Arriving in Italy

Argh, I wrote this entry originally on Works and then lost it.

Today I got up around 5:30am to fly to Italy. Ella was doing more cute mischief and puffed up her tail and fur when she saw me this morning. She also rubbed all over dad’s suitcase. Sooo cute.
The tax ride was smooth, and we had pre-paid the proper amount so we didn’t have to worry about getting ripped off. I like Heathrow’s check-in system, at least for this terminal, better than LAX’s by a long shot.

They’re starting to speak Italian on the plane and it’s, well, Greek to me.

The check-in went smoothly and quickly, except that my bag got isolated since I had forgotten the bottle of water in it from the last flight. The guy in front of us was trying to sneak rum and cologne on board the plane, so it took a while to sort him out. The TSA guy finally just got my bag over with quickly. He was nice, and handed back my shoes and sweater before searching it.

We then went into the stores, since our gate hadn’t opened yet. Marks and Spencer is still expensive. I got a look at the new mini-VAIO. I’m jealous of its size, but the processor is only 1.33ghz and I don’t see why they made a deal with Vista instead of Ubuntu. I honestly think the latter will affect the popularity of it. But it’s great to see a prototype of the future of netbooks.
The other netbooks were basically like mine or worse, and cost its equivalent in pounds. I LOVE my Acer, as practically everyone knows.
I’m also happy to learn that Packard Bell survived in Europe. We have computers from ‘88 and ‘98 made by them, which still haven’t broken. If they still make computers of that caliber, then I am so glad they survived here. Of course, their netbook has a 1.2 Ghz AMD processor., eheheheh.

I’ve realized that the fact that I am familiar with most of the movies/television here is more a comment on how LA and the internet are hubs of information than anything else. I’m also glad to see uniquely British movies in a generic store, though not the titles “Giant Shark vrs Octopus” and “Lesbian Vampire Killers”. I wanted to buy the first season of Little Britain and may when I get back. They also had Goodnight, Lenin in the store.

I’m sad to see a dearth of the healthy snacks I observed from my first times in England, which also has an obesity problem now. There are less bookstores and less Starbucks.

My uncle gave me a sandwich without telling me it had chicken in it(he does know I’m a vegetarian). I consequentially got a stomachache.

I slept on our flight here. Customs were almost too easy. My uncle’s suitcase got lost. We then took a large Mercedes Benz taxi with a very enthusiastic cab driver, who showed us half the monuments in the city and confirmed the stereotype of people being very enthusiastic with their hands. The architecture is amazing. More on that later. There seems to be a large proliferation of tagging on the beautiful Italian housing and trains. Our cab driver then didn’t know how to get to the hotel and shouted to people on the street for directions. We eventually got here. The elevator is old-fashioned and scary. I love the trees in the boulevards, which are flourishing in their natural habitat. The rooms are very clean and nice, though the outside is not much to look at. Thankfully there appears to be unfamiliar music, though Lady Gaga followed us here.

I hope that we adapt without incident to the Italian culture without incident. It’s very different from our task and time oriented culture.

Off to Italy at 6:00am

I have to write an entry on decaying art.

Today I rebelled against long sleeves, as it has been warm and even hot here. My dad and I split off from the main group to go to the Natural History museum while my mom met up with my aunt Brenda to go to Oxford Circus, which is a street with shopping. The natural history museum here is excellent and certainly better than the ones in LA and San Diego. Even the architecture is gorgeous, though you can see through the windows into the messy research institutions. This museum was the first that taught me about the sheer scale of dinosaurs. As a kid growing up in a world full of skyscrapers I was never impressed with the fossils I saw, but the enormous T-Rex in the lobby showed me exactly why this was the king of tyrants. I don't know what they did with that skeleton and I wish I could have seen it today, but the gigantic diplodocus that took up most of the lobby will have to suffice. I never knew there were so many species of ichtyosaur, nor that they gave birth to live young. Seeing their fossilized remains right before birth was kind of sad. The usual suspects, mosasaur etc were there as well, but one of the best was seeing the only fossil identifying one of the species. I wonder why they even were in different genuses?

I then bought a mini-puzzle of the HMS Beagle for Chris in the Darwin shop. They had an "extract your own DNA" kit in the shop, which I wanted even though I could probably do it fairly easily with a little ingenuinty, but it cost too much.

The birds were too crowded at that time, so we went up the stairs. I can't remember what order we did things in. I think the next thing we saw was the gems. They have thousands of pounds worth of beautiful minerals in one of the most complete collections I have ever seen, including tons of beautiful and famous diamonds like The Star of Africa. They also had the largest gold nugget ever discovered(from Australia), worth over 500,000 pounds. One of the meteorites was on display and I touched it because I couldn't help myself. They also had several moon rocks and a metorite from Mars. The cut gemstones were also amazing. So cool!

We quickly went through an exhibit on the Evolution of Man, but most of the bones were casts. This was the first time I saw Lucy in person, though. There was a GIANT sequoia trunk over 1300 years old when it fell. We bought my mom a beautiful red amber necklace on a sterling silver chain. I got a clear rock quartz-studded chain and an unusual hematite chain. There were also a lot of different and interesting toys, also known as "I'm going to look up how to do this on the internet when I get back". The birds exhibit was sad, as they had some animals that had gone extinct because of us. The hummingbirds were gorgeous, but dead. It does make me sad that they had to die, even if it was for a good cause.

Then there were the dinosaurs, which had a line to get into. The wait was supposed to be 30 minutes but ended up being about eight. I joked in the exhibit that the warfare of the future would involve cloned dinosaurs instead of tanks. The skeletons(and claws) were huge! I have pictures, but they don't show the scale of the animals. Iguanadon was freaky. The club on the end of those dinosaur's tails was huge! Some dinos suffered from arthritis. There was also a really realistic animitroncic T-rex which was almost scary. Dinosaurs were the ultimate killing machines, and now the planet is ruled by little, soft, pink things. There is no way we could have stood up them. There was also a section questioning why dinos are so popular. Well, no crap. Humans have a thing for huge reptiles and cool things.

I also got a notebook with a cover made out of recycled circuit boards!

We went to meet the rest of my family at this point, went the wrong direction and had to take the tube another stop. Finally, we ended up in the right Marks & Spencers. We went to Boots and then went home.

It's interesting how even the vegetation in England is familiar because of how much of it is imported to the United States. I am happy to see local brands and books. I haven't seen any Innocent Smoothies so far; what happened?

