Sunday, September 30, 2007

I'm Not There

The new Bob Dylan movie, I'm Not There, is coming out this November. It looks really good. It has 6 different people playing Bob Dylan, including Cate Blanchet, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, and Richard Gere. I can't wait!



Thursday, September 27, 2007

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver with help from her daughter Camile and her husband Steven Hopp is not a book you should read when you have just moved off the farm. It is all about food and like the Omnivore's Dillema advocates eating locally. It makes strong arguments for getting off the petrochemical food chain and bringing it all closer to home, by growing and producing your own food and supporting those around you who do as well. She is not a purist but she and her family did try to eat local food (grown or raised on their own small farm or within a 100 mile radius of their home in Tennessee) with a few exceptions like coffee (who can live without that!) and flour, yeast and a few other things for a year. It all sounds pretty grim but it wasn't and was full of great growing, cooking and eating. I did not know this but Barbara Kingsolver was trained as a microbiologist and has an eye for detail and accuracy( a little like Annie Dillard there). Since completing this book I have been wandering around the yard looking for spots of sunshine and shadow. Time to put in that asparagus bed in the strip along the road.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Here are a few of the things I've been doing for my classes;
Drawing apples(those cheap, gross red delicious ones) at various times of the day, paying special attention to color and lighting, of course.

Memorizing a ton of different Prehistoric, Egyptian, Anchient Eastern, and Agean art(remember that fertility goddess you got me Jenny? I have to write an essay on one a lot like that.)

Preparing to construct a 3-D human eye, split down the center, I'm making it out of all sorts of different things, used(therefore free) clay, styrafoam balls, wires, string, rubber, and whatever else I can find.

Making a video, so far it's 72 stills run together at a .2 sec. per still, I made it on photo shop. Maybe I can post it on here when it's done.

I've also been drawing bottles(yay), but I'm not allowed to use shading, only contour lines.

Oh yeah, I've been sifting through countless sheets of semi-toxic Coloraid paper(361 sheets of colored paper for $122) to make collages and other similar designs.

So that's pretty much what I've been up to here in Brooklyn, puttering around the arts and crafts tables, so far so good!

Miss you all, by the way.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Thank you, Gwen

Thank you Gwenny-Wren, I didn't think that I could post again! It was like being locked out of my own home while everyone was happily eating dinner! I could send little paper airplanes into the window in the form of little anonymous comments but could not lead any of my own little discussions! Out of the hedges and into the dining room we go! Good luck Gwen, with those interviews this week!

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Yarr!

A jolly talk like a pirate day to ye scurvy lads and lasses!

Monday, September 10, 2007

Davises started a blog!

Hey Clay Clan, I just wanted to give you all the heads up that the Davis fambly started a new blog as of yesterday and no I have not seen it because I cannot quite figure out how to get to it. For that I must rely on my technical staff...one of whom is busy generating income and the other who has a pretty high fever and is home sick from work watching War Games (the old Matthew Broderick movie which is a real favorite---review later, maybe!))with two future staffers. It is on this same Blogspot thing and is called Widdershins....I love you all. Mom

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Boyfriend

As per mom's request, here is a picture of my new boyfriend:
His name is Ken Sims, he's a transfer student, and has either Sophomore of Junior standing, however he will be 21 in October, because he spent a year in Argentina before he went to college. He's about 6 feet tall, is very nice, kind of quiet, and adventurous. He is Jewish, lives in Des Moines, has one older sister, and his parents are still together. I think that you would all like him. My friends all approve of him. And so do I :P

(P.S. he looks less like Dave in person than he does in this picture. This is just the best picture I could find of him on Facebook)

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Cymbaline

Dad and I went to the Shakespeare theater for our anniversary yesterday evening and saw Cymbaline. It was one of his last plays and I think that he tried to pull off all his stunts in one great, grand finale. There were brothers in hiding who did not know their true identity. There was an unjust challenge and of course the heroinne spent almost half of the play dressed as a young boy. There was royalty and pomp (even Caesar Augustus was indirectly in the play!)There was a wicked Queen, a befuddled King, a nasty young pretender to the throne and a Deus Ex Machina, and yes, it came down on a wire from the ceiling! It was almost farcical but not quite. The acting was wonderful,the young wicked pretender was hilarious and the heroinne electrified the whole play. We had a vibrant, wonderful time.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Trip down memory lane

Here is a game I found that I think most of us reading this will remember fondly.

http://www.switchbreak.net/game.exe

To run it, run the file and unzip it to some directory. Go into that directory and doubleclick the shortcut named "Play."

Things looked up from classes on Thursday

rate my philosophy of science readings: Hume (+), hemple (ok), Russel (meh), Popper (++), Thomas Kuhn (~)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemokines (chemokines are a subset of chemotactic cytokines)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokines
these line up pretty well with the textbook!

Epitopes:
(aka determinant) the parts of an antigen that interact with antibodies - the parts of an antigen that are specifically recognized by lymphocytes. All antigens are recognizable, but only some can activate lymphocytes. Molecules that are capable of stimulating immune responses are called immunogens.

Thomas Kuhn:
The guy who wrote a book on the philosophy of science that I have to read (The Structure of Scientific revolutions). Looks as though we have him to thank for the incredibly overused term: "paradigm shift".

Ideotypes:
I need a more technical definition of this also. all I can find is the dictionary definition: "ideotype [systematics] A specimen identified as belonging to a specific taxon but collected from other than the type locality."

viz.:
viz is a corrupted abreviation of videlicet - adverbs used today as synonyms of "namely, precisely, that is to say". They introduce a specification or a more detailed description of something stated before. viz is far more common in English than videlicet. Viz is traditionally read aloud as "namely" or "to wit", not phonetically as [vɪz]. In writing, it is now usually followed by an unnecessary period. (thanks wikipedia )

Modus tollens:
In logic, Modus ponendo tollens (Latin for "mode that affirms by denying") is the formal name for indirect proof or proof by contraposition (contrapositive inference), often abbreviated to MT. It can also be referred to as denying the consequent, and is a valid form of argument (unlike similarly-named but invalid arguments such as affirming the consequent or denying the antecedent).
Modus tollens has the following argument form:

If P, then Q.
Q is false.
Therefore, P is false. (wikipedia, again)

Alexander Von Humbolt:
the "founder of modern geography" and the first biogeographer. He was the first to recognize that the distribution of species by altitude was similar with their distribution by longitude. He also was a great geologist and climatologist. Highly influential upon C. Darwin (He claimed to not only admire, but "worship" him) - in fact his Latin American voyage and research and subsequent publication of Cosmos (which took 21 years) were the pinnacle of naturalism to date and possibly even Darwin's model for the Beagle voyage.

Test

Welll guys, I took my first real test in a college class in 25 years! Boy was I pumped up, nervous and scared! I did ok....man, am I relieved and happy! Gwen, thanks for encouraging me to go ahead and take the plunge, get the kids occupied and take it!