gObama

After an exhaustingly long campaign Barack Obama has become the first major black presidential nominee. Now that Clinton has been subdued, Obama wil have to take on John McCain, who is almost 30 years older than Obama.

Change, lets hope it comes.

Personally, I hope that Mr. Barack will come out on top. He will be the first president I vote for.

Breadsticks and Cheesecake

I can not wait until I graduate and head off to college. After going to all of the graduation parties and wishing my senior friends goodbye, I am ready for high school to be over. And yet I have another year. The next year will be fun, senior year always is, but it will be nice to move on to college and prepare for the rest of my life.

I am excited for senior year. It gives me a chance to run state in both crosscountry and track and improve my times, a chance to make more friends, and most importantly, decide where I am going to college and what I am going to devote the rest of my life to. I am one of those kind of guys that dreams of having a big family in a big house with a big yard. I want to get married, have a bunch of kids and get good job. The first step in that dream is to get my education for that high-paying job is choosing the right college. The aspect of finishing my education and also the social aspects of college have me very excited.

Meanwhile, its so sad that all my senior buddies are leaving, I have known alot of those people for a long time and I know that for some of them it may be the last time I see them. I am not going to get overly sentimental, so I will just say that I am going to miss them.

I went to the graduation parties this weekend and thoroughly enjoyed them. The Raspberry-Lemonade Cake at Kyle Schura's party earns the award for best desert while Aaron Elias's party potatoes topped off the overall list. I have had more crap food in the last few days than ever. I tried to even it out between chocolate and white cake, but chocoalte got a little sickening after a while. Patrick Cahalan's pancakes were probably the worst food, but he did have good brownies. I ate a lot of olives and strawberries. And Brueger's bagels, those were at Emily Ehlen's, one of my friends from Linn-Mar. In another year when I graduate, I have decided that I am going to have Olive Garden breadsticks, bagels, cheesecake and strawberries, for starters.

Anyways, I have a year before I need to worry about grad parties and leaving for college.

Solar Blimps

In recent weeks we have seen many natural disasters. From the storms that killed eight last night in Iowa to the Myanmar Hurricane and the China earthquake and aftershocks, we seen a lot. One of the main problems is not being prepared for the disaster, it is responding to the disaster. In China and Myanmar, and even to a greater extent the Tsunami a few years, thousands of aid workers have poured into the these regions. In Myanmar it took a while because of diplomacy and the military government. Often the entire infrastructure has been wiped out and it is very hard to set up refugee camps and coordinate efforts to rebuild.

And this is where Andrew Leinonen comes in. He has conceived a novel idea--a floating power plant. A blimp, covered with solar panels, could be flown to a disaster site, even unmanned if need be. This small airship would provide power to aid rescue workers in regions where there is no available power. This blimp could generate enough electricity for 125 shallow-water pumps, which would generate enough drinking water for 12,000 people everyday.

This airship, while not yet built is an innovative idea that could help care for thousands of refugees after a horrible disaster. With every-increasing numbers of people and seemingly more frequent natural disasters, devices like these will be needed. Nice job Mr. Leinonen, I wish I would have thought of blimps.

Information Age

Our society runs on information. A century ago, information was slow to diffuse and often the morning newspaper and word of mouth were the main media. These days, CNN can have us notified of any major event in real time, whether its a school shooting, new election results or natural disasters.

Freedom of speech in this country and others has caused an explosion in the volume of information. In a democracy, anyone can state their ideas, even if no one actualy wants to hear them (shut up Rush Limbaugh). This blog is a testament to that. While the government may be reading my blog, they cannot prevent me from writing whatever I want (legally, at least).

This blog is just one medium of many media. Now we can communicate with all of the tele's -- telegrams, telephones, television, telepathy (that would be sweet), and telescopes (with the aliens). Other information sharing media include newspapers, the all-powerful Internet, radio, cable TV, and (omg) books. Books, you say, what are those? Yes, they still make Those. Printed materials, even though they are so low tech, still make up the majority of information.

As soon as I hit Publish Post this blog will more information to the endless realm of the Internet. It will be read by less than five people, but it will be there for anyone.

Black Gold

Its Just Our Luck. Right when our age group is beginning to drive, gas prices decide to shoot up astronomically. If I had to pay for my own gas right now, I don't know how I would do it. With prices approaching four dollars a gallon, its not going to get any better. Alaska is the most expensive place to buy gas at $4.18 a gallon (isn't that were most of our non-imported gas comes from?) and Arizona is the cheapest at $3.71 a gallon. I heard that the company that makes the numbers for gas stations signs has received many new orders. Gas stations are running out of threes and fours and there are even some orders for fives. Scary.

