P.C. Shannon

I thought I had this whole blog thing figured out, but then Lorelle had to do a series on “blog focus.” I tried to ignore it, but the challenge of it kept bouncing around in my head: what am I passionate enough about to focus on as a single blog topic? I ended up with a few ideas, but the one that really resonated, the one that feels like I’ve had it my whole life, is my obsession with future technology. I’m not talking about computer tech stuff and geeky gadgets. I mean, what are the operating principles of the warp drive on Star Trek?

So I took some of my birthday money, bought a new domain name, and set up a new blog. It was an experiment, just to see. After a month-and-a-half, I feel like it’s been pretty successful. I’m excited about writing for the new blog, and, since it has a focus, I’ve been able to promote it a little bit. I’m still trying to find the right voice for it, but that’s part of the fun.

Check it out: Ultratech Memes.

As a result, this blog will suffer. I would like to keep posting here, if on a much less frequent basis. We’ll just have to see whatI have for.

I really enjoy musicals, but I’m a bit of a snob for “book musicals.” I like The Sound of Music, but the original John Waters Hairspray and High School Musical were disappointments because all of the song and dance routines are ancillary to the plot. West Side Story is the perfect antidote for those films. The plot advances more through dance than through song, which is fine because the choreography is great. It’s a very 60s movie (Austin Powers, mod 60s; not hippies 60s), which kinda slapped me in the face at first, but I quickly came to like that aspect of the production.

This movie is a classic for good reason and highly recommended if you like musicals. I could easily watch it again.

Caroline recently sent me an article about organic food from Consumer Reports. The article is a very interesting read since it details what is and is not allowed for foods labelled “organic,” and, more importantly, some efforts by big agribusinesses to undermine those rules in favor of profit. But I want to focus on two smaller quotes from the article. First,

Organic fruits and vegetables are farmed with botanical or primarily nonsynthetic pest controls quickly broken down by sunlight and oxygen, instead of long-lasting synthetic chemicals. Organic produce sometimes carries chemical residues because of pesticides that are now pervasive in groundwater and rain, but their chemical load is much lower.

According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a research and advocacy organization in Washington, D.C., eating the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables exposes you to about 20 pesticides a day on average. If you eat the 12 least contaminated, you’re exposed to about two pesticides a day.

Even eating the least contaminated food exposes you to, on average, multiple pesticides per day because the stuff is as much a part of groundwater and rain as, well, the water itself. Is that not shocking? This article sort of tosses it out there like they’re saying the sky is blue. But it’s why advocate organic foods even if the direct health impact over regular foods to me is minimal: it’s just getter for the Earth and for everyone in general.

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I don’t have the time or energy that I used to devote to finding new music, but I have found a few blogs to help me out. The interwebs (or at least the little corner I monitor) have been all afire lately over The Black Kids, so I wasn’t going to write about them. But then I actually listened, and I was blown away. It’s been a long time since I’ve had that sort of visceral reaction to music on the first listen, so long that I can’t remember when it was. Check out The Black Kids on MySpace—you can download their whole EP for free.

The other band that I’m in love with at the moment is White Rabbits. I would describe them as sounding kinda like Interpol. Apparently they have two drummers, which is pretty cool. I have some tracks, including live ones, I got somewhere, but Hype Machine is being a bitch right now so I can’t find the links. White Rabbits does have free MP3s on their MySpace, so you can check them out that way.

In grad school, I TA’d for a professor who claimed that students finished his class knowing genetics as well as those at Harvard. He gave out these detailed definitions for terms and made the students write them down verbatim. On the tests, he give them the definitions with some words missing, and they had to fill in the blanks. It struck as a very rote, grammar school type of pedagogy, and I’m not sure that any of the students came away from the course with a very deep understanding of genetics. After all, just because you can recite a definition doesn’t mean that you understand what you’re saying. It’s the difference between knowing and truly understanding.

I bring this up in response to a recent editorial in Wired, “Your Outboard Brain Knows All,” in which Clive Thompson talks about our increasing reliance on computers to store key facts. He cites a study that found a number of young people didn’t know their own phone number and instead had to look it up on their phones. I usually know my own number, but I was dating Caroline for years before I’d memorized hers. Moreover, I love looking stuff up on Wikipedia or IMDB. But Thompson raises a good question: “Does an overreliance on machine memory shut down other important ways of understanding the world?”

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There’s such a long list of dystopian sci-fi films and books that it’s hard to determine exactly where THX1138 falls in the overall scheme of things. It borrows heavily from Brave New World and 1984, but it also is reminiscent of Metropolis, The Island, and The Matrix. Except that all of those things are good—okay, not The Island, but it at least had explosions and good chases.

For whatever reason, the subtitles turned themselves on about five minutes into the movie, and that was a good thing. I could understand all the soft-spoken parts (there are a lot) as well as the background vocals (there are a lot of disembodied announcer, too), which helped me to understand a lot more about what was going on in terms of both the plot and the future society in general.

Taken solely on its own merits, THX1138 would be a forgotten film. It’s preserved solely by another small film made by the same director a few years later. Ultimately, it’s only a footnote.

Darths & Droids is a webcomic that posits, What if the Star Wars saga were actually the campaign of a long-suffering GM? Then it explores the answer using screen-caps from the movies (starting with The Phantom Menace). If you’re a gaming geek or a Star Wars geek—or, like me, both—then check it out. If you’re my wife, just keep reading.

Today, the International Astronomical Union officially designated an asteroid 7307 Takei in honor of actor and activist George Takei, who is best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek franchise. The asteroid joins others named for sci-fi luminaries such as Issac Asmiov, Robert Heinlein, and Gene Roddenberry. [Via Yahoo/AP]

I’m not a big fan of lists or countdowns that are “The Best Whatever as Voted by YOU.” The entries are generally all top-notch, but what’s number one is such a matter of personal preference that I always end up being disappointed. So with that preamble, I have to say that the Top 50 Dystopian Movies hits all the right notes, although I may not necessarily agree with the actual rankings themselves. The honorable mentions are also great.

[Note: I started a separate page about the practice of patent law in general and where my job fits into the big picture. Please check it out to get an idea of what I do. Thanks!]

For the last two months, I’ve been working as a technical advisor in the patent group of a law firm. It’s great to be back at a company; the environment and atmosphere is really much more suited to me than a research lab. Moreover, this is, so far, the best job I’ve ever had.

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