Nav System

I am traveling in New England this week on vacation and making good use of my $120 super cheap Chinese made navigation unit. It has been pretty good so far except for the couple of times it froze up completely and a few times it completely got confused. I keep seeing ads for expensive models that have the ability to reroute you around backups which at first seems like a great feature. But the reality is as more and more of these devices get onto the road and become affordable for everyone, the route around backups will become the new route because everyone will be taking the side road. So I guess its a matter of enjoy it while you can, since there are a limited amount of optional routes that can be used by an ever increasing amount of vehicles.

A Food Contradiction

I was reading today on CNN that oceanic dead zones are increasing rapidly and becoming a global problem. One of the biggest contributors to the growth of dead zones is the use of large amounts of fertilizer which eventually leech off the land and into the water, eventually traveling to the sea. Corn, which is the largest crop in the U.S., is especially fertilizer intensive. When in the ocean, this fertilizer causes the production of huge algae blooms which starve the water of oxygen, killing the seafood around it. So basically in the quest to grow more and more grain to feed the population of the world, we are inadvertently killing the seafood we depend on as well. If it continues, we would see a future when a seafood meal would be a very rare delicacy, something the average person could not even experience. Being a person who loves to eat Maryland crab, this is a very sobering thought indeed.

Best of Craiglist

I have been trying to sell a rug and table on craigslist for a while now without any luck. I'm not sure why they haven't been selling, after all they are from that trendy furniture store West Elm, which should mean something. Maybe people just have been cutting back on spending or are on vacation. Who knows. The best thing about craigslist though is the Best of Craigslist - the posts that are so bizarre or funny that they gain a special status in the heart of all the craigslist users out there. Here are some of my favorites:

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Where is the bottom?

The recent news about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the icing on the cake of the housing crisis facing the U.S. right now. The foreclosure rates have not settled and still appear to be rising. Financing is getting harder to get for home purchasers right now causing less money and interest that is much needed to be invested in the struggling industry. This is not a normal recession or downturn right now like many economists have predicted. When the housing industry can become stabilized and reaches the bottom is anyone's guess. I was lucky when I got my home this April that I had a good salary and down payment to cover financing, but I think I was the exception and not the normal home buyer. I feel sorry for many Americans now, their dreams of owning a home or getting financing are in a big jeopardy until the economy recovers from this mess. At least the prices keep dropping right? Well that is not good news for all the people who bought when the prices were inflated the last few years and now owe much more than their property is worth. I may soon count myself in this category myself - even though I bought this year, I noticed prices falling every month so far. I took this into consideration when I was buying that prices would continue to fall, so I hedged my bets by buying a place close to downtown as data has shown that the most severe price drops are happening on the outer suburbs of the D.C. area.

Viral Parasites

Its an amazing time to be alive, especially in the field of Biotechnology.   I believe a majority of the scientific advances to be made in the 21st century will come directly from the understanding and manipulation of genetic material.    Today I read two very interesting articles on Wired.com, one that talked about French researchers discovering a small virus (called Sputnik) that actually infected and hijacked another larger virus to force it to reproduce the DNA of the attacking virus.   Can a cold virus catch a cold is the question now it would seem.   But the researchers were still arguing over the fact that a human type virus might be too small for another parasitic virus to come along and infect it.   Here is a photo from the article showing the smaller virus attacking the larger one.  

Union Dues

I work for a company that employs a rather large labor union to handle the maintenance and installation of our various products.   (Note that I cannot be more specific due to privacy issues)   It is the time once again that the labor contract has expired and is up for negotiation which is the case every few years.   I am not against labor unions and the right to organize in this country, but I am against these same unions asking for benefits and considerations that the regular non-union members don't receive.    For example my pension was eliminated recently and I have to contribute to healthcare via my salary, but the union members still have a full pension and healthcare upon retirement.  I think GM recently came up with a good model to handle retirement and healthcare costs, which was to make the unions themselves responsible for them.  To hand over the funds that are maintained by the corporate entity and let the union management bear the costs of maintaining these benefits for their members.   

Me vs The Tree

I haven't written in a while now thanks to a brief altercation I had with a tree in my front yard.  I was having fun trimming branches off with a tree saw and making a general mess of things when a fragment of wood from above landed in my eye straight on.    I ran into the house and washed my eye out thinking it was just some dirt, but I soon found out I had purchased a one way ticket on the pain train for not wearing any protective eye wear.   The funny thing was that earlier in the day I was wearing protective goggles to work underneath the car, but for some reason I didn't wear them for working on the tree.   So I ended up scratching my cornea pretty well according to my eye doctor.   Let me tell you it feels like something you never want to experience, like someone is poking your eye every few minutes and swelling like you just took a punch in a drunken bar fight.    Today I almost look and feel normal which is a relief, but I will never make that mistake again....