. . . for educated hope.

Excellent Quotes to Remember!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:18:00 +0000

And my traveling companions
Are ghosts and empty sockets
I'm looking at ghosts and empties
But I've reason to believe
We all will be received
In graceland.
- Paul Simon, "Graceland"

And now pray tell what lured you with false hope
To make the venture of eternity
And seek the love of kind in wintertime?
- Robert Frost, "To a Moth Seen in Wintertime"

Catchiest Song Ever. . . . God help me.

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:11:00 +0000

Well, okay. I'm not going to tell you that this is a good song. It's not -not at all; not even a little - but I'll be damned if it isn't ridiculously catchy.

. . . and the video is really quite awful . . . but the song, it's so . . . familiar somehow. It reminds me a little of Savage Garden. I actually thought it WAS Savage Garden, but unfortunately it's not.

I think Disney has somehow figured out how to make the perfect SIMULATION of a pop song. Baudrillard would eat this up.

Now, I'm bringing this up on here because I think this raises a good question: is this a real song? I mean, sure, of course its obviously a song on some point, but its so pre-fabricated and . . . pop-y.

It's sort of like a Disney World version of pop music just like Frontier Land and the movie UNFORGIVEN are both representations of the American West . . .

Consider even the video - yes, really watch it. The "Brothers" are just boys talking about girls at the beginning when they are shown a script for the video of their new song. The song then begins in earnest, playing over the "Brothers'" imagining of what the video would be like. What follows is then a series of skits lampooning different videos that themselves lampooned different movies who were themselves iterations of different periods of history, ie, the Jonas Brothers' video "Burning Up" is a represenation of periods three times removed and thus flattened from their original versions, such as Miami in the early 1980s in the case of the Miami Vice spoof in the video.

This just strikes me as a very ironic video to tack onto a song by a 3rd or even 4th generation boy band sponsored by Disney. . .

But it sure is catchy though. . .

Please don't hold that against me.

Reporting LIVE from the NINES

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:05:00 +0000

Yes all! More on this later but I am OUT OF TOWN!

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:41:00 +0000

Joss Whedon! Neil Patrick Harris! Nathan Fillion! Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog!! Brilliant!

Changes!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:28:00 +0000

Howdy all!

Welcome to the great changing of gears! As you can see, [ jason-in-progress ] has undergone somewhat of a revamping over the last day or so. I've dropped some content, moved a couple of things around and generally just sort of started over.

Why?

Well, though I wish I could say that I have something witty, pithy, or generally useful to say everyday, the sad truth is that my life isn't interesting enough to support an endeavor like that. Instead, what should otherwise be a relaxing and cathartic thing becomes added to the burden of things that I feel need to get done everyday. So, I'm stopping.

-ish. Changes have been enacted.

First of all, I have changed my main website address to http://elliswords.googlepages.com to support a wider array of more diverse materials, such as a resume, my calendar, my portfolio of stories and poems, and, lastly, my journal.

My journal, rather than just being a rote "thought of the day / week" 'blog, will become an amalgamation of my existing [ jason-in-progress] blog and my EllisWords' Notebook. It'll still be at this URL, but the focus will be somewhat different from here on out. I had originally intended my blog to be a collection of things that I didn't want to forget and I've gotten away from that in the last few months. My goal now will be to use it to capture rough drafts of creative pieces, little things that I write all the time, and notes toward the researches of different things (online and off) that I'm literally constantly doing, and etc. I hope that some of it might interest each of you occasionally, but I find lots of different interesting things online and it probably won't all appeal to any one person . . . except for probably me.

UPDATE - My flickr photostream is still accessible through the main homepage here.

Red Shift and the Ever Expanding Universe Explained

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:48:00 +0000

Ok, this isn't directed at anyone who reads this blog, but I've found in my reading online that a LOT of people don't understand what the Big Bang did. I won't presume to be a scientist here. I'm not, but I am a reader and I do read a LOT of science content and, frankly, when I read things like CNN (and other fairly legitimate online sources for information) and everyone seems to make a muddle out of what it is (essentially) the defining characteristic of our existence in the universe, it bugs me.

So, here you go, for anyone who is interested or in posterity who stumbles across it. This is the ever epanding universe explained.

