Those little spiny pine-cone guys

I think at one point or another (especially around this time of year) everyone has seen one of the seeds my article is about, slowly gyrating down from the tree tops, or picked up one of this funny looking little one sided wings and dropped it to watch it spin to the ground, but very few people would be able to explain how they work.  The purpose of this spinning is to generate lift which is of course why they fall so slow which means more flight time which consequently means the same amount of breeze will disperse these little flying seeds over greater distances.  The article is about the people who were recently researching maple seeds and what they learned.
They basically learned that the seeds generate lift almost exactly like a plane does, exploiting a wing shape that forces the air to move more quickly over the top of the wing than it does over the bottom.  This causes a lower pressure to be on the top of the wing causing an upward force, generally called lift.  The thing that made the seeds really interesting is that when they spin the shape of the seeds generates a vortex, causing the wind speed to be much, much faster generating way more lift.  They hope to use this technology to make little itty-bitty Robo-copter, which is in my opinion pretty sweet.
here's a pretty cool clip of a man made bigger version, being spun fast enough that the lift over comes gravity and it flies (for a little bit anyway :] ) autogyrating choppa'

Hijacking Smart Mobs aka How to Start a Riot

We didn't know about them until a week ago, but it seems like smart mobs could be related to just about anything we do where technology is used to communicate.  When I want to play frisbee I text five or six people and tell them to text some other people.  If everything goes right an hour later 10 to 15 people come out to play frisbee.  This doesn't make me a leader and the first people i text aren't leaders either, but still we ended up getting enough people to come play a full sized game (maybe even an over sized game).  We didn't need a leader to be organized just a few people who took initiative.  This is basically what we talked about in class today.  One of the students (I don't know who because i didn't turn around to look at him) said leaders are naturally put in place (his term for it was "implied leader") and his example was if there was a fire and he were the first person out of the room everyone following him would consider him the "implied leader".  I thought this was a very interesting point relating to smart mobs and group mentality in general and led me to think of some unnerving consequences.  I think people who are in a group want a leader.  They want some one who will tell them what needs to be done and when to do it, some one who can organize and that people can rally around.  With a smart mob, the group forms in a quasi-spontaneous way that causes it to be born without leaders, but in a group with a common cause i believe a leader will usually come forth and take responsibility.  This scared me a little and maybe you can already see why.  It seems that it would be easy to take all of the energy behind such a group of people and turn it in a different direction.  If people are eager to accept a leader in a situation with little organization, what is to stop a corrupt individual from manipulating all of these people into following his or her agenda?  I came up with a hypothetical, bear with me here, based on the Battle for Seattle situation.  What if say after this "whack-a-mole" protest had been going on for a while and someone sent out a text to 2 or 3 hundred people saying "Police are beating protestors!!! RIOT!!!"???  maybe it would work and maybe it wouldn't but with an unorganized mob who really knows?  If anyone knows of an example of a smart mob getting out of control or just a personal story that relates leave a comment for me.  :]
Dance + Mountain = Fail?  Clip from the film "Hot Rod" the dance is good on it's own but the pay off is the last thirty seconds.  There is a really funny part where they start a riot which would be a little more relevant but I couldn't find it :P

So... the tennis ball represents freedom?

So in class on tuesday we were talking about this poem that wasn't really a poem it was just some list of names for a reading assignment.  But this teacher decides he's going to play some mind games with his religious poetry class. (I guess your pretty much asking for people to screw with you if your studying religious poetry)  To me this professor was trying to prove that people can see anything they want if you give them a little nudge.  I'm not sure if i got the point right but it was a good story all the same.  It reminded me of reading novels for English in highschool.  You remember.  You were just reading a nice short book about an old guy who liked fishing, but the teacher just wants you to think about symbolism.  The sharks have to represent early 1900 America's oppression of the Irish and the turtle...  You don't even want to know what that represented.  Whenever the teacher called on me to tell her what something meant, I just made up some bull crap and she just loved it.  Back to the point, this teacher (Spitz was it?) told his gullible class that these words that were an obvious list of names was a poem and then spent an hour analyzing something that was completely meaningless.  What does it mean?  Why would he do this, did he even tell the students that his class exercise was a sham?  I can see some rhetorical motive behind it and even if I didn't I could make something up that sounded good but what was the point of doing this in a religious poetry class?  If anyone can enlighten me please please please comment.  Maybe he just made the whole thing up
In the meantime here's the link to your weekly dose of tasteless humor 
boosh boosh stronger than a moose  <-- don't lock your doors or they'll come through the roof

