Stalking the Next Frontier in Treasure Hunting.

Is there something wrong with stalking? I think we all do it. Maybe we are not up in trees with binoculars like George McFly from Back to the Future, but you know you do it. Checking someone’s Facebook status or checking to see who there friends are, waiting at places we know they will show up at... I bring this up because a friend of mine sent me a link to a saved by the bell where are they now article and I was intrigued by the fact that Anne Tremko a character from saved by the bell the college years had not been heard of since 2003. I wonder what had happened to her, where did she go. So I began to search the internet in vain to find out what had become of her. Not even Wikipedia could help. It just repeated that she had not been heard of since 2003. Had she died, changed her name, turned to scientology? I was becoming obsessed. I could imagine myself turning this into a hobby. Was I becoming a stalker or was this a legitimate way to waste time? I felt like a pirate on treasure hunt, maybe some how I could turn this into a game. Set up a website. People could come and challenge there friends to find out where these people are now. Even Amelia Earhart could be found. It could become a monster, treasure hunting for the 21st century. I could even make money off this idea. But no, this can not happen because I am still no closer to finding Anne Tremko...

Metaphors? Don't talk about Metaphors!...Movies then? - Part 2 of the what I do Series

This is the second part of the what I do series. In this installment the topic of conversation begins to change from that of science and religion to that of movies and other issues of entertainment. And somehow CSI Miami finds its way into this conversation then again so does Motley Crue...


Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness
 
of coarse it is metaphor, but it is does not mean that that there was not a flood of great impact. i do not mean that the whole world flooded.  you take things way to literally.  like personally i think the story Adam and eve could be true at least in this sense.  8 - 10,000 years ago the climate of north Africa was much different than it is today.  it was much more ideal for human life and at some point the climate dramatically changed to what it was today.  Something to do with retreating glaciers in Europe changing the weather patterns, i think. When the climate changed the people living there would have to go some where and the some where was probably the middle east.  given that Semitic languages are related to Africa not indo-europe and secondly why cross the Sahara when you can travel along the coast, would all be likely indicators that they moved east and north.  So, through time this migration becomes the story of Adam and eve and there forced exodus from eden to permanent settlements, just as they begin occurring in the middle east.  i mean they are all metaphors but somewhere along the way they come from truth.
 
I have seen planet terror, it was Ok. you will like zombie story. i liked the other story better, death proof.  the intermission trailers are the best part. forgetting sarah marshall was pretty funny though it kind of dropped of in the second half as the plot kicked in.  the best part is that she stars in this show called crime scene which is satire of CSI Miami, which ironically is already a satire.  The scenes from her show are the best parts by far. i just saw "rear window" for the first time, pretty interesting. saw the sorta remake of it "disturbia" it was surprisingly OK. "Butterfly and the diving bell" French but good, "atonement" slow but the story is really good and i like how it dealt with Dunkirk in it.  You usually do not see much mention of that in movies.  No Country for old Men, incredible and "3:10 to Yuma" is also really good.  Finally saw "high plains drifter" on the big screen probably my favorite movie of all time.  "27 dresses" pretty bad considering i guess the whole plot before watching the movie, but it has one scene that is just great. TV shows I should start watching on DVD.  things on my list are "the wire", "arrested development", maybe "veronica Mars", "northern exposure"... movies i would like to go back and watch are "little big man", "lost highway", "for a few dollars more" ...  
 
JIM
 
Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness  
 
A flood is a metaphor for an angry God cleansing the world of his mistaken first attempt at creating life.  It's like erasing a blackboard after working on a math problem for half an hour and then starting from scratch.  Remember: just because it rained a lot in Mesopotamia or wherever the people who recorded the history lived, doesn't mean that the Earth flooded for real.  The new Rambo looked hilarious.  Limbs being blasted off every other scene?  Cheesy Stallone lines?  What's the memorable moment of violence when the whole movie is just one violent image after another?  A triple decapitation with one swing of a machete?  Starship Troopers was satire, but I loved the effects.  The bugs were so creepy.  Any big horror fan had to love that movie.   Let's see, we watched Lost Highway the other day.  The DVD finally came out (11 years later) and I bought it.  You and I talked about that, right?  You said you saw it or you wanted to see it?  See it if you haven't already.  It's pretty weird.  Reservation Road
 
Reservation_Road
 
(Joaquin Phoenix, Jennifer Connolly).  Decent drama about a couple whose kid gets run over and killed.  Joaquin is stealing all of Sean Penn's roles.  You might find this one slightly dull.   We've been watching a lot of House lately.  Netflix is great for catching up on what I missed.  We just started Season 3.  Season 4 is on TV right now.  The DVD's should be out around Christmas I'm guessing.  I really like House, and I sort of get the feeling you could get into it, too, if you'd just watch a few episodes.  I got the Season 1 box set for Christmas if you want to borrow it.
 
We're getting Planet Terror
 
Planet_Terror
 
tomorrow.  Zombie movies can be fun.  I watched 300 sober the other day-first time for that.  Made a lot more sense!  Good movie. Check out Black Tide
 
blacktide
 
a new band I've been listening to.  They're decent.  Sound like Motley Crue a bit, some Anthrax, Ratt, and a dollop of Metallica.  And they're all teenagers.  That's fun.  The big hit is Shockwave.  It's on Rock Band, that video game.
 
Erik

CSI: Maimi

CSI: Miami, The most popular show in world and as a friend of mine likes to say the best comedy on TV and the worst drama ever. How is it that a show this terrible could be so great?

