Transportation: Interestingly enough, local Californians and many other commuters have grown a liking to the public transportation method of commuting they adopted to deal with outrageous gas prices not too long ago. Now that gas prices have dropped, many commuters still prefer the public transportation method. Hey, better for the environment, less pollution, and cheaper; they just have to make sure they get a good bus driver!
Real Estate: Californian real estate continues costs top dollar, especially compared to other places around the U.S. Take La Jolla's average house cost of $1.8 million compared to Sioux City's average house cost of $133,000. You'll get comparable actual houses for 13 times more or an additional $1.67 million in California. One small factor is unemployment in some mid-west states like Ohio or Michigan, unemployment rates have slashed home values, but that's not the bulk of the price variation. So what's the deal? I think local home owners would agree that mountains, ocean, surfing access, and perfect year-round whether is well worth 20 times the amount of paying to live in a place with no ocean, no mountains, and colder temperatures half the year. So in a sense, CA real estate is a bargain! Going international, however, it turns out Dubai, United Arab Emirates takes the cake for most expensive home, costing $2.5 million, or a 1/3 more than the average La Jolla cost. However, some east coast places like Greenwich, CT ranked in at comparable prices to the expensive California coast cost. While on the other end of the spectrum, the study showed house prices like Jackson, MI, Akron, OH, and Arlington, TX as the lower end prices, but obviously, that cost cut reflects the cut in climate quality and environmental resources.
Technology: Google plans on ousting Microsoft's Internet Explorer with its own browser, Chrome. While Microsoft remains convinced its newest IE 8 will hold the market, Google's browser undoubtedly will be tough competition given their dominance in internet searches already. The announcement could've effected stock prices already as MSFT dropped a few cents while GOOG jumped over a $1 but those prices could have been coincidental. Some features of Chrome are going to be tough breaks for Microsoft though. Like "protected tab surfing" or "crash control" where (not unlike the protected memory feature of Mac OS) if one tabbed page crashes while surfing only that single tab will restart, not the entire browser, making for much less glitchy web surfing. And features like "incognito" which keeps hidden your Internet navigation history as well as an auto-updated list of top site visits. It's quite possible that the introduction of the iPhone, Bill Gates' departure, and now Chrome poking tough competition at IE 8, could have started a slippery slope for Microsoft, inhibiting it from holding the monopolizing technological stance it once had. However, it's important to point out that most all features present in Chrome alreasy existant in Apple's Safari browser.
Immunology: New discoveries in the origins of poison ivy reveal insights into developing an immunity to the plant, but a consistent cure remains to be found.
Science: Oh...and there's just one more thing. The Large Hadron Particle Collider could change the way we view the entire universe, gravity, and our relationship between matter and energy. Just one last tidbit to throw in there. I found this little rap pretty convenient and instrumental in explaining all the fine details of the process:
LHCB is where the antimatter's gone. ALICE and ATLAS looks at collisions of lead ions. CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind. They're looking for whatever new particles they can find. The LHC acclerates the protons and the lead and the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.
The LHC will reveal to us details about dark and antimatter. It's like an opportunity to replicate some never before-seen conditions, and answer millions of unknown questions; doing that, sometimes scares people! haha.
It's amusing how much irrational fear this amazing scientific breakthrough has caused. Talks of "the end of the world", "silly Jesus stuff", "recreating the big bang's destructiveness" are just ignorant and irrationally loony. It's astonishing how far ignorance and blind naivety will allow people to take them; some people even went as far as trying to have a legal barring of this incredible and fantastically monumental breakthrough in science. But people always fear what they don't understand albeit one the biggest cosmological breakthroughs ever, so hopefully the above rap will eradicate that fear with a simple explanation:
size = 17 miles, cost = 8 billion, energy consumption = 14 trillon electron volts
but a complex explanation could be even more enlightening, but this inside look is what really takes the cake for being the most helpful. Of course, learnign something about Higgs boson and the Standard Model couldn't hurt either. This is a the collaborative product of over 8000 physicists and 85 countries. It's a grand uplifting event not a destructive one! The collaborative efforts of that type are second only to things like the Olympics. This most certainly is a fine day for the world and for science.
C to the E to the R to the N...ahh that's the best part of the rap.
Conclusively, I say:
The LHC will reveal to us details about dark and antimatter. It's like an opportunity to replicate some never before-seen conditions, and answer millions of unknown questions; doing that, sometimes scares people! haha.
It excites me and most scientists, too, though!
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