Crazy Brits

So the Brittish gov't has recently passed a law banning junk food from their schools- Go Brits!

Teaching kids good healthy eating habits is obviously important, and I'd like to see a similar shift in policy here in the States. The funny thing going on in the UK is that the kids mums are actually making the kids junk food and smuggling it to them anyway! Can you believe it?

Meatpie Mums

US population hits 300,000,000!

So in the news today:

US population hits 300,000,000 people the growth of our country has been due largely to immigration.

The Chinese step up border relations with N. Korea. Not a big deal but I found this picture and thought it was insane.
Disney has decided to pull its characters off of bad sugary fatty caloric intensive kids foods. They are trying to make a statement that kids need to eat healthy. Its about time Disney did SOMETHING good. I've been pissed at them since they made Aladin 25 and The Little Mermaid 69.

Finally, Google is building the largest coporate consumer solar set up on their building, providing 1/3 of its total power. Way to go Google. Say what you will about big business- its nice to see a company TRYING to do it different: Google Solar

Arches National Park

Enroute to Arches

We went through some of the prettiest stretches of road I've seen on our way to Arches.

This is what remains of a Spanish watering channel.


All I gotta say is: EEEwwweewwwwww

Awe!

Dave's hat pic #2!

Unaweepe Valley, CO

So this was my favorite camping spot of the trip. Everwhere else we stayed w/ the 'rabble' as Dave likes to say. We had a spot on a cliff over looking the valley, with an amazing view. It was just great.


Dave's hat pic #1!


Lizzard on a cliff.

Grand Junction, Colorado

All of these pictures were taken from the Colorado Nat'l Monument outside of Grand Junction, Colorado. It was a very nice sandstone structure that we did a nice lil' mini-hike on. It rained a bit and we got a nice rainbow.

Yosemite in the Fall

Bri being Bri.

Lizzard hammin it up.

Bridalveil falls.

Look for a little orange spec on El Cap- that's people climbing it! (My heroes)

Crepscular Rays.

Shrouded Half-Dome

$450,000,000,000

So I need to do some posting so that you can actually see the personality test results, and I thought another critique of the government would be in order. Earlier this week, or maybe even last week, the Senate approved the Defense Department's budget in a close close vote of 100-0 yea's to nehs. It was a razor thin victory for the Halliburton/McDonald-Douglass/Boing/Lockheed-Martin group, but thank goodness they won. Now to put this into perspective, I thought that I'd look up some figures on just what stuff costs and how that money can be spread around:


Using the data from the National Priorities Project:

Ok well first off and easy figure, there's something like 250,000,000 people in the US (a lil' more) which would mean that we could each get $2,000 back each. I don't know about you but that would be very nice chunk of change to get back, I mean talk about trickle down economics.

The average salary of a full-time high school teacher is $47,500 per year so that means that we could hire ~10,000,000 more teachers, or 1 teacher per 25 people in the US. Thats not per kid, tha's per person. Per kid it would be more like 1 teacher per 7 kids under 18. I think a more realistic idea would be to just increase the average pay for teacher, making the job more competitive and getting more qualified people for the job. Imagine what would happen if the average pay were up to $70,000 per teacher...

The total amount of money spent on education in the United States in 2004 was ~$750,000,000 so we could effectively increase eduction monies by 600x what it currently is or by 600,000%.

I'm not going to quote the numbers because its obvious that the ~3% of the population of the US that are hungry wouldn't have to be hungry anymore.

The amount of money spend on the afforable housing inniative in 2004 was just over $3 million, so that could be increased by 120,000x what it was in 2004.

Finally, the cost of the war in Iraq to date is ~$375,000,000,000.

I ask you where does the priorities of the people of the United States lie?

Personality Test

So I saw Lizzard's personality test, and it looked so detailed that I just couldn't resist. This is my test, which is suprisingly similar to Liz's in a lot of ways:

Trouble in Motown

From the NY Times Website:

"General Motors ended its talks about forming an alliance with Renault and Nissan as they failed to agree on how G.M. would benefit from such a deal, the three companies said today.

In a statement, the companies said they could not agree on the total savings the deal would produce or how the benefits would be distributed.

“Based on its conclusions, G.M. had proposed that Renault-Nissan provide compensation as part of a potential alliance and for potentially precluding G.M. from entering other alliance opportunities if Renault-Nissan had made a significant investment in G.M.” the joint statement said."

-Sounds like the vultures are circling.