Can't wait..

I just can't wait to go walk outside when spring is advanced enough so that the days are warm and the evenings are cool. I'd feel like walking to go grab a smoothie nearby, then wander in the streets in Villeray and breathe the fresh air. I wanna go to Mount Royal on sundays, and bathe in the sun, relaxing with friends and a few hundred other relaxed people.

I miss it. Enough winter already! The sun's back, time for a little bit of warmth to kick in!

In the meantime, I wanna go skate at the Atrium downtown soon, anyone wanna come with? I used to skate so much as a kid, it's been so long it seems, I wanna rent some skates for an hour or something! Come on!! :D

Mystery package

Spring is coming along, and with it, my smile too is coming out of hibernation. I love spring, almost as much as fall, which is my favorite season. So yeah, enough with the useless weather chit chat, I wanted to post something a little less brainy today and share some random girly thoughts, as well as share with y'all the content of the mystery package I received this week! I haven't ordered anything in a long time, so it was kind of a WTF moment when I got the claim coupon for a package in my mailbox earlier this week.

But first, I must share my coup de coeur for this Marc Jacobs bag, which I would certainly marry if marrying a bag was legal (and not completely insane). Too bad I can't even afford to take it out on a date... Link: http://www.net-a-porter.com/product/98495

Erratum... sorta.

I mentioned in a previous post that "space is expanding, but that fraction of it that emits light, that part of it we can see, is currently estimated to be 4.6%." I feel that I was unclear as to the real significance of that percentage. In that 4.6%, there's the moons, the planets, the comets, the interstellar dust and dust clouds, the stars, the quasars, pulsars, even the black holes. Everything that is made of atoms, and therefore classified in the table of elements, from hydrogen particles to plutonium and all those other alloys we don't even know about yet even, everything that emits and reflects light, only constitutes 4.6% of the Universe as we know it.

Fascinating, isn't it? Speaking of the universe.. I was admitted to the University of Quebec in Montreal in creative writing, go me! Whoo! I know, it has nothing to do with the universe.. only with my universe! And now if you'll excuse me, I'll go celebrate the news! ;)

xoxo

Prodigies

I've been neglecting my blog lately, so I'll post a few things over the weekend! For this entry, I decided to share some videos of people who do incredible stuff that most people can't do. This first video is of a 6 year old skateboarding chick! She is just awesome! Sorry if the video is not embedded, but it's not on youtube.

I was trying to find the very first video I saw of Charice Pempengco, but it seems korean broadcasters have a real issue with this particular video being available on youtube, so here again, a video from Dailymotion.

(long) Side note: I LOOOVE this korean presenter, Kang Ho Dong, which was host to one of my favourite korean game shows ever, X-Man. Two teams filled with artists, comedians and actors would oppose in crazy-ass games, and at the end, everyone had to guess who the "X-Man" is. At first, the X-Man was chosen beforehand, and had to be a team disruptor, but later they changed formula a bit, and the X-Man was instead voted by various entertainment people based on a theme/question, like "If I had that persons face, that would be great" or "The person who spends a lot of money on their appearance?", or even "The best person to have their sex changed?". It was hilarious, too bad it got cancelled. Side side note: Kang Ho Dong was the X-Man on the week when the question was "This person doesn't take care of their face very well!"

Coming back to Charice, she's all grown up now, she stars on Glee as Sunshine Corazon, Rachel Berry's natural singing enemy, and probably Sue's final weapon as Vocal Adrenaline's lead singer (I'm SURE). In 2010, she made another appearance on Star King, to whom she pretty much owes her internet fame and subsequent shot at international stardom. I have to say it, her look for that appearance was perfection. And how about that rendition of When You Believe from Prince of Egypt?! Amazing.

Black holes and Revelations

So basically, black holes are giant event horizons where matter, well.. relatively disappears, because light can't escape from its gravitational pull. It peaked my curiosity. How do those black holes intervene in the case that the universe is expanding, and would eventually become so diffuse all the remaining matter would freeze? Will the supermassive black holes at the center of most galaxies eat up the frozen remains until there's no more light and visible matter in the universe, perhaps even the dark matter and whatever's left of the diffuse star stuff Carl Sagan liked to refer to?

