Child prodigies never cease to amaze me. In all probability there’ve always been prodigies in various fields. However, today they easily get much more exposure and quickly become world famous because of the internet. I love seeing and hearing young people with a great musical genius. It’s inspiring! It gives us a glimpse into the vastness of human potential.

I just wanted to share a few video clips with you, showing three very young people who are so good at what they do it completely blows my mind. Most musicians could work hard for 40 years to improve their skills and still not become as good as these kids – who aren’t even teenagers yet!

Watch. Listen. Be inspired!

Popularity: 100% [?]

The greatest tool mankind has for commencement is knowledge and wisdom. What I’m about to describe is probably utopia, but should still be a goal we actively try to accomplish.

Currently, mankind is continuously “reinventing the wheel”. Because a huge part of the results from the research and invention being done in the world are considered to be commercial business secrets, the same things are being discovered several times by different people around the world. Other discoveries are kept secret by the various governments because they are of great value to the military or various clandestine agencies.

All this is necessary from a business perspective, or a security perspective. However, it greatly slows down the accumulation of human knowledge, and thus also the commencement of mankind.

We could expand our combined knowledge base virtually exponentially if we didn’t have to worry about revealing our discoveries and research papers to the public.

Imagine a free (as in beer), well organized, easily searchable central database storing everything mankind currently knows about everything - stored in such a way that it’s easy to follow every piece of information from conception to current version. A perfectly organized Wiki, so to speak… If there are things scientists disagree upon, then there would be different pages describing each view, and you could easily trace each piece of information backwards and see every other piece of information it builds on. You could see where each view on a subject parts from the path taken to reach the other views. Everything would be well documented (explained in extreme detail) with all available proof or evidence (or references to such).

This is, of course, only a vague description of how such a database should work – but you get the picture (I hope). With everyone having access to such a database people would be free to build on the research and discoveries of others, without worrying about patent issues or copyright infringement.

This could never become a reality, of course, in a world where any research is focused on making a weapon intended to be used on Earth – or in a world ruled by capitalism.

Regarding the weapons thing: I wish people would just grow up and work things out peacefully (which is theoretically possible in EVERY situation). Regarding the capitalism thing: I believe the best solution we currently have is a mix of capitalism and socialism. Pure capitalism would end in disaster and so would pure socialism. So we can’t, at least currently, rule out capitalism. That in turn means that we can’t currently make this system where all knowledge is in the public domain a reality. We can still try to work towards it though. The more knowledge in the public domain the better.

Google is currently, to the best of my knowledge, the company doing the most about achieving a similar goal. Their ultimate goal is to make all information (with a broad definition of information) freely searchable. Achieving that goal is probably the closest we can come to the utopia I just described - since this world is mostly ruled by various degrees of capitalism.

Feel free to debate!

Popularity: 32% [?]

It’s strange how music can make you feel really great. It is, after all, just air being pushed around in a certain way. One of the most significant parts of music that makes you feel great is - the groove. Some people have it and some don’t. When music really grooves it inexplicably touches your soul.

I’ve had my share of bad days. I’ve had periods of depression. Music has always helped me get through it. Music can manipulate your emotions to such a degree that it can cure depression. I love all kinds of music, but for me, the best music is that which really grooves. Music can be OK, or even in some cases quite good, without it truly grooving – BUT, when music truly grooves it becomes great music.

A musician can play his/her instrument in perfect time and still not groove completely. Move one note slightly and suddenly, there it is – the groove.

Musicians who have the natural ability to just instantly groove when they start playing their instrument(s) have (in my opinion) an obligation to use that gift – for it is a divine gift. They have the ability to improve people’s quality of life.

Keep on groovin’ and help make the world a better place

Popularity: 32% [?]

There’s so much I hate about money. I hate the fact that money is what makes the world go round. Everything is ultimately about money. It makes me sick.

So the fact that I suddenly found myself fascinated by the stock market caught me completely by surprise.

Two or three years ago I suddenly got this urge to buy some stock - to invest in something so that I could eventually build a solid portfolio. If I did things right it would be much more rewarding than putting money in a savings account, and much more exciting. The only problem was: I had absolutely no money to invest. I was behind on every single bill. That was partly because I was trying out lots of different tools and services related to internet marketing, and buying lots of books and courses on internet marketing. I had planned to build a small online marketing empire. Needless to say, I had to choose between the two - I couldn’t do both. I didn’t want to quit the internet marketing game without having made any money so I postponed my investment plans.

That was a huge mistake.

