superk

When this happens to me – the hour or so I'm awake in the middle of the night is not a peaceful relaxing time – the night has this pessimistic quality to it: the assignment I'm working on is impossible, I'll never get it done, I'll lose my job, that pain in my side is likely cancer, etc.. with that on my mind I drift back into a turbulent sleep after a while, but when I wake to daylight all those problems seem trivial and I'm able to get up and cope with the day. If anyone else experiences something similar that's probably why medicating a full night of sleep is so widespread...

Getting fired from Applebees is the best thing that could've happened to her. That's divine intervention if I've ever seen it...

I agree with you - absolutely. The potential for growth and perspective as a human being is innate - some people have more of it than others. Though those people with greater potential - an awareness that our experiences can change us - are exactly the kind of people who leave their comfort zone more - versus the author of the linked story who writes: "But when I thought about what it took to get there, the diapers, the soccer games, the braces, the tantrums, the whole enchilada, I knew that it wasn't for me." That was the kind of person I had in mind.

Sigh. That wasn't at all what I was trying to say. I'm not my father either... but a piece of his generic code is in me. He was the final link of a countless chain of beings, and I am a continuation of that chain, and my daughter will be too. I hope that makes it clearer... unfortunately I'm not enough of a poet to express this sentiment any better.

I'm 35, been together with my wife for about 8 years and we're finally expecting our first kid in about 1 month. We were both always firmly in the "no kids" camp, the cost/benefit ratio just never seemed to add up. So what changed our minds? Partly it was peer pressure: everyone I know by this time has had kids, people who I respect, smarter people than myself. But mostly it was two slow realizations I've had:

1. It is part of the lifecycle, it is part of being an adult. The link at the top is mislabeled, you can't be an "adult" and not have kids. Yes it's grueling and miserable, but discomfort grounds you and gives you perspective. People that never leave their comfort zone never grow... they don't "grow up".

2. I personally believe it is the key to immortality. I'm not talking reincarnation or ancestor worship. Just a mental image I have every being that lived and died since the beginning of time to create me (or you), like threads in a fabric, and then you don't procreate and it's like "snip" and that thread ends.

I don't see email disappearing. It is one of the classes of communication, from least disruptive to most disruptive:

Messaging - email, fb, linkedin, etc

Broadcasting - twitter, fb wall, rss, etc

Instant Messaging - skype, irc, etc

Calling - skype, phone, etc

In Person

That people are doing more messaging through fb, linkedin etc doesn't change that what they are doing is essentially email.

I totally see this as the future of photography. Good pictures are all about timing (luck) - i'm pretty sure you could give a monkey a digital camera with enough storage and come up with a World Press Photo of the Year. I think about how different I take pictures now (snap snap snap and sort/discard) versus with film (every shot in the roll of 12 or 24 was precious). I see this as an extension of that. I'm pretty sure the future a camera smart enough to understand composition/color in order to know when is the right moment to capture a nicely framed image... and maybe to take more shots when there is a lot of movement or even to react to your body (higher temperature/heartbeat might indicate change in emotion/excitement so should capture more/continuous images). I'd actually like for this to be in a hat form or maybe glasses to capture images at eye-level. Damn, is this just where Google Glasses is going?