Archos just released new Android tablets.

I'm still not sold on Android on a big screen, but whatever. Archos has just intro'd 5 new "tablets" on their website. The most interesting one, is the 10.1" Archos 101, because at $299, it significantly undercuts the iPad. Important note: the $299 price is based on 8GB internal storage whereas iPad starts at 16GB, and that this tablet has only two options: 8GB or 16GB, which is a big drawback for anyone wanting to not have to carry external hard drives.

Some specs (the stuff I care about):

• Memory:
• Internal: 8 / 16 GB
• External: Micro SD Slot (SDHC compatible)
• Display:
• 1024x600 pixels (WXVGA), 10.1'' TFT LCD
• OS:
• Android 2.2 Froyo
• Video playback:
• MPEG-42 HD (up to 720p, 30 fps@6Mbps)
• MPEG-42 (ASP@L5 AVI, up to DVD resolution, 30 fps@8Mbps)
• H.264 HD (HP@L3.1 up to 720p, 30 fps@5Mbps)
• WMV9/VC1 (AP up to 720p 30 fps@10Mbps)
• M-JPEG (Motion JPEG Video) in VGA resolution
• Audio playback:
• MP3 CBR & VBR
• WMA, WMA-Pro 5.1
• WAV (PCM/ADPCM)
• AAC, AAC+ 5.13
• OGG Vorbis
• FLAC
• Photos:
• JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF
• Webcam
• HDMI
• USB 2.0
• WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1 EDR
• Built-in microphone
• Battery life:
• Music, up to 36 hours
• Video, up to 7 hours
• Web surfing, up to 10 hours

Gmail has Priority Inbox.

I'm not going to use it, as I have 24/7 access to my emails on my phone, and I simply delete those that I don't care to read, and my inbox is not that of some project manager of a large project.

But the video is just so entertaining, I had to post back to it.

What is Optimism?

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Optimism is:

"a doctrine that this world is the best possible world;"
"an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome."

I ask rhetorically, how does one look around, and see *reason* for optimism in our contemporaneous world? 46% of Republicans think President Obama is a Muslim, for goodness sakes. I can imagine that they're also the same people who believe that the Iraqis hid the WMDs so that they could not be found, and that Al Qaeda was operating in Iraq in cooperation with Saddam Hussein. But you know what? They have their own counter parts in the Middle East, who think than Israel and the US were co-conspirators in the 9/11 attacks.

I'd like to know how, the US is actually better off without Glass-Steagall. I'd like to know how we're better off with people like Michelle Malkin making arguments (not back in 1941, but in 2004) that members of my extended family deserved to be interned during World War II.

But most of all, I'd like to know how America is better off, under Republicans who have so far guided us based on fear and anger. Liberals mocked Bush as an idiot monkey; Conservatives retort with Obama as... a Socialist, tyrannical, evil, despotic Communist, dressed as a Joker but underneath, is actually Hitler. You get the diff?

So why do I bring this up?

Because Mr. Frank S. Robinson left a critical comment on a post earlier this year, that also plugged his book, "The Case for Rational Optimism", which, while I strongly disagree with the broad concept of optimism in the foreboding darkness of fear and anger, I am willing to let others provide their own take on the world.

Quite frankly Mr. Robinson, a single entry in your blog that simply advertises your book is not much of a blog. But, I will hold out optimism that you will eventually get around to it, and provide broader insight into your observations of everyday optimism.

On why the last song I hear, must be Moby's "18" (from previous post).

I made this flash video (not attached, see note below) - years ago - when my first dog passed away, with Moby's "18" as a background music.

Through a lot of thick and thin, he was there. I scolded him for a lot of shenanigans, including raiding the trash often, but you never stop loving your pet, and he had more patience than I did. I want to see him again, as do I wish to see a lot of people (family). I figure this song brings up memories of my dog, so when I die, with the thought of my dog in my head, I'd probably die happy, and remember to find him.

And that's why I want Moby's "18" to be the last song I hear in this life.

---

NOTE - no video attached; apparently I have to remake it in Flash CS4 with new controls and actionscript -
sorry.

