The Spurs have cemented themselves as a true dynasty, writes SI.com's Marty Burns. San Antonio swept the Cavaliers on Thursday to become the fourth team to win four titles.

 

I'm not sure what's scarier, the AK-47 she's holding or the iPod's invasion of all corners of the globe. Actually, my real question is: Would it be possible to replace the lip plate with a speaker? – Matt Buchanan

[via iLounge via Boing Boing]

Were you ever a kid? If you were, then you have probably experienced one of the key ingredients in living a stimulating, interesting, fascinating life. What's that, you ask? Curiosity!

Next time you're around small children, watch how they engage the world around them. It's inspiring. It really is. There's a new discovery around every corner, and everything is wondrous and new.

Here's a question for you. On a scale of one to ten, how curious are you? How often do you take a look around you and say, "Hmmm. I wonder...?" I wonder how. I wonder why. I wonder when. If you're like many adults, you've probably lost a lot of that sense of curiosity and wonder along the way.

And that's a shame, because curiosity keeps life fresh. And not only does it keep life fresh, it keeps it rich with potential and possibility.

I think there are a couple things that get in the way of the reinvigorating potential of curiosity. The first is the dreaded rut. We drive the same road to the same job and work on the same things with the same people. We watch the same TV, and have the same conversations. One day of life blends into another, and it all starts to look a bit monochromatic. It dulls the senses and we forget that the world offers a rainbow of colors to experience.

Another obstacle to tapping into the richness of curiosity is the fact that, as we grow older, we start to build more rigid perceptions of "the way things are." We've been there done that, and we start to believe that we know what's what. With a perspective like that, what's the point of curiosity? We already know it!

That's dangerous territory, because it inherently closes doors. There's a Zen Buddhist concept called Beginner's Mind. One of the quotes in today's newsletter sums it up beautifully. "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."

Take a look around you. Where is there potential for curiosity? What do you want to know more about? What assumptions are you making that you can explore with fresh eyes? How might someone else see your world?

The more curiosity you can bring to your life, the more energy you'll feel, and the more possibilities you'll discover.

http://www.spreeder.com/index.php

the Spreeder webapp trains you to increase your reading speed by displaying single words in succession at a high rate. I use it daily for web and computer reading, my reading speed is 500 wpm

and I found this article very helpful

Double Your Reading Rate by Scott Young

1) Remember, Reading is Not Linear: jump around, set your pace, skim through un-important parts and slow down on the important ones

2) Stop Subvocalizing: To move to a new level you need to stop sounding the words inside your head or subvocalizing. Subvocalizing takes time, more time than is necessary to comprehend the words you are reading. It is almost impossible to go much beyond 400 or 500 words while subvocalizing. Instead you need to train yourself to read without hearing the words in your head.

3) Practice Reading: Practice reading involves reading faster than you can actually read. Chances are you won’t comprehend much of what you are reading because your brain is so used to going at a slower rate and subvocalizing. The point is simply to see the text faster than you can read so you can untie the habit of sounding the words as you comprehend them.

4) Use a Pointer: Your eyes don’t stay fixed in one spot when reading. Eye tracking movements have shown that your eyes actually quiver and move around considerably. And every movement away from your position in text requires a few milliseconds to readjust. These little readjustments in locating your place in a book add up to be very costly if you want to go faster. Use your index finger to mark where you are on the page at all times.

5) Eliminate Distractions

6) Find Your Motivation: engross yourself in the material you are studying. If you can connect what you are reading to a deeply held motivation, and determine your specific purpose for reading you can maintain a very alert and focused state.

 

from lifehack.org by Adrian

Here—again in no particular order—are 10 more ways to transform your working life. Maybe you should try them.

