Category: Uncategorized

So Much Drama in the PhD (from MS newsgroup) by Monzy. A hilarious song and pretty nice sounding too about a CS student striving to get a Ph.D. I’ve bolded the phrases that DW’s been singing all day.

Lyrics (from Monzy):

Yo, MC Plus Plus, my rhymes are so phat,
I’m PSPACE-complete but I’ll reduce you to 3-SAT.
My crew is so hard that we roll in NP,
And bitches dereference my pointer for free.
When I’m linear probing they’re like, “Damn that’s gigantic,”
I showed it to your mom and she used Hoare semantics.
She jumped like JNE up onto my erection
And I picked up that ho like straight garbage collection.
(“That’s right, mark-and-sweep on these nuts, bitch.”)

My lyrics get stolen by sucker MCs,
I gotta sign my rhymes with PGP;
But I keep on generatin’ like a CFG
‘Cause there’s so much drama in the PhD.

What’s wrong MC Plus Plus, am I making you nervous?
Even skanky fat hoes give you denial of service.
You’ll probably go to jail before you write your dissertation
So prepare your asshole for some internal fragmentation;
<Uhhh> Penetration, as they fill it up with jism,
It’s too bad you aren’t closed under homomorphism.
Your problem, Plus Plus, is that your typing isn’t strict:
In ML my type is real and your type is ‘a dict.

I control my flow better than TCP,
I rep the west coast like Eazy-E,
You best not front if you can’t pass the GRE,
‘Cause there’s so much drama in the PhD.

My flow is so intense that I will overflow your buffer,
Corrupt your stack pointer makin’ all your data suffer.
I’ve got saturated edges but your flow is sparser,
Real gangstas sip on Yacc; instead you generate a parser.
While you’re busy poppin’ stacks I’ll pop a cap in your skull,
While you smoke your crack pipe I’m gonna pipe you to /dev/null.
I may not have a label but I rap like a star;
I’m an unsigned long int and you’re an 8-bit char.

Your mom circulates like a public key,
Servicing more requests than HTTP.
She keeps all her ports open like Windows ME,
Oh, there’s so much drama in the PhD.

DWORD to your moms, I came to drop bombs;
I’ve got more rhymes that San Jose’s got dotcoms.
I rep the Farm like 50 reps Queens,
With more power than multitape Turing Machines.
Blowin’ up the rap scene faster than factorial functions,
I’m dope like PNP transistors and I’ll saturate your junctions.
By the time you’ve rhymed one line, I’ve already busted ten;
You rap in exponential time and I’m big-O of log(n).

I run gmake and gcc,
And I ain’t never called malloc without calling free.
I’ll beat your ass until it’s colored like a red-black tree
‘Cause there’s so much drama in the PhD.

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An old favorite: Finite Simple Group (of Order Two) by The Klein Four Group. You can check out more of the videos and songs on their non-flash homepage.

Lyrics (from The Klein Four Group):

The path of love is never smooth
But mine’s continuous for you
You’re the upper bound in the chains of my heart
You’re my Axiom of Choice, you know it’s true

But lately our relation’s not so well-defined
And I just can’t function without you
I’ll prove my proposition and I’m sure you’ll find
We’re a finite simple group of order two

I’m losing my identity
I’m getting tensor every day
And without loss of generality
I will assume that you feel the same way

Since every time I see you, you just quotient out
The faithful image that I map into
But when we’re one-to-one you’ll see what I’m about
‘Cause we’re a finite simple group of order two

Our equivalence was stable,
A principal love bundle sitting deep inside
But then you drove a wedge between our two-forms
Now everything is so complexified

When we first met, we simply connected
My heart was open but too dense
Our system was already directed
To have a finite limit, in some sense

I’m living in the kernel of a rank-one map
From my domain, its image looks so blue,
‘Cause all I see are zeroes, it’s a cruel trap
But we’re a finite simple group of order two

I’m not the smoothest operator in my class,
But we’re a mirror pair, me and you,
So let’s apply forgetful functors to the past
And be a finite simple group, a finite simple group,
Let’s be a finite simple group of order two
(Oughter: “Why not three?”)

I’ve proved my proposition now, as you can see,
So let’s both be associative and free
And by corollary, this shows you and I to be
Purely inseparable. Q. E. D.

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Dean Glenn Hubbard – Every Breath You Take (from Dan), a parody music video of Police – Every Breath You Take. This was done by the Follies Student Comedy Revue, a group of students at Columbia Business School.

