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Obama & Stem Cell Research
It is so great to finally have a President that isn’t so anti-science in office. It was great to hear Obama lift the ban on stem cell research. Why anyone would want to ban any kind of research boggles my mind. There is so much we don’t know yet. Scientists are discovering new stuff everyday. Why would you want to prevent that? Knowledge and learning can never be a bad thing.
Obama gave a great speech before signing the executive order to lift the ban. He showed his commitment to science, which is a really cool thing. You can see a video of it here. It also personally cool seeing a fellow lefty as President, but I still find it weird using all the different pens.
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My New Eee PC
So I have wanted a netbook for some time now. I had $70 in Best Buy gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, so I thought I would put them towards a netbook. I pretty much had three options at our Best Buy, the Dell Mini 9, the Asus Eee PC 900, or the HP Mini 1000. Of those three I like the HP the best, but I hate the track pad button placement. The Asus and Dell’s keyboards were really cramped. What I really wanted was the Asus Eee PC 1000H, but they didn’t have it. Or more accurately, they didn’t have one on display. I went online and ordered my Asus Eee PC 1000H and was able to pick in up in store minutes later.I really like this Eee PC. The keyboard is a little cramped, but not nearly as bad as the 900 they had on display at Best Buy. It only took minutes to get use to. My only real complaint about the keyboard is that I wish the bumps on the F and J keys were a little bigger. Sometimes my fingers slip of the home row and I don’t notice it.
With the smaller screen, and lower power, I wouldn’t want this to be my main computer. It wouldn’t be good at photo or video editing, but that’s not really the point and not the reason I bought it. It’s a great little internet machine. I took it to bed last night, and thought it was much easier to use than my MacBook. It’s nice and small and doesn’t generate nearly as much heat.
It came with Windows XP on it. It’s been a long time since I have used XP. XP runs great on it, but I am considering installing either Windows 7 or Ubuntu on it. I hear people have installed OS X on these things, but that seams more of a hassle than it’s worth.
I love gadgets, but I don’t like spending money on things I don’t use. It took me a while to get my first iPod because I wasn’t sure how much I would use it, and I ended up using it constantly. I am not sure how much I am going to use my Eee PC, but it is cheaper than an iPod, so I am sure I will get my money out of it.
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I See Naked People
So I always have this reoccurring dream. It’s about this website that has naked pictures of everybody on it. It’s kind of like Facebook, but everybody is naked. And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. If I know you, chances are I found you on the site. There is just something sexy about seeing someone naked, even if they don’t look good naked.
Well, today I ran across the site that was in my dreams. Except of course the fact that it doesn’t have everybody on it. It has only 24 people on it, but still a cool site. I wouldn’t call it a porn site, but it has nudity, so it’s NSFW.
Oh, one more thing, what ever happen to pubic hair? Doesn’t anybody have it anymore?
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Happy Square Root Day
Today is Square Root Day. Square Root Day is a rare day that occurs when the day and month are both the square root of the last two digits of the year as in, √9=3, or 3²=9, or 3×3=9. Square Root Days only happen nine times a century. The last one was February 2, 2004, and the next is April 4, 2016.
I hear you are suppose to celebrate by eating root vegetables cut into squares.
There is another geeky math holiday coming next Saturday. March 14th is a math holiday that happens every year. It’s Pi day, 3-14 or 3.14.
Then for even more math geekiness I ran across this awesomely funny t-shirt. I want it.
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Palindromes
I love running across palindromes, but I can never remember them. In case you don’t know, a palindrome is a word or phrase that can be read the same forwards and backwards. I always thought the name palindrome should be a palindrome, but it’s not. The two that I always remember are “race car” and “race fast, safe car”. Chris Pirillo recently blogged about his favorite palindrome and asked for everybody’s favorites. Some of them are pretty amazing, but I think Weird Al has some of the best I have ever heard in this video.
Then there is the 224 word palindrome written by Demetri Martin (who is one funny comedian I might add) titled “Dammit I’m Mad“. Amazing stuff.
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Weekend With Crazy Family
We just got home from spending the weekend with my family. We went to the Water Park of America. It was pretty cool. They say it’s the largest indoor water park in the US. We had a great time in the water park, but I am a little sore now and have a black eye. Coming down one of the slides my face smacked into the back of the Wife’s head. That didn’t feel too good.
The worst part about the weekend was dealing with my family. I totally disagree with my Mom, Brother, and Sister-in-Law on most subjects is seems like. I just kept my mouth shut most of the time. They are so close minded it does no good to state my points. They are so against all prescription drugs. They think their only point is to make the drug companies money. I agree that drug companies push them to a point, but many people do actually need them for certain things. That have even bought into the whole antivaxxer movement. They believe all the non-sence that they cause autism. The funny thing is they all take a bunch of vitamins and herbal crap that pretty much only line the pockets of the salesmen.
They are also all Jesus freaks. They were talking about how good the movie Fireproof was. I normally couldn’t care less about what actors beliefs are, but I have a hard time with Kirk Cameron. I have seen some of his anti-evolution nonsense videos, so I refuse to watch anything he is in. It’s pretty save to say I wouldn’t like anything he ever does anyway.
