A New Year Approches

Good bye 2008!!! In central time there's one and a half more hours until 2009. It's been a fun year. A successful orbit of the sun.

But I thought . . . ?

It seems strange that the governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich can still name his choice to fill the vacated senate seat of Barack Obama, even after he has been accused of trying to sell that same seat to the highest bidder. Today he named his pick for the seat, Roland Burris, the first black politician to win statewide office in Illinois with a cautious approach to politics and a background in banking.

It's sort of strange that the guy arrested for trying to make a profit off the senate seat can still decide who will fill it.

Innocent until proven guilty huh?

By the way. . .

Images from: http://senatus.wordpress.com/2008/12/12/minnesota-canvassing-board-meets-for-key-decisions-in-senate-recount/
http://hidates.com/i/6-1.gif

Minnesota still doesn't have its second senator. Today Franken pulled ahead in the recount, not that its final because he's ahead by only a hundred or so votes and the Coleman campaign has challenged hundreds of ballots.

Perhaps it is time to start thinking about flipping a coin?

And Merry Christmas To You

Picture from: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/12/19/santa-zoom.html

Researchers at Texas A & M university think there might be a good chance the reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh are female. Why? Because bull reindeer typically shed their antlers before Christmas. However, the reindeer could also be castrated males known as steers. Young steers and non-pregnant females loose their antlers around February to March while expecting mothers keep the antlers until the calves are born.

Apparently, tis the season for strange thoughts about flying reindeer.

A Person of Importance

Picture from: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/personoftheyear

Barack Obama was named Time Person of the Year for 2008. I can't really say I was surprised. There was so much publicity about him during the election season, he made some historic breakthroughs during his campaign, and his story is very compelling.
His election was exciting and uplifting for the country. Hopefully he can survive his first days in office dealing with two wars, global warming, and the economic slide.

Shoes

Image from: www.reuters.com/news/pictures

Apparently, in Arab customs one of the gravest insults you can commit is to throw a shoe at somebody. That is probably why the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush is being detained. He actually got off a pretty good throw if the article that I read is correct. I quote, ". . . flung one shoe at Bush, forcing him to duck, followed by another, which sailed over Bush's head and slammed into the wall behind him. . ."
Among Iraqis there are mixed feelings about this act. Some people are hailing the journalist as a national hero, and staging protests for his release. Others (such as the government) are calling the act "barbaric".
I can easily see how people would be angry at the U.S. The journalist was angry at the president for bringing in troupes, starting a war, and causing the deaths of Iraqi citizens. Many people echo this view point while other oppose it.
Personally, I'm rather impressed the journalist got close enough with his shoe to make the president duck. It's sort of hard to aim a shoe, because of the shape, and isn't there supposed to be security around? Wouldn't people wonder what you were doing if you suddenly took off your shoe in the middle of a press conference? Speaking of security, wasn't the security around there rather bad? What if somebody had thrown something other than a shoe?
Flying shoes and all, this only reminds me why I never, ever, want to be a politician let alone president.

What if the INTERNET crashed?

I was reading the paper and came across an article. Some researchers from the University of Minnesota (at least I think that's where they're from, I wasn't reading closely) thought there was a possibility of increased solar storms in the near future. So much increased activity that the storms might interfere with the Internet.
Reading that made me think, "What would happen, in this day and age, if the Internet crashed?" I don't mean personal wireless routers. I mean the whole global Internet system. What if, suddenly, there was a poof, and no more Internet?
For somebody who goes to an online school and lives by my computer, that's a scary thought.

Recount over, Still no winner

We still don't know whom Minnesota's second senator will be. Norm Coleman or Al Franken? And the elections were like what, a whole month ago. The problem is that the race is SO close. During this month, there has been a ballot recount, where volunteers go through all the ballots by hand and count them. (sort of strange because human counting has a greater margin of error than a machine) The outcome should be solved by the recount right? Well not when both campaigns are challenging the authenticity of any ballot that goes to their opponent. To make things harder, an envelope containing about 135 uncounted ballots has disappeared and nobody can find it. Normally, 135 votes wouldn't make a huge difference, when the margin between candidates is usually thousands of votes. But when the recount started Coleman was only leading Franken by roughly 215 votes. Yes, a rather smaller margin than normal.

The thing is, that during the campaign, these two candidates were really, really nasty to each other. There was a lot of accusations, negative adds, mud throwing, etc. Because of all this, the third party candidate Dean Barkley got a higher percentage of the vote than he would normally. However, it was still not enough for him to win. Most people probably didn't vote for him because they were afraid that if they did, the other major party candidate would win.

It seems sort of bad, but no matter who wins this recount and the senate seat, more than half of Minnesotans will be unhappy.

I'm not sure I would be happy with any of the candidates from this election (senate only). It really was a very negative campaign season and that was not pleasant. None of the candidates stuck out as being very original or having especially good ideas. (Besides how best to smear their opponent that is)

I guess we can only wait and see how the recount turns out. Hopefully we'll know before the new senators are supposed to be sworn in on Jan. 6th.

Legislation for Charter and Online schools

EdVisions Off-Campus High School is a pretty different school from the norm. Actually, it's the only project based, online school in the whole United Sates.

I sort of take the school for granted, because I've been homeschooled so I don't really realize or notice as much as other people how different it is from traditional school. It's interesting to really look at this school once in a while and think, "wow, this is really an amazing school."

