Friday, December 28, 2007
Climbing Memama's Tower
Since we were born, we've been passing this old forestry tower to get to my Grandmother's house. Today, we climbed it.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
TED: Ideas Worth Spreading
Every year, hundreds of the greatest thinkers and changers on the planet, by invitation only, come together for no other reason than to exchange their great ideas. Scientists, philosophers, designers, artists, musicians, technologists--all kinds of people at the cuffs of their fields have been meeting together for years without me even knowing about it! Are you kidding me?! I just couldn't believe it. Learning about this was like someone finally telling me about Christmas.
The event I'm referring to is called TED. What used to be strictly for Technology, Entertainment, and Design has now branched out into countless other venues.
The attendees are given 18 minutes to give a presentation, or TED talk, and the results are always astounding. This event is letting people in a community of genius and action, who would never have otherwise gotten a chance to meet, hear cross-disciplinary ideas from one another and make real change and help others.
But I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Chase, this is nice and all, but I'm not one of the greatest thinkers and doers on the planet yet. What about me? Why can't I hear these talks? I still have great ideas and potential to change the world!" Well, if you're not thinking that, you definitely should be. And here's great news for you!
TED as an event might be invitation only, but the thoughts are for everyone. On TED.com, you can watch over 150 Ted Talks online, together covering almost every subject imaginable. God, poverty, technology, philosophy, design, globe warming, peace, love. It's all there!
Think about how great it would be to listen just for a little while to one of the guys who discovered the double helical structure of DNA, or sit down for a spell and chat with Richard Dawkins, famous atheist, or Paster Rick Warren, author of A Purpose Driven Life. Al Gore was there, too. He gave his PowerPoint to the TEDsters before we ever saw it as An Inconvenient Truth. Watch incredible performances! See the ways you always thought be shaken by a brilliant presentation!
I'm extremely excited about this concept and have been so for months! In the end, though, what makes these talks so important may not be that they are so brilliant, though many of them are. The important thing to me is what it represents. I hope that we as humans can learn to listen to new ideas from all kinds of sources and use them as the lumber for our own revolutions, innovations, and change. TED.com is a great source of intriguing ideas, but there are other's too. You're a source, for instance, and so am I. The way we make change is by acknowledging new ideas, pondering them, evaluating them, and finally--and most necessarily--acting upon them. This, I believe, is how the world really changes.
The man below sings a multi-lingual jig with many African languages worked in, and even a little English! It's one of my favorites:
The event I'm referring to is called TED. What used to be strictly for Technology, Entertainment, and Design has now branched out into countless other venues.
The attendees are given 18 minutes to give a presentation, or TED talk, and the results are always astounding. This event is letting people in a community of genius and action, who would never have otherwise gotten a chance to meet, hear cross-disciplinary ideas from one another and make real change and help others.
But I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Chase, this is nice and all, but I'm not one of the greatest thinkers and doers on the planet yet. What about me? Why can't I hear these talks? I still have great ideas and potential to change the world!" Well, if you're not thinking that, you definitely should be. And here's great news for you!
TED as an event might be invitation only, but the thoughts are for everyone. On TED.com, you can watch over 150 Ted Talks online, together covering almost every subject imaginable. God, poverty, technology, philosophy, design, globe warming, peace, love. It's all there!
Think about how great it would be to listen just for a little while to one of the guys who discovered the double helical structure of DNA, or sit down for a spell and chat with Richard Dawkins, famous atheist, or Paster Rick Warren, author of A Purpose Driven Life. Al Gore was there, too. He gave his PowerPoint to the TEDsters before we ever saw it as An Inconvenient Truth. Watch incredible performances! See the ways you always thought be shaken by a brilliant presentation!
I'm extremely excited about this concept and have been so for months! In the end, though, what makes these talks so important may not be that they are so brilliant, though many of them are. The important thing to me is what it represents. I hope that we as humans can learn to listen to new ideas from all kinds of sources and use them as the lumber for our own revolutions, innovations, and change. TED.com is a great source of intriguing ideas, but there are other's too. You're a source, for instance, and so am I. The way we make change is by acknowledging new ideas, pondering them, evaluating them, and finally--and most necessarily--acting upon them. This, I believe, is how the world really changes.
The man below sings a multi-lingual jig with many African languages worked in, and even a little English! It's one of my favorites:
Sunday, December 02, 2007
There's no "I" in Statement
One of the most compelling impulses I seem to have is the tendency to use "I" statements. I'm good at this. I like to do that. When this happens, this is what I like to do. It like a very natural thing to do, but it occurs to me that every time I make an "I" statement, I almost always find the statement incomplete or incorrect, not because I enjoy lying, but because "I" statements are much more dynamic than I thought at first.
When I make a statement about myself, what I am really doing is thinking about what I've done or how I've felt in the past, marking a tendency in my mind, adjust that tendency to create harmony with the way I already think of myself, and then making the statement. After all, it's very difficult to describe something that constantly changes, and it's much more comfortable to think of myself as predictable to my own psyche. But am I? Certainly not. As much as I'd like to think I know myself, I cannot always express my tendencies correctly or predict my reactions accurately, so statements I make about myself I find to be awkward at best.
Instead of making "I" statements, which are in essence just silly predictions--"I'm pretty laid back", "I don't cry at movies", "I do my best work under pressure"--maybe the most accurate and compelling way we have to describe ourselves is by simply living. Instead of locking myself into a certain prediction that I may feel so obligated to fulfill that I alter my actions just to fit it, maybe I should allow myself to live naturally and leave the tendency marking and prediction making to those who see me live. In this way, I have lived not up to a false and trivial standard set by an "I" statement, but simply lived and let others tell the stories. For some reason, perhaps because of their wider perspective, I find that others are much better at describing me than I am.
When I make a statement about myself, what I am really doing is thinking about what I've done or how I've felt in the past, marking a tendency in my mind, adjust that tendency to create harmony with the way I already think of myself, and then making the statement. After all, it's very difficult to describe something that constantly changes, and it's much more comfortable to think of myself as predictable to my own psyche. But am I? Certainly not. As much as I'd like to think I know myself, I cannot always express my tendencies correctly or predict my reactions accurately, so statements I make about myself I find to be awkward at best.Instead of making "I" statements, which are in essence just silly predictions--"I'm pretty laid back", "I don't cry at movies", "I do my best work under pressure"--maybe the most accurate and compelling way we have to describe ourselves is by simply living. Instead of locking myself into a certain prediction that I may feel so obligated to fulfill that I alter my actions just to fit it, maybe I should allow myself to live naturally and leave the tendency marking and prediction making to those who see me live. In this way, I have lived not up to a false and trivial standard set by an "I" statement, but simply lived and let others tell the stories. For some reason, perhaps because of their wider perspective, I find that others are much better at describing me than I am.
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