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Month: March 2015

Little House On the Prairie Versus Contemporary Society

March 9, 2015

So there it is. Another Sunday waving goodbye. I’ve come to enjoy this ritual of ending the day w/ an episode or 2 of Little House On the Prairie. Purchased the entire Season 1, as I’ve never seen it. What comes to mind most often while watching it, along with hundreds of other thoughts, is just how much society, hence collective consciousness, has changed over the last 40 years.

The show depicts sincere straight forward simple stories about living and being alive. No irony satire sarcasm or cynicism, all so rampant in today’s model of entertainment — i.e. no fear of being judged or criticized for being real or kind or honest or good — the fundamental thoughts and feelings beneath aforementioned irony cynicism satire and sarcasm, fear. Instead the benefits of virtues are emphasized; ideas long lost at some point along the way in modern times such as kindness, hard work, honesty, fidelity, connection w/ the divine, family values and the like are not only explored but downright encouraged. Straight faced, without a nod or a wink or a tongue in cheek. One couldn’t find anything even remotely similar to it today.

Of course Little House portrayed life in the 19th century, understood, when life was simpler and civilization had not yet reached a state of excess — thus greed and self-centered pleasure-experience seeking had not yet boroughed it’s way into mass consciousness as a main priority. Those things would come later, when surviving became all but guaranteed — this is after all the natural flow of the evolution of all sentient being civilizations. And yet lest we forget, Little House aired during the 1970s, long after the industrial revolution, when survival was indeed by all accounts all but guaranteed. Yet it somehow managed to still find an audience that could not only relate to it, but sincerely welcome it.

The question begged now is what changed in the last 40 years?

No blood gore violence crime murder CSI vampires zombies gratuitous sex adultery lying and deceit taken for granted billionaire playboys shallow busty airheads like Snooki or KK, no drug kingpins villains disguised as heroes vulgarity or nudity. Just simple stories extolling the virtues of being a good person and doing your best for yourself, your family and your neighbor. As far away from what passes for entertainment in today’s world as can be imagined. One would be hard pressed to believe that anything remotely similar could find an audience in modern times.

But why? Again…what has changed? What went missing? Or what got added in consciousness to create such a stark drastic change in such a short period of time?

It’s worth pondering…

– Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone



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Uncategorized collective consciousness, human evolution, little house on the prairie, modern entertainment, TV, Virtues

The Biology of the Changing Seasons

March 7, 2015

The sun is out white hot and bright today; the sky near perfectly flawlessly clear and brilliant blue. It’s a sharp contrast to the freezing temperatures, gray overcast skies and constant onslaught of snow we’ve been experiencing for almost a week in the Northeast. But one would do well not to be fooled by this recent change in the weather, for though the skies are clear and blue and the sun is shining bright, the temperature today is a biting 21° and according to weather forecasters will not rise above 25. It’s the kind of cold that hurts your skin if you’re exposed to it for any longer than a few minutes. At first it’s pin pricks. Then a numbing swelling-like pain. And if there is ever a pickup in the wind, forget about it — t’s a physically brutal and near unbearable condition to spend any considerable amount of time in.

But unlike most, who seem to get as much of a kick out of complaining about cold weather as they do sunbathing on a sunny day in June, I have loved every minute of this Winter’s snow and freezing temperatures. For me there is something very appealing about this cold weather, considering that it’s perfectly normal for winter — I don’t see how we have a right to complain about it, let alone dislike it — as if we were somehow entitled to warmer temperatures just because we are used to getting everything we want. I find the cold and snow quite enjoyable, desirable even; comforting in a paradoxically warm and cozy way.

Clearly this attitude does not apply to everyone; some people blatantly profess out loud to dislike the cold and snowy weather of winter. (It makes one wonder why then do they choose to live in a seasonally volatile locale like New York City if they’re going to complain about it every year…) Plenty of people for generations have moved from the Midwest and the Northeast down south to warmer climates specifically for this reason. My family in fact were diehard self professed “yankees” from New York and Pennsylvania and yet because, as all people do once retired, my grandparents moved to South Florida, I was obligated to grow up there.

From the day I was born I can always remember disliking Florida; feeling like a fish out of water, an outlier. There was nothing about it except the beach that I liked or felt connected to in the least. Some people feel right at home where they grow up. It is after all for all intents and purposes “home”. But I never felt at home growing up. Rather I felt like an alien who was forced to make a pit stop in a strange and foreign and hostile land. Like an outsider. As if I were the only one, all alone in seeing how terribly wrong and ass backwards it was there. From the climate to the people it just didn’t feel right down there. I didn’t fit and everyone knew it. There are few things as upsetting to the psyche of a young mind than never feeling like you fit in somewhere when everyone around you is acting as if everything is perfectly fine.

