A dream is a picture in your mind. It may be a real dream like when you go to sleep and wake up, yet then again it can be a dream that was written down when you were fully awake, or it could be something you wrote on a napkin one day that really inspired you. You may believe money is gravitating towards you, yet more importantly have a dream that relates to a way you will make this money and what great impact your product or service will have on the lives of people who buy or use it. Great dreamers have plans in their life and goals, and can visualize money sitting on their door step or being deposited into their bank account because they've done something great for others, for the world, or to change the world. Great dreamers and visionaries also see that their dream goes beyond just the money, yet it's the inspiration, or the passion to make or do something great that will change the world.
Establish a Vision - A vision is basically like a goal, something you look forward to seeing, a mindset, something you have your eyes on.
Have a passion. For whatever you do, be passionate about it. If you love sandwiches, start a restaurant and branch it out! Stay dedicated, start with a few shops, branch them out, and open more. You too can become a billionaire like Fred Deluca the founder of Subway. It's also good to note how important networking is, as if Fred never met his friend to help him start the first sandwich shop known as Pete's Sandwich Shop, then he would have not been able to start the first one. Talk to a few billionaires if you can find them, and they might be able to lift you off the ground to pursue your passion.
You've got to have money to make money. If it's not money, you've got to have something great, a product, an amazing idea, or simply a belief in something great in order to make something great come to life.
Well known billionaires such as Warren Buffett and Carl Icahn all took the money they made and invested it. They learned how to invest, and invested in products or services where they had passions, interests, and understandings.
So, the first lesson to becoming a billionaire is that you can make lots of money if you learn how to manage your investing portfolio like a pro.
Now...
This is of course easier said than done... Many billionaires aren't even prepared to explain their strategy, or if their strategy is proven, yet one thing to know is that they have a strategy. They double down when times are tough, they take the risks, and they invest in their interests and stick up for the companies they believe in.
For instance, Warren Buffett is a dyed-in-the-wool value investor. This strategy has allowed himt o achieve annual returns on his investment of more than 20% for 40 plus years. He invested in companies that he believed had competitive advantages such as GEICO, and as of 2008 he held a stake in Goldman Sachs. Most investors who are successful because they figured out a strategy, and stick to their practice in any economy, whether the economy is good or bad.
If you have a big dream, something that can change the world, or something you think can help a lot of people out, a way to do something better, don't give up on it! Becoming a billionaire is not only about making money, it's about making a difference!
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Remarks of Bill Gates
Remarks of Bill Gates
Harvard Commencement, June 7, 2007
President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:
I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.”
I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.
I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me “Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed.
But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.
Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn’t even signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn’t worry about getting up in the morning. That’s how I came to be the leader of the anti-social group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.
Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.
One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world’s first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.
I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: “We’re not quite ready, come see us in a month,” which was a good thing, because we hadn’t written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.
What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege – and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on.
But taking a serious look back … I do have one big regret.
I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.
I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.
But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.
I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.
It took me decades to find out.
You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world’s inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you’ve had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them.
Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause – and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it?
For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have.
During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year – none of them in the United States.
We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren’t being delivered.
If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: “This can’t be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.”
So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: “How could the world let these children die?”
The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.
But you and I have both.
We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.
If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.
I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say: “Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will be with us till the end – because people just … don’t … care.” I completely disagree.
I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.
All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted.
The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.
To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.
Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.
But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: “Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them were on this plane. We’re determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent.”
The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable deaths.
We don’t read much about these deaths. The media covers what’s new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it’s easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It’s hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help. And so we look away.
If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.
Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks “How can I help?,” then we can get action – and we can make sure that none of the caring in the world is wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to matter.
Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it’s something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.
The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. The ideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand – and the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior.
Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pattern. The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to surrender to complexity and quit.
The final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts.
You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to be able to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This is essential not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from business and government.
But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work – so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.
I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person’s life – then multiply that by millions. … Yet this was the most boring panel I’ve ever been on – ever. So boring even I couldn’t bear it.
What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting people excited about software – but why can’t we generate even more excitement for saving lives?
