So, Brooke and I were watching “Numb3rs” last night and she asked the following:
“Is it cold in here…or am I just crazy?”
…to which…I responded simply in uncontrollable laughter…
😉
I need a bumper sticker…
I saw this as I was leaving SLU this afternoon…I found it only slightly hilarious… 😛
If you don’t know who Sauron is, then you don’t watch enough movies…check this out…
Truthiness…
“Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel ashamed – Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn’t drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say to myself, ‘It is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver.'”
— Anonymous
Courtesy of a quote Kristen found in London…and there is wisdom in it…oh yes…
Review: Silent Hill
So, Josh had me go see “Silent Hill” with him today, a movie based on a popular video game series that first premiered in 1999. If you click through to the Wikipedia description, and go through the various links to each game, you’ll see that some games follow one plot line, and others go in different directions. You’ll also find that each game has a variety of endings…
…such is this movie (i.e. a bunch of parts thrown together). It starts out with a mother, Rose, who finds that her daughter is having nightmares about some place called Silent Hill… She does Google searches to find this place, seeing that it’s a ghost town in West Virginia. Therefore, as any smart mother does (insert sarcasm here…), she decides to take her daughter there… After Rose wrecks the car on the way there, she wakes up to find her daughter missing and ashes falling. After this point, Rose slowly descends into the mystery surrounding Silent Hill and, consequently, hell…
The effects, overall, are pretty good and the story relatively captivating…but only because you think “what the hell?!” throughout and hope that it gets figured out in the end…and while many parts do get resolved, it still leaves you wanting…something… More information? Resolution? A big “hey! You’ve been ‘had’!” from the filmmakers? Who knows…
Regardless, as a scary movie, it doesn’t do so well…at least, I wasn’t scared…although the gory parts made me wriggle in my seat a bit… There weren’t any “jumpy” parts, at least. And while it was an interesting story, unfortunately, it just didn’t make much sense…
…and if you look through the video game information on Wikipedia, you’ll likely see why… It seems that the movie tried taking parts out of each game, and incorporated those elements/scenes effectively (and a few reviewers who have played the game think that the movie evokes the emotion that the game does really well)…but something got lost in translation. I just would have liked to see something a bit more…cohesive…I guess…
Yeah, I guess I’m not really recommending this… It was okay if you like video games and if you liked the series, but as someone who’s never played the game(s), it just didn’t make much sense… I’d wait for the rental…
Kinda sad…
Some statistics from the May 2006 issue of Popular Science:
- 68% of American fourth-graders perform below math-proficiency levels for their grade
- American 15-year-olds rank 21st out of 30 industrialized countries in math
- American 15-year-olds rank 19th out of 29 industrialized countries in science
- 42% of American middle school science teachers lack certification in their field
- 23% of undergraduate degrees are awarded in science, technology and engineering in the United States
- 64% of undergraduate degrees are awarded in science, technology and engineering in Japan
It’s stuff like this that makes me consider teaching high school instead of going into industry, etc…or at the very least, teaching high school around retirement time rather than at a college somewhere…
Brooke and I are both reading a book now titled “The World is Flat,” by Thomas Friedman, which is about rapid globalization in the 21st century…how the U.S. is quickly falling behind other countries like India and China in technology, etc…? He points out how it can be a good thing for the U.S., since we as Americans tend to do well when we’re challenged (i.e. World War II, the Space Race, etc.), but we’ve gotta start getting in gear unless we want to be left behind.
In any case, it makes me wonder what everyone’s doing with their lives, then. If we’ve got so many people going to college nowadays, why aren’t more of them majoring in “pure” sciences or engineering? It’s not like getting degrees in physics or chemical engineering are going to leave you without a lucrative job when you get out… Maybe it’s because you really need a graduate education before you get a money-making job (not in all cases, of course)?
I dunno…I still find it sad, though…especially sad that the American public is more preoccupied with their own wealth and with Tom and Katie’s new baby rather than with trying to figure out how the world works and, therefore, how to fix its problems.
