3/31/2009

NBA Draft Scouts

My friend Tyler knows more about basketball than anyone I've ever known. He has been obsessed with basketball since at least as far back as the time UNLV scored over 100 points in the NCAA championship game in 1990.
He has coached High School basketball, and professional basketball teams.
He is a former co-owner of the professional team the Grand Rapids Flight.
Currently he is a co-owner of Rivertown Sports, and the IBL team the Holland Blast.
He has started a new magazine.
Check it out.
click here

Prom Night Dumpster Baby



A lot of people think the FOX tv show Family Guy isn't funny.
A lot of people are often wrong.

What Is School For?

Taken From Seth Godin's Blog
Seth's Blog

What is school for?

Seems like a simple question, but given how much time and money we spend on it, it has a wide range of answers, many unexplored, some contradictory. I have a few thoughts about education, how we use it to market ourselves and compete, and I realized that without a common place to start, it's hard to figure out what to do.

So, a starter list. The purpose of school is to:

1. Become an informed citizen
2. Be able to read for pleasure
3. Be trained in the rudimentary skills necessary for employment
4. Do well on standardized tests
5. Homogenize society, at least a bit
6. Pasteurize out the dangerous ideas
7. Give kids something to do while parents work
8. Teach future citizens how to conform
9. Teach future consumers how to desire
10. Build a social fabric
11. Create leaders who help us compete on a world stage
12. Generate future scientists who will advance medicine and technology
13. Learn for the sake of learning
14. Help people become interesting and productive
15. Defang the proletariat
16. Establish a floor below which a typical person is unlikely to fall
17. Find and celebrate prodigies, geniuses and the gifted
18. Make sure kids learn to exercise, eat right and avoid common health problems
19. Teach future citizens to obey authority
20. Teach future employees to do the same
21. Increase appreciation for art and culture
22. Teach creativity and problem solving
23. Minimize public spelling mistakes
24. Increase emotional intelligence
25. Decrease crime by teaching civics and ethics
26. Increase understanding of a life well lived
27. Make sure the sports teams have enough players

3/30/2009

MSU is going to the Final Four



Spartans advance to the Final Four after 64-52 victory over Louisville.

3/26/2009

Parents Claim Hospital Killed Their Teen For Organs



The parents of an 18-year-old who suffered a brain injury in a 2007 snowboarding accident say his doctors "intentionally killed" him to harvest his organs.

full article here

What Would It Be Like If Dane Cook Was Funny?



and I don't mean the "oh-my-god-i-wanna-punch-that-guy-in-the-face" kind of funny that he already is.

3/25/2009

The Global Economic Crisis Is About Power, Not Money



"It's over — we're officially, royally fucked. no empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire."
by Matt Taibbi

full article here

3/24/2009

Nintendo's NEW Punch-Out! Game

Stephen Colbert wins NASA naming contest



Associated Press
updated 4:35 p.m. ET, Mon., March. 23, 2009

WASHINGTON - NASA's online contest to name a new room at the international space station went awry. Comedian Stephen Colbert won.

The name "Colbert" beat out NASA's four suggested options in the space agency's effort to have the public help name the addition. The new room will be launched later this year.
NASA's mistake was allowing write-ins. Colbert urged viewers of his Comedy Central show, "The Colbert Report" to write in his name. And they complied, with 230,539 votes. That clobbered Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes. Nearly 1.2 million votes were cast by the time the contest ended Friday.
NASA reserves the right to choose an appropriate name. Agency spokesman John Yembrick said NASA will decide in April, but will give top vote-getters "the most consideration."

How To Make A Bettery-Free Flashlight



MAKE has a cool tutorial on how to build a flashlight that doesn't use batteries.
"In this project, you will make a flashlight that works without batteries. Even more amazing, you can recharge it in three minutes and it will run for more than 24 hours. Because the ultra capacitors can be recharged thousands of times, you may save the environment from ever receiving an old flashlight in the trash system."
how to build a battery free flashlight

Solar Refrigerators are on the way


The solar fridge was developed by mechanic engineering students Frederik Knop, Nicolás Ripoll, and Olivier Bernade, the last one a French exchange student.

The prototype is based on adsorption, which Wikipedia explains in the following way:

Absorptive refrigeration uses a source of heat to provide the energy needed to drive the cooling process.[...] The classic gas absorption refrigerator sends liquid ammonia into a hydrogen gas. The liquid ammonia evaporates in the presence of hydrogen gas, providing the cooling. The now-gaseous ammonia is sent into a container holding water, which absorbs the ammonia. The water-ammonia solution is then directed past a heater, which boils ammonia gas out of the water-ammonia solution. The ammonia gas is then condensed into a liquid. The liquid ammonia is then sent back through the hydrogen gas, completing the cycle.

This article was originally posted on Treehugger.com
You can read more here:
Treehugger.com

Time Machine

Double Click on this picture, and then you'll be able to read it.
Look at the one on the bottom right corner.