Ella is doing cute and naughty things. She was in the blinds and now is in Sharon's bed. She purrs when she's about to "get" someone.

Insomniacalicious

I am having trouble sleeping. I'm thinking about how glibly most women I know dismiss the fact that high heels damage feet. It seems that most rationalize this with "yes, but only if you wear it all the time" or "these aren't high enough to do any damage". Every time a person wears high heels they are damaging their foot a little, and in my opinion they really are the new footbinding. There is only one pair of shoes with heels which I will wear, and even my formal shoes don't have any. Looking good is not a good enough reason for me to hurt myself.

I really like these toy robots from the 80s. They look more like robots than what is seen in the toy section today. I used to love virtual/giga/robotic pets, and still have a mess of them around the house. I'm trying to figure out how to make use of them, also. The problem with virtual pets is that they're missing two of the crucial things which makes a pet worth having: behavior to observe and unpredictability. A worm is more interesting to observe than a Giga pet.
When we develop better pet robots, though, I am getting one hands down. They combine my love of electronics with my love of animals and pets.

This morning I want to do everything. I want to check out the underground comic stores and all of the cool little places here. I'm probably not going to get to do that, but waaaaaaah.

I like this article on behavioral economics and how it is more realistic than "rational man", but dislike how it paints humans as creatures unable to help themselves.

Imagination

(Image credit; By artist Dean Yeagle)


Some moons ago Boing Boing posted a link to this Flickr gallery featuring Soviet radio apparatuses.

They also posted a link to the online archive of the American eugenics movement. We like to censor our social attitudes at the time of WWII in retrospect, but I really think that in this case we could benefit from learning from it. Also, it strikes me as blatant propaganda to hide this ugly truth. Perhaps it is beneficial that the story is alien from us as it makes it all the more repulsive, but America is guilty and needs to answer for that. It is also beneficial to face the realities of a society where quote-unquote scientific enlightenment ruled, or rather, how easily "common sense" and misinterpretation/failure to take into account variables in/of models can turn into a destructive force. As someone who welcomes intellectuals as leaders this era has especially served as a cautionary tale: yes, in ideal form, this would not happen, but a lot of things work in ideal form and Joseph Stalin does not come to power, for example.

So I don't have a Wii, but the images for the new Steampunk "Epic Mickey" freak me out and make me want to. As long as they don't have that six-legged MechaMickey in there, because I would probably accidentally throw the controller through the screen when he turned up. This is probably the most blatantly psychological steampunk I have seen, filled with a landscape of broken childhood innocence. Imagine a post-apocalyptic fairy tale, or set in a formerly fairy land. I had a dream like that, where fairyland had been transformed into suburbia and it was my job as the leader to lead my people to wake the fairy queen. We had to escape guards at Disneyland and she was in a pond where houses and graffiti were encroaching; it was nevertheless a beautiful place, much like a lake I saw in Scotland. In fact, it probably was that lake in Scotland, a lake where we thought that an oil slick made the water shine from afar but was in fact a healthy and living beauty. I was the only woman, I made fire and water dance together for a couple's wedding and accidentally made it rain. But I am all about actual utopias(or as near as humans can get, or a civilization where everyone is enlightened and can fullfill their creative urges...something), so someone else will have to write the story.

Here is an interesting story from Wired on the economics of the Somalia pirates. Note: an average pirate makes seventeen times the income of a regular Somalian citizen.

You know, all of this buisness news is blending into "estimated this and that". I'm suprised economists haven't included into their own model the estimates of what reporting can do to stocks.



If you love stop-motion animation, you'll love this. It's seriously amazing.
(Credit: The PEN story, found via Boing Boing, is another amazing stop-motion video made as an ad by Olympus. They mention him as their inspiration in their credits. )

Honestly? I can't wait for Italy and England. My blood is boiling from the need to travel to Europe again. I've been having dreams about it, and finally I'm going. And yes, I am going to be posting while there, which will probably be my only contact with the outside world.

Reading Into it All

Thanks for the link Anonymous, I finished reading the story today.
As someone who has read Flatland I am hoping he got to copyright first, which he probably did.

I am a sworn enemy of the Twilight series. Everything I have read about it reinforces my resolution not to read it, especially Edward's line "You're like my own personal brand of heroin". What girl actually wants to hear that? Well, apparently many, many teenagers these days, but still. It doesn't help that my usual reaction to romance scenes is to skip them unless I'm reading a classic or it's a very good book. And here is my problem with most fantasy novels:

1.) Guy meets girl, guy and girl fall for each other. Cool.
2.) Guy and girl go through tribulations together, keep love to themselves. This is realistic.
3.)Guy and girl confess love and then get married/spend eternity together shortly thereafter. Wait, what? No?

First love sells, which is just a matter of fact. But these novels include only the honeymoon phase and none of the ecstasy or pain that comes with real love or spending a significant amount of time together. A partner is a person whom you know for years and will still be a surprise sometimes and totally predictable in others. These saccharine, unrealistic portrayals are not doing anybody any favors, ultimately. Why would you want a love like that if you could have the real thing?
Also, as far as I understand Bella follows Edward to the exclusion of everybody else and then gets pregnant right after high school. What a great example. Also, talk about communication issues between Bella and Edward. As far as I understand, in the second book he leaves without telling her why.
I know that people are going "it's a book for teenagers, you shouldn't expect better". And there are plenty of examples of other books where the characters meet, fall in love, and get married soon thereafter. It's usually their saving grace that this is not the central pillar of the plot which excuses this.
Ok, so people in my generation were reading Harry Potter in middle school, and I would love to say that nobody took them too seriously, but it's Harry Potter. I have read all of those books, and while they are entertaining and do use actual mythology/characters from history in them(eg Nicholas Flamel) they are entertainment and nothing more. I do not get why so many other just as good or better books did not gain the popularity of this trilogy. Maybe it was a changing climate in regards to fantasy, or the series was simply extremely accessible to people, or a bit of both. Either way, LOTR was then produced, which I approve of. Then there was Wicked. I never finished the book, but it is dark and graphic and I'm willing to bet most people don't actually read it. I've heard some of the songs from the musical and read the Wikipedia entry on the play. The songs are very simple musically and tap into generalized emotions. "I'm not that girl" is something most, if not all of us, have felt in the past before and probably associate with deep emotions, but it's not exactly brilliant writing. The whole the popular girl and the outcast can get along! and the popular girl has problems and can feel like an outcast too is good. Of course, I believe most of us learn this immediately after high school if not before then.

