The Writer's Poke

Big fan of artists that record their songs in other languages. Kudos, Peter. Hope this one sold well for you.

An empty city built for one million people.

So, are you typical?

What is it like to be a girl growing up in Nepal?

Unreal. China doesn't have a mall culture. So, they built a mall twice as big as Mall of America, and no one came. No airports or highways to support it, and only 1% occupied. My thought: great place to set a sci-fi apocolypse movie...

Students seem to love the poetry of Robert Frost; my guess is: they love it because it's highly accessible, and the selections provided in the typical anthology are easy to relate to. Take "The Road Less Travelled," for example. Who can't imagine being at a fork in the road?  In the poem, the traveler admits that both roads have their appeal, but the choice he selects is the road less travelled. And that, he says, has made all the difference. What the "difference" is, of course, isn't clear, and the traveler admits that he'll probably never be able to try out the other road. So, how does he actually know if taking the less travelled road made more or less difference? Even in this rather "clear" poem, some ambiguity remains. But it got me to thinking. Wouldn't it make a great phone app to see what the other road was like? These days, we have the GPS technology. We wouldn't have to "guess" at all. In a sense, we could ...

Pretty amazing statement by 19 year-old Iowa native Zach Wahls. And oh yeah, he was raised by two women. Lesbians.

Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Hundred-Dollar Kisses," available in the While Mortals Sleep collection, makes an interesting observation. In the story, Henry George Lovell has been arrested for assaulting Verne Petrie with a telephone. I don't want to give away the full details of the story, but Lovell's motive is this: "Everybody pays attention to pictures of things. Nobody pays attention to the things themselves." So, think about that. Lovell was so upset with Petrie that he wanted to do him bodily harm. The reason: Petrie didn't pay attention to "the things themselves." This story reminds me of what's currently going on in Egypt. After a couple of weeks of protest, the Egyptian leader has finally decided to resign. We watch the celebration of the Egyptian people on our televisions, but all we see is "the picture of things" and not "the things themselves." Isn't that interesting? For most of us, we have no i...

A recent Cracked article ( http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-great-artists-who-make-it-really-hard-not-to-hate-them/ ) listed Kevin Smith and Quentin Taratino as great artists that have horrible real-life personalities. Personally, I'm not sure why this should matter to the average film goer. It's unlikely that I will ever meet either one of these guys, and I doubt that we'll ever go out to dinner together. If we did, then maybe it would matter. Maybe I would learn first hand what arrogant, full-of-themselves pricks they really are. Until then, however, my only real interaction with them is through their work, and their work is more than solid; it's exceptional. I'm sure part of the reason I like their films so much is because they care about dialogue. Modern films don't generally pay much attention to dialogue. These days, people go to films for CGI and 3D effects. I, on the other hand, like films that pay attention to language. Smith and Taratino both brand the...

This week, the President gave his State of the Union address. The reaction to it illustrates pretty clearly the difference between listening and interpreting. If we like someone, or if we know that their point of view on a topic is aligned with ours, we're more likely to listen to what they have to say. On the other hand, if we don't like someone, or if we know that their point of view on a topic is not aligned with ours, we're more likely to interpret what they have to say, which prevents us from being able to listen fully. In my use of the term, "interpreting" refers to such things as 1) discounting the person's honesty or sincerity, 2) finding points of disagreement before fully hearing everything the person has to say, 3) reviewing our own beliefs and philosophies to find a base platform on which to reject any message that is counter to what we thought before the person began speaking. Sometimes I wonder why people give speeches, or even try to com...

The United States may be the greatest country in the world. Who's to say? But why would Americans that have never travelled outside the country's borders try to make that claim? Christianity may be the "true faith," but why do Christians send out missionaries to convert the "pagans" without learning the beliefs of the individuals they're trying to convert? If listeners agree with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and the political views they hold, is there a danger to continue listening to their radio shows rather than listening to shows that might provide different perspectives? My thesis is a simple one: Whether we wish to examine culture, religion, or politics, we find truth in the familiar. That which is "foreign" to us -- or that which we don't expose ourselves to on a regular basis -- likely won't seem to be as valuable, or to hold the same "truth." We make our judgements based on what we know and observe, and right...

