raining yellow

goodbye fall,

hello winter.

yelower

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Chapter 8: The Felicity of Virtue

"It is impossible to live the pleasant life without also living sensibly, nobly and justly, and it is impossible to live sensibly, nobly and justly without living pleasantly" -Epicurus

"Set your heart on doing good. Do it over and over again, and you will be filled with joy. A fool is happy until his mischief turns against him. And a good man must suffer until his goodness flowers. -Buddha

_As ripped from the pages of The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. This book is one of the best that I have read on thePositive Psychology movement/research/area of interest.


Here's an old podcast that was super awesome, that some of you may have heard before. (blahblahblah, shameless self-interest plug...)

Lily Lin won!

So yesterday, as I was trolling through endless web art, I came across a really cool Graphic Design tournament held last Saturday in San Francisco. It's called the "Cut & Paste Design Contest" and it is a live art event in which people are given a pre selected topic to create something of using computers. They each have 15 minutes and must start from scratch in front of a live audience. There were 3 rounds in this event, the topics were "Deja Vu, Lost in Translation and One Too Many."

See video footage of the contest here.

Lily Lin won, and her final piece, for "one too many" was this one...

Man, I miss San Francisco!

i got a wife

More pictures of fun

So, Kevtron has posted 200 pictures on his new blog over here if anyone is interested in high resolution documentation of our trip last weekend (he has one of these). From the pictures it probably appears that there is nothing but drunken debauchery, which is partly undeniable, but you must keep in mind you only get as drunk as you want to. Somehow I managed not to do one beer bong! (I never could do them anyway, so it worked out nicely).
Here is a diagram of what we travelled in.

Historic avenue

opinionesque

An unbelievable 72 hour skate/party

The PMA guys surprised us with a keg of Bud Light in the shower (is that legal?) It provided refreshment for almost the entire trip.

70mph topless beer bongs! (no homo)

ships set sail

So, later on today I will board a 28 ft vessel similiar to the one pictured, with a total of 8 bros (some of which I barely know) in search of a good time. The mission at hand is "pure fun with skateboards and beer bongs." We shall traverse trails unknown and explore the roads of freedom America let it ring. I imagine it will be a well documented adventure with the many "cameraman" and "life aficionados"on board. DC to Charlottesville/Harrisonburg to Pittsburgh. Stormy seas might cause us to re-route but our plans will not be run aground by the Gods of seasonal winds and rains. Ay ayi. arghhahd!

Nightlife

Austin has a bustling night life scene, as one of the highest concentration of bars, per capita in the US.


It has many other things to offer as well...

Romulo Maccio @ the Blanton

Mick at the Art on 5th Warhol Exhibit.

Touchdown
:( all good things come to an end.

Austin, America

We missed our first night in Austin due to a "tire complication" screwing our whole itinerary, sending us to sleep ("nap") in a Motel 6 in Houston at like 2 am, to catch an early morning flight to our final destination the next day! Continental Airlines = not a good first impression.


South Congress St. is neat.

Austin has many vintage clothing and thrift stores.


"Keep Austin Wierd" is the unofficial motto of the city and you start to see why after a few hours being there.

la resistance

“The democrats have to fight back. Really, if it weren’t for a big lawsuit, I myself would like to punch Karl Rove in the face. This whole country has been lied to by a few coy men, and propagated by sick talk show hosts, Limbaugh, Falwell, and Bill O'Reily. Really, we are where we are right now in this country because all of the American people have been lied to. That is serious stuff. American soldiers are dying everyday over oil. It doesn't seem real, but then one day you wake up and you realize. What kind of country is this? Damn the republicans.”
-Part of an email I received today.

shapes

Rachel and I leave for Austin tomorrow evening! (hence the white monster to the left, dancing) November is looking to be a good month, with all the pretty colored leaves and their hidden beauties revealed; they fall to the ground every minute, night and day. This is all truly nothing less than beautiful. This, however, is truly wacky.

Halloweeny

Speculation on morality

A fascinating article appeared in the Times today, leading me to think about an increasingly interesting subject to me; morality. Why do most of us do the right thing and not the wrong thing? How important is religion in this decision? There was some chatter about this subject a few weeks ago on the NPR which I remember catching some of on my lunch break, and then coming back to my computer to take the Moral Sense Test.
It would seem that morality has re-emerged as a hot topic after studies yielded some surprising results. Most notably that we, as suggested by the article linked above, are "hard wired" to be moral animals regardless of religious beliefes or the child rearing practices we are a product of. We have a sense of "moral grammar" that is innate, such as our "innate neural machinery for language".
Just read the article. It is good.

the weekend

A "dark" party consisting of low lighting, a bonfire and just about any alcoholic concoction you can imagine (the finger is a cookie).



A beautiful day was taken advantage of today in Colonial Williamsburg, "a walk back in time."



It sure was windy!