Category: Miscellaneous

I heard the electric car didn’t make it because it just isn’t a good product. This EVConfidential Trailer now has me wondering—but am I just a sucker for conspiracy theories?

Give this one a chance, it’s a lot more interesting than it might at first appear.

japanese_tradition_sushi.mov

Check out ‘what barry says’, a cool motion graphics video with an interesting perspective on the United States’ history of war. Propaganda yes, amazing images, and though it’s a bit heavy on the conspiracy theory side of things, it’s still pretty compelling.

“‘what barry says’ is a collaboration between simon and his friend barry mcnamara, simon has long been fascinated by barry’s views on u.s. foreign policy. simon decided to record barry delivering a monologue exploring u.s. imperialism and the project for the new american century. this speech became the focal point around which animation was constructed.”

What Barry Says (24.8 mb QT)

So I have a story about a “friend”.

My friend, I’ll call him Joe, had a foreign roommate who wanted to rent a car. The roommate was only 21, not old enough to rent a car; not to mention the fact that the only credit card the roommate had was his Dad’s. It didn’t look like the roommate would be renting a car anytime soon.

But Joe’s roommate wanted to do something special to celebrate dating his girlfriend for 100 days so Joe took pity on the roommate and did something very stupid. He rented the car for him, in his own name. To save a little money they decided not to get the insurance because – I don’t know – they were stupid.

Well as the astute reader can probably guess the phone call soon came and with it news of the collision. Luckily no one was hurt and the damage was only to the rental car.

It didn’t look too bad but there was damage in three places – the bumper, the light, and the fender. Actually the light didn’t look bad. It appeared to just be knocked out and just needed to be put back together, but that was not the case. It would cost an additional $400 to replace that too. The total came to around $1870 (in Canadian dollars of course) which the roommate did not have. He would have to borrow.

It was about a week into a new month and the roommate hadn’t payed his rent that month yet. Because he couldn’t afford to pay the damage as it was, he immediately dropped out of school and moved back to Calgary. Joe figured he would just use the damage deposit for the last month’s rent – that’s what he usually did anyway. Near the end of that same month, when it came time to pay up for the car, the roommate came back for his stuff (which had been sitting in the room indicating that even though the roommate wasn’t living there, he was still “living there”) and to pay for the damages. He had borrowed most of the amount oweing from friends but didn’t pay the full amount robbing Joe of a month’s rent about $375.

Since Joe had lied about who would be, and who had been driving the car at the time of the accident, there was pretty much nothing he could do. The story has a few morals:

• Always get insurance
• Don’t lie about who is going to drive – even if it’ll save you a few bucks
• Don’t assume your roommate will pay up and hold his stuff until he does (if you can)
• It doesn’t always pay to be a good guy especially if you have to lie
• (and my personal favorite) honesty is the best policy

The sad thing is, Joe even knew there was a really good chance this guy would get into an accident. But he just felt unnaturally compelled to help the guy out. Chalk the whole thing up to gaining experience I guess.

So I went to the funeral last week and I have to say, though sometimes funerals can bring you down, this one was very nice.

I don’t know how appropriate it is to joke about funerals after just having been to one, but I cannot resist:

Found on the web:

A bereaved woman goes into a funeral home to make arrangements for her husband’s funeral. She tells the director that she wants her husband to be buried in a dark blue suit. He asks, “Wouldn’t it just be easier to bury him in the black suit that he’s wearing?”

“No,” she insists. “It must be a blue suit.” She then gives him a blank check to buy one. When she comes back for the wake, she sees her husband in the coffin and he is wearing a beautiful blue suit. She tells the director, “That is absolutely perfect! I love it! How much did it cost?”

He says, “Actually, it didn’t cost anything. The funniest thing happened. As soon as you left, another corpse was brought in, this one wearing a blue suit. I noticed that they were about the same size, and asked the other widow if she would mind if her husband were buried in a black suit. She said that was fine with her. So, I switched the heads.”

Scientists are calling for a plan to deflect a 1200-foot asteroid named Apophis which has about a 1 in 5,500 chance of hitting Earth in 2036 (based on current observations) with its impact causing damage equivilent to 100,000 Hiroshima bombs.

They say there isn’t much time left to decide what to do, as it could take decades to design, test, and build the needed technology.

Granted the odds are strongly in our favour but it gives one pause to think what will happen when the earth does get hit – because we know the earth has been hit before and we know it will be hit again. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.

Two weekends ago I went to one of my cousin’s wedding reception in Raymond. I had a great time visiting with my extended family. I particularly like to joke around with my Dad’s brothers and it’s always a good time when ever they get together.

It looks like the family will be headed back to Raymond for the funeral of another cousin this Friday. It’s such a stark contrast in seeing everyone at a happy event such as a wedding compared with such a sad one.

She was one of my older cousins, and as such I didn’t know her that well. As for how she died, I’m not too sure of the details. I understand she was in the hospital and not doing too well for a couple weeks now but other than that I don’t know much.

For the heartbroken I’ve found a report that indicates your “psychological” pain is just as real as if were physical: Pain of Rejection (transcript).

So what we’re looking at. This activation this red block here is in the anterior cingulate cortex. And this is basically the same part of the brain that’s involved in physical pain. So when we feel distressed or when we feel bothered by some kind of physical pain, that’s the same activation that you’ll see.

So you’ve got a broken heart and clearly you already know it’s no different than physical pain, but what you may not know is what to do about it.

According to the transcript the brain also has a kind of safety valve that protects the brain against feeling too rejected:

We also found in out study that this area, the right ventral prefrontal cortex which is sort of right in over my eyebrow, we also found activation here. …/… and this area has typically been shown to be associated with regulating people’s distress …/… And so people who had more activity in this area actually reported feeling less badly after they were rejected.”

So perhaps this safety valve that is the key to mending a broken heart.

And I think this is part of the reason why people tend to write poetry or write in diaries more when they’re sad than when they’re happy, because there’s something about turning on this region of the brain that helps turn off the parts that produce the distress itself.

If you’re not a poet/artist/blogger, (or if you’ve been forbidden from writing on the subject) it also mentions that a drop of alcohol can help ease the pain.

“The demolition of a 200 foot building in Sioux Falls, SD didn’t go so well today. Demolition experts blasted the bottom of the tower expecting it to tip over. Instead, the building sank into it’s basement. Great video!”

Check out the botched building demolition (1.7Mb QT) and here is a mirror link.

(via BoingBoing.net)

I uploaded the new International Centre for Student website earlier today. You can see the old version and the current version.