Here is another one of Keith Olbermann's great commentaries. A prime example of why I love watching his show, and why you should watch it too.
P.S. For those who don't know, Keith used to be and still does do some part time sports broadcasting. Just goes to show, don't judge a book by its cover!
Here ya go!
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Why I Support Obama
There are many policy reasons why I support Barack Obama, and I could definitely get into a long discussion about all of them. But I recently stumbled upon this video clip of an address Obama gave at the DNC meeting, and after you watch this, I think you'll get a pretty good idea of why I support Barack Obama to be The President of the United States...
Humanity
So today I watched the movie "Powder", actually it's still on but just about over. A great film if you've never seen it; Sean Patrick Flannery (Young Indiana Jones, Boondock Saints) and Jeff Goldblum among others. Basically, for those who haven't seen it, it's about a teenage kid who as a child was struck by lightning in the womb, which then gave him a kind of superhuman ability where he could manipulate metal things, attract electricity and lightning to him, and he also had an IQ far beyond anyone who had ever lived. It's a great story, and toward the very end, Jeff Goldblum quotes Albert Einstein and says,
"It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity."
He then says that after seeing Powder and all he can do, he now thinks that someday our humanity might actually surpass our technology.
This is something I hope to be true, but currently, things don't seem to be going on that track. What really gets me about Einstein's comment on society is that he made the comment back in the `50's! There was no NASA back then, no artificial sattelites in space, no personal computers, no cell phones, no internet, no cable t.v., no cloning, no stem-cells, no mechanical limbs or mechanical organs... none of that stuff was around then and yet Einstein still saw that our technology of the 1950's was surpassing our humanity.
This really worries me, because we haven't seemed to have improved upon our humanity at all in the past 60 years or so, but we have drastically improved upon our technology. In the years 1990-2000 alone, there were more technological inventions and innovations that in the years 1890-1990. It seems so backward that we will sup-up our cars to make them go faster, but not take the time to train our own bodies to run for faster or longer. That we spend so much money increasing the memory and disk space of our computers, yet don't spend the time to read and exercise our own brain to retain more knowledge and take in information faster. How we spend money on cell phones with advanced texting abilities to guess what want to write and learn the words we use most often, but when was the last time we learned a new language or increased our grammar of the one we speak?
There are some people though, who do not spend their time or their money on the advancement of technology, but rather on the advancement of themselves. For the most part, the vast majority of these people are holymen or clergymen. They focus on themselves, on their interior, on the one constant in their lives which is themselves. One of the most notable examples of these are the ShaoLin Monks of China. They basically follow the lifestyle of Jedi and were actually George Lucas' main inspiration when developing the idea of Jedi.
Here's a video of their incredible abilities and use of Chi:
The ShaoLin Monks begin their training from the age of 5 or 6 and devote their entire lives to harnessing all the powers of their body. They train from a young age to be in peak physical condition, they read and study all day to make themselves wise and strong in mind, and they meditate in order to find their deeper meaning in life and to harness what they call "Chi", basically energy which flows through all things and can be manipulated; equal to "The Force" in Star Wars.
This may seem strange and not real because most people relate it to the fictional "Force", but actually George Lucas took this real concept of Chi and turned that into "The Force". It is actually quite amazing what they can do with this. They can harness the Chi and create "force-fields" around their body, which make it possible for other men to hit them with blunt objects, give them roundhouse kicks which can usually break through concrete ... and allow the man harnessing his Chi to be able to take it all and not feel a thing and not even move. They have even actually monitored people while doing this with various scientific instruments and have actually seen a change in their energy flow and in their heat signatures while harnessing Chi.
Here's another video displaying their incredible talents:
If in the movie "Powder", Goldblum says Powder is his hope that our humanity might actually surpass our technology. Then in the real world, the ShaoLin Monks are my hope that our humanity might actually surpass our technology. But we have a long way to go...
"It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity."
He then says that after seeing Powder and all he can do, he now thinks that someday our humanity might actually surpass our technology.
This is something I hope to be true, but currently, things don't seem to be going on that track. What really gets me about Einstein's comment on society is that he made the comment back in the `50's! There was no NASA back then, no artificial sattelites in space, no personal computers, no cell phones, no internet, no cable t.v., no cloning, no stem-cells, no mechanical limbs or mechanical organs... none of that stuff was around then and yet Einstein still saw that our technology of the 1950's was surpassing our humanity.
This really worries me, because we haven't seemed to have improved upon our humanity at all in the past 60 years or so, but we have drastically improved upon our technology. In the years 1990-2000 alone, there were more technological inventions and innovations that in the years 1890-1990. It seems so backward that we will sup-up our cars to make them go faster, but not take the time to train our own bodies to run for faster or longer. That we spend so much money increasing the memory and disk space of our computers, yet don't spend the time to read and exercise our own brain to retain more knowledge and take in information faster. How we spend money on cell phones with advanced texting abilities to guess what want to write and learn the words we use most often, but when was the last time we learned a new language or increased our grammar of the one we speak?
There are some people though, who do not spend their time or their money on the advancement of technology, but rather on the advancement of themselves. For the most part, the vast majority of these people are holymen or clergymen. They focus on themselves, on their interior, on the one constant in their lives which is themselves. One of the most notable examples of these are the ShaoLin Monks of China. They basically follow the lifestyle of Jedi and were actually George Lucas' main inspiration when developing the idea of Jedi.
Here's a video of their incredible abilities and use of Chi:
The ShaoLin Monks begin their training from the age of 5 or 6 and devote their entire lives to harnessing all the powers of their body. They train from a young age to be in peak physical condition, they read and study all day to make themselves wise and strong in mind, and they meditate in order to find their deeper meaning in life and to harness what they call "Chi", basically energy which flows through all things and can be manipulated; equal to "The Force" in Star Wars.
This may seem strange and not real because most people relate it to the fictional "Force", but actually George Lucas took this real concept of Chi and turned that into "The Force". It is actually quite amazing what they can do with this. They can harness the Chi and create "force-fields" around their body, which make it possible for other men to hit them with blunt objects, give them roundhouse kicks which can usually break through concrete ... and allow the man harnessing his Chi to be able to take it all and not feel a thing and not even move. They have even actually monitored people while doing this with various scientific instruments and have actually seen a change in their energy flow and in their heat signatures while harnessing Chi.
Here's another video displaying their incredible talents:
If in the movie "Powder", Goldblum says Powder is his hope that our humanity might actually surpass our technology. Then in the real world, the ShaoLin Monks are my hope that our humanity might actually surpass our technology. But we have a long way to go...
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