In elementary school during what we were told was “winter” we were instructed to draw snowflakes or snowmen, as all kids are in the States. But we’d never even seen snow let alone built a snowman. During the Fall we were always asked to draw all these different colored leaves of orange and yellow and red to decorate the room — yet we’d never experienced the changing colors of Autumn. Our teachers attempted to explain to us what autumn was…or why they called it “Fall”. But the explanations fell on deaf ears. All around us were green trees 365 days out of the year. There is no Autumn in Florida. Just as there is no winter and no spring. So these were ideas that only became real to us through the movies or TV. Talk about feeling like you’re missing out…. Gloves mittens scarves winter coats galoshes hats long-johns snowmen snowball fights skiing hot cocoa warm cozy fireplaces…these were all things that seemed entirely foreign to us as children growing up in a temperate climate that never had seasons. It felt as if a very large part of growing up, of being a human on planet earth, was being withheld from us, a large piece of the collective pie of civilization was totally off limits to our experience. These were things we couldn’t even relate to, let alone know anything about. It set up a real “us and them” paradigm in our young minds to be sure. We never had White Christmases. In fact we didn’t even understand most Of the lyrics of those classic Christmas songs. Sleigh bells in the snow? What? The idea that people would deliberately ever desire to move down to Florida or the South for that matter seemed a ridiculous notion. Why on earth would anyone want to do that and give up all that fun stuff associated with the seasons that we saw on TV and in the movies?

The first time I ever felt “at home” in the world was my first visit to New York. It was a palpable change in feeling, change of state inside of me. A brand new sense of calm, ease and letting go. A great big physical and psychological sigh of relief. The first time I ever felt relaxed and not on guard in my entire life. As soon as I got into my first taxi I just immediately felt different, transformed, happy, grounded — as if some invisible force was whispering into my ear “you are home…” I experienced the same thing in Vermont, Chicago, Wisconsin (and of course later in Italy, but that’s another story…). Anywhere that had seasons really. I began to understand that home had very little to do with where we are born or raised or where our family resides, but instead it goes much deeper than that. It’s more of a feel thing, up to each individual and how the environment affects their mind and body.

I don’t pretend to believe that this sudden transformation was due entirely to the weather. I am sure that culture and people also contribute to it as well. But for now, here, I am specifically focusing on the weather, especially as it relates to the changing of the seasons.

For me, someone who was raised primarily in the south, I find the cold weather of winter extremely comforting and grounding. It’s as if the cold winter weather is somehow attached to our very souls from some primordial source the dates back hundreds of thousands of years. A biological connection to the changing seasons perhaps through thousands of lifetimes of different incarnations on earth; or perhaps an even deeper more primitive genetic predisposition to the seasons based on the fact that nearly every atom in our body is comprised of the same stuff as planet earth is. We share the same molecular heritage and thus anything the earth is accustomed to so too are we.

I have concluded over many years living in the north now as compared to living in the south that there has to be some sort of biological reason for this almost supernatural attachment human beings have to the changing of the seasons. It is as if by our very nature, being biological organisms, that we are as attached and attracted to the cold of winter and the blossoming of spring and the luxurious warmth and heat of the summer as the earth is.

Now of course this might not be the case at all; it might be more of a purely subjective preferential cause-and-effect matter. Some people like cold-weather, and some people don’t. But I cannot speak for others. I can only speak for myself. And for me I have always found the cold weather and snow of winter as appealing as I do the warm weather and hot son of a day at the beach during summertime. Truth be told I cannot readily relate to those who desire to live in climates that do not regularly change seasons. Such was the case in Florida where if it dips below 70 people go crazy and throw on three or four layers of winter clothing because they’re so unaccustomed to cold weather. Not only are they not accustomed to it, they are overtly against it and claim to dislike it. This attitude against what can only be considered one of the most natural aspects of earthly living possible has always struck me as being very odd. But again it is after all a seemingly subjective thing.

Why is it that some of us prefer our winters to be cold and our Summers to be hot? Why do some of us prefer the changing of the seasons so much more than others? Some people don’t seem to have a preference at all whether the season changes in their environment, not even a little bit. This mentality I do not understand. I believe there is a divine purpose to the elegant and subtle changing of earth’s seasons. Something that not only greatly benefits the earth and all of its various species and inhabitants but also a profound yet subtle benefit to the heart and soul of humankind.

