Friday, September 26, 2008

Survivor- Week 1

Good morning! Since I know most of you are Survivor watchers, I'll try to write a little blurb on Friday mornings about the previous night's show and of course, chime in your opinions. First I'd like to comment that it was a 2 hour premier and I had no idea. I watched the first hour and someone got voted off so then switched to The Office. After The Office, I was flipping back through the channels and caught the tail end of the second episode, so hopefully Boski can fill us in on what happened.

The show's 2 teams are Kota and Fang (even though it sounds like Thong every time Jeff says it). From what I saw, Kota is 100 times better than Fang. Fang lost the first 2 challenges and are already down 2 people. My beef with Fang is that they are morons. They vote off their strongest girl after the first tribal council which is a joke. Girls good at the challenges are hard to come by, and they decide to vote off the best one because of her attitude....give me a break. The first girl off the island's name was Michelle. She was a bad ass and I was really mad to see her go. As she left, she was quoted by saying "I'm not really surprised. Losers stick together. Fat people stick together. They decided to keep Gillian, who's like a hundred and five, and to vote me, who's twenty-four and completely fit. I mean they're all idiots. They're all voting off the strongest member, so it's going to be interesting to see what happens. Very interesting." Of course, the next person to go was Gillian, the 60 year old annoying as fuck nurse....hallelujah!

Sorry this post is so long, I promise future ones will not be this bad....and I'm sure half of you stopped reading already. I just want to point out one more thing- the hot (or potentially hot) chicks. It's still early, so I haven't found my true favorite and I could be off base with some of these girls, but this is off first impressions so no bashing. There is Corrine, Jacquie, Sugar (borderline ugly), Kelly, and Paloma. As the shows go on, I'll probably knock some of these chicks off the list but as of right now, Paloma is the hottest and my favorite....mmm that caramel skin yum. Michelle was kind of hot, in her own bitchy way, but as I said before she is already gone. RIP

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Bye Bye iPhone...hello G1 Smart Phone

I'll be getting this whenever my Sprint plan is done.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=google-t-mobile-launch-g1

With open source software, geeks world wide will make some incredible add-ons. I can't even imagine how much cool shit will be available within a few months.

Goal Line Technology...is it time?

One of the biggest problems in Soccer today is actually awarding a goal. Not a strike from 25 yards out that goes right in the upper 90. But one of those hit of the cross bar bounce on the ground/defender sliding into the goal to clear out/9 people in front of goal can't see shit goals. Goal line technology, made by the same people who have built the tennis system (Hawkeye) was testing several prototypes over the past a few years until last year when the funding was pulled. It was tested at several premier league teams stadiums and all the results seem positive. They use the same technology as the tennis system where several strategically placed cameras watch the goal line from various angles to help with any questionable calls. The system was able to tell instantly whether a goal was in or not. They pulled the funding because some soccer purist believed it to be a step in the wrong direction because soccer is a sport not based on technology and has stayed constant throughout the years. I always felt this technology was needed, having witnessed many goals count/not count that where not registered.

The issue was brought back to fore-front this weekend by what was one of the biggest refereeing fuck ups ever seen. Even more of a fuck up that Graham Poll's infamous 3 yellow cars in the world cup 2006. This happened in the English League Championship which is the league right below the premier league. Watford vs. Reading that ended in a 2-2 tie. Well it should have been 2-1. Reading had a corner, which was headed toward goal by a watford (he saw it late and was trying to clear it out for another corner). Now the ball was heading toward the goal but was going wide, and did go wide. A reading player then saved it...having the ball gone out for what should have been either a goal kick. Keep in mind the linesman is standing on the end line (or near it) because it was a corner. After saving a ball that was already out the linesman flagged for a fucking goal...the play kept on because Reading surely did not think it was a goal, and headed against the crossbar had it come back in play, someone shot it and got it deflected out of bounds. But the ref (who is the youngest ref to do big games at the age of 25) saw the linesman call for a goal and awarded it. The players lined up like it was a goal kick, and then to their shock it was awarded a goal. This gets even better because Steve Copell, the reading manager, who I have a great amount of respect for as a coach basically said they would re-play the game because that goal should not have counted. The linesman said after watching a replay that he had made a mistake, was sorry for it, and said it was an "optical illusion". The 25 year old ref has come under fire as well because they think he should have known, and saw it was not a goal and said to the linesman hey man you fucked up. Here is the "goal", view it for yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LST-Ch2uVzw

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Favorite stand-up Comedians

Alright, time for a little change of pace. Who are your favorite stand-up comedians? This doesn't have to mean 'who are the best of all time', but rather who do YOU like the most. For instance, Richard Pryor is probably one of the "greatest" but I wouldn't put him in my personal top 5. Also, some people are really funny and have made great movies, but I wouldn't say they are great stand-up comedians (i.e. Adam Sandler/Chris Farley).

