My Favorite Quirky Things

In honor of my recent visit to see the works of Salvador Dali in Atlanta at the High Museum of Art, I have compiled a few of my favorite quirky things.

So as Julie Andrews says in The Sound of Music, "Here are a few of my favorite [quirky] things:"

Fav Quirky Artist - Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali, a Surrealist painter during the Atomic Age, is best known for his moustache and his painting of melting clocks. His use of unique paintbrushes (including such things as french bread and an octopus) for his series of Don Quixote paintings earn him a spot on my list.

Fav Quirky Movie - Amelie

Life wouldn't be complete without watching this fabulous tale of Amelie Poulain, a young woman living in Paris. I won't spoil the story except to say the story involves gnomes, photo booths and love (all of which are quirky in their own right). If that isn't enough convincing, Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie a 90% on the tomatometer.

Fav Quirky Website - Is it Christmas?

Yes or No: See for yourself.

Fav Quirky Holiday - Shark Week

Who came up with this idea? It's brillant. There's something just so fascinating about sharks. Especially when they adorn buildings, pedicabs and cupcakes (all items that can and should be used to celebrate the Week). For extra reading (fun reading, I promise), check out this post I wrote during the 2010 Shark Week holiday extravaganza.

Being Fat Not Our Fault?

McDonald's is not the only place where food is supersized.

According to NPR.org, the food in The Last Supper painting has been supersized over time. A computer program examined 52 paintings of The Last Supper from the last 1,000 years and found that entree sizes grew by 69 percent and bread size grew by 23 percent. 

(Read the article to see pictures of The Last Supper supersize over the years.)

The findings suggest bigger portion sizes and bigger plates have been developing gradually, said Brian Wansink, co-author of the study and author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. 

So it's not our fault then that we're so fat, right? If the people before us kept increasing plate size, we can't help it that we were born into a time where food was served 69 percent larger than before. 

Maybe. 

I suspect that at some point, we have to take some blame for obesity being an epidemic. At some point, we have to take initiative to exercise, eat healthier, and (gasp) eat less. 

I'm always surprised when I hear that a serving size of meat, fish or poultry should be the same size as the palm of your hand (not including your fingers). Six dice is about a serving of cheese and the tip of your thumb is one teaspoon of peanut butter. My mindset demonstrates exactly how blown out of proportion my thoughts  on portion sizes (and probably most others) are. 

"The lat thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food," Wansink said, "We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history's most famous dinner." 

Here's hoping that in another 1,000 years, portion sizes and plate sizes decrease and don't increase another 69 percent. 

Or else we might end up like the humans in Wall-E.

Why I'm Going to Blog

I'm dedicating this blog post to my friend Bryan who has been urging me to blog for quite some time now. So Bryan, here's hoping that I'll live up to your musings.

Today in class, Editor in Chief Mara Shalhoup and Food & Drink Editor Besha Rodell from Creative Loafing gave advice about how our class, as magazine students, could break into the industry and get editors to give us one of those ever coveted Jobs.

Major skills I need to possess by the time I graduate:

1) Have intelligent, preferably witty conversation with the public using different types of social media tools while promoting magazine I'm working for

2) Be able to come up with great story ideas

3) Have a speciality of interest that I'm an expert on

4) Have several different kinds of skills (New Media/computer skills, copyediting skills, etc.)

Basically, I need to be awesome.

They also looked really favorably on blogging. Besha even said she preferred looking at blogs to see writing style and personality versus looking through clips and resumes when hiring interns and freelancers. So, I've decided to revitalize my old new media blog, where I posted interesting new media technologies each week. But I also want to add sections about books, films and probably anything else that strikes my fancy.

Blogging Goals:

1) Develop a personality for my blog

2) Find what topics I'm interested in writing about

3) Write wittier

Cheers!

P.S. My fourth blogging goal is to come up with a wittier signoff. I'm thinking something along the lines of "Good night and good luck" or "Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered."...something like that.

