Early Afternoon Thoughts ~ Deadly Veggies And Snakes On Facebook…

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During the time I was teaching Speech, Theater and English in India, I sometimes had a bit of difficulty helping students “get” some of the Greek Classics in Theater.  Face it, much like Shakespeare – some of the translations of the Greek Theater have about as much excitement in them as reading the day’s to-do list….but with “You Need To Know This” added on top of it.

There are fun(ish) games one can play with Shakespeare such as “What is the color and design of Desdemona’s handkerchief?” … which can only be ascertained by actually reading the text.  The Greeks? Not so much.  Several years ago, I ran across this video of Oedipus The Movie [“Warning ~ contains vegetable sensuality”] …. Something such as this would have made teaching Oedipus Rex easier with my high school students ….

Now, there’s no plays that I know of starring Medusa, but she certainly colors a lot of plays and literature … From this website http://cityofspeed.msn.com/article/detail/253303958 I found an amazing telling of Medusa and Facebook …

Fox 2000 Pictures

Here’s the article …

Maybe Posting Medusa’s Photo on Facebook Was a Mistake?

After a long journey with many adventures that will soon become legend, Jason and the Argonauts returned home. Like anyone just back from a trip, Jason was anxious to upload all of his pictures to Facebook, because as they say in this golden age of ancient Greece, “Pictures or it didn’t happen.”

Though he eluded the stone curse of the Gorgon called Medusa by looking at her with a mirror, having not reviewed his pictures, Jason had not yet learned that the curse also applies to high-definition digital photos of Medusa, of whom he took many.

While batch uploading pictures to Facebook, Jason didn’t notice that a photo of Medusa was included in the “Whoa!” album. The following is the comment thread after the picture auto-posted to Jason’s wall.

Heracles Hmm. That woman looks familiar. Does she run the inn on the Isle of Crab Legs? Hoowee! I must have eaten BLARRRR!

Polymede Son, I raised you to know better than to post pictures of the floozies you meet while on your odysseys. Things like this are better kept privateEEEP

Apollo Jason, what is this creature? I foresee a fortnight of nightmares with this face, haunting my dreams otherwise filled with rainbows, sunny fields and harps. Ergggg

Kevinacles Heyyy roomie. Nice pic. So, if you have time, could you do all the dishes you left out last night? It looks like a pack of boars got in here and GRRK

Achilles I have battled some of the most fearsome warriors and monsters known to man, but this is the first time I’ve ever spilt my drink at the sight offfffffffffffffffffffff

Pan Seeing this, I long to return to the fields for some peace and reflection, surrounded by my herd of goats, who, incidentally, are like 20 times more attractive than this womEERRRRRRGGG.

Aeole the Blind Oracle What? What’s everyone talking about? Someone DESCRIBE the picture please. Ay, I hate Facebook.

Ashleymede SO! THIS IS WHAT YOU DO ON THESE TRIPS OF YOURS?? TAKE WEIRD PICTURES OF STRANGE WOMEN? BOYFRIEND, I WILL DUMP YOU SO FAST YOUR HEAD WILL KI,K,IKMIJKKJIKJIKJKJKJKMKJJIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Dale the Argonaut “Whoa” is right! I remember that day! That Medusa was a handful! If we hadn’t used that mirror trick, we’d have never AIIIIG!!!

Poseidon Jason! You fool! This is my ex! One look at her will literally turn you to stone! I’m reporting this picture before anyoneeeeeeerglgdho.i/tfv[p

Jason Wow, strange comments. Is there some kind of mass keyboard malfunction going on? Anyway, sorry. I didn’t mean to upload this one. But don’t worry, a photo of Medusa shouldn’teeeerk

Early Afternoon Thoughts ~ Things That Go Bump In The Night, Or Show Up In My Inbox ….

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I consider myself pretty computer savvy … I don’t fall for the Nigerian wealth scams (although I do sigh at all the money I’d missed out on) or phishing scams.  Today, however, was almost the exception.  This delightful missive showed up in my email, and I’m not going to redact much except the links …..

Nick H. – WordPress.com
Hi there,

We have received a DMCA Takedown Notice (http://automattic.com/dmca/) for the following material published on your WordPress.com site:
[redacted]
[redacted]

As such, we were legally required to remove the material from our servers.