---

Oh, but you can listen to Moby's "18" below (assuming no one deletes it):
At last.fm

What music would you listen to, if you were dying?

Such a morbid thought it might seem, but our lives are short in comparison to our hopes and dreams, don't you think?  Why not ponder - in advance - what sort of playlist to create?

If I were to die within hours, I'd like to listen to mostly ambient chill mixed with Moby, and oddly enough, some Radiohead:

• Phobos - Edge of Forever
• Julee Cruise / Angelo Badalamenti - Falling / Twin Peaks Theme
• Julee Cruise - The Orbiting Beatnik
• FC/Kahuna - Hayling
• Radiohead - Creep
• Radiohead - Fake Plastic Trees
• Radiohead - High and Dry
• Radiohead - Let Down
• Radiohead - No Surprises
• Dusted - Always Remember to Honor and Respect Your Mother
• Enigma - Shadows in Silence
• Enigma - Return to Innocence
• Annie Lennox - Love Song for a Vampire
• Afterlife - Speck of Gold
• Afterlife - Clear Blue Sky
• Afterlife - Makes Me Feel
• Mono - Life in Mono
• Bent - An Ordinary Day
• Bent - Always
• Kruder & Dorfmeister - Original Bedroom Rockers
• Moodswings - Opium 45 deg
• Moby - Porcelain
• Moby - Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad
• Moby - Signs of Love
• Moby - 18 (the very last song I want to hear when I'm about to die...to be explained later.)

Environmentalism via...banks?

It appears that environmentalists have seized upon the power of having a corporate green cred, to pressuring banks into avoiding extreme environmentally damaging projects, including palm oil harvesting and mountaintop coal mining.

And I must say, this is a lot more effective than the shenanigans of ELF and others.

And I must say, times have changed if corporations are now concerned about their green cred...which makes it tough to understand why we're still having to debate global warming.

Bing search in Android, exclusively for Verizon.

Not sure what to make of it...why would Bing want to go exclusive on Verizon?  It's not as if they have a premium product that everyone wants (3.34% global market share - July 2010). Of course, what this really points to, is that we're probably seeing a reverse-direction incentive, where Microsoft is paying Verizon to carry their product, as opposed to Verizon paying someone for an exclusive market.

And the whole world issued a collective "whatever".  Well, not exactly...according to the NYT, "On Monday the tech world was buzzing again ."   Now that's rich.

A fresh way to passing a car.

Video comes by way of Autoblog.

Tea Party folks are being bankrolled by billionaires.

Both the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch are bankrolling the activities of the Tea Party.  In one sense, it perfectly matches the same type of mentality - a very self-interested greed that permeates the Tea Party - but in another way, it is ironic, because the self interest of Murdoch and the Kochs, is to manipulate people to increase their own profit and at the expense of those very people they're manipulating.

"In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States." *

"The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation."**

 "When David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools."***

* - "Covert Operations", Jane Mayer, New Yorker, August 30,2010, paragraph 5.
** - "Covert Operations", Jane Mayer, New Yorker, August 30,2010, paragraph 6.
*** -  "The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party", Frank Rich, New York Times, August 28, 2010, paragraph 10.

Just some thoughts about housing market.

I think there are probably 6 groups of people in it:

1. Long-term investors looking for rental income, and only care about apartment demand and low buying prices.  They're the ones probably buying right now.
2. Short-term investors, known as flippers, simply looking to make a fast buck, and will over leverage themselves, believing that they'll get it all back and more, when they sell.
3. General investors who care only about their return, and thus will drop their investment at a whim, if they think the markets are bad.  They might invest in REITs, but because they see everything as an investment to make or lose money, including their own residence, they have no qualms about dropping their property, usually because they have more than enough money to ignore the hit to their credit rating.
4. Long-term homeowners looking to steady their housing costs, and aren't concerned about any price fluctuations in the market.
5. Long-term homeowners who could not qualify for traditional loans, but nonetheless got into the market.  They are the ones who were sold on the idea of steadying their housing costs long term, but could not normally qualify based on their income and credit history.  They've signed up for non-conforming loans and end up being over-leveraged.
6. Short-term homeowners looking to build fast equity to move up in the market.  They might be over-leveraged because they believe prices will continue to go up, or they might simply be opting for short-term loans (5 year or less jumbo) because their intention is to get the lowest rate and trade up in just a few years.

