Success doesn't cause happiness.  Happiness causes success.

http://www.wpp.com/wpp/marketing/publicrelations/happynomics.htm

Anyone who has lost their job in the last few years should watch "One-Armed Swordsman" (1967).  It's a powerful metaphor.

"We need to be more sensible with respect to antibiotic use because we use them indiscriminately in places like the food industry, where they serve no genuine purpose other than to increase animal weight."

- Richard Roberts, molecular biologist and winner of the 1993 Nobel Price in Physiology/Medicine

One third of the world’s cigarette consumption is in China.  China consumes 50,000 cigarettes
 per second.

‎1/585 people on Earth was a New Yorker in 1960. Now it's 1/854.


- New York Magazine

‎"In 1984, [American] households headed by people age 65 and older were worth just 10 times the median net worth of households headed by people 35 and younger.  But now that gap has widened to 47-to-one, marking the largest wealth gap ever recorded between the two age groups." 


- CNN Money

The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle.

"All you garlic belt club med countries eating your lunch al fresco everyday doing nothing while I've been having mine al desco for last 4 years... It's payback MOFOs"
- A friend's Facebook status (with a picture of a salad in front of his monitor)

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.


- Zig Ziglar

Tap water accounts for just 8% of the 50 billion beverages US restaurants serve annually, while soda (soft drinks) and coffee account for 49%. (LA Times)

If you feel pessimistic or discouraged by something in your life hearing first-hand about real injustice that others are facing will change things for you.  It heals you and orients you to help others.

What's the first thing you'd change if you ruled the world?
"Replacing the awful, rude and egotistical immigration and custom officers in the US with the beautiful, polite and adorable waiting staff from Hooters bar."

- Yang Yeo, Chief Creative Officer, JWT Shanghai

"Modern paintings are like women, you'll never enjoy them if you try to understand them."

- Farrokh Bulsara (Freddie Mercury) at age 15.

Asian women annually spend seven times the amount of money as Asian men.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

- Confucius

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

- Helen Keller

Google Chrome is FAST! Goodbye Internet Explorer.

Every time you spend money you cast a vote for the kind of world you want.

- Anna Lappe

Businessmen with Backpacks

From time to time in New York I’ve seen businessmen in suits wearing backpacks while commuting. Backpacks are for schoolchildren and campers. People in backpacks don’t seem like credible business people to me. The irony is enhanced when seeing a backpack made of leather – it’s still a backpack and now you look like a student in Japan. Can’t those people fit their documents and their lunch in a different bag? If they really need to lug many books and papers back and forth they should take a small suitcase that can be rolled or held in one hand. At least then they’ll look like a consultant, not like they’re going camping or to school. At the very least they’ll save their clothing from tell-tale creases.

Manure from chicken factory farms is choking the life out of the oceans. Management programs for waste have not kept pace with output. Nearly 9 billion chickens are raised for meat in the US each year.

Life is too short to do things that constrain or bore you. Make it amazing.

The whole idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation. Just do it. Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever. Do it without motivation. And then, guess what? After you start doing the thing, that’s when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing it.

- John C. Maxwell

I receive an e-newsletter from Diversity Executive magazine. I think it's ironic that there are links to download "white" papers.

'Vengeance is a water vessel with a hole. It carries nothing but the promise of emptiness.' - Master Po

'Shall I then repay injury always with kindness?' - Young Caine

'Repay injury with justice and forgiveness, but kindness always with kindness.' - Master Po

Eating vegan one day a week lowers your carbon footprint more than eating local every
day of the week.

- Washington Post

If you continue this simple practice every day, you will obtain some wonderful power. Before you attain it, it is something wonderful, but after you attain it, it is nothing special.

– Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Master (1904-1971)

Why do some companies choose to have chairs in their meeting rooms that make fart sounds when you shift your position? If I'm in a meeting and the chair I'm sitting on makes that noice, the way I deal with it is to keep moving so that people realize the sound can't be a fart.

We have successfully raised an entire generation of kids who think fruit is a flavor, not a food.

- Tony Geraci, food and nutrition director for Baltimore City Public Schools

Wireless charging – the technology for wireless power transmission already exists. Imagine not ever needing to plug your phone, laptop, game controller, golf cart, etc. When people figure out how to make it commercially practical we'll have it.

The most typical family featured in advertising, "married with children," is actually the third-most-common household, at only 22% of households [in the US]. The largest household group, 28%, is actually the "married with no children" home. In fact, the "one-person household," only 17% of the population in 1970, became 27% of the population by 2007 and is still growing.

- AdAge

Your motivation and ambition are more important to your success than where you went to college.

I changed my gender on my Pandora account. After 4 years of being male they now think I'm female. There were too many match.com ads with many smiling faces of single white females. It grew distracting and annoying. The annoyance was because in the US, white people are the equivalent of Type O blood: everyone can accept Type O. The dozens of white faces don't represent the actual demographics of this country, nor, I assume, the membership of match.com. I understand match.com wants to drive traffic to their site, but the way they're doing it ticks me off. It's encouraging a pigmentocracy, which more responsible companies should try not to support.

I should probably point out that despite these views of what should and shouldn't be publicly promoted, I am in a LTR with a white female (who happens to have Type O blood).

When you know better, you do better.

The average age of all humans is currently 28.

In rapidly growing economies, the prime use of wealth is the display of wealth.

Status symbols acquire a significance they don't have in the West. Young adults in particular see the acquisition of status and its symbols as the be all and end all of their existence.

The best status symbols are the ones other people can see all the time. Which is why many women will spend - or have spent for them - twenty percent of their annual income on a high status handbag.

Pretty much anything that your friends, dates and neighbors can see has a status angle. Air cons, fridges and LED TVs are all symbols of your rising status in the world.

Many young Thai men spend a quarter of their monthly income on a bottle of premium whisky to impress women passing their bar table.

A girl who has nothing still has her hair. Which is why many a poor girl will spend a quarter of her weekly income on shampoo and haircare products to make sure she's looking good at the dance at the weekend.

- All from Y&R's "How to Dominate the World"

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 858,320 lawyers employed in the legal services industry in the US in 1999. According to the NY Times there are 45,000 lawyers that graduate from US law schools each year. Is the US legal services industry growing by 5.24% per year to absorb all these new lawyers? Are enough retiring or moving on to other things so that there are enough jobs? What's the impact of legal outsourcing on the number of legal jobs in the US?