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.

Number 4

And He's back.

Good old Harrison Ford is going to be Indiana Jones one more time, although a little older this time. I think Ford is like 65, which is pretty old to go swinging from whips and jumping off cliffs, or whatever he will do in this next movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Indiana Jones is definitely one of the classics, up there with Rambo and James Bond. My favorite movie has been the Last Crusade, the most recent installment before the new movie. Sean Connery played Indiana's father in Last Crusade, and he is another of my favorite actors. I have probably seen Last Crusade about ten times and it never gets old. Indiana is just the king of adventure. Which is why I am planning on seeing the new movie as soon as it comes out. I am trying to ignore all of the people saying that it will disappoint, won't measure up to the other three, and has way too much hype. Even if its not as good as the other three, it will still be better than 90% of other movies. I mean, just look at the picture, its classic Indiana Jones. I want to get a giant poster to put in my room, so I can worship Indiana every night before I go to bed (okay, maybe not, but I still want a poster).

This fourth Indiana Jones is going to be the first in a long line of good movies this summer, such as the new Narnia, The Dark Knight, Wanted and some others that I cannot think of.

Off on a tangent, they made a new Rambo movie, havn't seen it yet but its the same kind of thing. Some old guy coming back to act young and play hiss macho character again. While Harrison Ford probably just used some make-up and digital effects to look good, Sylvester Stallone decided to juice up as Rambo. To get those awesome mus-cles back from twenty years ago, this seventy year old actor took steroids like crazy so he could look cool while killing Asians. You gotta love his voice though.

Anyways, There's still a minor wait until The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, during which I will attempt to finish all these blogs and other school work.

9.3 is not Good

The strangest things happen in Iowa sometimes. Just a few weeks ago we had an earthquake. What? An earthquake in Iowa? I thought all we had to worry about was tornados and rabid animals. 

While our earthquake wasn't exactly San Francisco in 1906, when the whole city either collapsed or went up in flames, it was still a 5-ish on the Richter Scale. The scale is in orders of magnitude, so a 6 is ten times bigger than a 5 and a 100 times bigger than a four. Remember that quake the day after Christmas in 2004? Maybe not, you say, but that quake was the one that triggered the infamous Tsunami in Southeast Asia, killing over 200,000 people. That quake was 9.3, 10,000 times stronger than our little Iowa version and the second largest ever recorded.

I remember hearing about the Tsunami when we were vacationing in Hawaii over Christmas break. I was in the hotel room watching the TV for about an hour. I was just glad that the Tsunami didn't come and wipe away our hotel, since we were right on the beach and there was nothing between there and Indonesia to stop a massive wave. Luckily, I survived the day, and went on to enjoy my day, eventually reverting my mind to more pressing matters, such as helping my dad navigate as he drove, attempting to avoid crazy Hawaiian natives and clueless tourists.

Anyways, yet another quake has struck our small little world, killing some more Asians. Today, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake rocked (no pun intended) Central China, where only like 5 billion people live. Luckily, only 10,000 have died (thats the current death toll and it will rise). Many of the buildings in the province collapsed, including a three-story school, trapping 900 children. If that happened in my school I would freak out, and Kennedy is only one story (well I guess two in places). If you have ever seen the movie World Trade Center with Nicholas Cage, you can truly appreciate what it would feel like to be trapped in a collapsed building with little hope of rescue.

Also besides the thousands of people dead, one of the giant pandas might be injured. O my God, not the panda.

Birthdays, Death and Jewish Paratroopers

On May 8th, Israel celebrated its 60th birthday with the traditional picnics and chants of "Death to Arabs."

In 1948, the United Nations voted to create the new nation of Israel. After several million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, everyone felt sorry for them so they got a new country, displacing the Palestinians. Several wars followed between the surrounding Arab nations and Israel, including the Six Days War and many other conflicts.

Nowadays, the region is still in turmoil, and the Arabs still want to rid the Middle East of those Jews. The conflict is in no way one-sided. The Jews hate the Arabs just as much and on the independence day, violence erupted because the Jews were shouting 'Death to Arabs'. The Israeli Arabs didn't like that saying very much and responded with chants of 'Palestine'. The march soon degenerated into the violence that everyone has come to associate with the Middle East.

Also marring the festivities of Israel's 60th birthday was a wayward paratrooper. The Israeli Army Paratrooper was supposed to land on a beach as part of the festivities, but he didn't end up on the beach. This 'professional' soldier somehow managed to land in a crowd of bystanders, injuring himself and knocking the people over like bowling pins. Several of the people were seriously injured. I hope that paratrooper doesn't get a Purple Heart. I wouldn't want a man falling from the sky on top of me. That doesn't sound like the best way to spend a holiday.

Don't Be Jealous Bill

These days, everyone loves an expensive house. Many families buy houses that they can never afford and languish in mortgages for the rest of their lives. Mukesh Ambani decided to have his dream home built, but he didn't have to go into debt to buy it, even though it cost almost $2 billion.

Mr. Ambani is the world's fifth richest man and the owner of Reliance Industries, which makes petrochemicals (don't ask me what those are), started by his father. Ambani is worth around $43 billion, so this custom house was just pocket change.

This house is not yet complete, but it will be 27 stories when finished, with each floor being vastly different. The designers and engineers were ordered to make every floor out of different materials and have a different theme, It sounds like a nightmare to me, changing everything all the time. That's part of the reason its so expensive.

The first six stories are parking garages (how many cars do they have?), and then a lounge with a ballroom and seven elevators. Farther up is an outdoor garden that takes up almost the whole floor (the W shape in the picture). I am not going to go through all the features, but just imagine what you could get for 2 billion dollars.

This downtown Mumbai skyscraper is the world's first billion dollar home. Bill Gates' home only cost $60 million, but then again he doesn't have a six-floor garage. I guess Bill just doesn't have the taste that Mukesh does.

RIP Giant Pig

Apparently, pigs can actually fly.

At least Pink Floyd's giant pig can.

The giant two-story pig has been a signature Pink Floyd stage prop for almost thirty years, but I am afraid its glory days are over. This monstrous inflatable pig was tethered at a music festival in Southern California, until they got a little bit of wind. Obviously, whoever tied down that pig wasn't a boy scout because the pig easily broke free and sailed off into the night, with thousands of people watching in amazement at the flying pig.

I could just see this giant pig floating higher and higher and eventually taking out a commercial jetliner. "Hey mommy look at the giant pig" a four year old says as he gazes out the plane window. Unfortunately, for the pigs sake, he did not float higher and higher or visit some exotic island. This huge pig crash landed in the desert.

So your outside and playing with a rattlesnake (or whatever they do for fun in the desert) and suddenly a shadow comes over your head. You have no clue what it could be as if falls further towards you. Just before it hits the ground, the pig impales itself on one of those really big cactus.

Well, anyway, there was a pretty hefty reward for this oversized pork chop. The owner offered $10,000 to whoever found his favorite inflatable pig, and those desert dwellers got lucky. Two couples found shredded remains from that unfortunate swine in their driveways. At first, they had no idea what it was. I mean, how often does a giant inflatable pig crash land in your yard?