Laundry List of Unrelated Items

[ziasudra]

♦ This? Is amazing. And judging by the other painting shown at ~6:22, it seems like the elephants have a certain degree of artistic license to draw whatever they want ("I feel like flowers today" or "I feel narcissistic today"). So does this mean they choose what color paint to dab onto their brushes as well? I'm not sure, as the video doesn't show it.

♦ The fourth season of Doctor Who airs tomorrow! In UK, alas, so I'll probably be quite behind in viewing, even if the signal detector on my TV suddenly decides to pick up BBC America.

♦ Boss Lady loves food. She also owns a Chinese fast food cafe (think spam and egg instant noodles, "office" sandwiches) a block away from our office. For the past week, she's been bringing me congee/porridge for breakfast. Today she gave me spinach soup (no MSG!) and rice for lunch, and packed another quart of spinach soup for me to take home for dinner. She also gave New Co-Worker stir-fried beef and chicken to take home. I might be working at a non-profit, but I definitely ain't going hungry!

♦ Former Roommate J was in town and slept over at 6K last night. I couldn't talk, so we used G-Chat to "talk" with one another. It felt just like my student days, when we'd be in the same room, me working on my essay and her typing away on her computer.

♦ NCAA Final Four and Championship games coming up in the next three days. Three of my Final Four picks are still alive, now let's hope my chosen winner goes all the way.

♦ Still no voice, although I've "improved" today in that if I try really hard, I can squawk out something rather cacophonous for half a second :p

Comments

[sparkly-stuff.livejournal.com]

:( get well soon!!

[ziasudra.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

*hugs*

[lynkemma.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the elephant link, it was very interesting. I've seen it posted elsewhere as well, an it surprises me that so many people seem to believe the elephant is actually painting free-form, and is designing the picture as it goes along. The picture is such a very human design... I highly doubt it's even aware that it's creating a pictoral representation of an elephant; I think it's been taught to recreate a specific design. Which is pretty amazing in itself.

Mm, Chinese food. I wish I had access to good Chinese food where I live - I don't, alas, we only have watered-down Westernised versions.

And get well.

[ziasudra.livejournal.com]

Hehe, I eat so much Chinese food that sometimes I'm desperately looking for non-Chinese substitutes for lunch, even fast food! Maybe we should swap...

I'm sure the elephants were taught to draw those designs, but there also seems to be some sort of betaing (so to speak) going on within the taught structure. Like why was the elephant going over lines that were already drawn, for no other perceivable reason than just to darken them? Seems like we have a perfectionist elephant on camera here ;)

Which is why I really want to know who does the paint dipping. I'm guessing it's a human. Does the elephant start drawing elephants if s/he sees that the first dab of paint on paper is black? Does s/he proceed to draw flowers if the paint is orange-red? Or does a human show a dummy picture to the elephant before giving him/her the paintbrush?

So many things I want to see, but alas, all of them off-camera.

*eats oatmeal, hopes to get well soon*