The Adam Lee Commentary » Interesting

Top Regrets When Dying

Adam — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 01:06:49 +0000

A UK newspaper recently posted a profound article listing the top 5 regrets people have when on their deathbed. The regrets were recorded by Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse working in palliative care with those who have 12 weeks or less to live. In her time working with so many dying people, she noted the regrets people voice out to her and report the following wishes:

I wish I had the courage to live the life I wanted to live, not the one others wished of me.
I wish I hadn’t worked so much.
I wish I had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish I let myself be happier.

As someone who is not on their deathbed, these five regrets should make you think twice about your priorities and how you are living your life. Are you living your life as a plan for someone else or for what you want yourself? Are you working so much your life is not meaningful? Are you expressing your feelings or letting them eat away at you? Are you staying in touch with your friends? Are you letting yourself be happy?

If the answer is no to any of the above, perhaps you should rethink your life and make plans to change it in a positive way that wont leave you regretting anything on your deathbed.

Inhalable Caffeine

Adam — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 04:41:10 +0000

Recently a new product was brought to my attention via a Senator’s call for an FDA review of Aeroshot Energy, which is in essence an inhabitable dose of caffeine and vitamin B. You can check out their website here. If it is determined to be safe, then perhaps people can also start installing caffeine units into their air conditioning systems to wake them up in the morning? Anyways, I went ahead and bought five units just to see what all the fuss was about. What do you think? I don’t think that this product is going to be any worse for you than 5 hour energy or a Rockstar Energy drink.

Building Oil-Free Communities

Adam — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:39:04 +0000

Oil products are all around us, from what we wear, how we carry things, and what things are wrapped in – the most obvious product of oil is gasoline. The United States is full of cities and towns which are designed in such a way that people need cars to function, which isn’t how it always was. I think it would be useful to design communities where oil is not a big factor in daily living – now this is easier to do in warmer areas nearer to the equator since keeping warm always requires the use of fuel. Why not design towns where everyone lives within walking distance of everything they need? Other people call these types of towns “Transition Towns”, where community gardens are grown and local businesses buy local and exchange locally. Following this method, these towns will be well suited for times when peak oil is reached.

50′s Songs Part IV

Adam — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:31:36 +0000

I Wonder Why – Dion and the Belmonts

When - The Kalin Twins

Herman Cain Ad

Adam — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 02:13:30 +0000

I’m sure by now you’ve heard of the “smoking” Herman Cain ad, I’d thought I’d show it to you here – let me know what your thoughts are on it.

Why Oil Will Skyrocket

Adam — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 23:07:25 +0000

The oil price is set to skyrocket, provided things keep going the way they are. In particular, the situation in Egypt where the government is cracking down on civilians and even shutting down all communications including internet and phone services means that there is a possibility that oil production from the region may become unstable along with transport through the Suez Canal.

Add onto this the ever increasing demand in the east coupled with the finite reserves, unless a great new energy technology is discovered relatively soon oil will soon become a luxury resource.

我为什么不能写中文？

Adam — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 01:43:06 +0000

我以前不能打中文字在这个网站因为我的数据库表默认是‘latin1_swedish_ci’. 我就改变到‘utf8_general_ci’ 就可以放中文字。I was wondering why I couldn’t use Chinese on this blog, and it turns out I had to go into phpMySQLAdmin and change the default collation in particular for my wordpress posts table post_title and post_content fields. (See image) Now you, too, can type Chinese on your WordPress blog!

If I can do it, so can they

Adam — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:25:17 +0000

Google’s Picasa is more advanced than a simple photo manager. There is a feature that can automatically pick out portraits of people based on facial recognition and then group them together. Even with photos in which the faces are quite small Picasa can parse them out for you to name.

See below:

This unassuming photo of pedestrians in a German town can be analyzed for faces and the following is generated:

This technology is surely already being implemented by security and espionage services worldwide – the only difference being the scale is much grander, with cameras in traffic lights and crowded streets that are surely checked against a database to try to find troublemakers in the system. See below for more examples:

And just remember, as time goes on this will only become more prevalent – and if you look up it will not be hard to imagine you will be recognized immediately.

Solar Shingles

Adam — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 02:48:50 +0000

Imagine covering your entire roof with solar cells that have a 25 year warranty and are being subsidized by the government. A ridiculous waste of money if you ask me (not only in terms of resources put into making the cells and the efficiency of those cells given today’s solar technology), but something that will possibly match the popularity of the iPod in the 90′s or the cash for clunkers program seeing as much of the cost will be bore by other taxpayers. The cost of these would be relatively high and the amount of time before these become available to the general public is just as dubious as the Starcraft 2 release date was five years ago. An excellent invention, in my opinion, yet the free market should decide the price of these and not the government in my opinion.

solar shingles

These panels are being announced and researched and by Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW) codename “Powerhouse” and the company claims after 10 years that they will pay for themselves with government subsidies factored in. This is quite ridiculous indeed as if this was the case (and I doubt it is) than one would probably profit more and help the environment more by investing in oil futures – thereby doing their part in increasing the price hence decreasing the consumption utility of oil than buying a product that is covered in plastic (an oil product) that saps money from the government and is less cost efficient energy-wise than wisely insulating ones home.

Dow is not the inventor of solar shingles, there is a company called Uni-Solar which already makes the product but uses an older amorphous silicon technology for homes and who’s website claims to be “the only flexible photovoltaic product produced in commercially viable volumes”. Dow is utilizing ‘Copper indium gallium selenide‘ (CIGS) technology which has better efficiency (up to 19%) and generously applying its ample knowledge of plastics to increase the defenses of this otherwise extremely vulnerable photovoltaic cell. I sincerely hope that this drives solar technology to a new level, one in which solar can become cost effective and boast a longer lifetime. In fact, a good way to capitalize or encourage Dow Chemical’s ventures into this realm is to invest in it! However, there are other areas of Dow Chemical and its history of environmental ‘clashes’ that makes me wonder whether this venture is in a way an atonement for those other incidents. The Political Economy Research Institute ranks Dow Chemical third among corporations emitting airborne pollutants in the United States, an unavoidable figure as one of the world’s largest chemical companies. On a side note, Dow Chemical acquired Rohm and Haas company April 1st, 2009.

P.S. Much research has apparently been done on the beautification of the shingles, as many homeowners associations besmirch notions of acquiring applying such technology by passing rules against the installation of solar shingles, along with coloring the house green and the construction of giant garden gnomes.

The World Population Charted

Adam — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 02:12:40 +0000

You don’t need me to tell you the world is growing, at least in terms of population. You are just one person out of 6,785,271,317 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. If you’re an American, you’re one out of 307,493,230. Every second 175 people are born in the world, and every seven seconds one new American is born. In the year 1800 there were not even one billion people on the planet, and now China has over 1.33 and India has over 1.14 billion. The population centers of the world have shifted, as in 1750 20% of mankind lived in Europe now only 10% do, thanks to a boom in populations in North America, South America, and Oceania (the South Asian island countries of the Philippines, Indonesia, and Australia).

Much if not all of this population growth is due to increases in science, and the migration of populations to urban centers. The largest city proper in the world is Mumbai, India which boasts a population of 14 million and a density of 23,000 per square kilometer. Shanghai comes in second with 13.9 million and Karachi Pakistan comes in third with almost 13 million. If we count the suburbs, which can spread for several miles, Tokyo comes in first with around 35 million. Seoul has around 23 million and New York has almost 22 million.