If you are biased against Kristen Stewart because of her role in Twilight, I strongly urge you to reconsider. She’s excellent; amazing even. She’s one of the few people (along with Shailene Woodley, Idris Elba, Brit Marling, Laura Dern, Margo Martindale, Elle Fanning, Keira Knightley and a few others) whose films I’ll watch just because they appear in them no matter how bad the work itself is.*

I’ve liked her ever since she was a wild-eyed little squirt in Fincher’s Panic Room and she’s only gotten better over the years (which is pretty impressive when you start from great).

That list leaves out a really good Stewart film and role, though: Speak. Do watch that one, too. You won’t regret it.

*It’s everything I can do to avoid the Twilight series; yes, I want to watch it because Stewart is in it. Someday I will succumb, but today is not that day.

About intelligent life, plants solve some real-world optimization problems far better than most people do because they have no illusions and their biases are highly reality-constrained.

And they have no brains at all. We are biased to cephalization and movement. Sessile and environmentally synesthetic with chromatophoric communication might be where it’s at and we are in fact an anomaly.

Also, my spellcheck needs the dictionary for people who memorized the dictionary when they were twelve. This one isn’t up to the task.