Out & About w/Mid-Week Notations

It was another interesting, challenging, disheartening and yet hopeful week.    Despite the profound challenges as exemplified in the work our team has done at the Daily Outsider, I wanted to be a bit "upbeat" as I picked the Disney Image above from the folks at the Mission above which is quite cute as I also take comfort in this admonition from John Kennedy:  “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.”    One of the many highlights of the week for me was being at at the Aliso Niguel High School last night as the class of 2018 senior awards were held.   What was amazing was to see selfless souls who spearheaded the reception for the presenters and the honorees and their families.   I produced a Visual Essay of this fabulous Night of Service:

This is also a week that saw us losing two major literary figures:  Philip Roth and Tom Wolf.    The beautiful Tribute by Adam Lashinksy is fabulous:  If you’re fortunate enough to practice a craft and to achieve some modest success at it, and if you have even a modicum of humility, then you’re hyper aware of the giants of your field, the people whose least impressive effort is better than you’ll ever accomplish. Journalist and novelist Tom Wolfe was one of the finest practitioners of narrative nonfiction ever to write in English. Wolfe, who died Tuesday at age 88, was a lion of 20th century journalism, a hard-working, creative, brilliant writer, and a colorful character in his own right. There may be no better example of the genre than The Right Stuff, Wolfe’s meticulously researched and entertainingly told tale of the early American astronauts and the daring test pilot, Chuck Yeager, who never joined their ranks. He excelled at literary criticism, cultural and political portraits, and then, as if there was nothing left to achieve, fiction. His Bonfire of the Vanities recorded an era, the 1980s on Wall Street, as well as any writer ever will. This being Data Sheet, it may shock you to know that Wolfe also wrote one of the best magazine feature stories every published about Silicon Valley. His December, 1983, profile in Esquire of Intel co-founder Robert Noyce captured the early days of the technology industry, a feat all the more astounding given Wolfe’s outsider status in these parts. Anyone who thinks today’s “brogrammer” culture in the Valley is somehow new needs to read Wolfe’s insightful account of the proclivity of Intel men to leave their wives for the young women at work who found the engineers’ stories and business triumphs far more entertaining than their homebound spouses did. I first read Wolfe’s Esquire article a baker’s dozen years ago when I was reporting a profile of Intel’s new CEO, Paul Otellini, who died last year. I asked the legendary Andy Grove, also no longer with us, about the Wolfe profile of his long-deceased boss, and Grove unleashed a typically expletive-laden condemnation of Wolfe’s sendup, arguing that Wolfe didn’t understand Silicon Valley. I could see why Grove didn’t cotton to Wolfe’s account. But I thought then—and continue to think now—that Wolfe perfectly nailed the self-righteous, entitled, narcissistic mentality of the Valley, a place whose accomplishments equal its hubris. And this was nearly 35 years ago. Godspeed, Tom Wolfe. Adam Lashinsky @adamlashinsky I had a chance to confer with one of the presenters.   He was part of the local Laguna Niguel Rotary Club Committee that made determinations on the Awards.   He noted how as he read the submissions, he noted that the Republic will be fine--I couldn't agree more not withstanding the challenging scene we're faced with. As I conclude these thoughts,  I wanted to wish all in the United States a restful Memorial Day Week-End as it is the "official" beginning of Summer, the School Year is coming to an end but more importantly--it is a chance to remember and honor all who have served.    I look forward to joining the City of Laguna Niguel's Event on May 28!! Onward to June with all its' possibilities!!!

Out & About w/Brief Thoughts as a New Week is At hand....

A new week is at hand as I write this.   It has already been quite a forthnight as I have been helping to tweet on the #GazaReturnMarch and how as I am finishing off these thoughts, some 16 people have been killed--and over 700 people have been wounded.    Al Jazeera has been covering this live which is available in The Daily Outsider Main Property in the Live Broadcast Pod.   This is as  the US Embassy will officially be opened as Palestinians throughout Israel and Gaza will continue their protests as a build up to Nakbha Day.   It is just so overwhelming to be witness to it as Gaza continues to be blocked by Israel to fish and as the two only entrants from Egypt and Israel continue to be closed.

