Rose Bowl anybody?
The day started with a loss at Columbus. And with that, destiny was not in our hand anymore. Fate was Wisconsin to command. However, chance stole fate from Wisconsin and voila! Michigan is in the Rose Bowl!
And may I say, thank you Wisconsin. It has been a fun season.
p/s – Ajax 5 – 0 De Graafschap. A nice little warmup for the Champions’ League match against Juventus . Ajax needs to win this if they want to save their season. And damn, Rosales is a good purchase!
… is never objective.
So much for moral value, eh?
p/s – for a cleaner environment! This is our next goal after Kyoto is done!
pp/s – hunting with hounds has been banned in Britain. Hunting ban is probably the biggest environmental issue in Britain at the moment.
The most interesting point on this issue is that, the House of Commons is in favor (or in favour, depending on how messed up your head is) of the ban while the House of Lords is saying nay. While this happens, the House of Commons is pushing the ban forward, regardless of what the Lords thinks. Class war in the making, probably.
ppp/s – this might be a little bit sadistic, but a twin .50 calibre machine gun is the right way to fight poaching. Let the poachers be hunted.
p4/s – Kmart and Sears are merging into a single, bigger, giant entity.
Did you watch Futurama when it was on Fox Network?
If you did, do you remember this one particular episode where Fry was sleeping and an advertisement ran through during one of his dreams and when he woke up, he told Leela that he dreamt an advertisement and Leela said he didn’t dream it but rather, it was some kind of advertisement transmitted via some kind of wave by some marketing firms to the brain for marketing purpose?
(Pardon me but w00t! 68 words in one sentence!) In short, everybody sees commercials during their sleep without wanting to see it.
When I first saw that episode, I laughed so hard that I cried. That idea was so funny because the notion itself is an impossibility. It is so impossible that it is absurd and such extreme absurdity is so impossible, that it is funny.
Currently the US Senate, in the real world of course, is considering an act known as the Intellectual Property Protection Act. As the name of the act suggests, it aims at protecting intellectual properties. Many in the entertainment industry, including the RIAA have hailed this as the way to go.
I haven’t read the whole act yet and I plan not to read the whole boring stuff. But, according to Wired, the idea of fair use might be bulldozed by this act. More:
However, under the proposed language, viewers would not be allowed to use software or devices to skip commericals or promotional announcements “that would otherwise be performed or displayed before, during or after the performance of the motion picture,” like the previews on a DVD.
Yup. If the act is passed, we can no longer skip commercials. That is one step closer to Futurama’s joke. But I will not laugh on this one.
p/s – there is a growing expectation of Malaysia repegging the ringgit from 3.80 to a dollar to 3.30 to a dollar. Now, this is my first chance to speculate in the face of this appreciation. I should convert almost all of my dollar denominated currency into ringgit before the revaluation and then buy back the dollar. Sounds like a plan!
Now, where can I find a billion dollars…
In the past week, two high profile reports on global warming were released. One of them concerns the Arctic and another is about the flora and fauna of the United States.
The first report found that on average the Earth has warmed by about one degree Fahrenheit since 1900. This is not really news since it is almost widely known that the average temperature of the Earth has gone up by a few degrees since the industrial revolution. However, what is spectacular is the temperature increase in the Arctic. It is reported that in the last 50 years, the area has experience 4 to 7 degree increase in temperature and this is strikingly different from the average global increase. An earlier report from the Arctic Council, a group of nations within the Arctic Circle that convened a few weeks ago, states that the temperature in the Arctic will likely rise by 8 to 14 degrees in the next 100 years.
The finding has already sparked concerns on the ability of species to adapt to the changing climate.
At the same time, experts at the University of Zurich reported that the glaciers in Switzerland have shrunk as much as 20% of its 1985 size. This only strengthens a report by the United Nations released a year ago, if I am not mistaken, that concludes that the skiing resorts in the Alps are facing extinction in the near future. On the side note, Switzerland is hardly an Arctic nation.
The other major report was conducted by scientists from Austin and Boulders. Quoting the press release,
Global warming has forced U.S. plants and animals to change their behavior in recent decades in ways that can be harmful…
More disturbingly:
The report revealed that some plants are flowering earlier in the spring than ever before and some birds breeding earlier. In addition, species from Edith’s checkerspot butterflies to the red fox have been gradually moving northward or to higher elevations, where more tolerable climate conditions now exist. Some of these species are also disappearing from southern, or lower elevation, portions of their ranges.
From all of these reports, in my opinion for global warming, or climate change at the very least, is getting stronger and harder to refute.
From all of these reports, the empirical evidence for global warming, or climate change at the very least, is getting stronger and harder to refute from my point of view.
In the face of such increasing certainty, I am only glad that the Kyoto Protocol will come into force in less than 80 days. The effect of Kyoto will be slow no doubt but if the current model is correct, the rate of increase in the global temperature should somewhat be abated.
p/s – the NYT picked (reg. req.) up a story on Newmont in Indonesia. Quoting:
In a telephone interview from Denver on Saturday, Mr. Baker said the arsenic levels were basically irrelevant because the arsenic was a kind that would not dissolve in water and enter the food chain. Newmont said that it disagreed with the way the arsenic and mercury levels in the fish were calculated and that it believed that the benthos were not polluted.
He says it is impossible for arsenic to enter the food chain! I would like to see him eating a fish from a pond full of arsenic!
For goodness’ sake, quit lying already.
The NYT in its Op-ed (reg. req.) is calling Indonesian new President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to act. I strongly support that call.
Apart from the Times, many other major newspapers have ran the story on Newmont’s little errand in Sulawesi, Indonesia. The multinational firm will certainly enjoy the publicity, albeit much less than us, the environmentalists.
Winter seems to be around the corner. Despite report that this winter should be milder, the cold is still chilling to the bone. My professor, who commutes weekly to and from Ann Arbor and Buffalo, New York via Canada, said that snow has fallen in Ontario.
I like the snow, minus the cold, but fall has always been my favorite season. During the fall, Earth seems to be painted by splashes of colors. Summer is fun but that is for some other reason.
I captured this somewhere in Ann Arbor.