How Not To Blog ?

The recent 7.0-7.4 earthquake off of the coast of California demonstrates that the SE Asia region isn't the only one that's active.

Potential earthquakes on the Puente Hills fault beneath the Los Angeles area could result in 3,000 to 18,000 fatalities, 142,000 to 735,000 displaced households, and more than $250 billion in total damages, according to U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) research.

Alas. Someone is taking the bird flu threat seriously enough to start a blog about it.

Too bad we suffer from other, unnamed, psychological ailments that prevent us as a society from thinking critically about H5N1 (and everything else that smells bad, for that matter).

Are people really falling for this hoax?

Transatlantys (or Transatlantis, Transatlantic): A tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean, through which trains would pass, from New York to Paris, they say, at a cost of "several trillions of euros".

Several trillions is right, but who the fuck would be crazy enough to build such a thing? Even at a cost of "only" $200 billion no one would touch such a project after the EuroTunnel experience (a $15 billion undetaking).

It..er... snowed in Somalia recently... on the ground.

Are they even prepared for cold weather?

The first snowfall on this part of the world has claimed one life and caused extensive damage to properties. Puntland, northeastern part of Somalia has never recorded snowfall before last night when snow storms with high winds destroyed homes in Rako town.

The storm left a blanket of snow on the ground, something residents had never seen in their lives before. Aside from this unexplained snowfall on this tropical land, Somalia has experienced very strange weather in the past few months.

Floods killed people and forced rivers to overflow banks in almost all parts of the country. Many cities from Hargeisa in the north to Baladweyn in central were affected badly by heavy rains and floods. Many people were killed and thousands of livestock washed away by this strange weather. The country is still struggling to recover from last month?s killer weather.

With no effective central government, Somalia doesn?t have weather prediction or climate monitoring systems in place. Somalis think this unusual weather and last night?s previously unheard of snowfall are part of the global warming phenomena

More bird flu alerts, "Bird flu virus 'close to pandemic'" and "Flu pandemic 'could hit 20% of world's population'"

Governments' main concern is the scripted "war on terror". And the docile masses care not, so long as they're kept entertained.

Terror alerts are seen as security, whilst any other alert is simply being alarmist.

If you ask me, the world's population is long overdue for a major setback.

It appears that the avian flu virus's genetic signature is mutating in a way that may make it more likely to spread among human populations, reports the Globe and Mail.

The virus is also partially-resistant to oseltamivir, "...the main drug wealthy countries are stockpiling to fight it".

As with any potential for crisis in these sleepy times nobody wants to do anything, until it's too late.

Millions of people dead is fine by me if governments fail to see the urgency of the issue. (Particularly, governments in SE Asia that take a lax attitude. Blame it on their "cafefree" religions.)

Story from Ananova.

Those wacky scientists!

Could memory be just an exchange of information with a simultaneously-occuring, "past" self?

Betsy has a vision of the future but its vastly different "look and feel" isn't too compatible with her current mental architecture. Betsy then forgets her memory of the future with her next breath.

Is her past self is blocked from recalling her present self simply because it can't compute what it sees, just like how she gradually forgets a dream when she awakens? (In porportion to how awake I she is that instant. My dreaming self thinks that it will easily recall every detail of the dream, but my waking self hasn't a clue.)

When we dream, are we actually exchanging information, in real time, with other selves in alternate realities? Is my subconscious brain really that creative when I dream that I can actually read a brilliant short story that I would have never thought of, or compose stunning, original pieces of classical music? Are flashes of insight strokes of mental luck or did we briefly "tune in" outside of ourselves using an innate temporal/dimensional communication protocols in our mind?

It might be that some of us can more intuitively use these protocols than others. They might be highly creative and insightful individuals. Super geniuses. Seers. Or just plain nuts. (How many crazy folks actually do see or hear someone else that we think isn't there? And what the hell are newborn babies looking at, anyway?)

I can't recall the number of times I dreamt of a personal event, remembered it upon waking, only years or months later to experience it in exact detail (no more than a few seconds, at most), thinking "Deja Vu" to myself.

