Aurora Borealis timelapse HD – Tromsø 2010 from Tor Even Mathisen on Vimeo.

A total of 80k people were registered with respiratory infections (not classified by flu type). Several small samples tested for A/H1N1 (which is the cause of swine flu pandemic) indicate that 30-50% of all cases could be swine flu (with other cases being “seasonal flu” – that is, previously known influenza types and subtypes). It is reported that ~37 died since Monday, with symptoms matching those of swine flu. Most of the statistics come from the Western regions of Ukraine, which were the first to face rapid daily temperatures decrease – which could have been the trigger of massive infections.

Today I’ve seen a number of people in Kyiv’s underground railway wearing medical face masks (or just pulling their scarfs up to cover noses). Drug stores were literally stormed for anti-virus medications, immune system stimulators, medical face masks, vitamins, etc.

If not the virus, then panic is definitely in the air. I do not recollect seeing something like that before.

In 2007 in Ukraine, there were over 62 000 road accidents with over 9 000 killed and 77 000 injured.
This is 20% increase comparing to 2006.
And this is also almost two people dead from road accidents per 10000 of population, and 16(!) people injured per 10000 of population.
Based on these numbers, every Ukrainian is (on average) at 0.16% risk of being injured and at 0.02% risk of being killed in a road accident.

(An increase in the number of new cars sold in 2007 relative to 2006 was 46.1%: from 371000 sold in 2006, up by 171000 to 542000 new cars sold in 2007.)

On average, road kill accidents take 3-8 times more lives in Ukraine, then in other European countries.

If you visit Ukraine – watch out for reckless, drunken, stupid, blind, ignorant drivers and violating, unpredictable, dummy pedestrians.

The further from the Kyiv’s downtown you are – the more watchful you should be.

This post used the numbers from this press-release (in Ukrainian).

At the end of the video, when future supercomputers are described, it hinted me at two distinct long-living ideas: that of singularity (in the sense of a breakthrough leading to the immediate exponential growth and even probable abrupt mankind transformation), and that of Artificial Intelligence. The video suggests that this will happen somewhere between 2013 and 2049, which is hard to believe.

Information overload is definitely a feature of the modern world. There’s still space for further overload, but what will be the result? Psychotic workers, or super-intelligent and hyper-efficient “infohumans”?

China, India and their bordering states (sorry, no offence here – just to shorten the list) were long known to constitute the largest mono-national parts of world population. It’s clear that after fairly recent joining of the Asian states into a superstate cooperation commonwealth, half of the world’s population already resides in that commonwealth. This projection for the future seems the strongest of all shown in the movie.

I would strongly doubt the “largest English-speaking country in 10 years” to be China. Imagine: you live in a 1+ billion people country, and you are financially stable (we all know that China is the fastest growing world’s economy); why would you need to learn English, which is so different from your native language? Chinese language is the way – so start learning it as soon as you can (BTW, seen somewhere that the number of Japanese blogs, as expected, became larger than the number of English blogs. Now waiting for Chinese blogs? )

If it’s convenient and well-designed, I wouldn’t mind visiting such a fast food once in a while. Though it’s hard to imagine having breakfast there every day: too dull, I suspect. But have to try first to be sure.

Some more videos of delivery and disposal:

(But, in short, the philosophy is: “100% efficiency in urban movement”.)

All the videos (except for two) are embedded from the Parkour series at ExpertVillage. As a side note: ExpertVillage shows ads before the video from time to time.

To start with, you may want to know the short history of parkour. Here is a movie from one of the parkour-evangelists:

Next, here’s a short sample of parkour from YouTube:

If you decide to try, you need to watch at least two more videos – about the equipment and safety measures.
First – equipment:

Safety should be self-understood, but in addition to that common-sense, here are some advices on how to behave while performing the most common parkour elements:

Next, there is a whole set of videos under the common title “training”. Here they are:

(I used to practice the one above at school… it was known as “goat jumping”)

And, of course, some video-hosting services like youtube will give you a variety of parkour-keyworded videos.

Some people say that it’s worth living in order to “make a difference”, to improve something, to push the evolution – any evolution, be it the improvement of education or dedicated environmentalism. What do you “improve” playing computer games? Evidently, you support the computer game industry, which recruits more and more game zombies, withdrawing them from reality, depriving them of the ability to make a difference, and gaining more and more support, growing larger.

Playing computer games is already a kind of a sub-optimal virtual reality, where one can hide from real life. Suboptimal, because as of now it lacks complete sensual dive – only visual and audio contacts, both handicapped to the extent correlated with hardware and software used. But still, it’s a reality – because MMORPGs are highly addictive, and even single-player games are addictive as well.

Think of this virtual reality in this way: when you start playing and like the gameplay, you already lose some part of your precious lifetime. As you lose it, your contacts with real world get weaker – so you may spend more time diving into your favourite VR. This process repeats until you maintain only the basic links to the real world – like going to the bathroom once in a while, or getting some food to snatch promptly and continue playing. As you do like your VR, and being interrupted angers you, you start disliking and even hating real life – for the hardships it has in gaining some social recognition, in earning your living, in achieving anything at all. You prefer the other way – the way it’s done in your VR: with magic, dragons, simple economics model, and especially – ability to save and reload as needed.

