The scandal erupts in Belgravia, instead of Bohemia, and reaches as high as the British throne, and as far away as across the pond to involve the Americans (heavy handed ones .. poor Mrs. Hudson). The episode begins, though, where we left off at the end of the first season. Moriarity bookended the episode, but pulled the strings on many of the key characters.
Sherlock and Mycroft are two peas from the same pod … no doubt about it. They have quite the surreal conversation at one point, musing to each other if they are odd for their lack of emotional attachment to others.
I’ll have to wait a couple of days to watch next week’s episode “The Hounds of the Baskerville” but the previews look thrilling.
Monday, Apollo and I took our longest walk of the week, an hour long meander around the neighborhood at dusk. We saw a few flowers and a strange small dog with a pink mohawk who got very excited when Apollo walked by the front yard on the sidewalk. Pedometer: 10,790 steps
Click photo to see the rest of the album.
Tuesday, Apollo and I took a brisk forty-five minute walk around the area. Pedometer: 7,941 steps
Wenesday, I knew I wouldn’t get a chance to walk Apollo in the evening because Terry and I were meeting a couple for dinner and a concert after work. So I took half my lunch hour and walked around the park behind the American Century towers on the Plaza. Pedometer: 7,640 steps
Thursday morning, I took Apollo on a short pre-dawn walk for thirty minutes. My vanpool is leaving later now (at a quarter to seven), so getting up at my normal alarm time of five o’clock leaves me quite a bit of time to get some exercising in before getting ready for work. And, it allowed me to mow part of the lawn in the evening. Pedometer: 8,313 steps
Friday evening, Apollo and I walked for thirty minutes or so, and saw a pretty nice sunset and the almost full ‘super’ moon. Pedometer: 8,810 steps
Saturday overflowed with activities. I mowed most of the rest of the yard (push mowing for an hour). I cleaned house (more steps vacuuming and toting things up and down three flights of stairs). I ran errands (shopping). Apollo had a play date with a potential adoptee at the dog park (date didn’t go well, but I got more steps in). And I still took him for a walk that evening, for about a half an hour. Pedometer: 11,309 steps
The second week of ‘in training’ for my walking regimen to prepare for the KC Heart Walk seems to be a success. I’ve increased my activity. This week will be a challenge, though, to get enough walking done. We’ll see how well I do and how dedicated I remain to my goal (and to increasing that goal) of seven thousand steps each day. Especially since I didn’t get to walk at all on Sunday thanks to spring thunderstorms. And to show you I wasn’t the only lazy one in the house, here’s a photo of Apollo eating his supper … laying down.
After reading Scalzi‘s Filmcritic.com post this week, which featured nine science fiction movies I might have overlooked, I added several of them to my Netflix queue(s) (both disk and streaming) with the intention of watching at least one of them over the weekend. A few on his list I watched years ago. Since I didn’t get my last disk in the mail until last Friday, I decided to watch the cyberpunk anime almost cult classic Ghost in the Shell. I have Destination Moon (co-written by Heinlein, who also served as a technical adviser on the film) in the mail for Monday night.
I couldn’t have avoided anime if I tried with two artists for offspring. My son, Derek, especially fits the target audience for this subject matter, although I’m not sure the deeper philosophical ‘meaning of life’ questions would have been absorbed by his consciousness a decade ago (when he was a sophomore in high school). I remember my daughter being caught up in the Pokemon fad, even taking her to the movie theater to watch a film based on that character. My personal favorite remains Miyazaki’s post-apocalyptic fantasy adventure film Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds. I not only own an unabridged subtitled (not dubbed) DVD but the manga as well. But I’m partial to post-apocalyptic tales.
Cyberpunk, on the other hand, just doesn’t do much for me. Several years ago, I read the classic Gibson novel Neuromancer as part of a group read for discussion. I still haven’t gotten around to reading the other cyberpunk ‘must read’ Snow Crash by Stephenson. So I started Ghost in the Shell with some trepidation.
I enjoyed the visuals. Kudos to mid-90s tech and the seamless integration of traditional animation (well, traditional for the Japanese anyway) and computer graphics. I focused on the deeper undercurrents, the ghostly whispers heard by the protagonist, Major Kusanagi, and her musings and conclusions derived therefrom.
