This past weekend I jumped out of an airplane.  Why, you ask?

When I was 7 my dad picked up flying again.  I remember my very first flight he took me up in in a small plane.  We flew out of Addison airport touring Dallas from the air, shooting through clouds and buzzing over our house.  I remember wondering "What would it be like to fly... without the plane?"!  Now I know...

For my birthday in August Jill gave me a gift certificate to Sky Dive San Marcos.  We went together on a cool and clear Saturday morning.  My thoughts were more excitement than fear.  This was to be a tandem dive, meaning you are strapped an instructor. I felt safe and confident I would land in one piece.  The plane flew to 11,000 feet and my instructor and I stepped to the edge of the plane.  He had told me to push my hips forward and lean back as we stepped off the back of the plane... this meant we launched out into a back flip!

I went 0 to 60 MPH in 3 seconds!  It was a wild first step but pretty quickly I could see the ground as we did a free fall for about 6,000 feet.  We reached around 120 MPH but I have to say... it was peaceful and amazing!  I've never felt anything like it and any it went by way too fast.

At about 5,000 feet above Texas the chute opened and the ride changed completely.  All of the sudden the rush was gone... the 120 MPH race turned into a leisurely stroll.  It was amazing how maneuverable the parachute was as we spent the next several minutes, spinning, talking and looking around.  I could see the Austin skyline about 30 miles away. The ride down was as easy and relaxing as a walk in the park.  I was not ready to land!

With Jill floating in over my left shoulder we gently sailed back to earth.  The landing was easy and more than anything I felt bummed that it was over!  The jump was amazing and I would do it again in a heartbeat.  As I considered the "why" of my motivation to jump put of an airplane I thought about several factors.  Like many people, I have a bucket list and today it has one less item on it.  I also am one to "face my fears" and anyone that would tell you they were not afraid to step off an airplane at 11,000 feet is lying!

So why did I jump out of an airplane?  More than anything I did this because it is not something that is easy to do.  It is an event to face, not to put off.  It is something to embrace, not shy away from.  It is an activity to be shared, one that will create the memory of a lifetime.  I was glad for the incredibly thoughtful gift and excited to have someone special to share it with.  

I recognize sky diving is not for everyone and that's ok.  But maybe it is for you... maybe it's time to face your own fears, do something challenging and create a memory.  It certainly was for me and I wouldn't have missed it for the world!

... and Nine Other Things Everyone Should Know About Time 

A lifespan is a billion heartbeats. Complex organisms die. Sad though it is in individual cases, it’s a necessary part of the bigger picture; life pushes out the old to make way for the new. Remarkably, there exist simple scaling laws relating animal metabolism to body mass. Larger animals live longer; but they also metabolize slower, as manifested in slower heart rates. These effects cancel out, so that animals from shrews to blue whales have lifespans with just about equal number of heartbeats — about one and a half billion, if you simply must be precise. In that very real sense, all animal species experience “the same amount of time.”

Time” is the most used noun in the English language, yet it remains a mystery. We’ve just completed an amazingly intense and rewarding multidisciplinary conference on the nature of time, and my brain is swimming with ideas and new questions. Rather than trying a summary (the talks will be online soon), here’s my stab at a top ten list partly inspired by our discussions: the things everyone should know about time.

1. Time exists. Might as well get this common question out of the way. Of course time exists — otherwise how would we set our alarm clocks? Time organizes the universe into an ordered series of moments, and thank goodness; what a mess it would be if reality were complete different from moment to moment. The real question is whether or not time is fundamental, or perhaps emergent. We used to think that “temperature” was a basic category of nature, but now we know it emerges from the motion of atoms. When it comes to whether time is fundamental, the answer is: nobody knows. My bet is “yes,” but we’ll need to understand quantum gravity much better before we can say for sure.

2. The past and future are equally real. This isn’t completely accepted, but it should be. Intuitively we think that the “now” is real, while the past is fixed and in the books, and the future hasn’t yet occurred. But physics teaches us something remarkable: every event in the past and future is implicit in the current moment. This is hard to see in our everyday lives, since we’re nowhere close to knowing everything about the universe at any moment, nor will we ever be — but the equations don’t lie. As Einstein put it, “It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.”

3. Everyone experiences time differently. This is true at the level of both physics and biology. Within physics, we used to have Sir Isaac Newton’s view of time, which was universal and shared by everyone. But then Einstein came along and explained that how much time elapses for a person depends on how they travel through space (especially near the speed of light) as well as the gravitational field (especially if its near a black hole). From a biological or psychological perspective, the time measured by atomic clocks isn’t as important as the time measured by our internal rhythms and the accumulation of memories. That happens differently depending on who we are and what we are experiencing; there’s a real sense in which time moves more quickly when we’re older.

