Grave of the Fireflies is a little weird for me. I had seen it before, and I agree that it is extremely sad and depressing, but every time I watch it I have a little bit of a problem with Seita, the main character. I can't help but feel like there is a little grain of truth in all the mean things the aunt is saying to him. He IS old enough to get a job and help. He IS old enough to fight the fires. It always feels to me like he wants to live in this dream world with his sister. Now I understand he pays some very adult prices for things, such as when he gets caught stealing, but even then he is let off the hook. Not to mention he resorted to stealing before getting a job. Now, maybe we were supposed to assume that jobs weren't available, but his aunt seemed to think so, and they didn't make any references to unemployment problems.
When I looked up the movie on Wikipedia, which is of course infallible, it says that the movie is based on a semi-autobiographical novel by a man named Akiyuki Nosaka. Interestingly, he claims he wrote the novel as an apology to his sister, who died of malnutrition in post-World War II Japan. It seems to me that if he felt like he had to apologize, he felt like he didn't handle the situation like he should have, but on the other hand there would doubtless be guilt no matter how the situation was handled, so I guess that doesn't mean much. Regardless, there are my feelings on the movie, I hope everyone doesn't think I'm completely callous and heartless. I still think it's a moving movie, I've just always had some nagging problems with it that kept me from identifying completely with the characters.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Inspiration
Alright I can't really post it here so you'll have to follow this link first:
http://www.camilleutterback.com/abundance.html
What you will see if you go there is an installation piece that Camille Utterback created for San Jose, California. There is a camera set up above a plaza, and as people move across it graphical elements tracing their movements are projected on to the side of the City Hall. Different types of interactions between people create different colors and animations on the projection, all combining to create a huge digital painting. At her presentation Ms. Utterback showed several pieces where she was trying to create a digital painting by tracking the movement of people, but this was the first one that was, to me, really successful. A couple of the others were alright, but they just still weren't doing it for me and I was skeptical about whether or not she could ever really accomplish her goal, but this one opened my eyes. Watch the video, it's actually really beautiful.
http://www.camilleutterback.com/abundance.html
What you will see if you go there is an installation piece that Camille Utterback created for San Jose, California. There is a camera set up above a plaza, and as people move across it graphical elements tracing their movements are projected on to the side of the City Hall. Different types of interactions between people create different colors and animations on the projection, all combining to create a huge digital painting. At her presentation Ms. Utterback showed several pieces where she was trying to create a digital painting by tracking the movement of people, but this was the first one that was, to me, really successful. A couple of the others were alright, but they just still weren't doing it for me and I was skeptical about whether or not she could ever really accomplish her goal, but this one opened my eyes. Watch the video, it's actually really beautiful.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Hey you, get off of my cloud.
So the original idea Ellis and I came up with for advertising the New Media school involved an underground advertising campaign involving a pirate broadcast on JagTV and distribution of an unauthorized New Media newsletter. I know it goes against what many people lean towards naturally, but I think the way to make this easily viable is just to cooperate with the school and make the campaign legitimate. I think the key to maintaining the excitement of the campaign is to make it still appear to be illegal activity. Make the JagTV broadcasts a War of the Worlds-type thing where none of the viewers realize what they're seeing is completely planned and anticipated. Maybe that's a poor analogy, but hopefully you understand what I mean. The same approach to the newsletter would also work, but I feel like it would really lose some of its spirit if it wasn't a little bit snarky about the program and even professors, so the administration would have to be convinced to let that sort of thing get published; a lot of compromise would be involved.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Bleep, What the?
Soooooooo......What the Bleep. I don't know, I didn't really like the movie as much as I thought I would. I love the topic of quantum physics and took a class on it back in my IU Bloomington days, but somehow this movie didn't quite do it for me. I guess maybe it just wasn't quite what I expected. I had heard that it was about quantum physics, so I think I was expecting a movie something bordering on a scientific documentary, and that wasn't what it was as far as I'm concerned. In fact, I'm not totally sure how I would classify it. There just didn't seem to be any cohesiveness to it. It felt like the makers sat down at a table, brainstormed a bunch of really wild ideas (some of which were admittedly pretty cool), and went down the list making a scene about each idea and smashing it all together. I really can't explain why, but the line that inspired the most thought from me was right near the beginning. It was, "what are thoughts made of?" I'm sure the makers didn't intend for that to be their moment of triumph, but it was my favorite part. It made me say, hey yeah, what ARE thoughts made of...some kind of electrical impulse I guess but that doesn't really explain how they are stored or processed. A computer uses strings of 1's and 0's, what does our brain use? and so on... I don't mean to be completely negative about the movie, I don't regret watching it once at all, and it had it's thought-provoking moments, I'm just not sure I'm that interested in watching it again. Maybe this was covered in class, I wasn't there, but it looks like they have made another movie in this same series claiming the newer ones provide the "deeper experience audiences have been asking for," so maybe that would be worth checking out.
