Saturday, May 12, 2012
Look what I did! (8, 5, 3, 3, 3, 4)
Zebras yanking xenophobes waxed volatile under tipped sanctums, ridding quails passing offended never, many liberty killing, justifying here instead, geeks flatulent enough, dodge can't bees average.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Look what I did! (8, 4, 5, 7, 2)
Average bees can't dodge enough flatulent geeks here, instead justifying killing liberty, many never offended passing quails, ridding sanctums tipped under volatile waxed xenophobes, yanking zebras.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Long Bike Ride
So, I went on a long bike ride yesterday, and depending how things go, it may show up here or not. I'll let you know how that works out when I find out. I'm trying to get LA Weekly interested.
In any case, I'll say a few things about it here, just so you know this is how I fill some of my days. I took my bike on the subway up to the Watts Towers, about ten stops away form where I picked the Blue Line up, and went to take some pictures. Feeling good and out of place, it was time to head home...on the bike.
The entire trip was just under 16 miles, and the majority of it was along the LA River bike path. Originally I wanted to avoid the river-way, but I changed my tune while riding through the neighborhoods.
Speaking of those neighborhoods, there are two ethnic groups living there, and while I obviously am not going to be mistaken for Torii or Tyreke, it was equally obvious that my pink and orange complexion, mixed with bushy red beard, I wasn't going to be mistaken for Candido or Rigoberto.
Every few minutes I'd pull this out of my pocket, just to take a look and catch my bearings, another giveaway I was, eh, different.
It chronicles my route through the Watts neighborhood of LA, then through Lynwood, and then through Compton to get to the river-way route at Somerset Blvd. That was all I brought with me, really. I mean, I brought water, and my ID, but I didn't bring any of my money cards (ATM or credit) or my phone, which on more than one occasion would have been helpful when a street sign was missing. I went unconnected and digitally naked, a contingency against the worst-case scenario.
I had a different plan for a long bike ride, and this was like a dry run, or practice run to test my legs and conditioning (not quite "woefully inadequate", but...well, I made it home). I have some pictures to prove I really did it, but they'll have to wait.
I still can't believe that was my only navigation tool, that crumpled slip of paper with street names and how to turn on each. I love "Pine, through the mall, continue on Pine". That was how Google maps set me up on the bike directions. Now, I've had issues with Google maps before, but that was mostly in Austin. Those bike directions though, were pretty awesome, and kept me off of major thoroughfares as much as possible, which was the entire trip until crossing the 710 and LA River on Somerset at the end.
In any case, I'll say a few things about it here, just so you know this is how I fill some of my days. I took my bike on the subway up to the Watts Towers, about ten stops away form where I picked the Blue Line up, and went to take some pictures. Feeling good and out of place, it was time to head home...on the bike.
The entire trip was just under 16 miles, and the majority of it was along the LA River bike path. Originally I wanted to avoid the river-way, but I changed my tune while riding through the neighborhoods.
Speaking of those neighborhoods, there are two ethnic groups living there, and while I obviously am not going to be mistaken for Torii or Tyreke, it was equally obvious that my pink and orange complexion, mixed with bushy red beard, I wasn't going to be mistaken for Candido or Rigoberto.
Every few minutes I'd pull this out of my pocket, just to take a look and catch my bearings, another giveaway I was, eh, different.
It chronicles my route through the Watts neighborhood of LA, then through Lynwood, and then through Compton to get to the river-way route at Somerset Blvd. That was all I brought with me, really. I mean, I brought water, and my ID, but I didn't bring any of my money cards (ATM or credit) or my phone, which on more than one occasion would have been helpful when a street sign was missing. I went unconnected and digitally naked, a contingency against the worst-case scenario.
I had a different plan for a long bike ride, and this was like a dry run, or practice run to test my legs and conditioning (not quite "woefully inadequate", but...well, I made it home). I have some pictures to prove I really did it, but they'll have to wait.
I still can't believe that was my only navigation tool, that crumpled slip of paper with street names and how to turn on each. I love "Pine, through the mall, continue on Pine". That was how Google maps set me up on the bike directions. Now, I've had issues with Google maps before, but that was mostly in Austin. Those bike directions though, were pretty awesome, and kept me off of major thoroughfares as much as possible, which was the entire trip until crossing the 710 and LA River on Somerset at the end.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
After 32,000 Years, She's Back!
