What’s Jaouen Jonesing For?

A couple years ago, an intriguing rumor began to circulate across the interweb.  Quietly, the rumor grew until finally speculation was on the front page of every tech site on the net.  Apple was going to start selling a tablet.  As the rumor gained in strength, my yearning for a MacBook Pro waned.  I wanted the new hotness, and that was a tablet computer.   Finally, the big day arrived.  Steve jobs walked up on stage with his signature jeans and began to tell us about a magical new device, the iPad.  It was awesome at first sight; a marvel of form and beauty.  But slowly, as Jobsy got into the technical specifications, it became clear that this was not a magical device.  It was not even a practical device.  No multitasking, meaning I can’t have google talk open and browse the internet at the same time.  No GPS, meaning that all location based services would be rendered useless on this device.  No camera, meaning no video conferencing.  Its 2000 fucking 10!  I saw video chat in Aliens when I was 10 years old.  That movie came out in 1986!  24 years later I still can’t video conference.  What the hell?  It’s not that complicated!  I was hoping that the iPad would lead to some great video conferencing revolution.  No longer would we be able hide behind a simple audio communications system.  We would finally put an end to those annoying calls where your friend answers from the toilet.  Unfortunately, Jobsy didn’t thing that was important enough to include in his magical device.  Instead, he essentially took an iPod touch, removed the things that make it cool and enlarged it.  Oh Apple, don’t blow our minds too much.  What a fucking revolution.  I feel like the entire world has changed because of the iPad.  Finally, I can do exactly what you want me to do with a pad, rather than what I want to do.  It’s unbelievable to me that Apple could have screwed this thing up so royally.  If they had just made 3 very simple changes to the device, it would be on my wish list faster than Rachel could tear her ACL.  Regardless, the new rumor is that a 15” MacPad will be released next.  Apparently it will run on Mac OS 10, but I’m not holding my breath.   Apple has let me down, and its going to take something fairly spectacular to gain back my trust.  Maybe Jobsy has lost his edge.  He has had health issues; maybe they have clouded his vision and made him think that anything shiny is magical.  I imagine that early man would have thought that the iPad is magical too, but screw those ignorant bastards.  The iPad is not magical, its not awesome, and I’m certainly not Jonesing for one.  That said, I may get one.

HIGHLANDS RANCH – Local keg tossing sensation and Lego enthusiast Danny Holland coined his first new term early Saturday morning. The term, which was invented on the 5000 block of Diana street just after 3 am, was used to describe a meatheaded new method for removing unwanted individuals from a house. “I’m really proud,it’s the first time that I have invented a word that people truly appreciated.” The new term was originally dropped by Danny Holland shortly after 86ing a low life from a party. “I was searching for a way to adequately describe the move that I had just performed when I realized that the English language simply wasn’t up to the task. I had to come up with something,” explained a very hungover Holland in a phone interview. “I laughed when I heard it, it was really clever. The only problem was that by laughing, I opened the door to hearing the term a further 20 times that morning,” witness Brandon Mutari commented. “I was rolling on the floor when I heard it first, but after he continued to use the term in every sentence, it lost a lot of shock value and cleverness. I remember doing the same thing when I coined my first term. It’s a beginner mistake.” Holland admitted to having over used the term stating, “Give me a break, I got excited. The key now is to learn from my mistakes and move forward.”