1) Dave Chappelle- I'm sure he is in everyone's top 5. He is the comedian of our generation IMO and is specifically great b/c he jokes the white and black race and no one gets offended....aka he says what everyone thinks.
2) Daniel Tosh- This guy is awesome; watch some of his acts on youtube if you haven't heard his stuff before.
3) Mitch Hedberg- He does one liners that can be cheesy, but I think his stuff is great. Too bad he died in '05.
4) Dimitri Martin- He also does one liners like Mitch. I don't know if that's just my favorite style, but he's really funny too.
5) Louis CK- I first heard of him through his HBO show, which by the way was hilarious. Then I started listening to his material online and they are equally as funny...very raunchy guy.

Funniest Female Stand-up: Ellen Degeneres...I've seen one of her stand-ups on HBO and it was really funny. I usually hate female comedians because all they do is joke about men and their relationships with men. However, her comedy was based on real life stuff and definitely the best from a woman I've ever watched.

**I didn't put Dane Cook up there b/c I've changed my perception of him after hearing how he ganks routines. His retaliation CD was awesome but what else has he done? Plus, some of his material from that CD was what he stole from other comedians.

Just Missed List- Bill Cosby, Chris Rock (his old material was hilarious like black people vs 'gros), Eddie Murphy, Charlie Murphy.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Are We Alone?

The universe is about 14 billion years old, atleast the start of this universe. Maybe there were an infinite amount of big bangs before ours? The cycle could go: big bang --> universe expands until it can't expand anymore --> universe collapses into extremely dense ball --> big bang. Anyway, that's not really what I wanted to talk about, we'll leave that topic for another day. What came into my mind was something that I'm sure everyone has thought about before and probably argued about. Is there intelligent life somewhere out there in the universe?

Odds seem to be undeniably in favor of...yes. In our galaxy there are estimated to be upwards of 250 billion stars. Some scientists say there are more than 100 billion galaxies. So, lets say there are about 2.5 sextillion (2.5 x 10^21 ) stars in the universe
. Then let us assume that the earth is not some kind of anomaly and therefore is somewhat typical, atleast when referring to astronomical odds. With this assumption, we see that there should be billions of habitable planets in the universe. Given that the universe spans 14 billion years, it then should not be unthinkable that life has evolved on these planets, from mere 1 celled prokaryotes to species as smart as humans and some most definitely smarter. Unless you're some kind of god freak that believes we were created as the only intelligent species, reason leads us to believe that there are aliens somewhere, probably in our own galaxy.

Okay, so we've come to the conclusion that life outside of our planet must exist. It has to right? The odds against it are infinitely, impossibly low. Why then is there no evidence? No proof of alien communications? Well maybe there is, maybe the government just hides it (area 51 for example). I don't know what I think about that subject, maybe aliens really did crash on our planet, but we don't know for sure, so we have to assume that they haven't. So back to the question, if there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe then why haven't we found them. I'll mention a couple possibilities.

First, the universe is just too big. The odds of a chance encounter are incredibly slim. The sun alone is 93 million miles from earth. The next closest star is 4.3 light years away, or about 25 million million miles. Travelling as fast as our current technology allows, it would take about 100,000 years to get to Proxima Centauri. And that's when we know where we're going. Even if they could travel close to the speed of light, aliens finding earth would be like finding a needle in a stack of needles.

Next is an idea that ignited the fire for writing this post. What if the amount of technology needed for interstellar travel is beyond the point of survival? Take the LHC for example, this obviously didn't cause the end of the world, but maybe something like it could. What if civilizations just destroy themselves with their technology before they have the chance to leave their planets? I recently read an article about advances in nanotechnology, stating that we are getting closer to producing self replicating nanobots. Some of you have probably heard about this idea before, which some fear might lead to "grey goo," an end of the world scenario. Basically, these nanobots consume materials to replicate themselves, eventually consuming all of the matter on earth.

There's more I'd like to talk about, but I have some studying to do. Feel free to share your own ideas, because I'm sure a lot more could be said about the topic that I didn't touch on.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Damon speak politics

I like it when celebs speak their mind and don't give a fuck what anyone else thinks....

