dragonball z is back on this midday. setting up the vcr. also, spongebob-zip on the 5pm to 6pm nick block
When I was young I used to wait on master, And hand him his plate, And pass the bottle when he got dry, And brush away the blue tail fly
Cracking corn today, no work save for laundry…I started singing it after watching Bugs Bunny do it in a cartoon. I suppose I should get cracking on the wash, just to get it out of the way. No point in having the sword of damocles hanging over my head if I can help it.
Well, perhaps I’ll waste a little time by passing on a couple of widely believed scientific “facts” that are actually false… until proved otherwise again.
The age-old study in which they trained planarians to go through a maze, and then fed the trained planarians to untrained planarians and noticed that the recently-fed planarians learned the maze much more quickly than a control group of unfed planarians. No explanation was ever found for this property of flatworms.
Much later, another group of researchers figured out why this was. The fed planarians weren’t assimilating memories, they were simply better-fed than the control group, and so they learned faster.
I think it was just so embarrassing a find that it was largely ignored, and textbooks in the know stopped using the flatworm learning as an example of the scientific method. Of course, cannibals who eat their associates’ brains so as to gain their wisdom are largely ignorant of this fact as well, and they keep on using planarians to justify their actions.
full moon tonight..
thoughts of my beloved reaching out, and tucking her in… the sweetheart is so tired after this and last week’s heavy workload. I hold her in my heart as she sleeps, and trust she’ll wake refreshed and happy. I adore her so much.. I hope that her dreams are bright, and we get together in the sandman’s realm shortly.
I spoke with brother tonight, and I think he’s on the right track… he’s aware of the dangers at hand, and knows I’m around to hlep if he wants or needs it. Heh… he exchanged the guide to GTA3 for a fishing game for PS1, and is really digging the DVD player. He lives right next to the library, so free movies, five at a pop. I wonder how long it’ll be before he runs the library dry, and has to resort to inter-library loan?
Kirstie Ally doing those Pier 1 commercials is disturbing to me. Some of the gears are slipping, somewhere.
120 gig HD, video card, dvd drive and extra cabling all arrived today… I estimate the happy machine will be assembled, and ready to rock and roll inside of a week if time allows. Also bargained with my ride home, and I’ll be saving 25% of my travel expenses in the evenings now, which will be better spent on other things.
speaking of cool gizmos – Future Horizons
They don’t have the Oscillation Overthruster, but they’ve got plans to build just about every dang thing else, including the Flux Capacitor and the amazing Cosmic Diode, the Ion Ray Gun, the Hiller Flying Platform, and even complete schematics of a Maglev Superconducting Train. No, not movie props – real working stuff, or so they claim. It’s like reading the inventory of the storage room in the Baxter Building. Excelsior!
with that, nigh nigh from Han Scotto and Newtbacca, dear journal.
Him That Hears The Voice of Big Nuknuk gazed worriedly into the sky for the tenth night in a row.
How had he displeased Big Nuknuk? The rituals had been followed and the sacrifices made following the dreams: The dreams that had shown great destruction and hardship and strife for the tribe.
He had gathered the tribe before Big Nuknuk, and for a day and a night chanted and drummed and made offerings to Him, so that He might show them favor, show them mercy. Him That Hears The Voice of Big Nuknuk had spent days prostrate before the idol, forsaking food and water that he might hear the Will of Big Nuknuk more clearly.
But still Big Nuknuk was silent, glaring balefully down at him from the night sky.
Each night a little more brightly, more full of rage and menace.
Coming closer.
*pan to sky*
Were the meteor possessed of intelligence it would have known of its imminent death, drawn to its doom by a force it could not comprehend.
Were it possessed of will, it would have raged, frustrated, pulled from its flight by a force it could not control.
Possessed of humor, it may well have appreciated the irony that it’s own death would bring about life.
Possessed of emotion, it would have drawn malicious pleasure from the chaos this new life was to unleash.
But it wasn’t.
Simply:
The meteor fell.
It burned.
It crashed.
And from its impact ripples coursed, as it bounced and twisted and tore its way across the land. Plates shifted and the land bucked and heaved. Cracks and fissures clawed their way across plains and through forests tearing asunder all in their path and allowing fire to fountain forth from deep in the wounds they left.
And as it finally rolled to a stop, all was still.
For a while.
nifty human tricks and what do you fill your blind spot in with?
