Posts

Posted on

Review: Beowulf

Dang, I haven’t been to the movie theater in a loooooooong time… Needless to say, I’ve been studying a lot recently and took this opportunity to escape the confines of my little room upstairs and went to see “Beowulf,” the new Robert Zemeckis film based on the classic epic poem.

Now, when I say “classic,” I mean it… At least according to the Wikipedia article, it dates back as the oldest written manuscript in the English language (AD 1010) and, as Mrs. Rahm and Mrs. Grupe in 10th grade were kind enough to point out, it holds nearly all the elements that we modern folk consider as “the hero story.” A hero that comes to save the people of the land from giant beasts when others can’t, and does it for glory. Also, and perhaps more important to Rahm and Grupe, the Beowulf character also included a “fatal flaw,” something that translates into nearly every modern hero tale. Every hero has his/her weakness.

I guess what I’m saying is that this is, perhaps, the original “hero” story…unless you count Gilgamesh, but who can read Cuneiform script, anyway? (…besides Liz, of course…) 😛

Anyway, so the movie was decent… In all honesty, watching the movie, I thought they added stuff to the end that wasn’t in the originally epic poem, but according to Wikipedia, it was in there and I just forgot…oh well… Either way, the effects were borderline spectacular – there were instances where I forgot I was watching a pseudo-animated movie. Some things, like galloping horses, could have been done a bit better, but for the most part the movie was a wonder to behold. The acting was pretty strong, overall, and of course, the story included most elements of the epic poem. There were certainly some liberties taken with certain details, but it made for an entertaining movie…

Something about it didn’t sit well with me, however…and I sadly can’t figure out what it is… I think I expected a little more action than I actually saw. They played up the “hero” character beautifully and stayed true to the story, but seeing as the movie was being compared with “300,” maybe I thought it’d have a few more action scenes. Don’t get me wrong, there was action in there, but the only “WOW” action sequences were at the end between Beowulf and the dragon. The movie was just about 2 hrs long, which was perfect…I didn’t look at my watch until the very end (usually a good sign), so I wasn’t bored, per se…but I still felt like something was missing… Maybe if any of you see it, you can enlighten me…

Regardless, you can’t fault the story. Any story that’s lasted 1000 years has got to have some merit…and considering that nearly every super-hero movie/comic/etc. is based in large part on Beowulf, you’ve gotta respect it. I still have a lingering feeling that I wanted something more, but oh well… It’s at least worth the rental, if not the theater visit…

Posted on

SfN 2007

So, I was away in San Diego from Oct 31 – Nov 7 for two scientific meetings: National Parkinson Foundation and the Society for Neuroscience. These were my first real “meetings” that I attended and my first experience with people “in the field” that I’m working with (and there are a lot of the, apparently…).

The Parkinson meeting was over two days and was very helpful. The whole thing was set up so that there were presentations that were grouped along certain topics, discussed by people who know what they’re talking about, and educating the rest of us on this aspect of the Parkinson’s research field that we would otherwise be unaware of. Most of the discussions, it seemed, focused on the genetic forms of Parkinson’s disease (which only account for maybe 10% of total cases…) and that was informative, as we don’t really focus on the genetic forms, per se. Regardless, we met some folks, heard some good talks and learned more about the field.

While the Parkinson meeting involved 100-120 people, the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) meeting involved…oh…30,000 people…which meant that I learned a little bit there, but not as much as before. You come to a point where you get overwhelmed by all the posters and topics that your head spins…and after 6 days of straight brain research, you get tired and ready to go home. I learned a bit at the SfN meeting, but there was honestly too much to learn, and thus, it was a bit overwhelming… However, Newt Gingrich did speak to us…more on that later, perhaps… 😉

San Diego itself was decent, although Macarthur was right in that the place seems “artificial.” By that I mean that the downtown area didn’t have much character: you can go to Dogtown, Soulard, and The Loop in St. Louis and get a feel of “character,” but San Diego didn’t really have such things. That, and it was hazy the whole time – it was only sunny for one day in “sunny southern California” while we were there…

Anyway, it was a good trip! Certainly informative for a first meeting and I look forward to going to more in the future…hopefully an international one next time… 😛

Posted on

Still here!

