Where did the potato originate from? Most of us probably don’t know and don’t care but the people of Chile and Peru are arguing over whether the potato comes from their country. This is after Chile decided to add 286 varieties of potatoes to their “national heritage” list. I guess we’ll see who wins this grudge match.
Archive for March, 2006
This essay has been added to Essays page.
Imagine what life would be like without TV, your computer, a washing machine, not even a water heater with which to take a bath. No, I’m not talking about people living in the Stone Age; this might be your life 20 or 30 years from now. The thing is, we are rapidly running out of power and if we don’t change over to newer sources of energy soon we will definitely run into major global problems in only a couple of decades. So why should we switch to newer sources of energy? As I’ve said we are quickly running out of fossil fuels. Once they are completely gone we will be stranded without energy, and many people will die since we as humans have and will surely continue to have a strong need for energy. But that’s not the only reason. Current energy sources pollute the air that we breathe. In fact, some cities are so polluted that walking on the streets is like smoking 10 cigarettes a day, for example Mumbai in India. And to add to that point, air pollution creates dirty air, an unhealthy environment for both humans and the world around them, illness and in extreme cases even death. Solar, wind, nuclear, hydroelectric power etc. are cleaner, better, more powerful and they are renewable unlike coal, oil etc. Traditional sources of energy just aren’t enough anymore; they pollute our air and we’re running out of them at an incredible speed. In order to sustain our power-hungry world we will have to find and use newer, more advanced and cleaner sources of energy.
Personally, I think Windows did quite a good job with the look of Windows Vista. I just hope the actual OS is good and doesn’t crap up all the time.
Do you like this green background? The gray was becoming a little too dull for me and I got bored of it. Personally, I like the glow of the initials of my name without it saying Illya Lapko’s Blog blabla. Still the same, simple, easy to navigate theme though.
What’s all this commotion over some guy in Louisiana who is suing Apple for making the decibel level on their iPods too high (115 decibels). Every normal person in their sane mind knows that listening to the iPod at 115 decibels isn’t exactly healthy. Even 100 is already quite crazy in my opinion. How often do you listen to your iPod at the highest volume? Not often, right? Most of the time it’s about halfway or less.
Of course you must realize that there are some reasons for having the volume reach such high levels. Say you want to plug your iPod into a sound system and you want the music to be heard over a large area, in many cases you will need to turn up the volume on the iPod itself and that of the sound system. No one ever said iPods are only to be used with earphones.
So this guys is suing for the fact that the iPod is defective and causes hearing loss. Well you dumbshit, maybe if you actually turned down the volume on your iPod you wouldn’t be suffering from hearing loss. And just because the iPod is the most popular over other types and brands of portable music players, its ability to cause problems in hearing is no higher than its competitors.
I think this is quite an unfounded and hard to win case for the guy from Louisiana since Apple does have a warning that ships with their iPod that cautions: “permanent hearing loss may occur if earphones or headphones are used at high volume.” So in my view, case closed.
