Category: words mean things (Page 146 of 223)

Geniuses produce
I feel the need this morning to plug JD’s weblog, “The Real John Doe.” In my little links database (which you can see rotating in the sidebar), I called it a “mind expansion project,” and that’s as close as I can get to the feeling when I read it. Go there now! (© Miguel)

Plus, JD linked to one of the more interesting pages I’ve read recently: A Theory About Genius. Mind expansion is a good thing.

Random thoughts on the Survivor finale:

-I was glad Ethan won. I was rooting for him from the beginning. But I have to say my favorite was Theresa. I just fell in love with her, and I respected her last-ditch effort to stay by confessing her vote to Lex.
-Kim J. was arguably the weakest competitor in the whole game up to the final episode, staying because of her original Boran alliance. But she impressed me with her final two immunity wins, especially “hands on the idol.”
-Couldn’t believe how everyone was obsessed with how Kim J. was 56. Come on people, that’s not that old.
-I liked Kelly when she was the victim of Lex’s maniacal lust for revenge. But her intense bitchiness while on the jury and that stupid “pick a number” thing (remember Greg?) made me dislike her maybe more than anyone else there.
-This series was certainly not as interesting as what went before it. But Survivor is still more fascinating and entertaining than 90 percent of what’s on the airwaves these days.
-Lindsey looked like she had peeled her face off to reveal another face beneath.
-Apparently, nudity on your audition video drastically increases your chances.
-Bryant Gumbel should be placed on a remote island somewhere with a blood-soaked volleyball and left there. Our world would be a better place.
-Among his many faults, Gumbel gave short shrift to Theresa in the reunion interviews.

It was a fun series. But as my Florida blog colleague Xkot said, it lacked the extremes of either good or evil that we saw and enjoyed in the other two.

I’ll be watching the next one. Definitely.

I would say the universe is more a pale mint. But that’s just me. (via MeFi)

I tend to watch L.A. Law reruns on A&E on weekday mornings. They’re in the last season now, which was actually better than the couple of years before it. And it had the advantage of the character of Jane Halliday, a fundamentalist Christian who brought a lot of interesting religion-related cases to the firm.

This morning, a high school science teacher was suing after he was fired for teaching “creation science” alongside evolution in his class. The students thought it was interesting, they liked the teacher and wanted him to continue. The school board, of course, wanted him to stick to teaching science, as they defined it.

Much to my surprise, I found myself siding with the teacher quite a bit. After all, the teachers I remember and the ones who influenced me the most were the ones who challenged me, who pushed me to think in new ways. I found myself thinking it would have been interesting to discuss what creation science advocates believed, as long as it wasn’t presented as “the truth.”

My reaction was a shock to my good liberal, separation-of-church-and-state attitude. I know it’s a slippery slope, bringing religion into the classroom. But I also believe opening your mind and considering many viewpoints is what leads to real education.

All kinds of great stuff about the media and politics in these strange times can be found on Cursor.org, my new favorite web site.

I’ve been in sort of a little funk lately, and it’s amazing how my recent horoscopes on Excite have illuminated my feelings:

Yesterday
The problem is not the weather, the opponents, your other obligations or your lack of funds. Rather, it’s that you simply feel that you’re either not talented enough or not enterprising enough. Perhaps you need to turn inward for a while and give yourself a pep talk. The truth is that you have everything you need either at your fingertips or within an arm’s reach. If you expect to come out of this with anything less than a grand prize, you’re selling yourself short.

Today
You’re pacing in the cage, wondering when all of this is going to pass. The truth is that the current drama isn’t going to magically be gone when you wake up some morning in the near future. Instead, you’ll have to chase it away a little bit at a time. You’ll have to clear your head and put in extra hours if you want things to start moving in the right direction again. The worst thing you could do right now is wait for someone else to come and rescue you.

While I don’t believe that the position of the planets has anything to do with our lives here on Planet Earth, for some reason I find astrology fascinating. Maybe I just find other people’s interest in it fascinating. The jury’s still out.

Watched one of my favorite movies tonight, “Once Around” with Holly Hunter, Richard Dreyfuss, Danny Aiello and Gena Rowlands.

There’s a lot to say about this movie, not the least of which is if you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out. So much better than Lasse Hallstrom’s current “The Shipping News.” But what struck me this time was the fierce love of Dreyfuss’ Sam for Hunter’s Renata. It’s the kind of love that we all deserve to have in our lives. It’s messy and difficult and passionate and intense and worth every minute. When’s the last time you saw a movie that conveyed something like that?

The new iMac is cool. It’s as simple as that. I watched Steve Jobs demo iDVD, iPhoto and the rest at the Macworld Expo keynote, and I thought, I wish I had the money. (I had taped the keynote from TechTV – I am such a geek. And a Mac person at heart sitting in front of a PC who longs to break away from the dark side.)

What was even better was to watch a procession of these geeky guys from Adobe and Wolfram and Wavefront and such get up on the stage and for a few brief moments, they were stars. They wore pocket protectors in high school, they loved math and science, and they were stars. That’s wonderful.

January is the forgotten month. At least, I wish it was. New Year’s comes and goes and I want to just crawl into bed and not come out for a few weeks. Throwing back those toasty-warm covers gets harder and harder, especially when you’re greeted with day after day of grey skies.

Of course, with “In The Bedroom” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” finally coming out, I guess I have to leave the house sometime.

Looking for an easy way to contribute to a good cause? Then use the link below to do your Amazon.com shopping:

When you enter Amazon through this link (which you can also save in your Favorites list by right-clicking on it), anything you buy during that session contributes 5 percent of the purchase price to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Wisconsin, a great organization. (Full disclosure – I did their web site.) Your purchases don’t cost more, so it’s a painless way to contribute.

If you are involved with any non-profit organization, you should get them involved with the Amazon.com associates program. With links like the above they get 5 percent of purchases, and they can set up special item-specific links that net 15 percent. If more people who used Amazon did this sort of thing, charitable giving would increase considerably.

Just a thought.