Have you ever been around blind folks “speed-reading” books on tape? I had a professor (of psychology) in college that was blind, and he used a special tape player with a variable playback speed for skimming recorded texts. It sounded like mosquitoes humming to me, but he said that he was so used to it that it sounded normal to him. Now, that’s what can be done consciously, the nervous system is even better at training itself without your conscious interference in the process. Consider the “cocktail party effect” and other audio tricks your nervous system learned without any conscious effort. There is a lot more ambient sound going into the ear and along the auditory nerves than ever gets to the conscious “hearing” centers in your brain. Most of the unnecessary input is evaluated and discarded before bothering “headquarters.” This is a subconscious, or pre-conscious routine, and is probably essential for living in an urban environment.
What you see and hear is not literally what comes in through the nerves. It is processed and interpreted. The literal image on the retinas is upside-down, it is the brain that turns the image 180 degrees for you to “see.” The flashes you “see” when your eyes are closed are not the result of light striking cones and rods. What you “hear” is not literally the waves striking your eardrum, but a condensed report of the important input made by the nerves. Prior to the activity in the brain that is your sensation of hearing, a lot of editing has been done by the nerves. But, in order to do the editing some evaluation of the message is made at a subconscious level to determine whether it is something that should be passed on to the conscious hearing.
This all sounds a little out there. The best way to get a visceral feel for the difference between the raw input and your perception is to try out the Blind Spot exercise. Prove to yourself that you actually have a blind spot on each eye, and your brain automatically fills in the missing part of the picture so that you have to do weird exercises on the Internet to detect them at all. What you see is not what you get. What you “see” is a phenomenon happening in the brain, not what is out in the world.
I wonder what could be missed or hidden in that spot, or how two different people see the same thing… or even the same person at different times.
Protected: something foomy deleted, kept here as a sweetheart only post
assorted ways to kiss – awww! click on the folks in the crowd.
forgot to mention last night’s dream… transcribed from my bedside notebook –
Dreams of laying face-down in the dirt, a layer of skin painlessly removed, covered in tiny seeds, fine as powder, and then the skin replaced without even a seam showing. a tickle behind the knees where the sprouts began to show… but where I expected seedlings to be there was instead a fine, soft fuzz that changed slowly into iridescent feathers of a deep green to a golden hue.
soon, my entire back was covered with the same sort of stuff… from there, three pairs of wings sprouted… a set at the shoulder blades, another at the base of my back, and the last near my ankles. Despite having them, I didn’t try to fly.. instead, I just tested them out, flapping and raising a large wind… while not a tornado, a large wave of air was projected in front of me, sending most things directly in my line of sight up and away with the force of a hurricane.
Few things were immune to the wind…buildings and flagpoles, though vehicles would get caught up and sent rolling away from me like a toy cast off by a careless child. Trees didn’t seem to waver much, but loose debris was swept up and the area inside the gust was clutter-free.
I have an urge to make a scarecrow for the herb garden.
weird seach code to my website of the day – AltaVista – bob ross painting death 9 down
an interesting article about copyright law. I lean to his idea #2 at the bottom.
Newtella the mountain-goat is on munch-episode two on his catgrass. He just trots right up to it, takes a seat in front of the salad bar… wait, I stand corrected, the pot’s been overturned. Ack, time to get more soil. He does dig the plant-life, though. nice thing about sweeping up the spilled dirt is that I can toss it back into the pot.
sunny and bright today, but my mind is happily residing in a comfy nap-zone of dark clouds and soft rain…. my noggin is heady with good, snuggly thoughts.
more fun info on the planets lining up.
I find myself wondering what would happen if a Tunguska event-type thing happend today. What sort of alarms would it set off… how much annoying news coverage would there be? The conspiracy theories and accusations that would follow… who would believe that a meteor just fell out of the sky and did that to a major city… like New York or Washington DC… perhaps a lesser target, like Disney World? Perhaps a story seed, probably not one.
Protected: sweetheart only post
My latest entry into the
Farenheit 451 on AMC, and late night peanut butter sammiches with a side of Newt-snuggles. Spiff! I wonder how many people know that walking outside or driving slowly, was as frowned upon as reading books in the f451 universe? Bradbury is still one of my all-time favorite authors… Dandilion Wine being perhaps my fave of his many books. Newt’s stopped snuggling… he wants a chase around the apartment… just the thing before bedtime, methinks. He’s such a good, soft, sleek, foolish little monkey.
nighty-night, dear journal.
