It was a lot of fun having my sister around and I wish she were around more often. Maybe in a few years when she gets to run her own bevmo store she can get them to open one in Santa Cruz.
May 312005
May 312005
Well the pressure wash happened on Saturday and today work continues. I expect by the end of the week we’ll have a different looking house. Then we get to move into an RV while the floors are getting done.
May 302005
So I was digging a hole in the front yard to make a target for the potato bush that I was going to attempt to move (It didn’t work out because of the confined space it was planted in). Tami came out and said “That’s a big-ass hole.” I changed the emphasis slightly to “big ass-hole” and she realized that it sounded bad and started laughing. Then she tried to fix it, but came out with “that’s a giant asshole”. Oops, wrong word, more laughing! It all ended up with “Doug digs big ass holes.”
May 272005
Tami and I just went to see this to see Paris Hilton get killed. We ended up seeing a movie that wasn’t nearly as bad as reviews would say. It does take a little while to get started but it’s faily interesting once it gets going. It’s never really scary, just interesting and looks cool. I had a bladder ready to burst and still I wouldn’t leave because I didn’t want to miss the ending which was definitely worth it.
Ok, there three gross/distuirbing moments that might make you cringe that have to do with injuries but those are quickly forgotten.
And Paris’ death? I could not imagine a more satisfying death for her. I was expecting some quick non-lingering death scene. She dies quickly but you get to enjoy it for a little while. Heck, the killer enjoys it for awhile! That makes it the feel-good movie of spring.
You should definitely rent this for nifty wax effects and the Paris death.
May 272005
Not the crappy American release, but the real one from Hong Kong. Get it if you can. We decided to stay home and watch a movie and since Tami hadn’t seen this it was the obvious choice even though she doesn’t like kung-fu movies. She thought it was an odd and strangely entertaining movie though she was tire and slept through the ending. It’s not something she would have chosen for herself but she enjoyed it.
If you haven’t seen it you should! It’s a better story than Kung-Fu Hustle but now as stylish.
May 272005
I finally got a chance to see this because my sister bought a copy while she’s staying here. I’ll need to see it again too because I was also really tired and dozing on and off throughout. That said, wjhat I saw I thought was quite funny and a good parody of action films and of the current american mood.
Check it out for the theme song alone. FUCK YEAH!
There is an article on creativity in Scientific American Mind about creativity, what it is, how to get it, etc. Well, it indicates that on the cover but hte cover promises way more than it delivers in general. Anyway, it kind of wandered on the creativity subject leaving me feeling that they still didn’t really know.
First it didn’t distinguish between what people consider creative, like painting or composing, and general every day problem solving. Those are treated as equal creative endeavors. I personally feel that the abstract creativity (arts) is different than the practical creativity (how do I make the square peg fit the round hole).
It mentioned that people who have temporal lobe deterioration get more creative and people who previously couldn’t paint are now winning awards, etc. It also mentioned that the left brain, which is more focused on logic and reasoning gets developed as a child and the creative (right) side gets pushed down in many people. That was pretty much it for how much is known about creativity.
I also learned there are no standardized tests to determine creativity, just rules of thumb that creativity experts use to try and gauge. So things like take this shape and make a picture, take this set of shapes and make a picture, take this shape and complete the picture are used and then evaluated. Which by their definition would also be a creative act. According to the article just stringing words into a sentence is creative on some level.
I guess I’m just disappointed in an article that presented so little information. Especially when the next article showed that fMRI, which is the current main tool for study, is so unreliable for actually reading the brain.
May 242005
A few weeks ago in New Scientist there was an article about how they found a brain cell in someone that fired in response to images of Bill Clinton, even drawings of him. This led them to think that this means that brain cells can process much more than previously thought and each cell would have the memory for one piece.
I think that’s rediculous. To stumble on the one cell out of millions that happens to be the Bill Clinton cell? I can believe that it’s part of a network that consistently fires in response to things associated with him, but to think that they stumbled upon the one cell out of billions? No. If that cell were removed I’m sure the person would still easily identify and have all their associations for Bill Clinton.
May 242005
In the April Discover there was an article on super atoms. Basically they are clusters of atoms that in these clusters act like another element. For instance, 13 aluminum atoms form a stable compound that won’t oxidize. It’s tied to how many shells are left open when they are all together.
I think it’s really cool and odd at the same time that you can mimick elements with clusters of other elements and makes be think that we’ve been missing something in our explanations for how things work.
May 232005
We have the most leftovers we’ve ever had. On the bright side We won’t have to buy meat for a long time!