Dave’s posterous

While I'd have a hard time calling this technology a "sixth sense", as offered, it is still quite remarkable and certainly worth your time to view.

After you've seen the talk by Pattie Maes, based on the work of Pranav Mistry, please consider taking a few more minutes to view the remarkable and surprising short video by Bruce Branit that implements some of the technology described in the talk.

Thanks to Joel Baumbaugh for being the catalyst on this blog.  Please consider spending some of your recreational time watching the TED talks.  They are always stimulating.

Feedback always welcome.  Happy Halloween.

Dave out

P.S.  I've long held the belief that a sixth sense exists.  I believe it is localized at our "nodes of Ranvier" where breaks in the myelin sheaths, on our axons, allow for electromagnetic interaction with our environment.  There is no magic or mysticism in this mechanism.  Saltatory conduction has long been understood and provides a very valuable service to neuron bearing entities.  I have neither engaged in experimentation with nor sufficiently researched this arena but now throw this idea forth in the hopes that you can either enlighten me to unknown research or to perhaps light a flame in the darkness, to stimulate your curiosity sufficiently to perform your own research.  The mind reels at the possibilities.

Pattie's talk   http://www.branitvfx.com/worldbuilder/index.html

Bruce's short video   http://www.branitvfx.com/worldbuilder/index.html

(download)

I have had several  responses to my recommendation Friday, for "Captain Abu Raed", Jordan's first major motion picture for international distribution.
From the folks who've seen it, the responses were uniformly positive.  For a first movie, from Jordan, it is excellent.  No I take that back.  What I should have said is.  For a first movie, from Jordan, it is excellent.

I've been looking for it for over a year with no luck.  I didn't realize that the person who recommended it to me initially, saw it at a film festival.  It actually did not get released until recently.
I found out last Tuesday that it was showing at the Ken Cinema, two blocks from my house.  Unfortunately, the night before I discovered this  the director, composer of the score and one other key player, were at the theater.  Rats, I missed it.  When I saw it Thursday night, I was one of 10 people in the theatre.  It was very sad that such good movie would be seen by so few.  Clearly, the lack of a big advertising budget does not necessarily indicate an inferior movie.

I thought you had missed your chance (San Diegans) when it ended it's run at the Ken Cinema, Thursday (8/13) but it has only moved a short distance to the Hillcrest Cinemas where it will be until this Thursday (8/20).  Usually, the first show of the day is discounted.

Dave out

Life is so much easier for people who don't care!

Revel regardless!

Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want!

See the turtle.  He only gets ahead when he sticks his neck out.

Today I give special thanks for the planet Jupiter ... and you should too.  Though not to the point of worshiping it yet, we all owe it a huge debt.

"Huge" being the salient word here.  Most of us know that Jupiter is the largest planet in our neck of the woods.  It is the 5th from the sun; has many satellites and is one of the brightest objects in the night sky

Being the giant that it is, it carries with it a massive gravitational well¹.  Since I doubt that most folks, on this list, are too interested in a 1/r² force law where one needs a three-dimensional rubber sheet bending into a fourth spatial dimension for a good idea of gravitational wells which is unlike the normal textbook views of an isometric embedding of a constant-time equatorial slice of the Schwarzschild metric in Euclidean 3-space, so I'll rapidly move on.  (Thanks also given for "cut and paste". op cit¹)

So instead consider this simpler, but easy to understand, analogy.  Pretend you are a ferrous metal ball who happens into a room of magnetic personalities.  Who are you most likely to be attracted to?  The one with the most dazzling magnetic personality, of course.  See how much you know about astro-physics ;-)    ?

Loose canon chunks of space crud are no different.  They are also attracted to the big attractors too.  Locally, the Sun gets the lion's share of the free masses to gobble up but Jupiter gets some too and, fortunately for us, with the Sun, Jupiter, moon and our atmosphere working for us, we don't get too many superheated rocks bouncing down on our heads at 25,000 mph.  Also, having an orbit closer to the raging, testerone imbued, ravaging hoardes of adolescent space rocks, Jupiter operates as a sentinel on our periphery.

Some of you may remember when pieces of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed into Jupiter's cloud bands in July of 1994.  Well just this past Sunday, while you were in church praying for the San Diego Padres not to finish in the cellar, Jupiter again did you a great kindness with neither your prayers nor thanks as incentives.  An old, bored asteroid, looking for a good time, ran into our ol' pal.  As you look at this picture (also embedded below but san citations) and read the scale consider what would happen if Jupiter was not there and the asteroid had decided to pay a surprise visit to Earth instead.  Yes ... that's correct, the visible debris field, in the Jovian picture is roughly 10,000 MILES in diameter from a SMALL comet or meteor.  For a frame of reference the New York to San Diego distance is 2,432 miles.

Thank you, Jupiter for working so hard, for so many, thanklessly ... until now.

Sincerely,
Dave

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When it happened, I knew it was significant.  I knew it would be important for me; a milestone in my life.  I just wasn’t sure what it was and so I though I’d write it down.  I hoped my thoughts on paper would be like slides being prepared for a presentation and that by arranging them well, the essence; the morsel of knowledge; le raison d’être, the truth, my truth, would rise to the surface and present itself.  I’d then stare at it and say to myself “why was something so obvious, so hard to see when it has lived in my mind and heart for all of my days.”

