Is It Worth Being Wise?

An interesting essay by Paul Graham: Is It Worth Being Wise?

North Cascades National Park

I thought that there were only three (US) national parks near Seattle - Olympic National Park, Mount Rainier, and Crater Lake.

The other day I stumbled the North Cascades National Park online. According the its website it is very scenic and has lots of camping and hiking with mountains and glaciers. It's only two and half hours away from Seattle too. I going to drag my friends there in the summer to go camping.

Daylight Savings

Leaving work while the sun was still up was a nice feeling. Dragging my ass out of bed in the morning was impossible though. I want my hour of sleep back! Somehow I'm really tired despite it being "really" only 10 pm... :-(

The good news is that after a ridiculous amount of work to prepare for starting daylight savings earlier and patching what seemed like a zillion systems, nothing broke a work.

The End Of Suburbia

Last night I watched the documentary The End Of Suburbia. It's been in a Netflix queue for a long time, but its availability was always "Very Long Wait". I can understand why after seeing it; the film was quite thought provoking. It covers the emergence of the suburbs in North American society then discusses Peak Oil and how it will affect society.

Because so many people list in the suburbs, they are dependent upon cars (often gas-guzzling SUVs) to travel for work, shopping, leisure, etc. Moreover, most of what they consume (food from far away places such as California, Florida, etc.; cheap goods from China; etc.) is also transported long distances by transport trucks (as the North American rail system is not much to speak of). Consequently, when the supply of oil drops in the next few years, the economic upheaval will be massive due to the fact that our way of life requires an unsustainable of energy. Moreover, most homes are heated by natural gas and the electricity for those homes (air conditioners, etc.) often comes from burning natural gas. However, the production of natural gas will also undergo a collapse in supply at some point in the near future, exacerbating the pending energy crisis that has the potential to cause another Depression.

[For more information about Peak Oil, see my post nine months ago, Peak Oil? about an Australian TV documentary that's available free online for viewing].

Snow Patrol

I went to the Snow Patrol at Key Arena last night with Suor.

The first opening act was Silversun Pickups. I'd never heard of them, but I think I recognized the last song they played from somewhere (probably KEXP). Their music had a rather uniform "loud" sound and I didn't find it all that interesting.

Ok Go was the second opening act. The commentary by their singer as well as their videoes were entertaining, but the music was perhaps not so memorable.

Snow Patrol put on a good show. I don't have either of their albums (just a couple songs off iTunes), so I didn't recognize a lot of what they played, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. "Run" was well done; it's one of my favourite songs.

Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader speaking at the Capitol Theater in Olympia, Washington.

I spent Sunday in Olympia, the capital of Washington State and an hour south of Seattle, with Dave and Caroline. We watched the documentary An Unreasonable Man, which was about Ralph Nader - his rise to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s as a consumer advocate, as well as his presidential campaign in 2000. It was in a theatre that reminded me very much of the Princess Cinema in Waterloo.

Later in the evening, Ralph Nader gave a lecture about his new book, The Seventeen Traditions, which describes his upbringing and the family values that were instilled in him. They also gave out copies of the book to everyone in the audience; I'm looking forward to reading it.

I found both his lecture as well as the documentary to be both interesting and informative. (I knew very little about Ralph Nader beforehand).