Back on the Treasure Trail – Garaphernalia 7.5

I’ve written several aborted posts in the weeks since I’ve last posted here. I think its time to get back into the swing of things.

I saw Munich, Fun with Dick and Jane, and Cassanova over the weekend. Munich was probably one of, if not the best, films of 2005. Cassanova was nice if you came in with no expectations. Dick and Jane was stupid. What has Jim Carey done lately? I wonder if it is a coincidence that the stars of Brokeback Mountain (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal) both came out with movies where they played very masculine characters (Jarhead and Cassanova) at the same time as Brokeback Mountain?

One of the things which years of speech and debate did for me was get me to read The Economist. Their end of the year double issue is always their best. They have excellent articles this year on: Microstates, Wheat, Darwinsim as a Philosophy, Differeing notions of poverty, and the future of conspicuous consumption. The Economist (wisely) is doing a Salon.com type system where you can get a free day pass to the site by viewing an ad. (as an aside, the ad you view is for EDS and the music they play is from Philip Glass)

The next few weeks I’ll be working on my research project at the Institute for Rock Magnetism. I got funding approved for my Undergraduate Research Opportunity Project (UROP) which is titled Paleo-rainfall and its Magnetic Proxy from Soils: The Microbial Link. Geomagnetism is a pretty obscure field, and the guys that work at the IRM really know their shit. Its rather overwhelming at times. I was introduced to this field in August, and while I’ve come a long way, I know enough to know how much I don’t know….which is a lot. In World of Warcraft terms, I’m about level 10 and they’re level 60 with epic gear.

I’ve upgraded the software for this site to WordPress 2.0. You probably can’t notice a difference, but the back end is much cleaner. I don’t think I’ve gotten a single comment spam since I installed the Akismet spam filter. All of my WordPress 1.5 plug-ins and Themes seem to still work.

Congratulations are in order to Mrs. Amy ~~Thomas~~ Moore who got married on Saturday in somewhere in the panhandle, Texas. The wedding was acapella.

Props also go out to Sean who got a perfect score on his LSAT. He is I think the 3rd person who was on the debate team with me at Mac who got a perfect LSAT score. I think I might be the only person who was on the debate team at Mac at that time who doesn’t have an advanced degree.

My trip is still on. More details to come. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking of how/where/what I’ll be doing. I’m going to try to plan out the first leg of the trip which will be island hopping in the Pacific.

By Gary