Monday, June 2, 2008
2 weeks left...
It´s like I can´t even believe it myself but it´s fact. Exactly 2 weeks from now I´m in Malaysia.
Todays Meanderings
Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss)I am almost done reading Full of Bull Do What Wall Street Does, Not What It Says, To Make Money In The Market by Stephen T. McClellan. I will probably finish reading it on the train home. I have enjoyed his criticism of the current use of analysts on Wall Street. He believes analysis should be separated from investment banking and should have a much more long term focus. He mentioned a book which I have in my bookshelves, Security Analysis by Graham and Dodd. He calls it the foundation stone for modern security analysis.
It makes me think deeply about stocks lately. I have been noticing that there is a lot more demand for mass transit lately, especially things like hybrid electric buses. I have been looking closely at Capstone Turbine which has an advanced hybrid electric turbine bus engine for mass transit. I think they will be doing well lately. I am of course not a professional and cannot know the future.
Two more books came in for me to look at today. One is the graphic novel, Castle Waiting by Linda Medley. There is an introduction by Jane Yolen. It appears to be a kind of fractured fairytale. The other book is American Nerd: A History of My People by Benjamin Nugent.
I also have been looking at another title called Theodor Seuss Geisel The Early Works of Dr. Seuss Volume 1, it is printed by Checker Publishing Group, c2005. It consists of Dr. Seuss's work before he was a children's author. Apparently, he met Chuck Jones, the animator during his stint in Frank Capra's signal corps. He wrote numerous editorial cartoons in support of the war effort during World War II.
He also ran a series of advertising cartoons for Atlas Oil. Right know I am looking at a magazine article entitled Ye Knights of Ye Round Table Being The Inside Dope on King Arthur's Court Translated From Merlin's Memoirs by Theophratus Seuss. The book is fairly entertaining so far.
The majority of his cartoon lampoon society. They often include rube goldberg type contraptions, make comments on peoples style, or physical aspects of people like mustches, beards, and adams apples.
There are also advertisements for things like mirrors and fountain pens. He did a campaign for Chilton Wing Flow Pens.
I am at the point where there are several anti Lindbergh for president cartoons. He wrote a number of pro-war cartoons well before Pearl Harbor.
I don't think it is as good as his children's cartoons. The majority of the cartoons are in black and white. This book is definitely not a childrens book. I still found it quite intriguing.
"Falling In Love"
Jay Rolfe's painting on a shaped wood panel of "Falling In Love" is a humorous look at the lust of falling in love. It's the photo of the day.
This is the latest step of artist Jay Rolfe on his Journey From Starving Artist To 21st Century Picasso. You may view some of Jay Rolfe's signature style, his innovative Pop Art 3-D paintings, many on shaped stretched canvas, on his website at http://www.3dssc.com/.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
"Black Hole"
"Black Hole" is by Jay Rolfe. It is 30 inches round painted in acrylic on a wood panel. It's the photo of the day.
Artist Jay Rolfe is fascinated by the night sky, the cosmos, the universe. He has created several paintings on these subjects.
This is the latest step of artist Jay Rolfe on his Journey From Starving Artist To 21st Century Picasso. You may view some of Jay Rolfe's signature style, his innovative 3-D Shaped Stretched Canvas paintings, on his website at http://www.3dssc.com/.
"Institutionalized Community"
Who sets the rules for your community? Organized institutions have to have rules, I get that and I agree, but the "rule setting" part always seems to be where the rub comes in.
We all need a group, we to varying degrees are willing to change to gain the value of the support. We seek to change and innovate, but we aren't willing to accept diversity of idea and action.
Church is an institutionalized community quite literally by design. As I write that, I get a bad feeling. Not sure why, but I do all the same. "Institutionalized community feels sterile, structured, and inherently impersonal. Those things tend to be the antithesis of alive in the spirit, innovative, and overflowing with love.
The bad feeling is that I am contributing to exactly what I fear. How do others outside of my "circle" view me. In my zest for action and results, I have trouble fully embracing the diversity and elegance of thought surrounding me in so many channels.
When we take control, we steer the ship towards the middle, and wallah.. like magic, what we invariably breed is mediocrity of the masses. How do we include and value everyone and still seek excellence? Tall order.. if I figure this one out, I'll write more.. for now, I am befuzzled with my own thinking.
