Katie & Scott & Simon & Cecily.
I had the day off from work today, like most. Because of the extra time, I was able to watch some TV, mow the lawn, play 9 holes of (virtual) golf, watch Public Enemies, and convince Sarah Palin to step down.
I didn’t find too much time to fool around in Kodu, so I’ll hold off my comments on it for another day or so.
Happy 4th. Enjoy your holiday safely and don’t forget to rub it in the face of anyone you know who happens to be British.
Katie and I are going to see Wicked tonight. I’m relatively excited.
It’s also a three day weekend, which is exciting.
I had a delicious BBQ chicken sandwich at lunch today while discussing the financial viability of the Large Hadron Collider.
Then, I had a piece of German chocolate cake this afternoon.
All in all, I’d say it’s been a pretty good day.
I’ll write something about Kodu, the new XBLA community game “lab” that I downloaded last night. It’s definitely something worth checking out if you have an Xbox 360.
Being a kid is like having a time machine when it comes to money. There’s a certain wonderful naiveté that accompanies the age when you think of $20 as a “lot of money.”
The biggest physical manifestation of this childhood time when money is worth more is the piggy bank. It certainly requires a bit of self-control, but saving all of the money that belongs to you in a small pig and being proud is a feeling that is hard to reacquire once you actually have a salary and bank account.
Katie and I keep a pig that we keep leftover change in, but in terms of actual amount of savings, it pales in comparison to our bank accounts. It does have something that the rest of our accounts lack: a presence.
A piggy bank is there, in your home, on your counter or end table. Saving money is accompanied by a satisfying little clink and the gradual additional weight and heft that the pig attains. And although the money is hidden behind a veneer of porcelain or plastic, it is never actually out of reach. It never requires a trip to the local ATM or signing a small slip of paper.
It harkens back to a simpler time, when people kept all of their money in a sock under the mattress, when you saved up for a particularly cool toy instead of whipping out a plastic card, when a $5 tip seemed like the utmost extravagance.
There’s a powerful human effect that occurs in crowds.
Large groups of people, if convinced to believe in the same thing, can be a supremely powerful force, whether its an Australian rugby team, a political party, or a cause of some kind.
Crowds can unite in impromptu cheers in near unison, in group activities and cooperative destruction with little advance planning or personal relationships between those involved.
But in a spurt of emotion over a sports team winning/losing a championship or a candidate winning/losing an election, groups of strangers find the motivation to band together and block traffic, or flip parked cars, or participate in group activities that would be awkward in other situations.
The odd thing is that this odd energy is present in both victory and defeat, both extreme emotional highs and lows. Why is it that we work so instinctively well in groups and clans when we are filled with energy and emotion? Does this speak to a piece of our basic being that tells us we belong in packs and tribes – that no man is truly an island?
Or do we just seek like-minded individuals when we are elated or outraged because it gives us all more power than we individually would have?
Or do we seek like-minded individuals our entire lives and it is simply more obvious when our emotions run high?
I’m not sure what the point is. I suppose it may be: if you want to do something extraordinary or dangerous, find a group of like-minded people, pump yourselves up to a point of charged emotions, and the rest will come naturally.
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