May 4, 2009
Mandy and I were talking about our all time top 5 video games (our favorites, not the best).
Mine are (in no particular order):
1. Super Mario Brothers (NES) less than 5 minutes, I have witnesses
2. Mario Kart (Wii) Mandy and I are kind of obsessed
3. Legend of Zelda (NES) the first game (and really only one) that I played for more than two consecutive days with minimal breaks
4. Contra (NES) updownupdownleftrightleftrightstart
5. Q-Bert (ATARI) I had to include an atari game
As you can see I don’t really like game systems with a million buttons, a joystick, a wheel or a two button controller are about my limit.
Anyone else have a list?
April 19, 2009
I just came across an interesting idea. Going Green is most effectivley carried out at a community level. An individual is too small to make much difference. Yes you should be greener individually but that does not get the job done. The nation and state have a role to play, but they are too big and have too much else going on to be the main force. Each community that does its part for the earth is really the key. A community organizes hundreds and even thousands of people to a cause that is not abstract at the community level. “Look at our river over there. It is pretty gross. We should do something about that.” “Hey, why doesn’t my town recycle?” You get the idea. Communities are big enough to make real change and small enough that an individuals voice can still be heard.
Another great benefit of community action is that it molds the next generation. Kids don’t really care if we choose one lightbulb or another or if Congress passes a Clean Water Act. They do see their parents and neighbors and teachers doing something positive in their community and it makes a huge impact on them.
March 31, 2009
I was listening to sports radio last night and they wee talking about parity in various sports. This seems to be really important to people. They want to think that everyone has a reasonable chance to win year in and year out. Football has been making this argument for years. The NFL has the most parity among the major sports. Baseball has always gotten a kind a bad rap in this area. I thought to myself that baseball has had a lot of different winners in the last few years. Maybe marketing of teams and players has more to do with the idea of baseball being dominated by a few teams than reality. Here are the numbers for the past ten years.
Baseball has 30 teams – 24 have made the playoffs in the past ten years. The only teams not to make it to the playoffs are the Blue Jays, Orioles, Pirates, Royals, Reds and Nationals. The Blue Jays have been good but play in the same division as the Yankees and Red Sox. In any other division they probably would have made at least one playoff appearance. The rest of the teams are in various states of disarray.
Another interesting fact is that exactly half of the teams have made at least one World Series appearance over the last ten years. This is due in large part to the wild card system which I think has improved baseball.
Lastly 8 different teams have won the World Series in the past ten years. The only two repeats are the Yankees (99, 00) and the Red Sox (04, 07).
I think that this qualifies as parity to me. I need to go back and check against football to see how it compares.
March 20, 2009
I think that I am going to like the Pikes Peak Library District. They offer sets of books for people who want to do book clubs. One person can check out a set of 12 of the same title for six weeks in order to facilitate a book club. They have a pretty long list of books to choose from. Now I just have to make enough friends to start a book club.
March 11, 2009
I have read something in two places lately that I had never really thought about before. The idea of closing the loop is to buy recycled products. If no one buys recycled products then there is no good that comes from it in the first place. I don’t know why this had never hit me before. Maybe everyone else already realized this but it was an epiphany to me. I am going to begin to seek out as many recycled products to buy as I can. (Things I need anyway, not going to buy more stuff just because it is recycled). Mandy and I need some more printer paper so I will probably start there. After all, if all anyone wanted to buy was recycled stuff then every business would start producing it. When going green actually makes companies money is when they will begin to see the light.
February 17, 2009
I haev watched LOST from the begining. I love the way that the writers have developed the characters through the years. Over the last two or three seasons one character has come to be my very favorite. I really like Juliet. I love the way that she seems to know things that other people don’t. I love the way that she calls Sawyer James. And I love the way that sometimes she just smiles a small resigned smile when things look really bad.
Of all of the characters I hope Juliet gets a good ending.
February 13, 2009
I am reading biographies faster than I can write about them.
Thursday was the 200th Birthday of Charles Darwin so I read a short biography of his. I have wanted to know more about him since I saw his grave. He has been the cause of so much fundamentalist angst and yet he is buried in Westminister Abbey in London. I always thought that was funny. The book was for intermediate kids so it wasn’t very in depth but interesting enough to make me want to read more.
My E Biography was George Eastman who invented the Kodak camera. One interesting thing about Eastman is that he became a noted philanthropist in his later years. We donated money to MIT, several other educational institutions and many local projects in Rochester, NY. The most interesting thing that he found to donate money to was calender reform. He wanted to go to a 13 month calender of 28 days each. The extra day a year would be without a month of its own and would be World Peace Day. I wonder why that never came to pass.
February 11, 2009
I have finished my B and C Biographies.
B was a woman named Arlene Blum. She was one of the first women to excel at high al;titude mountaneering. She lead all women teams up Denali in Alaska, Mount Everest and Annapurna in the Himalaya. She also was one of the first women to earn a doctorate in Chemistry and helped discover how proteins fold to make different compounds in the body. A remarkable woman who was very candid about her flaws and her family struggles.
C was Cesar Chavez. I have been roughly familiar with Chavez but his biography was very interesting. One of the most interesting things was the fact that he and Robert Kennedy were friends. Kennedy was present when Chavez broke his first 25 day fast and Chavez was present when Kennedy was assasinated in California in 1968.
February 5, 2009
My first biography in my project was Neil Armstrong. The coolest thing that I learned about Armstrong was the romantic thing that he did for his wife on the moon. Each astronaut was given a small bag to fill with personal items. Armstrong took a recording of one of his wife’s favorite musical peices. The original recording had been destroyed in a fire at the Armstrong’s home and his wife had not heard it since. She was very suprised to hear it being broadcast from the moon.
I also liked the way that Armstrong retired to a farm in his home state of Ohio. I can just imagine him driving around the small town in a beat up old pickup with memories of being on the moon in his head.
February 4, 2009
After my 100 Book Challange I decided that I wanted to do another book challange. I want to read a biography of a person whoes last name starts with each letter of the alphabet. I will try to update this challange better than my last one.
