To Be Continued

Hello, anyone out there in blog-reading land that might actually be keeping up with these.

You're very likely confused that there was no topic post on Sunday, nor is there a 9 AM post with actual content for today.  After a bit of discussion among some of our regular contributors, it appears that we're going to put our blog on a short hiatus.  None (well... not many) of us are superhuman, and other things in life (particularly school) need to take priority.

There's no real established timetable as to when our blog will make a return, though I'd imagine the likely possibilities exist around the notable breaks in school.  That being said, if anything changes, I'm sure we'll post an update, so feel free to click back every once in a while to see what's going on.

On behalf of all of our contributors, both regular and occasional, thanks for reading so far, and we hope to see you back again when we resume this.

2040 Is Not Very Far Off

As mentioned in a previous posts, overly sensational titles bug me. That's exactly what this article has, and that's what drew my attention to it. "You won't need a driver's license by 2040." I was half-expecting to read an article about microchipping people or something else to render the license obsolete as a means of providing identification, but... yeah. I was off on that guess, but the resulting article ended up being far more interesting.

The focus of this article is on the idea of self-driving cars and how they're finally starting to become a realistic technological possibility. The most interesting idea that it considered, which had never occurred to me, was the idea of how this could reduce traffic. If we could convert to driverless cars, suddenly the entire idea of an asshole driver disappears. Instead of having to determine the most efficient route to a location given traffic, you can have your car controlled by a centralized hub that could route traffic to be much more evenly distributed than usual.

While the idea of taking one's own hands off the wheel may be unnerving, I think that the possible impact this could have on transportation would be completely worth it.

Pretty Roman Pictures

So this week's article is archeology-based.  It is about a mosaic that was found under a farmer's field in Turkey.  Now, I am not really sure how you can grow a field over a tile mosaic.  Or, more importantly, why you would want to.  Roman mosaics are so pretty that it seems a shame to cover one up with grass and crops.  This mosaic was from the 3rd or 4th century, too!  That's a really long time for a mosaic to stay in as good a condition as they found it in, especially if there were roots growing down from the plants above.  Anyway, I just thought that the article was cool, since you generally don't think about still finding mosaics unless you go out on an archeological dig to specifically look for signs of a civilization.

Happy Belated Constitution Day!

For anyone who doesn't know, yesterday (Sept. 17) marked the 225th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution.  (I personally have Facebook to thank for the reminder, because whoever printed my calendar decided to leave this holiday out).  Anyway, I'd like to urge anyone out there to use the time they would have spent reading the novel-length posts that I usually write, and instead go and either read the Constitution if you're not familiar with it or just reflect on it.  Or if you're in a pinch for time, you should look up the School House Rock version of the Preamble, which I think is pretty darn cool and informative.  

All cats are worth having around.

http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_c2#/video/world/2012/09/16/mabuse-eco-leopard-skins.cnn

There's a guy in South Africa trying to sell artificial leopard skin clothing to religious tribes, in an attempt to help preserve the leopard population.  While it's not uncommon for people (particularly in other countries and cultures) to use animals and their pelts for attire, there comes a point where the desire for said pelts has to be weighed against the longevity of the animal.  Even more troubling is the fact that the laws concerning the wearing and trading/selling of leopard pelts are apparently being flaunted and nothing is being done about it.

Leopards are pretty.  Let's not kill them.

Week of 9/16 - More Current Events!

Hey all, sorry that this is a bit late. This post is gonna be a quick one.

This week is another one of each of us discussing various things going on in the world today. John'll start tomorrow, and I'll be back on Friday. Enjoy!

The Problem is I Don't Watch Enough Movies

The favorite television show was easy. My favorite movies, not so much. I'm not just not as interested in movies as I am TV, because the spans are shorter and often times I feel the good ones are all slightly depressing and therefore do not feel like watching again. I can say a couple of the movies I have just seen and currently enjoy and I suppose I do have a favorite movie, which I can state below.

I am an anime fan, so whenever I think of my favorite movies, my mind goes to Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki, my favorite of which is Princess Mononoke. His films did gain traction after Spirited Away earned so many awards, and I think his films are therefore not as unknown as they could be. I can easily say I am a fan of all of his work.

But really, I barely go to the movies. I have long list of television shows I want to watch, and those always come before my desire to watch a Redbox or OnDemand movie, although I will set aside time to watch the cheap actions flicks. The Die Hard trilogy is a good set of fun, and the first Iron Man movie still probably stands my favorite so far of the Avengers flicks.

I did watch The Grey recently, the one staring Liam Neeson. That was a pretty violent movie, especially in the beginning, but all who say it could be like the "Jaws" for wolves do not get the way the movie portrayed the animals. Perhaps it wasn't at all how wolves act in real life, but I can away with respect for them. I actually liked the wolves and the way their relationship with the people moved throughout the film. It was unexpectantly good, but as I mentioned in my first lines, it is one of those emotionally draining movies that you do not want to see twice - at least for a while.

I suppose I am going to stick this under movies, just cause it was one of those long TV miniseries - Dinotopia. It's my guilty pleasure, apparently not as interesting to some of the people I know as I find it, but there are dinosaurs and I enjoy the storyline and its characters. It comes to almost four hours long, so it makes a good movie/mini series to watch on a long car ride.

Considering I have things to get ready to go to, I shall leave it at that. I hope maybe some of that was interesting to you.