Topper's TravelsTopper Kain's blog. Topper Kain is a world-famous kazoo player and traditional norwegian food chef. He wants you to use the comments. Wednesday, August 29, 2007Damn this cool:http://www.flashearth.com/ Of course if you want directions you should goto http://maps.live.com, but still. .: posted by Topper 3:48 PMFriday, August 10, 2007Canada and Russia are getting all hot and bothered over resources in the north poleExcuse me, don't all North pole resources belong to it's indigenous people .: posted by Topper 1:59 PMThursday, June 07, 2007I must say, I am disappointed that the Dems pushed through a new stem cell law. I have a serious problem with the government spending money that results in the destruction of human embryos. I'm not positive if these embryos are human life or not, but the fact that I am not means that I must err on the side of caution and oppose their destruction as murder.Honestly, I don't see the need to federally fund embryonic stem cell research. It seems like everyone else is doing it, so why does the federal government need to? The advances in adult stem cell research in the US has been very interesting and could potentially be more rewarding, espicially if the US gets a leg up on the rest of the world. I know, I know, embryonic looks "more promising," but in the first serious bioethics debate of the 21st century lets err on the side of caution, espicially when the downside is so low. .: posted by Topper 5:08 PMSaturday, April 07, 2007So I didn't know this before, but apparently Barrack Obama's full name is Barrack Hussein Obama. I wonder if there is a chance in hell that anyone would have voted for a guy named Ivan Adolf Stalin in the 1950's... Maybe....: posted by Topper 4:12 AMThursday, April 05, 2007I was browsing the WASL science standards will waiting for a phone interview and I must say that I'm more than a little disappointed. As I could attest to from my experience in the Washington State school system, science education is heavy on what I call the "fluff" sciences, geography and biology, rather than the useful (and math heavy) sciences of physics, chemistry, and engineering(I'd say computer science too, but I have a bias it could be under math).In particular, I'm bothered (and boggled) by the sample 10th grade "science" test. It was entirely biology based. Although the experimental part of it was fine (a table of numbers is a table of numbers) the multiple-choice questions were purely biology based. More when I get more time... .: posted by Topper 12:35 PMSunday, April 01, 2007Pages Written on my Thesis: 37 (Up from 23 this morning!)Number of those pages actually acceptable: 34 Mininmum required: 40 Recommended: 60 chapters written: 1.9 minimum needed: 4 left to do: Finish the chapter I wrote tonite Come up with one more idea for a chapter to describe miscellanious things I've been looking at. write 20 more pages this week Find a way to work Jack Bauer, the TMNT, and maybe borat into this thesis. This is how I feel: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=804 .: posted by Topper 6:08 AMMonday, February 12, 2007Is Harvard having a female president really news? The Ivies already have a 50/50 gender split, and the Claremonts are 80% women. Is it really news that a woman can be a university president?And really, doesn't it seem creepy that the first women president of Harvard is named "Dr. Faust?" .: posted by Topper 11:45 AMTuesday, February 06, 2007On the Watada trail: Lt. Watada should be convicted and punished. While I'm the last one to say a person should leave their morals at the door when volunteering for military duty what Lt. Watada is doing is wrong.While the legality of the war of the 2003 war is still debated (I think the US did not need UN authorization to attack, and even if it did, the US was still authorized under the 1990 Desert Storm resolution), the legality of the occupation should not be. The UN authorized the US and the UK as occupying powers in October 2003 (http://www.casi.org.uk/info/scriraq.html). Thus, the US occupation of Iraq is undoubtably legal under international law. This does not mean that the US has free reign in Iraq. Indeed, the conduct of some US forces in the Iraq occupation has been illegal, under both domestic and international laws. However, Lt. Watada is not claiming that sexual humilating prisoners is an illegal order, he is claiming that going to Iraq in general is an illegal order. As I said before, I don't believe a soldier should hang up his conscious for the duration. However, allowing soldiers to refuse orders must be done very, very