Picture Overload!

(Click the pics for bigness)

August 29:
This is a solid spherical stone in the city center. It is supported by a jet of water from underneath. The water pressure is strong enough to slightly lift the stone from it's base so you can rotate it. The way you can tell that it is solid stone is by the incredible amount of effort needed to get it to spin. Once it's spinning, it's really hard to change its direction or stop it.



That is not a reflection in the center of the sphere, that's a dry spot. You are looking down the axis of rotation.


September 6:
Here are some berries on a huge bush in the park downtown.


These are pictures from the rose garden in the park downtown. It was even more beautiful earlier in the year.












This is near the rose garden, in the same park downtown. It's in a little area with benches where you can just sit and enjoy the day while looking a pretty flowers.


A bee working hard on the last few warm days.


Same flowers, sans the bee.



Becky waiting patiently while I take a million pictures.




This guy can't get enough.



"Hey round-boy! Give a skinny guy a chance!"




Everyone wants a piece of the action.



I like the bright red berries in the tree.


That's the coffee shop in the park.






I'm not entirely sure why this couple is dancing in the median, but behind them is a performing arts theater.



September 8:
As we were leaving work, we noticed this. I think this was in preparation for a faculty/new student party that night.


September 9:
This is a lake very near our apartment called Kuivasjärvi.



These are pictures taken along the path around the lake.




September 23:
The morning walk to work.

These guys support McCain.

...except G.I. Joe actually was awesome.

Nope, my calendar reads 2008.

Here's a video of some Ohio voters discussing why they won't be voting for Obama. They make some intelligent and well-reasoned arguments.




Did I just bum a ride from a guy in a DeLorean and end up in the 1950's?

The Post Onslaught.

I feel like I haven't posted anything in a long time. I have really great fall pictures on my camera I want to post, but that will have to be later. The sad thing is that fall here is pretty much over now. The deciduous trees are nearly bare, the weather is getting colder, and the days are now 9 hours 36 minutes long. There still hasn't been any snow yet though.

Last Friday or Saturday night, Becky and I saw the aurora for the first time. It wasn't as impressive as pictures make it out to be. It basically looks like a swiftly changing cloud lit up by a full moon. It looked quite pale and didn't have the vibrant green colors you see in pictures like this:


The camera I have won't let me set the exposure time longer than 2 seconds, so I have essentially no chance of photographing the northern lights.

On Sunday night, I went to 45 Special (my favorite bar in Oulu) and saw a popular Finnish band called Viikate. I also saw them the last time I was in Oulu. They are pretty talented.

Lately, I've been kept pretty busy with writing an application for telescope time and a proposal for a Fellowship that sounds really good. I also had to read through the proofs of the last paper of my dissertation, which should be published soon. That can actually be a lot harder than it seems, depending on how good your proofreader is. Unfortunately, the proofreader I had on this last paper wasn't as good as on my previous papers.

Today was the first day in a while where I felt like I could take a breather, so I decided to let my computer do some work for me while I played around with the format of my blog. As you may or may not have noticed, you can now Digg individual posts on my blog if you want. I've also signed up for Twitter and placed a feed in the right column so you can feel like "big brother" and track my every move. I've also started to really use Google Reader and I love it. The cool thing about it is that you can "share" any of the posts you read, so I've also set up a feed that lists some of my most recent shared posts.

Stay tuned for pictures!

Invest in Soup.

Colbert invests in soup. Behold:

Colbert was right.

Last night, we were catching up on The Colbert Report and he brought up an interesting observation. While everyone is losing their shirts in the stock market from investing in Ford, Apple, Exxon, etc., the people who invested in Campbells Soup are making out like bandits! I guess people are opting for the $0.89 meal-in-a-can nowadays.

Take a look at how the stock has done in the past 6 months:



(I was going to add the clip from The Colbert Report, but my browser keeps crashing while trying to load the site. If you go to colbertnation.com, I'm sure you'll find the clip. It's from either Wednesday's or Thursday's show. I'll try to add it later if I can.)

Ask for your own bribes.

Now Accepting Bribes...

Our absentee ballots arrived today! I honestly thought that we would never see them. Tuscaloosa continues to surprise me.



I plan on voting soon and, in the spirit of the U.S. legislative process and the First Amendment, I will be accepting donations. The size of your donation will be directly proportional to the amount of consideration I will give your voting request. I will not place restrictions on the size of donations that I am willing to accept.

Fun and Not-So Fun.

First the fun. Check out this video from San Francisco of the Imperial invasion. It may be time to get your midichlorian count checked:



Now, the not-so fun. I'm guessing that a lot of people don't know where money really comes from (I really didn't either). The common assumption is that for every dollar put in a bank, a dollar can be lent out (for mortgages for example). That is not the case. In fact, for every dollar put in a bank, about $100 can be lent out! The money is created by debt. This video does a really good job of explaining how the financial system works and one can see why the US government wants to give $700 billion to the banks for the bad mortgages rather than the people with the mortgages. If the people get the money, the debt goes away.

The video makes some conspiracy theory accusations toward the end, but the beginning is really informative.

Oh Sh*t!

In case you haven't heard, Travis Barker of Blink 182 fame was critically injured in a plane crash. He was the drummer that took over for Scott Raynor, for what ever reason, and helped create the bands first album that was a mainstream success (Dude Ranch had some success but not as much as Enema of the State).

< aside >
...yes, I love this band as much as your 14 year old sister does, but I also had the Cheshire Cat album when they were still called Blink rather than Blink 182.
< /aside >

Travis is a very talented drummer but he's no Neil Pert. Check out his skillz:

Better Know a District: Florida's 7th

My Mom lives in this district!

Fett's Vette

Fun with hadrons.

Zombie Season.

Here's a great, out of print shirt from shirt.woot.com. I hope they bring it back.



Now that I have your attention...

In her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Vice Presidential nominee and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a `community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Nominally, her words were an assault on Barack Obama's early career as a community organizer on Chicago's south side. But the impact reaches farther than that and is a direct affront to the thousands who have dedicated their lives to making America great.

I just signed a petition to tell Governor Palin to apologize for her disparaging remarks about community organizers -- I hope you will too.

Please have a look and take action.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/community_organizers/?r_by=-1781216-9JNBQvx&rc=paste

Thanks!

September 3, 2008...

...The Daily Show was on FIRE!

Yeah, I know Becky already posted a piece of this, but you need to watch the whole thing.