I heart John Stewart.   (I especially liked the baseball scene.)

About a year ago, the New Yorker wrote an article on Robert Lang and his crazy mad origami skills.  I thought it was super cool, and wrote about it.  Here’s a newer piece that he’s done (yes, it’s one piece of paper): In the latest TED talk, Robert Lang goes into more technical detail on how his origami designs are actually created.  (I watched this on my new black, 16 GB, super sexy iPhone while working out.  It rocked.)  The geek in me was intrigued.   One of the other talks I watched was by Benjamin Zander, on music and …

My mom just sent me the trailer for the next Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  It looks REALLY good. It’s directed by David Yates, the same director of the last movie.  Also, from his IMDB profile, it looks like they are making the final book in to TWO movies… Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is supposed to release “sometime this year” according to the trailer… and 21 November 2008 according to IMDB.

I just read a fascinating article in the New Yorker: “First Impressions: What does the world’s oldest art say about us?” by Judith Thurman.   Here’s an excerpt from the first paragraph: …After a visit to Lascaux [a cave in the South of France] …, which was discovered in 1940, Picasso reportedly said to his guide, “They’ve invented everything.” What those first artists invented was a language of signs for which there will never be a Rosetta stone; perspective, a technique that was not rediscovered until the Athenian Golden Age; and a bestiary of such vitality and finesse that, by …

Random:  I just finished last week’s New Yorker on the bus.  Did you know that… A penny costs 1.7 cents to make? A nickel costs ~10 cents to make? A lobby funded by Jarden Zinc Products (major supplier of penny cores for the U.S. Mint) prevented the last "get rid of pennies" legislature? Coinstar is now one of the biggest pro-penny lobbies? Just crazy.  Ah, the way the world works.  🙂

The New Yorker cartoon caption contests are generally funny. But this week’s, I think, is one of my favorites: “We’re all out of the blood of your enemies. You’ll have to settle for marmalade.” Jason Beck Los Angeles, Calif. Drawing by Michael Crawford Also, in last week’s New Yorker, there’s an excellent article on carbon emissions… It calls out how difficult it is to choose the most “carbon friendly” option, especially since “buying local” isn’t always the most environment choice. I highly recommend.

I’ve had my thinkpad for about 6 months, and I like it a lot.  (Although, it wouldn’t kill Lenovo to make them a bit cooler looking – would it??) The one thing that has bugged me, though, is that the screen *always* dims when I unplugged & go onto battery.  This was especially irritating when trying to work on the bus or edit photos on the plane. I tried all the Windows settings magic (power options, display brightness, etc) to no avail.  I finally found the trick to making it work today: you have to update your bios. If you …

MyHeritage.com helps you determine which celebrities you look like.  They also allow you create video a that “merges” your face to & from a celebrity’s. It’s pretty fun.  Ah……Facial recognition technology at its most useful. 🙂 Collage Morph Videos