I found it odd, and perhaps a bit ironic, that the climax erupts in an abandoned museum, riddling murals of dinosaur fossils and a tree of ‘life’ rooted in ectoplasmic ancient history and branching up to the pinnacle of hominids with bullet holes, culminating with the evolution of a new life form from the ruins and desolation of human endeavors.
But what really got me scratching my head came during the epilogue, with an awakened and evolved cybernetic child’s first image, seen dimly across the room, is her own image in a dark mirror. And just a few seconds lately, she explains to her ex-partner and rescuer, the meaning behind her previous whispers, and then quotes the Bible! Specifically 1 Corinthians 13, with just touch of artistic license to add some personalization for the character.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
But it’s the next verse that whispered to her earlier:
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
This verse is no stranger to science fiction. Philip K. Dick used it obliquely in the title of his 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly. I think there’s even an original Star Trek episode that includes some variation on this verse, perhaps it was Mirror, Mirror?
Other translations of the twelfth verse offer different reflections:
For now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
KJV
Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now.
NLT
It is the same with us. Now we see a dim reflection, as if we were looking into a mirror, but then we shall see clearly. Now I know only a part, but then I will know fully, as God has known me.
NCV
I must assume the use of these quoted verses by the director and/or writers of Ghost in the Shell plucked them from First Corinthians and intended to use them completely out of context with the rest of the thirteenth chapter (more commonly known as ‘The Love Chapter’ and a frequent wedding vow inspiration). For there was little of love, an absence of faith, and a scarcity of hope, for humans at least, in the Ghost in the Shell.
So these three things continue forever: faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.
When I first laid eyes of Michael’s painting, I knew this is what I’d been waiting to envision for more than two decades.
First, let me share the front cover as you’ll see it next January:
Next, the entire panel, sans lettering, synopses or endorsements, and a bit of a spoiler, if you can guess (or know) who the other two figures are (besides Rand who is front and center above):
Michael cleverly hid Rand’s missing left hand, yet I love the stance he’s chosen and the determination and tension emanating from Rand. I’m curious about the eclipsed sun though, and hope the author(s) didn’t fall for that overused cliche’ for this pivotal moment in the Last Battle.
I am one step closer to knowing the answer (on January 8, 2013) to the question posed over two decades ago (on January 15, 1990) in Eye of the World. I plan to while away the remaining months re-reading the entire Wheel of Time series. The real challenge will come next January, when I should be re-reading Crossroads of Twilight, but may not be able to resist the undeniable pull of A Memory of Light.
My last two posts on Remembering Roxy dealt peripherally with her main fascination with anything remotely food-like. Actually, let’s be completely honest, Roxy had an overriding addiction to food and anything closely resembling it. She had a particular obsession with paper products (paper towels and facial tissues, but not toilet paper … thank goodness!) and never passed a trash can she didn’t like (or that she didn’t want to root around in).
Roxy, like most if not all of the Rottweilers we’ve had over the years, lived for meal times. She was incapable of self-feeding herself (I’ve heard that some other breeds of dogs actually know when to stop eating and therefore can have more food put in their dish than they would likely (or should) eat at one meal). Most mornings, I would measure out a cup or a cup and a half of dry dog food and wait for Roxy to settle down (either sitting and laying down). Then I would dump the food in her dish, stand back and give her the signal that she could proceed. By the time I walked over to Apollo’s dish with his cup of food (a matter of a couple of steps), Roxy had finished her breakfast. I ignored her and gave Apollo his breakfast, encouraging him to eat it (unlike Roxy, you have to cheer Apollo on or he won’t eat). I’d then let Roxy out, and watch Apollo watching (and sometimes growling) at Roxy to keep her from snatching away his breakfast (which she would try to do if Apollo got distracted). Never mind that Apollo probably wouldn’t eat it or would take his own sweet time to consume his breakfast, he was not going to let Roxy anywhere near his dish.
I remember one weeknight when the band was over for practice and Terry demonstrated Roxy’s snarfing ability for the disbelieving guys. She convinced them of her food ferocity.
Several times over the years, if Terry or I forgot to close the door securely to the band room (where we kept the fifty pound bag of dog food and the dog dishes), Roxy would wait for Terry to take a nap and sneak downstairs for a snack. We could always tell when she’d succumbed to her stomach, not only because the dog food bag would be tipped over or otherwise disturbed, but also by the evidence of her distended belly. Roxy never learned to resist the bottomless pit that was her stomach, even though she would suffer for most of the day.
