Goodsoul Blues - The sound of one harmonica in a marching band

Would You Like a Pillow? Um, no thanks....

2008-01-12T15:25:00.001-06:00

Eight mice found - dead and alive - on
United Airlines flight

by Catherine
Bodry Jan 9th 2008 @ 11:00AM

If something runs over your foot on
your next flight, beware: it might not be the beverage cart.

In a
reversal of roles, the United States nearly imported its own tainted goods to
China on a United Airlines flight recently. While en route to China, United
employees discovered a total of eight mice -- some dead, some alive -- hidden in
pillows throughout the cabin. On arrival, Chinese officials greeted the plane
with rat poison and mouse traps.

The story was printed in newspapers
yesterday, along with lists of viruses mice can carry. The articles also
probably incited panic when they wrote of the potentially fatal damage mice
could do by chewing through wires on aircraft.

Could these tiny
creatures be more dangerous than the
terrorists?

PhotoSensational Models!

2007-10-25T20:00:00.001-05:00

www.onemodelplace.com/photosensate

PhotoSensations - Tabitha

2007-10-25T19:01:00.001-05:00

See more at www.onemodelplace.com/photosensate

Undeniably Awesome!

2006-12-23T03:31:00.000-06:00

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

DarnNews Blues

2006-08-28T02:37:00.000-05:00

My Own Self-forgiveness and Redemption

2006-08-28T02:21:00.000-05:00

An entry I received via email from a respected counselor.... - goodsoul

"If we live our spiritual lives only in fear of punishment (in some form of exclusion) or in hope of reward (in some form of inclusion), rather than in the simple awareness of the One because of Whom all life is totally meaningful and worthwhile, we can end up becoming very 'religious' people, but not very 'holy' people. Then life becomes simply a series of tests and trials and disciplines and scores, instead of the moment-by-moment, joyful revelation of God Who is present in everything that happens to us, in every single thing we do. Sanctity is about how we view life, and then how we live life from that vantage point. It is not about empty, ritualistic spiritual exercises designed to evaluate our spiritual athleticism or a kind of spiritual bribery designed to win us prizes we've already received and can never really earn or deserve. ... I used to think that sanctity meant keeping all the rules (or at least appearing to do so). Now I know that it means knowing and managing the self. When I really know myself, I know what I must do to be the best me I can become. Then and only then does it become impossible to judge another."

-- Joan Chittister, in Becoming Fully Human; The Greatest Glory of God

"There must be no limit to your goodness, as our God's goodness knows no bounds."

-- Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount

Who do I think I am to judge anyone else's spiritual life (or, for that matter, to judge those others who I think are judging others), as if I am living a life of unique quality and depth? There is no official "ranking" that I need to concern myself with, no grade or performance that can ever make me "good enough," while others are clearly not measuring up. The only human experiences that are in my control are my own attitudes and behaviors, and forgiveness of everyone and everything is the only path to my own self-forgiveness and redemption. I have more than enough battles to fight inside my own skin, battles I've been instructed to focus on and die to, as I "remove my own plank." I really don't need to be distracting myself fighting battles with others. When I see their speck, I can simply name it with love, because I recognize it inside myself, and let it go.

Jim Spivey
Revolution Consulting
2219 McDuffie
Houston, TX 77019
(713) 854-4848
www.revolutionconsulting.com

"helping people come ALIVE, and thrive,
in their personal and business relationships"

check out my daily coaching journal at:
http://www.revolutionconsulting.com/blogger.htm

Sly Takes a Hike

2006-08-19T00:07:00.000-05:00

... See my Tabblo>

Owed to a Spell Checker (with apologies to Percy Dovetonsils)

2006-07-31T01:03:00.000-05:00

[I don't know who E. Bear is - I came across this delightful poem years ago and have no other artifact from its author. Since I frequently use the incorrect spelling of common words or blindly allow the spell checker to incorrectly correct words I use, I thought this fine little ditty should crawl off my hard drive into the public eye once more]

I have a spelling checquer
It came with my pea sea
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea

Eye ran this poem threw it
Your sure real glad two no
It's vary polished in it's weigh
My checker tolled me sew

A checker is a bless sing
It freeze yew lodes of thyme
It helps me awl stiles two reed
And aides me when aye rime

To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should be proud
And wee mussed dew the best wee can
Sew flaws are knot aloud

