Sitting on his throne, a studio executive once infamously said, "Do I pay the plumber every time I flush the toilet?"

In Hollywood, the powers-that-be don't give two sh*ts. So to speak. Creative accounting makes it appear that studios never earn a profit. Meanwhile, the talent who make the entire business possible in the first place must fight for equity.

This is brilliant. Perception is reality. I love how people "know" what's going on. Truly, we see the world not as it is, but as we are.

After staring/playing with this for a while, I can now consciously switch my perception of the dancer's rotation. Quite an interesting optical illusion.

When she is spinning left, it appears that her left arm and leg are raised. And when she is spinning right, it appears that her right arm and leg are raised.

Have several of your mates look at this together, and you may find they are perceiving the same moment differently.

Dear Skippy,

What if your work happens to be promoting peace on the grassroots level, literally one step and one meal and one music jam at a time? Just because certain folks choose to work in an office or store doesn't mean there aren't other avenues of meaningful contribution in the world. Maybe there is a book or documentary film to come out of their experience. And in the whole process, during the trip and subsequently, who is to know the influence or the good to come of it? The lives they touch along the way; how their own lives will be shaped and changed.

Enriching ideas can come from unexpected places -- and have a way of taking root and growing.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=3R3S1NAZ1X2NVQFIQMFCFFWAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2007/09/12/nwater112.xml

This is freegan awesome. It is a lifestyle choice that has an activist message: we are a throwaway culture, an over-consuming culture, and we are suffering for it. Issues of world hunger, environmental degradation, personal health, labor conditions (such as sweat shops) -- all of it is connected, and our individual choices (diet or otherwise) add up. Freeganism is not meant to be a sustainable practice. The folks in New York City, and other places, can do it because the society's waste allows for it. It is an ethical choice, until (if ever) our culture shifts as a whole. If we lived more simply, we would be providing goods and services on a local level ... instead of shipping bottled water from Fiji, or cutting down Amazon rainforests to graze cattle, or whatever. In the United States, we are treated more as consumers than citizens -- so, be as it may, our consumption habits (energy, food, entertainment, etc.) can literally shape the world for the better. Someone once described it as, "Economics as if people mattered."

You might be pleasantly surprised to know that Keira Knightly was Queen Amidala's decoy, Sabé, in Star Wars episode 1.