DENVER – Wednesday night marked the opening of the Mahatma Gandhi Center for Anorexia and Tooth Decay. A who’s who of the Denver metro area were present for the gala dinner party. Area legends John Elway, Jake Jab, and Dealin’ Doug were all in attendance. The star studded event was held for the ceremonial opening of the MG Center, a center intended to help young bulimic women overcome bulimia and tooth decay. “This is the last meal that will ever be eaten here,” joked MG Center co-founder Jeny Sills. “Our goal here is to teach young women how to keep the weight off without the constant vomiting. So much vomiting really takes a toll on the teeth!” Asked about the name of the facility, co-founder Lindsey Bauhofer commented, “We like to look at Gandhi as a visionary. While hunger strikes rarely work, I think that young bulimic women can learn a lot from Gandhi. His diet is much better for young women, and society, than bingeing and purging. Bingeing is a waste of food, it uses up resources, and it has a big impact on the environment. Gandhi can teach all young bulimics that there is an alternative. By meditating, and taking on the courage and passion of Gandhi, young women can completely overcome their need for food.” The night’s keynote was delivered by a slightly intoxicated John Elway, “As the provider, I too know the plight of tooth decay. I know, I know, but believe it or not, I eat just like the rest of you. If you watch my highlight reel, which you really should, you will notice that my teeth are extremely yellow. I have been battling problems with my teeth all of my life. I can’t tell you the relief that I get from a facility of this kind opening in my home town. “ Later a drunken Elway stumbled into gala attendee Grady Murphy, spilling both men’s drinks and leading to a heated argument. The scene took a turn for the worse when one of Jake Jab’s white tigers got splashed by champaign during the exchange. Both men were taken to the University Hospital where they were treated for minor animal related wounds. At the conclusion of the evening, miss Bauhofer commented, “Even with the…incident, the night was a complete success. I’m just so excited to get to work helping young women sculpt better bodies!”

Local Theoretical Physics Buff

YOSEMITE – Sunday 12, 2009 – Local gamer, theoretical physics buff and paraphilia expert, Nicholas Jaouen was recently found in an uncomfortable situation with the biggest tree in the forest.  “I told him she was a huge bitch,” recalls area gawker Tuyen Tran.  “But he just walked up to that hussy of a tree and started hugging her.  Even though he was a total stranger, she didn’t even resist!  Imagine a tree with that sort of nerve.  But I have to give it to him, he wasn’t going for the low hanging fruit.”  Jaouen had been hiking in Yosemite National Park over the July 11th weekend when he encountered the tree.  “She was magnificent.  Like nothing I had ever seen before.  I couldn’t help myself, and I don’t think it was too bad for her either,” recalls Jaouen in an exclusive interview with TheJaouen.com.  “Admittedly though, she is a little bit high maintenance.”  As a dendrophiliac, Jaouen has reportedly conquered all of the Rocky Mountain locals.  “I’ve tried lodge poles, aspens, furs, and spruces, but they aren’t even in the same league is Yosemite’s giant beauties.” But not everyone is happy for Jaouen’s new found love.  “He used to be all mine,” jealous Steamboat Springs native Aspen Populus remarked on the event.  “We had something special!  Now look at him, going on with oldest tree he can find.  She is 3000 years old, what a cougar!  She isn’t even as cute as me, look at her waistline, it’s like 100 feet.  At least he could get his arms around me.  Oh, and she lives in a national forest, so she is all about protection.  I don’t care about protection.”  Jaouen wouldn’t comment on his estranged ex-lover’s remarks, but had this to add,  “It may be sappy, but I just love Giant Sequoias.”

Local Physics Enthusiast

DENVER – At 9:43 PM on Wednesday, local gamer and theoretical physics enthusiast Nick Jaouen stunned lower downtown with what he described as a ‘revolutionary’ particle physics joke. “He [Jaouen] just walked up to the cutest woman at the bar and delivered it. I was really impressed, his delivery was flawless,” recalls local bar fly Joe Peetz. “After he finished, the woman seemed to stare blankly at him, then turned away and began awkwardly messing with her phone. She was ice cold. I really felt for the guy. I mean, come on, who doesn’t like jokes about Fermions?” In a Thursday morning phone interview, joke recipient and physics PhD student Harmony Minors admitted that while Nick seemed to be a nice guy, his joke definitely turned her off. “Look, jokes about strange and charm quarks are just too easy. I mean, look at their names, who calls something a strange quark without expecting a couple jokes. If he really wanted to pick me up, he should have tried something with top and bottom quarks. Or he could have talked about large hadron collisions. I would have settled for a measly joke about bosons, if he delivered it forcefully.” Those close to Mr. Jaouen tell us that the failure of his joke really demoralized him. “He was different after that. He had sort of a thousand mile stare. I think he was really demoralized by the entire episode. Honestly, I wasn’t surprised when he stood up, chugged his beer and left the bar without tipping,” commented Mr. Jaouen’s wingman, Danny Holland. “He’s usually a really upbeat guy. He was so excited when we went to the bar. He said he had new material, and that it was gold. You just hate to see something like this happen.”