Seasons are landmarks, rights of passage, outposts in the desert of existence that help map our journey through life, each as important as the other. Just as one ends, always perfectly at the right time, and another begins, so too does our state of mind. There is something very unnatural about living in an environment that never changes seasons. The human heart and body are deprived of something powerful, perhaps even essential, which is why you’ll never hear me complain about the cold and snow, nor the heat and sun. They all have their rightful place. Just as we do. Many people are aware of Florida’s reputation for extreme corruption. Law enforcement calls it the “fraud capital of the United States”. Perhaps the unnatural never changing constantly hot weather plays a role in this strange anomaly that gives Florida it’s duplicitous reputation… I don’t know. But I do know that it doesn’t FEEL right. One only need spend one year in a locale that has four distinct seasons and they will feel forever changed for the better, recharged and refreshed equally from each though in a different way.

Right now we are enjoying Winter, in all of its glory, from temperatures below 0 to piles and piles of snow decorating the city in a luxurious soft white, to the slower pace brought about by the limitations of such frigid temperatures. And yet at the same time there also seems to be a cheery spark in everyone’s eyes as well. I couldn’t imagine spending January February or March in 80 degree weather as they do in California or Florida. It just wouldn’t be natural. In time Spring will arrive. The big coats and floppy hats will come off. Sun dresses and flip flops will start popping up everywhere and eventually be as ubiquitous as the bursting colors of fresh cherry blossoms and other floral delights. How else would we know this spring if not for this Winter? We wouldn’t. And that’s the point of it all.

– Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone 8s Custom

– Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone



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Uncategorized Autumn, biological connection to seasonal changes, California, changing seasons, Florida, New England, new york, snow, snowmen, winter

Trading Your Pre-Owned Digital Media

March 5, 2015

A few years back I posted an article here suggesting that the television industry needed to institute a radical change in programming and release full seasons of shows all at once instead of sticking to the old model of one episode per week and that they could even charge a premium for it because consumers were changing how they wanted to view TV. Less than six months later the advent of binge watching and studios releasing full seasons all at once began when Netflix released an entire new season of Arrested Development. Soon after came House of Cards, Orange is the New Black and once Amazon jumped on board the rest as they say is history.

Well here’s another one for you and I’m going to give it to you free of charge. At some point in the near future we will all hear about an exciting new company — whose title will invariably be one word and be a pun or spin off of another more common word — that gives consumers an opportunity to buy and/or sell to each other their pre-owned digital media such as movies, ebooks, albums, TV episodes or whole seasons.

At one point or another we’ve all sprung for a movie we really wanted to see on Amazon, went ahead and bought it because it wasn’t yet available to rent — and now it sits in our “Video Library” even though we may never feel a desire to ever watch that film again. The same is fast becoming true with TV episodes. As more and more of us travel more or ditch cable completely, we still want to keep up with our favorite shows; so we end up “purchasing” different episodes, usually at about $1.99 per OR $39.99 per season.

But let’s say we’ve already binge watched seasons 1 through 4 of Walking Dead a few times and we’re over it. As of now all those episodes just sit in our possession forever. Stored on Amazon’s servers and held in our name — what they call our “Video Library”. After a while we may want to sell all those episodes to someone else, say at half the price we paid, and buy season 1 of True Detective. Again we won’t buy True Detective new, nor will we even rent it via On Demand — we may no longer subscribe to cable. Instead we will have the opportunity to purchase or better put “repurchase” it from someone else who already bought it a year or two earlier.

The biggest challenge to this business — and it’s guaranteed that this WILL BE an exciting new business everyone will be raving about at some point in the next 6 to 12 months — is making the calls to set up all the partnerships that would be needed to make it work. For one thing deals will have to be made with all the distributors, the Amazons and HBOGOs and ShowTimes and the like. Best solution would be to offer them a simple transaction fee for every time they change the name of one of the titles they have in their library from say Mr. John Smith to Mrs. Annabella Washington. The digital media will never move. It will still stay in the same place on their servers. The only thing that will change will be the owners name.

Deals will also have to be struck with all the content providers and the licensing agencies, the people who originally created and licensed the product who usually receive a fee every time that particular title, whether it be an ebook or a movie or an or a TV episode, is purchased; whether it’s a television studio or a production company or a record company etc etc. Yes it will be a challenge. But it’s no more challenging than what YouTube or Sootify or Pandora have had to do. It’s just going to take time, a good law firm, a little effort, a smattering of charm and a gift for gab. In a few months time all of these deals can easily be put into place and the business can be up and running on a simple web and mobile platform for consumers to start using.

