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A few days ago a post was on the Delicious front page (protip: one of the best news aggregators around, especially for webworkers). Anyway, the focus of the post was Einstein’s sage advice in a small business context.

It was good stuff, and I’m sad I can’t find it again to share. Not to worry, I have taken the liberty of gathering 5 of my own most favorite Einstein quotes and sharing a little about why I find them useful.

#5 Letter to an unemployed musician

“I am the one to whom you wrote in care of the Belgian Academy… Read no newspapers, try to find a few friends who think as you do, read the wonderful writers of earlier times, Kant, Goethe, Lessing, and the classics of other lands, and enjoy the natural beauties of Munich’s surroundings. Make believe all the time that you are living, so to speak, on Mars among alien creatures and blot out any deeper interest in the actions of those creatures. Make friends with a few animals. Then you will become a cheerful man once more and nothing will be able to trouble you.

Bear in mind that those who are finer and nobler are always alone — and necessarily so — and that because of this they can enjoy the purity of their own atmosphere.

I shake your hand in heartfelt comradeship, E.”

As quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side

Einstein’s letter to a Munich musician is a showcase of grandfatherly compassion and wisdom for travelers losing their way. Note the careful attention to anonymity in both the salutation (“I am the one to whom you wrote”) and the closing (“E.”). The conclusion is what gets me though, an expression of solidarity between two lone wolves.

#4 Letter to a distraught father

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”

- Letter dated 1950

Was Einstein a Buddhist? Probably not in letter, though many of his viewpoints may be harmonious with Buddhist doctrine, especially on compassion/understanding and loving-kindness. Not to confuse things, but it’s also well known that Einstein was influenced by Christian teachings, instructed by Christian teachers as a child and carrying a lifelong admiration for “The Nazarene” Jesus Christ. So while, it’s tough to come up with any rigid statement of his beliefs, Einstein’s ethics are valuable because they point to the commonalities underlying major belief systems.

#3 Love Thy Enemy

Upon hearing a friend recommend the maxim “Love they enemy” Einstein replied:

“I agree with your remark about loving your enemy as far as actions are concerned. But for me the cognitive basis is the trust in an unrestricted causality. ‘I cannot hate him, because he must do what he does.’ That means for me more Spinoza than the prophets.”

- Letter to Michele Besso, January 1948

There are many versions of the fox and the scorpion story, but for me the wisdom of this Einstein quote pertains directly to the lessons contained in the Zen version of this story. In the Zen version, a master is crossing a stream when he sees a scorpion fall into the rushing water. The master carries the scorpion to safety, but while doing so it stings him badly several times. When the master gets to shore he puts the scorpion safely down, but his apprentice beseeches him for the reason he did such a foolish thing. His reply “It’s his nature to sting. But it is mine to save.”

#1 Quoting Einstein

“I like quoting Einstein. Know why? Because nobody dares contradict you.”

- Studs Terkel

I was contemplating whether to do this post at all, not sure if it would come across as hacky, or kitsch (wiki defines kitsch as “a worthless imitation of art of recognized value,” which only adds to my hesitance).

But in the end it was this Studs Terkel quote that gave me the motivation to continue. I am aware that people often quote Einstein like the quote the Bible, in order to prove a point over someone. Great passages as these are often used like a muzzle in social contexts.

But I hoped to make some fun of myself for doing this. The post was written with a touch of irony, aware that adding my own ideas to copied commentary is the very definition of kitsch.

Let me end here by saying if you see Einstein on the road home tonight, sock him in the face.

Such an interesting little roundup for today. Started when a cheeky experiment on Ask Reddit spilled out onto the larger interwebs and sparred toe-to-toe with the mighty CoS over prime Google search real estate.

User privatepyle82 began the Ask Reddit thread with two goals in mind:

1. A Reddit style discussion of happiness and how to reach it, and
2. Outright rambarging to the top of Google Search results (over a CoS website that currently holds the top hit for Googling “Is it possible to be happy?”).

By the afternoon the Ask Reddit post had received some 1250 upvotes, as well as prompting a storm of responses over the interwebs.

And though the submission failed to unhorse the CoS at #1 in Google search (Reddit’s currently in second place), the activity was enough to drive the terms near the top of Google Trends for a while this afternoon .

Now I respect the rights of others to practice their beliefs, and I fully extend that  respect to those who practice beliefs and traditions considered outside the norms of the Western tradition.

So I don’t condone singling one group out for punishment or vigilante style retribution. That’s an uh uh where I’m from.

But I also fully support the expression of contradictory viewpoints and the challenge of discursive combat online, in print and person. Challenging one’s opponent to a Google search results duel is a right worth defending.