If you wish to challenge this notice we will be happy to provide you with all of the appropriate details.

Thank you

Nick H.

WordPress.com | Automattic

First of all the two issues were posted in 2007 – I guess in June.  I frankly couldn’t find where they were….I’m assuming the when I moved from Blogger to WordPress there might have been some missed pictures – but more likely videos as the two sites have different methods of embedding videos.

Then (foolish me, I know) I tried to find a link to contact someone at WordPress about all this … there doesn’t seem to be one.

This is why I’ve decided to turn to you folks here in ‘bloggerville” – have any of you gotten something such as this? According to the sight Atuomattic – someone is supposed to contact the blogger directly to request that the blogger remove the material.  While I’ve not had a DMCA notification before, I have gotten requests to re-do my attribution on photos I’ve used.  There is no way I’m going to reply the email, as I have no way to ascertain that this is valid …. Any suggestions?

unknown source

Come Let Us Reason Together ~ Early Evening Thoughts ….

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Often, for me anyway, I get somewhat random thoughts as very random times.  Unfortunately, it’s often when I either can’t pursue the thought (just drifting off to sleep) or where writing the idea down is either impossible or unfeasible (inside a very noisy club or … well … you get the idea!)

One of the reasons I enjoy the TED talks and TEDEducation videos, is so often they manage to hit one something I’ve had a stray thought about and never thought about again.

I also have decided that if my teachers had presented concepts this way, my grades would certainly have been better.  I can only hope, that when I was teaching in India ~ some of my students felt I had reached out this way ….

This video tackles invisibility … what, where, when and quite a bit of why … bear with the beginning – it will pay off shortly after the video starts.

An Elegant Time-Waster ~ Early Afternoon Thoughts

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Let us leave the world of children’s toys in space .. (AKA “Kid’s Toys In Space”) and enter another time-waster. This is titled Snake Squad.  It’s an interesting combination of several game themes but just like Mario – remember to “gather” the money!!  It’s totally controlled by your mouse …

Failure to remember to “collect” the money will result in a fairly low score ..,..

As always, I’m not responsible for time wasted, broken keyboards, or smashed objects (in frustration) .. ENJOY!!!!

http://www.freeworldgroup.com/games9/gameindex/snakesquad.htm

Through The Eyes Of A Child ~ Early Afternoon Thoughts

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This absolutely made my day ~ with thanks to the blog Towel Road …..

”

I’ve had this video for a few days but haven’t had a chance to post it. Ron Fugelseth wins a ‘Dad of the Year’ award imho:

On Aug 24th 2012 we sent my son’s favorite train “Stanley” to space in a weather balloon with a HD camera and an old cell phone for GPS. He was recovered 27 miles away in a corn field and we got some great footage of the trip. This video documents the journey from liftoff to landing.


My 4-year-old and Stanley are inseparable like Calvin and Hobbes. He’s been attached to him since he was two, and they play, sleep and do everything together. I animated Stanley’s face with After Effects and Photoshop to bring him to life how I imagine my son sees him. [added emphasis is mine]

And They Came To Believe And It Came To Pass ~ Late Evening Thoughts

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[updated video link 9/26/2012]

Hopefully, by the time I’m done this post will make sense.  Starting with Friday, this was an amazing weekend for me.  I celebrated a dear friend’s birthday, went with two VERY dear friends to Rocky Horror Picture Show with a wonderful, silly and noisy audience, and Sunday went to a club where I actually felt free to dance and not worry about the “youngers” standing on the sides going “ewwwww”!  I also, at the club had my inner theater geek (30+ years in theater will do that do you) explode as I got to see ~ but sadly not touch ~ the computerized controls for the entire light system.  Yes, it was an amazing, exhausting but fun weekend.  A true mountain top experience.

As we all know, you really can’t live on the mountain top ~ you inevitably must go down into the valley.  And that’s where I came to today.  One thing I’ve learned is that there’s really no good grass or water on the mountain top, it’s down in the valley.  While the valley may not be totally comfortable and it’s certainly NOT the high of the top, it still is very, very important and extremely worthwhile ~ if you let it.