Lyrics (from CBS Follies):

Every breath you take
Every change of rate
Jobs you don’t create
While we still stagflate
I’ll be watching you

Every single day
Bernanke takes my pay
When growth goes away
Inflation will stay
I’ll be watching you

Oh can’t you see?
The Fed’s where I should be
How my poor heart aches
With each of your mistakes

First you move your lips
Hike a few more BPS
When demand then dips
And the yield curve flips
I’ll be watching you

Since you came supply’s lost without a trace
I dream at night that I punch you in the face
Your interest policies I cannot embrace
I feel so wronged and I long for Greenspan’s place
I keep cryin’: Benny! Benny! Please…

Oh can’t you see?
The Fed Chair should be me
How my poor heart aches
When prices escalate

Every move you make
Every oath you take
Hope your models break
Bet that beard is fake
I’ll be watching you

CBS is great
Wouldn’t change my fate
But we’ll be watching you
We’ll be watching you

At first, I didn’t know wht BPS is, but it turns out to stand for basis point: A basis point (bp or ‱) is 0.01% and is often used in the context of interest rates.

Just realized CBS stood for Columbia Business School and not the TV channel Columbia Broadcasting System. I also didn’t know who Bernanke was and it turns out he’s the new Alan Greenspan, I mean Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve (“the Fed”).

Cops Lose $31K After Tossing Broken Desk – More than $31,000 in drug money seized by Somerville police now is buried forever under tons of garbage in a Rochester, N.H., landfill after officers accidentally stashed the cash in a broken desk drawer that was being discarded.

I always thought it was funny when something like this happens. Does that mean $31,000 just mysteriously disappear from circulation? What happened to that money? Does the government replace that money by printing $31K worth of new bills?

I mean nowadays, money is mostly virtual. Most of my money are seen as digits on my online statement in my bank and brokerage account. I’ll probably never see that amount in cash. I probably use about $100-200 in cash a month. Economics and money flow is a funny thing, which never really made logical sense to me. Above that, there’s the world economy with the annual import and export exchanges.

Referring back to the article above, the money is now deep inside a super dense compact waste, probably never going to ever see the light of day again before it decomposes. Can’t the federal goverment just add this amount of fund electronically to the Police Department’s account provided they were able to prove that they had $31K. I guess the proving part is the hard part, but what is money really if it’s no longer accessible?

This actually reminds me of what happened in Speed Grapher:

So this corrupted society of Japan, where the people who govern the country are into these weird fetishes and abuse their power. It turns out this was all part of Suitengu’s revenge. Suitengu saw both his parents hung because they didn’t have enough money to pay back. The 5 yr old sister was taken away for prostitution and he was sold to some armed forces as a soldier.

Suitenguu’s plan was to overtake the largest company in Japan, liquidate all its assets, convert them to cash, and burn all the cash. He does succeed and we’re talking about trillions of dollars here. Imagine what would happen to the economy. I mean literally trillions of dollars are no longer in circulation. What can the government do at this point?

This brings back to the main question. If I was able to accumulate a large sum of money (millions, billions, or even trillions – imaginarily speaking) and burn all of it and dump it to the bottom of the ocean or somehow make it disappear off the face of the earth, should the economy be shattered because of this. I mean, it’s quite easy to approximate the amount of money I had, however should that amount of money be given back to me (virtually) or be returned to the government, but would that be the correct thing to do?

The only solution I can think of is to recall all current currency, issue new currency, and the amount that is ‘lost’ will get reissued. If older bills appear in the market later in the game, the government would just absorb that as a loss.

Until our society no longer depends on tangible objects to make transactions, I don’t think this problem would ever be solved.

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Random Crap:

I’m thinking of teaching you guys a new Japanese word/phrase every time I post a random crap post. That’d be fun and I can reinforce my Japanese too. Today’s word is: 泥棒 (dorobou) – thief, burgular, robber, theft. I hear this word so often in Detective Conan. Hehe.

How “Daddy” affects your job – In “The Father Factor,” Stephan Poulter lists five styles of fathers — super-achieving, time bomb, passive, absent and compassionate/mentor — who have powerful influences on the careers of their sons and daughters. … Children of the “time-bomb” father, for example, who explodes in anger at his family, learn how to read people and their moods. Those intuitive abilities make them good at such jobs as personnel managers or negotiators, he writes. But those same children may have trouble feeling safe and developing trust, said Poulter, a clinical psychologist who also works with adolescents in Los Angeles area schools. Sounds like an interesting read.

Police train rats to sniff out landmines – The smartest rat among the first six that the government is teaching to locate explosive devices planted by leftist rebels, she has a 90 percent success rate in locating explosive material in her laboratory training maze. Instead of spending millions to train rats to find mines, wouldn’t it be cheaper to release thousands or millions of rats into a minefield and let them blow up? Just kidding. ;p

Austria’s Grasser sues German publisher over photo-lawyer – Michael Rami said the picture that showed a bare-chested Grasser reclining in a holiday resort with his wife’s head just below his waist was a violation of Austrian privacy laws. He said the lawsuit was filed on Monday in a Vienna state court. … The newspaper wrote in a headline beneath the picture published on Friday that Grasser’s wife Fiona Swarovski was “searching for the crown jewels of the Finance Minister.”

