Oilers Game #6

The "we want the cup" chant in the last period of Oilers game last night was spinetingling. All the loonies on Whyte ave. were chanting it as they walked through marshall law. It's a good thing nothing got broken, but did the cops realy need to shut down half the crosswalks?

Two types of writing

For me there are two types of writing, stuff that I read in it's entirety and stuff that I read just the first and last paragraphs. This article written by a friend was the former.

http://www.martlet.ca/view.php?aid=38704

Ethanol Redux

Here's some more info on Ethanol.

In and earlier post I said "Ethanol blended is a marketing scam, like Eminem," I was wrong...about the ethanol,

"Implementing a 5% blend of ethanol in gasoline will generate hundreds of jobs in rural Ontario, create a market for an additional 50 million bushels of corn every year and reduce greenhouse emissions by the equivalent of 200,000 cars. And it all starts on the farm." (Also your engine will last longer).

Husky Mohawk sells a 10% blend, double the above figures. To find a ethanol blended gasoline near you go here http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/transportation/fuels/ethanol/station-locations.cfm

Here's some links about ethanol (a.k.a. the future):
http://www.greenfuels.org

http://www.cleanairwisconsin.org/publications/ethanol.pdf

http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/eng4473

I talked to a friend from thunder bay and he mentioned that they use it in Thunder Bay. Here's a link about a proposed ethanol plant in Ontario. By 2010 all motor fuel must contain ethanol in Ontario. Not a bad goal.

http://www.northernontariobusiness.com/regionalReports/ThunderBay/01-05-Hearst.asp

Alberta could easily bring ethanol into the picture. We have huge fields of grains, which is a perfect source of ethanol. I read that it takes 3 barrels of water to extract one barrel of oil from the oilsands. That's ridiculous. Do they know that humans can't drink oil?

message to all the pedestrians out there

Here's a little public service anoucement for all you pedestrians out there. If I stop my car for you to cross the street then you cross the street. Don't give me that bullshit where you wave me by and then make the car behind me stop so you can cross. I've already stopped the car, the road it yours so take it. And if you don't cross, I'll drive up on the sidewalk and hit your ass. Unless your a senior, then you're allowed to wave cars by because you might take a little while crossing sort of thing.

Some dude tried that shit on me today, he gave me the go on by wave and I just sat there until he crossed. I would have sat there all day, it drives me crazy when people give me the go on by wave.

Thinking

This is me thinking about what to write on the blog.

Davis and Dylan

Recently I've read both Bob Dylan's and Miles Davis' autobiographies. Personally I like autobiographies because they are really the only way to get into someones head. Biographies are great, but I think lots of times they are full of bullshit facts and the author always puts his/her slant on the person the book is about. But back to Davis and Dylan.

I found that they had a lot of similarities. They are both American legends in that they took a existing musical style changed it greatly and brought it to a new generation. Miles with Jazz and Bob Dylan with folk. In addition they both steered towards rock music in the later parts of their careers, but who wasn't playing rock in the 70's? The are both geminis (and believe in astrology) and they both had run ins with the Grateful Dead. The both came from the midwest and moved to New York to pursue their musical careers. Miles started off in East St. Louis and Bob started playing in Minneapolis. They both recorded for Columbia Records for the majority of their careers and they even met eachother at a party at Miles' house. Miles broke both his ankles in his Ferrari and Dylan had a bad motorcycle crash.

Anyways I thought Miles' book was far more interesting, he has some pretty crazy experiences, I think a lot of it has to do with being addicted to hard drugs (Herion from around ages 19-25 and cocaine from ages 39-54). Although he does have interesting experiences during his clean periods in his life, which in my opinion he made his best music. He hung out with Jean Paul Sarte in France and travels to Brazil, Japan and Europe. Also Miles' book covers his whole career where as Dylan's just covers a few specific periods of his life. Lastly, Miles is older so he talks about how the 40's and 50's were which I found very interesting.

In summery, I recommend both books, but Miles' is much more entertaining. And really you don't get much more bad ass than this.

Arrivals in the Americas

I think there is a fair amount of confusion as to who arrived in the Americas first. The reason for it is because there are several figures who led voyages to totally different parts of the Americas.

First of all we know that people have lived in the Americas for atleast 13,000 years. Archeologists have many different theories as to when and how the first people arrived in the New World. Some believe they crossed the Bering land bridge, where as others believe they travelled by boat. It is believed that the ancient polynesians posessed extremely advanced sailing and navigation techniques. Even today they can sail to any island within the triangle of Hawaii , Easter Island and New Zealand with the same technology they have used for thousands of years. If the polynesians could sail this far they could have easily reached South America.

In addition to this, remnants of Coca leaves found in an Egyptian tomb suggest that there was travel across the Atlantic during the era of the Egyptians beacause Coca plants are native only to South America.

The first Europeans to arrive in the Americas are the Vikings. Not much is known about this arrival, but we do know that they arrived somewhere in eastern Canada in the 10th century.

After the Vikings came Christopher Columbus who was an Italian sailing for Spain. He and his men left from Lisboa, Portugual and arrived in Santo Domingo, Dominican Repulic in 1492.

The next European to arrive was another Italian named Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot). He sailed from Bristol, England to Newfoundland, which was originally called Terra Nova (New land in Italian). Nova Scotia is also Italian and means (New Scotland). Cabot is generally credited with being to first European since the Vikings to arrive on mainland in the Americas.

The first European to arrive in South America was Pedro Alverez Cabral a Portuguese explorer. He arrived in Porto Seguro, Brazil in 1500.