The theory wants that our universe is pretty flat. Imagine those huge black holes being the only remnants of the big bang that allowed for billions of light years of cosmic evolution? It's all very fascinating to imagine the end, not of the world, but of time altogether. No more stars in the sky, a generalized event horizon. Now we can't see past 16 billion light years, as the light from the objects that were before that is too diffuse to get to us. Space is expanding, but that fraction of it that emits light, that part of it we can see, is currently estimated to be 4.6%. Now nothing is made, nothing is lost, all is transformed, right? That's the pattern generally observed with regular matter. What about dark energy? Is it a constant or a quintessential force? Similarly, Black Holes were theoretical only a few decades ago, until the effect they have on their surroundings gave them away and showed us their locations in the cosmos. We still can't "see" what's inside a black hole, hence the name. We can't see dark matter either, or the elusive dark energy. I can't help but wonder what the link is.

Perhaps in a decade or two, dark matter and dark energy will have more eloquent names, and their existence and influence will be more widely know, but in the meantime, I can't help but look at both these phenomenons and wonder where this collapsed matter in black holes ends up, and what will be their role in the expansion and possible death of the universe. Maybe the universe will end up contracting, maybe this dark energy is only a wave, and the subsequent void will pull the remaining matter into a cosmic "crunch", like they say. For all we know, gravity does affect this dark substance thing, plus there is no observable epicenter for this "Big Bang", anymore than we can formally pinpoint any horizon line in the cosmic sky. So what exactly are we looking at?

We'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, let's enjoy some related videos. Nothing instructional, unless you wanna learn how to rock the cosmos.

This Mastodon song is magnificent, and plugging quintessence in my speech about black holes was nothing but an excuse to link this. (ok not really, but might as well have been the case.)

On the softer side, I struggled to decide if I was being obvious with Supermassive Black Hole, but I decided to go with another song from Muse's Black Holes and Revelations album, Starlight. The lyrics are a great parallel between the way we behave as humans, just like star clusters and galaxies, sometimes we gravitate towards one another,  we attract and destroy, sometimes we just drift away, and sometimes we blow up and become supermassive black holes, sucking our entourage into our endless mess. I mean just look at Lindsay Lohan! (oh SNAP!)

I like this Porcupine Tree song. Sounds much like a modern Pink Floyd, without the exquisite guitar sound and voice of David Gilmour. And yes, more variation on a theme. :P

I also stumbled upon this short movie on youtube, while searching for more black holes. Seems like this guy found one in his office! INCREDIBLE!!! Hahaha.

Enjoy! ;)

Update

It's one of those weeks when I don't feel like doing anything. Blogging, cleaning, working, cooking, walking.. everything that ends with -ing. I feel stuck in a rut, can't wait for tomorrow's concert (and paycheck, ooga ooga!), at least I'll get a nice bang for my buck. (not THAT kind of bang, geez..) Anyhow, I don't have much to talk about, my weekend's been pretty unmemorable, slept a lot, watched a few documentaries, just a regular business day in the life of K-T.

Truth is, I'm bored. Very bored.

So instead of getting a full blog post about some existential issue, you'll be getting this. (AKA the result of countless hours of random browsing.)

Okay, it's sort of existential, but.. I mean come on. Those kids are old enough to believe in Santa, but the mother nodding in agreement to all that bullshit?! You've got to be kidding me!! The Christians are accusing science of having no proof now?! Talk about reverse psychology!

Coffee and University

I'm so hopped up on caffeine right now, it's not even funny. I drank a large Tim coffee this morning, then another coffee at my break, another at lunch, iced tea while I was eating dinner, and now another x-large Tim coffee.. whew! I had a great day today though, I FINALLY filed my admission demand at university less than an hour ago, I still need to provide my 2nd reference letter, but I bought myself a whole week to get it, and I already got one, which is good stuff nonetheless. I applied for a Certificate in Creative Writing, and another in Sociology (2nd choice). I wanted to include Ecology, but I guess the first two are required first, to get good grades and then apply for that program with grades from a University, instead of with experience (I don't have in the area).

On a related subject, I have this project that I've been procrastinating on. As you all know because I blogged about it before, I'm currently watching the Carl Sagan's Cosmos series on youtube, I'm almost done, and this weekend I watched a few documentaries with my mom also. I want to write a children's book about the climatic changes we are facing because of human activity. Perhaps if we train the next generation to think about these things when they are very young, we'll get through this?! I somehow doubt it, but I'm just tired of sitting here and babbling about how irresponsible human kind is, while very certainly not doing anything to help the situation. I feel like a hypocrite of the worse kind, one that condemns the Industry, and then turns around and buys from McDonald's once in a while and consumes at least as much as the other guy in useless goods.