A new book, called "Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living" suggests that man's best friend might not be best for the environment. The article states the following:

The Vales, specialists in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington, analysed popular brands of pet food and calculated that a medium-sized dog eats around 164 kilos (360 pounds) of meat and 95 kilos of cereal a year.
Combine the land required to generate its food and a "medium" sized dog has an annual footprint of 0.84 hectares (2.07 acres) -- around twice the 0.41 hectares required by a 4x4 driving 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) a year, including energy to build the car.

To be honest, I was not buying into this at first, but they later said that the researchers sent there results to the Stockholm Environment Institute and there results were essentially the same. The same results said that:

Cats have an eco-footprint of about 0.15 hectares, slightly less than driving a Volkswagen Golf for a year, while two hamsters equates to a plasma television and even the humble goldfish burns energy equivalent to two mobile telephones.

A couple of days ago, the Rasmussen survey group released poll results for the following question, "In order to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming, how likely is it that some scientists have falsified research data" Their results stated the following

According to their survey, 35 percent believed that it was "very likely," 24 percent thought it was "somewhat likely," 21 percent thought it was "not very likely," 5 percent thought it was "not likely at all" and 15 percent were unsure.

But, apparently this was not enough for Fox news, who in turn "falsified" the results (ironic, right) and stated in big bold letters the following in their news cast.


Here is a little tip for the people over at Fox news. I am in a Statistics class in high school, and the first thing that we learn when going over surveys and there responses is that, and I am quoting our book for this, " When interpreting polls, all results when calculated into percent form, should add up to about 100% when taking into consideration the % margin of error." Now if they had said something like, "This survey has a 20-25% margin of error" then this wouldn't be a problem, but the original data had no % error listed. The part that just makes you want to laugh is the fact that this data that they listed for the results on a poll asking of people think that scientists falsified data, and this data itself is falsified. I guess it is just one of those things that makes you think, "Wow, I know better than these morons, and they get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year"

Time for a laugh break. This must hurt.

Goldman Sachs took a lot of heat a while ago when they gave their executives huge multi-million dollar bonuses despite receiving bail-out money from the government. They apparently are changing the bonuses for the top 30 people and instead of giving them out right cash, they are instead receiving stock. The catch is that they will be letting the stockholders vote on there bonuses, so in theory the shareholders could vote to give the Exec's nothing. which would be very embarrassing for the company.

Thomas Friedman was on The Daily Show last night to promote his book, Hot, Flat, And Crowded 2.0. It is the exact same as the original, except it is in paperback. While on the show, he talks about how he had just had a lunch that day with President Obama and a bunch of other opinion columnists (sea bass, really?). He tried to make a Salahi joke (gets beaten to it) and talks about how at the lunch President Obama was trying to get his ideas out to them beforehand and in a more private venue. Friedman also talks about how Obama never used the word "surge" at the lunch, and how really 30k more troops won't make that much of a difference at what they are trying to do, which is basically to clear, hold, and build. Friedman also says that he really doesn't think that this somewhat small troop increase will work to meet those goals. He also stated that he really doesn't care for fish, in particular sea bass.

Last Friday the new Motorola Droid "landed: so to speak. It went on sale to less than expected crowds but rave reviews. Everyone who does reviews is already comparing it to the iPhone, but it will be a while before it's sales match the iPhone's and it's customer reviews. One thing that might help is there ad Campaign, constantly making fun of the iPhone, including now there new ad in time for the holiday season, putting it on the island of misfit toys, take a look below

The House late last night, an unusual move for them, passed the new health care bill. At over 1900 pages it will cost us taxpayers about 1.2 trillion dollars, more than the bailout even. The new bill passed even without support from 38 fellow democrats. This landmark new bill will be th e largest expansion of health care since the creation of medicare in the 60's. This new bill will make health care affordable for 96% of the population if it is passed in the senate, let's hope it is.

Today the Dow Jones went back over 10000, due to rapid increases in the medical industry and Tech. industries, with IMS health inc. jumping almost 4 points, or about 20% and Google going up 8 points or 1.5%. Another somewhat gain is the phone company Motorola, who has seen there stock jump about 17% in just the last week with the anticipation of there new phone, the Droid, hailed as the only real competition to the iPhone this coming holiday season, promising better pictures, service coverage being on Verizon, video capture, longer talk time, and a whole lot more. You might have seen there commercials for the new smartphone, they start out by mocking the iPhone and say all the things it doesn't do, it is the video below.

A while back, in august, a local math teacher and retired engineering professor at DVC , Ken Green, at the old age of 75 managed to win one for the bay area and took silver in the senior Olympics down at Cañada college. He raced in the men's age 75-79 40k road race in the cycling category and due to a rather unexpected turn of events (someone forgot to do the last lap), he managed to win the silver. The previous day he had raced in the men's 20k road race and managed to win a bronze 3rd place medal too, and the next week he raced in the 5k and 10k time trials and managed to win second there too. This just goes to show you that sometimes, age is irrelevant when it comes to some things.

