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The Clues to a Great Story - TED Video and Infographic

Hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving.

I visited family.

 

 

One of the things that caught my attention was how attached to stories we are ... our own, and the stories of others. 

They help us decide who is naughty or nice.  They help us decide who to spend more time with ... and where we fit in.

Stories are emotion catalysts and amplifiers.  Choose the 'right' ones, and you feel good.  Focus on the 'wrong' one and you feel bad. 

Well-told stories make us care.  Humans use 'story' to make sense of things.  If you create the narrative, the process is intentional.  However, for most, the quality of our stories is not a conscious process. 

 

How Do You Craft a Great Story?

 

A good story can make the gathering feel that much closer. A good story can flip a conversation at a party from completely awkward to wonderful.

A good story can glue your nose to a book. And, on screen, a good story can rivet generation after generation.

Story-telling is an important skill.  So, how do you tell a good story?

Andrew Stanton, the Pixar writer and director behind both Toy Story and WALL-E, has many ideas, and he shared his expertise in his TED Talk, The clues to a great story .

 

 

 

Storytelling is like joke telling. It's knowing your punchline, your ending, knowing that everything you're saying, from the first sentence to the last, is leading to a singular goal, and ideally confirming some truth that deepens our understandings of who we are as human beings.

We all love stories. We're born for them. Stories affirm who we are. We all want affirmations that our lives have meaning. And nothing does a greater affirmation than when we connect through stories. It can cross the barriers of time, past, present and future, and allow us to experience the similarities between ourselves and through others, real and imagined.

 

Here is an infographic that sets out the basic steps to a great story.

 

Stories are not just for kids.

Make me care.  Take me with you.  Be intentional.  Let me like you.  Delight me.

Words to live by!

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"Oils" - A Thanksgivukkah Miracle (Royals Song Parody)

Thanksgiving and the first night of Hanukkah coincide this year. 

American Jews get to mix turkey, stuffing, menorahs, and dreidels with a popular song. And what better song than Lorde's "Royals?" More appropriately named "Oils," in honor of the latkas and burning candles of Thanksgivukkah.

So, here is a musical parody of the new mashup holiday, Thanksgivukkah.

 

 

 

Puritans and a different Tribe dancing the the horah while belting back some Manischewitz ... it's a Thanksgivukkah Miracle.

The New Grand Theft Auto Videogame is the Fastest-Selling Entertainment Product Ever

GTA V reached the billion-dollar revenue milestone faster than any other entertainment product in history. 

Read that again ... Not only does that make GTA the fastest game to reach that milestone, but the fastest-selling entertainment product of all time.

It took the game only three days to achieve what Avatar, no less than the most successful movie of all times, did in 17 days.

 

With an estimated production/marketing budget of $265 million, GTA V is not only the most expensive video game of all time, but also more expensive than most of today's Hollywood blockbusters.

The two highest-grossing movies in history, James Cameron's Titanic and Avatar, both took considerably longer to pull in one billion. 

For what it's worth, I think is also says something good about the economy and disposable income.

Show more statistics on the Topic of "Video Games"

Watch as Astronaut Chris Hadfield Covers Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ in Space

Life imitating Art.

Here is a version of David Bowie's Space Oddity, recorded by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station.

Hadfield is not only an astronaut, he is a social media star who invited the world to experience space differently by sharing the photos and videos he captured during his stay on the International Space Station.

 

 

With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here's Space Oddity, recorded on Station. A last glimpse of the World. youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9d…

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 12, 2013

 

 

In the clip, Hadfield floats around the space station singing the 1969 track (with modified lyrics such as, “Ground control to Major Tom, lock your Soyuz hatch and put your helmet on,”) and playing an acoustic guitar while gazing at Earth from space.

Kind of fun to watch.

 

The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History? [Video]

Tragedies often sound a clarion call that get people to band together and be their best selves.  

But how long will the good behavior last?  Like exercise or showers, while it is good to do ... it is better to repeat. 

It is time to take an honest look at ourselves ... and take appropriate action.