This explains a lot… – More than 60 percent of Britons use items such as screwdrivers, scissors and earrings to remove food from between their teeth, according to a survey published Friday. … More than 60 percent questioned by the British Dental Health Foundation said they used makeshift items, including knives, keys, needles and forks. The survey also found that 23 percent of people chose to leave food stuck between their teeth, increasing the risk of gum disease and bad breath, according to the foundation which promotes oral health. Personally, I pick my teeth with anything handy. Sometimes that involves biting off my own fingernail and picking my teeth with that. However, I never pick my teeth because of “oral hygiene or health”, but because leaving chunks of meat between my teeth irritates and annoys me. If it doesn’t irritate me, I’d usually find it the next morning when I take a bath.

Bash Quote #486349 (from Tera):

<Man_Loner> I had the best masturbation ever today too
<Man_Loner> I had the magazine open in front of me, at a really great picture
<Man_Loner> My eyes were rolling back in my head
<Man_Loner> I let out a deep moan
<Man_Loner> And then the man in the shop asked “Are you going to buy that?”

Shanghai Preparing for ‘Human Zoo’ (from Cari) – Shanghai is getting set to open a “human zoo.” Four Australian men will live in a glass box on a downtown mall for two weeks in June, with the public able to watch them sleeping, eating and bathing, a news report said Thursday. … “People like to watch them taking a shower, so they have to shower at least two times a day,” Chang said. “Of course, one can’t see the key parts, because there is nontransparent glass in the bathroom.” What exactly is nontransparent glass? Something you can’t see through or does it really mean semi-transparent glass where at least you can make out the shape… of the body. Regarding that, there was a funny conversation Cari and I had:

Cari: i like how they phrased it… “key parts”
Cari: haha
Krunk: shower twice a day = 8 showers
Krunk: lets say mall opens between 8am to 12am
Krunk: that’s 16 hours
Krunk: so bath ever 2 hours ;p
Krunk: i wonder what’s so interesting of watching them shower
Krunk: since it’s nontransparent glass
Krunk: i’m guess that just means everythign is blurry
Krunk: but you can still make out the shape
Cari: lol
Cari: who knows…
Cari: haha
Krunk: i didnt mean the shape of that!
Krunk: i mean their body
Cari: lol
Cari: i wasn’t implying that
Cari: haha
Krunk: hehe

Energy crisis? Venezuela gas is cheaper than water – Taxi driver Jaime Tinoco works the streets of Caracas in a 1976 Chevy Nova that guzzles 19 gallons (72 liters) of gas a day. But he doesn’t worry about fuel efficiency — filling his tank costs just $2.30. While U.S. consumers struggle with soaring energy prices, Venezuela’s gas is now the world’s cheapest at 12 cents a gallon and Washington’s regional foe, President Hugo Chavez, vows to maintain subsidies that keep fuel dirt-cheap. – Time to move to Venezuela? I heard they have nice beaches too!

A FAA Radar track sequence of a FedEx aircraft getting into Memphis as thunderstorms pass over the airport (from Deadlock) – funny video of how FedEx planes move about when there’s a storm. They look like little flies trying avoid poison gas.

You DO NOT laugh when this Japanese man tries to speak English (from Deadlock) – I think this is a TV game show where guests or actors dressed as students and watch a program trying to teach them English and the point of this game show is not to laugh. Obviously this isn’t really a educational video, but something made up to make you laugh. I survived the first part, but broke up multiple times when he started counting nubmers. Just thinking how he says 20 just cracks me up! And be careful of 100, my stomach was hurting so bad.

Booth babes back despite restrictions – Are booth babes really necessary at a trade show like E3 (which is closed to the public)? Your typical E3 attendee is a journalist or industry player, likely male, and probably a big fan video games. He’s also into technology and consumer electronics. Yes, it’s the same demographic that likes to look at attractive women in skimpy outfits, but is a gamer going to ignore the EA or Rockstar exhibits because there are no women to objectify there? I don’t think so. Ultimately, booth babes are there because show-goers expect them to be there. After all, it’s a video game expo, and scantily clad women (usually with unrealistic proportions) are a fixture of video games, so why not dress women up to look like the characters?

If you’re easily offended by stereotype/racist jokes, I implore you to not enlarge the following images (from Esca). These are images that label certain areas of San Francisco and Los Angeles:

If you look at the Los Angeles Chart where it says China, Vietnam, Japan, you can see Monterey Park (my hometown) right smack in the middle of it.

