It’s nearly 2008. I think my favorite part about the last couple weeks in December is looking back at the past year, and seeing what came out of it that was definitely worth the time and effort put into it. So here it is - the my tops lists:

Top 10 albums:

1. LCD Soundsystem - 45:33
2. Rascal Flatts - Still Feels Good
3. Craig David - Trust Me
4. Pinback - Autumn of Seraphs
5. Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity
6. RJD2 - The Third Hand
7. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
8. The Six Parts Seven - Casually Smashed to Pieces
9. Elliot Smith - New Moon
10. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

Runners up definitely - Feist, Radiohead, M.I.A and Of Montreal
Actually, i think this list of top albums might actually destroy mine… Not only is it a good list, but it’s also 100% Canadian. Woo! Feist!

Top 10 songs:

1. Apologize - Timbaland ft One Republic
2. Hot Stuff - Craig David
3. Toy Solider - Britney Spears
4. Alaska - Camera Obscura
5. The Way I am - Ingrid Michaelson
6. Bartender - T-Pain ft Akon
7. +81 - Deerhoof
8. Blueberry Tree Part II - Husky Rescue
9. My Moon My Man - Feist
10. The Past Is a Grotesque Animal - Of Montreal

Top 5 movies:

1. The Lives of Others
2. Little Miss Sunshine
3. Sweeny Todd
4. Amazing Grace
5. Surfs Up… fo reelz

Top 5 personal moments:

1. Moving home from BC… I miss BC a lot, but it is good to be home. And it looks like I’ll be here for a while, and that’s okay.
2. Getting alcohol poisoning. …I know, it doesn’t really sound all that good, but honestly - it made a good story and has terrified me into drinking less and less each time I go out.
3. The CFI leadership conference. It opened my eyes to a lot of things, introduced me to a lot of people and gave me an opportunity to converse with a lot of open minded, like minded people my age for a few days.
4. My first night out with Future Shop folks. Shit. Show. I established quite the name for myself that night. Gah.
5. Getting to meet Baby AJ! The birth of Baby Ella!

Top 3 games:

1. Oblivion!
2. Guitar Hero 2 - seriously, 3 isn’t really that much better. There are some good songs, but… meh.
3. Bioshock!

I hate halo 3 and the orange box. …so i dont even want to hear it. call of duty 4… it’s more than decent though. As is Assassins Creed, but I haven’t played it enough to put it in a top list.

Top 5 TV shows:

1. Heroes!
2. Flight of the Conchords
3. Planet Earth
4. Yo Gabba Gabba
5. The Office

Top 4 under-reported news stories:

1. Somalia … for some reason, few people knew about the + 1 million Somalians fleeing from their homes - while the UN sits back and watches.
2. Mansions in Luanda … Post-Civil war Angola had an economic growth rate 12.5% higher than China’s 11.5% rate. Thank you oil reserves!
3. 100 000 troops … Lined up along the Ethiopian and Eritrea border, just waiting to have at it, much like the crisis that happened there in 2002.
4. More reasons why teachers need to have background checks, character tests and need to be watched closely. Seriously.

Top 5 books:

1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
2. Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill
3. The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester
4. Dirt - The Erosion of Civilizations by David Montgomery
5. Busting the Limits of Time by Martin Rudwick

Top 5 environmental stories:

1. Walmarts green appeal. …They’re still not perfect. They still encourage suburban sprawl. They still suck money out of people. They still pay employees shitty wages. But they are doing great initiatives for the environment. That is all.
2. Moving from “environmentalists kill the economy” to creating green jobs to increase economic growth. Creating new economic sectors that cater directly to the hippies. Solar panel companies, organic farms… the new green economy should create over 6 million jobs by 2015.
3. The world’s 15 greenest cities
4. The Great Biofuel Hoax
5. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its 4th Assessment Report in which it declared that global warming is “unequivocal” and that it was “very likely” that most of the observed warming was caused by man. More than 2500 scientists worked on the report. The panel’s work was recognized with a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which it shared with Al Gore.

Top 5 natural disasters:

1. Bangladesh Cyclones

2. Mexico Floods

3. Hurrican Felix

4. Greece Forest Fires

5. Peru Earthquake

I’ve found a few things on Prof Moran’s blog tonight that I’m absolutely in love with. Hopefully I get to meet him one day soon, my new executive position at the Center for Inquiry Ontario should eventually lead to our paths crossing one day, I’m just not sure when.

The first thing that he has on his site is a link to …quite possibly the most entertaining thing I’ve looked at online for a long time. Virtual City. You can go anywhere in the city and see pictures of the street. I found Allen’s house, my brother’s apartment, my friend Adam’s condo and my friend Phil’s building. I found pictures of all my favorite stores, bars and parks to sleep in. I even found CFI. (Click to enlarge and take a look. ITS SO COOL!)

Maybe it’s just the geographer in me, but I find that to be one of the coolest things I’ve seen … since google earth. Google earth is awesome too. But it doesn’t have pictures of CFI!!

Also on Moran’s blog is a segment about this:

It is supposedly the new symbol for atheism. It’s part of Dawkins new “thing” called The OUT Campaign. It’s a campaign for atheists to start wearing this “A”, putting the “A” on their blogs, and generally just “coming out”. Moran makes a good point - we should be uniting in positivity, not negativity. But more than that - if you’re going to “come out” wear something that actually identifies you with that particular group! You don’t see gays walking around with big “G”s on their shirts… Sure, they have a rainbow, but the rainbow is a long used symbol… we can’t just have 500 people wearing “A”s because no one will know wtf you’re wearing an “A” for. Wear a shirt that says “Atheist” for crying out loud. NO ONE is going to understand this goddamn “A”!

