Jake Shimabukuro is a last name you will have a hard time pro­nounc­ing (it’s she-ma-BOO-koo-row). And his instru­ment is a ukulele (oo-koo-LAY-lay). But he plays it with so much pas­sion, inten­sity and hon­esty that you don’t really need to pro­nounce his name to appre­ci­ate it. You don’t even have to say anything.

You just listen.

This one I got from the Busi­ness Mir­ror. My work con­stantly reit­er­ates how there are really no such things as acci­dents. “Acci­dents”, as we know them, are really due to many man-made fac­tors: lack of train­ing, a lack of sys­tems, or pro­ce­dures to fol­low, and/or plain old stu­pid­ity. This is one of those things. 32 years ago, there was a study that showed how Marik­ina is unsuit­able for development.

This is an email cir­cu­lat­ing around now that Ninoy Aquino is run­ning for Pres­i­dent of this coun­try. I read this for the first time sev­eral years ago; so I think it’s gen­uine. It sure sounds like Ninoy. It’s a beau­ti­fully writ­ten piece. And we could learn a lot about the man and his son from how this piece was written.

3000 years ago, around 1550–1050 BCE, a stat­uette of an Egypt­ian woman was carved. The woman was prob­a­bly roy­alty, for a statue to be made of her like­ness. Noth­ing is really known of her.

This is Ellen DeGeneres’ Tulane Uni­ver­sity Com­mence­ment Speech last May 16, 2009. Read about this first from my friend Andi’s blog. I was laugh­ing the whole time I was lis­ten­ing to the speech. And by the time it ended, I was men­tally giv­ing her a stand­ing ovation.