The reason I'm thinking of this right now is because the state of Minnesota is projecting a 935 million dollar budget deficit. And the thing that the state spends most money on is education. EdVisions Off-Campus is a charter school, which means it gets its funding from the state and taxes. When the state is in financial trouble, programs are going to be cut and new money saving legislations are going to arrive. That's not a bad thing necessarily, but it does mean that our school might come under scrutiny because it's so different from all the other schools. We are affected by legislations for charter schools, and legislations for online schools.

It's sort of strange all the things that the government has charter or online schools do to make sure they're meeting the standards. It is good to have things like that, because the schools are using tax payer's money so they should be doing a good job, but sometimes it just seems like busy work and it doesn't even help show if the school is actually helping all its students or not.

It's really weird, all these economic problems. It's not like there is less money in the world now. There is still the same amount I think. I don't think all the bills and coins disappeared over night did they?

It's December!

November is over! The novel is complete! Hopefully I will get back to updating. Hopefully.

New Puppy in the White House

There's been a lot of talk recently about what kind of dog the Obama family is going to get. ^_^
I think it's sort of cute. It is certainly a lot easier listening than all the negative campaigning. I do not miss that stuff one bit.

On the other hand, the Coleman, Franken race for the Minnesota senate is still going on. They are going to start a recount some time soon and they might not decide on the victor until December. :s

Oh well. . .

By the way, it is now snowing.

The 44th President of the United States of America is . . .

Barack Obama is going be be President of the United States of America. He is giving his acceptance speech right now. Everybody in the crowd is really happy and a lot of people are crying. It is an exciting event. Many people think this is a great step forward towards creating equal rights for African Americans and other minorities. I agree. It is sad that things like race still matter in this country but they do. Hopefully as times goes on, a person's ancestors will become less important than their own words and actions.

It's an exciting day.

Suspense!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's election night!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My parents voted for Barack Obama this morning. Right now he is leading in the electoral college votes 207-135 over John McCain. CNN has projected Obama to win Pennsylvania and Ohio, even though only like a fraction of the votes have been counted. It's sort of weird that they can project for Obama to win when actually no votes have been counted. They're basing their predictions on exit polls.

We're also watching Indecision 2008 by John Stewart and Stephen Colbert (I think I spelled the names right but I'm not sure). It's really funny :)

Ahh the suspense is killing me.

I'll let you know the results tomorrow, or later tonight if we find out.

#1 Texas vs. #5 Tesas Tech

It's been a crazy game. I just had to say something. Tex Tech was leading, then Texas got ahead, then T.T. came back. Then with like 1:29 left. Texas scored and was ahead 33-32. Then the T.T. quarterback went into hyper-efficiency mode and threw like four first downs in a row. Then he threw a pass, the receiver wrestled his way free of a guy and scored a touchdown with 1 second left giving T.T. a 38-33 lead. Then the crowd (Texas Tech people) stormed the field and broke the goal posts. It was a crazy game.

NaNoWriMo!!! The Insantiy of November!!

It's October 28, only four more days until November!!! Or five, or three, depending on how you count. I don't know.

What's so exciting about November?!! After all, it's only another month, and a month with bad weather at that, right? WRONG!!! November is the month were thousands of formerly sane people take leave of their minds and begin a month long sabbatical into insanity. They will all attempt to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. And I am proud to say that I am one of them.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) was started in July of 1999 by Chris Baty in the San Fransisco Bay area. That first year there were 21 participants. In 2007 there were over 100,000 participants from around the world!

The goal of NaNoWriMo is quantity not quality. It doesn't matter how horrible your writing is. You just write and write and write and get all your ideas out. You can go back and fix it later for just for one month the focus is just on writing and no editing.

I did it last year and it was really fun!!!! So now I'm doing it again. No doubt there is some corner of my brain that is yelling at me for being so crazy, but at least for now, I can't hear it. Perhaps I'll think differently when it's 3:00am on November 29th and I still have 5000 words to go, but I don't think so. I like writing and no matter what happens on this insane journey I'm sure I'll have fun.

I should warn you, posts here will probably be pretty slim during the month of November. I'll be crazily typing away at my novel, but I'll try to write a quick post now and then just to let you know I'm still alive.

Sliding on Water

Picture from: National Geographic News

I just saw this article today about a small aquatic snail that can squeegee along on the surface of water. The snail is so small and light that it doesn't sink. Scientists have been perplexed at how the snail moves along the surface of the water because the water is slippery and the snails can't grip it, much like humans trying to walk on ice. Scientists recently discovered that the snail makes small rippling motions with its foot and creates traction for itself.

I found this very interesting! It can't be applied to humans, because to have spread our weight around enough so we don't sink, we'd have to have each shoe as large as a football field. However, it's really interesting how the snails evolved to do this.

Go Fire!

The Chicago Fire are beating the New York Red Bulls 4-1! (soccer) The Fire are already guaranteed a spot in the play offs. New York is in the hunt for one of two wild card spots. They still have some hope if they lose tonight (which they look like they'll do) but they'll have to rely on D.C. United either loosing or tying. Chris Rolfe of Chicago got a hat trick in the first half alone. His second goal was really, really pretty. He received a cross from another player, bounced it off his chest, then volleyed it straight into the goal without the ball touching the ground.

Oo. New York just had a really good scoring chance but the Fire goalie just had a big save.

