Entries this day: Dream YouTube.com donald life-of-pi origami you-tube

Dream

9:27am IST Tuesday 08 November 2005

Explaining to my mom where I had been:

"I went to the nine inch nails concert over there," indicating with my finger, "and Fred came a bit later, and he wanted to talk to me about something I didn't want to talk about, so I ran up to my room and crawled underneath the bed and ate some of the pudding that I had left over.

"He came up but didn't find me, so I got up and I'm not sure how I got home; but I can't remember parking over here; I must have left Mr Van back there."

Ma didn't seem too impressed with my story, or any less upset that I had left Mr Van parked somewhere overnight, but she didn't get angry at me.

YouTube.com

12:01pm IST Tuesday 08 November 2005

YouTube seems pretty awesome!

I uploaded two videos a bit ago and one of them says it's been viewed 12 times!

donald

11:41pm IST Tuesday 08 November 2005

Amazing.

Donald is a good natured missionary who believes wholeheartedly that the King James Bible is the authoritative word of God.

He says slavery was not condoned in the bible. "It refers to bondmen, who were obligated to repay a debt. The simple word 'bond' explains it. There was an agreement; a bond. It's not slavery."

Ben looked up bondman. "bondman, noun: a male bound to serve without wages. a male slave."

"I don't trust people who write dictionaries."

- - - -

Donald says continental drift is a lie; there is no way continents can move around. "Take an egg and crack its shell. Can the pieces slide around? No; they are all bumping into one another."

Sarah explained that the plates crash into one another to create mountains, and sometime go under one another causing earthquakes.

"If it's been happening for millions of years, as you say, why aren't the mountains higher? It's just a ridiculous proposal to ignore what they can't explain."

Donald disproves the theory of evolution by pointing out that we can't explain where all the matter came from in the universe. "Before the Big Bang, was there matter, or wasn't there? It's a simple question."

Ben goes, "by definition, if there is a point at which the laws of physics break down, we can't know what happened beyond that point." He continues, "but that has nothing to do with the origin of species; there were billions of years between the Big Bang and any life."

"The Origin of Species means the Origin of Matter. It's as simple as that."

A different topic, that was more complicated than I can realistically capture, went something like this:

Ben: "settlements are illegal."

Donald: "no they're not."

Ben: "yes they are; under the 4th Geneva Convention."

Donald: "Geneva Convention? What's that? When was it written?"

Ben: "Right after World War II."

Donald: "settling happens all over the world. Take Texas for example; the Americans invaded Mexico to take over the Mexican land."

Ben: "Ignoring that happened before the Geneva Convention was written, because an international law is broken by one country doesn't make it right for any country to break the law."

Donald: "That law doesn't exist."

Ben: "Yes it does."

Donald: "It's the spoils of war. Take Kuwait for example. Iraq attacked them without cause, the bastards, and Kuwait was able to hold them back. Had Kuwait gone ahead and taken the land, more power to them."

Ben: "I'm not talking about Kuwait or Texas. I'm simply saying that settlements are illegal under the 4th Geneva Convention."

Donald: "Whoever wrote that was out of their minds."

life of pi

##07:42 Tuesday 08 November 2005

Completely wonderful story.

I loved the ironies in narration, like, "the experience itself was different than that of our imaginations, where we sunned ourselves with fat bellies after the picnic like lions on the Savannah, then tottered home under the glorious painting presented by the Heavens in the evening. We died."

I laughed several times.

I want so much for the story to be true. It truly does prove the courage of life can overcome astonishing adversity.

I cried twice near the end.

How funny to see me working so hard to write this description. _Life of Pi_ rules.

origami

##20:39 Tuesday 08 November 2005

Yesterday one of the Faisal residents showed me how to fold a simple rhombus out of a square piece of paper and then link several of these rhombi together to make various closed solids.

From my research, I have determined that it shouldn't be too hard to put together a really big solid, but I am wondering how many rhombi are needed...

I gave the geometric solids to Gyosei, who provided the paper, and I don't have pictures of them.

All of the geometric solids in my research are made of three sided pyramids. Each side of the pyramid is a regular right triangle, with the 90 degree angle at the top. At the apex of the pyramid, three 90 degree angles are formed by the edges.

The simplest one we could make is basically two three sided pyramids attached at their bases, for a six sided object made of right triangles. It requires 3 rhombi.

The next was a cube, which required 6 rhombi.

The next was a shape for which I don't have a name. It required 12 rhombi.

The next required 30 rhombi.

What's next?

3, 6, 12, 30, ?

you tube

##18:32 Tuesday 08 November 2005

Just found a new site called YouTube, which has just received funding, which means to me they could have a good thing going.

The front of the site looks so much like google and gmail's front page that my brain thought it must be associated with google.

Sign up by clicking here and I'll get a referral.

I'm quite impressed with the site. I just uploaded two videos; it made thumbnails, permalinks; gave me HTML code to embed videos on my pages... and it's fast and free.

Soundbomb thrown near little girls

Confronting officer and Jewish victim

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