Skip to main content

Star Wars, Stravinsky, Summer!

It's been a while since my last post. So much has happened in the last few weeks. My brother graduated from Columbia! Kudos to the kid. It's interesting how Columbia has played such a large role in my family's life and education..my father taught there, a cousin got a Masters, I have a Bachelors in the Arts, and now my brother too! I'm sure some day if I ever have kids I would encourage them to apply, of course, no pressure whatsoever.
So the lucky kid will be in Germany for the next half year or so trying to beef up his Deutsche Sprache. I sure wish I had such experiences. Its a lot harder when you're doing experimental science to travel around like that. I can't just lug around my couple hundred pound dilution fridge everywhere I go. Still, I can always plan for a postdoc in either Europe or Japan. Actually that's my goal..go and get to know some hot Japanese or Euro chicks eh? But back to reality here, need to finish the PhD first. One step at a time yo.

What other bigs things have happened recently? If you are just so culturally in the backwaters, or perhaps comatose, then you might not be aware that the most anticipated movie of all time was just released. Star Wars Episode III baby! I mean, this movie has been so influential in the lives of so many. I watched my first Star Wars movie when I was 3 years old! The year Return of the Jedi was released. I can still remember being grossed out, slightly scared, and definitely curious about Jabba the Hutt when he appears in his den. Thank you George Lucas!
Episode III certainly didn't have that many surprises. It was more or less just completing a story that everyone already knows the ending to. That's no easy task, and I think George has done a superb job, not forgetting to maintain his trademarks: cheesy dialogue and blow your mind away graphics and special effects. So again, Thank You, George Lucas.

Now I'm enjoying my summer = freedom from classes. So all the time I used to spend on homework, I now use to do my daily three C's: vitamin C, Cartoon network, Comedy central. Of course I try to pack in some book time and sketch/ draw time. I've been reading about Stravinsky and how he came up with the Rites of Spring. Perhaps more on that in another post.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Leadership

Check out the parody of Memoirs of a Geisha by Bobby Lee. Hilarious. Here's stuff on America's best leaders . Speaking of leadership, what makes a great leader? Do you have to be the smartest on the team? Or the best coordinator? It must really depend on the organization and job, but in general all leaders have to share similar traits. For example, I saw a brilliant basketball game today, Duke vs. Wake Forest. It's clear that Duke's leader is JJ Redick. That's because he is the most effective scorer, but also I think his will to win leads the team to achieve. Of course he is putting in perhaps the most work by scoring and playing nearly the whole 40 minutes. But he is defintely not the best defender on the team. So a leader needs to certainly be very skilled, but not necessarily the best at everything. The vision and determination is what makes a leader. Not everyone is a natural born leader. Some are better than others, by talent and nature. But I think leadership...

Yes, Taiwan Can!

I saw this image somewhere, and I thought it was nice. I hope we can spread it around! I apologize for not giving full credit, but if it's yours, let me know!

Of Mice and Men

Here's an interesting story, mice sing ! Check out the sound clip at the bottom of the page. Apparently during courtship male mice sing. This was discovered when researchers let male mice sniff on female or male mice urine, and though the original intention was to see how the male brain differentiates the pheromones, they noticed a rather complex ultrasound pattern erupted when hetero (whether there are homo mice is a question) male mice smelled female pheromones. This places mice in the same league as some other complex singing beings such as birds and dolphins! This is interesting for many reasons, but one I can think of is since mice are relatively easy to manipulate genetically, and the fact that they utilize complicated vocal patterns to court mates means perhaps mice have some simple language abilities. So we may be able to understand how language and vocal abilities develop and play such a crucial role (obviously as in birds better singers get to procreate!) in animals. We a...