Archive for February 21st, 2008

A hmmmm moment…

Posted in CSA, Entertainment on February 21st, 2008

HP Chorus with frogsEvery now and then there’s one of those moments when you have to go hmmm. I was reading a CNN article about a bowling ball sized frog that lived contemporaneously with dinosaurs and had teeth. But it wasn’t until I saw a photo with the article that I thought I’ve seen that frog before. So, I thought about it a while and then went to the Leakey Cauldron site to find the picture of the chorus that sang in Prisoner of Azkaban. Sure enough there was the frog looking like the picture of the ancient one in the news article.

Ancient Frog Of course, it might be hard to see the similarity from the two pictures but if you go and rewatch the movie, I’m sure you’ll see that they are very similar.
What this brings up for me is how often FX people get things right when they are told to do something. They didn’t get the teeth, but they sure made the size and shape just about right for our ancient frog ancestor.
I remember going to a talk by a planetary geologist who was saying he’d hired a science fiction artist to do a picture of Venus based on some information he gave him on the climate and other geological information. When the picture was done, the scientist wasn’t really happy with the flat mountains but the artist insisted that it was what would happen under that pressure. Next survey of Venus sent back pictures and lo and behold there were the artist’s pancake mountains.

Maybe artists and FX people should have an active part in scientific inquiry because they seem to think outside the box in interesting ways.

February snow… and random thoughts on thinking

Posted in CSA, Hearth and Home on February 21st, 2008

snowflakeIt snowed today. In fact it is still snowing. It’s supposed to snow until about 11pm and then taper off. It’s actually sticking to the ground so we might have some accumulation when we awake tomorrow. I’m sorry if this sounds whiny for those who’ve had feet of snow but I don’t think we’ve had snow on the ground in February since we moved here 10+ years ago — it may have snowed a time or two in February but not to stay on the ground.

The weather has been so unsettled lately. Just Sunday it was in the low 70’s and now it’s below freezing again. I’m sort of worried about the perennials — you see we started raking and clearing the garden area in preparation for spring planting late next month. Now they may freeze since we uncovered them. But it was so nice to see the bright green of the new growth pushing up when we got the leaves off. Prematurely, it seems now.

Haven’t been sleeping well with all the barometric changes — all those ups and downs trigger migraines. I don’t think I’ve been able to really sleep in a week now. The worst bit is when I go to say something to my husband and I just can’t think of the word I want. I can almost see it. I can give the whole definition (and usually have to) but I can’t remember the word itself. We watched a movie the other evening where the main character got hit with some sort of nerve gas and forgot her name but she could still remember English and lots of other things just not who she was.

I seem to spend a lot of time lately thinking about how people think — mostly how I think. Why can I describe something — say corduroy — but I can’t remember that word itself. The neural net is a wonderful things but I truly find it amazing how it connects one thought to another or a word to a concept.