Are we fighting a war?

674 days ago

I just watched the movie “Idiocracy” as recommended by Brian and Joe. In the words of d’Arcy Norman“damn. that movie was depressing, funny, and awesome”. It tells the story of a distopian future,...

I just watched the movie “Idiocracy” as recommended by Brian and Joe. In the words of d’Arcy Norman“damn. that movie was depressing, funny, and awesome”. It tells the story of a distopian future, where due to the fact that smart people have less children than stupid people, by the year 2500, smart people have died out. Everyone is incredibly stupid. Those left spend their time drinking “Brawndo, The thirst mutilator. It’s got electrolytes!” and watching people get kicked in the balls on television. It’s a future where everyone behaves exactly as Kraft, Walmart, etc want us to behave. It’s a brilliant cautionary tale and I highly recommend watching it.

Idiocracy Poster

Idiocracy poster (via Wikipedia)

Will it happen though?
Is there a possibility that humanity is doomed to get dumber? I think yes. There are many different reasons why this may or may not be so (all of which better suited for a non-wee-hours-of-the-morning post), but I think the largest of those is that in a world of stupid people, the corporations win. Corporations are psychotic entities that would do anything to get us to behave as they want and they have a lot of power (as described in another thought-provoking move, the Corporation). The power is evident everywhere. They are doing their damndest to use all media at their disposal to dumb-down children and make them into perfect buying machines, doing their bidding.

How do we stop it? We fight back in the schools. If education can be revolutionized (and there are many smart people working on it) then we can teach the young how to take back the power from the corporations and to make them do our bidding instead. Eating healthy,  exercising, learning and being compassionate are what smart people do and we need to ensure that despite the corporation’s efforts, everyone is given the tools and motivation to do so.

This is a war, it’s humanity VS. the corporations.We are fighting to see who controls who. If we get real about being flexible and innovative enough to fix education and make it a place where people learn to become smart enough to take back power from our creations.

Kiva – 11 months later.

682 days ago

I joined kiva.org and gave my first loan 11 months ago. 1 Month later (almost a year ago) I wrote a blog post titled “Kiva: The Cheapest way to help poor...

I joined kiva.org and gave my first loan 11 months ago. 1 Month later (almost a year ago) I wrote a blog post titled “Kiva: The Cheapest way to help poor people“. It described how Kiva is a great way to get your feet wet with giving, due to the fact that you loan money as opposed to giving it. It also goes into some depth as to the academic arguments surrounding micro-lending.

So after 11 months how do I feel?

Themes – A personal journey

683 days ago

My site has gone through a lot of them changes over it’s history. Even though one of the bloggers that I admire most (at least before he went off the deep...

My site has gone through a lot of them changes over it’s history. Even though one of the bloggers that I admire most (at least before he went off the deep end) disagrees with theme changes, I feel that creating and changing my themes has allowed me to flesh out my ideas around aesthetics as well as my sense of self and personal style. I started university believing that I had no artistic talent whatsoever and have slowly come to realize that I just never spent any time developing it.  I treat my theme as a personal journey, it showcases my knowledge, ability and feelings at a given point in time and allows me to show everyone in a visual way when those things change by updating my theme.

So although I’ve lost a few of the steps along the way, here is a subset of the themes I’ve hacked along the way…