Paul's Note

I love this quick video as it represents the things that 99.9% of humans are terrible when examined.  There are two  causes for this problem or a combination of the two: either not being able to see a path leading to the result, or not wanting to see the long term impact of their decisions.  How many times does a person think I can cheat on this now, cut a corner on this, i can fix this later and there will be no impact. As humans it is funny how surprised we are over and over again when we are bitten in our proverbial asses.

Depending on your age you may have never heard of Jim Croce.  Yet, regardless of your age his music has influenced you more than you know.  Most of us can sing the lyrics of Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.  Jim Croce was born in South Phily in 1943.  He grew up singing music and writing poetry.  He became very passionate about pursuing a life in music.  He signed a contract with Capitol Records however they left him with a very small percentage of the profits from his first album less than 2%.   To survive he had to sell most of his guitars.  During this period of time he was living in a farm house with his wife.  They would hold parties and ‘jam sessions’ where musicians would drop in to spend time with them including: Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jimmy Buffet, Randy Newman, and Arlo Guthrie.  However with the financial burdens Jim was getting ready to quit the musical dream.  Finally something changed in his life.  His wife told him that she was pregnant.  After he found that out he went and wrote several songs in one week including: You Don’t Mess Around With Jim, Photographs And Memories, Operator, Time In A Bottle, A Long Time Ago and Hey Tomorrow. Despite several successful songs that reached the top of the charts including two number 1 hits Jim’s family was impoverished.  Jim was ready was to quit the business for good.  Jim went to finish his final tour.  On September 20, 1973 Jim Croce was killed in a plane crash.  The following song was written for his son and was written specifically to his son,  Adrian James Croce.

Mes amis,

Can I just say how much I love this film.  Yes I know the music was featured on another post.  However what could not be more cool than these guys.  Drifting through the mist while base jumping or wearing a wing suit.  While I watch them tight rope walk my hands get sweaty just watching as he crosses with no rope.  Few things get my body, heart, and mind in an unleashed state pure release like this video. never mind some of my own extreme trick while flying.  (I will share some of my videos in the next little while.)

 

If you spend any time watching movies you begin to realize what is broken with Hollywood and how it is impacts our socio-economic lives.  All of the lengthy political argument aside I am tired of Hollywood.  I am tired of SOPA and ACTA.  I am tired of business models  not adapting to methods to legal up rather than show innovation.   A few nights ago a friend and I went to a movie.  The movie was “okay”  meaning while there was nothing where I left feeling I was owed my money back. As I walked off I did wonder when was the last time I left a movie feeling the overwhelming feeling of my mind being re-wired. Here is the reason I think why:

From Quebec to Brazil and places in between the world is celebrating Carnival. One of the most colourful vibrant times of the year I personally think the world should celebrate this holiday. They video I am sharing today is a fantastic example of tilt-shift photography. In tilt-shift photography there are to movements that cause the rotation of the lens plane relative to the image plane–the tilt. The second movement of the lens parallel to the image plane called the shift. These two movement produce a “miniaturization” effect.

This video leverages a creative story telling technique, time-shifting.  This is an effective technique that can be used to retain audience focus.  However the technique has several serious risk factors such as too many time-shifts or unclear defined jump sequences that result in complete breakdown of the story.  This video uses the technique in a simple form.  The story is continous but begins at the end of the story and works back.  The medium is effectively used to allow users to control the overall story line and effectively passes along its message:

In modern dance one the elements of composition is shape. This doesn’t reference the figure of the dance, rather the position in which a dancer’s torso, arms, legs, and head move in position to one another. Dancers will spend years honing their flexibility and movement just to master this one element. Shape is broken into levels, symmetry, and scale. Other elements include space, timing, and dynamics each with their respective aspects. I like the following video because of its focus on shape:

I was watch some of the video posts on Vimeo the other day and stumbled upon something that reminds of the one the most key elements of true creative genious, love what you do. I am not talking about like, love my dog or love to eat chocolate.  I am talking about loving to an unhealthy level, obessesion. The few people who I have met in my live who I have considered to have true creative genius obsess night and day.  The love and they hate, loath something.  True passion so deep that anywhere or anytime is the right time and place for them.   While watching the video I shared today we can watch Feist, a hometown girl, create her obsession in an unexpected environment.  Enjoy as she shares her art:

Recently I was listening to a speech about art and how our lives are the canvas that we choose to paint.  To take that analogy a little further I stumbled across the video I am sharing today about the art done by the Dreamworks artists outside of the office.  One poignant description by an artist while doing ink work he said, “What I like about ink is that involves a lot of water and you ddon’t control it a lot. So it is a mix between control and letting go….most of the time it doesn’t work as you expect, you have to learn to work with it.”  I think that is a fantastic principle to use in our life.  Many time we don’t always choose how things flow we have to mix our control with the things we can’t, like water and ink.

Lately I have been watching as celebrities have been taking a stand outside of the Whitehouse to protest the Keystone pipeline and the Oilsands of Alberta. I find a few items very funny about the whole argument. My first question have any of these people ever set foot in Alberta? Seeing celebrities such as Daryl Hannah, Margot Kidder and Danny Glover getting so worked up about the environmental impact while one might question their motives. Some the celebrities who claim to be Canadian but would take action in the US rather than appeal to Canadians. They would then call foul on the Canadian environmental record. Is it just me or did a whole lot of people lose perspective?
Let us first note that while auto mobiles and transportation are the largest consumers of oil and natural gas they are not by far the only products. Anaesthetics, antihistamines, aspirin, cameras, batteries, cortisones, crayons, deodorant, detergents, fertilizers, glasses, food preservatives, glue, lotion, ink, lipstick, shampoo, rubbing alcohol, shaving cream, vitamins, and water pipes are just some of the products that have ingredients that require oil. So if we were to live without oil you would have to give these items up and a whole lot more. I don’t see Danny Glover racing to the front of the line to say, “I vow never to use any of these products again.”
Just by eliminating fertilizer the worlds food production would drop in 1/3 to 1/2 of its current production. To those outside of the Whitehouse I encourage you to live by your word and give all oil products up, every last bit. What we see with these protesters are the worst kind of environmentalism: extremism. This behaviour promotes hatred, disillusionment and obscures the truth on both sides.
Don’t mistake my intentions environmentalism needs to happen but it needs to happen with a sustained adaptable model that can be taught easily. It needs to be economically sustainable, and it needs to minimize the impact on the quality of life. Like all changes, slow and stead wins the race. All my ranting aside about how Lois Lane needs to get real!

I do support and promote honest and responsible environmental change.

I though I would share this video about the desire to change and the lessons learned that hopefully will not become our lessons learned. The extreme environmentalists would have you believe the following energy sources should be banned:

• coal-dirty
• nuclear-dangerous and dirty waste
• oil-dirty and ruins environment during extraction
• ethanol-requires fertilizer(oil) to grow plants to harvest also hard on crop cycle (corn)
• wind-disturbs animals and visual pollution
• solar-expensive and manufacturing process produces nasty wastes
• tidal-disturbs marine life
• bio diesel- not cost effective in mass production still requires some oil
• While environmentalism is an effort reduce not to eliminate, until a cleaner, healthier, solution can be found and sustain this progression as one of our major goals.
  The environmental lessons are good for us to think about and to do that little bit to clean the earth. Here is video that will remind you just why we need to take care of ourselves and the earth for those who come after.