tales of an ordinary girl

I'm off now to Dragon Con for 4 wonderful days. If you were reading last year you may remember all the terrific and not-so-terrific costumes that populate the con.

This year I'm not so much of a Dragon Con newb, so maybe I'll take everything in stride. I'll still take pictures of costumes as I can because they're so fun, but I hope to have more fun too. And, the Space and Science tracks are filled with more than just Myth Busters and Ghost Hunters, so there should be some good panels. Last year the Short Film track had Cthulu goodness, but unfortunately I don't see any on schedule for this year. :(

But most of all it'll be fun to see old friends and hopefully this year, play some games! :)

I have a problem with books. Last month while I was reading American Gods I found another copy on one of my bookshelves that I had no idea I owned. I thought I'd left it on an airplane by accident several years ago, but maybe that was another Gaiman book (which I'll have to find and re-buy now, of course even though I haven't thought of it in years). I did manage to find a copy of Stardust on my bookshelf though that I had forgotten about.

My problem with books is that I buy too many to possibly read them all. Perhaps that's why keeping a reading list of "to read" books has been good for me. But the main problem, buying too many books, remains. There are too many books, too many good books, to ever hope to even read a small portion of them.

This month I managed to finish two fairly lengthy books. Pitiful! The good thing is that I enjoyed them, for the most part. That's the whole point, right? Look for reviews coming in September, hopefully.

Read in August
The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins
War of Flowers - Tad Williams

Currently Reading
Julian - Gore Vidal

Right now my only expectation is to finish Julian this month, but a few more might be possible. I'm going to try to focus on one book at a time and see how that goes. No grabbing the first book I see on my desk as I rush off to work and no picking a new book at night because I'm too lazy to go out to my car and get the book I've been reading. :)

Coming Up Next
Lost Languages - Andrew Robinson
Heart-Shaped Box - Joe Hill
Darwin's Ghost - Steve Jones
Seasons - Robert Frost
A History of the End of the World - Jonathan Kirsch
Spirit Gate - Kate Elliott
Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea - Carl Zimmer
Dark Tower - Stephen King
The Lucifer Effect - Philip Zimbardo
The Android's Dream - John Scalzi

Join Dr Martin Rundkvist over at Aardvarchaeology for the 68th Skeptic Circle. In this edition many interesting topics are covered including:

I’ll have my scientists one-dimensional and without opinions, please!
Einstein was wrong.
The (non-)Danger of Microwaves

Give it a look!

I've been silent the last couple of days. Work has been very, very busy and I haven't had any free time outside of work either. Between baking cookies for Nice-Soon-To-Be-Ex-Coworker and grilling vegetables for Taco Day for work (yes, really and it was yummy!), packing for a trip over the long holiday weekend, and assorted stuff I do already in the evening I've been busy.

I'll be away from the web until after the holiday (Labor Day), but I promise to post pictures of the trip. And I hope to have a few posts up before I leave tomorrow morning.

Usually these sensory streams, which include vision, touch, balance and the sense of where one’s body is positioned in space, work together seamlessly, Prof. Botvinick said. But when the information coming from the sensory sources does not match up, when they are thrown out of synchrony, the sense of being embodied as a whole comes apart.

The brain, which abhors ambiguity, then forces a decision that can, as the new experiments show, involve the sense of being in a different body.

Could you just imagine how weird it would be? Friends of mine and I have played a trick like this on each other before and it's truly a weird experience when the brain tricks itself into thinking the rubber hand is your hand.

In that illusion, people hide one hand in their lap and look at a rubber hand set on a table in front of them. As a researcher strokes the real hand and the rubber hand simultaneously with a stick, people have the vivid sense that the rubber hand is their own.

When the rubber hand is whacked with a hammer, people wince and sometimes cry out.

The illusion shows that body parts can be separated from the whole body by manipulating a mismatch between touch and vision. That is, when a person’s brain sees the fake hand being stroked and feels the same sensation, the sense of being touched is misattributed to the fake.

(via onegoodmove)


Update
The Evolutionary Middleman has a good article up about many experiments with consciousness.

I recently came across a couple of posts (here* and here) by Jason Kuznicki of Positive Liberty on animal rights as supposed under a Libertarian form of government.

Ask yourself: How would we treat a human male who behaved toward other people in the same way that a tomcat behaves toward rodents — or toward the females of his own species? The tomcat should feel lucky that he is usually only confined and castrated. By the logic of individual rights, we’re doing him a favor. Not that this logic necessarily applies, but this would certainly be the result if it did.

