Florida

This weekend I took Friday and the following Monday off to go to Florida with my girl friend Tanya to visit our mutual friend Becky. It was awesome. The first night we got to Florida it was rain but Becky took us out to the bars with her friend Rico. We went to the bar she works at, Rico is a bouncer there, you might know of it, its called the Coyote Ugly Saloon. That’s right, from the movie, but don’t tell them that, they will just yell “the Bar came first!”

If you can ever get to one of the Coyote Ugly Saloons I highly recommend it, the movie does not do it justice. To make it even better Rico got us in with not cover charge and Becky mixed us Captain and cokes that where more Captain then coke.

Next we where off to the biggest night club in the USA, Club La Vela, with 10 different theme rooms with everything from country to techno. They also have a huge pool and 38 bars. While in Club La Vela Rico impressed us by spotting an underage drinker dancing in the crowded thunder dome and helping them outside. Later he caught another underage kid and showed him the door too. He used to work at Club La Vela before moving to Coyote Ugly. Rico is damn good at his job.

Then next day it was still raining but since we did not get back till 5 am we did not wake up until 4 in the afternoon. Again we went out to some awesome clubs and this time some 1 in a million drama hit us. Becky ran into a girl she had never met before and started taking to her. Turns out she is dating Becky’s roommate’s ex-boyfriend. One problem, Becky’s roommate is getting back with him and their are no longer ex’s… needless to say the girl was in tears because the guy had said it was all over between him and Becky’s roommate. Other then that another late night of partying.

Then last day there we forced ourselves to get up semi early and go to the state park. It was hard to get up but totally worth it. We walked around alligator pond and saw 2 huge alligators sun bathing and then spent the day on the beach. Despite loads of sun screen I still got a little burnt in some place but not too bad.

The only other part that was not fun was a 6 hour layover on the way there from one of our plans not arriving on time and the 8 hour layover on the way back from a cancelled flight. We will still drunk on the way back so that one wasn’t so bad. We left the bars at 4:30am to get a 6am flight that ended up being at 2pm flight.

All and all it was a much need and fun vacation. OOOoo and amazing food from all the little restaurants Becky and Rico took us too, delicious.

Stelarc

For anyone how would like to learn about Stelarc or learn more about him you can go to http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/

I really enjoyed doing a presentation on this performance artist. He is all about the interface of man and machine. I really agree with his work like the extra ear on his arm. He is saying that we have come to the point where we no longer have to wait a million years for evolution to give us things like opposable thumbs. We can now pick our evolutionary path. Not only will this technology in our near future allow a person to fix damage to their body but also alter it to fit their job or life style.

It’s also nice to see the artist and engineer coming back together. The engineer must remain open to ideas like this. Stelarc shows how an engineer can help art come forward. The idea and the means to make the idea a reality must go hand and hand.

Awsome Movies

This weekend I saw several short films from the Boston Turkish Film Festival. The first one, which I did not get at first, was a short comedy with son teaching his Turkish mother how to say American actor’s names. The mother and son’s accents where so heavy that I didn’t get it until Portia explained what their where saying after words. This first film was short and comical. It was ok.

The second film almost made me cry, almost, I didn’t cry, dust got in my eye… any way there was no narrative and the first 5 minuets looked at two old men who would both walk very long distances to meet and play chest every day. They both live in small run down villages. One old guy had to cross a 6 lane highway to meet every day, and sure enough one day he did not show up and the other old guy waited all day for him. The movie ended by showing the missing old man dead on the side of the road, hit by a car, covered in news papers and traffic just driving by like nothing was wrong. This movie was very well shoot and was my favorite by far, it was very moving.

