Maya Elhalal’s Blog

I normally wouldn’t, but I recently became 30 and I could relate. This is one of those things you can’t be reminded of enough, and at some point you start enjoying it as if it was the first time you heard it…

George Carlin’s Views on Aging when he was 102:

Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we’re kids? If you’re less than 10 years old, you’re so excited about aging that you think in fractions.

‘How old are you?’ ‘I’m four and a half!’ You’re never thirty-six and a half. You’re four and a half, going on five! That’s the key.

You get into your teens, now they can’t hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.

‘How old are you?’ ‘I’m gonna be 16!’ You could be 13, but hey, you’re gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life … . You become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony. YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!!

But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There’s no fun now, you’re Just a sour-dumpling. What’s wrong? What’s changed?

You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you’re PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it’s all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 and your dreams are gone.

But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn’t think you would!

So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.

You’ve built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it’s a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!

You GET INTO your 80’s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30 ; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn’t end there Into the 90s, you start going backwards; ‘I JUST WAS 92.’

Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. ‘I’m 100 and a half!’

Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctors worry about them. That is why you pay ‘them’.

May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!

And Amos, when young groupies start throwing panties at you from the audience, remember I was you first fan.

Condense was formed in 2005 by Koby Moshe Wallace & Amos Aharoni.In the next year to come they gathered with Gilad Ariel and started working on their first album.

Condense album produced by Tom Nichols, who is an ASCAP award-winning songwriter and producer based in London & NY. During the last few years Tom has been part of nearly 40 million records sold with the likes of: All Saints - ‘Black Coffee’ (Number 1 UK single), Kylie Minogue - ‘Fever’ & ‘Burning Up’, Sugababes – ‘Undignified’, Lindsay Lohan – ‘To Know Your Name’ and many more.

Condense Album was recorded in Israel and Mixed in L.A by Brian Paturalski (a Grammy award winner for Outkast, Aerosmith, Britney Spears and more). All samplers & programming in the album were done by Pete Gordeno from Depeche Mode, Tim Baxter from the Gorillaz and Ohad Bolotin.

My first, second and third screens. Did I hear someone say media rehab?

Moshe Safdie’s a triple citizen of Canada, Israel and the United States, three places where the bulk of his buildings can be found: in Canada, the National Gallery in Ottawa, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Vancouver public library. For Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, he designed the Children’s Memorial and the Memorial to the Deportees; he’s also built airport terminals in Tel Aviv. In the US, he designed the elegant and understated Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Masachusetts, and under construction now is the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas, set to open in 2010.

The human figures, the music, the precision, the lighting, the setting. How with such minimalism it kicks you in the stomach. Everything about this contemporary ballet is just so powerful and awe inspiring.

I couldn’t stop watching it.

You can get the full DVD in Blue Ray Quality from Amazon.

9 lessons for life (that are also very much true for entrepreneurship) in this 5 min TED U2009 talk (U = University, TED attendees giving talks) by rock climber Matthew Childs:

1. Don’t let go!
2. Hesitation is bad
3. Have a plan
4. The move is the end
5. Know how to rest
6. Fear sucks
7. Opposites are good
8. Strength != Power
9. Know how to let go

Matthew Childs is VP of Strategic Planning for FKQ Advertising and Marketing. He is a lifelong rock climber and climbing guide.

The amazing Eric Lewis performs Going Under in TED2009. I went to see him again a few days ago in Joe’s Bar in Manhattan and he was phenomenal. It’s 10 minutes of pure magic…

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A couple of days ago I got my hands on this book, Biology of Cancer by Robert A. Weinberg and as weird as this may sounds, I couldn’t put it down!

Science and Nature thought it was good too:

The Biology of Cancer is no doubt the definitive statement on its topic today. -Science, 11 August 2006: Vol. 313. no. 5788

There is no comparable text in cancer biology and no single book that is so current and informative. -Nature, November 30, 2006, Vol 444

I was just struck by how dated popular cancer treatment is in comparison to new discoveries in cancer research. It’s far from an uplifting read but unfortunately a very important one for all of us.

Robert A. Weinberg is MIT Professor known for his brilliance in research of oncogenes and the genetic basis of human cancer.