Well, another year another set of FBI violent crime statistics.

For the 17th year in a row, crime has gone down

5.5 percent decrease in the # of violent crimes (last year was 2.5% a 120% difference)
4.9 percent decrease in the # of property crimes (last year was 1.6%a  206% difference)
10.4 percent decrease in the # of arson (last year was 3.9% a 166% difference)

Yawn… are we bored yet?  Do you get the point that the world IS getting better and better?  The news continues to spew lies designed to make you feel insecure and buy stuff to fill the void.  More on that later, but I just wanted to relay the latest information.  See you next year.

For those self-acclaimed enlightened among you, please join in the non-battle against unwanted things.

We all have some unenlightened friends who often send us an invitation to join a Facebook group to fight against something. So I wanted to make a group I could send them to, to attempt to try to teach how things are truly defeated.

To understand that pushing against unwanted things only creates more of them (war on drugs, terrorism, crime, teen pregnancy, poverty, cancer, anything unwanted, etc.) To teach that emotionalized attention to a subject gives it energy and continues to perpetuate them in our experience.  Whatever you resist, persists.

This is not a group who pushes against those pushing against unwanted things; this is more a statement that there are a group of enlighten beings who quietly are making the world better by our attention to wanted things.  Peace, Freedom, Abundance, Health, Happiness and Love.

We understand what Jesus taught when he said “Resist not Evil & Turn the other Cheek” meaning don’t give attention to unwanted things, turn away from them.

Next time your friend invites you to join a group “against” something, free free to send them an invite this way.

Not Fighting the unwanted – Facebook Group

It’s disputed that Eleanor Roosevelt actually said that, however, it’s a very interesting thought.

We all know the tween or teenage mind that incessantly gossip and talk about other people.

Many never leave that stage of life, if it’s an evolutionary stage at all. We will discuss that later.

We also all know those who read about events, current or historical.

These are the knee-jerk’rs in life;  observe and react,  observe and react, observe and react: observe something judged as bad or unwanted-react-and feel bad or angry.  They don’t yet have enough power or self control to direct their own thoughts.  These are the critics, complainers, whiners, commentators, skeptics, cynics, it reminds me of a quote Quinn pointed out to me:

“Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create.”   Calvin Coolidge

These are the people who adamantly think they are the smartest people in the world.  They will scoff at any who are tried up in pop-culture.  They are primarily fed on distorted lies and propaganda the news feeds them, they take it in from all sources they can so they can claim to be “unbiased” AM talk radio, political commentators and shock jockeys, etc.  That like to point out what’s wrong, and – even better – what will not work.   They don’t really have any answers.  They never do anything about it other than complain, and join groups of other like minded complainers to join their voices and fight against unwanted things.

Then there are those in which the small minds roll their eyes at and think are boring and the average minds probably think are way-up-there-in-the-clouds with all their crazy ideas; the great minds.

They are sort of fridge dwellers. They are not hermits, they are part of every day society, they are just more visionaries than observationists.  George Bernard Shaw confirms this whole line of thinking with his famous quote, “Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?”

These are the ones who do pay attention to what is, but just enough to give them a launching point into what IS wanted rather than hang out in unwanted things.  They are the ones who cure diseases, solve problems, invent things that have never been before.  I am reminded of the story of a man who, much against the adamant advice of his neighbors, told him NOT to take his entire life savings go to Detroit and buy a new Ford only to take it apart.   The man’s name was Chrysler, yes there is a skyscraper named after him (The Chrysler Building).  There is yet to be any skyscrapers with the names of the cynical neighbors on it.  However, there are some dusty six foot holes in the ground with their names displayed above.

I personally couldn’t be happier anywhere in the world than deep inside a leading edge discussion about new ideas and thoughts.  Does that mean I have a “great mind”?  Is such a conversation more “higher minded” than pop-culture or current events?  I like what Aaron said to the affect that in regarding that quote at the beginning, ” Whoever said that quote, just espoused themselves that ideas are the pinnacle of thought.”   Talking about other people, or focusing on events could actually be the pinnacle of human thought; I’m not trying to disparage anyone who enjoys such conversation or topic.