I disagree with his conclusion, but I think he makes some interesting points. Comparing raising animals for food and raising animals for dogfights does make all of us meat eaters seem pretty hypocritical. And maybe we are. But I still think there's a distinction between an activity that is intentionally cruel and sadistic (like dog fighting) and raising animals for food.

Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings has put together a list of post on animal rights, property rights and animal cruelty from a Libertarian perspective. They're all worthwhile reading, but I think Libertarianism and Animal Cruelty from I Think ^(Link) Therefore I Err is the best (and by that, of course I mean the closest to how I feel about the issue).

Same for animals. Like babies, they don’t know we essentially “own” them. They know who butters their bread and what choices they have within the confines (word corrected) of their “homes”. And they make do. Slaughter isn’t inherently “cruel” and any of Temple Grandin’s books will have you seeing that. (designer of about 1/2 the slaughter houses in the US)

Is there a libertarian argument against animal cruelty? Only if there is one against child cruelty. And I suspect there is.

*And I have to agree, the best title ever.

Sean explains dark matter and dark energy to the science panel at YearlyKos. I'd love to go one year just for this panel of talks.

I've been feeling a bit of vertigo for the past couple of days and I haven't felt up to writing coherently. I hope to be back to posting later this week.

Seriously, parents are the funniest people in the world. Don't believe me? Read this.

(via venjanz)

A husband, financially desperate because of his wife’s medical problems, walked her to the balcony of their fourth-floor Kansas City apartment, kissed her, then threw her to her death, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

Stanley Reimer, 51, was charged Wednesday with second-degree murder for allegedly killing Criste Reimer, 47. Her body was found Tuesday night on the pavement outside the Plaza Point Apartments, 4901 Wornall Road.

Reading the news story made me incredibly sad.

Could extraterrestrial life be made of corkscrew-shaped particles of interstellar dust? Intriguing new evidence of life-like structures that form from inorganic substances in space have been revealed in the New Journal of Physics. The findings hint at the possibility that life beyond earth may not necessarily use carbon-based molecules as its building blocks. They also point to a possible new explanation for the origin of life on earth.

Read more here.

(via venjanz)

"The goriest fright film of all time," might be right. But it wasn't really disturbingly gory, more gratuitously gory. You'd never be able to tell from its modest beginnings, but by the end of the movie this really is a blood bath.

This movie was a funny horror movie, in the vein of Evil Dead and Shaun of the Dead, though not as funny as either.

You feel a little for Lionel as he tries to hide the fate of his undead mother from his new love and the rest of the world. As more people get infected, Lionel takes on the task of taking care of them until the situation gets beyond his control. It was a bit of a relief for me when Lionel finally lost control and had to do what you hoped he'd do from the beginning of the movie.

The movie has a tendency to go over the top in parts and especially at the end, but that's part of what makes it campy and fun. If you're a fan of the horror comedy genre then you'll probably enjoy this film.

Ain't No Sunshine Live - Bill Withers

More videos from Garbage. These are a little more current than Push It.

The World Is Not Enough


Bleed Like Me

Chris Hoofnagle at denialism blog discusses why we care more for animals than people. Some of the reasons listed were:

...pampering pets, the replacement of children with pets, animals' helplessness, anthropomorphism, the link between cruelty to animals in childhood and adult sociopathy.

But then an interesting explanation is given. We don't self-identify with animals like we do with people. And thus we don't need to distance ourselves from the cause of the tragedy.

Thus we rationalize that a crime victim shouldn't have ventured into a certain neighborhood at a certain time, or consorted with people of ill-repute, or been careless about locking their doors, or dabbled in drugs -- whatever might have jacked up their risk of jeopardy.

We simply don't play the same "blame game" with animals.

What do you think?

The 67th Skeptic's Circle is up at The Bronze Blog. The Bronze Dog has put together a Giant Robot Squad to combat woo.

I haven't listened to internet radio in a while, but I recently re-visited Pandora Radio and reviewed my stations. I decided to delete all of them and start over with new artists and songs for this year. My new station, 2007 Favorites, (how original, huh?) has a few seeded songs and artists. I added a widget to my side bar to access it as well. If you want to listen, feel free. I don't expect everyone (or probably most people) will like the same music I do.