As I was curating work and continuing to build out my repository of thoughts,  I ran across this as I wanted to share this on a positive note:

True wealth consists in:

Worriless sleeping
Clear conscience
Reciprocal gratitude
Absence of envy
Good appetite
Muscle strength
Physical energy
Frequent laughs
No meals alone
No gym classes
Some physical labor
No meeting rooms
Periodic surprises

- @nntaleb pic.twitter.com/dVEhrCgu0y

— Gold Telegraph (@GoldTelegraph_) May 1, 2018

Thank you @SteveSchmidtSES

As I had the pleasure to be supportive of the Work of the Daily Outsider throughout the week, I can't think of a way to "book end" my week before being "dark" for the weekend with this from Steve Schmidt.

Steve Schmidt managed the 2008 Presidential Campaign from  Senator McCain.   These are some of the most powerful 4 minutes in praise of Senator McCain and I bow in respect to Mr. Schmidt for this eloquent tribute to Senator McCain which epitomizes what I view Senator McCain to be.    

I made it a point of responding to Mrs. McCain in the aftermath of the vile comments by the White House Aide and a Fox Pundit:

Although a thank u is enough it is all that I can offer as one simple member of the @ordinaryfaces as I bow in respect to a patriot that along with your entire family epitomizes the best of America folks like him are like the wind but lions like your husband will endure

— Mike Pouraryan (@mikepouraryan) May 11, 2018

As I was finishing these thoughts and wanted to confirm Mr. Schmidt's Twitter Handle, I saw this (and couldn't agree more as to how General Kelly could tolerate this):

This is the citation for the award of the Silver Star to Commander John Mccain. This is real. This happened. Later he helped reconcile relations between our countries as a man of peace who knew war too well. Shame on John Kelly for tolerating this . https://t.co/o9ZG080fiA

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) May 12, 2018

I will note that I have had disagreements with his views over the years.  But that's the beauty of democracy.    His commitment to America is unshakable and his legacy will endure long after Donald Trump along with his vile and despicable Vice President, Mike Pence and his entire Administration are relegated to the dustbin of History.      

Out & About w/Thoughts.....

As I was working away on late commitments for the Daily Outsider, I saw that Israel had struck Iranian Infrastructure in Syria after what was noted to be an Iranian Missile Barrage which was struck down by Israel's Iron Dome Defense System.   The Israeli Defense Chief had said that All key Iranian Infrastructure in Syria had been hit.    The last reports I personally reviewed was that over 2,000 Iranians had been killed--that does not include all the Afghan Recruits who joined the ranks out of desperation--Truly worrisome times....

I had hoped to strike a rather optimistic tone--but these two Visual Essays I produced over the past Week was to "hopefully"  tend decided to take a different "route" this week as I also was knee deep in various projects to share two "Visual Essays" I produced It has been an interesting week!!   For this edition of my "Out & About",   here are two Visual Essays to Enjoy as I also wanted to extend a Happy Mother's Day as it is Mothers' Day Week & of Course Teacher Appreciation Week:

Out & About w/Brief Thoughts On the Eve of a New Week

Googosh Sings 

#GazaReturnMarch

@ANHSTealTown Espirit De Wolverine 

What a week it was!!! 

It  was a week being witness to humanity and yet being taken aback by some of the on-going challenges in our World including the Gaza Return March and the freak show in Washington epitomized by the latest over the Stormy Daniels mess.    Professor Turley of George Washington reflected upon this on Face The Nation--As I noted on Twitter earlier, I read his blog daily although I  have disagreements with him periodically.

Our World was witness to quite a challenging week on a multitude of fronts no doubt--but my sense of optimism was exemplified as I was witness to the Esprit de Wolverine Awards at my Son's High School being witness to  the beaming Young being honored by their teachers under the watchful and proud eyes of their parents--and how the selfless souls that serve on the Aliso Niguel PTSA Board hosted a reception for the students and their families.    This was also a week, though, that saw one of the leading lights of Modern Iranian Music, Naser Cheshmazer leave the scene as he had a heart attack--I chose a clip of one of my modern classics song by the Iranian Music Legend Googosh courtesy of the Team at Tavanah that I was pleased to present

I am looking forward to joining an afternoon of service later on this week at Camp Pendelton as I will join the team from the Laguna Niguel Military Support Committee for a Family Day with the 1/4 Marines & thereafter join the selfless souls who serve on the Aliso Niguel Grad Night Committee as we all gear up to host the Grad Night 2018.   

