{"id":380,"date":"2011-03-23T22:24:45","date_gmt":"2011-03-23T22:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adamflanders.com\/blog\/?p=380"},"modified":"2011-03-23T22:24:45","modified_gmt":"2011-03-23T22:24:45","slug":"reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamflanders.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been very busy with my classes and completing my senior research paper this semester. Not sure if I&#8217;ll be marching in May or not because I need to complete a couple stray classes this Summer, but we&#8217;ll see. In any case, I&#8217;ll have my Biology degree by August.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\tNot a whole lot going on in the gay rights world. Maryland&#8217;s same-sex marriage bill failed to get past the legislature. The 9th Circuit refused to lift the stay on Prop8, so we&#8217;re in for a long haul in that court battle, which won&#8217;t pick back up until this Fall. On the other hand, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-obama-gays-20110323,0,5104981.story\">Obama signed the United Nations Gay Rights Resolution<\/a>. The focus of this resolution is on developing nations where gay people are persecuted, even jailed or murdered for being gay (though it could be argued the US still has a long way to go in distancing us from that sort of behavior).<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\tI&#8217;ve been reading a lot. Aside from textbook reading, I just finished Susan Orlean&#8217;s <i>The Orchid Thief<\/i>, which was awesome. I definitely recommend it! The movie <i>Adaptation<\/i> (2002) is loosely based on the book and stars Meryl Streep and Nicolas Cage. It&#8217;s kind of bizarre and takes liberties with the Orlean&#8217;s writing, but it gives a good visual supplement to a book that is profuse with rich imagery.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\tI&#8217;m nearly finished with Scott Rosenberg&#8217;s <i>Dreaming in Code<\/i> and, continuing Matheson&#8217;s bibliography from <i>What Dreams May Come<\/i>, I&#8217;m about halfway through <i>The Other Side of Death<\/i> by Raymond Bayless. I have to admit the latter is kind of dry. I&#8217;m also working through Thich Nhat Hanh&#8217;s <i>You Are Here<\/i>. Hanh is one of my favorite authors, but one does not simply read through his books &#8211; it&#8217;s more of an instructional book in leading a life of mindfulness in the Buddhist tradition. I&#8217;ve read maybe ten of his books so far.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.adamflanders.com\/images\/booksmarch.jpg\" border=\"0\"><\/center><br \/>\n\t\t\t\tMy reading&#8217;s going to have to take a back seat starting this weekend &#8211; I have a Cosmos Black Nintendo 3DS reserved at GameStop and I&#8217;m really excited for the release! It will be the first consumer glasses-free 3D technology released in the US and the reviews so far are overwhelmingly positive. I&#8217;m especially excited about the augmented reality feature and the ability to take 3D photos. I&#8217;m also glad we&#8217;ll finally have a Virtual Console for the DS so that it will be possible to download past titles like Super Mario Bros. I&#8217;m a little disappointed with the launch titles, though I have already reserved copies of Nintendogs + Cats, Super Monkey Ball, and PilotWings Resort. I&#8217;m confident that coming titles like Zelda and Kid Icarus will make it all worthwhile.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.adamflanders.com\/images\/nintendo3ds.jpg\" border=\"0\"><\/center><br \/>\n\t\t\t\tBetween all of this I&#8217;m honing my C programming skills and getting comfortable with Objective-C and the iPhone SDK. I have like a hundred plants growing. My gerbils are doing well. My mom and sister decided to keep our new pomeranian puppies, bringing the total up to 6 dogs, though having a huge number of animals in general has always been common in my familiy, lol. I get to visit them when I go home. They are precious poocademons as always ^-^<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\tI&#8217;ll post more updates as things develop. I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ll have a lot to say about the 3DS, my research, and my upcoming paleogenetics website. Oh, and UMaine Pride Week is April 11th to the 16th.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.adamflanders.com\/images\/prideweek2011.jpg\" border=\"0\"><\/center><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been very busy with my classes and completing my senior research paper this semester. Not sure if I&#8217;ll be marching in May or not because I need to complete a couple stray classes this Summer, but we&#8217;ll see. In any case, I&#8217;ll have my Biology degree by August. Not a whole lot going on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamflanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamflanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamflanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamflanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamflanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/adamflanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":382,"href":"https:\/\/adamflanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions\/382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamflanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamflanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamflanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}