Why, sometimes when I am in dream, does a person calling my name in my "waking" reality become part of my dream before the person says anything at all? And sometimes when I am waking, do I smell my kindergarten classroom or a dish that my mother used to cook as if I was there at that very instant?

Some of the sub-atomic particles which compose us experience time as simultaneous. We call the leaping of electrons through time scientific, but do not extend its possibilities to encompass any personal reality the way the atom itself does.

Quantum physics suggests that time as we sense it does not actually exist and that all of our perceived "time" is actually one simultaneous occurence, but how should that affect our personal relationship with time?

British scientists have developed a process by which the force of gravity can be canceled out, using a device that generates a magnetic field that is stronger at the bottom and weaker at the top.

Here's the article from the New Journal of Physics, with reference to diamagnetic levitation.

Personally, I don't know why so many scientists are busy working against gravity. I thought gravity was our friend.

Perhaps this UFO hovering over a Florida town is one of their experiments. Maybe they can get a clue and cease applying their device to dirt and start working on spaceships.

And there's no mention of this story in the press because... no one is concerned with virii coming out of Asia?

More than 10,000 people, mostly children, suffered from flu symptoms during an outbreak in southern China during the weeklong Labour Day holiday, a Hong Kong newspaper reported Sunday.

[Article]

You're right! The story will most likely die with this post. The blogosphere only wants to run with mild media blackouts relating to their own sorry asses.

Here's a new type of concrete that's supposedly 500 times more flexible and 40 times lighter than regular concrete.

Here's the video. (And if you're on a Mac, you're special.)

One step closer to the bridge to space.

These contradictions aren't exactly reassuring...

ABC news, April 8th, 2005: "Scientists: Yellowstone Eruption Unlikely"

Scientists say the odds of another catastrophic volcanic eruption in Yellowstone within anyone's lifetime are extraordinarily remote, but that's exactly what happens in a made-for-television movie that will air this Sunday.

(I wonder. Would any measure of eruption from the caldera be catastrophic?)

ABC news, May 6th, 2005: "Yellowstone Rated High For Eruption Threat"

The Yellowstone caldera has been classified a high threat for volcanic eruption...

According to the first ever US Geological Survey's review of the nation's volcanoes completed recently, Yellowstone, along with 36 other volcanos, is classified as "high threat". 18 volcanos, including #1 Mt. Kilauea, have been classified as "very high threat".

What they should really be emphasizing is that they don't know if or when there would be an eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera. That would be more reassuring that their contradicting (implied) statements.

The Time Traveler's Convention is hoping "people" from the time travel-enabled "future" show up and say hello.

Just as the organizers believe "...the ancient Greeks would have thought computers were impossible..." we, too, approach alien concepts with the same frame of mind that causes the alien to be so divorced from our experience.

Most Ancient Greeks, then, would not have been able to fathom the concept of computers just as most modern humans would not be able to fathom time travel. I have a hard enough time explaining what the internet is to my own father. Something so pervasive, and his mental architecture still has not changed to embrace that and related concepts (IP, digital networks, etc).

That might be funny considering this is 2005, but do you think humans would have readily grasped the concept of computers, or even the internet, 50 years ago? Some would have, but most would not be able to. Try going into a remote village today and explaining what the internet is. You'd get blank stares, even if you spoke their language.

If the convention organizers are really serious about being able to see or communicate with "visitors from the future", then how about opening up multiple receptive channels?

I've always thought that one day an Internet protocol will be invented that allows communication with other periods of time (provided that time is simultaneous). Publicize the phone number, too, as you can't rule out a phone call. (A phone call from the future may make a phone ring constantly from the moment the number is activated until the time you pick it up.) And why wouldn't a time traveler be able to travel via dreams?

Our concept of time travel via machine is mechanical. I'm sure there are people now trying to "create" a time "machine", as if it were a new type of beverage that is just waiting to be discovered. If only they had the correct 'ingredients', they think.