As I was dealing with the “down” of today, my mind went to some of my friends complaints that I have a tendency to believe in people far longer than I should.  I know that it is sometimes a problem.  I had one person I was trying to help who fell into the pattern of using me to “have a place to stay to sober-up, get a little food to eat, clothes washed and a little money” – rinse, repeat.  I have another that I have such a soft spot for…a couple of years ago, he was trying to spark a business and I made an investment.  Not in the business, but in him.  I believed in him then, and I believe in him now.  I’m seeing some pay-off from the investment, but I must be the only one so far.

But as I was wondering in my mind ~ there is a saying that “My mind is a dangerous place to wander in, unaccompanied ~ especially at night ~ I began to question my belief in people.  Then, my inner “me” took me back through much of my life … the problems in college, relationships that failed – badly, the three suicide attempts.  It was the third attempt  (which I posted about here before – feel free to read the history),  when at the CRU – the Crisis Residential Unit – that someone actually said they believed in me.  Now, don’t get me wrong, there were plenty that believed in me, but somehow I had to come to the bottom before I could really realize it.  And as I climbed out of THAT “slough of despond” I became acutely aware of how powerful our belief in someone can be.  Oh, I’ve done it before, but there always seemed to be an agenda.  Now, I’m working agenda free.

To me, that’s where the power really begins.  You see someone not just as they are, but as they could be for themselves…..not as the person YOU want them to be.  I can’t change anyone, I can only encourage and believe in them.  They may not take the paths I would have or would have chosen – but they are on their own journey not mine.

I’m going to post more on this at another time, but also during the “down” of today, I found this video.  Here’s the power of only ONE person believing in someone.  He had only one person, his grandmother…I still cry each time I watch this video.  I want my life to be as she is … in the background, but believing.  That’s one of the things I’d like to be remembered for when – in the not too distant future – I’m gone that someone will say: “He believed in me”.

First off, I’m sorry there will probably be an ad (it is from You Tube after all) and please watch it all the way through and see what terrible power being told “you’re not good enough” can have over someone.  I’m not saying we have to encourage someone when they obviously can’t do something.  There’s no way at my age and (ahem) physical condition I’ll be an Olympic athlete – but there’s other things I can do…. and so can you.

[It appears I own an apology to Freemantle AND X-factor UK …Here’s the video embedded]

See people where they are, and for who they are … and as I used to tell my speech students, don’t change the pattern, just eliminate the flaws.

Early Afternoon Thoughts ~ They’re Not Ignoble ~ Just Ig Nobel

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Next to the Darwin Awards (for those who mercifully remove themselves from the gene pool), I love the Ig Noble Awards.  Hosted by Improbable Research each year they award an Ig Nobel Award best described here :These come with little cash, but much cachet, and reward those research projects that ‘first make people laugh, and then make them think'” — Nature

I’m not totally sure about the thinking part, but the laugh part certainly is there.  This year’s awards include a variety of subjects … each seeming somewhat ridiculous.  I suppose there ARE those who need to know what happens when coffee sloshes when you walk, but right now I can’t think of anyone!!! Let me know if you do….

Envelope please ~ the 2012 winners of the coveted Ig Nobel (who  received their awards in an actual ceremony yesterday) are:

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE: Anita Eerland and Rolf Zwaan [THE NETHERLANDS] and Tulio Guadalupe [PERU, RUSSIA, and THE NETHERLANDS] for their study “Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller”

PEACE PRIZE: The SKN Company [RUSSIA], for converting old Russian ammunition into new diamonds.

ACOUSTICS PRIZE: Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada [JAPAN] for creating the SpeechJammer — a machine that disrupts a person’s speech, by making them hear their own spoken words at a very slight delay.

NEUROSCIENCE PRIZE: Craig Bennett, Abigail Baird, Michael Miller, and George Wolford [USA], for demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere — even in a dead salmon.

CHEMISTRY PRIZE: Johan Pettersson [SWEDEN and RWANDA]. for solving the puzzle of why, in certain houses in the town of Anderslöv, Sweden, people’s hair turned green.

PHYSICS PRIZE: Joseph Keller [USA], and Raymond Goldstein [USA and UK], Patrick Warren, and Robin Ball [UK], for calculating the balance of forces that shape and move the hair in a human ponytail.

