Dude... (TEDTalks)

Okay, this "dude" is completely unrelated to the previous one. But it still merits the dude.

I was looking up Podcasts, and I stumbled upon something called TEDTalks. It's from TED, a get together that stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. On the site, one person totes TED as the "pre-Heaven" get together of all the greatest minds in the world.

After watching some of the videos here, I have to agree. Not only are these people brilliant and passionate, they're funny. My personal favorite is below. It's from David Pogue, a technology columnist. Warning: Pogue is a known Mac aficionado, so prepare for some Windows humor.




I hope you enjoy these presentations. They make me all electrified inside. I know that feeling of inspiration is just a state I'm in. I wish I knew how to get to where they are ALL THE TIME.

Namaste.

Dude...

I got this video from a Dan Millman newsletter.

Assuming this is real, this kid is amazing. It's like "extreme" gymnastics.

Crazy.

AP Test Scores Are Available by Phone

If you're interested, our AP scores are available via phone. July 1st, psh!

Anyway, it's $8 a pop (as if College Board hasn't already sucked us dry). A little pricey. But can you put a price on peace of mind?

Since I'm a big loser, er hm, I mean, was curious, I called up and got my scores. I got a five in Bio, a five in Calc, and, the shocker, a five in English. Therefore, judge how well you did in these classes compared to me, and now you have a rather accurate subjective guess to your score. For free. Aren't I nice?

I'm not too suprised by the Bio and Calc scores. No, I'm not conceited, but those tests just seemed easy to me. The English score, on the other hand, was up in the air. Completely. Somehow I pulled through, though. Maybe it was my writing about literarature... I mean... uh... never mind! I expect many more fives in English. The question is, who do we give credit to? Buh buh buuuuuuh!

You can now return to your scheduled programming. Thank you.

Namaste.

Right Where It Belongs by Nine Inch Nails

See the animal in it's cage that you built
Are you sure what side you're on?
Better not look him too closely in the eye
Are you sure what side of the glass you are on?
See the safety of the life you have built
Everything where it belongs
Feel the hollowness inside of your heart
And it's all
Right where it belongs

What if everything around you
Isn't quite as it seems?
What if all the world you think you know
Is an elaborate dream?
And if you look at your reflection
Is it all you wanted to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks?
Would you find yourself
Find yourself afraid to see?

What if all the world's inside of your head
Just creations of your own?
Your devils and your gods
All the living and the dead
And you really are alone
You can live in this illusion
You can choose to believe
You keep looking but you can't find the woods
While you're hiding in the trees

What if everything around you
Isn't quite as it seems?
What if all the world you used to know
Is an elaborate dream?
And if you look at your reflection
Is it all you wanted to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks
Would you find yourself
Find yourself afraid to see?

A More Measured Approach

I've realized after thinking for way too long that the reason I don't get anything done is because I think too much. Ooh, got you on that one, huh?!

Anyway, my point is that I've been trying to "do" too many things at once and in the process ended up doing none of them. That's tricky.

Now my goal is to be more measured and actually get things done as a result. For example, my big goal for the next 30 days is to get up at 8 AM every day. That may not sound like much (then again, it might sound like a lot), but it's the one thing I'm setting my sights on. I realized that by getting up at 11 AM each day, I waste about 3 hours per day, so that's about 21 hours per week. That's almost a day! Sleep is good, but not THAT good!

Another thing you might notice is more structure at this site. Don't worry, there will still be the willy nilly posts like this one that just spring up organically, but there will also be the more carefully planned out serieses, like GodAIM (The Reckoning), a primer on Buddhism, and more exciting ideas as they pop up.

Why all this sudden decision to get something done? Because I realized that I only have 8 weeks of summer left, no job, and nothing to show for the past two weeks.

Huzzah!

Namaste.

PGSS 2006

Wow, a year ago today I was at Governor's School for the Sciences. For my first day. Completely lost.

Wow.

I'm glad I don't have that this summer. I'd much rather spend the time with my friends here in Chi for the last time before we all become [insert your college name here] students instead of Chichesterians. Though I imagine, and I'm sure Ed would corroborate, Governor's School can be more fun than anything else in the world.

