How Smart Are Dolphins?

Been a while since the last news story cop-out here at Grant's Pad. Today's cop-out is an interesting news story forwarded to me by Karn:

Just How Bloody Smart Are These Dolphins Anyway?

For those of you who don't want to interrupt the stream of Chinese pop you're undoubtedly listening by navigating away from Grant's Pad, basically, these dolphins in a Mississippi facility have learned how to scam their trainers. The dolphins are all trained to pick up litter in their tanks - they are rewarded with fish whenever they bring a piece of litte to their trainer. One particular dolphin has learned to exploit this by hiding a large piece of paper litter under a rock at the bottom of the tank. When she sees her trainer approach, she swims down to the hidden piece of paper, rips a piece off, and trades it in for her fishy snack, then swims back down again, tears another piece from her stash, and trades it in for yet another fish, and repeats this until she's had her fill!

The story goes on to talk about how dolphins (and related animals like killer whales) like to play games - but they not only enjoy playing games, they will actually try to make their games more and more challenging. In one example, a young killer whale would try to lure seagulls to the surface of the water with fish, then attempt to catch the gulls in its mouth without killing the bird. After getting satisfactorily good at this, the killer whale upped the ante by trying to catch the birds before they hit the water, and the increased the challenge yet again by trying to catch only the older, more experienced gulls!

Check out the story for yourself when you've had your fill of Chinese Pop!

Last week's Wonders of the World poll went fairly well, snagging 12 votes. Interestingly, the dominant winner was Grant's Pad, which I had initially put in as a joke. Very funny, guys! Flattery will get you... everywhere!

The final results:

• Great Pyramid of Giza 0 (0%)
• Channel Tunnel 0 (0%)
• Empire State Building 0 (0%)
• Great Wall of China 2 (16%)
• Stonehenge 0 (0%)
• Taj Mahal 0 (0%)
• Forbidden City 1 (8%)
• Statue of Liberty 0 (0%)
• Petra 0 (0%)
• Mount Everest 0 (0%)
• Hanging Gardens of Babylon 2 (16%)
• Grand Canyon 0 (0%)
• Roman Colosseum 0 (0%)
• Sagrada Familia Church 0 (0%)
• Machu Picchu 0 (0%)
• The Internet 1 (8%)
• Grant's Pad 6 (50%)

This week's poll will be something a little different. I'm trying to start up a Fantasy Football league with some guys from work and some friends. We need to pick at least two college conferences to make our pool of draftable players. I've excluded the SEC because that is going to be a shoo-in, but please pick your favorite non-SEC conference to help us pick our second and/or third conferences!

Also, I'm at a loss as to what to name our league, so if you have any suggestions for that, please let me know in a comment to this post!

New Wonders of the World

This might be old news for some of you (it's actually old news for me, just I haven't gotten around to blogging about it yet), but recently, a global election was held to select a new set of "Seven Wonders of the World". It's particularly interesting for a few reasons. First, as a Chinese, it's interesting because, for all you history buffs out there, the original seven wonders did not include any Chinese structures, of which many are probably worthy. In fact, the original seven wonders didn't include any Asian structures at all - they were all remnants of a world that was known to the Greek Empire. This fact was actually one of the arguments against selecting a new set of wonders, since it "breaks" the tradition that the Wonders are from the Greek world. The new set includes not only Asian Wonders, but some American (north and south) ones as well, which is pretty cool.

Another interesting feature about the new set, and something that I plan on having a little fun with, is the fact that the global election was actually implemented via internet poll, which I can't imagine didn't open up cans of worms all over the world. One of the arguments against the awesomeness that is Wikipedia is that the information isn't reviewed by a professional academic staff. Similarly, the new Seven Wonders was selected by wretched peons like ourselves as well. Plus, there was of course the other issue of how nothing prevented voters from casting multiple votes - in fact, there were 14 million votes from the country of Jordan, which only has a population of 7 million! Regardless, what's done is done!