From /. Comment #15301879 and deviantART: Miru: Journal:

A physics professor and his assistant are working on liberating negatively charged hydroxyl ions, when all of a sudden, the assistant says, “Wait, Professor! What if the salicylic acids do not accept the hydroxyl ions?” And the professor responds, “That’s no hydroxyl ion! That’s my wife!”
-Joke from Dexter’s Laboratory

I’ve always wanted to understand this joke, from many years ago. @___@;;;
I was reminded of this joke today when we talked about hydroxyls in biology and chemistry. :XD:

To liberate is to set free. The point of this joke is that it’s saying that a negatively charged hydroxyl ion is equivalent to a professor’s wife. Hydroxyls, which contain at least one hydroxide (-OH), are alcohols. Does the joke mean the wife is drunk?
I then researched salicyclic acids and I found out that salicyclic acid is a plant hormone used as a medicine for acne. More importantly, it is a carboxylic acid. We learned in biology today that an ester linkage is formed between a carboxyl and a hydroxyl, and in this case, salicylic acid and hydroxyl ions create aspirin, the pain reliever.
Now isn’t that cool? 😀
Lastly, the hydroxyl ion is NEGATIVELY charged, so the wife has had an excess of alcohol.
Basically, therefore, the professor was only trying to give some aspirin to his wife, who has a hangover.
ROTFLMAO.

Teen Says Friend Asked to Be Hit With Car – A 17-year-old boy who police said asked a friend to hit him with a car “for fun” was still hospitalized Tuesday with a broken leg. Sigh…

Just call me Dolph – Bottlenose dolphins can call each other by name when they whistle, making them the only animals besides humans known to recognize such identity information, scientists reported on Monday. Dolphins just got smarter! Or maybe we just realized they were smarter.

A great incentive to succeed the next time… – A German man who unsuccessfully tried to kill himself by jumping in front of a train must pay compensation for the damage he caused, a court in the southern city of Munich ruled Tuesday. … For repairs to the train and lost wages for the driver, Munich municipal authorities sued for damages of some 4,200 euros ($5,325). The court ordered the man to pay half the sum.

So I had emailed the DOE (Department of Energy) requesting data regarding the production of crude oil before I started researching elsewhere for data:

Would you have the past few years of Top World Oil Producers records:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/topworldtables1_2.html

I’m doing a research on oil and petroleum and this data would be extremely helpful to me.

I was only able to find the year 2004 data.

Thanks!

I got a reply back yesterday:

Thank you for your inquiry to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), www.eia.doe.gov.

I apologize for the delay in responding.

We have all world oil producers for all years previous to 1980 at http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableg2.xls. The link opens up an Excel spreadsheet. All you have to do is use Excel’s sort function to get them in order from greatest to least for any particular year.

I hope this is still helpful.

Indeed the Excel spreadsheet was quite informative. I’ve redrawn my charts.

Top 3 Oil Producing Countries from 1980 to 2003 (since there’s a big gap between the 3rd and 4th):

Oil Producing Countries above 1 million barrels per day from 1980 to 2003:

Do note that USSR falls off the chart after 1991 and Russia’s graph begins in 1992 as you know that the USSR was dissolved in 1991. So the USSR was the top oil producing country/region (not sure if you can call that a country) from 1980 to 1991. When they disassembled, Russia continued the line with about a drop of 2 million barrels per day. The drop continued, but as the graph shows, it hit its low in 1996 and started climbing up again, beating United States in 2004 (the new graph doesn’t have this information), but you can see it in my previous post. United States have just slowly declined as we start to run out of new places to drill and existing oil drills are running out of oil. Saudi Arabia has just continued to keep on climbing, which is quite amazing.

So United States was the top oil producing country from 1992 to 1997, loses to Saudi Arabia in 1998, retakes its leadership in 1999, but has remained at #2 since 2000 onwards and now has dropped to #3 as Russia surpasses our daily oil production.

Just something interesting I thought I’d share.

Another one pass through today. The current score:
872 Caught / 9 Missed / 0 False Positives (99.0% accuracy)

Improv Everywhere Mission: Best Buy (from /.) – A pretty hilarious prank. A group of people dressed up in royal blue polo shirts, khakis, belts walks into Best Buy (not at the same time, but a couple at a time every 15 minutes) and as they stand at the end of each aisle. If people come up to them and ask for help, they’ll try their best to help, but if asked if they worked there, their answer would be no. If asked what they were doing, they would say they’re waiting for their significant others. The scene was hilarious as the security gaurds were running around and I quote: Security guards and managers started talking to each other frantically on their walkie-talkies and headsets. “Thomas Crown Affair! Thomas Crown Affair!,” one employee shouted. They were worried that were using our fake uniforms to stage some type of elaborate heist. “I want every available employee out on the floor RIGHT NOW!” Then the manager busted out a funny: There a manager claimed it was “illegal” to film in Best Buy and instructed someone to call 911. She informed him that he had violated her “civil rights” by filming in her store. Agent Nicholson, who had been taking photos at the hip to avoid detection was caught as well, but he was able to leave the store freely.. Do check out the videos because they’re pretty neat.

Also check out their Cell Phone Symphony: The working theory after the first two rings was that one phone was going off first and then triggering the other phones. I think some thought that the “triggering” phone was defective and the whole thing was a coincidence, and others thought that the guilty phone was specifically modified to make others ring. Either way, it was agreed that if they could find the phone that rang first and shut it off, the rest would stop as well.