But, more importantly, if you have a Pandora Radio Station, please feel free to share it with me. I'd like to hear what other people are listening to. Feel free to post a link to your station in the comments.

During the first decade or so of the Cold War, it was the most normal thing in the world for those defending the American way of life to denounce Communism as being “atheistic” or “godless.” The implication here, of course, was that atheism is a very bad thing. And if Communism, a bad thing, was made even worse by being atheistic, then non-communist American atheists, while not perhaps as bad as their “red” cousins, must be pretty bad. Another way of putting this is to say that during the middle years of the 20th century atheists were excluded from the theistic consensus—the Judeo-Christian consensus—that dominated American cultural life. Just as African-Americans were “second-class citizens” by virtue of belonging to the “wrong” race, so atheists were second-class citizens by virtue of having wrong views on religion.

Those days are gone—and probably gone forever, despite the wishes of some cultural conservatives who would like once again to define the United States as a Christian nation, or at least as a Judeo-Christian nation. There are now too many atheists in America for the US to return to that old self-definition of itself. Though still relatively small in number, atheists are disproportionately represented in what may be called the “command posts” of American culture[—]refer to elite universities (including law schools), the national press, and the entertainment industry. Their influence in American political and cultural life is very, very great. It is unlikely that theistic Americans will ever again be able to forget that significant numbers of their fellow-Americans are atheists, or to pretend that this atheistic minority simply doesn't count. (In the present discussion I am counting almost all “agnostics” as atheists, since the great majority of American agnostics, while willing to grant that there is a slim—an exceedingly slim—chance that God might exist, are for all practical purposes deniers of the existence of God.)

That's what David Carlin of the Community College of Rhode Island wrote in the Homiletic & Pastoral Review (June 2007). You can read more at Halfway There.

But there's also this quote from Thomas at Hope for Pandora that really is wonderful.

You might expect that I would - as a Christian - object to this campaign, or otherwise be put on the defensive by it. If you made that assumption, you'd be wrong. I think the Out Campaign is an admirable effort to unite a community of Americans that have been too quiet and too persecuted for too long.

Wow, I need some nip-tuck on those jeans and a haircut. :)

(via Pharyngula)

I started watching this film one day when I was off work while my parents were visiting. I think I was waiting on my parents to be up and about for the day. Originally I thought I'd watch it with my parents until Matt pointed out that it's R rated. I wasn't sure what made the rating R in it, but I figured I wouldn't take the chance of showing it to my parents.

I didn't think Matt would like it very much based on the synopsis of the movie, so it was the perfect movie to watch alone. I got about halfway through it before I realized that Matt really would like it. It's a funny movie. I can't see why anyone wouldn't like it (unless they find it too crude or objectionable).

The characters are what draw you in. Abigail Breslin's character was very sweet in the movie and Greg Kinnear's was such an asshole. You feel for Dwayne. You want to scream at them all sometimes, but mostly you want to help them succeed or laugh at their humanity. We've all felt like each one of them before.

It's a good movie. See it if you haven't already.

If you're reading this then you found my new blog location (http://talesofordinarygirl.blogger.com). Welcome!

The old location was a difficult URL to remember. Well, at least I couldn't remember it. I always had to log into Blogger first to access it. And, when someone asked me for my blog address, I couldn't tell them. I had to find it and email it later. It was laziness, yes. But if I couldn't remember the address how could I expect anyone else to?

Thanks for coming by to my new place.

As I was leaving work today there was an odd sound, like I'd run over something or something was caught in the wheel well.



Yes, that is the asphalt stuck to my tire. Here's a better look.



The parking lot hasn't been paved at least since last year (when I wasn't with the company), so it's not new asphalt. That wouldn't have surprised me so much. My car registered 104 degrees in the sun, but my weather station at home which is mounted in the shade registers 98.6. It's not really that hot. It's supposed to get hotter this weekend though.

It's time to go into hibernation for the summer.

*** Spoilers ***
I didn't see this movie during its theatrical release, but I did see it via Netflix a few months ago. While it definitely was an interesting concept, I don't know if it played out as well as I had hoped. I kept expecting more of an explanation to come out at the end of the movie and to have one of the captives revealed as a (the?) captor, similar to Saw.

I should be happy that the movie wasn't as predictable as I first thought, but instead i was just disappointed. Although the movie was good at portraying human relationships under stress, it was too obvious. But wait, I just said it wasn't predictable, right? It wasn't predictable because I was expecting more.