Russian scientist have resuscitated a version of a flowering plant called silene stenophylia that has, according to carbon-dating of the source's plant tissue, not see the light of day for 32,000 years.
Remnants of the plant were found preserved in a frozen squirrel den in the Siberian permafrost. There were modern versions of this ice age flower growing nearby, so the idea that the tissue could be from the same plant was reasonable.
They successfully were able to get a version to grow, flower, and make viable seeds using genetic material retrieved from the tissue. The flowers are of a different shape than the modern varieties nearby, and a success like this has provoked the Russians to push for the continued research done on the permafrost in eastern Siberia.
Whether or not the scientists should have resuscitated plant DNA from 32,000 years ago hasn't ever really been addressed, at least in anything I've read. If anything, it leads to a rather serious precedent.
It also has inspired me to consider this post and concept as a Part 2 in a trilogy, with Part 1 being this post about guest mitochondria and zygotes (which I can say is quite good after I read it for the first time since writing it back in June of 2009). If "science fiction" is abbreviated by sci-fi, then let me state that something I'm calling "science reality" can be abbreviated by sci-real.
This trilogy is about the "Banality of Sci-Real". Part 3 will be about tetrodotoxin and datura.
For an article on this really old school stilene tundra flower, check this out.
Remnants of the plant were found preserved in a frozen squirrel den in the Siberian permafrost. There were modern versions of this ice age flower growing nearby, so the idea that the tissue could be from the same plant was reasonable.
They successfully were able to get a version to grow, flower, and make viable seeds using genetic material retrieved from the tissue. The flowers are of a different shape than the modern varieties nearby, and a success like this has provoked the Russians to push for the continued research done on the permafrost in eastern Siberia.
Whether or not the scientists should have resuscitated plant DNA from 32,000 years ago hasn't ever really been addressed, at least in anything I've read. If anything, it leads to a rather serious precedent.
It also has inspired me to consider this post and concept as a Part 2 in a trilogy, with Part 1 being this post about guest mitochondria and zygotes (which I can say is quite good after I read it for the first time since writing it back in June of 2009). If "science fiction" is abbreviated by sci-fi, then let me state that something I'm calling "science reality" can be abbreviated by sci-real.
This trilogy is about the "Banality of Sci-Real". Part 3 will be about tetrodotoxin and datura.
For an article on this really old school stilene tundra flower, check this out.
Friday, May 4, 2012
"Troll 2" Notes
Using our streaming Netflix account the other night I cued up Troll 2, considered one of, if not the, worst movie ever committed to film.
Using the same Netflix account I saw Best Worst Movie, the documentary about the cult status of Troll 2 and how the movie affected the players in it as well as the filmmakers.
Let me start by saying that it is definitely not the worst movie ever made, er, Worst Movie Ever Made.
I'm a highly critical viewer of film, and there are plenty of movies that are less comprehensible, less well-executed, and less fun than this (have you seen anything by Ed Wood?).
Troll 2 was originally going to be called Goblins, as it has nothing to do with trolls, or the first Troll film, or ever even uses the word "troll" anywhere during its 94 minutes.
It's not a great movie, but it does create genuine tension, something a movie like Charlie's Angels can't even do. It's a low budget movie shot on location in the south and populated by real people who can't hide their inherent crazy. The main problem would have to be the lead actors, who run the gamut from B-movie silly to downright awful.
The main character is a young boy, Joshua, who still occasionally sees and converses with his dead grandfather. Written like that makes the're encounters seem silly, but they're played rightfully for spooky tension. That dynamic pretty much does work.
Josh's family is part of a summer exchange; they switch houses with a family who lives in the country. The grandfather tries to get Josh to stop the move, and failing that, tries to warn them about the food. All the food stuffs has a strange light green paste, like branding. It's pretty neat.
The town they're staying in for the summer, Nilbog (check ithe spelling backwards!), is populated by a gaggle of creepies, always pushing their green food crap on the family members. The main conceit of the film is that Goblins populate the woods around Nilbog, have a connection to the creepy townfolks, are vegetarians--almost--and the green pasty foodstuff starts a transformation in the eater.
