Check out http://votekishi.tumblr.com/ . Everyone knows that social media was how William Henry Harrison won the Oval Office. If you’d like to post to it, leave a comment and I may give you the super-secret email.
“ripped through a concrete wall”
Wow. Can you imagine a cannonball going through your house with that much force? It had already gone through concrete by the time it punctured a bedroom wall.
Mythbusters has been put on hold while authorities investigate their safety procedures.
I love the show. I hope it stays on the air. I am also very glad that no one got hurt. I’m sure the show will reimburse the families for the damaged home and minivan.
That they’ve gone this long on the air with no deaths and only mild-ish injuries to the staff speaks well of their safety precautions. Either that or God is a fan of Adam and Jamie, despite what they say about Him.
My brother and his wife recently went to California and took this footage:
When trying to make contact, the paranormal entity re-transmitted Earth’s SETI message back to my brother’s car (like talking to whales). Upon further analysis of the soundwaves, it appears the alien culture was founded on Jimmy Z technology.
Breaking news: authorities have identified pop sensation Justin Bieber as none other than Bizarro Peter Pan. He was caught on film flying into teenage girls’ rooms and giving them awkward midair piggy-back rides:
Unrelated:
My youngest and I have watched quite a bit of Wiggles this week. Six Months in a Leaky Boat always struck me as melancholy. Listening closer, the lyrics don’t match the upbeat feel. “The tyranny of distance” “I’m sailing to be free” “Lass, forget and forgive”:
This joke, told to the Dalai Lama, rivals my father-in-law’s gorilla nose joke.
Have you seen the article about Nazi scientists training dogs to talk? One apparently said, “Hungry! Give me cakes!” It’s sad that, when I get home from work, I’m on the same mental level as a Nazi dog.
Don’t be surprised when we start seeing the Gorilla Grodd threat make it to the front page like it deserves. We can’t rest in our victory over Red Skull. It’s not like we have an unending supply of heroes to thaw out and guys in red spandex have as many identity crises as guys with green rings.
Even the pigs and birds aren’t that angry.
Did you see the accusations from Google that Microsoft is using data from Google searches to improve Bing? David Pogue has a great article about the Bing Sting.
Basically, when users type a Google search into Internet Explorer, Explorer records which ones you click on (if you have opted-in to send your data for higher quality products) and feeds that data to Bing to improve results. Google employees spent two weeks typing in nonsense words like “hiybbprqag” and deliberately clicking on results inside Explorer to skew Bing’s results. Here’s the defense from Microsoft where they explain clickstream stuff.
What I don’t get is why Google doesn’t just yell, “Gaqrpbbyih” and send the troublesome imp back to the 5th dimension.
All I know is that the Babelfish has kept AltaVista going. It’s still there! Oh, nostalgia. You remember web searches before Google?
The above photo is from a manual created by Egyptian protesters to promote unity. In the manual, they detail proper ways to shield yourself using home implements and where to aim spray paint at riot police. Notice how “positive language” is part of the battle plan.
We’ll come back to that.
Also in the news this week was Casas por Cristo in regards to the violence in the Ciudad Juarez area. The number of volunteers has dropped off in recent years since the U.S. media has picked up the story about drug-related murders.
General readership, I hate to break it to you, but Juarez was violent before we ever heard of it (technically, even back to 1911-1912 and Pancho Villa’s gangs, but that’s for another book, so to speak).
Part of what makes Juarez scary is that some of the police have sided with the cartels for their own advancement or protection. We’ve been traveling there for eight years and even in 2004, there was the drug violence. But the United States is not spared violence. The same weekend we went to Juarez this year, a police officer was shot and killed in New Jersey. This stuff happens in the fallen world we live in.
So, imagine in Juarez a people who don’t know if they can call the police and trust that they will be safe.
Now imagine those people living only in structures made from wooden pallets and cinder blocks.
There’s a need. Oh, I assume people wouldn’t dispute that. I think the issue is who God uses to fulfill that need and how to meet the need.
I’m reading the book Radical
One section that I just read was David Platt guest-speaking about missions at a church. When he finished and stepped from the podium, the pastor said:
…brother, we promise that we will continue to send you a check so we don’t have to go there ourselves…I remember a time at my last congregation when a missionary from Japan came to speak…I told that church that if they didn’t give financial support to this missionary, I was going to pray that God would send their kids to Japan to serve with that missionary.