4. You live in the past. About 80 milliseconds in the past, to be precise. Use one hand to touch your nose, and the other to touch one of your feet, at exactly the same time. You will experience them as simultaneous acts. But that’s mysterious — clearly it takes more time for the signal to travel up your nerves from your feet to your brain than from your nose. The reconciliation is simple: our conscious experience takes time to assemble, and your brain waits for all the relevant input before it experiences the “now.” Experiments have shown that the lag between things happening and us experiencing them is about 80 milliseconds. (Via conference participant David Eagleman.)

5. Your memory isn’t as good as you think. When you remember an event in the past, your brain uses a very similar technique to imagining the future. The process is less like “replaying a video” than “putting on a play from a script.” If the script is wrong for whatever reason, you can have a false memory that is just as vivid as a true one. Eyewitness testimony, it turns out, is one of the least reliable forms of evidence allowed into courtrooms. (Via conference participants Kathleen McDermott and Henry Roediger.)

6. Consciousness depends on manipulating time. Many cognitive abilities are important for consciousness, and we don’t yet have a complete picture. But it’s clear that the ability to manipulate time and possibility is a crucial feature. In contrast to aquatic life, land-based animals, whose vision-based sensory field extends for hundreds of meters, have time to contemplate a variety of actions and pick the best one. The origin of grammar allowed us to talk about such hypothetical futures with each other. Consciousness wouldn’t be possible without the ability to imagine other times. (Via conference participantMalcolm MacIver.)

7. Disorder increases as time passes. At the heart of every difference between the past and future — memory, aging, causality, free will — is the fact that the universe is evolving from order to disorder. Entropy is increasing, as we physicists say. There are more ways to be disorderly (high entropy) than orderly (low entropy), so the increase of entropy seems natural. But to explain the lower entropy of past times we need to go all the way back to the Big Bang. We still haven’t answered the hard questions: why was entropy low near the Big Bang, and how does increasing entropy account for memory and causality and all the rest? (We heard great talks by David Albert and David Wallace, among others.)

8. Complexity comes and goes. Other than creationists, most people have no trouble appreciating the difference between “orderly” (low entropy) and “complex.” Entropy increases, but complexity is ephemeral; it increases and decreases in complex ways, unsurprisingly enough. Part of the “job” of complex structures is to increase entropy, e.g. in the origin of life. But we’re far from having a complete understanding of this crucial phenomenon. (Talks by Mike Russell, Richard Lenski, Raissa D’Souza.)

9. Aging can be reversed. We all grow old, part of the general trend toward growing disorder. But it’s only the universe as a whole that must increase in entropy, not every individual piece of it. (Otherwise it would be impossible to build a refrigerator.) Reversing the arrow of time for living organisms is a technological challenge, not a physical impossibility. And we’re making progress on a few fronts: stem cells, yeast, and even (with caveats) mice and human muscle tissue. As one biologist told me: “You and I won’t live forever. But as for our grandkids, I’m not placing any bets.”

 

(Amazing talk by Geoffrey West.)

 

 

This design concept might be more sight gag than real product, but it’s clever nonetheless. Bringing new meaning to the phase “you snooze, you lose,” when you place this unforgiving clock across the room from your bed, if you don’t get up when the alarm sounds, it’s going to cost you.

Might we suggest at first being easy on yourself, placing a lower-denomination bill into this sleeper’s trap before you start punishing yourself too much. From the looks of these pics, that shredder does a thorough job of destroying currency or whatever else you’d like to place in it. And look at that — the designer has placed not one, but what looks like a stack of $100 bills into the clock’s hungry maw.

Careful, though — in the U.S., willfully destroying U.S. currency is a federal crime:

“..Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined not more than $100 or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.”

Adding a bit of jail time to the penalty of losing your $100 (and perhaps paying another $100 fine) might just make you get out of bed in the morning, sleepyhead.

There's a stack of hundreds in there!

Maybe start out with $1 bills?

I don't know why I think is so funny...

sadly, you probably won't either :)

Justin Wagoner's tent outside temporary Knox Street store in Dallas
With the iPad 2 set for launch at 5:00 PM on Friday and Apple not offering pre-orders, those looking to get their hands on the updated tablet device as soon as possible may find themselves facing long waits to secure spots near the front of their respective lines. And just like with the iPhone 4, Dallas resident Justin Wagoner has already pitched a tent outside his local Apple Store in order to be first in line for the iPad 2 launch on Friday.

One catch for Justin is that the Knox Street retail store that has been the usual location for his campouts is currently closed for expansion, with Apple now operating out of a temporary location around the corner.

Justin Wagoner passing time in-store waiting for iPad 2 launch
Seeking to capitalize on his growing publicity as an early camper for Apple devices, Justin has launched a new site at iJustinOfficial.com to document his wait. He will also be offering a live video broadcast on Ustream as the iPad 2 launches.

La mia preghiera per voi nel 2011 è che anche tu puoi avere un "cuore di sabbia"...

