The plural of "Lego" is "Lego"

If this requires exposition to explain its coolness, then you and I are different on some very fundamental level:

Down with LHC?

...apparently it won't destroy the world? Well, you be the judge:

There Will Be Blood...

...watched it last night. I think it's probably one of the most relevant films ever made, and in my opinion every American should see it. Without getting into a long discussion, basically it forces the viewer to empathize with some very unsavory aspects of the "american spirit." I know that I learned something about myself while watching it, and it's not every day that one can say that about a film.

GHET-TO!

I've have a really nice road bike that I've ridden sporadically over the past 5 years. I've used it to exercise and to recreate, but I've never done anything practical (read "commute") with it, although I've always intended it for this purpose. After all, one doesn't buy an expensive road bike if one intends it only to collect dust. So, why am I not using it for my morning commute? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but I'd likely have to duck as I ride by the 2 or 3 drug dens that I pass on my way to work. Anyway, I've started riding it to the gym during the week, and yesterday I decided to bite the bullet (hopefully not literally) and ride to work. Using googlemaps like the geek that I am, I found a route that bypasses most of the mess without taking me too far out of my way. I go thusly:


View Larger Map

3.3 miles...and that's with a relatively long detour (if you look at the map, the detour is where I ride southwest on main st. to kensington avenue.) The shortest route is straight across main, down filmore to kensington. If you need illicit substances that's the road to take, otherwise I'd go the long way...

Finally getting off my ass and deciding to do this made me realize how close I am to work, and it made me feel guilty for waiting so long to start. I highly recommend this for anyone who lives and works in the same municipality--I'd hazard a guess that even if my ride was twice as long it wouldn't make much of a difference. I timed the ride, and biking the detour route takes literally a couple of minutes longer than driving the short route. (I've biked the "danger" route and I made it in the same time it takes me to drive, which makes me feel even more guilty.) All of this aside, it's just plain nice to be out on a bike. Unless it's snowing. Or raining. Or there are 30mph winds.

To sum up, the benefits of biking to ECMC (saving $, lower CO2 footprint, exercise, "experiencing" the city) to me outweigh the potential negative aspect ("experiencing" the city.)

Your McCain Me Crazy

In the interest of fairness...

Since I posted a while back criticizing McCain for retaining crazy evangelist advisers, I feel compelled to post about his recent repudiation of John Hagee. While I am still puzzled over why he would have sought the endorsement of guys like this in the first place, this is at least a good first step towards sanity.

puck

The summer hockey season started this week, and we kicked it off in style with a convincing 5-1 win. The summer performax league is much more engaging than the crappy winter league we were in over the past several months: the league maintains a website that uploads scores and stats after every game. I'm not going to deny the geeky pleasure I get out of playing a game, and then coming home and checking out my stats for the night. If you're interested, they can be found here. (note you have to select the "sportsman north" league from the drop-down box in order to see yours truly.) For the record, this was my best statistical game ever, with a 1.00 GAA and .963 save percentage. However, if there's any significance to those stats (and there isn't), they serve to illustrate the difference in skill level between winter league and summer league. Our 5-1 win came on monday night. The following night, we played one of our 4 remaining winter league games, and were soundly beaten 8-2. Granted, our team had a grand total of 7 skaters for Tuesday's game, and none of our better players showed up, but still...

High Gas Prices Are Good

This article was written about 2 and 1/2 years ago. Not that 2005 is so long ago, but at the time gas was about $2.20 a gallon. In gas-price-years that probably feels like an age to any regular driver. Anyway, the author makes a good point, and I've been saying the same thing for some time now: high gas prices are a good thing. If you don't want to read the entire article, there are two main points. First, expensive oil makes expensive alternative energy sources look more favorable to those who must fund their creation. Second, enormous profits from high-priced gas put these same companies in a great position to make some headway in alternative energies. It comes down to motivation: if we continued on with $20/barrel oil for the next 100 years, I can safely promise you that you'd be putting regular unleaded in your car come 2100. However, if that same barrel of oil costs $250 by 2050, you can bet your sweet sweet crude that energy moguls will have a trump card up their sleeves. There is no motivating force in the history of the human race to compare with greed, and I'm counting on it to save our collective bacon.

Oil companies are the only entities on the planet with the wherewithal and the motivation to research, design, and implement alternative energy sources and infrastructure. If it means that we have hydrogen powered cars sometime in the next 20 years, I'll pay $10 a gallon for gas...and I'm not kidding.