| Macho Comedian |
[04 Nov 2009|05:12pm] |
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Johnny Cash |
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I have this weird suspicion that Randall Mario Poffo, better known as Macho Man Randy Savage, really wanted to be a stand-up comedian, but felt compelled to follow in the family business, which was wrestling.
Think I'm talking nonsense? Watch this clip:
Both his father and brother were wrestlers. This probably prompted Macho Man to hide what his family would consider to be a lesser profession.
You could argue that Macho Man actually wanted to be a baseball player, since that's what he was doing before he threw his shoulder out and became a wrestler, but the problem with that argument is that if you look at Macho Man you can tell he's a natural athlete, so being a minor league baseball outfielder was probably something that came naturally to him, and the things that come natural to us are rarely the things that we have a passion for.
My guess is that he tried the baseball thing to avoid falling into the footsteps of his father, but when he had no choice but to become a wrestler he found ways to work in his true passion.
How many of you have a career path that was influenced by your parents?
How many of you are doing something that comes naturally to you while secretly working on your passion?
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| Is Google... |
[31 Oct 2009|05:48pm] |
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symphony of science |
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Everyone remembers the Google screenshots I've captured on this blog?
Well, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) monochromeninja just informed me that this page exists: http://www.gdumb.com
Now that I know someone has this covered, I can get back to work on more serious topics and stop messing around with the silly questions people have for the Internet.
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| Why I am for the Global Blasphemy Law |
[30 Oct 2009|12:16pm] |
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Shakkazombie |
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If you're not familiar with the Global Blasphemy Law allow me to sum up:
No one anywhere on the planet Earth is allowed to, in any way whatsoever, insult any and all religious beliefs, under penalty of something probably very nasty and ludicrously legal.
(If you like, you can read more about it here: http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1027/p08s01-comv.html)
So, why exactly am I for this nonsense when it clearly violates any and all free speech, while also giving these people permission to slap several hefty fines on my person?
Because they couldn't.
And the reason they couldn't is because they wouldn't be allowed to admit they were offended in any way whatsoever, because that would mean that they would have to admit that they held religious beliefs, which, under Global Blasphemy Law, they are not allowed to do.
Allow me to explain, and follow my logic carefully, because it is calculatedly flawed.
1. No one is allowed to insult any religion according to Global Blasphemy Law.
2. Most holy books will insist on its followers not worshiping alternate deities.
3. Belief in another deity or set of beliefs is abhorrent in the eyes of God and therefore an insult to that religion and its people (not to mention the act being punishable by eternal torture).
4. Hence, the mere practice of any religion would be an insult to any other religion, thus making it impossible for anyone to practice anything.
5. World Peace?
So there you have it, problem solved and everyone can go back to just getting on with their lives.
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| Mortality Quote |
[24 Oct 2009|12:05pm] |
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Smashing Pumpkins |
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"Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. Must have been shattering. Stamped into one's memory. And yet, I can't remember it. It never occurred to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction. And time is its only measure." -Rosencrantz
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| Another Doomsday |
[20 Oct 2009|11:44am] |
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Lady Gaga |
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For those of you who haven't figured it out already, (which is no one here now, since the people who read my blog are more intelligent than that) the world ending in 2012 is a hoax:
http://www.physorg.com/news175236478.html
We've seen this nonsense spread everywhere from the Interwebs to the History Channel to the glossies, and a good question to ask ourselves right about now would be, "Why?"
Why what? Why didn't someone laugh in the face of the person who suggested it, why do people continually give into doomsday predictions (see: Y2K), why wasn't this simply printed in the Weekly World News so we could snicker at it while waiting in the checkout line at the market?
People like to feel important. They like to believe that the time they live in is a special one where interesting and grand cosmical events will take place. Take for example the Evangelicals who believe we're living in the "end of days" (note: not the same end of days as 2012 mind you).
What's downright bizarre is how these events people look forward to are ones that will destroy them and everyone they care about.
Chances are doomsday predictions have a sort of social effect that could be beneficial.
For instance, my attempts to get people who claim to believe the world will end Dec. 21, 2012 to write me a check the size of their bank account that will clear on Dec. 22, 2012.
Their apprehension in whipping out the checkbook tells me there is something inside their head that has made the automatic calculation of 2012 being a hoax. Why this something hasn't been brought to the forefront of this person's thinking is beyond me.
Doomsday predictions can also act as a way to get someone to express their fears or ignorance on a particular topic. Y2K struck when people knew less about computers than they do now.
Before it came back from the future to stop itself, I've heard people suggest that the Large Hadron Collider and 2012 are somehow linked.
Why do you suppose people need the world to constantly be on the brink of destruction?
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| Two Movies Hypothetical |
[06 Oct 2009|11:51pm] |
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Somehow someone produced two unauthorized movies about your life.
