The difference between your life and a cartoon?

Who hasn't seen these "fatal" accidents befall one of their favorite cartoon characters?

1. He falls out out of plane, but lands in a giant haystack and walks away with only minor injuries.
   
2. A giant oncoming truck forces him to drive his car off a cliff, but he somehow falls out of the car, catches safely on a convenient tree branch, and watches the car explode in flames 300 feet below.
3. His train derails at high speed and plunges into an icy river, and he's found with his arm in a funny position, but only scrapes and bruises otherwise.
4. A flame thrower blasts him in the face at short range, but he only loses some hair and ends up covered in soot. Alternatively, his car is engulfed in flames, and he walks away unharmed.
5. He's hit by a bus, but suffers only minor injuries.
   
6. Of course, after suffering through a bunch of these, the happy ending has the character being given exactly one million dollars.

What do these six cartoon events have in common?

Even in a movie (like "Unbreakable") it's too unbelievable to see stuff like this happening to a real person, right? Hold on ...

The answer is they actually happened in real life, and although 37 people died in the various accidents, at least one person did survive each time.

But, most amazing of all ...

They didn't just happen, they all happened to the SAME man: Frane Selak, a Croatian music teacher (what would a cartoon be without music?). And they happened exactly as described above.

Frane (pictured above at left) was born in 1929, and in January, 1962, his "luck" changed for the first time. He was riding a train (#3 below).

Real life events more amazing than any movie

Here's his amazing story, exactly following the cartoon events listed above:

1. FELL OUT OF A PLANE: How? A DOOR blew out on a plane flying from Zagreb to Rijeka in 1963. While it was flying. At high speed. High above the earth. Etc., etc., etc. Twenty people were sucked out to a certain death, because, c'mon, how's he gonna survive that?
   Oh wait. That's exactly what happened. Only 19 people died, because, I kid you not, #20 was Frane, and he landed in a giant haystack and walked away.
   
   
2. DROVE OFF A CLIFF: What can I say? The truck, the cliff, caught in the tree, the car exploding 300 feet below, all true. That's exactly what happened to him in 1996.
   
   
3. TRAIN PLUNGED INTO RIVER: Yup, in 1962 nineteen people faced likely death when their moving train derailed and plunged into an icy river, but only eighteen died, because when they found #19, it was Frane. His arm was broken, but he had just a few scrapes and bruises otherwise.
   
   
4. FLAMETHROWER IN FACE: As amazing as the others are, I know you've been asking, c'mon, a flamethrower? Okay, this was a car fire forced through air vents, but if that happened in YOUR face, I think you'd agree that "flamethrower" is a pretty good description. Happened to Frane in 1973. He lost most of his hair but had no other injuries.
   
   ENGULFED IN FLAMES: Of course, by this point in his life, flames in a car weren't that big a deal for Frane. Three years earlier his car was engulfed in flames from a faulty fuel pump. He escaped, and walked away unharmed.
   
   
5. HIT BY A BUS: Yup, in 1995 he was hit by a city bus and suffered only minor injuries
   
   
6. AN EVEN MILLION: In 2003, Frane won EXACTLY $1,000,000 dollars in the Croatian lottery. Almost like a heavenly award at that point!
   

World's luckiest man? Or unluckiest?

Considering what he's been through, surviving mortal terror without a heart attack is probably is among his greatest achievements.

"I know God was watching me over all these years," Frane said, and has reputedly refused to fly to Australia to air on a Doritos commercial, saying he "didn't want to test his luck."

Finally, for the big question: Good luck, or bad? We'll give Frane the final word. "I prefer to be called the world's luckiest man," he said, admitting that some people call him "The World's Unluckiest Man."

So, how's YOUR luck?

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Is play much more important than we realized?

One of my favorite wildlife stories is the wild (and said to be very hungry ) 1200-pound polar bear that came to play--every night for a week--with tethered sled dogs. The director of the national institute for play gives a great presentation on the event.


Great photos, inspiring moments

German photographer and frequent National Geographic contributor Norbert Rosing took these photos, and Stuart Brown on Speaking of Faith describes the play that happened in this inspiring video. Brown is a psychiatrist who specializes in the study of the evolution of human and animal play, and the founder of the National Institute for Play.

What's so great about play?

