What Would Be Your “Metta World Peace” Name?

Ron Artest, the basketball player currently known as Metta World Peace, changed his name in a tone of hypocrisy to try to cover up his violent past on and off the basketball court. He has been in brawls, is a repeat offender for dishing out nasty flagrant fouls, suspended for about 100 games and arrested on domestic violence. To call yourself Metta (Buddhist term meaning loving kindness and friendliness toward others) and sporting World Peace on your back doesn’t change who you are, even if it’s as powerful an advertisement as can be for a celebrity because your name gets called an awful lot! But if the world did see him in a new light because of his name, World Peace recently reminded us it’s all a facade with a six game suspension for almost taking the jaw off James Harden with an elbow.

But Ron does go around sporting World Peace on the back of his jersey, which prompts me to ask you this…

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What to Do with Your Canadian Pennies Now That They are No Longer Minted

The last Canadian penny was minted today. So what can you do with your Canadian pennies from now on? Well, that depends on what year you have pennies from due to composition changes and historical values. Here are a few thoughts.

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My All-black Adi Zero Light Boston Running Shoes

Here’s a little trick to get your dark running shoes black, or your black running shoes blacker, if you like the look of black shoes on your feet without all that razz-ma-tazz also on them. Keeps them from getting much dirtier in appearance, at least!

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The Tipping Point Numbers for Social Change

These are targets every person or group trying to instill social change needs to know to gauge the likelihood or their success.

Recent research has shown that for true social change to occur, you’d need 7-10% of a population to hold an unshakable belief to be able to change the belief of that population within a reasonable amount of time. This is as long as there isn’t another group with another unshakable belief opposing it, like a different religion (Discovery News, August 6 2011). Combine that with the 1% you need to start a movement (Microtrends, by Mark Penn) and you’ve got two real targets for any organization seeking to create lasting social change. There’s none of those around these days, are there? 🙂

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Simple, Sensible and Effective Suggestions for Improving Facebook

Facebook is a great utility with lots of great features, but there are also quite a few not so great features which aren’t hard to fix, and some features not present which shouldn’t be hard to add. This is my list, in no particular order. I’d love to hear from you for your ideas, or which ideas listed here that you’d like to see the most. Who knows? Maybe Facebook staff may actually listen to user feedback! 🙂

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