I'm All Over The Map

This looks positively sick; and considering how totally over Azeroth I’ve gotten…  : )
 

Go to http://probablyinteractive.com/url-hunter
Read the instructions on the page.
Look up at the address bar.
Using three keys, play.
Don’t tell.
: )

This months article from Low Tech Magazine would have come in handy about 90 to 120 days ago.

In it, the age old idea of controlling what we put on our scrawny frames, rather than manipulating our room environments, is thoroughly explored from a number of perspectives; not the least of which is how dressing appropriately can save you money in heating bills.

According to the author, there is a paucity of historical data on indoor room temperatures over the last century. From anecdotal sources it is thought that people may have kept their homes up to 17° cooler in the winter in the 1950s than we do today.

So how does that stack up from the standpoint of energy savings?

If lowering the thermostat 1° delivers a 9% to 10% energy savings, then our grandparents and parents were “greener” by at least 153% than we are today.

“But wait!” you say, “I live in a new, energy efficient home!”

Statistically, such homes deliver only

Read More >>

We’re coming up on the one year mark for the Deepwater Horizon disaster and what do you suppose I saw on CBS the other morning?  Yep, another BP Look-What-We’ve-Done-For-You-It’s-Almost-Shiny-As-New commercial.  My blood pressure elevated by six points.

So I went searching for an online version of it to share with you, as I ripped it to shreds, and guess what?

You won’t find it.

In fact you won’t find a single, solitary, one, of BPs PR obfuscations online.  Sure you can go to BPs website and snooze through over an hours worth of 4 to 5 minute puff pieces, all of which are handled by Bill Young Productions, none of which can be easily shared.

Try I as I may I could not find the commercials that are aired on mainstream TV, touting the great job they’re doing and the amazing resilience of the Gulf and its citizens.

Maybe because they’re afraid (justifiably in my opinion) that people of a skeptical/critical mindset might compare this:
BP press conference of November 2010
to this:
Scientist finds Gulf bottom still oily, dead

I think this quote sums the situation up succinctly:

“The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.” ~ Tom Clancy

MEDICAL ALERT!
The FDA web site is at the bottom of the page for verification…
<snip [to spare you the sad, sad story and FEAR about phenylpropanolamine]>
http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/InformationbyDrugClass/ucm150767.htm

What it should have said was:

DUSTYPALEOLITHICDEADNEWS ALERT!!

Because someone was behind the times by ABOUT A DECADE.

Phenylpropanolamine, or PPA, was ordered off the market in 2001, Japan followed suit in 2003.

It was totally banned in the US in 2005.

“In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a public health advisory[9] against the use of the drug in November 2000. In this advisory,

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You know how it is, you’re clicking through some web pages, doing some research, and BAM!  Something hits you right up aside the head.

In this case, following a link about AOL layoffs after reading a comment about the AOL buyout of Huffington Post, I wound up at the blog of an ex-AOL e-mail administrator who left the good old US of A for the Netherlands.  Actually, she’s been there since October of last year.

Why should this be noteworthy you ask?

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So, here we are, two days out from Superbowl XLV. It’s been an incredibly arctic 15° F, on average, for the last three days, and while sitting at home, due to work being canceled yet again due to “inclement weather”, I ran across a article on the stadium over at IT World.

 

Affectionately known in these parts as “Jerry’s World” (in honor of the owner, Jerry Jones);  I’d not known much about this local landmark, outside of the apparent abuse of eminent domain that allowed it to be built, and the fact that its architecture reminds me of a massive Decepticon® Transformer®, waiting to sprout legs from its flanks, stride forth, and flatten the nearby Wet and Wild ®and Six Flags® theme parks.

Apocalyptic imagery aside, the article at IT World made my geek-flesh pimple.  Because the tours they give the faithful don’t include statistics like these:

“…884 Cisco wireless access points (AP) scattered around, and more than 70 different wiring closets containing more than 40,000 wired ports. There are several different wireless networks for staff, press, guests and attendees that segregate their traffic. There is more than 8 million feet of Ethernet cabling, and 260 miles of fiber to support all the connections, and more than 100T-bytes of data storage too. Everything operates on a single network, including the point-of-sale terminals at the concession stands, 185 security cameras and access control doors, entrance ticketing stations, the scoreboards, and the public Wifi network as well as the more prosaic business computing needs of the staff.”

Kind of makes me weak in the knees, knowing all that.

Check out the rest of the story, and be prepared come game day to share your new found geek-trivia with all your buds.

Goodwill® is cool, I’ve bought some pretty groovy stuff there over the years.

So I serendipitously find out that  our local Goodwill® has a pretty modern website, which includes a page devoted to their most interesting donations, one of which is shown here on the right.

Yep, Fertility Idol, NSFW, politically corrected.

If you’d like to see more, head on over to Goodwill® and scroll down through the gallery, you’ll be glad you did.

Some idi…uh…”Congressman” slid a bill into committee last month that would reinstitute the draft and provide for compulsory civilian service by any member of the population of these United States, aged 18 to 42.

That’s right, HR5741 is in committee as you read this, having been introduced on July 15th of this year.

Now, this isn’t the first time this type of stupi… err… legislation has been introduced, courtesy of NY Congresscritter Charles Rangel.  Like his previous bills it will have little chance of either garnering support or having more than the proverbial snowballs chance of passing.

Which begs the question:  Why?

Why would someone who is under scrutiny for ethics improprieties, including improper use of his office to solicit donations for a City University of New York center to be named in his honor; failure to report rental income from his villa in the Dominican Republic and to pay taxes on it; omission of some $600,000 in assets on his House financial disclosure forms; and acceptance from a Manhattan developer of four rent-stabilized apartments, one of which he used as a campaign office, waste time reintroducing a bill that amounts to little more than legalized slavery on the part of the government?

If this is an indication of how incumbents take care of the needs of their constituency, come November maybe we should show them all the door.

You may not have noticed it, but Kodak announced a little over a year ago that it would cease production of its flagship product for the last 74 years, Kodachrome® film, due to declining sales.

At the time that really saddened me.  I’d had a love affair with cameras and photography from age 18, and while it never progressed further than the avid hobbyist / occasional supplemental income stage, I came to appreciate the quality and consistency that the Kodak brand gave me.

Which is why I have to share with you an item from the Wichita Eagle, chronicling the fate of the last 36 exposure roll of Kodachrome® Kodak produced, when it was finally processed in Parsons, Kansas:

“PARSONS — Freelance photojournalist Steve McCurry, whose work has graced the pages of National Geographic, laid 36 slides representing the last frames of Kodachrome film on the light board sitting on a counter…”  The rest of the story is here

If you ever held a camera in your hands and shot slides, it’s more than worth the read.

Damn if I don’t feel like holding an Irish wake.