I have been watching Heroes lately. I admire purpose driven people, and so find the show’s geneticist, Mohinder Suresh, quite intriguing. I have compiled a short essay elaborating his philosophy on the implications of Darwin’s natural selection on our everday life.

Watch the trailer.

Where does it come from, this quest? This need to solve life’s mysteries, when the simplest of questions can never be answered. Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream? Perhaps we’d be better off not looking at all. Not doubting, not yearning. That’s not human nature. Not the human heart. That is not why we are here.

Evolution is an imperfect, and often violent process. Morality loses its meaning. The question of good and evil, reduced to one simple choice: Survive? Or perish?

When evolution selects its agents, it does so at a cost. It makes demands in exchange for singularity. And you may be asked to do something against your very nature. Suddenly, the change in your life that should have been wonderful, comes as a betrayal. It may seem cruel, but the goal is nothing short of self-preservation. Survival.

Some individuals, it is true, are more special. This is natural selection. It begins as a single individual born or hatched like every other member of their species. Anonymous. Seemingly ordinary. Except they’re not. They carry inside them the genetic code that will take their species to the next evolutionary rung. It’s destiny.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose. The Earth spins at a thousand miles an hour as we desperately try to keep from being thrown off. Like the first blush in winter that signals a great migration. Is there any warning of their arrival? A sign, a single event that set this chain into motion? Was it a whisper in God’s ear? Survive. Adapt. Escape. And if we could mark our single moment in time, that first hint of a prophecy of approaching danger… would we have done anything differently? Could it have been stopped? Or was the die long ago cast?

The earth is large, large enough so you think you can hide from anything. From Fate, From God. If only you found a place far enough away. So you run… To the edge of the Earth, where all is safe again. Quiet and Warm. The Solace of salt air. The peace of danger left behind. The luxury of grief. And maybe, for a moment, you believe you have escaped.

This quest. This need to solve life’s mysteries. In the end, what does it matter when the human heart can only find meaning in the smallest of moments? Those moments are here. Among us. In the shadows. In the light. Everywhere. Do we even know yet?

Generally Interesting

• The surprising links between anger and time perception
• Profanity Helps One Tolerate Physical Pain Better
• Taking more math in school will raise your income
• The fruits of the feminist revolution: eight hours a day in a cubicle.
• How Professional Writers Write
• Research says women are getting more beautiful

Science

• Fatty Foods Affect Memory and Exercise
• How to accelerate time or at least the perception of it
• Why Humans and Their Fur Parted Ways
• Understanding the mind by studying ant colonies
• Why a woman’s attractiveness acts as a repellent, explained using probability.
• Why the Z boson had a different mass at different times of day.
• A Tour of my Brain

Business & Marketing

• Facebook shown to increase jealousy in relationships
• I now pronounce you monetized: a YouTube video case study

So like last year, and the year before that, this year I will be teaching the Search Engine Optimization course at Humber College. Students will be learning everything from website conversion metrics, link building, and grey hat seo to keyword density, mod rewrites, and sitemaps. I also show students how to leverage social media sites and blogs to their advantage. So, if you’re in Toronto, be sure to sign-up and come listen to me for hours on end!! *exciting*

Furthermore, thanks to the efforts put forth by James, Humber is also offering a course on Web 2.0 Applications Development. I am particularly looking forward to teaching this one. Students will learn how to integrate custom Google Maps, RSS feeds, Flickr photos, and Twitter into their website. They will learn how to build Facebook applications with Facebook Markup Language, and various other useful mashups. If you’re in the field of digital media, this course will be well worth your time. Sign up today!

A year ago, I would have spent the first two paragraphs explaining Twitter. Today, I see Tila Tequila using it. So I will spare you the time and get right to it.

I thought I write a post on how I display random twitter updates on the top right corner of this website. This website pulls in a random twitter status from my account each time the website is reloaded (press F5 to give it a shot!). You can easily plug in the following code snippet to make this functionality work for your website as well.

View the live version of the twitter updates.

Grab the code snippet right here.

I have commented the code, so have fun modifying it. Post a comment or shoot me an email if you have trouble with it.