While the jury is still out on the Google search rankings battle (goal number 2 of the Ask Reddit thread), it can safely said be said that the Reddit post touched off a flurry of genuine interest and discovery on the topic of happiness this afternoon. Goal number two, done.

In the end it doesn’t matter that the Reddit post is in fourth place on Google.  Just like the question of whether happiness is possible or not, it’s actually the fact that we’re interested in the result, and not the result itself that really matters.

I had an opportunity to do some needed perceptual realignment yesterday after reading “How to become rich even if nobody is following you on twitter” on Max Klein’s blog. Seeds of gold for anyone who’s thought of making it on their own.

I’ve put together a brief reformulation of key points to share. I’m losing much of the humor of the original post, so do check out Max Klein’s

1. Ditch the IPO mentality that equates big payouts with success.

Not that there’s anything wrong with making money or achieving success per se. It’s that we need a way of preventing our high expectations from disappointing us in the likely event they’re not met.

“It’s not about how to make a lot of money with a project, it becomes a matter of how to optimise your time and selected projects.“

2. Instead focus on reducing the time it takes to grow your projects to the point of marginal success – defined here as 1 dollar daily profit ($30/month).

Rather than trying to build something small and simultaneously divert resources into scaling up the application, let’s take the approach of focusing our efforts into achieving a modest outcome in a minimum of time.

“Now sit back and think for a few days – what type of software could I write that would be quite quick to make and could bring me $1 a day? Once you find one that works, think of ways to modify and expand it. Bring in new ideas.”

3. Increase the number of such sustainable projects until 400. By the time you reach 150 you’ll be within reach of your ultimate goal: long-term profit and stability in your life.

This is the foundational aspect of  the piece, the very essence of the “mental repositioning” Klein is advocating. Instead of basing our success on the outcomes of one or two momentous undertakings, we have the freedom to tinker when we proliferate. 

“I once made a video hosting website and put 30 ninja videos on it. Adsense money was about $1 a day.“

While this strategy may seem formulaic and strictly concerned with numbers (time, money, efficiency rating) it’s also about emotion frames of reference and about what makes us tick.

What he’s talking about is fear of failure, and the way those nagging doubts become the blocks preventing us from the small, reachable, dollar-a-day steps to completing our projects. Not from any lack of talent, gift, creativity but because the odds are so heavily stacked against us. It’s the perfectly reasonable among us that give up pursuit of their passions.

So today I’m going to revel in the freedom of not placing judgment on the future outcomes of my actions. I know that because my goals are small and doable, and built around the principle of reducing the time to completion, I can kick back and enjoy the performance.

Consider this a work in progress about a large but fascinating subject: image editors, particularly the online and free variety.

Sketchpad: a little HTML 5 editor

Sketchpad is a free image editing program accessed entirely in your browser. It’s the only one to my knowledge written entirely in HTML 5.

Sketchpad is currently still in beta, but it’s free and allows you to export your creations to png. Included are drawing tools Text, Shape, Spirograph, Brush, Calligraphy, Pencil, Paint-bucket, and Stamp as well as the generic Marquee, Crop, Eraser and Color-picker.

While Sketchpad doesn’t support layers currently, the free version has an excellent set of brushes and stamps that make it superb for creative playtime, light mockups and experimentation. And it’s relatively quick-loading and light on CPU resources compared to say Sumo Paint, Splashup, and Pixlr v1.1 using the Flash 1o player.

Well-developed and supported web image editors aren’t esactly new. A number of other excellent accessible free online editors have been around for a few years now. What makes Sketchpad unique/cool is the fact it’s written in HTML 5. And that means another nail in the Flash as the dominant rich media application coffin.

Sumo Paint

Sumo Paint. If you’ve used Adobe Photoshop of GIMP for your projects then you should be able to get started quickly with Sumo’s toolbox, palettes, and menu icons. Sumo supports and layers and effects, as well as the usual color and image adjustments, stamps and brushes. Of the online freebies it’s probably the most comprehensive, allowing you to accomplish as much photo editing and image creation outside Adobe CS as possible. Sumo has a vibrant community of artists that use the service to exchange ideas as well as images.

Honorable mentions:

• Pixlr is primarily for editing photos but the company also bundles a free image hosting service with Imm.io.
• Aviary is actually a suite of applications encompassing raster and vector editing, image grabbing (useful for quickly “borrowing” images from the web), audio remixing and swatch editing apps – all from your browser. Of the online image communities Aviary has a large collection of the freshest most inspiring creations from artists around the globe.
• Citrify
• Splashup