Time is not a science. It is an experience. Physics, for example, could never allow someone to experience what it's like to play basketball. Science, or quantum mechanics, would probably never be able to 'create' a time machine until it places at its foundation the concept of time as an intimate personal experience. Thereafter, no machines are necessary.

Time is first and foremost experienced personally, in our minds. It could be said that one has a sense of time. Quantum physics show that time does not work independently of our perception of it. It is highly relative and exists only when we perceive it.

So, how does one travel through time? One doesn't.

One re-experiences time. You do this all the time (fun intended) when you slow your experience of time down or speed it up. Sometimes we may smell something or hear something from our 'past' as if it were our present, for example. (To our minds, there is no difference. It reacts the same, because it is the same.) It is not time that is changing, it is you that changes. More specifically, your thoughts and emotions that change.

All of us already have the facilities by which to "time travel". We just haven't yet learned how to consciously alter our sense of time. We have learned how to control our breathing, though we don't need full awareness of the process, but we haven't learned how to control our experience of time, though we carry our consciousness "forward" through it at every new moment.

The convention would be much better off, I think, creating a blog and asking each interested party to consciously alter their sense of time and then relay their experiences. To start.

If their statement, "we of the present (2005) don't have time travel", were true they would not be able to hold the convention. They would be stuck in time.

Using the internet would not be very appealing to Archimedes. We, now, would not be excited by the idea of using our minds to time travel more than we already (subconsciously) do.

So many of us, looking for an excuse to get together and be social.

An early May snowstorm left this Panhandle city with nearly 5 inches of the fluffy stuff Monday...

5 freaking inches? In the panhandle? In May?

Not an entirely rare occurence, taken by itself. But the weather has been fairly awkward nationwide.

It's freaking cold for May.

As noted in HNTB's previous article, Asteroidal coincidence - Scientists soften the warning system, just as the number of meteors hitting and lighting up the earth is increasing, scientists want to dampen reports.

A brilliant green fireball streaked over New England on Sunday, April 24th, at about 8 pm EDT. What was it? Probably a small asteroid, sofa-sized or so, breaking up in Earth's atmosphere. Such space rocks hit Earth frequently, but they are seldom observed because they appear, e.g., during the day or over uninhabited ocean. This one disintegrated over a densely populated area during the dark of evening while many people were awake to see it.

Contrary to some reports, the fireball was not a Lyrid meteor.

Sooner or later, someone will come out with a grand unified field theory to explain all of this. It'll be the least-read piece of shit you ever didn't see.

Following up their Supervolcano special, BBC is now showing "End Day" appearing on April 30.

Death by... segments include Mega-Tsunami, Comet Attack, Killer Virus, Supervolcano, End of the Universe.

The most likely of the bunch are a comet (direct hit not necessary to do damage or likely anytime soon), killer virus (how many are out there these days?), or supervolcano (increased earthquake activity around Indonesia and the Atlantic rift could awaken any one of the supervolcanos there, such as Mt. Toba / Lake Toba.)

If we're truly unfortunate, we'll suffer most at the hands of a closeted homosexual crackhead, megalomaniac madman-in-charge who pretends to care about his bible. Or someone like him. That's why I'm rooting for the supervolcano.

Oh, my! It's the fucking matrix. Games are teaching us that there is no spoon.

But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can't control their narratives in any fashion?you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. For those of us raised on interactive narratives, this property may seem astonishing. Why would anyone want to embark on an adventure utterly choreographed by another person? But today?s generation embarks on such adventures millions of times a day. This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they?re powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, participatory process; it?s a submissive one. The book readers of the younger generation are learning to 'follow the plot' instead of learning to lead."

I'm convinced that my theory on why Google won't survive can also be applied to certain segments of society. Particularly, in explaining how the hell the lamest songs reach the top of the charts.

Unlike a lot of other people that claim they "like everything" when it comes to music, I actually mean it. I like jazz, blues, R&B, classical, a little reggae, rap, hip hop, some country, metal, a little punk, Latin, French, Polish, and Chinese music. I've got likes and dislikes in each. I think I know a good song when I hear it. Not much has changed in songs popular to each popular genre over the past few years. The best-selling pop songs today, for example, sound pretty much the same as did the popular songs from a few years ago.

