Foreplay

I've been neglectful. I beg your forgiveness.
I have a very intense conversation with a close friend the other day. He was having some tough times with the girl he was trying to date. And to paraphrase his gripe - she was terrible. awful. horrible in bed. I believe the term he used was "dead fish syndrome." And while I am not the most prolific nor most skilled (I guess the term is) lover. I could feel his pain. Mainly because his description was so detailed and painful. There was no reciprocation. He did all the work and then was expected to then be ready for the main event.

Now, I feel like we've all grown up in a time where the running joke has always been that guys don't know how to perform foreplay. Or that they always rush things. Or they do not concentrate on their partner's experience enough. And this may be all true. I am not out there asking every girl their terrible sexually experiences. But I know I have, and according to my nameless friend he has too, tried to make any physical contact, be it over the shirt second base to passionate, sweaty, quivering... you get the picture..., to be as much about my partner as about myself.

We got to talking. We know that one experience does not make a trend. But could it be? Could the pendulum have shifted so much? That women are now the ones clueless on how to excite their men. "Dead fish syndrome" is not acceptable. Such interactions need to be a two way street.

I now come to you. This needs to be more of dialogue with any of my readers that are still left. I am jumping to many conclusions.

Dark Days Ahead

For those of you who have never been in grad school, it might come as a shock that there is an entire online comic dedicated to life as one. PhD Comics is spot on in their humorous interpretation of being a grad student and how the world treats you.

With that, this comic is not AS funny. It is slightly comical, but the message here is important, so take a second to read it. Ponder what it means. Start working on your emergency supplies. And start living life.

Make it a Trillion

I found this post on mint.com. It's very interesting trying to grapple with the amount of money being spent to stimulate the economy, see if this helps: how much is a trillion dollars?

Petitions are so easy in the Age of the Internet

Am I right? Huh? Huh?
It used to be if you wanted to express your opinion to a member of Congress, you actually had to call or write or send smoke signals/carrier pigeons, sometimes smoke signals and carrier pigeons in unison. And then some aid used math mumbo jumbo to say, "Well, if 15,000 people in our 55 million person state sent in concerns, this equates to being important to 56.7896% of the population - let's do this to be re-elected." Now, you just type in your email address and zip code and wham bam someone else does the work for you.

For example: During the Bush Administration, the Bush-appointed head of the EPA blocked a waiver submitted by CA to increase the regulation on auto emissions. Because CA had it's Clear Air Act in place prior to the EPA, it has had the right to enforce regulations on air pollution that are more strict than EPA standards. Once CA enacts such a law, any other state in the Union can then follow suit if they so choose. For 30 years, this worked fine. Until the most recent regulation was blocked. The EPA is now considering allowing the waiver through, and letting CA enact stricter auto emission regulations. A law 13 other states have said they will also follow. If you do the math, it would require 40% of all future cars in America to be less polluting!!!

The EPA will be hold a public hearing in Washington DC tomorrow. I know, I know. Why do I always tell you this at the last minute? But you can be there, sort of. Follow this like to The We Campaign, and enter your petition. Add you name, and your weight of being a US voter, to help save the planet. You don't even have to leave your seat :)

I would like some flab with that

So it seems my last set of posts was enough to make someone stop reading my blog publicly. That always stings just a little bit. You know -- right here. I definitely take it too personally and for those of you sticking around, thank you. For posts that you don't find exciting enough, please leave a comment ("boring", etc.) so I know that the zero comments are because people don't care, not because you have no comment.

So. On the six hour, 265 mile drive home from Yosemite, as a sort of project, my car decided to keep a tally of the number of fast food establishments we could see from the high way. We were quite amazed at the results.

In no specific order:
Subway - 15
A&W - 2
KFC - 6
Carl's Jr - 11
Jack in the Box - 15
McDonald's - 17
Taco Bell - 13
Burger King - 10
In-n-Out - 5
Wendy's - 4
Starbucks - 7
Denny's - 18

So I think there are two shocking things we can take from this list.

1) Denny's, unsuspectingly, is more prolific than McDonald's. Which is mind boggling because McDonald's, in my opinion, completely saturates the market as is. Not really sure how Denny's can do it. ESPECIALLY because it sucks.

2) In the same vein, along this route, there was a McDonald's restaurant every 15.5 miles. Amazing. That really just blows my mind.

A matter of time

As many of you know, because of I am a marine biologist, one of my favorite topics to talk about is ---

the current credit crisis... bet you new readers didn't see that coming.

I persistently follow the Planet Money Blog, a reliable NPR based source of financial news. A post today (found here, by Adam Davidson) should be heeded by anyone who has stock in a major bank, BoA, Citigroup, etc. The question of the day was: will the government have to nationalize the major banks of America to prevent financial ruin? And the answer was very eloquently, "Can't tell you even if we wanted to." Essentially, the government will not discuss such a move in an open forum for one big reason --

The government official told me that if word leaked out in any way that the government was even considering nationalization, it could spook the stock markets so badly that all those troubled banks would, instantly, become dead banks. Citi, Bank of America and other big banks, have shockingly low stock prices. But some people think that they are still overpriced--that those banks are insolvent and the only reason their stock has any value is because many investors believe the government will bail them out. Nationalization would, in most scenarios, mean the stock would lose all of its value instantly.

So any inkelling that the government might nationalize the banks, by any major news source or politician, could collapse the banking system of America in hours.

So if it does happen, expect the following events to occur. The US stock market closes Friday. Rumors start to fly of emergency meetings in Congress. Saturday more rumors and leaks become available. And Sunday, the Adminstration comes forward to announce the US banks are not the US Bank. All before the markets in Asia open. Crazy.

And we wouldn't even see it coming --

[the] government official is the kind of person who normally, well, leaks; tells reporters interesting things off the record. This person wouldn't budge. Not an inch. I asked: so, if you were just in a meeting where you decided nationalization is, clearly, the best option, you'd tell me you had never discussed it, right? This person said: yup.

Credit Crisis Video

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

For anyone who is unsure how we got into this mess. This super fun animation gives a very amazing background as to why we are in a recession and why we may have to nationalize the banks.

For even more information, check out this This American Life episode.