“A similar report Wednesday showed oil, gasoline and other fuel supplies unexpectedly rose sharply. Traders saw both the petroleum and natural gas reports as reasons to sell, as they reinforce data that show consumers are cutting back on their energy use.”

-http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080717/oil_prices.html

It would seem that oil being so expensive encouraged people to use less.
Huh, the laws of supply and demand seem to work. Imagine that.

Everything you ever wanted to know about Serj Tankian.

Thanks to Dave for bringing this amazing piece of entertainment to my attention .

Having recently had the opportunity to visit two of the local farmers’ markets, I thought I’d share a few thoughts.

Last week I stopped by the Sparks farmer’s market in Victorian square. I was less than impressed. While I understand that it is early in the growing season and many growers don’t have much available yet, there was still a disappointingly high ratio of fast food/trinket vendors to actual fruits and vegetables. If I had to guess, I’d say the farmer’s market portion of the event was less than 10%. All but one of the growers were from California.

Yesterday, I found the first annual Sommersett farmer’s market. While much, much smaller than the Sparks variety, there were more vendors selling actual fresh food. I counted six booths compared to the five in Sparks, and only two non-farmer booths compared to several dozen in Victorian Square. It had much more of a neighborhood event feel, and at least three local farmers represented.

I’m sure both events will grow as the summer progresses, but at this point I can’t imagine any reason to return to Sparks. I look forward to checking out the various other markets that take place around here, including the soon to open West St. Market. I have high hopes for that particular venue.

The Sparks Farmer’s Market takes place in Victorian Square every Thursday 4-9PM through August 21st, and the market in Sommersett Towne Square is every Wednesday 4-8PM through August 20th.

This started out as a comment on David’s post regarding race and college admission, but I decided to go ahead and post it here instead of leaving a small book in his comment section.

It irks me to no end when people pull the discrimination card when its not warranted. Now don’t get me wrong - there have certainly been, and still are, many occasions in modern times when someone has been blatantly discriminated against due to their race. The problem I have is when the situation does not even come close to being racially motivated, and is instead due to the fact that the person or persons have some other trait that is a valid reason to disqualify them, or that the so-called discrimination is actually just choosing someone based on merit.

I see headlines all the time claiming that someone was fired from their job or denied a job, or whatever it happens to be, due to race. Again, sometimes this is valid, but sometimes it is just a lazy, ignorant person trying to take advantage of previous cultural stigmas. If a black applicant can prove that he is more qualified as the white co-applicant (or can prove obvious racial discrimination, i.e. derogatory comments) and is still denied the job, then he has a valid complaint. If, as it often seems, the black applicant appears to be about equally qualified with the white one and does not get the job, that does not automatically mean it was due to racial discrimination. It most likely means the other applicant had some trait or ability that made him slightly better for the job. Maybe I’m blowing it out of proportion, but this seems to happen all the time if we’re to believe the media.

This is the type of thing I am reminded of by situations like the one David discusses; a racially oriented group (NAACP in this case) claims that something being done will discriminate against their constituents. In this situation, the NAACP is claiming that raising the minimum GPA for admission to the University of Nevada Reno may discourage minorities from getting a higher education. While this may be true on the surface, it is not discrimination against Blacks, Hispanics, or any other ethnic group. Its “discrimination” against those who did not exert the effort, or did not have the intelligence to do well enough in high school to maintain a 3.0 GPA. The fact that minorities have a lower average GPA shows that there is something that needs to be fixed at that level. It does not indicate that we should lower the standards of higher education to allow those minorities a chance. That, by definition is actually discrimination.

Dictionary.com defines discrimination as the following:

“Treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit: racial and religious intolerance and discrimination.”

Yes, it works both ways folks. By making special considerations for minorities, we could possibly discriminate against others. If we really want to get beyond racism, beyond the hatred and classification of people based on their color or gender, then we have to stop both the discrimination AND the special treatment. Equality cannot exist otherwise. While I understand that we are not there yet, we have to start thinking that way.

If I was a minority and felt that it would be more difficult for me to get a certain job, I would not want special treatment because it would only reinforce the fact that I was different in some way. I would want to work to be thought of as no different, equally as capable and incapable as everyone else. For true equality to exist, race can’t be a negative or a positive factor. End of story. It really can be that simple if we just try.

…to describe this video. So funny and entertaining, while absolutely idiotic at the same time.

