I can has break from homework?

So homework has had me pretty busy this last month. So I'm going to take a small break for some blogging

First and foremost. I encountered some missionaries on my way home yesterday, and you know what I realize? Missionaries are very young people. They mostly seems like they would be more comfortable talking about X-box than religion. I only even comment on it because I brought up the topic, like I usually do that there is a difference between faith and knowledge. Their response was that scientists know things without proof, specifically they told me that there are scientist who know that gravitons exist, a statement with which I am comfortably secure in saying is completely false. I politely ended the conversation.

Really though this leads into my next topic, that of the Large Hadron Collider. The 6 billion dollar proof that no scientist that matters knows whether gravitrons exist, more appropriately the Higgs Boson.

Seriously though, this thing is awesome! It is really going to answer some important question about the universe. You know make history and what not. I've included a video that's pretty awesome.



So to end with, isn't the economy going bonkers! I've always felt that most of the investment banks are pretty much illegal, so to see them go belly up pleases me. I just wish the government wasn't so bent on bailing this crap out. It was a terrible business model, it should go bankrupt and quickly. Sorry to be callous, at least it's happening fast. We want change, we want it know! Really though, these companies basically take out huge loans to put in risky investment vehicles to make a ton of cash, works great when the market it doing well, and then go bankrupt when the economy turns south. That is there business model in a nutshell. I'm just glad this is happening quickly and can move on from it. The stock market has been quite in free fall. I just wish we could attack the underlying problem of people wanting a better return on their money, but also don't want the risk. It just doesn't happen that way, they tried it tech stocks, nope! They tried it with house, nope! They tried it with oil, nope! The fact is, there is no such thing as a free lunch. It takes hard work and time. That is the only thing that will make you more money. If anybody says any different, there ideas will be found bankrupt. At least they televise these shenanigans.

Eeek!, I've spent much too long rambling.

New Kittah!!!!

So for some reason, I don't know why really, we decided to get a new Kitty.

I would like to introduce you to THE AMAZING RANDO!!!!

He seems to be doing well with our other Cat, Gimli. Check out the sized difference, Gimli is like 50 times bigger than Rando. Gimli is not intimidated to say the least.

Finally check out the new kittah in action

In a world full of video blogs...

I said me too me too!





In the future there may be less yapping and more dancing.

Fun places to drive

So Ogden is quite lucky when it comes to having fun places to drive your car(and I don't mean the 'vard).

Let's start it off with the North Ogden Divide. This road is terrifying and thus you must have a stout heart in order to tackle its curves.

The road quality varies greatly on this short ride, but traffic is light. Be careful on this stretch of road.

Next on this list is Ogden Canyon. This is a classic with plenty nice corners to play with. It can feel a little claustraphobic at times because of high cliff walls, but it all just adds to the adventure.

The road quality is generally pretty good, but traffic can often spoil your fun. Also great care should be taken as you could end up in a wall if your not careful.

Next on the list is snowbasin loop. This is by far the best road we have. It is glorious, you just want spend all day driving past snowbasin.

Taking the Old Snowbasin road up and meeting up with the New Snowbasin road is a fantastic stretch, but coming down on Trappers loop isn't such a bad road to loop around on either. However you look at it, during the summer the road is nearly deserted and is of quite good quality. You could just spend all day doing circles and be the better for it.

Finally to road out our showcase is South Weber Drive. I'll typically go out of my way to take this road when I drive out to my brothers house. This is also a popular ride for the car dealerships in Riverdale when they want to show off their cars.

The road quality is good, but there are a lot of houses and offshoots on this road. Traffic is typically light, but keep an eye out.

Katie went to Spain and all I got was photoshopped in

The following are a collection of photos in which I look as though I was photoshopped in. I swear I was there, I promise.

Me "at" the Plaza Mayor

Me "at" the Alhambra

Me "at" the fancy world fair building

Me "at" the Sevilla Cathedral

Me "outside" the Mezquita

A small interlude from Spain. Oil!

So I think we are in huge oil bubble. Oil is a good example of a boom-bust commodity. When it does well, it does really well. When it does bad, it does really bad. Example, the 70's boom was an 80's bust. Record highs in the late 70's resulted in record lows in 80's and 90's. So oil is booming now, but for how long? I'm not crazy, I think we're running out, but we're not running out tommorow. There have not been any steep decline in production, nor has there been any steep increases in consumption. The worst case scenario, I'm using the one provided by Matt Savinar, is that world production decreases by 2% and demand increases by 2%, so a 4% change year after year (this does have little to do with reality, as high prices have dropped demand). Bring on the chart.

So starting in 2000 at $35 a barrel, 4% would put us at around $50 a barrel today, not inflation adjusted. If you adjust for inflation, it's about $70 a barrel I think, well at least that's what the Saudi's would lead us to believe. Needless to say this looks like, oh, I don't know, the dot-com boom, the housing boom?

