Sunshine

A must see clip from the up and coming movie Sunshine:

http://www.sunshinedna.com/videos/19 (Mercury Clip)

Enjoy!

Wandering

Sometimes I feel as if I am just wandering about in this life.

Good.

Favors

I recently was approached by a friend who needed some help after recently having surgery. She has many friends in this apartment complex, but it seems not many were able to help her out when she needed it. There could be any number of reasons, but regardless in her mind they were letting her down. She called me and I offered to help, and this started me thinking of favors.

Your life is filled with choices. When you choose not to help someone, you may be letting them down. When you choose to help this is obviously a good thing. But in doing so, you could be sacrificing something else, or even letting someone else down. This is common sense: you're only one person, right? But people sometimes overlook that the person they are letting down may be themselves. Occasionally in our over eager attempt to be a good person, be liked, or receive a favorable impression we may forget about others that are more familiar to us; perhaps our family, our friends, our ourselves. Its not that you should avoid helping people, its that you should avoid neglecting yourself and those close to you in the process.

Theo Jansen

Adding to the collection of interesting lifelike machines previously posted come these fascinating creations, this time of the wind powered type, by Theo Jansen:

Animaris Geneticus Ondula
Animaris Currens Ventosa walking
Animaris Percipiere
Animaris Rhinoceros Transport

More information and movies on these curiosities can be found on the Strandbeestmovie - Weblog. Enjoy!

(originally spotted on the TED Blog.)

Learning

The more I think about it the more I realize that, in a relationship, it is important to be continuously learning from one another. One joy of life is perpetual learning. All people you come into contact with, whether or not they are your partner, will teach you something (or two), but its very easy to miss the lesson if you do not pay attention.

This is especially true in a relationship where one becomes overly dependent on the other. The other may then think that he or she is not learning anything, through a superiority complex or what have you, and the relationship becomes stale. On the other hand, a little dependence is felicitous as well: sometimes feeling needed by others is also an essential relationship ingredient.

The moral of the story is that learning, teaching, and dependence, like everything else in life, are best had in moderation--not to little, not too much. You might say that 'wait a moment, how could there be such a thing as too much learning,' but I would say what good is learning if you never stop to appreciate and practice what you've learned?