G.R. Linden's Blog, page 19

World Building 101- Magic

And now we’ve come to the sexy bit. That’s right fellow world-builders, gods of the imaginary realms, after meticulously planning out our world’s geography and mythology, painstakingly creating an ecosystem in which the distinct plants and animals of your creation can thrive it’s finally time to indulge ourselves a bit. In this edition of World Building 101, we finally cover Magic!
Let your imagination run wild. If you can dream it you can build it. Wizards who can summon talking rhinoceroses...

Worth it?- The Intern

In this edition of Worth It? I take a look at a quiet comedy called The Intern starring Robert De Niro and Ann Hathaway. The story follows 70-year-old widower De Niro as he goes to work as a “senior” intern for Hathaway’s incredibly successful internet startup which is beginning to feel growing pains. The through-line of the story revolves around whether or not Hathaway should bring in an outside CEO to help her run her company.
Robert De Niro has hit that point in his career where he can tak...

Mind Blown- Hubble’s Theory of Universal Expansion

Greetings and welcome back to Mind Blown. I’m going to go out on a limb today and assume that if you are reading an obscure blog about mind-blowing scientific concepts, that you have at least a passing familiarity with The Big Bang Theory (not the television show, the actual Big Bang Theory). What you may not know is that following the creation and the rapid expansion of the universe as we know it, things kept expanding!
To explain that a little bit more clearly we need to go back to Einstein...

Wily Wordplay- On Life

Life is Hard. Here are some quotes about it.

1.“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” ― Dr. Seuss
2.“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” ― George Bernard Shaw
3.“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” ― Mark Twain
4.“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”― Oscar Wilde
5.“You get what anybody gets – you get a lifetime.” ― Neil Gaiman, The Sandma...

A Writer’s Tale- Arthur Conan Doyle

You probably remember Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from one of the previous installments of this series, where he featured prominently on a certain cricket team of some infamy. Or perhaps you simply know him as the creator of the most famous detective in all the world (sorry Hercule). Either way, I would wager that you do not know him from the strange tale I am about to tell.
The period after the first world war was a strange one for many people. The world became a place caught between two eras; th...

The Silver Bullet – Curriculum 3-4

Third Grade: Third grade is an unofficial graduation year. The lessons and methods of the students younger years are left behind as students are expected to be more independent in managing their workload. Learning topics cease to be general overviews and basic building block and are now more complete units with depth and details the students are expected to dive in to.

Math: Topics will cover multiplication tables, long division, mixed operations, estimating and rounding, patterns, graphs an...

Reference Humor: Spaced Season 1 Episode 1 “Beginnings”

While I won’t go so far as to say the cult Channel 4 series Spaced started the modern trend towards reference humor it was certainly an early forerunner of the comedic style as we know it today. And since it was there at the very beginning of the 21st-century meta-movement I thought today we should take a look at its very first episode; aptly titled “Beginnings”. As always bold numbers represent the time at which the reference happened and Spoilers abound for a wide variety of films. Scroll d...

Subtitle Subversive- The Seventh Seal

Cinema, like all the arts, serves many functions. Sometimes it is meant to help us escape. Sometimes its meant to give us hope. Sometimes its meant to expose an uncomfortable truth about the society in which we live. And sometimes its supposed to make us reflect on the nature of existence itself. In this edition of Subtitle Subversive, we’ll be taking a look at Ingmar Bergman’s Det Sjunde Inseglet or, as it is called in English, The Seventh Seal.
One of Bergman’s seminal works, The Seventh Se...

In Theory- Urban Renewal

Urban Renewal. It has a nice ring to it. Investing in run-down metropolitan areas in order to spur growth and prosperity while cutting down on crime and blight. As far as sales jobs go you could find yourself pitching something a lot more unpopular than “less crime, more money” to those who dwell in decaying urban neighborhoods. But this is In Theory and like any good students of economics, politics, and sociology; you, my insightful readers, know that nothing is ever that simple.
The idea be...

The Franchise- The Tick

Spooooon!!!!!!!! Destiny is whispering your name chum and she’s saying “Thank You” for stopping in and checking out this edition of The Franchise. With Amazon’s The Tick returning for the second half of its freshman season today I thought it was the perfect opportunity to break down what makes this big, blue lug and his misfit band so darn lovable. So in the indelible words of Arthur “Not in the face! Not in the face”

Core Concept:  First and foremost The Tick is a spoof. A well thought out,...