What does it mean to be your own hero

The parable of Spiderman, Superman and Ironman and many others tell us something. These characters possess extraordinary powers to kill the evil character. In real life, the story is no different; if we ought to be superheroes, we need to begin by slaying the evil within ourselves.  The heroes rise triumphant over their fears. Their fears don’t control their behavior because they don’t succumb to the fears but get past it. Kill the fear monsters that breed egoistic, dishonest and deceptive behavior.

More than anything else, be the hero of your life, not the victim. It has nothing to do with money, ego,  stuff to show off and power. It has everything whatsoever to do with emotional honesty, courage, positive thoughts, integrity.

You can't be anyone's hero until you become your own hero first.

The process begins by building a heroic courage within yourself which comes with inner strength of character, being intellectually and emotionally honest with yourself as well as with others.

Everyone wants to be proud of himself/herself but they aren’t quite sure how would it happen. 

For example, I’ve witnessed many of my friends getting perplexed by the question which leads to inner conflict - How to tell if it’s true love or addiction/infatuation?

You truly love someone when they’re good human beings, when they have the virtues of a great person, for example, honesty, sincerity, truthfulness, and the most important thing - holding a conscience. If you’re loving someone who’s bad, then you’re only addicted. Just like you get addicted to drugs which you know are harmful to your health but there’s no way you’re ready to give them up. There’s a greater amount of pain attached in case of leaving the people you love. True love gives you the power, the courage to stand tall, i.e., you won’t be afraid to let go of a bad person. You’d love them enough to let them go. Because inside your head, the concepts of goodness and badness and their potential repercussions are all clear.  

If you’re Dishonest, what does it tell about you:

When you shun honesty in your relationships, you do so solely out of fear. Your best heroic potential is stunted right there.  Heroic behavior doesn’t grow. 

If you’re envious, what does it tell about you:

Being envious, shameful, criticizer, guilty and player of blame game, you’re exuding the tumultuous conflict inside of you. As a result you end up in darkness. And there’s only one way out, fight and kill the monsters within you. Win the duel and meet yourself in real form!

Some questions and a pathway to answers

Ask yourself, do you honour truth, do you honour your friends? Do you treat your girlfriend, boyfriend, colleagues, spouse, family with respect? Have you been granted the trust of person closest to you? How much do they trust you?

Emerging out of your dark side, leveling up the low goals, making yourself extraordinary is part of heroism. It’s natural to be afraid of many consequences. In situations of muddiness and disarray, standing up and doing something that must be done is heroism. One has to strike a balance between feeling no fear and being a total coward. 

With a keen eye, you’ll be able to see that there’s a decipherable pattern in the events happening around you. The irrefutable argument is - We can go deeper into the tiers of meanings of our life by taking a panoramic view of our own life. The things you discover with this practice will surprise you!

Headline May 06, 2015/ ''' INSTAGRAMMERS BY SOCIALS '''

''' INSTAGRAMMERS BY SOCIALS '''

UNLIKE SOME OF ITS social media rivals, Instagram isn't given to asking existential questions about the nature of its own appeal.

Systrom, who serves as CEO, believes Instagram is up to the challenge. In 2014, when he hired employee No:145, and Instagram had just expanded to-

Fill out most of its floor in a building on Facebook's faux-urban Menlo Park, Calif., campus, where Systrom is within walking distance of Facebook's leadership team.

He acknowledges that expanding  -and realizing the economic potential of  -his service is no small task. But he counters with a question of his own: Just how many companies have figured out how to nurture the point:

That it has an audience of more than a billion people? Before anyone can answer, he interrupts: ''One.'' he says. ''The one we work at.''

One of Systrom's new obsessions is flying drones, writes the authors.''You can get some cool photos of the world by looking down at it, he points out. It changes your perspective. 

And so on a June afternoon, I found myself with Systrom, Kreiger, and some other Instagrammers on-

Stanford University's campus in front of its  320-foot Andy Goldsworthy stone wall sculpture. Fifty feet above us, a-two-by-two-foot Phantum2Vision+   -a $,299 toy -swivelled its camera to point directly down.