And now bee cause my spelling
is checked with such grate flare
Their are know faults with in my site
Of nun eye am a wear

Each frays comes posed up on my screen
Eye trussed to be a joule
The checker poured o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule

That's why aye brake in two averse
By righting wants too pleas
Sow now ewe sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear for pea seas

E. Bear

2006-07-21T10:02:00.000-05:00

KUNDALINI

From the bottom up;

Through the physical differences

That both separate us

And allow us to join;

And through that which marks

Where once we were joined with our Mother,

From which separation we find our anger;

And through that which beats

At intervals that parallel the cycles of the Universe,

And so makes us one;

Then through that which speaks,

And so, through renouncement, articulates

That which is known;

Unto that which beholds the image of God,

Or that which cannot be known:

Whereby this coiled up energy

Emerges through contemplation

Of all that we embrace, and

All that we release.

cleonard– 06/30/03

In explanation of Kundalini Yoga, from Thou Art That by Joseph Campbell, pp 98:

‘The word Kundalini means “the coiled up one,” and it refers to the spiritual energy

which is coiled up on itself in most of us most of the time…. [1]’

2006-07-10T19:28:00.000-05:00

You Are a Retrospective Soul

The most misunderstood of all the soul signs.
Sometimes you even have difficulty seeing yourself as who you are.
You are intense and desire perfection in every facet of your life.
You're best described as extremely idealistic, hardworking, and a survivor.

Great moments of insight and sensitivity come to you easily.
But if you aren't careful, you'll ignore these moments and repeat past mistakes.
For you, it is difficult to seperate the past from the present.
You will suceed once you overcome the disappoinments in life.

Souls you are most compatible with: Traveler Soul and Prophet Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

We Never Worry About Now

2006-07-10T16:24:00.000-05:00

Ever noticed how little we worry about now?

We worry about what will happen. Even our regrets are projections, usually of the mess we’ve made for ourselves or someone else, and how it will affect us.

Part of Spiritual Equilibrium is understanding that good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people, and all of our projecting into the future, our plotting and planning, our expectations, manipulations, self-recriminations are the reverberations of a disintegrated soul - a soul estranged into an illusion born of ego.

Practical solution: if you can’t fix it, don’t worry about. If you can fix it, don’t worry about it.

We Never Worry About Now - The Most Comical Zaadz Ambazzador Goodsoul

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FOAFOAFOAFOAFs or a list of the more popular Web-based social networks

2006-07-09T19:26:00.000-05:00

Information Highways, May/June 2004

Clique here

Can social networks serve business?

By Janice Pearson

"Ok, I just joined network number 6, I think it might be becoming a problem -- intervention anyone?"

Gisela McKay is a Web developer. She's also a fan of social networks. She lists her "Haves" as Skills, Smarts, and Personality but she hasn't figured out what her "Wants" are yet. Judging from her post maybe one of her wants is to find a network that will help her figure that out. Her personal quest raises an interesting question, particularly at this crucial time when social networks are just on the verge -- what does anyone want out of social networks? More specifically, what would the business world list as its "Wants?"

As social networks like Ryze, LinkedIn, Tribe, and most familiarly Friendster become household names, anticipation builds about the effects they will have on socializing, dating, networking, and business. Certainly there's lots of investment interest -- in 2003 Friendster raised $13 million, LinkedIn raised $4.7 million and Tribe raised $6.3 million. User buy-in has also been impressive: LinkedIn recently announced it has pulled in 385,000 users in less than ten months, with a new member every 20 seconds. Friendster boasts 5.3 million members.

While computerized social networking is a 21st century phenomenon, the theory behind it is simply the old school "six degrees of separation," which theorizes that strangers are inevitably linked to each other by six people at most . If you know and trust Peter, and Peter knows and trusts Cecile who knows and trusts Pamela -- then perhaps you too can trust Pamela. So you find a network, register and create a page which can include a photo, pertinent details, even advertising. And then you wait. Or rather, you invite all your friends to join, and then look for people you want to meet -- whether it be fellow fans of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, fellow athletes in training for a triathlon, or even fellow graphic artists from Vancouver. You don't need to limit yourself to one network either, especially since there is a bit of difference between them -- Tribe leans towards classifieds and message boards, Friendster is good for personals and dating, Ryze and LinkedIn are geared towards making business contacts.

