Dreams

You know? Dreams are a really strange thing. My dog, Digory, is currently lying on the couch next to me asleep... and a couple minutes ago, he started twitching and growling. He eventually stopped and settled int a peaceful sleep, but-- Op, he's twitching again. Anyway. That got me wondering why we dream?
Recently, I've had really vivid, life-like dreams every night and woken up thinking they were real. Which is especially ridiculous because Sunday's dream included dinosaurs repopulating the earth because CO2 levels had risen so much that the global climate was warm enough to support the lifestyle of dinosaurs (don't ask.. I couldn't tell you anyway), and in Monday's dream, my dad was convinced that my dog could drive.
Some people say that dreams are expressions of your emotions, or a result of the chemical balance of your brain, or involved in 'memory consolidation'. Some people have even tried to predict the future from dreams. All these attem0pts at dream interpretation just exemplify how myserious dreams are to us.. I mean we've explored space, and the ocean... Even the internet has been around for a while. Maybe dreams are the new frontier. Not having dreams per se, thats been around forever. But discovering the purpose of dreams. What they maen, why we have them...
But I'm pretty sure they don't tell the future.. unless dinosaurs do eventually reinhabit the world. Hmm. I wonder what Digory dreams about?

Joe

Joe was the last person on earth I expected to do that. I mean really. I went to school with the guy Kindergarden through Senior year, and never once had he mentioned anything about rabbits. He hadn't even owned a rabbit as long as I knew him, and now he has a bunny farm all of a sudden? What is that? It seems like he's that farmer from Phineas and Ferb who buys a bunny farm without bunnies then just all of a sudden bunnies fall out of the sky right on to his farm. Maybe that's what happened.. yeah, I bet that's it. I'll have to go visit him sometime and see.

2 days later:
Well, I visited Joe, and he is not like the farmer from Phineas and Ferb.. He's crazy. He genuinely believes he is a super hero.. Bunny Man to be exact. His powers include eating carrots really fast, and wiggling his nose in an attempt to be "overwhelmingly adorable to the extent that it kills his enemies" --his words not mine. But a Forty-year-old man dressed up as a pink bunny doesn't bring the word 'cute' to mind.. It does trigger the use of another 'c' adjective though! What was it again.. oh yeah. Creepy. Well, by the time I left Joe's bunny farm I'd seen everything from his bunny-mobile (a white Prius with pieces of white felt sticking up from the side of each front door, and a pink nose painted on the hood) to his bunny lair... His closet with a stash of carrots, bunny suits, and a litter box in the corner (though he says it's only for emergencies.. Ew.) The whole experience was just awkward.. But I guess I learned one thing.. Life doesn't get better for everyone after High school.

Ted Talk: One Second Every Day

       In the Ted Talk: One second every day, Cesar Kuriyama made the argument that each day we live is important and should not be forgotten. To illustrate his point he used his own personal experiences and anecdotes, as well as a video which contained one second clips of his life from every day of the past few years. The result was an inspiring speech which left me, (the audience) with a desire to follow his example and go make a 'one second a day'  video of my own.  

The video itself, spoke the loudest for Kuriyama's argument. Through his whole speech, one second snippets of every day from the last three years or so rolled past the screen, giving the audience a peak into his life. We saw glimpsed of his road trip across the U.S. and him and his family deal with the hospitalization of his sister in law. At least 10 clips were of people sitting in a waiting room or of a hospital bed. Those ten seconds-- representing ten days, give the audience something that Kuriyama couldn't have given them with just words. The video lets the audience see into his life and allows him to show them what he means by not losing a single day.

Kuriyama's speech itself was filled with personal experiences and stories which helped him explain why the project was so important to him.  He explained how in such a world as ours, where everyone wants more, cutting each day down to a single second is difficult, but makes that second so much more meaningful. Triggering the memory is the important part. He wraps up his speech with a 'think of how cool it would be', and sort of leaves the audience with a hopeful feeling for the world and the concept of living each day as best you can and never letting a day pass with out doing something memorable. 

I thought Kuiyama was really smart and efficient about proving his point, and that this one would be an interesting video for other kids to watch. http://www.ted.com/talks/cesar_kuriyama_one_second_every_day.html