Delusioned » Reality

Because our children go to school in a war zone…

Philip G — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:04:33 +0000

MJ Safety Solutions has come out with the prefect solution for making our kids safe: Bulletproof school backpacks.

Just what we need, something to make your kids feel like they are going to school in a bullet infested shooting ground. Maybe these shooters would recognize these bags and run knowing they wouldn’t be able to kill that kid! Then again, maybe they’ll just aim straight at them knowing they can shoot, but not kill.

Come on now, has society gotten this bad? It’s starting to make me think of World War II where people had to actively practice war survival skills in order to survive. Has our country sunk this low?

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Philip G — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 17:52:29 +0000

On the subject of schools, I just ran across a fascinating speech by Ken Robinson about creativity and schools. It brings up the question, well rather point, that schools are designed to kill creativity.

In his speech, Do schools kill creativity?, Robinson talks about how schools are designed to work the body of a student working their way up to their heads and then slightly to one side. “We are educating people out of their creativity,” said Robinson.

This speech hits pretty close to home. I am a poster child of something that did exactly the opposite of what happened to Gillian Lynne. Instead of being told I was a dancer (or anything else for that matter), I was told to calm down and often was “joked” to on how I should be on Ritalin.

Needless to say, I ended up in a “professional” job programming, even after a small run on the creative tracks for a few years at the tail end of high school and start of college phases. Due to my upbringings and “understanding” of the world, I figured art was hurting my programming — so I dropped it. I missed a lot back then. If I had seen this video when I was 19, things would have been different indeed.

I was a stereo type of person Robinson spoke of. I grew up with the idea you cannot earn a life making money with art, so I choose to go left brained. School did teach me, code me, to be left brain thinker. It focused more on knowledge, memorization, storage and less on imagination. As Robinson suggested, the whole purpose of our current education system is to produce university professors, living in their heads slightly to one side.

Are schools killing creativity? I think they are. I know they are, from experience. What can we do about it? I think it is time we start learning from our own kids.

Time is going really, really, slow…

Philip G — Tue, 22 May 2007 17:10:11 +0000

This is great. I don’t smoke marijuana, nor have I ever tried it, but I at least know you cannot over dose on that stuff.

If I know this, you would think a cop would, too. And lets not forget the fact that this cop openly admitted to confiscating the dope and cooking it within brownies. Priceless.

News report of the incident:

[youtube]hnZb5wi_jsU[/youtube]
911 call in its entirety

After the hilarity of the incident, there is one thing that bothers me. I am not one to smoke marijuana, but I do know very well it happens to be a lot safer for you than drinking or smoking cigarettes. Lets ignore the fact that it is illegal for no apparent reason and focus on the punishment this cop was given.

If he was an average Joe Smoe on the streets, he and his wife would have been arrested and put into jail for at least 30 days for possession of marijuana. If Joe also admitted to stealing the package, his time may have been greater — or at least with greater fines.

Now, I don’t mind the punishment the cop received. What I don’t like his how everybody else is not let off as easily. What his wife received, a slap on the wrist (if that), should be the same punishment everybody should receive. After all, marijuana is less harmful than smoking cigarettes. Our drug use policy in the US is so as backwards, it is unreal. People should have free choice to screw their bodies up if they want to. We also should not take on so much compassion for somebody that consciously chooses to screw themselves up. It’s nothing but a waste of time and money.

Predictions from 1900

Philip G — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 03:50:17 +0000

This is impressive, apparently Mr. John Watkins wrote an article, “What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years” (easy readable version), asking a number of highly educated and conservative minds to predict what they believe will be in the US at the turn of the century.

What I found most impressive about this list is some of the predictions did indeed come true. While the predictors were off on the details, their general ideas were dead on. Some of them accorded only within the last 30 years. Other predictions, however, still remain pretty far fetched, even with today’s standards.

Freestylin’ in a wheelchair

Philip G — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 18:41:50 +0000

http://www.dailymot….xch4w_chaise-roulante-freestyle

Now that’s what I call determination. That’s a good example of somebody not getting his disability take the best of him. He just grabbed on by the wheels and let it go!

Never forget.

Philip G — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 20:41:29 +0000

1/31/07 … We must never forget the lives that have been waisted in overreaction by the City of Boston. We must never forget people cannot live their lives with the ability to laugh at a cartoon. We must never forget Lite-Brite contains the components of an improvised explosive device, sans the explosives.

On 1/31/07, a couple hooligans placed LED cartoon figure across the city of Boston as well as 9 other cities in efforts to promote their new movie, Alpha Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters (this is by no means an attempt to promote their movie AFTHF:MFT). These hooligans have attempted to add laughter to our lives and therefore must be punished.

This is indeed a non-laughing matter. Cartoons are ruining our chil…oh wait, these are adult cartoons. Okay, cartoons are ruining our adults. We cannot go outside without seeing an “improvised explosive device” in attempts to make us laugh. The humor is all around us. For two weeks, it has gone unnoticed. We must make a stand against these cartoons! We must not take this for what it is — a laughing matter. Our rights are being violated by these cartoons!

Next thing you know, people will be throwing “Nukes” at us. We must take a stand and never forget!

Update: more links upon the horizon:

Warning, these links might distort your perception as to how serious this matter really is:

Car pinball

Philip G — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 17:52:47 +0000

What do cars look like when going through a pinball machine? Not sure, but I’d wager it’ll look something like this NWCN News video shot by a by-standard on the roof top.

Wow. Thank god it doesn’t get that bad here. If you look closely at the people walking, you can see the street is so slick, people are even having trouble walking on it. Now that’s bad!

XM Radio takes a step backwards

Philip G — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 17:48:35 +0000

All thanks to the RIAA, too. The judge as unfortunately ruled in favor of the RIAA. The full details of the article can be located on Yahoo Finance.

The general jist of it is the judge just ruled in favor of the RIAA to prevent XM + MP3 players from “recording” XM braodcasted songs. XM attempted to compare their XM + MP3 player as being nothing more than a radio tuner + cassette player, but unfortunately the judge ruled against it.

I tell you, one of these days RIAA’s reign of terror is going to prevent anybody from owning any music.

Wedding Photos!

Philip G — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 04:53:15 +0000

The wedding photos I have are now posted online. You can view all of them through my personal site’s photo album or through the actual Flickr pages.

I did my best to remove all the obviously bad shots. There are still a few in there that are either crooked or blurred a bit, and some odd light spots (no clue how they happened).

Enjoy the photos. I’ll add notes later on when I get more time.

Tribute to Steve Irwin

Philip G — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 05:36:45 +0000

As you may have herd, or not, by now, Steve Irwin, aka The Crocodile Hunter, has died from a sting through the heart by a stingray. Steve was a bit of a joke in some parts of the world, namely his homeland Australia and their neighbor, New Zealand, but he did love the wild-life. As a fellow wild-life enthusiast, if you’d call me that, I had nothing but respect and admiration for what Steve has been able to do.

This will be a sad day for many as the news populates the world.

Steve, here’s to you mate! You’ll never be forgotten. In tribute: http://irwintribute.ytmnd.com/

Additional Stories:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200609/s1732439.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14663786/
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/09/04/australia.irwin/index.html