Wow, that time and place seems way more than a year away. I can remember going there, completely without any desire to get to know anyone. I remember all the amazing people. Really, really amazing. I've been browsing through some of their blogs / livejournals from that time. It's amazing to see the interiors of some of these people. It's such a shame we can only see people's exteriors. That's the least interesting part!

Well, the one person I look forward to reading from is Sir David Pickett, my favorite TA from Governor's School. I can read his Xanga here. He reminds me a lot of myself. I wish I had gotten to know him more when I had the chance. The French L attacks!!! ;)

Time for the summer to really start. Only eight more weeks to go. Not even.

Wow.

Movie Schedule Update

Well, Holly just called me, and it sounds like she'd like to get together sometime tonight for the movie thing. That's fine with me if it's fine with everyone else.

Hm, I'm thinking I'm going to make a blog dedicated to movie news / information. In fact, I will. And here it is: http://chimovie.blogspot.com/

Thanks for your patience. Check that site for any and all updates (I don't see the point in clogging up this blog with random scheduling).

Hm, technology is marvelous!!!

Namaste.

Movie Schedule

As long as it's alright with everyone, I'm proposing that we start brainstorming / filming the "movie" (which I imagine we'll have to give a title eventually...) tomorrow. I'm going to take today to get caught up on some of my backlogged work, such as the Science Olympiad Video.

I'm available all day tomorrow. If you could, please post the time you'd prefer to get together here, or just e-mail me. And I guess we need somewhere to meet. We can meet at my house, but I'd prefer not to (not much room for any sort of meeting without interruptions). If anyone has any ideas, feel free to post / e-mail them as well.

Well, thanks for your patience. I'm not the best group coordinator ever, but I'll do my best. Or someone else could take over. You know, whatever works.

So, when we meet tomorrow, have some ideas on hand. Or don't. We'll just have a massive brainstorming session and figure out where we're going with this.

But most of all, this should be FUN. It's summer. Our last one before college.

Thanks everyone.

Namaste.

Quote

Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.

- Benjamin Franklin

Quote

As with all great moments in life, this moment seemed non-descript, commonplace, and mediocre. Then again, so does death, birth, the first kiss, the last goodbye, the first shots of war and the final signing of a peace treaty. All things in life, it seems, pass without careful notice.

- Me

The Urinal Rule

I realized that I never posted this. That whole censorship thing got to me! But now that I'm out of Chi, I can post anything I want. Well, in all honesty, I could have posted this here at any time, I just forget about it. So, without further ado:

Urinal Rule: Universal Truth or Evolutionary Relic?

A little over a month before the writing of this article, I was introduced to an interesting concept explained to me as "The Urinal Rule." Now, I kid you not, that is exactly how it sounded, with quotation marks and all. This rule, I was told, stated that one... Well, first I suppose I should explain the set-up of a male bathroom for the ladies out there who (hopefully) have never been in a guys bathroom.

In the male lavatory, there are two places in which a man may relieve himself: the toilet and the urinal. The toilet needs no explaining. It's the throne of men, and women, and has been since the dawn of modern plumbing. But the urinal, ah, that is the prize of every man's anatomical advantage. In the typical bathroom, there are anywhere from one to seven urinals, depending on the location. A urinal is like a toilet put on its side, opened up, and barred to the world. And very convenient to pee in, I must add.

Now, back to the Urinal Rule. One thing lacking in my description of urinals is the fact that most urinals are immediately next to one another, with, typically, no divider. Therefore, you, to put it crudely, pee with your neighbor. Now I was told, after an embarassing incident in which I stood next to someone at a urinal, that such an act defies a universal code of male conduct known as, and here it is, the Urinal Rule. I was informed that every man knows for a fact that when there are three urinals, one never, and I mean never, uses the center urinal. If there are two urinals and one is occuppied, the other person must wait their turn. Now, this assumes no divider. With dividers, anything goes. But back to the Urinal Rule. I was quite dismayed by my lack of knowledge in this area. So I decided to conduct a survey.

After a thoroughly unscientific study of my peers, I found that 1 in every 600 men don't know about this urinal rule. So that led me to an interesting thought: perhaps the urinal rule is NOT a universal truth, as I was told. It might be a cultural norm. Or just maybe, and this might get certain people angry at me, it's an evolutionary relic! After asking a very respectable source, I was informed that humans are animals. Okay, I can accept that part. I was also told that humans, as animals, have a natural sense of "personal space" that they wish to maintain between themselves and others. This sense of space depends on numerous factors, including how intimate a person is with the people around them. Interesting.

