Aung San Suu Kyi and Bill Gates

I finally got back to reading Letters from Burma by Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar. For the past few decades Myanmar has been under the stiff rule of the Junta, the military government. I'm only halfway through the book, but Myanmar certainly seems to be an interesting country, plagued by many problems namely corruption and poverty. Kyi's party won upwards of eighty percent of the vote in the last election, yet the Junta will not recognize the victory. The Junta have placed her under house arrest for many years to stifle the democratic process. Although, she is no Nelson Mandela who recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday, and spent twenty years in jail fighting against segregation in South Africa. She does deserve some admiration to give up her livelihood for a greater cause. It would have been easy for her to move back to London with her family, and forget about fighting for causes she believes in.

If you didn't know Bill Gates recently stepped away from Microsoft, he retired from his position as chief software architect this past week. For the rest of his life he plans to work for his foundation and use his wealth to combat a host of problems that plague Africa. Bill Gates could have easily given his savings to his children, but he chose not to. Instead he said he choose to use the resources that his approximate 45 billion dollars of wealth could bring to solve some of the most vexing problems in recent human history. His main point in doing this was, he knows hes a brilliant guy that will go down in the history books as someone who changed the world in the technology area. Yet, he argues a real accomplishment for him would be to change the face of a sometimes forgotten continent for the better.

I should really think about how I'm going to use my abilities to make a positive contribution to society. I don't think a desk job is in my deck of cards. I'll run past some ideas, I have next time.

Next up: Amy Winehouse, my Thoughts on the Bush Administration's accomplishments, and Does getting shot down in a plane make McCain qualified questions retired U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark, Oh and a friend of mine thinks shes a Democrat now (more on this soon).

Salt Lake City and Such

I recently came back to Miami after a short trip out to Salt Lake City to present my poster. When I was at CEDAR (the conference) I learned about polar routes. I guess I never really thought about them much. Basically a polar route is a flight path that takes a plane straight over the North Pole just as the routes above show. Many of the people that read this blog have taken Electromagnetics. So you know that a compass will be useless over the north pole due to the fact it will just spin around. Nowdays GPS is used to navigate planes over the north pole to places like Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan, because it saves hours of flight time by flying up and over the globe, than around it. However the GPS has failed a few times over the poles and they have been forced to land the plane in Alaska or Russia. Yea, not exactly the most exciting thing in the world, its probably quite scary knowing your plane is flying without any computerized instruments.

Dr. Thomas Bogdan, of NOAA gave a great presentation on space weather. He brought up some scary facts about flight crews that fly over the poles tend to have more health problems than those that don't. The primary reason is that when you fly over the poles you subject yourself to more radiation which is pretty bad for your health. Long story short, don't fly over the poles that much.

What have I been listening to lately?

Honda FCX

Lately I've been listening to the following songs:

1. Viva la Vida - Coldplay

2. Love song - Sara Bareilles

3. And Then What - Young Jeezy

4. Dilema - Nelly (A tad bit last decade)

5. No Doubt - Don't Speak (Acoustic)

6. Apologize - Onerepublic

I guess oil and gas prices are still on everyone's mind. Most Americans didn't change their behavior and continued believe we could buy the largest SUV and fill the tank up for a $1.50 and pollute the air without any consequences. Times have changed. This year pubic transportation has handled 85 million more riders than last year. I doubt the public transportation infrastructure the will be able to handle the demand. Well the fact is we are screwed over gas prices as they will continue to rise. American, and United Airlines have been cutting down on flights, raising ticket prices, cutting staff, and now charging for the first and second piece of checked luggage. Food prices are rising since food has to be transported too.

I guess we never quite wanted to find the real solutions, since we were too busy keeping our oil company friends happy. But maybe Honda,Toyota and some of Detroit are coming to our rescue. I'd be happy to work for either company in their hybrid vehicles or hydrogen fuel cells research areas. Toyota recently started manufacturing hybrids in the US instead of shipping them over from Japan. The future of vehicles is here:

How about the new FCX Clarity from Honda. Look it up at Honda.com and learn something. Its a fuel cell vehicle.

Salt Lake City

Well its been a while since I've written on my blog. I haven't been in the writing mood lately. I recently finished a book on Mexico called Border on Chaos. Its amazing to find out how corrupt Mexico's government has been in the past.Tim Russert dying was big news and a tragedy he really knew his stuff and tv was a better place with Tim on it.

Anyway I'm in Utah for a conference about 1 hr out from Salt Lake City. Its pretty mountainous out here. I'm staying at a five star ski resort thats costing Illinois a pretty penny. I guess its nice to have the week off from Motorola and away from home. The talks at the conference usually ends around 3 pm. So I can just sit back and relax, and think about my life, and take things into perspective. I'm attempting to finish reading the Bible cover to cover by the end of the summer.