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September 17, 2006
Three Nights Of Dune
I really should update this thing more often than I have been lately. Because sparse posting typically leads to long posts that take way too long to write or read. Oh well.
Last week on Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday evenings Jacob & I watched the DVDs of the 5-hr long "Dune" miniseries that was made for Sci-Fi Channel back in 2002. I'd read the book and loved it, so I was really curious to see a film adaptation of it. While I know that there were some problems with the film when comparing it to the book, most films that were first books leave out or change a bunch of stuff anyway, so it's not a surprise that I thought the book was better. The acting was a bit wooden on occasion, and there were some scenic backdrops that were so obviously matte paintings that it was a bit ridiculous. Overall I liked the film though, and thought they did a pretty good job. Now I'm definitely interested in seeing the two-hour film that was made for theaters awhile ago, to compare it with the miniseries and the book. By the way, if you haven't read "Dune" by Frank Herbert, I'd highly recommend that you check it out sometime, it's a sci-fi classic and an excellent novel.
Thursday afternoon instead of colloquium we had the EMS (College of Earth & Mineral Sciences) Poster Exhibition down at the HUB. Kerrie, Anke, Walter & I all entered our posters into the contest, and there were 35 entries in all, with $100 awarded to five honorable mentions, $300 to third place, $500 to second place and $700 to the first place poster, so there was definitely extra incentive to explain things well. :-) 
The only one of us four meteo grads to win anything though was Anke, who nabbed an honorable mention for her poster. Congrats Anke! I wish they would've had each poster judged by more than just two people though, to help smooth out the inevitable inconsistencies between different judges. One kinda funny thing was that one of my two judges was Petters, my roommate. No conflict of interest there, haha. :-) And Walter's two judges were Petters and Steph, so the organizers definitely weren't trying to prevent people from judging posters from their own department.
Last Thursday evening for Men's Group we tried something new, a "theology pub." The idea was to hang out and get to know each other better by discussing ideas and why we believe what we believe, all over a good-tasting beer. So there were six of us that met up at Otto's (the first time I'd ever been to Otto's, incidentally), and no theological issues were discussed at all, but that was totally fine. A couple of the people who came were new grad students, so we used the time as more of a getting to know each other time, which was still fun. Another discovery from that evening was that Otto's Apricot Wheat beer is pretty darn good!
On Friday evening we had a PSCG Game Night at Steve & Elizabeth's place, which was a blast. A bunch of us played a good long game of a new version of Balderdash, where in addition to coming up with definitions to obscure words, there were also obscure abbreviations that you had to supply the full unabbreviated organization/saying for, "famous" people for which a description of why they were well-known was required, and movie titles where you had to come up with a brief synopsis. I liked regular Balderdash before, but with these new additions I like it even more, because it just provides a bit more variety and creativity (and obscure trivia as well). The whole evening was another fun opportunity to get to know some of the other people in the group better, particularly the newcomers.
Ahhh, I love Saturdays in autumn. It was another home gameday here at Penn State, which means it was time for another tailgate party! Fortunately this one was way more enjoyable than the first tailgate two weeks ago, which was just a bit damp due to good ol' Ernesto. Anyway, we got to the field/parking lot and got everything set up at 10am, which allowed plenty of time for tailgating before the kickoff at 3:30. 
I didn't actually go to the game though, because, well, I didn't have a ticket, we were playing Division 1-AA Youngstown State, and there was an entire slate of fantastic games on TV at the same time. I just figured that Penn State would roll over the Penguins (which they did, 37-3), so I went up to Houserville with Daniel to watch bigger and better games on their three-TV setup the rest of the afternoon and evening. Ahhh, college football...
I was a big fan of the song selection in church today, four hymns and a couple of "oldie but goodie" choruses. I always wish they'd do more hymns. And shortly after the service today I ruled myself officially "out" of Julian & Suzanne's wedding this coming Saturday. I tried to play a couple of chords, but my left pinky hurt too much when trying to play even at a mezzo forte level. There's a decent chance my finger will feel fine sometime this week (I'm still listed as "questionable" for IM sports this week), but it was just time to make a decision so that everyone (including Sarah, who's taking my place) can know and move on with certainty. As a further update on my pinky, the radiologist called me back on Tuesday to let me know that his diagnosis was officially a "non-displaced hairline fracture of the distal bone." His advice was to wear the splint for another couple weeks, but I really haven't been wearing it much the last few days because my finger's been feeling better by the day.
I was happy that I got to see parts of the Vikings overtime win over Carolina today, especially the fake field goal for a touchdown (bonus: Longwell is the kicker on my fantasy team, booya!). It wasn't on regular TV in these parts, so I went down to Champs with Frame & Andrew, who were there to watch the Lions-Bears game. I'm more interested in the Vikings this year (partly due to sucking quite a bit less and no love boat scandals), so I think I'll go to places like Champs or Damon's to watch them a bit more often.
For the Bible study we had this evening for PSCG, we had 18 people show up! That's the most we've had at a Bible study since last fall, hopefully we can keep the numbers up. This fall we're examining the book of James.
Could gasoline prices fall all the way to $1.15/gallon? This analyst thinks it could go that low.
And who knew punting could be such a dangerous job? I think that's what you call being too competitive.
Well, that's all for now. Time for bed.
Posted by Jared at September 17, 2006 11:20 PM
Comments
Oooh, POOR SPORTSMANSHIP ON PENN STATE!! Winning 37-3 is somehow ok, but losing 41-3 or whatever isn't? {grin}
The SciFi Dune miniseries was MUCH better, IMO, than the original movie -- which was still pretty good. Children of Dune -- the 4.5-hour followon -- is interesting, but suffers a bit from having to compress TWO books, versus the ONE they compressed in "Dune".
Posted by: Nathan at September 18, 2006 01:29 PM
Penn State's blowout was okay because they didn't run trick plays, go for it on 4th down or continue passing repeatedly while up by a bunch. JoePa's got too much class to exhibit poor sportsmanship.
Posted by: Jared at September 21, 2006 10:59 PM
That's just silly reasoning. And how, and when, is a coach *supposed* to get good practice running those plays?? Hmmm?? It seems really odd to me that a play that would be perfectly acceptable were they on top by fewer points is suddenly so unacceptable.
I bet you still would've cheered if PSU pulled one of those and further widened their lead!! :)
My whole point is to try to encourage a bit more-reasoned of a look at what is truly poor sportsmanship -- COMPLETELY aside from the issue of whether your team blew out or got blown out.
Also, so it's the running of "trick plays" that qualifies it as poor sportsmanship?? What about the last couple of drives' worth of plays that put PSU up by two more touchdowns?? Isn't 23-3 winning by enough?? How about 13-3?
One could *just* as sensibly argue that outscoring your opponent by more than 10 points is poor sportsmanship, couldn't one?
WHERE DO YOU DRAW THE LINE??
Posted by: Nathan at September 23, 2006 10:36 AM