Today's speed run: 12 minutes to the end of 6-3(got killed by the world boss).

One of the differences between photographs and paintings, at least, to me, is that, in a painting the subjects are beautiful shells waiting to be filled with meaning, but a photograph is of someone extant, a person who's shoes we may attempt to step in but can never replace. In fact, completely replacing the person in a photograph dehumanizes the model in a way, because they become simply tools, vehicles for ourselves. Of course, many fashion photographers attempt to take the image of a model and make it their own in the way painters made model's images a work of art. One could argue that the ending photograph is as far removed from the model as a painting, but this is not intuitively extant to me. Perhaps because when looking at a painting, the first "person" considered is the painter, but when looking at a photograph, it is the model. Or perhaps it's my perception of models then and now.

After reading this article on horrible, horrible US companies that again throw the phrase "first world problems" into harsh reality, I had a heart attack when Nesquick was #1 on the list. Child slave labor, some of it from human trafficking, harvests the cocoa in their drinks. I love chocolate milk and consume vast quantities of it. I am never buying Nesquick again. The Kirkland milk I buy is organic, certified by the American Humane Society and obviously sold by the awesome Costco, but where does the cocoa in it originate? Here is a site called "Rountable for a sustainable cocoa economy". Declaration of Trinidad and Tobago?! This hits much too close to home. But I can't find out where the cocoa is from. Most likely a middleman.

It's Personal

A girl running through lavender fields. Pic via Jezebel via the Getty.








An illustrated Mario death by John-
ny Yakon, via Offwo-
rld.




































Today's speed run time: 14 minutes until the end of 7-1. I tried out a little bit of "Super Mario: The Lost Levels". Here was my reaction: "I don't see why this was considered too hard for Western au-"/murdered.
I used to suck at the first Mario. I played a single game today, got up to 5-3 and then was killed by Bowser's castle.
My mom used to play the first Mario with us and actually was very good at beating it. In fact, she was considered "the expert" in the family on that game.

Speaking of my mom, she picked up Clingy today, who was so shocked he didn't even struggle. She put him down and he proceeded to hide, then come back and play on the patio. My mom corrected me, as it has been over two weeks since we last saw Gaiylee herself.

Look at the language in this article from the Reuters:
"But Paal cautioned Clinton against hanging her reputation too much on improved relations with China.

"We are not in a position to control them," he said."

There is always the possibility that this man's quote was taken out of context. However, it is very telling of the imprints of foreign policy in this country, even if Obama is trying to change them.

I didn't copy or write down a lot of stuff today.

Wouldn't it be cool if there were bridges that were water and held together by water tension in a theoretical world? It would be so trippy to swim through them and put a hand out into the air.

Physorg.com published an article on friction free computer circuits via quantum mechanics. I'm too lazy to link. Go do it yourself!

So I have over two hundred entries in this journal, which is impressive. I love writing and I love sharing cool stuff with people. Blogs are a perfect balance of the two. I feel strange writing a diary on the computer, especially since I don't want to have one somewhere that is ultimately hackable, but I dislike writing by hand since, well, I'm faster at typing and my handwriting starts to resemble random loops after a while. I just figured it out! A flash drive!

Flash drives, though certainly hackable if you put the wrong things in them or leave them connected to the computer, are the first ultra-easy ways to distribute data that don't require linking computers directly and actually keep the information remote from the rest of the digital world(if you don't keep them connected to the computer, again). They are our first private digitilized miniaturized domains widely available to the public. And don't tell me about external HDs, because those are not miniaturized, at least in comparison to the flash drive.

Of course, unlike a book, you need a computer to make a flash drive work, an extra piece of equipment that must take part in the process. And boot before starting the process. Ah, the booting.

The original Star Trek is an entertaining, theoretical and thoughtful show. What it is not is in any way realistic. Which is now I bring to you this parody; look for upcoming ones about Grecian gods appearing, geniuses going insane, and time travel. This particular one is based on "it's scientifically impossible!"; specifically "Shore Leave" from season one, which I actually enjoyed quite a bit.

1.) The landing party beams down and everything looks perfectly normal on their sensors because their sensors are crappy. Also, everywhere looks like Earth because of Somebody's Law of Planetary BS(or, we reuse the same drawings as alien backdrops several times).

2.)Something impossible is seen and hard proof of its existence is found, usually corresponding with the word "fascinating". Spock's soul dies a little more.

3.)People still think that it's a good idea to split up because that makes for dramatic death scenes which lead to dramatic scenes for Captain Kirk to lament over his crew member. Or Kirk still thinks that crew members can handle themselves even though they keep dying because they have PHASERS*
*Note: phasers usually knocked out or taken away by the end of the episode

4.) Captain Kirk meets THE GIRL. All girls in this galaxy have an inexplicable attraction to at least one member of the crew, usually the one who's name is an anagram for "Tiberius Kirk James". And that specific member tends to "genuinely" fall for this woman in return because they have sexual ADD. McCoy, Spock, and Kirk have at least 5 women each who are waiting for them to settle down with.
In this episode Kirk meets a special lady from his past of which he has 6 million. He must have been dating some of these girls at the same time as each other or be a serial monogamist, because, how many relationships can you have in twenty-something years?
P.S. Kirk's charm has won more battles for the federation than the Enterprise herself. The Federation should just package up an "essence du Kirk" and send it around instead of spaceships.**
**Working parts included.

5.) Their phasers stop working. Suprise! Also, The Enterprise is helpless for one reason or another because the scientists in this time period are too busy focusing on how cool it would be to be able to "blow up half a continent" rather than "shields that work properly", despite the fact that the Enterprise is mainly a defensive ship. Communicators are out, too, and for some reason it never occurs to them to use the injectable trackers besides as a deux ex machina for prying them out of their arm and setting things on fire in a Nazi jail. Yes, this actually happened.

I mean, nothing usually goes wrong, right?
Wait.

6.) So now the crew is being chased and seduced by a wide variety of things that turn up for no reason despite the fact that it's pretty obvious now what's happening. Everyone seems to have lost their critical thinking skills....

7.) Which leads to the Shatner vrs. somebody fight. Badly choreographed and involving lots of rolling, I'm never quite sure what the point of these are.

8.) Spock and Kirk figure out the solution and start acting on it, because the show is running out of time and Shatner's shirt has finally ripped open. Then the solution appears out of nowhere, in this case a peaceful creator who was waiting to intervene until the emotional scarring occurred. The explanation is cool, but sort of leaves you going "wait, but what about...". Also, the skimpily clad girls couldn't not show up, so they decided to include them at the end. Everybody is happy and Kirk decides to spend time with a cellular cast of one of his many long-lost loves.

