The 10 Commandments of Social Media

clipped from www.fastcompany.com Thou Shalt Blog (like crazy). Thou Shalt Create Profiles (everywhere). Thou Shalt Upload Photos (lots of them). Thou Shalt Upload Videos (all you can find). Thou Shalt Podcast (often). Thou Shalt Set Alerts (immediately). Thou Shalt Comment (on a multitude of blogs). Thou Shalt Get Connected (with everyone). Thou Shalt Explore Social Media (30 minutes per week). Thou Shalt Be Creative (go forth and create creatively)!

Migrating to Linux in 5 Steps

As always, I advise following the link at the top of the clip to the full article for more detail.

clipped from www.nixtutor.com 1. A Fresh Copy of your Favorite Distro My favorite place to view the list of available distros and their features is a site called Distrowatch. 2. Back up your Data Before doing anything major, like changing operating systems, on a computer it is wise to create a backup of your data. 3. Is your hardware compatible? In modern Linux distributions hardware compatibility is usually not an issue; however, it is easy to check hardware issues with a LiveCD. 4. Identify your essential programs The next step is to write down the applications that you use every day. This will help you determine what to install once you get Linux up and running. 5. Have a fresh hard drive/partition ready to go When your backup is finished make sure you have an entire drive or partition ready for Linux before you install.

NO HUGGING.

clipped from www.upi.com NEW YORK, May 30 (UPI) -- Hugging among U.S. teenagers has become so prevalent some schools say they've banned the embrace or imposed limits on how long they last. "Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory," said Noreen Hajinlian, principal of George G. White School, a junior high school in Hillsdale, N.J., which banned hugging. "It wasn't a greeting. It was happening all day." Hajinlian's school is among those from New Jersey to Bend, Ore., that have clamped down on hugging, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Be unpredictable.

clipped from ponderabout.com "Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people’s actions.  Your predictability gives them a sense of control.  Turn the tables: Be deliberately unpredictable.  Behavior that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off-balance, and they will wear themselves out trying to explain your moves.  Taken to an extreme, this strategy can intimidate and terrorize."  ~ Robert Greene The above in an excerpt from Green's The 48 Laws of Power (1998), a best seller that examines: - one's ability to influence others,   called "Personal Power", and - those specific behaviors that lead to   the accrual or the loss of personal power.

How to Learn About Everything

clipped from metamodern.com Read and skim journals and textbooks that (at the moment) you only half understand. . Include Science and Nature. Seldom stop to study a single subject with a student’s intensity, as if you had to pass a test on it. Don’t drop a subject because you know you’d fail a test — instead, read other half-understandable journals and textbooks to accumulate vocabulary, perspective, and context. Notice that concepts make more sense when you revisit a topic, and note which topics provide keys to many others. Continue until almost everything you encounter in Science and Nature makes sense as a contribution to a field you know something about. Why is this effective? You learned your native language by immersion, not by swallowing and regurgitating spoonfuls of grammar and vocabulary. With comprehension of words and the unstructured curriculum of life came what we call “common sense”.

How do you mix up meth and E?

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk It was billed as the one of the most dramatic warnings the world has ever received over the dangers of ecstasy. A study from one of America's leading universities concluded that taking the drug for just one evening could leave clubbers with irreversible brain damage, and trigger the onset of Parkinson's disease. But today, scientists are facing up to the humiliation of admitting that the stark results they reported in the study were not a breakthrough but a terrible, humiliating blunder. The study was based on the fact that laboratory monkeys and baboons had a severe reaction to the drug when it was injected in small doses. But it emerged this weekend that the vials of liquid did not contain ecstasy. Instead, the animals received a dose of methamphetamine, or speed - a drug widely known to affect the body's dopamine system. The tubes had somehow been mislabelled by the supplier.