I'm sort of rooting for the Fire. If New York looses then D.C. United has a better chance of getting in. I'm not sure why I like D.C. but I do for some reason. They had a really good season last year but this year they've had a lot of injuries to all their good players and they didn't play well either. It's rather doubtful that they'll get in though. Oh well.

Chicago just scored again! It was a first career goal for one of their players. Good for him. Now the score is 5-1. And they just almost scored again. Wow. Now it's a corner kick . . . that didn't end up being very dangerous. I'm pretty sure Chicago will win though. :)

Arg. A N.Y. player just ran through the defense, got past the goalie, and passed to another guy who got his shot blocked. Yikes, a close one. That was some bad defending.

There are only 10 minutes left now. A win for Chicago.

Ready - Set - COOK!!!

Photographed at the IKA International Culinary Olympics
Erfurt, Germany

(How on earth are you supposed to eat that thing?)

From October 19th to the 22nd chefs from 53 countries will compete in Erfurt, Germany in the Culinary Olympics.

I had no idea such a thing existed. I guess I shouldn't be surprised since competition and food always seem to go together. Who can cook the best apple pie? Who has the best stuffing? Iron Chef America on Food Network. And all sorts of increasingly weird competitions. After all that, Culinary Olympics sound be no surprise.

The chefs will compete in teams for their countries, creating huge masterpieces of sugar shaped like dragons or dainty plates of carefully placed appetizers. Surprisingly enough, most of their points come from presentation and style, taste accounting for a small portion of the judging. I suppose the judges can't taste all the entries of 1,600 chefs but isn't food for eating not looking at?

I like my food plain. Food is fuel. But I do admit, all the artwork created at the Culinary Olympics is definitely very pretty to look at.

3rd Presidential Debate, and World Cup Qualifying

The third and last presidential debate is going on right now. By now, I've heard everything that the candidates are saying. They have set messages that they have to deliver and they keep repeating them. Say McCain attacks Obama. Then Obama goes into his planned 'absolutely not true' response and throws in a couple attacks on McCain along the way. Same goes when Obama attacks McCain. It's getting sort of old . . .
However, Obama just had a nice speech on education which I really agreed with. Get more parents involved, give credit for community service, lower costs of college. :)

In general these days though I'm rather tired of all the mud throwing and politics. There was a strip in the comics today where one of the characters put in an absentee ballot just so he could get his vote over with.

Oh, but the moderator (Bob Schieffer [not sure on the spelling of his last name]) is doing a much better job then his predecessors. He is actually interrupting the candidates and chiding them when they don't answer the questions. He also asked some very good questions and follow up questions.

The U.S. soccer team just lost to Trinidad and Tobago in a world cup qualifying match. The game was in Trinidad and Tobago, and it was airing during the debate. I actually watched more of the game than the debate. The home crowd was very supportive of their team. Trinidad and Tobago scored first, then the U.S. caught up, then the U.S. fouled in the box on a corner kick. Trinidad and Tobago scored on the Penalty Kick and the final score was 2-1. It's not terrible for the U.S. since they've already got a spot but now they might be put in a harder group than if they had won. Trinidad and Tobago is ecstatic. They lost to the U.S. 6-1 or something like that the last time they played so this was a big change.

Crazy!!

Yikes!!!! The Gophers (football!!!) beat Illinois!!! 27-20!!!! Crazy!!!! There is something seriously strange going on when Minnesota beats a team that creamed Michigan. Speaking of which, Michigan lost to Toledo, who I've never even heard of before. There are some very sad Wolverine fans out there right now.

That's all for today :) I just had to get that out there.

2nd Presidential Debate

I'm watching the re-run of the second presidential debate right now. It's sort of interesting watching the debate right after listening to the experts, news people, random people, undecided voters, and everybody else debate the debate on the post debate discussions.

We're on the second question now. It's from Oliver Clark, he asked about the bailout, what does it actually do?

McCain is talking about how he left his campaign suspended and went to Washington to make sure that tax payers were covered, and how Fanny May and Freddy Mac made lots of risky loans with encouragement from Obama and his 'cronies' or friends. This rescue package means that they will stabilize the market, they'll buy up the bad mortgages. Ect. . .

Obama is talking about how the credit market is failing and how companies can't get loans at the moment. They will have to cut jobs and stuff because they can't get enough money through loans. That's why they had to take action and set up the bailout. The biggest factor in the economy problem was the deregulation. Obama is saying how he wrote to people in Washington and said they had to deal with it and nothing happened while McCain said they should keep deregulating.

Blah blah blah. . . the candidates were just asked if they thought if the economy would get worse before it got better but neither of them are answering. They just go off into their speeches that they've said a hundred times before. . .

Somebody just asked something along the lines of "Why should we trust you with our money?"

Obama is going off on a Bush-was-really-bad speech. Now he's talking about making investments in college, independent energy, and stuff.

McCain, ". . .The system in Washington is broken. . ." and then he starts boasting about his bipartisan record, and saying how Obama doesn't have a good record. He's saying how he has a good record while Obama voted for earmarks, and extravagant spending, and stuff. wow, he mentioned energy independence too. But then he said offshore drilling, and nuclear energy.

The moderator just reminded them to keep on track with time. And the next question is what will be your order in terms of priorities for Health Care, Energy Independence, and Entitlements.

McCain is answering first and he says he will work on all three at the same time. Then some more classic lines. But he's pretty sure he can do all three at once, and he said we have to do all of them at once.