carefully. I don't think many Americans (or even westerners, for that matter) realize how truly amazing our system of civilian control of the military is. Every time a soldier refuses an order from a civilian (as is essentially the case with Lt. Watada), Americans should be wary. While it is quite possible for a civilian to issue an illegal order (I believe some in the civilian government have already), the military must err on the side of executing the order when in doubt, lest our military men become too used to ignoring the civilians. .: posted by Topper 10:34 PMFriday, February 02, 2007On the whole aqua teen hunger force thing in Boston:Just out of curiousity, why on earth would islamo-fascist terrorists place bombs that blinking space aliens flicking people off? Wouldn't they, you know, place the bombs in normal looking pieces of trash or maybe bags and then blow them up killing people? If they were to advertise their bomb, wouldn't it at least have a reference to Islam? Seriously, this is retarded. Just fine Turner for litttering or something, move on, and tell them next time to leave contact information on the glowing thingies. .: posted by Topper 2:49 AMTuesday, January 30, 2007http://www.commutesolutions.org/calc.htmInteresting link for the “true cost of driving.” According to akitsap transit pamphlet that was sent me, the total operating cost of a passenger only ferry trip is about $9.00. This means that to transport one person on a passenger only ferry, the operating cost is $9.00 Google maps says the driving distance from Bremerton to Seattle is 65 miles. The two estimates I have generated for per mile driving costs of a Toyota Avalon are $0.24 per mile and $0.168 per mile. This means that cost of a driving trip to Seattle costs between $11 and $16 dollars. That even if you paid the full price of travel both ways, taking the ferry would still be cheaper than driving for an individual. Now this doesn’t even take into account the $5 bridge toll, the costs to society of driving, the cost of getting to the ferry dock, or the time savings/loss of taking a ferry, but I’m betting that the cost of driving just goes up. My full write-up: Using as estimates: 2 Cents per mile for deprecation , based on the decrease in blue book value for a 1999 Toyoya Avalon from 10,000 to 160,000 miles) 10.6 cents/mile for Fuel and oil, based on a a $30 oil change ($30/3000miles = 1 cent/mile) and a 25 mpg car taking $2.40/gal gas ($2.40/gal / 25 mpg = 9.6 cents) 5.9 cents per mile maintenance and tires (I’m taking this on faith from the website, but it seems about right) 5 cents per mile accidents (again on faith, but it seems about right) Total cost of driving to individual: $0.24 per mile $0.24/mile * 65 miles = $15.6 per trip to Seattle in a car. This varies slightly with the mileage and expense of the car. AAA’s national estimate for driving costs is lower than this estimate at 16.8 cents, but reflects fuel prices that are cheaper than Washington state and does not include accident costs or per mile deprecation. Still, $0.168 * 65 = $10.92 per trip. That means that the cost TO THE INDIVIDUAL for taking the ferry is less than that of driving. This does not even factor in societal benefits, which according to http://www.commutesolutions.org/calc.htm is around $0.33 per mile (I dispute these numbers and say it most properly calculated at around $0.20 per mile, but this is still HUGE). An interesting things that I noted in this policy analysis: Although it is cheaper for an individual to take the passenger only ferry than drive by themselves, it is NOT cheaper for even a two person carpool to switch to the ferry, even though it is likely that this switch would still have societal benefit. This indicates that there should be some mechanism by which to encourage groups of people to ride the ferry together. The car ferry does this imperfectly by only charging per car on the way to Seattle, but the passenger ferry has no mechanism for this. On way to do this is to use electronic fare cards instead of paper tickets and to allow the grouping of fare cards: a fare card can belong to a group of maybe up to 5 people, and if they board the same sailing they receive a reduced per person rate. .: posted by Topper 2:32 PMMonday, January 15, 2007Quote from a grad with a BA in... something:"It's like, wow, I was just studying the cultural history of aborigines and now I'm looking at jobs where the main duties are answering the phone and typing.' " I mean really, you didn't see this coming? .: posted by Topper 11:27 AM |
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