China Beat Us To It

Tom Freidman thought we had the upper hand in green technology. He begged us to get ahead of the other countries by making advances in clean non pollutant technology. But apparently China got this message as well. I can't say that I'm sad that they're going green, if they do world pollution might decrease. I just wish that we had made these advances a few years ago because we've had so many warnings and yet we've made little movement towards that direction. If it becomes an international trend within the next few years as developing countries and the US compete then the world will become a safer place for the future

AIDS Vaccine!

An AIDS vaccine is in the making which makes me really happy and raises questions at the same time. This has been the longest AIDS vaccine trial but i wonder where other trials have failed? When will this be perfected to release to the public? I worry that this might become to expensive for lower wages to afford. But if this does come out to the public this will be a break through in medicine and hopefully will help us defeat other major fatal diseases such as cancer.

Its a must read

Obamas Ban on Flavored Tobacco

Obama plans to ban flavored tobacco products and personally i think its ridiculous because he is a smoker himself. He claims that it appeals to first time smokers because some flavored tobacco is fruit and candy flavored that might attract children but I really doubt that. Smoking is a personal choice and if they want fruit or candy they'll just go eat some. Why would they go out and smoke a cigarette because of the flavor, the dangers of smoking are very public so that should scare children away by itself.

Heres and article about the ban

"Popularity is like blood pressure," he says. "Sometimes it's high and sometimes it's low. What you need is to keep it under control."

The Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is doing a good job in his country. He has a real inspirational story and is extremely popular in Brazil so popular in fact that they want him to change the constitution so he could take a third term as president. From what I've read hes very intelligent and humble. Hes someone I think we'll see a lot more of as the year progresses because hes planning to get a million jobs for the Brazilians. Hes someone we could use a little advice from in this time in our economy.

Heres the article
The title of the blog was a quote from Luiz himself i thought it was a great analogy and quite funny aswell

cartoon time

this is kinda sad...

Edward Kennedy

This is a picture from Edward Kennedy's funeral.

India Gay Sex Laws

this is little bit of old news but im not sure if anyone new about it. apparently being gay in india was straight up against the law which is rediculous but the law was originally put in place druing the british colonial times.

Is Iran returning to normal?

first id like to say that this article is written by Fareed Zakaria, writes for newsweek, he has really interesting articles and writes well. i really like his work so i suggest reading his articles. this article is about how America cant really intervene in iran right now due to the change in power.

What is happening in Iran? On the surface, the country has returned to
normalcy. Demonstrations have become infrequent, and have been quickly
dispersed. But underneath the calm, there is intense activity and the beginnings
of a political opposition. In the past week, Mir Hossein Mousavi, the candidate
who officially lost last month's presidential election, has announced his
intention to create a "large-scale social movement" to oppose the government and
press for a more open political system. Mohammad Khatami, the reformist former
president, has called for a referendum on the government. Another powerful
former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has criticized the regime's
handling of the election and post-election "crisis." All three have demanded the
release of politicians and journalists imprisoned over the past month and held
without charges. (Those prisoners include Maziar Bahari, NEWSWEEK's Tehran
correspondent, a Canadian citizen, and an internationally recognized documentary
filmmaker.) These are not dissidents in the wilderness. Between them, the three
men have been at the pinnacle of power for most of the Islamic Republic's
existence.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/208656

study of children and race

if you have psyc with McAlister you will know they did a study on adults and it showed how we have been raised racist but here is a study with children from a young age. this study supports the video we watched in psyc.

At the Children's Research Lab at the University of Texas, a database is
kept on thousands of families in the Austin area who have volunteered to be
available for scholarly research. In 2006 Birgitte Vittrup recruited from the
database about a hundred families, all of whom were Caucasian with a child 5 to
7 years old.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214989

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is making more moves to become independent of japanese-american relations but America has nothing to fear. Its an interesting article because it shows Americas dependency on territorial additude.

For half a century, the United States and Japan have been pals across the
Pacific. Whenever officials from both countries meet, they almost always hail
the U.S.-Japan alliance as "the cornerstone" of America's foreign policy in Asia
and boast how it is "one of the most important bilateral relationships in the
world." But the ouster this week of the party that has governed Japan since
1955—and the arrival of a group that occasionally badmouths America's role in
the region—has frightened people that the happy days have come to an end. They
should relax.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214810

wow this is sorta cool because i know geologists and they say to stay out of the feild but i guess you mix anything with oil you get money

http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2009/08/31/the-financial-crisis-as-moneymaker/#more-6735

link to this story above

In Saturday's FT, Martin Sandbu tells the amazing tale of Farouk al-Kasim, the Iraqi geologist
who has been more responsible than anyone else for Norway's success as an oil
power.
[H]e and his Norwegian wife, Solfrid, had decided that their youngest
son, born with cerebral palsy, could only receive the care he needed there. But
it meant turning their backs on a world of comforts. Al-Kasim's successful
career had afforded them the prosperous lifestyle of Basra's upper-middle class.
Now they would live with Solfrid's family until he could find work, though he
had little hope of finding a job as rewarding as the one he had left behind. He
was not aware that oil exploration was under way on the Norwegian continental
shelf, and even if he had known, it wouldn't have been much cause for hope:
after five years of searching, still no oil had been found.
This was in 1968.
Once in Oslo, Al-Kasim paid a visit to the Ministry of Industry, just to see if
anyone there knew of any oil-company work in Norway. Before long he was
part of the inner circle of Norwegian government officials mapping out the
country's future as a major oil exporter. His most important early contribution,
as Sandbu tells it, was in persuading his Norwegian colleagues that the country
actually had a future as an oil exporter. All the early wells drilled had come
up empty, but Al-Kasim's analysis of the results convinced him that a big strike
was in the offing. It came in December 1969, with the discovery of the gigantic
undersea oil and gas field known as Ecofisk.