For being Christians they are also so full of hate. They pretty much believe that anybody that isn’t American, white, straight, and not from California, are out to destroy our country. I had to bite my lip on many occasions for their idiotic comments.
Don’t even get me started on their love for Fox News. I sat through about 5 minutes of that crap and I had to leave the room. I’m sorry, I like my news to actually contain facts and you can keep your idiotic opinions to your self. I am smart enough to come up with my own thank you.
I love my family, but sometimes I think I am adopted.
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Weekend Links
I am out of town for the weekend, but here are a few cool links.
I know I am not the only one confused by the credit crisis. Here is a nice little video that explains it in simple terms.
And for a couple funny links.
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What Happened to Good Music
Today would have been Kurt Cobain’s 42nd birthday. It’s crazy that he has been dead for 15 years already.During my junior year of high school this album with a naked baby on it came out. A lot of people didn’t understand it, but I totally got it. It was something different. I totally related to it and it changed my life. That tape was pretty much glued into my tape deck. Not a bad song on it. There isn’t even a mediocre song on it. All were and still are great in my eyes. That alum opened my eyes to so much great music that wasn’t very popular. Many of those unknown bands would eventually get big and played on the radio. In the mid 90s the radio stations were playing music that I actually liked. Not so much now days.
Maybe I am getting old, but music now days seems watered down. Even the lesser known stuff that I listen too isn’t nearly as good. With the Internet and MySpace anybody with a computer and a guitar can be a band. To find good music now days you have to wade though much more crap. It’s no wonder the radio doesn’t play anything worth listening too. I still find and listen to good stuff, just nothing nearly as good as some of those 90s albums. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins Sonic Youth, and many other bands all had killer albums in the 90s. There have been only a handful of great albums since.
Or, maybe I am just OLD.
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Numb3rs
On Friday I mentioned I have a few lucky numbers. I don’t know why I have them. I don’t believe in luck or anything. I just like numbers. So here are my favorite numbers:
7- It’s a pretty popular lucky number. It’s my birthday. My birthday is 2-7-75. The two numbers that aren’t 7 add up to 7. It was also the number that the best QB for my favorite team, John Elway wore.
22- Growing up in elementary and middle school I played basketball. My best friend and I were huge Kareem Abdul-Jabbar fans. When it was time to hand out our jerseys he beat me to the 33 jersey, so I went with 22. 22 was then my basketball number whenever I could get it.
27- It’s also a take on my birthday 2-7. The great Steve Atwater wore it for the Broncos, and it was also the number worn by the late Darrent Williams.
34- One of my all time favorite football players was Walter Payton. He was great on and off the field. He wore 34. 34 was also worn by Tyrone Braxton. One of my favorite old time Bronco player that also went to college in Fargo.
42- Any geek has a special place for the number 42.
63- Is the number I wore in football from my sophomore year on. It was my second choice, but a good one. It is the card number of John Elway’s Rookie card, and also the last two digits of my social security number.
77- The number I wore my freshman year of football. Also the number of a Bronco great Karl Mecklenburg who went to college in Minnesota. It is also just two of my favorite numbers.
I also enjoy running across palindromic numbers, and numbers like 1024 and 1337 make me smile a bit too for obvious, or not so obvious reasons.
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Response to Cali Lewis on Global Warming
Over the weekend Cali Lewis made a comment about global warming on Twitter. She really stirred up a frenzy of comments. Half for her had half against. I didn’t feel like adding to the chaos, so am just blogging about it. I felt a little sorry for her, but she kind of deserved it. Science doesn’t prove global warming doesn’t exist, just like it doesn’t prove that it does. Science doesn’t prove anything. Science just provides the data and facts. Scientist will be the first to tell you they don’t know everything. They are always finding new and cool things. That’s what’s so great about science. Also, calling global warming a hoax is a little extreme.
Science shows that global warming does exist, and humans may have some blame to it. The real question is how much are humans affecting it, and how much we can really do about it. I don’t think anybody really knows the answers to those questions.
Cali did reply with a blog post that explains herself a little more. She changed he wording to being more skeptical of global warming. That is a big difference. It’s good to be skeptical. Being skeptical means you are looking at the data and coming to your own conclusion and are willing to change your mind if the data changes. I can handle someone being skeptical of man-made global warming. Calling it a hoax, no way.
I think Al Gore did more harm than good bringing global warming more to everybody’s attention with is book and movie. Just by who Al Gore is, half the population isn’t going to believe anything he says. Al Gore is a also little extreme. He is all doom and gloom. In reality it’s not that bad, yet.
I know a little bit about water treatment and I relate our air pollution to water pollution. Years ago, when our populations were smaller, we just dumped our raw sewage into rivers. It was no problem then. Nature took care of it. As populations got bigger and bigger, nature couldn’t keep up and sewage treatment plants were required. The still pretty much just use nature to treat the sewage, they are just helping it out. As the worlds population grows we will have a similar problem with air pollution and global warming.
I love Cali Lewis and was worried by her tweet. I know I disagree with her on politics, I was hoping I didn’t disagree with her on this. Her blog post cleared things up for me. I still disagree with her, but not as much. I can see where she is coming from.
In the end everybody really wants the same thing. Clean air, blue skis, and green grass (or in our case white snow). Trying to be more green can never be a bad thing.