There is, perhaps, no other explanation than that the songs touch a massive number of listeners at the right emotional angle. The songs elicit a useful emotional response for many/most listeners.

The same kinds of songs reach the top of the charts not because they're great, truly wonderful songs or so different than any other previous song. I think they are so popular because there are many people that are addicted to certain emotions that those songs are able to satisfy. The songs enduce the emotional response that a great number of listeners are actually addicted to. Thus, you will hear the same kind of song over and over again. The reason that the songs are so lame is because you've heard its like thousands of times before.

(If you're puzzled as to whether or not people can be addicted to certain emotional states, see the movie What the Bleep Do We Know?, or just pay closer attention to your own emotions once you have reasonably expanded your definition of what emotions are to include just about every variety of thought that you can imagine, to determine for yourself if I'm just talking out of my ass.)

The 9.0 Sumatran earthquake on December 26, 2004, was so massive it may have changed the Earth's gravitational field.

Seismological data suggests that, during the event, the seafloor on either side of a fault line running for 1000 km along the bottom of the Indian Ocean dramatically changed height, producing a ledge, 6 metres high. Such a large-scale movement will change the gravitational field of the Earth.

Strangely enough, the year before there was another big earthquake in Iran in which ~30,000 people killed and 30,000 injured. This earthquake occured exactly one year earlier, within the hour.

2003 December 26 01:56:52 UTC
2004 December 26 00:58:53 UTC

Unfortunately, the number of quakes in 2004 is nearly double the number of quakes in 1990.

No matter what these people try to claim, Chinese men have small penises and will continue to have small penises until the end of time.

"Our conclusion is that Hong Kong people are no smaller than Western men, where their penises are concerned," said Chan Lung-wai, director of the Urology Center at the Union Hospital, who headed the study.

(Why they compared the penis size of "Hong Kong people" with Western men is beyond me. I guess there are a lot of transvestites in Asia.)

Did the urologists really obsess over the size of their penii enough to perform a study? There must be so many Chinese doctors nowdays that they don't have much to do.

The average length of their flaccid penises was 3.33 inches, which compared favorably with similar studies on other men overseas.

Germans have average lengths of about 3.4 inches, Israelis 3.27 inches, Turks 3.07 inches and Filippinos 2.89 inches. Italians were the longest at 3.54 inches, and Americans averaged 3.46 inches.

Well.. the thing is that Chinese penises don't really increase in size when they're erect. But who the fuck cares? The size of your penis matters only when you're buying condoms or if the person you're having sex with laughs at your little soldier and then you need to go out and buy some yohimbe bark.

The only thing they're doing is reinforcing the old wives' tale that bigger penises are better.

Interesting article about how many leaders seem to exhibit more personality disorders than criminally-minded psychopaths.

Other studies have revealed, rather surprisingly, that mental ability does not in itself result in success. It has to be combined with exceptional social skills and of these, chameleonism and machiavellianism - common in many PDs - are important. Since such people earn more and go higher than ones without these traits, it supports the idea that many leaders have PDs. But perhaps the most persuasive indirect evidence concerns leaders' deeper motivations.

Shipments of dealy virii via FedEx have been occuring for years. I personally know a FedEx packaging supervisor who claims that all kinds of improperly-packaged and dangerous shipments are sent out through the carrier. Not only that, the employees open many such shipments without proper protection.

Here's an article, by the Associated Press, about the safety of such shipments.

Every day, deadly germs are shipped across the country and around the globe, right alongside the books, gourmet foods and birthday presents sent through FedEx Corp. and similar couriers.

Often their journeys can be circuitous, too.

Follow, for instance, a single vial of the potentially deadly flu virus causing a world health scare because it was included in test kits sent to more than 4,000 laboratories. It was grown in a Virginia lab, spent time in a Cincinnati freezer and passed through a small medical company on the Mexican border before it finally arrived at a Milwaukee lab.

