How does perception work? What kind of brain chemicals and sequencing goes into it? I’ve been considering this issue for a long time. Have you been in a room with a group of people and an argument breaks out. Let’s say there are two people in the argument and eight others watching. All ten people an hour later will not come to the same understanding of what happened. I’ve always found this phenomenon difficult. What good is communication if it can’t insure the data being sent is not corrupted? I was wondering what leads to differences in perception. I came up with internal existing biases (ie. past prejudices), childhood/cultural background, life experience in general, mood at the time, attentiveness at the time and in general willingness to seek truth. What do you all think? And what do you think can be done to alleviate these challenges? Or is it just part of being human? The world is huge and in order for people to get along I think more needs to be understood about perception.

I went to a talk maybe a week ago. Someone from either MIT or Harvard (I forget) came and talked about control systems of our bodies. He had come up with a formula for how our body governs itself and how it learns and unlearns. The formula wasn’t exactly the same for everyone. The parameters were the same for everyone but the actual values would be different for each individual case. It was interesting. I’m not sure if we’re fooling ourselves that we could understand something of that nature. I was recently told by my advisor that just because your results fit on a curve doesn’t mean anything. A model is just an approximation or an attempt to understand something. One’s results can easily be wrong, the model can be wrong, etc.

So why is being right important? I know, I’m rambling. Maybe perception isn’t even important. Maybe people believe in what they want to believe in. Someone once told me your beliefs shouldn’t be an accident of birth. I really took that to heart. Just because you’re born to a family in a particular place in a particular time with a particular set of resources shouldn’t limit your beliefs to that instance. Shouldn’t your mind be free to reach any conclusion?

Very violent movie. It’s set in Boston. State police officers are after a mob boss. Mob boss has an informant in the police department. The police department has an informant in the mob boss’s crew. So it’s a game of cat and mouse. Both police officers have to pass information without being noticed or suspected. The bad cop with a high up position in the state police is played by Matt Damon. The good cop who is stuck undercover too long is Leonardo Dicaprio. Jack Nicholas plays the mob boss. Other actors include Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin.

All the acting was good. Good script (really heavy on the foul language).

4/5

710 Pembina Hwy

Serves Caribbean food. Interesting atmosphere. The restaurant part is tucked away in a corner. Most of the space is used as a stage, dance and pool area. However during most of the day it’s just a restaurant I gather. I had eskovitched fish. I have no idea what the word eskovitched means. I looked it up and couldn’t find it. Anyways, it was really good. It had a hint of spice and was very flavourful and pleasing. I chose fried plantains and fried dupplings as my sides. I’ve had plantains before and didn’t really like it so I thought I’d give them another try. It turns out I don’t really like plantains. However I’m not too choosy with food and I ate it anyways. I also had coleslaw. Pretty random but I like coleslaw. Tipu had ox tail. His sides was potatoes and rice. He also had this soup called pepperpot soup. The soup reminded me of halim but with lots of beans of different sizes and colours some beef and gnochi (sp?) pasta. He really liked his meal too.
4/5

“You don’t scream on Young street”

“He engaged”

“What if Santa was Saudi?”

“Just so you know, I’m not changing”

“What the bunk is Kufa? Use english!” reply “That is english you idiot”

“What is it? What is it?” reply *smack* “Hazelnut”

Someone make me study!!!!!!!!!!!

Not everyone with animation technology should be making movies. This movie had potential and it was good in segments but all together it was pretty nonsensical. It’s like they got engineers to write it or something.

Story line (avert your eyes if you don’t want me to spoil it):

Penguin named Mambo born to a society of penguins that regard a good a singing voice as the key to life. Mambo can’t sing. He can dance however. He is shunned from his society. He walks on and finds a bunch of smaller penguins with Spanish heritage who regard dancing as important and singing less so. Fish are running out. Mambo tries to find out why. Mambo walks/swims to the ends of the earth and figures out it’s humans. Unfortunately he gets captured and put in a zoo. He starts dancing in the zoo. He dances so well that they let him go. Then the UN gets involved and decides perhaps they should ease up on the fishing. Anyways, Mambo goes back to his original society and the leaders piss themselves when they realize that his dancing wasn’t the bad omen causing less fish but it was the aliens. The aliens actually come to see the penguins and everyone starts dancing. Very Bollywood. The scientists/aliens videotape the colony of penguins dancing and the whole world sees it and falls in love with it and work hard to prevent overfishing. Then the penguins have fish. The penguins also accept dancing. The end.

So the story line is completely weird. The animation itself is excellent. The music is ok but a little cheesie at points. There are some good humorous lines with good timing. The voices really pissed me off. Two voices in particular. Mambo’s parents. The father has the voice of Elvis. I kid you not. Why the bunk do we need an entire hour of Elvis impersonations? I do not frickin’ understand because I don’t think Hugh Jackman normally talks like that. Mambo’s mother voice sounds so sugary and country hick you want to die. Nicole Kidman doesn’t sound like that normally, why was she using a bad accent?

There are good animated films. Remember The Incredibles and Cars? Good technology and solid story line equals success. You need a good story line. Having cool water and sky graphics with squishy cute characters is not all that’s required.

I suppose it’s good that environmental issues are being emphasized in animated features. Entertainment can do good.

2/5