Still, even though I was a little disappointed by the transparency of the story, I did enjoy the characters - even the parts that were over-the-top. If you are looking to rent a movie and don't mind a simple story then it's worth a rent.

Another of my favorite videos, though this one is more recent.



And here's a live version from Letterman.

If you haven't already you must read Mark Hoofnagle's I say, Hard Cheese! article about nature... and hippies... and Monty Burns. Really, see the quote below.

Hippies drive me nuts. Not only is this just totally unrealistic, but I think it also reflects a fundamental ignorance of biology, history, and the basic infrastructure of our society. I'm of the Monty Burns school of nature.

The entire article is worthwhile if just to give you perspective.

Nelson Primus (1843 - 1916? ) "Portrait of a Lady (Lady with Golden Hair)" Oil on canvas 1907

I decided it was time for a new template. I still like the old one, but I've lost most of the vintage text and theme in the upgrade to the new Blogger.

I wanted some sort of "girl" theme since the blog is titled "tales of an ordinary girl," yet I didn't want anything sexy or young teenage-girly. Not that there's anything wrong with a sexy theme, but it's not what I want for this blog. It was difficult to just find an ordinary girly (womanly?) theme. I hope you like the new look. Let me know if there are any problems with any of the images or links.

The Carnival of the Godless #72 is up at Atheist Revolution. Here's a taste of the articles.

One blogger muses what it would take for him to stop being an atheist
West Palm Beach woman sets to ban books she's never read
Comic: The Proof is in the Poseidon
Where do atheists get their morality?
Hell as a social control
On Judging Others

Recently Roger Ebert published an article about art and video games. And, of course, I must disagree with him. He has several perceptions of video games that are just wrong.

First, he's under the impression that video gamers get to define the story for themselves. No, that's not the case. Video games are extremely linear, even games that give gamers choices are limited to just a couple of paths. For example, Knights of the Old Republic gave gamers several options in how they interacted with multiple characters. Despite that, in the end there were really only two choices and previous encounters made no difference. In one dialog choice the game player decided whether the character of the story would be a good Jedi or an evil Sith. I didn't even have to restart the game and play it again to see the difference. All I had to do was reload it from a save point near the end of the game.

Even Elder Scrolls: Morrowind or Oblivion are only an illusion of player control. The player doesn't have to move through the game in a linear fashion and there are tons of choices. But in the end the game has been fully defined by the programmers, storyline writers, and concept designers. The only unexpected turns in the game are due to gaming bugs, mistakes in the code. Sometimes these are laughable and form their own interesting results, but they are not the players re-interpreting the game on their own.

So, let's just get this out of the way now. Despite preconceived notions that video games are free-form canvases for the players to create, they aren't. Every option has been pre-written unless it is a mistake.

For his second impression I'll give you his quote.

I know it by the definition of the vast majority of games. They tend to involve (1) point and shoot in many variations and plot lines, (2) treasure or scavenger hunts, as in "Myst," and (3) player control of the outcome. I don't think these attributes have much to do with art; they have more in common with sports.

And if I were to say that the vast majority of movies tend to involve (1) goofy romantic comedy, (2) over-the-top action scenes, and (3) often predictable story lines, do you think I have described most movies?

Most movies are entertainment, not art. So why should video games be judged by some higher standard? Is it possible that the vast majority of video games are entertainment and a few are art? Absolutely!

Roger Ebert can pretend to be a critic of video games all he wants, but he's working from a position of ignorance. I would find it difficult to define all movies as X or even just a genre of books if I'd only read or seen one or two or even a half dozen. If I'm wrong and Ebert is really an avid gamer and done more than just observe and maybe play a session of Myst, then my apologies.

So here I'm making an assumption. Roger Ebert does not know very much about video games. He has likely not played many games and probably has mostly observed only a few of the more currently popular games. That doesn't make his opinion invalid as an individual, but as an authority he lacks credentials. His movie critic credentials don't carry over into the gaming world.

In reality Roger Ebert really doesn't know if video games are art or not. He surmises they are not. From my experience I think he's wrong.

It's been a long time since I've been called beautiful and brilliant by anyone but my husband. OK, I don't think he's ever used the word "brilliant," but he has said he thinks I'm smart. :)

I'm flattered and humbled all at the same time.