To understand the expansion, you only need to understand one extra "technical" thing, and that's called "Red Shift" and its really just common sense. Imagine that there is a mouse hole on a wall facing you. Every second or so, a mouse runs out of that hole and out the door behind you at the exact same speed, over and over again without any alterations of behavior. With me so far? Now, in theory, if nothing is changing in the scenario (ie, everything is constant,) each of those mice are a fixed distance between one another, yes? Now, imagine (any fear of rodents that you have not withstanding) that you start to slowly move (at a fixed rate) toward the mouse hole while nothing else in the thought experiment changes. What will happen? The mice will still be their fixed distance apart, and they are still emerging from the hole at one per second (or whatever. Right! They'll be passing you more quickly than one per second. The exact math is just a function of how quickly you're moving toward the hole, but the specifics don't matter for the explanation here.

Okay, if we're all clear on the mouse experiment, lets use the same scenario but use a light bulb emitting light waves instead of a mouse hole. Light producing objects (light bulbs, stars, fire) emit light waves at a fixed rate, just like the mice coming out of their hole. So, in this experiment, you walk toward the light bulb (at a normal, fixed rate) and what happens? The light waves will now hit your retina at a faster (fixed) rate than before. But mice and light waves aren't the same. If the distance between mice passing you is decreased, nothing really happens, but if the distance between light waves decreases the color of the light appears to change. If you were moving toward the light at a super high speed, the light being emitted from the bulb would shift toward violet. On the other hand, if you were back pedaling from the light bulb at a fast enough rate, the light from the bulb would appear red.

Are we all still together? We're almost there. . .

Now, imagine that someone pointed their radars toward the sky and found that light coming from the sun was undergoing the same physical effect that we found when we thought about running backwards from our light bulb. You would have to assume that either the radar was moving away from the sun or that the sun was moving away from the radar. Or both.

The truth of the matter is that when scientists point their instruments into space, the find that everything is moving away from us. And that is the legacy of the Big Bang.

The misconception is that the Universe is expanding like a balloon, so that there is a set center of the universe and all points outward from it are getting farther away (like the outside of a balloon from the center) but the truth is that the Universe IS expanding like a balloon, only in a different way. Imagine if you drew five or six black dots on a deflated balloon and then blew it up. The more you inflated the balloon, the further those black dots would stretch from one another, and that is almost EXACTLY like science says our Universe is expanding.

Quote of the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:30:00 +0000

I'm reading Atmospheric Disturbances (by Rivka Galchen) and its pretty good so far, but I found a quote this morning on the bus ride downtown that seemed startlingly concise and well-spoken. I thought that I would pass it along here.

"Habits of thought are death to truth."

I like it.

Graduated!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:36:00 +0000

Yes! It wasn't really in-question . . . . but it sure does feel good to have my diploma in-hand now rather than just sort of speculating about it and saying, "well, I SHOULD'VE graduated" or "Yeah, they SAY I graduated. . . "

But now it's officially official. I am an alumni!

Three BIG THINGS!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:46:00 +0000

I've only talked about this with a few of you really, but three big important things that have solidified over the past couple of weeks.

First of all, I was accepted into N.K.U.'s Masters of English / Professional Writing program. That'll be starting up in the Fall. For details, go here. I'm actually enrolled in both the Professional Writing certificate program and the Master of English program.

Second, I was accepted into the Congressional Leadership Program for the Northern Kentucky area. This is, apparently, something of a big deal. It consists of 8 classes between 6/28/08 and 8/11/08 that deals explicitly with Northern Kentucky / Cincinnati issues and is intended to immerse enrollees in the specific unique challenges of the Greater Cincinnati area.

And finally, third, I am now definitely going to THE NINES conference at Miami University at the end of July. You can read more about it here, but essentially THE NINES is a digital humanities conference funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities on the uses of computing technology in the humanities fields. I was invited because of my work during Spring and Summer '07 digitizing a collection o15th C. women's poetry.

UPDATE to Jason's Summer Reading List

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:39:00 +0000

Update 1: I finished The Devil You Know by Mike Carey and highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys both mystery and horror. Very good hard-boiled mystery in the vein of Constantine.

