Word of the Day "Paraprosdokian" for Sat. Dec. 18th

A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part... frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect.

To go with the WikipediA examples, I will add a few:

I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.



Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.



I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.



Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.



The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list.



Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.



If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.



We never really grow up; we only learn how to act in public.



War does not determine who is right -- only who is left.



To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

All with Source Unknown

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Lunar eclipse, winter solstice to coincide - first time since 1554 :)

I guess I am going to have to stay up very late on Dec. 20 -> Dec. 21 in order to witness an infrequent "happening". I'm in -0600 from the Exact times:



Penumbral Eclipse Begins: 05:29:17 UT

Partial Eclipse Begins: 06:32:37 UT

Total Eclipse Begins: 07:40:47 UT

Greatest Eclipse: 08:16:57 UT

Total Eclipse Ends: 08:53:08 UT

Partial Eclipse Ends: 10:01:20 UT

Penumbral Eclipse Ends: 11:04:31 UT



And more information at NASA's website:

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH2010.html#LE2010Dec21T

Amplify’d from www.cbc.ca

Lunar eclipse, winter solstice to coincide

Last Updated: Friday, December 17, 2010 | 4:04 PM ET

A world map of lunar eclipse visibility. Tuesday's lunar eclipse, expected to occur in the early hours of Tuesday morning, will fall on the same day as the winter solstice for the first time since AD 1554.

This year's winter solstice on Tuesday will fall on the same day as a full lunar eclipse for the first time in 456 years.

The rare, 72-minute lunar eclipse — when the sun, the Earth and the moon align — will begin in the early morning hours on Dec. 21 in North America, and should cast an amber glow on snowy landscapes, said NASA.

The moon will pass through the darkest part of the Earth's shadow. Tuesday marks the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere, and the winter solstice begins in the evening at 6:38 p.m. ET, which is 8:08 p.m. NT, 7:38 p.m. AT, 5:38 p.m. CT, 4:38 p.m. MT, and 3:38 p.m. PT. Scientists said the last time a full lunar eclipse coincided with the winter solstice was in AD 1554. NASA forecasts that at 1:33 a.m. ET on Tuesday, "Earth's shadow will appear as a dark red bite at the edge of the lunar disk." After roughly an hour, that "bite" will eventually grow to cover the whole moon. That stage, known as "totality," will probably start at 2:41 a.m. ET and last 72 minutes. As for the best time to witness the cosmic event, NASA suggests being outside at 3:17a.m., "when the moon will be in deepest shadow, displaying the most fantastic shades of coppery red." Although the arrival of the solstice cannot be seen, the moment describes the instant when the Earth's axial tilt is farthest away from the sun, resulting in the shortest day of the year as well as the longest night of the year.

Why moon will appear red If you were to stand on the moon's surface looking up at the sky, you would see Earth hanging above, nightside down, and completely hiding the sun behind it. Rather than being completely dark, the Earth's rim would appear as if it were on fire. Around its circumference, you would be seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world at the same time. This surrounding light will actually beam right into Earth's shadow, giving it a rusty glow. From the Earth, the moon would appear as a giant red orb because the only sunlight visible is refracted through the Earth's atmosphere. Source: NASA Read more at www.cbc.ca

 

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The State of the Blogosphere 2010 via Brian Solis

An EXCELLENT article by Brian Solis who is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist.



If you are interested in Statistics, there's a TON of them in this article.

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The State of the Blogosphere 2010

The question we ask ourselves when examining the state of the blogosphere is whether or not the cup is half full or half empty? Personally, I believe the answer lies in the nature of circumstances. If drinking from the glass, it is then half empty. If pouring, it is half full. With the rise of Twitter, Posterous, Tumblr and other forms of micromedia, many believed that the glass was half empty. Blogging appeared passé as many individuals opted for microblogging, investing in the art of the short form. After all, the blogosphere at one point seemed to succumb to the allure of the statusphere and the effortlessness and trendiness of rapid-fire, micro publishing. But, something was lost in translation over the last few years…context. Today, 100 million Tweets flew across Twitter. On Facebook this month, the average user created 90 pieces of content and contributed to the more than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) collectively shared each month. But blogging perseveres – as it should. It is a place where context, thoughtfulness and continuity are rewarded with inbound links, ReTweets, bookmarks, comments and Likes. Blogs are the digital library of our intellect, experience, and vision. Their longevity far outlasts the short-term memory of Twitter or any other micro network. In fact, with Twitter, we are simply competing for the moment. With blogs, we are investing in our digital legacy. The State of the Blogosphere 2010 Since 2004, Technorati has published its annual State of the Blogosphere report. As it indexes over 1 million blogs, Technorati is the authority. This year, the team dove deeper into the blogs with a focus on female bloggers and mobile blogging. No matter which network you call home, blogs are the pillars of the democratized web. Blogging sets the foundation for influence providing an intellectual epicenter for vision and knowledge. To begin, let’s take a look at the residence of bloggers worldwide. Almost one-half of all bloggers reside in the United States with 29% blogging in Europe. Respondents for the survey, which was administered in English, represented 24 countries. 38% of respondents resided in North America – 33% in the United States specifically. Participants from Europe account for 19%. Read more at www.briansolis.com