You can’t get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the impact. And how you do that – is a complex question.
Still, I’m optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are new – they can help us make the most of our caring – and that’s why the future can be different from the past.
The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the computer, the Internet – give us a chance we’ve never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.
Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: “I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.”
Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant.
The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating.
The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree.
At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don’t. That means many creative minds are left out of this discussion -- smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don’t have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world.
We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.
Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great collections of intellectual talent in the world.
What for?
There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name?
Let me make a request of the deans and the professors – the intellectual leaders here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves:
Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?
Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school … the children who die from diseases we can cure?
Should the world’s most privileged people learn about the lives of the world’s least privileged?
These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies.
My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here – never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”
When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.
In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.
Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.
You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort. You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.
Knowing what you know, how could you not?
And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.
Good luck.
Harvard Commencement, June 7, 2007
President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:
I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.”
I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.
I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me “Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed.
But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.
Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn’t even signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn’t worry about getting up in the morning. That’s how I came to be the leader of the anti-social group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.
Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.
One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world’s first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.
I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: “We’re not quite ready, come see us in a month,” which was a good thing, because we hadn’t written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.
What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege – and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on.
But taking a serious look back … I do have one big regret.
I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.
I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.
But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.
I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.
It took me decades to find out.
You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world’s inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you’ve had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them.
Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause – and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it?
For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have.
During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year – none of them in the United States.
We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren’t being delivered.
If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: “This can’t be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.”
So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: “How could the world let these children die?”
The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.
But you and I have both.
We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.
If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.
I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say: “Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will be with us till the end – because people just … don’t … care.” I completely disagree.
I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.
All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted.
The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.
To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.
Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.
But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: “Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them were on this plane. We’re determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent.”
The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable deaths.
We don’t read much about these deaths. The media covers what’s new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it’s easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It’s hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help. And so we look away.
If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.
Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks “How can I help?,” then we can get action – and we can make sure that none of the caring in the world is wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to matter.
Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it’s something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.
The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. The ideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand – and the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior.
Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pattern. The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to surrender to complexity and quit.
The final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts.
You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to be able to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This is essential not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from business and government.
But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work – so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.
I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person’s life – then multiply that by millions. … Yet this was the most boring panel I’ve ever been on – ever. So boring even I couldn’t bear it.
What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting people excited about software – but why can’t we generate even more excitement for saving lives?
You can’t get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the impact. And how you do that – is a complex question.
Still, I’m optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are new – they can help us make the most of our caring – and that’s why the future can be different from the past.
The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the computer, the Internet – give us a chance we’ve never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.
Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: “I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.”
Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant.
The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating.
The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree.
At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don’t. That means many creative minds are left out of this discussion -- smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don’t have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world.
We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.
Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great collections of intellectual talent in the world.
What for?
There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name?
Let me make a request of the deans and the professors – the intellectual leaders here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves:
Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?
Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school … the children who die from diseases we can cure?
Should the world’s most privileged people learn about the lives of the world’s least privileged?
These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies.
My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here – never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”
When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.
In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.
Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.
You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort. You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.
Knowing what you know, how could you not?
And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.
Good luck.
Monday, October 19, 2009
2012 Cont.
The ancient peoples of Mesoamerica were of a vast interconnected empire, filled with rich art, education and destruction. The Maya were one of these tribes. Other than archaeological intrigue why are these people so studied? Their written language was based on pictographs, much like the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Mayan culture was like most other native cultures.
The Maya had an understanding of mathematics and understood the value of zero long before its discovery in the Eastern parts of the world. Their understanding of numbers and astronomy gave us the Mayan calendars of the Long and Short Counts. So why does this calendar attract so much attention now? The Mayan calendar ends on the Gregorian calendar date of December 21, 2012, which most people believe is the total end of civilization, as we know it, while others believe it is simply a change of enlightenment in this current time. Many theories have sprung up about this end date, ranging from the laughable, to the religious, to the scientific. "
So what is supposed to happen on this magical date of December 21, 2012?
