Sunday, December 28, 2008

Harry Potter Prediction comes true...

Twelve years ago J.K. Rowling wrote a book that has since made her the wealthiest woman in the world and the wealthiest author in the history of the world. In that book she wrote fiction, but like much of the science fiction of Star Trek that later came to fruition (think of their communication devices and compare them to modern day cell phones), Rowlings words have also proved prophetic.

This year my mother got me a gift of a digital photo frame. You can take your digital pictures and/or videos on an SD card and insert the card into the picture frame. It then rotates through the pictures or videos at intervals you determine.

So now I have a picture frame on my wall that has a movie of my daughter dancing. Compare this to Rowling's description of pictures in the wizard world from her very first Harry Potter book.

Science is Magic.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Snow in Houston Again!

For the past three days I've had Geoff Akins, the Bubble Juggler down here from Chicago doing Texas School Assembly Programs for our company. He does an amazing show with soap bubbles. The message is one of hope, belief, persistance, and of course a good deal of science.

But the irony is that he left Chicago, in part to enjoy some of our mild weather and tonight it is warmer up north in New York City than it is here in Houston. The ground is covered in snow.

It snowed here in 2004, too. I remember because it snowed on Christmas day, which has never happened in the history of recorded weather in Houston. I also remember because that was the year I introduced my show "The Arctic Express", a school assembly program about winter festivals celebrated by various cultures around the world.

The theme of the show is about making magic snow, and then, it actually snowed in Texas the year I did that program. Now it's snowing again.

It's just coincidence, but you got to respect that it's a pretty cool coincidence!

Monday, December 08, 2008

Do People Even Think?

I was in the gym this morning and I saw a woman walk past the stairs to the elevator and ride it up to the second floor. This always catches my eye because I have tried to program my brain to always take the stairs if it is two flights or less. It is usually faster to take stairs than to wait for an elevator and the time saved makes me feel like I'm increasing productivity.

Anyway, I saw this lady get off the elevator up stairs and go to the...(you guessed it) STAIRMASTER!!

Do these people even THINK about what they are doing or are they just wandering around in a zombie-like daze?