Calm In The Storm

In the crazy, challenging times we live in, here is video to calm your nerves and slow your breathing. Presenting Haburu! 

It's All About Balance

You better watch out. You better not cry. Better not pout. I’m telling you why. 

Here is the why . . . 

In years past we listened to Christmas music through a pretty limited bandwidth. Radio stations weren't dedicated to 24/7 Christmas music, television channels weren't saturated with Christmas movies, Christmas decorations didn't show up in September, and we weren't bombarded with holiday emails, social media holiday content on a mobile phone that never leads our sight, and finally the effects of ramped up consumer advertising. Instead of a mere three weeks of being exposed to Christmas content, now we get a minimum of two months. Wow, it makes me tired just typing this content. 

Thanksgiving Stories

I watched a riveting video on YouTube this week titled, "How To Ride A Backward Bicycle". It is part of the "Smarter Every Day" video series that my wife and I enjoy on a regular basis. This particular episode dealt with this specific challenge, could someone learn to ride a bike that was engineered to turn the opposite direction of the steering column? 

On the surface this would not appear to be a difficult challenge, I mean all that is required is to reprogram your brain to understand that when you turn the steering wheel right the bike will go left and vice versa. But here is the crazy part, in this video, no one can successfully ride this bike! Hundreds of people have taken up this challenge and no one can ride this bike more than 2 or 3 feet before crashing.*

Why?

Six Hundred Years Ago . . .

In a kingdom driven by dynastic war, a young shepherdess receives religious visions, revealing that she is her nation’s only hope in leading her country to victory. At sixteen, she convinces the local garrison commander near her town to give her a military escort to the court of the uncrowned prince-royal. She achieved this by accurately predicting the outcome of a battle taking place more than a hundred miles away. (Though, notably, she’d already won several of his soldiers to her cause before she ever made her prophecy.) 

This was not the first time she had won over the confidence of authority figures in her life, she prevailed in a legal trial when her father sought to bound her to a marriage obligation to a man she did not even know. Somehow, she convinced the Judge to free her from the obligation her father had made. At the age of fourteen. Without any legal education. 

So after receiving her military escort, she arrives at the French Court, where she correctly identifies the prince hiding in the crowd of courtiers. She strikes up a conversation with the prince and whispers a secret known only to the two of them and God. (We still have no idea what this secret was, though it has been rumored to be the prayer the future king had prayed to His Creator. Joan of Arc refused to reveal this confidence even under torture.)