Huh?

Mooning

These Flickr shots from India, China and Japan of the most recent lunar eclipse are awesome. I found them via the Freak-
anomics blog. This is where today's picture (s)comes from. I can't even begin to post all of my favorites. I love the steam-punk-ishness of the first shot and the fragile humanity of the second.

Shell has been accused by Amnesty International of horrible crimes in the Niger Delta. The report which has been put together is pretty damning. Please click.

Someone please remind me to get my hands on Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald". Apparently it's his fusing of HP Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes. This sounds like it could go horribly wrong, but it most likely it didn't. And I want to see it.

Speaking of Gaiman, a short while back he posted a link to Jamie Kennedy's hilarious bid to take the Newberry award from him.

".. And I, Jamie Kennedy am the Sarah Palin of fiction!"

The third video of three:

If you want to see Gaiman being wrestled to the ground, here is your chance.

I believe that there should be a ban on political ads. In this day and age of the internet the off-hand access to a candidate's information is easy to find, and the horrible excess of money that is wasted while running for office on every level of government is disgusting. Of course, I have no doubt that politicians will then attempt to rig the sites with the most hits for the apposing candidate, even if it is illegal. Can't the public win? In a way, though, website traffic is much more traceable and easier to investigate. If only society didn't insist on drowning us in nonsense information and untrustworthy leaders. You can't only blame the politicians, though. What if we all participated in the primaries and the big name candidates were not the only ones who received grassroots funding?

This makes me think about celebrity and de-humanization. The earliest humans always portray other tribes as evil or less than themselves in some way. Celts are Frost Giants, enemy tribes are motivated by jealous demons, and the other tribes are actually monkies that look like humans. Yet it is extremely rare to encounter a racist child. A judgmental child, though, is not hard to find. We all have "that uncle" or someone who's views are directly the opposite of ours, sometimes for all the reasons we dislike the opposing side, too. Yet would any of us wish them to die or call them the names we call our politicians?

All of these are just snippets of thoughts I'm having.

PS New Mario 2 speed run time: 20-21 minutes, got to the middle of 7-2(the last level)

I kind of like the wacky layout of this particular post.

Good and Bad

(Note: This is a real nebula)



This couple has an awesome wedding! Source

Somebody decided to "donate" a landmine to Goodwill.

Apparently as many as 2,000 Afghan soldiers were killed and put in a mass grave that was covered up under the Bush administration. I wonder why they hate us? It is so difficult to figure out.

I wonder how many of those people had families with children or babies? Let's kill a bunch of fathers who are also sons. Not only is it morally justifiable, but it won't have any far-reaching repercussions.

Please visit this site.

The Falcon from The Shamptonian Institute on Vimeo.

"The Falcon is a stop-animation/steampunk film that takes place on an old wooden photo album and is entirely composed of macro-photographed hardware pieces from vintage, antique cameras that have been carefully disassembled, for that true analog experience in pure 100% digital Shamptonian definition. The film features music from ESL Music ESL artist Thunderball, with sound design by Bret Johnson. From A.gfa to Z.eiss, and whatever your format, The Falcon has a perspective for everyone."

This..is actually a cool way to go after dying to me for some reason.

I saw my goby today! He seems to be doing well, though he has decided never to leave the cover of the driftwood. I also saw my everglades pygmy sunfish.

I am kind of in love with Regina Spektor's song "Blue Lips".

Every Day Saturday Morning is the blog of an abortion clinic escort. These people tolerate everything from verbal abuse to actual violence in order to protect women in what is usually already a horrible and harrowing time.

Robots, Plants, and Dystopias

I love this simple yet salient article on the Freakanomics blog criticizing the way data is used in today's journalism.

"The lead article is by John Noble Wilford (who’s still going strong, btw), and includes one of the most elegant little uses of data I can recall seeing in a news article:

Although Mr. Armstrong is known as a man of few words, his heartbeats told of his excitement upon leading man’s first landing on the moon.

At the time of the descent rocket ignition, his heartbeat rate registered 110 a minute — 77 is normal for him — and it shot up to 156 at touchdown."

MIT is also tracking trash in an effort to show how far it can reach. I think the criticisms present about the sampling are relevant, though they may be showing how even conscientious people can have far-reaching affects with their disposables.

NASA apparently secretly launched a moon rock into space to celebrate yesterday's anniversary of the moon landing. Why?! We only have so many and I want one, you could have given it to me instead! Also lost opportunities for science, blah blah blah.

You know, after reading a couple accounts of the UK terrorism laws on Boing Boing I'm starting to understand things like V for Vendetta, Quatterman, and Warren Ellis (who is a person not a thing and in San Diego where he can do horrible, horrible things to me). Damn, it makes here look like a a veritable utopia of individual rights in some cases. I'm not going to go into debating the amount of freedom they have versus our amount of freedom because I don't know enough on the subject and am too lazy to do the research. All I will say is that this issue is not black and white.

Lego Microtome


"A microtome is a small machine that biologists use to slice specimens into very thin sections to examine under a microscope. Instructables user lemonie made his own out of Lego! In this video demo, the device cuts garlic in slices just 250 microns thick. That's about twice as thick as a human hair. Seems like the Lego Microtome could be scaled up for slicing paper-thin prosciutto! Lego Microtome (Thanks, Christy Candida!)"

People are thankfully working on shark repellants to save them from fishing lines.

It's amazing how Twix and Burger King cross the line from using women for sexy points to using women. Thanks, I love being objectified and taken for granted! I'm not a person, I'm a walking Barbie doll who's all plastic with no inside.

These paper robots are awesome! That's what that picture is, btw.

How NOT to raise a chimp in your family:
"I collect books by people who have raised apes in their homes. One of the first, The Ape and the Child, was written in by behaviorist W.N. Kellogg, a man with a peculiar brainstorm: that he should raise a chimpanzee as a twin to his own infant son, treating them in exactly the same fashion, and comparing their development......Results? Mixed. The chimp, Gua, took more quickly to her civilizing education than her brother. She appeared smarter, stronger, and more emotionally developed on a number of counts: she was better at using glasses and silverware, walked earlier (chimps generally don't walk upright), responded to verbal commands sooner, and was more cooperative and obedient......For example, though Donald had learned to walk before Gua joined the Kellogg family, he regressed and started crawling more, in tune with Gua. He'd bite people, fetch small objects with his mouth, and chewed up a shoe. More importantly, his language skills were delayed. At 19 months, Donald's vocabulary consisted of three words. Instead of talking he would grunt and make chimp sounds..."