Bliss
For my bliss assignment, I actually ended up taking a whole evening. I got home from work a little after 5, messed around for a little while, then decided, "screw it, I'm just not going to do anything school-related this entire evening." I have to say, it was kind of a relief. It was probably the first evening I can remember recently where I was able to just sit back and enjoy what I wanted to do. This has been a hectic semester for me, so even when I allow myself a little time to do something unrelated to school I still feel guilty about it the entire time. In this case, since I had just decided ahead of time that I wasn't going to do anything it somehow allowed me to forget about it for awhile.
Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time to work on school work today (Saturday) as I have a family function to go to, but I do feel a little more motivated to sit down and knock out some work, so I'm going to take advantage of the situation with the time I have. I'm going to try to get myself to use this technique in the future. I always have a tendency to sort of guiltily take a little time for myself and that just saps the enjoyment out of it. Then when I go back to work I still don't feel like doing it and I just fiddle around instead of focusing. I think if I schedule some time to forget about work I'll be more productive in the long run. The trick will be to limit myself to a reasonable amount of time instead of taking an entire evening.
Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time to work on school work today (Saturday) as I have a family function to go to, but I do feel a little more motivated to sit down and knock out some work, so I'm going to take advantage of the situation with the time I have. I'm going to try to get myself to use this technique in the future. I always have a tendency to sort of guiltily take a little time for myself and that just saps the enjoyment out of it. Then when I go back to work I still don't feel like doing it and I just fiddle around instead of focusing. I think if I schedule some time to forget about work I'll be more productive in the long run. The trick will be to limit myself to a reasonable amount of time instead of taking an entire evening.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Senses
I'm finally getting around to pasting in my senses assignment. Hopefully the formatting doesn't get screwed up too badly.
Smell – My first day I decided to focus on sense of smell and I thought I would do a little experiment. I work at a local paint store, so as I opened different types of paint to tint them, I would close my eyes and smell the paint, try to think what it reminded me of, and then see what kind of memories were conjured by that association in my mind. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but unfortunately it didn’t really work very well. Only two of the products I smelled made me think of anything but paint.
I want to add a disclaimer here: this paint was in a can, not an inhalant like spray paint, but sniffing the wrong paint can still be extremely bad for you; I’m familiar with the products so I knew what would minimize the risks, but I still wouldn’t recommend this.
The first product that reminded me of anything was Benjamin Moore Regal Aquavelvet. I can’t explain it, but it smelled like chocolate to me and chocolate always makes me think of my grandpa who loved chocolate as much as I do. The second can of paint that provoked a reaction was MAB solvent-based epoxy. It reminded me a little bit of gasoline, which probably isn’t too surprising since they share some of the same solvents. When talking about the smell of gasoline my Dad always says that gasoline smelled much better back in the day, so that memory was what came to mind immediately as I smelled the epoxy. I always wanted to find a sample of thirty year old gas to see if it really did smell as glorious as I’ve been led to believe. I wish more had come out of this experiment, but you win some and you lose some.
Taste – I decided to have a little fun with the taste day. Before I left in the morning I grabbed two of my wife’s favorite things: unsweetened grapefruit juice, and 6-year aged extra sharp cheddar cheese. Throughout the day I asked people to sample each one without telling them what it was, then tell me what they thought immediately. Reaction to the grapefruit juice was almost universal hatred and I’m pretty sure I was in danger of physical harm a couple times. Only one person actually liked it, describing it as “pleasingly bitter.” Other notable reactions were, “is that drain-o,” “that tastes like battery acid,” and “it tastes like burning.” I commended the last person on a well used Simpsons quote. The cheddar was much more polarizing. For those unfamiliar with it, the longer you age cheddar the sharper it gets. A 6 year old cheddar is almost frighteningly tangy. Some people asked me a variation of, “why did you just feed me bad cheese,” while others said it was agreed it was one of the stronger cheddars they had ever had and they really liked it. One person from Wisconsin originally said it was a mildly strong cheese but that they really prefer something more like a 10 year variety. Alrighty. I don’t know that I learned anything from this experiment, but it was a lot of fun to see different reactions to taste and the different takes on the flavor that each individual has.