Obama said we (as a country) have to prioritize just like a family has too. Energy has to be at the top of the list he said because not only do high gas prices hurt the average person, it is also a security problem because some of the money going towards foreign oil is going to countries who aren't friendly towards the U.S. Next Obama said was Health Care. Now he's going back at McCain about the earmark thing. Throw mud, throw mud. . . .

As president what sacrifices will you ask the American people to make?

McCain: we will have to eliminate some programs. Defense spending is one example. "I believe we have to eliminate the earmarks." Spending is going to be cut, he recommends a spending freeze except for veterans programs.

Obama: "A lot of you remember the tragedy of 9/11..." how the country was able to come together. There is going to be the need for each person to think of how they use energy. Including offshore drilling?? (Not sure I like that) Obama said that each of us should start thinking about how we use energy. Make cars, business more energy efficient. Young people are eager to be involved. Military family families shouldn't bear the full burden of the country.

The debate is going on. I'm not really hearing anything new. Townhall is an interesting format. The candidates have chairs on the stage but when they talk, they usually get up and walk around talking to various members of the silent audience. It's definitely different from them just standing behind a lecturn.

Btw, McCain keeps saying "my friends" it's sort of getting on my nerves. And just so my critisism is spread around, Obama's tie loks sort of strange. Is it supposed to be blue, gray or purple? I can't tell.

It's getting late, I'm going to keep watching but I'm getting really sleepy. . . .

Politics and Problems

If you watched the Colbert Report on Oct. 1st you'll know what this picture is about

Image from: http://brandstrategy.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/campbells-soup-i-1968-print-c10089337-1.jpg

The Senate voted on their version of the bailout plan yesterday. As expected it passed. Not only passed but passed by a margin of 74 to 25 and both senators from MN voted for the bailout. There are a bunch of 'sweeteners' added on to the bill to make it more appealing for the house and general public. Sort of a interesting idea. It's like large scale bribery. Anyway. . . the house is going to vote on the bill again tomorrow. It is yet to be determined if the revisions made by the senate will make the bill more appealing to the house.

Speaking of which. I was watching part of the Colbert Report for the first time. It was ridiculously funny. The theme of the day was reporting on the future. How McCain's campaign had released an add saying he won the first presidential debate before the debate actually took place. And various other things like that. I must admit that whoever came up with comedy was a genius.

And tonight is the Vice President's debate. There has been a lot of media hype about it. How Sarah Palin is going through a rough time, how Joe Biden is known for putting his foot in his mouth, etc. Everybody has a different idea of what the candidates should do to each other and behind it all the media people are gleefully dancing around stirring up any little fact they can find and inflating it to epic proportions.
I think it might be anticlimactic given all the attention being paid to it. These people are vice president candidates. They probably don't want to do anything that will reflect badly on their running mate (at least I hope they don't). They probably won't go out and do all sorts of risky things that could easily backfire. At least that's what I think, but I'm hardly an expert.
I will be watching tonight's debate though. If I'm not bored to tears in the first five minutes, I'll probably watch most of it. Hopefully I'll be entertained. Certainly the media will do their best to make this as entertaining as possible, even though that wasn't the original goal of debates.

Help! Bailout! Or Not. . .

To help the struggling stock market President Bush proposed a 700 billion dollar bailout plan. The government would inject lots of money into the market, buy the sub-prime loans that aren't really worth anything at the moment (but could be worth more in 20 or 30 years), and basically try to make sure the market didn't crash. It didn't work. The House of Representatives voted it out. Actually it was the House Republicans who didn't vote for the bailout. Bush, McCain, both party leaders in the house, and Obama were all supporting the bill, but all of the house is up for re-election in five weeks and the bailout is very controversial. If a house member seeking re-election or trying to move to the senate voted for the bill, their opponents would definitely use it against them in the election.

I'm not sure how I felt about the bailout. If the bailout happened the stock market would be a little more stable at least in the short term and there wouldn't be a sudden loss of jobs, loans, and stuff like that, but the bailout would be payed for in taxpayer money so taxes could go way up. However, the bailout was necessary because there is a lot of artificial value in the market right now and if the government bought the worthless mortgages that are giving the companies so much trouble, the government would be continuing to pay for things that weren't really worth all that much and the artificial value crisis would go on.
If there was no bailout, the stock market would crash (like it just did), people will loose jobs because companies don't have as much money so the cut back, it will be harder to get loans of any type, and all sorts of other things. But taxpayers wouldn't have to pay to rescue all the rich CEOs on Wall Street and once the market rebounded (it probably will eventually, sometime in the future) there would be no more artificial value of sub-prime mortgages.

I really didn't know what to think about the bailout. On one hand, I didn't like it because it seemed like it would give money to some already rich guys and make normal people pay for it. However, if there was no bailout there would be the job losses and stuff like that. It would be good to get rid of the artificial value in the market but getting rid of value, artificial or not, would mean that the market would go down. It seems like a very hard choice to make and I don't envy the politicians at all.

The house is meeting again on Thursday to talk about this again. People for the bailout will try and convince the other people to vote for it when they do a second vote. People against the bailout will try and convince their counter parts to join them. I'm sure all of them will have hard choice to make and there will be a lot of yelling and barbed speeches. I, however, am very glad I am not a member of congress. Hopefully I will get better at deciding about these hard issues by the time I can vote but for now, I have no idea what the best path would be.