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Random Crap:

A tribute of Mitch Hedberg for the amazing work he’s done (from RayAlome):

When you go to a restaurant on the weekends and it’s busy they start a waiting list. They start calling out names, they say “Dufresne, party of two. Dufresne, party of two.” And if no one answers they’ll say their name again. “Dufresne, party of two, Dufresne, party of two.” But then if no one answers they’ll just go right on to the next name. “Bush, party of three.” Yeah, but what happened to the Dufresnes? No one seems to give a shit. Who can eat at a time like this – people are missing. You fuckers are selfish… the Dufresnes are in someone’s trunk right now, with duct tape over their mouths. And they’re hungry! That’s a double whammy. We need help. Bush, search party of three! You can eat when you find the Dufresnes.

I like to wear a do not disturb sign on my neck so that little kids can’t tell me knock knock jokes. Say “Hey, how ya doin’, nephew?” “Knock knock!” “Read the sign, punk!”

I wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I’m gonna put pins into all the locations that I’ve traveled to. But first, I’m gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won’t fall down.

Can’t wait to watch Detective Conan – Movie 10 『名探偵コナン　探偵たちの鎮魂歌（レクイエム）』 (released in theaters in Japan on 4/15/2006). You can watch the trailer here.

Penis reattached after maid cuts it off – Surgeons have reattached the penis of a Saudi man who paid the price for trying to have sex with his Filipina maid and she attacked him with a knife, a hospital source said on Monday.

Wal-Mart seeks smiley face rights (from /.) – Wal-Mart is embroiled in a legal dispute over the smiley face image which it wants to trademark in the US. A Frenchman who claims to have invented the yellow smiley face back in 1968 is opposing the US retail giant’s move. Pretty soon, the 🙂 that you see here would be a copyright infringement.

Bubble Magician (from ChewyDenise) – Awesome video of some guy doing tricks with bubbles by making St. Helen, catepillars, bubble cube, and carousels. Pretty awesome tricks.

$2.73 a Gallon? Not at First Fuel Banks (from AT Forums) – First Fuel Banks bills itself as the only retailer in the country where customers can buy gasoline for the future and hedge against rising prices. It advertises no service charge and no storage charge, just a $1 lifetime membership fee. Pretty interesting business model. I wonder how it manages to stay in business with only $1 lifetime fees. Maybe he charges a small premium when you purchase gas for the future. It doesn’t sound like you actually bring your own gas and store it in their containers, but you get whatever gas they have.

Robot Muscle (from /.) – Usually the only alcohol-powered muscles are the ones in barroom brawls, but one scientist is adding alcohol to artificial muscles to power robots and more. This ScienCentral News video explains. Scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas have developed “artificial muscles” — science’s best attempt at mimicking natural muscles. But they’re not made with the hydraulics or gears that power most of today’s big, strong machines. These muscles are made of an elastic metal called “shape memory wire.” … “On the more humorous side,” he says, “perhaps in a very distant future the humanoid robot who is sitting next to you in a bar might be drinking alcohol in order to work the next day.” Sounds neat and they have a video on it too. It seems that by adding alcohol to the metal, it heats it up and the metal contracts pulling things together.

Welcome to the New Dollhouse (from /.) – As far as we know, children have always played with dolls of one sort or another to act out variations on their own lives, or lives they observe or imagine. Today, a vast and growing number of kids are doing the same thing — but with a very new tool. Instead of dolls, they are using video games. And perhaps most of all, they’re using The Sims. Interesting… Maybe that’s why we play video games instead of sports. ;p

Gadgets now and then – part 1 (from /.) – compares gadgets of yesterday with today’s, like car stereos, removable storage, mobile phones, kitchen tv, and video games.

Kristin Chenoweth – If You Hadn’t But You Did (from FuzzyWuzzy) – a pretty neat musical/skit done by Kristin Chenoweth. The song is called If from Two on the Aisle. The song’s pretty hilarious and the skit’s pretty funny too.

Coach says he drank too much to celebrate – Magath, an avid drinker of green tea, had not had any alcohol at all in the last six months, according to Bayern commercial manager Uli Hoeness. He told German television Magath had three glasses of champagne and beer on the bus to Cologne. Um… 6 months of no alcohol and gets drunk over 3 glasses of champagne and 1 beer? I mean I think even I could beat that…

Four Second Fury (from MS newsgroup) – a series of 4 second flash games tied seemlessly together for those with a short attention span. I think i managed 63 seconds, but I only gave it 3 shots.

Boy Does Homework, Smokes Pot With Mom – A 13-year-old boy told police his mother required him to do his homework first thing when he got off the school bus, then smoked marijuana with him as a reward.

Get a Mac – Watch The TV Ads (from MS newsgroup) – pretty funny ads. Some people were saying how distasteful these were. Others were saying how we could use this for our anti-trust cases, since Apple had a commercial that claims we didn’t bundle anything useful. I watched them, didn’t think too much, it was funny. Enjoy.

