Note

Hi everyone,

It has sure been a while since Life^3 in A^2. Mark, Ian, and I recently graduated together from UM, and the three amigos have since put many miles between themselves. Ian now lives out near Phoenix working at Intel, while Mark is finishing up a master's degree in Ann Arbor, prepping for even more years of college in med school.

Recently, I have been building a website called To Do in A2. It's a way to discover the coolest Ann Arbor events, so check it out if you're still around town. It's interesting, maintaining this blog was one of my first experiences with web design, so writing this now offers a lot of perspective on how far we have come.

The antics and adages of 2010 make up some of my favorite memories during college, and I miss them a lot. That huge, hot apartment, Germany's psychic-octopus-inspired World Cup run, deep discussions about politics and sustainability, and all those evenings of tennis and after-tennis smoothies. I wish I could go back, but unfortunately, that's not really how it works.

So instead, I suppose the best we can do is close our eyes, imagine some summer Ann Arbor fireflies, and for the last time, listen to the official, the amazing, and the only, Life^3 in A^2 blog ditty.

It's not very long, so enjoy it while you can.

Tyler

Last night, Mark and I headed over to North Quad

for some soccer and frisbee in the courtyard.  Ian is currently training as a community assistant there, and—as you would expect from Ian—he immediately introduced us to what seemed to be the entire group of CA’s and RA’s.  After trading a few greetings, frisbee passes, and stories about European volcanoes, the insects came out, and it was time to head in.  For a personal tour.  Through the “not open to the public” doors =)

As expected, North Quad is really nice—but maybe not for the reasons we expected.  I don’t know about you, but with all its hype, I had envisioned plasma TV’s in every room, luxurious couches in every lounge, maybe even some moving staircases and secret rooms for times of great need.  The truth is, though, that most of that was left out.  Sure, there are still plasma TV’s in almost every room, but the couches are simple and sleek.  Most of the rooms are not overly grand, and the elevators don’t even work sometimes.

Instead, North Quad focuses much more on developing community and cultural awareness.  The building has no front desk but rather a community center lounge.  Centrally controlled monitors, providing information about all kinds of North Quad activities, can be found almost anywhere within the building.  There is an enormous tower room for hosting community events, and there is a room where residents can make voice calls to any country in the world.  The lounges even contain trilingual trash cans.  They even have “freaky German” chairs… which are interesting. 

One thing has been bothering me recently, though.  If we would have turned on any of those numerous plasma TV’s, we probably would have seen a large number of reports about cultural misunderstandings and misled hostility.  It seems to be everywhere these days.  Even our president is wrongly accused and well… yeah.  It just makes us wonder what people are doing out there.  Are they listening with an open mind? Or are they just listening for what they want to hear?

Either way, one thing is certain: North Quad is on pace for the former.  And gazing across the city from the tenth floor tower room, we can hope that the rest of the country will soon follow. 

The Glass is 100% Full

Don’t look now, but it’s August!  I know, I know.  Summer is almost over.  But before we begin to get ourselves down, thinking about late nights in libraries, depressing football losses, freezing cold weather, and depressing football losses in freezing cold weather, remember this:  the glass is 100% full.

Suppose we are walking, and we forget what we’re doing and make a wrong turn.  What do we do?    Many people may keep heading in that same wrong direction.  What’s better, though, is to adjust our route for what is fastest (or most scenic, easiest on the joints—whatever we value most) at that moment.  If that requires pulling a one-eighty, we do it.  To avoid looking weird, we might cross the street beforehand, but still, we do it.

It’s like exponential decay.  Carbon 14 doesn’t know that 10,000 years ago it had a lot more of itself.  It’s just happy that it has so much of itself now.  From its point of view, carbon 14 is always normalized to 1, the present!  And by doing so, carbon 14’s attitude always remains aligned.

Er, excuse me for that nerdiness.

Anyway, it’s thinking about situations as if they are brand new to us.  If summer were only one month to begin with, we would all be quite happy that there’s one month of summer left.  It’s like we’re drinking our glasses, and they become half empty, but instead of wishing that emptiness were filled, we just get smaller glasses.

And there you have it, a full glass.  And as mother always said, let's be sure to finish our glass before we drink another.  I’m feeling a little thirsty for some smoothie about now, so feel free to stop by if you want some.  Cheers to August as the best month ever!