3/19/2009

Bacteria (random facts about)

Bacteria and archaea vastly outnumber all other life forms on earth.
Bacteria are the oldest known life form on the planet.
Most bacteria have yet to be identified.
The human body has almost 10 times more bacteria cells than human cells.

3/18/2009

Wolfsheim











Immanual Kant, Jesus, and my Grandfather

I believe that all 3 of these people stated something true, that they came to in different ways, and they all mean basically the same thing in the end.
(also, I'm kind of paraphrasing all 3, rather than quoting directly)


Kant - "Act so that every action of yours should be capable of becoming a universal rule of action for all men."

Jesus - "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Grandpa K - "Don't ever do anything that would embarrass you if it was on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper, and you'll be OK."



3/16/2009

The end of Detroit

Detroit may be the first metropolitan area in the world with thriving suburbs surrounding a dead city.

In the 1920s a New York weekly magazine Outlook actually called Detroit "the most modern city in the world, the city of tomorrow." Now it would be best described as "the most dead city in the world, the city of yesterday."

Perhaps the true irony of the death of Detroit is that it's downfall is rooted in the fact that everyone who had any money moved outside city limits into the suburbs. The suburbs would not exist without cars. The people who made money making cars got into their cars and drove away.

3/13/2009

the problem with NASA

what the priorities of NASA should be:
1. Conduct research, particularly environmental research, on Earth, the sun and Venus (the most earth-like planet).
2. locate asteroids and comets that might strike earth, and devise a practical means of deflecting them.
3. increase humanity's store of knowledge by studying the distant universe.
4. figure out a way to replace today's chemical rockets with a much cheaper way to reach Earth orbit.


the current priorities of NASA:
1. maintain a pointless space station
2. build a pointless base on the moon
3. increase humanity's store of knowledge by studying the distant universe.
4. keep money flowing to favored aerospace contractors and congressional districts.

3/12/2009

Scientology is crazy



a link to the rolling stone article about scientology
Click Here To Read Article
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/9363363/inside_scientology

here's a link to a short documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD9bCdHqU3s

3/11/2009

Detroit Motor Cars

GM, Ford, and Chrysler should merge.

GM has already stated that they want to get rid of or shut down all divisions except Chevy and Cadillac. They have also recently stated that even with $30 billion in bailout money they'll still probably have to file for bankruptcy protection.

Ford has already sold Jaguar, and Land Rover. Next they need to sell their stake in Aston Martin and Mazda. Then shut down Lincoln and Mercury. They also need to sell Volvo, and then they'll be down to just Ford.

Chrysler has already shut down Plymouth, now they need to shut down Dodge and Chrysler branded cars and just stick with JEEP.

If they merged at that point then it would be only Cadillac, Jeep, Ford, and Chevy left all under one company, and they could succeed.
They won't do it correctly though.
They won't be able to pull all of that off however, and they won't merge. most likely what will happen is Ford will end up buying one of the competitors brands, maybe Cadillac or Chrysler and the rest will all go completely out of business within the next 10 years, and there will end up being only one Detroit car company left at the end of it all no matter what they try to do.

3/10/2009

Who will guard the guardians?



The movie The Watchmen which is currently in theaters doesn't appeal to me, but one of the basic themes is quite interesting. Who will watch the watchmen?

The question was posed by Plato in his book The Republic.

In the perfect society as described by Socrates, the guardian class is to protect the city. The question is put to Socrates, "Who will guard the guardians?" or, "Who will protect us against the protectors?"
They will guard themselves against themselves.
Plato says we must tell the guardians a "noble lie", convincing them that they are better than those they serve, and it's their responsibility to guard and protect people lower than themselves. We must instill in them a distaste for power or privilege and convince them serve because it is the right thing to do.

This also reminds me of the classic "a watchmaker needs a watchmaker-maker" paradox about how if the universe needed a creator then by that same logic that creator needed a creator of its own.
and it goes on and on.
If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the universe as God.

3/09/2009

Deadly Immunity - Autism and Mercury Poinsoning

Apparently Thiomersal is used in vaccines as a preservative, and it contains mercury. Many people believe that the level of mercury that children are receiving with their shots is causing the recent autism epidemic.

This entire article was written by Robert F Kennedy Jr, and was originally published in Rolling Stone magazine in 2005.
here is the link to the online version of the article on RollingStone.com
Deadly Immunity article on RollingStone.com


Deadly Immunity
In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.

3/06/2009

Faraday Cages and John Locke/Jeremy Bentham

A Faraday cage or Faraday shield is an enclosure formed by conducting material, or by a mesh of such material. Such an enclosure blocks out external static electrical fields.




Several of the main characters from the TV show LOST have names that give clues and insights into parts of their personalities. Sometimes the writers just wanted to give the characters a clever name. I've no idea if there's any significance to Sayid Jarre, but I've found none so far.