Since I was small, my dad’s always told me U.S. was the biggest Oil Producing country and I didn’t really believe him since it always seemed that most of our oil comes from the middle east. However, I reported last summer that we were actually 2nd. I’ve been following the trail and started plotting points and adding to my data set and ended up with this graph:

Country x Year = Million Barrels Per Day

                     | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 |  2004
--------------------------------------------------------
Saudi Arabia         | 9.12 | 8.73 | 8.54 | 9.95 | 10.37
Russia               | 6.71 | 7.29 | 7.65 | 8.44 |  9.27
United States        | 9.08 | 9.02 | 9.08 | 8.84 |  8.69
Iran                 | 3.81 | 3.82 | 3.54 | 3.87 |  4.09
Mexico               | 3.48 | 3.59 | 3.61 | 3.79 |  3.83
China                | 3.25 | 3.30 | 3.37 | 3.54 |  3.62
Norway               | 3.32 | 3.41 | 3.33 | 3.27 |  3.18
Canada               | 2.74 | 2.80 | 2.94 | 3.11 |  3.14
Venezuela            | 3.14 | 3.07 | 2.91 | 2.58 |  2.86
United Arab Emirates | 2.51 | 2.42 | 2.38 | 2.66 |  2.76
Kuwait               | 2.25 | 2.15 | 2.02 | 2.32 |  2.51
Nigeria              | 2.15 | 2.26 | 2.12 | 2.25 |  2.51
United Kingdom       | 2.75 | 2.59 | 2.55 | 2.39 |  2.08
Iraq                 | 2.59 | 2.45 | 2.04 |      |  2.03

You can also download my Excel spreadsheet: Top World Oil Products – Chart and Data Set.

If you enlarge the chart, you’ll see that United States was the #1 oil producing country for the years 2001 and 2002. However we fell to #2 in year 2003 and and now down to #3 in year 2004. Unfortunately year 2005 data has not been released yet.

This whole research was sparked off reading this blog entry: We Need a War for Oil (from HKenshin), because I was certain that U.S. was either #1 or #2, but was shocked when I found out we dropped even further to #3.

Sources: Top World Oil Tables

• Top World Oil Producers, 2004 (Ohio State University – Fisher College of Business)
• Top World Oil Producers, 2003 (SEC Info)
• Top World Oil Producers, 2002 (WaybackMachine)
• Top World Oil Producers, 2001 (networkideas.org)
• Top World Oil Producers, 2000 (Collin County Community College District)

One would wonder why if America is one of the top 3 oil producing countries, why do we still have shortages and have to bend our backs for OPEC. If you look at the Top World Oil Producers, 2004 table, you’ll notice that Saudi Arabia exports 8.73 million barrels per day (84.2%) and Russia exports 6.67 million barrels per day (72.0%), but United States is nowhere to be found on that list. I’d like to bring your attention to another table: Top World Oil Consumers, 2004. The United States consumes 20.7 million barrels per day (we only produce 8.69 million barrels per day) and we import 12.1 million barrels per day. That means we consume 238% of what we produce.

So yah… now you know why.

Shoot, maybe I should go to bed now. It’s 7:15am.

Yep, that’s the time I left work tonight. So tired…

Don’t call me “mademoiselle” – “Bonjour mademoiselle!” — is that a sexist insult? A classic pick-up line? Or just a friendly greeting for millions of French women every day? … A group of French feminists wants to get rid of the word “mademoiselle”, or “miss,” saying the term turns a female into an inferior being defined by her marital status. … Her petition — which has gained much media attention in France and is supported by some feminist groups — calls on authorities to force firms to scrap the term in all administrative or contractual documents. Mathilde aims to hand it over to the government before the summer. … In English-speaking countries, the terms “Miss” or “Mrs” for unmarried and married women have given way to the neutral “Ms”. In Germany, calling a young woman “Fraeulein” is almost considered an insult and the term “Frau” has become the rule.

An article that has brought forth an interesting question. Why do women have 2 salutations and men only have 1? I understand Ms. can be used for both married and unmarried woman, but they do have 2 terms. Is it because back then in the old ages, a woman’s status is dependent on who her husband is, hile a man’s status is regardless if he’s married or not? *shrug* Just an interesting question that I don’t have the answer to.

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Random Crap:

What Grinds My Gears – Why is it when you right click on a picture in Firefox, ‘s’ = set as desktop background and ‘v’ = save image as? I mean why does the less common action of setting the picture as your wallpaper get the default ‘s’ and save image gets punted to use the ‘v’? I’m not a big fan of Internet Explorer, but even they got it right where ‘s’ = save picture as and ‘g’ = set as background. If I were to redo the hotlinks for Firefox when you right click an image, ‘s’ would definitely be save image as and probably ‘d’ or ‘b’ would be set as desktop background.

YouTube finally added volume controls to their flash video players. About time! I’ve always tried to find other links other than YouTube since I hated thir video player.

