:: Momentary Flash of Genius ::
What's in this section?
These are little grains of genius that strike at unexpected moments. Keep in mind that what I consider "genius" may not be quite up to snuff with what *you* consider genius!
They Really Should Rent Children
Thursday, September 30, 2004
For those oh-so-embarrassing situations where you really want to do something childish but don’t have a good excuse
I always felt that way when I went to see a Disney movie that was particularly childish. Or didn’t you ever get the urge to watch the first Spy Kids? Or get a happy meal? Or jump in the play pen with all the plastic balls? Somehow doing all that is pardonable if you’re toting a small child along. Then it’s “coming down to their level” and being “empathetic.” But let’s face it: we all wanted to do that stuff anyway, regardless of the presence of a child or not.
This past Sunday, my classmate Tanya and I went to the Bronx Zoo for a class assignment. Our job was to look at the interactive media available in two separate exhibits and evaluate them based on effectiveness and a list of other criteria. That’s when I began to wish I had brought a spare child along.
What better way to evaluate whether an exhibit is interesting than tossing a kid at it and seeing what he or she does? Is the kid interested? Is (s)he actually learning anything? What caught his/her attention first? Was it worth sticking to for more than 30 seconds? All these things would have been great to observe, much like a field biologist in the jungle, observing gorillas.
The zoo was beautiful and the experience was great! Tanya and I had a lot of fun getting lost, trying to find camouflaged animals in pens, and making fun of the Okapis for having silly looking posteriors (poor blighters!). I was really impressed with the quality of the zoo stuff. One zoo personnel said, “really, people are just coming here to be recognized by the animals. The animals are the ones with the real show!”
In any case, if you start a child-renting service, I expect royalties because you saw it here first! Rent-a-kid: because there’s no need to go through 9 months of pregnancy just to see a kids’ movie!
"How to Bond With Your Teen" - a seminar
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Feeling that you just don’t understand that teenager (your child, your roommate, or your underaged girlfriend) in your life? I can help!
It all begins with the MTV VMAs. I know I know, the MTV Video Music Awards are such a, well…(you fill in the blank) thing – how can they possibly help?
As you may or may not know, my roommate is about 19 years old and a performing arts major who wants to work on Broadway. I was afraid that we’d have nothing to talk about. When we do talk, it’s great. We’re very friendly and such, but it’s easy to become UNeasy when you don’t interact for awhile. In fact, we have completely opposite schedules. She has morning/day classes and I have night classes and engagements, so I don’t get up til late and stay up all night. By the time I get home, she’s already in bed. She also leaves earlier than I wake up.
I was trying to find a non-awkward way of spending time to bond a little. I was thinking about inviting her out to dinner or something. Well, as it turns out the VMAs were a great bonding moment for us. There were so many strange acts and antics that we had a lot to comment and talk about. I had cooked earlier while she was asleep, so I offered her some of my humble humble and I mean really humble food. So we had dinner together after all. Voila! Instant bonding over food and pop culture! You can’t get much more authentic than that!
Good stuff, the VMAs. Really, parents, roommates, lecherous older boyfriends, next time you want to bond with your teen and see what’s going on in their lives, sit down and watch the VMAs with them. It’ll be an eye-opening experience.
What grade are you in? Grades 4life
Sunday, August 08, 2004
After experiencing years in the education system, once we’re out of it, we have no idea how to mark the passing of time - until now. Introducing Grades 4Life!
Instead of asking, “How old are you?” you can ask someone “What grade are you in?” to which one can reply, “27th grade. You?” The grade would include a list of “to dos” before you can pass on to the next grade. In order to get out of 19th grade, for example, you need to know how to take care of your own taxes and have experience renting/owning property. That way, you can easily get a feeling for the person’s background more than you would be able to just from an age.
Maybe that way, we would have more rounded people, more balanced or at least know when they’re not all there…
Maybe certain communities could benenfit from the dating requirement. “You must have a t least gone on at least one date.” That’s to pass 18th grade. Perhaps asian parents would then encourage their kids to date instead of keeping them socially stunted by telling them that they can’t date until their done with medical school. I can just imagine them saying to their sons, “Must get ahead! Go date a girl now!” “But Mom! I’m only in 8th grade!” hehehe that’ll be the day…
Any suggestions for requirements per grade?
Ah-ha! Not just a euro-pop group!
Friday, July 23, 2004
Thanks to hanging out with Daryl, i finally have a flash of genius - uploading expendable media directly into your brain!
Actually, i just stole his flash of genius. :( booooo. But here i go, explaining it anyway. So, i know that we’ve all watched the matrix, right? So why don’t we make our brains the repository to for all kinds of media? Right now our media storage is limited by the physical media on which it is placed - i.e. CDs, DVDs, hard drives, etc. If our brains are nearly half as expansive as we think they are, they would be the perfect receptical for expendable media like movies, music and the like.
You would simply go to a place for an upload or do it via the web. You would get an time-limited password that would expire after a couple of days. You would then be able to view the media from within your own mind!
Of course there was also the uploading of skills and trades. One of the minor arguments for that is that people enjoy the journey involved with learning a skill, something you can’t achieve by just uploading information. BUT what if you were to program emotion uploads? You could build in the *feeling* of having worked hard and especially the “ah-ha” moment when you understood the process. So at the end of the upload, instead of a sound that goes “ping!” you get an “ah-ha” feeling of accomplishment that goes along with learning. oooh.