One theory suggests that a Magnetic Field shift will occur around this time, that the calendar was based on pole shifts, which have occurred repetitively throughout the Earths history. The Maya, understanding the time periods between these shifts created their Long count calendar around them and come up with the final date for the next pole shift. But how would they know what to look for to expect another shift? How much time was supposed to pass between these shifts and how did they know it? Was there record passed down to them from long ago recounting a time when there was a prior pole shift so that mathematics could be used to predict the next one to come? Or did the ancients study a form of dendrochronology the study of climate changes by looking at tree rings.
Others suggest a much more mythical or religious approach. December 21, 2012 is also the Winter Solstice, and provides us with a view that will not be seen again in any of our lifetimes. The Sun will conjunct the intersection of the Milky Way in the ecliptic, giving us view of the Sacred Tree as called by the Maya, giving us view of the Tree of Life. Both of these scenarios are quite possible, one scientific explanation, and one religious. What we still do not know, and probably will not know is what will happen after this end date until it actually occurs. A new dawn of enlightenment would be a step towards progression, in that mankind would become more aware of their surroundings and the impact that they have on the Earth as well as a higher intelligence and consciousness and a better mindset for helping their fellow man. Perhaps this is the end, when Mother Nature finally decides to shrug off the oppressiveness that has been created by the children and start anew. We may just end up living through another doomsday prophecy, going to work or school as usual, looking back on the prophecies and laughing them off.
Mayan Prophecy - 2012: The End?
The Maya had an understanding of mathematics and understood the value of zero long before its discovery in the Eastern parts of the world. Their understanding of numbers and astronomy gave us the Mayan calendars of the Long and Short Counts. So why does this calendar attract so much attention now? The Mayan calendar ends on the Gregorian calendar date of December 21, 2012, which most people believe is the total end of civilization, as we know it, while others believe it is simply a change of enlightenment in this current time. Many theories have sprung up about this end date, ranging from the laughable, to the religious, to the scientific. "
So what is supposed to happen on this magical date of December 21, 2012?
One theory suggests that a Magnetic Field shift will occur around this time, that the calendar was based on pole shifts, which have occurred repetitively throughout the Earths history. The Maya, understanding the time periods between these shifts created their Long count calendar around them and come up with the final date for the next pole shift. But how would they know what to look for to expect another shift? How much time was supposed to pass between these shifts and how did they know it? Was there record passed down to them from long ago recounting a time when there was a prior pole shift so that mathematics could be used to predict the next one to come? Or did the ancients study a form of dendrochronology the study of climate changes by looking at tree rings.
Others suggest a much more mythical or religious approach. December 21, 2012 is also the Winter Solstice, and provides us with a view that will not be seen again in any of our lifetimes. The Sun will conjunct the intersection of the Milky Way in the ecliptic, giving us view of the Sacred Tree as called by the Maya, giving us view of the Tree of Life. Both of these scenarios are quite possible, one scientific explanation, and one religious. What we still do not know, and probably will not know is what will happen after this end date until it actually occurs. A new dawn of enlightenment would be a step towards progression, in that mankind would become more aware of their surroundings and the impact that they have on the Earth as well as a higher intelligence and consciousness and a better mindset for helping their fellow man. Perhaps this is the end, when Mother Nature finally decides to shrug off the oppressiveness that has been created by the children and start anew. We may just end up living through another doomsday prophecy, going to work or school as usual, looking back on the prophecies and laughing them off.
Mayan Prophecy - 2012: The End?
Improve Your Google Adsense Income
Recently, I had read lots of articles those related on how actually to improve of your google adsense income, which posted by a huge amount of blogger from every corner of the world.
Yes, once your websites attract more visitors, your ad impressions would definitely increases. When the ads attract more click through as the number of good quality advertiser increases. Therefore, your google adsense income increases.
But how to get more and more visitor come to your websites to make traffic and crowded? Choose a topic that you like it will make the work less boring and in turn give you better results. Of cause it is important to create a good quality content which will not only attract readers but good quality advertisers in the long run.