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Its the end of the world as we know it!.....????

I'm sure most of you have seen something about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Its basically the worlds largest particle accelerator. At around 10 Billion Dollars this thing ain't cheap. Its contained underground is like 17miles in circumference. What this thing is designed to do is basically speed up protons, sending some going one way, and others going the other using various electro magnets and other crazy shit to bend them around this track and slam them together in an effort to better understand things like gravity, mass, and a bunch of theories people have come up with over the years. Theories, not laws, not rules, shit some guys sat around probably stoned and said you know I can bet find out how mass is achieved by slamming particles together flying around at near light speed. Other theories like nuclear fusion and stuff I really don't fully understand are also going to be tested. So along with this great technological creation comes great power. Possibly the power to destroy the earth! There are tons of scientist and experts against this project. Stating that this may be able to create small stable black holes, hypothetical things called strangelets, magnetic monopoles, and vacuum bubbles. Its even gone so far as some of the people working on the project have said it is possible and that the black holes should disappear due to some theory called Hawking Radiation. So something might happen, that might be contained by something that hasn't been proven to even exists....sounds great to me. Do I think anything will happen that is terrible, probably not. But as history shows when we start fucking with the most powerful sciences on earth sometimes it comes back to bite us in the ass. Especially when we are dealing with items, theories, properties, etc. that we are not sure to be true, false, exists, etc.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

recycling

saw in the USA Today that Houston has the worst recycling in the usa. 2%....

some cities are in the 20%'s...

discuss

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Overpopulation

As the population continues to grow and with life expectancy increasing every year one has to ponder the question...when will there be too many people? To some the answer is easy....right now! Some argue we will reach the limit in 20, 30, 50, 150, etc. years. Others feel the population will never exceed a "limit" as technology will help us along the way. Whats Boski say?

Right now the estimate is 6.692 billion people on earth. Think about that for a second...6.7 BILLION PEEPS! We need to curve this fast. But what can we do? Take China for example. While not being a "law" each family is only supposed to have 1 child. Now certain exceptions obviously apply, almost everyone in China follows this rule. They have curved their population explosion greatly. Now I'm not sure if thats the answer, it raises huge problems and concerns that I won't even go into. Overpopulation is one of the main reasons I am for abortion. But thats the kind of thinking that needs to be brought up. Not the US's attempt by shoveling 50+ million dollars a year into planned parenthood classes. The problem is compounded by humans ecological footprint, and more specifically who leaves the biggest. It is said the US accounts for around 5% of the total world population but consumes 25-30% of natural resources. So we've got overpopulation and over consumption. We can shrink this down from large scale to examples that are easier to understand: Those millions of people in Africa that live in shacks made from bits of metal and cardboard don't really consume that much in terms of food, goods, or energy. We can look in our own country, a Amish family will consume far less that a typical family living in a suburban environment.

Now we open up the debate, as all contributors to this blog comes from families and none are an only child. Some come from large families. Should there be a rule in place, similar to China, were we regulate number of children. Its get even more complicated when you take into consideration of who is having children. In most normal middle class families (were most of the US population falls into) I feel like they should be able to have as many children as they want, this ignores the consumption argument but it beats the lower income families who have multiple children that end up getting supported by welfare. Should we say unless you make XXXXX amount of money a year you can only have X amount of children? What about those Amish families discussed where they are taking no welfare or government help and completely self sustaining? What about a selective extermination of certain populations? Do we really need all the people in 3rd world countries? If thats too extreme lets cut all funding for government issued help programs. If your 3rd world country is suffering from a drought and no food can be produced that sucks for you. We won't waste our food and money to help you out when you give us nothing in return. The fact is technology is not keeping up with our growth and consumption. People in the 1960s thought we would be living on the Moon by now. Our reduction in greenhouse gases and population has not decreased as much as it should and while the whole "going green" is generating more buzz is it to little to late? So I open up this topic for discussion.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Left 4 Dead

The blog has been pretty empty for a while, so I'll go ahead and make a post about this new game that's coming out soon. Basically it's a valve game, so it will be available over steam, which of course we all already have. It is a 4 player co-op game that you play online. It's kind of a mixture of CS and resident evil. It also has a 4v4 mode where one side plays the humans and the other side the zombies. I definitely plan on getting it when it comes out, if we had 3 others I think it could end up being really fun. Anyway, here are 2 videos of gameplay footage.