Oysters anyone?

Cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay would be cool and everything. There is also an economic aspect to it.

"Bay pollution is not only an ecological disaster, it's an economic one, too," said Ann Jennings, the group's Virginia director.

For example, the decline of the Chesapeake oyster alone has cost Virginia and Maryland more than $4 billion over the past 30 years, the report said.

Wow! That seems like a lot of oysters. In fact, let's do the math.

$4B over 30 years is over $133M/yr. (I'll assume they're talking about current dollars.)

But how many oysters is that? Well, as of two weeks ago -

The buyers had been paying as much as $42 per bushel but, this week, they lowered the price to $35, said Danny Webster of Deal Island. And rumors are circulating that the price could drop to $30 next week.

OK, at $35/bushel that $133M is going to buy us 3.81 million bushels of oysters per year. Given that the average American eats only about 1 1/2 ounces of oyster meat per year, that ought to pretty well supply all of us.

Fields of Dreams

In the movie Field of Dreams the characters Ray and Terrence mystically pick up a kid on the road going to try out for a little baseball team in the midwest. They comment on how there haven't been that sort of league for years.

Well, yes they do exist. Here is one such team in the Northern League - the Lake County Fielders.

And the owner? Kevin Costner.

3-D plotting

This is something I thought I was going to have to write myself. A 3-D plotter that allows you to rotate the view to any angle. Thanks gnuplot!

The Country That Pees Together Stays Together

Re: the Olympic Gold Medal hockey game -

EPCOR, the water utility company that runs the fountains up in Edmonton, Canada released this graph yesterday. It's water consumption during the Olympic gold medal hockey game, overlaying consumption of the previous day. How much do Canadians love their hockey? A lot.

The first period ends. Time to pee. The second period ends. Time to pee. The third period ends. Time to pee. Consumption goes way down when Canada wins and during the medal ceremony.

Another jumper

I was hearing all of the sirens as the vehicles wnet past our house yesterday, thinking "this is not good". We had another person jump off the bridge.

The 59-year-old Newport News man who died on Sunday after leaping from the
Coleman Bridge was a prominent financial advisor on the Peninsula. Carroll
Marcus "Marc" Cooper Jr. died after leaping from the bridge into the York River.

Nuthin', Nada, Zilch

Yup, nothing posted in months. No excuse. Well, lots of excuses. That bad feeling in my chest that sent me to the emergency room Christmas Eve. Finding out one dog has cancer. A generally cold, miserable winter. Total disruption at work that meant I was employed, but had me living out of boxes of my stuff for two months. I'll try to be better.