The point of this mental exercise, is to ask the question of which groups deserve saving, and which ones don't.  I'm all for saving the long-term investors, including those who didn't qualify for traditional mortgages and instead went for non-conforming.  I think intention is critical.  In the same way that we - currently - distinguish long term capital gains from short term, it may be time to distinguish the two, when it comes to housing.

(And by the way, of all the tax cuts set to expire at the end of this year, the capital gains reduction for the lowest two tiers and long-term investors, should be the most important tax cut to preserve.  This would encourage people to invest as opposed to parking that money in the bank.)

So how do you differentiate the long-term investor from the short-term?  I think the trick is to force the short-term investor to go long term, in order to receive help.

To be continued.

Paris Hilton caught with cocaine, subsequently released.

She got arrested in Las Vegas in an SUV. She had a purse, it was filled with cocaine. She claims it wasn't hers. Authorities book her and release her without bail requirements.

If it were anyone else with a history of being caught with drugs, that story of the purse not being hers would never fly.

Just a commentary on how, in fact, the US has a caste system.

On why Paul Krugman is the economist I like.

Watch this video from Friday's PBS News Hour. At about 8:52 into the video, Paul Krugman cites a point that you'll never hear Conservatives mention: the pain that would be inflicted by letting market forces take their natural course, per the standard outcome of a recessionary period. I'm dumbfounded how Conservative politicians and economists blithely fail to discuss this point, either intentionally or out of ignorance. Have we really become a "Nation of Know-Nothings", allowing the Rush Limbaughs of this world to get away with dishonest discussions?



Oh, but do watch the whole video; Krugman catches Doug Holtz-Eakin contradicting himself. He's forced to change his opinion on the question of whether or not the Feds have tools other than the Fed fund rate, to effect monetary policy. Quite amusing, really.

The death of spam...at least for the past two days.

I noticed a big drop - as in ZERO - spam in my Gmail and Yahoo inboxes the past two days or so. Maybe it's because there was a concerted effort to shut down the Pushdo Spam Botnet? Well, except Hotmail, of course. My Hotmail is still being filled up. Yay Microsoft.

About that double dip...

Conservatives are sticking to their guns on austerity, and well, it looks bad.

From Paul Krugman's blog.

You hear that, Mr. Anderson?

Ben Bernanke goes nearly all in, and we discover the source of gaudy.

Major speech from Bernanke today.

The US - having rates sit at 0.25% for nearly 2 years - has nowhere to go but to 0.00%. That looks an awful lot like Japan's deflationary trap, and once you reach 0.00% and the economy turns to deflation, you've used up one of your tools that would have been used to battle deflation.

Instead, the Feds signaled that they were willing to buy even more long-term securities - as an instrument to effectively lower rates - than was previously announced a few weeks ago.

And why?

Because the second quarter GDP was revised sharply downward from 2.4% to 1.6%, after the government corrected for lower than expected inventory.

And if that wasn't bad enough, scientists have used technology to pinpoint the source of gaudy, and it goes back to ancient Rome.

All this bedbug news lately, I thought I should compare.

Was contemplating visiting Vancouver, BC, and was looking through Amtrak's "deals".  I was checking the cheapest hotel options in downtown Vancouver, and cross checked any reports on the bedbug registry website, and they all had problems.  No wonder, really, as the news has been catching on, albeit slowly, about the bedbug explosion.  So popular are bedbugs now, that the Chicago Trib's got a top-15 US cities infested with bedbugs; needless to say, I'm not visiting NYC any time soon.  They're in movie theaters, stores, and office buildings, and in some cases, even furniture rental businesses.

So I got to thinking, I'd compare what it was like last year compared to this year.  Went back to a post from last year, and grabbed that image, and posted it alongside a new screen grab from today.

