This was a belated gift but when it's this cool, how can you care about the belated part?
And it was belated for a great reason... the artist asked people to send in requests and he would paint them for free. Why? So he could become a better painter. Can't argue with that either.
I love my robot.
Not quite the type of nesting my sister is doing for sure, but since being felled by pneumonia I've created a nest for myself on the couch in the living room. Within a 3 foot radius are the following:
Why get up? My only wish was that turning on the WII or the PS2 didn't involve getting up and bending over, which makes me very dizzy.
Before this illness rececdes into that murky fog of memory there were a few things I wanted to jot down before I forget them that I also thought you might find amusing or interesting.
During my hospital stay, especially the first three nights, I was incredibly sick. My kidneys had started to shut down, I was very dehydrated and had a very hard time breathing. I also hadn't slept more than three hours in four days. I wish I could say I was exaggerating, but I don't think I am. Every time I would doze off I would wake myself up coughing. Repeat every 30 minutes, and you end up a little delirious. By the time I was in the hospital I was out of my gourd. Mind you I was still quite lucid, but the hallucinations! My god, I had no idea they could be THAT real. In the room there was an observation window which was covered with a curtain with some sort of tapestry pattern on it. I spent hours during the night watching the pattern of the curtain flip in and out, sort of like an advent calendar, watching characters out of Hieronymous Bosch paintings look to me, wave hello, and morph into something else. It was fascinating yet quite disturbing as the characters became more grotesque and more evil as my stay wore on.
The second night I was there I asked for something to help me sleep; between the full re-breather mask and vitals being checked every 2 hours I was hardly sleeping at all. They offered me some Ativan and I took it, and rather than make me more sleepy it made me hallucinate even MORE. The turning point came when I was describing to Steve and the nurse, quite calmly, how in the reflection of the window there was the three of us, the hospital bed, and then two children right behind the nurse. A boy, about age 4, from the early 20th century perhaps, wearing a tweed hat, white shirt, knickers, and his sister, just behind him, both of them talking to each other (although I couldn't hear them) and looking directly at me, smiling and waving. When I looked back to the nurse and to Steve their eyes were are big as saucers. I told them that wasn't the HALF of the stuff I'd been seeing over the last few nights. I'm not sure if they administered something to either make me go to sleep or what, but after that I think I blacked out, and as my hydration returned to normal and my kidneys kicked in, the room wasn't quite as terrifying as it had been those first two nights.
What was absolutely amazing to me was how REAL the hallucinations were, and how LUCID I felt looking at them. I was clearly conscious, I was oriented for almost the entire time (at the end I had trouble telling people where I was or what day it was), and it was just a fact that I was seeing all this STUFF, all these people looking in and out of that window, peeking from behind that curitain, standing off in the corner. It was was, similar to how we assume that London exists even though we might not have been there ourselves.
Reality is so incredibly tenuous, tied so closely to a couple million cells packed into our cranium that only shares the same reality as all the other craniums in the world because biology makes it so. Mess that up and reality becomes a whole different matter. What is real? What we see? What we measure? What we believe? In those 48 hours reality was kids coming to visit, old guys with evil smiles and long fingers passing in and out of that curtain, medieval peasants walking to and fro across the window, and that brother and sister, stopping by to say hi.
I had these grandiose ideas of publishing links the week after BAW to highlight your magnificent brain (and okay, nervous system too) and all the amazing things it does.
And then I was going to wrap things up, head on a plane, go to San Francisco, tour the Six Apart offices, meet one of Steve's good friends, meet WhitneyB in the flesh for the first time ever, eat alot of sushi, enjoy some sunshine possibly, and wear some new threads I bought exclusively for the excessively hip SanFran fashioni.st scene.
What did I do instead?
I took a course in college on motor control, and yes while that was "way back when" the topic of robotic walking is still a tough nut to crack from an engineering point of view. Walking is incredibly difficult! Balancing meat on four legs (nevermind TWO) is not easy. The fact that we do it at all is a near miracle. I won't attempt to scratch the surface of the complexities behind locomotion, but if there's a lurking physical or occupational therapist who'd like to, be my guest in the comments.
But take a look at THIS: If I saw this in the woods I would run the other way. To me this is way into the uncanny valley. Well done Boston Dynamic, now please use your knowledge for good, not evil.
Enjoy this amazing talk from TED from Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who describes her experiences when she suffers a hemmorage and how it changed her.
And quite frankly, it has changed me, and what it means to be treating adults with aphasia.
I missed Brain Awareness Week, having mistakenly thought it was THIS week. But rather than wait another 51 weeks to celebrate it again, I'll push it on into this week and feature a new brainy post each day for your amusement (or consternation :).
Update: Video link fixed.
Two old colleagues and friends of mine have formalized a partnership and have created 4th Jump. I couldn't be happier for them, as each is outstanding in her area of expertise.
On a side note, it makes me realize how happy I am that I am no longer doing this kind of work. Their website is great and obviously filled with enthusiasm for what they do. I hope once I become certified I can bring that kind of knowledge, confidence, and interest to speech-language pathology.
Congrats Naava and Amanda! If I need a website, I'll let you know.
I hate it. It started with the movie Species, and the line "The DNA... It's 40% human" and the inferno of obscenities that spewed forth from my otherwise relatively kind mouth after that quote, and today continues with Altoids and their obnoxious claim that eating an Altiod makes you a better problem solver by stating, "Like a slap to the cerebellum."
Why yes, I was the inaugural vice-president of the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Undergraduate Council at the University of Rochester, why do you ask?
It's okay that I ordered boneless Shanghai chicken wingies at Chili's because I did so on Feb. 29th, which is more or less a fake day, and all that happens during that day doesn't count. Towards revoking your Upstate NY Buffalo Wing Certificate of Eats. Just saying.
Corey and Susan both asked what I was having for dinner, and then Corey threatened me if I didn't post the recipe, so here we are!
Thai Green Curry. I probably would never have made it myself if I hadn't stumbled up on Mom's House in Amherst. El Steve asked to return after I dragged him there a few weeks ago so that we could spend some time pouring over the incomprehensible packaging and varieties of dried shrimp in the hopes of finding something fun. And when I saw the tub of Thai curry, I knew I'd found my little package of fun.
Okay, so I didn't make my OWN green Thai curry... What can I say? This was a great foot-hold into Thai cooking, which I've found incredibly daunting should I attempt it myself. The brand says Maesri (I love the translations on this site!) and the majority of the writing is in Thai, so I'm not sure what it says aside from the brief English instructions on the back. That's what I had to go on, along with the aforementioned Thai cookbook, and I made it up based on what I remember from Pattaya and the The King and I in Rochester, NY. I would KILL for some Thai Sticky Rice with coconut and mango right now, but I guess some Pocky will do.
So I put into a heated wok four tablespoons of the curry paste and stirred until fragrant. I then stirred in a can of coconut milk and heated to a simmer. I took a taste, and almost immediately added a can of water. Holy SMOKES this must be the real thing, or something like it, because it was spicy. I then added a melange of frozen veggies (as it is winter, after all), peas, broccoli, tri-colored peppers, and then some shrimp and simmered. I then made some rice noodles, portioned, and topped with the curry and shrimp. Garnish with lime, cilantro, and basil and enjoyed by girl and boy alike.
Enjoyed with a glass of white wine (that's for Susan. :)
A longtime and very dear of mine just edited and released her very first photo animation and I think it's fantastic (I am also quite partial, but don't let that dissuade you.)
www.flickr.com
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Bruce Campbell: If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor
I'm still waiting to warm up to this autobiography. Maybe I need to see Army of Darkness again. (**)