I have never liked Sarah Palin.  It’s no secret.  Sarah Palin is the embodiment of everything that I think is wrong with America.  She is socially conservative, thinking that everyone needs to conform to her cookie cutter view on the world in order to live up to her standard.  She is ignorant.  During her campaign she said that funding joint fruit fly research with France was a bad idea because we were giving money to France, when in reality it was research to cure a number of horrible diseases.  She panders to the lowest denominator of American society with these sorts of comments.  I could rail on Sarah Palin for days about being an idiot, but current events have given me a better channel for my anger.  Sarah Palin is a drama queen.  We have all seen it and felt it.  That person that doesn’t get the joke.  That person that takes life too seriously and has no idea how to laugh at them self.  Palin is taking this too an extreme.  Apparently, nobody was giving her attention, so she manufactured a controversy.  This controversy surrounds a couple of moderately funny jokes that Letterman made about her daughter.  The jokes were about the older daughter’s apparent inability to follow her own abstinence advice (Don’t get me started on her).  Palin however, has warped the comments in that little acorn that she calls a brain, to be comments about her younger daughter (14 years old) getting sexually abused.  Letterman never made such a comment, but Palin is insisting that he did.  I have watched the video of Letterman, and he made no such joke.  Regardless, even if he did make a joke about her younger daughter, he is a late night comedian!  Palin needs to get a fucking clue.  Letterman makes rude jokes about everyone.   That is the point of late night comedy.  It’s about cheap shot jokes to get a quick laugh.  Its not a personal attack on Palin’s moron, slut, daughter.  The reason that this disgusts me so much is a “What If” scenario.  Let’s say that IQ’s in the United States dropped sharply and McCain had been elected President.  How would Palin be able to cope with North Korea telling her that she and her family are all fucking idiots.  How would she be able to cope with any number of other antagonistic nations making comments about her and her family.  It would be like having the head of a high school click at the head of the nation.  We would all be fucked.  So, to Sarah Palin I have this to say.  Shut the hell up, go home, and maybe do your job and pull Alaska out of the fiscal disaster that you have created there. Oh, and grow up, you aren’t in high school anymore.

A quick note from the Jaouen:  This may not be my best post, but I’m tired of Sarah Palin.  After this post I will never agnowledge her existence again (other than for cheap laughs).  Maybe if we all just ignore her, she will go away.

When a religious zealot kills a group of pro western supporters, we call his a terrorist. Why? He or she is creating an environment of fear in an attempt to cause a shift in policy. So, when a religious zealot kills an abortion doctor in an attempt to cause fear among abortion doctors leading to the illegalization of abortion, isn’t that terrorism too? There is no difference between a Christian fundamentalist terrorist and a Muslim fundamentalist terrorist, except that the US is a pro Christian nation. The killing of George Tiller by Scott Roeder is not a simple case of murder. This is a case about terrorism. Is the United States going to stand idly by while a group of ultra conservatives wield fear as a tool to create change? We must set an example with Roeder. He must be tried as a terrorist. He must treated as we treat all terrorists, by putting him to death, or a very dark hole for the rest of his miserable and pathetic life. This isn’t about being pro-life or pro-choice. This is about affecting political change by constructive means, rather than through fear and violence. The United States is in a world full of people who promote fear as a method of control. We must stand up for our ideals though. The United States cannot become a Saudi Arabia for Christian fundamentalists. We cannot protect these people. They must be dealt with, harshly. And lets call them what they are: Terrorists!

UPDATE: (6/14/09) Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad was charged with terrorism for killing a US army recruiter.  We officially have a double standard.  Welcome to America, land of equality (if you are christian)

Comments have been fixed, so you can now comment without having to register an account. I had been having trouble with spam. I got 20k spam comments during my time off, so I decided to make people register to stop it. I have set up a bunch of filters that should help. Now, make some noise!