Touch – This isn’t something that I experienced personally, but it was much more interesting than anything I could come up with, so I thought I would write about it. I originally saw this concept recently on a television show like Nightline or 20/20, but I can’t remember which one and I can’t seem to find anything about the specific show, but I did find a scientific article discussing the same procedure here:
http://www.oandp.org/jpo/library/2006_02_028.asp
Basically, when doctors have to amputate an arm, all the nerves for that arm are severed also. Scientists have now learned how to relocate the nerves to the chest if they’re not too damaged. Both the article and the show discussed the huge prosthesis benefits that scientists expect to achieve from this process. Basically, they want to put the nerves for the shoulder, elbow, and hands in the pectoral area and allow the brain to control a prosthetic limb entirely through those nerves as if it were the original. What that article doesn’t seem to discuss is the sense of touch. On the show, the lady they were interviewing claimed that when the doctors were touching each individual nerve patch on her chest, she could feel the touches in a ghost limb. It was specific enough that she could correctly identify when they were touching each of her individual fingers. So what I’m saying is, if you meet an amputee, when you would normally shake their hand you should shake their chest from now on. Don’t even ask, just go for it.
Sight – This is probably really cliché, but I decided to deprive myself of sight for a few hours on a day when I had a free afternoon with no plans. All I did was blindfold myself and try to go about my normal around the house activities by myself without being able to see. Now normally I would use the computer quite a bit, but without programs to speak the text to me, and training with those programs, that wasn’t really possible, so instead I did things like watch TV, make myself something to eat, and use the restroom. It was a pretty interesting experience all around, and I really might do it again in the future; it really gives you a different perspective on things. Making the food in particular was really bizarre, and I probably should have combined the touch section with this one, but I hadn’t decided to do this on the touch day. I’ll be honest here, I don’t have the cleanest refrigerator in the world, so feeling around in the refrigerator and having to put my hands on everything in there until I found what I was looking for was a little horrifying. Also, applesauce and grape jelly jars feel very similar. I won’t go into detail here, but using the restroom blindfolded was very unique and I recommend everyone try it.
Hearing – While I had my blindfold handy, I had an idea for my hearing activity also. What I decided to do was open zBrush (a digital sculpting program), prepare a blank plane, start a piece of music, put a blindfold on, and let my hand move, trying to express the music as I heard it without being able to see the piece while I worked on it. I would’ve liked to be able to change brush size and shape as I went, but I couldn’t really make it work consistently on test runs, so I was stuck with the standard brush. I really don’t know whether the experiment was successful or not, you tell me. It doesn’t do a lot for me personally, but oftentimes the stuff I make that I don’t care for, other people like the most. The music I was listening to was O Mio Babbino Caro from the opera Gianni Schicchi. Here is a YouTube link to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD9RQ4QuS4w
Sixth Sense – Going into this assignment, when I really thought about it I wasn’t totally sure exactly what the “sixth sense” actually was. It’s one of those terms I’ve heard my entire life and just sort of accepted without ever getting a concrete definition. So in researching it, it seems that most people seem to accept it referring to some form of the ability to see the future. Sometimes the ability to detect objects such as a card from a deck without using any of the traditional senses is also cited, but that seems like a variation on the same theme to me. If you know the future, you know what card the person is going to show you, right?
So, with all that being said, I really can’t find anything in my research, nor have I ever experienced anything, that would convince me that this really exists. Now, I’m not saying I am absolutely certain it does not, just that I don’t feel like there is any evidence solid enough to support the claim completely. I know this is a fairly recent example in the grand scheme of things, but it seems extremely popular to cite reaching for a cell phone to answer a call before it rings as evidence of ESP. My problem with that, beyond it just being possible coincidence, is that we know cell phones produce a signal before they ring (have you ever heard a set of computer speakers make a horrible noise right before your cell phone rings?), and we know that some people are more sensitive to certain electrical fields than others, so doesn’t it seem possible that some people might subconsciously pick up on that signal before the phone rings? You could probably claim that as a sixth sense itself, and I wouldn’t necessarily argue with you, but it’s not ESP.