Sad - or scary - on how the number of buildings with reported infestations have grown.  21 new reports in 26 days so far this month!  Next year, I wonder if the entire downtown area will be infested?  I'll grab another image next year and do another comparison.  (Maybe I'll eventually get around to making a nice, interactive flash object.)

Mars is going to be as large as the moon!?!

At first I could not believe people still fall for this hoax, but then I remembered that the Dunning-Krueger effect never takes a break, and that half of all humans fall on the back half of the intelligence scale.

On the bluster of fools who think the unemployment problem is an issue of skills mismatch.

Paul Krugman wrote the other day in his blog, about how Minnesota Fed president Narayana Kocherlakota made an alarmingly off-base comment about the state of the unemployed:

"The Fed does not have a means to transform construction workers into manufacturing workers."

Meaning of course, that unemployment is being driven by a skills mismatch. Unfortunately, a comment I wrote up didn't get posted. In it, I suggested that it was ludicrous to think that a skills mismatch was to blame. In fact, the housing market's toll has added to the immobility of people to move to where the jobs are.

If you just think for a moment about it, are you going to pick up your belongings and risk a move, when you have no idea if the nation is about to double-dip, and without any guarantees as to your length of employment? Can you take a loss on your home and move? I think most people are not willing to take such high risks, and are staying home, hoping the economy recovers and are willing instead to take no- or low-skilled jobs, even at a major reduction in pay, just to lower their risks.

Well, turns out I wasn't alone in my assessment. NPR's got a story on how devalued homes are preventing many homeowners from picking up and moving to where the jobs are.

Silly me...how could I possibly think that I might know something that a Fed president didn't?

On why I mock Republicans.

Between 2001 and 2006, they had full control of Congress and the White House.  They effected change in exactly how they wanted things to be.

They fucked up.

Now they say that they deserve a do-over.  They didn't even wait a year before they began in earnest to complain that Democrats were out of control.  You know, every time they've had power, they've fucked up.

John Boehner really fucked up in 1996, but amazingly, even though he's full of hypocrisy and is cozy with lobbyists, he managed to maintain minority leader status in the House and continue unabated with more hypocrisy.

IOKIYAR!

Well, at least we now understand why he was so enraged by the Health Care Act; there was a 10% tax on tanning salons, and he's upset that Tangelo-Americans are being singled out.

Apparently, it's fortuitous to be a Republican, as witnessed by Republicans winning their primaries.

USA Today's headline reads, "Fortunes shine for GOP in Fla., Ariz.".

See, these days, winning a Republican primary - where you're selecting the Republican candidate to represent the party in the November general election - is a huge victory for Republicans; it's a positive sign that their fortunes have improved, right?  (Just think of what might have happened if a Republican didn't win a Republican primary.)

Which of course, I thought was somewhat peculiar, but I guess IOKIYAR.

IOKIYAR

I did not know this one.  Apparently IOKIYAR to make nonsense, hyperbole and hypocritical statements.

Sigh. No northern lights.

I got in the car, got a medium diet coke from a 24 hour McDonald's on W Burnside, then drove out to Sauvie Island, hoping to at least see a glow.  Well, when I got there, I checked my phone, and the auroral oval had shrunk far up north of the Canadian border. :P

But at least the moon was out, and I got some freaking awesome photos anyway.  So you have to remember, this is out in the middle of Sauvie Island, 2:00 am, and the only light is coming from the full moon.  This shot is looking due north.

This shot is looking south towards Portland's West Hills, otherwise known as the Tualatin Mountains, which is nowhere near the City of Tualatin, but gets its name from the Tualatin Kalapuya Indians whose area ranged from the Tualatin River to the Tualatin Mountains.

This one, I thought I'd play with a tungsten flashlight to highlight a tree in the middle of the field.  It turned the tree leaves to a much brighter green than what it really is.

The reddish color is actually the glow of the city (Vancouver, WA).

Last, what would a night in complete darkness (except moonlight) be, without taking a photo of the xB?  I just love how the moonlight looks like the sun and the shadow cast is very strong.

Anyone up at this hour in Seattle, look up into the sky.