Systrom, who towered above the rest of us at 6-foot-5 and was wearing an argyle tie fashioned to his blue-button with a silver tie clip, had linked his iPhone to the drone's camera, and we peered at the screen.

The Goldsworthy sculpture looked like a snake gliding across the lawn. Systrom snapped, snapped and snapped again.

He didn't post anything right away. Later that evening, he reviewed the photos. He picked the best one, cropped it, ran it through a filter, tweaked the saturation, and uploaded it, sharing it with his 1.5 million Instagram followers.

More than 10,000 people  ''liked'' it.  The 175 comments, however, mostly came from Instagram users who wanted customer service on their accounts, a reminder (along with the tie) that Systrom is after all the boss.''

Systrom wasn't a photograph aficionado before Instagram. He and co-founder Krieger, who is Instagram's technical lead, originally set out to build a location-based sharing app. Systrom, who grew up in Holliston, Mass, a tony Boston suburb, first met the Brazilian-born Krieger at Stanford.

Like many before them, they hatched their collaboration in a coffee shop. Their messaging app was called Burbn. It mostly let friends say where they were and share a few photos. But early on they discovered that photos were what hooked people.

The quickly built a simple photo app and selected 100 people - Apple's maximum limit for a beta test-  to test it. this time, instead of asking their friends to try it, as they had with Burbn, they reached out to two target groups.  -designers and reporters.

They launched Instagram on Oct-6, 2010. and attracted  100,000 users the first week. It has been among the top 10 most downloaded apps ever since.

Just over a year later, Facebook and Twitter began jockeying to buy Instagram. In April 2011, after reportedly turning down acquisition offers by each of the social media giants, Systrom and Kriger closed a $50 million round of funding led by venture capital firm Sequoia. The plan was to stay independent.

But on the Friday that Zuckerberg received the news about the funding, he asked to meet with Systrom. The Facebook founder raised his offer to $ 1 billion, twice what Tweeter had offered. Just as important he had promised autonomy.

Systrom and Kreiger decided to take the deal. Systrom spent most of the following weekend at the Facebook CEO's house for negotiations that were interrupted only briefly on Sunday evening so that Zuckerberg, an avid:

Game of Thrones fan, could host a long-scheduled viewing party. On Monday, April 9, before Twitter had the chance to make a counteroffer, Systrom and Zuckerberg announced the deal. Instagram's emplyees drove down the 101 to Facebook's Menlo Park Headquarters for a tour.

From an internal balcony, designer Keegan Jones Instagrammed a photo of his 12 colleagues looking up somewhat bewildered as if to say, ''What just happened?''   

Many people criticized Instagram for selling out so early when the app's popularity was skyrocketing. But the Instagram team insist that the executive at their parent company have been remarkable hands-off.

Kreiger credits Jay Parikh, head of Facebook's infrastructure group, explaining:

''Before we got here, he told everyone,  'Don't bug them. But if they ask you for help, do whatever you can.' ''

The Honour and Serving of the  ''technology operational research'' continues. Thank you for reading and see Ya all on the following one.

With respectful dedication to all the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!   -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

'''Social's Biggest Player To Be'''

'''Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Headline May 05, 2015/ ''' INSTAGRAM : THE PHOTO-SHARING LOVE '''

''' INSTAGRAM : 

THE PHOTO-SHARING LOVE '''

INSTAGRAM'S USERS SHARE over 60 million photos a day and have shared over and above, and more than 23 billion in total.

In an attempt to harness this enthusiasm, Instagram has begun calling on its corporate blog for the occasional worldwide  ''InstaMeet''. Just recently was the ninth global gathering;

On the same day, Instagrammers were  snapping and sharing  photos from London to South Africa. Skinny learned about the Brooklyn InstaMeet from local organizers he follows- who spread the word in the captions of photos they posted.

Afterward, the Instagrammers selected their favourite shots, edited them, applied the app's distinctive filters, and posted them to Instagram with the hashtag #thatnycmeet; in no time there were 838, at least three of which were added by Skinny.