Generally Interesting

• Hitler’s secret fighter revealed after 50 years.
• Psychologist finds Wikipedians grumpy and closed-minded
• Cocaine prices around the world

Science

• Humans prefer cockiness to expertise
• Ant mega-colony takes over world
• Study: Brain represents tools as temporary body parts
• Rating attractiveness: study finds consensus among men, not women
• Doctors Baffled, Intrigued by Girl Who Doesn’t Age
• Study finds that short-term memory is improved 20% by walking in nature
• Women’s Makeup Draws 33% More Men

Business & Marketing

• Translators Wanted at LinkedIn. The Pay? $0 an Hour.
• Mobile uploads to YouTube up 400% after iPhone 3GS launch
• Don’t Use Number Or Underscores When Picking a Twitter Username
• Twitter Has Tweaked Its Title Tags to Optimize Your SEO Ranking
• Step by Step Instructions on Building a Successful Twitter Account
• Simple Math to Calculate a Product’s Virality
• How To Create A Successful Viral Video Campaign
• The 20 Words and Phrases That Will Get You the Most ReTweets

Glucose is the main source of energy for the human body. Glucose is a form of sugar that is produced when carbohydrates are digested. Glucose in the bloodstream is converted to the energy needed for the body to function properly.

Past research indicates that self-control relies on some sort of limited energy source. Blood glucose is one important part of the energy source of self-control. Acts of self-control deplete relatively large amounts of glucose. Self-control failures are more likely when glucose is low or cannot be mobilized effectively to the brain (i.e., when insulin is low or insensitive). Restoring glucose to a sufficient level typically improves self-control. Numerous self-control behaviors fit this pattern, including controlling attention, regulating emotions, quitting smoking, coping with stress, resisting impulsivity, and refraining from criminal and aggressive behavior. Alcohol reduces glucose throughout the brain and body and likewise impairs many forms of self-control. Furthermore, self-control failure is most likely during times of the day when glucose is used least effectively. Self-control thus appears highly susceptible to glucose. Self-control benefits numerous social and interpersonal processes. Glucose might therefore be related to a broad range of social behavior.

Go here to discover some good sources for Glucose in your diet.

Anyone who believes that money doesn’t grow on trees need not look too far. The current global economic crisis is a result of just that. The federal reserve has been printing money out of thin air to bail out banks that passed along bad debt as assets to rest of the world.

The Federal Reserve has printed over a trillion dollars to combat the spending freeze. While the rest of the western world has followed their lead. All this money will inevitably lead to hyper-inflation; devaluing the dollar and possibly dethroning it as the currency standard of the world. “Everyone says a little inflation can’t hurt us,” said Martin D. Weiss, chairman of Weiss Research. “What they don’t seem to understand is, that’s inflation in a growing economy. Inflation on top of rising unemployment is another thing entirely. It’s much more painful, and it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

Here is a list of some current and upcoming crisis’ we must prepare ourselves for:

1. Global Real Estate Overvaluation

2. Indebtedness

3. Excessive Leverage

4. Global Bubbles (Globalization has placed us in a world where one country’s economic collapse can devastate another)

5. Retiring Baby Boomers

6. Global Warming

7. Crude Oil and Energy Crisis

8. Hyper-Inflation

9. Decline in Key Commodities, including Steel, Iron, and Water ]]> http://jawadonweb.com/?feed=rss2&p=1157 http://jawadonweb.com/?p=1153 http://jawadonweb.com/?p=1153#comments Tue, 19 May 2009 03:39:33 +0000 jawadshuaib http://jawadonweb.com/?p=1153 It takes two things to turn a crowd into a tribe:

- A shared interest
- A way to communicate

Leaders galvish, inspire, and connect their tribes through their remarkable ideas. No one watches a mediocre YouTube video they’ve seen before. No one passes on a boring e-mail. No one invests in a stock that’s boring, with few prospects of big growth.

People yearn for change, they relish being part of a movement, and they talk about things that are remarkable, not boring. Leaders lead when they take positions, when they connect with their tribes, and when they help the tribe connect to itself.

Remember, crowds are just waiting to be turned into tribes, and from thereon, into movements.

Unless something major happens between now and 10 years from now, the person you are now will be very similar (if not identical) to the type of person you’ll be 10 years from now. If you’re not a risk taker, then there’s no reason you won’t be one 10 years from now. If you’re not entrepreneurial, then why will you be in 10 years from now?

If you’re not willing to constantly be in a state of pushing yourself to do more and learn more, then you’ve already reached your limit. So my theory is this: unless you change something about yourself now, you’ll never change.

To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.

Inspired from Jared’s blog post.

In a recent presentation at the Google HQ, the software celebrity, Joel Spolsky stated that as we move from the era of computing into the era of the Internet, we no longer need to worry about computer-human interaction. What we do have to think about [in the era of social networking] is human to human interaction. And to do that, you have to think as an anthropologist does.

Go over to ReadWriteWeb for the rest of the article.