Looking at NASA's auroral oval tracking, the oval appears to have dipped as far south as Seattle, at this very moment (1:45 am Tuesday).  This is lower than when they had announced three (or so) weeks ago about a big solar flare, amazingly.  Since then, I've been tracking - occasionally - the auroral oval.

OKCupid does "Flow Chart to Your Heart".

I guess I'm picky.

Yesterday: play ball and sunset. And a blimp from last week.

Conservatives defeating America.

Frank Rich has an interesting opinion piece in NYT, wondering how General Petraeus is supposed to win the hearts and minds of Muslims in Afghanistan, even while Conservatives in America are attacking Muslims and Islam, for invading Ground Zero in NYC.

It's a valid point; how does a nation sell others on freedom and the American Way, if we ourselves, cannot look into the mirror and act the way we want others to act?

NYT examines Muslim viewpoints on mosque near Ground Zero.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one who wondered what Muslims thought of the whole controversy of having a mosque near Ground Zero. Turns out, the NYT was also curious to survey Muslims on the issue as well.

As expected, even Muslims worry about the mixed message of having a mosque located near hallowed ground, except that the concern is more of a personal safety mixed with a lot of pragmatism from folks who feel not entirely embraced by the rest of America. I believe the NYT article also rightly relates how Japanese Americans were perceived following the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, and how Muslims Americans still feel not quite right in how they are perceived by others in America.

I think most people know the easy answer is to simply relocate a few blocks away. Being free to do what you want to do, but practicing good relations with your neighbors by compromising, is really the American way. (Unless you're hard-core extremist like the Tea Party or ALF.)

Chrome OS coming soon on a tablet?

The news is old - as in, two days or so - but Google's somewhat confirmed that there's a tablet coming out soon.  Of course, some people think that it would be a bad idea, specifically because of the anticipation of a need to be always connected to the web in order to access services.  But I think they have it wrong.

Google's got an app developer website set up, specifically for ChromeOS.  In it - at least for now - it specifically indicates that developers have the option to create either one of two types of apps: hosted and packaged.    Specifically, a packaged app is:

"A web app that's bundled up, so that the user downloads all its content."

It seems like Google's ChromeOS could in fact be a transitional platform for packaged apps to the eventual hosted apps, which I think is a great idea.  Nothing against Android, but every time I've seen  any implementation of Android on a larger screen, it looks out of place.

Which is better, Android on a large screen?

Or Chrome OS?

I think ChromeOS will be a better sell for a simple UI, without some pull-down/out app tab, and I think it'll be very popular. I'm not sure that Google will make a lot of money from it at this point, but it's not about today...it's about 5 years from now.

Space shuttle solid rocket booster videos.

7 minute long video of the reusable solid rocket boosters from STS-124 space shuttle mission, from flight to splashdown.  I like the sounds, actually, as it's rotating in the upper atmosphere; you can hear some flexing of the metal and the gradual pick up in speed and presumably the friction.



I also dig this video of the solid rocket booster - from STS-124 - but without sound.  You can see the jets of water shooting out inside the platform, just before the rockets fire.



And one more, but from STS-115.



via boingboing

The G1 phone => G2 phone.

It's been nearly 2 years since I got the very first Android phone that started the revolution, and now that my 2 year contract is nearly up, looks like T-Mobile is set to release G2 soon, the next HTC Android phone on T-Mobile, and the first to be able to use the HSPA+ 21Mbps network. Makes sense, in that the G1 was the first phone available for T-Mobile's new 3G network in 2008.

How weird is that, to talk about T-Mobile's 3G network being less than 2 years old, and it's already being upgraded to 21Mbps HSPA+?

(Maybe in 2 more years, T-Mobile will be announcing a G3 phone running on an LTE network?)

---

Also, read in the news that 18% of Americans think President Obama is a Muslim. Worse, more Republicans (31%) believe Obama is a Muslim, than (27%) think that he's a Christian. It is without any wonder, that Conservatives think that Stephen Colbert is literal...they just don't seem to have the capacity to properly discern the type and quality of information that they receive.

I might have to refer to this as the Dunning-Kruger-Conservatives Effect.

