What does it MEAN!?!!?

So, I just took an online test from the Prosopagnosia Research Center at Harvard University and University College London. In it, they check your ability to recognize faces, objects and how well you do with verbal recognition.

I won't give away the tests, in case you want to try them. I figure that would skew the results. However, I found my results extremely interesting.

For facial recognition, I got a near perfect...96%. That puts me in the top 88% of everyone who has taken the test so far. I didn't do quite as well for the object recognition. Apparently, I'm totally average at that...I'm in the 50 percentile.

But, for the verbal recognition portion of the test, I only scored a 33%...less than 1% of everyone who took that test did worse than I did!!! So...WTF? Do I have some kind of mental problem where words don't register with me? I've always noticed that names go in one ear and out the other, but I never figured I was in the bottom 1% of the world!

I'm kind of freaking out about this!

Someone else take the test! Tell me what you think!

Why haven't I heard of Danny Boyle's new Film? - Sunshine

While at lunch today, a friend of mine asked me if I had seen the trailer for the new film by Danny Boyle. "Danny Boyle!?! THE Danny Boyle who made Trainspotting, Shallow Grave and 28 Days Later!?" (Three of my favorite movies ever, btw..)

Yes. THAT Danny Boyle. And the movie is being released Friday. July 20.

Go on. Check it out yourself. Here is the trailer. Here is an interview with Danny Boyle himself. Why have I not seen one single ad for this film? Is this movie supposed to be totally awful? Has anyone seen it? The trailers look intense as all hell.

I was about to say how I find it hard to believe that Danny Boyle could make a bad movie, but then I remembered that he also directed The Beach, so....

RadioLab

Radiolab is an amazing podcast that I discovered through a segment on This American Life (another very good podcast). However, the Radiolab is currently blowing my freaking mind.

Forget podcasts that deal with movie reviews or the latest gossip from Capital Hill (or even reviews of Buffy the Vampire Slayer! *ahem*) Radiolab covers the BIG questions. "What is a soul?" "Where does morality come from?" "Why do we sleep?" But these aren't exercises in Philosophy. The hosts interview scientists and experts in each of the fields they cover to try and reasonably ANSWER these questions. Now, they do this with varying degrees of success, but the answers they FIND are ALWAYS intriguing, and presented in entertaining, thought provoking ways.

Some people may be turned off by the stylistic elements of the show. (Sounds and conversations are layered over one another at times to draw parallels and illustrate examples) but I find the entire thing fascinating and well worth the hour each episode lasts.

There are currently five seasons to download. I can only hope more are on the way soon!

WHAT THE F - - K IS THIS!?!!!?!!!

OK, what the hell is 1-18-08? (yes, I realize it's a date)

Holy God...talk about a freakin' teaser!!!

JJ Abrams. The man is a force to be reckoned with. Seriously.

Edit - OK, so, there is a teaser WEB site that seems to be slowly adding pictures, one at a time, and a really vague article at ign that mentions a possible title of Slusho.

So, I'm sure we'll get fed things a little at a time. (it is the JJ Abrams way, after all!) I'm looking forward to regardless. Even if it really is titled, "Slusho".

Edit again...Just did a little more research on Slusho. It's written by Drew Goddard. Staff writer on Buffy, Angel, Alias and Lost! Damn, a resume doesn't get much better than that in the Carlson household!!!

Nosferatroll...

Was just sketching with the idea that I wanted someone "with big ears", and came up with this guy...one part troll, one part vampire.

I think I want to color him, but haven't really decided how he should look yet, so I thought I would just throw him online so I can show him off (I dig him!)

DC Joins the Online Comics Community!

Comic Book Resources just posted an article about a new online comics community being created by DC Comics called Zuda. It sounds like they are going to try for a very interactive community, where users will vote for their favorite strips (which are the ones that will actually appear on that Zuda "ongoing series" pages). The submission process is open to anyone and everyone, and it sounds like it would be a great place to break into the comics business for anyone with an inkling and the talent to do so!

I can't wait to see what they have planned!

Inventor of Car that runs on Water Killed

Conspiracy theories are everywhere. But few of them seem to show up on the front page of your local paper.

The Sunday edition of the Columbus Dispatch ran this story: The car that ran on water which starts out like this:

After more than 20 years of research and tinkering, it was time to celebrate.

Stanley Allen Meyer, his brother and two Belgian investors raised glasses in the Grove City Cracker Barrel on March 20, 1998.

