i was just relaxing & looking at the caribbean when i saw it, and i couldn’t figure out what it was without looking it up. it’s obviously connected to a main Thing at its northeast corner, but that didn’t have any helpful features so i went looking around on wikipedia and stuff. it’s turkey point power station, a two-reactor nuclear power plant. in retrospect the two big reactor-looking things paired with two stacks and a lot of water stuff around it, combined with the massive electrical stuff outside of the parking lot, is pretty salient.

the “crazy nonsense” is a 168-mile long cooling canal. that is awesome

also “misfits” is a very funny new tv show.

Anti-Terrorist and Monitory Crimes Division. ROBERT MUELLERIII EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FBI FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION FBI. WASHINGTON DC. FBI SEEKING TO WIRETAP INTERNET ROBERT MUELLER III EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FBI FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION FBI.WASHINGTON DC. FBI SEEKING TO WIRETAP INTERNET DEAR FRIEND, WE THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION WASHINGTON DC, WOULD LIKE TO INFORM YOU THAT WE HAVE TAKEN OUR TIME MONITORING THE TRANSACTION WITH YOU AND MR. PACKER ESTRADA OF THE DHL company concerning your Bank Draft in NIGERIA AND HAVE FOUND OUT THAT IT IS HITCH FREE, WE THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION HAVE BEEN ABLE TO TRACK THE BANK DRAFT AND SPECIAL DOCUMENT WHICH IS PRESENTLY NOW IN THE DHL COURIER COMPANY IN NIGERIA FOR DELIVERY AND WE HAVE GETHERED ALSO THAT YOU WHERE ASK TO PAY $75 USD FOR THE REGISTRATION FEE. NOTE: THIS IS NOT A SCAM ITS REAL!!!!!! WE HAVE CAREFULLY INVESTIGATE THIS AND FOUND OUT THAT ITS REAL AND LEGITIMATE GO AHEAD AND SEND THE DHL COMPANY AN E-MAIL,AS WE ARE STILL RUNNING UNDERGROUND INVESTIGATION,BUT WE MUST SAY ITS REAL AND LEGIT. THE FBI WILL NEVER LIE TO YOU. SO WE WOULD LIKE YOU TO PROCEED AND SEND AN E-MAIL TO THE DHL COURIER COMPANY FOR THE CLAIM OF YOUR BANK DRAFT ASAP AS THEY ARE VERIFIED AND LEGIT,WE WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO CALL YOU BECAUSE WE ARE BEING SO CONGESTED WITH MOST OTHER MANY CASES. WE ALSO WANT TO KNOW FROM YOU IMMEDIATELY YOU RECEIVE OUR MAIL WHAT HAVE BEEN GOING ON WITH YOU AND THE DHL COMPANY SO IT CAN ENABLES THE FBI INVESTIGATE MORE AND ALSO WE WILL MAKE SURE THAT YOUR PACKAGE GET TO YOU. SO BE REST ASSURED THAT YOU ARE ON THE RIGHT PART AND WE ARE MAKING SURE THAT WE ARE MONITORING ALL THE WHOLE PROCESS UNTIL THE FINALLY RELEASE IS MADE. KINDLY KEEP US UPDATED ON ANY DEVELOPMENT WITH THE BANK DRAFT SO WE CAN GUIDE YOU ACCORDINGLY. THANKS FOR YOUR CO-OPERATION. Best Regards, ROBERT S. MUELLER, III DIRECTOR FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON, D.C. 20535

all of those pictures are from the first page of google images, and one is hotlinked from THE ONION. amazing! “NOTE: THIS IS NOT A SCAM ITS REAL!!!!!!“

michael moore is a horrible conspiracy theorist. he gets a little of my respect for the guts (haha) it takes to voluntarily show his disgusting bloated self on screen, but i started watching his most recent documentary on capitalism and i didn’t last very long. i did like this, though – michael moore “interviews” some priests on capitalism, and of course they go on and on about how evil and ungodly it is. when asked why it’s been able to become so overwhelming, one of them brings up propaganda and mentions how a harmful system has “the ability to convince people who are victimized by the very system to support the system and see it as a good” through propaganda. how beautifully hypocritical.

the CTV “countdown” video : everyone is going to think the salient feature of canada is our abundance of helicopters. wish i could find this on youtube, it was honestly 90% helicopter shots of winter sports

requisite “support our troops” shot of people watching from afghanistan: there are old white ladies and teenagers. i think they mixed up their feeds and that is actually a police station in thunder bay

announcer: “australia! 40 athletes!”
rebecca: “let’s see how many inbred people there are…..….40!!!”

