Sometimes you see a quote so profound that you must share. I didn’t find the post itself that profound (you can find it here, The French Method – :: LEAST I COULD DO FORUM ::, and decide for yourself), but the poster, Ryan Sohmer, ended with a quote that came from The Wonder Years:

“When you’re a little kid you’re a bit of everything; Scientist, Philosopher, Artist. Sometimes it seems like growing up is giving these things up one at a time.”

It struck me as a very true idea and it makes me sad that so many poeple find it neccessary to let go of so much to “grow up”. I believe the world would be a much better place if we looked through the eyes of babes every now and then to remember how wonderous the world really is.

PvPonline » Archive » The Dark Hype

Scott Kurtz, the talent behind PVP (as if he needs an introduction), gave us a few words regarding spending money at a movie theater that I can’t help but agree with.

Hollywood, you can blame piracy for all your troubles, but maybe if you stopped showing us the last page of the book first, and just let us READ the damned thing, we’d feel more satisfaction about the money we’re spending at the theaters.

Specifically he was talking about all the promos and hype surrounding the Dark Knight movie. I have a very similar feeling about Hellboy and others. At this point, I feel I should mention that I get to see many movies for free via a perk of knowing certain people. Even with this advantage, I am often let down by an excellent movie that would have be a great experience if it weren’t for the fact that the whole movie felt like deja-vu. These days, if you want to be fully entertained by a big budget movie, you have to shut yourself off from all media so you don’t see the whole movie in disjointed clips before you sit down with your bucket of popcorn.

I have an idea. These big budget hollywood movies could get even more hype wrung out of these, get just as much exposure, and preserve the actual movie experience (possably even enhance it) by making the promos a prequil to the movie itself. Something that is not neccessary to get the movie’s story, but at the same time, adds to it. While you still have all the camera, make-up, sets and such, take two weeks to shoot the promo prequils that would be planned into the overall production. That’s how I would market a movie.

**Warning: If you do not like to read, skip to long story short below!**

It struck me today how odd individual human perception is, in broad terms, of course. What struck me was that someone mentioned to me about a bicentennial. He got mixed up and said that the country’s bicentennial will be next year, which he immediately realized he misspoke. Not a big deal, but it got me to analyzing my own perception of our government. I was born after the bicentennial had passed for our nation. As such, I have never been witness to a major event marking the age of our country. This may our may not contribute to the following perception as realized today.

I realized that I had a general perception of our country as having always been here due to that its state was established for as long as I have been self aware. As such, without specific reference, to my general consciousness, our country is equal to all other established governments that were established prior to my awareness. This is odd because I have academic awareness that our country is young in comparrison to others. I just have to put an effort (albeit a small effort) into this realization in my thought process. This is not limited to national awareness, however. This also is reflected in my awareness of other people and things around me such as parents, houses, et cetera. Without thinking specifically of their age, my parents and grandparents are equal to me. They were here before me. It is as if rudementary thought processes group items into “here before me” and “younger than me.” This also gives a certain perception of agelessness to the concepts in question.

What is the point here, you may ask? What is the application of this idea?

Well, if you consider that this may be a phenomenon shared amongst many if not all peoples, it would explain many a national superiority complex. It also helps explains why many are upset and confused by the loss of older loved ones.

Of course it could just a personal phenomenon due to my own thought processes which are very often different than most others. If you read this, please look into your own perceptions and share your thoughts. For those readers out there, the long story short is a lie. Nobody “did it.”

Long Story Short:

The son’s friend’s second cousin did it.

The following are not my own words, but I thought they were interesting enough to share. They are derived from Thomas Sowell who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy. You can read more about the author of the following passage at Wikipedia.

By Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Many years ago, a great hitter named Paul Waner was nearing the end of his long career. He entered a ball game with 2,999 hits — one hit away from the landmark total of 3,000, which so many hitters want to reach, but which relatively few actually do reach.

Waner hit a ball that the fielder did not handle cleanly but the official scorer called it a hit, making it Waner’s 3,000th. Paul Waner then sent word to the official scorer that he did not want that questionable hit to be the one that put him over the top.

The official scorer reversed himself and called it an error. Later Paul Waner got a clean hit for number 3,000.

What reminded me of this is the great fervor that many seem to feel over the prospect of the first black President of the United States.

No doubt it is only a matter of time before there is a black president, just as it was only a matter of time before Paul Waner got his 3,000th hit. The issue is whether we want to reach that landmark so badly that we are willing to overlook how questionably that landmark is reached.

Paul Waner had too much pride to accept a scratch hit. Choosing a President of the United States is a lot more momentous than a baseball record. We the voters need to have far more concern about who we put in that office that holds the destiny of a nation and of generations yet unborn.

There is no reason why someone as arrogant, foolishly clever and ultimately dangerous as Barack Obama should become president — especially not at a time when the threat of international terrorists with nuclear weapons looms over 300 million Americans.

Many people seem to regard elections as occasions for venting emotions, like cheering for your favorite team or choosing a Homecoming Queen.

The three leading candidates for their party’s nomination are being discussed in terms of their demographics — race, sex and age – as if that is what the job is about.

One of the painful aspects of studying great catastrophes of the past is discovering how many times people were preoccupied with trivialities when they were teetering on the edge of doom. The demographics of the presidency are far less important than the momentous weight of responsibility that office carries.

Just the power to nominate federal judges to trial courts and appellate courts across the country, including the Supreme Court, can have an enormous impact for decades to come. There is no point feeling outraged by things done by federal judges, if you vote on the basis of emotion for those who appoint them.

Barack Obama has already indicated that he wants judges who make social policy instead of just applying the law. He has already tried to stop young violent criminals from being tried as adults.

Although Senator Obama has presented himself as the candidate of new things — using the mantra of ‘change’ endlessly — the cold fact is that virtually everything he says about domestic policy is straight out of the 1960s and virtually everything he says about foreign policy is straight out of the 1930s.

Protecting criminals, attacking business, increasing government spending, promoting a sense of envy and grievance, raising taxes on people who are productive and subsidizing those who are not — all this is a re-run of the 1960s.

We paid a terrible price for such 1960s notions in the years that followed, in the form of soaring crime rates, double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment. During the 1960s, ghettoes across the countries were ravaged by riots from which many have not fully recovered to this day.

The violence and destruction were concentrated not where there was the greatest poverty or injustice but where there were the most liberal politicians, promoting grievances and hamstringing the police.

Internationally, the approach that Senator Obama proposes — including the media magic of meetings between heads of state — was tried during the 1930s. That approach, in the name of peace, is what led to the most catastrophic war in human history.

Everything seems new to those too young to remember the old and too ignorant of history to have heard about it.