if i were mayor

1) i would promote filming throughout the city and create a joint tourism campaign
2) integrate tourism with foursquare and culture
3) create an integrated city-wide app for all events, transit routes and time tables, sales, vendors, reporting crimes and issues, etc
4) create major tax incentives for major corporations to headquarter in the city
5) charge for waste by per pound, credit back based on recycling, and promote composting and upcycling
6) create major incentives for hiring and consuming locally
7) incentivize public transportation and cycling
8) tier water and electricity consumption rates, and heavily incentivize solar panel installation
9) promote social entrepreneurship
10) file bankruptcy

in 50 years, i will

a) login to this blog and add a post
b) forget my login to this blog or even that it exists
c) receive alzheimers treatment (which will exist in 25 years) to effectively remedy b)
d) have reentered the carbon cycle
e) read this and chuckle at my foolhardy younger days
f) not give two poops (except in my adult diapers)

health

what an insanely large liminal space that exists between life and death, not even metaphysically speaking (unusual, i know).

that massive liminal space is probably what we call health.  over our lifetime, our health waxes and wanes at different points and we never quite know how close we get to either maximum.

beyond our lifespan, we have our healthspan.  this is the time in which we can attain maximum life and health, but we all live in mediocrity.

we eat like sh*t, we sleep like sh*t, we work like sh*t.

so how exactly do we measure our health within this liminality?  biomarkers alone?

if you could measure it, would you even change anything?

surely you've had a blood panel done before.  metrics, with strong correlations to outcomes.

what more does would it take?

wayfarer

i traveled once in a younger man's shoes
much ignoring an older man's clues
idealistic and all, ignoring my dues

when that path ended, i decided otherwise
what's tried and true i thought were just lies
so a road of my own i'd pave at sunrise

i've gone and done things in my own way
i've toiled and moiled, made my parlay
but more and more the days are just gray

my paving days i find are numbered
my strength i find is much encumbered
i soon wish to just lay and slumber

i learn that paving is best together
traveling far no matter the weather
in groups and teams, life is just better

now i backtrack the road once traveled
dreams and idealisms, much unraveled
a younger man, now aged and baffled.

lame ducks

if you ask me, the presidency is like taking a man to jupiter.

it could take five years to get there.  so before the man (hopefully woman soon) gets there, yoink.

it's like putting a ceo in charge of a company and as soon as she gets it all figured out, you put someone else in.

which duck is the quickest of them all?

choose wisely, young padawan.

kids

i think kids are gentle -
and by gentle i mean
blatantly raucous and belligerent -
reminders about all
the little things in life.

how a small toy or
a cool lunch box can
be the extent of your
worldly possessions.

and that precious
period of life is as
ephemeral as the time
a child spends crying
over a dropped ice cream cone.

luck

cross your fingers, your 't's, your eyes, and your toes.

my brilliant friends

let's start an embryonic biophysics / tissue engineering company. simply put, a cell inkjet cartridge company. the 3D bioprinter was one of the best inventions of 2010. but to mass produce any tissue, won't they need insane quantities of bio ink?

convention

i wonder if russians have just as hard a time remembering my name as i do, Александр.

unintended consequences

people have probably heard me mention those two words incessantly for the past year and a half.

it dawned on me that life is similar to the heisenberg uncertainty principle or the observer effect.

thus, when you interfere with anything, there are bound to be unintended consequences. unfortunately, most of us are far too short-sighted to map out a probability tree with the 1,000,000 potential outcomes, and the subsequent secondary cascade of 1,000,000,000,000 potential outcomes, the tertiary cascade of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible outcomes, and so on.

so unless you're about to prevent a train wreck or some outcome that doesn't have potentially adverse secondary, tertiary, etc consequences, sit down and hold tight.

coin toss

[content rated E for evolutionists. not recommended for creationists.]

what are the chances that if the earth were to start over 100 times, that the land masses would be the same. that the same wars would occur. that genghis khan would have existed. that japan and germany would have gone bat sh*t crazy. that insane dictators would coexist on this planet. that we would go into space. that the same languages would be formed. that britain would colonize the world. that we would develop the atom bomb. that english would be dominant. that people would look the same. that currencies would be formed. that law would be created. that religion would exist. that corporations would form. that the same viruses would kill us. that steve jobs would be born and create apple. that we would have technology.

what are the chances of these convergences?

i welcome my nerdier folks to run some bayesian and mcmc modeling, but really, isn't the outcome fairly improbable? and by improbable, i mean infinitesimally minutely impossibly possible.

game over

life is like a board game. no matter how many pieces you collect, no matter how much property you acquire, countries you invade, opponents you bankrupt, money you collect, at the end of the game, it's all moot.

your money and other game pieces are no good.

everything goes back in the box, only to gather dust.

propaganda

national anthems are merely hymns of propaganda of nations - governments and borders that wax and wane and change hands at the whims of mere mortals.

we are all born human, merely different by thought and peril.

as a man for all humans, i can't condone war, so i stand for global health.

fools and progeny

we are the most foolish specie on this planet.

you may think we're made of molecules and magic (since we can't really replicate life), but we're really made of time. as we sit here, we're aging, or if you're morbid, we're dying. so everything we do is a measurement of time, which makes its mark on us as age. no matter how much we make, how little or how much we do, or how much plastic surgery we get, we age. so everything we put each passing second into, we're putting a part of our lives into.

so we're all in this rat race, putting our time - our lives - into 9 to 5s (if you're fortunate), putting our lives into our jobs (that some of you really hate) for the sake of money. and we put that money into things. so we put our lives into things and spend all day worrying about our things. what if my house burns down? what if someone dings my car door? what if i spill water on my laptop? what if a hurricane tears through my vacay house in the carib? what happened to that weed whacker i lent my neighbor? where are my video games?

we project our lives into stupid physical objects. and the wiser of us procreate. they project themselves onto their children. love them. watch them grow. the better of us do good. we project onto other people. we do good for the world.

because at the end of the day, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Cancer

What if you could know the exact instance when you get cancer?

Magic school bus

I know someone was on LSD when they wrote this show, but...what if we shrank down an army down to 150nm per person and injected them into someone's body. How many people would we need to send in with shrunken swords and laser pointers to fend off an infection. Also, how much would we charge? #shrinktheworld

another obsession/fascination

i've been fascinated about leadership for the last nine years. motivators, detractors, etc.

and i recently had an epiphany about bullying. bullies always seem to win because they have their own interest in mind. i'd imagine a kid with bully parents in the middle of a WFP region would weigh more. i'd imagine a company with a $252.56 billion market cap that bullies its competitors would rise above the rest. the point being self interest, even if that self is a company. when is the last time you borrowed or rented something and treated it like your own? if you actually name a time, i'm more apt to call b.s. rather than put you on a pedestal.

and i connected the two.

a job at a company, from mailroom clerk to CEO, is just a loan. the title of the position has been temporarily lent out to you. the trick is to make people think they own it.