The first is an independent documentary. The documentary features vignettes of you going about your life completely unaware of the camera crew that must've been hiding in the bushes (or as the bushes) in order to procure this footage. It also includes uncomfortably honest interviews with all your family, friends, and enemies.
The Second movie is a major motion picture from Hollywood. It has all the people you would have suspected playing you and all of your friends and family. Critics and audiences alike find they like the film and it has both a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has a 9 star rating on IMDB.
Which film are you more interested in watching?
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| Mono no AWARE Study |
[29 Sep 2009|12:37am] |
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Yasunori Mitsuda |
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Death is one of those many things your mind blocks out on a day-to-day basis in an attempt to keep you on a mentally even keel.
The reason is because Death is not pleasant and being constantly aware of it will make life rather difficult.
Just try to function in society while being fixated on Death.
You start asking perfectly happy people questions about it they simply don't want to be asked.
These are nice folk who have Death fenced off in a dark and sunless prairie, located on a desolate moon, deep in the subconscious Universe of their minds and here you come in your morbid spaceship asking things like, "I keep thinking about Death from the perspective of being alive, don't you?"
I spent a good portion of last night reading Epitaphs and from a quick bit of math I could tell the majority of them ironically didn't believe in Death (or rather, being dead).
Dr. Sam Parnia and the AWARE Study seem to be fixated on Death.
Their dilemma is that no one wants to hear about Death. Their solution is to not talk about Death and instead talk about consciousness... sorta....
Sources of the above nonsense:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/33055341#33055341 (w/ video)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33055601/ns/today-today_health
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080910090829.htm
"Curiosity did not kill this cat." -Studs Terkel
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| You and your Clone: The Dilemma |
[21 Sep 2009|01:31pm] |
This is supplementary material to the question posed in You and your Clone
We'll presume our situation to be the exact way it was in the previous thought experiment, except this time, as you and your clone are being lead into the room, you are instead seated next to each other.
Sitting on the other side of the table is a tall, thin, and serious looking man in his 50's.
He explains that overnight there was a power surge that deleted all of their documentation and files.
Every security camera tape had been erased and in the darkness there was much confusion.
His point being, the facility has lost track of which room you were placed in and which room the clone was placed in.
How can you go about telling yourselves apart?
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| You and your Clone |
[18 Sep 2009|05:07pm] |
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Morrissey |
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PREFACE
For the sake of this thought experiment, we will use the marvels of Science Fiction and assume the Clone in question is one of those clones that is an exact duplicate of you. It will look exactly like you and have all of your memories.
One evening you enter a cloning facility.
Upon entering you are greeted by an orderly and guided to a plain room with a single bed.
You lie down on the bed and fall asleep.
The following morning you are awoken by the same orderly and lead into a white room.
Centered in the white room is a square table with two chairs, one on either side.
Each chair has in front of it one sheet of paper and one sharpened number two pencil.
Across the room you notice another orderly, that looks exactly like your orderly, simultaneously lead your clone into the room and towards the table.
You and your clone are seated at the table and left alone.
A disembodied voice instructs you and your clone to draw a picture.
Will you and your clone draw the same picture?
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| Internet Anthropology: Round 2 |
[13 Sep 2009|10:30pm] |
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Procol Harum - A Salty Dog |
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While wasting more time typing random phrases and questions into the Google search bar something occurred to me.
The aggregate of searches typed into Google is a window into the human condition.
The questions people ask, their desperation for answers about the unknown; these are the similarities about being human that might be exactly what people need to get past the shallow differences that are created by our post-modern world.
( What are people searching for when they turn to the Internet... )
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| Toby |
[09 Aug 2009|02:32pm] |
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柏原芳恵 |
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Back in college, the editor of the campus magazine nicknamed me Toby.
This didn't really change anything about me. Another personality, a "Toby" with his own distinctive qualities and characteristics never developed.
Oddly, I never felt the urge to correct him when he called me Toby and neither did anyone else. No one else ever called me Toby, just him.
All his calling me Toby really did was allow him to remember my name.
Recently I took an online poll of what people believe.
Below is a list of the more interesting responses.
( The List )
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| The Internets Mood |
[04 Aug 2009|10:58am] |
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Procol Harum |
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A little while back I posted the seemingly outrageous idea that the Internet may be conscious and that we may have given it consciousness by accident.
The question was, "How do we go about figuring out if it actually is?"
This is a difficult question for humans to answer about each other, nevermind bits of information being shared across an international computer network, the majority of which are pictures of cats and silly videos.
Sometimes I can't even tell if the slow moving ape hunched over its shopping cart blocking the cereal aisle in the supermarket is a conscious being or not, but what I can tell is that this particular ape is miserable.
Aha! That's something. Emotions are a clear indication that something conscious-like is going on behind those slow-moving glassy eyes. A something that not only gives it the ability to poorly navigate a shopping cart in front of people that know what they want, but a something that tells it exactly how it feels about it.
