Interesting

We are brainwashed!

Seth Godin says that everything, our education, society and corporations brainwashed us into compliant cogs that worship the status quo. His advice is that we do stuff that matters and break free from the norm. He wrote a manifesto on what you need to do to reinvent yourself. Pass this to all your friends, everyone must read this. He also just released his latest book, Linchpin. Can't wait for it to get here.

Driving in Beijing

During my trip to Beijing last year, I noticed something rather interesting while I was staring out from the tour bus. There are many road signs that mention "Ring roads" and upon further inquiry along with some googling, it seems Beijing is one of the few cities in the world that have rings roads or beltways. As you probably have guessed from the name, ring road is basically a road, highway or expressway around a city. The 2nd Ring Road in Beijing surrounds the city and form an area that is roughly equivalent to the old city. The later ring roads are further and further away from the city center. Most of the 2008 Olympics venues are accessible from the 5th Ring Road.

To combat air pollution and congestion for the Olympics, Beijing implemented a rather brilliant scheme to reduce the number of vehicles on the road by half. Dubbed the odd-even scheme, you can only enter the city if the last number of your license plate is in the right half for that day. (e.g. odd or even) I don't think they are still enforcing this but I can't stop to wonder how will it turn out if we were to do it here in Malaysia.

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Why Charlie?

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I just found out about this 3 year old Youtube video, Charlie the unicorn that has something like 40+ million views and 110k+ comments. It is ridiculously funny and random. I was curious about how this 3 1/2 minutes long cartoon became so viral. So I took the risk and watched the other episodes. Thankfully, I think I'm still sane and these are the things I noticed in all 3 episodes.

  1. Charlie's friends will invite him on a magical adventure
  2. Along the journey, Charlie's friends will make random noises/conversations that annoys him
  3. Also along the journey, they will encounter things you can't expect in your wildest imagination which will annoy and humor you (and Charlie) at the same time
  4. Near the end of the adventure, there will be a song which is surprisingly pretty catchy and of course random
  5. At the end, Charlie will be screwed in some way by his friends

Not sure if this is the formula to create a viral clip but one thing I'm sure of. This thing is pretty darn addictive to watch and probably explains the massive amount of views. Whatever it is, I need to get away from it now.

What matters now EBook

A while ago, Seth Godin posted about an ebook with ideas and insights from many influential individuals and great thinkers of our time. Here's an excerpt from his post.

Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O'Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Fred Wilson, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.

It is so good and thought provoking that I just had share this to everyone. You can download it here or view it online on Scribd or wepapers.