My pent up rage has subsided as the US economy’s drop into 3^rd world status has begun to slow. Its time to, Buy! Buy! Buy! Too long have I been walking places, like a chump. I really need to get my hands on something that will allow me to be just as extreme during the summer as I am during the winter. A mountain bike seems like the perfect solution. A computer has also been on my mind. I saw a Windows commercial recently where they sent a woman into the Apple store with a thousand dollars and she couldn’t get anything. Then they sent her to a store with Windows computers and she found exactly what she wanted. Well, I’m not anything like that dumb lady, my purchases represent the distilled essence of cool, so I want to drop a few G’s on an Apple! There are several different schools of thought with regard to these purchases. One school, we will call it the Danny and Ben school, says that if there are 2 expensive items to chose from, buy a cheap version of both. So lets say, for instance, I want to buy a computer and a bike. By the Danny and Ben schools of thought, rather than buy a sick Yeti at around $3600 bucks, or buy a MacBook Pro for about $3100 bucks, I should settle for both at a cheaper price point; say a $1600 Mac Book and a $1500 Specialized Stumpjumper. Both are quality products, but they don’t feel like someone injected them with a syringe full of awesome. The other school, is the Brant school. These school of thought names are scientific, so pay attention. The Brant school of thought is to buy one of the two objects at the high price point. Under this line of thinking, I would end up with a badass bike, say a Yeti 575 or a Specialized Enduro, but would walk away with no computer. Historically, this train of thought has lent itself well to my lifestyle. The problem is that it limits the number of toys in my arsenal, but it maximizes the value of the toys that I do have. The net worth of the toys is the same, but there are half as many. The upside to this train of thought is that every toy feels like it is a sports car, wreathed in flame, driving at 300 miles per hour, being chased by ninjas. Awesome. This is the train of thought that led to my television purchase, as well as all of my skis. All are totally badass, but ridiculously expensive. So, these are my choices. Live by the Danny and Ben school, or the Brant school. It’s a tough choice. One limits the number of areas into which I can spread the light of my awesomeness, but at the same time makes the awesomeness shine with the light of ten thousand suns. The other option allows my awesomeness to spread like the clap though a dorm, but limits the severity of the symptoms. All I can say is this, “Fuck That!”. I’m getting my cake and I’m eating it too, bitches! I’m getting the MacBook Pro and the Yeti 575 (Or Specialized Enduro, I haven’t quite decided that yet, but feel free to weigh in on the decision). To steal a line from Contact, why by 1 when you can by 2 for twice the price. The financial side of my decision to buy both is complicated, with lots of ins and outs. The moral of the story though is that I’m not going to stoop to the lameness of the Ben and Danny school, nor am I going to limit myself as the Brant school would. Instead, I am going to be as fiscally irresponsible as the Bank of America, and get both. Oh, and I’m going to get one of those Apple Notepad computers when they come out. Suck on that irresponsible awesomeness. Who needs to retire, just buy really dangerous toys and use them in an extremely dangerous and life threatening manner. Same thing.

We are currently having issues with readers being unable to see posts and strange formatting. The only browser with these problems is internet explorer. If you are using internet explorer, I suggest open firefox to view this page. I will try to fix the issue soon.

UPDATE:  It works fine with google chrome too.  And the google cache has a version that looks good too (missing todays post though).  If you are using IE still, get with the program.  Firefox and Chrome are where its at.  Oh and Safari works fine too.

When I was young, my father brought home an apple computer. This was back at the beginning of this whole “computer revolution”. It was a paperweight at best by today’s standards, but at the time it was the top of the line. It had a 256 KB hard drive. My father explained to me, 256 kilobytes is an astronomical amount of memory. We will never use all of that. It should be noted that 256 kilobytes is about 10 blog articles in Word format. My iPhone has about 10 thousand times more memory than that apple, and I can fill it in a heartbeat. Here lies the problem though. How could my father have possibly envisioned our world back then. How could he even fathom the concept of an iPhone in a time when we had tiny hard drives, 10 megahert computers, and cell phones the size of mini coopers. If he had, we would have skipped 18 years of learning and understanding. I learned very well from my father’s comments. I learned that we can never say never, and we can never say impossible.