The 3 minute video below highlights some tough issues.  The hard truth is that progress starts with honesty.

 

 

 

Do you think this painted an accurate picture of the current United States?

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Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading

It was cool that they found the bombers so fast. Yet, I have mixed feelings about what that implies about the 'surveillance society' we live in.

Sometimes things just don't seem to make sense ... other times they do.

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• Google Person Finder Located the Missing at Boston Marathon Explosion. (Mashable)
• Stupidity: Why Didn't Evolution Make Us All Geniuses? Why we still do dumb things. (NS)
• IBM CEO Predicts Three Ways Technology Will Transform the Future of Business. (Forbes)
• Disruption Results from Rational Responses to a Changing Environment. (Harvard BR)
• Stanley Kubrick Worried that IBM Would Get Mad About His Psycho Computer, HAL. (BI)

 

Trading Links:

• After Apple’s Rise, a Bruising Fall. Wall St. has turned viciously on its one-time iDarling. (NYT)
• The Death of the PC Has Not Been Exaggerated. (Forbes)
• Computer Sales in Free Fall. Quarterly Shipments Dropped 14% (Wall Street Journal)
• New Study: Smaller Hedge Fund Managers Outperform. (AllAboutAlpha)
• Condoleezza Rice:  Russia Is Really Just a Large Oil & Gas Syndicate. (AdvisorOne)

A View From Above ... Making the Invisible Visible [Video from the Space Station]

It is easy to get lost in the admistrivia of day-to-day life.  Here is a quick antidote for that.

International Space Station astronaut Don Pettit lived on the station for about a year, and took many pictures while up there.  The results of his innovative photographic work and passion have changed the way we see earth from space.

Next, astrophotographer Christoph Malin took thousands of Pettit's individual photos and animated them, adding clips of Pettit giving a talk about his stay aboard the ISS and his photography there. He also set it to music, creating a simply stunning time-lapse video.

The result is certainly worth watching.  So, set aside 16 minutes of your busy day, sit back, and soak this in: “The ISS Image Frontier”.

 

"Making the invisible visible" - the ISS Image Frontier from Christoph Malin on Vimeo.

 

The video presents an interesting perspective of our planet.

Many astronauts, even from back in the Apollo days, talk about an incredible feeling they get after a few days in space. As they gaze on the Earth from above, they lose their feeling of borders and nationality. The Saudi astronaut Sultan bin Salman Al-Saud, who flew on the Space Shuttle in 1985, commented on this, saying , “The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth.”

On a different note, the technique where they create a composite view of a visual time series is facinating.  It makes the invisible visible ... and has many uses in the big data space as well.  Very cool!

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Putting One Foot In Front of the Other

Whether you think you can ... or you think you can't ... you're right.
        ~ Henry Ford

 

Slack-Lining is kind of like tight-rope walking (except the line isn't as taut ... so it moves and bounces around).  The image to the right is of me trying it less than six inches off the ground.

It was harder than you might guess ... Perhaps fear of falling contributed to the heart racing and muscle tension that went along with it.

Josh Beaudoin (the guy trying to steady me) claims that slack-lining is not an adrenaline sport.  It is about being composed in the moment.  It is about finding the confidence to face your fear and the power to manage your emotions.

Listen to some wisdom as you watch an awesome video by Josh. It was shot in Rock Canyon near Provo, UT. 

 

 

Imagine the experience of being up there ... and what we do down here doesn’t seem risky.

To see something else a little crazy.  Check out this link about Fire-Walking.

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A Bad Lip Reading of the NFL

Playoff time is usually serious for the NFL.  This is not.

It is kind of the opposite of one of those old Kung Fu movies where the dubbed words you hear aren't synched with the mouth movement. 

Here it looks like they are saying what you hear ... it's just that someone changed the words.  You could call it "So THAT'S what they were saying ..."

 

 

 via YouTube

JibJab's 2012 Year in Review Video

Oh well ... crazy how fast time flies.  Hopefully 2012 was good for you. 

Here is JibJab's take on what happened.   

 

 

 via: JibJab

 Long Live 2013.

 

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