Just stumbled over a game called Proteus while checking out some news on Steam – a fantastic looking and sounding exploration experience from the indie game scene. Can’t seem to find the “buy” option although it’s supposed to be released today. But I found some interesting “Let’s Play” on Youtube giving a little bit of a feel what it is (spoiler alert). Must say, I am curious and will definitely check it out. If you are into games also because you feel they are a piece of art and more than just objectives to solve or competitions to beat, you might want to do the same… If you constantly feel the need to blow shit up, please move along!
Neil deGrasse Tyson makes astrophysics accessible to the average people by his enthusiastic and entertaining way of telling stuff and Stephen Colbert’s fun way of leading the interview is a quality bonus to this video. If you are only slightly interested in the questions why we should raise our scientific literacy and what makes astrophysics valuable to everyone, you should really watch this entertaining talk:
If you are fed up with all the people who do not seem to realize, that some things are going wrong, maybe those might just not feel they would be allowed to say what they think. We live in a society where realism is not always appreciated. Even so far as to distort reality into a point of view where we are not making any changes, even when they might be absolutely necessary. The constant “everything is ok” and willful ignorance that is going on especially in the corporate world and politics does not contribute to our progress as a society at all. It is harmful in just the same way as the constant fear and depression that we perceive most of the time through the media. In fact, people might start to feel powerless with the constant good mood in the same way as they would with the constant negativity they are confronted with – especially if they don’t believe it. The solution? Just acknowledge the facts that you have at hand and act accordingly! Smile or complain whenever you think it’s appropriate but never stop acting upon what you think is right or wrong!
RSA Animate published a fantastic talk on this topic by Barbara Ehrenreich on positive thinking accompanied by a kind of speed paint to what the talker is saying. I really love all of their videos (and I will post some more here later). This clip unfortunately has some pretty bad audio, but the message is clear…
And while you are at it, you might also want to check out my previous post ‘Everything is OK‘.
First of all: maybe I tricked you a bit with the title there to get your attention. Please accept my apology for that! But the following is really important to me. Since you are apparently still reading this, let me take the opportunity to clarify: I believe there are probably bazillions of things that are not OK at this very moment…
People (like me) are running around with their headphones on and their eyes on the phones all the time. Especially commuting to and from work is kind of boring if you have no music in your ears and sometimes even spooky because you realize that nobody is talking to anyone at all. Why not break the silence and ask those people what they are listening to? I find this idea inspiring and the answers sometimes even surprising:
“Man…. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.” — Dalai Lama Continue reading
While I have been near Lago Maggiore in Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland, I have also been going up the stream of one of the rivers – leading into the Verzasca Valley. And by “going” i mean “driving”. Anyway… After a while you find yourself in front of a cement wall: the Contra dam. Wait a second, I know that sight: From this dam James Bond took his famous bungee jump in Goldeneye! In fact you can even do the jump yourself if you dare. Even though i just posted all those adventurous things i would like to do some day, bungee jumping was not one of them.
Contra dam aka the favorite place for Bond to Bungee Jump
Instead I continued going up the river, beyond the enormous artificial lake of the dam, and I reached a wonderful river bed carved into solid granite near a very old roman bridge. Wow. What a sight! Around this river you can climb along the rocks from one small stream to another. Near the bridge you see the mountains in the back and the water is flowing very slowly and is several meters deep. Some small streams go all around the rocks so it may very well happen that were you climb along would turn out to be a dead end after a while because you cannot cross the water except by swimming. Continue reading
I know i do. Well, not just at home. I am also at work, but its basically the same thing: there is a desk, a computer and i am sitting in my chair in front of that. Sitting, sitting, sitting. What i am doing might change depending on where I am, but no matter what that might be, i am sitting. That is why once every couple of hours i need a little inspiration to imagine I am doing things outside of the digital world and on my feet. Inspiration that might make me think “Hey, that’s EXACTLY what I always wanted to do!!” – and hopefully I am going to do that too later that week.
So i did what everyone would do nowadays: I went online (while sitting) and I was looking for awesome inspirational videos. I ended up with a handful of adventurous outdoor activity clips… interestingly, every one of those is showcasing some people going downhill in one way or the other (what that means is to be interpreted by YOU). Continue reading
This week’s top creativity inspiration for me goes to the people of Cyclecide. Those guys are plain awesome when it comes to the ‘just-do-this-thing’ mentality. I like the spirit and the circus appeal. Just would love to see them traveling around the country too… Continue reading
There are some things that we all have in common… Bobby McFerrin is demonstrating this on the World Science Festival 2009, by making the audience spontaneously sing together without explicitly telling them what to do. As he said, this works no matter where on earth he is trying this. I also like the comment in the end “what the hell just happened?” and am smiling even without knowing the answer…