Statues and Monuments

In an earlier post I said that Canada didn't have enough monuments. I was wrong. Ottawa and Montreal are filled with them.

Da Vinci Code

I saw the Da Vinci Code the other day and I liked it. I think it is due to the fact it was based on a book because usually I could care less what happens in the end of movies. With this one I was captivated and I didn't have any trouble paying attention. I give it 4.5/5 Stars.

Eastern Canada J walking

I'm in Montreal now and I've always like how everyone j walks here. If you tried that in Edmonton you'd end up getting a $150 ticket, that's bullshit. It's just because the cops don't have enough real criminals to bust

Ottawa

I'm in Ottawa right now, it's the first time I've visited and I like it. It reminds me of Edmonton, just more cultured. I love the fact that you can hear more than one language being spoken when you walk down the street.

Sex With Dog

Occasionally I check how has visited my blog through a sitemeter. Anyways someone florida searched Sex com cachorro (Sex with dog) into a search engine and my page came up. I guess this is the most popular site about sex with dogs, but that's not saying much.

Alberta Plants

Here's a list of plants you can grow in Alberta. It's quite an interesting link.

http://www.theurbanfarmer.ca/plant_profiles.html

How about that Oilers Sharks series by the way. They are some of the most physical hockey games this year. So many big "clean" hits. I think Torres might be a little crazy. Go Oilers Go!

Ethanol

Ethyl Alchohol, we love to drink it, so why not put it in our cars. I just read this article about the introduction of ethanol as a fuel source.

It talks about new cars in Brazil and how they run on either ethanol or gasoline. I bet you thought hybrid technology was the next big thing. No, but maybe a hybrid that runs on ethanol!

In Brazil they are producing ethanol from sugar cane, which is the same way they produce the liquor Cachaca. Ethanol is a renewable resource and it pollutes less than gasoline. It is more pure than gasoline so it's only biproducts are CO2 and Water. Theoretically the combustion of gasoline has the same bi-products. But in real life gasoline is poorly refined and produces carbon monoxide and other pollutants.

*Ethanol blended is a marketing scam, like Eminem*

Canada could do a similar thing, ethanol can be cheaply produced from grain (the Russians have been doing it for centuries). And GM could sell us the same cars that they are making in Brazil.

No cards

No cards, no cards, bank machine over there. That's what a guy told me the other day at the restaurant. I didn't have any money in my account so I had to cancel the order. But as I walked out I started thinking.

Why doesn't he take cash? What's the advantage of that? Tax Evasion. He doesn't accept cards because then he would have to report all his earnings to the government and pay tax on it. Then I thought about the bank machine, it was one of those pay 2.50 extra models. Take a couple bucks from the costumer

If I took the money from the bank machine I would have had to pay 2.50 extra plus my banks fees of 1.50 to help him evade his share of taxes.

It's like getting fucked over twice.

Mexico and the War on Drugs

Check out Mexico's new approach to the war on drugs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/29/world/americas/29mexico.html

Sassy

Is it just me or do north american girls get sassy when they play Shakira songs?

New Mix

I've made a new mix and put it in a zip file in the music folder. It's called Vitrola.

http://www.ualberta.ca/~derekw/music/

If you burn it to a cd, I suggest putting normalization on at 95% because the volume levels of the track are a bit different.

If you have an Ipod, PLAY THE WHOLE TRACK. I can't stand that, here's a good song...15 seconds later...oh check out this one....10 seconds later....no wait this one is the best......

Tsotsi

We went to see the Inside Man last night. I've always like Spike Lee joints, I'd have to say my favourites are Summer of Sam and Bamboozled "Feed the idiot box, feeeed the idiot box."

Although, we accidentally walked into the wrong theatre. 20 minutes in we figured out that Denzel Washington wasn't going to appear. Maybe the fact that noone was speaking english should have cued us in. I found out later that the film we were seeing was called Tsotsi and the people spoke Zulu, Xhosa & Afrikaans. Man, African people are so linguistic advanced, I had no idea that they were switching between several languages. There were even english words, that must have been part of the Afrikaans. s' good s' good was a common phrase.

Anyways the movie was amazing, one of the best movies I have seen this year. One thing I liked was that it was a movie about Africans in Africa, instead of a movie about foreigners in Africa. Constant Garderner was good, but I'd rather see a movie based around African people.

bad terminology

Words like third world, first world, developed and developing are bullshit. People spout them out like they know what they're taking about but really they are just ignorant. First of all the definition third world implies that a country is neither aligned with the West (USA, etc) or the Soviets. It's a term from the cold war, so pretty much it is outdated and doesn't mean anything in today's world.

As for developed and developing, they're BS as well. Not even Europe and the USA have stopped developing, the may have run out of land to exploit but there is still room for development. Developing on the other implies that someday these developing countries are going to live like people in "developed" nations. That would pretty much be the end of the world, the amount of waste and inefficiency that takes place in developed nations could not be sustained worldwide. What is development anyways? I consider female prime ministers like Chile's a sign of development. The majority of "developed" nations haven't reached that point yet (Well Canada if you consider Kim Cambell taking the fall for Brian Mulroney). People refer to Brazil as a developing nation but have you seen GM cars that run on either alcohol or gasoline in the states yet? Don't worry they be arriving soon.

Anyways I'd like to suggest some better terms. Over wealthy and not as wealthy, draw the line in the sand where you see fit. Hmmm...maybe Overconsuming nations and underconsuming nations is better.