"Nevertheless"…
Does anyone know where that word came from? I mean, we were reading in a paper today and it struck me (not the first time, honestly…) how odd that word is. It’s a combination of three English words…like we used to spell it out in a sentence, but then we said it so often that we randomly decided to make it one word… Whose decision was that?!
“Nevertheless”…
Does anyone know where that word came from? I mean, we were reading in a paper today and it struck me (not the first time, honestly…) how odd that word is. It’s a combination of three English words…like we used to spell it out in a sentence, but then we said it so often that we randomly decided to make it one word… Whose decision was that?!
Didn't see that comin'…
So, I’m in this class called “Special Topics in Biomedical Sciences II” where you read papers and discuss them. The papers generally follow along with what we’re getting in our lecture class, so it’s consequently divided up into “units,” of sorts, each with a test at the end. Well, our “Systems” (as in, systems of the body) exam was last Thursday. The grade is based 50% on participation and 50% on the exam for each section; participation is handled in a Socratic style, where the students have to each talk about the paper and what it means, how the experiments were done, etc.
Honestly, I was sure I did well on the exam, but I wasn’t too sure on my participation. We did the first few sessions as a full group, rather than dividing up into two smaller groups (which, all of the class agrees, is preferable)… In the first few sessions, I don’t think I really talked that much…I almost went and talked to Dr. Samson about how I was doing, ’cause I wasn’t really being called on or directed to describe any portions of the paper like some other students were.
Well, we got our grades back today for participation and the exam. I got the high score, overall.
😛
…now, if I can just buffer the grade in the lecture class a bit…hmmmmm…
Didn’t see that comin’…
So, I’m in this class called “Special Topics in Biomedical Sciences II” where you read papers and discuss them. The papers generally follow along with what we’re getting in our lecture class, so it’s consequently divided up into “units,” of sorts, each with a test at the end. Well, our “Systems” (as in, systems of the body) exam was last Thursday. The grade is based 50% on participation and 50% on the exam for each section; participation is handled in a Socratic style, where the students have to each talk about the paper and what it means, how the experiments were done, etc.
Honestly, I was sure I did well on the exam, but I wasn’t too sure on my participation. We did the first few sessions as a full group, rather than dividing up into two smaller groups (which, all of the class agrees, is preferable)… In the first few sessions, I don’t think I really talked that much…I almost went and talked to Dr. Samson about how I was doing, ’cause I wasn’t really being called on or directed to describe any portions of the paper like some other students were.
Well, we got our grades back today for participation and the exam. I got the high score, overall.
😛
…now, if I can just buffer the grade in the lecture class a bit…hmmmmm…
Need I say more?
So, I was flipping through Daily Kos (who was interviewed on The Colbert Report a few weeks back, so I’ve been checking out the blog recently) and saw this posting referring to an article at Think Progress regarding a new policy by our friends in the government regarding funding for abstinence education. Think Progress made the following highlights:
“In addition to being costly, inaccurate, and ineffective, the programs must now operate under a strict new definition of abstinence:”
Abstinence curricula must have a clear definition of sexual abstinence which must be consistent with the following: ‘Abstinence means voluntarily choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage. Sexual activity refers to any type of genital contact or sexual stimulation between two persons including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse.’
Later, the guidelines explicitly define marriage:
Throughout the entire curriculum, the term ‘marriage’ must be defined as ‘only a legal union between one man and one woman as a husband and wife, and the word ?spouse? refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.’ (Consistent with Federal law)”
Seriously…can’t people simply stop persecuting the people who a). they don’t understand and b). they don’t agree with? What damage, exactly, would pre-marital sex and homosexual relations have to America (or the world)? Isn’t it worse to get married just to have sex, and then have a baby, and then get a divorce? Are they going to outlaw birth control next?
…there are times, yo…I swear…