I’m an atheist, because I don’t believe in a god. What I do believe in is secularism, and promoting secularist groups who have common goals of building communities and developing social networks and nets. Not putting “A”s on all our chests because some big wig atheist who is a total jerk ass to religions told us to so that we can “come out”. Sure, be proud of your atheism, but if you want to draw attention to it - this fucking “A” won’t be your answer.

Finally on Moran’s blog… this coin is soooooo coooooool.

WOOOO! DINOSAUR!!!!!… and this $4 coin is apx $40.

Maybe if caging Mexicans out isn’t enough to change some minds, animals will be… hrm.

The Rio Grande Valley thrives with wildlife and interesting plant life. Bearded moss, ebony tress, kiskadee, chachalaca, bobcats, lizards, tortise, ocelots and jaguarundi (2 endangered species of cat)… As if the border that the U.S government plants to erect wasn’t inhumane enough it now threatens the very life and existance of these natural wonders.

 A treaty made in the 1970’s declared that the international boundary to be at the middle of the river and that no construction of any kind could deflect or obstruct the flow of the river harming the other side. The fence could, and probably would, cause flooding thus being in direct violation of the 1970’s treaty.

THe quick solution to this was the use of solid steel landing mats that would be impermeable to water. Obviously, environmental issues were not a part in the decision making. But hey - keeping those damn Mexicans away from unplugging our dying Grandmothers is much more important than preserving land. Secure the frikkin’ borders at all cost!! Woo!

“If you have a fence that runs several miles long, if you are a tortoise or any animal that can’t fly over or go through it, then you have a pretty long distance that you have to go to get water,” said Brown, an outreach manager at the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, 225 miles south of San Antonio. Also, “any destruction of any brush is very damaging.”

Screw ‘em, right? Oh but wait - the tourist industry! Money!

In addition, some worry that the barrier — described in some plans as triple-layer metal fencing — will damage the tourism industry along the Rio Grande.

The wild cats, reptiles and at least 500 species of birds attract visitors from around the world who bring the impoverished region $150 million a year. Depending on how far inland the fence is built, it could create a no man’s land north of the river, hurting tourism.

If they’re not going to reconsider the fence for the fact that it’s hideously inhumane, or that it has the potential to destruct and screw up 14 unique ecosystems at LEAST reconsider it for the tourism!!! …[roll eyes]

(Cross posted at appletree)

Weather effects everyone on earth, it can cut into lives… be tranquil or wonderous… dangerous or beautiful… It is mighty unpredictable. Appreciation of nature and the power of it hasn’t exactly been a priority for the world and society that we live in today. We have the privilege of living within it, and often destroy it and most definitely underestimate the awesome power and workings that weather and climate have over us.

It is for that reason that along side my paleontology posts I’ll be start weather posts as well. It seems appropriate that we should be reading about and learning about the weather that can drastically change our lives in just a singular event.

Weather is one of the most widely talked about topics, it effects people on different scales. Some people just need to go out of their way to bring an umbrella to work where as other are displaced as their houses are ripped apart. Weather dictates the types of life that we lead and the way we build our infrastructure. In conjunction with the geological events of the earth and all of the variety of Earth’s life weather has shaped the face of the planet. Consider deserts and the Amazonian swamp forests. The climates and weather the shape the lives of people there and around the area. The weather completely dictates the types of food and products they can produce, obviously in conjunction with climatic regions - which we’ll get to eventually.

Weather also provides and dictates the food that we’ll eat. In the IPCC reports often food was mentioned - either deminishing food supplies or increased food supplies because of climate change. Climate change for this reason, and many others is one of the most vital things facing the world today (along side resource depletion and over population, IMO.)

For these reasons, and many others, climate and weather are extremely important topics to discuss. From here on I’ll start by talking about how to read nature and amateur signs in weather. Then the climatic regions of the world, and eventually all the different types of weather that occur, including could types! (cucumber-nimbus! i heart kids) In conjunction with this series on weather my intentions are to keep an eye on the big weather events around the world. It won’t take long for anyone to see how incredibly humble we should be in front of the forces of nature. I’ll also throw in the history of weather here and there too - and of course discuss climate change and keep an eye on climate change news and developments just as much as I usually do. Woo! Weather!

Geography and dinosaurs. yay.

The “White Chicks and Gang Signs” song is absolutely hilarious. Turns out the rest of his site absolutely sucks. I hate it when that happens.

An abandoned mine kills on average 30 people a year.

Drowning is the number one cause of death. Most people who drowned entered a quarry and went swimming. Quarries are very unsafe places to swim. Steep drop-offs, rocky ledges, flooded equipment and industrial waste can be in the water and make swimming risky. 

Some people are stupid… Like people who don’t listen to geologists when they say there is something fishy going on up around Mount Baker.

Small earthquakes that may indicate underground activity now occur once or twice a month beneath Baker, compared with as many as 10 times that number beneath Rainier and thousands beneath St. Helens.

Just living with 3 mountain climbers last year, I know that people don’t look into these sorts of things. I’m pretty sure they went and climbed Baker once or twice and I can promise you that they did check out instabilities or anything of that nature Two of them are even geographers, and they wouldn’t check that sort of stuff out, or even take it seriously. Douches.

The only thing I hate more than idiots, are sexists and racists.