Update 2: I finished First Blood by David Morrell over the weekend when I was camping. It was good at first, but tapered off quickly into a kill-by-the-numbers thriller. It wasn't bad though.

Now I'm working on Atmospheric Disturbances and it's pretty good so far.

The orginal post is here with links to all the books I'm talking about.

Jason's Summer Reading List

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 18:33:00 +0000

I'm a bad reader.

Actually, that's not really true. I'm a really good reader. My problem is that I'm also a pretty good consumer, so I buy way more books than I should. My hypothesis is that I spend so much time being guilty about my flagrant consumerism and dump SO much energy into choosing new books that I want to READ that it virtually becomes impossible for me to focus any energy into the books that I already have and wanted to read in the first place.

And so, in response to that, I'm making a commitment here to read the following books this summer:

The Devil You Know by Mike Carey - already reading this one now. I'm about 1/3 of the way done and it's uber-cool so far.
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leanord Mlodinow - this is a bookloan from Barnes & Noble so I'll need to read it pretty quickly. It's non-fiction, obviously, but sounds pretty cool.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid - This has been on my shelf for awhile now and I'd like to read it. It's just a small fiction.
The Last of the Mohicans by J. Fennimore Cooper - I've always wanted to read this one. It's a classic obviously but I never had to read it in my undergraduate classes. Since it's pretty much the first major American novel, it always seemed like a good one to read
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow - I think in the mythology of American history, Alexander Hamilton is one of those guys where the legend and mystery has grown up to all but eclipse the real person, maybe moreso than any other persona. I like colonial biographies and this one was too good a deal to pass up. Chernow's AH was really a big hit a couple of years back.
First Blood by David Morrell - I've been telling my friend Ryan for years now that I'd read something by Morrell and this was only $.50 at the Book Rack, so I couldn't pass it up. Yes, it was the basis for the Stallone movie that kicked off the Rambo series, but supposedly its a really great book.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe - A couple of reasons why I'm reading this. First of all, I've never read Tom Wolfe before and always sort of thought I should've by now. Second, this book basically kicked off the school of New Journalism as well as is a fundamental introduction the Hippie / drug movement.
Crime and Punishment by Feodor Dostoyevsky - This is another one that I always figured I would have to read for a class but never did. I've owned it for years but never bothered reading it and it always sounded really interesting and accessible. This is the summer I'll read it.
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen - This has been getting GREAT reviews so far and sounds REALLY up my alley. I've got it coming in at Barnes for my NEXT bookloan, so we'll see how it goes.

And so there you have it, my friends. Those are the next 9 books I'll be reading this summer. I'm thinking that I should be able to finish them all. It's a pretty big load, but there are some easy reads peppered in with heavier stuff.

Now all I need to do is read them.

In other news, I found out yesterday that I have officially been accepted into the MA program at NKU. I go for my first advising appointment this week sometime. Woot!

Some Photos of That Day

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:44:00 +0000

This is an amazing internet find on the part of one blogger / editor at Mental Floss magazine. It's been making its way around the internet for the past week-ish now, so you may have already seen it or heard of it, but its really an amazing document.

Apparently Jaime Livingston took one Polaroid picture everyday of his life starting in March 1979 through the day he died, his 41st birthday. What makes the pictures so interesting (to me anyway) is that they are very rarely topical and as well, only rarely were they ever posed. Most are candid, many feature Jamie in the frame, some are blurry . . . but looked at in order they evoke something that a lot of more traditional art doesn't: they give you the sense that art can't capture it all. Usually the idea is for a work of art to capture a complete lifelike experience, but Livingston's photos make you realize just how much life can't be captured.

The ending (the entire last year actually) is brutal and and complex and sad, as you get some sort of sense that his health is steadily failing while he still tries to maintain a full life. You see him get married near the end and finally you certainly see what must've been a moment only minutes from his death.

You can see it here.

A ironic fact about myself. . .

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Fri, 23 May 2008 02:38:00 +0000

I've discovered that while I broadly dislike consumer culture, strangely I rather enjoy PHOTOGRAPHING cheap consumer items; I don't know why.