Well, I’m sitting in the convention center in San Diego, CA waiting another hour before I present my poster… It’s been an informative and interesting trip, to say the least, but I’m ready to come home…there’s only so much neuroscience that a brain can handle… 😛

I’ll try and recount the experiences in a few days after I’ve recovered a bit – I fly back to St. Louis tomorrow morning, so it’ll be busy for the rest of today and tomorrow. Until then, I’ve got a few pictures up on my Picasa page (click on the Picasa Web Albums plug-in to the right-hand side of this page) if you wanna see what’s been going on so far in the trip.

On another note, it’s about 65 F here…and I hear it got into the mid 30s last night in Missouri… 😉

Posted on

No…seriously…

Yeah, this is what we saw when we got home today…

stoopid dog

Yeah…that’s a container of dog food that we had set up for when we take Edie with us to Columbia or Hannibal. The dog opened it. No tooth marks. It’s like she has opposable thumbs…

…this could be bad…she may know how to open doors…

On another note, be sure to stay out of trouble whilst I’m in California, yo… 😛

Posted on

Awesome Creation

Not to brag or anything, but the dinner I made up for tonight was pretty good.  I had some “Mediterranean” cheese crumbles in the fridge and some ground pork that I needed to use, so I made Greek  burgers.

1.  Ingredients:
english muffins
1/2 lb. pork (I think turkey would be good for this, too, but I’d add something else, like some cheese or apple juice to make it stick together)
Greek seasoning (find any recipe online to make your own, like I did, or buy some premade)
Mediterranean cheese (the stuff I got on sale was provolone, feta, and parmesan)
Olive salad (whatever you want to add to some chopped up olives – mine was a handful of green olives with pimento, about a quarter of an onion, finely chopped, 2 mashed cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar)

2.    Toast english muffins.  Mix together pork and about 2 tablespoons of Greek seasoning.  Form into patties (I made 4 small ones).

3.  Wait until your husband finally decides to make his way home, even though you’re super excited to get started on this endeavor.

4.  Cook burgers however you want.  Broil some of the cheese on the bottoms of the muffins, until it’s melty and a little bit brown.

5.  Put the burgers on the cheesy muffin bottoms, top with olive salad (I put more on mine than on Andy’s, since I knew I’d like it more.)

6.  That’s it.  We also had some diced potatoes cooked with olive oil and some more of the Greek seasoning in a cast iron skillet and some steamed California blend (see, Andy does eat green things!).

I’d been thinking of this pretty much all day long, since I didn’t have any inspiration for dinner otherwise and I think it turned out very well.  Hopefully I’ll be able to put it together the same way another time, but chances are I forgot to include something I did that made it good, but feel free to try it too, and let me know if you do anything differently.

Posted on

Greatest…site…ever…

Yeah, so The Daily Show has a new site, apart from Comedy Central… Now, there are free videos from the past 8 years available, and searchable. If you want to look up all interviews that Jon Stewart has had with Bill Clinton, have at it. If you want to look up all the classic “Even Stevphen” sketches, they’re there.

Above, I’ve got the best Lewis Black “Back In Black”…it’s well worth it…especially because Starbucks is about as evil as Microsoft…

Anyway, check out the site if you want…actually, check it out anyway…whether you want to or not…

Posted on

Moment(s) of truth…

Lots of stuff going on, folks, so here goes:

1). Tomorrow, I’m turning in my 8-page research proposal. Assuming it’s approved (sometime next week), I’ll expand it to a 25-page NIH-style research grant and then, once that’s approved, I’ll orally defend the research proposal in early December. So yeah, this is one of those things you’ve gotta do to get the Ph.D. and, for the most part, is the absolute hardest thing I’ll have to do to get through this thing. So, if I’m studying a lot over the Thanksgiving holiday, that’s why… ;-P

2). I’m going to San Diego, CA. on Oct 31 for the annual Parkinson’s Society meeting and the Society for Neuroscience meeting. I’ll be gone until Nov. 7th, so it’s going to be a long trip! We’ve been getting our plane flights, hotel reservations, reimbursement shenanigans, etc. in order for the last few weeks and I think we should be ready to go, but I’ve still gotta get my poster done. These meetings typically involve “seminal presentations” from the big names in the field (i.e. Nobel Prize winners, etc…smart peeps, yo…) and then “poster presentations,” of which I’ll be presenting my research with pretty pictures and graphs. All told, it should be a good practice time for me to answer questions about what I did to others in the field that know infinitely more about the subject than me, which is really good in preparation for my oral defense a month later. Either way, it’s a paid-for trip to California, so I’m not complaining… 😛

3). We’re holding Grounded again this Sunday. Check out the website that I set up (should look familiar, compared with this one…) and stop by if you’re in the St.L area at 6:30 on Saturday night!