My new plant from Trader Joe's named "Blue Wonder"(pictured) was rootbound, so today I bought another pot for it. When repotting it it looked so happy in the outdoor sun that I decided to leave it there(yes, it is a full sun plant). Now I need an indoor plant and the cycle continues. Maybe I'll get bamboo?

Will Arnett praying for breasts.

MechaBarbie(or Bush) Makes Children Cry(and Other Issues)

Source
This is what my kids are going to be playing with. Aren't you glad I'm not having any?

So I was walking to Trader Joe's today and suddenly felt angry thinking about how men's bodies don't go out of style. Then I realized that this simply was not true. Henry VIII was considered extremely attractive and we've gone through several versions of the "ideal boy" in recent years, from various bad boys and star jocks in the 80's and 90's to Zak Efron and Edward Cullen. And I realized that I actually know a good number of men who have body issues. It just seems to go un-discussed, most likely because of the macho hetero-normative male now dominating our culture. Body issues are for gay people and girls, God.

One of the many reasons guys need a masculist revolution of their own.

We live in a disposable culture. Everything is thrown away with regularity, from trends to toys to paper towels without us noticing.

I am kind of loving this article on the future of books. But I think what a lot of us are experiencing when we profess our undying love to the smell of a library(which I do) is nostalgia. Please keep in mind that nostalgia is what keeps people from having integrated proms and such. The one thing that disturbs me is that, counter-intuitionally, data is much more fallible than paper. What if some large world war took place? I would like to think that information is distributed too far and wide to be lost in the manner of the Library of Alexandria, but there is so much that is not. Books go out of print and are lost in the halls of The Library of Congress.

Books are personal experiences. They affect our mind and soul in a profound way. Games and movies do not move many of us in the same way. Yet for those who movies do, they are content with a flat disk and pretty cover.

Perhaps we can invent something akin to flipping pages and the "permanence" of paper. I'm sure the person who does will be very rich.

Bioastronautics, a scanned book about some of the things that really go into space flight(like spit).

It would be so easy to engineer a fountain using $3.99 plates from Ross, a pump, and a background. But then my parents could justifiably kill me.

Good news: violent crime is down all around the country, even though nobody is reporting on this. One cynical commentor says that this is because "People can't afford bullets anymore".

Picture from Jezebel

History: The Video(s)

Image via Boing Boing

In America I am considered tiny, but in Trinidad my weight is normal. This makes evolutionary sense, as people in the blinding heat of the tropics need a fast metabolism and little fat. It also makes sense that people from the colder parts of Europe would evolve to be beautiful and curvy. This is just a theory, as I have no scientific, controlled evidence to support this hypothesis.

While I voice my support against the dreadfully anorexic girls present in modeling today, I also sort of wonder what will happen when people with normal(read: another select segment of the population) weights come back into style. Will people mock my size? Will they tell me that my weight is obviously a product of neglecting myself, as is done to plus-size women today? I want to believe that we can accept the fact that people naturally have more than one body type, but this does not seem to be a concept native to the fashion industry. I do not have whatever BMI is being enforced on some of the European catwalks today. While I still completely support the regulations, it feels sort of strange that some years from now I might "go out of style". It's not fair that this has already been done to Rubenesque women, though. We're people, not ephemeral fashion trends.

Just to clarify, it's more the fear of being actively discriminated against than anything else which wrote these last two paragraphs.



Oh. my. God. It's NABOKOV. I LOVE YOU.
It's crazy how Youtube has in a way democratized history. We can now experience moments from the past like previous generations never had the chance to, all within our personal computers. It's so cool! This was from Boing Boing, btw.

Also from Boing Boing: there is apparently a black market in moon rocks. As in actual rocks from the moon, not LSD. I can completely understand this. If I ever get engaged again I want an extraterrestrial rock for my ring like in the "Bones" episode "The Science in the Physicist".



"PLEASE – do yourself a favour and turn the sound OFF – NOW. I’m almost willing to throw the towel in admit that creationists are right when I hear it. However the video is just brilliant (if you ignore the silly text as well)... Here’s 500 generations every SECOND backed up by actual fossil evidence – shoved in to a computer and animated together. It’s fantastic to watch." Source

I have to watch this video again to take in what changed first, hypothesize why the did, etc.



OH MY GOD IT'S THE MOON LANDING. /hyperventilates. They look like ghosts that are hopping around. Even though his voice is level you can feel the excitement coming through the video. Or maybe it's just me trying to live this vicariously.


Here is Buzz Aldrin punching a conspiracy theorist in the face.

Why you should NOT fly with regional carriers, as written by an experienced pilot.

"Flying from Chicago’s O’Hare to Denver is routine, right? But it wasn’t a few decades ago. We, the pilots, make it routine too. But I challenge you on this. Is your life worth less because you are over the heartland of America in the dark of night rather than climbing into the skies of Rio over the Amazon or headed out across the Pacific? It is worth less if you are on the low-cost regional carrier because you chose to pay less. If you are on the regional carrier headed to Denver and the engine is on fire, I am sure that it is comforting to know that you saved 15 percent by shopping the Internet for the cheapest fare. Isn’t it great to know that you have the newest, least-experienced, exhausted, starving young cockpit crew that this regional airline could find? Good for you!"

PS apparently the Alaskan blob is not Palin after all.

Yesterday is Today is Yesterday

Significant Objects is a site dedicated to people buying thrift store items and writing a fictional history for them then selling them on Ebay. Yes, the descriptions are marked as fake. At first I was a little skeeved about this concept but then realized that what's really being marketed is the author's talent as a writer. Fictional history is fun.

Here is an interesting story of a roleplaying game revolving mostly around story and not around
winning.

"To call Slobbovia a Diplomacy variant is, however, misleading; the game purposefully had no victory conditions, and the formal game itself served as little more than a framework for structuring a written roleplaying game. The postal Diplomacy hobby has a tradition of "press," whereby a player may, each turn, include a written statement that is published with the turn's results (e.g., "The Office of the Kaiser today announced..."). In Slobbovia, press was the focus of the game, rather than a minor adjunct."

And here is a game which reminds of what Risk is trying to be.

Will someone browse the freeware on that site?

