McSorley's Film

This is a film that Collin, Andrew and I made for a contest.

Update: The guys were featured in the New York Times on May 21

No More S.U.V.s

The Times reports today that sales of S.U.V.s are falling by large numbers. Dealers are offering huge discounts just to get the cars off of their lots. This is mainly due to high gas prices and maybe the negative sentiment towards the oversized cars. One thing I found interesting was 'fewer than half the people who bought luxury S.U.V.'s are going back for another one.'

I personally can't stand these cars because of the ridiculous amount of space the waste and the ludicrous fuel efficiency. Hopefully they will pass as a trend and also improve their fuel economy to make this country appear a little more sane.

Get a Rhythm

Trashy

Views of my trash can over the past week.

Boss is Pissssssed... and Season Hasn't Even Started

George Steinbrenner is voicing his opposition to the World Baseball Classic taking place right now. He is worried that his players will be injured in the non-MLB tournament this spring. According to Si.com, yesterday the Yankees placed a note appologizing to fans for the absense of some of their stars. I guess Boss is more worried about not selling tickets to his spring training camp rather than the health of his athletes.

"Thank you for expressing your concerns," the sign stated. "We are sorry that certain players will not be present for portions of spring training. These players have elected to participate in the World Baseball Classic. The World Baseball Classic is an event sanctioned by the commissioner of Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association.

"The New York Yankess," the sign went on, misspelling the team's name, "did not vote to support this event. Any comments you have regarding the World Baseball Classic should be directed to the commissioner of Major League Baseball or the Major League Baseball Players Association."

AP Katrina Video

The Associated Press has released video of the government's pre-Katrina breifings. Many people, the AP included, are reporting on Bush's lack of questioning in the meeting and contradicting himself and others at FEMA. On the other hand, I've also read about some factual errors in the news reports. Either way, I don't really care. Just thought you might like to see what today's fuss is about.

Port Fuss

Although I've largely ignored the issue, I'm already getting fed up with the political fuss being made in Washington over the ports. There really is no issue here to begin with. A company in the U.A.E. is buying P&O, a navigation company in London (a foreign company) that manages some of our ports. Many argue that an Arab company controlling our shipping jeopardizes our national security. However, the port security is opperated by the coast guard. There is no situation, but Congress is doing their best to start a fight.

Stephen E. Flynn is the maritime security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has explained in much detail the security risks of our ports.

"It's a global network at the end of the day that we're trying to secure here," Flynn said. "And that doesn't happen by the United States owning every bit of it. What we should be focusing on instead is the question, are the security standards adequate?"

So there you go, instead of worrying about who secures our ports, worry about how they are secured. And Congress, why don't you take a flying leap off one of those docks!

New Energy

Yesterday I went to Columbia University to hear a talk put on by their Earth Institute. The Governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, was the speaker. His topic of discussion was the future of energy in America.

As you know, the President mentioned our nation's energy crisis in his state of the union address last month. Our nation's foreign policy today is directly determined by our demand for oil. We are giving billions of dollars to dictators across the globe to feed our energy addiction. Dirty regimes in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Iran have us pinned by their ability to supply us with oil.
Much has been talked about new fuel alternatives to gasoline since the soccer mom's are sucking it all up in their SUV's. Gov. Schweitzer went into detail about these fuel options. A good point he made is that there is no single solution to the problem. There need to be several other energy alternatives. Montana gets 10% of its electricity from wind. Another popular idea for car fuel is ethanol. This is certainly a potential source, but is not the perfect solution to our problem. Schweitzer's favorite prospective fuel source involves converting coal to a liquid fuel. Montana sits on 30% of our nation's coal and by converting it to liquid fuel, could provide enough energy for our country to survive for 40 years. The process is economically friendly and cost efficient. Montana is currently negotiating to build multiple facilities to peform this conversion within the next four years.

The Governor is spending the rest of his week visiting with banks and energy companies about coal liquefaction. He will be featured on 60 minutes Sunday night and then will meet with President Bush to discuss the national energy crisis and their ideas for a solution.

Around the World

I've decided recently that my life is not complete until I circumnavigate the globe. In fact, if I am still working at this job next Christmas, I'm going to quit and take the next 5-8 months to travel around the world.

I found a very cool travel site yesterday called Traveler's Point. It has a very cool feature that allows you to plan your trip and it calculates the airfare for you. Then you can send the plan to a travel counselor and they will book the trip for you. I believe the tickets are open-ended so you can leave pretty much whenever you want.

I've tried a few different trips. Mine range from $5,000-$7,500 which I find reasonable for some weird reason. Here is what I came up with today.

New York - Reykjavik - Amsterdam - Saint Petersburg - Prague - Rome - Cairo - Dar Es Salaam - Johannesburg - Bombay / Mumbai - Varanasi - Bangkok - Hong Kong - Shanghai - Beijing - New York

I'm leaving out 3 continents mind you and most of Europe goes undisturbed. Whenever I go on this trip, a believe me I will, I think I will do a lot of traveling on land between cities instead of flying to each one as the itinerary describes. I also imagine I will have to take this trip solo since few of my friends have the money/desire to do this and we would probably differ on many destinations of choice.

So you can officially count global navigation as a life goal of mine and I plan to do it sooner than later given my nomadic direction in this current lifestyle. Come with?

Daily Reads

If we spend any time together, you know how much free time I have at work. I spend a few hours a day just reading up on current events and the like. I created a new blog today, in my spare time, that has links to some of my favorite links of the day. This way we will have similar stoies to discuss over our choice beverage.

If we don't spend time together, just read the articles.

Daily Reads