Author: Mike Pihlman

  • STEM / STEAM: 2023 Weather Summary for Northern California

    STEM / STEAM: 2023 Weather Summary for Northern California

    Meteorologist Adam Epstein is the Chief Meterologist at Sacramento’s FOX40 news station, KTXL. For the second year in a row, Adam has given us permission to post his year end weather summary for Northern California. Thank you, Adam!  2023, to me, was very wet and snowy in the winter, cooler further into the summer than usual, and…

  • Movie Review: “Spirited”

    Movie Review: “Spirited”

    Fresh off their success redeeming their latest mean person the three ghosts: Present (Will Ferrell), Past (Sunita Mani), and Yet-To-Come (Tracy Morgan & Loren G. Woods) set out to find the next humbug asshole to redeem next Christmas. They find Clint Briggs (Ryan Reynolds) but the ghost’s boss, Marley (Patrick Page), quickly turns him down…

  • Movie Review: “The Family Plan”

    Movie Review: “The Family Plan”

    Dan and Jessica Morgan (Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Monaghan) have been happily (if a bit bored) married for 18 years. They live in Buffalo, NY and have 3 kids. Nina (Zoe Colletti) is heading off to college in the fall, Kyle (Van Crosby) is banned from gaming by his dad, and a Thursday ooops baby,…

  • STEM / STEAM: Using Google BARD Artificial Intelligence to Write a Short Story

    STEM / STEAM: Using Google BARD Artificial Intelligence to Write a Short Story

    In 2024, ForCarol.org will “embrace” the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in our college scholarship applications. The requirements for using AI in their submissions are that the students must tell us: 1. What AI apps they used, 2. how they used them (to write, draw, etc) and what prompts they gave to the AI’s to…

  • Movie Review: “Candy Cane Lane”

    Movie Review: “Candy Cane Lane”

    Every year the residents of Candy Cane Lane compete for the best Christmas yard decorations. This year, there is an extra incentive to win as the local cable TV outlet is covering the festivities and will judge the winner of the $50,000 prize. For the Carver family, that incentive is even stronger as Chris (Eddie…

  • Movie Review: “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”

    Movie Review: “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”

    1944 Archaeologist Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and his cohort Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) are hot on the trail of one of Hitler’s most valued antiquities…a Lance. On a train filled with Nazis guarding the antiquities, Dr. Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), knows the Lance is a fake. But in his briefcase, he has a truely powerful antiquity…

  • STEM / STEAM: Artificial Intelligence by Adobe Firefly and Google Gemini

    STEM / STEAM: Artificial Intelligence by Adobe Firefly and Google Gemini

    Here is a quick intro to a couple of the latest AI (Artificial Intelligence) apps I’ve started to look at in the past few weeks. Why am I looking at AI? I asked Inyoung (2014 scholarship winner) and Yash (2018 scholarship winner) if it might be feasible to embrace AI in the 2024 Carol Phan…

  • Movie Review: “Blue Beetle”

    Movie Review: “Blue Beetle”

    Home from college where he earned a pre-law degree at Gotham Law, Jaime Reyes (Xolo Mariduena) finds that his family is hurting financially. Vowing the make enough money so the family can live in a mansion, Jaime, and his sister, Milagro (Belissa Escobedo), start jobs at a Kord Insustries Hotel, where…..they both are promptly fired…

  • Movie Review: “Barbie”

    Movie Review: “Barbie”

    Everything is perfect in Barbieland. Barbie (Margot Robbie) has the perfect life. She wakes up to a wonderful pink world, food magically falls onto her plate, her feet fit perfectly into her high heels, she has lots of friends and a guy who loves her, Ken (Ryan Gosling) She is content knowing that this perfect…