PUSHING PAST LIMITS

David Copperfield

2012-05-28T11:29:00.002-07:00

Invictus

2012-04-21T03:28:00.000-07:00

The poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley was written on a piece of paper in Nelson Mandela's prison cell.

Steve Jobs

2012-03-18T08:15:00.002-07:00

Kai Greene

2012-03-10T13:01:00.000-08:00

Turnarounds

2012-03-04T05:55:00.001-08:00

"Whatever it takes"

2012-02-25T23:43:00.002-08:00

Internal drive

2012-02-11T12:20:00.000-08:00

Adi Dassler

2012-02-04T03:56:00.000-08:00

"Any rational person would give up"

2012-01-28T12:14:00.000-08:00

"Failure"

2012-01-22T02:10:00.000-08:00

What staying the best means

2012-01-17T13:02:00.000-08:00

Making mistakes

2012-01-11T13:11:00.001-08:00

We choose to go to the Moon

2012-01-08T02:05:00.000-08:00

Are you a contender?

2011-12-28T08:32:00.000-08:00

Stallone's characters don't talk much. I like that. Also, his movies keep giving the same general message, again and again, until it gets into your head. This next vid is a nice summary of that message:

Arnold's rules

2011-11-13T09:12:00.000-08:00

Dreams

2011-10-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

This is too good not to share: the first step to making your dream a reality is to wake up.

Man in the arena

2011-10-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

This is a part of the "Man in the arena" speech given by Theodore Roosevelt in 1910:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Tango

2011-09-18T10:03:00.000-07:00

Taking Tango lessons these days. Check out this cool dance that the instructor sent us:

25 years

2011-07-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

I haven't written for my blog in a while... It was pretty popular a few years ago... Reduced to sporadic thoughts now. A quarter of a century as my age might be a good occasion to write what i'm up to these days:
- i just got my masters degree
- i just got a new apartment and a car
- no one is more tired than me right now because the last 6 months i've felt like a one man army.

And now let me fall asleep as i throw myself towards the bed :)

Lessons of life

2011-06-03T11:23:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you can find treasures on YouTube. This vid is what its title says, a lesson of life.

Incredible story

2011-04-17T01:23:00.000-07:00

For my master thesis i'm looking for all kinds of written text (letters, speeches, etc.) to analyze with some software. After i found a cool essay by Frank Herbert a few days ago, which i also posted on this blog, today i found this incredible story, which i'll try to summarize:

In 1973, a 9-year old kid named Anthony Hollander discovered a dying bird in his garden. After this, he wrote a letter to a BBC tv show for kids and asked for assistance to "make people or animals alive". Here is an exact transcript of his letter:

"Dear Val, Jhon, Peter and Lesslie,

This may seem very strange, but I think I no how to make people or animals alive. Why Im teling you is because I cant get the things I need.

A list of what I need.

1. Diagram of how evreything works. [inside youre body.]
2. Model of a heart split in half. [both halvs.]
3. The sort of sering they yous for cleaning ears. [Tsering must be very very clean.]
4. Tools for cutting people open.
5. Tools for stiches.
6. Fiberglass box, 8 foot tall, 3 foot width.
7. Picture of a man showing all the arteries.

Sorry but in number 6 in the list the box needs lid. If you do get them on 1st March I can pay £10, £11, £12, £13 or £14.

Send your answer to me,

Love from Anthony,
London, NW11"

And he got this answer:

"Dear Anthony,

Thank you very much for your letter. It was nice to hear from you again after such a long time and we are sorry we have been delayed replying.

We are receiving over 4,000 letters every week and are having difficulty answering them as quickly as we would like.

We were interested to hear that you think you know how to make living people - and your list of necessary items intrigued us!

We are sorry we can't help you at all, but we wondered if you had thought of talking to your family doctor - he might be glad to help you with some diagrams and other information.

We are sending you a photograph of the "Blue Peter" team - it has been signed specially for you.

With best wishes from Valerie, John, Peter, Lesley and all of us on the programme.

Yours sincerely

B (Biddy Baxter)
Editor"

Today, Anthony Hollander is a professor of rheumatology and tissue engineering. He played a key role in a surgery first: the successful implantation of an artificially grown windpipe... I can't say much more after this, if you want to read the full story, check this out.

Listening To The Left Hand

2011-04-10T08:25:00.000-07:00

I just want to paste a small essay that i found very interesting: Listening To The Left Hand, by Frank Herbert. It deals with embracing change, a motif in Dune as well.

When I was young and my world was dominated by indestructible adults, I learned an ancient way of thinking that is as dangerous as a rotten board in a stepladder. It told me that the only valuable things were those that I could hold unchanged: the love of a wise grandfather, the enticing mystery of the trail through our woodlot into the forest, the feeling of lake water on a hot summer day, the colors (ahh, those colors) when I opened my new pencil box on the first day of school...
But the grandfather died, a developer bulldozed the woodlot, loggers clear-cut the forest, the lake is polluted and posted against swimming, smog has deadened my ability to detect subtle odors, and pencil boxes aren't what they used to be.
Neither am I.
There may be a quiet spot in my mind where nothing moves and the places of my childhood remain unchanged, but everything else moves and changes. There's dangerous temptation in the nostalgic dream, in the expertise of yesteryear. The nameless animal that is all of us cannot live in places that no longer exist. I want to address myself to the survival of that nameless animal, looking back without regrets at even the best of what was and will never be again. We should salvage what we can, but even salvaging changes things.
The way of this change is called "process" and it requires that we be prepared to encounter a multiform reality. Line up three bowls in front of you. Put ice water in the one on the left, hot water in the one on the right, and lukewarm water in the middle one. Soak your left hand in the ice water and right hand in the hot water for about a minute, then plunge both hands into the bowl of lukewarm water. Your left hand will tell you the water of the middle bowl is warm, your right hand will report cold. A small experiment in relativity.
We live in a universe dominated by relativity and change, but our intellects keep demanding fixed absolutes. We make our most strident demands for absolutes that contain comforting reassurance. We will misread and/or misunderstand almost anything that challenges our favorite illusions.
It has been noted repeatedly that science students (presumably selected for open-mindedness) encounter a basic difficulty when learning to read X-ray plates. Almost universally, they demonstrate an inability to distinguish between what is shown on the plate and what they believe will be shown. They see things that are not there. The reaction can be linked directly to the preset with which they approach the viewing of a plate. When confronted with proof of the extent to which preconceptions influenced their judgment, they tend to react with surprise, anger, and rejection.
We are disposed to perceive things as they appear, filtering the appearance through our preconceptions and fitting it into the past forms (including all the outright mistakes, illusions, and myths of past forms). If we allow only the right hand's message to get through, then "cold" is the absolute reality to which we cling. When our local reality has attached to it that other message: "This is the way out," then we're dealing with a form of "holy truth." Cold becomes a way of life.

Android Celebs - Episodes 25-29

2011-03-19T02:21:00.000-07:00

More fun i had on the way back home:

Doc Brown

Marty McFly

Ronald McDonald

J.R. Ewing

Ray Krebbs

Android Celebs - Episodes 19-24 (Lost!)

2011-03-05T05:03:00.000-08:00

So here are a bunch of Losties. If you don't know who these are, you can always watch Lost :)

Kate

Sayid

Sawyer

Mikhail

Eloise

Radzinski

Android Celebs - Episodes 13-18

2011-02-28T09:56:00.000-08:00

Lionel Messi

Diego Maradona

Santa

Sherlock Holmes

Hercule Poirot

Lady Gaga