How to be Funny: i.e. Don't read this post

I was hoping that the blogger Muses wold reach down during class and slap me on the back of the head today.  Alas, here I am typing away and still have nothing to write about.  We mostly just talked about the next assignments.  How to write instructions... :]  yep.  My instructions are how to take care of a skateboard so my audience is pretty limited there and I hopefully don't have to worry about offending anyone so I'm going to be going with my old fall back of 'use humor to make my writing seem better.'  I was thinking on that in class today when we were reading the really bad example instructions on dubbing.  The part where the writer tells you to go find 'Katie' was specifically what got me thinking.  My first idea is the writer was trying to be funny by referencing some unknown person by their first name.  I got a little chuckle but it was just bad.  Soooo.... I was thinking "Ohhh no. What if everytime I am trying to be funny its as bad as that guy?"  People would hate me, I would be booed out of class.  But really, what is it that makes me so hilarious and that dubbing guy a worthless idiot? (other than pre-established ethos ;] )  Good humor in short writing like this comes from consistency and voice.  The guy tried his best to be technical but it was so dry my contacts were about to fall out.  If the Katie thing was a joke then it was a definite miss, but that's just cause he didn't finish the joke.  If he'd dragged Katie into like 2 or 3 more sentences?  Comic gold.  This guy could have been writing Prime Time stuff but he got embarassed and quit.  Not just on himself but on English 314.  The former is forgivable but the later, no sir. Not okay.  Long story short I say we all go find this guy and keep him tied up in the back of the class room as a mascot/reminder of what shame looks like.
All joking aside here is your weekly irrelevant humor
The friendship zone   <--- clicky click

A day late and a dollar short...

A bit behind the times as usual, I'm making my second post.  Over the first week of class we have mostly talked about rhetoric and built on the things we learned in Engl 103.  We've coasted over ethos pathos and logos and we learned some new big words like enthymeme and syllogism that would be familiar to someone who has taken a logic class.  We read some stuff by some old dead guys, but what are we really taking from the class.  I believe the underlying goal of this course is to stipulate to the students that being able to use rhetoric is essential in any field.  If you do ground breaking research and can't tell people about it in real life in a convincing way.  On an overpopulated planet, why should I believe what you are telling me, when I know they are plenty of people who are completely full of shit.  Logic is the art of truth, rhetoric the art of persuasion, making logic the more noble pursuit in my opinion, but both are useless without the other.  I guess the point I'm trying to make is, If you can't convince people that what you are telling them is true then what is the point in finding truth at all.  For personal satisfaction? Hmm...  Conversely, If one wants to convince another of something with out knowing it is the truth what is the point of rhetoric.  Surely, a convincing enough person may be able to make the whole world believe a lie, but with out the truth this sophist is merely manipulating reality and those around him, not teaching or learning anything of use. Learn one and you can be noticed, learn both and you might change the world.  I guess you could just buy an Apple though.
Enough rambling, here it is your link to happyness...
Missy the cat and her poor little legs... :'[  <-----Clicky clicky

All grown up... He's got his own blog and everything

Hey everybody! It's my first blog post and I've decided to keep this one short and sweet.  The Apple commercial we watched in class reminded of the commercial I did my Engl 103 final project on.  It's a parody of the "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" commercials with the two dudes on the white back drop except the two people represent a PS3 and a Wii.  It was good for the project I was doing and great for a laugh.  enjoi

Good cheap fun   <----click me!