I close out my brief thoughts with this very optimistic note courtesy of the visionary Peter Diamandis that is a long-read but also quite critical for us to remain as to what is truly possible: 

Every year I take the major XPRIZE benefactors (Vision Circle & Innovation Board members) on an Adventure Trip. This time, we went to Vatican City to discuss longevity and regenerative medicine, piggybacking on the United to Cure conference hosted by the Pope.  The notion that the Vatican hosted this event, and even had a panel on “the morality of immortality” (or the immorality of mortality) is pretty amazing (more on this in a future blog). It’s more evidence that we’re living during the most extraordinary time ever in human history.  Since I had the great honor to give the opening keynote, I thought I’d use this blog as an opportunity to share my remarks. Let’s dive in.  Contextualizing Human Progress It's hard to remember how extraordinary the world is today when we're bombarded 24/7 by news about problems and disasters. History provides valuable context, however. Some 700 years ago, the Plague killed 200 million people in a single year -- 40 percent of England. About 500 years ago, famine claimed 3 million lives in France.  100 years ago (in 1918) World War I claimed 16 million lives, while the flu pandemic caused 50 million deaths. All in a single year. If these were our current headlines, we would be in shock. We forget how much the world has progressed in the past century alone.  The per-capita income for every nation on the planet has tripled. The human lifespan has doubled. The cost of food has dropped thirty-fold. The cost of transportation hundreds of fold. The cost of communications millions of fold. The human lifespan is another way to contextualize progress:  During the days of the caveman 100,000 years ago, the average lifespan was in the late 20's. By age 13, humans went into puberty and began having children; by 26, those parents became grandparents. And since food was scarce in those days, the best thing you could do was “give your bits back to the environment,” so to speak, and not consume food and other resources that would otherwise have gone to your grandchildren. In the Middle Ages, the average human lifespan grew to 35. A century ago, it was the mid-40’s. Today, it's around 80. One of my missions -- which I share with many of you -- is to discover how we can add 20, 30 or more healthy years to our lives. How do we make 100 years old the new 60, and then intercept exponentially growing technologies to extend the healthy human lifespan beyond that? Exponential Technologies Driving Longevity We take the technology and the empowerment we have today for granted. I teach my Abundance community that whatever becomes digitized enters a period of slow, deceptive growth. Next, it becomes disruptive, and then it dematerializes, demonetizes, and democratizes products and services. Consider storage, which is critical for the genomics world today.  In 1981, 1 gigabyte of storage cost half a million dollars. Today, it's 25 million times cheaper at 2 cents per gigabyte. How about computation? In 1971, Intel put out its first computer chip, the Intel 4004. It had 2,300 transistors on at $1 each. Intel no longer actually tells you how many transistors are on their chips, but the recent Core i7 had 14.4 billion transistors at less than a millionth of a penny each. This represents a 330 billion-fold increase in price performance in 45 years. If you have a smartphone, you have more computational power in your hand than all the governments on the planet had just 30 years ago.  But that doesn't compare to what's coming next in quantum computing. This year, we expect to see ‘quantum supremacy’ -- that moment in time where a quantum computer can solve a problem that no classical computer can do.  Google recently unveiled Bristlecone. This new quantum computer chip has 72 qubits. By the time it gets to 300 qubits, it can perform more calculations than there are atoms in the known universe.  We’re about to see an extraordinary revolution in drug discovery. Pharmaceutical companies today are spending decades and billions of dollars to discover molecules that affect us. But soon, quantum computers will allow us to model molecular interactions at a level like never before.  Imagine an individual working on a quantum computer on the cloud who is able to look at the interaction of a particular molecule with all 20,000 coded proteins in the human genome. Drug discovery will go off the charts. This isn’t happening 30 years from now, but in the next decade. What about communications? We take it for granted, but in 2017, we had 3.8 billion people connected on Earth. In the next five years, we'll see the deployment of the 5G global network that Qualcomm has been developing. We're about to see Facebook and Google with balloons and drones and satellites. OneWeb will deploy 900 satellites leveraging a $1.2 billion Softbank investment, and then layer on top of that 4,425 satellites being launched by SpaceX, and we're about to connect every single human on the planet with a gigabit connection speed. A gigabit connection for everyone, effectively for free. That connection represents a lifeline for health sciences. It’s an ability to upload data or enable AI support. And it doesn't slow down. With the Internet of Things and a proliferation of sensors, by 2020 we'll have 50 billion connected devices with a trillion sensors in the world. By 2030, we’ll see 500 billion connected devices with 100 trillion sensors.  In terms of health, every single person will have the ability for real-time monitoring. Every single element of their lives -- their glucose, their blood pressure, the microRNAs, their vitamin D levels -- can be uploaded to an AI that can convey their exact health status. We'll all have a version of JARVIS from “Iron Man.” These personal AIs can collect our data and enable us to be the CEO of our own health. The acceleration continues with genome sequencing. Back in 2000, the price of sequencing a human genome -- all 3.2 billion letters of your life -- was $100 million and 9 months' time. Today, it’s $1,000 per genome, and within two years, with Illumina's newest machines, it will cost about $100 and be completed in 1 hour.  We're talking about trillionfold increases in price-performance capability, which is in turn driving a revolution in cellular medicine, stem cells, natural killer cells, CAR T-cells. It’s extraordinary. I believe nothing is truly scarce. Nothing. We have the ability, with access to these technologies, to say, “This is the problem I want to solve."  We often talk about our desires and our abilities. I posit that we're living in a time a day and age that within our lifetimes, we will truly have the ability to meet the needs of every man, woman and child on this planet.  You may have heard me say, “The world's biggest problems are the world's biggest business opportunities,” and, “If you want to become a billionaire, help a billion people.” What is the challenge you desire to solve? What is the impact you want to create? I believe that each of us should be taking on what I call the Impact Pledge... to stand up and say, “During my lifetime, this is the problem that I want to solve. This is what I stand for. It used to be that capital was restrictive. Today, we're living in a world of crowdfunding, angel capital, venture capital, and even startups being funded by sovereign wealth funds. But it doesn’t end there. In 2017, the world saw $3.8 billion in ICOs (initial coin offerings) -- an entirely new mechanism to generate investable capital. And even that is accelerating, in the first four months of 2018 alone, there was $6.2 billion of ICOs. Capital is flowing to great ideas. What is your great idea? Each of us has what I call a Massively Transformative Purpose in our lives that motivates us to pursue the seemingly impossible. What we do with our time matters. What Moonshots we take on to change the world matters. What impact do you want to make on this planet? You have access to everything you need. More knowledge on Google or Baidu, more computational power on the cloud, more capital, more access to AI. With this abundance, what else do you actually need? Ultimately, it is the “dedicated, passionate human mind” that makes all the difference. A mind with the audacity to think thoughts like... I refuse to allow this disease to go on for a day longer. I refuse to not have the ability to feed a billion people, or to save a billion women's lives. We are alive in a time of great capabilities. The choice is yours.  Let’s create a world of healthcare abundance. Let’s make disease a thing of the past. Let’s make 100 years old the new 60, and then once we get there, we can debate how we get to 150 or even 200. I "book-End" my thoughts with this:

  Onward to the new week with all its' possibilities!!

"Out & About" w/Brief Thoughts....

Dariush The Great Prayer For Iran:  I ask you Almighty God to protect Iran from
Enemies, Drought/Hunger, lies & Deceit (A Prayer For the World) 

It has been quite a week on a multitude of fronts.     One critical thing I was so proud of was when I released an update from Radio Free Europe on two enterprising Iranians developing an updated version of Telegram--Telegram is the messaging app that is used by 40 Million Iranians which was ordered blocked by Iran's Judiciary--I can't wait to download it!!!    I was also proud of the five women who in Iran dressed up as Men to get in to watch the key Match for the National Football (Soccer) championship as captured by Tavanna last week as all who were at the Stadium cried out, "Reza Shah, Rohat Shaad..." which means Reza Shah, Rest in Peace: 

For those who may not know who he is, Reza Shah is known as the founder of Modern Iran with all that he did.    As I was working away, though, I thought about the choice and the legacy of purpose.   What I hope to be supportive of in the work of the Daily Outsider (as it evolves), the Community Projects & Initiatives to live up to the admonitions at hand: 

The three controlling desires of every normal man seem to be:
First, to live. Not merely to exist.
Second, to be a man among men.
Third, to do that which will endure.
- James Hulme Canfield

Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, 

and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The way you get meaning into your life

is to devote yourself to loving others.

Devote yourself to your community around you,

and devote yourself to creating something

that gives you purpose and meaning.

- Mitch Albom