If someone would have said that we would have four dollar gas about 10 years ago, no one would have believed you. If they would have shot up to that immediately, there most likely would have been a revolt. There was the oil embargo in the 70s that highlighted our countries need for oil, and we simply cannot live without it and are forced to pay whatever the price.

Gas prices have continually increased over the past few years, and all of a sudden I have found myself saying "When did gas get so high? Seems like it was just at $2.80" The increase is so gradual that it makes it easier on our minds but tougher on our bank accounts.

It might even be tolerable if gas prices didn't cause everything else to rise in price. Food, airline tickets, and basically every industry is affected by the high prices of gas and they pass that expense on to the consumer. I don't buy a whole lot of things myself, but soon I will head off to college and have to survive on my own income. And college kids are usually broke.

So who to blame. So many say 'blame Bush, he caused all of this!' but I think the picture is more complicated. Reserves are being drained faster and faster, chaos in Iraq and other Middle East countries has caused hostilites and oil shortages, and Chinese people are switching from bikes to cars and there are alot of Chinese people. One thing that we cannot deny is that the oil companies are raking in record profits. Exxon Mobil set the record for quaterly earnings this winter by making a profit of $11 billion. That is the highest profit for a US company ever. Exxon made $40 Billion in profit in 2007. But again that is only a part of the problem. Exxons revenue was about ten times the profit, which means that only ten percent of the price of gas goes to the gas companies. So instead of four dollars a gallon it would be $3.60.

And Its Only Going To Get Worse

Japanesian Singing Parrot

It's just one of those days. Randomly searching on the Internet, hoping for something to catch my eye and provide me with something interesting to blog about. Nothing overly interesting on the main pages, just something on Kobe Bryant and a new death toll for the China quake (btw, its up to 51,000 dead with another 30,000 missing). After being distracted by several people in the IMC, I made my way to the Most Popular section of news. That always works.

Mr. Yosuke Nakamura is not you average Japanese guy. Even though his name sounds like something you would eat at the Sushi House, Yosuke loves to share his name.

So one day Yosuke decided to escape from his cage, for little Yosuke is a bird--a parrot to be exact. After cruising the neighborhood for a while, the gray parrot ran into a problem. He was lost, and Tokyo is not a friendly city for parrots.

Fortunately, Yosuke found a police station and soon some Japanesian police people caught him. I guess Yosuke wanted a lawyer or something because he wouldn't talk to the police. I can just imagine them interrogating the parrot, attempting to force him to talk with people watching from behind a two-way mirror.

After these attempting failed, those Japanese people turned the bird over to some different Japanese People, namely a veterinarian. Yosuke immediately opened up to veterinarian.

"I am Mr. Yosuke Nakamura" said the parrot (But in Japanese)

"Oh my" says the vet (also in Japanese)

"I am Mr. Yosuke Nakamura" said the parrot

The parrot then proceeded to rattle off some vocabulary far beyond that of your average talking bird. Instead of the traditional "Yes" or "Give Me a Cracker", Yosuke decided to impress that vet and began to recite his name, his home address, down to the street number, and his social security number (okay maybe not the last part). While someone was checking the address, the parrot began to entertain the staff by singing several Japanese songs. It would be pretty sweet to have a Japanese singing parrot.

Anyways, they found the Nakamura family and Yosuke was returned to his house after the greatest adventure of his parrot life.

Man of Iron

Well, you know, I was just working out in the gym. Did about 500 reps at 200 pounds. Not bad for one days work. You should have been there.

That's what Rex Jameson was probably telling his friends. Except its not quite as good as it sounds, this robotics engineer did it with a sweet suit.

While I haven't seen the Ironman movie yet, I have seen the trailer and it looks decent. The concept is just cool to think about. Ya know, everyone would like to fly around in a powerful suit of armor that shoots things that blow up tanks. Anyways, if you are totally ignorant and do not know of the Ironman thing, let me elaborate and cure your ignorance.

So there is this guy, Tony Stark. Super rich, super smart guy that develops weapons for the military. Basically he gets caught by a terrorist organization and is held hostage until he builds a superweapon. Instead of some atomic bomb, he makes an iron suit (get it, Ironman?!) and kills some terrorists. Once he is back in his billion dollar home he makes a new suit and flies around shooting things. Yeah, you can tell I haven't actually seen the movie.

Well, back to Mr. Rex. This enterprising engineer made a similar suit under contract from the US Military. While I don't know the specifics, the suit basically detects your every movement and amplifies it almost immediately. So now instead of being the gym class looser who can't bench the bar, you can be like Hercules and throw giant things around at the hundred-headed Hydra (that is like the sweetest animated movie ever, next to Lion King).

The suit is about 150 pounds and the military hopes to use it to make a new super soldier. The main problem with it at this point is the battery life. You can't go fighting enemies with only thirty minutes of battery life. And it looks nowhere as cool as Ironman's suit.