To Be Removed Soon
Snow Dinosaur
It snowed about fourteen inches at my house over the last two days. This is an exceptional amount of snow for this early in the season. Anyway, while shoveling the sidewalks I looked up at this snow covered tree in my yard. With a littlie imagination I think it kinda looks like a snow dinosaur.
Posted in home, photos, seasons/weather.
– October 29, 2009
Martian Skin And Tatoo
This incredible photo of the surface of Mars was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera. Our very own local astronomer/blogger, Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy, points out that:
The important thing to note here is that the sand in the craters of Mars is actually dark grey in color, since it’s made of basalt. The reason it looks red in pictures is because covering the sand is a thin layer of much finer dust, and the dust is what’s red. When a dust devil moves over the Martian surface, it can pick up the very light dust particles, but not the heavier sand grains. So those blue-grey swirls are tracks where the dust devil has vacuumed up the dust, revealing the darker sand underneath. If you look carefully in the tracks, you can see the sand dune ripples are undisturbed. Only the dust is gone.
I think it is also important to note that by clicking the photo above, you can view a much larger version that shows the martian sand dunes and dust devil tracks in detail.
Posted in asides, nature, photos, science.
– October 21, 2009
I’m About To Whip Somebody’s Ass
As far as I now, this song comes from a man named Ray. Ray has a daughter who was stressed out about her job. So he wrote this song to cheer up his daughter and for the benefit of “all employees under stress”. Ray has shared it on the internet and I’m sharing it with you.
A bunch of Ze Frank minions have created a ton of remixes of the song to pay Ray back for the happiness he brought.
“Now you might not be able to sing that out loud, but you can hum it to yourself, and you know what the words are, and let it give you some strength to get through the next few moments on your job.”
– October 17, 2009
Eye Heart Brains IV
The fourth annual Denver Zombie Crawl will be on the Saturday, October 24th. It has changed a lot (for the better) since I first reported on it back in 2006. This year there will be zombie make-up classes, costume contests, cool glow-in-the-dark posters, live music from Windows Bane, a world record attempt (4,000 zombies), and charity. Details can be found here.
Posted in asides, denver, entertainment, fun, party/celebration.
– October 14, 2009
Goldberg Variations Variations
Artist, John Menick, has created an album entitled “Goldberg Variations Variations or Music for Insomniacs”. The work simultaneously plays ten different synchronized recordings of of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Goldberg Variations BMV 988“. All of the ten recordings are synced at the first note. But, because of the varying tempos of each of the ten different recordings, they quickly fall out of step with each other and dissolve into a beautiful chaos and eventually end with the quiet, final notes of the slowest paced recording of the Variation.
The CD contains all thirty of the Bach’s Variations, including the Aria and Aria da Capo. Below, you can listen to the first track.
– October 10, 2009
Banned Books Week
It’s the final days of 27th annual Banned Books Week here in the US. Created by the American Library Association, the event was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries.
Since 2001 bans on 3,736 books and other materials have been requested. And according to the ALA, there were more than 500 “challenges” to specific books in schools, stores, and libraries reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2008.
In solidarity with this student who is running an banned book library out of an empty locker at her school, I thought I would post this list of the top ten most challenged books for each year back to 2001. A link to their Amazon page is included so you can collect them all or buy copies for your local library or school.
2008
- And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group - His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence - TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group - Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence - Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, and violence - The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group - Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group - Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
Reasons: homosexuality and unsuited to age group - The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group - Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper
Reasons: sexually explicit and unsuited to age group
Posted in books, culture, lists, reference.
– October 2, 2009
One Year’s Addictions
I love this project put together by Rollertrain. “One Year’s Addictions” is a collection of one entire years worth of “empty cigarette boxes, tubes of chapstick, beer bottle tops, empty bottles of lubricant, empty prescription pill bottles and broken ipod headphones.” I shutter to think of what my collection of addictions would look like – it would be very different, no doubt, but no less sinister.
Photo courtesy of Libby Lynn.
– September 23, 2009