What did the common folk come up with? The list is below in alphabetical order:

• Chichen Itza of Yucutan, Mexico


• Christ the Redeemer of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil


• Great Wall of China of China


• Machu Picchu of Cuzco, Peru


• Petra of Jordan


• Roman Colosseum of Rome, Italy


• Taj Mahal of Agra, India


• Great Pyramid of Giza of Cairo, Egypt

As you can see, only one former Wonder (the Pyramid) is retained on this new list - and it was actually a default selection because it is in fact the only remaining intact former Wonder of the World. In any case, for fun, I thought the next Grant's Pad Poll would be for a little list of our own little 7 Wonders. Since I'm lazy, I'm just going to use mostly the same choices that the other online vote used. Still, check it out!

Got this picture in my e-mail today. On July 7, 2007, Boeing held it's official rollout of the (very cool) Boeing 787 Dreamliner at Boeing Field in Seattle. For this event, they did an additional fun ceremony. At exactly 7:07 PM, the first of Boeing's jets, a 707, landed at Boeing Field. It was followed within minutes by a 717, 727, 737, 747, 757, 767, and finally a 777, welcoming their new family member. It was noted that this was the first time in history that all of Boeing's 7-series jets had been gathered in one place!

Before I send the Transformers poll packing, a final count for the record books:

If I was a transformer, I would transform into a:

• 2008 Chevy Camaro - 1
• BMW Z4 - 0
• Cadillac Escalade - 0
• 2002 Toyota Supra - 1
• 2007 Porsche 911 Carrera - 0
• Nissan 350Z - 2
• Ferrari Enzo - 1
• Lamborghini Murciélago - 1
• F-22 Raptor - 3
• Hummer - 1
• Semi Cab - 0
• Mazda RX-7 - 1
• M1 Abrams Tank - 1
• Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier - 2

Total votes - 14, twice the amount from the last poll! Guess that fighter jet was pretty popular!

Tech Director for a Week

Well, it's been quite a busy week for me so far. As with any summer week, many people were on vacation. Only this week, the project group's tech director, Mark, was on vacation, and as such, any questions and duties that would have been his responsibility were delegated to me, naturally, as the Cognizant Engineer. Which was all rosy and keen until I got my first big problem to fix! So, I had loads of fun masquerading as an important person this week. I wonder if being tech director is always this exhilarating!

Some good news - I shopped around a bit for homeowner's insurance earlier this week. I discovered one of the awesome benefits of getting a brand new house - my quote was under $800! I recall that my dad's insurance this past year was something like five thousand dollars! That made me very happy - looks like I will be able to eat meat this fall after all!

Last thing before I sign off for the day. With my recent destruction in the Travian game that I have played the last few months, I strove to look for another laid back, multiplayer game. I eventually came across Puzzle Pirates, a cute Pirate game where you (a fledgling pirate) learn to do different piratey tasks like pumping bilgewater, repairing ships, sailing, dueling, and looting through a variety of puzzle games that can be played in chunks of twenty or so minutes. Eventually, you can captain your own vessel and command a crew of other pirates and try to rule your oceans! Needless to say, I haven't gotten to that point yet, and I imagine that once I do, the game won't be so laid back and non-time-consuming any more, but still, I kinda wanna see how far I can get! Check it out!

Wake Up, Transformers!

My dad came up to visit this past weekend, primarily to support me in the walkthrough of my now completed house. The walkthrough went well enough, there were just a few things that needed touching up, and soon, I'll have the keys to my new house! While he was here in Melbourne, I treated him to dinner at Shells, a nice casual seafood restaurant, he treated us to lunch at the restaurant "Island Pasta Company" (thanks, Nick, for the awesome suggestion!) and we went to see the incredible Transformers movie.

A fun story - when I was little, around, oh I dunno, 8 or 9 I guess, I watched a particular episode of the old Transformers cartoon almost every day. It was the Dinobots episode, where the Autobots team up with robots that transformed into dinosaur forms. Big robots and dinosaurs - it's a kid's heaven! Anyhow, when I would want to sleep in early in the mornings, my dad would shout "Wake up, Dinobot!", just like the Autobots did in the show, and sure enough, I would get right up and face the day! I even had my own toy Tyrannosaur dinobot!