The FAA isn't asleep, unlike some of the pilots seemed to be. The two pilots, Capt. Timothy B. Cheney and first officer Richard Cole had there pilot's licenses revoked today as a result of there overshooting the target airport by about 150 miles. During the FAA's investigation on how exactly these pilot's managed to screw up this bad, it was found out that the two men were on there laptops instead of flying the plane. They probably were doing one of 3 things, either looking at inappropriate sites, playing a computer game like Left 4 Dead or Borderlands or they were just looking at funny videos on YouTube like the one below

Even though Harry Reid came out the other day saying "The Public Option is back!" some people are still divided on the issue, even the democrats. Some democrats of all people are still wondering if this is the best idea to bring it back to the table. Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, said this on the issue,

" I Don't Know. I Don't Know. I Don't Know" "I just really don’t know"

Baucus says this because in the first place, he spent months trying to get a bill through to the senate without a public option because in his mind he didn't think that it would get the 60 votes needed

Despite all that is going on in the world, the main point at the White house brief today was the basketball game. The president along with several cabinet members and congressman played a game this afternoon and later in the briefing noted that they were regretful that they didn't invite any women. There are SO many other things they could have been doing, but instead they chose to play a game of basketball, probably leaving whatever they had to do until the last minute, like this blog.

A bill that was threatened with veto has passed through the house (while attached to a defense bill) that will increase the coverage of hate crimes to include anti-gay crimes. This has been supported by Obama and will go to the senate in a few days. The question is, despite republican protests that it is attached to a defense bill, will it go through the senate and become part of the law?

Some Somali Pirates attempted to raid a large ship they spotted. Little did they know that it was actually a French Navy Destroyer. They were captured and there fate are yet to be decided. Every year apparently out of the pirates captured only a few face trial due to legal reasons, weird.

A couple of days ago, we discovered that Iran was hiding a second uranium enrichment plant, a place where they could make weapons grade nuclear materials. New reports suggest that they are going to send the already made uranium to Russia before the inspection. Whether they try to hide some other materials not disclosed in Geneva will be up to the Russians to tell us.

Iran agreed on Thursday in talks with the United States and other major powers to open its newly revealed uranium enrichment plant near Qum to international inspection in the next two weeks and to send most of its openly declared enriched uranium to Russia to be turned into fuel for a small reactor that produces medical isotopes, senior American and other Western officials said.

We all heard a while ago that Sarah Palin had written a memoir called, very appropriately, Going Rogue, had already made it to the best seller list, and it doesn't even come out until November 17th. Somehow it even managed to pass up acclaimed author Dan Brown's latest book, The Lost Symbol. How did she d this while resigning from being the governor of alaska, and trying to cover up (no thanks to the press) her daughter's baby, apparently tried to make it seam like it was her's?

A newlaw has been passed that has made it illegal to text while driving. Personally this should have been a law that forbade anyone to text while driving, because it really takes more of your attention away from the road than making calls did.

Driving while talking on hand-held cellphones has been banned in seven states, including California, and texting while driving has been banned in 18 states. Seventeen states have made it illegal for school bus drivers to use cellphones while driving.

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the communist taker over of the largest country population wise in the world. Since there founding in 1949, they have transformed themselves into the modern war-torn economic powerhouse that they are today. Chinese dissident Harry Wu said this

Wu, now 72, believes the Chinese people will eventually cast off communism as citizens in the Soviet Union did.

A somewhat reliable source has disclosed that the 60th anniversary is apparently the debt forgiving anniversary, hope they are right.

A new Fossil, named "Adri" (where did they find that random name?) was recently unearthed in modern day Ethiopia. The statistics on the size of the body are quite surprising, considering that my mother is actually taller than them.

The story of humankind is reaching back another million years as scientists learn more about "Ardi," a hominid who lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia. The 110-pound, 4-foot female roamed forests a million years before the famous Lucy, long studied as the earliest skeleton of a human ancestor.

Yes, this poll was actually posted on Facebook over the weekend. Somehow they didn't catch it before it went public. You would think that the worlds largest social networking site would have some sort of a filter to stop these things from being posted in the first place. The possible answers were "Yes" "Maybe" "No" and "Only if he takes away my health care". It is just utterly amazing the crap that people can post on the internet.

Even though Twitter apparently doesn't make much money, the new internet company has had a more than 10x increase in visitors in just a year. They are in the process of getting a 100 million dollar loan, apparently to "make a business plan". How did a company without a business/marketing plan grow to be worth 1 Billion dollars?

Twitter Inc. is nearing a deal for as much as $100 million in new funding that would buy the fast-growing Internet-messaging company more time to figure out its business model, according to people familiar with the situation.

A remarkable discovery was made today in England. they have uncovered the largest single stockpile of anglo-saxon gold ever recorded. Experts say that the find dates to around the 7th century and there were about 1500 pieces found. That's a lot.

Former house majority leader Tom Delay apparently is to be a "star" on the new season of Dancing With The Stars. How did ABC managed to change the definition of a word to be able to include people like Delay and numerous others. He even has his own promo

According to Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat, and Crowded", from the time he was born in 1953, to 2053, the population on Earth will have gone from about 2.63 billion and tripled to about 9 billion, that's just unbelievable.

Joe Wilson, the Representative from South Carolina who burst out during President Obama's Speech on Wednesday, is being demanded by Democrats to formally apologize on the floor, even though apparently he has already privately apologized to the president. Let's hope that this man doesn't lie anymore than a normal politician.

The lengths that people will go to make a buck. If you were in a hospital and saw that you could buy your own swine flu microbe, wouldn't you? I guess that the CDC has a lot of spare time to come up with something like this

Since when does the president "give out homework" to kids? The video below talks about his speech.

Last time they opened the bridge early when the closed it, and they even had time to plan it out and everything at least a year or so in advance. I guess they didn't see the cracked bar before they started.

Now is it just me, or are the top 3 foreign cars? I mean come on, if the government gives you 3500-4500 for your old car, at least buy American.

Studies have shown that playing certain games like Tetris help stimulate brain growth

Now I wonder how he would feel if someone water-boarded or tortured him for weeks on end with no legal justification?