A Debate over A Debate

The first official debate between the presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain was scheduled for this Friday (9/26/08). However John McCain announced that he wanted to suspend his campaign and go to Washington to work on the economic crisis, and he called for Obama to do the same. Obama however, said that he would show up at the debate site regardless and if McCain didn't show up he'd have a town hall meeting or do something by himself depending on what the moderators for the debate wanted. So he tossed the ball back onto McCain's side of the court and now people are waiting to see what McCain will say.

Today I also read an article in the Star Tribune about what high school debaters think of the presidential debates (at least these particular high school debaters).

"Our presidential debates are media events that are forums at best, with the candidates primarily seeking a sound bite that will play out on the news the next few days," said Chris McDonald, whose Eagan High debate program is a perennial state tournament powerhouse.

It does seem like the candidates say the same thing over and over again when you listen to them making speeches and talking to reporters. But then again, don't people ask them the same questions over and over again? So they couldn't really give different answers. But I do think that they have some set word for word answers that they give out in response to the questions.

High School debates differ from the presidential debates in having only one topic for the entire year. Well you could say that the question, "Who is the best person to be president of the United States?" is also one topic but it covers a wide range of subjects. For the 2008-2009 school year, the topic is alternative and/or renewable energy. Wayzate High coach Gail Sarff thinks that the kids know more about this particular subject than any of the candidates because they research the issue, argue one side of it in the first round of debates, then argue the other side during the second round.

I think having high school debate teams is a good idea. While it seems strange at first to have groups of people come together and argue with each other, I think it makes people more aware of both sides of any issue and more aware of issues in general. That being said, I'm not sure I would want to be on one. I'm not very happy arguing and I have trouble seeing how I would argue for a position I didn't hold myself. It seems strange to try and promote say off shore drilling if you didn't agree with it yourself.
That's where I think it would be really strange to be a lawyer and try to argue for your client even if you didn't really agree with them. Hopefully most lawyers try to get clients that they actually agree with. . .

Android Phones Take Over the World!

Image from: http://www.mobileburn.com/imagepop.jsp?Id=5360&file=media/t-mobile/g1/thumb_g1_white_open2.jpg

Well not really, but today was the first unveiling of the T-Mobile G1, an android smart phone created by Google, T-Mobile, and HTC. The exciting thing about this phone is that the software used to run it will be open source so anybody who knows how to will be able to make application

s for the phone and share them, a lot like Mozilla Firefox the web-browser. But why they called it an 'android' phone I don't know. It always puts me in the mind of Starwars whenever I hear it.

I watched the unveiling press conference online. It was really strange!!! There were these four guys talking to a room full of reporters. They were in a really weird room, the walls were like fake stone or something with purple lights. There were also a couple screens for showing demo movies. It looked like the Batcave! Very strange. . . 

The guys were a bit strange too. I'm not exactly sure who they were, well there was one guy who was a representative of HTC, one from T-Mobile, one guy from Europe, and one guy I thought was from Google, but I don't know names or anything. None of them were very good speakers. Well, they all did much better than I could've but you'd think that if these people spoke about their products for a living, they could do better. They weren't very engaging and they said a lot of weird stuff that was either strange stuff that I had no idea what it was supposed to be, or really weak attempts at jokes.

They also did a couple really dorky photo shoots. First they showed a really, really short teaser thing about the phone, then they all got up and said, "anybody who wants to take photos please come forward". Then the guys stood in a semi circle holding the phone and all the reporters took pictures of them. Then they did a longer video with more details about the phone and another video with different people talking about how great it was to have open source software. Then the co-founders of Google came up and stood around, and looked uncomfortable, and made strange jokes, and said how the phone was so fun to play with, then they had another photo shoot and left. I think they were even worse at public speaking than the other guys. Well maybe I'm being a little harsh on these people, the only people I've watched speaking in public recently are the presidential candidates and I suppose they have to be really good at it.

The phone itself seems pretty cool. It has a touch screen like the iphone and the menu and display look a lot like the iphone but it also has a full slid out keyboard. It has e-mail, web browsing, google maps, amazon music, and all that sort of stuff. Not anything that we've never seen before but it seems to work ok.

I think that it's exciting that the phone is open source and anybody can make up applications for it. Firefox is set up that way and I really like it. However, for the phone I have the feeling you might need to pay for some of the add ons. Who knows, it'd be nice if some of them were free but also if they are charged, the developer might get something for their work. 

As I only turn on my cell phone once a week, my calls are seldom longer than three minutes, and I can't text a sentence in less then five minutes, I don't think that getting an android phone would be very helpful to me. Well possibly the internet access part would be useful but not the phone part and since it's a phone, well, that seems sort of strange.

Image from: http://www.mobileburn.com/imagepop.jsp?Id=5360&file=media/t-mobile/g1/thumb_g1_black_closed.jpg

A good way to get squished disguised as a game

So, I've been reading a lot about football recently in the newspaper. The NFL season started a couple weeks ago and all that stuff so football is one of the biggest sports going on at the moment. I got somewhat interested in football like a year or two ago and I admit to reading the articles about games and players in the sports section. But I'm still continually perplexed by football and football players. First of all, why is it called football? I mean, the players carry the ball with their hands. I looked that up online and found some answer about American football evolving from rugby football and rugby evolving from soccer (I'm an American so it's soccer not football) but it was still pretty confusing and I didn't get a clear answer. 

