Mapping H1N1 with Google

someone had a great idea, and seems to be putting some nice work into this google map of the H1N1 vectors...

maybe it's just pissed off about oracle?

the sun seems depressed.
or maybe pissed off about oracle buying it's namesake?
ok, bad joke, i know.
:P

pirates of the somalian

i have some admiration for the pirates of somalia, they are fishermen who are struggling for a living, fighting against enormous corporations who are overfishing & polluting their coastline & fisheries.  they began seizing ships and extracting ransoms.  i don't recall seeing where they actually killed anyone.  seemed like good piratey fun, right? 
well, now they are being spun (by the world spiders) as bad men doing bad things. 
i have my doubts.

today:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7999350.stm

the situation with Cpt. Phillips was tragic, i grant that.  things went badly, on both sides, and the situation got nasty quick.  and the navy special ops team did what they do best - clean up the mess.  decisively.  hoozaah!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7996213.stm

oh wait, some pirates 'on the phone' threatened retaliation against french and u.s. ships?  um...
somalia is a country and people struggling at the edge of survival.  right?  what are they gonna do?
i'm sure if any of the huge corpgov entities wanted to, they could find the pirate 'motherships' on google maps, fly a few apaches, raptors, etc over there, and make a new coral reef.  think those somalian pirates have ship-to-air stuff?  they have AKs and shoulder rockets. 

awful lotta smoke in the air about all this pirate stuff, which is good for making us sheeple ignore the dire financial straits we are in, eh?  it's like going to the movies for free.  pirates of the somalian is on!  wooohoooo!  oh, look, pirates of the somalian 2 is on now!  get the popcorn.

or wake up.
:-/

nice byline or punctuation, or philosophy

Mr. Winchester, the sheriff in Enid, Okla., has the same thought. "Guns have always been a good investment," he says. "Guns are as good as gold."
from this article: http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0413/p02s01-ussc.html

gollum?

wow, phil spector looks like gollum...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090414/ap_en_mu/phil_spector;_ylt=AmgKHC8WH3mEFqLcvVFbCrus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFrNG9mZTdsBHBvcwMxNTMEc2VjA2FjY29yZGlvbl9lbnRlcnRhaW5tZW50BHNsawNsYWp1cnljb252aWM-

/shudder

personal boycott: china products

i'm gonna start my own personal boycott of china & chinese products.
i don't want to be poisoned.

oops!

i just realized, that it's been almost 2 weeks, and i haven't even mentioned my futsal injury. ( i did put it on my facebook page, sorry ). so, anyways, not last sunday, but the sunday before, i was playing futsal, and i was rocking da joint. finally had hit my stride on getting in shape, and getting a good feel for the ball on a wood floor, etc.
we had been playing for about 1/2 hr or longer, and i had scored a few times, and played goalie too, saving some stuff (banged my hip again, but that's another story).
i was about midcourt, and had got the pass, saw an opening between two players i thought i could beat, and so i accelerated from about 1/2 speed to FULL SPEED (dribbling)... and... riiiiiiiiiip - i feel this 'old-sock-tearing-when-you-pull-it-on' feeling, and then two small pops or 'bites' at my heel and my calf. and i fall hard, with a load 'OH'.
this scares the crap outta me, and so i don't bother to get up, just roll over, and sit up, and tell the guys to drag me off the court. they do, and then decide it's time for beers, instead of playing for the rest of the hour we have the court reserved for.
i pull off my sock and shoe, take some offered ibuprofin, and start probing my achilles, which hasn't swollen at all (and i take to be a bad sign). my son is hovering and asking questions, and he's gonna make a good paramedic or doctor some day, cuz he's got a great 'courtside' manner, lol.
he helps me stand up, and it's bad, i can stand, but all my weight has to be on my heel, cuz i can't put any on my toes, or ball of foot, it just isn't there. not numb exactly, but it's a weird feeling.
well, we put my shoe on, and everyone heads out to drink at the pub, my son as my crutch, and voice-of-reason. :) he even offered to drive, lol.

so, it's gonna be two weeks this sunday. and i've been limping around, a little less each day. it's still swollen, still hurts, but i have full range-of-motion, which is good right? ;)

open & closed

just reading news this morning, and opinions, and fluff - all the MSM (main stream media) output available on the net.
( i like to see which version of the exact same story Google, CNN, Reuters, et al, have up on their sites )
and over at urbansurvival.com they are talking about topology (or topography since he mapped it) of belief sets...

which made me ponder, what am i open & closed to, in beliefs and ideas?
cuz i consider myself a fairly open-minded person...

gonna just list some fun & semi-controversial topics:
(and work up to some really woowoo areas)
scale: 0 being no possibility, 100 being certainty.

freewill : 90 - basically i believe in freewill, but also that each life has destiny (which might argue against freewill).
lifes purpose, destiny : 90 - seems contradictory, but i think our purpose is revealed, thru exercising our freewill, to choose.
soulmates : 50 - i think we might have soulgroups, rather than a single soulmate.
magic : 50 - i disagree with the term, but believe in the ability to manifest thru intent.
god : 99 - there is something, seriously doubt if it can be grasped by the human mind, currently.

