The Ultimate 'What-if"

"Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace."

Those words were thankfully never spoken by Richard Nixon.

I wasn't planning on doing another post, but I came across this incredibly incredibly interesting story on the first trip of the moon. Turns out Nixon had his speech writer William Safire prepare a speech in case Aldrin and Armstrong died on their trip to the moon.

It is a great read and I recommend you take a look at the link to see what it was all about.

On a side note, I think it ties in well to Hilary's 'contingency planning'. Also leaves you wondering just how much faith the Americans had in the mission.

Very neat indeed.

The Toronto Blue Jays

I'm geeking out today about the Toronto Blue Jays.

For those of you who aren't following baseball, the Jays are in First Place.

That is really big news. They are 10-4. Ahead of teams like the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. The Jays weren't even expected to contend this year, with predictions placing them in fourth place in their division.

Thanks to great hitting from the young guns like Adam Lind and Travis Snider, the jays offense is number one in the league.

I know some of you aren't big ball fans so you won't want to goto a game. I think you should get aboard the bandwagon. The Jays will be hosting promotions called "messin with recession" to try and get fans out. These games will have reduced ticket prices and 1 dollar hot dogs! Each game will have a unique souvenir available for 4 bucks too. The next Messing with Recession game will have jays foam fingers on special. Great buy if you ask me.

The jays used to be the talk of Canada. Lets get back to the glory days of 50,000 + a game. So why not take a chance and come watch this year's exciting team!

Bio Ethics

There have been a few interesting stories related to bio ethics in the news lately.

The pic above t shows octuplet mom Nadya Suleman. She what I have read around the 'net, she had at least six or as many as eight inseminated eggs implanted in her. I know all eggs rarely take, but what were they (her and the doctor) thinking? This was a ethically questionable decision. Consider the following: 1) She already had six children. 2) She is a single mother. 3)Typical in vitro costs between $8 000 and $15 000. 4) Used some of the $165,000 in disability payments from a work place injury to play for the procedure. 5) Already uses food stamps and child disability tax credits to take care of her first six kids (maybe its because she spent her money on, I don't know, in vitro?)

Then there is the story of the 60 year old mother from Western Canada. In my view, another questionable move. Statistically speaking, these parents aren't even likely to see their children graduate highschool. Just how active will they be in the children's lives? Chances are, they don't even have grandparents. They may not even have aunts or uncles, and if they do, they will also soon die. Cousins would be all grown up. These kids will not have a normal childhood. I think it was incredibly selfish for these parents to do this. They are incredibly lucky that the kids are relatively healthy.

i did some research about the increased likelihood of down syndrome with age. The data I looked at only showed the rate of incidence for mothers up to 49.

Mother's Age	Incidence of Down Syndrome
Under 30	Less than 1 in 1,000
30	1 in 900
35	1 in 400
36	1 in 300
37	1 in 230
38	1 in 180
39	1 in 135
40	1 in 105
42	1 in 60
44	1 in 35
46	1 in 20
48	1 in 16
49	1 in 12

I can't imagine how likely their children were to get life debilitating diseases like this.

I think these two scenarios are just a tip of the bio ethics. Here's a crazy prediction. Within our lifetime, a woman will carry her clone to term.

Picture of the day

Picture of the day courtesy of this link.

A Heads Up to My Fans

Just wanted to give a heads up.

I think the blog assignment is supposed to have a theme of some sorts. Some people have had really awesome themes, like vegetarianism, or dieting. This is really all over the place so i've decided to make a new blog called "The D-list, with Devin". This one is going to continue to live because I enjoy ranting about all sorts of stuff. I don't want to mix the two because one is so targeted and the other is so random.

The new one is going to be about the trials and tribulations of getting the first job. Its something we all relate to, so I thought I might be able to get a discussion going. I call it the D-list because, as soon to be fresh grads in a recession market, I feel like are not exactly going to be at the top of the list for the good jobs.