If anyone is interested in reading more about all this from a skeptic point of view, I recommend looking into the James Randi foundation. James Randi is a magician who has devoted his life to debunking examples of psychics, faith healers, and other similar paranormal claims. Look him up on YouTube, there are some hilarious videos of people trying to reproduce their abilities on his show. Here is a link to his site also:
http://www.randi.org/
Seventh Sense – I think if I had to pick a seventh sense, it would be the ability to know if someone is lying. I understand that with our current senses combined we can still sometimes do a pretty good job of picking up on someone who is dishonest, but there are still people who are very good at telling lies that escape detection. I’m talking about the ability to detect lies completely independently of the other five senses; like an on/off switch, they’re either lying or they’re not and you know it immediately. I just think that would be really useful in day-to-day life. Really try to think about it and I think it becomes clear how nice it would be. One of the most important things on both a personal level and in business is knowing who you can trust. If you were a fool-proof human lie-detector you could actively use your ability to get to the bottom of things. Imagine you’re buying a house. You ask the real estate agent if there are any issues you need to know about and they tell you no, but they’re lying. Then you can start asking leading questions about different areas of the house, always knowing whether their responses are honest, until you figure out the problem area and bring it up specifically. That’s just a silly example I guess, but I think it gets the point I’m trying to make across.
Smell – My first day I decided to focus on sense of smell and I thought I would do a little experiment. I work at a local paint store, so as I opened different types of paint to tint them, I would close my eyes and smell the paint, try to think what it reminded me of, and then see what kind of memories were conjured by that association in my mind. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but unfortunately it didn’t really work very well. Only two of the products I smelled made me think of anything but paint.
I want to add a disclaimer here: this paint was in a can, not an inhalant like spray paint, but sniffing the wrong paint can still be extremely bad for you; I’m familiar with the products so I knew what would minimize the risks, but I still wouldn’t recommend this.
The first product that reminded me of anything was Benjamin Moore Regal Aquavelvet. I can’t explain it, but it smelled like chocolate to me and chocolate always makes me think of my grandpa who loved chocolate as much as I do. The second can of paint that provoked a reaction was MAB solvent-based epoxy. It reminded me a little bit of gasoline, which probably isn’t too surprising since they share some of the same solvents. When talking about the smell of gasoline my Dad always says that gasoline smelled much better back in the day, so that memory was what came to mind immediately as I smelled the epoxy. I always wanted to find a sample of thirty year old gas to see if it really did smell as glorious as I’ve been led to believe. I wish more had come out of this experiment, but you win some and you lose some.
Taste – I decided to have a little fun with the taste day. Before I left in the morning I grabbed two of my wife’s favorite things: unsweetened grapefruit juice, and 6-year aged extra sharp cheddar cheese. Throughout the day I asked people to sample each one without telling them what it was, then tell me what they thought immediately. Reaction to the grapefruit juice was almost universal hatred and I’m pretty sure I was in danger of physical harm a couple times. Only one person actually liked it, describing it as “pleasingly bitter.” Other notable reactions were, “is that drain-o,” “that tastes like battery acid,” and “it tastes like burning.” I commended the last person on a well used Simpsons quote. The cheddar was much more polarizing. For those unfamiliar with it, the longer you age cheddar the sharper it gets. A 6 year old cheddar is almost frighteningly tangy. Some people asked me a variation of, “why did you just feed me bad cheese,” while others said it was agreed it was one of the stronger cheddars they had ever had and they really liked it. One person from Wisconsin originally said it was a mildly strong cheese but that they really prefer something more like a 10 year variety. Alrighty. I don’t know that I learned anything from this experiment, but it was a lot of fun to see different reactions to taste and the different takes on the flavor that each individual has.
Touch – This isn’t something that I experienced personally, but it was much more interesting than anything I could come up with, so I thought I would write about it. I originally saw this concept recently on a television show like Nightline or 20/20, but I can’t remember which one and I can’t seem to find anything about the specific show, but I did find a scientific article discussing the same procedure here:
http://www.oandp.org/jpo/library/2006_02_028.asp
Basically, when doctors have to amputate an arm, all the nerves for that arm are severed also. Scientists have now learned how to relocate the nerves to the chest if they’re not too damaged. Both the article and the show discussed the huge prosthesis benefits that scientists expect to achieve from this process. Basically, they want to put the nerves for the shoulder, elbow, and hands in the pectoral area and allow the brain to control a prosthetic limb entirely through those nerves as if it were the original. What that article doesn’t seem to discuss is the sense of touch. On the show, the lady they were interviewing claimed that when the doctors were touching each individual nerve patch on her chest, she could feel the touches in a ghost limb. It was specific enough that she could correctly identify when they were touching each of her individual fingers. So what I’m saying is, if you meet an amputee, when you would normally shake their hand you should shake their chest from now on. Don’t even ask, just go for it.