As I grew older, I started getting told by teachers that nothing is impossible. I still believe that. That’s why I’m perplexed when I see people say that things are impossible or hear a someone tell me, “This is a fact.” In college, a professor of mine who was a major asshole (and won the Nobel prize for creating Bose-Einstein Condensate), told my physics 3 class that these strange quantum rules he was explaining were fact, and there was no argument about it. Well, that may or may not be true, but who knows what we will find when we look at the systems underlying the quantum world that we have observed. It is impossible to say with absolute certainty that anything is true. We have only had modern science for a few hundred years at best. I think it’s still probably a bit immature to believe that anything that we say is fact. Not long ago, we thought it was a fact that we moved through ether in the universe. Not long before that, the universe rotated around the Earth. Even before that, we thought that the world was flat.

What do you think cavemen thought when they saw lightning? They probably didn’t think, “Oh, that’s a stream of electrons moving from an area of high electrical potential to an area of low electrical potential over a route through the air who’s composition, pressure and temperature offer a path of least resistance.” Fuck that! Those guys where probably scared shitless by the seemingly random and completely unpredictable fire that the gods were attacking with from the sky. For them, fire from the gods was a perfectly reasonable explanation that matched their observations of lightning (Although, to steal a line from Dawkins and butcher it, when something is mysterious it doesn’t make sense to postulate that an even more mysterious super being is behind the mystery.) Just like now, quantum weirdness doesn’t make much sense to us, but we have postulated rules for the system that seem to match our observations.

The only reason that this came up is because I read an article this morning that said that warp drive is impossible. The word impossible was even used in the article. What a narrow minded interpretation. In 1994 a physicist theorized that warp drive would be possible by surrounding a spaceship in a bubble of space-time. The idea was that the ship itself couldn’t travel faster than light, but there is no reason that a bubble of space-time couldn’t move faster than light through our space-time. There were problems, such as the equations showing that the bubble would be filled with Hawking radiation. Regardless, it was interesting and it opened our eyes. The article I read this morning though, reports that the quantum theory predicts instability in the bubble as it passes the speed of light. Therefore, it’s impossible. Bullshit. Maybe that approach to the problem of faster than light travel is flawed, but that doesn’t in any way rule out other methods of solving the problem. Furthermore, what if that instability in space-time is like the instability in radioactive isotopes and leads to remarkable discovery. Maybe we will find a way to stabilize the region of space with some future understanding and manipulation of the underlying principles of the universe. The fact is that we just don’t know enough to be making comments like, “That’s impossible.” By the way, the scientist who wrote the original paper, Semiclassical Instability of Dynamic Warp Drives, doesn’t come to any conclusions about warp drive being possible or impossible, he simply states that the system becomes unstable (A true scientist.) The report that he wrote though, will only be read by scientists and reporters. The mainstream is reading articles written by narrow minded science reporters that jump to the conclusion that warp drive, or any faster than light travel, is impossible. It’s shameful, and completely unfounded.

I don’t think it’s a big stretch to imagine a future in which superstrings or quantum gravity or the Higgs field can be manipulated by man. The possibilities in that world will be endless and amazing. If we can make computers with electrons, what could we do with streams of quarks or by manipulating bosons? I don’t know, but I hope I’m alive to find out. If you leave this blog with one simple concept in your mind, your time here will not have been ill spent. If Joe can do the splits, nothing is impossible.

Now, go chase a dream.

Last weekend I went skiing and saw this guy hit the biggest cliff that I have ever witnessed.  His buddies posted the video on youtube.  You won’t be disappointed.  Click here to  see it!

There has been a long break since my last blog post. I have avoided Jonesin too much because of the decline in the world economy. My need for new cool stuff is still there, just suppressed, like my love of Coldplay. In place of Jonesin, a rage is growing. After a brief period of elation following the election of Barack Obama, I have again returned to my bitter old self. Several major topics are up on my agenda. So, what will follow this post will be a series of posts that are slightly different from the general theme that this blog has followed up to this point. These posts are going to be hateful rants against individuals, institutions, nations, laws and anything else that I feel needs to be said. Most of it will be things that everyone has heard before, elsewhere. My goal is to provide a fresh insight, infused with the passion that only a Jaouen rant can deliver. Now, before I begin, I should address a number of things that all of you are probably thinking. First, the rants will not be about my ex-girlfriend. Second, I am not rusty from having not written a post in so long. The truth is that I have a backlog of about 6 posts that just never made it onto the site for one reason or another. I even have one fantastic post about that octuplet mother that we all hate so much. I realized after I wrote it that the entire world had risen up against her so my message had gotten through, even without posting it. As for the last question on your mind, will my posts be more regular, the answer is absolutely not. If I make my posts more regular, it will just raise expectations. I have found that by lowering everyone’s expectations, when I finally do post something, it’s like getting Christmas presents in September…awesome. I will probably still post some standard Jonesin blog posts here and there, but increasingly, the filter between my mind and my fingers is going to be turned off. You should probably refresh this page to make sure I haven’t posted something else already.