CSI: Miami is show about how we dream things to be it can take the most complicated, convoluted situations and make them simple. It appears to generate its plots based on the random combination of possible subplots. To make sure that you do not get lost, it leaves you signs to make sure that everyone can understand what is going on, both literally and fugitively. If there was drinking game of based on the number times that they show a sign telling their location, you would be drunk before the Who “say we won’t get fooled again”. For me this is where the show usually starts to go down as the first five minutes of the show are some are the best you are going to see the whole week. Each episode starts very formulaic. They start off with somebody either getting murdered or the finding of dead body in the most unexpected of locations. This is then followed up by the best looking CSI crew in the history of crime fighting who are on vacation from their full time jobs as models. Finally when the crime seems clueless or too bizarre Horatio Caine (played by the Leprechaun, looking David Caruso) shows up to see the key clue or makes connection that no one else can make about the crime by simply removing his sun glasses and a witty phrase. In one of my favorite scenes a man appears to have been murdered by an ice sculpture and the coroner asks Horatio "what kind of cold person could have done this", to which he responds “someone who is as cold as ice," he then places his sunglasses back on. And with that another crime is going to be solved with help of the magic sunglasses. Knightrider had Kit; the A-team had BA's van, MacGyver had his Swiss army knife, Magnum PI had his Tiger’s hat, and now a new generation has a great TV prop: Horatio Caine's sunglasses. These are more than ordinary sunglasses, not only do they help solve crimes; they help protect the pale skinned David Caruso from the intense south Florida sun. You would have thought that his prop of choice would have been hat like Magnum PI. Experience shows that glass do little to protect you from the harmful rays of the sun. I was just out fishing a week ago wearing a long sleeve shirt and a hat despite the fact that it was suppose to be sunny and 95. All the tourist going out on the charter boats were looking at us kind of funny as they left the harbor wearing only shorts and sun glasses. If only they realized that they would be the funny looking ones as the easily spotted that evening with their faces looking redder than Caruso’s hair, but at least they had white circles around there eyes.

But the sun and water is why people tune in to watch CSI: Miami. The show uses the Baywatch mantra: if you give them beautiful places and beautiful people, people will watch. Not only are they the best looking CSI crew in the world there victims and suspects are too. Where else on TV can you see a common street criminal come in for a police interview in designer clothes. It is escapism at its best, Hollywood is known for creating places that do not really exist, or do they. There are places like this in the world and one can be found in the beaches of south Walton. This is where the rich spend their beach vacations and mega rich keep their 200 ft yachts. When you enter the gated part of the resort you are met by girls riding bikes in bikinis and old men driving H2 golf carts like they are late to a crime scene. Normally you have to take shuttle through the gated part to get to “village” area, but a friend does some work for a night club owner so we got drive there. As much as the drive was something out of a movie the night club was something else. Just the other day my friend let someone in the back door in exchange for dinner at Ruth’s Chris. Then you get to go upstairs were they have a table full of money counters and you half expect to see someone doing lines of coke in the corner. Just when I had thought I had seen it all, I ran into an old family friend who was telling the story of her husband, a luxury yatch captain, who had just been attached off the coast of Nicaragua by pirates. Because they had just come from Havana were weapons are not allowed, they had to make like MacGyver and improvise molotov cocktails and flare guns. This was enough to scare them off long enough to make a run for it and to call the US state department, who said that they had watched the whole event and that the pirates would not be bothering them anymore. I am sure with Horatio’s glasses you could see that far too.

We all love a good mystery; we also love things to be wrapped up quickly. Who wants to wait for lab results? Just solve the crime in day. If you watch enough CSI: Miami episodes you begin to realize that it is never night in less that is when the murder happened. The reason that it is never night is because they always solve the crime in one day. So if you see the sun going down you know the crime is about to be solved. It is too bad that the real world does not work this way. I was asked to go by the local book store to help them find out if they had been robbed, i.e. help them use their video surveillance equipment. The bookstore reminds of me of something out of the Death on Demand series of novels with about five old ladies huddled around, drinking coffee, trying to piece together the crime. Based on their summary of what had happened I was able to use the video surveillance and found that they were robbed and that they had criminal on tape stealing books and purses and then sneaking out. The only problem was that you cannot enhance the video like they do on the CSI, so the best I could for them was produce a grainy picture of the suspect and a DVD of the crime. It was probably still good enough; though I am sure they will never see the lady again.

So night began to fall As I left town the mist of the post afternoon summer shower began lifting off the bayou and settling into the trees and I began to realize just how beautiful this place was. The haze lasted longer that normal it seemed to hang on to the tree branches and the kudzu, trying to not leave. I thought I was ready to leave but the further I drove the less I wanted to leave and I began to think about something I a comment that a friend once made that you probably do not meat as interesting people in engineering as you do in liberal arts. I agreed with then and still do, but truth is everyone has a story, an angle; it is just a matter of doing a little investigating. A sign appeared out of the fog it pointed right for Tallahassee, I knew where I had to go…Cue the air boat…arhhhhhhhhhhhh…..

Connections

Connections, was a ten-episode documentary television series created and narrated by science historian James Burke and is probably my all time favorite science show. Produced originally for the BBC in 1978, it was later replayed on PBS in the states. A second and third season were also made in 1994 and 1997, though I never saw any of the episodes. The show illustrated how scientific progress did not always progress in a linear fashion and that in some cases scientific discoveries were made because of pure chance. And pure chance is the reason I am writing here now if I had decided to start writing 30 minutes from now chances are that the out come of this prose would be different and is such the case with everything we do. I should have called the blog connections but I always enjoyed a misreading of a friend’s website better. I would like to apologize for this blatant plagiarizism, though the words have been reordered to protect the innocent. I am not sure how long I will keep this thing up but I have a few working subjects already in mind and if nothing else I figure that if come back in 10 years and read this I can remind myself of how silly I was. Finally watch for the bad grammar and misspelled words there will be lots of it. Enjoy.