Water on Mars Confirmed

Today NASA confirmed soil samples found on Mars contain water.

"We've seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted."

It is amazing and sad that such a massive scientific achievement is receiving such little attention from the media. I'm not really sure who's fault it is that Americans seem to care so little about science, but it seems to me like we're going to be in rough shape heading forward if that doesn't change.


07/31/2008tags: science robots nasa
HellBoy -

Very interesting visually but I just didn't care about the characters or the story. Hellboy 2 can wait for DVD.


07/27/2008tags: movies
The Dark Knight -

The Dark Knight is a great film which I thoroughly enjoyed watching, but failed to live up the the hype. The performances were incredible, it was beautifully shot, but it was way too long.

The one thing that really took me out of the film was that it looked exactly like Chicago. Christopher Nolan did a much better job creating Gotham in Batman Begins.


07/24/2008tags: movies christophernolan batman

Leafcutter Ants


Leafcutter Ants in the El Silencio park near La Fortuna, Costa Rica.

I saw a lot of cool stuff in Costa Rica; sloths, four kinds of monkeys, a ton of birds, but I think the ants were my favorite.


07/20/2008tags: video insects costarica ants
Batman Begins -

Just as good the second time through. I am really excited to see The Dark Knight.


07/19/2008tags: batman movies

Big Couple of Weeks

Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica

I have a good excuse for how slow it's been here lately, Jess and I got married last week!

The ceremony was in Ogunquit ME on the 28th of June and went off without a hitch (I am really funny at night). We were treated to some very Maineish weather that should make for dramatic photos.

We don't have any of those photos yet which is why I am posting this photo from our honeymoon to Costa Rica. Generally honeymoon photos consist of lovey, sunburned, slightly drunk looking couples hanging all over each other with a sunset in the background. I may or not have some of those, but I am posting this photo because it's my favorite from the trip (favorite photo without a sloth in it anyway). This was the view of Arenal from our cabin in the hills above Monterrey.

Costa Rica is awesome. More photos soon.


07/10/2008tags: wedding costarica arenal

As goes the bumper.....

So goes the nation?

Is it me or are there virtually no McCain bumpers stickers out on the road right now? I cannot remember seeing a single one. This occured to me this morning so I paid very close attention while running a bunch of errands this afternoon. Sure enough, I didn't spot a single McCain sticker in the sea of Obama bumpers. Granted I live in a liberal area but I swear I have seen more cars with Bush/Cheney '04 stickers than McCain '08.

Anyone else noticing this?


06/07/2008

Chapel Hill Hail Storm

Chapel Hill Hail Storm Last Friday night (5/3/08) around 12:30 I was playing Mario Kart on the couch directly underneath the large and old skylight in my apartment when we got hit with an intense hail storm. It was unbelievably loud. M. Nature gave me a pretty serious pelting when I ventured out to recover the handful of hail pictured here.

Chapel Hill Hail Storm Luckily the hail stones survived the week in my freezer because I kept forgetting to bring my calipers home from work. The largest one was just under an inch in diameter (9/10ths). Definitely the biggest hail I have ever seen, but pretty small in comparison to some of the photos from the area. A lot of people had golfball sized specimens.


05/18/2008tags: weather hail chapelhill

Microsoft buys out OLPC. That's right, the OLPC now runs XP. A very sad day for open source software.


Cloverfield -

I finally saw Cloverfield last weekend. What a complete piece of garbage.

Back in January I was genuinely excited to see it, which is odd because I am neither a big monster movie nor JJ Abrams fan. In retrospect it seems I succumbed to the "viral" marketing campaign. It's hard to argue with the Statue of Liberty head flying down the street, and the idea of a new monster was exciting.

The bottom line is Cloverfield is boring as hell, which is really saying something since it's about a monster ripping through NYC and its 84 minutes long. The main characters are so lame I actually found myself anxious to witness their demise. Plus I figured the movie would be over when we were rid of them(turned out to be true, surprise!). The monster was also really disappointing. It looks nothing like the whale-esqe drawings that piqued my interest initially. Instead, it resembles the nondescript monsters you've seen in every lame video game from the last 20 years.

Since I found the movie thoroughly uninteresting I wasn't compelled to read many reviews. Most of the criticism I did see focused on the steady cam work and/or the undeniable similarities to 9/11. As far as I am concerned the camera work fit perfectly with the narrative style of the film (however flawed), and I will leave the 9/11 commentary up to the residents of Manhattan. From my perspective the principle problem with the movie was its attempt to rethink the monster movie genre.

The main idea is that Cloverfield it would be the first monster movie shot from the perspective of the people getting squished rather than the monster doing the squishing. That seemed like an interesting approach at the time, but ended up falling pretty flat. The reality is the people on the ground (in this film at least) are not interesting, at all. I spent the whole movie wanting to see more of the monster, wanting to know where it's from, wanting to know what the military was going to do about it. Every other monster movie lets people in by giving them this info. And they make the MONSTER THE STAR! I spent the whole time wondering why we were following this preppy dumbass around Manhattan when there is an awesome Monster to watch?

Lesson learned? Sometimes conventions are classic for a reason, because they work.


05/15/2008tags: movies jjabrams

The truth about gas prices

Obama's cut the BS approach is a large part of why I voted for him in the NC primary this morning. Let's hope he wins huge in Carolina today and we can get on to winning this thing in the fall.


05/06/2008tags: obama gas economy politics
Iron Man -

Yes, I went to see Iron Man on opening night. And yes it was awesome. As long as you can forget anything you happen to know about physics, or science in general, it's a lot of fun. One quick shot of RDJ wearing a Wonder Woman suit under the Iron Man armor could have made it perfect. I guess they are saving that for the sequel.

Favorite hilarious moment?
"TONY STARK WAS ABLE TO BUILD THIS IN A CAVE! WITH SCRAPS!"


05/02/2008tags: movies

Modular Robot Reassembles when Kicked Apart

Am I the only one who gets a little teary-eyed watching stuff like this?


04/29/2008

"We want to react against the organic, improvised expression. We wanna do a more synthetic, weird and non-organic expression. Within the artificial expression new moods and spheres arise. Electronic music is absolutely the music of the future. Machine music is good."

Karin Dreijer Andersson of The Knife

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