The current price of oil is totally dictated by speculation. It has nothing to do with supply or demand. It's just people driving up the price to drive up the price. Some day oil will be at that price, that day is not today. I can't say when the speculation will end. It will probably get worse before it gets better. Looking at the chart and using my brain makes me think probably in the next year there will be a fantastic correction in price that occurs when price is determined by speculation and not cold hard numbers.

Spain (Part III)

I kind of got the order messed up in the last entry, as we went to Cordoba after Sevilla, but we push forward anyway. The reason I even mention this is because the train stop at Cordoba is a short one, so we had to hurry like bunnies to catch the train. They guarantee the time these trains show up, and well some of the group we were traveling with think that this is like Hollywood and the train will wait for them, but it won't. This Train is capable of traveling at over 200mph. This is really the way to travel. I think we need a few of these around the country.

We got back to Madrid and we took the Metro to dinner and we had a run in with some pick pockets. The first was as I was walking into the restaurant, a man had his hand under an umbrella and through some shrubs and was trying to unzip my backpack. Luckily there was nothing to steal. The next attempt came while we headed back on the metro when a lady wedged herself between Katie and I. She proceeded to put a jacket over Katies purse. Katie was able to hand wrestle her so she couldn't get in her purse. At the same time another gentleman was going after Katie's mom's purse. Luckily nothing got stolen. I guess pick pockets in Spain just aren't that good. We were lucky I think too.

Finally on our last day we traveled to Segovia, which was the oldest city on our tour. Pictured here is an aqueduct that is about as old as jesus.

It was used for like 1800 years. They had some pretty cool romanesque churches, but that wasn't on the schedule.

Instead we went to the alcazar. Which is very impressive up on its rock, surrounded by a moat. This location was used by the Romans, Muslims, and the Catholics. It was always a favorite. I borrowed this picture as I have none other that show how verticle this baby is.

Inside there is this creepy mural of the coronation of queen Isabella. They have no eyes. I don't know why. I think it is to suck out your soul.

A picture of us out on the ledge. It is sheer cliff over the side. I can see why this place was a favorite of kings and queens. You'd feel pretty safe.

We then went to Escorial, which little known to me was a giant tomb. It was designed to be the ultimate monument to God, with all sorts of meaningful architectural designs. Mostly there were just a lot of dead bodies in very elaborate tombs.

Going home was the hardest part, poor Fernando ,our tour guide, looked so sad sending us off. Because of traveling west, I think we had a solid 24 hours of daylight. Everything was going according to plan until our stupid flight got cancelled in Denver. In reality we could have driven home faster than we could catch our flight. Ultimately though it is nice to be home. Only barely though.

Spain (Part dos)

So after we finally made it home after Morocco (our bus broke down on the way home), we got to sleep, headed out the next day to Cordoba. Here we went the Cathedral or Mezquita there. This place was pretty awesome. It is still considered the third largest Mosque in the world. It's so big that when the city was retaken from the Moors in the 1200's they just built a Catholic Cathredral in it. It's such a big place you can't even see the cathedral part in the picture! Seriously though, something like 5 different cultures added on to this building.

Oddly though the catholics seems to show off their immenseness by building these huge solid gold thingys to hold the spirit of Christ or something. I wasn't really paying attention as I was distracted by the shine.

We then headed down to Sevilla and an odd thing about this city is back in the early 1900's they decided to have a world fair, and well countries from around the world built pavillions. Take a look at this Spanish pavillion. It's HUGE. It's a really pretty building. I just find it odd that its original purpose was for tourist information.

Next we went to the Cathedral in Sevilla. It's a big one too, like the 3rd biggest in the world. It had two alters in it while we there. One of gold, and one of silver.

It is also home to one of Christopher Columbus's three graves.

Also a fun bit of info is that often when Catholic Churches where built instead of building a new bell tower often they would just convert a Spiral Minaret. This was the case at most of the Cathedrals we saw. This one had ramps to the top so that they could ride a horse to the top instead of walk.

I made Katie walk it in 10 minutes, all 90 meters, and she was not happy.

I was in Spain Bitches! (Part 1)

I'm finally back from spain and man, it was awesome. It's been a let down to come home and go to work and the dentist (my nerve ending playing the part of grass and his drill playing the part of a weed wacker).

I have a ton of stories to share, from gypsies to to castle and cathedrals. We start in Madrid and the Plaza Mayor. This is a rocking Plaza where they have concerts and dinner and street performer and during weekend a flea market. You can rent one of the rooms for cheap, because it's very loud.

This the palace in Madrid. We missed it because some big chinned royalty were getting married.

Madrid is a relatively young city for Europe only being founded like four or five hundred years ago. So this is one of the older building here.

This is the most visited museum in all of Spain. The Museum of Ham. They have pork legs, hooves, hair and all hanging, rotting, until they are just right and delicious. They love there ham. Seriously though, like 75% of our meals were ham and cheese bocadillos.

So for the first couple of days our tour guide warns us to be careful of gypsies, that they will steal your things, and try and decieve you. So we travel 3 hours to Granada to the hotel that is right out of the Shining and what does our tour guide suggest...that we go to the gypsy caves for sangria and flamenco. We load up onto the gypsy vans and they proceed to drive like 1000mph through narrow corridors to get us to their cave.