Personally, I don't think I would ever want to play football. There seems to be a high chance of being injured, squashed or killed. However it does seem that some people really like playing it and do so for hours on end and for a profession. But then again, I fence and I suppose you could find something similar in voluntarily getting out a sword and letting someone try to stab you while trying to do the same to them, and voluntarily getting on a field and presenting yourself as a target to lots of 300 pound guys whose job it is to squash you. 

Surprisingly enough, I actually like both the Minnesota Vikings and the Gophers (college team). The Vikings I don't know why I like them, probably because they worked hard and came close to the playoffs last season but didn't quite make it. I like the Gophers 'cause I feel sorry for them 'cause they had a horrible season last year. They're doing much better this year though with an undefeated 3-0 record. Of course I don't think it'll stay that way but considering they were 1-11 last year, it's a big improvement. In the NFL I also like the Green Bay Packers. I think it's cool that the majority of their stocks are owned by fans and not just one or two super rich people. I'm also rooting for their new quarterback Aaron Rodgers because he was put in such a hard position, following Brett Favre. 

Football. A game where the object of the offense is to move a ball down the field and score. And the object of the defense is to promptly squash the guy holding the ball. Though the first recorded mentions of modern football were during the mid 19th century I can easily imagine cavemen playing a similar game during their days.

Um, just a slight malfunction

Picture from: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/09/18/large-hadron-collider.html

The huge atom smasher in Switzerland was turned off Wednesday due to an electrical problem. The malfunction affected a cooling system for the high-powered magnets that steer the beams of shooting protons. A CERN spokesperson said that because it is a very complex piece of equipment it wasn't uncommon for a stoppage to occur. 

It was also mentioned in the article that the atom smasher took 20 years to build. Wow. I knew before that it took a long time but I was thinking like 10 years or something like that. 20 years is a looooooooong time. 

Well I hope they get it up and running again soon. 

Hurricane Ike

Hurricane Ike is the 9th named storm of the 2008 season. It made landfall in the US on September 13th at 2:10am CDT in Galveston, Texas. At the time it was a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 110 miles per hour. However it was much, much larger than an average hurricane. A bigger storm makes a bigger storm surge and because the water around Texas and Louisiana is shallow, that area is more susceptible to storm surges than other areas. 

The death toll for the storm wasn't very high but thousands and thousands of people were displaced and whole areas were completely destroyed. Hurricane force winds from Ike got as far inland as Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. More than 2 million people are without electricity in those regions. Chicago also had a record rain fall of more than 7 inches in 24 hours and the city experienced flooding in some areas.

It's always sort of strange that every time a hurricane or storm hits the US coast a big deal is made out of it but whenever a storm hits one of the island nations like Cuba or the Bahamas, it's only mentioned briefly. I suppose it's because those are different countries but it's still sort of strange. For example Haiti has been hit hard by four hurricanes in a row Fay, Gustav, Hannah and Ike, but nobody is really talking much about it. The Haitian city of Gonaives was devastated by Hannah and 495 bodies were recovered by September 5th. Officials expect that number to grow because they still can't really get into the city. Ike further damaged the city causing flooding so severe that the prime minister said they might have to rebuild the city elsewhere. 

While I like rain and storms, hurricanes are a bit too destructive. According to some speculations, because of global warming raising the temperatures of the oceans, hurricanes will be getting stronger. That's a scary thought.  

Cuauhtemoc Blanco

Blanco retires from the Mexican international team after playing for seven minutes in the world cup qualifying game against Canada. (I'm trying to find the score online but half the sites I look at say Mexico won 3-0 and the other half say they only won 2-1. It's very confusing but at least the part that they won is clear) He is not quitting soccer entirely though. The 35 year old will continue to play in the U.S for the Chicago Fire for a few more years. Blanco has been hailed as one of Mexico's greatest soccer players and has scored 34 goals since is 1995 debut against Uruguay. Ever since we started watching major league soccer, he has also been one of my dad's favorite players for some reason.

Blanco was born on January 17, 1973, in the Tepito neighborhood of Mexico City. He made his Primera Division (Mexico's 1st division) debut in 1992 at the age of 19 playing for the club America. He was a member of the Mexican team that won the Confederations Cup in 1999 and was the leading goal scorer in that tournament with 6 goals. He was also part of two world cup teams, France in '98 and Korea-Japan in '02. On April 2nd, 2007, Blanco signed to the Chicago Fire and started his Major League soccer career in the U.S. 

Speaking of the US international team. They just played a qualifying match against Trinidad and Tobago and won 3-0. I was pretty surprised. We're talking about the men's team here by the way. The US women's team has been pretty good for a while now but I don't really think of the men's team as being very good. However, they seem very motivated to give a good showing of themselves so it might get interesting next world cup. I don't think they're as good as say, Brazil, Argentina or Italy but I don't think they're horrible either. It'll be exciting to see what they can do.

Onions and Planes

So while my mom was standing around in the McPhail lobby waiting for my siblings to come down after they're lessons, she happened to pick up a copy of The Onion. And on the drive home my brother somehow got his hands on it and started reading it out loud. He started with the short descriptions of all the college football teams' prospects for the up coming season. It was hilarious. (in case you don't know what the Onion is, it's a newspaper made up entirely of satire) Also on the front page was an article about how a mountain lion had successfully defended itself from a family of hikers. It escaped with only a few scratches and left one hiker dead and another seriously injured. When we got home I looked up the Onion's website and saw a video predicting the economy will collapse after Bush leaves office because of a decrease in demand for anti-Bush merchandise. Heh.