Skinny, 29, loves Instagram. An account manager at a publishing company, he goes to friends' Instagram meet-ups nearly every weekend, uploads photos every day, and post them under the handle @skinnywashere. 

He has 35,000 followers, which is a lot but not quiet enough yet for him to leverage into making real money. Mostly he's inspired by his passion. He calls Instagram a  ''visual diary'' that lets him connect to other creative people. 

First thing every morning he reaches for his phone, eager to see what has transpired on the app.while he was sleeping. ''I used to do BMX with my friends on the weekend, but now I Instagram,'' he says.

This is exactly kind of devotion that Facebook generated in the earliest days. That's why, two years ago, Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg paid nearly $ 1 billion to buy the photo-sharing app. People thought he was crazy.

At the time  Instagram  had 13 employees, fewer than 22 million active users, and no website. Today it boasts more than 200 million active users  -almost as many as Twitter-  who upload 60 million photos every day.

They spend spend an average of 3.7 hours on Instagram every month, according to Nielson more time than people spend on Twitter or Pinterest. The acquisition has been a boon for Facebook, helping it connect to younger users.

Says RBC managing director Mark Mahaney : ''It might turn out to be one of the best deals we've seen in the history of the consumer Internet.''

That's true in part because Instagram has helped spawn a powerful new social phenomenon: Just as Kodak's invention of a roll film made it easy for almost anyone to take photographs a century ago, Instagram's invention of a-

Social feed paired with easy-to-use editing tools makes everyone capable of creating and sharing nuanced, edited pictures today.

And that photo sharing has empowered people in powerful, unexpected ways  -even those not named Kardashian or Bieber.

A 13 year-old professional skateboarder, for instance, can draw a large audience for practice skate session with one photo posted to his 42,000 followers. And an Oxford, Miss., who started using Instagram to exchanges photos with her sister-

Has amassed an audience of 530,000. Her pictures were so popular she set up a storefront and began selling prints   -enough to quit her job. Much as YouTube did for Google, Instagram has put Facebook squarely in the heart of an increasingly important medium of communication.

Businesses are leaping onto the platform. Companies from apparel maker Free People to General Electric have launched their own Instagram feeds, which they say have generated much more user engagement (in the form of ''likes'' and comments) than other social sites.

Patagonia invited climbers to instagram photos of themselves mountain climbing, tagging them #VIDAPatagonia, and then publish the photos on Patagonia.com. Others like Puma, are hiring Instagrammers with large, deeply engaged followings at rate of up to $5,000 a day to capture photos that showcase the company's products.

Just about the only party not trying to make money on Instagram right now is Instagram's corporate parent. It doesn't need to. Facebook's revenues jumped 55% last year to $7.9 billion   -and not one penny from it came from Instagram.

In 2014, In Facebook's April earning call, Zuckerberg said that he thinks Instagram has a lot of room to grow and that it will start to be an important business in the future. But, as he put it:

''Monetization isn't our near-term priority here.''  In March , 2014, Instagram signed its first deal with an ad agency, when Omnicom pledged to place around $40 million in ads on the service.

There's no guarantee of course, that the steady ascent in popularity will continue. Instagram's co-founders, Kevin Systrom, 31, and Mike Kriger, 29, know this. For one, there are myriad technical challenges, from maintaining infrastructure-

For ever more users to providing support in foreign languages. Also a host of messaging services like Snapchat and Whatsapp (now owned by Facebook) have emerged and a mounting desire for people to share photos privately rather than publicly.

The company must figure out how to evolve to meet changing tastes without changing what its users love about it.

The Honour and Serving of the  ''operational research''  continues. Thank you for reading and, maybe learning something, and see ya all on the following one.

With respectful dedication to all users of Instagram. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' Ready For The Shot '''

'''Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Floyd Mayweather beats Manny Pacquiao

Floyd Mayweather defeated Manny Pacquiao via a unanimous decision, 118-110, 116-112 and 116-112, to claim WBO welterweight title in Las Vegas.

American Mayweather, 38, delivered a defensive masterclass against his Philippine rival at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, making the necessary adjustments after only a few rounds before disappearing out of sight.