For those who haven’t noticed, in the last week or so Google Maps has added a huge amount of Street View images. Almost the entire Reno-Carson-Tahoe area is now available, as well as a large majority of California (including fairly small towns like Truckee, Nevada City and Grass Valley).

All of the images appear to have been taken in the last year to year and a half, so I can only assume Google has had cars driving around for that long and just waited to make all the imagery available at once. To see the images, just find a place on Google Maps, zoom in fairly close and click the Street View button. Kind of scary/interesting all at the same time.

Every so often, my job takes me to neighboring towns. Being in northern Nevada, that almost always equals small towns. If I happen to be there around lunch time I like to pick a local deli or cafe at random and try to find a local newspaper to read while I eat. Its amazing how fast this makes me feel like the world just slammed on the brakes. There’s a sudden clarity about life. No one is worried about traffic, the only politics being discussed are local ones, and no one seems in a hurry to go anywhere.

Now I wouldn’t want to spend very much time in most of these places; I thoroughly enjoy living in a moderate sized city where there is easy access to amenities and usually always something going on. I would even begin to miss rush hour traffic after a bit. However, its… refreshing to pull out of that for short periods of time. It’s almost the same feeling I have after waking up from a really good nights sleep.

I never really realize how different a city can be from the small town U.S.A. type of place where I grew up. Spending just that small amount of time there immediately brings back the little differences; everyone knows everyone, the newspaper is full of articles about local high school students and extensive coverage of the smallest street repair, people randomly talk to you as if they’ve always known you. The same type of things exist in larger cities, but they get lost in everything else that is going on, and the scale of things change their meaning.

While there’s a long list of things I despise about small towns to go right along with this, I still enjoy feeling like I’ve dropped out of the rat race, even if just for a few hours.

From CNN.com:

“Indeed, the survey found that upwardly mobile, middle-class families were among those who had the most debt stress. Others were women, couples with small children, low-income working families, Democrats and those who graduated high school but haven’t taken college courses. Those least likely to be stressed from debt include men, retirees, empty nesters, college graduates and Republicans.”

How’s that again? Your level of stress about debt is tied to your political affiliation? Using someone’s political party as a filter just doesn’t seem relevant in this situation. That’s like saying people who own cats are more likely to use two ply toilet paper than those who own dogs. I imagine you can make almost any statistic like that work, simply because traits and behaviors don’t divide up nice and evenly amongst the population. The point remains that its not a relevant statistic. No one is going to say “Oh, I’m going to become a Republican so I don’t have to worry about money so much!”

Thank you mainstream media, for once again blinding the masses with meaningless data.

Well, it’s been nearly a whole month since I managed to post. Where in the world did the time go? Between getting ready to move and catching up on random tasks (finding and registering for classes, spending hours at DMV, etc) the days have been flying by. I’ve also been hesitant to get into the ridiculous game that is U.S. politics any more than I already have. Since that’s been a large part of recent events, my motivation to write about anything has dwindled.

Fear not, however. With the primary season essentially over, I’ve found a renewed desire to read the news again.

On that note, something of interest out of the tech world this morning; Crysis (a very high-end game) appears to run quite well on a 1.8 GHz VIA Nano CPU. Since Crysis states its minimum requirements as 2.8GHz (or 3.2GHz if you’re running Vista) this is quite impressive. Even better, the Nano uses far less power than most current CPUs. You can read more here.

Also of interest, it appears the hated (at least by me) Blackberry platform has found another reason to continue to exist. If you’re an E-Trade customer, they now have an application for Blackberries that will allow instant trades from your phone. I dislike Blackberries because of this very type of thing; they still manage to remain a proprietary, no-options platform. How they still manage to thrive when there are much easier and better ways of doing everything a Blackberry does (and more) mystifies me.

I will be posting more soon… and soon does not equal thirty days this time.

A few months ago, I overheard someone talking about a new gin being produced by Anchor Distilling (a.k.a. Anchor Brewing) in San Francisco. I finally had the chance to try it a few weeks ago, as Ben’s Fine Wine started carrying it. So far, it’s the only place outside of the Bay Area that I’ve seen it. It’s called “Junipero”. Not the most creative name, but who cares.

After mixing some up with a little tonic, my first impression was that it lacked flavor. As I had another sip I realized that all the flavors I’d expect from a gin were still there, just a little more muted than I’m used to. Overall, I’d describe Junipero as having a fairly complex but smoother flavor, and being slightly less acidic than the average Tanqueray or Bombay gin. Definitely something I’ll drink every now and then, but it won’t replace Beefeater as my basic gin of choice.