Digital Lunar Pictures

Scientists will now be able to see how the moon has changed in the years since the Apollo missions. A new NASA project called the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) has restored 42-year-old images taken of and from the moon. All images will be made available to the public.

The biggest benefit from digitizing these photos is to see the even the smallest changes to the lunar surface over the past 40-plus years. The images originally were taken in the 1960s by camera. These images were put on magnetic tapes and then transferred to film.

LOIRP has transferred the original analog data from 1,500 tapes and changed them into digital form.

"This project is an opportunity to revel in what was done in the past," said Pete Worden, director of Ames Research Center where LOIRP is based, "and get excited about what we're doing in the future."

I think this digitizing of photos is great because now these photos will last much longer on Earth and will be in much higher resolution. Plus, since I will probably never get to actually go to the moon, looking at the quality pictures of the moon is great!

The image at the top of this blog is the "image of the century" which was the first picture ever taken where Earth is seen from another celestial body. You can see the north coast of Africa and the glint of the sun on the Atlantic ocean.

The World of Digital Books

All over the world, books are going digital.  Last week, American authors and publishers reached an agreement with Google for it to sell electronic versions of copyrighted works that have gone out of print. 

"Almost overnight, not only has the largest publishing deal been struck, but the largest bookshop in the world has been built, even if it is not quite open for business yet," wrote Neill Denny, editor of The Bookseller, a London-based trade publication.

Right now, the bookshop would operate only in the US. And this agreement is only one of the ways books are making a technological leap.

This month, a group of European national libraries and archives plan to open Europeana - an online database of two million books, films, paintings, newspapers, and sound clips.

In Japan, the mobile phone is a popular way to read e-books. Sales of digital manga comic books are leading the way, and Penguin is optimistic about selling e-books to mobile phone users in India.

Stanza is an application for the iPhone that lets people read e-books. About half a million in more than 50 countries have downloaded this application.

I think all of these new initiatives to digitize books are great! I would definitely take advantage of reading e-books, whether it be on a mobile phone or on a device like the Kindle. I think reading the books on a mobile phone is an especially great idea because I take my phone with me wherever I go; that means whenever I have a free moment, I can just whip out my phone and read a book. 

USB Provides Bank Security

IBM has developed a USB type device that protects people doing online banking. The USB creates a secure channel to the bank's online transaction server. The USB can even bypass the user's PC and avoid any virus or other malware on the computer!

The user logs on and validates transactions using the display on the device. Extra security can be added by inserting a smart chip in the device that will prevent "man-in-the-middle interceptions."

The USB is called a Zone Trusted Information Channel and is ready to start banking trials. Another great thing is these devices need no new software and they run on all major client operating systems. 

Because this device looks like it can be integrated into use so easily, I think this USB will be a big help in making sure online banking is secure and will allow more people to feel comfortable using online banking. I would use it!

Elbot comes close to passing the Turing Test

On the lovely Friday before the Georgia-LSU game, Dr. Shamp discussed Artificial Intelligence and the Turing Test in class. The Turing Test was designed by Alan Turing, a famous Britain code-breaker, in the 1950s. In order to pass the test, the machine being tested must convince 30% of the human interrogators he is human.

Over the weekend, at the 18th Loebner Prize for artificial intelligence, a new computer named Elbot convinced three of 12 human interrogators he was human. That is one human short of passing the 30% mark! Elbot is the first machine to come close to passing the test. 

It's scary to think that some machines have enough A.I. to make humans think they're also humans and not computers. However, I had a conversation with Elbot (have your own by going to www.elbot.com!), and I wasn't sure how he managed to convince three people he wasn't human. 

For the most part, I found him to be sarcastic and cocky, and I thought he discussed how he cleaned off his rust spots way too much. He did have a few nice things to say and after I complimented him on his niceness, he told me, "for a human being, you're somewhat nice yourself. If only you had wires..."

Hmm, nice with an edge. Ultimately, I think we have a long way to go before humans need to be concerned about A.I. becoming as just like humans because though Elbot is smart and does seem to have a bit of personality, Elbot can never take the place of real human compassion.