The article continues...

Last month, a FedEx truck carrying five boxes of samples of anthrax, flu, tuberculosis, salmonella and E. coli collided with a car in Winnipeg. None of the dangerous germs escaped.

In 2003, a FedEx package containing West Nile virus exploded at the Port Columbus International Airport in Ohio. Firefighters suspected dry ice caused it to burst open. No one was injured, but 50 workers had to be evacuated.

...

As it turns out, most of the Cincinnati company's test kits with the 1957 bug were ultimately assembled and shipped via FedEx and DHL by Proficiency Testing Service, a tiny Meridian subcontractor in Brownsville, Texas.

Further, the article states "FedEx said its employees and customers are "rigorously trained" to handle dangerous biological material and federal laws and company policy mandate packages be clearly labeled and properly packaged."

That's simply not true.

These shipments were sent over 5 months ago. A couple of countries (no telling how many shipments) say they did not receive the shipments. Don't FedEx and DHL offer international tracking? Wouldn't they be able to track a package of peanuts sent from the US to Lebanon or Mexico over five months ago?

Good timing! Just as the number of meteorites hitting the earth and near-earth asteroids are increasing dramatically, scientists soften the asteroid risk-assessment system so that possible near-earth rendevous or collisions won't sound so bad.

If you believe the India Daily, "...some of these asteroids are artificially made invisible by the extraterrestrials and is used as their UFO bases for intergalactic travel." (That passes for news?)

Is the debate on whether or not requiring a license to be a parent still closed? Why would The Asshole Family need a license or permit for fishing, driving, bicycling, camping, boating, hunting, but be able to have as many damn kids (most likely also to be either assholes or dysfunctional) as they want? If a parent is a child abuser, molester, drug addict, etc., they can bear as many children as their houses can hold, and even stick some in a family member's house. Maybe one day the kid(s) will be taken from their home by DCFS if the parents are deemed to be unfit, and put into some other home where their chances of being directly or indirectly abused is also high. But why allow unfit parents to make more humans in the first place?

Selective breeding? Yes. Is it right? Probably not in that context. But why close the discussion before it even opens?

This is a stupid idea. It's stupid because it would never fly in today's society. I bring this up because it is interesting to think about other programs, harmless and for the better, that also would not fly in today's society. And harmful ones that do fly.

Two examples would be a class on Friendship and a class on Social Skills. They are what you think they are and would be held in school. Not "taught" in the traditional sense, but explored. A school would most assuredly resurrect its dead sexual education class or fine arts program sooner than it would even think about a class on how to work within society. Are not people skills much more important than spending 2 weeks discussing who Magellan was and where he went?

A lot of people in this country seem to wonder why anti-social behavoir is on the uptick. But where do children learn behavior that's beneficial to society? Why would Sally have a grasp of algebraic concepts but no idea why being honest to others is a good idea? (No, she isn't learning it at home, which is the usual answer.)

We live in a society that is already considering selective genetic breeding of humans. Some laboratories are actively pursuing it as a business model. Science gets away with a lot because most people are too stupid to grasp the science behind the processes and thus don't consider it to be a part of their lives until it's staring them in the face. Talk about it non-scientifically and people get all emotional and don't want the discussion to continue. That's why there's no vote (or "pubilc permission") on scientific and technological advances or research. It just happens to society, rather than society being a part of the evolving discussion. The effect is that our technology is more mature than we are.

Kids in the future, rich and poor alike, may be born genetically perfect but still have fucked-up parents. You can't change how a person thinks no matter how many reworks of your genetic algorithm you process. Even then, the above two discussions will probably be closed while we're busy breeding "perfect" humans.

Interesting article in The Independent about how our Earth system is changing.

One thing I'm tired of hearing of is how this-or-that human activity is causing Earth to change in ways that aren't beneficial to us or our environs.

There are bigger seasons that that which farmer Joe knows the names for.

Mother Earth would change regardless of whether or not we're here.

Humans are naturally egotistical. Even the 'bad' things we manage to attribute to ourselves.