I don’t know what offends me more, that the pastor used serving internationally as a threat or that he held up his prayers as more important than his congregation’s. (What’s to stop the congregation from praying against what the pastor is praying? That’s when God facepalms at our stupidity.)
Now, I’m not saying that:
1. The role of sender is not important
2. I am in any way awesomer than anyone else for having gone to Juarez
What I don’t want to see, though, is someone who would have gone but chose not to based on fear. Even our team had people drop as the travel date approached, so I’m not judging people’s convictions.
What I have noticed, though, is the best way to fight:
1. Love God
2. Love neighbor
It’s a true positive message, with power and not just positive thinking. If we have people fighting in this way (and not in the “let’s protest funerals/ComicCon” way) on both sides of the border, I believe that fear will not be given the leniency we’ve allowed it.
I’d like to rent Kennedy Space Center to work on my Firefly transport. NASA hasn’t set a price yet, but it can’t be that much, right?
Very few news sources will tell you that the people of Sudan voted this week to split the country in two. It’s big news that will hopefully lead to peace after many years of genocide. A vocal minority in North Sudan have threatened to step up a cleansing, but hopefully that doesn’t happen. Why is it always countries in the north, like North Korea, the North Vietnamese, and North Carolina?
What our news sources are going to focus on is how Marvel is designing mascots for the NHL (like they did for the NBA).
Looking at the photo, doesn’t it seem like Cobra Commander plays for Montreal?
Doin’ research for the last section of my book (the end is near!) and I came across this interesting chunk from a Roosevelt speech:
…and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers, to the republican, the democratic, and the socialist parties that they cannot month in and month out and year in and year out make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that brutal violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind – they cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.
I’m glad that 100 years later we have learned to remove bitter and untruthful assaults from our politics…
WikiLeaks has started releasing copies of communications from U.S. embassies to other parts of the world. Here’s an interesting one, which is unclassified (versus Black Ops) from Tehran, Iran, in 1972. Notice Iran’s description of us as a “most dependable friend”. The theme song from Veronica Mars (We Used to be Friends) is playing through my head.
R 250930Z FEB 72
FM AMEMBASSY TEHRAN
TO SECSTATE WASHDC 7561
INFO SECDEF
EUCOM
CSAFUNCLASSIFIED SECTION 01 OF 01 TEHRAN 1164
E.O. 12958: AS AMENDED; DECLASSIFIED JUNE 21, 2006
TAGS: MASS MARR IR
SUBJECT: ACCELERATION OF F-4ES FOR IRANREF: TEHRAN 1091: TEHRAN 263: MOSCOW 1603
COUNTRY TEAM. MESSAGE
BEGIN SUMMARY
GENERAL AZIMI, MINISTER OF WAR, ON INSTRUCTION OF SHAH ASKS THAT WE TAKE ANOTHER HARD LOOK AT F-4E PRODUCTION LINE IN ORDER ACCELERATE DELIVERY OF ONE SQUADRON OF F-4ES TO IRAN IN 1972. REQUEST REFLECTS SHAH’S INCREASING CONCERN OVER SOVIET AMBITIONS IN AREA AND ESPECIALLY THREAT SHAH SEES TO IRAN OF FRIENDSHIP TREATY UNDER CONSIDERATION BY IRAQ AND USSR. SHAH RECOGNIZES PROBLEMS THIS POSES FOR US BUT IS TURNING TO USG WITH THIS REQUEST TO GIVE IRAN HIGHER PRIORITY ON FA-4E PRODUCTION SCHEDULE BECAUSE HE REGARDS US AS MOST DEPENDABLE FRIEND. END SUMMARY
ACTION REQUESTED: COUNTRY TEAM RECOMMENDS US REVIEW F-4E PRODUCTION LINE AND RESPOND FAVORABLY TO SHAH’S REQUEST FOR 16 F-4ES IN 1972 FROM WHATEVER SOURCE MAY BE AVAILABLE.
This is an F-4E:
What’s your take on the situation? Should a preschooler be allowed to be sued for negligence based on a bike accident (with training wheels, no less)? Does it depend on who they hit?
The suit that Justice Wooten allowed to proceed claims that in April 2009, Juliet Breitman and Jacob Kohn, who were both 4, were racing their bicycles, under the supervision of their mothers, Dana Breitman and Rachel Kohn, on the sidewalk of a building on East 52nd Street. At some point in the race, they struck an 87-year-old woman named Claire Menagh, who was walking in front of the building and, according to the complaint, was “seriously and severely injured,” suffering a hip fracture that required surgery. She died three months later.
