Early snowfall on Almirante Nieto. We are just about to enter the Parque Nacional Torres del Paine after a long, bumpy, dusty bus ride. Note: “Almirante Nieto was the first mountain climbed in Torres del Paine park in 1937 by German climbers Hans Teufel and Stefan Zuck, of the Bavarian Mountain Club. These brave explorers reached the summit east, by climbing the northeast edge in front of the three Towers
March 15, 2015
Patagonia: Strait of Magellan
The colors in the fading daylight were intense, the land bathed in gold and the choppy waters of the strait a steely, glinting gunmetal gray.
March 8, 2015
Preparing to be Unprepared
Familiarity ossifies experience. We must recalibrate our instruments of perception.
February 22, 2015
Edge of Tomorrow
Starship Troopers meets Groundhogs Day with a bit of Aliens thrown in.
February 21, 2015
The Examined Life
Language: The Examined Life 改 KAI: examine, amelioratePerhaps my fondness for this kanji stems in part from my Catholic upbringing and the cyclical and ongoing practice of examining one’s conscience and making amends for one’s faults. The verb 改める”aratameru” means roughly: revise, alter, rectify, correct, redo, renew, over again, and anew. In short, in order to improve, you must both examine and change. Composition of 改 On the left side
January 12, 2015
Complexity as a Feature
We oughtn’t just operate the world on a gut feeling; we have brains, after all.
January 7, 2015
A History of the World in 100 Objects
The stories gleaned from objects can reflect an individual, a society, or all of human existence.
November 3, 2014
The Tale of Princess Kaguya
かぐや姫の物語 I was lucky to see this in the original Japanese-language version at the +Alamo Drafthouse. From the info I could glean on the Internet about the limited release in other American cities, I was afraid it was going to be the dubbed version. So a big thanks to the +Alamo Drafthouse for showing it in the original language! Taken as a whole (story, visual, and graphics) I think Princess Kaguya is the
November 2, 2014
Purpose, Goals, Destinations
Quite fittingly, and is so often the case, where I ended up by the time I finished writing this meditation is not where I thought I was headed. The word of the day is destination and the realization that when I aim for a goal, not only do I often fall short but that I’ve fallen short so often that I now habitually begin with what some might term a defeatist attitude. It hasn’t always been thus. I remember some projects that turned out differently, where a collaboration took me further than I had initially conceived. That was amazing.
October 30, 2014
The Pleasure of New Words
“…University of Barcelona (UB), the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg (Germany) have experimentally proved that human adult word learning exhibit activation not only of cortical language regions but also of the ventral striatum, a core region of reward processing. Results confirm that the motivation to learn is preserved throughout the lifespan, helping adults to acquire a second language.
“Researchers determined that the reward region that is activated is the same that answers to a wide range of stimuli, including food, sex, drugs or game.”
October 5, 2014
Examining Surprise
Curiosity, discovery, and examination are all part of the same arc of wonder and joy. Further examination frequently leads to additional discoveries. To turn away from examination and reflection and analysis is to turn our backs on the wonders of our physical world and our amazing ability to perceive it. To attend, to pay attention, is to be awestruck.
September 29, 2014
Google Translate
GPlus Timestamp: Sep 29, 2014 1:19:38PM Migrated. Not Formatted. The advent of Google Translate encourages me to work at my Japanese because it piques my interest in the original text. I laugh and wonder what could possibly be going on in the original Japanese to produce results like these? 農業とは無縁だった高野さんには不可能に近い難題であったが、「むずかしい仕事に直面すると、胸がジーンと熱くなるのです」。 It was a challenge nearly impossible to Takano-san was unrelated to agriculture, “When you face a difficult job, chest I