When I got my first job out of college, I was brimming with excitement. For once, I would be able to afford all of the cool shit that I want, including a sick new phone. There were two phones at the time that really stood out. There was a $600 iPhone (Early adopters must be pissed that it is only $200 now) and the $400 Helio Ocean. The Ocean was touted by many as the iPhone killer. It was an impressive phone, with double sliding action, a full keyboard, access to the internet and a complete all-in-one plan. I decided to go with the cheap, iPhone killer. It took a few months, but eventually I realized that the vaunted Helio Ocean was a dismal disappointment. The realization came when I decided that my Big Pimpin’ ringtone was not work appropriate. I searched and searched for a new ring tone, one that just sounds like a normal phone ringing. After much searching, I figured out that my Ocean was actually designed for teenagers, who as we all know, don’t have a clue. There are no “normal ring tones” for the Helio. I also started to realize that the internet functionality of my Helio was sub standard. An iPhone user can check their bank account, email, and watch the best porn that the internet has to offer with ease, using an intuitive, fast and slick interface. The Helio user on the other hand has to navigate through several screens of menus just to find a browser, which seems to translate every web page into some unintelligible form of Aramaic. Now, a year later, I’m stuck in a 2 year contract with a phone that seems to die every time it is opened. The screen barely works, the operating system crashes about once an hour, and I don’t even feel comfortable using the phone as an alarm to wake up in the morning. I have explored the other telephone offerings from Helio and have come to one conclusion; there is a very good reason that Helio nearly went bankrupt, their phones are perplexingly unintuitive offerings with substandard support and software, designed for twelfth grade girls who wear too much makeup and aspire to marry doctors but probably won’t because they have the intellectual capacity of inbred Dodos. A new phone from Helio would be like shooting myself in the foot and then pouring salt in the wound. I need to explore the other options available to me. Two phones strike me as good options. The first is the G1, which uses the open source operating system from Google. The G1’s only selling point is the operating system. Other than that, it seems about as nice as my Ocean. The iPhone is the other option, but it comes with an expensive plan and a tyrannical overlord named Steve Jobs. I think I will probably end up getting the iPhone, but it’s still up in the air. Please feel free to weigh in with your opinion in the comment area below. Oh, and don’t suggest a phone that doesn’t have an app store, like the crackberry Storm; I’m not interested.

Nothing scares me…well, almost nothing. Among the short list of things that do scare me, I have one misunderstood fear. Vacuums cleaners. When hearing of this fear, some have remarked, “What are you, a dog?” The truth is that I am no so much scared of vacuums as I am scared of their users. Growing up, my mother kept the house orderly and neat. She would vacuum often because she had kids and cats, 2 things that stink up a house (As a side note, I hate children, especially the sound of their laughter.) Vacuuming didn’t represent cleaning to me though; it represented a mood in the house. It was a foreboding mood. It was a tense mood similar to that of the Cuban missile crisis. It meant, watch your ass, don’t make a wrong move or you will regret it. Maybe my view of the whole thing is clouded by the haze of time, but it always seemed that when the vacuum turned on, my mother transformed from a lovely woman to a creature of horror and anger. The slightest misstep could result in the scolding of a lifetime or worse…grounding. This was before the time of the internets and computers; it was a time when being sent to your room meant that there would be absolutely no fun that day. I was deathly afraid of being sent to my room for the afternoon. I was terrified of being yelled at by the witch with the vacuum. As a result of the hair trigger that the vacuum instilled in my mother’s temper, to this day I fear the use of vacuums. Call me crazy, but that just seems normal.

Oh, and my mother is a wonderful woman.

