Yangtze Dolphin Extinct

Yangtze Dolphin Extinct [UK Times; via Metafilter].

A sad encore to the West African Black Rhino's Extinction earlier this year.

Places Visited

I've visited 18 countries:

6 provinces:

and 15 states:


I need to figure out where I want to travel to next year. I'm thinking maybe Costa Rica (to see a rainforest) and maybe Yellowstone National Park.

The Land Of Contradictions

Only in JesusLand and centre of the Free World could a Christmas Wreath in the shape of the Peace Sign be "symbol of Satan" or "anti-Iraq-War protest".

Isaiah 9.6: "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." (KJV) comes to mind with respect to the former and "If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands, they must be made brighter in our own." (Franklin D. Roosevelt) for the later.

What Does Peanut Butter Tell You About Work?

The past year at work has been an...interesting?!...one and I know a lot of my friends and co-workers would have a lot to say about it too. Recent news like Yahoo's Peanut Butter Memo and Siebel and IBM settling class-action lawsuits regarding overtime feel somewhat relevant and only give me pause to think about my current situation and where I'd like to be...I'm not really sure. I'm not even sure that work can make you happy anymore...I suppose this means I should either be doing something else or find something outside of work that makes me happier...

Who Killed The Electric Car?

Who Killed The Electric Car? is a pretty good documentary. Until I saw it, I didn't know that electric cars actually existed. California had a law that car companies had to make zero-emission vehicles, and all the major car makers produced electric cars. They produced 2% of the pollution of a regular car (taking into account the pollution from the power plants that generate their electricity) and the electricity costs one-fifth the cost of gasoline (per mile) - an amazing piece of technology with a lot of potential to only get better.

However, the car companies, Big Oil, and the Bush administration sued California to kill the program and they succeeded. Why? There are a lot of reasons given in the movie; I thought one of the more compelling ones was that the car companies make billions of dollars in car parts and service (oil changes, oil filters, brakes, mufflers, etc.), but the electric cars have almost no parts (as there is no combusion engine) and the parts they do have (e.g. brakes) were designed to be a whole magnitude more efficient, so the don't need to be replaced.

Canuck

As a follow up to my previous post, I also got perfect on the How Canadian Are You? quiz:

You are 100% Canuck!

 

You rock, you are an almighty Canadian through and through. You have proven your worthiness and have won the elite prize of living in a country as awesome as Canada. Yes I know other countries think they are better, but we let them have that cuz we know better than they do, eh?

Accent

I took the What American accent do you have? quiz. I think my (American) friends, will be amused by the result:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central   "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
The West
The Midland
Boston
The Inland North
The South
Philadelphia
The Northeast

Lost "Loose Ends"

IGN has a very long article about the Top 50 Lost Loose Ends with a discussion about each. I think they've hit on pretty much everything that's been bothering me, including:
#32: The Supply Drop
#31: Why Couldn't Desmond Leave?
#26: Libby
#24: Michael & Walt
#21: Christian's Body
#8: Locke's Legs
#5: The Unusual Connections Between Castaways

New URL

I'm moving my blog from http://www.s93608309.onlinehome.us/ to http://sendingtransmission.blogspot.com/ as my free hosting with 1&1 is going to expire soon. I'll continue posting new photos on Flickr. I know links to old photos and image are all broken, eventually I'll get around to fixing them (probably by posting older photos to Flickr). I'll see about coming up with a better template too.

Memories of 342

Building a better HashMap is a short, but interesting, article on IBM's website about how java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap is implemented to provide much efficient concurrency than java.util.Hashtable.

No More Fish?

...this century is the last century of wild seafood... The BBC has an article about the rapid decline of fisheries: 'Only 50 years left' for sea fish.

It reminds of Collapse, by Jared Diamond, which I just finished reading. It talked a lot of over fishing, over logging, soil erosion, pollution, over populating, etc. It's a good book.

Black & White Photos

I went to the Pike Place Market this weekend and took some photos.