I really want to enter reburbia but feel as though I am automatically outmatched by architect students and don't have the time to engage in such a project. Also, I think I'm going to enjoy the magazine that's sponsoring the competition, Inhabitant, very much. Here is the newest entry:

"Designer Chiyu Chen has conceived of an ingenious transit system that encourages the use of sustainable transportation by crediting people for renting and riding bicycles. His Hybrid2 system consists of a fleet of rentable bicycles that are capable of generating and storing kinetic energy, which is then used to power the city’s hybrid electric buses. Simply rent a bike, charge it up with kinetic energy from pedal power, and then return it to a kiosk - the station feeds energy into the city’s smart grid, and you receive a credit towards your next bus pass!"

The problem with capitalism is that people speak so glibly of the market punishing and rewarding businesses. What if the business is so large that a lot of other businesses rely on it? What about all of the jobs lost when that company goes out of business?

USAspending.gov makes United States spending open-source for viewing. On one hand, this makes me happy. On the other, don't look, countries with grudges against us!

Apparently visa overcharged some unlucky people to the tune of $23 quadrillion dollars. Nope, not a joke, just a glitch. The author of Freaknomics pointed out that this is a good point against those who favor an all-digital currency. A quote of a comment from the blog:

"It’s a technical glitch. The interesting part of this is not that it happened, but rather, how those involved dealt with it.

People calling their banks to ask about this, got a lot of runaround from folks at those banks who either did not realize there was anything wrong with massive transactions, or who realized they were erroneous but otherwise did not address all the attendant issues (e.g. NSF fees, etc.).

Also, although the problem has been figured out, it’s not because anyone working for a bank or Visa actually disclosed what it had been. It was, instead, “reverse engineered” by geeks who uncovered the cause on their own. Official response has been evasive at best, e.g. in this story:

Bank of America tells WMUR-TV only the card issuer, Visa, could answer questions. Visa, in turn, referred questions to the bank.

As I said, the assorted dodging, swerving, evasiveness, and foot-dragging are interesting. What makes people so unwilling to deal with what is, in the end, a simple technical glitch?

Very revealing about human nature.

— PsiCop"

I think we've found out what Palin is up to: turning into the black goo of death. Am I mean? Maybe a little.

Also, apparently closing down a few roads is actually beneficial to traffic congestion as a whole, since people cannot selfishly optimize their routes.
Comic courtesy of xkcd

Boom! Boom!

Source

So I just realized that I sound very cool, calm, and relaxed on my blog.

This is a lie. I am actually dying of stress, but complaining is not going to help that, and I'd rather not talk about it. Instead I will run around my studio like a crazy person and proceed to collapse on the bed, weezing from the fact that I have way too many obligations.

Help?


Via Boing Boing

Part of the reason I think old film is so fascinating is because of how delicate it seems in its shaky and silent monochrome. Even though the picture is factual the world it presents seems to be remote.


Gravy Stress may waste your time if you like looking at random funny images. I am not going to click on it anymore. If your name is Chris or Frosty you may wish to check this website out.

I wonder how ridiculous our commercials look to foreigners?

In any case, here is an awesome quote from BLDBLOG:

"If you'll excuse the rambling nature of this post, meanwhile, my wife and I are actually staying in Potts Point, and we're located basically right across the street from a Saturday morning farmers' market where we got into a conversation early on our first morning here with a man selling gourmet mushrooms that were grown, he said, inside repurposed railroad tunnels south of the city in Mittagong. I would love to visit those tunnels!
Cockatoo Island, in fact, is actually honeycombed with old tunnels dug directly out of the site's bedrock – so perhaps some strange form of subterranean myco-agriculture might pop up in a few student designs over the next two weeks. Mushroom farming in the underworld. Or perhaps even the high-tech cultivation of pharmaceutical biocompounds by UV light in what used to be a submarine-repair facility (the island also houses a former submarine-repair facility!)..."

Geoff's post "The Thirteenth Room" is also rather fun, as is Reburbia. Reburbia falls directly into my sphere of interests. If you like architecture or imagining the things I do, CHECK THESE OUT.

Here is a quote from Mr. Ellis:

"The next movie I write will be Jurassic Park 4: ADAMZOIC, in which a group of committed Creationists sneak onto a dinosaur-infested Island in an attempt to prove that humans and slavering proto-avian carnivores can live in harmony, as in Eden. The film will be 3 hours long; will feature multiple variations on the theme of Cute Naked People being disembowelled while trying to sing hymns; will include at least one incidence of punning, based on the words “pray” and “prey”; and will end when the sole survivor realises the error of her ways, embraces the Power Of Darwin, and spontaneously evolves a set of wings to escape."

Soil bacteria injections make mice happy. This may explain a lot. I've always said that dirt was good, though now and as a kid I refused to eat it.

Here is an interesting article about personal transformation in the internet age. I could comment on it right now, but I don't want to.
Damn, I may have to get this novel:

Progress

Star Trek predicts the 1990s are a time of bloody world war and our first space travel. We may not be colonizing other planets, but this is because we instead "chose" to make scientific, medical, and engineering progress, this choice, of course, being the result of various social and political pressures. The things science is now accomplishing were a dream in the 1960's and are in many ways simply amazing.

I find that, in a way, Star Trek is more of a scientific fairy tale than science fiction. Scenarios may utilize science at times, but this is far outweighed by the number of unscientific and improbable elements involved in many episodes so far. This is not to say that the scenarios have not been clever and interesting to watch. I find that I am really enjoying the show, and am almost finished with the first season. Since every episode is fifty minutes in length I cannot watch more than one per day, and two is stretching things.

People have treated space as the frontier, but what about the internet? We need more novels like this.

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When a significant other is having a difficult experience it is not right to abandon him or her even if the experience is affecting the relationship. Examples of difficult experiences include finding a job or prolonged illness. It is only if the affected partner makes no effort to recover that perhaps action is necessary. Being critical is in fact counter-productive because in addition to the initial stressor the affected partner has to cope with the disapproval of her significant other while the "support group" affect of partnership is negated. If your partner is going through a difficult time, please attempt to put yourself in his or her shoes.
Yes, there is a story behind this paragraph, but I am not willing to share it. No, the inspiration was not Chris.

I dislike it when individuals claim to constantly be "calling people out" as this generally implies a sense of their being superior to the general population. This method is tends to be ineffective due to the extremely blunt and sometimes condescending way in which it is usually used which makes the actual message get lost in communication. People are not generally receptive to profanities or tones which imply they are being talked down to. Furthermore, the general implication is that people are liars or do not know how to analyze their own feelings or minds.

