Big Stick Physics

Author: Richard Nestoff (Page 141 of 168)

Called it: Poor Things wins the right Oscars.

March 11, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Of course I don’t watch the Academy Awards, but I posted a review of Poor Things and noticed that the awards show was scheduled for later in the day. 

Emma Stone won Best Actress for her part in Poor Things.  She had to act like something that didn’t exist.  She did it convincingly.  She completely sold the performance.  That seems much more difficult than acting like a particular person or type of person. 

For instance, Da’Vine Joy Randolph won Best Supporting Actress for her part in The Holdovers.  She acted like the fat, Black ladies who used to serve at the cafeterias at Ohio State.  Da’Vine had some extra dramatic work that she did convincingly.  I really enjoyed The Holdovers.  It was a subtle movie, but very relatable.  It was nominated, but didn’t win, for Best Original Screenplay.

Poor Things also won Best Production Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling and Best Costume Design.  Those are all aspects that go into making a unique and plausible world.  It’s much more difficult when it’s a fantasy world.  

Oppenheimer won a bunch of awards.  I liked it well enough, but I’m more interested in the physicists of era, and they weren’t very prominent in the film.

Godzilla Minus One  was awarded the prize for Best Visual Effects.  I’m happy for them.  I haven’t seen it yet, but many people are impressed with the film and it only cost $15 million to make.  Domestically, it’s made $56 million.  That should be wake up call for Disney who spend 30 times that much on big franchise films, but only sell two or three times more tickets.

Sparky goes for chicken.

March 10, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Sparky was feeling  cheated for giving up the dead squirrel.  He always intends to do the right thing, but he doesn’t see a dead squirrel as a moral question.  He needed his faith restored, so I took him for a car ride.

While we were out, he made a compelling case for picking up a rotisserie chicken.  After picking it up, the truck smelled great.  Sparky couldn’t stop talking about how much fun we’d have eating chicken when we got home.

Eating the chicken wasn’t as wonderful as Sparky had hoped.  Being a beagle, his idea of a good time is eating so much chicken, he vomits.  Then eating the vomit and taking a nap.  Instead, I gave him an amount equal to about 4 human bites with no greasy skin.

Sparky doubts my judgement.

March 10, 2024 / / 0 Comments

He found a squirrel in the brush, and pulled it out to show me.  After I told him to drop it, I got his WTF look.  To his credit, he did drop and abandon it when I spoiled his fun.

Now that we are back at the house, he is acting like I promised him something even better than a dead squirrel.  I’ll take him for a car ride to even the score.

A small Reddit victory

March 7, 2024 / / 0 Comments

While browsing the *Teachers* forum on Reddit, I read this post. 

If you want to keep your jobs, and preserve the education system as it currently stands, VOTE in the 2024 presidential election.

The text of the post was a rant about how Trump promised to dismantle public education and collapse democracy in America.  No one had commented, so I did:

The education system, as it currently stands, ain’t that great.

The original poster and a couple of dozen other people replied.  A third were supportive, so I engaged the other two-thirds.  Always be polite, but give no ground.

Several other people commented to disagree with the original post and started other threads.

After 200 comments, the original author withdrew her post.  My comment has 28 up votes.  I figured I’d be deep in negative numbers.

That’s a win.  Not only did she withdraw, but many conservative teachers know that they aren’t alone.

Sticking with the workout.

March 1, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Since Davy and I started working out, I wanted to encourage symmetry.  Some machines allow for a different weight for each arm.   It made sense to start with the highest weight that either arm could handle.  I don’t want to develop a lobster claw, where one arm is much stronger than the other.  That might be a fiddler crab I’m thinking of.

Working in muscle pairs seemed like a good idea.  The row goes with the bench press and the pull-down with military press.

One idea was to workout with the same weight on all stations.  It’s a dumb idea.  Starting out, my shoulders were weak, bench was reasonable and pulling was strong.  Also, with machines, you really don’t know what actual resistance force is required.  Nobody is calibrating those things.

My strength workout is six stations.  That doesn’t sound challenging, but after a half-hour of cardio, that is all the juice I’ve got.

Here’s what it looked like when we started:

  • Military press:  20 lbs per arm
  • Row: 100 lbs
  • Twist:  100 lbs
  • Leg Press:  Who knows?  It depends on the machine.
  • Bench:  110 lbs
  • Pull-down:  100 lbs

After six months,

  • Military press:  80 lbs per arm
  • Row:  140 lbs
  • Twist: 140 lbs
  • Leg Press:  430 lbs
  • Bench press:  145 lbs
  • Pull-down:  140 lbs

With the improvement in the military press, I’m tempted to workout with 140 lbs across the board. 

Some of the improvement is due to using a different station with a more comfortable motion.  For the bench, we are using the Smith machine, so that is a real number.  The leg press is all over the map because some machines move body weight along with supplemental weights and all are on an incline.  The 430 lbs is with actual weights, but is on an incline.  The twist machine is doable with almost any amount of weight, so that’s kind of phony.

We do a solid half-hour on cardio.  I use the bike, and average about 130 bpm.  I go harder or easier as the workout progresses.  I’m all sweaty at the end, so that seems good.

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