Many Thanks to Medieval Islamic Culture

Among the thousands of things that I have to be grateful for here is one that just made recent news. Decagonal and Quasi-Crystalline Tilings in Medieval Islamic Architecture It is always good to receive a reminder like this — a reminder about the great things societies from the past have been able to accomplish.

My Top Ten Films (I’ve had the list in my mind for a while but when I was asked what it was I could only think of the first two)

With movies being on the forefront of my mind I felt like now would be a good opportunity to write down films that I currently think are the absolute best. (You may disagree but you’d be wrong to) My list however is not very comprehensive and was quickly penned, so expect it to change, as I watch new movies and review old ones.

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind This is quite possibly the worlds best love story and is simply the most painful movie I’ve ever seen.
2. Pan’s Labyrinthpossibly receiving such a high rating because of the freshness in my mind. The acting is superb, the story well told, and is completely frightening.
3. Waiting For Guffman Simply Fun a must see, buy the DVD for the “special features”
4. Citizen Cain ROSEBUD!
5. North by Northwest Very memorable thriller.
6. Bucket of Blood (1959) A film for the emerging artist, thanks dad for introducing me to this film.
7. The Painted Veil Another 2007 film, a rather simple story with great acting, again beautifully told.
8. The Life Aquatic A touching film about an oceanographer and his final voyage (Bottlerocket by Andersen might occupy this place, but right now the Pirate Scene is winning.
9. Bubba Hotep The Thrid Best Comedy on my list, I’ve never laughed so hard.
10. Road Over the Snowy Mountains A beautiful filmed love story that takes place in a small village in northern China. If you ever find a copy grab it and hopefully it will have subtitles.

Planet One…Film Making Zero

Well it happened An Inconvenient Truth won “Best Documentary” film, can information be presented in a less interesting way!? Boo to the Oscars for choosing such a “film” and I use the term very loosely. What good is saving the planet if our documentary films have come to this.

EDF (Environmentalist Designers & Friends) Protest Planned for 2006/02/24

Saturday, February 24
Noon
603 E. South Temple
Bring posters and your voice

I recieved this email from a friend yesterday saying this
Most of you have probably heard about the nuclear wast bill passed by the Utah House and Senate. If you haven’t, I will explain it very briefly: Utah representatives recently voted to allow EnergySolutions–a commercial nuclear storage facility–to expand by 50 percent. This is not all, however. SB 155 also removed all legislative oversight from nuclear waste issues altogether, making it impossible for Utah voters to ever influence nuclear waste policy ever again. Although 78% of Utah voters are against expansion (and undoubtedly even more are against removing oversight), an overwhelming majority of reps (55-10) voted in favor of it. Almost all of these reps received campaign donations from EnergySolutions. In a few days, Governor Huntsman will decide whether to veto or approve this bill, and, despite original claims that he would veto the bill, he now seems to be waffling. If we want to influence the future of nuclear waste in our state, this might be our last chance (since, obviously, our representatives will go with their wallets instead of voters).

I propose a night or morning fashioning posters that will make people think

Join me for public demonstration craft hour (i’m still trying to find a time/place for this) after all your voice is louder with better type!

Monitoring a Spider Bite

Though hollywood and popular culture has tried its best to convince me that spider bites can have positive effects on the average person my experience with them has proved other wise.
Last night around 1:30 my right arm began to itch and ache. upon close examination I noticed a small raised welt mid way between my elbow and shoulder. As one who has had experience with small biting insects, some might describe me as paranoid, I began to run through a list of likely culprits.
At the top of my list this guy.

photo taken by Dr. Lee Ostrom.
It was late and I didn’t want to worry to much about it so I went to bed.
When I awoke this morning the welt had grown it was now the size of a nickel. “This isn’t good” I told myself. When I looked in the mirror I noticed no stark improvement of my over all muscle tone, and I still needed my glasses. So I took out my trusty staedtler pen and traced the circumference of the bite.
I’ll keep you all informed about the progress of the spider venom. place your bets on who’ll win (jason’s immune system, or the spiders toxicity)

Three Climbers and A Dog

Growing up in the nineteen-nineties I seem to remember a lot of films that used this simple mathematical formula (4 and 1, 3 and 1, Bill and Ted) to create interesting titles , so when I happened across this NYT article I had to read it.