When someone does deserve to be "called out", most of the time he or she is not going to be receptive to the truth and it is better to trust that life and experience will show it to him rather than attempt to win a fruitless battle of words. There are few cases where this is false.

Listing Between the Lines

Comic courtesy of A Softer World

I brought up two things while talking to Dylan yesterday that I want to share with everyone here.

1.) If a girl is using abortion as birth control should she really have a child? The level of irresponsibility, and perhaps to a certain degree, callousness, that having the procedure many time would imply suggests that the potential mother, at least at this point in her life, should not be involved in child-rearing. Not to mention that abortion is never free, whereas condoms can be.

2.) I never understand why people are worried about the population in first world countries falling. Not only would a reduction in population be beneficial to the earth and perhaps imply less cost for these countries it has been proven many times in history that a small elite is still very effective at controlling money and power as far as nationalism is a concern.

Other thoughts:

1.)
As gay rights gain further acceptance the gay community will have to face one of the sectors of American society most biased towards heterosexuals: the sports community. I wonder how integration will occur. Will there be gay sports teams? Who would these sports teams play against? Men and women do have biological differences which mean that the elite in sports are competing against different elements. It would not be fair to put lesbians against a male sports team, but it would also not be fair, in a way, to pit them against a woman's sports team. I would not, in the heat of competition with all of the grabbing and touching involved, want to face the possibility that my opponent is sexually attracted to me. However, it would be as unfair to characterize gay people as sexually attracted to the other team as it would be to say that women are attracted to all men. Basically, I see no reason that gay members should not be integrated onto existing teams if the rules in place now are followed during the game. However, I have a disgusting feeling that the sports community will disagree with me.
I wonder how many of its members are already gay?

2.)
I think it would be a great idea to combine the modern three-d graphics and plot lines of RPGs with the elements of games like Mario and Metroid. Imagine somersaulting, dodging, and powering around a 3-D map using different zooms with an actual story element involved. I believe Super Mario Galaxy incorporates some of the elements I am discussing here but cloaked in the Mario universe, which leaves a *few* things unclear. Obviously a fantasy element would be the easiest to incorporate which, for example, would explain why the monsters are trapped within a certain range or you grow after eating the mushroom. There could also be lots of weapons and spells. A certain cartoonish element could also be used. There is lots of possibility here.

3.)
Very tenuous theoretical question: What if we could generate power using atmospheric heat? Heat is entropy, of course, but what if we found a certain metal or bacteria that had a "switch" at a certain temperature and somehow used that to generate electricity?

4.)
"Even though President Obama was in Russia, he couldn't escape questions about Michael Jackson. He said, "You know, this is part of American culture," said Obama. "Michael Jackson, like Elvis, like Sinatra, when somebody whose captivated the imagination of the country for that long passes away, people pay attention. And I assume at some point people will start focusing again on things like nuclear weapons.""Source

I agree with Obama. As much as Micheal Jackson's death matters the Iranian elections, Chinese riots, and North Korean crazy are extremely important and involve millions of living people. Please give them more air time.

This is an interesting article on public health care.

So apparently there are twelve million people in Jakarta and half of them are homeless. My mind is sufficiently boggled.

More awesome Cracked articles:
7 Ways the Zombie apocalypse could actually happen
What happened to Television?
6 Kickass Animals Ruined by Evolution

Fungus

This has happened to me before.

So I opened my vermicomposting bin today to put in some grapes and was surprised by a soft layer of fungus.
My reaction was naturally "euuurgh!". I wasn't completely caught off guard since peat is a extremely nutrient rich and in a moist environment attracts many members of the animal kingdom. After my initial emotions I realized that fungus and earthworms coexist in naturally in many places around the world and there were earthworm tunnels near the sides of the bin. Besides, even as I watched the fungus faded from being exposed to sunlight.
For those not familiar with creating ecosystems this simply meant there were enough excess resources for some outside source to utilize.
This led me to wonder if there was a fungus relatively harmless to humans which could compost quicker and more efficiently. I realize that most people's reactions to this would also be "euuurgh", but remember what cheese is etc. Just don't breathe too deeply around the thing and you'd be fine.
I actually don't use that much organic material in my house. I generally finish what I eat and haven't used a single paper towel since I bought my Trader Joe's cloths. Cardboard and plastic are recycled as necessary. I'm wary of putting cardboard in the bin before the colony of worms is fully established since there definitely would be excess resources for other kingdoms to use. I'm even going to buy a Diva Cup(women only, it's about PERIODS). I've heard many women state that they are very pleased with theirs, so I'm going to try the product myself.

*--------*

I attempt to desexualize myself because I wish to be viewed for who I am, a person who is fairly androgynous and does not wish to have feminine generalizations applied to her. How many desexualized male icons are there vrs the amout of desexualized female icons? It's not fair, as some of us do not find sexualization empowering or what we wish to be known for. I attempt not to do this since it is silly, but I have sometimes ended up suppressing feminine aspects of my personality in order to disassociate myself.
And really, every time a negative stereotype of behavior is encouraged by a member of the same sex I get angry. Men "are programmed to sow their oats" and grunt and posture at each other; women having an outburst at any time of the month blaming it on PMS.
We all know the saying about one white crow. So don't blame shortcomings or personality traits on gender and accept them for what they are. If you want to start a sentence with "most women are encultured in our society..." that is a different matter. For example, most women in our society are encultured to worry an excessive amount about their bodies.

Happy Fourth of July!

From Cracked

Picture from a Manta Ray feeding frenzy. Source

"Mantas and whale sharks commonly feed together, untroubled by the occasional collision. As many as 200 rays and a half dozen whale sharks have been counted in a period of several hours, British marine biologist Guy Stevens reports."
Source

Apparently there was a massive bank fraud in EVE online. I'm amused and horrified.


There is a new Turkish reality show pitting a Buddhist monk, a Rabbi, an Imam, and a Greek Orthodox priest against each other to see who can convert the most atheists. Missing the point much?

A 19 year old was arrested for tripping on weed and LSD, thinking he was Terminator, and then running around a casino naked. What not to do on your day off.

I love this piece about "5 presidential elections even dumber than this one".