So I don’t know if I will entirely recant passing along the advice millionaires have given me to read what looks like the the best life changing books on the best sellers list.  This is a very narrow topic which is primarily philosophical, spiritual and meta-physical in nature. Sometimes you need a specific answer rather than one based on quantum physics.  If you go to a surgeon, she will cut.  If you go to a baker, he or she will bake.  If you to a philosopher, he or she will … pontificate?  The point is if we were all on the same level, we’d only need a single teacher.

I never like to ‘should on’ people, but I will now: Whatever gives you joy in life, you should seek.  Since “ask and it is given” is still in effect, then following your own guidance and bliss (Joseph Campbell) will always lead you perfectly to what you’ve asked for.  While following the advice I passed along was meant for me and my path – not for you and yours.  If your personal dominate intent is to be joyful (and it should be!) then you will find people to talk about, or events to interest you, or ideas that thrill you, help you create and make your heart sing.

I’ve written a nifty guide I though up after I found someone’s digital camera. The first thing people do when they find a digital camera is look at the pictures.  Partly out of pure curiosity, partly out of a legitimate desire to see if they know anyone in the pictures, or will recognize the owner if they see them.  This guide shows you how to lock your contact information on the memory card, so if you do loose it, it can easily be returned.

Early on, a mentor once suggested that I check out Amazon.com‘s  and New York Time’s Best Selling Non-Fiction Best Selling Lists for some of the best life changing books.  I hesitated because I did not think I really cared to read what the mindless drone masses thought was good, I only wanted to know what the cognitive elite and most successful people thought.   I took the advice anyways, and started to plow though the lists, even going back into the 1930′s and before, reading every title that looked promising or was the #1 book for that year or decade.  I was blown away at the high quality of many of them.  The biggest questions that struck me were along the same lines of:

• Why don’t more people know what’s in this book?
• This must be common knowledge now, why are so many people not aware of it?

I just could not wrap my head around why certain ideas that were so prevalent, with millions of copies sold in the world was not more into mainstream though. For instance the best selling health book of the entire 1970′s was no where in the American Health Care system – I just couldn’t figure it out.  Now, here is where I was wrong: It’s not the masses of mindless masses that even read books.  Here are some figures I’ve gathered that point out exactly who is reading, and who is not:

• 99% of people don’t buy books
• The average Fortune 500 CEO reads 4 to 5 books per month (and makes over 500 times what the average book reader person makes…)
• The average person buys 1 book a year
• The number of people who will not read past the first chapter …60%-98% depending on the book
• 54% of people never read another non-fiction book outside of school for the rest of their lives.
• National Endowment for the Arts report titled “Reading at Risk” found only 57 percent of American adults had claimed to have read a book in 2002.  This figure is most likely grossly inflated.
• 95% of people, basically, don’t read books

So the advice given to me to check out the best sellers lists for the best life changing books was solid advice.  It is NOT the mindless masses reading these books, it’s basically the top 1-5%.

It’s true though, most of the subjects on those lists do not really appeal to me; I do not care about politics, some biographies of some pop-star, the latest fad diet or someone complaining and fighting against unwanted things.  But there are real jems there, and I will heartily pass on the advice.  One more fact:

• The average American by the age of 60 has watched 15 years of television.

