Poo!

Now I know why I'm writing these entries: it makes me feel socially connected and therefore happier, according to a recent pyschology study. Gosh, I hope someone's reading this...

Check out this fantastic paper from Creative Papers in Tasmania: it's made from kangaroo poop (giggle)!

Now for some eye candy:

Photo from Devoto wedding via The Offbeat Bride blog

Surprising edible fish

I don't know why so many of my blog entries reflect a fascination with Valentine's Day merchandise, but I just couldn't let this one go without comment.



Yes, that's a chocolate trout. With little crispies inside. I know because I've tasted it. No, I did not buy it. Yes, that is Mike's hand.

I've seen a lot of amusing valentine's gifts, but I could always imagine how some poor fellow would be desperately looking for a silly/sweet gift for his gal, and would pick up the bag of marshmallow hearts or the stuffed cow plastered with pink hearts (see previous posting of 1/28/09). But I just couldn't understand the fish, until Mike pointed out that it must be intended as a gift for guys. I guess I missed that because it was surrounded by chocolate roses and teddy bears, but in isolation I suppose it could look reasonably masculine...

The chocolate fish reminded me of one of my favorite T-shirt designs:


Photo: http://www.engrish.com/2001/11/i-hate-myself-and-i-want-to-die/


OMG, OMG, that reminds me, I found the perfect wedding dress!


Photo: from this website here, apparently originally from etsy

Hey, at least it has character! Or rather, characters.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm a day late with this one. Actually, we were originally supposed to go to Boskone on Valentine's day (my gift to Mike was paying for his admission; his gift to me was actually accompanying me there. It did take some pleading. :) He says he enjoyed it, so I'll take that at face value.) Instead, on pink hearts day we ended up doing various work (me) and home improvement (Mike) tasks, but we did go out for dinner to a new Thai/Vietnamese restaurant down the road on the Somerville/Cambridge line. Yes, that is a heart made out of hot sauce.

Although the food was mediocre, they did wind up the meal with some appropriate chocolate mint treats. Sorry about the bite marks. :)

Spec fic edition

In case you have been living without a TV (like me), you may have missed the hype leading to the new series Dollhouse, created by Joss Whedon and starring Eliza Dushku (Faith from Buffy!). I did hear a great interview of Joss on Fresh Air (NPR). Unlike most directors, he is genuinely interesting, and mentioned, among others things, that he had consulted informally with a feminist group while creating Dollhouse. By the way, Joss is a fan of Battlestar Galactica (also available online) whose early seasons are definitely on par with the best of Buffy. In fact, hearing the creator's commentary on Battlestar Galactica only served to remind me how much I enjoyed Joss' commentary on Buffy (the BSG commentaries are not that insightful).

The premise of Dollhouse is an illegal operation that recruits volunteers, wipes their memories and personalities, implants new ones according to customer specs, and rents out the dolls for usage. I saw the first episode, available online; although I wasn't completely sold on the show, I am definitely willing to watch more to see where they go with it.

The Fresh Air interview reminded me Joss' other recent project, Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog. Apparently the DVD version has a sing-along commentary with the directors, etc, singing their commentary! Clearly these are people who like their job; Dr. Horrible was actually made during the writer's strike. (If they stopped paying you, how hard would you work?) By the way, the actor (if he looks familiar to you) is Neil Patrick Harris, who also played Doogie Howser.


Today Mike and I went to Boskone, the New England Sci Fi Assoc's annual convention in Boston. It was really fun! The best part was seeing so many speculative fiction fans (who on average are and look like nerds) being totally un-self-conscious of wearing a warrior's cape, chain mail, or a zillion scarves, and just having fun in a supportive, positive atmosphere. We saw Geoffrey Landis, who is actually also a real scientist, read some of his poems and a short story. We were two of six people in that room! The most entertaining poem was 'Gulliver's Boots', about a pair of Exponential Boots that always takes its wearer twice as far as the previous step. We also heard some filk, browsed a lot of books and artwork (see left for a tie containing the Tardis), and sniffed a lot of spice concoctions. If you visit me, look for the print 'Cave Cooking with Chef Dragone'. Any takers for next year? :)

Mike recently introduced me to some sci fi that made me doubt my love for the genre (Dr. Who: Logopolis). However, now I must say that it was not all in vain, for I readily recognized the blue phone booth on the Tardis tie. It's true that the idea of the Logopolians is cool (they are human calculators who compute the form of the universe, which is too difficult a calculation for computers), but the production, the writing, the soundtrack, the acting... ack!

Here are two of my current favorite authors: Lois McMaster Bujold, who writes space odyssey and epic fantasy (awesome storytelling); and George RR Martin, who writes truly creepy under-your-fingernails short stories ('The Pear-shaped Man' and 'Sandkings') and apparently also writes great fantasy, although I haven't read those books yet.

Happy privacy day

Photo: NASA

Did you know that the Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are still working? Those little robots were originally intended to last for 3 months. They've been chugging away for five years now! Unfortunately, it sounds like something might be wrong with Spirit. But they've definitely Exceeded Expectations in an Outstanding way.

Come to think of it, does anyone else think that WALL-E is a cutified version of the rovers?


Photo: Pixar

Yesterday we went grocery shopping and stumbled immediately into this display:



So, would you rather compare your beloved to a cow or a pig?

I know, I know, pigs can be cute. That reminds me:



Now that's cute!

Sunlight

As many of you know, my office has no windows. It does have a sliver of glass that looks into Big Faculty's office, which (by the way) has a long wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. Up until yesterday, I had never seen natural sunlight in my office. But, it turns out that at 7 am, this is how my office looks:



Apparently, at this early hour after the sun has risen, a sliver of light does manage to hit at just the right angle to illuminate my wall. Pretty neat, right? Now I know why my plants (which can be seen in the 'window') are still alive.

Yesterday I watched the TV miniseries 'Earthsea', based on Ursula LeGuin's books. I had gotten this on VCD in Hong Kong (it's legal, although the VCD format is unpopular in the US, probably because DVDs are higher quality). It turned out to be overdubbed in Cantonese. Whoops! Fortunately, the English was carried primarily in the right channel, so listening only to the right channel made it just barely tolerable (if the English and Cantonese speakers' voices were at different pitches, I could fairly readily 'bandpass' the audio in my head). I remembered loving those books back when I read them, but I did not love this miniseries. It borrowed way too much from Lord of the Rings (the movie), including nearly literal copies of underwater scenes (swamp struggle) and musical atmosphere (remember the wooden flute music that evoked the Shire?). It was like they flipped through the book looking for scenes that resembled something from LotR, filmed them in one take, and stuck them together randomly. And the CGI was worse than a video game. Anyway, I couldn't believe how bad it was, so I Googled it and found that Ursula LeGuin had posted some entertaining criticisms of the miniseries. Sigh. I suppose my expectations were high, given how well the LoTR movies had captured the spirit of the books.

I was just listening to the Obauguration celebration on the radio; HBO and NPR music sponsored a concert. I have to say that hearing millions of people sing 'This land is your land, this land is my land' with Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen made me feel pretty good.

Finally:
Good news: temperature today in the double digits
Bad news: snow
My street this morning:

A blog falls in the forest...

Presenting my blog entry in Science origins, at last! I have no idea how anyone else finds the weblink, though.

Otherwise, things are going well; we're writing a paper, and I've started an exercise routine at home. (Well, since two days ago.) It's only for maybe 10-15 minutes a day, but it's still a lot better than what I was doing before (0 minutes). My goal is to get to the point when I can do real push-ups instead of girl push-ups.

It might take a while.