During the year before we rescued Apollo, Roxy would clear the kitchen counters for us whenever we left her home alone. She particularly liked my fresh baked bread. Terry got so frustrated with her they got into a scuffle over her behavior. I learned to put the bread (and anything else remotely edible) up in the cabinets with the plates before we left the house. Roxy eventually learned we weren’t going to let her starve and she didn’t need to raid the pantry, the counters or the trash can.
Earlier this year, we put a damper on her feeding frenzies by purchasing a slow-feed dog dish. As you can see from the photo to the right, the center of the dish is raised up, forming an O-shaped trough narrow enough that Roxy could not get her entire snout down into the dish. Any food put into the dish had to be lapped up with her tongue. That doesn’t mean she didn’t try her best to circumvent the dish’s designers. The very first time I fed her in the dish, she picked it up by the rubber seal around the bottom and shook it to dump the dog food out on the floor. Soon after that incident, the rubber seal stayed off the dish so Roxy couldn’t find any way to grab onto it and turn it over.
Both of Roxy’s dishes stand empty in the corner of the band room now. The bag of dog food I bought at the end of February still has plenty left in it. Most days I can only get Apollo to eat one meal, unless I bribe him with a can of ‘beef cuts in gravy’ dog food. You can tell he’s lost some weight, but some of that may be the both of our increased physical activity with my walking regimen. Every morning, I miss not putting the food in her bowl and making her wait, impatiently and with the drool polling on her paws, until I let her have at her food. You could definitely hear the sound of the wind created by the vacuum left in her empty dish a split second later.
I came home last night to a sweet surprise waiting on my dining room table from my wonderful husband: Beautiful roses, a thoughtful card and a gift card to my favorite local clothing store. I thought I’d share the flowers with friends and family here.
Since Terry hasn’t been feeling well the last few days, we relaxed around the house, watching an episode of Chopped All Stars we’d recorded on the DVR and a couple of last week’s Jeopardy episodes. We ended the evening playing nine holes of Frisbee golf via Wii Resort Sports. Just like we did last year when we played real miniature golf, we tied (one under par for both of us).
Kansas City Kansas Community College Jazz Extravaganza
KCKCC Big Band, Latin Concert Band & Vocal Jazz Ensemble under the direction of Jim Mair, Jurgen Welge & John Stafford
A full night of Jazz is in store by the Kansas City Kansas Community College Jazz Department, under the direction of Jim Mair. They will be showcasing their 17-piece Big Band Jazz Ensemble, and the 9-piece Latin Jazz Band. These groups have performed at the Montreaux, Switzerland Jazz Festival and are the first and only Community College Jazz group to perform at the New York City JVC Jazz Festival. They’ve also received invitations to play at the Puerto Vallarta, Hawaii and Morocco Jazz Festivals. They will also be featuring the chorales of the #1 Vocal Jazz Ensemble in the Kansas City Metropolitan area directed by John Stafford.
I found this film difficult to watch. Spielberg is a master at tugging my heart to places it fears to tread. And this horse went to places of heart-stopping beauty and through circumstances of heart-rending destruction.
Two aspects of this film, excluding the beautiful equines, that hit a home run (for me at least) were the cinematography and the music. I expect that from the likes of John Williams for the latter. I will pay attention to cinematographer film credits in the future to be sure I watch anything by Janusz Kamiński. He worked previously with Spielberg on Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List. Of course, it’s hard to go wrong with landscapes found in Dartmoor, Devon. And a nice ‘book end’ touch to the film included almost identical scenes, one of dawn over Dartmoor (and the birth of Joey) and the other at dusk.
I knew the plight of men who went to battle during the Great War. I am blessed to live within thirty miles of the National World War I Museum housed under the Liberty Memorial. I highly recommend you visit the museum if you ever find yourself in Kansas City, Missouri with a day or so to spare.
I did not realize the extent of equine casualties during WWI. According to the Wikipedia article on War Horse, the section relating to the research done by the author of the children’s novel of the same name:
Morpurgo researched the subject further and learned that a million horses died on the British side; he extrapolated an overall figure of 10 million horse deaths on all sides. Of the million horses that were sent abroad from the UK, only 62,000 returned, the rest dying in the war or slaughtered in France for meat. The Great War had a massive and indelible impact on the male population of the UK: 886,000 men died, one in eight of those who went to war, and 2% of the entire country’s population.
