A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff
In 1971 Stanford University conducted a study of the psychology of imprisonment. While extremely unethical by today’s standards, this 50 minute video takes a fascinating look back at the incredible psychological experiment. See also the Prison Experiment slide show with written history.
(The German movie Das Experiment is based on this event.)
Fans of my backmasking page will probably want to check this out.
A few years ago my friend Megan dropped by the house sporting a copy of The Wizard of Oz in one hand, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon in the other, and a giant grin on her face. We played them both simultaneously and watched/listened as the two synchronized. I am not completely sure it’s intentional, but there are some interesting coincidences.
I recall reading that when asked about this, Pink Floyd has neither admitted or denied intentionally creating their album to go along with The Wizard of Oz.
To set this up at home, you needed to start the album just as the MGM lion roared for the third time, but thanks to Google Video you can see the combined video and audio: Dark Side of the Rainbow.
It’s a little easier to make connections if you know the name of each track:
So what do you think, intentional syncronization or just our minds making connections where none exist?
My brother and his wife climbed Mt. Fuji – (photo). My parents left a city in northern Israel that was bombed later that day by militants in Lebanon — more info from my mom:
We were shocked to hear that there were bombs from Lebanon in Safed or Safet :( however you spell it… I’m not sure if that was today or yesterday, but we were there yesterday afternoon about 1 or 2 p.m. and it is only 20 miles from the Lebanon border. Our Tour Guide was talking to all the soldiers and shopkeepers, but we had no idea what he was saying since we only speak English. He spoke to us about how bad the situation was since 7 soldiers had died, but I really didn’t have any idea of the implications.
As for me, I’m loving Quebec. I played Ultimate Frisbee yesterday. Tonight I will see the band, “Live”!
Québec is like a foreign country where they still take your Canadian change.
I have been having the most wonderful time over the past week. My comprehension of French has been growing at an amazing rate and I’m meeting a ton of wonderful new people.
On Tuesday we watched a French film called, L’auberge espagnole. Fantastic story about a guy from France who decides to live in Spain for a while in an effort to improve his Spanish so he can advance in his career. He leaves his girlfriend behind but makes some new friends along the way and has some very interesting problems to overcome. It’s a cute movie and though I didn’t always follow the dialogue completely, I really enjoyed the story. I recommend it.
Wednesday evening, we hit up the Beach volleyball and partook in hotdogs and coleslaw. Though I’m not usually much of a fan of hotdogs, these ones were smothered in fried onions, ketchup, relish and mayonaise — wow! They were extremely good.
The highlight so far, however, has to have been the trip to La cabane à sucre : la cabane à Pierre. La cabane à sucre translates to The Sugar Shack. Sugar Shacks are where they make the maple syrup for which Canada is world renowned. It’s made mostly in the winter months, so our tour of la cabane à sucre didn’t include watching them actually creating maple syrup, but we did see where they did it (and some of those that knew french better than I found out how). I think it’s basically they boil it in big vats until it’s ready (The Wikipedia entry on maple syrup is a lot more clear)
You’ll notice from the photo the odd shape of the building, that’s because the whole roof is actually a kind of chimney for all the gases evoporating from the boiling maple sap.
The dinner provided at la cabane à Pierre was absolutely fantastic (can you guess what cabane à Pierre is?) I ate like a French king and loved every minute of it. Potatoes, ham, beans, bread, meat pie, pancakes, and more all drenched in the world’s best syrup (yes Maple!). Pierre himself even showed up and we danced the night away.
For dessert they gave us (I forget the actual name) it’s maple syrup poured over ice and wrapped around a stick like a popsicle. So much fun and so tasty.
I know I just got here, but I already know I’m not going to want to leave in only four more weeks.
I hope my parents are having a good time in Israel this month. I also hope they stay at least 6 miles from Gaza.
My red eye flight with Air Canada was, as is no surprise to any of you that have flown with Air Canada, delayed. I missed my connecting flight but caught the very next one (though my bags did not). Anyway, enough complaining about Government funded private ventures that are bound to fail…
Quebec has been more wonderful than I could ever have imagined. My host, Danny, is a fantastic cook and continues to surprise us with delicious recipes at every meal.
July 1st is known in Quebec as the moving day. People take it seriously and actually do move on Canada Day – there is probably some deep symbolism behind their choice of days – but I prefer not to think about it. My host, Danny, is also in the process of moving, so while he worked to get things transferred to his new apartment, I went for a walk in the old city of Quebec.
The old city or Vieux-Quebec is located beside the St. Lawrence river. The smaller width of the river as it enters the towns of Quebec and Lévis, on the opposite bank, provided the name given to the city, Kebec being the Algonquin word meaning “where the river narrows”. It doesn’t appear very narrow to me, but I guess it’s a relative thing.
Walking through the old city makes me feel like I’ve travelled back in time. Founded almost 400 years ago (1608), the old buildings and French architecture have a magic way of connecting me with my Canadian heritage. I spent the day walking around taking a plethora of photographs of Quebec.
That evening my new roommate and I walked down to The Plains of Abraham and enjoyed a free concert followed by Canada Day fireworks. As a note of potential interest I learned that the Plains of Abraham is the largest urban park in Canada, and repeating this fact at the Welcome Party last night won me a nice red University of Laval t-shirt.
On Sunday Danny took us to see La Chute Montmorency (Montmorency Falls). They were named in 1613 by Samuel de Champlain in honour of Henri II, duc de Montmorency, viceroy of New France. (That area of Canada used to be called New France).
It’s been too long since I’ve been around anything so breathtaking. There is a lot of water moving out into the St. Lawrence over the falls and I had a good time watching the hypnotic motion of the water falling so far down. Apparently early explorers were excited to have found such an abundant supply of fresh water so near the St. Lawrence River.
I’ve started my month long French immersion and I’m loving it! Of course I’m just at the elementary level, but I’m thrilled to have actual conversations with people in French. It’s a lot less stressful when you know the other person is just a nervous about their French as you are with yours.
Oh, and one last thing, the University pool is fantastique.
I’m about to embark on the My Explore program, a month long French Immersion class at the University of Laval (or en français de l’Université Laval). Posting may be sporadic throughout July or then again, maybe I’ll find that I have a lot of both interesting experiences to write about and time to write about them.
Au revoir, I’m off to Quebec.
It’s fireworks season in Canada and the United States and for those of you that intend to photograph the pyrotechnic festivities, I recommend checking out How to Photograph Fireworks.
The photograph pictured here was taken on May 10th, 2006, celebrating the 100 year anniversary of Lethbridge. I didn’t have a tripod and didn’t know what I was doing, but even though this photo isn’t the greatest, I still consider myself to have been lucky getting it. I’m hoping that during the celebrations tomorrow in Quebec City, I’ll be able to capture some truly fantastic shots.
Most of the readers here will have already seen the all three movies, but for a bit of nastalgia, check out the Lord of the Rings Trilogy movie trailer (640×272 MOV) created as if the three parts were one.
My new favourite tool to go along with Flickr is the Flickr Map GeoCoding Bookmarklet. It’s a Google Maps/flickr mashup that let’s you easily add geocoding information to your picture and/or see where other people’s geocoded images were taken. Also it’s so easy to use that even my parents could do it.
[The bookmarklet] enables mapping, geocoding and (of course) geotagging directly in your Flickr photo page. It works with all common browsers (Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera), so you do not need to install any extension to run it!
Once you’ve got it saved check out my collection of geotagged images.