A mosque near the twin towers; we know what everyone else thinks, except...Muslims, eh?

The President has stepped in, Democrats and Republicans left, right and center have stepped in, to all voice their opinions. I can tell you, WHITE American overwhelming disapprove of a mosque near Ground Zero. But really, I want to know what Muslims in America think. Seriously, CNN didn't bother to find out when they did a poll, and neither did Quinnipiac.

Don't you want to know what Muslims think, or are we only concerned about what Jewish, Catholics and Protestants think (as was measured by Quinnipiac's polling). Don't you want to know what the surviving family members of muslims that died on 9/11 in the twin towers, think?

Don't people find it disturbing that America doesn't give a damn about what the Muslim community thinks? For all we know, they might oppose it as well, making a decision rather easy for all sides.

Where is the journalism?!?!

Hot days are finally over. Some random observations during that time.

I was at Portland Nursery today, pulled up this tag from a plant by chance, and was shocked to read, "Go Ducks". Every plant of the same variety had the same tag with the same text. How fascinating to be in Oregon Ducks territory and to find these hidden messages, huh?

All this hot air made for clear skies and nice sunsets.

Nothing gets in the way of Mother Nature, not even a fire hydrant.

Striking similarity of form.

Squint your eyes so that you can barely identify the objects in the images, and you begin to notice that a graveyard in New York is eerily similar to New York City.

Or am I the only one to see that?

Jarhead black bear cub.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation workers were able to catch this bugger and his family, to remove the jar.  They named him Jarhead; I would've called him Jughead.  Besides the black bear, there are polar bears and the brown bears (grizzly, coastal brown and Kodiak) in North America.

FTR, the black bear is the cutest of the native North American bears.  Shy guys, too.  You can see them in Yellowstone; just look for the crowd of cars parked on the side of the road with people standing in a huddle, looking at some tiny black things in the far distance.

It just might be, time to go on vacation.

Chrome beta channel now up to 6.0.472.33

And we've now got syncing of extensions and autofill.  They've rearranged things, but not so bad as to be confusing.  The dev tools are pretty neat, too.

Not a bad way to quit your job.

This woman quit her job because of an ass of a boss who referred to her as a HPOA.  What's a HPOA?  Don't worry, just click on the link to get to her story.  Apparently she found out her boss had been playing online at work with Farmville, and not just a little.

Props for originality, humor and style.

Moscow: living in Hell?

I am just shocked and afraid for Russians living in Moscow and the surrounding areas.  According to the USA Today, the average number of Muscovites dying from the regional wildfires and smog, is now at 700 a day!

Sound implausible?  But wait, look at this NASA satellite imagery of carbon monoxide levels throughout western Asia. According to the EPA, " The U.S. National Ambient Air Quality Standards for outdoor air are 9 ppm for 8 hours, and 35 ppm for 1 hour."  NASA's measurements are 2 ~ 8 km above the surface, but reports in Russia have noted that CO levels were as much as 6x higher than what would be considered acceptable.

Image below from USA Today / Alexander Zemlianichenko, AP

Image from NASA, dated 8/9/2010

Image from NASA, dated 8/4/2010

Video from USA Today

Playing around in Photoshop with GMC Granite concept.

I just thought I'd play around with this image a bit...darken it up a bit and make it more matte.  No reason, other than to play around with it, because I wanted to.  Hope they produce it while staying true to the concept vehicle.  They really didn't do a good job with the Volt concept, IMO, from early conceptual to production, so I'm worried they'll screw up the GMC Granite.

See what I mean?

Alan Greenspan cracks me up.

He was quoted in the NYT:

"I don’t think anybody can know exactly what the impact of these taxes is on GDP."

He's calling for the complete repeal of all of Bush's tax cuts, in order to dent the federal debtm which in turn, is supposed to bring calm to the markets (hello, this is the market calling, we'd like you to spend more on stimulus, please).

I say let those tax cuts expire, but use the expected savings to invest in job creation via one-time grants for small businesses and another stimulus rebate.  The rebate works great, because it gives people cash they can see in their account, as opposed to the trickle of the tax cuts which really do nothing to inspire consumers to spend.  Since it's all about inspiring confidence to spend, I say forgo the tax cut and give it back as stimulus rebates, instead!

