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Best Songs I Heard for the First Time in 2010

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Most people do not hear most of the songs they know for the first time in the year the song was released. If anyone did, I would feel very sorry for them for missing out on all the great songs of the past from before they were born, or even great songs each year they lived they would have missed.

What most people don’t do is reflect each year on the best songs they heard for the first time that year. I’ve blogged some of mine, but not all so this is my entire collection for 2010 which could fit on a CD if I made one.

After several years of discovering a ton of jazz and older music, then tunes from musicals, so that they made up most of the songs in my list for recent years , I am back with an eclectic set that reflects my true musical tastes and philanderings across genres. I even have not only one song from the current year, but two! A song from the year of the list was something I didn’t have for several years. I did find newly released songs I liked a lot in those years, but they didn’t compare to a variety of jazz and musicals standards I discovered in those years.

But before I share my list, let me ask you the same question as I answered to write this post. What were the best songs you heard for the first time in 2010?

I’d love to know so please do leave a comment. I can add the links to videos so people can hear what you’re talking about, if you would like. But if you don’t want to do it here, maybe write a blog post like this if you have a blog, or a Facebook note or something like that on a social media platform account you have. It might just be one of the more thoughtful notes to your friends all year.

Here is my list, in no particular order of preference, with videos streaming the songs. You will need to click on the YouTube link for some videos with some weird copyright condition that only allow them to be viewed on YouTube. I hate that’s become a wussie and lost all its edge.

Happy New Year!
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Sharkwater, Dispelling Myths About the Shark (full documentary)

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What do you think of when you think of the shark? A fearsome monster? A man eater from the ocean? Something that should be killed if seen from land?

If you’re like most people of the world, that’s generally what you would think of when you think of a shark. However, sharks are nothing like that. It’s all man-made myth!

Sharks are rather shy, intelligent and have incredible senses. They avoid people if they can, actually being afraid of people, and often know better than to eat people despite how people resemble the seals they actually eat. They eat the only way they know how, and most are not like the way they are portrayed in movies like Jaws. Furthermore, they have a huge environmental impact by being at the top of the food chain, controlling populations of other species below them so all the phytoplankton in the oceans which generate oxygen for us to breathe are allowed to do just that. We are destroying our future just by letting a bunch of fishermen slaughter all these sharks because some people in China believes eating their fins bestow good health and miracle cures, and are willing to pay a ton of money for them.

Sharks are absolutely remarkable creatures which have survived hundreds of millions of years, virtually unchanged, while the world around it has or has become extinct. They were here 150 million years before the dinosaurs! Come see how amazing they truly are, and how they are being hunted to extinction by greedy people who only take their fins and throw the rest of the animal away. Sharkwater will show you all of this, with remarkable cinematography in a captivating adventure that has won 31 major international film awards.

More of the world needs to see this film. I hope you will watch it if you have not, and/or tell other people about it!

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Vodpod videos no longer available.

This full-length online version is of good quality, though not the same as a DVD version, obviously. But if you can’t get access to the DVD, this will do. This also has English and Chinese (not sure which form) subtitles. If it gets stuck loading when you play it, please pause it for a few minutes while it loads and come back. You should be fine, then.

Synopsis

For filmmaker Rob Stewart, exploring sharks began as an underwater adventure. What it turned into was a beautiful and dangerous life journey into the balance of life on earth. Driven by passion fed from a lifelong fascination with sharks, Stewart debunks historical stereotypes and media depictions of sharks as bloodthirsty, man-eating monsters and reveals the reality of sharks as pillars in the evolution of the seas. Filmed in visually stunning, high definition video, Sharkwater takes you into the most shark rich waters of the world, exposing the exploitation and corruption surrounding the world’s shark populations in the marine reserves of Cocos Island, Costa Rica and the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.

In an effort to protect sharks, Stewart teams up with renegade conservationist Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Their unbelievable adventure together starts with a battle between the Sea Shepherd and shark poachers in Guatemala, resulting in pirate boat rammings, gunboat chases, mafia espionage, corrupt court systems and attempted murder charges, forcing them to flee for their lives. Through it all, Stewart discovers these magnificent creatures have gone from predator to prey, and how despite surviving the earth’s history of mass extinctions, they could easily be wiped out within a few years due to human greed. Stewart’s remarkable journey of courage and determination changes from a mission to save the world’s sharks, into a fight for his life, and that of humankind.

Please click here for the Sharkwater website.

Least Likely To Facebook Tagging Meme

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After creating my version of the next generation of pictorial Facebook tagging meme in the Most Likely to version,the logical progression was a Least Likely To version below so this is original at the time of posting as far as I know it. While one can use this  poster in a pessimistic way towards tagging people for the future, to identify friends who would be least likely to do something, I meant it as a reflective exercise with the instructions being to tag friends who were least like to do something.

This is an exercise to acknowledge how people change in big ways we don’t expect, but that we should afford them the chance to in life, rather than blocking them in by removing their potential. I’m generally a positive kind of guy, though with a bit of a wicked sense of humour, at times, as you can see by some of my choices in the poster below. As a result, despite using the same poster as the Most Likely to version, I changed the picture text to be more general in some circumstances. We may dream or lift others to the post of president, for example, but in reality, just being a leader applies to far more of us than president, no matter what kind of president you want to consider.

Here’s how to get the new graphic for your Facebook fun:

  • Click on the picture below to get it at full size.
  • Right click on that picture and save to your computer.
  • Upload it to your Facebook profile.
  • Tag your friends!
  • Click the Back button on your browser to return to this post.

Please click here for a complete list of over 100 Facebook picture tagging memes on this site with which you can use for fun with your friends.

 

In case you don’t recognize some of these people, they are as follows, left to right:

  • Top: Peyton Manning, Wangari Matthai, Osama bin Laden, Paris Hilton, Jet Li
  • Middle: Pamela Anderson, Bob Dylan, Oprah Winfrey, the current Dalai Lama, Sue Johannson
  • Bottom: Claudia Schiffer, Martha Stewart, Bill Gates, Anna Nicole Smith, Barack Obama

I’m too tired to put links to all these people but you can Google them, and maybe guess why I’ve put labeled each as such.

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Most Likely To… The Evolution of a Facebook Tagging Meme

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Note: Since this posting, I have evolved Facebook picture tagging memes on my own ideas far beyond this concept I saw. My ideas involve real world and life actions rather than just associating ideas. They are listed under the Action memes category, involving what I call Facebook 2.0 tagging memes.

The pictorial Facebook tagging memes that have been going around in many variations seems to have evolved into that common high school year book feature, the Most Likely To… page. I saw one just hours ago, but it was so poorly done (mostly due to almost unreadable small type) I went and created my own, text, picture compilation and all. Here’s how to get it:

  • Click on the picture below to get it at full size.
  • Right click on that picture and save to your computer.
  • Upload it to your Facebook profile.
  • Tag your friends or let them tag themselves.

Please click here for a complete list of over 100 Facebook picture tagging memes on this site with which you can use for fun with your friends.

In case you don’t recognize some of the people in my new version, they are as follows, left to right:

  • Top: Peyton Manning, Wangari Matthai, Osama bin Laden, Paris Hilton, Jet Li
  • Middle: Pamela Anderson, Bob Dylan, Oprah Winfrey, the current Dalai Lama, Sue Johannson
  • Bottom: Claudia Schiffer, Martha Stewart, Bill Gates, Anna Nicole Smith, Barack Obama

You can Google these people if you want to know more about who they are, and maybe guess why I’ve put labeled each as such.

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