Just as a note, apparently the start up of the giant atom smasher was successful. However, it will take years to analyze all the data collected so don't hold your breath waiting for the secrets of the universe.

Today is also the 7th anniversary of 9/11 2001. There are various speeches going on around the country and flags are at half staff. Both presidential campaigns have formed a day long 'truce' and both Obama and McCain are speaking at the same event later today. 

Hmm. . . I've gotta go. My brother is trying to convince me to go to his soccer practice. Later.

Lazy Ants, or Maybe Not??

I just read this article about leaf cutter ants. It's really fascinating how the foraging ants can know how large to cut off leaf parts so they are a good size for the ants working inside the nest. According to the article, forager ants can carry seven times their body weight but they are carrying less then that because the ants inside the colony could process smaller sized leaf chunks faster than the largest ones. Once the leaf bits are inside the nest, the ants tear it up and use it to feed the fungi they eat. The different kind of fungi depends on the nest of ants but all the fungi comes from the Lepiotaceae family.

Ok, some so background on these ants so you'll know what I'm babbling about. They are found in the warmer regions of Central and South America such as the rain forests. They live in huge colonies with different ants assigned to different jobs just like bees. The ants designated to forage go out and bite off parts of leaves and bring them back to the nest to feed the fungi which the ants eat. They are one of the few species of bugs which farm. Ant Farmers. 

Facts of Australia: (in case this seems random, one of the scientists mentioned in the article was from Australia)

• it is home to the largest number of venomous snakes in the world
• it has been rumored that the first European settlers of Australia drank more alcohol per person than any other community in the history of mankind
• it is the driest inhabited continent besides Antarctica
• average life expectancy is 80.73 years, 77.86 for males and 83.75 for females (2008 est.)

What Does it Mean to be a Republican?

Behind party lines: what it means to be a Republican

by Jeff Horwich, Stephanie Curtis, Michael Caputo, Minnesota Public Radio, 

September 4, 2008

So, part 2 finally came out online. I had an excuse to sit around at my desk and make wire dragons while listening to the fascinating debate and taking occasional notes. They started the show with each of the people they were interviewing saying a word about what they thought the republican party was about. Justice. Freedom. Accountability. Principles. Restraint. Integrity. It sounds pretty reasonable. I can agree with all that.

The first 10 minutes or so was criticize the democrats time. While we were watching the democratic convention the newscasters were complaining that the democrats weren't attacking the republicans enough. There were none of those complains at the republican national convention and I don't think anybody listening to this program would complain along those lines either (unless they were a democrat). 

Some of the ideas that were stated:

• democrats are too controlling; they tell you what to eat, where to smoke, where to go to school, what to wear
• democrats put race labels on people and hold them back
• less individualism more state-ism

It was made very clear that the people speaking thought the government should stay out of the way. There was lots of talk about how government programs didn't really work and just took up a lot of money. One young man brought up the point that people should be more self reliant. In his opinion people shouldn't depend on the government to help them, they should go out and work hard for themselves. He said something like, if you depend on the government you stay stagnant and don't grow as a person. 

Another guy's idea was that it's more compassionate to teach people how to help themselves than to keep them down and just hand them checks. Several people made the connection between the government handing out checks to specific people and slavery. They said it was like keeping people enslaved to certain rules in return for money and such. 

One of them pointed out, and I definitely agree with him, that the two parties have very similar goals. They both want a country of rich, happy, smart people who can boast to the rest of the world about how great they are (ok, he only said that they have similar goals but I'm free to inject my own thoughts here right?). However, the democratic approach versus the republican approach to get to that goal, are very different. Very, very different. 

I think the common goal is a good one. And some points the republicans make have good common sense behind them. Likewise to some of the points the democrats make. So it's now time to bring out to cosmic mixing machine. Bzzzzztt. Hurray! The perfect politician! 

Facts on Both Parties:

• In the early 20th century the political animal was a eagle for the republicans and a rooster for the democrats (in Midwestern states at least)
• the republican party was created in 1854 to oppose the expansion of slavery into Kansas 
• the democratic party evolved from Anti-Federalist factions opposed to Alexander Hamilton in the early 1790s
• apparently the reason the democratic symbol is a donkey is because Andrew Jackson was labeled as a jackass by an opponent during intense mudslinging of the 1828 election
• Abraham Lincoln was the first republican president 

From Exhaust to Energy

I was reading the Star Tribune over breakfast today when my dad pointed out this article. It was in the business section, which I never read, so if he hadn't mentioned it I never would've found it. I usually don't have much interest in the business type stuff but this article was very interesting. 

Apparently BMW (I just found out that the company is German) is testing vehicles with thermoelectric generators  to capture heat from the exhaust and turn it into energy. I think that is a really good idea because according so some estimates almost 60% of the potential energy in the gasoline burned by a car is let off as heat. 

This works due to the Seebeck effect, an process named after Thomas Johann Seebeck, a physicist who discovered that if he joined two different metals together with two junctions and created a temperature difference at the junctures, a nearby compass needle would be deflected. This is because the two different metals reacted differently to the temperature thus creating a current which created a magnetic field. At the time Seebeck didn't realize there was an electric current involved so he called the phenomenon the thermomagnetic effect. Hans Christian Orsted played a vital role in conceiving and explaining thermoelectricity (he is best known for discovering the relationship between electricity and magnetism called electromagnetism). 

