I bet he likes star trek too...

I love this ad... I laugh just as hard at it now as I did when it first came out.

As a society, our technology has evolved more in the last hundred years than we have in the last thousand years.  The role television plays in furthering technology is undeniable.  The 60's Star Trek mobile communicators look remarkably like the first versions of flip phones.  Many medical revolutions were inspired by movies and futuristic concepts.  It's amazing, to me, how the artistic mind of a screenwriter can stimulate the scientific mind of engineer or scientist.  The flip side, of course, is when an inspired scientist gives ideas to a screenwriter.

This back and forth movement continues to stimulate our minds and plays an integral part to our continued momentum.  I hope to be around for a long time to see what amazing things we come up with next.  Who is to say what the future holds?  Maybe someone soon will unlock the genetic drift that causes us to age.  What if we can, one day, move the marker back and stay 25 forever?  The scariest part  for me is wondering how we will handle technology in the future.  I worry that if our morals stay how they exist now, we will only offer the newest and hottest ideas to the highest paying bidder.  If I'm 95 years old one day and a scientist offers me a way to be young and healthy again, but I can't afford it, do I just die?  Can we stand idly aside and allow people to perish because they can't contribute enough to a doctors' retirement fund?

I've staged this question in the future and I truly do worry about how we will handle situations like this as they arise... but we face a similar dilemma now.  How many hours of debate transpire in Washington over how to treat illegal immigrants in medical emergencies?  How many hospitals have closed in the last few years because insurance companies won't pay for the treatment of a human being?  How many people are refused a better life because we refuse to add them to our precious society?  Our neighbors to the south and across the seas sometimes live in reprehensible circumstances--but we'd rather go to Chili's and eat twenty dollars worth of ribs than consider a hungry family in Mexico.  As the planet and humanity evolved, it didn't place borders between our countries; that's a man-made concept.  Unfortunately, your life can differ greatly if you're born on one side or the other of about 100 feet.

So where does that put us in a few hundred years?  Will we still be cheering our successes while simultaneously scorning our neighbors or are we capable of evolving to some level of equanimity?

I've stopped laughing.

...Don't say "wind farm." I'm already feeling gassy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mTLO2F_ERY

I really really really love this advertisement.  Our society has had an enormous push in the last 25 years for finding renewable energy.  Finding renewable sources of building materials.  Finding things to incorporate into our lives that wont tax our planet any more than we already do.  Out of all the animal species in the world, we are the only ones that are truly detrimental to our home.

Science has proven that our planet continuously cycles through regeneration over millions of years.  We have a very limited existence compared to our planet, but we understand through the shifting of tectonic plates and the earth's molten core, there is a recycling process that occurs.  By extracting fossil fuels and burning various elements out of our planet, what building blocks are we removing that will be necessary in a future earth?  It is no wonder to me that by burning these elements we are also destroying the atmosphere--those elements belong in the earth, not in the air.  Most scientist believe there were hundreds of pivotal moments in evolution that brought us into being.  The miracle that is human life came to exist because certain elements happened to merge together. Those elements happened to be photosynthetic and stimulated by the sun.  The resulting combination of precise heat and chemical combinations started the building blocks that created blah blah blah... each step in the process has a critical moment that must have occurred or none of us would be here.  So what inertia have we ceased by removing such a large percentage of fossil fuel variables?  The equation of the future has been dramatically altered by our existence--and it needs to end before we become our own undoing.

Looking forward, there are so many awesome, renewable substances we can use that have such a low impact on our environment.  Recycling innovations are even starting to find uses for discarded plastic bags by turning them into wood composite products to make weather resistant decking.  By harnessing wind and water movement and transitioning into vehicles and utilities based solely on electric, we could greatly reduce our footprint.   As we look into the future, we need to make sure our planet is still the beautiful, lush, green place it was when we came to inhabit here.

...take a left at Starbucks and when you see a giant ass, go inside...

First of all, despite the giant ass they must walk through, people are clamoring for the prospect of a new career--that is funny and sad to me at the same time.

During ancient times, people worked jobs they were good at because it helped their neighbors or community.  If you were a skilled craftsman, you made that your livelihood.  If your family worked as farmers for generations, it was important to continue that tradition because it supplied food for miles around.  People found satisfaction in what they did because it was rewarding and fulfilling.

In today's society, I feel that too many people find jobs because they are trying to support families or because they need to provide for themselves--not because they enjoy work.  I have met dozens of people who have law degrees, criminal justice degrees, music degrees, and so on, working as managers and area directors at Chilis.  Granted, running a restaurant can be a fulfilling career, and some of those people are very happy in the corporate casual dining world, however, it is a trap for others.  It was becoming a trap for me as well.  I worked with Chilis for 11 years and had been promised positions within the company that pay upwards of $100,000/year plus potential for an additional $30,000 in bonuses. I quit without giving notice.  I burned that bridge when school started to focus on being a student.  Why?  The money isn't worth it.  I was a miserable person to be around and felt like such a looser every time I got dressed for work.  It's a great company and there isn't anything majorly wrong with the job except that it didn't make me happy.

Our lives are too short to feel stuck in careers that do not fulfill us.  The average person sleeping 8 hours a night, will be awake for 112 hours a week... 40 to 50 of those hours are spent working full time at a job.  If you are going to commit nearly half of your time to something, shouldn't you be enjoying it?

So, my question to the world would be, are you walking in or out of the butt at this point?