Who's in?

More on that Rawhide image.

It reminded me of some of Francesco Guardi's work, with the layers of objects with varying depths of field, and how perspective and arches are used to guide your eyes towards one direction.

When science fiction becomes fact...

Here's a folly of a question: In 2310 when science fiction from 2010 is science fact and humans are traveling the stars, what will occupy their science fiction, or will the genre die?  Will science fiction become purely nihilistic or apocalyptic, and nothing else?

Speaking of Rawhide...

Just look at how perfect this shot was set up, with the light just right, to give good shading on the domes and to give the sense of depth of the church's buildings.  Then look at how the angle was set up with the wagon framing the edge full height, then filling the foreground with people, in perspective, getting smaller as your eye moves to the center.  Contrast that perspective with the size of the structures in the background, and that is one heck of a set up of a shot!

Watching old Rawhide episodes.

I love Westerns, and the Asian equivalents, samurai and kung fu shows.  I noticed something however, while watching Rawhide: since the 50's and 60's, broadcast television has been shortening show lengths to add more advertising time.

• (1959) Rawhide - 51:30
  
• (1977) Charlie's Angels - 50:10
  
• (1983) The A-Team - 48:30
  
• (1989) Quantum Leap - 47:30
  
• (1999) Angel - 42:30
  
• (2004) Stargate Atlantis - 43:30
  

I don't know why, but this story is just really sad to me.

I read in the NYT, that 10 medical aid workers were killed in Afghanistan while traveling by foot to a remote area to provide dental, medical and eye care. They were members of a Christian-based group - but that means little in the end as their intent was to help people - guided by one member who had been working in Afghanistan for 40 years and was fluent in the local language and well versed in the local culture.

One of the members of this group, was a 36 year old surgeon, Dr. Karen Woo, from Britain (half Chinese, half British). She kept a personal blog about her experiences, starting from the day she left London, to fly to Dubai, then onto Kabul.

This is probably what makes this particular story so sad (at least for me).

When you read her blog and her description of both the mundane and unique, you end up capturing the essence of her life's spirit, by the way she expressed her thoughts and concerns. And though it was short (from December 2009), it doesn't take long to understand, that she was well balanced between the harsh environment and her feminine side, and that she had this duality in her from a very young age:

"I was also probably the only tom boy who also loved makeup and was very happy climbing trees outside the house in my electric blue miniskirt."

And she did not lose her sense of humor (or maybe humor was required to counter-balance the suffering one saw daily):

"Tragedy strikes as my laptop battery suddenly runs out of juice and I have to leave the comfort of the sofa and run out into the corridor to find a three point plug socket."

And she was more than aware of the cultural differences, as they related to her situation in Afghanistan:

"They say that expat women here are treated like a third race - neither male nor female in their eyes - and I am getting this strongly now. I feel so very alien; in my attitude, in my upbringing."

And the immeasurable pressures on Afghan women:

"It was with great sadness that I sat with a 26 year old who already has five children - we'd run a routine pregnancy test and unfortunately for her hers was positive. She was obviously distressed, crying silently.

But, I think what really is poignant, is when Ms. Woo related her concern of her friend, who had just heard the news of some friends dying in a plane crash:

"Tthe caller a good friend of PM’s based out in Kabul was calling to say that several Brits were on the plane and two were very good friends. At the time PM said “Well, that’s life”, but I could see him gritting his teeth. It was too soon to see the true reaction, he was here with me in London, he felt it but he didn’t feel it. We carried on with what we had to do, he, with a brave face, saying nothing very much, feeling for the wife, the parents of the friends who had died. How can it not affect you?

Who weeps for these people?  Do we?  Are we more concerned about the politics that surround the loss of their lives, as to debate the merits of staying in Afghanistan, or can we stop for a moment and just weep for these people who lived to help others?

I choose the latter; I choose to weep for these people who have just lost their lives trying to help their fellow human beings, and not focus on the politics of war.  I choose to write about Dr. Karen Woo, because she should not be forgotten.