Don’t get me wrong - I learned a LOT about marketing and building a business. I’m very confident that knowledge will serve me very well in the near future. However, I started reading some financial newspapers from time to time, and I started to keep an eye on various companies’ stock prices. Every once in a while I thought: “If I only had 10,000 kroner to invest in that company I’d do it in a heart beat.”. As it turns out, those thoughts would have made me a very wealthy man if I’d acted upon them.

One of the companies I wanted to invest in was a Norwegian company in the salmon industry. It was nearly bankrupt or something and the stock price was shifting from 0.03 to 0.04 kroner each day on the Oslo Stock Exchange. I was convinced that one of the elite finance moguls here in Norway would snap up this company and turn it around quickly. Sure enough, one of those great business men did exactly that, and the stock for that company was last traded for 7.91 kroner yesterday. If I had bought 10,000 kroner worth of stock in that company when I wanted to, those shares would be worth 1,977,500 kroner today.

Rats. Darn. Okay, here it comes… Shit.

Another company I really wanted to buy stock in when they announced they were going public was Google. Needless to say, that investment would have paid off nicely as well. I believe it’s still a very good idea to buy stock in Google today, as that company has only just gotten started… (And that says quite a bit.)

It’s fascinating, and to some degree terrifying, how some people can make a huge fortune by playing the stock market while others fail miserably at it and lose everything they have. I recently saw an interview with George Soros on TV. He made his fortune on the stock market. He started with $5,000 and is currently worth about $8.5 billion! He has long since abandoned the life of a financial speculator and investor and is now using his money to support human rights groups, among other things. Using the stock market he made his fortune grow by roughly 30% per year.

My first real venture into the world of stock investment has resulted in a 41% increase in the value of my portfolio for the first 9 months – so I’m on the right track ) However, it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll be able to do as well with the stocks I purchased during the last month. I’m still very optimistic though, and as strange as it is – it seems I know what I’m doing. How that came to be, I don’t know.

Now my main problem is this: I REALLY want to buy a MacBook Pro – and that would require me to sell all my stock. I really doubt it’s possible for me to double the value of my portfolio within the next couple of months, so I’ll either have to find the money somewhere else, or go ahead and sell all my stock, or postpone the purchase. I must admit I don’t like any of those alternatives.

Maybe I could start a brand new pyramid scheme! Seems to be all the rage these days. Then again, maybe not.

For the record: I still hate the fact that the world is ruled by money. However, until that changes it would be wise to make the most of what we’ve got. So I’ll try, while having some fun in the process (hopefully).

Popularity: 33% [?]

I’m a huge fan of great movies, but recently I’ve found myself almost completely ignoring all those DVD movies I have in my book shelf. Yet, I’ve been spending more time in front of the screen than before. I also rarely buy new movies these days - only the new and really amazingly great movies get me to fork over some of that hard earned cash.

The reason for this is that there’s so much good TV out there these days. The American networks are poring more and more money into producing quality TV-shows. Some TV-shows have such huge budgets that the production quality and the quality of the actors rival that which you find in great Hollywood blockbusters. This also means that more money is invested in writing good scripts too. TV is getting better and better because of this.

This has had an affect on the other side of the coin as well. The bad shows with poor production quality, mediocre actors and poor scripts are getting even worse. Probably because there’s less money left for them. That’s great - maybe we’ll see the end of all these recent TV-shows made possible only because advances in technology have lowered the cost of producing pictures/effects of decent quality (but not, of course, enabled better script-writing).

A good TV-series is like a very, very long book that keeps you turning page after page until you absolutely must do something else, or wait for the sequel. You get to know the characters much better in a TV-series than in a movie, and there’s room for a much more complex plot and longer story time-line. Of course, one shouldn’t stop reading books - as they are much better for stimulating your own imagination.

Here’s a list of my favorite TV-shows (that I either watch regularly, or have watched regularly, or plan to start watching soon):

• Stargate SG-1
• Stargate Atlantis
• Smallville
• Criminal Minds
• Alias
• Firefly (cancelled too soon)
• Battlestar Galactica
• 24
• Lost Season 1 (they lost me halfway through season two)
• 30 Rock
• Heroes
• Saturday Night Live
• The Simpsons
• Prison Break
• Point Pleasant (prematurely canceled)
• Revelations
• Friends
• Seinfeld
• Myth Busters

I may have left out a few, as there are quite a few shows on that list… Feel free to recommend other TV-shows.

Now where’s that…? Ah, there. PLAY!

Popularity: 32% [?]