"It's tragic that it is easier for the severely mentally ill to get a gun than adequate medical care." -- Michio Kaku

I'm preparing to teach a Humanities class with the title "The Art of Being Human." What a weird title for a class. According to the course description, the course should basically show students how others have attempted to live worthwhile lives. Admittedly, trying to teach others how to live worhtwhile lives might be going a bit above my paygrade, as they say. My sole hope, really, is just to teach people to examine their own lives. I'd like my students to be able to differentiate between art and artificial. Unfortunately, many of us live our lives in a "paint-by-numbers" style. Now, I ask you: Can paint-by-numbers be considered art? Sure, the finished product can be pretty, and there's a value to the systematic, ordered approach. But in the end, it's not art. To me, the true value to living a "worthwhile life" is to avoid living the sort of predetermined life that others would set for you -- whether it be promoted by cultural, famili...

Philosophers may debate it, but most people accept that we have free will. While we can all think of exceptions to the rule, for the most part the buck stops with us. We are responsible for our actions. Now here's the fun part. Some religious traditions promote the idea that, yes, we have free will, but we really shouldn't be using it. That's not exactly how they would state it, of course. Such traditions would most likely state that part of our "free will" is to freely avoid acting on improper impulses, etc. Yes, you have the free will to do x, y, or z, but instead, accept that doing x, y, or z is "wrong" or "sinful" or "against God's plan," and don't do it. Can we use our free will to question why x, y, or z is wrong, sinful or against God's plan? Well, no. Because doing so would itself be wrong, sinful, or against God's plan. Please don't question. Be obedient. Offer yourself up as a willing sacrifice. Submi...

The average person living in the United States today has more freedom of choice than any person living in the entire history of humankind. But does more choice equate to more happiness? How do we cope with the infinite number of options we "enjoy"? Psychologists have developed tests that indicate that too many choices lower overall satisfaction levels. In other words, if we have a few options, that's optimal, but when we have to sift through dozens of choices, it's too much for us to handle. We become numb through oversaturation. Common sense would suggest the truth behind the curse of choice, too. Think about going to the store to buy a box of cereal. Does it really matter that the grocery store stocks a hundred different kinds of cereal, or are you simply going to pick out Honey Nut Cheerios like you have done every previous time? It takes a special kind of person to select an unknown cereral from the more tried and true options available. Or, think about some...

Dalai Lama has noted that the Tibetan language does not have a word for "guilt." This seems very strange to me, as "guilt" is a very common emotion felt in the English-speaking world. Can it be that Tibetan people don't feel guilt, or do they feel some emotion like guilt, but simply attribute a different word to what they're feeling? And if the attribution is different, is the feeling itself different?  In other words: Does language create reality? The common assumption would be that we create words to fill a void, a need. If a language doesn't include a specific word, then that would seem to indicate that no void exists. The Tibetans apparently never felt the need to create a word for the emotion of guilt. In The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker suggests that "We are verbivores, a species that lives on words." According to Pinker, "language is above all a medium in which we express our thoughts and feelings." But if we don'...

These days, most people won't bother to pick up a coin on the floor unless it's at least a quarter. If you were at the grocery store and found a quarter, you'd probably smile at your good fortune, pick it up, and put it in your pocket. Would you even consider taking it to Customer Service to report it as lost? Try it some time, and record the bemused look on the associate's face. Your honesty will probably make the rounds of the breakroom for the rest of the day. Why do we consider a quarter so insignificant? We cannot know the true value of that quarter to the person that lost it, but we judge based solely on our own situation that the quarter is virtually meaningless -- although not quite meaningless, as we willingly bent over to pick it up. If we found a wallet, whether it had ID included or not, most of us would probably take it to Customer Service, yes? Perhaps the wallet only included a quarter, but we'd still turn in the wallet. But what if we found ten...

I like religions and mythology more than most people, but I also like science more than most people. And, I cannot understand how someone can get so into religions and not spend time learning mythology and science. Seriously. Enjoy Christmas, but think about learning some science. And, don't ignore the connections between mythology and modern religions.

Yes, I know that most people are thinking ahead to 2011 Goals -- at least people that make goals -- but that's too far away, really. Instead, I've decided to make some 2010 Goals. Actually, I made my 2010 goals at the beginning of the year. As always, I experienced some successes and some failures. It's good to look back and examine the past, but why not focus on the now, too? Setting a beginning-of-the-year goal, while good, is artificial. We're given a new beginning each morning we wake up, and we should use the start of each day to commit to what we want out of life. So, while others are taking one last week to procrastinate on starting 2011 goals, I'm using each day this week to keep working away at my goals in 2010.