So I´m sitting in my hotel lobby in the middle of Madrid.
That was a cool sentence to write. Madrid is beautiful; with statues, fountains, and beautiful walks everywhere. We arrived late last night and were exhausted.
The first plane ride (from Vancouver to Amsterdam) was about 9 hours. The food was relatively good for a plane. But they really should not serve the breakfast just before doing an extended and bumpy landing. I got about three hours of sleep on the plane.
Four hours in Amsterdam airport were pretty boring. There was nothing to do beyond the security check point other than drink at the pubs. Though before we passed that we did go into a few stores. You´d think that a “gadget store” which sold mainly mp3 players wouldn´t have sex toys, but then you´d be wrong. Weird. Anyway, I fell asleep in the airport for about an hour. The flight to Madrid was blessedly short. I slept again on the plane.
We got to Madrid and after a wild taxi ride through the town we got to our hotel, checked in, and went for a walk. Apparently everyone here walks in the evenings. All of the cafes and such are open late. We stopped and had a tortilla which was way too big and a nice glass of wine. All in all a good evening. Could have slept better last night, but ahh well.
After a wonderful breakfast this morning I´m sitting here writing this, and in just a few minutes I´ll be off to the Prado.
Enjoy.
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Has anyone else noticed that in the past when we thought supply was going down the gas prices went up, and when the supply increased the prices went down? Now it seems that when supply goes down prices go up, when supply goes up, prices go up. What happened?
For anyone who used to read my myspace blog you’ll remember my irritation with the oil and gas companies when I determined that based on the price per barrel we were being charged almost 20 cents more per liter than in the past. Well the oil and gas companies have come out and said the reason why. Apparently the problem is no longer the amount of oil in the world, but rather the number of refineries. The obvious answer to this is of course to build more refineries.
Here’s the problem though. Why should they build more refineries? What does it gain them? With the current system they get to jack the price up. Even if it’s just a few cents higher profit than it should be, they still make more money. If they were to build refineries they wouldn’t be able to do that. Also building refineries costs money. But as I said it results in the companies getting less money. Also I think that they can see the writing on the wall. Why build something that might be mostly obsolete in 10-20 years?
If you were faced with a proposition where you had to put out a lot of money and in return you’d make less would you take it?
I’m almost to the point where I think that the government should step in and either build the refineries themselves or force the oil and gas companies to do it.
Oh, and gas prices were over $1.30 today again. This is starting to hurt, and my Metro gets over 40 miles to the gallon. I can’t imagine what the SUV drivers are paying. Here I think my $30 a week is bad. I’m looking forward to next year when I’ll go to school and work in the GVRD. Which means skytrain.
Enjoy.
-Noah
Oh, and the cartoon at the top is by Henry Payne.
As some may have noticed, I’ve been reading books which I’ve read before. Yep. Most of the books in my “just read” list are ones that I’ve read before. Why? Well I decided that I’d read the same books with new eyes. And it’s great. I’m picking up things I completely missed. It’s given me a greater appreciation for many authors. It has also let me know which aren’t as good as I remember.
 Why am I saying this? Well, I’d like to challenge everyone to pick up a book you remember liking in high school. I promise you you’ll learn something new.
Now I’m going to sleep.
 -Noah
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Why do we keep calling spy organizations “intelligence”? It seems to be a misnomer to me.Some of you may remember that last year there was a kerfuffle over Canadian “spy coins”. Apparently, we, or another country they never really made a decision on who the culprit was, have been putting nanotechnology into coins. This was, they suspected, an attempt to track American DoD contractors while they were at conferences in Canada. If this were true, here is a hypothetical situation describing what could occur:
“Well sir, our super-secret-spy-shillings ™ were a partial success. We managed to plant them on all of the US contractors.”
“Why only partial?”
“Because though we had accurate tracking of them for a while, it didn’t take long to lose them again. But there is an up side.”
“And that would be?”
“We now know where all of the local pop machines are.”
So there you go, the obvious problem with it. The Defense Department has since withdrawn the claim. Now, though, it has come out just what the problem with these coins was, and how they aroused suspicion. Apparently, the coins in question are the poppy quarters that came out a few years ago. You know the one, it has the red poppy on one side, you probably picked one up at a Tim Horton’s with your change once. These coins were so unfamiliar to the contractors that several of them reported the coins to their superiors. Though if any of the contractors decided to take a closer look at the coin and noticed that the coating, which protects the poppy image, glows when under UV light I might understand why.
I guess that CSIS isn’t dabbling in nanotechnology. Too bad really, we could have gotten a good conspiracy theory started about it. However, it is rather suspicious having a spy agency that manages to stay in the background that much. They don’t take credit for much, so I wonder if CSIS is really a “shady government agency”(tm)? Maybe they run everything. They could be involved in anything from assassinations to trying to make the Bloc Quebecois relevant. On second thought, the second one is probably impossible.Â
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