Brown points out (Why Didn't the Wild Polar Bear eat the Husky?) that if you've ever thrown a Frisbee with a dog, you knows playfulness is inter-species. Play can be a universal kind of training and language of trust. Knowing you are safe with another is a trust formed over time by engaging in regular play. Trust brings about intimacy, cooperation, creativity, successful work, and more.

Play is also a great way to connect when there is an age difference. In my work with kids and youth volunteers through New Reality Delivery, Improv play has shown itself as a great way of connecting and communicating as equals.

Video (from a different situation) of this kind of playing:

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All-Time Gravity-Defying Great Original Videos: Dance and Movement!

Videos that always give me a lift -- hope they do the same for you! Also see my collection of greatest uplifting music videos.

Includes the "Greatest dance number ever filmed," the "Best video of all time," one dancer becoming many dancers, many dancers becoming one dancer, the smallest, the legends, as well as the great, the merely famous, the funny and the viral ... not to mention parkour, acrobatics, and amazing fight choreographies!

Enjoy!

The Nicholas Brothers
Don't miss the second half! Landing in splits from bigger and bigger leaps .. incredible! (And a lolpic version of brothers dancing--couldn't resist!)

Cab Calloway, "Stormy Weather" (movie)
"Greatest dance number ever filmed." - Fred Astaire

Related famous tap dance:

• Fred Astaire: Highlights Bio; Dancing on the ceiling (short; full; improved sound); with Eleanor Powell/Begin the Beguine
• Gregory Hines, Sammy Davis and Legends of Tap
• Savion Glover: Solo; as a young kid

Christopher Walken
Drawing on his early dance and musical theater training Walken won awards for this unique approach to dance (and flight!) he created shortly before his 60th birthday.

Fatboy Slim, "Weapon Of Choice"
2002's "Best video of all time," six MTV awards

Related famous dance and videos:

• John Travolta: Saturday Night Fever; Pulp Fiction
  
• Michael Jackson: Billie Jean, Dangerous
• Billy Ray Cyrus, Achy Breaky Heart: Music video; dance popularity
  

Bboy Junior (aka Buana)
(France) A frequent European competition winner, his gravity-defying acrobatic style is based on his tremendous strength. Watch from 1:11 how long it takes before his feet touch the ground again!

Red Bull BC One Competition, 2004
One-on-one Breakdance

Related amazing movement:

• Parkour
• Acrobatics/Trickers
• Ben Dova: The Drunk Daredevil (no net, no camera tricks: don't faint!)
  
  
  

David Elsewhere (Bernal)
Digitally plays all dancers in his commercials:
iPod; Singing in the Rain; Heineken; Music video: Kinky, "Sister Twisted"

Mikhail Baryshnikov: Giselle; Don Quixote

Acrobat and Circus Artists:

• Chinese Ballet Circus: Swan Lake
• Dima Shine, one-man show: Cirque de Demain
• Dralion: Duo Flying Trapeze
• Mouvance: Tango Trapeze
• Cirque du Soleil: The Varekai
• Related Acrobat Performances: Beijing Acrobatic Troupe; chinese Duo

Deaf Child Dancers: Thousand-Hand Bodhisattva
(China) Performing the amazing Kwan-yin (Buddhist goddess of mercy) in sync by following two women instructing them in sign language—because they can't hear the music! About the Disabled People's Performing Art Troupe

Fight Choreographies:

• The Matrix: Vampire Chateau; Agent Smith Reloaded; Neo v Morpheus; Lobby Scene; Revolutions Final Fight (actual scenes, not remixes)
  
• Choreographed Fight Competitions: 10th All China Games; winner

Funny Dancers:

• Judson Laipply, The Evolution of Dance
• Little Superstar
• Weird Al Yankovic: White and Nerdy; I'm Fat
  
• Napoleon Dynamite Dance Scene

Viral Dance and Movement Stars:

• Soulja Boy (and the one by the white kids)
• 1500 Inmates perform Michael Jackson's Thriller
• OK Go, Here It Goes Again (treadmill choreography)
  
• Star Wars Kid: Matrix; Drunken Jedi
  
• Matrix Ping-pong
• Steven Colbert Green Screen Highlights

And all this time, you haven't been Rick Rolled ... yet!