After eating the food, they start to sweat green, chlorophyll laden sweat. Eventually they start to transform into plants, and that's when these veg-hybrid Goblins like to eat the stricken plant-man.
Vegetarian-like Goblins? Novel, at least. Josh's older sister, whom I think moved onto an actual career as an actor, is the weak link in the main cast. She's pretty goddamn bad. Their mom is, according to the documentary Best Worst Movie, is a little batshit crazy, and this comes out in her performance. The dad, George Hardy, the star of the documentary, is also pretty bad, but just a run of the mill B-movie bad, but remember, he's a dentist.
The youngster playing Joshua has flashes of competence mixed within B-movie typical. The best performance--from an actor anyway--has got to be from the maniacal dead grandfather. Other than him, the guy who tells the kid, "Coffee's the devil's drink!" is equally creepy and crazy looking, and after seeing Best Worst Movie, you see he's spent the majority of the years since Troll 2 institutionalized.
Watch Troll 2, then go watch the Wild World of Batwoman. Or Plan 9 from Outer Space. Or Charlie's Angels. The tell me that Troll 2 is worse than any of those three.
Using the same Netflix account I saw Best Worst Movie, the documentary about the cult status of Troll 2 and how the movie affected the players in it as well as the filmmakers.
Let me start by saying that it is definitely not the worst movie ever made, er, Worst Movie Ever Made.
I'm a highly critical viewer of film, and there are plenty of movies that are less comprehensible, less well-executed, and less fun than this (have you seen anything by Ed Wood?).
Troll 2 was originally going to be called Goblins, as it has nothing to do with trolls, or the first Troll film, or ever even uses the word "troll" anywhere during its 94 minutes.
It's not a great movie, but it does create genuine tension, something a movie like Charlie's Angels can't even do. It's a low budget movie shot on location in the south and populated by real people who can't hide their inherent crazy. The main problem would have to be the lead actors, who run the gamut from B-movie silly to downright awful.
The main character is a young boy, Joshua, who still occasionally sees and converses with his dead grandfather. Written like that makes the're encounters seem silly, but they're played rightfully for spooky tension. That dynamic pretty much does work.
Josh's family is part of a summer exchange; they switch houses with a family who lives in the country. The grandfather tries to get Josh to stop the move, and failing that, tries to warn them about the food. All the food stuffs has a strange light green paste, like branding. It's pretty neat.
The town they're staying in for the summer, Nilbog (check ithe spelling backwards!), is populated by a gaggle of creepies, always pushing their green food crap on the family members. The main conceit of the film is that Goblins populate the woods around Nilbog, have a connection to the creepy townfolks, are vegetarians--almost--and the green pasty foodstuff starts a transformation in the eater.
After eating the food, they start to sweat green, chlorophyll laden sweat. Eventually they start to transform into plants, and that's when these veg-hybrid Goblins like to eat the stricken plant-man.
Vegetarian-like Goblins? Novel, at least. Josh's older sister, whom I think moved onto an actual career as an actor, is the weak link in the main cast. She's pretty goddamn bad. Their mom is, according to the documentary Best Worst Movie, is a little batshit crazy, and this comes out in her performance. The dad, George Hardy, the star of the documentary, is also pretty bad, but just a run of the mill B-movie bad, but remember, he's a dentist.
The youngster playing Joshua has flashes of competence mixed within B-movie typical. The best performance--from an actor anyway--has got to be from the maniacal dead grandfather. Other than him, the guy who tells the kid, "Coffee's the devil's drink!" is equally creepy and crazy looking, and after seeing Best Worst Movie, you see he's spent the majority of the years since Troll 2 institutionalized.
Watch Troll 2, then go watch the Wild World of Batwoman. Or Plan 9 from Outer Space. Or Charlie's Angels. The tell me that Troll 2 is worse than any of those three.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Thank You Cyannobacteria!
What would you call the emergence of a bacterial entity that actually put off as waste a poisonous gas and eventually killed off all other forms of life on the planet? The life of the party, baby!
One life form back in the day, and I mean way fucking back in the day, like more than a billion years ago, emerged as being quite effective at replicating itself. It had two secrets: the first was that it used the sun's energy for food; and the second was that it expelled poisonous gas as waste, thereby dealing effectively with their neighbors.
