I like movies, but there are certain combinations of movies that do not make for the best days. Yesterday The Bucket List happened to be on. A great movie, has a lot to teach about the difference between money and happiness. It also shows that having money can definitely help with happiness, a point most movies gloss over.
However, after that I watched Seven Pounds. Another excellent movie. A great uplifting story that makes you consider the merits of bridges and rocks. I would say more about the lessons learned from the movie, but other than “doing good deeds is good” anything else would tell more of the story than I would like.
More to the point. Those two particular movies in combination should require the use of anti-depressants. They did; however, get me thinking.
We need more random good deeds in the world. At the very least we need more education about kindness and mindfulness. One of my professors was recently teaching a course on Mindfulness which I crashed a couple of times (the perks of being a graduate are great). The concept is excellent, help people develop mindfulness – a largely Taoist/Buddhist concept – and lead generally happier lives through reflection and metacognition.
There really aren’t enough courses, seminars, discussions about this in education. It got me thinking, being that I have no job and a lot of time, I may start pitching a similar idea around the school district and college as a free seminar.
Just a thought, and movies tend to get my wheels moving.
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May 17th, 2009 in
My Life | tags:
Life,
mindfulness,
movies |
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I stumbled on a cool project by Rhett Dashwood last night. In between projects he searched Google Maps for natural formations and building that looked like letters and numbers. The result in a “typeset” made of these finds.
So, there you have my name in the letters Rhett found. The website linked above has the image I pulled the letters from and also has a link to the map with all the markers for the letters and numbers that were found. So before you call “Shopped!” check out the real locations and get an eye full of what man and nature can make that resemble our language.
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In this diverse world, we need to remember one thing. White people have problems too. These are serious problems! Problems like: Where is my gate pass for the country club? Why do other people speak non-English languages? and, How can I further “Where’s Waldo” my income for tax season?
Because remember, white people are people too. Just like other people we have problems. White People Problems.
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I’ve been known to play some games. I can thus attest to the truth of the the statement above. In fact, I was playing Burnout 2 with some friends the other night and a very similar discussion came up.
Now, if you don’t play Burnout here is the basic premise: You have cars, you blow stuff up. Ok, not there are some races, but the parts we love playing are events where the goal is simply to wreck as many cars as possible within a time limit.
This skews your image of reality after awhile. You start looking at intersection as chances to score points and your fellow drivers as targets. I also used to play Forza Motorsports a lot. By a lot I mean that I had unlocked the vast majority of cars and memorized most of the courses. Driving at over 100 mph and taking sharp corners at 60+ began to feel like a natural thing to do. Luckily my city is on a grid system and provides few places that would seem remotely race worthy in the Forza sense of things.
Fortunately for the world, games don’t shape minds to the degree that the media would like you to believe. I still drive the speed limit (generally) and have not been involved in a single street race. But when I hit the open road, I like to check that mirror and look at all the people who won’t be winning any races that day.
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Well, I caught this from Parallax who got it from Spunky. And despite my lack of meme indulgence as of late, this is decently witty!
1. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random – The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
2. Click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 – The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
3. Visit http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ – The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result.
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March 18th, 2009 in
Blogosphere |
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