#1301: | There's still a fundamental weakness in the housing market: In the post-internet world, no one needs much housing. It's mainly vanity. |
#1302: | Listen, as you go through airport security, don't talk about the bomb. Don't even spell it out: B-O-M-B. They won't understand your humor. |
#1303: | Stopping for fast food in Duluth, Glenn feels like he is totally living in the movie "Fargo" -- Don't ya know! |
#1304: | Photo Tip #1: CROP. Cut out extraneous data along edges of photo, either in-camera or in post-production. |
#1305: | Photo Tip #1: SEPARATION OF ELEMENTS. Each person or other subject should be distinct from its surroundings. Move to make that happen! |
#1306: | Photo Tip #2: SEPARATION OF ELEMENTS. Each person or other subject should be distinct from its surroundings. Move to make that happen! |
#1307: | Photo Tip #3: SINGLE FOCUS POINT. Each photo should have only ONE center of attention, no more. If two things are competing, cut one out. |
#1308: | Photo Tip #4; COMPRESSION. Select a viewpoint that compresses the scene into a tight area. E.g. A whole mile-long train seen from the front. |
#1309: | Photo Tip #5: ILLUSION OF DEPTH. Always put something in the foreground and something in the background. |
#1310: | Photo Tip #6: HUMANIZATION. Every photo needs a human or human-like character to give the scene perspective. |
#1311: | Photo Tip #7: HIGH CONTRAST. Search for bright colors and high contrast between colors. Avoid dull grays. |
#1312: | Photo Tip #8: IRONY. Seek the outrageous and that which is unexpected for the situation. |
#1313: | Photo Tip #9: FIND HIDDEN MESSAGES. Look for messages in the juxtaposition of objects. Change your viewpoint to bring these items together. |
#1314: | Photo Tip #10: TAKE A LOT OF FRAMES. Shoot first, ask questions later. In the digital age, it's all free, so why not? |
#1315: | Photo Tip #11: REMOVE DISTRACTIONS. Frame or crop to exclude distracting objects, or Photoshop them out. |
#1316: | Photo Tip #12: SUN BEHIND YOU. Whenever possible, stand with the sun behind you for best light. |
#1317: | When the Edmund Fitzgerald set sail, the crew could never have imagined their journey would result in one of the longest songs on Earth. |
#1318: | The carbonation in soft drinks, like other marketing ploys, gives the illusion of substance to an otherwise vapid product. |
#1319: | In a desperately needy world like ours, you don't want to create new responsibilities where none previously existed. |
#1320: | Who's the most incompetent boss ever? Who's the guy who has hired the worst employees and screwed up the most projects? The voter! |
#1321: | It's a tragedy that we all have to die, but you still have a little time left, so you need to get cracking! |
#1322: | The notion of "slowing down" in your final years is absurb. You should be "speeding up" since there are so many things left to do. |
#1323: | Since your time on Earth is running out, you need to be working more efficiently than you have ever done before. |
#1324: | The only time you can afford to rest on your laurels is in the grave. |
#1325: | My worst personal crisis turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. It freed me to live again. |
#1326: | No one is asking, "Why couldn't Michael Jackson sleep?" There were existential reasons. He was caught in his own emotional conundrums. |
#1327: | "Anal retentive" - Freud was wrong about a lot of things, but this term alone is worth the price of admission. |
#1328: | An "anal retentive" is an inflexible hard-ass who is so ungiving to world that he can't even surrender his own shits. Lovely imagery! |
#1329: | Freud was wrong about childhood sexuality. Kids have little interest in sex prior to puberty (unless sexually abused). |
#1330: | Consumer absurdity: "sea salt" - You can't tell me this is any better than table salt. Same taste. Just an excuse to charge more. |
#1331: | From Florida to the Arctic Circle, summers are pretty much the same. Summer just gets shorter the further north you go. |
#1332: | It may seem lonely being single, but the discomfort pales compared to being attached to someone you are out of sync with. |
#1333: | My new photo album from Duluth, Minnesota: http://bit.ly/yhIpF |
#1334: | Glenn has released a new Homeless by Choice blog entry: http://bit.ly/THEPo - "Free Luggage Storage at the Airport" |
#1335: | "Insight" is when you finally understand the real reasons for your own actions. No one can give it to you; you have to find it yourself. |
#1336: | The best time to rest on your laurels is in the grave. Until then, keep moving! |
#1337: | Interesting article from @Slate: "Is Depression Useful?" http://bit.ly/LMpyZ - Sure! Obvious isn't it? |
#1338: | While Bush will be remembered for an absurd war, Obama will be remembered for eye-popping deficits. |
#1339: | Why do we have to say, "God Bless America" -- or God Bless anything? Doesn't He know what to do without our advice? |
#1340: | "Cultural relativism": What is offensive to one culture may be normal to another. Right and wrong can be judged only by long-term effects. |
#1341: | Trees are the result of an arms race among plants, growing ever higher to catch the sun blocked by others. |
#1342: | There are some who choose to run whatever race is presented to them, and there are others who digress and find easier paths. |
#1343: | The biggest mistakes of nations and individuals are when they see a "trend" in recent events and assume this trend will always continue. |
#1344: | People who are already trapped usually want you to join their prison because it helps justify their own past decisions. |
#1345: | The biggest mistakes of nations and individuals are when they see a "trend" in recent events and assume this pattern will always continue. |
#1346: | From Florida to the Arctic Circle, summers are pretty much the same. They just gets shorter the further north you go. |
#1347: | From Florida to the Arctic Circle, summers look pretty much the same. They just get shorter the further north you go. |
#1348: | Photo Tip #13: ILLUSION OF MOTION. Every photo should be "going someplace" with its main character engaged in an action. |
#1349: | Selling luxury products to people who cannot afford them is like selling them heroin. There is no honor in helping people make bad choices. |
