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Despicale Me

I say Despicable Me the other day. I thought I would write something about it.
But first some background :D
Despicable me follows the story of Gru, the worlds #2 super villain and his quest to become number 1. But some kids show up and ruin it all for him. And guess what? He no longer.... well never mind, better not to give the story away.
I saw this movie mainly because it was getting good reviews. And I like to see movies that get good reviews, especially ones that look like they could have been really bad.
I was not disappointed. Although I didn't like the very beginning, the rest of the movie lived up to the hype.
But be forewarned, you might possibly cry.

Nothing

Ok here's what I'm thinking about.
Nothing.
I could not think of anything to write today. So I started trying to find something to write about. That is completely against my rules.
I set up this blog so that I could write about nothing in particular. I don't try to think things up. Nor do I try to present pivotal issues in the world today. I just write about whatever I feel like writing about at the.

Right now I don't feel like writing about anything.
Looks like I found something though.
This is something for us all to remember, if you are trying to do something creative. Don't force it. I promise you that the results will be worse then the ones that came naturally.

Unprofessionalism

Yesterday, LeBron James, one of the greatest basketball players ever, announced his intentions to leave his home team and go to Miami. Miami was incredibly happy, Cleavland, where LeBron was before, was incredibly sad.
LeBron had lived in Cleavland all of his life. Why did he decide to go to Miami.
I have a few theories.
1. (most likely) he left because he wanted to win a championship, and Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade are playing for Miami this year. LeBron has not won a championship to date. He has been playing for seven years.
2. Miami offered him more money then all the other teams that wanted him. I don't find this likely.

But that isn't what I'm here to talk about. The Cleavland Cavaliers where, understandably, upset. But their owner, Dan Gilbert was no doubt more upset then the rest of them.
He published a letter on the Cavaliers website. Ripping on LeBron for leaving them.
He called LeBron cowardly. He showed us the epitome of unprofessionalism.

If you want to see the letter go to:
http://www.nba.com/cavaliers/news/gilbert_letter_100708.html

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo is, quite frankly, the largest writing contest in the world. This contest encourages some of the worst writing in the world.
Confused? Don't worry all explain.

First off, NaNoWriMo (which, by the way, stands for National Novel Writing Month) is not really a contest. There are no prizes awarded for 1st place, and there are no losers. The object? Write a 50,000 word novel in a month.
The project was started in 1999 by Chris Baty and 20 friends. Their object was to write a novel in 30 days, that year, six people did it.
In 2000, a website was set up. 140 people joined, including many from foreign countries, and 21 people completed the challenge.
The next year, the number jumped to 5000. This was unexpected, and Chris and his friends scrambled to add the members to the website, which had not yet been automated.
In 2009 over 170,000 people signed up and 2,427,190,537 words were written.
That's a lot of words.
Chris Baty said in an interview that the contest is not about quality, it's about quantity. The whole goal is to turn of your internal editor for a month, and just write. It happens in November every year.

Sounds like fun.

If you're interested: http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Bicentennial Man

I watched the move "Bicentennial Man" last night. Adapted from a novel by Issac Asimov, the story follows the life of an android who has a personality and would rather be human. I won't give to much away.
I liked the movie because of a couple of things. One is, like many movies, the music, it is very well orchestrated and played. I also like the story a lot. As I said earlier I won't give to much away. But I will say that, in the middle of the movie, he starts to pursue his quest as a human by putting on a human appearance (F.Y.I. it's very Robin Williams like). But even with this we are frequently reminded that he is, in fact, a robot. We are mainly reminded when he misunderstands human figures of speech and expressions. Which can lead to some good laughs.
It was a good family movie. I'm not sure why it got such bad reviews, because I thought that it was good.
The movie is rather touching at times, especially when Andrew (that is the robot's name) realizes that, as a robot, he is immortal, and everyone that he loves and cares about will die around him while he will continue through generations and generations without aging.
I suggest it if you need a good family movie. 

Indipendence Day

So, it was this day 234 years ago that the Second Continental Congress signed the Declaration of independence. First off, I find it amazing that this country has survived so long without falling into anarchy, tyranny, or some other oppressive form of government. That in and of itself is a feat that very few countries can call their own.
But many people do not realize what we are truly celebrating here.
The founding fathers took a big step when they signed it, to quote one of my favorite movies:
"Had we lost the war, we would have been hanged, beheaded, drawn and quartered... [and] had our entrails cut out and burned."
Honestly, that doesn't leave a pleasant picture in your head. And remember, that quote is quite conservative.
And don't forget General Washington. While he did not sign the Deceleration of Independence, he risked his neck in several other ways. Namely leading a starving, cold, badly-equipped, untrained group of (mostly) farmers, against the warm (well relatively), full-bellied, well-equipped, well trained British army. And let's not forget, he was vastly outnumbered. Yet he did it. Kudos to Washington.
So just remember what was at stake when our country did this. And remember, if they had lost, I have no doubt we would still be under British control

Complexity

So I've been thinking about the size of things and there complexity. I do not think many people realize how complex life is or how big the universe is.
Here's a visual.
Imagine the sun is a grapefruit. The earth would be approximately 35 feet away from it and be the size of a grain of salt.
Jupiter (the first outer planet) would be 182 feet away and be the size of a large blueberry.
Pluto, (I still consider it a planet) would be 1400 feet away and be the size of a piece of ground pepper.
Now, I'm going to make this even bigger.
The sun is still the size of a grapefruit. If this were so, the next nearest star would be 2500 miles away. Approximately the distance from Washington DC to the middle of Nevada.
Now I will totally blow your mind.
On this same scale, the approximate width of the universe would be 9.75 X 10^12 or approximately 9.75 Quadrillion miles wide. It was kind of an eye opener for me, what about you?

And don't even get me started on the complexity of a cell...

What is Facebook?

Facebook is many things, but here are some of the more interesting things it is:

1. The only place in the world you can talk to a wall and be called perfectly sane
2. A place you can call someone a friend when you have never met them before
3. A place people can farm, take care of fish, or be a master of crime all at once.
4. The place where the worst grammar in the world is used often.

Now, most of those things would not happen in the "real world." But they happen here, isn't that odd? Chew on that.