Someone on the Internet had to already have noticed this and chances are that someone took the average of everyone's mood and concluded that to be the mood of the Internet.
That someone, or couple of someone's, website is here: http://www.wefeelfine.org
Allegedly we, as a society of the mind of the Internet have become happier since around February 2005.
Now I've done some research to try to figure out what the exact date was that started this turn around from 'miserable ape in the supermarket' to 'slightly less miserable ape that finally realised it would like some cereal too' and I think it was February 15th, 2005, the day the Internet was introduced to YouTube.
Now the question is, how does YouTube assist consciousness and emotion?
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| Ways of Thinking |
[27 Jul 2009|01:30pm] |
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Ennio Morricone |
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How exactly do you think?
It's a strange question, and I'm not sure I even have an answer for it myself.
I wouldn't be able to tell you which thought came first, but I could tell you that they didn't occur in chronological order.
This tells me that they are connected another way, linked by a common thread my mind uncovered that makes it easier or quicker for these thoughts to communicate.
The thoughts however aren't as distinct as the words I'm using now.
Another thing I can tell you is that I mostly think in pictures, except for when I read. It isn't that I'm not imagining the landscapes and characters being described in the pages of the book, I am, but that all comes after a voice in my head reads it back to me.
What I'm saying is that I don't strictly see pictures, like I do when I'm simply thinking.
Oddly, this voice in my head doesn't assist me when I read signs, cereal boxes, or movie posters.
I've thought about this, and it could be because those things are very similar to pictures.
A box of Cheerios is practically a symbol, therefore I believe my brain processes it as one and no longer employs the "voice function" it uses for reading books or magazines.
So what the hell is the point of this rant?
Well, I'd like to know what happens when two people collect the same data and arrive at different conclusions. I'd like to figure out what questions need to be asked in order to determine what's going on behind the curtain of their consciousness.
What goes on in your mind when you read? Do you hear a voice, see pictures, both, neither?
What about music? Does your mind drift into images, do you pick apart the sounds, or are you overcome with emotion to the point where your mental critics shut down?
How long does it take you to count to a minute in your head? Do you use a voice, do you imagine a clock, or do you use your sense of touch and keep count with your heartbeat?
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| Swinging Together |
[28 Jun 2009|05:13pm] |
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Ennio Morricone |
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According to a recent article in Forbes, "research suggests that the brain considers tools to be extensions of the body."
That statement seems somewhat obvious, but it's good to have it backed by some research.
After reading this article it dawned on me that whatever device inside our heads that causes the mind's eye to change the shape of an arm or hand holding a tool must also change our shape when we're involved in a group activity.
Take for instance playing an instrument in a band. Recent studies have shown that the people playing guitar together become mentally synchronized.
Now it's obvious that brains 'swinging together' is a little different than physical contact with a coffee cup, however I still can't help but think that there is a definite similarity between the two.
Basically I'm getting down to two points:
The first point is that this research backs up my Ghost in the Earth hypothesis, but changes it in order to incorporate smaller ghosts.
In order to accept that the Internet is a conscious being, I would also have to accept that so are, orchestras, sports teams, and parades.
The second point is that a key to world peace relies on this very research. It seems like a grand thing to say, but I think it's true. Unlike other cure-all's such as, creating a giant cosmic enemy for us to unify against, this idea would simply take hard work and discipline.
A singularity where each of us can play our own instrument but retain our individuality.
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| "Stop or Keep Going" |
[17 Jun 2009|03:34pm] |
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Here is my latest editing and producing effort, the Kev Hannibal hip-hop video, "Stop or Keep Going" directed by NYC Fifth Column member Kevin A. Lopez.
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| Words |
[14 Jun 2009|10:02pm] |
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It's all over now baby blue |
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The Zen disciple sits for long hours silent and motionless, with his eyes closed. Presently he enters a state of impassivity, free from all ideas and all thoughts. He departs from the self and enters the realm of nothingness. This is not the nothingness or the emptiness of the West. It is rather the reverse, a universe of the spirit in which everything communicates freely with everything, transcending bounds, limitless. ... The disciple must, however, always be lord of his own thoughts, and must attain enlightenment through his own efforts. And the emphasis is less upon reason and argument than upon intuition, immediate feeling. Enlightenment comes not from teaching but through the eye awakened inwardly. Truth is in "the discarding of words", it lies "outside words". -Yasunari Kawabata
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09/boroditsky09_index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis
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| Economic Crisis as reflected by IMDB |
[09 Jun 2009|11:09am] |
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Nobuo Uematsu |
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IMDB polls are typically obvious market research, and I suppose this one is no different, except for how it unwittingly took a snapshot of where a good number of unemployed insomniacs spend their time.
( Read more... )
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