27 Dec 2009
I have been in doubt for a long time about the difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England.
For some strange reason I thought England was a country, Great Britain was the alliance between Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland, and the United Kingdom was the collection of islands including the Isle of Man.
I have done some research and also developed a small image that exemplifies what I have learned.
- The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe.
- A sovereign state, commonly simply referred to as a state, is a political association with effective internal and external sovereignty over a geographic area and population which is not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state.
- Great Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe.
- England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom.
I hope this may have been of use to you or somebody else with this question.
The following links were of use to me while doing my research:
22 Dec 2009
What is the operating system of money? Why are the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer? When did all of this start?
Douglas Rushkoff answers these questions in a powerfully simple way:
Once upon a time, before the middle ages, we had an abundance-based currency. Everyone lived happily, you were issued vouchers based on how much grain you harvested, and those vouchers could in turn be used to pay for things. It was based on abundance… In contrast to our scarcity-based currency model of today.
> The monetary system we use today was created so that rich people could stay rich by being rich rather than doing anything.
> We live in an economy where the sustainance of the economy itself depends on growth at the rate of interest.
> Where do you get the extra money? You'll have to borrow that too.
> Corporations? They were created to support this economic system as well.
This was the value of our currency right through the industrial age. This is the system still in use today. It is an outdated system, one that must be ruled out.
Why and how did this happen?
The following video by Rushkoff explains this in 15 minutes, why the system is broken and how must we change things to create a better economic system.
Via poortaste
04 Dec 2009
I just finished reading Bones of the Hills by Conn Iggulden. It is the 3rd book in the Conqueror Series of Genghis Khan. I would like to share my thought on the book.
The hardback version is 518 pages long, so it proves to be a lengthy good read. It is mostly fiction, however, many dates, army sizes, names, and events are based on actual facts and tales written throughout history.
The book is very vivid and descriptive. While I am a fan of 1st person writing, this book was colourful and used a wealthy amount of grammar. It is fast paced, and I consider it the least boring book I’ve read in about a year. The most intense and emotional part (in my opinion) is towards the end, at four fifths of the book.
If you are looking for a historical novel to read through I can highly recommend this book.
04 Dec 2009
So, you’ve finished school, you’re working, you probably have been doing so for a few (or too many) years. Then one day you stumble on a math equation you saw at High School (Tertiary School if you are British) and you can’t remember where to start solving it. Then someone mentions something about Genghis Khan and you barely remember he was a Mongol that took over many lands.
It’s only natural, you know, to forget things over a period of time. Specially when we don’t use and practice them constantly. How can you avoid losing all that information your teachers took so much pride and effort in stuffing into your brain in the first place?
I came up with an interesting game I am going to start. Every Saturday (or so) I will pick a topic on random, it might be about the British Empire, or about the Chin, or about finding the area under a curve, or parsing XML through the Python programming language, or how to hack the firmware for my digital camera, or maybe how to bake French bread. Then I am going to blog about my findings.
Why? Well… maybe many of you already know some of these things. Then again, maybe many of you don’t. Information is vital in our society: He who knows is he who perseveres. The point of me posting random topics to my Blog is not to brag about how much I know, or what I learned throughout the day, but to share my opinion on a topic I randomly thought about which may be of interest to you.
In the end, it may be a handy read, or it may be irrelevant information, but the point is doing what you feel is right in the end… I feel we all must keep our memories and knowledge alive, and this is might be a good practice to start with.
What do you think? Do you consider you have a better way of keeping knowledge alive in your memory?
25 Nov 2009
How can you be more productive at home and at work, while ridding yourself of unnecessary stress? These are a few tips I have found along the way:
Pending matters (personal or work) tend to stick to your brain through the day, even though you are not focusing on them. They are like a cancer that cuts off productivity, just like a person who is going through divorce or difficult times will have trouble coping with work and friends, this holds with any kind of personal activities that have been left pending.
- If you take email seriously, divide it into “personal” and “work” folders. Attend to personal mail before leaving to work each morning, or at night before going to bed.
- Write down task lists (Use Google Calendar, Outlook, Google Tasks or even pen and paper) and divide them into days. You can’t do everything in a day, so be realistic. Try to do everything that is personal at home, and everything that is work related at the office.
- When you don’t accomplish a pending task, don’t leave it “hanging”. Set it for a later time (after work maybe?) and remove it from the “overdue” list. If it was something urgent you couldn’t accomplish and it involves someone else, let that person know (email? phone?) immediately that it will take you another day to finish it.
- While at work, be sure to have your pending activities listed appropiately and go through them in order, remember you can’t do everything at once and it will only stress you out thinking about how much you have to do, specially when you have a deadline.
- If you read personal email at work, try to archive (or store) personal emails that arrive, and mark in your calendar that you must attend to those emails when you get home. If it is something urgent, reply at once that you will attend to the issue at a later time.
By following these steps, hopefully you will be able to clear your mind at work and start to focus on what you have to do, not what you had to do and didn’t do, nor what you have pending and might have to do later. Everything at its time.
Now get to work!
