Nissan Rogue Commercial
Now then, if this isn’t the coolest commercial I’ve seen in the past 12 months. You see, they made NYC into one of those labyrinth maneuvering board games, and then sent a car through it. Behold, the car commercial itself.
Now then, if this isn’t the coolest commercial I’ve seen in the past 12 months. You see, they made NYC into one of those labyrinth maneuvering board games, and then sent a car through it. Behold, the car commercial itself.
Leó Szilárd, an important member of the Manhattan Project, was quite an interesting character. While he was politically active and had a tendency to be extremely blunt with such dealings, those aspects of him are not what I’d like to share. First, from the Wikipedia article (emphasis mine):
In 1960, Szilárd was diagnosed with bladder cancer. He underwent radiation therapy at New York’s Memorial Hospital using a treatment regimen that he designed himself. A second round of treatment followed in 1962; Szilárd’s cancer remained in remission thereafter.
Those were certainly the days of the super scientists, when physicists could cure their own cancer. But seriously, by “super scientists,” I refer to the likes of Szilárd and Feynman, who possessed an extraordinarily broad range of knowledge and experience. To me, they are the modern equivalents to the Renaissance man.
In response to the topic of “How bombing boomeranged” in a famous interview “President Truman Did Not Understand,” Szilárd had this:
Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?
But, again, don’t misunderstand me. The only conclusion we can draw is that governments acting in a crisis are guided by questions of expediency, and moral considerations are given very little weight, and that America is no different from any other nation in this respect.
Remember, this is coming from one of the key physicists who worked to develop the first nuclear bomb; I would think the bomb development work kept those scientists up nights and the results kept them up again years after.
Highly dissimilar viewpoints don’t bother me — in fact, I love a good intellectually interesting debate. What does bother me, however, is those who passionately latch on to worldviews with which they are only superficially familiar. In arguments, these people’s only defense consists of sputtering emotionally charged strings of words whose meaning they haven’t investigated and logical fallacies of begging the question, burden of proof, irrelevant conclusion, and verbosity.
Show some respect for your viewpoint; take some time to formalize your arguments.
Oh, and please stop yelling at one another.
Try NPR.
Lost my watch from Mykala a couple days ago. Kept thinking it would pop up some place I hadn’t looked or hadn’t thought of. I checked my gym bag 15 times, and went through my backpack at least that many. The bizarre thing was, the links on the watch make a very distinct sound when you move them — much like a muffled version of the “tink” produced when a bead falls down a rain stick. What I mean is, it’s a difficult sound to mistake for something else.
So, every time I moved my backpack, I’d hear something I could swear was the watch. I’d checked all the pockets, though! It simply wasn’t in them. At the end of work today, however, I found out the deep fold between the two parts of the bag had trapped the watch and hid it from view for days. Hurrah! It could have fallen out at any time, but it hadn’t. Now, I had a watch, and (most importantly), I didn’t have to tell Mykala I’d lost her gift to me.
In my mind (dull from 8 hours of work) the vague beginnings of a simile attempted to coalesce into a coherent comparison. However, the binary joys of completing another day of work and finding the timepiece overshadowed the effort. So, dear reader, I leave it to you to compare some moments in life with “something you can sometimes hear (and think is there) but can’t quite find.”
I’d like to visit Fraser Island someday. You see, it has these super ultra blue lakes that are kept free of just about any growing things as a result of their high pH level. (I learned that on The Savvy Traveller). Wikipedia continues about the lakes:
A popular tourist area is Lake McKenzie which is located inland from the small town of Eurong. It is a “perched” lake sitting on top of compact sand and vegetable matter 100 metres above sea level. Lake McKenzie has an area of 150 hectares and is just over five metres in depth. The beach sand of Lake McKenzie is nearly pure silica and it is possible to wash hair, teeth, jewelry, and exfoliate one’s skin. The lakes have very few nutrients and pH varies, though Sunscreen and soaps are a problem as a form of pollution.
Apparently, the Queensland area food can be darn good too - a mix of native meats/tastes and modern culinary techniques.
More “daily” pictures on their way soon, I just haven’t gotten them edited down off the camera yet. Hang in there!
2:37 into Bloc Party’s song This Modern Love from their 2005 Silent Alarm release is one of my favorite moments in music from the past couple of years. There’s just this massive wave of sound and emotion coming through the speakers when the melody is torn down to it’s essentials; the whirlwind tour through major chord harmonies by overdubbed voices sends chills down my spine every time I hear it.
And hey! I found you can listen to This Modern Love online… now you can hear what I was talking about.
Now we travel to this link: MoCo Loco: Anti-Theft Bike/Car Device. There, you’ll find that you can prevent theft of your new mode of transportation by applying fake rust, scratch, and dent decals that are stunningly realistic.
But then your new mode of transportation appears to be rusted, scratched, and dented.
VideoETA says that The Namesake will be released on November 27, 2007. When that date comes, you should see this movie. For those who have no idea of what I am talking about, the Chicago Sun-Times had a good review when The Namesake was first released in the US.
Nils wrote this comment in January of this year. Given our recent discussion about life choices and comics, I think it’s appropriate to bring out his well-articulated viewpoint:
I think that we have to learn to deal with uncertainty for the time being. We’re 21 for christ’s sake, the possibilities and choices that lay ahead of us are virtually endless. The problem is that high school and college have not primed us to deal with the unknown. There has always been a set track that we have been required to follow and that track pretty much ends with college, I think. We should all be prepared for unforeseen conflicts and always have back up plans because you never know how things will turn out. I’ve been thinking a lot about post graduation lately and I have thrown together a few scenarios for myself: stay with TV and pursue jobs in TV market, move to LA and attempt the film industry, join the peace corp, or move to Norway and do something (read: I have no clue). I think can live with those options.
Good stuff. Oh, and this comment is attached to the post Sometimes, You Feel Like A Spring.
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