They say the etymology of heck is the euphemistic alteration of hell, but I was thinking where the heck does the ‘ck’ come from. Somehow, I was thinking and got to the point of WTF (what the f*ck) and WTH (what the heck/hell) and came to the conclusion that hell + f*ck = heck. They couldn’t do it the other way because f*ck + hell = fell, which was already taken. I also tried to figure out what other curse words end with ‘ck’, but couldn’t really come up with any.

Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 (direct download) (from Tera) – a video animation by Paul Robertson. NOT WORK SAFE! A lot of violence and very culturally wrong animations. The animation seemed like a regular side scrolling game (like Metal Slug, in fact very similar to Metal Slug) with tons of cool machine animations and special power ups and evil octopus. However, the characters used are so wrong. I would assume all the monsters they were fighting were zombies, but these were zombie babies where they blew off their heads. Then there was naked female zombies (but they weren’t as bad). Then there were pregnant women who’s stomach exploded and zombie babies came out. Then there was the canon that fired out naked woman at the boss. The list just goes on.

Hungary workers get shock at bottom of rum barrel – Hungarian builders who drank their way to the bottom of a huge barrel of rum while renovating a house got a nasty surprise when a pickled corpse tumbled out of the empty barrel, a police magazine website reported.

Star salaries coming down in Hollywood? – Poor Jim Carrey. His movies have raked in nearly $2 billion at box offices, but now a leading entertainment magazine says the comedian’s asking price of $25 million a film has become “a bit of a gamble.” … However, his recent big-budget movies like “Fun with Dick and Jane” barely topped $100 million in domestic ticket sales, leaving his star tarnished, the magazine said. Carrey’s not the only one. Kidman is considered a risky bet after the box office failure of “Bewitched” and “The Stepford Wives” among other recent films. … But Tom Hanks’ $25 million was thought to be “worth every penny” because he remains “one of the most bankable brand names in the world.” Oscar nominee Jake Gyllenhaal, at $5 million to $7 million a picture, and Rachel McAdams at $3 million to $4 million, were bargains. I’m just surprised that they were willing to hire such expensive actors on scripts that sucked. I’m still a big fan of Nicole Kidman (she’s so pretty), but sticking her in The Stepford Wives or Bewitched was trying to rescue a script that was dead in the first place. I bet sales would’ve been much lower if you they hadn’t hire a “big” star to play the main role. Acting wasn’t the problem here. All these actors can act (maybe with the exception of Will Farrell). Movie studios don’t hire hit stars on poor scripts for their acting abilities. They hire them so they can attract fans.

Moving puppy-bag sparks bomb alert in Italy – A moving bag apparently abandoned on a tram in Italy sparked panic among passengers who thought it was a bomb — but turned out to contain four puppies. What the heck? A bomb that moves? Sigh…

Family Kicked Out of Buffet Restaurant – Wendy Dershem may think twice before leaving that egg roll on her plate at her next Chinese buffet. The Des Moines woman, her boyfriend and her two children were kicked out of a restaurant last week after management accused her of leaving too much food on her plate. Haha. Reminds me of all the Asian buffets that have the extra line that says any piece of wasted food = $0.50 extra per piece on the bill.

When bugs fly / Auto geek hits highway for surreptitious runs in jet-powered VW (from /.) – Ron Patrick is approaching the age of 50, a time when many men begin thinking about minutiae like pensions and second homes and third cars. But Patrick is far more interested in telling you why it is that he has stuck a big jet engine in the back of a prosaic silver Volkswagen. Check out the video. Too bad it never shows the car at full speed.

Apparently CBS like ABC, decided to start streaming videos online: InnerTube. Only down side about CBS is that it requires RealPlayer. The scrollbar they implement is pretty awful too. I can’t seem to find any real content, just short clips and commercials. Maybe they’ll put up some real stuff soon.

Otaku From USA (from MS newsgroup) – Essentially, Otaku is Japanese for ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’, specifcally someone deeply versed/obsessed in the worlds of Anime (Japanese Animation) or Manga (Japanese Comic Books). Mostly, Otaku are seen as being so obsessed with their made-up worlds that they can’t live in the real one. Kind of like people I know stuck in World of Warcraft. The term even spawned an awesome TV show that I’ll blog about some point in the future called Densha Otoko. Here’s the direct link to the video.

Half-tonne man seeks life-saving surgery – – A Mexican man who at 550 kg is possibly the heaviest person in the world hopes to travel to Italy for a life-saving operation to shed weight. Do note that 550kg = 1212lbs. Do check out the photo.

Study: US mothers deserve $134,121 in salary (from Tekman) – A full-time stay-at-home mother would earn $134,121 a year if paid for all her work, an amount similar to a top U.S. ad executive, a marketing director or a judge, according to a study released Wednesday. Well, the mom job is a 24hr job, right?

Highest Yielding Money Market / Savings Accounts – I’m still sticking with HSBC, but it seems there are newer higher paying savings account, such as Amboy Direct Premium Savings, which has no minimum and no fees.

