"Al Gore Screens His Global Warming Message"

Al Gore was on NPR's Fresh Air yesterday(?), interviewed by Terry Gross. I listened to it as a podcast on my way home. It is quite a long interview, and the best interview I have heard with Al Gore. Get it on iTunes, or go to the website to listen to the realmedia or windowsmedia audio.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5439305

While we are speaking of Al Gore, here is the trailer for An Inconvenient Truth:

By the way, I don't agree with the sensational shocking, terrifying, marketing for this. It sounds even more affected next to the faux blasé word "Inconvenient". Don't get me wrong. Global warming is very likely to be true, and even if we aren't sure of it, we should err on the side of not roasting the planet. Ice ages have extended ice caps nearly to the equator in the past. At other times, Antarctica was ice-free. Only 10,000 or 15,000 years ago, sea levels were over a hundred meters lower, and most of what is now land was ice. Industrial-scale activities are having industrial-scale changes, changing global climate. Events like Katrina may happen every few years, drowning cities just as 20^th century cities were once prone to burn down. (Tokyo burned to the ground in 1923 and again in 1945, twice in a century.) We should not have so much trouble getting our heads around the reality of climate change. (The IPCC says the polar melting will span the next 1000 years, so there will be some time to move house.) However, I think the emotional and apocalyptic language of this trailer adds emotional distance, makes it more unreal, harder for people to accept. I also disagree with the arrogance in the idea that we will kill Gaia. Every species that has lived on the Earth has eventually died. Gaia is a tough chick, and will shake us off long before her own wounds are fatal. I believe Gaia is kind enough to give us a good kick in the teeth first, maybe knock us down for a century or two while she sops up some of that CO₂. That doesn't change the need to make our own adjustments, like Alan Greenspan soft-landing the economy, in order to avoid Mother Nature adjusting us.
"Aw, c'mon Mom, give Fire Monkey another chance!"

Photo hosting notes

I thought this was a good explanation of the differences between Flickr, Photobucket, Zooomr, YouTube, and others.
http://www.simran.in/blog/2006/05/dont-fear-the-bucket/
http://www.simran.in/blog/admin/dont-fear-the-bucket
When I started posting photos online in 2000, I used iTools, a free 50 MB website offered by Apple. It has evolved into something much better called .mac now, but they charge for it. With all the free photo hosting sites online, it's probably not worth it, if I could migrate all the photos and pages on the site elsewhere. I am keeping .mac until I can move it, but who knows if the site I move it to would close down soon? I also think of it as a hundred buck donation to Apple to help keep Bill Gates under control, but with the iPod and Pixar, Steve Jobs probably doesn't need the shot in the arm.

By the way, I think that the iPod will eventually go the way of the calculator or digital watch; become a cheap piece of circuitry and flash memory that you get in a cereal box.

H.O.M.E.land Security

An image I made from expropriated (huh?) corporate logos in September 2004! How times have changed... not!
I had heard that they were looking for a design for the ministry logo.
H is for Halliburton,
O is for Oil (OPEC-mObil-exxOn-cOnOcO),
M is for McDonald's Happy Meals Ready to Eat (MHMRE) or McDonnell-Douglas or your McJob,
E is from Enron,
land is the happiest crappiest kingdom on the earth, (under King George II) now with branches in Anaheim, Orlando, Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong, Guantanamo Bay, and other secure underground locations where our Pirates of the Caribbean agents will Haunt your Mansion.

Time Out for Installing Clocks

I saw some javascript clocks and couldn't resist adding one to this site. But none of them were quite exactly right, or I am just indecisive, so I put three here to try them out. The digital one is best, I suppose. Too bad it doesn't tell the date. (I am usually living in someone's tomorrow.) The analog one has the date, but is hard to tell what the actual time is. Also, you can't read the date unless you increase the size of the clock to the point where it won't fit the sidebar unless I resize it. Finally, there are clocks that count down or up from a certain date, and I need one of those to tell me what day this is in this lifetime. I hope you can actually see these and not just a messy javascript error writing nasty text all over your page or giving you three dialog boxes you have to dismiss.

Note that I am currently in my 16,000s.

Does that sound like I should probably change the oil and my belts pretty soon?

Hive

Tsevis Flickr page

This is one of the more interesting Flickr pages I have found.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tsevis/ 

No Sleeping At Your Desk

Kindly remain conscious while seated at a desk in this area.

CELL by Stephen King

Eighteen chapters of "Book Extracts" from retired (?) writer Stephen King's new novel CELL are available from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8802-2055797,00.html  through to what looks like a conclusion at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8802-2055520,00.html

If you are like me, and a fan of short short stories, you will just read the first two chapters to pick up the premise and let your imagination do the rest. (Writing it as a short story is not the way to sell novels and make movies, however.)

The idea is that the global cellphone network is hacked, and used to send a signal that is formatted, not to wreck the phone, but to trigger a psychosis in the brain of the person who picks up the phone. This psychosis disables the higher functions of the brain. In other words, it's the first cellphone/zombie movie. This horror/signal meme may remind you a little of the Ring, but it may be a little more scientifically plausible, except that the victims also levitate, or so I read in the Amazon reviews.

Update: I stayed up an extra hour to read it. It doesn't seem to be the end after those 18 chapters (or book excerpts or whatever they are), since they are just trying to leave Boston. I didn't see anything about levitation, either, so this comment on Amazon must be from later or a different version.

A. Raymond
Some of the weirdness is just weird but with a stretch could "possibly" happen but the levitating???? I don't get it ....
Mar 24, 2006 1:43 PM PST

Charles B. Hinton
They clearly explained it within the book. Their brains were being rewired so they discovered new areas that we havent unlocked yet.

An illustrated version of the first 2 chapters is at http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,1150884-2-6_5||1151082|1_,00.html

More Journalists Being Spied On?

I guess it is not enough to control the Presidency, Senate, House, Supreme Court, and governmental agencies. The neoNixonian Bushies want to control the media, too. That's why spying on journalists seems to be another black op (or whatever they call it), according to Ted Rall.  At least one of these links is sure to work. You may want to browse Smirking Chimp or Common Dreams while you are there. :-)

LITTLE BROTHER WILL BE WATCHING YOU   
Who Will Inherit the NSA? www.uexpress.com/printable/print.html?uc_full_date=20060516&uc_comic=ru

Who Will Inherit the NSA? by Ted Rall.
www.commondreams.org/views06/0517-21.htm

The Smirking Chimp - Ted Rall: 'Little Brother will be watching you'
Ted Rall, Yahoo NEW YORK--
www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=26125&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Crisscross - Commentary - Little brother will be watching you
by TED RALL May 18, 2006.
www.crisscross.com/us/comment/389

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Chat Lounge Rapa Nui, Easter Island Poster

Unbelievable.

I have had this blog here since April 21, 2004! I guess I made it and forgot it was here for 2 years. I will try to post more often in the future.

I WANT TO BELIEVE...