It will always be the case that that which we do not know is far greater than that which we do. I love a good mystery. Whether it is a mystery about who ate my lunch, or why any woman would ever fall for Mike Holland, it doesn’t matter to me, I just like the unknown. Recently, the Hubble space telescope witnessed an event. It was a mysterious flash of light lasting about 100 days. There was nothing, then there was something, then there was nothing again. The flash of light had a completely unknown spectrum, ruling out a supernova. According to one researcher from CERN, the object looked similar to “the flash that an Imperial Star Destroyer does when reaching warp 10.” I disagree though because imperial star destroyer flashes look more like plaid. The object’s distance is even a mystery. Estimates put it anywhere between 39.87 million and 3.37 billion parsecs from Earth. With the Universe only spanning roughly 93 billion light years, or 27.6 billion parsecs (current estimate), that gives us a margin of error roughly 10 percent the size of the universe (and yes, I worked the unit parsec into this post. Deal with it!). That’s like me saying that my brother’s loft is somewhere between my house and New York City. Stranger still, the object was observed in the space between galaxies. Apparently, there is something out there, and it can react extremely violently. I would like to think that it was an alien species turning on their own Large Hadron Collider. It could also be a space ship exploding, like the death star, but bigger. We may never know what the object was and why it created a burst of light lasting 100 days, but at least we have a good mystery.

Update: THere is a new mystery…why wouldn’t the picture for this post work correctly?  It has been removed because it was problematic.

Good friends are hard to find. Anyone that says that good friends are easy to find, has lots of friends that suck. In the coming weeks, a close friend of mine will be heading to Africa as an aid worker for the Peace Corps. Mike is the kind of person that isn’t sent places, he is unleashed. Now, he is being unleashed on the unsuspecting continent of Africa. Not since Rommel, the desert fox, has Africa had so much to worry about. Mike is no ordinary man. In the short time that I lived with him, Mike distinguished himself as a gentleman and a scholar. Although most of Mike’s friends couldn’t spell the word achievement, Mike managed to graduate with honors from CU. Mike’s real genius though, lies outside the bounds of academia. He is a true master of the snowboard, and the mojo. While I lived with him, I witnessed Mike bring home a new woman at least once a week. The kid was an incredible machine, able to slay the ladies with his drunken idiocy in a way that I had never before seen, and haven’t seen since. Mike’s other passion, snowboarding, is where I watched him achieve the most. Before living with Mike, I had heard stories of a young man who grew up deep in the forests beyond Rabbit Ears Pass. The stories described a man who possessed the courage, and stupidity (depending on your perspective), of 10 men. The stories were true. When I met the man, I was not overly impressed. He was an obnoxious kid who didn’t shut up for a single second during the ride to the mountain. When we finally got onto the mountain, he was amazing. He and I had some of the best experiences on the ski mountain that I have ever had. I watched him straight-line into the dragon’s teeth at Vail from a cat track 100 yards above; a very ballsy move. Best of all, after tripling or even quadrupling the size of the drop with his speed, he stuck that landing clean and rode it out like a conquering hero. Another time I stood at the edge of the highest cliff I have dropped in my life. As I stared down, preparing myself for the disaster that would inevitably follow my landing, I saw Mike charge into the cliff and throw and enormous front flip. He landed on his back with his head facing down the mountain. Seconds later, he was on his feet laughing and egging me on to jump. Mike distinguished himself in the terrain parks too. He would ride into the biggest jumps on the mountain and just huck. He wouldn’t necessarily have a plan in the air, more of a mission statement. The mission: Look badass while doing as many off axis spins as possible. Somehow, he managed to achieve his mission and land (nearly) every time he tried. Mike now prepares for 27 months of celibacy in Cameroon. In the coming weeks he will be departing on the journey of a lifetime. God Speed Mike, return safely, and without any VD.

Many times, a good rant is more fun for the writer than for the reader. Understanding this, I have written a rant to get some frustration off my chest. I have opted not to put the rant on the front page of this site. If you are interested in reading my lengthy diatribe about my experiences over the last week, click here. Otherwise, you can always check out this link for a funny video.

