Time

In response to Professor Stearns' interest in my previous post about a topic in 671, I have another, which probably covers the most popular topic of the class: time. Just look at the photo: James seems to be on the brink of a mental overload; he's obviously overwhelmed by the apparent rupture in the space-time continuem that occurs weekly during our class. Jack seems paralyzed; maybe he is. How else do we explain why two hours and thirty minutes becomes a marathon of cosmic proportions. How many years of life have we lost while attending the 671 time-warp? The damage is done, and I don't want to think about it anymore.

America is not the Coolest

A few days ago NPR did a show on how Japan is replacing the U.S. as the hub of popular culture. I had not really thought about it like that before, but I agree. In terms of video games, most of the good game developers come from Japan. And many games are released in Japan six months before they get to the U.S. (there are many good games that never reach the U.S. market). Some games I own are based on Japanese anima or manga. My current favorite video game, Okami, is based on Japanese mythology. I have been trying to purchase an illustration book based on Okami's Hokusai-like art work (I have a gigantic poster of Hokusai's "In the Well of the Great Wave of Kanagawa."), but there is not English translation. Last year I found the most detailed model of the X-Wing (from Star Wars) to be made by a Japanese company called Finemolds (they make the most detailed Star Wars models without question). The only problem was that the directions were in Japanese. At one point, I was looking to pay a translater to decipher the directions. Luckily, I found an English translation of most, not all, of the directions (Yes, that is the model I made in the photo). Maybe my next hobby will be to learn Japanese.