(via onegoodmove)

I liked this book. Gaiman has a way of making the unusual seem usual. It bothered me a bit because I know people who believe in gods exactly as Gaiman describes them. And after reading the book I'm guessing a lot of that came from Gaiman. I've spent much of my time rejecting the notion of the supernatural lately and so even though the book is written as fiction, it still bothered me a bit. But I was able to overlook that dissatisfaction enough to enjoy the book.

The book centers on Shadow, a man who's life is changed when he is released from prison early after his wife is killed in an accident. As he's dealing with his grief, a man offers him a job. Shadow doesn't want to do anything more than put his wife to rest, but instead he's caught up in a story and a world that he never imagined existed.

Parts of the book are just fantastic. The description and the characters in Lakeside, a town Shadow hides out in later in the book, made this book for me. I could see Lakeside in my mind and it was a place that I wanted to visit. It was that perfect small-town where things really aren't perfect, but it's still beautiful and moving, even in the midst of tragedy. If I could imagine a perfect place to live (minus the murders), it would be there.

I also loved the bit with Anubis, Bast, and (I'm drawing a blank on the other god, Osiris?) in Memphis, Michigan (I think?) running the funeral parlor.

Overall the story was great. It took me a little bit longer to get into, but under normal circumstances I don't think it would have been as difficult. And once it captured me towards the last 100-150 pages I couldn't put it down.

The latest Skeptic's Circle is up at denialism blog. It's a great set of articles including:

UFO Sitings
Christian Domestic Discipline
Amateur CSI Trial Jurors
Moral Reasoning in Chimps
Death by Homeopathic Surgery
Reporting Odds Ratio Mistakes
Transcendental Meditation

There was a comment about embedding You Tube videos and I thought it'd be easier to answer in a short posts. You can't post pictures in the comments.

There's a really easy way to embed You Tube videos in blog posts if you're viewing it from within a webpage. If you click the Menu button on a video you'll see two buttons - embed and url. Click on the embed button and you'll see something like below:


You Tube has made it very easy with the Copy to Clipboard button. Just copy the embed text and paste it into your post.

If you're on the actual You Tube site you can do just about the same thing.


Just copy the Embed text and paste it into your blog post. If you want to send a link to someone via email or just post a link, use the URL text.

And yeah, I made this post because I love using SnagIt.

Well, I only managed to complete one book this month. I'm about halfway through War of Flowers and I have about 2/3 of The Blind Watchmaker to go. I haven't actually started Julian yet, but I plan to in the next couple of days as soon as I find some time to read.

Read in July
The End of Faith - Sam Harris

Currently Reading
Julian - Gore Vidal
The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins
War of Flowers - Tad Williams

Coming Up Next
Lost Languages - Andrew Robinson
Heart-Shaped Box - Joe Hill
Darwin's Ghost - Steve Jones
Seasons - Robert Frost
A History of the End of the World - Jonathan Kirsch
Spirit Gate - Kate Elliott
Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea - Carl Zimmer
Dark Tower - Stephen King
the Lucifer Effect - Philip Zimbardo
The Android's Dream - John Scalzi

My next review might seem a little out of place amongst my other listed movies for the year. I can't say I have ever seen anything like this movie myself. My husband bought a 4 movie disc set at Best Buy many months ago titled Da Killaz (seriously). So far we've watched "Cut Up" and "Rage". Since I watched "Cut Up" last year, I won't review it here, but it was definitely a step above what I've seen on the DVD so far.

I couldn't find a date for when the movie was released, but it looked a little more current than "Cut Up." I can't even find mention of the movie on IMDB, but "Cut Up" and "Bang" are listed there. The fourth movie, "The Murder Men" is also absent.

From the back of the DVD:

Terror in the streets of East park, but the cops can't find da killlaz. the only clues are a sick mask and some off the tip video tapes left at each murder. Every brotha in East Park is a suspect in this horrorcore classic.

The story starts out with a few scenes of some random people being stalked in what is possibly a park, though it looks more like wilderness. The camera work was very odd and at first I thought it might be a trick to cover up some bad footage, but I think the director honestly wanted to capture the scenes the way they were shown.

Then we flash forward to a man in jail being interrogated about many gruesome murders that happened one evening. As they try to figure out why he did it, the story unravels and we find out who the real murderer is.

Yeah, this movie kept me interested, but not really for any good reasons. As noted the camera work was very odd. The movie progressed slowly and moved along in a jumbled timeline that really didn't do much for the story. And the characters were completely unbelievable. But, if you can get your hands on this movie, it's definitely worth it if just for the sure absurdity of it all.