Yes!

We recently spent some time in a wonderful little town named Yellow Springs, OH. It's a great place, full of small shops, used book stores and art, art, art everywhere. Even the telephone poles are decorated, wearing knitted "cozies" in riotous colors - sadly, I failed to take a photo of any of them. I'll be sure to photo a few next time we're out there.

I did manage to secure a photo of a lion. Actually, my lovely and talented wife took these shots. We were temporarily parked and I noticed this lion head on the side of the wall:

And here's a closer view:

Isn't it fantastic? No reason for it at all, other than to make people smile. I want to live in a town like that.

Hot New Internet Meme (With Bananas)!

I was sitting in class today, staring at my empty banana peel, when a funny idea struck me. Fortunately, I'd brought two bananas for lunch today, so I had enough bananas to fully develop my idea and do it right. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce my newest creation: messages on banana peels!

I'm really impressed with how well a banana peel holds ink - it's really the perfect fruit to write on, if you want to write on fruit. But this crazy idea isn't just about bananas, or even about fruit. Oh no, my dear readers, it's much bigger than that.

I think it would be funny to take a series of "Help! I've been turned into *fill in the blank*" written on the *blank* - which of course would have to be an object that people ordinarily don't write on. I'm thinking of pants, cell-phones, shoes, underwear, sandwiches... you get the picture.

Alternatively, we could take a bunch of photos (get it - a "bunch"?) of messages written on bananas - sort of a fruit-based fortune cookie experience. 

Now it's up to you - send me your photos, or just post them on your own blog. Pass these around. Have fun!

Distributism - check it out

Distributism is a "third-way" economic philosophy I've discussed several times on this blog. I just came across an excellent article that describes, defines and discusses distributism in terms that are contemporary and easy to understand (albeit somewhat Catholic-centric).

I don't claim to know how to make distributism work, but I'm pretty sure it could work (and does work in the places where it's tried). The first step, I believe, is to make people aware of it and help them understand it. So, I hope you'll click on over and read through the article, titled Capitalist? Socialist? Distributist. Here are a few excerpts to get thing started:

Capitalism and socialism are theoretically enemies, but for the ordinary citizen, their results are remarkably similar: little or no power. In socialism, power centers in the few who happen to run the government. In capitalism, power gathers in the few who happen to run the largest corporations... 

In contrast to both socialism and capitalism, distributism aims for a wide distribution of private property.

[in distributism] Power is balanced and decentralized, according to the principle of subsidiarity: Every function is controlled at the most local level possible.

Universal Healthcare = Economic Stimulation

The following is  from Summer Pierre's excellent blog, and she was borrowing it from Matt Haughey's blog, but it's just so doggone interesting I had to pass it along too:

Everyone I know that freelances or works a day job and wishes they could quit and follow their dreams of launching a company complains about the lack of healthcare. Whenever I used to talk about freelancing at tech conferences, the first question was always about healthcare coverage. I've heard that in places like Berlin where you don't have to worry about where your healthcare is coming from or how much it costs, up to 35% of working age adults are freelancers. 

It may sound crazy and anti-capitalist to consider healthcare for all, but if we flipped a switch tomorrow and everyone had health coverage I swear a million small businesses would launch overnight. I know lots of people that keep a job just to get healthcare that are wasting their creative talents because they had a cancer scare or were born with a defect or otherwise are deemed uninsurable on their own.

Makes sense to me!

Ordering Pizza in the Future

I saw this video in class the other day, as part of a discussion about privacy and the interweb. It's obviously an extreme example, but parts of it are not entirely outside the realm of the possible... or even the realm of the likely!

Art from Saudi Arabia

I heard a brief interview on the radio with a female artist from Saudi Arabia - I could have listened to her all day. I didn't catch her name, but she is one of the artists featured in a new exhibition in London, titled The Edge of Arabia. I think it was Manal Al-Dowayan - and even if it wasn't, check out her photos. They are striking and genuinely thought-provoking.

In the interview, she talked about the differences between European and Arabian art. For example, the western idea of beauty is heavily influenced by the Greeks and sees the human figure as the ultimate symbol of beauty. For her culture, on the other hand, depicting the human figure (even clothed) is practially forbidden. She also pointed out that for us, rain is a symbol of gloom and mourning and darkness, but in her culture's art, it represents mercy.

I loved having the opportunity to peek into another culture's view of art. I hope you'll click over to Edge of Arabia and peruse some of their creations.

Enough?

I often have the haunting feeling that I'm not creating enough, despite all the articles I've done for Defense AT&L and the handful of books I've written. I think that's a good thing - to always have the drive to create new things, to write new stories and books... to never be satisfied.

I hope the feeling doesn't go away, although it's not terribly comfortable. I assume most writers, musicians, artists and creative types have a similar experience. Is there such thing as having created "enough"? Maybe when I'm very, very old...

So, I've got two novels in my head that I've been thinking about for a while now. Grown-up novels this time. They'll probably won't sell any more than my current ones do, but I think they'd be fun to try. Maybe I'll have a go at one of them during next year's NaNoWriMo. I've also started pulling together some notes for a companion book (or two) to The Simplicity Cycle. And I'd love to do some little online videos, maybe take up drawing again... and that's just the start. 

How about you? Anyone else out there have a strong drive to create, to write, to paint?

And speaking of creations, The Simplicity Cycle has been downloaded 913 times. I think that's kinda cool, considering how little marketing I do. Of course, selling (or giving away) a million copies was never the point. Creating was the point.

Never Stop Exploring?

My favorite pair of khaki's has a strange, secret message on the inside of the zipper, which I discovered when I got them home. That's a photo of of the pants there - of course, I wasn't wearing them when I took that picture with my handy-dandy, fuzzy camera phone.

In case you can't quite read the message, it says "Never Stop Exploring." Apparently that's the motto of The North Face company (they made the pants).

But frankly, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. That's kind of a strange place to post a message like that - just inside the zipper. Sure, it's the company motto, but really, right inside the zipper?

But they're awfully comfortable pants!

Bad Google! Bad Google!

I can't believe the changes Google made to the iGoogle front page. Oh, it's so bad!

I'm not alone in my opinion. And really, Google should know better than to add so much chrome to their famously simple interface, and add it in a way that it can't get removed by users who don't want it. Didn't they just release a new browser with the ironic name Chrome. 

In software lingo, "chrome" refers to the borders, frames, toolbars, etc an application or website uses... and Google's Chrome browser has almost none of it. The new iGoogle interface, on the other hand, is positively dripping with it. It's a chrome infection and it needs to go!

I hope they undo it. I really, really hope they undo it.