So even if you are forced to do the same task over and over it will be less painful as you are working for something that you love and if you follow these quick tips you'll be well on your way to improve your google adsense income. Try it please!
Yes, once your websites attract more visitors, your ad impressions would definitely increases. When the ads attract more click through as the number of good quality advertiser increases. Therefore, your google adsense income increases.
But how to get more and more visitor come to your websites to make traffic and crowded? Choose a topic that you like it will make the work less boring and in turn give you better results. Of cause it is important to create a good quality content which will not only attract readers but good quality advertisers in the long run.
So even if you are forced to do the same task over and over it will be less painful as you are working for something that you love and if you follow these quick tips you'll be well on your way to improve your google adsense income. Try it please!
Saturday, October 17, 2009
What Is All About 2012
2012 - the year when the world begins its age of transition.
According to http://www.adishakti.org, it stated that the Mayan will end of its age on 26th Dec 2012. Basically, the Mayan's calender is the most accurate on the planet. We never hesitating on it since the Mayan 5th world was finished in 1987. Therefore, estimated that the 6th world will start in 2012 and we are currently in between world.
Few things needed to be known:
1. Humanity and Planet Earth are currently going through a huge change or shift in consciousness and reality perception.
2. The Mayan civilization of Central America was and is the most advanced in relation to time-science knowledge. Their main calendar is the most accurate on the planet. It has never erred. They actually have 22 calendars in total, covering the many timing cycles in the Universe and Solar System. Some of these calendars are yet to be revealed.
3. The Mayan fifth world finished in 1987. The sixth world starts in 2012. So we are currently "between worlds". This time is called the "Apocalypse" or revealing. This means the real truth will be revealed. It is also the time for us to work through "our stuff" individually and collectively.
4. The Mayan sixth world is actually blank. This means it is up to us, as co-creators, to start creating the new world and civilization we want now.
5. The Mayans also say that by 2012
we will have gone beyond technology as we know it.
we will have gone beyond time and money.
we will have entered the fifth dimension after passing through the fourth dimension
Planet Earth and the Solar System will come into galactic synchronization with the rest of the Universe.
Our DNA will be "upgraded" (or reprogrammed) from the centre of our galaxy. (Hunab Ku)
Everybody on this planet is mutating. Some are more conscious of it than others. But everyone is doing it.
6. In 2012 the plane of our Solar System will line up exactly with the plane of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. This cycle has taken 26,000 years to complete. Virgil Armstrong also says that two other galaxies will line up with ours at the same time. A cosmic event!
7. Time is speeding up (or collapsing). For thousands of years the Schumann Resonance or pulse (heartbeat) of Earth has been 7.83 cycles per second, The military have used this as a very reliable reference. However, since 1980 this resonance has been slowly rising. It is now over 12 cycles per second! This means there is the equivalent of less than 16 hours per day instead of the old 24 hours.
8. During the Apocalypse or the time "between worlds" many people will be going through many personal changes. The changes will be many and varied. It is all part of what we came here to learn or experience. Examples of change could be- relationships coming to an end, change of residence or location, change of job or work, shift in attitude or thinking etc."
What is so special about the Mayan Calendar?
http://enlightenment.en.funpic.de/index.php
Pacal Votan's prophetic call is alerting present-day humanity that our biological process is transforming, approaching the culmination of a 26,000 year evolutionary program. Bringing the return of universal telepathy, heightened sense capacity, and self-reflective consciousness, this is a return to the sacred domain of our inner technology.
This grand cycle of evolution will culminate winter solstice, December 21, 2012 AD.
This time we are now in has been called the doomsday or the judgement day. It is foretold that the completion of the Precession brings regeneration of Earth, offering awakening to all open, willing hearts. Many peoples spoke of these last days of the Great Cycle, including the: Maya, Hopi, Egyptians, Kabbalists, Essenes, Qero elders of Peru, Navajo, Cherokee, Apache, Iroquois confederacy, Dogon Tribe, and Aborigines.
Thank to adishakti.org for sharing!