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Try reverse Déjà Vu for inspiration

What's Reverse Déjà Vu for inspiration? Do something uplifting you've NEVER done before! I'm betting NO ONE has seen ALL of the videos below before. If you have leave a comment with something new for the next visitor. There are some new variations of well-known ones here, but NO WAY have you seen all of these!

New inputs = new inspiration

Why did I put these together? It's important to seek out things to be motivated by, not to just stick to the same inputs, day in and day out. To find new things to lift yourself up, forget all the time-wasters and get energized or just relax deeper than ever before. To remember what you want most out of life, and feel that it can happen.

Sometimes when something inspires you, it feels like remembering something that you've forgotten. Peaceful music and imagery is what often does it for me, that and really cool, gravity or body-defying dance! Here's one of my favorites nature videos to start things off:

Remember the best things you want from life

I hope you find something here that helps you feel and remember the best side of yourself, and remember the best things you want out of life. Hopefully there will be something here you love but have never seen or heard before. (Yeah, I've also got puns, cats, photoshopped and large desktop pics*sigh*)

Links in most cases take you to other popular videos by the same artist, or style of video. All photos below are by me.)

Enjoy!

Oh, and a suggestion: Watch and listen to these here but then watch your favorites in full screen. (How? Click on the YouTube logo in the lower right corner to go the video's main page, and then click on the tiny icon in the lower right to open the video in full screen. Viewing controls at the bottom of your screen, press the Esc key on your keyboard to exit full screen mode.)

"This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet." -Rumi

Okay, this is a viral video ad (Schweppes Burst), but it's great! Slow motion of water balloons bursting, with music. Won me over. Wait for the one that hits the guy in the face

Davy Spillane plays a lament on the Uilleann pipes to Cuchulain composed by Bill Whelan for Riverdance. (Once you've heard this sound, you'll never need to look up the meaning of "lament.")

Ray Lynch, "Celestial Soda Pop" (comments?)

Flowing Sand Art will blow you away. Don't skip this one if you've never seen this kind of artist perform before (comments?) 

Kitaro, "Silk Road." For fans, here's a version of Symphony of the forest (comments?)

Glass Harp on wine glasses (comments?) 

Enya, Watermark Orinoco Flow and May it be are great too! (comments?)

Laughing Baby What a great audience! Thank you, I'm here all week! (comments?)

Saraswa, "Trees" (comments?)

Nessun Dorm by the Three Tenors. You really owe it yourself to hear how it develops--listen to the whole thing and it will bring tears to your eyes. Made popular recently by Paul Potts version (comments?)

Okay, this is straight-up comedy: Tripod, "Make You Happy Tonight." At 1:07 the real meaning of this song comes out. "Turn the lights down low .. it helps me feel like I'm in a spaceship" (comments?)

Tchaikowsky, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Glass Armonica (comments?)

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What motivates people? Harry Beckwith knows: The Beckwith 40

When I wrote about prof. Clay Shirky and giving people the chance to achieve higher needs, I was thinking about some of Harry Beckwith's genius.

We're not talking brainwashing here, this is common-sense human nature from a brilliant observer of it. One of my favorites from Harry is: The ultimate test of a communication: Does it make people stop what they are doing? That gem of advice is #40 on the list he calls the Beckwith 40.

So, for an introduction to Harry, here's a baker's dozen from the Beckwith 40: (The subheads are my addition. For the full list, Rajesh Setty has published it with Harry's permission.)

First, Understand How They Think

1. Your biggest competitor is not a competitor; it’s your prospect’s indifference.
2. Your second-biggest competitor is not a competitor; it’s your prospect’s distrust.
3. Your biggest obstacle is whatever stereotype your prospect has formed about you and your industry.
4. Prospects decide in the first five seconds.
5. Prospects don’t try to make the best choice. They try to make the most comfortable choice.
6. At heart, every prospect is risk-averse, and risks are always more vivid than rewards.

Second, Understand How You Need To Think

7. Beware of what you think you know or have experienced; memories fail people constantly.
8. For the same reason, beware of what others say they know or have experienced.
9. Certainty is a trick your mind plays on you; keep yours open.
10. If everyone likes your idea, it’s not an idea. Good ideas always make enemies.
11. Don’t create something that everyone likes; create something that many people love.
12. Research never shows anything; it only suggests.

