Archives for the month of: June, 2004

Global ThoughtsI’ve often won­dered if our thoughts change the world around us. I’m not talk­ing about deci­sions per say, not why you chose to see Charlie’s Angels: Full Throt­tle over Y Tu Mama Tam­bien. Rather, I’m refer­ring to the col­lec­tive thought process of the world. Is it pos­si­ble that you or I with just a mere thought could change the func­tion­ing of our world?

For instance, while walk­ing around in a mall sev­eral months ago, mid­way into a con­ver­sa­tion with a friend of mine, I thought of Pay­less Shoes. How­ever, it didn’t stop there. Think­ing of Pay­less Shoes I came up with a ran­dom num­ber, $12.99, and the color of an almond (in this case Biege). Not too long after we strolled by a Pay­less Shoes’ out­let with beige-colored san­dals on sale for $12.99.

Was this a mere coin­ci­dence or did my thoughts change the world? It’s debat­able and even I don’t have the answers. How­ever, some­one has writ­ten an arti­cle on what is referred to as the Global Mind.

Numbers in HollywoodIn the past, movies that fea­tured tele­phone, pager, or cell phone num­bers would resort to the infa­mous string of 555. Now the 555 code in the USA is being used in the real world by a slew of ser­vice providers. To coun­ter­act this, the stu­dios are now using real phone num­bers. Yet, their rea­sons for doing so are becom­ing cum­ber­some for some peo­ple whose num­bers are fea­tured in Hol­ly­wood productions.

Case in point; In the movie, Bruce Almighty, star­ring Jim Car­rey as a man who is given the pow­ers of God, a num­ber used in the fea­ture to con­tact Bruce belongs to a woman named Dawn Jenk­ins. Accord­ing to Jenk­ins, she’s been receiv­ing about 20 calls an hour with mes­sages left for God. Yet, Jenk­ins is not alone on this issue because the num­ber belongs to other indi­vid­u­als, among them a call cen­ter for local Col­orado radio sta­tions. (Inter­est­ing, since Carrey’s Dumb and Dumber movie took place in Aspen).

While this pro­vides plenty of headaches for those indi­vid­u­als whose num­bers are fea­tured in the movies, what other pos­si­ble route can the stu­dios use? Almost every movie, unless used in a spe­cific period of time with­out elec­tric­ity or the use of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, uses phone num­bers as the basis to the plot. The Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan fea­ture You’ve Got Mail uti­lized screen­names for AOL Instant Mes­sen­ger — more specif­i­cally Shop­girl and NY152. Most likely these names were used in the past or they are being used now because of the movie.

There is no other fea­si­ble solu­tion for using phone num­bers in movies that don’t uti­lize some sort of real­is­tic string. Oth­er­wise, the notion of it being semi-realistic is thrown out the win­dow. Con­sid­er­ing phone num­bers are widely dis­trib­uted and there will come a time where num­bers will have to include a longer string of num­bers (and or let­ters), maybe Hol­ly­wood could extend the length of the string? Instead of using, 756‑0890, how about 0756 – 08901? It looks strange to the USA, but sim­i­lar sequences are used in other coun­tries. For instance, a num­ber in Bel­gium could read: +32 (0)16 35.34.30.

Most likely, that num­ber is in use by some­one in Bel­gium. Let’s say a cof­fee shop owner with 6 kids and a butcher for a wife. That, or a Bal­loon man­u­fac­tur­ing plant resid­ing near a Bub­ble gum fac­tory. Who knows?

The Big WheelEvery kid grow­ing up in the 80s owned a Big Wheel. It didn’t mat­ter what region or coun­try you resided in, you had to have one. They were the qui­nessen­tial toy for any grow­ing child to show off to his neigh­bor­hood pals and mut­ter under his or her breath, “Yeah, I’m big and here’s proof.”

I think I was the owner of a Trans­form­ers Big Wheel and a Knight Rider KITT ver­sion. Although, much to my dis­ap­point­ment, it never talked back in that spiffy Eng­lish accent sadly.

The best part of the Big Wheel was — hands down — the plas­tic tires. You could run over any­thing in the road or side­walk and wouldn’t have to worry about get­ting a flat. I used to turn it upside down and pre­tend it was a miss­ing piece of some gigan­tic NASA engine. I’d spin the ped­dles as fast as they could go and “revv” up the “engine” part.

Sure, Big Wheels exist today — but noth­ing like those of yesteryear.

If time travel were pos­si­ble and pub­li­cally acces­si­ble, I would uti­lize it to travel back to the early 80’s to see what kind of child I was. Granted, because of var­i­ous the­o­ries this most likely will never hap­pen. How­ever, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Accord­ing to an arti­cle pub­lished in Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can enti­tled How to Build a Time Machine, the pos­si­bil­ity of a work­ing time machine could occur but it would be immensely dif­fi­cult to pull off.

For a crash course in the the­o­ries of time travel, please read any­thing by Steven Hawk­ing or view the fol­low­ing (and highly rec­om­mended flicks):

  • Don­nie Darko
    Dis­turbingly cre­ative film revolv­ing around the con­cepts of time travel. You’ll have to incur repeat view­ings in order to fully under­stand the mes­sage of this movie.
  • Back to the Future
    Any­one that hasn’t seen this movie is just, well, in a sad state in their life. BTTF (Parts 1, 2 and 3) all uti­lize the time travel the­ory but in an enter­tain­ing and often hilar­i­ous fashion.
  • Time Machine
    H.G. Wells clas­sic. It evens stars the man who voiced Scrooge McDuck and was the main char­ac­ter in Mr. Ed (not the horse, of course of course). The main attrac­tion is the time machine built by a sci­en­tist who is curi­ous about the future and is shock­ingly surprised.
  • Time­Cop
    Jean-Claud Van Damme. Time Travel. Can’t think of any­thing else to say.
  • Minor­ity Report
    Steven Spiel­berg and Robert Heinlein’s vision of the future, with a pseudo-time travel pro­ce­dure that allows law enforcers to per­ceive crimes before they occur and try to stop them from occuring.
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