Similar to Black Beauty in time period and focus, the true star of this film was Joey, the English thoroughbred. “During filming, fourteen different horses were used as the main horse character Joey, eight of them portraying him as an adult animal, four as a colt and two as foals; four horses played the other main equine character, Topthorn. Up to 280 horses were used in a single scene. … Working with horses on this scale was a new experience for Spielberg, who commented: ‘The horses were an extraordinary experience for me, because several members of my family ride. I was really amazed at how expressive horses are and how much they can show what they’re feeling.'” (War Horse Wikipedia article).
And the most surprising tidbit I picked up from that article: “According to Spielberg, the only digital effects in the film are three shots lasting three seconds, which were undertaken to ensure the safety of the horse involved: ‘That’s the thing I’m most proud of. Everything you see on screen really happened.’ … Representatives of the American Humane Society were on set at all times to ensure the health and safety of all animals involved, and the Society awarded the film an ‘outstanding’ rating for the care that was taken of all the animals during the production. An animatronic horse was used for some parts of the scenes where Joey is trapped in barbed wire; the wire was rubber prop wire.”
Like Schindler’s List and The Passion of the Christ, I’m glad I watched this film, but I’m not sure I could watch any of them a second time. No, it doesn’t rise to the human tragedy and triumph of the two I mentioned, but War Horse reverberates on a similar harmonic.
I missed the dawn of International Astronomy Day, thanks to a mostly overcast sky here in the Heart of America. By mid-morning, the skies had partially cleared to allow the sun to peak through occasionally during my morning long walk with Apollo. But by late afternoon, the clouds had crept back in to conspire against any star, planet or moon gazing. Never admitting defeat, though, my dad and I headed to Kansas City to attend the April general meeting of the Astronomical Society of Kansas City (ASKC).
Path of Solar Eclipse (20 May 2012) - click image for more info
Due to student examinations, our normal meeting place, a lecture hall in Royal Hall on the campus of UMKC, wouldn’t be available until 7:30 p.m (instead of our normal seven o’clock start time). Many members arrived early and congregated in the hallway outside. I met my team leader and we exchanged business cards. In May, I have my first night assisting at a Powell Observatory public night as a ‘staff’ member. My team leader, though, won’t be with us that weekend, as she’s traveling to Arizona to observe, first hand, the solar eclipse that occurs across the Southwest on Sunday, May 20th. She did introduce me to her backup leader for Team 2, who also happens to be a resident of a town very close to where I live now. Always good to know who has been bitten by the astronomy bug in your local neighborhood.
Kitt Peak (southern Arizona)
The room became available about ten minutes before half past seven and I relocated from the hallway to seating in the lecture hall. I kicked myself for not bringing my notepad with me to take notes during the meeting. Yes, I could have used my Nook Color (by pretending to send an e-mail I could have typed up notes), but not having a ‘real’ keyboard would slow me down too much. The same guy who I had just met as my backup team leader just happened to be the Vice President and began the meeting mostly on time. He announced our illustrious president was absent this evening and bearing the heavy cross of observing from Kitt Peak. We all groaned appropriately, most of us with envy.
The meeting continued with Master Observer Scott Kranz handing out Astronomical Leagueobserving awards to several club members. The Astronomical League is an umbrella organization composed of over two hundred and forty local amateur astronomical societies from all across the United States and forms one of the largest amateur astronomical organizations in the world. Many of the certificates and pins awarded during the meeting resulted from the late March Messier Marathon, including one club member who found 109 of 110 Messier objects during one night of observing. A similar award based on a detailed analysis and observation of all 110 Messier objects, albeit not in one night, was also awarded to Steve King, the club’s observatory director.
Scott encouraged all of us to look through the list of observing projects after the meeting. I still need to finish the one I grabbed last year (about this time) called the Astro Quest General Observing Award. In reviewing the list of objects available in that Quest, I have observed several of them already, and even have photograph evidence of same (and blog posts here) as further proof. Now I’m even more pumped up to attend next month’s club star party so I can check off a few more from the Quest list.
