YES I AM BRAND LOYAL

Dammit, brand advertising does work on me when it comes to food. When I went into Manhattan yesterday to run a couple errands, I had Chipotle for dinner. SO GOOD.

Now I see this commercial for the "Angry Whopper" and Burger King makes me actually nostalgic for their fast food. Their advertisers and product managers are bloody brilliant and have completely nailed me, because I know that thing is nutritional dog doo and will have horrible aftertastes, but the commercial makes me want to try one.

Good job marketers!

My Cookie Sense Is Tingling

Is anyone out there taking Girl Scout Cookie orders? Please respond only if your order forms list "Samoas" and not "Caramel Delites" or whatever the heck those are called by the evil cookie makers. I only want cookies from Little Brownie Bakers! Who apparently now make a Dulce de Leche cookie...

Universe as Hologram

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?full=true

The implications of this latest theory about existence are pretty neat. Please excuse my liberal use of quotes in the following ramblings. Also please forgive me if this sounds ridiculously stupid for using a cheesy sci-fi movie as an analogy.

So, here's what I understand to be the basic underpinnings of this idea. "You", as in the collection of particles that make up your being as a person in this universe, are really just a projection of some other "stuff" in a "place" outside of the entire "universe". Sort of like the movie Tron, where there's a lower world and a higher world - the world inside the computer and the world outside. And what happens in that movie is that a person is "digitized" and sent from one world to the other.

I don't think this would make any sense in the context of the universe-as-hologram theory - you can't take a picture and pull a person out of it (or vice versa), that's not possible. Essentially, we, the universe, are just "abstractions". We're the picture, and whatever is projecting us is the "actual" reality. BUT... what if we can view and understand this base level of existence? What if quantum entanglement is an effect of some interaction that happens at that fundamental level? Imagine that we can build devices that can somehow make observations at that level of existence - could we see the interactions that previously produced the past, or the ones that are about to create the future? Imagine being able to view and interpret the "higher world"; if it were like Tron that would be like the programs being able to read their own code, almost the same way that Flynn gets godlike powers and understanding due to his ties to the "real" world.

So now let's take it another level - let's say that we figure out how to influence the higher world and somehow directly manipulate it. What if you could take all of the fundamental "stuff" that makes you up and move it from one "place" to another? The projection that is "you" would teleport, no?

This makes me sound like a crazy person. But sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic, right?

Another thought: What world are we creating? What projections exist "below" us?

New York Supporters of California's Proposition 8

The following people in New York donated to the anti-civil rights legislation, California's Proposition 8:

Mrs. Patricia Robison
Homemaker
$100.00 7/21/2008

Tracy Bentley
Attorney
Lehman Brothers Inc
$250.00 9/23/2008

Lisa Clarke
Accountant
Kinderhook Industries
$35.00 10/8/2008

Mr. Matthew Lambert
Analyst
Millgate Capital
$100.00 10/16/2008

Mr. Larry Hanson
$100.00 10/16/2008

If you know these people, let them know how you feel about equal rights for everyone!