gods & goddesses : 40 - in the hindu tradition of some level of being between ultimate god, and mankind.  maybe extinct.
jesus : 10 - i have a doubt.  maybe there was a wise man, or several men, nothing like the christian mythos.
immaculate conception : 0 - sorry, humans don't reproduce this way, if we did, jesus would've been a girl.
good & evil : 50 - not in the religious sense.  i believe in the capacity for each, and the choice by strength or weakness of will.
reincarnation : 99 - in the idea of returning again and again, until we choose not to.  (at least i remember some parts of past lives).

multiverses : 90 - subparticle physics has a theory.  our mind can only exist in one at a time.
ghosts : 90 - seen something a few times.  would i say an echo?  or a wandering soul?  or a dream body?
TPB (the powers that be) : 80 - someone is always trying to be the power.  human nature demands this.
illuminati : 25 - a group of TPB in the past, doubt if they passed on any lasting practices.
demons : 60 - similar to my thoughts on gods & goddesses.  shapechangers,  rakshasas.

area51 : 100 - it exists, we can see it, read FOI releases about it.  it's the skunkworks. 
aliens : 90 - highly probable, have they come here?  i've seen the phxlites, but nothing on the ground.
greys, zeta, blues, reptilians, insectoids, nordics : 30 - this is fun.  but so much disinfo.  like mulder, i want to believe.
bigfoot, yeti, sasquatch : 99 - i don't know why i am so certain of this, just am.
chupacabra : 100 - coyotes with mange.

socialists : 0 - bleh
liberals : 0 - bleh
democrats : 0 - ho hum
republicans : 0 - yuck
fascists : 0 - double yuck


whew!  that's a braindump right there...
;)

ice bridges & missile launches

so, i guess the ice bridge that was "anchoring" the wilkins ice shelf, has broke.
headline @ bbc: ice bridge ruptures in antarctic

and, those sneaky north koreans, they launched their big missile too.
article at voa: north korean launch.

(apparently there is some disagreement if anything actually was put in orbit,
either it splashed, according to south korea, or it's orbiting and singing songs,
according to north korea).

interesting day, so far...

wilkins icebridge

from my google alert on wilkins:

Collapse of the ice bridge supporting Wilkins Ice Shelf appears imminent

george hit's the bullseye

i read urbansurvival almost every morning,
cuz i enjoy george's wit and insight into the various info sources.

this morning, he has hit the bullseye:

It's all so disappointing to watch: 

Bankers getting more dole than common folks (must save the world, don'tcha know),

the PTB may be setting up a "hurt them to help them" showdown in a lot of places,

and meantime the second biggest headline on Goggle's News site this morning

when I looked was "Madonna loses Malawi adoption bid."

 

WTF people?

- - -

exactly.

continuing dumbness

ack, my feeble monkey mind is flying on this one:
- - -
so, having a balloon, as your launch platform, might be plausible?

your "fishing rod" doesn't have to be huge...

cuz we are dealing with small particles, moving very fast

we have to slow them down, somehow, then capture and reel them in

maybe a giant wad of chewing gum, on the end of the line?

and the little pieces of satellite, just thud into it, and stick, lol

maybe take some of the ideas of the space-elevator tether thing,
where you use the rotation of the earth to keep it up there,

and that could be your "fishing platform".

hrm, can i patent the balloon-fishing-gumwad-spacedebris-collector ?
probly can!  lol.  well, only in amerika...

space fishing

okay, dumb idea time...

space fishing
how high can you go in a fancy high-altitude balloon? 
once you have your "balloon launch platform" you use your "space fishing rod",
and sling the "magnetic bait" up into the "space ocean"...

and catch yerself a "big fish" and hold on.

sure, there's probly some small technical hurdles to jump for that to come true,
but i think you'd have alotta volunteers, maybe even space-tourists,
especially if you could bring a cooler of beer with ya!

bold statement

"All of their work has gone for naught," said Alfred Huger,
vice president of development for Symantec Corp.'s security response team,
referring to the hackers who created the Conficker worm.

from this article: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=network_security&articleId=9130902&taxonomyId=142&intsrc=kc_top

now, i'm not in the sec biz, and i'm no hax0r, but i think that's a pretty bold statement, since today isn't over,
and anyone who can produce that kinda sophisticated bit of work it has been touted as,
might not want to be provoked, don'tcha think?

maybe al wanted to be an anonymous source?
oops!
;)

she's kinda cute, she must be right

eh, just got back from lunch, at a place with cute waitresses and high prices.
i'm the kinda stupid old guy who tends to believe what cute girls have to say to him...

http://seekingalpha.com/article/128472-seven-uncomfortable-predictions-for-the-economy?source=article_sb_popular

april fools

i actually have nothing to say,
about april fools, or the financial fool's day, or myself.
sad, ain't it?