Like most new ventures, online social networking will take some trial and error to figure out. For instance many networks are limiting the degrees of separation to four, since the further along the chain you get, the less likely you are to automatically trust the people you meet, and social networking threatens to fall apart. So while one Friend Of A Friend (FOAF) may be easily trusted, the reliability of FOAFOAFOAFOAFs are more difficult to gauge. With the more prolific members numbering their potential Friends in the thousands, networks can become unwieldy. David Galbraith, co-founder of start-up MRL Ventures with PayPal founder Max Levchin, says that although he knows he can make good connections, he also knows he has his limits. "I am not particularly interested in degrees of freedom beyond two," he states. "If social networking is about six degrees of freedom, then I am not that interested."

Network to get work?

"The beauty of online networking," says Carolyn Burke, "is the level of trust." Burke is the CEO of Integrity Incorporated, an information security policy consulting firm in Toronto, and a speaker at the 2004 Information Highways Conference. She's also the regional chair of Ryze Toronto, a branch of the more business-oriented Ryze.com social network. As Burke describes Ryze, "the site helps you profile your own interests, invite your own friends -- business, social and family -- who you already know in real life and find others with similar or complimentary interests. Because you add your friends into the site and network through them to other people as you go, there is a higher level of trust than you might have meeting total strangers." The aim is to develop a tolerable "signal to noise" ratio. Want to connect with someone but aren't sure? Ask for an introduction and a reference.

Do the connections really work? Burke says that she hired her accountant through Ryze and is going to meet someone she met through the site when she's on holiday this year. Others join to find lost friends, old schoolmates, business colleagues, or even people in the news. When a network is based on geographical nearness, it has the added advantage of offering real life meetings. Burke has a contract through Ryze to run monthly business networking mixers. Attendees are given the opportunity to view the RSVP list in advance and are encouraged to meet between three to five people over the evening. Next-day reviews are glowing.

While networks like Ryze are slowly making social networking a business proposition, some say the business-to-business potential is only just beginning to show itself. Chris Tolles is the vice president of marketing at Spoke Software, a key social networking software provider. He explains that Spoke is connecting individual business professionals, workgroups and enterprises to opportunities through their relationships. "Our applications increase deal close rates, deal velocity and revenue per customer," he says. "While the software can be delivered privately behind the firewall, it can also interact and federate data from a public network. People want to utilize both their personal and co-worker relationships in sales and we've noticed that people are using our application to get better information through others, instead of just trying to get access. Several companies are likely to emerge that base their businesses on social network analysis."

Growing pains

Just as an email address and Web site were once status symbols, now it's being in a social network that counts. Yet there are some growing pains. One of the latest entries to the social networking field is Orkut. While it has the backing of Internet giant Google and gains major coolness points by being invitation-only, it is also the example that proves that the rush to be a "cool kid" has its downside. Ben Hammersley, a writer for the Guardian, is a member of many sites. "When I got my first Orkut invitation," he says, "some 20 or so hours in, I found all the usual suspects. The thing is, I already know these people. I don't need to network with them any more. They're wandering from site to site trying to find a reason to stay." Fellow networker Chris Heathcote, a customer experience manager with a focus on social software at the European telecommunications company Orange, agrees that the same people show up all the time. He bemoans the lack of innovation at Orkut.

Another potential concern and curiosity of social networking are the notorious Fakesters. Stanton McCandish, an online usability and PR specialist, belongs to ten online networks. For the most part, he enjoys the experience, although he does rage against what he calls "the capricious, dictatorial and non-response administration of the system." It seems that some networkers sign up with alter egos with names like Wonder Woman, Los Angeles, and Pure Evil. These "Fakesters" as they call themselves, see their fake profile building as creative and clever undertaking. Administrators see otherwise, swooping down and deleting profiles by the dozen. This is hardly democracy, say the Fakesters, who claim identity is provisional and see themselves as defending the right to preserve public identities. Yet in a network based on trust it is also easy to see how fictional profiles could increase suspicion among users.