So I was staring at a tree, thinking "I want to climb this tree". I know, I know, I'm an adult and tree-climbing is not for adults. Well, you're wrong; it's not for boring adults. Anyways, I was thinking about climbing it and defending it from trespassers, when I went "Holy crap, that's not an inborn notion".
Or is it? Were the Native Americans taught to squash their inborn urge of possession? I'm not an anthropologist so I couldn't give a comparison of cultures and their native practices or what is generally considered "tribal" vrs "individual" property. Did the Mongols in their migration routes consider the land itself "theirs", or did they consider the land a place to defend and live upon? The most obvious place to look for an answer to the general question would be pre-history.
The notion of individual possession and tribal possession obviously have different limits in different cultures. We are taught at as young an age as possible what is ours and what is not. Children, at first, consider everything to be grabable(and breakable). It is more likely they do not possess the distinction of ownership than that they consider every object a possession. This is probably the most compelling evidence questioning the innateness of this drive. When a child screams "mine" after having a toy taken away it's more likely that the object is simply desired at the moment than that he or she feels he has ownership of it. Obviously, though, these are just hypothesis.
Would artists feel pain at having their creations taken away? Would scientists gall at having a theory used without their names cited? What would happen to the notion of plagiarism? The notion of ownership has very obvious advantages and disadvantages.

It would be awesome if they created a school which utilized children's existing knowledge to discover new knowledge, like a game or exciting job. I also really believe that a school in the manner of Plato would be much more effective than the Socratic schools we have now. People do think knowledge is cool and like finding out how things work.

It's fun to analyze feminism in Star Trek. The show is fairly progressive in many ways, though it still is struggling between the notions of women as powerfully sexual beings, workers just as capable as their male counterparts, and wives. Both Kirk and many of the women on the show are portrayed as extremely attractive; in fact, one of the reoccurring factors of the plot is attractive women and Kirk seducing them with his genuinely deep good-boy ways. Whatever happened to guys like that? Did they ever really exist? Star Trek is more moral than a lot of the show on today.
Btw, the episode "The Conscience of the King" is really good. Also, why is Scotty the only one with an accent?



Here is a short sketch comedy parodying what it would be like if homeopaths ran the emergency room:

Viscoseity

Has anyone created a Captain America comic that comments on American policy today?

Remember when I was talking about the SKOY cloth? Apparently Trader Joe's has a product that's basically the same. I'm going to use it and write about my thoughts here. One will be used for cleaning and the other for cleaning up random messes and spills. Here is a quote from the back:

"This cloth is created from 100% Viscose, a miracle fabric.." (Way to make me suspicious, Trader Joe's) that absorbs over 10 times its weight in any liquid."

Let's Google Viscose, shall we?

Wikipedia tells us that "Cellulose from wood or cotton fibres is treated with sodium hydroxide, then mixed with carbon disulfide to form cellulose xanthate, which is dissolved in more sodium hydroxide. The resulting viscose is extruded into an acid bath, either through a slit to make cellophane, or through a spinneret to make rayon. The acid converts the viscose back into cellulose...Viscose currently is becoming less common because of the polluting effects of carbon disulfide and other by-products of the process, forcing some factories to close."

Trading one evil for another. Either we cut down the forests or make the water undrinkable. Everybody wins, and by wins I mean dies.

I have no idea what the credibility of Wisegeek is, but here are some quotes:
"...including some of the products that many people use every day that are made from this substance."
Wiki also mentions this. Apparently viscose is really common, especially in apparel, and is used in Nylon sometimes. The things we learn from random research. Here is a table from Time
(Yes, as in The Times).

"Figures in millions of pounds consumed:

_______Raw Cotton__Wool_____Silk____Rayon
1926—3,215—343—66—61
1929—3,423—368—81—133
1932—2,463—230—71—155
1935—2,755—418—62—259
1938—2,904—285—52—327
1940—3964—41—36—488"

So I have lots of work to do, or I would probably start looking up polymers and other things that are lots of fun. Feel free to do your own research and post it up here.

I finally added a "Household Products" tag but can only remember two entries where I discuss them. I still haven't finished tagging all of the "Random Thoughs" entries, either.

Here is an interesting post on good startup search engines that I will read in full later. Also, I was a little skeptical about Cracked's post about the blind man who learned to echolocate, but now an article on the phenomenon is on Wired and if humans can do this I want to learn. I have officially converted Chris to Cracked(.com)! Go me.

Video killed the Bandwith Star

I like this article because the physicist featured works at UCSD. Also, it gives me a headache when I think about my future in research.

Scubatube.org is a Youtube-like site dedicated to Scuba videos. Dnatube.com is a Youtube-like site dedicated to scientific videos. I forsee time-wasting in my future. Or would it really be time wasting? Ah, the existential questions.

Tiny Master of Tomorrow have a sound very comparable to Karen O's. And I support them because at 13 and 15 who didn't want to magically learn to play guitar, write about all the schmucking around you and then get complemented by David Bowie? Then again, I didn't know who David Bowie was. Another thanks goes out to the Chrisman for that one.

Mom found my blog and read it a bunch while procrastinating. Thankfully, I'm pretty sure that she doesn't know the URL.





How NOT to campaign for school board:

Love, Money, Art and Science

Comics are from xkcd

This article analyzes how paper money hurts the economy. It brings up some interesting points that I have never considered before and has three basic keys:

1.) The US government spends a LOT of money minting money
2.) The infrastructure is already in place for a digital switch
3.)Most money is already only in existence electronically

Here is the main problem I have with this article: most of the world does not have the infrastructure to make the switch to digitalized money. I can see how this could be countered by simply doing business deal in other country's money, but one of the powers of the dollar is the fact that it is ubiquitous. Take this away and the value of our currency would drop substantially.
Another trouble is that all money becomes traceable. Here we must thread the line between what is good for our society and the American suspicion of totalitarian governments. I must admit a cultured dislike of taking away that measure of autonomy and the fact that powerful people could destroy a person's savings with a few clicks on a mouse.
To me, the disturbing thing is that, for the most part, this could already happen. We are dependent on trust in a society that encourages our bankers and lawyers to be untrustworthy.

Apparently there is a Youtube stream dedicated to rejected marriage proposals. I watched a couple and really do not understand how they could be considered funny.

I started watching the original Star Trek series because of the movie and after two episodes I am really enjoying the series, cheesy sets and all. It reminds me of The Twilight Zone, except better done and set in space. Not that I've ever seen that much of the Twilight Zone, as the episode I watched did not catch my interest.

This artist uses discarded plastic to make his creations. This makes me feel like making landscapes from sticks, stones, and dead leaves.

I must have this. Seriously, I need more plants and aquariums. I love creating ecosystems! But let's not focus on that when I have to work on math and physics. I will read my ecosystems book later, by which I mean tomorrow.

I feel really good today. I had a visit last night from a dear friend which went really well.