Trip to the Rose Bowl

In all of college football there are few places as historic as the Rose Bowl. Sometimes that history and tradition has resulted in college football and its pundits doing some stupid things, but nevertheless, the place is rather special. I went there a few weeks ago for the first time.

I wasn't there for the Rose Bowl, but maybe someday I'll go to that too. The place is pretty big. I was there with my buddy Jarv and some of his friends for a Utah football game. The Utes did not win, but it could have gone a whole lot worse.  I stayed up in LA for the weekend. Here were the top highlights of the weekend:

-Not only did I get to hang out with Jarv and his family, but I also saw my old roommate and hung out with his family some.

-I watched a lot of really boss cartoons with Jarv's son. Saw some sweet Avengers cartoons and something that featured a hammerhead yak riding a hammerhead whale. You read that correctly. With the boy there, for once I had a perfectly good reason to watch cartoons. 

-While leaving the game, the Utah band, dance squad, and cheerleaders passed us by. As the cheerleaders walked passed us I glanced over at them as any red blooded male probably would do. Much to my surprise I spotted one of them, and I am not kidding here, completely stuck...staring at me. It was like my beard was a tractor beam and she was locked on. I asked my buddies if they noticed and they all agreed she was looking my way. Now, they are all married men, but I could tell they were a little envious. Understandable considering I am pretty sure this was her (second from the left):

Now I admit, perhaps she was looking and thinking "Look at that beard?" Of course maybe she was actually thinking "Look at that beard!" I prefer to think it was the latter. That one gives me a nice shot of confidence. I'll be at the games in Seattle and Colorado too...just putting out the vibe...though maybe not for 18 year olds like she undoubtedly is.

All in all, it was a fun weekend. Would have been better with a Utah win, but still some pretty good moments as I am sure you can agree.

Science, seriously, just stop it all ready

Once again science has come along and ruined all our fun. This time a bunch of dudes in New Zealand were looking at old, extinct Moa bones between 600 and 8,000 years old. They examined the amount of DNA decay in the bones and concluded that DNA has a half-life of about 521 years. That means that even under ideal preservation conditions the longest you would expect to find any intact DNA in a specimen is about 6.8 million years. To find DNA that you could actually read and do something with? About 1.5 million years. What does this mean for the overall goal of modern science to create a living, breathing dinosaur (a Tyrannosaurus rex to be more precise)?

Obviously this is a big blow to molecular biologists and really people everywhere because dinosaurs are a lot older than this and so the dream of recovering some dino genetic material, even if it was encased in amber in a mosquito's belly, seems to be over. I suppose dino DNA could somehow be more resilient than Moa DNA, but that really doesn't make sense in any sort of practical way...only in awesomely radical and probably not true ways. Science, sometimes you are just the worst. Seriously. Even with dino cloning out the window, all hopes of achieving the goal of seeing a real dinosaur are not totally lost (just significantly lessened from an all ready very small likelihood). Here are some ways we just might yet get those dino dude ranches.

Reverse engineering one from a chicken (or other bird)

This is the idea that after millions of years of evolution everything that makes a dinosaur is locked away inside a bird. If we just tweak those genes a bit maybe we can make one of them birds come out more like a dino. This is actually a legitimate idea with actual scientist and dino experts working on it. Sure its riddled with several, several, several technical challenges, but theoretically possible I guess.

Discovering some sort of "Land of the Lost" like scenario

Maybe there really is a dinosaur in Loch Ness? Probably not, but maybe. If not there, well maybe somewhere else. Again, probably not. Or maybe some dinos were taken from here and preserved by some other civilization on another planet or something. Extremely unlikely, but I'm leaving no scenario out when it comes to something this important.

Making time travel work

Everyone knows there are 3 main reasons to invent time travel. One, financial reasons, like going back and betting on sporting events that you know the outcome to. Two, saving lives, this obviously includes John Connor scenarios, but also includes going back to stop dudes, dudes like Hitler, from causing so much harm. Three, freakin dinosaurs! So far time travel has proven to be a tricky puzzle to solve and while it is probably not getting figured out any time soon, you never know.

Magic

Ok, ok, ok, I admit, this is a long shot, but the sky's the limit if it ever comes through.

See, there is still a chance. Sure, its an extremely, ridiculously small chance, but still...a chance. For such a big deal like this it is important to remember that there is a chance, especially with such disappointing news. Unless we somehow come up with a way to decipher dino DNA without actually having dino DNA these are our best chances. Most of these rely on science in some way so don't blow it again science like you did with the dino DNA!

Movie Review "Taken 2"

This movie (series) is all about people being kidnapped and then fortunately being saved. Its a fine movie, but unfortunately not as good as the first which by no means was a gem of a movie. This one has plenty of problems and things that would be very easy to poke a little fun at. The hard part for me is given the fact that everything happening in the movie is because of an abduction it is hard for me to poke fun at these things without maybe coming across as though I was belittling or treating casually the horrific and scarring experience that any sort of human trafficking must cause. By no means is that my intention. In fact, maybe the producers could consider that when they unnecessarily make another one of these. I mean considering that this one begins with the dead dudes from the last one being buried it really seems like little time has passed between the events of the last movie and this one and yet, everyone seems to have recovered rather well. I think this is rather remarkable, especially for the daughter who's best friend was killed and she herself was drugged and nearly sold into sex slavery. She has bounced back amazingly well all while she is experiencing yet another parental separation. Shoot, she has even begun dating some slacker dude in that short amount of time. And now, just like that, she is heavily involved in a revenge plot that has captured her parents, once again while overseas. There are people who have been struck multiple times by lightning with better fortune than her. I am pretty sure thats gonna take some time to recover from. Probably a lot of time. Maybe give them a few or maybe even several years between this one and the next movie you make. Now having said all that just some heads up to some of the characters. To Liam, maybe never let anyone in your family travel abroad again. To daughter, maybe cut your dad some slack for being very overprotective. All things considered it seems to be reasonable. Lastly to slacker dude, she's real cute, but maybe take things a bit slower. For both your sakes...but mainly hers...I could actually care less about yours...sorry...I guess.