Her estate sued the children and their mothers, claiming they had acted negligently during the accident.
I know that in some parts of history, the extremism was sorta understandable (notice the half-committed sorta). If you were a Tory, you’d want to stay away from a Whig. Some kind of revolution might break out. If you were from a Northern state in the 1800s, you might want Federal ideals trumping states’ rights.
Does this have to be how politics is played? I feel like we’re in one of those places in current history where once again we’re right and the other side is woefully wrong. I’m wondering if some of my older readers (or Political Science junkies) can remember a time when it wasn’t this way, when one side listened to the other side and vice versa.
Right now (past the 100 pages mark!) I can tell you that Taft is accusing Roosevelt of being too progressive and dividing the party. Roosevelt’s about to go all Ross Perot on the situation.
The moon
Beacon for lovers. Setting for weird Georges Melies films. Reminder of Chairface Chippendale’s far-reaching criminal influence.
In 1962, JFK said that we choose the moon (remember the cool site his library set up?):
George W. Bush had said that he wanted NASA to focus on getting us back to the moon. While a lunar base would be cool, especially as a construction yard (although would we want more space junk?), it’s a place we’ve already been.
Obama spent Columbus Day signing his space vision into law. We’re going to have a manned mission to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in 2030. Those dates don’t feel like they have the same sense of urgency as the Space Race. We’re not afraid of a Sputnik fleet brainwashing our teenage girls, only to be saved by rock and roll, anytime soon.
What works is providing a challenge for NASA. Now they have to hit a moving target.
What? You say the moon orbits around the Earth, which in turn orbits around the sun? Don’t tell the Internet commenters that. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that trolls hate science.
“Don’t burden me with your Kepler ellipticals, boy!”
The real benefit of the program is that there are some vocal experts on landing on asteroids. Steve Buscemi is already putting together his Aerosmith mix tape in anticipation of being selected. The asteroid program is said to rely heavily on commercial help. Richard Branson is wringing his hands in Burnsian delight.
Which one’s the crazy one?
If you want to fund the program, sell advertising space on the module. Send the GEICO gecko up. Better yet, to gather the most news time, put Kim Kardashian up there with The Situation, Nancy Pelosi, and Glenn Beck.
The only danger would be if they could work out their differences, populating an asteroid with their own twisted culture. Then we would definitely need the nuclear option.
The big question is what will happen when the next administration takes over. Will the next president scrap Obama’s plan like he did to Bush’s Constellation project?
The funny thing is that I’m so immersed in my alternate history right now (27,000 words!), I keep thinking Woodrow Wilson wins the next election.
And now back to my alternate history.
“How was work today, honey?”
“Oh, same old, same old. Hey. You may seem some videos online…”
“This is quite obviously not in order.”
I love hearing the calm voice trying to remind people of order.
Police at the Mexico City airport, who detained a man with a suspicious bulge under his T-shirt Monday, found 18 small endangered monkeys concealed under his clothing in a girdle.
Roberto Cabrera, 38, traveled to Mexico City aboard a commercial flight Friday from Lima, Peru, and was searched when he began behaving “nervously,” police said in a statement.
Behaving nervously? The guy had 18 monkeys stuffed in his clothes -did none make a sound?
Last year, an American woman was convicted for smuggling a rhesus macaque from Thailand to Spokane, Washington.
Gypsy Lawson, 28, pretended to be pregnant in order to smuggle the monkey into the U.S. She received 60 days in jail.
Manute Bol died today. He was 47. He had kidney trouble and developed a skin condition called Stevens-Johnson syndrome (very nasty disease – you don’t want pictures) that irritated his mouth. He went 11 days without food because of the disease’s complications.
Manute played from 1985-1995 and helped start the Ring True Foundation, although you might not hear the specific purpose of the organization in the news this week. Ring True raises money and awareness for Christian persecution and death in the Sudan. From 1999-2001 his travel was restricted by the Sudanese government in suspicion of supporting the Dinka rebels (his dad is a Dinka tribal leader). He wasn’t allowed to leave the country. The government wanted a bribe. He sold his furniture and had friends in Connecticut send additional funds. The U.S. government wouldn’t let him bring his family with him until he filed for refugee status. He did and they were able to make it back to the U.S.
Manute wasn’t a perfect guy, by any means, but he is someone to read more about. In YMCA basketball my teammates used to call me ‘Manute’. (My dad thought they were chanting ‘Lute’ because they were huge U of A fans.)