Henry Phish

So I participated in this event over the weekend called A Night On The Street. Basically, about 200 to 300 teens and their adult leaders spend the night sleeping in boxes to raise homelessness awareness. It’s a pretty cool event, if you ever get the chance to attend.

They have speakers talk to you about what it is like on the street; some of whom have personal experiences that you wouldn’t even believe. It’s the kind of stories that you see in the movies, but you never quite identify with them. Seeing a person that has actually gone through one of those situations and has come out the other side, it really sells the point home.

Homelessness is a real problem in America, and real people suffer from it; people whom you may even know. It was interesting to hear that a lot of homeless teens actually go to school. They try to blend in, they wear cloths like everybody else, they try to learn, because they see education as a way out of their problem. But then there’s the flip side of life on the street; for chronic homeless cases, in order to survive you have to learn to shut yourself off from people. Fighting and yelling are protection mechanisms, as are smelling bad and looking filthy. Unfortunately, these protection mechanisms make it difficult for people to move back into society once they have been trapped on the outside.

In the last 35 years problem has increased dramatically as low income housing is replaced with expensive condos, homes, and apartments. In the 1960’s, homelessness was hardly even even apparent, but with the rise of the middle-upper class in America, these people have been left high and dry.

Anyway, the Plymouth Church Foundation supports several low income communities around the twin cities. Check out their web page if you get the chance. They except donations here.

Also, visit A Night on the Street for more information on upcoming events.

An Oscar nominated short film created in 2005.  Enjoy.

Badgered

A friend of mine sent this to me and it’s just downright hilarious. Classic Monty Python. Check it out.

International Philosophy Match

From Youtube.com

Among the many companies getting rich from the sudden interest in ethanol are The Andersons Inc, ADM and Pacific Ethanol. All of these companies have been growing exponentially in both earnings and stock price in the last year or so. With Congress requiring the U.S. to use 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2012 everyone is in a rush to jump on the next big thing. Personally, I think the combination of ethanol and hybrid technology is the way to go…at least in the short term. Who am I to argue progress…

Investing in Ethanol

…More on Ethanol Investments

My guess…the government is developing a giant wind-breaking machine for use against the terrorists and rogue nations off the San Diego coast…man, we need a conspiracy thread.

Mystery Disturbance Traced to Sound Wave

In 2000, some people came up with the idea of creating the worlds largest Tetris game…the problem, someone had already beat them to it.

Worlds Largest Tetris Game

Worlds Second Largest Tetris Game 

So love it or hate it the Family Guy is here to stay. It finally found it’s legs by offending pretty much everybody…and for better or for worse, it’s equal opportunity.

I thought this blog was kind of funny. Basically it’s a list of all of the things that family guy has stolen from other sources. Of course lets be serious, most media, regardless of genre, is derivative anyway, so take what the guy says with a grain of salt…and if you like the show…watch it.

Family Guy Steals

Since ethanol seems to be a popular subject these days, I decided to do a little research in order to find out some of the more problematic issues involving in it’s use as a fuel substitute. While people argue quite a bit over one point or another, the general consensus seems to be that cars built after the early 90’s can use gas with 10% ethanol without problem. Previous to this, the seals and gaskets in automobiles were made of rubber, which deteriorated when in contact with ethenol based fuels. So while I wouldn’t want to use 100% ethanol for fuel any time soon, it’s perfectly safe to use a mixture on your modern car. More problematic, is the fact that ethanol is not as energy efficient as regular gas. Essencially, it has the affect of reducing the gas mileage of your automobile, which means you need to buy gas more often, which means you polute more, but ethenol is cleaner burning, so there are less emmissions. Basically, that doesn’t mean a whole lot without quantified statistics, but looking around, most people in the know seem to agree that ethanol is a good alternative fuel. The way I figure it, if you ran the alt fuel with the hybrids, you’d have a kick ass car. If you got that crazy guy from california to install the plug into that thing, you’re car would be the most eco friendly thing on the road…of course the economics of that are pretty outlandish, so I suspect that most people will stick with their Toyota Corollas and Honda Civics for the time being…at least until someone makes it easy on the pocketbook for all of us to switch. Of course, if we ever did switch to ethanol as a major sourse of fuel, the next challenge problem we’d face is replacing all our lawn-mowers, gas generators, and outboard motors so that they would even run on the stuff, since they still use all the rubber seals that the car industry got rid of. Now you have the problem of creating a whole new infrastructure for your home gardening, midnight block parties, and nautical activities…of course it’s still cheaper than hydrogen, and Arnold Shwartzenegger already has a Hum-Vee that runs on the stuff.

The Bad Side of Ethanol

What stands 6 feet tall, 12 feet wide and emits a sound that makes nails across a chalk-board seem like easy listening music…why a Chrystler Air Raid Siren of course.

Hailing from the WWII and having continued use through the cold war, these babys were as big as they got.  Fortunately, they weren’t used for much more than tests, but if you’re even a little bit of a history buff like I am, these things are just cool!

Chrystler Air Raid Siren

Here’s another case of people leaving old money lying around. The funniest thing is that the thieves were stealing metal from the Russian missile silo and never even noticed the money.
Russian Thieves Break Into Soviet-Era Missile Silo to Find it Filled With Money Bills

The incident would have remained secret, had the wind not blown hundreds of banknotes all over the countryside.

Via - BoingBoing