According to http://www.adishakti.org, it stated that the Mayan will end of its age on 26th Dec 2012. Basically, the Mayan's calender is the most accurate on the planet. We never hesitating on it since the Mayan 5th world was finished in 1987. Therefore, estimated that the 6th world will start in 2012 and we are currently in between world.
Few things needed to be known:
1. Humanity and Planet Earth are currently going through a huge change or shift in consciousness and reality perception.
2. The Mayan civilization of Central America was and is the most advanced in relation to time-science knowledge. Their main calendar is the most accurate on the planet. It has never erred. They actually have 22 calendars in total, covering the many timing cycles in the Universe and Solar System. Some of these calendars are yet to be revealed.
3. The Mayan fifth world finished in 1987. The sixth world starts in 2012. So we are currently "between worlds". This time is called the "Apocalypse" or revealing. This means the real truth will be revealed. It is also the time for us to work through "our stuff" individually and collectively.
4. The Mayan sixth world is actually blank. This means it is up to us, as co-creators, to start creating the new world and civilization we want now.
5. The Mayans also say that by 2012
we will have gone beyond technology as we know it.
we will have gone beyond time and money.
we will have entered the fifth dimension after passing through the fourth dimension
Planet Earth and the Solar System will come into galactic synchronization with the rest of the Universe.
Our DNA will be "upgraded" (or reprogrammed) from the centre of our galaxy. (Hunab Ku)
Everybody on this planet is mutating. Some are more conscious of it than others. But everyone is doing it.
6. In 2012 the plane of our Solar System will line up exactly with the plane of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. This cycle has taken 26,000 years to complete. Virgil Armstrong also says that two other galaxies will line up with ours at the same time. A cosmic event!
7. Time is speeding up (or collapsing). For thousands of years the Schumann Resonance or pulse (heartbeat) of Earth has been 7.83 cycles per second, The military have used this as a very reliable reference. However, since 1980 this resonance has been slowly rising. It is now over 12 cycles per second! This means there is the equivalent of less than 16 hours per day instead of the old 24 hours.
8. During the Apocalypse or the time "between worlds" many people will be going through many personal changes. The changes will be many and varied. It is all part of what we came here to learn or experience. Examples of change could be- relationships coming to an end, change of residence or location, change of job or work, shift in attitude or thinking etc."
What is so special about the Mayan Calendar?
http://enlightenment.en.funpic.de/index.php
Pacal Votan's prophetic call is alerting present-day humanity that our biological process is transforming, approaching the culmination of a 26,000 year evolutionary program. Bringing the return of universal telepathy, heightened sense capacity, and self-reflective consciousness, this is a return to the sacred domain of our inner technology.
This grand cycle of evolution will culminate winter solstice, December 21, 2012 AD.
This time we are now in has been called the doomsday or the judgement day. It is foretold that the completion of the Precession brings regeneration of Earth, offering awakening to all open, willing hearts. Many peoples spoke of these last days of the Great Cycle, including the: Maya, Hopi, Egyptians, Kabbalists, Essenes, Qero elders of Peru, Navajo, Cherokee, Apache, Iroquois confederacy, Dogon Tribe, and Aborigines.
Thank to adishakti.org for sharing!
Easy Google Profit
Most of the information needed to make an easy Google profit can be found online for free you just have to take the time to look for it. The people who sell the get Google fast cash courses rely on the fact that most people are too lazy to learn for themselves how to setup all the elements of a successful internet business.
The first place to start in your quest for an easy Google profit is by building a website or blog. This first site will allow you to experiment with various aspects of internet marketing and web building. The best part about this business is that you do not need to be an expert programmer or coder. Even the most basic sites have the potential to make thousands of dollars. In addition with everything that you learn you will improve your skills as a marketer and get closer to making money online.
Once you are comfortable with the basic elements of a website or blog, in this case a blog is easier since everything is ready to go all you need to do is upload it to your chosen domain and webhost. Now once that is done your next step is to generate traffic to your site or blog. The way this is done is by focusing the content of your site on popular keywords and then ranking highly for them in the search engines. By mastering this, your site will continue to generate many users which can then be turned into a solid income.