"Using the sun's energy for food" is an oversimplification of the photosynthesis, but the idea's set: something is directly using the sun, like a parasite of sorts (not really, but...) The gas that these little suckers used to murder off everything else was oxygen, quite the nasty poisonous gas to many an early living thing.
Once the oxygen really started to fill the atmosphere, the die off of the other organisms quickened, all the way until today, where the only life-forms that don't use oxygen are living down in thermal vents at the bottom of the ocean or living in random caves near sulfur vents.
Those little bastard bacteria that killed off so many others with their poisonous gases are called cyannobacteria, and there are still types around today. All life that uses oxygen have them to thank for getting the planet ready for us. Animal life developed as a parasite of plant life, and plants just yse sunlight, and we all need to thank those little cyannobacteria.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Legends from the Land of the Rising Sun
In the comic book industry you have Stan lee. Stanley Lieber, as his parents would have recognized him, created either alone or with Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko, Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the comic book Thor, and the X-Men. No one person in the industry has had his hands and creativity on so many different beloved characters in the entire medium.
This type of status rarely happens. The case could be made for George Lucas and his Star Wars universe, but while he presides over that universe as a god, Star Wars doesn't make up nearly half of the film industry, like Stan the man's comic creations.
While both Stan Lee and George Lucas have been called innovative for their different techniques--Stan with his complex humanity seen in those characters and George with his special effects developments--both didn't really come along early enough in the history of their respective media to really get to define the vocabulary to which each media would eventually conform.
I'm talking about the ability to be technically advanced with each step forward, character creation-driven, and able to define the vocabulary of the following eras...like Stan Lee, George Lucas, and Gutenberg rolled into one. Does this person exist?
Well, yeah. It's a guy and he's Japanese.
While you may not have heard of him, I'd be willing to guarantee if you're reading this entry online somewhere, you'd heard of at least one of his creations.
I'm talking about the legend Shigeru Miyamoto.
He's responsible for the Nintendo characters Donkey Kong, Mario and Luigi, and Link and Zelda.
Shigeru the man is from Kyoto and had a job with Nintendo painting the sides of their arcade game cabinets. Nintendo had a game that wasn't doing so well, and let this young artist try to come up with a game. Shigeru had an idea based on Popeye, with Bluto and Popeye and Olive Oil, but changed it to the antagonist to an Ape and the names to Pauline, after somebody's wife, and Mario, after the landlord of their warehouse workshop.
The premise was that the Ape was Mario's pet, but he escaped and kidnapped the girl, and it was up to Mario to rescue her. I only mention this silly premise because Shigeru couldn't program that well, and used it as an explanation for his desires from his prom programming team. That, and it was the first time a story or premise was used around which to build a video game. They named it Donkey Kong.
After it's success, he gave Mario a brother, named him Luigi, and created another rudimentary jumping type game called "Mario Bros". This was marginally successful. His next game was a industry changer: the iconic "Super Mario Bros". This side scrolling adventure game focused more on gameplay than score accumulation , and came to define a style of game called "platformer" for, pretty much, all-time.
Miyamoto's next game was the next thunderous medium shifter "The Legend of Zelda". Unshackled by time constraints with a world you needed to explore and puzzles that needed to be solved, a new type of video game genre was created. Still difficult and popular today, the 1987 "Legend of Zelda" ranks on many lists as one of the best games ever.
One of his last games for the first generation of Nintendo, Miyamoto dropped probably the pinnacle of the 8-bit cartridge based video game: "Super Mario Bros. 3". Seen in America at the end of the movie The Wizard months before it was released brought the excitement and anticipation to a fever pitch. It was closer to the next installment--on an entirely different game system--than it was to it's predecessors.
Shigeru then launched "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past" for the Super Nintendo, which is generally considered one of the best games for that machine, and one of the two or three best Zelda games ever. (One of the other pinnacle games for the Super Nintendo was "Donkey Kong Country", although Miyamoto didn't work on it.)
Next he moved on to Nintendo 64 and developed the world's first truly 3D game with "Mario 64". The medium lurched forward. His next big game for the N64 has gone down as generally considered the Greatest Game Ever, "The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time". (Also, it's the only game on this extensive list I've ever beaten.)
