The Mars Rover Opportunity is the first of the two twin robots to discover strong evidence that water once flowed on mars. “That does not mean life was there. We don’t know that, but this was a habitable place on Mars at one point in time,” said Cornell University astronomer Steve Squyres who works as the principal investigator for NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rover missions. But as Squyres explains, “This was the kind of place that would have been suitable for life.”
Every morning on Rock 106’s morning show Fraser and Rosie reenact a scene from a movie and the listeners call in and guess the movie. This week they are doing all Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson movies. This was the scene they acted out:
FRASER
Can I ask you something?
ROSIE
(pause)
OK.
FRASER
Are you trying to steal my woman?
ROSIE
(pause)
I beg your pardon?
FRASER
You heard me, Coltrane.
ROSIE
(long pause)
Coltrane?
FRASER
What?
ROSIE
Did you just call me Coltrane?
FRASER
No.
ROSIE
You didn’t?
FRASER
No.
Since I thought this was a totally obvious movie I didn’t even bother to phone in. Too easy I thought. I got up and walked into the kitchen. I still hear the radio coming from my room. “Is it Zoolander?” asked one oblivious caller after another. “Sorry, it’s not Zoolander”. “Is it Zoolander?” “No.” “Is it Zoolander” “NO!” “Can I have a hint?” “Sure, this one has lots of big actors in it, Gene Hackman was in it” “Uh… I don’t know, are you sure it’s not Zoolander?”
At this point I was like trying to remember the number to call in because apparently nobody in Lethbridge can appreciate a quality stylized film. It’s one of my favorite movie. Luckily I have the number programmed into my cell phone and doubly lucky was the fact that I had charged it overnight. Rosie picked up and as Iawkwardlyy asked if they had an answer yet, I could hear my voice being broadcast live. “It’s The Royal Tenenbaums,” I stated.
So my prize for getting the movie right is two tickets to see Starsky and Hutch this Friday. With Anna-Maria in Edmonton, who will I take?
I had heard what I considered to be an urban legend that the ratio of a woman’s index to ring finger indicates whether women are likely to engage in casual sex and the sexual orientation of men. Turns out the research has been done and maybe it’s not an urban legend after all. Oh and for those of you wondering, my ring finger is about 10mm longer than my index finger – could possibly explains why I’m such a fast sprinter.
Are 2D:4D Finger-Length Ratios Related to Sexual Orientation? Yes for Men, No for Women
Digit Ratio: A Pointer to Fertility, Behavior and Health
2nd reason found to check woman’s ring finger
I am excited to get some sleep – but since it is 2:46AM and I wanted to celebrate my “being done”, I can’t exactly phone Anna-Maria and tell her the news, so I decided to post to the blog. Good night – I hope your paper writing experiences are better than mine.
I tried out new flash game that I found on the net, a blatantly poor use of my time, but “Bush Shootout” proved to be kind of fun and I needed a break from the essay I haven’t been working on. Jeff Milner = biggest procrastinator ever. My final score: 266847.
I read the headlines about Grey Tuesday last week as it approached but I didn’t bother to read what it was all about. I thought it sounded boring.
So today I read all about it and I downloaded a couple of songs from DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album this afternoon. While I strongly believe in the principle of Grey Tuesday, that is to say that copyright law needs reform, I have to say the songs themselves didn’t bake my cake. I guess I’m just not into that indie rap stuff. Anyway I do hope the attention that the Grey Album is getting will bring about some common-sense changes to copyright law.
For those of you unfamiliar with the situation, let me catch you up to speed.
DJ Danger Mouse has taken audio tracks from Rapper Jay-Z’s Black Album and remixed them with music from the Beatles White Album. The new album is cleverly titled The Grey Album.
Enter EMI and copyright lawyers. They claimed that he had not asked permission or paid for the rights to use The Beatles music and demanded that he stop selling his record. The DJ agreed to comply with the order and is no longer distributing the record, which was allegedly only intended for the ears of friends.
But the story doesn’t end there. In issuing the order, EMI has unwittingly thrust The Grey Album into the public spotlight, prompting guerilla music lovers to post MP3s on their websites and blogs specifically on, but not limited to, Tuesday February 24th. Considering that only 3,000 copies of The Gray Album were pressed and the fact that it has been banned pretty much guarantees a Holy Grail status among hip-hop fans and serious music collectors alike.
“Grey Tuesday” Civil Disobedience Planned February 24th Against Copyright Cartel
In protest of EMI’s action approximately 170 sites hosted a full copy of the Grey Album on Tuesday, in spite of the fact that many of those sites had received cease and desist letters from EMI’s lawyers.
So how successful did Grey Tuesday turn out to be?
“After a survey of the sites that hosted files during Grey Tuesday, and an analysis of filesharing activity on that day, we can confidently report that the Grey Album was the number one album in the US on February 24 by a large margin. Danger Mouse moved more “units” than Norah Jones and Kanye West, with well over 100,000 copies downloaded. That’s more than 1 million digital tracks.”
I think that’s pretty cool.
The next time you do anything in life – have the Death Clock ticking away on your screen and it will help you realize that maybe what you are doing is not the most efficient use of your time. It’s actually pretty freaky to have this thing staring back at you.
My Personal Day of Death is… Sunday, December 22, 2052. I told Anna-Maria, my girlfriend, about this and her immediate response was, “You better NOT die right before Christmas.” I’ll try and hold on for the extra three days, but I’m pretty sure the death clock does not lie.
I’m guessing this short film Tin Toy will be featured at the beginning of one of the next two new Pixar movies (either The Incredibles or The Cars). But why wait, check it out now – it appears to be a test piece for Toy Story and it’s actually quite brilliant.
Quote / Unquote:
“Is it art or FedEx? Because only FedEx delivers the mail.”
My Production Management professor speaks in metaphors and riddles. Anyway the game menu I created for that class now links to the beta version of the game. Your results may vary. At the present there is no reset control so if you tip your car over or find yourself falling endlessly outside of the map, you’ll have to hit refresh (F5 on most popular browsers) to start the game over.
Update: The class is over and the link has been taken down.
Here is a link to the flash menu of a new 3D game that I am helping to make in my production management class. The big green rotating guy that used to be there has been updated with a rotating jeep from the game. I’m also going to try and put in a three-dimensional map of Lethbridge in the map section. What do you think?
Update: The class is over and the link has been removed.