7 Tips for Making Good Conversation With a Stranger

clipped from slate.com Making polite conversation can be tough. Here are some strategies to try when your mind is a blank: 1. Comment on a topic common to both of you at the moment But keep it on the positive side! 2. Comment on a topic of general interest. 3. Ask open questions that can’t be answered with a single word. 4. If you do ask a question that can be answered in a single word, instead of just supplying your own information in response, ask a follow-up question. 5. Ask getting-to-know-you questions. 6. React to what a person says in the spirit in which that that comment was offered. Now, what to do if a conversation is just not working, and there’s no way to use the “Excuse me, I need to go get something to drink” line? 7. A friend argues that you should admit it! “We’re really working hard, aren’t we?” or “It’s frustrating—I’m sure we have interests in common, but we’re having a difficult time finding them.”

If you had five minutes...would you be ready to go?

clipped from survivetheworst.blogspot.com If an airplane crash, hurricane, earthquake, terrorist attack or medical emergency struck right now, would you be ready? Where is your spouse, your children, the other people you love? What if they were injured? Would a doctor know what to do to save their lives, with their specific healthcare needs in mind? Would the hospital know to call you? What about your vital documents? Could you find your bank account number, your homeowner's policy and your birth certificate, if you suddenly had five minutes to evacuate? When it comes to you and your family, it's up to you to fill in that missing piece BEFORE an emergency strikes. You need to: Figure out what you need Find all of that information or those documents Fill in or create emergency contact forms Format and secure your vital documents Formulate your family's emergency plan Fast track your family's emergency treatment And make sure that if you ever have only five minutes, you can grab what you need and go.

Learned Helplessness and What You Can Do About It

clipped from www.silverknife.co.uk Image by solidxsnake13224 via Flickr In 1967, behavioural psychologists Martin Seligman and Steve Maiers discovered quite by accident (while investigating simple conditioning) that dogs which were unable to escape from an unpleasant situation (small electrical shocks given through the floor of their box) gave up even trying. They were conditioned to be helpless, and would just lie there and take the shocks even when free to move. The ethics and humanity of the experiment are a topic for another time, but they gave psychologists a valuable insight into one of the causes of depression and demotivation - learned helplessness. Fortunately decades of behavioural research have also shown that what has been trained can be untrained. You just need to create a string of situations where you are visibly achieving what you set out to do. Set yourself well-defined goals Break down your tasks Keep your successes visible

Exit bling (and good riddance)

Russia quietly passed a milestone this year: surpassing De Beers as the world’s largest diamond producer. But the global market for diamonds is so dismal that the Alrosa diamond company, 90 percent owned by the Russian government, has not sold a rough stone on the open market since December, and has stockpiled them instead.

An ominous trend?

"At age 7, Gabriel Myers was already well on his way to becoming a sexual predator.

He had exposed himself to classmates. He had kissed another boy. And his uncle warned child-welfare administrators Gabriel had described what he wanted to do with several little girls at his Christian private school.

Gabriel, who may himself have been sexually molested by another boy in Ohio before moving to South Florida, had been on several strong psychiatric drugs before he hanged himself last week at a Margate foster home."
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"Sirdeaner Walker, 44, has been surrounded by family after discovering her son, Carl Walker-Hoover, 11, hanging by an extension cord in the third-floor landing of the family's Northampton Avenue home in Springfield."
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"A crowd of about 60 gathered Tuesday night at the DeKalb home of Jaheem Herrera to remember the fifth-grader who committed suicide last week. The 11-year-old boy hanged himself at his home after — according to his family — relentless bullying at Dunaire Elementary School."

Yet another way life holds you back

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com Children raised in poverty suffer many ill effects: They often have health problems and tend to struggle in school, which can create a cycle of poverty across generations. Now, research is providing what could be crucial clues to explain how childhood poverty translates into dimmer chances of success: Chronic stress from growing up poor appears to have a direct impact on the brain, leaving children with impairment in at least one key area -- working memory. With the economic crisis threatening to plunge more children into poverty, other researchers said the work offers insight into how poverty affects long-term achievement and underscores the potential ramifications of chronic stress early in life.