Pulp Fiction scene, remixed with Donald and Mickey voice over.

Thanks to the copyright's latest ruling on the DMCA, we get Donald and Mickey in Pulp Fiction!

Took what I thought would be a moderate bike ride.

Turns out, after plotting the route on Google Maps, that it was 15 miles long (round trip).  I was wondering why I was starving like a bear out of hibernation and thirsty like a desert.

Somewhere out there, someone's laughing at 15 miles.  But I wasn't carrying water with me.  I stopped twice for a sip from the public fountains - in Portland they're called bubblers - and we took a rest near the end, at a Safeway, and I had a crappy lemon parfait thingie, and a calorie-free lemon water thingie with vitamins, which was not too bad at all.  I really wanted to eat protein, but really, there was nothing I could find for a quick bite.

WARNING: RANT

At Safeway, I nearly lost it (anger) because the checkout machine didn't print me a receipt at the self-checkout line, and the attendant was completely, utterly useless.  She told me she couldn't print it out while the guy behind me was using the machine that I had just used.  Then after he was gone, she said that she couldn't print out my receipt because that guy who came after me had completed his transaction and my receipt was no longer available.  WTF!?$@!  Why the hell didn't you say that earlier and try to stop him while he was starting his transaction?  I'm waiting around for the guy to complete his transaction so that she can go to the machine, and she does nothing?

It got me so angry, that I've vowed not to shop there...at least until the end of the year, if not longer.  I'd rather take my bike to two other grocery stores (yay Fred Meyer and Trader Joe's), than to have to deal with the same woman again.

END OF RANT

Oh yeah, and my thighs are tired from 15 miles, but it feels good to exercise like that.  Oddly, it feels about the same amount of energy I would normally expend from an hour's worth of basketball, except of course, no twisted ankles, out-of-breath running, and big boys pushing their ass into you while they try to make their way to the rim.

Must find work... aka life according to Pearls Before Swine.

Hope I don't come across any pictures of cute little earthworms dressed like an ancient warrior.

And for goodness sakes, I hope I don't run into privacy issues while working online.

With any luck, I'll find a job.

If things get bad, I guess I could sell some stuff for cash.

I could always take up writing.

Or write music.

Or go back to school.

Hell, dees depressing; me think me just have beer instead.

Newts, cancer and regeneration.

It seems everything comes with a price attached to it. Take for instance this article in Wired about two genes, that are responsible for inhibiting cancer growth, were turned off. In turning those genes off, researchers were able to regrow muscle tissue in mice. The idea came from comparing genes from newts to those of humans. Specifically, these two genes were turned off in newts, but not in humans, which gave the idea that these anti-cancer genes might be part of the equation in how newts are able to regrow body and organ parts.

Fascinating story, but, if you were to turn off those anti-cancer genes in your body, well, you would likely end up with out of control cancer, which would seem to defeat the purpose of regrowing body parts, don't you think?

Still, it would be...interesting...if we humans, could live longer and have body parts regenerate, though. If it came soon enough - in the next 5 years - I'd be thrilled.

Still no northern lights.

But oh well, I got some more photos at night on the waterfront, of downtown Portland. First, Hawthorne Bridge. f32, 20mm, 1min15sec

Then the heart of downtown. f32, 10mm, 30sec + f4, 10mm, 30sec dual exposure mix

One more, of the same view. f32, 10mm, 30sec

I didn't see no stinkin' northern lights...

But I did take some night shots anyway, and downloaded old pictures from the past 3 months or so.

Hawthorne Bridge - 100th anniversary.

Downtown Portland.

Bamboo on my balcony one fine sunny, blue-sky day.

Yes, there are 3 pots of gold; one each for each rainbow. If you look close enough, you can see parts of 3.

Ah...double rainbow. It was a bonus Spring for rainbows, I think.

So yeah, no northern lights, but at least I finally downloaded some digital photos from my camera. There's supposed to be another opportunity - a better one at that - on Thursday. I guess these things are cumulative, so the one on Tuesday evening will help make Thursday's even better.