I have some good stuff to talk about. Today I went to the UW, WLU, U of Guelph, Conestoga College Job Fair and met with alot of people.

Join me tomorrow at http://dlistwithdevin.blogspot.com/ to discuss the job seeking life.

Wasn't Jennifer Hudson Great at the Superbowl?

Did anyone catch Jennifer Hudson singing the American anthem at the Superbowl?

Turns out she didn't' actually sing the song. The whole thing was lip synced.
I don't want anyone to think I'm just picking on Hudson, turns out Faith Hill also lip synced.

The article I've linked to above has quotes from the Producer of the Superbowl talking about her "first performance" since the tragedy that struck her family.

Yes, what Hudson did was a performance alright, an ACTING performance. If the artist (and i use that term loosely) isn't going to actually sing their song, we might as well just watch a music video on the jumbo-tron.

Can You Guess Which Movie This Foreign Poster is Promoting?

So I thought I would lighten things up with a rather fun look at international posters that promote American movies.

So what movie is does this poster promote?

If you guessed, The Robotic Disco Puma, you are wrong.

This is actually a Russian poster for Star Wars. Crazy, I know. This poster was only 18th on cracked.com's "Lost In Translation: 20 Baffling Foreign Movie Posters" list. Cracked.com is a great site. Follow the link to see some other great posters.

If this poster isn't enough to pique your interest, take a look at the poster that comes in at number 3 on the list.

Traditional Gender Roles

I know my first post made it sound like my blog would be a fun and light-hearted space for me to talk about unimportant stuff but there are occassions when I need to geek out on matters that I think are important and relevant.

I was going to wait until tomorrow to make my second post but I was inspired to write tonight.

I think it is really unfortunate that Michelle Obama has been relagated to 'fashion diva'. Take one look around the internet and you get websites devoted to apparent fashion sense. The images I have put up are images from the front page of http://www.mrs-o.org . It's a website devoted to the fashion of Michelle Obama. I think it's incredibly unfortunate that the first lady is reduced to the traditional first lady role of just the pretty lady with no talents to offer the country and the world other than standing beside her husband, the president.

What a waste of talent. According to Wikipedia, Michelle is only the third first lady to have a post graduate degree. She has been an associate dean, a lawyer, a social acitivist, and graduated cum laude from Princeton freaking University.

The esteemed "Mrs O" website has high hopes for Michelle. But it isn't because they think she'll push for health care for the nearly 46 million uninsured Americans. They don't have hope because they want Michelle to push the gender boundaries and show the world what an intelligent powerful woman can do. None of that matters. According to mrs-o.org and many others, Michelle Obama is the next great hope.

Mrs-O.org hopes Michelle Obama is the next great stay at home mom.

Welcome to My Sanctuary.

Welcome,

I've created this blog as a space for me to geek out on random things that interest me. I have a lot of quirky interests that don't fit into a neat and tidy category so I thought "Geeking Out: A Sanctuary" was an appropriate title. On top of that, I'd like to think that this is indeed a good place for people to talk about things that are not that popularI know there quite a few closet geeks in my class so I'm hoping they'll come out and be free (I'm looking at you Julia).

I stole some defintions from here and as well as here to help describe geeking out.

1. To spend an ammount of time discussing geekish things with other geeks, or to participate in geeky undertakings and pasttimes with one or more other geeks.

2. To engage in a conversation of a highly technical nature, typically with some other members of the party you are with, completely (and usually inadvertently) alienating others in the process.

3. To participate in or talk excessively about a current interest or obsession which is not part of mainstream culture.

This one is my favorite.

4.To enthusiastically share details about a current interest which is of little or no importance to your audience.

If you are turned off by my blog already, don't worry it is not simply for SciFi related topics. To me, geeking out simply means that I'll talk enthusiastically about things that interest me even though there may be no one that cares. But don't worry, I'll get around to other fun topics like politics and the economy.