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What If Health Replaced Wealth As a Measure of Success?
by Sudhakar Ram
“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.” ~ M K Gandhi
Money has been the world’s primary measure of success over the last 200 years. Nations want bigger GDPs. Corporations want higher market capitalization. And we individuals all want fatter bank accounts. The assumption is that if we have the money, everything else can be acquired. Money can buy us better health, more leisure time – and even increased happiness.
Gyoza Party Forever
by Sasa Sunakku
If ever I asked “Where shall we go for dinner?” when we lived in Tokyo, F was sure to answer “Gyoza Party.” Actually, he often suggested it even when I hadn’t asked. Like, daily. In fact though, Gyoza Party (yes, I did intend for that to be capitalised) is less a place, than a state of mind. Gyoza Party is a happy place, a place where an endless parade of gyoza magically appear within chopstick range, dip themselves delicately in the shouyu, vinegar and chilli oil and insinuate themselves gently between your lips, only to explode in an orgy of garlicky porkiness.
What’s Da News to Do With It?
by Marge Simon
In high school, like Stephen King and others, I started out on the school paper. I loved working on it. I thrived on deadlines, the crazy fun coming up with headers, getting to do my own features, guest editing the April Fool’s edition, all that. And I really got a high from writing my own quirky columns. I won an award for my editorial about astronaut Scott Carpenter, who was from our home town (Boulder, Colorado.) Seeing a newspaper I helped produce, tossed into the school hallways and trod upon was a stiletto heel through my vanity. With ink in my blood, I dreamed I’d be the next Ben Franklin, Sam Clemmons, or Erma Bombeck.
Valentine’s Day Ideas for 2010
It’s not easy to come up with romantic ideas for Valentine’s Day every year. Sometimes a good idea just costs too much. Or sometimes the only idea you come up with is just too ordinary, and though it took you a long time think of and will cost money, you know that she will think you took the easy route. And you know that if she thinks that, then she will think you don’t care that much about her.
Romance in the Air
Romance is in the air.
It’s always in the air around Valentine’s Day. For many of us, we walk with a lighter step as we think back over the years we have spent with our wife or husband and how far we have come and all the wonderful experiences we have had. We think forward to the night with a little bit of excitement. We have already planned something special. We hope the delivery man comes on time and that the best cook is on duty at the new hip restaurant down the street, where we have reservations for 7PM sharp. Then our minds flash forward to what her face is going to look like when she sees our gift and we can’t help but smile a little more.
Write to Excite, Delight and Entice
by Suzi Elton
When you do your business writing, consider incorporating the principle of Excite, Delight and Entice. What this means is that you emotionalize your writing in such way that your readers cannot only picture themselves living a more satisfactory life, but can feel the excitement and satisfaction they would have. This produces a strong pull to explore working with you. In effect, they say to themselves, “If s/he knows enough about what I want to write like this – like they know me and my problems – I REALLY want to talk to them about what they do.”
The Rise of the Virtual World
If you look back over the course of history, what started as a trickle of inventions has turned into a waterfall. Imagine it: first came fire, then five thousand years later the wheel, then a thousand years later the plow, then five hundred years later the printing press, then a hundred years later the telescope. Now, every day brings new inventions and advancements in previous inventions.
The internet is one of the more recent developments when you look at the timeline and it has been fascinating to watch it morph from a data transfer technology into a realm of unspeakable possibilities.
OG’s Speculative Fiction, Issue 22
Great news! OG’s Speculative Fiction, Issue 22 has been released! In Dawn Lloyd’s “Mr. Pinenut” a man gets a second chance at love, but does he take it? Benjamin Crowell’s “Fork” will rearrange your thinking on alternate realities. Also included is poetry by Marina Lee Sable. Let us know what you think of the issue! [...]
Reading Evolution: My 2010 Reading List
The most gifted item this past year? The Amazon Kindle.
Years ago, I bought a Palm Tungsten C, which at the time was on the forefront of the technology frontier. It was a fantastic little device that could connect to the internet, manage a calendar, play videos, listen to music, play video games, and had more than 10,000 other little applications that programmers made for it. It could also do one other thing: read ebooks. This was long before the PDA smartphone really got going, when netbooks were just a dream.
The Game of Baseball and Starting a New Year
Some years ago I played baseball in Japan. If you looked at our team, you wouldn’t think much of us. Our team was a collection of older office workers and a couple husbands who had put on a few pounds around the waist over the years and one tall gangly American. We looked like an easy win, but for three years our team was one of the best in the league and always had a chance to advance to the national tournament.