The 50 Year History of Play-Doh (from /.) – In 1956 a new type of “modeling clay” for children was invented and began popping up in schools and stores everywhere. In 1965, U.S. Patent No. 3,167,440 was granted to Noah McVicker and Joseph McVicker for a “plastic modeling composition”, (which was originally intended to be a wallpaper cleaner) now called Play-Doh. Little did they know that they had created the substance of childhood memories as well as many a childhood meal, unfortunately. It’s interesting to see how play-doh came about. I didn’t really like the taste of play-doh that much. I was much more of a fan of paste.

Gone in 20 Minutes: using laptops to steal cars (from /.) – High-tech thieves are becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to stealing automobiles equipped with keyless entry and ignition systems. While many computer-based security systems on automobiles require some type of key — mechanical or otherwise — to start the engine, so-called ‘keyless’ setups require only the presence of a key fob to start the engine. Wow… Makes me think twice before deciding to make my security all based on software.

The Best of the Worst (from /.) – The Internet spawned so many weird gizmos and bad business ideas that mocking dot-com duds became something of a sport in the post-bubble era. But some ideas still stand out for pure silliness. These are products and services that attracted lots of publicity — and, in some cases, millions of dollars in funding — before folding. Haha! Who could forget Flooz and CyberRebate and the CueCat (I think I still have a couple of those at home).

Thief disguised as guard robs Italy museum – A thief disguised as a security guard on Tuesday duped the unsuspecting staff of a top Italian art gallery into giving him more than 200,000 euros (137,000 pounds), local media reported.

India’s Gump: Boy, 4, Runs 40 Miles – “Cheered by thousands, a 4-year-old boy dubbed “India’s Forrest Gump” who was nearly sold by his impoverished mother ran 40 miles Tuesday to enter the country’s foremost record book. … Budhia Singh completed the distance in seven hours and two minutes which is an Indian record. This is perhaps a world record too. No other kid at his age has completed a distance of 65 kilometers (40 miles) at one go,” said his coach, Biranchi Das.

Couple, 33 and 104, Reportedly Marry – A 33-year-old man in northern Malaysia has married a 104-year-old woman, saying mutual respect and friendship had turned to love, a news report said Tuesday. It was Muhamad Noor Che Musa’s first marriage and his wife’s 21st, according to The Star newspaper which cited a report in the Malay-language Harian Metro tabloid. … The report did not say if any of Wook’s previous 20 husbands are still alive. Makes one wonder what happened to the 1st 20 marriages…

PM ‘eats babies’ sign flashed at commuters – A mocking announcement about Canada’s prime minister, “Stephen Harper Eats Babies,” was flashed on electronic advertising signs on Toronto area commuter trains for several days, and technicians were still scrambling on Tuesday to get the signs fixed. Why didn’t they just unplug the sign before attempting to fix it? Several days? Hahaha.

面白い [omoshiroi]
Translation: 【おもしろい】 (adj) interesting; amusing;

But 面 = face and 白 = white. I guess a white face is somewhat interesting and amusing. I wonder if it has to do with 歌舞伎 [kabuki] (Japanese theater) where they tend to powdered their faces really white.

I just finished watching 仙劍奇俠傳 and the ending was pretty crappy. Lots of people died. I guess FuzzyWuzzy would’ve like that – the only reason he watches 24 is because they kill off so many main characters, anyone that isn’t Jack Bauer has pretty much 100% chance of dying, either now or in later seasons. I mean the only 2 characters besides Jack that still exist from the 1st season is Mike Novik and Kim Bauer (although I’ve wanted her dead probably by the 2nd episode of Season 1). [I just realized Mike Novik wasn’t introduced till the 2nd Season when David Palmer was the president. In the 1st Season, he was CA governor running for presidency.] Tang Yu just found the other half of the pendant by rushing into the tidal wave just like that *snap*. What the heck was that? I won’t spoil anymore, but it was pretty cheesy all the way through. There’s only 4 characters worth liking: Tang Yu, his Godfather, Seven, and that Tao Master. Even the 2 main characters remained mostly annoying and immature throughout the series. However, there’s this phrase I would like to share with you:

善與惡, 必共存. 沒有惡, 就突顯不了美.
[literal translation: Good and Evil, must coexist. Without evil, then beauty won’t stand out.]

Reminds me of that joke:
Q: Why are there ugly people in this world?
A: So we can tell who’s pretty.

Maybe I just pulled that out of my butt, but there is some truth in that statement. Opposites are there to complement each other and to help differentiate. Without the ugliness of the world, we’d never appreciate the beauty that exists. Just like without all the raining days here in Washington, we won’t appreciate the nice sunny days we’ve been having. Without foul tasting food, we wouldn’t appreciate the delicious food.

I’m not saying a perfect world is bad. What I’m saying is people living in a perfect world would never appreciate it. To never have starved, one would not truly appreciate food. To never have been homeless, one would not truly appreciate his shelter.