If belonging to a network of friends can expedite business interaction, then social networking has a bright business future. Right now there is no cost to join the heavily invested networks, although advanced services carry a fee. Once the technology has wider acceptance, it's likely that users will have to pay for completed connections. Inside the firewall, there is also a great potential for social networking to provide employees with an opportunity to mine the resources that may not be obvious at the water cooler or through daily email. Beyond the firewall, it may be the way to greater innovation through cooperation and collaboration of ideas and higher sales potential. Spoke Software's Chris Tolles and MRL Venture's David Galbraith both feel that with time social networking will become a lasting part of the fabric of the Internet. Larger and more successful sites will swallow the smaller ones and tighten up the market. People will own their profile rather than have it exist within one or another public site. And like email, online social networking will become part of our everyday lives.

The Small World Experiment

Ever wondered how the phrase six degrees of separation came to be? In 1967, social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a seminal experiment to test the hypothesis that members of any large social network (in his case, the population of the United States) would be connected to each other through acquaintances. In order to test this contention, Milgram asked a few hundred randomly selected individuals in Nebraska and Kansas to send packages to two target individuals identified only by name, occupation and approximate location. The initial recipients were told to send the package to someone they knew (on a first-name basis) who might be in a better position to pass it along to the addressee. Milgram tracked the packages, and his shocking results determined that on average it took between five and seven steps to get the package to its donor, generating the concept of "six degrees of separation."

Naturally Milgram's research has been the subject of debate ever since, and repeat experiments have attempted in the age of the Internet to verify his results. One group to tackle the small world problem recently is based at Columbia University and online at http://smallworld.columbia.edu/. Their first experiment challenged more than 60,000 e-mail users to reach one of 18 target persons in 13 countries by forwarding messages to acquaintances. Their findings confirmed that social searches can reach their targets in a median of five to seven steps, although small variations in chain lengths and participation rates generate large differences in target reachability. They also determined that successful social searches are conducted primarily through intermediate to weak relationships, do not require highly connected "hubs" to succeed, and disproportionately rely on professional relationships.

Network of Networks

Not sure which to join? Here's a list of the more popular Web-based social networks to get you started:

Ecademy.com

Friendster.com

Itsnotwhatyouknow.com

LinkedIn.com

Meetup.com

MySpace.com

Orkut.com

Ryze.com

Tickle.com

Tribe.net

Zerodegrees.com

Janice Pearson is a freelance writer and editor who divides her time between Toronto, Canada and London, UK. She builds online networking into her day as a way of maintaining sanity and a bank balance.

The Best for last: Zaadz.com

Quote of the Day on Google

2006-07-04T22:28:00.000-05:00

"Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better." - Andre Gide

Google

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Amy Ann

2006-07-03T13:23:00.000-05:00

Flickr Photo Download: Amy Ann

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Let's Change the World

2006-06-30T16:58:00.000-05:00

PhotoSensate - Apprehending Light!

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Visions of Tomorrow

2006-06-30T16:55:00.000-05:00

PhotoSensate - Apprehending Light!

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G. I. Gurdjieff & P.D. Ouspensky - Most Remarkable Men

2006-06-30T16:15:00.000-05:00

Gurdjieff - A reading guide. | 3rd Edition - 2004 | Edited by J. Walter Dri [gurdjieff-bibliography.com]

A very remarkable fellow -

"It is illusion to say our movements are voluntary. All our movements are automatic. Our thoughts and feelings are just as automatic. The automatism of thought and feeling is definitely connnected with the automatism of movement. One cannot be changed without the other. So that if a man's attention is concentrated, let us say, on changing automatic thoughts, the habitual movements and habitual postures will interfere with this new course of thought by attaching to it old habitual associations."

From "In Search of the Miraculous" The Teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff, by P. D. Ouspensky, another Most Remarkable Man

Blogged with Flock

Goodsoul Blues - The sound of one harmonica in a marching band

Would You Like a Pillow? Um, no thanks....

Eight mice found - dead and alive - on United Airlines flight

PhotoSensational Models!

PhotoSensations - Tabitha

Undeniably Awesome!

DarnNews Blues

My Own Self-forgiveness and Redemption

Sly Takes a Hike

Owed to a Spell Checker (with apologies to Percy Dovetonsils)

We Never Worry About Now

FOAFOAFOAFOAFs or a list of the more popular Web-based social networks

Quote of the Day on Google

Amy Ann

Let's Change the World

Visions of Tomorrow

G. I. Gurdjieff & P.D. Ouspensky - Most Remarkable Men

Eight mice found - dead and alive - on
United Airlines flight