Value, Communication, Action, Understanding

13. Never take seriously what people say they think, because people are never sure. Trust only action.
14.-40. Full list

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There is time enough to create 10,000 new web sites that engage and empower us

NYU professor Clay Shirky points out the the Internet population watches 5 trillion hours of TV, roughly equivalent to 10,000 Wikipedia projects worth of time. His point is that what he calls our "cognitive surplus" is huge, and there is room for a whole lot of new and engaging stuff on the web. His talk at the at Web 2.0 Expo SF 2008 is loaded with useful insights. (Transcript and video below.)

I wish he'd talked more about self-actualization. Self-actualization is sometimes described as an instinctual need (in humans) to make the most of our abilities; to strive to fulfill our potential and be all that we are capable of. It includes creativity and problem solving. And self-actualization opportunities sometimes need to be made more visible before people will take them up.

Whether you agree with Maslow's heirarchy of needs from "A Theory of Human Motivation," it seems common sense that self-actualization is a higher kind of human striving.

Shirky points out, explaining social sites, that if you offer people the opportunity to produce and share media (beyond just consuming it) people take it up, but it didn't feel like he delved into the real reasons why, IMHO. I predict sites that seek to provide a high level of self-actualization opportunities become more the norm, but they need to signal that they offer a higher level of opportunity.

But it's nonetheless a great talk! Some very useful insights. You can read this lightly edited transcript of his talk, or watch it below. Shirky also has a great book about net-enabled social tools are transforming us, Here Comes Everybody, The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.


His talk begins:
"I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin.

"The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing-- there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.

"And it wasn't until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today.

Read the whole transcript here.

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Freedom: Work for yourself, or work for others?

I think you'll find this contrary compared to most of what is written, but that's because most of what you'll find is either a sales pitch or written by the top 1% of entrepreneurs. (Just by being successful as an entrepreneur you are in the minority.)

Most entrepreneurs are definitely very unsmart about what it takes to succeed. Self-defeating habits and ignorance take them down. Which means when writing about how worthwhile being entrepreneurial is, you have to explain problem-solving better than most articles do.

Lack of stability is a huge impediment to freedom. Sure, working for someone else has its frustrations, but for most people, there is more freedom in working for someone else. Stability, health care, etc. Be careful selling "freedom: as the reason for entrepreneurship.

Another sales pitch for entrepreneurship is the fear of your stability being in someone else's hands if you work for someone else. But losing your job and looking for another job is basically the experience of entrepreneurship. Tons of startups fail. Having a job in this sense is neither better nor worse than entrepreneurship.

If you're really, really good at finding another job, you have demonstrated entrepreneurial skills. (Possibly by using this great list of Resume Action Verbs.) But why not keep putting them to use giving yourself the greater freedom of working for someone else?

Quick test before going into business for yourself: are you running away from something, or running toward something? Very, very few people make changes for something better. Most make changes to get away from something they don't like, and end up throwing out the baby with the bath water. If you are setting out on a major life change and don't have gratitude for what you have now, you'll likely be ignorant of both what you're losing, and what challenges you'll be facing.

If you're facing major changes (unintentionally or intentionally), a great resource is How to Master Change in Your Life: 67 Ways to Handle Life's Toughest Moments by Mary Carroll Moore. Joan Borysenko reviewed it as "Real-life help for everything from spiritual crisis to changing careers - all given in a humorous, down-to-earth manner."

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Do you know something important you'd share if asked?

Summarize what you know in writing.

In particular, if you've already written an email about something useful, simply edit that email for a general readership and email it to be posted on the internet. All you need to do once you know how is send your useful information in an email, and it appears on the internet for all to see and find and be helped by. It's called posting to your blog.

I'd be glad to set this up for anyone reading this that is intimidated by the prospect of doing so for themselves. (It only takes me a minute or two.)

I believe that whenever you have something important to share, you should write it down and post it. That way more people can benefit from it. So start by going over your emails and simply edit any useful information you may have already written something about. I've been bad about sharing my own knowledge, so I'm trying to put out short posts like this one to at least share a little bit, and hopefully come back later to flesh this out with more useful links and examples. My idea is that at least it's here to help people learn something I think could help them help others.

