Archive for 2009

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Time Is An Illusion, Lunchtime Doubly So

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on March 8, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

Who’s behind the daylight savings time conspiracy?

My concept of time was destroyed at a relatively early age, first by reading Ray Bradbury short stories like A Sound of Thunder, and later by being exposed to Zen and eastern religion by reading pop philosopher Alan Watts. That headline of course is quoting a Douglas Adams character, Adams being another individual who apparently took an early disregard for the concept of time. All of which has something to do with my mild contempt for daylight savings time and the fact that I felt somehow cheated out of an hour this morning. So who’s behind this grand conspiracy to give us travel-free jetlag? Well, most recently the change was rolled into the Energy Policy Act of 2005, signed by George Bush. I still don’t understand why changing the dates of daylight savings time saves energy, and in fact, if you read this explanation on Wikipedia, you might end up concluding it only benefits wealthy golfers. But before all you ranting Liberal Elitists start blaming Bush, understand the trail goes back MUCH further, to 1884 and the International Meridian Conference, which was requested by U.S. President Chester A. Arthur, the guy we always forget because he only became president when Garfield was assassinated. Which I think makes it clear that there was indeed a conspiracy. An assassination, an international plan to modify TIME ITSELF….I’d follow up this morning but I’m short of time.

You Look Like A Million Dollars, But What Does A Trillion Look like?

[ 3 Comments ]Posted on March 7, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion

Saturday, March 7th, 2009

Putting Things In Perspective


Yeah, you look like a million dollars,
but this is a hundred million…

All the casual conversation about trillion-dollar budget issues lately reminded me of how poorly most of us understand numbers as they relate to reality. For instance, ask a person how far away the moon is: 24,000 miles? 240,000 miles? 24,000,000 miles? Don’t feel badly if you don’t know yourself. To put things in perspective on that scale though: if the sun were a beach ball about 2 feet in diameter, the Earth would be a pea 215 feet away (about a small city block), and the nearest star would be about 11,000 miles away. To put a trillion in perspective, the MegaPenny Project uses an image of a trillion pennies next to some familiar architecture. If you’d rather see examples using hundred-dollar bills, see this PageTutor.com page which utilizes Google Sketchup. Another way to look at things is to ponder what you could buy with large sums of money. For instance, WhatWarCosts.com tells us that with their estimate of $323 Billion spent on the war, you could hire 577,648 teachers for 12 years, or bribe every member of Congress 6,037 times. Which, on reflection, has probably in fact happened over the last couple of years. There are hundreds, if not thousands of sites out there with examples like this; one of my favorites is that with a trillion dollars we could pave the entire U.S. interstate highway system with 23.5-karat gold leaf. If you’re tired of bailed out bankers having all the fun, and you’d like to try spending trillions of dollars yourself, try The Three Trillion Dollar Shopping Spree. And if you missed it when you were a kid, check out the classic kid’s book How Much Is a Million

World Builder: A Charming & Visually Stunning Short Film

[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 6, 2009 by admin in Popular Media

Friday, March 6th, 2009

A charming nine-minute short film created by Branit|VFX

I’ve mentioned before that due to my puppy-like attention span, I’ve long been a fan of short media. That’s one of the reasons I like the award-winning short film World Builder, featured at left. I also like it because it takes something usually used to blow things up or create monsters – visual effects – and creates a few moments of sentimentality and simple beauty. If you’re especially hip and cynical, don’t waste your time; there’s no jaded punchline. Although visually rather stunning and clever, it’s really just kind of sweet. Apparently the nine-minute film was shot in a day, but took TWO YEARS to complete in post-production. It was created by Branit|VFX of Kansas City, which has also provided effects for shows like Pushing Daisies and Lost, as well as producing the amusing 2004 short 405:The Movie, “The story of the wrong guy – in the wrong place – at the wrong time.” This kind of material is one of the things I love about the current world of media production: some of Hollywood’s best post-production work takes place in places Like Kansas City, MO! I could watch Branit|VFX’s 2009 Demo Reel repeatedly simply because it uses Kaki King’s music as a backdrop…. Read the rest of this entry »

Are You Really Stupid, Or Do You Just Have Poor Taste?

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on March 5, 2009 by admin in Music

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Correlating Facebook Data With SAT Scores

If you’ve ever been mystified (as I have) by the popularity of Beyonce or Lil Wayne, there’s a fairly good chance that you’re just intelligent. Or at least that you would do well on the SAT. Caltech graduate student Virgil Griffith has gotten considerable attention for his tongue-in-cheek but slightly scientific analysis of how intelligence affects tastes in music and books. He plotted aggregated Facebook data against average SAT scores from various schools, and came up with graphs for both Books That Make You Dumb and Music That Makes You Dumb. Personally, I think you can be stupid and still like Beethoven (who was most popular with students that scored around 1400), but it is somehow telling that “I don’t read” and “Dan Brown” correlated with students who scored around 1000. I also have to admit I was a little surprised to not see The Decemberists over on the 1400 side given their popularity with ad-industry types and Stephen Colbert; and these are indeed troubled times when the Bible hangs down with the 900 scores while “Lolita” tops the smarty-pants reading lists, with an SAT/popularity score around 1300.

Lions and Tigers and…Well Okay, No Tigers Or Bears…

[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 4, 2009 by admin in Clean & Green

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

Amara Conservation: Sustainable Wildlife Conservation Through Education

…but there are some elephants involved. For several years I’ve worked with a very cool non-profit in Kenya called Amara Conservation. Originally founded by Lori Bergemann of Ann Arbor, MI, Amara focuses on encouraging sustainable wildlife conservation in Kenya, mainly by using a mobile film unit to show educational films produced by the African Environmental Film Foundation to the rural people of Kenya. Amara supports a lot of other projects in Kenya, including lion translocation, various activities of the Kenya Wildlife Service, and is currently working on some other interesting projects, including a mobile radio station in conjunction with UK-based Radioactive. The clip here is an early promotional video from 2001. We’re currently planning a May/June fundraiser in Michigan; if you’re interested in helping out somehow (volunteering, networking, fund raising), contact me or contact Amara via their web site. The clip here was written & produced Chris Cook, edited by Matt Zacharias, with music by yours truly, Ian Gray. Read the rest of this entry »

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