I took this line of inquiry a step further and found work by a Dr. Edward Hall called Proxemic Theory. This theory states that personal space is not only defined not only by biology, but also by culture. Different cultures have different ways of determing the space that one may enter without causing discomfort. Dr. Hall then divides the world into two types of people, the contact variety and the non-contact variety. The contacts include Arabs, Latin Americans, and Southern Europeans. Contacts have little to no personal space, and because of this don't mind people being near them, or even touching them. The non-contacts include Asians, Northern Europeans, and, not suprisingly, Americans. Non-contacts feel very uncomfortable when someone they are not intimate with gets too close. We are, therefore, a non-contact culture.

And there you have it. One thing is most certain: the urinal rule IS NOT a universal truth. If it is anything, it's a culturally bound tradition affected slightly by biological factors. But that won't change whether or not you feel comfortable urinating next to me. And yet, it makes me feel better to know why.

Levels in Games, Levels in Life

This is a thought I had a while ago, but I never got around to posting on it, so I will do so now.

After reading about flow, I came to an interesting conclusion: one of the most important components of flow is "clear goals," and such clear goals make video games interesting. Woah! you're thinking. I know, I know, genius.

But it doesn't stop there. My next thought was, "Wouldn't it be interesting to create such a system, something resembling a video game, for ones life?"

Now I've got your attention.

Think about it. What makes games interesting? There's some sort of inherent scoring going on, and the main goal is to increase that score. Now, the "score" may be defined in several ways (getting further in the game, literally increasing the score, etc.), but there is always that score. And it is that score that makes the game interesting. What would a game be without the score to push you to move further and further into the game? Very, very boring.

Same thing with life. Now, I realize that life isn't a video game, but why not apply the same concepts? Create levels, a point system, rewards, etc, and see how it affects life. The first real life video game!

Then again, life is constantly a video game. The question is whether or not it's award winning.

Hm, this is something to think about. I imagine it would be a bitch to actually implement, but the application seems intriguing.

And of course, there's the fact that no amount of "winning" the video game will make you happy. That requires realizing that there is no video game and that you've created the entire illusion to amuse yourself.

Namaste.

INTJ?!

If you're at all interested in personality tests, an interesting/useful one I've found is the Myers-Briggs. I think it's the one we did in Health class in 10th grade. But then again, I didn't pay much attention in health class...

Anyway, the MB test is based on 4 different continuums, the introvert/extrovert, the sensing/intuitive, the thinking/feeling, and the judging/percieving. When I took the test, I came out to be INTJ, which stands for introverted, intuitive, thinking, and judging. From a table on wikipedia that extrapolates the percentage of the human population that's this type, only about 2.1% come out as INTJ. Hm, that's a big minority.

Anyway, take the test for fun if nothing else. Though, like any personality test, take it with a grain of salt. You are you, and not some label. And certainly don't let that label constrict you.

Namaste.

The Stink of Zen

There's a saying in Zen Buddhism about someone that only thinks about the concepts of Zen instead of practicing them. They're said to "stink of Zen."

I find myself suffering from that affliction. (And I can't seem to spell!). Far too much cerebral activity and far too little action. Luckily, I have three graduation parties to look forward to in the next two days. Hopefully that will allow me to shake up all this stuffiness I've built up over the last week.

You see, it's not that I'm bored with Summer or with what I'm doing. It's just that I think I'm missing out on some of the other things I could be doing. You know, like pleasurable (in that very moment) activities. I feel very ethereal right now, very otherworldly. I need some major grounding.

Hm, sounds crazy. Yes.

Namaste.

Quote

We need to pay attention to how we generalize, because we generalize about people in so many different ways. For example, if someone was in a relationship with a person who treated them badly, they tend to generalize and think that everyone they become involved with in the future is going to treat them badly as well. In Buddhism, specificity is very important - we must pay attention to the uniqueness of each circumstance and situation.

- Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche

Quote

Addictions or attachments to things being different than they are need to be upgraded to preferences, so when "what is" is not what you want it to be, you do not suffer over it and your happiness and peace are therefore not controlled by forces outside of your control.

- Bill Harris

Quote

If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?

- Rumi

Interest in Personal Growth

I've thought of an interesting (though not all that new) theory in regards to personal growth and life in general. I call it, quite imaginatively, the Principle of Interest. OOOOOOOH. AAAAAAAAH.

Everyone knows what interest is, but let's get a dictionary definition for clarity's sake: A charge for a loan, usually a percentage of the amount loaned. Wow, after looking for that definition, I realized how important context is in my message. "Interest" has about five or six definitions that might pop up in your mind first. The one I'm using here just happens to be the one that pops up in my head first.

Any-gay (to quote Sean), interest, for our purposes, is when more than the original amount of some "thing" becomes required over time. So, with interest for loan (something we're all familiar with thanks to "higher" (read more expensive) education), if you don't pay the money by time X, you have to pay amount Y more. Pretty simple.

So simple, in fact, that it can be applied to just about any life situation. The Principle of Interest (PI) is why procrastination never works: you'll have to do that "thing" you're putting off eventually, and probably at much higher a cost. The PI is why, in life, it's often better to just bite the bullet. That "right" moment will never come for you to do that one thing, so why not just do it now? If you're planning on doing it eventually, why not just do it now?

Didn't come out quite as eloquently as it was in my head, but that's nothing new.

In short, keep this in mind: if there's something that you have to do that won't benefit from you putting it off (and you'll know when "putting it off" is really a good strategy), consider the fact that you'll have to pay the price eventually anyway, and possibly with interest.

Tada!

Namaste.

You Gotta Eat?

I've noticed a strange phenomena over the past few days. Nothing especially to worry about, just interesting. Over the past few days, I haven't been all that especially hungry. At all. I don't mean that I haven't been eating. I have been, just as much as or more often than I had in the past. In fact, I still eat every 2.5 to 3 hours, like I've read is best (yeah, you know me and reading things about doing things).

Anyway, after the 3 or so hours have passed, I don't feel the hunger that I normally associate with that time. It's like the Pavlovian instinct somehow got killed. I have to "force" myself to (though force is far too strong a word, more like I have to make a conscious decision to) eat. I don't have any problem getting the food down. I just don't really want to eat it.

I'm going to mark this one up to the fact that I am eating regularly. Over the school year, meals can be seperated by five to six hours. That just doesn't happen during the summer. I guess my body just normalizes and gives me the option to not eat.

Then there's also the fact that I'm more or less constantly engaged during the summer. There may be times when I reach a state of overwhelm, but never when I reach a state of boredom. If I'm fully in the "moment," to use a cliche, I don't feel the need to stop that activity and eat.

Interesting. Nothing all that important or profound (especially to someone that's not me), but I just felt like sharing.

You are now free to go about your day.

Namaste.

Mysticism in Rock

Only by Nine Inch Nails

I'm becoming less defined as days go by
Fading away
And well you might say
I'm losing focus
Kinda drifting into the abstract in terms of how I see myself

Sometimes I think I can see right through myself
Sometimes I can see right through myself

Less concerned about fitting into the world
Your world that is
Cause it doesn't really matter anymore
(no it doesn't really matter anymore)
No it doesn't really matter anymore
None of this really matters anymore

Yes I am alone but then again I always was
As far back as I can tell
I think maybe it's because
Because you were never really real to begin with
I just made you up to hurt myself

I just made you up to hurt myself, yeah
And I just made you up to hurt myself

And it worked.
Yes it did!

There is no you
There is only me
There is no you
There is only me
There is no fucking you
There is only me
There is no fucking you
There is only me

Only

Well the tiniest little dot caught my eye and it turned out to be a scab
And I had this funny feeling like I just knew it's something bad
I just couldn't leave it alone, I kept picking at the scab
It was a doorway trying to seal itself shut
But I climbed through

Now I am somewhere I am not supposed to be, and I can see things I know I really shouldn't see
And now I know why, now, now, now I know why
Things aren't as pretty
On the inside

Wow, a mystical message in hard core rock?! I love the internet radio. Almost as much as I love mysticism.

I mean, anatta and the oversoul/Brahma in rock? Amazing.