I think that’s about it for now? Sorry for the list… I’ve been kinda busy… 😛

Posted on

Wii Tidbits

A few things caught my attention this morning (while I was waiting for my experiments to be ready…early this morning…) related to my lovely Wii. Firstly, apparently, the Wii has sold 7.8 million Virtual Console downloads in the last year. If you multiply that out as if all the downloads were NES titles (i.e. $5 each), then that translates to $39 million in nearly pure profit, and we all know that not all those titles were NES (i.e. as high as $10 per title). The truly sad part about this is that these are old games that have already been sold. It’s akin to Ford making Model Ts for free and selling them again. Oh well…

On another note, here’s a video of old people in a Wii bowling tournament…worth watching for a few minutes, at least… 😛

Posted on

Mmmmm…Missouri Backcountry…

Well, Brooke got to go backpacking for the first time this weekend. We hit the Ozark Trail’s Current River section Friday afternoon, which is located kinda between Bonne Terre, MO and Eminence, MO…but by “between,” I mean “there’s nothing but forest there, so it’s kinda far from both.”

Anyway, we got started Friday night but really only had time to pitch a tent and collect firewood. We even got to chop down a tree with our nifty new hatchet (picture coming…) in the dark, which was rather sweet… The night proved mostly uneventful, but it was still good… The real problem was the heat. I mean, it cooled off a bit, but being in the trees with little or no breeze meant that the humidity just kinda hung around. As a result, Brooke didn’t sleep all that well…

We got up the next morning and hit the trail. The hiking itself was pretty straight-forward, but we weren’t as close to water as I’d hoped. I mean, yes, the trail generally follows the Current River, but as many of you know, there are lots of bluffs along the water, which means that while we were usually “close” to it, we still couldn’t actually get to it except at a few points… We did get to eat lunch by the river, which was lovely, and get our feet wet once or twice.

But, the heat was still pretty annoying and we did 10 miles of hiking (give or take…) in a relatively short span of time… By the time we had done the hiking we had planned to do, and hiked back, we realized we were only an hour from the car… So yeah, dripping with sweat and with blisters on our feet (well, mine at least…), we headed back to the car and just decided to come home rather than stick it out another night… We got back last night and picked up the dog from Jo and Lisa’s (thanks!).

Anyway, it was a good, albeit brief and warm, trip. While the weather wasn’t what we would have preferred, we did get some good scenery and some good exercise…

Back to the “real world” now, I guess……

Posted on

My Dream Just Might Come True…

Winter food drop spurs wildlife visits
ASSOCIATED PRESS
10/01/2007

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Homeowners in the Ozarks are being warned against leaving food outdoors because of the danger of luring hungry bears onto their property.

In urban areas like Kansas City where there isn’t a danger of bears, residents could see a sharp increase in the number of mice that invade their homes.

A freeze in April and drought in August have stifled the nut, fruit and seed production on many plants and trees, experts say. That means more wildlife than usual will be forced out of fields and into people’s yards looking for food.

“With mice, people better get ready for them this winter,” said Alan Branhagen, horticulture manager at Powell Gardens east of Kansas City. “They’re going to want inside the house because the food crop is so bad.”

In the Ozarks, black bears that typically gorge on acorns to prepare for hibernation will have to look elsewhere for nourishment because the nuts will be scarce. The white oaks that provide food for the bears and other wildlife such as turkeys, squirrels and songbirds, didn’t produce a crop.

On top of that, papaw trees that usually produce a soft fruit that ripens in early autumn and is eaten by many times of wildlife didn’t do so this year.

“We’re probably seeing more animals such as raccoons and possums out and about scavenging for food in the park,” said Conrad Schmitt, director of the Lakeside Nature Center in Kansas City’s Swope Park.

For bird watchers, however, the lack of food in nature could mean a big increase in the number of birds that flock to feeders.

That doesn’t necessarily mean a surge in the most-typical birds that are seen at feeders, said Larry Rizzo, a natural-history biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation. But there should be more birds such as robins, cedar waxwings, bluebirds and mockingbirds that usually rely heavily on fruits in the winter, he said.

“When you have less food available, birds will push into the feeders quicker than usual,” said Mark McKellar, an ornithologist who operates a feeder supply store and tracks bird trends. “We’re already seeing it this fall.”