Meyer said his invention could do what physicists say is impossible -- turn water into hydrogen fuel efficiently enough to drive his dune buggy cross-country on 20 gallons straight from the tap.

He took a sip of cranberry juice. Then he grabbed his neck, bolted out the door, dropped to his knees and vomited violently.

"I ran outside and asked him, 'What's wrong?' " his brother, Stephen Meyer, recalled. "He said, 'They poisoned me.' That was his dying declaration."

Looking into it further, it seems to be a well documented event, at least on the web. What's worse, is that I believe it. I think we are clever enough, as a race, to be able to figure out how to run a car on water. I also think we are savage enough, as a race, to kill someone over it. What a sad state of affairs.

I think the day is coming when we will rid ourselves of our "addiction to oil", as our president stated in a rare moment of clarity. How many will have to die between then and now is the question...

Oh, the irony...

OMGFreeMovies.com

I'm hesitant to even mention this site. I fear that spreading the word that this site exists will just hasten it being taken down, but after having finally watched the movie 300...a movie that I just couldn't force myself to shell out the money to watch otherwise, I can see it's worth, and wanted to be sure and spread the word.

OMGFreeMovies.com is exactly that. Free movies, online. I'm surprised by how well it works. I'm not one to usually do the pirated content thing. I get all my music from eMusic.com (and the occasional iTunes purchase when there is just no other way to get it) and the majority of my movies are seen through my netflix account. However, yesterday, I had a craving to finally give 300 a chance. It's a beautiful comic, and I enjoyed the art immensely when it came out. However, I have remained unconvinced, despite all my friends telling me that I would enjoy it, that it could successfully be translated into a film. Thus, when Giantmonster linked to omgfreemovies.com, and I saw 300 listed there, I figured it would be a good chance to finally find out. (I was plesantly surprised, by the way...much better than I could have imagined it!)

So, there is my recommendation...get your movies legally, but for those films that you just don't think would be worth plunking down the $9 to catch in the theater...there is this site.

I can live with that.

A Bigfoot Meme!?

Is it just me, or is Bigfoot hot right now. It seems that in the past week, I've run into three or four versions of Bigfoot in artist portfolios across the web.

So, I thought I would post something I did during a meeting at work last week. (After all, I always seem to come in on the tail end of these things! I want in towards the front for once!)

Not sure what the story is here yet...I kind of had a vague idea of the Geiko cavemen when I drew this, but it came out looking cuter than the cavemen. It looks like it would be at home in a kid's story book.

XKCD.com

I've been really enjoying this web comic I found called "XKCD". It's just crudely drawn stick figures with some of the most clever gags I've ever read.

Today's was a great example.

Wikipedian Protester

The strip also does something you don't see a lot of in any form of comics...it gets very romantic. Not necessarily hearts and roses, but romantic in the sense of expressing huge emotions. Take this for example:

It's such a simple, sweet sentiment. Not something I'm used to finding in a web comic (let alone the Internet as a whole!)

Many of the jokes revolve around the web, or science of some kind. I think I would love to sit down and have a beer with the guy that does this site. I just love the way his mind works.

Enjoy!

The Joker!?!!

Holy crap. This is so exciting!

Apparently, this is our first look at Heath Ledger as The Joker from his part in the upcoming Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight.

The image was revealed on ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com, where a picture of Heath in the makeup was slowly revealed. The site now claims to be down, giving a "Page Not Found" error (however, try doing a "select all" while on that page...)

This looks bad ass. I can't wait to see the take Nolan has on the Joker. I've heard a lot of people complain that no one could follow Jack Nicholson's performance in the original Tim Burton "Batman" film, but it looks like they aren't trying to compete with that portrayal. This is looking to be an entirely new Joker. One who may actually be as scary as he has been portrayed in the comic.

I'm trying not to get my hopes too high for this film, but wow. So far, so good.

Troy Sleepy...

My God. What a month.

Since I've started this blog, I've done a fair job of posting every once in a while. But recently, I just haven't found the time. It's not that there hasn't been anything to talk about or that I don't want to, but it's simply been a matter of not having 5 minutes to spare and sit down to write anything out. It's amazing.

And now that I finally have ten minutes to spare...I can't think of anything to say. I've been playing with Photoshop recently (one of the million things that has taken up so much time this month) and I put together a cartoon picture of me, specifically for this blog post. And now I've forgotten what I wanted to say.

...I need to get more sleep, apparently.