Keeping Warm

Tonight I found out that I won a raffle for a physio fleece jacket! Woo hoo! It's been a while since I've won anything. It's nice to be lucky again.

Just a few hours left to plan for April Fool's Day, everyone. I've been looking at a website that describes the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time. And Wikipedia has an entry for this year's hoaxes too.

Rap Videos Created for the Internet

A few months ago on Saturday Night Live they made a rap video called Lazy Sunday, a spoof of rap videos that described what the singers would do on a Sunday in New York when they didn't really have anything better to do. Since then there have been some good responses from the U.S. west coast (Lazy Monday), Midwest (Lazy Muncie), and from England (Lazy Sunday UK: language warning with this one). There have also been crappy amateur ones, but I won't torture you with those.

I can't believe how much this makes me want to make my own video...

To all budding writers...

I just found out about another site where you try to do lots of writing in a month. This one is called April Fools, and as you might guess it starts in April. What's nice about this one is that writing that you have to do for school can be part of your word count! All the writing without all the guilt! But then, you are doing homework and how much fun is that? Oh well, I signed up anyway. I gave myself a 5000 word goal, and that should mostly be from assignments for school. Just an extra kick in the butt.

Silly Walks

Have you ever wanted to develop your very own silly walk? Now you can! Just head on over to Monty Python's Silly Walks Generator!

Dancers in their genes

I received the following in an e-mail and haven't tried to ascertain the veracity, but thought I'd share it anyway.

Are Dancers Genetically Different Than the Rest of Us? Yes, Says Hebrew University Researcher

* Aboriginal performers at the Alice Springs Aboriginal Art and Culture Center in the Central Australian Outback of the Northern Territory (Photo courtesy Australian Northern Territory Tourist Commission).

What makes dancers different than the rest of us? Genetic variants, says a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In a study published in the American journal, Public Library of Science Genetics, Psychology Prof. Richard P. Ebstein and his research associates have shown, through DNA examination, that dancers show consistent differences in two key genes from the general population. Ebstein is the head of the Hebrew University Psychology Department’s Scheinfeld Center for Human Genetics in the Social Sciences.

This finding is not surprising, says Ebstein, in view of other studies of musicians and athletes, which also have shown genetic differences.

Ebstein and his colleagues found in an examination of 85 dancers and advanced dancing students in Israel variants of two genes that provide the code for the serotonin transporter and arginine vasopressin receptor 1a.

Both genes are involved in the transmission of information between nerve cells. The serotonin transporter regulates the level of serotonin, a brain transmitter that contributes to spiritual experience, among many other behavioral traits. The vasopressin receptor has been shown in many animal studies to modulate social communication and affiliative bonding behaviors. Both are elements involved in the age-old human social expression of dancing.

The genetic evidence was corroborated by two questionnaires distributed by the researchers to the dancers. One is the Tellegen Absorption Scale (TAS), that correlates aspects of spirituality and altered states of consciousness, and the other is the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ), a measure of the need for social contact and openness to communication.

The genetic and questionnaire results of the dancers were compared with those of two other groups examined – athletes as well as those who were both non-dancers and non-athletes. (Athletes were chosen for comparison since they require a good deal of physical stamina like dancers.)

When the results were combined and analyzed, it was clearly shown that the dancers exhibited particular genetic and personality characteristics that were not found in the other two groups.

The dancer “type,” says Ebstein, clearly demonstrates qualities that are not necessarily lacking but are not expressed as strongly in other people: a heightened sense of communication, often of a symbolic and ceremonial nature, and a strong spiritual personality trait.

Others involved in the research with Ebstein were his Ph.D. student Rachel Bachner- Melman, as well as additional researchers from Israel and France.

You go girl!

Local paralympian Colette Bourgonje won two bronze medals at the winter paralympics in Turin this past week. Colette is a teacher and her students were very excited after she won her first medal. I can only imagine how excited and proud they must be now. And what's my connection to her? I petted her friendly and nice dog on Sunday.

Happy New Year

... Persian New Year, that is. It is now the year 1385. To learn more about Nowruz you can read this lovely article at Wikipedia.

I received a lovely e-mail from an Iranian man who was briefly involved with my dance group. Here's what he said:

Dear Friends,

As the Mother Nature is giving birth to the spring,
May the seeds of love grow tall,
May the clouds rain peace,
May the sun radiate compassion,
May the wisdom overcome the ignorance,
May the trees humble down fruitfully,
May the candle of life burn endlessly,
May we all dance to the rhythms of creation, sing to the spirit of all beings,
Hand to Hand,
And shout with joy,
Life is beautiful,
As one.
- from Mehrdad Shokouhi

Another cool study

This could help all you fainters out there...

Simple exercises may ward off fainting

My tentative summer schedule

It's not everything, but today I received the first draft of where I will be doing my clinical placements this summer:

• May 1 - June 2: Wascana Rehab Centre in Regina - Neuro-Rehab placement
• June 5 - July 7: City Hospital in Saskatoon - Orthopedic inpatient or outpatient department

I'm pleased. I've heard good things about both of those places. Once I know if it's final (by March 24) I'll have to start finding a place to stay. I still have to figure out what I'll do with the rest of my summer. I haven't seen many job listings that will accomodate this schedule...

Adventures in House Sitting

Well, the title's a little misleading, really. I've been housesitting since Feb. 23 and it's all been pretty easy. I remembered to pay the power bill. I even remembered to water the plants. I guess the most adventuresome thing that has happened so far is that I spent about 30 minutes trying to open a jar of pizza sauce last week, with no success.

My life is boring lately, but at least I've been quite productive. I hope that means I can be awesome again by the time finals come around.

Right now I'm at the Health Sciences Library, procrastinating driving home to pick up some things. Things that could be useful, but that I don't care about right now. Maybe I'll just decide I don't need them. Then I could go back to where I'm housesitting, have a shower, and go to bed.

Snakes on a Plane

This is the title of an upcoming movie, believe it or not! Thanks to Zena I have discovered the wonderful underground movement determined to love this movie!

Here's a transcript from an interview that Samuel L. Jackson did with NPR:

"Snakes on a Plane is, well, pretty much what it sounds like. I want to do films, sometimes, that excited me when I was a kid, and I always like horror and adventure movies. And when I opened the cover on that particular script and it said Snakes on a Plane I was immediately, at the time, viscerally struck. Oh yeah. It turned out to be exactly what I thought. You know---somebody turns loose a big crateload of poisonous snakes on an airplane, and we can fight the snakes until we get to our destination. It was just, kind of, one of those popcorn kind of moments where you're going to a movie and you don't have to think about what's going to happen. You know what's going to happen. You know there are going to be snakes loose on this plane, people are going to get bitten, there are going to be some victims and you hope you're a survivor. You just want to have that experience and to excite people who are sitting there watching. So people who have a fear of flying and people who have a fear of snakes are gonna have a double-whammy going on there. It's kinda gonna be great."

• Find out more about the upcoming movie (has some pictures too)
  
• Read an article "Snakes on a Plane... and Nice Breasts"
  
• Read the Fark.com comments
• Listen to the audio trailer parody
  
• Watch a rough cut made by two guys who could not wait for it to come out in theatres (very funny)
• And hey! Samuel L. Jackson gets attacked by snakes in "The Ultimate Showdown" cartoon!