When A Leaf Turns » Entertainment

The Man From Earth

Liakela — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:48:55 +0000

Wanted to share my thoughts on a movie I’ve just seen (All Hail Netflix Streaming!) called The Man From Earth, a sci-fi film written by Jerome Bixby. probably best known for his tele-plays for Star Trek and The Twilight Zone. I was slightly skeptical of the movie being worth my time — hadn’t ever heard of it, or anything about it. And the premise seemed just plain odd: “… John Oldman, a college professor … reveals to his colleagues that he’s actually a centuries-old caveman.” But I figured, what the hay.. and dove in.

What I was presented with was about 80 minutes of ‘what ifs’ that really got me thinking both positively and critically about what could happen to the mind if you were forced, for no real reason that’s explained, to live for 14,000 years. Certainly there’d be just an amazing amount of knowledge to be gained, but what of the knowledge lost? Could the human mind really survive as much input as he’d have received without going insane?

There are some ‘ah ha’ moments in the movie, none of which I want to ruin for anyone who seeks it out, but I will say that I enjoyed the way the concept of religion was handled — I’ve heard the arguments before re: Buddha and Jesus, and this spin on that old theory is, at least, entertaining. It’s philosophy-lite, but worth the watch.

DJ Kentaro & Kinoshita Shinichi

Venture Free — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:10:39 +0000

Imagine a death metal band with a banjo player. That’s how strange this match up is. But it is awesome nonetheless!

No Hitter On LSD

Venture Free — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:37:46 +0000

‘Nuff said.

(Thanks David Pescovitz over at Boing Boing)

Just For The Fun Of It?!?

Venture Free — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:50:00 +0000

Until now I thought I was the only person who was silly enough to teach myself calculus just for the fun of it. It turns out there is at least one other person as crazy as I am.

Most people who find out that I did such a thing immediately assume that I’m some kind of math whiz, when in fact I did it precisely because I suck so bad at it. In college I took some math classes because I love science and I knew that a good mathematical base could help a whole lot. I got to pre-calculus and scored a hard won D, the lowest score I’ve ever gotten in any class I’ve ever taken in my entire life*. I HAD to take it again, if for no other reason than to erase that blight from my academic record. The second time around, through much hard work and perseverence I was able to raise that D to a D+. Okay, actually it was the same D. I gave up going to math classes, but I never really gave up trying to learn the math. Over the years I’ve built up quite a collection of math books, which I revisit every once in awhile in a renewed attempt to power through my mathematical mental block. It looks like it might be time to add to that collection. The Manga Guide to Calculus sounds interesting.

And by the way I was right. It really has helped me a lot in thinking about and understanding much of science.

* In reality I’ve gotten many D’s and F’s in my academic career. The difference here was that I was actually trying, where all the other bad scores were classes that I didn’t give a damn about.