John and Jack - are the two main leaders, and they often have opposing viewpoints. They have essentially the same name.

Jack Shepherd - he kind of IS a shepherd, isn't he?

Kate Austen - named after Jane Austen whose main work highlighted the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic stability.
Her work also centered on realism meanwhile she published most of her work anonymously.

Dr. Juliet Burke - named after Juliet Capulet from "Romeo and Juliet". Juliet is thrust into adulthood fairly quickly -- where she must deal with issues of life, love, passion, and even death. She is considered by many to be the true hero of the play, acting as a sounding board and a balance against the impulsive Romeo.

Boone Carlyle - Daniel Boone? Thomas Carlyle?

James "Sawyer" Ford - Tom Sawyer is a nice, playful boy, a natural showoff who likes to show his authority over other boys. Henry Ford invented the assembly line, and was also a notorious nazi sympathizer. His legacy is that his company continuously produces the cheapest and most dangerous cars. I'm not sure how this actually ties into the story.

Desmond David Hume - David Hume. Hume rejected the standard form of Enlightenment positivism, which believed in the power of Reason to determine all truths, moral, scientific, and other. Partly for this, and partly for his attacks on fundamental concepts like "causation", he has often been considered a skeptic. Hume is often grouped with John Locke and a handful of others as a British Empiricist

Charlotte Staples Lewis - Clive Staples Lewis, commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as Jack, was an academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist. He is also known for his fiction, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy.

John Locke/Jeremy Bentham - Locke is considered the first of the British empiricists, but is equally important to social contract theory. His ideas had enormous influence on the development of epistemology and political philosophy, and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, classical republicans, and contributors to liberal theory. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau. Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin for modern conceptions of identity and "the self", figuring prominently in the later works of philosophers such as David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first philosopher to define the self through a continuity of "consciousness". He also postulated that the mind was a "blank slate" or "tabula rasa"; that is, contrary to Cartesian or Christian philosophy, Locke maintained that people are born without innate ideas.

John Locke/Jeremy Bentham - He is best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism, for the concept of animal rights,[1][2] and his opposition to the idea of natural rights, with his oft-quoted statement that the idea of such rights is "nonsense upon stilts."[3] He also influenced the development of welfarism.[4] He is probably best known in popular society as the originator of the concept of the panopticon. Bentham's position included arguments in favour of individual and economic freedom.

Hugo "Hurley" Reyes - Victor Hugo. Hugo's religious views changed radically over the course of his life. In his youth, he identified as a Catholic and professed respect for Church hierarchy and authority. From there he evolved into a non-practising Catholic, and expressed increasingly violent anti-catholic and anti-clerical views. He dabbled in Spiritualism during his exile (where he participated also in seances), and in later years settled into a Rationalist Deism similar to that espoused by Voltaire. When a census-taker asked Hugo in 1872 if he was a Catholic, he replied, "No. A Freethinker".

Danielle Rousseau - Jean Jacques Rousseau's ideas centered on an increasing focus on subjectivity and introspection.

Ben Linus - Linus was one of the sons of Apollo in Greek mythology.

Shannon Rutherford - Ernest Rutherford who became known as the father of nuclear physics. He discovered that atoms have a small charged nucleus, and thereby pioneered the Rutherford model (or planetary model, which later evolved into the Bohr model or orbital model) of the atom, through his discovery of Rutherford scattering with his gold foil experiment. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908.

Daniel Faraday - A Faraday cage or Faraday shield is an enclosure formed by conducting material, or by a mesh of such material. Such an enclosure blocks out external static electrical fields.

Eko - named after authot Umberto Eco who wrote the book The Island of the Day Before.

Miles Straume - maelstrom

Ethan Rom - Other Man

3/05/2009

the things you like and the things you dislike are a window into who you are


Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste - by Carl Wilson

Carl Wilson was the guest on the Colbert Report last night.
interesting topic.
He thinks the things we are repelled by say as much about who we are (or who we perceive ourselves to be) than the things we like.
There are specific reasons why we like (or dislike) certain things.
Do we even understand these motivations?

3/04/2009

Ford makes crappy cars...


...and the lives of the people driving Ford escorts from the early 90s is probably rough enough without someone randomly going around and vandalizing their car.
it's still oddly amusing though.
arsonist targets 1990s green Ford Escorts

3/02/2009

Washington DC is in Maryland, let's stop pretending otherwise



Why are they deciding if Washington DC should have a representative in Congress?
nytimes.com article

1. Washington DC is a city. (Should New York city have their own representative in Congress?, what about L.A. or Chicago? when would this end?)
2. Washington DC is pretty clearly within the boundaries of Maryland to anybody who has working eye-sight. Pretending that Washington DC is some special vatican-like region that occupies some magical geographical space should come to an end. All of the residents of DC should just be considered residents of Maryland.

I don't see why ending the make believe is so hard for some people.