Case in point . . . :

I'm really not sure what this says about me but I do have two SPEED RACER McDonald's Happy Meal toy cars which I'll be photographing this weekend. I know you can't wait. I can't either!

Sadie's 1st 3rd B-Day present w/ Pics

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:31:00 +0000

Thanks Mom and Dad for getting Sadie a turtle sandbox for her birthday. She loves it and talked about it all last night while she was getting ready for bed!

This is now officially the best picture of Sadie ever:

More pictures can be found here as well.

Drama in plastic!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:49:00 +0000

The villain . . .

The young hero . . .

The grizzled warrior . . .

A partnership forged in blood . . .

. . . shall be tested . . .

. . . with more to come . . .

Call it Whatever

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:31:00 +0000

You can call it whatever you want - post-graduation work blow-off; slacker; hatred of my job; legitimately broken car - and you would probably be right. I'm skipping work today, unapologetically and unabashedly.

Yesterday, I legitimately needed to be out of work to go to the doctor (for several hours) but today, while my car really won't start (Julie left the lights on in it the last time she drove it) and I probably should muster up the hutzpah to go to work, I just can't bring myself to do it. I had planned on going to Cincy this morning and in fact did get all the way to the bus stop with Julie's car (again, because Julie really and truly did kill the battery in my car) before I realized that I just couldn't do it today.

I'm not at some 'breaking point' or a belated quarterlife crisis here but nonetheless today is simply not a good day for me to schill for Big Pharma.

Though, honestly, I don't hate my job. It's not a bad job. There are probably a lot of people who would consider what I do, in a way, a dream job . . . but it doesn't suit me. I think you all would agree that this article contained nothing at all about how being a spreadsheet jockey for a research company would be ideal for me. So, the good news I guess is that I only have six months of indentured servitude left to the company before I can leave without punitive actions taken against me (repaying tuition reimbursements) and really six months isn't too much in the grander scheme of things.

But. . . .

26 more weekly meetings . . . 26 more sets of minutes . . . 26 more metrics workbook compilations . . . untold hundreds more spreadsheet reconciliations . . . sure seem like a mountain in front of me to climb.

I mean really, let's jive a bit here and just riff on this a little, can you dig it? Think back to OFFICE SPACE. Did Peter get it right? Wouldn't it be better really to just find a job in construction somewhere? Do something outside and physical instead of wasting paste-ily away in front of a computer screen doing work that is so non-essential to everday life, so "for marketing purposes only," so useful only to help a pharmaceutical company have a higher profit margin five or six years from now that it has no value whatsoever?

I mean, seriously here, I spent $30 for a month's supply of Nexium yesterday. Thirty dollars for thirty pills, and that was after I used the "Purple card" that my doctor gave me to knock off half the cost of my prescriptions for that drug. So, that equates out to $2 a day - for just me - to use Nexium. Now, consider that for a thousand users, that's a return of $30,000. 1000 patients. 30 days. Consider this: if only 1 percent of the U.S. population uses Nexium, that's a net yield of 30 million patients times $30/month works out equals out to 900,000,000 dollars a month. Now, assume that I'm only 1% right, that's $9 million dollars / month. No! Assume, that my numbers are only .5% accurate and that still gives Astra-Zeneca $4.5 million per month. For that one drug. That is a fairly conservative estimate, I think. It's easy to see why they're being so nice as to give vouchers for half off of their drugs.

I understand the petty logic of it. I understand that the drug company only has so many years to recoup their investments before the drug goes to generic. I get it. It makes sense and is profitable to a select few, but forcibly importing African labor to work on sugar, cotton and tobacco plantations made a certain sick sense too, if the only good that you are striving for is to make as much money as possible.

I know what you're thinking. I'm sure some of you may be saying right now, "Oh, come on. Get off it already! Just do your job!" Some of you are probably saying, "It's just a job. Just do what you're paid to do." Or maybe "Are you really comparing the pharmaceutical industry to slavery?!?"

Well, I agree. . . to an extent. You see, this thinking troubles me every time I sit down to my computer to do some of my work. It taints how I relate to my job. I feel that I'm contributing to a system that I passionately want to see end and I'm not sure how to reconcile that with the need to work and function in the world. I think probably academia is the best place for me to be.