However, though thermoelectric generators (thermogenerators) are relatively simple and low maintenance, they aren't very efficient. In car engines they convert about 6 to 8 percent of the heat into electricity.  But the lead researcher on this project, Rainer Richter, is convinced that new materials will make the generators much more efficient. 

There are also more places besides cars where this technology is or could be used. In the 1950s people placed thermogenerators over kerosene lamps to power radios. That same technique could be used to generate electricity from stoves or fires in developing parts of the world today. Thermogenerators could also be placed near chimneys, factories, smoke stacks and all sorts of places that give off heat. 

I think it could be a very useful invention once it is made more efficient. It would definitely be a good idea to make car engines more efficient but another good place to put them would be lawnmowers. Those engines are even worse than cars, probably 80% of the fuel is lost as heat. 

Facts of Germany

• The largest Wind Farm and Solar Power Capacity is installed in Germany
• In 2007 14% of the country's electricity was generated through renewable means
• It is one of the most populous countries in the European Union with over 82 million inhabitants but has the lowest fertility rate in the world with 1.39 children per mother
• The average life expectancy was estimated in 2005 to be 78.65, males 75.61, and females 81.81

The End of the World is Coming!! Actually no it's not, don't panic

Several years ago I watched a program on PBS about string theory. String theory is a still in the works approach to theoretical physics. It's based on the idea that all matter is made up of tiny tiny string like particles. It is very, very confusing and I certainly don't claim to understand it. But while I was watching the show there was a brief mention of a project by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Scientists were building a giant particle accelerator called the Large Hadron Collidor (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. It shoots beams of protons around a 17-mile underground track where they collide with each other supposedly recreating the immediate aftereffects of the Bing Bang. The scientists monitor the debris to learn more about the origin and workings of the universe. 

At the time I thought it was a crazy but cool idea. They weren't done building it yet so I sort of forgot about it. Now however, it's done! The scientists are planning to start shooting proton beams on September 10th. 

Among critics of the project there is fear that the high energy experiment could form a mini black hole that would expand large enough to swallow the earth! There were last minute appeals to court to stop the project and so on. There was an article in Britain's Sun newspaper about it on Sep. 1st with the title "End of the World Due in 9 Days". 

However in June CERN released a report that stated that even if a black hole was to be formed it would immediately evaporate due to Hawking Radiation (even though black holes swallow up matter and light they also leak it out faster than they can swallow). And CERN scientists say that this kind of collision happens thousands of times a day when cosmic rays collide with the earth and other objects in space.

So I believe that we needn't fear the world will end on September 10th. It will probably take a very long time for the results of this experiment to be analysed and debated and finally released to the public but I'm looking forward to it. And if for some strange reason the world really does end at least I won't have to worry about my SAT testing.

Stats of Switzerland:

• As of 2007 the life expectancy average was 80.6 years, 77.8 male, 83.6 female
  
• It is one of the richest countries in the world
• Two of its cities, Zurich and Geneva, have been ranked first and second in the highest quality of life in the world
• 60% of the country is made up of the Alps
• and they generate 53% of their electricity by hydroelectricity, 42% with nuclear power, and 5% with conventional power sources

 That's all for now,

Jasmine

What does it mean to be a Democrat?

Driving home from music lessons I heard the last part of a program called "Behind Party Lines" on MPR. They were interviewing some delegates and volunteers on what it meant to be a Republican. It was interesting. I suppose I would call myself a Democrat but I try to keep an open mind and listen to what the Republicans are saying. I think Republicans do make some good points occasionally or at least what they say in their speeches sounds good. (of course that might just be what they're saying and not doing but I haven't researched enough to say yet)

So anyway, back to Behind Party Lines. I was listening to the last few minutes of part two, interviewing Republicans. It sounded interesting so when I got home I looked up part one, interviewing Democrats, online. The main question asked by the show's producers (Jeff Horwich, Micheal Caputo and Stephanie Curtis) to both parties was, "What does it mean to be a Democrat/Republican?" The interview focused on that question, not so much on the different issues, though plenty of issues came up in conversation.

The main points the democrats made were, being a democrat means:

• working for social justice
  
• speaking out for those who can't speak for themselves
• living your faith and political beliefs
• being a servant to those you have authority over
• freedom of religion

And the closing statement one of the delegates made was that "we can all agree to disagree" 

In my very limited knowledge and in very general terms, this is how I think of the democratic party's philosophy.

• Anti Iraq war
• More government sponsored programs
• Universal Health Care
• Higher taxes on higher income people, lower taxes on lower income people
• Pro Choice
• Stricter gun control

Like I said, this is a very, very rough and simple view and I will probably look back on this and cringe at my ignorance but this is what I know as of this moment. 

I'm going to listen to the full interview of the Republicans and hopefully get some good material. 

By the way, the third day of the republican national convention is taking place maybe a mile or two from my house. It's a very exciting time in politics right now.

Here's the link to the Behind Party Lines webpage if anybody's interested.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/08/28/behind_party_lines_democrat/?refid=0

Beginnings

I'm a student in EdVisions Off-Campus High School. We're a project based school so all the students get to make up their own projects. I'm doing a projects on current events going on in the world. I'm going to record my thoughts on current events along with background info on this blog. It's an experiment, we'll see how it goes. :)