Happy New Year my friends~

I read a blog post yesterday that really caught my attention.  It highlighted a list created by Don Yaeger, former editor of Sports Illustrated.  Don has put together a list of "Sixteen Consistent Characteristics of Greatness".  While we all aspire to be great, Don has hit on traits that separate the great from everyone else. I read this list and thought of people I admire.  It is the best list of attributes of successful entrepreneurs, athletes and business executives I have ever read.  I thought I would share the complete list with you here... it is well worth the read.  Maybe you see some of these traits in yourself or someone in your life... Sixteen Consistent Characteristics of Greatness How they think: 1. It’s personal They hate to lose more than they love to win. People that aspire to greatness know that defeat just isn’t an option. 2. Rubbing elbows They understand the value of association. I always say that we become the people that surround us. Those of us who are aspiring to greatness, it is our job to rub elbows with the right people and to learn what makes them successful and what keeps them going. In turn, it is up to them to help us better ourselves. And if you can’t change the people around you, then choose different people to be around. Think about it. 3. Believe They have faith in a higher power. It is proven that a strong spiritual commitment, and a strong belief in faith is linked to a positive outcome. In our current economic state, always remember the power of a positive mind-set and the importance of belief in beating the impossible. 4. Contagious enthusiasm They are positive thinkers… They are enthusiastic… and that enthusiasm rubs off. When you’re trying to work through your challenge-professional or personal – do so with the belief that the best is yet to come. Stay positive. How they prepare: 5. Hope for the best but… They prepare for all possibilities before they step on the field. I am an eternal optimist. But I am also a realist. When I enter into any situation, I am excited about the possibilities it may bring. But I also know that there are a lot of variables beyond my control. So I contingency-plan. 6. What off-season? They are always working towards the next game… The goal is what’s ahead, and there’s always something ahead. if you visualize where you want to be and work backwards from there, you can always be moving the ball forward. 7. Visualize victory They see victory before the game begins. Positive visualization is a proven ingredient of a successful outcome. 8. Inner fire They use adversity as fuel.One thing in life is certain… none of us gets through without adversity. What matters is that we find the strength to work through it. When we are knocked down, it may take hours, days, weeks, or months, but we need to get back up. For me, I’m at the point where challenging situations invigorate me. I’m mentally tough enough to embrace the adversity heading my way, overcome it, and learn from it. How they work: 9. Ice in their veins They are risk-takers and don’t fear making a mistake. Failure is one of our greatest teachers. I’m amazed at how much risk-tolerance I have acquired. But it’s the one component that enables me to keep growing. If I stopped to think about how much I have on the line, I would be paralyzed. “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career,” NBA legend Michael Jordan, who was known for his late-game heroics in addition to six national titles, once said. “I’ve lost almost 300 games – 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed.” 10. When all else fails They know how – and when – to adjust their game plan. Flexibility and adaptability is essential to survival. I wrote a previous column on this exact topic… the ability to shift when everything around you is shifting too. 11. Ultimate teammate They will assume whatever role is necessary for the team to win. Individual accomplishments are important, but the sum is always greater in value than the individual parts. How much do you step up to help those around you? When others around you thrive, you thrive as well. 12. Not just about the Benjamins They don’t play just for the money. It’s never about the money. And if it is, it’s about the wrong thing. The money will come if you follow your passion… if you become a part of something bigger than yourself. As a business owner, I view our profits as a catalyst to build a greater organization. How they live: 13. Do unto others They know character is defined by how they treat those who cannot help them. One of the greatest sources of satisfaction is helping others, from a truly altruistic standpoint. We all have something to give… our time, our experiences, our compassion. 14. When no one is watching They are comfortable in the mirror… they live their life with integrity. I always tell my kids… “What matters is not what you do when everyone is watching. What matters is what you do when no one is watching.” Your ultimate accountability has to be to yourself. 15. When everyone is watching They embrace the idea of being a role model. As leaders, we have an obligation to promote positive leadership, and demonstrate the positive influence we can have on others. Our actions shape those coming behind us. 16. Records are made to be broken They know their legacy isn’t what they did on the field. They are well-rounded. A legacy isn’t what you took from this world. A legacy is what you leave behind. Now go out and accomplish something! Tom Cuthbert

I really miss Calvin and Hobbes.  For years I enjoyed reading them to my son and laughing together.  Today the cartoonist, Bill Watterson is retired and my son is reading Fantasy Football stats! Calvin represented the boy in all of us.  He was inquisitive, fearless (to a point) and adventurous.  I enjoyed his imagination and certainly saw some of me in Calvin, and Calvin in my son. Hobbes is the quintessential calming influence.  The imaginary tiger was both a friend and counselor.  Together they made a great team and got into (and out of) more trouble than I ever did! The comic below is one of my favorites.  Often times, Calvin and Hobbes dealt with 'big picture' issues in a simple way.  Live life for a few years and you realize the world is a complicated place.  There are definitely days when I would have loved to take Hobbes advice and just "take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner." I hope this holiday season your world can be uncomplicated.  Enjoy the little things and appreciate the blessings of life.  While the world may not be as simple as black and white, it is an awesome place when filled with the color of life. My favorite quote is by Ronald Reagan, "Enjoy life, it's ungrateful not to." Indeed. Tom Cuthbert