i am constantly having thoughts that i can’t grasp; whisps of ideas float in and out of my head on a daily basis. these ideas usually have something to do with human society, our interaction with the world around us, our future, our past, etc etc etc. when a thought like this enters my head, i have a “moment” that is as singular as can possible be. it hits me hard, my world is rocked for exactly one moment and then it is gone; i can’t hold on and i have a hard time realizing or remembering what that moment was.
sometimes i wonder if this is normal. do other people have thoughts they can’t explain? do they sometimes think that seemingly “normal” things are actually really amazing? things that we know are true, but when you take a second and actually process what is involved, it’s damn near amazing. like the time that i looked through a telescope with my own eyes and actually saw saturn and it’s rings. right there, right above my head, fucking “floating” in space was another planet that rotates around the sun in the same direction as the planet that i live on! and then that turns into the idea that i actually live on a planet. and that planet is itself “floating” in space. and what the hell is space? and then it all starts flooding in. but that moment was very concrete and a result of an actual experience, not just crazy thoughts in my head.
despite my inability to grasp or articulate what most of these ideas are, there is definitely a sense that they are connected somehow. the feeling i get when one hits me is the same regardless of the content of the moment. on occasion, the ideas i’m having do coagulate into something concrete, and i can’t help but want to write a book when that happens.
another moment is getting larger and more explicable as we speak. it comes and goes at the strangest of times: from seeing Pixar’s Cars to watching the world cup to shopping at the grocery store to writing this blog entry.
actual people are behind everything that man creates, and it is truely amazing what we have accomplished with our collective mind (be that good or bad).
every man made thing has been thought up and created by a human mind. every system and structure has been developed and sweated out by a group of actual people with lives and family and happiness and sorrow. when the cool new product from Apple comes out we think, “Wow, Apple sure is hip and cool. I want it!” but i’d say that most of us don’t realize that the entire process, from coming up with the idea to making a prototype to testing it to creating an ad campaign to shipping the products around the world and selling it to consumers, is achieved by the human mind. every little detail of everything that we’ve created is thought out and decided upon by someone.
sure, computer generated animation is generated by a “computer,” but that computer had to first be created by a human and then told what to do by a human.
each of the 32 teams of the world cup had to be flown to germany and boarded for at least a few months and each game had to be organized and tickets had to be sold and a logo had to be designed and television cameras had to be in place and networks from around the world had to receive that single and broadcast it to millions of TVs that were all created in factories that were built and organized all by human minds.
does it amaze you that humans have developed a system of wireless, hand-held, personal communication that allows two devices to connect to each other in a matter seconds regardless of their distance from each other?
i could go on and on and on and on, and every single bit of it amazes me.
Filed under: nerdery
I agree…you fuckin’ hippie.
OK, Eli (and the rest of the gang). Here’s a 6 degrees of wikipedia for you. Get from “Batman” to one of the following: “smallpox”, “Eva Braun”, or “Hippocratic Oath”. GO!
Batman -> homosexuals -> Nazi Germany -> Adolf Hitler -> Eva Braun
Thats only 5! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
from the wikipedia genius. (aka rosa)
batman -> spiderman -> drug overdose -> illness -> medicine -> hippocratic -> hippocratic oath
pretty impressive, huh?
ok so it seven. but i only did 5 on the first one, and its only six arrows, if that’s what your counting!
no, i have nothing better to do. yes, it’s an addiction. yes, i admit i have a problem.
from rosa
wait wait! i found a better one!
batman -> homosexuals -> ancient greece -> hippocrates -> hippocratic oath
im off to bed now will try to do the other one tomorrow. I challenge anyone to beat my record!
seriously rosa, you amaze me day in and day out. is there anything you can’t do?
ohmygod! there is so much that i cant do! I wish i could play an instrument other that the piano. i wish i knew more languages. i wish i could sing. i wish i understood physics better… i could go on and on. really, i cant do all that much. i just have too much free time.
i don’t even KNOW rosa, but i bow to her uncanny ability to master wikipedia. the world of online encyclopedias should be shaking in its boots.
as for batman to smallpox, you’d write the check now because i’m about to cash it. work this one out, batman to ra’s al ghul to virus to smallpox. is that four degrees? it all happened so fast…
so rosa, wanna conquer wikipedia together?
i posted a bigger explaination of the following on my blog, so check that if you want more background. y’all should look up ‘killdozer’ on wikipedia. it’s amazing – i can’t believe i just learned about this a few days ago.
p.s. scrubs is rocking my world right now; anyone hear from andy recently? he wanted to buy my game cube, but nothing back from him yet. it’s on the auction block for the best offer.
b.t.w.
when searching for ‘killdozer’ make sure you search for ‘killdozer (bulldozer)’ to get the part i’m talking about.
you guys are crazy! what should i call this “degrees of wikipedia”?
yes. lets conquer wikipedia.
however, i am in a bit of a hard position as my dad is about to be given a job by jimmy wales creator of wikipedia. so i might have to use a pseudonym. any suggestions?
so whats our first step? proving that you can get from any article to another in just six clicks?
say what? a job at wikipedia? that is amazing! i really don’t know what to say. if he does, try and get me a t-shirt (size small). i did do some research on this and i found this link:
http://tools.wikimedia.de/sixdeg/index.jsp
but when i try to use it, it keeps giving me an error. it looks like someone has beat me to the punch despite the fact that it doesn’t work. oh well.
not at wikipedia, at wikia, which is owned by wales, and is how he makes his money. they are going to protect us from Yell who are suing us (Yellowikis) by taking us over. and they will pay my dad to run it. but i will try and get a t-shirt for you anyway.
ahhh, i see. that is still amazingly awesome! good luck with all of that. it’s funny when i look back at the actual content of the post that all of these comments are connected to and see that they have almost nothing to do with it. and it’s all Nate’s fault (he’s my brother) when he brought up wikipedia again. jerk.
Hey Dukay– I totally have those moments all the time. All sorts of things. Like, sometimes I think about the inside of my body. Like, there’s air coming in my lungs, cells pick it up and carry it to the heart, the heart pumps it to my brain, my brain tells me to jump, and I’m pretty damn good at jumping–something which is an effect of muscles, bones, electric pulses, inner ear balance, memory experience, and more. Anyway, totally. One time I took a personality test and it said that my personality type (and it wasn’t in the others) had a strong sense of “appreciation of beauty.” Bet you’ve got it, too.
i totally agree with you andy, but to me the accomplishments (if you want to call it that) of “nature” are a totally different world to me. there are so many amazing things in the natural world, but those are things that have been developing and evolving for billions of years. in my mind, it’s no surprise that things are complex at this point. the achievements of man (or at least the ones that i’m talking about) have been developed only over the past 200 years or so. THAT is amazing.