Then he was pretty much promoted to the head of development for the company, where he spearheaded the Wii Sports games for the Wii console before getting back into the thick of things with "Mario Galaxy", the Wii's Mario installment. It was considered the bets game for the Wii console ever, until "Mario Galaxy 2" came along. I have Galaxy 2, and let me just say that that shit is difficult as hell.
The media is so new relatively to other media that it makes sense that one person could have such a profound effect upon how we understand and discuss the thing itself.
It still blows me away, though. One guy.
This type of status rarely happens. The case could be made for George Lucas and his Star Wars universe, but while he presides over that universe as a god, Star Wars doesn't make up nearly half of the film industry, like Stan the man's comic creations.
While both Stan Lee and George Lucas have been called innovative for their different techniques--Stan with his complex humanity seen in those characters and George with his special effects developments--both didn't really come along early enough in the history of their respective media to really get to define the vocabulary to which each media would eventually conform.
I'm talking about the ability to be technically advanced with each step forward, character creation-driven, and able to define the vocabulary of the following eras...like Stan Lee, George Lucas, and Gutenberg rolled into one. Does this person exist?
Well, yeah. It's a guy and he's Japanese.
While you may not have heard of him, I'd be willing to guarantee if you're reading this entry online somewhere, you'd heard of at least one of his creations.
I'm talking about the legend Shigeru Miyamoto.
He's responsible for the Nintendo characters Donkey Kong, Mario and Luigi, and Link and Zelda.
Shigeru the man is from Kyoto and had a job with Nintendo painting the sides of their arcade game cabinets. Nintendo had a game that wasn't doing so well, and let this young artist try to come up with a game. Shigeru had an idea based on Popeye, with Bluto and Popeye and Olive Oil, but changed it to the antagonist to an Ape and the names to Pauline, after somebody's wife, and Mario, after the landlord of their warehouse workshop.
The premise was that the Ape was Mario's pet, but he escaped and kidnapped the girl, and it was up to Mario to rescue her. I only mention this silly premise because Shigeru couldn't program that well, and used it as an explanation for his desires from his prom programming team. That, and it was the first time a story or premise was used around which to build a video game. They named it Donkey Kong.
After it's success, he gave Mario a brother, named him Luigi, and created another rudimentary jumping type game called "Mario Bros". This was marginally successful. His next game was a industry changer: the iconic "Super Mario Bros". This side scrolling adventure game focused more on gameplay than score accumulation , and came to define a style of game called "platformer" for, pretty much, all-time.
Miyamoto's next game was the next thunderous medium shifter "The Legend of Zelda". Unshackled by time constraints with a world you needed to explore and puzzles that needed to be solved, a new type of video game genre was created. Still difficult and popular today, the 1987 "Legend of Zelda" ranks on many lists as one of the best games ever.
One of his last games for the first generation of Nintendo, Miyamoto dropped probably the pinnacle of the 8-bit cartridge based video game: "Super Mario Bros. 3". Seen in America at the end of the movie The Wizard months before it was released brought the excitement and anticipation to a fever pitch. It was closer to the next installment--on an entirely different game system--than it was to it's predecessors.
Shigeru then launched "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past" for the Super Nintendo, which is generally considered one of the best games for that machine, and one of the two or three best Zelda games ever. (One of the other pinnacle games for the Super Nintendo was "Donkey Kong Country", although Miyamoto didn't work on it.)
Next he moved on to Nintendo 64 and developed the world's first truly 3D game with "Mario 64". The medium lurched forward. His next big game for the N64 has gone down as generally considered the Greatest Game Ever, "The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time". (Also, it's the only game on this extensive list I've ever beaten.)
Then he was pretty much promoted to the head of development for the company, where he spearheaded the Wii Sports games for the Wii console before getting back into the thick of things with "Mario Galaxy", the Wii's Mario installment. It was considered the bets game for the Wii console ever, until "Mario Galaxy 2" came along. I have Galaxy 2, and let me just say that that shit is difficult as hell.
The media is so new relatively to other media that it makes sense that one person could have such a profound effect upon how we understand and discuss the thing itself.
It still blows me away, though. One guy.
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