God , who gets invited to dinner at your place? How do we get on your guest list? "Don't hurt your friend, don't blame your neighbor; despise the despicable. "Keep your word even when it costs you, make an honest living, never take a bribe "You'll never get blacklisted if you live like this."
"Walk straight, act right, tell the truth. --- Psalm 15 (The Message)
Thoughts for Today
I have been reading more of The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie. This book would be quite a hard book to review. The reason is that he is taking real events and history and changing it into fiction with a magical realist style. Not only is he reimagining historical events and people and recounting them, he is also adding in elements of the strange like magic tricks, philosophy, mysticism, humor, and language tricks.
The book contains an extensive four page bibliography of historical citations. Many of these cover witchcraft, the Osman's, Renaissance Florence, Machiavelli, Botticelli, the relations between the Medici, and the Mughals and many other arcane subjects.
In addition to works in print, he cites several websites. Some of these are on Akbar, the great Mughal king. For example there is a site on Persian literature in translation, http://persian.packhum.org/persian and the Gardens of the Mughal Empire http://www.mughalgardens.org/html/music01.html
This provides for a truly incredible reading experience, unlike anything else which I have ever read. I have not seen such an extensive bibliography in most fiction works.
I have learned a few things about social networking sites. One of these is that social networking requires a tremendous amount of bandwidth which is often not supported by the companies just starting out. I have seen outages and overloads at all the social networking sites I have used. All of them. As these social networks expand, they need to constantly increase the amount of bandwidth and memory which they are using.
Technorati has had trouble supporting favorites, Twitter has run into too many people, Blogcatalog has run into excessive amounts of people on their servers. The latest trouble has been with Entrecard, one of their servers blew and there was a fire. http://forums.theplanet.com/index.php?showtopic=90185 . I do not blame anyone for this. Social networking is much more data intensive than most people imagine.
If you are going to join and use social networking, join three networks and expect two to be working at any given time. Reliability seems to be highly random. A lot of these services are new and will be experimenting with their computing needs.
On another note, I played around with Shelfari a little bit more today. I added a few children's books The Butter Battle Book, Where the Wild Things Are, and Peter Rabbit to my shelf. I also posted a few comments in the groups.
I finally removed Technorati from my blog. I added Twitter instead. I don't know if it is just a flight of fancy. I was not happy with Technorati's function.
The book contains an extensive four page bibliography of historical citations. Many of these cover witchcraft, the Osman's, Renaissance Florence, Machiavelli, Botticelli, the relations between the Medici, and the Mughals and many other arcane subjects.
In addition to works in print, he cites several websites. Some of these are on Akbar, the great Mughal king. For example there is a site on Persian literature in translation, http://persian.packhum.org/persian and the Gardens of the Mughal Empire http://www.mughalgardens.org/html/music01.html
This provides for a truly incredible reading experience, unlike anything else which I have ever read. I have not seen such an extensive bibliography in most fiction works.
I have learned a few things about social networking sites. One of these is that social networking requires a tremendous amount of bandwidth which is often not supported by the companies just starting out. I have seen outages and overloads at all the social networking sites I have used. All of them. As these social networks expand, they need to constantly increase the amount of bandwidth and memory which they are using.
Technorati has had trouble supporting favorites, Twitter has run into too many people, Blogcatalog has run into excessive amounts of people on their servers. The latest trouble has been with Entrecard, one of their servers blew and there was a fire. http://forums.theplanet.com/index.php?showtopic=90185 . I do not blame anyone for this. Social networking is much more data intensive than most people imagine.
If you are going to join and use social networking, join three networks and expect two to be working at any given time. Reliability seems to be highly random. A lot of these services are new and will be experimenting with their computing needs.
On another note, I played around with Shelfari a little bit more today. I added a few children's books The Butter Battle Book, Where the Wild Things Are, and Peter Rabbit to my shelf. I also posted a few comments in the groups.
I finally removed Technorati from my blog. I added Twitter instead. I don't know if it is just a flight of fancy. I was not happy with Technorati's function.
Miss Potter-- DVD- Review
I watched the film, Miss Potter starring Rene Zellwegger as Beatrix Potter, and Ewan McGregor as Mr. Warne. I really enjoyed the film because I happen to really like her childrens books. Peter Rabbit the book she is most famous for sold over 40 million copies. When Beatrix Potter was a child, she had two pet rabbits, the first was Benjamin, and the second was Peter.