1. Slow down. Give yourself time and space. Never be in more of a hurry than you have to be. Allow time for thinking, musing, just noodling around in your head with no apparent purpose. Give space in your thinking for ideas you haven’t had yet; allow openings for sniffing out the ideas of others. Haste is the enemy of creativity. Being busy all the time is a great way to stop any possibility of breakthroughs. You won’t break out of your old habits by rushing. When people are under pressure, they don’t have energy to try anything new. They reach for whatever they’ve done before, or for some supposedly “tried-and-true” answer. They don’t believe they have time to take risks with change. As a result, they rush headlong down the same old paths into the same old messes. Refuse to be hurried and surprising ideas and opportunities may present themselves.
2. When you think you’ve gone absolutely as far as you can, keep going. You’ve just reached the starting point. Breakthrough can’t happen until you pass the boundaries you believe are there in your life and thought. If you find a boundary, be happy. You’ve just found what you need to break through. Learning and creative thinking are your only sources of sustainable competitive advantage. Never let anything close them down.
3. Take your mind and thinking on trips away. Deliberately step outside your comfort zone. See what you can find. You may come back a changed person. Conservatism is the philosophy of always sticking with what you have and trying to defend it against change. It’s a hopeless attempt. The best, longest-lasting and most valuable ideas remain because they continually adapt to the times. There’s a word for things that don’t change . . . dead. The world is bigger, stranger, more wonderful, and less predictable than you imagine. You won’t find it limited to programs on your TV, or what you can find on the Internet, or what the media present to you. Go out there and look for yourself.
4. Listen. Listen to everyone you can. Really listen. You don’t learn by talking about yourself and your own experience. You learn by listening to the ideas and experiences of others. By listening to the ideas of those around you, you can pick up whatever’s useful. Even the things you reject have taught you something—if only what to avoid. Everyone you talk with can bring you learning opportunities you might otherwise have missed. Never be snobbish either. The best lessons come in unexpected packages. One of the hallmarks of the fool is that he or she thinks learning is restricted to the “right” situations and people. Like birds of a feather, fools flock together, reinforcing their foolishness by deciding they’ll only listen to one another. Wise people know they can’t predict who or what will provide the best lessons in life. Sometimes it will be the voices all the “right” people have rejected.
5. Delight in metaphors and analogies. Every object or idea can stand for something else, or suggest an unexpected link. Dull people restrict their thinking and reading to what seems obviously relevant. Clever ones peer into what isn’t. You’ll maybe discover far more about working life from poetry, philosophy, or good novels that you ever will from business books and self-satisfied self-help writers.
6. Run away from any kind of dogma. Dogma is the product of a closed mind. It’s an idea with a threat attached. If you suffer from dogma, get it out of your life. Let it go. Kick it out. Try thinking the opposite. Treat it like a crazy joke. Do anything you can to get rid of it. It’s the greatest source of barriers to breakthrough.
7. Never aspire to be fashionable. Fashion is the foolish imitating the arrogant. Being cool is fear of change dressed in designer clothes. Following fashion is a sure way to prevent any kind of breakthrough in your life. Free yourself from barriers like this. Be who you are, not who everyone else is pretending to be.
8. Stand on the shoulders of those who went before you. You’ll see so much better and farther. Never imitate the past. Use it to understand better and provoke questions in your mind. History is too often neglected as a source of breakthroughs. By learning from what has already been done, you can make faster steps towards what hasn’t. Innovation is mostly sticking things together in unexpected ways. To create unique ideas and stimulate breakthrough thinking, hybridize from what you have already. Fresh combinations of old ideas can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. It’s simply not true that creative people come up with ideas from nowhere. Even the most startlingly innovative people need material to work with.
9. If it’s habitual, consider dumping it. Habits are the iron bands that hold you in your current ways of thinking and behaving. No one ever made a breakthrough without letting go of whatever has become habitual and automatic. Breaking those tough old habits won’t be easy. You may have to endure some “cold turkey.” It will be well worth it.
10. Begin anywhere. There’s no right place, nor any better place to start from that where you are right now. Waiting to find the right time and place to begin on your quest for breakthrough is a sure way to induce paralysis. New ideas arrive unexpectedly. Whenever they do, allow them to be heard. Learn to be alert always for good ideas and opportunities for breakthrough. Be flexible. Grab opportunities when they come. Don’t sit back and expect another one to be along in a moment. The universe isn’t like that. The idea or opportunity you just chose to ignore may have been the best one you’ll ever have. Begin anywhere. Begin now. Just do it.

People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success.
Norman Vincent Peale

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.
George Bernard Shaw

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.
Helen Keller

Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.
Og Mandino

Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.
Wayne Dyer

Niney-nine percent of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
George W. Carver

Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
H. Jackson Brown

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
Helen Keller

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
George Eliot

An Inconvenient Truth is not about blame. It's also not only about the problems that global warming poses. Instead, it sets aside the matter of "who's fault is it" and leaves the viewer with the desire to ask and answer the question of "what can I do?" The film (and companion website) does not fail to deliver: both offer practicable steps to take regarding the literal sea change facing the planet.

The movie presents evidence that, to me, was quite compelling. Is it incontrovertible? Not being an environmental scientist, I couldn't say. But it's telling that out of almost 1000 peer reviewed scientific journals the film examines on the topic of global warming, the matter was not questioned by one (though doubted in more than half of the popular literature written during the same time). It's also worth mentioning that while Al Gore hosts the film, this movie is not about him. And while he may have showed up for some six years ago as stiff and stodgy, in this context he is masterful in blending the informative with the entertaining. TRAILER

 

 

Count down..., 5 more days and I'll be in Costa Rica.

Looking back this 5 years in LA, it puts a smile in my face. The first 2 years here were the hardests, but I met some of great friends (closer to brothers now: Bruce, Elvin & Desmond) playing basketball; from there my life took a complete 180 degrees turnaround. Ming's arrival stated another phase of my life, so many good memories, lot of fun (with Shawn, Sho, Chris); not sure how much I was able to teach him, but I'm sure I learned more from him. I will miss Keth (my female version, just much prettier), Pak (blue butterfly), Jenny (eternal Mui Mui), Lala, Corie, Rita.

I always heard that a lucky person will encounter one or two true friends in his/her life, but I already consider myself one of the luckiest.

Thanks guys, for being with me in bad and good times, specially the bad ones. Love you all...

 

*PS: Costa Rica is just 5 hours fly from LA!!!

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” - by Marianne Williamson