LegendaryLife Blog

Looking at politicians the world over these days, it saddens me to realize that MOST would fail a grade school IQ test based on the way they act and their real knowledge of things BEYOND THEM in the world. I really don’t understand why the human race prefers to elect incompetent leaders at best with a lack of vision, fear of challenging the public to bigger and greater things. Why do we keep holding ourselves back, country by country and our entire race by these fools? They offer neither happiness nor fulfillment – replacing dramatic new ways of thinking with keeping the status-quo.

Some governments are “smart” – their solution to a populace that has lost interest in them is to force them to vote for them… instead of looking at the underlying issue causing most people to tune out. It’s easy to force somebody to do something – put a gun to a person’s head and they will do just about anything for you – but it’s hard to motivate somebody to want – DESIRE – to do something. That’s where true leadership comes from – a quality severely lacking in this world at the highest levels… where we can ill afford it!

Just imagine, for a second… Dr. Neil DeGrasse as president… watch this and share your thoughts!

Dr. Neil DeGrasse – A fascinatingly disturbing thought

Before you watch this video (below), please watch this amazing series: BBC’s Science and Islam: The Language of Science (Episode 1)

The Erosion of Progress by Religions

Stephen Colbert Interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson at Montclair Kimberley Academy

I’ve been learning Mandarin Chinese on/off for 15 years… each time, making great progress then life getting in the way – usually in the form of a business that takes over all my time (WoodMarvels.com didn’t grow from a lack of work!). This has happened to me several times so far – and will continue probably until I retire. I actually moved to China and lived there for close to two years in the hopes I could finally get this long term goal of mine accomplished!

What I saw while there surprised me and then I realized how little education I actually got both from various books / tapes / CDs and even my year learning Mandarin Chinese at my local university about anything beyond the language. There was so much that I didn’t have the opportunity to learn about that was just as important to me as learning the language. China and the Chinese people are fascinating and complex, I wanted to show this to others trying to learn Chinese while, at the same time, having a book that took this into account and improving based on my personal experience, all the shortcomings of what others had done.

Learning a language is very difficult, it takes at least an hour a day, everyday – even when you are living in a country surrounded by this language – for it to sink in. I felt there was so much I didn’t grasp, hence how both the website HowToChinese.com and the book that was written came about.

My wife and I built a resource that I wished I had when I was in university – it’s by far superior to anything I’ve ever used previously to learn Mandarin Chinese and unlike the other systems, you have live video that will help you throughout the learning process. Lucky really enjoys making the videos and I doing the post-production… it’s great fun and I hope you can also see great benefit to the system we have developed for you to benefit from. Lucky worked extremely hard on this book and I’m very proud of her for how she has developed HowToChinese.com… there is a lot more coming in the very near future regarding this business to make it all the more educational and fun.

Book Information

Experience Lucky’s passion for teaching Mandarin Chinese to students around the world through her comprehensive and professionally produced online video series to help you build fluency in record time!

A fantastic book for both beginners and advanced students!

• Step by step learning process with each chapter building onto the next
• Multiple in-chapter exercises to reinforce new learnings along with real-life conversation dialogs
• Pinyin and Simplified Chinese characters throughout
• In-book Chinese <—> English mini-dictionaries
• Comprehensive video series tie-ins to help with your pronunciation and fluency
• Chinese history and modern cultural notes
• Over 170 photographs taken across China!

I’m a great admirer of Dr. Niel deGrasse Tyson – and I’m with him all the way. If you invest in the impossible… it becomes possible. Sadly, today’s “leaders” have neither the balls nor the ambition to really push people out of their comfort zone. There is always an excuse, always a barrier… but big thinkers and more importantly, doers… just make things happen regardless.

If it was up to me, I’d convert the entire Industrial Military Complex – into an Industrial Technology Complex… and push technology way beyond the limits we now think we live under. There is no reason why, if we put these trillions of dollars into investments into increasing our knowledge of health, space, medicine and technology that we couldn’t easily solve many of the world’s most fundamental problems within the next decade. We have so much to learn as a species yet, due to a lack of investment, we are holding our planet and ourselves hostage to the lot we have been given.

