Numbers!

So over the past two weeks we have done pretty well.
Video views are up from 32,853 to 34,002 an increase of 1149, a very good two weeks.
Channel views are up from 1,478 to 1,505 an increase of 27.
A Separate Peace Part 1 has moved into the top 5 for video views and will soon be a number 4 sometime in the next week. Thanks for all of your views.
The website has undergone many invisible changes that will increase the ease of use. A few changes have been made to the look of the site to make thins more centered and easier to read. Also on the long pages a "back to top" link has been made that takes you, well, back to the top of the page.
And so there you have it.

The Future

Yesterday I found myself looking at an advertisement for the futurist magazine. It was really interesting to read about all of these advancements in nanotechnology and robotics and everything else along those lines. It also talked about the huge possibilities of water shortages and food shortages due to drought and overpopulation. I began to think about what the future could be like. Actually, I've been doing that for awhile. It really is an interesting thought. I began to think about everything bad that could happen (and most very possibly will). Mass deaths due to famine and drought. The second cold war with Russia and China. Energy shortages, even. But then, I began to think about the good that could happen. On a side note (that will be related to my point), my old school has gone through a lot of changes the past few years. I don't go there anymore because it ends in eighth grade, but it still is important to me. At the end of my last year, my French teacher, whom I liked a lot, divorced her husband and moved to France to live with the widower of her best friend in France. It was really a shock, and it strangely deeply hurt me. They also decided to just do science fair every other year, and my favorite teacher their (my science teacher) was fired. This also deeply hurt me. I felt like the school was becoming more of a rich kid school and less of a smart kid school. Just yesterday, I went to their website to see what the school was up to. I read a message from the headmistress, talking about the past of Advent, and the future. She talked about how it was the first accredited, and the first integrated school in Jefferson County. It really did blaze some trails. And then she began to talk about a new $3 million initiative to update facilities, provide financial aid (it's not a cheap school), and support professional development (not actually sure what that means). It's the biggest overhaul of the school since 1990. She ended the message with this: "Congratulations, Advent, for a shining past; Godspeed for the future. Una S. Battles, Headmistress." And strangely it gave me hope for the future of the school. For all of the bad that seemed to have happened recently, there seemed to be a lot of bright days ahead for the school. Back to my original story, I began to apply this hope to the future of humanity, and realized that for all the bad, many good days can still lie ahead. Sure we may have energy problems and drought and famine and overcrowding, but so many new technologies being developed can fix many of these problems, like desalination plants, better techniques for growing crops, new energies (see windmills), and the much overlooked space program. Sure we will go through some rough times, but I think we'll come out on top, especially with the help of the space program. I wish the presidential candidates would talk about it more, but they just don't seem to. Even though I'm usually a very strong advocate of free markets, I like NASA, even if it is a government agency. It really has done a lot. And it plans a lot for the future, like a Lunar base and a manned trip to Mars. So back to yesterday me thinking, I began to imagine a human empire across the galaxy, maybe even across the universe. With bases on the Moon and especially Mars and other planets, we wouldn't have as many problems with overcrowding or food or water, because we could develop the ability to terraform and create those things on the planets we colonize. I think that's why I so much want to be an aerospace engineer. I think good things lie ahead. The road will be rough, and we may not get past 2012, but if we do, I truly believe the best for humanity is yet to come.

The Disappearing Weatherman

So there's this weatherman for Fox 6 in Birmingham, and for like half a year now he's been gone and no one seems to know where he went. The channel wouldn't say. My grandmother said he was going through chemo. No one really new. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I went to the movies with my family to see Baby Mama. It was a reasonably good movie. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are funny people. So anyway, it's before the movie in the theater, and right beside me sits down that weatherman. I was too afraid to ask him about it, so I just sat there. This, though, wasn't the weird part. The weird part was that sitting by him was Andrea Lindenberg, a news anchor for NBC 13. I really wish I new what was going on there. One of the craziest nights ever. That picture up there is of the disappearing weatherman walking out of the theater. Not the best quality, but still pretty cool.

Windmills

Everyone has seen a windmill before. They are a free source of ultra clean energy. But windmills are not used on a large scale except for in the the western U.S.. Why is that? Well the excuse is that there just isn't enough wind. Well I say no.

I have always heard that tossing a penny off of the Empire State Building won't hit the ground. There are two reasons for this. 1) The penny will hit the roof of a lower floor of the building. 2) the strong updrafts of wind will throw the penny up (to a point) and will greatly slow the fall.
So based on this and knowing that winds are constantly battering the tall buildings of the world I came up with an idea. Have horizontal windmills that are attached to the sides of buildings. They would capture this wind almost constantly and the energy would be stored in small batteries on each floor or so. This power would run the lights and other electronic devices and when that energy is used up (which would require a week or so of no wind) the traditional power source would be used. Think of the applications of this in a city like Chicago where the wind is always blowing.

This idea was more reccent and even more far-fetched, but here it is.
With the advent of the hybrid car craze I was thinking of a way to use windmills or the same principle to power a car. Picture this: A car, normal looking on the outside except the front where the grill is sits what looks like a fan. The fan is connected to the battery and as the car drives 70mph down the road that fan is spinning wildly, constantly charging the battery. Of course a normal gas engine would be present just like in today's hybrids but would be barely used, majorly cutting gas use. Battery technology is not good enough for a battery of this size to the constantly drained and recharged but in the future I bet this could be a reality.

People don't look at wind energy as a viable solution but I think that is a BIG mistake. Coupling wind energy with other forms of alternative energy can have very profitable results. Even if people are not causing Global Warming and hurting the environment, nobody likes high gas prices and I am sure we could all do with a breath of clean air. So because of all of this I have made a page about it. I plan to expand it in the future but for now it is very simple. I have taken advantage of Safari 3.1's new Webkit technology to give some really nice special effects. Please note they will only work in Safari so we recommend you download the most recent version from Apple's website. (It is almost as much of a Safari feature showcase as it is about windmills haha.) Click here to visit.

So Anyway

Okay I promise to do some really substantive posts in the next few weeks. One about Al Gore and one about the disappearing weatherman. I just have some stuff to do. But they're coming.

Numbers

So another 2 weeks have passed and let's look at the results.
Video views are up to 32,853 an increase of 1,063 - doing great
Channel views are up to 1,478 an increase of 36 - best ever?
Genghis Khan is poised to jump to the next thousand mark of 13k. A Separate Peace: Part 1 is also very close to it's first 1,000 views.