Coca Cola Security Cameras

My roommate showed me this wonderful video...maybe there is hope for humanity after all! Coke always has good advertisements. This one warmed my heart. :) Enjoy! 

The Perfect Poet

Here is one of my favorite poems. I have often considered how God has created each small element of this earth with such grand precision, how everything has an exquisite delicacy beyond man's comprehension. I couldn't put it into better words than Robert Browning did when he said, "God is the perfect poet." I am sure Joyce Kilmer would agree.

Trees

Joyce Kilmer 

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made my fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

A Big Disturbing Mess

I was reading up on the Columbine high school shooting (spawned from a run into this article on YahooNews this morning) and learned some interesting things about the shooters in that horrible massacre. It's really quite a bit of detail, and you can learn all about it from my trusted source, wikipedia.

But here is my main interest: the boys had a website they created for gaming, which one of the shooters (Eric Harris) turned into a sort-of blog, containing his thoughts on friends, family, school, life. According to wikipedia:

"By the end of the year, the site contained instructions on how to cause mischief, as well as instructions on how to make explosives and logs in which he described all the trouble he and Klebold were causing. Beginning in early 1997, the blog postings began to show the first signs of Harris's ever-growing anger against society." 

This anger manifested itself in posts about his desire to kill people who annoyed him, violent threats against people at his school, and a hit list of targets. Eventually police started looking into the website; during this time, the boys committed theft and were convicted to a juvenile diversion program. They attended their mandated classes, as well as therapy. Harris continued to meet with his psychologist until a few months before the shooting.

After an early release from diversion based on good behavior, Harris took down the blog portion of the website and it reverted back to its original purpose of gaming. However, he reserved a small portion of the site for continued updates on he and Klebold's progress with gathering weapons and creating bombs. In his journal, he boasted of faking the "good behavior" and leading authorities to believe he was not a threat. The website wasn't taken down until it was made public after the shootings.

The whole thing brings up a ton of what if questions. What if authorities had taken the website more seriously? What if they had actually investigated the information the boys were posting about? What if their parents had read the posts, or personal journal entries? What if they boys hadn't been let off for their admittedly feigned good behavior? What if they hadn't been bullied and teased by their peers at school?

Where do you draw the line in regards to privacy?

Here are the boys:

And I would warn you not to Google search pictures. Some pretty graphic ones that pop up. AND...I came across a tumblr thread about them, with tons of questionable people and posts here. What do you do with stuff like this?? The whole thing is just a big disturbing mess.

The Claudes in My Life

Two of my favorite things in life: classical music and impressionist art.

Song of the week: Clair de lune (meaning "moonlight" in French) by Claude Debussy, 1905

(Fun fact: This song's name comes from the poem Clair de lune by French poet Paul Verlaine.)

And happy 172nd birthday to Claude Monet yesterday! Don't you wish you could join these girls in their afternoon stroll through the poppies?

Poppies, Near Argenteuil, Claude Monet, 1873

Epicurious

Last semester my friend told me about this wonderful little app for my iPhone called "epicurious." I love to cook, it's one of my things. What a gem this app has been for my cooking endeavors!

It has all sorts of nifty aspects. The home page has categories with recipes catering toward the current season or holiday, specific health needs, family dynamics, whatever you can think of. It also allows you to search their recipe database by selecting certain things you want to include in your meal...for example, if I want to make dinner using chicken and broccoli and I want it to be an Indian dish that is low in sodium, I can choose all those categories and the app will generate a list of recipes for me that have each characteristic. It also allows you to tag those recipes (kind of like pinterest) for later access, and even creates a grocery list for you if you want. It's wonderful.

Come to find out, epicurious also has a website! It's a little different than the app, but it has all the recipes and lots of handy categories for searching. It also has tons of short videos about various cooking techniques that are very informative and interesting. Did you know that you can test meat doneness by touching your thumb to each finger and pushing down with you other hand on the flesh at the base of that thumb, comparing the firmness of your palm to the firmness of the meat you've cooked? When you're not pushing any fingers together, that is what rare meat feels like. Pointer finger is medium rare and so on until you reach the pinky, which is similar to well done meat. That is probably a very confusing explanation...search the video and it will make more sense. But who knew! Not me, until I started browsing around the epicurious website. I'm never cutting my steak open to check if it's done again.

Fun Fact: the prefix epi- means "above, over, on, nearby, upon." Still not exactly sure what that + "curious" means in relation to cooking :) 

My Sister, the Photographer

My sister is an incredibly talented photographer and I have been loving her images and creativity for years and years. As soon as I have a home of my own, I am blowing up her photos and covering my walls with them. 

American short story writer and journalist Ambrose Bierce defined photography as the following: 

"Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art."

Lovely.

How is photography a form of media? It centers around communication. It communicates the thoughts and emotions of the photographer. It reveals the thoughts and emotions of the subject.

Brigitte Bardot, a French fashion model, said:

"A photograph can be an instant of life captured for eternity that will never cease looking back at you."

Photographs capture eternity. They tell you forever the communications of a single moment. I wish I had been more blessed with this amazing talent!

Here are a few of my favorites from my sister's creations:

Gangnam Style Invasion

Last night my roommates and I had a Halloween party at our apartment. It ended up being really fun!! But just as everyone was getting there and conversation really started rolling, one of our guests tracked down my roommate's computer and started playing that Gangnam Style video for everyone. I was totally bugged because I am kind of tired of it, and plus I thought it was so crazy that people couldn't just enjoy chatting and getting to know each other. I was seriously afraid this party that my roommate and I had planned was going to turn into yet another youtube fest, and what is the slightest bit unique about that? Luckily we shut it down when the video ended and started up a game, which turned out to be WAY more fun. Much much better than staring at a computer screen for hours.

Here is the video that plagued my party if you're interested (though I'm pretty sure every single one of you have seen it already):