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Tuesday, May 20, 2014

The Power of Numbers (and the Internet)

This is a continuation from my last post (sort of, anyway).  Today on my FB news feed page, there was a post asking if we should keep cursive writing alive (in schools).  Massachusetts wants to.  It has gotten over 1.5 million likes, and over 233,000 comments.  Yikes!!!

I remember learning this in school - forget what grade it was, but probably around 2nd or 3rd.  To the best of my knowledge, it hasn't affected my life in any obvious way, although perhaps made new connections in my developing brain.  Learning something new is always healthy.

Getting back to my last post and the power of numbers - When "A Murder at Midnight" was written about in 1929, it would have been difficult for everyone to tell 2 others about it every 12 minutes. Today, with cell phones, smart phones, tablets, and the internet, you can probably tell a dozen people about something every minute.  Conceivably, everybody on this planet who is on the internet could learn of this incident in less than an hour.  Obviously, things are never that perfect, but the above photo is probably less than a day old.

The internet words for this are "going viral."  Most viral stories I have heard involve people saving someone, or saving a dog, or even a cat saving a baby from an attacking dog.

Hero Cat Saves Boy from Dog Attack
If you want to see this, just Google "cat saves boy from dog."

One thing I would like to see go viral is contact your senators and congressmen and tell them you want all GMO foods labeled (or preferably outlawed until proper studies on safety are done).

Another I would like to see go viral is information on healthy eating and how to maintain your health, and what you can do to regain it if it is not optimal.

As a follow up to the above, I would like to see courses in nutrition and health in schools go viral - to contact Congress asking for this.

In my next post I will talk about the importance of beautiful portraits (made with proper lighting) going viral.  Why you should get them done and what they can do for you.

If you like today's post (or any other post or information anywhere), tell two other people and ask them to tell two other people, and on and on.  Thank you and have a great week.

One last thing - please feel free to comment on this or any post here.  I welcome your feedback.






Sunday, May 18, 2014

Believe It or Not - 1929 - and an experiment

I have a hardcover copy of Ripley's Believe It or Not - I think it was the 1929 copy, although it is missing the page with the date of publication.  On page 43, there is an item called "The Murder at Midnight."  What it says is that if everyone who was told about the murder told 2 other people within 12 minutes of being told, everybody on Earth would know about it before morning.

There are a few more people now then in 1929 on this planet (around 2 billion in 1929, now around 7 billion), but even today everybody on Earth would know (assuming each person was told only once) and if we used 6:48 a.m. for morning (daybreak) - the actual math would come out to about 8,589,934,592.

What's the experiment?  Suppose you did the same thing that was done with a Murder at Midnight with this blog post - as soon as you see it, within 12 minutes tell 2 other people to visit, and ask each of them to tell 2 people within 12 minutes, and on and on.

Once you do visit this blog, please come by or subscribe if you have an interest in photography (doing photography or getting photographed) or an interest in being healthy.  Thanks for stopping by, and for participating in this experiment.

Oh - the link to this blog post is:  Tony Belmont Blog - Believe It or Not