I’m concerned for my brother. He’s taking too much of his ‘scrip and now has to wait a week with none before he can see his doc to get more. I’m pissed. The last thing he should be doing is abusing his medication… that stuff is very addictive. He needs to go to the doctor tomorrow, tell him what he’s done, and get a proper dosage, if he needs a higher one. Hopefully, that’s what’ll happen… He has a potentially good gig at a new place, but they want him to cut his hair… and he’s not into that. I can understand that…. a need for some personal freedom is important, and he does have gainful employment now.
I’m concerned about his health and well-being, and will be calling him a lot in the next few days…I hope he doesn’t get sick of me peeking in, and trying to help.
A mind-bogglingly bad idea: the so-called “Victim’s Rights Amendment.” They want to put “victims and victims families first” by getting around that pesky due process thingy and ensuring that far more innocent people go to the chair. Apparently, someone missed a civics class.
I still would rather see ten guilty men go free than see one innocent man suffer.
Ooooh…. robot house-cleaner, will sell for under $200. (sweeps and mops!) I wonder how Newt would deal with it.
Joe Lamond, president and chief executive officer of International Music Products Association, listens as his fellow witness Elmo of Sesame Street testifies during a House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education Appropriations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill Tuesday, April 23, 2002, in Washington. The two were testifying in favor of school music education.
update on my palm-synch… I saw that Raymond is still working there….a nice guy, but he was working hard when I was visiting. Spidey doesn’t open untime the weekend after next, though. Maybe I’ll check out the sneak preview?
one ring to rule them all. hee hee
In today’s Onion-
Opium-Inspired Ad Executive Composes Epic Tums Jingle
CHICAGO— An eight-hour opium binge resulted in a towering work of advertising Sunday, when DDB Needham copywriter Brian Lisi gave birth to an epic 400-line radio jingle for Tums. “When Vulcan’s fires spout and rage / within a roiling acid sea / let work the soothing tablet Tums / The Hell-sear’d forge within becomes / sweet alkaloid esprit,” the jingle begins before detouring into iceberg imagery believed to represent Tums’ new “Cool Relief” flavor. The ad, which begins production in June, is expected to run nearly 90 minutes.
Before I forget-
I dreamt last night that people had retractable, collapsable legs, like dorf. It made sitting down simpler, as the ankles retreated into the knee, and the knee retreated into the hip. I don’t recall if the arms worked the same way or not. It was very vivid, and the legs contracted via force of will, not a button or lever, though the sensation was mechanical.
Catgrass #2 (unchewed) is growing long, and the stalks are too heavy to hold themselves up anymore. I might let Newt go nanny-goat on it, and give it a haircut. I’m really quite entertained by the rapid growth of all the herbs….I want to get a big box to put under my window.
Now, it’s off to work. see you tonight, dear journal. I’m in the mood for crispy pancakes now….
more public domain literature. found seaching for The Fairies by William Allingham… the King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers is spiffy, too. Gives me an idea or two.
Animated tesselations (those MC Escher interlocking-frog-fish-people things) from Japan. (found at boingboing)
I could watch these for ages. I wouldn’t mind this as a background image for a side-bar…. I bet
or maybe I’m just sleepy.
I also like these z-cardz thingies… they look cheap and fun for all ages. They’d be great for tabletop gaming props, too, I bet. Very Calvin and Hobbes… dinosaurs and jet planes. $2.50 for a pack of five. Just right! styles out now
Morikami (one of my fave places to skip high school) redid the website… one day I’m going to head back there, and walk the gardens (holding hands with my sweeite), take all sorts of pictures…rest in the shade with koi swimming nearby, have a little picnic. MmMmM… good dream fodder.
Ok, bedtime for Scotto and the Newt.
Sweet Dreams, dear journal.
Grodd! You’re under arrest for crimes against Gorilla City.
–Solivar
I want to be the diplomat to Gorilla City! I need a tinfoil hat and a power ring first, though.
I am weary, once again. Kevin had to put put fires from Fort Lauderdale to West Palm… I got to deal with electrical problems all day. Slowed me down quite a lot, didn’t get much programming done. I’ll probably hit the sack in another hour or so. Just tucked my sweetie in, and I’m happy that she’s feeling good. I look forward to her busy-busy time (and my own!) mellowing soon.
Congratulations, Emma and crew!