Another thing I would do immediately is tax all religions – there are no quick ways to knowledge (“it’s because God created it” is a cop-out to the ‘enth degree) nor are there any free rides in life (you pay, I pray). Religion is a fantastic way to limit human inventiveness, create problems where none exist and power to those who deserve nor earned any. I’m not saying if there is or is not a God, what I am saying is regardless of your beliefs, others shouldn’t have to support them through higher taxes than they would otherwise pay just to subsidize the belief of others in a omnipotent being. I’d earmark those funds directly into major childhood initiatives including the teaching of evolution, the sciences and rationality.

I don’t want to live to 80 years old, I want to live to 200… or even 300… and that isn’t possible as long as governments continue to invest in better ways of killing people instead of better ways of improving people.

I’ve been traveling for a while now and am finally staying put for the next month or so while I wait for things to sort themselves out with (I hope) Australia but with each new place, you see new habits.

Going from a cabin in the woods back to “civilization”, I noticed my uncle took a break from the regular stock market trading and started playing poker online using the FaceBook system… don’t quite know how it works but he seems to enjoy it. It got me thinking of how marketing is done by poker companies, as they are a dime a dozen nowadays… the old advertisements for free poker at PokerStars.net on television, knowing full well that people would only remember the .com I thought was a wonderful marketing ploy. Those commercials for the .net where everywhere… funny how that ended-up for the guy.

I believe the owner of this got his domain was taken over by GoDaddy a while back because he, making millions of dollars online, forgot to renew one or both domains. There are tons of other poker sites online as well, you see them on TV every afternoon during the weekend up here.

I’m unsure if it’s the same owner but another poker site that seems to have given this .com pay vs .net free marketing system recently is PartyPoker.com.

All I got to say is that I hope these guys don’t forget to renew their domain like the PokerStars guys… otherwise, we’ll be reading about them online in forums!

As for me, I’m not that big a fan of Poker… I prefer to keep doing my 3D modeling, animation and growing my online businesses… but the thought did occur to me more often than not to get other domains for my sites, so instead of just WoodMarvels.com, getting the .net variation – not sure as to the value though… from my stats, most people by default look for the .com on things.

The nice thing about both sites is that they allow you to play online for free… so if you are a big fan of poker – no point in buying these video games at the store, you can just do like my uncle… spend endless hours playing this stuff at home. Unlike the stock market, you can’t lose your savings playing the free versions of these games.

Every once in a while, I’m reminded at just how narrow minded people at the executive level of a company can become the longer they work on ONE task for an extended period of time at a specific position. It isn’t their fault, our minds are built to build initial comfort then doing anything possible to REMAIN there. The result? Rejecting ideas or individuals who may challenge you to grow in new risky directions.

People get their weekly salary and THAT’S IT. They wake-up, go to work, come home, watch TV, kiss their kids goodnight then repeat the same again the next day… each time re-enforcing the level of comfort and dulling the senses slowly regarding their true potential. Basically, your mind optimizes itself overtime to coast along and optimize life around this repeating pattern and any deviation from these thought or action patterns is quickly stamped-out. People become COMFORTABLE and soon cannot imagine themselves doing anything else in life. BIG MISTAKE!

Wonder why some companies prosper while others fade away? Easy… comfort! The ones that grow and thrive keep trying new things, fail often but always move closer to an ever moving goal-post. The ones that fail? See their job as a 9-5. Not bad… but we are in a GLOBAL MARKET and 9-5 thinking just isn’t going to cut it anymore! There is always a company in the world that’s willing to do things cheaper, faster and better than you. How do you stay ahead?

1. Keep re-inventing yourself and the company you are directing!
2. Hire passion over expertise. You can teach a task but not passion!
3. Fail… fail… and fail some more. If you don’t fail, you aren’t trying hard enough to succeed!
4. If everybody is driving a Prius… drive a Monster Truck!
5. If you notice others or yourself starting to say “no” to too many ideas without thinking it through – guess what. YOU’VE BECOME COMFORTABLE!