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The movie The Love Guru is coming out soon – looking forward to it!
All gurus of love psychedelic dance as one of their forms of exercise.
Dan Zen dances to The Garden – a social environmental Indian / Arabian / Persian sounding a Capella yodeling psychedelic song! Please see the video on YouTube. Or download the song from SoundClick. Or visit the Dan Zen page on facebook.
Dan Zen wears his San Francisco Groovy Guru robe. The one he wore for the International Groovy Day poster. Should we choose a day for that? Or should it just be any day? Oh… also check out the Love Mash – the robe shows up there too and it would be cool if some more people made Zen Mixes and maybe someone will make us a love mash!
Dan Zen also “starred” in a movie called the Guru Monster Movie. Some of that can be seen pictorially on Thee Gnostics mySpace page – more to come as TheeGnostics.com site happens.
In 1996, Dan Zen traveled to San Francisco and wore a guru robe – quite a beautiful traditional green robe with yellow embroidery. He was at the Macromedia Conference where Shockwave was unveiled. A flower lei held his festival pass. An Indian guard, after much deliberation, came up smiling and said, “You know… in my country… the women wear those robes”.
Get dancing people! Loosen up – no steps to follow – you can’t go wrong and it feels great – puts you in touch with your body and nobody has to know! Unless… you start vlogging it with Zen Mix!
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This title can be interpreted as a good thing that the girls stopped the cars – what activists! But unfortunately, the cars were still idling.
I am not for driving and would encourage people to walk, skateboard, skate, ride or take public transit. But since currently people do drive we should try and let them do so as efficiently as possible. Now it may be that in doing so, we encourage driving. Well there are ways to discourage driving without actually adding more harm to the environment – taxing drivers or gas is one way to discourage driving and if the money is used towards environmental solutions, then even better!
That aside… one way to let people drive efficiently is synchronized lights. Hamilton has synchronized lights which greatly reduces idling. Once again, perhaps the ease of driving through Hamilton encourages drivers to do so and so more people drive. But as mentioned, there are other ways to discourage driving. For the people that must drive, synchronized lights help – please see the synchronized lights post.
They have just put in a new light at a new supermarket and have added a cross button. There is another down the way at the Tim Hortons. Now, on occasion, a pedestrian presses the button to cross the road rather than wait for the light to change naturally. So on average, they get to cross a minute earlier.
But what happens is that this puts the lights out of sync. I have been caught oh, about 1/20 times. And each time, I look around and see 20 cars around me waiting for this person to cross the road. And there are 20 cars on the other side waiting. And once I go, the next light is out of sync so the 20 cars with me have to wait there too. And the ten cars going the other way have to wait at their next light.
So that is 20 + 20 + 20 + 20 = 80 cars idling for 1 minute so that a person can cross the road.
CAVEATS
If you have a light that does not change until a person wants to cross then this is good design if the light changes to be in sync with the others. If you do not have synchronized lights then perhaps it does not matter as much. If it is a crosswalk in between lights then that is sort of okay. Over or under passes for pedestrians might be better.
Madeline, my daughter, came up with a solution. She suggests that there should be a finished button on the other side of the crosswalk that turns the light back to green. A good idea but it could cause problems if someone uses it while another is on the path. But it could activate and warning hand and give a certain number of seconds to finish the crossing. It was cute and astute. It reminded me of my earliest invention that I proudly told my dad. If your shirt comes untucked, why don’t you tuck it into your underpants like me!
In conclusion, there are other ways to discourage driving other than cause cars to idle. As such, pedestrian walk buttons should not be placed on synchronized lights. Please pass this message along to your city planners for consideration.
Car Curling – the Environmentally Friendly Driving Game
February 8, 2008
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In this mash of Zen Mix mixes, we see examples of Car Curling and environmentally friendly driving game where you try not to use your brakes. So as you approach a group of stopped cars, you stop accelerating and glide towards them seeing if you can glide to a stop just behind them.
Every time you use your brakes you are wasting gas. It takes energy to move your car – think about pushing your car – and each time you use your brakes to stop your car – that much energy is just being thrown away. Well actually, it is being used to wear down your breaks…
In rush hour traffic, avoiding brakes can help smoothen out the flow – regulate it so the fluid flow (cars are like a fluid) becomes more consistent and speeds up. Trucks do this and it helps get the traffic back on stream. I have driven 100 Kilometers through rush hour traffic to Toronto and not used my brakes once! It is a fun, environmentally friendly game.
Car Curling… with Inventor Dan Zen on a Zen Vlog Car Vlog
Psychedelic Dancing as Exercise – Caribou
October 8, 2007
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An amazing new song by Caribou from Dundas, the Psychedelic and Spacerock capital of Canada with bands like Battleship Ethel, Simply Saucer, Thee Gnostics, etc. This mix features Opartica as the overlay from http://www.opartica.com, the Dan Zen online Op Art maker tool.
Get dancing people! Loosen up – no steps to follow – you can’t go wrong and it feels great – puts you in touch with your body and nobody has to know! Unless… you start vlogging it with Zen Mix!
Across the Universe Movie – How to Psychedelic Dance
July 31, 2007
The Across the Universe movie by Julie Taymor – who did the amazing Titus movie – is coming out and from some of the previews it looks like there is lots of psychedelic dancing some with oil drop shows, etc. So let’s hope that more people are looking for some examples of psychedelic dancing and come to realize that it is a most pleasurable past-time and indeed makes for good exercise.
To commemorate what is bound to be a revival below is a review Zen Mix mash of all the psychedelic dancing as exercise mixes Dan Zen has done to date. Zen Mix is the video and picture mixing tool (although, we will announce it here… you can mix interactive features with Zen Mix and we have been doing this) from inventor Dan Zen.
Psychedelic Dancing as Exercise (Mash in Order)
Psychedelic Dancing as Exercise (Random Mash)
Play these and get dancing yourself – get in the mood for Across the Universe movie!