It isn’t often that I see something that truly impresses me and opens my eyes to entirely new possibilities. A group of researchers at Idaho National Laboratory have created a new method of capturing energy that has done just that. This new method of capturing energy uses arrays of billions of nano-scale antennas to create electricity. It’s called a resonant (LC) circuit. The circuit captures the energy of the waves moving through it. Since infrared radiation operates in the 30 Terahertz (30 trillion waves per second) range, it’s possible to capture the energy of the waves by using very small antennas. The antennas are arranged into flexible sheets of material that are 80% efficient at capturing infrared energy. If you don’t know, infrared energy is heat. The implications of such a power source are staggering. So much energy in the world is lost to heat. Friction, electrical resistance, atomic reactions, and many chemical reactions create heat. Typically heat is lost to the environment or pumped away from its source. With this material, energy could be gained from excess heat. The best part of this material is the cost; a dollar per square foot. Imagine the possibilities. Clothes could be made that harness the heat of the body to power an iPod. These clothes could literally soak extra heat away from your body, keeping you at a comfortable temperature of your choosing. It should be noted that exceptionally cool people will not produce as much energy as “not so cool” people like Mutari. Excess engine heat could be used to add energy to a hybrid car’s power cells. Blankets could be tuned to absorb body heat at a rate that would maintain a comfortable sleeping environment all night. Depending on how hot your girlfriend is, you may be able to power several city blocks. Plus, these sheets open up some pickup line possibilities, ”Hey Baby, I have nano-sheets, want to come back to my place and help me knock a couple bucks off my Excel Bill?”  Even better, “Hey Baby, want to come back to my place and do something green?” and, “Hey Baby, my bed is carbon neutral!”(As a side note, anytime you start a pickup line with, “Hey Baby”, it’s a sure thing.  Works for me everytime.”) Several obstacles remain before the technology is viable and widely available. The main issue is that the energy is entering the system at 30 trillion Hz and needs to be slowed to 60 Hz. Super efficient rectifiers will be needed to make this possible. Even if the rectifiers are only 50% efficient though, the sheets of nano-antennas will still be more efficient that traditional PV. A few years from now, the energy crisis may be a thing of the past. Cheap infrared energy may be the wave of the future.

With the Beijing Olympics at a close, we look back on the moments that made them special. The US beach volleyball teams, both men and women, had great showings and exciting matches. The swimmers, not just Phelps, were fantastic. The basketball team got the gold, showing the world that we, Americans, are the most, “Like Mike.” One area that was a disappointment though was gymnastics. I’m not talking about the US’s lackluster performance either. I’m talking about the cheating Chinese! In what I can only imagine is a monumental undertaking, the Chinese government has made it a point that the Chinese will be an athletic powerhouse. With a population of over a billion people, it doesn’t seem like this should be a problem at all. With so many people, in a country with so much freedom and opportunity, world caliber athletes should be popping up all over the place. Apparently this isn’t so though, so the Chinese government has taken an extremely active role in grooming athletes from birth. Who would have thought that the Chinese government would get involved in every facet of their culture? The result of the Chinese government’s efforts was apparent when the Chinese won 51 gold medals and 100 medals overall, second only to the United States in medals. But how many of these Chinese medals were legitimate? Specifically, how many gymnastics medals were legitimate? It seems that the dates of birth of the Chinese Olympic gymnastics team members are not static, as dates of birth are for everyone else in the world. No, the Chinese have apparently found a means to change the ages of their athletes. Some believe that the Chinese have found the key to time travel; others simply believe the Chinese are fucking cheaters. Today they are 14 years old, tomorrow 16, the next day who knows. This troubles me deeply because of how blatantly obvious the Chinese are cheating. They are openly cheating, but nobody on the Olympic committee has the balls to call them out on it. The Olympics are not a necessity. There are large competitions attracting the same caliber of athletes for every sport represented at the Olympics. The Olympics have to represent something more if they want to stay relevant. The must represent the fair competition of members of every nation on earth. They must be a shining beacon of integrity and sportsmanship. Allowing the Chinese to cheat, and then allowing them to save face by not calling them out on it, is contrary to the spirit that makes the Olympics special. I am deeply disappointed in the Olympic committee, more so than I am disappointed in China. Nobody would put cheating past China, their government is a bunch of scumbags. The IOC however, has an obligation to run fair games! For shame IOC, for shame!