 

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Lessons to Be Learned for Monday - from an old west story:

Have You Ever Danced?

An old prospector shuffled into town leading an old tired mule.

The old man headed straight for the only saloon to clear his parched throat.

He walked up and tied his old mule to the hitch rail.  As he stood there, brushing some of the dust from his face and clothes, a young gunslinger stepped out of the saloon with a gun in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other.  The young gunslinger looked at the old man and laughed, saying, "Hey old man, have you ever danced?"



The old man looked up at the gunslinger and said, "No, I never did dance.. never really wanted to."



A crowd had gathered as the gunslinger grinned and said,  "Well, you old fool, you're gonna dance now," and started shooting at the old man's feet.



The old prospector --not wanting to get a toe blown off-- started hopping around like a flea on a hot skillet.  Everybody was laughing, fit to be tied. When his last bullet had been fired, the young gunslinger, still laughing, holstered his gun and turned around to go back into the saloon.



The old man turned to his pack mule, pulled out a double-barreled shotgun, and cocked both hammers. The loud clicks carried clearly through the desert air. The crowd stopped laughing immediately. The crowd stopped laughing immediately. The crowd watched as the young gunman stared at the old timer and the large gaping holes of those twin barrels.



The barrels of the shotgun never wavered in the old man's hands, as he quietly said, "Son, have you ever licked a mule's Butt?"



The gunslinger swallowed hard and s aid, "No sir..... but... I've always wanted to!"

There are a few lessons for us all here:

Never be arrogant.

Don't waste ammunition.

Whiskey makes you think you're smarter than you are.

Always, always make sure you know who has the power.

Don't mess with old men, they didn't get old by being stupid.

Don't you just LOVE stories with happy endings?

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Who Is Using Twitter? Insights from a New Study! via CBC Spark #canada

Where do you fit?

Posted by Nora Young under Great Links



The Pew Internet and American Life Project released new research into who is using Twitter, at least in the U.S. If you’re on Twitter, like me or Spark, you might be surprised to learn that only 8% of online Americans use the service. Other highlights from the report include information about which demographic groups are more likely to use Twitter:

Young adults – Internet users ages 18-29 are significantly more likely to use Twitter than older adults.

African-Americans and Latinos – Minority internet users are more than twice as likely to use Twitter as are white internet users.

Urbanites – Urban residents are roughly twice as likely to use Twitter as rural dwellers.

Women and the college-educated are also slightly more likely than average to use the service.

Interesting stuff. it certainly had me wishing that we had a comprehensive overview like this for Canadian users of Twitter (am I missing it?)



If you’d like to read more of the Pew results, check them out here.

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The 8 Habits of Highly Productive People :)

