Log #12

We watched the Sandkings movie and it was so much different from the short story. Instead of Simon Kress just being a crazy pet owner to a scientists that was bitten by the sandkings and now is a mad scientists. Hollywood turned this weird, but cool short story into another Frankenstein piece just so people would watch. And the actor that plays Simon is soo bad I mean like I would rather listen to the song that gets on everybody's nerves and write something on it than watch this guy. He is good in some parts and I'm not going to take that away from him, but the rest is so over dramatic and just not good. Some parts seemed like it was improvised into the scenes and yeah. Overall just not good. But you should read and then watch the movie and then will you see what I mean. You will be a little mad when you see that hollywood changed everything about this story.
https://forwearemany.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/sandkings.pdf

Log #11

The Thing is a good movie. If we were not watching it in class I might have watched it in my own group. It is all about an american group that is in the Arctic and a monster thing is mimicking Earth creatures so that it can blend in. And then the people are trying to figure out who else is like the alien because the doctor looked up the odds of someone being like that is 75% so we are at the part where they are choosing someone to take the key for the blood supply because someone took all the blood and ripped open some of the bags they were going to use to do a blood test. The one person that would have been a neutral party in the matter said that he did not want the key that is was too much responsibility so now we are at the part where they give the key to the leader of the group and they are doing things, but I can;t wait to see the rest of the movie because I really want to know who is the other person that was infected and who ends up surviving to the end of the movie.

Log #10

We are doing a video project for class where we have to watch two movies scifi movies that we have not seen before and do a project either a video or a poster or something comparing the movie's key elements and other things. I am thinking about doing The Martian the movie that just came out and Interstellar because the both have to do with some form of space travel and getting back to there families. There is some type of sacrifice either the people going to resurce the person in The Martian or how the dad help his daughter and the planet by going into space in the movie Interstellar. These movies are both very interesting because they both have a interesting appeal to them and follow the science fiction motifs. Like in Interstellar the dad is saving mankind from destruction and in all science fiction pieces it is always something about how mankind and technology destroys us or something like that. And in the other movie it is science fiction because mankind is in outer space and the people are needed to come save him after a storm on mars. Now even those I don't know to much about these movies (which is probably a good thing) I don't have anything to compare these movies to other science fiction movies so if these movies are boring I have to sit though them anyway because I don't know a better movie to switch it with/ I couldn't really give these movies horrible ratings too. So I think its a win win situation, but I might find a different topic to do the movies on we will just have to see.

Log #9

We were supposed to read to pg.119 this week and so far it is very interesting. Andrew Wiggin, is the main character he has an old brother, Peter, who he hates and a older sister, Valentine, who he misses and loves very much. Andrew (Ender) has been wearing a monitor for I believe is six years, so since he was born and out of the three of them he has it on for the longest. When they take off his monitor, Ender is scared by what would happen when he has it off. Then that day at school he is confronted by a school bully named Stilson, he starts the fight between them by calling him "third" because the country has a two children rule where the two children get free schooling and other things but if you have more than two you have to pay for all the things for the extra children that are not the first two. Ender beats up Stilson so bad that he puts him in the hospital and dies. The next day in the morning a I. F. (International Fleet) officer comes by Ender's home to meet with the parents and him. The officer wanted to know the reason behind why Ender beat up that kid and Ender said " because kicked won that one battle, I bet him up more so i could win the rest of them and so they would leave me alone." When the officer heard that, that's when he said that he wanted Ender to come with him to fight the bugger's in battle. That he would be perfect. Ender accepted the offer he though he was heartbroken about his sister. But before he left she said that she will always have a bond with him. He gets on the ship to take him to Battle camp, and another kid starts to pick on him. Ender get so mad that he breaks the kids arm.