Terminations (weekend of the 16–18).

After leaving work a little early on friday I decided I’d head south from Park City and go visit some friends in provo. I had a misconception that Provo was closer to Park City than Ogden, I was way wrong. — Provo could quite possibly be the farthest both geographically and ideologically from it. When I arrived in Provo I had a few hours to kill before planning to meet up with Kate and Neil so I went to the BYU museum of art to see their exhibit Beholding Salvation. The exhibit really brought in some nice prints and paintings and is worth checking out, but I was a little confused by the juvenility of many of the explanations accompanying the works of art, which seemed to be apologizing for the way Christian artist had depicted christ for centuries. Had my religion (Mormonism) developed a completely new set of theological rules, with regard to art, rules that force explanations and apologies to be attached to images about the Virgin Mary? This last summer I took a course covering the Renaissance in Florence, through that course I developed a greater love and respect for religious paintings, and as consequence I have come to believe that art needs to play a greater role in our societies beliefs. Just as the Bible and In my case the Book of Mormon are revered as Holy Scriptures I hold a believe that many of artist (including those of the renaissance) play(ed) an important part in sharing spiritual knowledge.

The following day Neil and I set out to film the first episode the saturday documentaries, which we didn’t finish or even really start. Instead we toured the Model homes in Day Break (Neil’s Thoughts) After a morning of touring houses we made our way to the latest exhibit at the UMFA I was excited to see this exhibit, but I as soon as we entered the exhibition room the security guard informed me that it was closing, From what I saw it looked really good and I’ll be back.

This post should have been three separate ones but I’m kind of liking the schizophrenia treatment of topics. Thanks for reading.

This Weeks Research Project

Okay I’ve been out of school just long enough begin paying my student loans, but I really miss the projects and assignments that used to be issued on a daily basis. So I’m going to be giving my self little projects and research topics based on things I want to explore more of.

Assignment Number One Termination

This morning while driving to work I couldn’t help but notice that the winter appears to becoming to a close. Originally I thought it would be fun to have this assignment be about spring and what that means, but now I think that might be a little premature. So instead I’d like to focus on what appears to be happening climate wise—that being we are neither in winter nor spring but rather we are nearing the termination of the season. This assignment is to explore; verbally, visually, literally,and contextually the ways terminations reveal themselves.

I’ll post more data and information as I gather it here.

I HATE TRAVELOCITY!

Well I have been planning a trip to the east coast for a while now, and yesterday when I went to purchase my tickets that I had found on travelocity I was shocked to see that the $200 budget tickets where now sold out (if they ever had them) the flights were the same but now it was going to cost me $600 instead. Well I didn’t want to pay that much and not be in Europe so I kept looking two hours of frustration later and after countless efforts to book another trip, I left their sight went direct to the airline’s page. Why hadn’t I started here first? with in 10 minutes I had my seats booked on a much more pleasant flight+ this flight was significantly cheaper than what travelocity had to offer. Sure travelocity may offer a lot of trips and destinations, but I only needed one and by bypassing the middle gnome I saved a bunch of money, and if I had gone to the airline first I would have saved a bunch of time to. In the end I can simply say I had travelocity, orbitz, expedia.

Teaching Affection to the Inaffectionate

Last week my niece brought home a letter explaining how their class was to distribute their valentines, it got me thinking about what society had really taught me about relationships and love.yep, that is right I’m blaming society for all my failed relationships.
The memo stated that rather than personalizing the individual valentines it was easier to just make them all generic—This way one could simply walk down an aisle and deposit any old card into any old box, making everyone happy,right?. I see why this elementary school teacher made the suggestion, but then I realized that I’m guilty of the generic display of love. some twenty years later. So choosing to do something about this I spent sunday afternoon and yesterday morning constructing some more personalized cards. Hopefully those recipients will enjoy them, I know I really enjoyed creating them. If you didn’t get a card well I simply didn’t want you to be my valentine and or I ran out of time, paper, glue.
Happy Valentines