Another one I really like was the story about these people that live in a valley in the winter and all climb to the top of the mountain for the summer. They bring all their cattle too. Recently people have started driving up the new roads instead of making the 2 day hike. The older people all miss the hike but the young don’t seam to care. They showed old pictures of the whole village walking up, it looked beautiful. They all still have a huge festival on top of the mount and it seamed very weird to me. There are hundreds of people all dancing and playing and there is nothing up there except for a few people play instruments. That would never fly in America; people would look at these hundreds of people dancing and all holding hands and be like where are the rides, food stands, all the things to buy and parking? And why are they all holding hands? These people live so much simpler and are entertain so much simpler and enjoy the close company of each other. This move had many beautiful shots of the mountain and valley. This place where they live is so beautiful.

The last one was of daily life in a village. It showed a lot of people’s laundry drying outside and people walking around. These where some cool shots but over all I was not very interested in this movie.

I am really glade I went to the MFA to see these shorts, the two I liked the most ( the two old men and the one about the village in the valley) were really well done and really gave me a feel of life in these poor villages. In some ways these villagers are far richer then any American.

The perfect world?

My idea of utopia is parallel to Brave New World in a lot of ways. The advancement in technology and medicine would be to the point that the human life would be extended and the quality of life would be good right up until one died. I would defiantly not have any of the preprogramming or even factory like creation of children seen in BNW, the family life would still play a large roll in my utopian society. Most of the unpleasant jobs would be replaced by robots or automated processes. People who did not excel in school to be doctors, chemist, designers, congress men and so on would be able to take a position as simple maintenance person, more like watching the robots and automated processes. Each country would vote on leaders and on a world leader and world senate. The country leaders could make rules much like state leader do now, they still have to answer to federal law but they can decide for the most part what they want to do. There will still be families that fall on hard time and there will still be pain and longing and sadness but these feeling are what make the happy times seam better. This world will still have conflicts that break out into war. Each country will still have armies. Basically it’s the society we have now with a lot more world communication and I wish we, as a whole, though more about what we are doing now and how that affects the future. But other that that I think we have a pretty good society all and all. Just keep advancing technology and the understanding of the world around us through science, philosophy, art and most important communication.

Class Room Cloning Debate

Or CRCD as I like to call it was the first debate I have ever done, I never tried the debate team at HS or anything. It was fun to be on an assigned side of a debate even though there are defiantly parts of cloning I support and am very interested in. It almost makes it easier to argue for the other side because you know what points support them and you can start to think of things to counter those supporting argument. It does feel a little weird to argue agents things you really do believe in, it’s almost like lying, even thought the facts you say are true you don't really believe they hold as much wait as your saying they do.
All and all it was a new experience that makes me wish I had looked into the debate team in HS. It wasn't at all what I was expecting it would be like. This class is defiantly a refreshing break from the lab reports, tests, and lectures the ELMC program is jam packed with.

Art and your Brain

The kind of art we saw at the MFA is not the kind of art you would see hang over a Victorian fire place or in a rustic Maine cabin. They are expressions of modern ideas and emotions. They are created by artist searching for new way to express them selves through "art". This is evident in the movie by Leslie Hall; it uses a media more commonly used for entertainment. She uses it as a media to express her feelings.
I love looking at this kind of art because at first glace its catches you off guard. You can’t immediately be like it’s a person or that’s a dog. Even more is that different people can get different feelings when they look at it. It’s kind of the same theory behind ink blots. Different people’s brains take this image and try and match it to something. Someone’s brain that has a fear of small places might be turned off to a particular abstract painting because their mind relates the closing lines to small spaces. While someone who loves reading may feel conferrable and at piece because their brain associates the closing lines to the fine print in the books they read.
Each person will bring reason to the abstract in a different way because their brains are build differently by their past experience. Being one who loves video games and the movies 300, I see a lot of the “dance with death” in the abstract pictures. Don’t let the name fool you the “dance with death” i.e. fighting for ones survival is also referred to as the “dance of life”, but that name is much less intimidating. Anyway I see a lot of flow in the abstract that I associate with balance, speed, precision and “the strike”. It invokes a lot of the same feelings I have when I practice with my sword or staff. My mind associates the seemingly chaotic and fast with the moves of war, the dance with death, they seem fast and with out order at first glance but on closer inspection each move in both is a reaction to the whole and must be perfectly executed if they are to succeed.