fantastic

This looks *in* *sane*.

secret science club: neil tyson

Last night I went to Secret Science Club, a monthly lecture put on by the scientifically inclined and curious community of Brooklyn, with Neil Tyson, People’s “sexiest astrophysicist alive”. He’s probably better known for finding himself at the forefront of the movement to get Pluto reclassified from a planet to something else. While “dwarf planet” is the name that seems to have stuck, Tyson referred to Pluto and other like masses orbiting in our galaxy as “Kuiper objects” [however my commenter informs me that the terms aren't mutually exclusive, which makes sense].

The presentation Tyson gave was fantastic, and the Q&A portion after the lecture lasted about as long as the lecture itself. He discussed not only his battle with part of the astrophysics community over Pluto’s status, but also 2012, the asteroid Apophis that will dip beneath our communication satellites in 2029 (on Friday the 13th too, yikes) that could come back and hit us seven years later, and even the economic crisis. It was so refreshing and inspiring to hear such a brilliant person speak. Just looking up at the sky afterward, I had a change of perspective. Astrophysics would be an amazing field of study, not just because it’s extremely interesting but because it is also extremely humbling. We are so amazingly small, and we’re not that smart either. He pointed out that optical illusions, while amusing, are actually our brains failing. BRAIN FAILURES, he bellowed. He ended on some ideas about evolution, and how, if our DNA is 95% similar to chimp DNA (at least), what a more evolved being with a merely a 2% difference from our DNA would be like. Would their toddlers write sonnets and solve complex problems like the most intelligent humans, while our toddlers use rudimentary tools like the most intelligent chimps? Interesting to think about.

Anyway, I really really enjoyed the lecture and I can’t wait to go to the next one. If you’d like to see him go over some of his talking points from the lecture, his recent Daily Show appearance is linked right hurrrr.

boston, part of it

Look at that blue freakin sky. I’ll do a little write-up on Cut&Paste soon. I might be attending the NYC one on the 21st.

my morning ride

Now that I do some running before work, I get to see a lot more sunrises. Snapped this one the other day.

modern day cave drawings

This is a series I hope to explore further. My theory started out as the simple idea that some graffiti is spawned merely from ignorance and boredom, some of it crafted by what I imagine to be mysterious, Neanderthalic figures. I’m not talking about the artful works like those of Banksy or fi5e, just things I didn’t consider to have taken a lot of thought or effort. Then, I considered the location. Subway tunnels are our modern day caves, and it only makes sense that this is where we find the modern day cave drawing.

I’m posting these two as an introduction, but I do plan to post more cohesive collections of them. I see them all the time.

fforever

could i get an extra plate?

The air quotes say it all. Nice 3d, albeit creepy and gross… And hey, at least that dude’s not um. Doing anything in his pants. Let’s hope you’ve seen that SNL video. And for something completely different, I wish there was a studio version of You and I with Ingrid Michaelson and Jason Mraz, instead of whoever sings the guy part on her CD. I love love love this song. The quality of this vid is kinda crappy but the audio comes through nicely… Listen to it already, omg!

PS - I finally caved in and bought another memory card for my camera. I’m tired of having to pick which songs to delete so I can record other songs at shows. I’m excited for it to get here. And since when is it almost 2009?

winter song

This video is adorable… Here’s to the spring that’s coming.

i’ve been waiting for a sign

I’ve come to be a believer in signs. It wasn’t any conscious decision, it’s just that things have presented themselves over and over, and I would be an idiot not to see them as meaningful. I used to mistake coincidences as something more, but there is a difference, and I’ve learned to discern between the two. Call me crazy, but I have quite a few examples. Really! Ask me about my three of hearts sometime.

On the subway today (my brand new commute!), I couldn’t decide what to listen to. Going to my “new” playlist, I thought I was putting on the Kaki King & Mountain Goats tracks, but after one song of theirs the new Mates of State came on. I had totally forgotten to listen to it. It’s been what I’ve been needing to hear for a while. I could explain my thought process behind why I view this the way I do, and I tried, but it doesn’t work on paper.

Or maybe it’s just all intuition. Or the incredibly obvious. So, listen to the album; it’s good and hopefully it makes you feel the way I do right now. And hey, by the way, happy December.

tokion’s creativity now conference

Today Kristen and I attended the first day of the Creativity Now conference at Cooper Union, put on by Tokion. It was a shame to spend such a lovely day indoors, but the discussions were really interesting.

The first presenter was David Shrigley. I found his presentation a particularly good start to this event, because of both his artwork and his way of addressing the audience. His artwork seems to manifest the simplicity of blunt honesty, mixed with a little sarcasm and dark humor, which appeals to me. His work reminds me a little bit of Toothpaste for Dinner mixed with some Daniel Johnston. They all have sort of similar styles, though Toothpaste is definitely more of a ‘cartoon’ than the others.

Another interesting panel was The Commodification of the Street: Downtown Gets Sold. Well, actually, the presenters of this one weren’t all that engaging, but they showed an interesting video… This has a lot of the same clips they showed today but it’s edited differently.

Too bad Clayton Patterson wasn’t there himself.

And then there was my favorite panel… David Cross, Maria Bamford, and Zach Galifianakis. They were supposed to be discussing the ’state of comedy’, however after they summed that up in about 45 seconds the rest of the discussion was all over the place. Here’s what they concluded…

I hope to upload my other videos but honestly, youtube is taking forever.

The other presentations were interesting, but not as notable. Aside from being subjected to the same three Zune ads on a loop during breaks, it was a very enjoyable experience.