Voyager

I’ve been getting into reading a little bit about Carl Sagan recently, just out of coincidence (and reading alot of digg.com). He died in 1996, but today would have been his 75th birthday – and so there’s been a ripple of news stories with his quotes floating around in the last few days.

One of them that I came across touches on musings about what the Voyager satellites were loaded with before they were sent out on their long and perhaps never-ending mission, and it’s quite an amazing thought really… what should we send out to sum up humanity – to sum up Planet Earth…what would you send out if you could launch a time capsule into space?

Check out what we sent:

”Accordingly, as each Voyager left Earth for the planets and the stars, it carried with it a golden phonograph record encased in a golden, mirrored jacket containing, among other things; greetings in 59 human languages and one whale language; a 12-minute sound essay including a kiss, a baby’s cry, and an EEG record of the meditations of a young woman in love; 116 encoded pictures, on our science, our civilization, and ourselves; and 90 minutes of the Earth’s greatest hits-Eastern and Western, classical and folk, including a Navajo night chant, a Japanese shakuhachi piece, a Pygmy girl’s initiation song, a Peruvian wedding song, a 3,000-year-old composition for the ch’in called “Flowing Streams,” Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Stravinsky, Louis Armstrong, Blind Willie Johnson, and Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.”"

Pretty cool, no? And funny that music is such a big influence in representing who we are…

Read more [here]

Youssou

People need to see that,
far from being an obstacle,
the world’s diversity
of languages, religions and
traditions is a great treasure,
affording us precious
opportunities to recognize
ourselves in others.

Youssou N’Dour
Musician.

From a Starbucks cup… “The Way I See It #21″

Staying Above Water

“I’m just, tryin to stay above water ya’ know?
Just stay busy, stay working
Puff told me like, the key to this joint
The key to staying on top of things
Is treat everything like it’s your first project, you know what I’m saying?

Like it’s your first day like back when you were an intern.
That’s how you try to treat things like… just stay hungry”

- Notorious B.I.G

A little piece of advice from Biggie. Stay hungry…

Today

Master: “Grasshopper, when is the best time to plant a tree?”
Grasshopper: “I don’t know master. When is it?”
Master: “20 years ago. That way you will enjoying the shade today.”
Grasshopper: “But I cannot travel in time, master.”
Master: “True. Therefore the next best answer is: Today.”

-Chinese Proverb

Mistake

Choosing

These novels will give way, by and by, to diaries or autobiographies—captivating books, if only a man knew how to choose among what he calls his experiences that which is really his experience, and how to record truth truly.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

If only.

Aid’s Sunday Drivers

“Passion is not the same as expertise.

The extent of Africa’s poverty mean those of us coming in from outside with money have great power to second-guess what we think is needed. Yet there are no great standards that need to be met to qualify an organization as charity. And there are no set qualifications required to be an aid worker, which makes aid singularly unlike any other comparable ’social’ profession, such as nursing or teaching. Almost anyone with a bit of enthusiasm or cash can interfere in the workings of a poor society.

In short, all you really need to be able to do is persuade a few people to write a few cheques, and away you go. The quality of fundraising literature thus seems to matter far more than the quality of work.

The problem with trying to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of charity aid is that the quality of charities is so varied.

Chali Mulenga

“The point that a lot of us seem to miss is that to some, the wealth of a nation is not only measured by how much money it has, nor how developed it is. For development brings convenience and money may afford you that convenience, but an abundance in love is what brings true happiness.”

- Chali Mulenga

Chali was a friend of mine at UCLA. He was born and raised in the copper belt of Zambia. His parents moved to California while he was finishing high school. He is now finished with his undergrad at UCLA, and studying medicine.

Benjamin Button

“It’s a funny thing about comin’ home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You’ll realize what’s changed is you.”

- Benjamin Button

Fashion

“The thing is, helping people has become fashionable – where as it used to be just good old-fashioned people, helping”.

- Pete Brierley on international aid