And I don't even have to take my shoes off to keep track of them

Amplify’d from celestinechua.com

What makes a productive person? Is it the ability to robotically churn out work, hour after hour? Is it the amount of discipline one has? Is it the speed at which one works? Before we can discuss what makes a productive person, we should first define what productivity is. The common notion of productivity is the ability to churn out a lot of work in a short span of time. True, but not complete. IMO, true productivity is the ability to create a lot of high impact work in a short span of time. This is the kind of productivity we should concern ourselves with, not other kinds of productivity which are more empty / busy work that create no impact in the long term. For example, let’s say Peter types very fast and can reply 1000 emails a day. That doesn’t make him/her productive, because there’s little output (product) to speak of (unless the emails contribute to tangible, high impact outcomes). However, if John completes just one task in a day that has more impact than the 1000 emails put together, then he’s more productive than Peter is. The past few months have been my most productive months for the year. I ran/spoke at a total of 8 workshops/speeches/conferences, including one in Hong Kong last month. My latest workshops have drawn in the highest number of participants to date. I created and ran 30DLBL, the first ever 30-day personal development challenge of its kind online, and had the honor of running it with over 1,200 of you in this special journey. I wrote, did the design and launched The 30DLBL Book (both guidebook and workbook), which has sold over 200 copies to date (that’s almost double of TPEBook in its first 2 weeks of launch). TPEB grew almost double in subscribers since Sep (3 months), from 9k to over 18k, making it one of the biggest personal development blogs online today. At the same time, I’ve also been managing other work, such as 1-1 coaching with clients (I’m handling about 5-6 clients on average at each time), administrative aspects of the business, writing TPEB articles/guest posts, maintaining the site, etc. A few days ago I finished designing my line-up of workshops next year, and earlier this week I conceptualized the idea for my next book for next year (I noticed many of you are in the stage where you’re thinking of pursuing your passion or turning it into a viable, full-time career. I want you to join me and pursue your passion as a full-time career, so I’m going to write about this for my next book. I’ll be sharing how I turned my passion from nothing into a 5-digit monthly income career today and how you can do so too. More on that next year). That’s all while maximizing other aspects of my life, such as keeping to my exercise regime (I exercise daily now), having a positive social life, keeping in touch with old friends, all at the same time. I think productivity is really how you manage yourself, and the habits you practice. By selectively practicing certain habits over others, you can get a lot more output for your time. Here, I’ll share with you my top 8 habits in productivity. Practice them and compare how your productivity changes afterward :D. Read more at celestinechua.com

 

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What does Cognitive Science say about Privacy and the Net?

An excellent article but first you might have to figure out (as I did) exactly what cognitive science is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science

Amplify’d from blogs.law.harvard.edu

Doc Searls Weblog

December 6, 2010 in Ideas, MIT, News, Research, Science, Technology, VRM | 8 comments

Here’s what one dictionary says: World English Dictionary privacy (ˈpraɪvəsɪ, ˈprɪvəsɪ) — n 1. the condition of being private or withdrawn; seclusion 2. the condition of being secret; secrecy 3. philosophy the condition of being necessarily restricted to a single person Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition 2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009 I especially like that last one: restricted to a single person. In the VRM community this has been our focus in general. Our perspective is anchored with the individual human being. That’s our point of departure. Our approach to privacy, and to everything else, starts with the individual. This is why we prefer user-driven to user-centric, for example. The former assumes human agency, which is one’s ability to act and have effects in the world. The latter assumes exterior agency. It’s about the user, but not by the user. (Adriana Lukas unpacks some differences here.) But this is a post about privacy, which is a highly popular topic right now. It’s also the subject of a workshop at MIT this week, to which some friends and colleagues are going. So talk about the topic is one thing that makes it front-burner for me right now. The other thing is that it’s also the subject of a chapter in the book I’m writing. My argument is that privacy is personal. That’s how we understand it because that’s how we experience it. Our minds are embodied, and we experience privacy through our bodies in the world. We are born with the ability to grab, to hold, to make and wear clothing, to build structures that give us boundaries and spaces within which we can isolate what are our concerns alone. Read more at blogs.law.harvard.edu

 

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Bluetooth, iOS Enable Digital Camera Remote Control from #canada

Great!

So now I have to get a New Camera as mine isn't listed. I do have a wireless remote for my camera but the camera has this crazy setting that only allows it to be inactive for 15 minutes unless you snap a picture

Amplify’d from www.informationweek.com

Bluetooth, iOS Enable Digital Camera Remote Control

The blueSLR device allows an Apple iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch to control Nikon DSLR cameras from up to 300 feet away.

By Esther Shein ,  InformationWeek December 9, 2010 01:38 PM

(click image for larger view) BlueSLR Camera Connector

If you've ever found yourself trying to take a family photo and having to sprint into position after setting the camera's timer, a new device has come up with a potential solution. Canadian-based company XEquals this week unveiled a Bluetooth accessory to remotely control certain digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras with an iOS device.

The small blueSLR camera connector is geared at both professional photographers and consumers and works with Nikon cameras. It will soon be available for Canon cameras as well, the company said. Because of its size, users have the option of keeping it attached to the camera. It is the brainchild of a husband and wife team who said they "wished for an accessory with remote functionality to snap photos wirelessly so that the entire family could be in the picture."

Once the connector is plugged into a compatible digital DSLR camera, it can be paired with an Apple iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch device with Bluetooth. When the device is synced, companion software allows the user to control shutter speed, auto focus, timer, and other options remotely, up to 300 feet away. It also has GPS geo-tagging functionality to record where photos were taken and enables sharing on sites including iPhoto, MobileMe, Places, Flickr, and Picasa, the company said.

BlueSLR is one of the first certified accessories to use Bluetooth to interact with compatible Apple devices, according to the company's blog.

