Showing posts with label Completely Different. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Completely Different. Show all posts

Caroling at Work


I move my hands an awful lot. :|

States in the Union

A recent post made me think about which states I have and haven't been to in the US. I think you have to stay a night somewhere for it to really count but will count traveling-through states with asterisks.

I don't really think this will be useful for anyone else, but it's a cool reference point for the future.

Final score: Been to 30, transited in 7, got 13 left.

So I watched some Downton Abbey this weekend...

A few observations:
  • I'm a complete sucker for truly good or truly evil characters - think Abigail Williams from The Crucible or Achilles from Orson Scott Card's "Ender" or "Bean" series's on the bad side. Anna, pictured at right, is one of the good ones - she doesn't take a single false or bad step over the hours and hours of the two seasons, which makes her incredibly unrealistic and yet compelling as we root for her and her Jane Austen beau. That screencap is from 11:11 in the first episode, but its context makes it obvious that she's the "good gal" and probably his romantic interest. Unrelatedly, I can't imagine how boring it must be to be an actor that never changes one's costume, with probable corsets to boot.
  • I also didn't realize how much of a structure the "downstairs" staff of a great house had. For example, a housekeeper (head of women service) had the title of "Mrs," and the Butler presided over a formal servant's dinner, complete with all staff rising upon his entrance to a room. Those positions were true pinnacles, albeit within a small universe of long hours and bowing/scraping to unworthier guests.
  • The show is a mixture of fairly typical television plotlines ("Father, I'm political!") made more interesting by strong characters and writing, espeically the vicious and amazing one-liners of Maggie Smith's character, who becomes much more decent throughout the series. Acting is also excellent, but I worry that cheap emotional hooks won't hold viewers without more interesting plotlines in Series Three.

This weekend

    Firstly, an observation: Rick Santorum is, by every account, a loving husband and father. He doesn't present a false face to the public - he's an honest, big-government-y social conservative, and he has a three-year old with a genetic convention.

    He left the trail, shortly before a vote that will likely end his candidacy, to be with his daughter, and my thoughts are with him and his family. One girl, one life, is ultimately a statistic most of the time, unless we know them personally, but in this case I think such stories and our respect for them are part of a common humanity that I want to preserve.

    But in other news, I had a great weekend. I indulged by inner geek and watched a tournament of my company's Starcraft 2 team, currently competing in an online tournament, and went from that event to a rollicking party at a friend's apartment, where a few stronger friendships were made. :) Saturday I went skiing, and left feeling good about it.

    After a tough time snowboarding, and an even rougher ski excursion during college, I was a little wary and was planning on going back to boarding. But with all of my friends on skis, I followed the crowd, and found myself.....not falling.

    So then I took a "blue" course (more difficult), and....didn't fall. Reality re-asserted itself a bit later when a snowboarder got in my way and I realized that braking and steering were mutually exclusive for me, but as I got better at sharply turning right (think Zoolander, but opposite) I felt more and more comfortable. I now feel confident on skis. Yay!

    And then there was another party that will really need its own post to explain, and snow tubing today.

    So in all....good weekend.

      Sing-Off Week 2

      Pentatonix - This week's best. (Hon Mention: DelTones)
      A weaker week, overall. Pentatonix was the only group to reach Afro-Blue or Delilah's height of last week, and the "middle" groups of week 1 were more consistently solid.

      Mind Games

      From Scientific American:
      The cost of hiding the logistical details of perception is that we are always a beat behind. The brain must strike a balance. Cognitive psychologist Alex Holcombe at Sydney has some clever demonstrations showing that certain forms of motion perception take a second or longer to register, and our brains clearly can’t wait that long. Our view of the world takes shape as we watch it.

      The 80-millisecond rule plays all sorts of perceptual tricks on us. As long as a hand-clapper is less than 30 meters away, you hear and see the clap happen together. But beyond this distance, the sound arrives more than 80 milliseconds later than the light, and the brain no longer matches sight and sound. What is weird is that the transition is abrupt: by taking a single step away from you, the hand-clapper goes from in sync to out of sync. Similarly, as long as a TV or film soundtrack is synchronized within 80 milliseconds, you won’t notice any lag, but if the delay gets any longer, the two abruptly and maddeningly become disjointed. Events that take place faster than 80 milliseconds fly under the radar of consciousness. A batter swings at a ball before being aware that the pitcher has even throw it.

      The cohesiveness of consciousness is essential to our judgments about cause and effect—and, therefore, to our sense of self. In one particularly sneaky experiment, Eagleman and his team asked volunteers to press a button to make a light blink—with a slight delay. After 10 or so presses, people cottoned onto the delay and began to see the blink happen as soon as they pressed the button. Then the experimenters reduced the delay, and people reported that the blink happened before they pressed the button.

      I Love the Sing Off

      This week's winning group (Hon Mention: Vocal Point Afro-Blue).
      So much real talent, so little stupid will-they won't-they drama. Episodes are simple:
      1. Happy group number
      2. Songs (with long intro sequences...the one eh)
      3. Informed commentary with musical terminology I don't always know ("rubbing seconds")
      4. Quick elimination as decided by smart judges I rarely disagree with.
       This is what TV is supposed to be, right here. And if the groups get better (Kinfolk 9, Urban Method, Yellow Jackets, looking at you).....oh boy.