CDOQ

I listened to Liszt's "Dance of Death" live with Marc Andre Hamelin on piano for the first time yesterday at the Seattle Symphony. It was beautiful! In the Q&A session, I learned something very interesting from Dennis Russell Davies. Discovery of music is very different than discovery of visual arts (paintings). When you see new art in a museum, you may or may not like it. However, you can think about what you saw and go back to the museum a few times, look at it again and make up your mind if you really like the painting or not. On the other hand, when you hear new music for the first time - on radio, TV, or at a concert - if you don't like or don't understand it then chances of you thinking about it are very low. It is because you don't know if and when you will hear the music again. In addition, if you did not like the music you would not purchase it. It is possible that you may hear the music again by chance and start liking it enough to purchase it...

Now that Oprah is on Twitter, millions of others will follow soon. Twitter is an open real time short message service with basic social networking features. Some people also call it micro-blogging. Since it is relatively new, there is no universal way to describe it. For generally accepted definition on Wikipedia, please click here . I think twitter can be bigger than Facebook . Here is why: 1. Accessibility: You can twitter 24/7 since you always have your cell phone with you. To twitter, all you need is a cell phone which can send and receive text messages (sms). 2. 140 character Restriction : Your "tweets" (short messages you post for others to see) have to be limited to 140 characters. This works well with how people communicate these days and, in general, our attention span is declining so people like short messages. 1 Trillion SMS were sent just in the US in 2008. 3. Real time Nature of Tweets : You know what is going on in real time. 4. Transparency : Twee...

Why do people settle for known misery over the unknown?

Today, we live in a world in which most people in the developed countries have access to the high-speed Internet. Some say that we are living in the information age . The Internet gives us the ability to consume information 24 hours a day. And, this is in addition to TV, radio, print, etc. Just like the body grows with consumption of food, the brain grows with consumption of information. However, not all the information consumed by the brain is healthy, just like all the food we eat is not healthy. Let's go back in time, when the only way to get food was physical labor. There were not many obese people at that time. Today, in many cases, genetics play a role in making people obese. However, the developed world has seen a significant rise in obesity since the industrial revolution. The easy accessibility of food with high fat content and reduction in physical labor have contributed to the rise of obesity. Unlike the body which can not consume unlimited food, the brain can consume...

When people like someone they look for similarities with that person. And, when people don't like someone, they look for differences with that person.

When people are insecure and/or do not understand the subject in-depth, they can not describe the subject in discussion in simple language. They use complex language and buzz-words to hide their insecurity and/or lack of understanding.