The ability to save/reload/restart/pause is a key which makes a difference between your VR and what we call real life. This is a kind of super-control of time and space at your fingertips. This is why you do like the game, even if you get killed once in a while. In reality you cannot pause time, you cannot save and revert back to previous state, you cannot just easily restart – your life is adding up to what you have and what you can do at the moment.

One can spend years playing a single game, being half-human for that cause – with no real-life ambitions, dreams and ideas. Eventually, the game is studied all across – all the maps are known, all the scripted characters predictable, nothing more to gain or possibly just no more charm and thrill in the game. Swimming out from the private VR, the VR diver finds that nothing had actually changed in his/her life while in the VR. Nothing improved, something probably got worse. Some worldwide events happened (bombings, wars, hungers, pandemics, disasters), but they do not matter – so what if they happened? Nothing makes a difference for a person swimming out from VR, just the desire to dive back – to hide, actually – and continue living as a screen-bound vegetable, getting fat, dumb, and old. Or just getting older – still, the time is wasted.

For the most of the people who play computer games I was evidently over-exaggerating. But not for all. Some people really get stuck that strong. And – believe me, as once I was going the same wrong way – it’s very hard to stop the VR insanity.

It was only the understanding of permanently losing time, which will never come back or be given again, that kicked me off the wrong path. Fortunately, I didn’t yet spend years playing – only months in a row, like a gameaholic, with severe back-to-reality remission periods.

I want this message to reach those who feel they are getting addicted to their own private VRs, and probably those who are already similar to what I described. STOP before it’s not too late. Do not think that you still have time – you will regret it, believe me. You will regret every single minute spent wasting you real-life time. Also, keep in mind that some people already died just because they spent 16 hours a day playing computer games… (no links here, you may have heard of these cases, just search for them)

I can think of only one exclusion and excuse: if someone wants to win the world computer games championship. This case is not within the scope of this post, I’ll just leave it out.

I know that lots of people play computer games and hour or two daily, and that they are completely normal and do not get addicted. These are fortunate or just strong/clever enough to limit the escape instinct. But still – is wasting 2*365/24=~30 full days a year in front of the screen a good thing? This means playing the whole year in a 12-year period. This means wasting 1/12 of your lifetime for nothing sensible or important.

Heed the warning. Learn from the mistakes of others, or at least learn from your own mistakes.

Do not ignore real life – it’ll get you at the end anyway.

• First, find some list of holy grails (or problems humanity is facing). Read it, and define the top three items which were interesting for you.
• Find out more about each of the items.
• And, finally, think if you could devote at least 5 years of your life to solving any of the chosen problems.

Of course, you have to take into account your real current abilities, and the approximate limits of your ability to learn new data and methods.

If you already had some ideas on what’s your mission, then most probably the three chosen problems will somehow relate to what you expected.

If you were “completely clean” – this is a good and really simple starting point.

Personally, I learned a couple of new challenges humanity has that I didn’t even hear of before… So even if there is no need for you to “find the life mission”, it might still be interesting.

For all others – good luck in searching for your life mission!

From my early childhood, I did not want to specialize. I just didn’t like the idea of doing only some limited portion of work, when there are so many interesting things to do. Becoming a specialist a priori seemed the way to boring life, because as a specialist you must do only the small subset of things related to you profession.

Opposite to becoming specialized in some field, I imagined doing that and this for some short periods of time, and eventually becoming a ‘specialist in everything’ (which pretty much equals to a ‘specialist in nothing particular’).

Evident drawback of dispersing efforts is that although you can do anything good enough, you can hardly achieve excellence. And without excellence you are not that needed in the market. Without staying focused on a single subject for a long time, you do not grasp all the specifics of it.
Another drawback is the lack of motivation. You do have temporary interest, but if there are many of them, it is again ‘Yet Another’ thing you do. You can be motivated by being paid for your activities, but that is different from real, persisting from-within motivation.

1. The earlier you become motivated, the better for you.
2. Experience is what matters the most. If you have it – you can get the necessary certificates. Education is good, but experience outperforms it. Still: early education is easier.
3. You should try new opportunities you find at least a little bit interesting or challenging – but do not do that at once for all opportunities you see! Get them one by one, and it’s nothing bad in stopping at one of them for better acquaintance.

If you find yourself in a position of being unable to find what you are interested the most in, you must no relax! If you live with the understanding of not beign devoted to some idea, and do not take steps to resolve this issue, you may fall far down the social ladder. Probably the only reliable solution for such a person is taking the hardest, the most challenging opportunities you encounter. This way, want it or not , you will eventually specialize or get experience sufficient for good and satisfied life.

I am still a bit undesided on what is my main interest. However, I did define the small subset of what interests me most, and I’m dispersing my efforts in this relatively small circle. The problem with my advice at the end of the previous paragraph seems to be in taking actually the most challenging opportunities – if one has a choice, he’s more likely to go the easier way.

There is one more danger in staying ‘undefined’, even if you do follow the hardest path. You may get stuck in the ongoing activities, and then, even if you stumble upon what you’d like more to be doing, you may simply fail to step from ‘stable now’ into the ‘uncertain future’. This is especially the case as you grow older and older.

One more, final word of warning for the ‘undefined folks’: do not just idle with no aim, earning some or even occasional income. (I’ve heard from an Australian friend of mine, that Australian young people do not continue studying at the universities after school – a lot prefer to become construction workers.) If you go the harder way, you are likely to end up with more support behind you, unlike the case when you ‘go easy’.

Update:see this post for an easy way to find your life mission, if you’re completely lost.