O.R 6

I am a huge fan of Johnny Depp's. In fact this year for Halloween I am going to be him so I decided that I would do a little(more) reasearch about him. So I reread a book about him. John Christopher Depp Jr. was born on June 9th, 1963. When he was 12, his mom gave him a guitar and Johnny began to play in several garage bands. He eventually quit high school so he could become a rock star. However, that didn't turn out to be the greatest. Years later Johnny was introduced to a man named Nicholas Cage who advised Depp to try an acting career. Johnny's career started with an offbeat movie called "A Nightmare on Elmstreet" and things took off from there. Johnny was cast as a cop in the show 21 Jumpstreet. But he quickly grew tired of the constant attention he got. He disliked seeing his face on every magazine, so he promised himself that after the contract expired, he would only do movies that felt right for him.

Hero in a Box

I have decided to base my Hero in a Box on 'character actors'. Here is the definition from http://www.dictionary.reference.com/ :
noun
an actor who specializes in playing supporting roles



It also states on Wikepedia( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_actor ) that character actors usually 'play a particular type of role'It also says that: ' Some character actors have eventually gained star status and have become widely known, or perhaps even become lead actors'.

Ex: Johnny Depp, Dustin Hoffman, Gary Oldman and Leonardo DiCaprio.



TIME even did a photo essay on character actors : http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/2006/in_character/

You may recognize some of them from popular movies like 'Spiderman' and 'Back to the Future'.
For me, I hear the name and I have no idea who this person is and then I see a picture and I remember.

For example, have you ever heard of J.K. Simmons? No? (click on the link)
http://www.filmnet.dk/UserFiles/image/Bjarke%20Kristensen/jk_simmons.jpg
Now do you remember him? He was recently in Juno, playing her dad and Spiderman playing the head of "The Daily Bugle".

O.R. 5

I continued reading little bits of the book, Forensics, and I learned some new info. For instance,
Dactyloscopy is the scientific study of fingerprints and it was developed nearly a hundred years ago. I also learned that SoleMate is a data base of almost all shoe patterns and can narrow a shoe print down to specific brands and models of shoes. I also found out that forensic sculptors are able to reconstruct faces using clay or computer modeling programs, and a portion of a skull. I think this stuff is so cool and amazing. Some may think its weird but it really draws me.

FORENSICS

This week, I was reading a book called Forensics. It was all about, you guessed it: Forensic science. I really like that kind of stuff. When I grow up I would LOVE to be a forensic scientist. I learned that the average adult has 10 to 12 pints of blood in their body. If you have ever watched CSI or a show like that, you know that they refer to something called IAFIS (sounds like a-fis) I never knew what they meant by it but apparentally, IAFIS(Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System) is where fingerprints are processed. I also learned that a single strand of human hair can tell race, body area, length, root type (naturally shed/forcibly removed), and any artificial treatment, damage, or disease of the person whom it belongs to. I just find all this extremely fascinating.

O.R 3

This week I read an article for Economics. It was titled: The Power of Incentives- How Seat Belt Kills. I found this article extremely interesting and it brings up a very interesting point. The article wonders, when people have safer cars, do they drive more recklessly? When they have unsafe cars, do they drive more carefully? So if that is true, would safer cars increase or decrease the number of accidents? One man even suggeste, that, to make young drivers more careful while driving to place a spear pointing directly at their heart. I think this is a little extreme. It would probably end in an accident, even if it wasn't the driver's fault. Another car could have bumped into them. The article then talked about the sign that is put in car windows that says: BABY ON BOARD. It pondered that if people drove more carefully around the cars with the signs, more people would probably buy them, whether or not they had a baby. In that case people might not pay any attention to the sign. Hmmm...What I really liked about this article is that it REALLY makes you think. It can go around in circles for ever. I enjoyed that... for some really odd reason.

Week 2

Ok, I know I've already written about a TV show but... it's one of the things that I really like. This week, I read an article about Dr. House... No, not the one from TV. But he was talking about the Dr. House from TV. Dr. John House specializes in ears and who created and implanted the first FDA-approved cochlear implant. Ever since "House M.D." has come on, John has been worried. It wasn't about House's attitude, it was about his addiction. If you watch House MD, you know that he is addicted to Vicodin. Although Dr. Greg House seems to show no symptoms from his addiction, that doesn't mean that there aren't any. In fact, you can even become deaf. Even though Vicodin temporarily gotten rid of the pain, it starts to kill sensory neural hair cells in the inner ear, which in turn can cause deafness in as little as 6 months. I really enjoyed the article because I really like science and I enjoy watching tv. House is one of my favorites. So it kept me interested.

CSI Replacement

This week, I read an article about how this season, on CSI, Gil Grissom played by William Peterson is leaving in the middle of the season and is being replaced with a new head of forensics. Laurence Fishburne will be in charge of the Las Vegas Crime Lab (on TV at least). His character will " have the same genetic profile as a serial killer, but hasn’t previously acted on any homicidal impulses". It seems like us CSI fans are up for an interesting season.