I'm not saying I need to make the world a better place. I just don't want to make it any worse.

Thoughts?

And now for something completely different . . . . !

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:54:00 +0000

Marvel Mighty Muggs: Spider-Man

. . . . and the hero shot!

This is absolutely, positively THE coolest toy ever. You can find more of them here. I've been scouring NKy this weekend looking for them (mostly via phone) but found this one and a Wolverine (with real plastic claws!) at ToysRUs on Mall Road. I might go get the Wolvie tomorrow!

Finally, a picture of the house!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:52:00 +0000

hehe, it occurred to me that I had never posted a picture of our house. Here's our house:

. . . taken with this, my newest favorite little gadget, a Nikon COOLPIX S600. It's the smallest camera I could find with the highest specs. It's smaller than my iPod. Julie got it for me for graduation.

The Architect

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:10:00 +0000

So, I thought that this was wholly appropriate to post as my 100th blog entry:

A friend of mine today sent me a link for what appears to be a relatively a good Myer-Briggs Test that his boss found online. Sure, it's a personality test and, so yes, let's all let out a collective groan, but the interesting part about this one is that it seems to be remarkably accurate in predicting and assessing my personality.

The pithy blog-widget friendly summation of my test results are:

INTP - "Architect". Greatest precision in thought and language. Can readily discern contradictions and inconsistencies. The world exists primarily to be understood. 3.3% of total population.

which, while giving me a tremendous temporary ego boost (at least until the depression sets in again) isn't really the part I was impressed by. I'm quoting everything here from the site which I'll give you the link for at the end. It said I am "introverted and intellectually curious" . . . yes, okay so far. It said I am a

"loner, more interested in intellectual pursuits than relationships or family, wrestles with the meaninglessness of existence, likes esoteric things, disorganized, messy, likes science fiction, can be lonely, observer, private, can't describe feelings easily, detached, likes solitude, not revealing, unemotional, rule breaker, avoidant, familiar with the darkside, skeptical, acts without consulting others, does not think they are weird but others do, socially uncomfortable, abrupt, fantasy prone, does not like happy people, appreciates strangeness, frequently loses things, acts without planning, guarded, not punctual, more likely to support marijuana legalization, not prone to compromise, hard to persuade, relies on mind more than on others, calm"

and yes. . . far more right there than there was wrong.

Ok.

Recommended careers?

"Philosopher, game designer, scientist, software engineer, freelance artist, research scientist, assassin, freelance writer, physicist, software developer, mathmetician, geologist, computer scientist, philosophy professor, webmaster, slacker, medical researcher, painter, mortician, systems analyst, comic book artist, computer technician, website designer, scholar, archeologist, computer repair, forensic anthropologist, astronaut, researcher, historian, systems engineer, genetics researcher, astronomer, enviromental scientist, egyptologist."

Um, I could either be an egyptologyst? an ASSASSIN? or a freelance writer?

Well, okay.

The site is Similar Minds, then click on Short Test under the Jung Tests header. It's only 53 questions. I'm curious for more people to take and see if their's are accurate too.

Blah.

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:09:00 +0000

Blah. That is all.

New Song I'm Rather Fond Of:

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 03:39:00 +0000

I know, I know, you've probably all heard this song from the Kia commercial but, dammit, there's really good music in commercials anymore and . . . so . . . here you go!

Joe Purdy: Can't Get It Right Today

A thought . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:22:00 +0000

Anyone else ever noticed how between the hours of 3PM and 10PM in suburbia you can almost always here at least one lawnmower running somewhere?

THE OFFICE IS BACK!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:20:00 +0000

Highlights from last night:

-Guess what! White and egg-shell white are exactly the same color.

- You can buy new stuff but you can't buy a new party.

- That was a $200 plasma screen t.v. you just killed! Good luck paying me back on your zero dollars a year salary plus benefits, babe!

- My apartment's on fire . . . flood.

- and, of course, Angela smashing the ice cream cone into the side of Andy's van.

A thought:

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:19:00 +0000

Possibly its because of my writing background, but I am extremely unimpressed when people use the word "film" instead of "movie" when writing a review online.

Pics!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Ellis) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:22:00 +0000

New Pics of the Kids!

New pics of the kids!