Sentimental

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Paper Man (2009) -quick film review

quick review:  

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3/5 stars.  decent movie. i really like the genre of quirky introverted personalities trying to figure out the meaning of life (aka “how to be happy and help others in this too”).  this movie started off very confusing and things start to make sense only near the end.  before then it isn’t known why a grown guy is wanting to hang out w/ a teen at his house (later it is shown that he didn’t really know why either at the time).  So throughout the movie i felt it deserved 2 stars (which i rarely rate a movie).  at the end there was enough meat in the dish to bite off, chew on for a minute and digest.  since i was able to take something away from the movie (some morsels of knowledge about human relationships) i bump it up to 3 stars.  in netflix i gave it four just so that it won’t shy from suggesting more movies of this ilk my way.  and that, is the reason for this post- it was inspired by the fact that i didn’t feel quite right rating a movie higher than it deserved and then not explaining myself.

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limericks about time

Time’s an illusion, you know
And lunchtime, of course, doubly so–
It so rapidly passes,
Or slow as molasses,
And where did my yesterday go?!?
The telling of time is an art
Take, for instance, the time we’re apart:
That time is not reckoned
By hour or by second,
But measured in beats of my heart.
I remember when days used to last,
And a year was impossibly vast;
It seems yesterday morn
When my children were born–
How the hell did they grow up so fast?
My days, though to say so seems trite,
Seem to pass at the speed of–well, light.
If I only could see ’em,
I’d carpe each diem,
But they so quickly pass out of sight.
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midnight prayer

we are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. but we can understand the universe. that makes us something very special. (Stephen Hawking)

tonight i watched into the wild on my ipod. i watched while lying in my bed, before going to sleep. my short 2-3 sentence review is this: thank you, mr. krakauer for letting me vicariously live a fantasy of going into the wild and being one w/ nature. i also learned thru the experience of christopher (the main character in the story), that “happiness is only real when shared” (he wrote these words towards the end of his lonely, soul-searching journey to alaska). there’s got to be a way to be one with the world and continue our relationships around us, too. this is a new goal for me to live by. tonight my wife shared a poem with me that said: “real tragedy is not death, but a life not lived” Continue reading →

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bloggy links for today

  • The 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World
  • The largest penis in the world (in the animal kingdom)
  • Evol. A very well-shot video clip of two people who find each other in a backwards world.
  • grappa. click it- it’s really cool.
  • huge mouth
  • Big Fat Friday, at the Eight Hour Lunch blog. a small group of people online who will be sharing their diet and exercise progress. i’ll be joining them at keeping my New Year’s resolution!
  • the single biggest achievement in lifespan extension ever produced in an organism!
  • A short-range RF tranceiver in a ring. Shake hands with someone, and data transfer occurs: the particulars of one’s life, details that would, in a calmer world, be exchanged in but a few minutes’ conversation with a new friend or business acquaintance.Information_ringA short-range RF tranceiver in a ring. Shake hands with someone, and data transfer occurs: the particulars of one’s life, details that would, in a calmer world, be exchanged in but a few minutes’ conversation with a new friend or business acquaintance. Why talk when you have technology? Information Ring [via]
  • High-Tech Contact Lenses [May One Day] Give Superhuman Sight To Humans, Vorpal Bunnies
  • Crazy Christian lady goes gets belligerent in a coffee shop (video below) [via]

…Okay that’s seriously enuf for now- i think i’m going to play COD4.

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Perry Passed Away

Perry’s wit, humor and great skepticism will be truly missed from The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe.  No one can replace that sarcastic raspy voice.

Some links, of note:

This is one of Perry’s last recordings on the show before he passed away.  He was kind of drugged-up in the hospital at the time so his “skeptical quote of the week” came out pretty funny.  You can listen to it here.

Hopefully someone reading this will find the Skeptic’s Guide for the first time find out how funny and smart Perry was.

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Sexy Description of Human Reproduction

…As told by science and sung by electronic music:

[It is] natural to feel a sense of awe and wonder… and goosebumps, […][for life] …I mean the way, that humans reproduce…is…at a moment when they are as close to each other as they can possibly be. And at that moment their DNA combines to produce new life so that an ancient continuety that stretches back four billion yrs on this planet continues on, with the information- the secret- of life at its heart= what’s more beautiful than that? It’s so much more beautiful than the religious myths that we’ve been given (and it could only be revealed by science).

Quote by Ann Druyan, wife of Carl Sagan, on POI 1/05/2007
Music by Apex, Virtuoso (Factoria Vocal Mix)

Video created by this Myspace user

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Ann Druyan on Love and Carl Sagan

Ann Druyan:

Of all the people I’ve ever known- I’ve never known anyone who lived and believed so strongly in the power of love and being in love and he was absolutely breathtaking in his endless fascination with love. He would put his love for me and our children above everything. we were together (married) for more than twenty years and we must have asked each other to marry each other virtually every day of those twenty years. I mean that’s how aware we were of our great good fortune and having found each other in this vast universe and being on the same world at the same time was just- too good to be true- and from the moment we fell in love till his last breath I felt it at every turn.

From Point of Inquiry, 1/5/2007

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Cool Quote from the Dalai Lama

Everyday, think as you wake up, ‘today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can.

From an article on 10 Benefits of Rising Early, and How to Do It (good article, by the way!)