Archive for Blog
World War Z movie
How awesome is it that the World War Z movie script is written by J. Michael Straczynski (writer of Babylon 5)? I’ll tell you: so awesome.
UNC!
That’s three games in the NCAA so far, and three commanding wins thanks to tonight’s game. Even though the huge Cougar’s managed to keep Tyler down to two points in the first half, we still had a great lead thanks to the fantastic efforts of everyone else on the team! The second half was all ours.
Our scrubs even got to have a couple minutes in the game. Scrubs, in a sweet sixteen game!
HBO's John Adams
If you aren’t watching the new John Adams mini-series on HBO you are missing out on some seriously great historical drama.
If you want to check up on the series’ historical accuracy, Boston 1775 is a great blog.
Watched: Ocean's Thirteen
Watched: Ocean’s Thirteen
Review: 3/5
Pretty decent. Of course it was nowhere near as good as Ocean’s Eleven and not nearly as bad as Ocean’s Twelve. While it was great to see the team back in Vegas and the heist was fun, there just weren’t as many smooth and delicious layers to the puzzle as in Ocean’s Eleven.
Watched: Resident Evil: Extinction
Watched: Resident Evil: Extinction
Review: 2/5
While it does look great on blu-ray, RE:E never comes close to the awesome action of the first Resident Evil movie. It is much better than the second, but that isn’t saying much. There is almost no true zombie action. The big action scene is the rag-tag group fighting domesticated zombies that look like crazed janitors with their matching blue jumpsuits. I guess there wasn’t a budget for zombie costume design.
The rag-tag group are apparently the dumbest people still alive on the planet. Their plan for survival is to drive around the US taking leftover gasoline and food. And not just the US, but the desert southwest! They have no air conditioning, so their vehicles they stay in all day (with the windows up) are just mobile death traps. Are you kidding me? I can only guess that they were hoping to die somewhere warm, but miscalculated.
Many subplots are started then forgotten. There is a pointless exposition about how the Earth has dried up, but then the movie is set in what was already a desert so I’m not sure what the movie is trying to do there.
It is fun to see Alice using her magical powers, but there’s only one really cool scene. Still, at least she used her power for more than knocking over one droid at a time in a totally ineffective manner. Star Wars prequels, I’m looking right at you.
Basis of life found on an extrasolar planet
More support for panspermia, Molecular Basis of Life Discovered on Extrasolar Planet.
Microcosms all the way down
So a black fungus has evolved inside the Chernobyl reactor last year. A fungus that feeds on gamma radiation. Keep that in mind for a moment.
Someday I believe that we are going to find out that our little oblate spheroid of earth has more in common with deep sea hydrothermal vents than most people realize. Deep sea vents have collections of life growing around them. Bacteria process the chemical energy pouring out of the vent into an edible food supply that allows a diverse collection of animals to thrive. It is the same for Earth: solar energy pouring out of the sun is processed by plant life which converts it into an an edible food supply that allows a diverse collection of animals to thrive.
The deep sea vents are almost entirely isolated from our solar energy cycle. If, somehow, the sun were to stop producing energy (say we encase it in a Dyson sphere within Earth’s orbit) the deep sea vent communities would go on living and thriving as long as Earth’s molten core keeps on chugging out energy. I only say they are almost entirely isolated because the collection of life around them must have collected from the general collection of life on the planet. In other words, they are self-sustaining now, but at some point the essential components for life must have filtered down and evolved into lifeforms that were capable of feeding on the chemical energy. Life probably didn’t originate at these vents, just as I believe that life didn’t originate on Earth.
The more places we look for life, or even just look as in Chernobyl, the more places we find it. Down at the bottom of the ocean so deep that the lack of solar energy means that life surely can’t possibly exist? Thriving, teeming communities of all sorts of life. In the heart of a massively irradiated reactor where life couldn’t possibly survive? A new form of life that is eating the radiation. Inside the boiling pools of Yellowstone National Park where the extreme temperature must preclude the existence of life? Microscopic organisms that could live nowhere else. Wherever we look, if there is some kind of energy source life is already there. Rather than the exception, it seems to me that we are just a deep sea vent, irradiated reactor, or boiling lake in the solar system. We have an abundant source of energy, so we are just teeming with life. If I put a piece of bread and some rocks on a table, should I be surprised when mold soon starts to grow on the available food source?
The problem with the theory is that we have, as yet, no real proof. Yes we have found organic compounds in metorites…maybe. Until we find somewhere else with a similar abundance of energy (Venus?) and find or not find life, there is nothing to compare. Maybe life is everywhere on Earth because we are the one lucky planet in the galaxy.
But let’s get back to that fungus. It literally eats gamma radiation in an environment such high levels that it simply shoudn’t be able to survive. It doesn’t need anything else, no oxygen or even an atmosphere. It is entirely possible that this fungus could survive a trip through space, and that’s all it would take. A planet with some kind of energy, being hit by microscopic life imported from space dust, comets, and meteors, would eventually find itself just as covered as a deep sea vent.
Look at it this way. Assume our planet is truly the only source of life in the galaxy (or universe!). As already described our planet is literally covered in the stuff to such a degree that even in a very short human timeframe, the right kind of life to feed on a new environment (Chernobyl Reactors) is able to form. Our planet is regularly spewing off ejecta from volcanos, minor meteor impacts, and major impacts (the last being about 65 million years ago). Much of that material eventually falls back to us, or trails along behind us like a streamer of matter. But some of that matter escapes our orbit. If we continue this scenario forward millions and millions (and millions) of years then some of the elements of life developed on Earth will reach other planets in our galaxy.
The biggest problem I have with this theory, Panspermia is that it doesn’t answer the question of where life came from or how it originated, but only moves the source and seemingly makes research into the origins of life on Earth a pointless gesture (of course it isn’t). But I still find it very compelling.
Balls are Geeks
It’s true. We Balls are just super geeks. From our parents embracing of all cool technology, it just gets more geeky. From cooking to programming to videogames to music, we just love to know, which is the true essence of being geek.
Through reddit I found Matt Ball’s blog post Is 91 prime? (also in the quicklinks). Geeky last name? For sure. Post on mathematics? Check. Personal wiki? Oh yeah. Fan of NCAA men’s basketball? Yes!
I swear it’s like we’re related or something.
Mario's Jumping Calculus
Mario’s jump moves are derived from basic physics of motion, and the calculus-based equations are in the source, nicely formatted
Go Heels!
So how awesomely sexy was that game of basketball?
I am, of course, writing of UNC v. Duke, last Saturday, March 8th, 2008, 76-68. The dunk, Ty’s steal, Tyler’s flat-footed block of a three point shot, Q’s cool 3-pointer, the fact that it was Duke’s senior night…what wasn’t to love about that game?
New Look
Now you see where all my blogging time has been going. Yes, it was time to work on design instead of content. I really like this new color scheme, but I’m not totally sold on this crowded three column layout. I was really hitting the limits of what I could cram into one sidebar.
The progression of cool
The progression of cool (images preserved locally for posterity):
and, for sake of completeness:
But “coolest-est” is clearly the apex of the meme.
Watched: Semi-Pro
Watched: Semi-Pro
Review: 3/5
It never hit the soaring highs of Anchorman, but this is still a worthy additon to Ferrel’s retro-70s comedy lineup.