Click photo for entire album of Lunar Eclipse (Dec 2011)
The second item on the agenda included education and announcements presented by Jay Manifold. He covered the night skies for the opening public nights at the Warko and Powell observatories, one of which includes the largest full moon of the year, on May 5th. He also mentioned the solar eclipse on May 20th, which we won’t be able to see much of here in Kansas or Missouri. He asked for members to submit photographs of the lunar eclipse on June 4th and I plan to put that on my calendar to repeat what I did back in December 2011.
The Transit of Venus again topped everyone’s list for ‘must see’ observations this year. I’m praying for clear skies on June 5th. Or I might be driving fast to the nearest clear skies so I can observe Venus transit across the face of the Sun … truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I doubt I’ll be around for the next one in 2117. To that end, I acquired (finally) some solar film thanks to a couple of club members. I left it in my father’s good hands (since he has my telescope for the foreseeable future … at least until after my daughter graduates from college in mid-May). Now we can make some filters to go over the scope, camera lenses and binoculars and we’ve still got time to practice solar observing before the actual Transit of Venus occurs in early June.
Another interesting item I noted during the education presentation involved something I could easily participate in. McGill University is soliciting photographs of the night sky to raise awareness about the problem of light pollution. The requirements for submitting a Dark Skies Photo include:
You can help by sending McGill University a picture of the Big Dipper constellation (in the northern hemisphere) or the Southern Cross constellation (in the southern hemisphere), or another constellation of your choice if you cannot find those. All you need is a DLSR camera and a stable mount for the camera (like a tripod). Please take your pictures with the following settings:
10 second exposure
ISO 800
f3.5
Hi-resolution JPEG (if possible)
Avoid nights with a bright moon. For example, wait for the moon to set.
Jay wrapped up the education and announcements section of the meeting with a plug for the MSRAL – the Mid-States Region of the Astronomical League – convention, Jun 1-3, 2012. Registration is only $25 (until May 15th, after which it increases to $40). After re-reading the Astro Quest observing list, I think I will register and attend. There are at least two sessions I’m very interested in attending, and I would be the envy of all my barbecue-loving friends by attending the Star-B-Que Friday night.
The main program presented by Darrick Gray and Alex Kranz (daughter of Scott Kranz) related a program at a local high school where Darrick convinced his administration to allow him to teach an astronomy class at night. And, each of the students builds their own six-inch telescopes, for less than $200, out of materials available from local hardware and construction supply businesses. The only two things not available locally are the mirrors from Meridian Telescopes (no, the students don’t grind their own mirrors because it just takes too long) and the eyepieces (and Darrick made a shameless plea for old eyepieces from club members). Another member mentioned, during the Q&A session, another website that might be a good source for mirrors or other parts: Surplus Shed. Some of the more interesting highlights of oddly juxtaposed hardware included a toilet flange as a mirror mount and hacksaw blades for the spider mirror support. Oh, and can you guess from the photo above what the tube is made of?
Starry Night by van Gogh
Alex related her experience using her telescope at the dark sky site and how she preferred using her own telescope, even over her dad’s 20-inch one! Most of the students felt the same way, having pride and confidence in their construction. Alex felt confident she could repair her telescope no matter what might happen to it, since she had built it completely from scratch. She also described a fellow student’s telescope, who had painted Van Gogh’s Starry Night on her telescope tube. Just imagine the painting (shown above left) wrapped around a six-inch telescope tube. Gorgeous!
Soon after the meeting adjourned, Dad and I retraced our path back home to Leavenworth County. Unlike in late March, when we could watch the triangle of Venus, a crescent Moon and Jupiter as we drove west on I-70, the only thing we saw in the low hanging clouds were reflections of powerful spotlights shining heavenward from the Power & Light district downtown and Dave & Busters, as we drove past the Legends and the Kansas Speedway.
Earlier this year, we put a damper on her feeding frenzies by purchasing a slow-feed dog dish. As you can see from the photo to the right, the center of the dish is raised up, forming an O-shaped trough narrow enough that Roxy could not get her entire snout down into the dish. Any food put into the dish had to be lapped up with her tongue. That doesn’t mean she didn’t try her best to circumvent the dish’s designers. The very first time I fed her in the dish, she picked it up by the rubber seal around the bottom and shook it to dump the dog food out on the floor. Soon after that incident, the rubber seal stayed off the dish so Roxy couldn’t find any way to grab onto it and turn it over.
