new way to wage war?

I've been a TED junkie recently, watching video after video about many interesting things that are discussed at TED. One that I watched last night really made me think about the role of the military in the world (specifically the US military) and how things could be done differently - especially considering the quagmire that is Iraq. It looks as though someone else has done a good deal of thinking on that idea as well and his ideas are pretty sound in my mind. Give Dr. Thomas Barnett a few minutes of your time and see that people do care about what we've done in Iraq and how that should be changed in the immediate future; its interesting stuff.

what to talk about?

“Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

My friend Shamash sent me a message on Skype the other day, linking me to a video of some amazing technology that is being developed. I'll link to that specific presentation some other time, but it was that video that got me interested in what I am writing about today. Its called TED and iTunes was gracious enough to put up the BMW sponsored video podcast of what happens there.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) bills itself with the tagline "Ideas Worth Sharing" and I couldn't agree more. TED is a conference where people come together to share their ideas with the world and now thanks to the internet, I can watch and absorb the ideas that people are thinking about and sharing. So I thought that I would do what I could to spread the ideas that people at TED are presenting, starting with this one.

reassuring comfort

Its been a while since I've posted on here, mainly just because of what I needed to do after the earthquake(s). While the event didn't affect me much physically, there was some mental issues that I needed to deal with before I got back to the normalcy of my routine life. The time that it took for me to process has gone and I feel like I'm back to a sense of security now that I've had the time to go through it all in my mind. Thanks for your patience.

That sense of security was prevalent today as I made my way home from school this evening. Its Tuesday and while this is usually a day for practice, today was a bit different. We were scheduled to play another local team, our first match of the year, but that match was canceled; they had some bad excuse and I just took it and moved on. So I ran a haphazard practice and then came home afterwards. Leaving school at 7:30 pm means that I'm going to be running into high rush hour and it took me waving down a few cabs before I finally got one that wanted to drive me out to Miraflores for a decent rate.

As I climbed in the back seat of the taxi, I reached over my right shoulder and pulled the safety belt across my body and locked it into place. The cab motored away and I felt relaxed in this cab as we headed off into the fray of rush hour. In a lot of cabs here, seat belts are just starting to be put in to the back seats and there are plenty of vehicles out there without belts. Its not something that I look for when hailing a cab so its kinda luck-of-the-draw as to what you get.

The comfort that this seat belt brought to me made me realize just what little things in life can do for you. It wasn't just the belt itself but the symbol it took for me at that moment in the cab. The idea of the small things meaning the most and comfort being derived from the simple and mundane made me smile - sometimes life just gives you reason to smile, and for bizarre reasons.

So here's to the safety belt that I put on this evening. Cheers for the warm fuzzy!