So I saw March of the Penguins last evening. In the melodious baritone of Morgan Freeman, it "is a story about one thing: love." The personification only got worse from there... at one point he claimed that the evil winter would try everything in its power to kill the young penguin chicks in the months to come.

Though interesting, I would recommend anyone who rents March of the Penguins to skip the movie and go right to the extra included film "Of Penguins and Men," which documents the film making process and is actually much more interesting than the feature film. It's narrated by the film maker Luc Jacquet and includes every bit as much information about the penguins and considerably more side story. "Of Penguins and Men" is not told quite as eloquently as in the feature film, but is nevertheless the better of the two films for including human drama alongside that of the penguins in a slightly less overly-dramatic way.

David: 1, World: 0

Thank you to Poppy for bringing this image to my attention. It combines my two passions: LOL katz and Star Trek II, the Wrath of Khan.

Also in the news today, I taught the gen bio pre lab this week while Kate, the head TA, was off on a trip. I was quite nervous beforehand, but everything went smoothly enough and I think everyone learned what they needed in a reasonable length of time.

Pages and EndNote

You may not care, but I do not like using Microsoft Word on the Mac. It just doesn't work well, looks even worse, and makes me cringe every time I open it. However, I am stuck with Word because Apple won't release development tools for it's word processor, Pages, and I can therefore not use an essential application, EndNote. I've fallen in love with this program that tracks all the papers I need to reference when doing most of the writing I've done in grad school. Going back to doing all my references manually is not an option as my reference list gets longer and thus I am ironically stuck with an inferior word processor in order to avoid an even bigger headache.

But, with your help there is hope. You can tell Apple to release development tools for Pages in order to allow wonderful applications like EndNote to do their magic. It is seriously the only thing that is keeping me from buying the elegant and affordable new iWork programs.

Saturday on campus

I'm having a productive day on campus today, writing my prelim proposal and trying to be a good grad student. I like it when Cami works on the weekends because it's easier to get stuff done with fewer people around in Blake. It's not exactly like Animal House over here, it's even quieter than ENR is usually, where most of the graduate program has offices.

I purchased a Targus laptop stand the other day to reduce neck strain when I have my laptop at home. It folds into a angled stand that is not pictured on that page. It is the same model as one my mom gave me a few months back that I use in my office. Unfortunately, Targus changed their design and made the stand much flimsier than it was before, so that even a light touch of the hand makes then entire setup wobble. I feel very ripped off... $20 for a piece of plastic that probably cost less than the indestructible plastic the item came in. Oh well..

Isaac Asimov still amazes me

I just read a great short story by Isaac Asimov, the Last Question, and I was reminded how much I loved Asimov as a kid and every time I read or re-read one of his books or short stories I'm continually pleased.

I remember my first Asimov book: I, Robot, which a librarian recommended to me after I asked her for a good sci fi book in elementary school. I can't be certain, but I think it was at a public library in a mall- my memory may be failing me on that last point. Anyway, I wish there was some way to go back and thank her.

Speaking of failing memory, I'm always amazed at the plastic nature of memory. I'm pretty certain that I was introduced to Asimov in the manner that I described above, but the memory is faint enough that I can't discount the possibility that I am full of b.s. In my high school AP psych class, we read about a study done in the 80s (?) where false memories were implanted in kids' heads after their family members created short episodes and told it to the children around the kitchen table- such as a time when the child was left by himself in the mall. The false memories were quickly absorbed by the subjects and often resulted in new details being added to the false story. I don't know if this has been done in adults- maybe kids are more susceptible to this, but I would not be surprised to find this is more generally true for everyone.