The movie didn't have Dinobots, but it was still filled with awesomeness. Bumblebee is no longer a Volkswagen beetle, but the awesome new Camaro! Plus, seeing the massive Optimus Prime (who I believe retains his original voice over actor from the old shows) is quite a rush.

It's interesting to note that almost all the vehicles throughout the film are GM vehicles, with the notable exception of the Decepticon that uses a Mustang police car as his transformation. Even as we take that exception in stride, Japanese or European cars are notably absent. I have to admit, American styling is pretty attractive, but I think it would have been pretty cool to have included some additional cars, and that brings us to the new Grant's Pad Poll: If you could transform into one vehicle, what would it be? You have one week to vote! If you don't see one you like, feel free to add your pick by commenting on this post!

P.S. For the record, the final results of the last poll are below:

Casual reading to break up an otherwise morbid weekday 0 (0%)
The jokes, videos, and/or reviews of various forms of entertainment 2 (28%)
The bangin' Chinese radio station 1 (14%)
Reading up on the life of my very good friend Grantis Mantis 2 (28%)
Grantis Mantis keeps on asking me to visit 2 (28%)

Total votes: 7... let's get this number up a bit, guys!

I've Exceeded the Capacity of My DS Case

That's right. My number of DS games now exceeds the holding capacity included in my savvy DS case, and I'm proud of it too! For about two months, I was at maximum occupancy, with one game (usually Pokemon Pearl) riding in the DS itself and six other games in the storage pocket, but when my urge to get a 3D platform game combined with a thirst for some Pirates of the Caribbean action, I granted my wishes and bought At World's End for DS from yet another high rated eBay seller, who got the game to me by Monday afternoon even though I had only placed the order on Friday night! Crazy fast.

The latest purchase bumped my total DS library to 8 (matching my SNES library, incidentally, not including a copy of Super Street Fighter II that found its way into my possession while I was in graduate school), which is exactly one more than my case and DS Lite can hold without overflowing! Despite some mixed reviews and warnings from friends about the mediocrity of movie-based games, I have thus far found myself enjoying the game quite a bit. As my readers should know well by now, I'm a big fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and being immersed in the Pirates world, walking around on the pirate ship(s), and swashbuckling to my heart's delight is very, very satisfying. I only wish I knew a few more people with the game (or DS's, for that matter) so I can duel them!

In other news, it looked like the poll was a moderate hit, with about 20% of visitors this week voting (yes, it was a slow week in terms of visitation). Hey, I think that's actually better than the typical rate Americans vote at! I'll try to come up more interesting polls, so for those of you who voted, keep the votes coming, and for those of you who didn't... well, get on the ball!

Introducing the Grant's Pad Poll!

Wow, it's been more than a week since my last post - incredible! This kind of thing usually only happens when I'm away - either on vacation or on a business trip. Even then, I usually find the time to get to a computer to blog for my loyal and new readers!

To be honest, I'm not sure what happened this past week to keep me from blogging. I didn't go anywhere, I didn't even head out to the homesite to check on my (now nearing completion) new house many times. I think I'm just becoming old and tired. That sounds about right - when we get older, we get tired...er. Plus, the other day, my good friend and faithful Grant's Pad reader Pablo read my blog post on our trip to the zoo and commented that I look fat in my photo! We all know that we get fat when we get old!

Anyway, on to more blog-worthy writing. This past week, amidst my tiring work (despite a day off for Independence Day), I started toying around with Pandora: The Music Genome Project, to help me get through that tiring work. It's a very cool netradio software that asks for your input and populates a playlist based on your tastes. It's very organic, learning your tastes as you give it feedback to the music it plays. On the negative side, there's currently primarily American or otherwise Western music on Pandora. When they start including some music from my beloved Asian artists, I'll be a true convert! Still, Pandora is very worth your time to check out, and if you're not as much of an Asian music fan as I am, it will help you get through your work days even better than it does for me!

I got word today on Blogger.com that we Blogspot bloggers now have yet a new toy to let our readers enjoy. It's a poll feature that allows us to add a poll into our sidebars, letting our readers vote on all sorts of cool topics, whatever tickles the whim of our blogging spirits. And so, without further adieu, I give you the first Grant's Pad Poll! Make sure you check back often to participate in future polls!