The film has a magical quality much like a fairytale. But, then Beatrix Potter's story is very much like a Victorian fairytale. Large portions of the film were shot on the Isle of Man. This means the cinematography and backgrounds were quite beautiful. You have rolling hills, forests, quaint villages, gardens, and old fashioned Victorian houses as the backdrop.
The story is at once tragic and at the same time uplifting. Ewan McGregor does an excellent job as Mr. Warne, the gentleman who first helps Miss Potter get her book published. He dies as they become engaged. The film is a more than a little stuffy in explaining their romance. They barely kiss. If you look at the actors cast as Beatrix Potter's parents, they look very similar to the photographs of her childhood. The film appears to be historically accurate.
There are numerous small animations of her childrens characters, including Jemima Puddleduck, Tom Tittlemouse, and Peter Rabbit. They come alive for brief moments in the film. These are very slight animations. Maybe, their ears move, or their eyes, or a frog hops about. Beatrix Potter was a mycologist and wrote numerous tracts on fungi.
This is also a story of a woman becoming independent. Beatrix Potter moved away from her family's house after she learned that she had a small fortune from selling her books. This allowed her to buy numerous small farms. Although, this wasn't shown in the film, she was famous for raising sheep. It did show her meeting William Heelis who helped her purchase her country properties and later married her.
I really enjoyed the film. Many people will find it stuffy and excessively proper, but that is how much of Victorian times was. There are tea parties, Miss Potter gets followed around by an old lady to make sure she is acting properly, and her father and mother try and marry her off to appropriately rich upper class people which she refuses to do.
Beatrix Potter's real life story is quite uplifting. The final screenshot where she leaves 4,000 acres of farmland to the British national trust to turn into parks is quite uplifting.
The DVD includes a documentary about the life of Beatrix Potter, and a film on the making of Miss Potter. It also includes some truly awful trailers of other films which are well worth skipping
I decided to do something a bit different this morning and review a film on an author. I am not sure if I should do this again with Finding Neverland starring Jonny Depp as J.M. Barrie author of Peter Pan. The film did not do too well in American markets, but did alright in world markets. I think it is more of an artistic statement than a mainstream film.
The film has a magical quality much like a fairytale. But, then Beatrix Potter's story is very much like a Victorian fairytale. Large portions of the film were shot on the Isle of Man. This means the cinematography and backgrounds were quite beautiful. You have rolling hills, forests, quaint villages, gardens, and old fashioned Victorian houses as the backdrop.
The story is at once tragic and at the same time uplifting. Ewan McGregor does an excellent job as Mr. Warne, the gentleman who first helps Miss Potter get her book published. He dies as they become engaged. The film is a more than a little stuffy in explaining their romance. They barely kiss. If you look at the actors cast as Beatrix Potter's parents, they look very similar to the photographs of her childhood. The film appears to be historically accurate.
There are numerous small animations of her childrens characters, including Jemima Puddleduck, Tom Tittlemouse, and Peter Rabbit. They come alive for brief moments in the film. These are very slight animations. Maybe, their ears move, or their eyes, or a frog hops about. Beatrix Potter was a mycologist and wrote numerous tracts on fungi.
This is also a story of a woman becoming independent. Beatrix Potter moved away from her family's house after she learned that she had a small fortune from selling her books. This allowed her to buy numerous small farms. Although, this wasn't shown in the film, she was famous for raising sheep. It did show her meeting William Heelis who helped her purchase her country properties and later married her.
I really enjoyed the film. Many people will find it stuffy and excessively proper, but that is how much of Victorian times was. There are tea parties, Miss Potter gets followed around by an old lady to make sure she is acting properly, and her father and mother try and marry her off to appropriately rich upper class people which she refuses to do.
Beatrix Potter's real life story is quite uplifting. The final screenshot where she leaves 4,000 acres of farmland to the British national trust to turn into parks is quite uplifting.
The DVD includes a documentary about the life of Beatrix Potter, and a film on the making of Miss Potter. It also includes some truly awful trailers of other films which are well worth skipping
I decided to do something a bit different this morning and review a film on an author. I am not sure if I should do this again with Finding Neverland starring Jonny Depp as J.M. Barrie author of Peter Pan. The film did not do too well in American markets, but did alright in world markets. I think it is more of an artistic statement than a mainstream film.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