It is compatible with the Nikon Essential DLSR D3100 and D5000; the Nikon Advanced DLSR D90 and D7000; and the Nikon Professional DSLR D2Xs, D3, D3s, D200, D300, D300S, and D700 models. XEquals said support for Android and Blackberry devices is also coming soon.

BlueSLR retails for $149 and the companion app is available for free with the device and through the Apple App Store. Read more at www.informationweek.com

 

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Charting a new course for #Winnipeg via The View from Seven

The article also states:

It’s shorter on specifics than I would have liked — there’s only so much one blogger can do — but if it shifts the terms of reference away from the idea that all that Winnipeg needs to get out of neutral is a new stadium, an NHL team, an Ikea store or some other bauble instead of deeper structural changes, it will have been worth it.



Make that two bloggers now as I totally agree with the shift in terms of reference. I would also add that lowering the Business Tax even further would make Winnipeg, and Manitoba more attractive to Business!

Amplify’d from theviewfromseven.wordpress.com

The View from Seven

Posted by: theviewfromseven | December 5, 2010 Charting a new course for Winnipeg

A new effort to brighten Winnipeg’s future gets under way in January. That’s when a new private-sector led initiative called “Yes! Winnipeg” will get up and running, mandated to pursue economic growth and a new spirit of prosperity for our city. It’s the latest in a series of efforts over the years to revive the fortunes of a city which went through a period of stress and struggle that lasted a generation. Winnipeg had begun the ’70s as the country’s fifth-largest metropolitan area and the economic capital of the Canadian Prairies, with a population one-tenth larger than Edmonton’s and one-third larger than Calgary’s. By 2001, Winnipeg was the country’s eighth-largest metro area and had been deposed as a regional economic capital by both Calgary and Edmonton, which by that point were both 40 percent larger than Winnipeg in terms of population. The decline appears to have stopped. Statistics Canada projects that Winnipeg will still be #8 in 2031, with a metro population of about 884,000. Winnipeg will obviously be a somewhat bigger city in 2031 than it is today, but will still be a secondary market a mere one-tenth the size of metro Toronto (8.9 million), and much smaller than Montreal (4.9 million), Vancouver (3.5 million), Calgary (1.9 million), Ottawa-Gatineau (1.6 million) or Edmonton (1.5 million). The days of grandeur — the days when Winnipeg was one of Canada’s most important cities — are obviously not coming back. But there are still things that can be done to become a more pleasant place to live in the decades ahead. I copied and organized some of the data that Statistics Canada keeps on its 2006 Community Profiles web site and set out to look for the factors that make some cities more vibrant than others — younger, better educated and more attractive to people moving back and forth within Canada. From the sample of 25 cities I looked at, here’s what I learned: Read more at theviewfromseven.wordpress.com

 

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George Carlin's "God blesses American Politicians Not the Working class."

George calls a Spade a F_____g Shovel

Language Warning - Not Suitable for Office Consumption

Rest in Peace, George

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A seasonal Music Video I'd like to dedicate to Politicians Everywhere!

A colaboration between Tom Cochrane, Paul Hyde & Murray McLauglan.

It's old but it is still very appropriate at this time of year.

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Shanghai restaurant will be torn down - but Mayor could resist site's future use as a parking lot! #winnipeg

Now it is time to see whether or not we have a Mendacious Mayor.



Because, as it also says in the article, "In his recent bid for reelection in Winnipeg's recent civic campaign, Mayor Sam Katz pledged to curb the use of surface parking lots in the city's downtown. He said the lots were "eyesores" that were magnets for crime."



It is my opinion that we already have far too many surface parking lots and too few buildings that are 128 years old!

Amplify’d from www.cbc.ca

Shanghai restaurant will be torn down Mayor could resist site's future use as a parking lot Last Updated: Tuesday, December 7, 2010 | 6:58 AM CST Comments16Recommended16 CBC News

The building housing Winnipeg's Shanghai Restaurant is one step closer to the wrecking ball. (Google Street View) Heritage advocates in Winnipeg say the approved demolition of one of the oldest buildings in the downtown area is an example of "demolition by neglect." City Hall's property and development committee has voted to allow the Shanghai restaurant building on King Street to be torn down because it's too expensive to repair. 'This can never be replaced.'—Cindy Tugwell However, the demolition will not proceed until plans for a new site development are approved. The building, at the corner of King Street and Alexander Avenue on the edge of downtown, is presently home to the Shanghai restaurant and once had a brief tenure as City Hall in the 1880s. Read more at www.cbc.ca

 

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