And that's where i am at so far so I have to get back to you on the rest, but I lead you in pretty well right? Well this is one of the better school books that I had to read and so far I am enjoying it. I really just want to read the introduction so I can figure out what happens in the end but ya know I can't spoil the book for myself because I'm too much fun reading it. ;)

Log #8

I read the Sandkings short story for class and I official have to say that was the weirdest thing I ever had to read for a class. It wasn't like the books that teachers make you read and you just don't like them and you call the weird, NO THIS WAS NOT LIKE THAT. The story was interesting like I was engaged in reading it, but it was creepy. So this story is about this crazy pet owner Simon Kress, and he owns a ton of piranhas in his fish tank but they all died when he went on some kind of business trip. He went into town to look for more exotic pets to use for his amusement, and he stopped in this place called Shade and Wo's pet store or something like that, and that's he met Jane Wo and she showed him what sandkings were. They are this small creature, kind of spider like but back to the story Kress didn't want them because they were too small when he was at the store. She told him that they will grow bigger to fit the tank and that they war (because he like animal fights for his amusement this was good). he took them and he fed them regularly, then he gave them an image of him so that they can sketch it on their castles. Then he started to starve them, and started to fight over food and getting more and more violent and then broke out of the tank. then at the end the orange sandkings they eat Simon because he went into the house and they attacked him. (that was the shorten version). Any way it a weird story but it is very interesting and fits into SciFi well because the insects attacked humans.

Log # 7

Artificial Intelligence is within our reach. Not earlier this year but maybe a few years ago I think IBM created the super computer that name was Watson. Watson was created to go against some of the smartest minds in the Jeopardy game. When they were designing him, the makers knew that he could not use the internet and needed to put tons of documents in the data banks so that he could answer the questions. But the one challenge was that the computer needed a human brain. It needed to be able to respond to hard context clues and understand the puns and weird language that are in the questions. In order for them to do that they needed to be able to use computer learning. Computer learning is when the computer picks up on patterns on its own to be able to get when your are trying to say. So it is getting examples of different things. Like when you talk into your phone like to Siri, and you want it to look up your favorite restaurant, and it looks it up for you; well your computer is looking  up different things the might match up with the accent in your voice. And they gave this computer practice questions to help out when by itself in the game. This is super cool and if we are to put this technology in to a robot then we can have helpers with almost everything known to man. (ans yes the computer won the game. Computer 1 Man 0)         

Log #6

In class we are watching Gattaca with Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman. This  movie is about the life of Vincent (Ethan Hawke) an invalid (a non-testube child) going up to space with a heart condition. This movie in a way is cool because not only are babies genetically engineered, but they are also the dominant race in the movie. having babies the "old-fashioned" way is a population of few and if that happens to be the case, the child will die early before they reach 40. Even though in the movie having a child that was in-vitro was not as accepted as today in the real world, It is cool to see how each character uses there abilities for good or evil. In the movie Vincent, is invalid and he can't get the job that he wants because only the best of the best such as the genetically engineered in-vitro children. Vincent take over the life of someone else that fits these standards and uses his blood and pee to get him the job that he so desperately wanted, which was to go into space. But his brother, is on his tale when one of the upper ranked people kill someone in the office and investigate, Vincent does not do a good job with cleaning off all his excess skin and hair, so they find it and look for him so they can arrest him. But with Vincent's hard work he is not caught at all and is able to make his dream a reality.

In though this movie is highly fictional, we all can learn something from this movie. I learned that no matter who you are or where you come from anything is possible if you set your mind to it. Just like Vincent, you can do whatever you want even though the odds are not in your favor, and something we can do great things when we put our minds to it.

Log # 5

2001: a space odyssey was one of the weirdest movies I have ever seen. Even though we saw it in class and some movies in school can be weird those movies were nothing compared to this. It was a strange movie because almost nothing in the beginning made sense. At first it was the primal point in our history. We had not fully evolved yet, and in one of the scenes it shows a monkey hitting a bunch of bones with another bone. Then later their was a group of monkeys beating up a monkey. Or how the one bone is turned into a spaceship. I guess that's just me when it comes to those scenes. But the one that is like the weirdest is the end after the light show Dave, the main character, is transported to another galaxy by the domino thing, then is in a house and it is someone in a room eating some food. You see him drop his fork he picks in up and Dave is in the bed dying, so on his death bed, and the one person eating is Dave. So Dave is watching himself die, and the domino thing is at the foot of the bed some creepy music comes on. Then you see a baby in a little bubble going toward Earth. Dave is the baby and he is the special child. But what makes him the special? Is it an evolutionary leap for man? Does the world want us to die? Was he the only one that survived? The world may never know, but this one site says that it was an evolutionary leap. And we need to make new tools to help with evolution. But now the real question is do we need tools to help us evolve or to destroy us all?