Yeah, that was exciting. Seriously though when we did go back to Madrid, we had quite a run with with some pick pockets. First at dinner, a man had his hand under an umbrella trying to get into my back pack, and then latter on the subway a lady put her coat over Katie's purse and tried to unzip it. Luckily they were quite unsuccesful.

After they finished dancing they took us of a walking tour and we headed over to a scenic view of the Alhambra also known as the Red Castle.

This is the place where Columbus first went to ask for money to sail to India. Spanish architecture was quite fun because the Muslims had controlled the country for seven hundred years, and when the Catholics came, they weren't keen to tear it down. They just added their stuff to it. So all the castle, cathedrals and palaces are a wonderful hodgepodge

After Granada we drove down to the Costa del Sol to swim in the Mediteranean. There were lots of naked boobies at the beach.

We then went to Morroco where we passed the rock of gibralter, and I rode a camel, bought a rug and ate lunch with a fire dancer.

Morroco was nothing short of amazing. It was like going back in time 100 years. It was something so different that anything that I was used, I would recommend it for everyone.

Of Economics, oil, and ranting

"A long rant to begin with, followed by an even longer rant to finish"

So a while back I read Matt Savinar's book Life beyond the oil crash(or some title like that), and boy did that book ever make me mad, it made me terrible mad. (Now, I pretty much believe in the idea of peak oil , but this book is just absurd i.e. not enough platnium in the world to make hydrogen fuel cells, hello? our you retarded, modern catylitc converters for our cars contain more platnium then this fuel cells would take.) It kind of put me on the otherside issue, not the "it's not going to happen" side, but the "it's not going to be as bad as this guy says by a long shot" side. What are the real costs of oil, and running out? It all comes down to rates. If it crashes like this guy says, then he's right, doom and gloom. That's not going to happen. He states it himself, rate drop offs of 2% a year with increase in demand at 2% a year. (I think he might be right about the supply side, but not completely on the demand side, are driving as much as you used too?) At that kind of drop off, we will still have abundant oil for a couple of decades at least. That's if we even needed it. We don't need oil for economic growth. We don't need oil(fossil fuels) for our excessive life style. Energy consumption accounts for 7% of our GDP. Our economy has grown out of this problem. That is the point this book misses. With all our money and technology, this isn't a crash, it's a changing of the guard.

"Everything is worth what people are willing to pay."

Things have gotten a little distorted in the last while. This is due to externalities ie. pollution. If the price that things are sold at does not include the price of cleaning up after yourselves than you are not really paying the correct price. Walmart is a good example of this. We exported all the dirty industries that are expensive in america because we force the companies to clean up after themselves to china. Thus when we save money at walmart, all we are really saving is cleaning up after ourselves and shifting all that cost over to china.

This first decade of the 2000's has been marked by the suv. The huge thing that probably isn't necessary, but I can afford it, so screw you. A kind of one ups manship in excess. Now if there is an area that this will hurt us economically it is certainly this one. When someone does buy the huge thing that isn't necessary but can't afford it, we run into problems. There is bancruptcy, pain, suffering, all things that lead to the dark side. All things that are not equal.
Stopping for a second to think about this, there is the housing crisis, the unaffordability of health insurance, and tuition costs. Sadly most these problems probably effect the same people. We are all in the boat together so I think health care and high quality public education are noble goals that we should try for. As for the housing crisis, jeez banana, can you draw a line on a graph. Buying a house is scary shit. You don't need to do it. Simply put it is an investment. You don't need a house to live, you need shelter and a place of your own, but you don't need a house. If we include social security, general retirement crap and military hulabaloo then we can top off our list of hot button social/economic issues.

So where am I going with this, it comes back to growth. If we grow the economic pie, we can diversify. If food used to cost 20% of my budget, now it costs 17%, and that happened because I made more money, I have 3% I can use for something totally different, possibly unrelated, or maybe better food. Growth over the last 10 years in america has been good, but its distribution, not so much. Take a look at the CIA fact book and you can compare the GINI index versus some european ones. Wow it's late, i better rap this up.

Growth is good, externalities bad. We can have growth and fix our problems with our externalities to make the world a better place. We can learn from Europe, more efficient cars, public transit. We can learn from ourselves, crazy hippies in oregon, technocrats in california. We are aware of problem that is 80,000 years old. We were not aware of it for ~79,950 of those years. The problem is of course our consumption of the earths resources. Not only are we now aware of it, but we have the money and technology to fix it.

It works, it's ugly, but it works

So I'll try this for a while, not that I blog a lot lately anyway, but I'll try to somehow integrate google into myspace. It's myspace who is the son of a bitch about this compatability and being closed if you every try to do it.

tldr

This is my first blog, and it's a test, mostly, to see if this is even worth it. This all seems wonderful and integrated with google, so if I could get working how I think I can get it to work, Hooray! Elsewise, too long didn't read.