Last night at my film festival a lady named Lynda said something that caused me to play a few performance clips for her, both before the show had started and after it had finished.  Her comments caused me to feel she might like a particular artist or two.  Fortunately, she did.

Today, I started asking myself why I liked this performance artist or that.  What was it about each of them that moved me so deeply?  Two parts of the puzzle I learned long ago.  If the performance depends solely on the shock value of expletives it will have no margin with me and I’ll excoriate it¹.  If the performance was exquisite, uniquely creative, exceptionally filled with beauty or magically executed, the doors to my acceptance become unlocked but not fully open.  There must be more.  However, those points alone, have allowed me to welcome performers who do not typically fall into genres I particularly enjoy.  Performing works I already hold in high regard can increase the likelihood of gaining favor but on the other hand the respective performers enter an arena of excruciatingly tough competition.

Clearly, as a talentless person I am greatly enamored by performers I admire and would love to meet all of them in a situation that would allow some serious one-on-one time allowing us to go far beyond “Wow, I think you are great.  I’ve got all your CDs/records.”  I’d love the chance to explore deeply the man or woman behind that public persona.  I have no doubt I’d find both delight and crushing disappointments².

It is no surprise that I’d crave their talent but certainly not for the extra income it would provide.  Those who know me well, know that money has never been a motivating force in my life.  I’d die in a heartbeat if I was assured, with some reasonable authority, that I could return with a voice like Nathan Gunn, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Paul Robeson or my father.  Don’t have to have their life; just the voice; the rest is up to me.  But why was that so important to me?  What was it, at the core, I pined for?

Surprisingly, I was dancing around the issue but couldn’t get at it.  It was not becoming obvious and so I took a break.  Very shortly thereafter I discovered what it was I sought.  I was envious; not of their good looks, high income, travel to exotic places or their set of fascinating associates.  I was envious of their vehicle to exercise their passion.  I have not the voice to sing songs that move people.  I cannot dance in a way that people are enchanted.  I cannot write things that move people to tears.   I have the passion without the required talent for an outlet.  How will I solve the problem now recognized?  Perhaps this soliloquy is part of the process.  Perhaps not.  We will see but recognizing a problem is a huge step towards its resolution.

Thanks to Lynda for being an innocent and unknowing catalyst.

Sincerely,
Dave

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¹  Sadly it seems a growing number of performers are substituting vulgarity for talent.
²  I’ve had it happen before when I met Glen Campbell and Helen Ready.        

Thanks to Aunt Peg for this unique forward.
Dave out

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Daring rodent shows puzzled leopard exactly who's boss by stealing its lunch

This mouse diced with death when it tucked into the lunch of a hungry leopard.  Seemingly unaware of the beast towering over it, the mischievous rodent grabbed at scraps of meat thrown into the African Leopard's enclosure.  But instead of pouncing on the the tiny intruder the 12-year-old leopard, called Sheena, appeared to be afraid of the daring mouse and kept her distance.  At one stage she tried to nudge the mouse away with her nose, but the determined little chap carried on chewing away until he was full.

Excuse me? A perturbed Sheena the leopard looks on as a cheeky mouse nibbles her food at the Santago Rare Leopard Project in Hertfordshire.
The extraordinary scene was captured by photography student Casey Gutteridge at the Santago Rare Leopard Project in Hertfordshire.
The 19-year-old, from Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, who was photographing the leopard for a course project, was astounded by the mouse's behaviour.
He said: "I have no idea where the mouse came from - he just appeared in the enclosure after the keeper had dropped in the meat for the leopard.  He didn't take any notice of the leopard, just went straight over to the meat and started feeding himself.  But the leopard was pretty surprised - she bent down and sniffed the mouse and flinched a bit like she was scared.  In the meantime the mouse just carried on eating like nothing had happened."



Even a gentle shove does not deter the little creature from getting his fill.  "It was amazing, even the keeper who had thrown the meat into the enclosure was shocked - he said he'd never seen anything like it before."  Project owner Jackie James added, "It was so funny to see - Sheena batted the mouse a couple of times to try to get it away from her food.  But the determined little thing took no notice and just carried on."
Sheena was brought in to the Santago Rare Leopard Project from a UK zoo when she was just four months old.  She is one of 14 big cats in the private collection started by Jackie's late husband Peter in 1989.  The African Leopard can be found in the continent's forests, grasslands, savannas, and rain forests.



... so the mouse continued to eat the leopard's lunch and show the leopard who was boss.

A Dutch friend of mine recently ran something across my palate that set off fireworks.  It is really good.

She gave me a piece of fabulous aged Gouda (pronounced How-da or Khow-da).  The best I'd had in a very, long, long time.  It is made in Holland by Rembrandt and amazingly enough it is available at CostCo in San Diego but available world wide and through mail order.  It has won multiple awards and it is not hard to taste why.  I'm on my way back for my second wedge since Friday (I have given some away to other to try though).  If you don't see it, ask for it.  A further description is on page three of this document and here is an independent review if you need one.  http://cheesemonger.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/aged-goudas/

Please leave your comments on the blog if you try it.

Dave

An interesting whistle blowing e-mail from Natasha Fatale (aka Rose Weeks)
Thanks Natasha,
Boris (aka Dave)

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