For example, a retired doctor I know had a serious ongoing condition following a serious injury. It destroyed his quality of life and seemed likely to shorten his life. He knew how to find the best doctors, but they didn't know what to do.

He found a treatment known only to a minority of physicians at the time that completely cured his condition. How did he find the treatment? He searched the web. While his doctors didn't know what to do for him, the internet led him right to a medically-recognized (barely) complete solution.

Another man I know helped his mother tremendously during the final months of her life by providing medical information to her doctors that they weren't yet familiar with.

I haven't yet been successful in getting either of them to write about their experiences and knowledge, which is frustrating. I think everyone should be encouraged to share the most important things they know that could help others.

And we can go beyond sharing our own knowledge to encouraging others to share theirs. It's also my feeling that posts that simply share our personal experience as a way to connect with others should be separated from those things we have to say that can help others. Mixing it all together makes it harder for others to find what they're looking for in our writings.

So that's my take on how and why we should all share what we know so that others can benefit.

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Free Large Background Desktop Vertical Wallpaper for (Portrait) Monitors

I'm adding new extra-large free wallpapers each month, so be sure to check back!



Recent addition: free vertical extra-large wallpapers that work in both portrait OR landscape mode when rotated, both abstracts and nature images. Most of these can stand having the "ends" cropped if you want to resize them to a ratio other than 16:10 wide screen. If you like these, link to this page so others can find it too!



You might ask: who else uses their monitors in portrait mode? Here's a couple of photos from the Googleplex to give you an idea:



I use a 24" flat panel widescreen (16:10) monitor set to 1920 x 1200 in portrait (vertical) mode. I've tweaked or montaged a number of free images into vertical 16:10 desktop wallpapers in Photoshop. For example, the first image, Eagle Mountain Mist, is a montage of six images, and lots of Photoshop "mist" (you can also see it on Flickr). Some have been rotated to work well vertically. If these are too huge for you, realize Windows can auto-size them for a desktop background. (Here's a great site for completely free images.)

Montages and optimized free images:

Note: These are vertical as shown.

Best of Hubble and the night sky

Note: These are vertical as shown (regardless of original image)

Free Nature Desktop Images: Vertical or Horizontal

Note: these come in a horizontal orientation.

Rotate to vertical as desired in an image program

Free Abstract Wallpaper: Vertical or Horizontal

Note: these come in a horizontal orientation.

Rotate to vertical as desired in an image program

Finding other sources for widescreen vertical wallpapers



Probably the best is interface lift, but Stock Exchange has quite a few to pick through. And there's a big list of links here. Try this useful large image search for popular, large nature wallpapers easily cropped. I can't post any here since they prohibit redistribution.



Graffiti Wallpaper is also excellent. Some of the nature images shown here are simply rotated from Mike Swanson's excellent collection.



If you've ever thought of making 1920 x 1200 wallpapers for your widescreen monitor from online map images, check out Earth Wallpapers.

Sources

Here are the source of some of the montaged and optimized images, in order from first appearing above:

• Eagle Mountain Mist is a montage of several images and lots of photoshopping;
  
  
• Lazy Days II by boss019; April 24th, 2007;
• Neutron Revolver by Parth; November 18th, 2006;
• Peace by Grant Erb; December 15th, 2005--Morfee Lake, Mackenzie, British Columbia, Canada;
  
  
• Silence by shiftedreality; May 13th, 2007;
• Epic Falls by Chris Fenison; June 15th, 2006;
• Splash/3D rendered water by Ratow; January 15th, 2006;
• Crepuscule, by Fabien Egot; August 16th, 2007;
• Courage et dévouement (Courage and dedication) Cédric Sacilotto's photo taken with a Canon EOS 400D at f9, 1/200 s; France, copyright 2007;
• Solar Wind effect on Earth's magnetic field: Scaling The Universe;
• Modified from Haleakala Sunrise by Greg Martin;
  
  
• If anyone can help me with the original source of the starry night over golden building (MIT) HDR image, I'd be grateful;
• The rest are adaptations of classic Hubble Space Telescope photos from a variety of sources.

Photoshop optimization techniques include HIROLAM, LAB color adjustments, BlendIF layer styles to reduce white halos after sharpening, etc.

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