Take that, gas guzzling automobile!

...now I just need a plug-in hybrid.

Official Blog Ditty (free music=)

Hey everyone!

It's time to unveil our official blog ditty (below, below).  We hope you like it because it was quite an ordeal writing and recording this thing.  Seriously haha.  If you can't get enough, download it by clicking here!

Later,
Tyler

The We/They Issue: What LeBron, the stupid octopus, & war have in common & what we can learn from them all

Last night LeBron James announced his intentions to leave his Cleveland Cavaliers to put on a Miami Heat jersey next season.  About ten seconds later, former fans in Cleveland decided to help him along by physically adding heat to their once beloved LeBron James jerseys, lighting them up in flames.  Perhaps these fans just wanted to see the new look for themselves.  Actually, probably not.  They probably just hate LeBron James now.

But how did this happen so quickly?  I mean, for the last seven years, these fans called LeBron “king”.  I’m pretty sure he didn’t have any sudden changes in values, and he probably didn’t lose all of his basketball skills either.  The only change was the team for which he played.  For Cleveland fans, LeBron was no longer one of us.  He had suddenly become one of them.

What decides whether or not we like people?  Probably a lot of things—like whether or not they say nice things, whether or not they’re good-looking, whether or not they’re blocking our view (cough Mark), whether or not they comment (cough you) on our blog posts…  But I’m convinced that the largest factor is how we think of them in the plural form, whether we think we or they. 

Just think about it.  Seriously.  The we/they issue is true with the LeBron scenario (he's now one of them).  It’s why the Big House hates Ohio State quarterbacks (eww, he's one of them), and it’s why most Germany fans now hate that stupid octopus (what the frick, he's now one of them?).  It’s why we get upset with other drivers in traffic (jeez, what is wrong with them?).  It’s the problem with democrats and republicans (let's just not listen to them), and it’s even the reason for racism and war (wow, I hate them because they're them). 

The cool part, though, is that this we/they boundary can be easily influenced.  I often—and I’m guessing a lot of people—subconsciously place strangers in the “they” category.  It happens almost by default.  With no previous interaction with these people, why should we think about them in the we sense?  It's mostly a thoughtless thought, however, and there's no real basis for it.  With just a little effort, we can rethink our "we-group" to be much more inclusive and spread the love a whole lot more.  

Usually it only takes some conscious thought to recognize common values.  For instance, yesterday I was driving home, annoyed with the dense traffic around me.  I almost felt as if the other cars were my competition, preventing me from getting home quickly.  After thinking about it, though, I realized everyone else was just like me.  We all just wanted to get home quickly and safely.  It sounds weird, but suddenly, the other drivers became my friends as we all worked together to get home.  Believe me, it was a lot less lonely, I felt better about society, and with our newfound camaraderie and compassion, my friends and I all made it home in the end… brings a tear to me eye :'-|

Anyway…

 

So do it.  Look for commonalities, think about “them” a little, and find reasons to love-not-hate.  After all, LeBron is from Ohio just like Clevelandians, the octopus just wanted a nice meal, and those people we’re fighting across the world have families too.  After all, all of us are one of us.

Heck, maybe someday an alien attack/other severe threat to our planet will arrive, cause our nations to unite together, and create world peace at last… er, that is, if a third of the world doesn’t argue that the threat doesn’t exist.  But that’s a story for another day.

It's Not Easy Being Special...

...but I have a plan!

A plan to set our blog apart from the zillions out there:

Plan Part 1: Fewer Words, More Graphics

Plan Part 2: Blabbing with Listening
Let’s face it: there are millions of blogs lying around with blab that is rarely read. There is just too much blabber and not enough reading, so I am pledging to go "blabber-negative" with my posts. For every one of my posts, I promise to read at least two posts of others. Should I learn some fascinating facts, I’ll re-share them with you! That’ll definitely go along with the plan’s part 3.

Plan’s Part 3: Fun Facts
Did you know that Meerkats can close their ears to keep out sand? …didn’t think so. It's no secret that people love fun facts. These days, too much of the internet's material is dedicated to useless arguments over what's real and what's make-believe. Well, facts are fact, and facts are useful, so stay tuned for some useful facts to impress all your friends!