Curious about 'The Whale?' Read the Book

There are numerous factual errors and misleading lines in this article that need to be corrected.



a) The sperm whale is not the largest mammal or creature in existence today. That title belongs to the blue whale

B) Orcas do not hunt sperm whales. They have been known to attack and kill blue whales however.

C) The presentation of ambergris is very misleading. Ambergris can only be collected from the shore after is washes up, it can not be collected by whaling or in any other way harming a whale since man can not replicate the role the ocean plays in the months of transformation of the sperm whale secretion to ambergris.

D) Tilikum did not kill three trainers. The second death wasn't even a park employee but a random moron that decided to go swimming without a wetsuit in water that would kill him in a few minutes.

E) What does a shark aquarium have to do with whales in captivity?



We shouldn't be keeping whales in captivity, that much of the article I can agree with, but this needs some serious editing.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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Coming Soon: Guitar Hero Battle.net Edition

Apparently Vivendi is going to spin off their games division (Blizzard Entertainment) and merge that with Activision to form a new company named Activision Blizzard.

That new entity Vivendi would retain 52% ownership in and would rival EA in size.

Activision's Product line:
Guitar Hero II, III
Call of Duty Series
Quake Series (just the publisher however)
Wolfenstein Series
Tony Hawk Series

Blizzard's product line:
Diablo I and II
Warcraft I, II, III
World of Warcraft
Starcraft, Broodwars

Okay so start coming up with mash-ups

Guitar Hero Battle.Net Edition
Call of Duty 5: For the Horde!

Up in yer country speakin' da english!

What American accent do you have? (Best version so far) Midland ("Midland" is not necessarily the same thing as "Midwest") The default, lowest-common-denominator American accent that newscasters try to imitate. Since it's a neutral accent, just because you have a Midland accent doesn't mean you're from the Midland.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Its actually not that surprising considering I was raised explicitly to use "Newscaster English". Seriously, I was even aware of the name when I was growing up.

Escalation

So last night there was a party next store...

I'm thinking about turning up my speakers and leaving my appartment for a while. The problem I'm afraid of though is escalation.

Movies, movies, movies.

So its been a while since I've made a movies post, so its about time. Because of the number I'll keep my comments short. The list is ordered alphabetically and not in order of "goodness"

Babel. If this movie came out 10 years ago, before we had movies such as Traffic, Crash, and Memento, it might have been good. But it didn't come out 10 years ago, so beyond the very obviously political slant through the entire film the style comes out as old and recycled. And the Japanese part of the story contributed nothing to the plot. The acting wasn't particularly memorable to me, though that also means it wasn't horrible, just boring.

Blood Diamond. My expectations for this movie were pretty low, I mean come on its a Leonardo movie. I was surprised by how well the movie was done. While parts of the story weren't particularly novel (after all there is Lord of War in recent movie history), the acting and cinematography made up for it. I don't want to give too much of the story away, but I think each actor did an effective job in conveying their part of the story. I think the movie ended the way it should have ended, not particularly romantically, not too depressingly either.

Catch and Release. Silent Bob acts. Its funny how a movie that has Jennifer Gardner as the star name it was all about the supporting cast. The story while revolving about Gardner's character, is definitely not focused on her. Its a different way to approach issues and I found the movie enjoyable. I think the movie did suffer in parts where the supporting cast shined brighter than the "star" did.

Come Early Morning. Viewers be warned, this movie has no “plot”. But with that I still believe this is a quality movie in a certain light. This movie very accurately, though somewhat romantically, portrays the culture, mindset, and lives of people it is modeled after. People that have grown up in the south/Midwest may take offense at the movie, and those not familiar with that segment of our country may be bored.

Crank. Any movie that advertises itself with a poster displaying a heart nails and needles shoved into it is promising violence. This movie delivers it. The plot is simple, and the number of ways they thought up for an adrenalin junky to get high is huge. This movie does not have a lull in the middle, and appreciably ends when it should, as it should. I enjoyed the display.

Déjà vu. Interesting plot, good cast, made for HBO cinematography. This movie also suffers from a worn out hook. Haven’t we already explored time travel dilemmas enough?

The Departed. What another Leonardo movie? Yah that’s what I thought as well. I personally thought it was a bit long, but in it’s defense they did adequately develop the characters. My overall opinion of it though is that the movie feels like a fan written Law and Order movie for lifetime. Too many clichés and it ends exactly how the TV audience would expect it to.

The Good Shepard. One word: Boring. The movie is too long as a barely organized string of romanticized glances at a man’s life. This movie barely delivers on the promise of detailing the “start of the CIA”. Yes the CIA forms during the course of the movie, but the movie doesn’t really cover it. Also Angelina Jolie does not play a dutiful housewife well at all.

Morning Music

So this morning it finally dawned on me as to what was different about the drive into work. While I have been noticing a few changes in music selection on the dance channels on XM I realized I hadn't heard Alan Freed in quite a while.

So far no details have emerged on why he "left" xm, but things have been different, and I do miss some of the personality he added to the stations. Of course during his tenure as music director at XM, BPM was voted the best dance station every year.

I hear they have added DJ Armando to the lineup which isn't bad, its just, well not all dance music is from New York. Right now that leaves the all the control of the music on those channels in the hands of DJs from New York.

Yum...

So the shortest path between downstairs and my cube happens to be through accounting. And by shorter I mean a good minute of walking shorter.

Anyway lunch time is always somewhat interesting... accounting is mostly women, ranging in ages between mid 20s and somewhere around 90. Then on top of that they're both penny pinchers and health concious and always bring lunch in. This makes for some very interesting smells when you walk through.

Today was steamed ass with a hint of brussels sprouts.

I have yet to walk by when there wasn't a smell somewhere in the range between foul and stomach turning. Luckily my cube is firmly situated next to purchasing where the average BMI is probably something pretty rediculous. It smells very good here.

BofA sucks part II

So after taking over the company my oldest credit card was with (MBNA) I've been forced to deal with Bank of America. Given the fact that they are one of the largest banks in the united states I have been tempted from time to time to see what they offer. After doing a bit of research I found this part:

A BofA money market account with $3000 in it would get the following rate:

0.36% APY

The national average money market (FDIC insured) rate for accounts with <10k in them is

3.75% APY (most with no fees if the minimum deposit is maintained 1k-5k normally)

And I have tripple checked those numbers, they are in fact offering a rate that is 1/10th that of the national average (source: bankrate.com)

Here's a list of rates:

Citibank: 4.50% APY (no fees, no minimum, FDIC to $100k)
CapitalOne: 5.00% APY (no fees, no minimum, FDIC to $100K)
Netbank: 3.05% APY (no fees if above minimum, $500 minimum, FDIC to $100k)
ING Direct: 4.50% APY (no fees, no minimums)
Vanguard: 4.20% APY (no fee if above minimum, $3k minimum, FDIC)

there is a huge list of other national banks with good rates between 3-5% APY