A little history:  When the hard drive industry, uniformly stepped back their three year warranty’s to one year, one company did the opposite: Seagate; they went to FIVE Years.  And  boy did they gobble up market share!  Thus after a year or two the other hard drive manufacturers started to wake up, and moved it back to 3 years.  Thanks Seagate.  A year or so later Seagate stepped back to 3 years.  Then Seagate started to have all kinds of firmware issues, of which I was affected too, and yes this was annoying.  Luckily I am smart enough to have Raid 1, so I never lost 1 single bit or byte of data. Anyways, this is why I still stick with them:

When you return a WD, Samsung, or a Hitachi (even Seagate) you get a refurbished drive, which is the industry standard – no surprises here.  But here’s the difference, Seagate transfers your original warranty over to the drive.  So if you have a DOA drive, and buy a WD, Samsung or Hitachi drive, you actually got a drive with a 90 day warranty on it.  Oops, it turns out 3 years was actually 3 months.  Lucky you.  But when you buy Seagate, you are basically paying to guaranteed have the drive of your choosing for the full warranty period no matter how many times it fails.

For example, if you have the unfortunate luck of having a hard drive fail every 3 months and 1 day, your original single Seagate purchase will get you though the 3 year period, while you would have to pay Western Digital, Samsung or Hitachi for ABOUT 10 more hard drives.  When all hard drive fail, are you still willing to pay several times more for the same storage?  If so, I applaud your loyalty.

Oh yeah, and another thing, Raid 1 your drives if you haven’t already!

If you are like most people, and use your computer daily, and use it to store photos, documents, media, Raid 1 is the greatest and best backup system, that protects against hard drive failure AND downtime.  Raid is the cheapest solutions that ensures zero downtime, minimal hassles, minimal price and piece of mind 24/7.   Raid 1 basically has two identical hard drives, and mirrors each hard drive to each other constantly.  So it one fails, you get a notice to replace it, and you just keep clicking along just like nothing happened.  You send back the bad hard drive, pop-it in, and it re-synchronizes up, and you’re back to being backed up again.  The chances both hard drives will fail at the exact same time or within a few days of each other are infinitesimally small, while the chances one or the other hard drive will fail “sometime” between this instant and anytime in the future, is the dreaded and unsatisfying probability of 100%.

So that’s all you need to know, build or ask that your next computer have “Raid 1″ installed.  If you want all the nerdy details, and why it’s the best solution there is for most people, you can click here.

It’s already been debunked that crime is increasing, the short of it being that while crime statistics are going down one or two digits a year, the reporting is going up by quadruple digits which dives a distorted view of reality.   I wonder about the same thing regarding earthquakes.  As it turns out, whenever there are a lot of earthquakes “in the news” the USGS gets this question asked a lot in America.  Well, they have recently published a response: According to the past 110 years the USGS says … not really, “According to long-term records (since about 1900), we expect about 17 major earthquakes (7.0 – 7.9) and one great earthquake (8.0 or above) in any given year.” So yes, indeed it’s just the reporting of earthquakes has increased (measuring equipment goes from 350 in 1931 to 8,000+ today).  Most don’t realize it but wherever they are living, there are probably hundreds, if not thousands of earthquakes a year in the state or country in which you live. In my state, there are 300-400 earthquakes a year.

Another freakonomics like belief debunked.  Where the story becoming really interesting is WHY people WANT to believe that earthquakes and crime is continually going up. . .

Well, I figured out if you go into Tools > Folder Options > Search, you can set it up to start searching like XP again!

Just change the options like so, and now you’re back to classic XP search, and it’s oh so nice! – Enjoy!

It’s almost impossible to find a cheap USB RF (radio-frequency; wireless) remote.  Yes, IR (optical) remotes are a dime a dozen, but I don’t like  having to be in line of sight; endless pointing and re-aiming to make it work. Also, many a time the projector screen is in the way.  Either way, RF remotes are rate or expensive.  Logitech makes one for $200.  But I stumbled upon this one made by Griffin, the Airclick for PC/MAC and it costs $8-$10 shipped.  AirClick on eBay

I got a little DLL that made it work in winamp.  But then Jared programmed it up to work in… well just about everything else: Media Player, VLC, PowerDVD, anything that uses windows Hotkeys, like they keys on a multi-media keyboard.

So go buy yourself one, if you like, Then download this little file and put it in your startup.

Thanks Jared! You rock.