“this is the first olympic games for colombia” this is the first time columbian athletes have survived for 4 years without being murdered by cartels

in the cultural segment: Middle-earth, one athlete: Gandalf

is that bear full of helium? is that how it stays up? are the people in the legs high as heck right now?

re: french-irish fiddle players: in addition to our helicopter abundance, the rest of the world has had their suspicions that all french canadians are evil confirmed

i hope final destination 5 takes place at an olympic opening ceremony. there are just so many ways for things to go horribly wrong

the light turned green and i made my turn as she yelled new-age epithets at me (i couldn’t actually understand her, it just sounded mad). it frustrates me to see and hear so many people that take horoscopes at face value (or any value), so this was a very satisfying interaction.

that balcony is here

the cool part was when i was coming home at 5:30. i went around the block to see where the outage ended (avenue), and up to cumberland. cumberland was awesome – all the lights were off (obviously) and i’ve never seen it that dark. everything had an orange cast because it was still dusk, and it looked like it should have been super quiet (there was nobody there except a couple pizza guys), but it was actually pretty loud because all the condos had their backup generators running. the generator for my building was powering some essential stuff – hallway and stairwell lighting, the rfid door system – but it was also powering ALL FOUR ELEVATORS. what a huge waste. i understand people on the top floor would be pretty put out by having to go up and down the stairs the entire way, but i feel like we could have dealt with one or two. i didn’t even realize the elevators had been on until after the power came back…i had been taking the stairs.

related to the generators: i really do not care about anthropogenic global warming or “the environment” very much. it’s true that pollution is a very bad thing (see: los angeles’ air quality, water quality in mainland china, unethical nuclear programs), but the ‘green’ and ‘energy reduction’ and ‘carbon neutral’ buzzwords are just frustrating. what i do care about is resource conservation. petroleum is something that will eventually run out, no matter what. yes, biofuel can be manufactured, but so many steps are involved in the manufacturing process that the idea of ethanol or anything along those lines being “efficient” is hilarious. i’m nowhere near a peakist, but i do think it’s going to be very interesting when it truly hits everyone that fossil fuels are going to start running out – forever – within the next couple generations.

what i’m getting at is how ridiculous it is for dozens of backup generators to be running off of gas, powering elevators so people don’t have to take the stairs. i’m not going to lobby to change this or anything, but it’s representative of ridiculous levels of waste. the same with cars. it’s been a refrain for years and years, but the amount of finite resources being wasted by cars is incredible. i understand that global shipping and transportation (planes, trains, boats, trucks) is so deep-set that it’s laughable to even think of changing it, but the amount of people that drive around ‘just because’ is insane. i’m not concerned that they’re going to kill my unborn children with air cancer, but if i drove around everywhere the fact that i’m just burning up an unreplenishable resource would be eating away at me. another reason i love cycling: keep the bike (and yourself) well-maintained and it will always be a viable method of local transportation.

i know that right now, any form of energy has fossil fuel implications. it would be nice if most electricity came from nuclear (or better, wind/hydro/solar/geo/tidal) sources, but that’s a ways off. what’s cool is that with current technology, fossil fuel is unnecessary (except for the fact that it’s so deeply built into infrastructure): the amount of solar-related energy (photovoltaic, wind, and hydro) that is unharnessed greatly exceeds all of today’s power needs. i’m super glad i live in the generation that i do, science and technology developments are incredibly exciting to me.

note to self: write about protests and petitions. they are ridiculous