FLUID DYNAMICS PRIZE: Rouslan Krechetnikov [USA, RUSSIA, CANADA] and Hans Mayer [USA] for studying the dynamics of liquid-sloshing, to learn what happens when a person walks while carrying a cup of coffee.

ANATOMY PRIZE: Frans de Waal [The Netherlands and USA] and Jennifer Pokorny [USA] for discovering that chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends.

MEDICINE PRIZE: Emmanuel Ben-Soussan and Michel Antonietti [FRANCE] for advising doctors who perform colonoscopies how to minimize the chance that their patients will explode. [OK, I just HAD to add to this one … REFERENCE: “Colonic Gas Explosion During Therapeutic Colonoscopy with Electrocautery,” Spiros D Ladas, George Karamanolis, Emmanuel Ben-Soussan, World Journal of Gastroenterology, vol. 13, no. 40, October 2007, pp. 5295–8.]

And there you have it … this year’s winners ….

Early Afternoon Thoughts ~ An Elegant Timewaster

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It’s been awhile since I’ve posted one of these.  I, personally, find Google fascinating … here’s some fun things to do with Goggle … load Google.com then type in one of the phrases into the search bar and then press I’m Feeling Lucky. Should you have it set to auto-search, then type in the phrase and click on the words … have fun!!!!

One of my personal favorites is Google Gothic …flames and all!!!

Early Evening Thoughts ~ Life On A Bus …

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Living in Houston and not driving (which is another story all in itself) one learns very quickly how to make the Metro bus system work in your favor.

One of the major routes (for me) involves the length of Westheimer and the bus numbered 82. I have maintained for years that Metro should charge an extra entertainment fee for the 82 bus … I’ve seen street preachers, hook-ups, un-hook-ups, and the “chair lady”  who rode the bus with her beach chair and her imaginary boyfriend.  (I’ve posted about her before)

Last night was no exception to the entertainment. I actually was looking around to see if maybe we were a part of  that television show “What Would You Do”, but then I realized that nope, it’s just people forgetting that talking on a cell phone is NOT a private conversation ~ especially at a loud volume!

I sent a txt to my daughter C about that and she wanted to know what I meant. I’m sure she’s sorry she asked…. In a short space of time I got so much TMI (too much information)  my main difficulty was not busting out laughing.

I found out about a really bad boss,a school party that went awry (“her two-year old couldn’t even carry her own tray!!”), some really bad customers, a post-break-up break-up … but the topper of the conversations had to have been the faults of a current boy friend. Let’s just say, one of his really bad habits is wearing his socks for two days in a row, then leaving them on the bedroom floor.

Way, way, waaaaaay TMI!!!!  ( to say nothing of the ewwwww factor)

I think there’s a TV show possible involving the 82 bus … but I’m not sure I’d watch it!!!!!

Early Evening Thoughts ~ Tomorrowland ….

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No, I’m not talking about Disney this time, but rather one of the most amazing parties in the world!!! This has been called Burning Man for people who like to bathe … whatever, it still looks like a heck of a party. It’s world party staged in Belgium since 2005.  This year was HUGE with 180,000 tickets completely sold out.  Here’s a description of the party:

The 2012 edition took place on Friday, July 27, Saturday, July 28 and Sunday, July 29. The line-up consisted of 400 DJs, such as Skrilles, Avicii, , Skazi, David GUretts, Nervo, Hardwell, Swedish House Mafia, Afrojack, Steve Aoki, Carl Cox, The Bloody Beetroots, Paul van Dyk, Martin Solveig, Chuckie (DJ), Fatboy Slim and Pendulum playing on 15 stages per day. Because of the enormous success of Tomorrowland and the fact that it is a Belgian festival, ID&T decided to give Belgians an exclusive chance with a presale (80,000 of the 180,000 tickets) on Saturday, March 24. In less than one day, all of the tickets sold out and at some moments there were 2,000,000 people on the online waiting list. The worldwide sale started Saturday, April 7 at 11am. Within less than 2 hours, the other 100,000 tickets sold out. The event became the most international one as yet, attracting over 75 nationalities. More than 35,000 people used the camping option at the so called “Dreamville.” [bolding is mine]

This is actually the first time I’ve heard of this party … and even though I’m slightly (ahem) above the age of most of the participants … I’d still LOVE to go.  ‘

Here’s the official “after” video ….