Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

So, I liked Delana’s gift so much that I decided to go ahead and buy some more Hexbugs for myself.

The first one I had was Bravo and these are called Alpha and Delta. Since I have three, I hope to collect two more and have the entire collection. That way, I can probably make them fight amongst themselves.

(Does anyone else think that they are called Hexbugs but there are only five of them? They do have six legs, though.)

And for some reason, these things remind me of those Replicator bugs from Stargate SG-1.

Washington Post has an article on how the SAT averages decline to lowest scores in years. Apparently, it’s the lowest since 1999.

And then there are idiots like Miss South Carolina Teen USA who blabber utter rubbish. Worse yet, people even pay attention to her. You are eighteen, for cryin’ out loud. When we were eighteen, I remember trying to solve 600 Calculus problems over the weekend and trying to work out physics problems in I.E. Irodov. And I was just an above-average student.

Ironically enough, Time has an interesting article about the failure of the US educational system to properly deal with gifted students.

No child left behind? What nonsense. Leave behind those that are not interested, those that are not capable and those that are callous enough to not care. You should be more worried about ignoring those that are ahead because they are the ones who are going to solve world hunger, take humanity to space and come up with the next big thing.

We should have a system that encourages the best and the brightest, and raises the bars of achievement for everyone to what the best and the brightest achieve. Lowering the bar to the worst performer just so that they can graduate high-school does not mean a thing. If all you are after is a piece of paper that says that you graduated high-school, you are defeating the very purpose of education.

Encourage the brightest. Raise the standard of education. Make over-achievement the norm. Challenge children and do not be afraid to fail those that lack the necessary skills, but that does not mean you should not educate them. If they cannot solve calculus problems by 11th grade, do not take calculus off the list but teach them until they understand. And then, promote them to the next grade.

And maybe some day — some day — we will have a society that does not reward idiots.

This Sunday, my parents, Lana and I went to the Cincinnati Zoo. It’s apparently one of the country’s top five zoos, but our experience there definitely did not reflect that claim.

First of all, we had trouble finding the place - the signs were wrong, and we kept going around in circles until we decided to finally stop at one of the entrances. I walked in and talked to a woman at the office, who then agreed to open up that gate and let us through.

Once inside, we realized a couple of things. First of all, the layout of the zoo was not particularly straightforward. Secondly, a lot of the animals were off the exhibit or were big disappointments. They did have a wide variety of themes and there were some very interesting animals, but we were still a tad disappointed at the fact that a lot of the animals that we were interested in were unavailable.

On top of that, they did not even have some of the more famous animals available - and I felt quite bad for some of the ones that were indeed being displayed. For instance, they had the Polar Bear out at when the weather was 100 F outside. The poor animal was panting and trying to cool itself off in the water, but I imagine that the water and the land itself would be so warm for it to rest inside. That was just plain cruel.

Anyway, here are some interesting pictures of the zoo from the visit. Enjoy.

…anything is possible. I simply love these ads. The McKay one takes the (cheese!) cake.

I finally got around to watching the film adaptation of Stardust. And given how much of a fan I am of Neil Gaiman’s work, I was not disappointed by the adaptation.

While I usually tend to be rather particular about adaptations of books that I like, this was a rare exception. The movie did take a couple of artistic liberties in differing from the book, but it felt like it was only adding to the spirit of the book. At the end of the day, Stardust is a fairytale (albeit for adults), and I thought that the movie portrayed that incredibly well.

And it was indeed quite a fairytale - a very funny one at that. The witticisms and the quips were hilarious, and I especially found Robert De Niro’s character to be extremely funny. The eclectic mix of characters was just perfect.

It was a rare mix of fantasy, romance (and funny romance at that - even the mushy parts kept cracking the audience up), comedy, adventure, action and suspense. Even for someone who had re-read the book at least a dozen times in the past few years, some parts caught me off guard.

This movie was perhaps the best movie I have seen all summer, and all year. And for those interested in watching this movie, I would strongly recommend that you read the book version of Stardust first - trust me, it is worth it.

After all, what is life is not a fairytale, hmm?

Meet the newest member of our family! Lana just got me a new Hexbug toy as a random gift.

Hexbugs are fun little robotic bugs that can sense the surroundings through their antennas and find their way around. Not only that, but when you make a loud noise, they can hear and react to the noise. This lets you control where they go. Interesting little buggers!