Will it happen? Yes, without a doubt. Within a year this is a no brainer for an acquisition or take over by one of the larger media companies. The question is WHO is going to do it? It could be you. Like I said, this is a freebie. Take it. I’ve already got too much in the pipeline. But regardless of who creates it, I personally cannot wait to use this service. I own way too many episodes of The Good Wife and would gladly trade them all in for half of what I paid for them.

The advent of a consumer market for used digital media is right around the corner. The demand is already there. We just need someone to build it.

– Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone 6



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Uncategorized Amazon, netflix, TVS, used digital media

Buying Selling and Trading Your Digital Media

March 5, 2015

A few years back I posted an article here suggesting that the television industry needed to institute a radical change in programming and release full seasons of shows all at once instead of sticking to the old model of one episode per week and that they could even charge a premium for it because consumers were changing how they wanted to view TV. Less than six months later the advent of “binge watching” and studios releasing full seasons all at once began when Netflix released an entire new season of Arrested Development. Soon after came House of Cards, Orange is the New Black and once Amazon jumped on board the rest as they say is history.

Well here’s another one for you and I’m going to give it to you free of charge. At some point in the near future we will all hear about an exciting new company — whose title will invariably be one word and be a pun or spin off of another more common word — that gives consumers an opportunity to buy and/or sell to each other their pre-owned digital media such as movies, ebooks, albums, TV episodes or whole seasons.

At one point or another we’ve all sprung for a movie we really wanted to see on Amazon, went ahead and bought it because it wasn’t yet available to rent — and now it sits in our “Video Library” — digitally speaking — even though we may never feel a desire to ever watch that film again. The same is fast becoming true with TV episodes. As more and more of us travel more or ditch cable completely, we still want to keep up with our favorite shows; so we end up “purchasing” different episodes, usually at about $1.99 per OR $39.99 per season.

But let’s say we’ve already binge watched seasons 1 through 4 of Walking Dead a few times and we’re over it. As of now all those episodes just sit in our possession forever. Stored on Amazon’s servers and held in our name — what they call our “Video Library”. After a while we may want to sell all those episodes to someone else, say at half the price we paid, and buy season 1 of True Detective. Again we won’t buy True Detective new, nor will we even rent it via On Demand — we may no longer subscribe to cable. Instead we will have the opportunity to purchase or better put “repurchase” it from someone else who already bought it a year or two earlier.

The biggest challenge to this business — and it’s guaranteed that this WILL BE an exciting new business everyone will be raving about at some point in the next 6 to 12 months — is making the calls to set up all the partnerships that would be needed to make it work. For one thing deals will have to be made with all the distributors, the Amazons and HBOGOs and ShowTimes and the like. Best solution would be to offer them a simple transaction fee for every time they change the name of one of the titles they have in their library from say Mr. John Smith to Mrs. Annabella Washington. The digital media will never move. It will still stay in the same place on their servers. The only thing that will change will be the owners name. Think of it like a virtual eBay for virtual media (since the media is no longer in physical form). No shipping required.

Deals will also have to be struck with all the content providers and the licensing agencies, the people who originally created and licensed the product who usually receive a fee every time that particular title, whether it be an ebook or a movie or an or a TV episode, is purchased; whether it’s a television studio or a production company or a record company etc etc. Yes it will be a challenge. But it’s no more challenging than what YouTube or Sootify or Pandora have had to do. It’s just going to take time, a good law firm, a little effort, a smattering of charm and a gift for gab. In a few months time all of these deals can easily be put into place and the business can be up and running on a simple web and mobile platform for consumers to start using.

Will it happen? Yes, without a doubt. Within a year this is a no brainer for an acquisition or take over by one of the larger media companies. The question is WHO is going to do it? It could be you. Like I said, this is a freebie. Take it. I’ve already got too much in the pipeline. But regardless of who creates it, I personally cannot wait to use this service. I own way too many episodes of The Good Wife and would gladly trade them all in for half of what I paid for them.

The advent of a consumer market for used digital media is right around the corner. The demand is already there. We just need someone to build it.

– Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone 6



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Uncategorized Amazon, netflix, TVS, used digital media

A private little world for me… a private little world for you. The online journals and musings of singer-songwriter author and activist Ed Hale. The Transcendence Diaries have been posting regularly online since 2001. Comments are always welcomed. And so are YOU.

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