Long time participant Joseph aka Joschka Fisher is pointing out in a post on the Future Salon Yahoo group that everyone can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:   Ask the individual to smile Ask him or her to raise both arms  Ask the person to speak a simple sentence coherently. The American Heart Association says, that it was a very small …

It is getting closer to the 1st of May, the delivery date of our future daughter Nina. Marie is counting the days already. We are getting all this new gear which of course we are not sure whether it is good and safe or not. So our friend Theresa hired Bruno the Baby Test Bunny to make sure everything is in the …

The other day at the dinner table I told one of my favorite Buddha quotes. Me: “Buddha said: “The one who eats until he is full is going to be Träge aka slow and lazy.” The smartest wife of all: “Oh, so this is where the Buddha Belly comes from!” <pause> Me: “Oh well, just give me the ice cream.”

The meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give it away. — Joy J. Golliver [via Quote-a-day]

The Postsecret Site is super addictive and apparently life changing. After reading this one the following lines were send in: I have been struggling with suicide ideation for the last several months, to the point that I just needed to figure out how to do it ‘just right’, I guess I wanted it to be beautiful and poignant. The line …

This brush has a little camera built in. You touch a colorful structure with it, the camera picks it up and then you paint on a real large LCD screen. The beauty of it is, that the camera picks up not only the color and structure of the object, but can also record small movements, like the closing of an eye …

For a long time I was contemplating whether to post this or not; but it made a big difference to me, and you may learn from it. At SAP Shai Agassi is about three hierarchical levels removed from me and responsible for a couple of thousand employees. Once in a while we chit chat: for example before we present SDN prizes on stage at …

Another great one from IT Conversations Andrew Weill gets interviewed by Dr. Moira Gunn about his latest book about aging well. The science around it is called Gerontology. The book is focusing on compressing morbidity: Reduction of the amount of time at the end of life spend in sickness and decline. My father has mastered  that goal: He was almost never sick, things took …

To be a Joyful Helper is one thing I can learn from my father.  He was always there for us kids when we were growing up and enabled us a wonderful childhood and youth in the Black Forest. But more then that, he was also always helping out when there was need in the neighborhood, at the sports club, for his friends, helping our mother …

I am really struggling with this post. One of the people that had the most profound influence on my life, my father Egon Finnern has died last Saturday. He was with a friend on his morning run. Following his suggestion they diverted twice from their usual route which lead to a chance encounter with another runner friend of theirs. They stopped for a couple of minutes and …