Sight – This is probably really cliché, but I decided to deprive myself of sight for a few hours on a day when I had a free afternoon with no plans. All I did was blindfold myself and try to go about my normal around the house activities by myself without being able to see. Now normally I would use the computer quite a bit, but without programs to speak the text to me, and training with those programs, that wasn’t really possible, so instead I did things like watch TV, make myself something to eat, and use the restroom. It was a pretty interesting experience all around, and I really might do it again in the future; it really gives you a different perspective on things. Making the food in particular was really bizarre, and I probably should have combined the touch section with this one, but I hadn’t decided to do this on the touch day. I’ll be honest here, I don’t have the cleanest refrigerator in the world, so feeling around in the refrigerator and having to put my hands on everything in there until I found what I was looking for was a little horrifying. Also, applesauce and grape jelly jars feel very similar. I won’t go into detail here, but using the restroom blindfolded was very unique and I recommend everyone try it.
Hearing – While I had my blindfold handy, I had an idea for my hearing activity also. What I decided to do was open zBrush (a digital sculpting program), prepare a blank plane, start a piece of music, put a blindfold on, and let my hand move, trying to express the music as I heard it without being able to see the piece while I worked on it. I would’ve liked to be able to change brush size and shape as I went, but I couldn’t really make it work consistently on test runs, so I was stuck with the standard brush. I really don’t know whether the experiment was successful or not, you tell me. It doesn’t do a lot for me personally, but oftentimes the stuff I make that I don’t care for, other people like the most. The music I was listening to was O Mio Babbino Caro from the opera Gianni Schicchi. Here is a YouTube link to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD9RQ4QuS4w
Sixth Sense – Going into this assignment, when I really thought about it I wasn’t totally sure exactly what the “sixth sense” actually was. It’s one of those terms I’ve heard my entire life and just sort of accepted without ever getting a concrete definition. So in researching it, it seems that most people seem to accept it referring to some form of the ability to see the future. Sometimes the ability to detect objects such as a card from a deck without using any of the traditional senses is also cited, but that seems like a variation on the same theme to me. If you know the future, you know what card the person is going to show you, right?
So, with all that being said, I really can’t find anything in my research, nor have I ever experienced anything, that would convince me that this really exists. Now, I’m not saying I am absolutely certain it does not, just that I don’t feel like there is any evidence solid enough to support the claim completely. I know this is a fairly recent example in the grand scheme of things, but it seems extremely popular to cite reaching for a cell phone to answer a call before it rings as evidence of ESP. My problem with that, beyond it just being possible coincidence, is that we know cell phones produce a signal before they ring (have you ever heard a set of computer speakers make a horrible noise right before your cell phone rings?), and we know that some people are more sensitive to certain electrical fields than others, so doesn’t it seem possible that some people might subconsciously pick up on that signal before the phone rings? You could probably claim that as a sixth sense itself, and I wouldn’t necessarily argue with you, but it’s not ESP.
If anyone is interested in reading more about all this from a skeptic point of view, I recommend looking into the James Randi foundation. James Randi is a magician who has devoted his life to debunking examples of psychics, faith healers, and other similar paranormal claims. Look him up on YouTube, there are some hilarious videos of people trying to reproduce their abilities on his show. Here is a link to his site also:
http://www.randi.org/
Seventh Sense – I think if I had to pick a seventh sense, it would be the ability to know if someone is lying. I understand that with our current senses combined we can still sometimes do a pretty good job of picking up on someone who is dishonest, but there are still people who are very good at telling lies that escape detection. I’m talking about the ability to detect lies completely independently of the other five senses; like an on/off switch, they’re either lying or they’re not and you know it immediately. I just think that would be really useful in day-to-day life. Really try to think about it and I think it becomes clear how nice it would be. One of the most important things on both a personal level and in business is knowing who you can trust. If you were a fool-proof human lie-detector you could actively use your ability to get to the bottom of things. Imagine you’re buying a house. You ask the real estate agent if there are any issues you need to know about and they tell you no, but they’re lying. Then you can start asking leading questions about different areas of the house, always knowing whether their responses are honest, until you figure out the problem area and bring it up specifically. That’s just a silly example I guess, but I think it gets the point I’m trying to make across.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Reflection on 9/29
Alright so I walk in to class a little late today, just in time to see pudding getting stuffed into an ear. So yeah, that was different. What was interesting to me was that afterward when asked if anyone was surprised by what Amy did, everyone said that they actually expected it of her. That fact was generally ignored and from then on we talked about how in New Media we need to do things that are unexpected. The problem with that was, the demonstration with Amy was apparently expected. So I guess what I'm saying is, Amy should have gone for the butt with the pudding. Have a nice day.
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