So your first step is to perform keyword research which will let you know which topics to write about based on their popularity. This is a tricky step as you don't want to choose to broad of a term which contains competition from corporate sites but there are tons of lesser populated niches which have enough popularity to earn you an easy Google profit. The other important thing to keep in mind and a factor that will make your life a lot easier is to pick a topic that you are passionate about.
A lot of the work required to make an internet business successful and to get you Google fast cash is very tedious and repetitive. This is why if you choose a topic that you like it will make the work less boring and in turn give you better results. So even if you are forced to do the same task over and over it will be less painful as you are working for something that you love and if you follow these quick tips you'll be well on your way to generating an easy Google profit.
The first place to start in your quest for an easy Google profit is by building a website or blog. This first site will allow you to experiment with various aspects of internet marketing and web building. The best part about this business is that you do not need to be an expert programmer or coder. Even the most basic sites have the potential to make thousands of dollars. In addition with everything that you learn you will improve your skills as a marketer and get closer to making money online.
Once you are comfortable with the basic elements of a website or blog, in this case a blog is easier since everything is ready to go all you need to do is upload it to your chosen domain and webhost. Now once that is done your next step is to generate traffic to your site or blog. The way this is done is by focusing the content of your site on popular keywords and then ranking highly for them in the search engines. By mastering this, your site will continue to generate many users which can then be turned into a solid income.
So your first step is to perform keyword research which will let you know which topics to write about based on their popularity. This is a tricky step as you don't want to choose to broad of a term which contains competition from corporate sites but there are tons of lesser populated niches which have enough popularity to earn you an easy Google profit. The other important thing to keep in mind and a factor that will make your life a lot easier is to pick a topic that you are passionate about.
A lot of the work required to make an internet business successful and to get you Google fast cash is very tedious and repetitive. This is why if you choose a topic that you like it will make the work less boring and in turn give you better results. So even if you are forced to do the same task over and over it will be less painful as you are working for something that you love and if you follow these quick tips you'll be well on your way to generating an easy Google profit.
Monday, July 13, 2009
搞创意
今早读了篇理财副刊，蛮有意思。内容如下：-
美国权威財经杂志《福布斯》公佈的“全球亿万富豪榜”中，身价在10亿美元以上的497名超级富豪中，竟有237名是白手起家！美国作家福利森指出，要成为亿万富豪，有5大秘诀。
1.搞创意
富豪不一定是某个伟大创意的发现者或发明者，但却是能把伟大创意发扬光大的人。
例如今年的全球首富比尔盖茨，虽然是靠电脑操作系统DOS发跡，但他並不是此系统的发明者，真正的“DOS之父”很早就在一场酒吧殴斗中丧生，享年只有54岁。
1973年，美国利物浦市一个叫科莱特的青年，考入了美国哈佛大学，常和他坐在一起听课的是一位18岁的美国小伙子。
大学二年级那年，这位小伙子和科莱特商议，一起退学，去开发32Bit財务软件，因为新编教科书中，已解决了进位製路径转换的问题。
当时，科莱特感到非常惊讶。因为他来这里求学的，不是来玩的。再说对Bit系统，默尔斯博士才教了点皮毛，要开发32Bit財务软件，不学完大学的全部课程是不可能的。他委婉地拒绝了那位小伙子的邀请。
10年后，科莱特成为哈佛大学计算机系Bit方面的博士研究生；那为退学的小伙子也是在这一 年，进入美国《福布斯》杂志亿万富豪排行榜。1992年，科莱特继续攻读，拿到博士学位；那位美国小伙子的个人资產，在这一年则仅次于华尔街大亨巴菲特， 达到65亿美元，成为美国第二富豪。
1995年，科莱特认为自己已具备了足够的学识，可以研究和开发32Bit財务软件了；而那位 小伙子则已绕过Bit系统，开发出Eip財务软件。它比Bit快1500倍，並且在两周內佔领了全球市场，这一年他成了世界首富，一个代表著成功和財富的 名字――比尔盖茨也隨之传遍全球的每一个角落。
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