Recently I got to see Blue Man Group perform in Seoul, and it was fantastic! While I’ve seen their various shows and concerts before, it was with a new perspective that I watched them portray their commentary and musings on conformity, on group-think, and on the plight of modern man in a rapidly changing world. After living in East-Asia for nearly a year, I’ve had the chance to see first-hand how confusing it can be for a culture to try to keep up with all the changes that are happening, especially a culture that teaches conformity in every aspect of daily life. (more…)
Have you ever noticed that no matter what problems come your way, you nearly always find a resolution that is good enough? No matter how big your troubles may seem, they come and go? Life goes on. (more…)
For as much as we love to know about the world around us, very few people actually take the time to really learn about the things they are interested in. Most people settle for sound bites, filtered through the popular media and pre-packaged to take no more than a couple minutes per story.
Now even most educational shows have been reduced to 5 minute segments, each segment an entirely self contained cliff-hanger for the next segment (just watch an hour of the Discovery or History channels to see what I mean). It seems people who channel-surf would find a show in the middle and have no way to figure out what was going on, so they would continue past it. Now anyone can drop in to the middle of a show and quickly catch up. (more…)
For the last two weeks, there has been protesting (and some rioting) in Seoul over the decision to resume importing American beef into South Korea. The cause for all the concern: the fact that US beef has been connected to a case of mad cow disease in Canada. In other words, the US beef supply is (to some unknown degree) tainted with mad cow, and therefore should not be consumed under any circumstances.
In my very first article, Understanding What You Read, I noted that statistics can be manipulated to convey many different objectives, agendas, and aims. Now I would like to elaborate on this. (more…)
Where do you define the boundary of ’self’ in your world?
Does ’self’ end at the physical boundary of your body? That doesn’t really make sense if you think about it, as we typically include surrounding personal space in our description of ’self’. If someone enters your personal space, you are very aware of it, even if your body hasn’t been touched. (more…)