8 Reasons Why Wandering the Internet Can Increase Productivity

This information comes courtesy of a recent study conducted by the University of Melbourne.

clipped from www.computerworld.com 1. The subconscious mind keeps working. 2. It gets personal things off your mind. 3. It builds work relationships. 4. It converts real-time interactions into asynchronous ones. 5. It makes work more enjoyable. 6. It replaces bad slacking with good slacking. 7. The Internet is educational. 8. The mind will not be contained.

A technique for fighting laziness

clipped from iamalwayslate.org The tactic we are going to test has a certain mission: in order to beat laziness we can try not doing anything. Let’s suppose that you have something urgent or important to do, but you feel lazy to do that. It’s ok. First of all, let’s apply the strategy we were talking about before, and make a plan. You should schedule your activity, so take a piece of paper and write down on it, when you are going to start doing the task and for how long you are going to be busy with it. Ok: when the scheduled time came, give up doing what you were doing before, get up from your place and stand in the middle of the room (standing is better than sitting or laying down, I hope you understand why!). Do not do anything and just go with the flow of your thoughts, until you start feeling like you are ready to start doing the task you planned to do. Not doing anything and just standing still is quite unpleasant and hard, so it will eventually come to your mind that you need to start doing your task.

The Vernal Equinox

clipped from www.universetoday.com Spring officially arrives for everyone, including astronomers on March 20. The word "Equinox" literally means "equal night". It's all about the balance of light - not the myth of balancing eggs. On the universal date (UTC) of Friday, March 20, 2009 at 11:44 (am) both the day and night are the same length. But what's so special about it? It's a date that most of us recognize as symbolic of changing href="http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/earth/why-earth-has-seasons/" rel=external>seasons. North of href="http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/earth/" rel=external>Earth's equator we welcome Spring, while people south of the equator are gearing up for the cooler temperatures of Autumn. So where did the urban myth of balance eggs on vernal equinox come from? It may very well have been the good folks in China who orginally began the myth by patiently practicing standing eggs on end during vernal equinox to symbolize the restoration of balance to the world after a season of darkness. If this symbol of fertility could be balanced on such a day of significance, then surely nature was in harmony!

Sometimes the cake is a lie

Sometimes it's a letter of resignation.

Perhaps it's all the drinking?

Researchers have found that peoples' mental abilities peak at 22 before beginning to deteriorate just five years later.

Professor Timothy Salthouse said the results suggested that therapies designed to prevent or reverse age-related conditions may need to start earlier, long before people become pensioners.

Evangelists everywhere are going to have a field day with this one.

Teens who prefer popular songs with degrading sexual references are more likely to engage in intercourse or in pre-coital activities, U.S. researchers say.

Thursday is International Darwin Day!

http://www.darwinday.org/

Makeup for men - yes, it does exist.

I'm not surprised that there is a company that specializes in not just skin care, but actual cosmetic applications for guys. What surprises me, if anything, is that there are several companies. I wasn't looking for anything elaborate...maybe some sort of blemish concealer (blackheads - if they're not ready, THEY'RE NOT READY, stop pinching) and an eyeshadow (I still like to darken the area around my eyes for effect). But these companies carry all kinds of things for a man's face and body, ranging from shaving/moisturizing products to facial enhancement (defining highlights, covering up shine). Take a look and see what's available to fix your face:



http://www.zirh.com/
http://www.getjackblack.com/
http://www.4voo.com/index.htm
http://www.studio5ive.com/
http://www.kenmen.net/

Everybody sing!

Everything fails

Everything fails

remember

Everything fails

Everything fails

believe me

Everything fails

Everything fails...

Everything Fails v1.0 - memeXK

An outline of a book that sounds great!

Predictably Irrational - The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Ten Simple Things We Should All Say More Often

clipped from www.dumblittleman.com “Hello.” “Thank you.” “Please.” “Here, take my seat.” "This one’s on me.” “Let me help you with that.” “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m [name].” “What I’m really passionate about is…” “Have a great day!” “I love you.”