#1350: | An old "TV Nation" segment was about selling Avon products in the Amazon, to people who could barely afford to eat. That's luxury marketing! |
#1351: | When people buy a luxury product they think they are getting some magical benefit from it that in fact doesn't exist. |
#1352: | You don't have to "lie" to be dishonest in selling. You can foster delusions through deceptive imagery or fail to dispell them. |
#1353: | Selling people things they don't need will eat you up over time. It will make you money but steal your soul. |
#1354: | There will always be people making bad choices. You free yourself of responsibility by not facilitating them. |
#1355: | You place yourself in moral jeopardy when your livelihood depends on selling people things that aren't good for them. |
#1356: | "Transaction morality" (my term) - the analysis of ones moral responsibility in terms of transactions with the outside world. |
#1357: | "Transactional morality" (my term) - the analysis of ones moral responsibility in terms of transactions with the outside world. |
#1358: | Essentials of Life: 1) food, 2) safe place to sleep, 3) computer w internet, 4) place to work w A/C power, 5) medical plan. |
#1359: | A fine point of hygiene: You can't catch a disease from your own feces or bodily fluids, so don't act so appalled by them. |
#1360: | There's a way to deal with food you already have but know you shouldn't be eating: Throw it away! Preferably where you can't get it back. |
#1361: | Let's get our priorities straight: The human body is only the physical avatar of ones online personality. |
#1362: | You are never going to know your own limits until you are pushed up against them. |
#1363: | It is illegal to talk on a cellphone while driving in New York, but what about running a game show while drivng? That's Cash Cab! |
#1364: | All passions are fleeting. That is what's so scary about them. |
#1365: | It's easy to confuse passion and addiction. |
#1366: | Addiction is when you repeat the same activity without much pleasure only because not doing it is so painful. |
#1367: | A sad fact about rural life: The brightest young people move to the city, leaving behind the dumbest. Then those suckers breed! |
#1368: | "These internet scams must make it difficult for legitimate Nigerian officials to share huge sums of money with strangers." RT @BadBanana |
#1369: | To gain the magical properties of the luxury product, one has to consume or possess it in some way. |
#1370: | "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it." - Helen Keller |
#1371: | In shamanism, one supposedly gains magical powers by consuming certain sacred symbols or substances -- like luxury products today! |
#1372: | A bad marriage can limp along for years, as long as there are resources to support it. The crisis happens when the resources run out. |
#1373: | "College isn't the place to go for ideas." - Helen Keller |
#1374: | Looking back on our own romantic obsessions, we are bound to exclaim, "I can't believe I fell for that!" |
#1375: | One of the biggest puzzles of life is trying to figure out the family we grew up in and how it really works. |
#1376: | It can be nice to visit a museum but an enormous pain to live in one, even if you constructed it yourself. |
#1377: | The model for the novel "1984" must have been the Department of Motor Vehicles. It's bad enough to have to go there; imagine working there! |
#1378: | It is not your place to expose the lies or delusions of others, only to enforce your own boundaries based on what you know to be true. |
#1379: | The existence or nonexistence of extraterrestrial life is irrelevant to our life on Earth. |
#1380: | You may think the necessities of life are "food, shelter and clothing" but the latter two are only required in cold climates. |
#1381: | "The capacity of women across cultures to dissolve relationships that aren't working has been much underestimated.” NYT: http://bit.ly/cfj7H |
#1382: | A fundamental human conflict is separating appearance from operational quality -- what looks nice from what really works. |
#1383: | "Glenn is thinking of becoming an Anarchist but doesn't know how to go about it...." Facebook Status: http://bit.ly/JQe9f |
#1384: | The nature of New York is that everything is decrepit, corroded, overcrowded and smells slightly of pee, but it all basically works. |
#1385: | "We are more different genetically from people living 5000 years ago than they were from Neanderthals." Daily Galaxy: http://bit.ly/iN20z |
#1386: | Anarchism could go someplace if it only it were better organized. |
#1387: | Manhattan for $20/night. Think you can do it? I did last night! http://bit.ly/CqsM3 (Homeless by Choice) |
#1388: | I have no real desire to travel more than 299,792,458 meters per second, but the fact that I've been banned from doing so still irks me. |
#1389: | A common affliction of those who have dedicated their lives to music is that they have nothing to say. They have a medium but no message. |
#1390: | Narcissism - a basic me-centeredness - is the position we all start from as children and escape from only through long, painful experience. |
#1391: | If I were reincarnated as a bird, I'd like to be a pigeon or seagull -- a hardy opportunist who can adapt to anything. |
#1392: | At the end of the meal, what matters is not the sensations on the palate but the nutrition in the body. |
#1393: | Everyone is always talking "megabyte" this and "gigabyte" that. No one ever remembers the real base unit of digital memory: the lowly bit. |
#1394: | Most adults have been absorbed into their investments and are no longer open to change. Change can only be forced upon them. |
#1395: | To most adults, it's a point of pride to say, "I've done the same thing for X years." What's the imagination in that? |
#1396: | "I've been vacationing in the same place for 15 years." You idiot! Think of all the places you could have seen! |
#1397: | Curiosity is an inverse function of investment. The more invested you are in a certain way of life, the less curious you can afford to be. |
#1398: | The biggest barrier to creative success is the demand that it be on your terms, rather than seeing the needs of the medium your working in. |
#1399: | Curiosity is the privilege only of those who are free to change. |
#1400: | The biggest barrier to creative success is the demand that it be on your terms, rather than the terms of the medium you're working in. |