Headline May 04, 2015/ ''' EDUCATION WARS -[THY FORUM]- AND BEYOND '''

''' EDUCATION WARS 

-[THY FORUM]- AND BEYOND '''

I MUST STOP FOR A WHILE to thank you all,  each one of you, -for the splendid support and encouragement that !WOW! receives from the world over. 

Many great Universities from all over ventured to ask for the vision of !WOW! in a fast changing world. While the vision must come from all of you, the students of the world, I can only make you privy to my private thinking: 

!WOW! must endeavour to provide the world with a shining example of Democracy. Someday, in the future, the students will debate the connection between public opinion and policy;

Students will discuss the challenges they face around the world. And thereby, go on to Enhance all segments of society the world over, through a united voice, for better governance and polity. 

!WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless, with the present but temporary Honour Host, Pakistan,  -which has. just published the following report:

The total number of out-of-school children at primary level in Pakistan, has dropped from 6.7 million in 2012-13 to 6.2 million. 

As per report from the Pakistan Education Statistics:

The total number of out-of-school children is 2.9 million in Punjab.

.- 0.4 million in KPK.

.- 1.8 million in Sindh.

.- 0.54 million in Baluchistan.

In the Islamabad Capital territory 24,000 children are out of school. And in a simple matter of common sense, the above stats could easily be from any of the countries in the developing world.

Education is turning into an exhausted battlefield. So one great suggestion, from a very distinguished author is to : Refocus some reformist passions on early childhood.

Though the report portrays a dismal state of education in the country in general but there is some encouraging development.

''The change is visible because of of the four-year National Plan of Action (NPA) launched in 2013,'' said Nasir Amin, director general of the Academy of Educational Planning and Management [AEPAM}.

According to the report, of all the primary-aged 5 to 9  years children, 68% are enrolled in schools. The highest net primary enrolment recorded is 83% in KPK, followed by  ICT  71 percent and the Punjab 70 percent.

In Baluchistan, the enrollment is slightly above 50 percent, while in Sindh it is over 60 percent.   

And !WOW! will continue to write regularly on this in the days ahead.

Waiting to be heard, is the remaining part of the research to which I now return, with the author leading the way:

I support education reform, states the author.  Yet the brawls have left everyone battered and bloodied, from reformers to teacher unions.

***I'm not advising surrender***.

Education inequity is America's original sin. 

A majority of American children in public schools are eligible for free or reduced price lunches, and they often get second-rate teachers in second-rate schools.

Even as privileged kids get superb teachers. This perpetuates class and racial inequity and arises in part from a failed system of local school financing.

But fixing  K-12  education will be a long slog, so let's redirect some energy to children aged 0 to 5  {including prenatal interventions, such as discouraging alcohol and drug use among pregnant women}.

That leads to my third reason: Early education is where we have the greatest chance of progress because it's not politically polarized. New York City liberals have embraced preschool-

But so have Oklahoma conservatives. Teacher unions will flinch at some of what I say, but they have been great advocates for early education. Congress can't agree on much, but Republicans and Democrats-

Just approved new funding for home-visitation for low-income toddlers.

My perspective is shaped by what I've seen. Helping teenagers and adults is tough when they've dropped out of school, had babies, joined gangs, compiled arrest records or self-medicated.

But in Oklahoma, I once met two little girls, ages 3 and 4, whose great-grand mother had her first child at 13-

Whose grandmother had her first at 15-

Whose mom had her first at 13 and now has four children by three fathers.

These two little girls will break that cycle, I'm betting, because they {along with the relative caring for them} are getting help from an outstanding early childhood program called Educare.

Those two little girls have a shot at  opportunity.  

Even within early education, there will be battles. Some advocates emphasize the first three years of life, while others focus on 4-year-olds. Some seek to target the most-at-risk children while others emphasize universal programs.

But early childhood is not a toxic space., the way K-12 education is now. So let's deploy some of our education passions, on all sides, to an area where we just just may be able to find common ground:

***Providing a foundation for young children aged 0 to 5***.

With respectful dedication to all the Parents, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!   -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' Students Governance '''

'''Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless