Barcelona (David Arthur Brown of Brazzaville)

An Edubuntu Desktop Picture

It's not the right proportion for my screen, but it looks OK centered as opposed to zoomed. The background image is from the USGS and would be regarded as in the public domain by US taxpayers at the very least.

This photo makes a pretty good desktop, for me anyway, since it's by me from my neighborhood. It's not much different from a gradient.


In a similar vein, the cat that sat on Makuhari. These two cats are both strays/runaways/throwaways that live in the tetrablock beach near crematorium cove and the insane asylum. These are dedicated to the Year of the Tiger --almost, but not quite, a lucid lynx.

RSS Screensaver Problem: OpenGL+NVIDIA+Compiz = X crash

Bad day simulation becomes real

There is a well-documented problem of using OpenGL with an NVIDIA video card in combination with Compiz. This is basically what I had been finding with the Mac Mini. I had a bad crash. Attempting to restart produced an "error: no such device. press any key to continue" but recovery worked. Also, I timed my slow motion bootup and it is 5 minutes 5 seconds from rEFIt to GRUB, then another minute or two to login and then the desktop.

Possible solutions are to turn off Compiz effects completely, turn off the screensaver, uninstall the OpenGL, stop using OpenGL (3D) screensavers, or stop using a random list of screensavers. I am changing back to Gnome screensaver, and setting the screensaver to Phosphor with an RSS news feed from Yahoo News, and hoping that will be stable and yet functional and informative.

New Install and RSS xScreensaver update

I had to re-install Edubuntu to an external hard drive as the space in the 22GB "Boot Camp" partition quickly ran out after a few podcasts and photos were added. There was some progress as I hadn't been able to get the external USB HD to boot up previously. Most things are working the same or better, but some things are worse. Booting up from rEFIt to GRUB 2 (1.97) takes several minutes. I won't reboot very much, but something is dodgy. It must be 7-10 minutes to boot up, but I haven't timed it. At least GRUB 2 works. If there is anything Linux needs, it is a reliable boot loader that doesn't bork the systems. Speaking of Linux faults, I'm not yet satisfied with the music player, Rhythmbox. It sometimes fails to sync with the iPod, fails to download podcasts and fails to play files. I haven't found a better replacement yet. Everything else in Linux works equally well, except for sound. Work on a kinder, gentler bootloader, and sound.

But because I couldn't get Linux to boot on one day, I spent an entire day in the freedom-hating AAPL operating system. You know, the one they call MacAAPLx10.6SnowLeopard or something. After 2 months, I had forgotten how to do things and found the global menu and window buttons in the upperleft extremely annoying. Let me say a few good things about the corporate profit-centered user-abuser Mac OS: it looks good and boots nicely most of the time, it generally handles sound, music, and music players well, and, best of all, Firefox 3.6 is available! The newest Firefox looks good with the Personas personalization layer enabling you to remove that tired brushed metal skin AAPL inc has made you look at for the whole millenium or the pale Firefox look.

Instead of randomly modding the OS and forgetting what I've done, I'm carefully logging what I've done in a tableside notebook. A few things inexplicably work better now. Compiz Fusion advanced effects are not freezing the xscreensaver so are turned on and make switching apps and windows mucho conveniento. In the xscreensaver, I added a few modules to the RSS news screensaver function: Fontglide, which creates a crazed robotic news feed in various fonts gliding onto the screen and arranging themselves into words, and phosphor, which looks like someone is typing the news feed into an old green phosphor-type of monitor circa 1970 (or ????). There is another xscreensaver module called XanalogTV which simulates a broken old analog TV switching channels and simulating the rollover, static, discoloration, and other nostalgic analog TV effects. It uses the picture folder you specify (as I explained before) so choose carefully your target folder. It's eerie to see the still photos as though they were TV channels where nothing is happening. It reminded me of The Ring, actually.

There is another module which is very creative and Dada-esque but not safe for work or for family. That is the webcollage module. This one randomly grabs pictures off the web and collages them onto screen with the transparency you specify.

As always, you'll have to remove (Gnome)"Screensaver" from your Startup Applications in System--Preferences and add "xscreensaver" instead.

BTW, Jamie Zawinski is responsible for xscreensaver and many of the modules.

Character Palette Panel Applet and Ringing Home

Danke schön, Señor Gagné. That answers a lot of questions for me. The Character Palette panel applet (say fast 5 times) is now living in my top panel.

On a completely unrelated note, as Monsieur Gagné has noted on his blog, you don't need to harbor any negative thoughts about the moon breaking up or our planet being eventually ringed with space junk. It turns out it's awfully pretty that way. Puts the moon to shame. The visual persuasion is below.

Civilization and its Discontents

I was addicted to Civ 1 but successfully overcame the addiction in the early days, knowing it was as dangerous as crack or meth. I think it was on Mac OS 8 or 9. Oddly, I continued to buy multiple editions of Civilization--but resisted playing the game. The software is still in the boxes, unopened, for OS platforms (10.2?, 10.3?) becoming obsolete now. None of that matters now, because on the Linux platform, there is FreeCiv. That's like giving free drugs to the recovering addict. Worse still, Freeciv.net puts it out on the internet. As great and dangerous as that is, an antidote exists. The solution is as simple as the problem. Should you ever find yourself not sleeping for days on end due to ongoing disputes with Mao Zedong, Lincoln, Caesar, and/or Catherine the Great, Civilization Anonymous, or CivAnon, offers peer support and explains the dangers. If you experience any of the symptoms, see how other addicts have clawed their way back to a partial, tentative recovery.

Ubuntu User

Ubuntu User Issue #1 is available as a free download. It's 42 MB of high-quality, useful articles covering nearly 100 pages. I've already learned some new things about OpenOffice extensions and using Freemind. The only bad point is that this issue is approaching one year old, so some details about Jaunty Jackalope may be starting to go out of date in the era of Karmic Koala and with Lucid Lynx coming. If you see a newsstand issue of this, it looks like a good buy. It might be worth subscribing.

Up the wrong tree?

BowLingual for the iPhone will have twitter support so that your dog's thoughts can be effortlessly tweeted.

Via Asiajin via Tokyo Mango

WTF'in' around with QR-codes

I've been listening to WTF with Marc Maron, as mentioned in a previous post. I've gone through most of the backlog and have to conclude that this is a better situation for Marc in that he is producing better, more timeless and higher-quality comedy-centered content now.

I tried to integrate a QR code into the (existing WTF) show graphic, so I could learn how to use the G.I.M.P. a little more, and maybe even contribute something back to Marc.

I used the Google chart API to make a URL like this or this with error correction level H (allowing 30% of the code to go missing).
My first idea was to go with Marc's face. Hmmm. It's not great but I suppose his face would be enough to remind people what the link was for.
My second attempt was the weirdo-at-the-screendoor effect, in 2 versions. Git yer gun, Pa!

(click for full size)

It doesn't really work unless you see it at full size; the grid doesn't scale.
I tried this blue 600 pixel hippie gif because I didn't like the Huck Finn quality of the existing letters WTF.
I'm not really satisfied with any of these. All of this "code" may be out of date soon as you can apparently just point your cellphone camera at buildings and things and have them recognized.

BTW, since I was working on this in the presence of a 7-year old, WTF now stands for Where's the fish?, What's that fish?, or What's that for?

This final one looks like it wouldn't work, but it scans in very quickly.

The GIMP is better than Photoshop. It's almost the same ease of use (if you start from zero), is cheaper at 0 yen vs $700, and is guilt-free for pirates. And although I personally like the gimpy-sounding name, I would propose the next version be called "The PIMP", Photographic Image Manipulation Program, or Professional Image Manipulation Program, to satisfy the people who are uncomfortable with the name. Hell, why even wait for someone else to change the name? Change the branding yourself just for your own personal use. The Windows version should go with the WIMP as the name, and perhaps The ChIMP would be appropriate for Christians or anyone who can think of a good acronymical reason for that.

The Case of the Missing Change Case: gedit vs OOo

One function that's missing from OpenOffice.org but which Microshaft Worm had is the Change Case function. I would sometimes use this to type in lower-case and later convert to Sentence case or Title Case. Although it doesn't seem to be available in OpenOffice -AFAIK, it shows up in gedit! I'm not sure if it's worth switching out of OO.o to do a tweak in gedit, but it's there. 

Note the Edit menu doesn't have this as an option as default, but open Preferences.

Select Plug-ins and then check Change Case. 

Check "Sort" too. Gotta have that.  

There's Change Case. Sentence Case is not available, but the judicious use of Title Case could function as a substitute. 

There's "Sort" -- also in the Edit menu.  

Check it out. I wonder if there aren't any similar plug-ins for OO.o. 

Free GIMP tutorial PDFs

You can have 18 free GIMP tutorial PDFs from Michael J. Hammel at Linux Format magazine. 

iPOTUS's SOTU, iSteve, Zinn, & 2010-01-27

The dear leader of our people gathered his flock together and laid down the law of and on his tablet. Meanwhile, in DC, another major operating systems developer, also the son of a runaway foreign grad student, spoke to an assembly of code writers. In Santa Monica, Howard Zinn passed away of a heart attack. He will not rest in peace, but has probably already returned, possibly right in the West L.A. area. He wouldn't waste time being dead.

Marc Maron WTFpod meta-talk

AirAmerica NYT Obit.

Speaking of AirAmerica, the NYT reports:

January 22, 2010
Air America, the Talk Radio Network, Will Go Off the Air
By BRIAN STELTER

Air America, the long-suffering progressive talk radio network, abruptly shut down on Thursday, bowing to what it called a “very difficult economic environment.”

The chairman of Air America Media, Charlie Kireker, said in a statement that the company would file under Chapter 7 bankruptcy “to carry out an orderly winding-down of the business.”

In a troubled time for advertising-driven media businesses, “our painstaking search for new investors has come close several times right up into this week but ultimately fell short of success,” Mr. Kireker said.

The closing did not come as a surprise. Air America, which began six years ago and has 100 affiliated stations, cycled through a number of owners and never found its financial footing. It first filed for bankruptcy protection in 2006 but managed to stay on the air.

“The fact of the matter was, it was always a very challenging business proposition, and it never had the right management,” said Sam Seder, who hosted programs on Air America until last year.

Although it lacked a substantial audience, the network catapulted a number of progressive media personalities into stardom, most notably Rachel Maddow, who now anchors a prime-time program on the cable news channel MSNBC.

Al Franken, now a Democratic senator from Minnesota, hosted an Air America show from 2004 to 2007, before running for office.

Several other prominent talk radio personalities who worked at Air America, including Randi Rhodes and Thom Hartmann, remain on the radio, but without the network affiliation. “It would be a shame if the world sees the failure of Air America as representing the failure of progressive talk radio,” said Michael Harrison, the editor of Talkers Magazine, a talk radio publication.

Mr. Kireker noted in his statement that advertising revenue in the radio industry had fallen for several years now. “Signs of improvement have consisted of hoping things will be less bad,” he said, adding that “our company cannot escape the laws of economics.”

Air America started to play rerun programming rather suddenly Thursday evening. The company said it would sign off completely next Monday night.

WTFpod

Marc is back, apparently podcasting out of his garage in LA? I hope he's given up any abusive relationships with AirAmerica. Just listening to my first episode of it now. I needed some good news.
Via Brilliant at Breakfast.

3D in the 1800s

There's a collection of stereoscopic images within the USGS Photographic Library, dating from the 1870's to the 1950's.
An example:

Posthumanist Mac Tonnies (さよなら)

More Human Than Human

R.I.P. GET BACK DOWN HERE!

I was visiting PostHuman Blues earlier in January and suddenly noticed that I was re-reading posts, although I hadn't been to Mac's blog for a long time. Then I noticed the dates were all October. Huh? I must be visiting older posts, I thought, and went to the top. What the heck--posts in October at the top... and so like many others, I considered various possibilities before eventually realizing the fact of Mac's death.

My condolences to all who knew him.

Damn. How can I be perhaps the last fan of Mac Tonnies to notice that he was dead? Well, I don't consider myself a Fortean, ufologist, or part of the blogosphere. I am unable to spare much time to read any blogs recently, although I guess I have read Talking Points Memo. Mostly I try to follow Google News and Yahoo news, plus some Linux news. I prioritize blogging for myself more than reading other people's blogs, or else I will never blog anything. I have 5 part-time jobs. I need to hunt for another job. There are multiple kids to look after. A language to learn. Other priorities I never get to, like sending Xmas or New Year's cards. Reading PostHumanBlues is so enjoyable and leads me to links that consume so much time and mind-space that I consider it a bit self-indulgent and not helpful in the task of caring for and putting food on my family. Excuses, excuses. I ask the forbearance and indulgence of those who find this state of isogashisa unimaginable/inexcusable.

Internet silence was the strongest evidence of his death. If I don't blog for a month, it means I'm busy. If Mac doesn't blog for a day, he must be dead.

We have access to his mind, not because his consciousness was uploaded by curious extra/crypto/terrestrial archivists, but because he documented his life "religiously" (his word) as a blogger and tweeter. Altho he labeled his posts "Tears in Rain," they were not. "Tears in rain" (a BladeRunner reference) denotes the meaninglessness of all of one's experiences and memories dissolving into the nothingness of death. Mac's posts were not tears in rain, but rather more like pearls, or perhaps grains of pollen, carrying their genetic information to the bottom of the lake or to the amber gem where the deposits can be studied by future archeologists or random web surfers. He was wise --and brave-- in that way to put his thoughts out there and not just sit in a room thinking to himself.

Mac called himself "an organic web filter" in response to a comment I made hinting that altho his link dump style posts were great, more of his original writing would be appreciated if he could spare the time from potentially profitable writing projects. We'll take what we can get, I concluded.

I think Posthuman Blues was the first site (and one of very few) to have a link to me. I'm not sure how he found me or why he linked to me. It could have been the shared "blues" element in the name, shared movie interests, (Blade Runner, other artificial intelligence themed movies), shared musical interests (The Smiths, Talking Heads, The Cure, Hooverphonic), the "metacognitive" label, the shared midwestern background, Discordianism, or some statistically improbable expression that Mac noticed. He noticed a LOT. Mac has, or had a discerning third eye and a high metacognitive index. I discovered his blog because it was linked to mine. I was surprised and pleased that he linked to me.

One time, in response to a question posted by Mac about a Blogger template (TicTac Blueberry), I set up a test blog and looked into the css to see if I could find the controls for the header (or banner) image placement. I don't know much about html/css, but it was the first or second place I looked. He was very grateful when I tipped him a solution to his problem, and he mentioned wanting to give me a copy of his book in return, altho he deleted the offer comment (after it had already come in my e-mail). It was a gracious thought that I didn't expect. I had just wanted to help him over that css bump as a tip (as in tip-jar) to thank him for all his great blogging.

I'm thinking one kind of dedication would be to create a mactonniesian feed. My concept is that everyone Mac linked to (at least in the sidebar) would be in a feed, so you could see the most recent post by each of these bloggers, in time order. I'm talking about the widget or gadget or gidget that Blogger has to put the feeds together and order them chronologically as a sidebar element. It would be the closest thing yet to automating the mactonniesian process, although still a weak imitation. The people Mac linked to circa 2009 will each change, grow, and develop in ways that parallel what Mac would have (probably) undergone. This feed of feeds could go into anyone's sidebar, but it might load so much information that maybe it deserves to be a blog in its own rite?

That makes me think of another possible tribute that I think Mac would love: a chat-bot. Try googling chat-bots, AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language), personality forge, or http://www.chatbots.org/ to find out more. Due to Mac's (continuing!) online presence, we have access to Mac's face, various facial expressions, and enough information to create a high-definition avatar. Samples of Mac's voice can also be found in many radio programs and video snippets. These can create a voice-print pattern much like a font for sound. Finally, Mac's text, vocabulary frequencies, grammatical patterns are all available to use to create a complete text database with keywords and tags. His books, essays, reviews, and interviews would be digitized as well. This is rather large. At the very least, he could reply to questions like: "What do you think of...'s book...?" using say, book reviews that he's written. Even just randomly providing some quotes might be interesting. Ideally, the output of a posthuman-Mac-chat-bot would have the same mean sentence length, vocabulary frequency, grammatical patterns, and other statistical properties of Mac's speech while conveying his ideas as well. There are chat-bots for Eliza, Abraham Lincoln, God, and chat-bots are used for corporate web-sites to deliver information given out in FAQs in earlier decades. I think there are experiments to use them for phone-sex type use and customer service. The best can pass the Turing Test, indistinguishable from a human for at least a large proportion of judges. The posthuman-Mac-chat-bot concept requires an exceptionally talented person to put together, but he would be an excellent subject for eternal digital life on the internet.

Optimysticism
I don't know what it means, but I had a strong urge to tell Mac "South Korea." Maybe something wonderful was waiting for him there. Perhaps he would have found a job teaching English or Science Fiction as Literature or something like that at university with the freedom to do what he wanted, and have a research budget to travel around the world, or perhaps he would have fallen in love, had a physical exam that diagnosed and treated his health problem, saving his life, or something else. Maybe he had already been there or something about him was reminding me of South Korea for some reason. Maybe it was just because as the most wired country in the world, with the fastest internet, he would have liked it. I didn't know how to frame the "South Korea" message, so I couldn't find a way to send it.

Emptying my mind of all thoughts I meditate on Mac until some words burst forth:

"I was killed because I knew too much."

What? That's not something I expected. That's disturbing. I don't think it came from Mac, but even if it did, it could be his joke(?). Perhaps just the product of my subconscious mind releasing a paranoid thought which is not present in my conscious mind. Or someone else? Eventually I quiet the mind again and wait for another signal.

"You are, too."

That doesn't even make sense. Is it grammatical? I am what, too? I am... killed because I know too much? I don't know anything. I suppose it could be grammatical, from a point of view outside of time. It certainly is possible to know too much, in several different ways. Knowing the time, date, and means of one's own death is not desirable for the psyche, and maybe that is why we cannot develop our faculties in that direction until we lose attachment to the world. I stop the experiment. That's what I heard, for what it's worth. Your results may vary.

Deltas from his death: Seize the day. The night. The orb. If you love it, set it free after seizing it. Put it all out there, online, back out into the One Mind. Suck the marrow from... your vegetarian diet. And from your espresso. Write. Post. I should probably exercise more and not stay up until 4 AM. Life's short. It's later than you think.

I'd expect Mac to return soon, and not waste time. Various people carry components which we could identify as "Mac", or should we say "macian," "tonniesian," or "mactonniesian," but the entire "nexus" (;-) we called Mac Tonnies will be back soon. He may have already been reborn, perhaps in South Korea, as a woman this time, for a change, or perhaps as a man again. He wouldn't wait a full year or more to be reborn, and would choose a Buddhist family over a Christian one, I imagine. This isn't death, but merely a minor setback, a restructuring of the corporeal realm in preparation for future growth. Come to think of it, I think he'll want to speak English again, but if, on the other hand, North America is fated to fall into decrepitude while China explores the solar system, maybe he'll come back in ZhongGuo. Anyway, I reckon we'll be able to read a new, remarkably Mac-like blogger by at least 2026.

Digital death, digital decay, internet immortality, LANgevity
His Blogger page, and Twitter account may live on for years, until/unless Google or Twitter decide to delete inactive accounts some day. His Flickr, if unpaid, may eventually lose all but the last 200 of the 7-800 pictures he uploaded. His older "Cydonia" web site may eventually disappear(?) if no one is paying for the domain and server. I'd like to (re)browse and perhaps save his web site before that happens. Mac had read through many hundreds of books on ufology and other inexplicata, and by reading what he has written could help avoid many dead-ends, disappointing reads, money spent on bad books, and could steer one to the better-written material. There is no one on Earth whose opinion I'd trust more right now than Mac's. He was not a fanatic but a very skeptical, sincere seeker who calmly and analytically accepted the physical reality and the reality of the experiences of many and tried to find explanations. One great thing about Mac was that pretty much any idea you'd ever had about these phenomena, he had also considered, often more deeply. In addition, he had considered hypotheses which had never occurred to most people. That quality will be missed.

The high-pitched noises I hear all too often will also remind me of Mac. He suffered from this, too. The silence is screaming.


Links I went through related to this: (sorry for omissions--it's very incomplete--and sorry for un-hyper links) You could google many of these.

PostHumanBlues
http://posthumanblues.blogspot.com/

His older website top
http://www.mactonnies.com/

things related to his earlier book and pre-blogger website
http://www.mactonnies.com/cydonia.html

an excellent sample of Mac's writing and thinking
http://www.mactonnies.com/sentience.html

Twitter
http://www.twitter.com/mactonnies

UFOs as Vanguards of a Post-Biological Intelligence
http://www.dailygrail.com/features/the-ancients-are-watching

The Pitch (Kansas City)
http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2009/10/and_were_back_5.php

Coast to Coast
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/article/mac-tonnies-r-i-p
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5FF1197EEC5082DB&search_query=mac+tonnies+coast+to+coast+am

UFOmystic
http://www.ufomystic.com/2009/10/23/remembering-mac/
http://www.ufomystic.com/2009/10/23/thoughts-on-mac/

A tribute with pictures
http://hemmingshousepictures.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html#4944516064707781346

George Dvorsky
http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2009/10/remembering-mac-tonnies.html

Ballardian
http://www.ballardian.com/rip-mac-tonnies

Paratopia (some artwork)
http://paratopia.podbean.com/2009/10/28/in-memory-of-mac-tonnies/

mentioned iN an iNteresting context, iThink
http://monkeybuddha.blogspot.com/2009/11/ithink-tech-evolution-of-mind.html

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=832

http://hermeticallyblond.blogspot.com/2009/11/ufos-are-weird-i-guess_23.html
The Alien Hypothesis / UFOs as trickster-like enigmas
Excerpts from the Sept 28, 2009, interview between Mac Tonnies and George Noory

from Cap'n Marrrrk
http://amplattner.com/ntm/2009/10/nature-of-mac-tonnies-health-problems.html
http://amplattner.com/ntm/2009/11/if-you-really-want-to-know.html

The other side of truth
http://redstarfilms.blogspot.com/2009/10/mac-tonnies-passes-away.html

Greg Taylor
http://www.dailygrail.com/news/vale-mac-tonnies

Loren Coleman
http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2009/10/tonnies.html

a note from his publisher
http://www.anomalistbooks.com/news/2009/10/24/a-quiet-escape-from-kansas-city/

Mac on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=mac+tonnies&x=13&y=19

After the Martian Apocylypse = $69.99 (used)
http://www.amazon.com/After-Martian-Apocalypse-Extraterrestrial-Exploration/dp/074348293X

Kindle version for $11.99
http://www.amazon.com/After-Martian-Apocalypse-Extraterrestrial-ebook/dp/B000FC1V6K/ref=sr_1_1_oe_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263576609&sr=1-1&condition=used

Kindle for PC a free download
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311

Kindle for PC de-DRM'er
http://i-u2665-cabbages.blogspot.com/2009/12/circumventing-kindle-for-pc-drm.html

Mac4Lin: AAPLification

I didn't know about Mac4Lin when I changed to Linux, but even if I had, I don't think I would have used it. It could be confusing, although it might ease the transition for some. It was publicized on Lifehacker last summer and before that on MakeTechEasier for Hardy and Intrepid. The option to change the "traffic light window control" is good to know, and could please users who want to have that in the upper left hand corner, but I've already gotten used to the upper right hand corner and now find the Mac way annoying. What was interesting to me was how good a simulation you could produce in Ubuntu, as seen in some Flickr screen shots. I also wonder why you'd want to, but it could be a challenge for someone. Rather than a near-perfect simulation, it might be more fun to make a slightly tweaked-looking anti-Mac clone. That reminds me that it could be a useful alternative for Psystar (if they have any future). It shows, anyway, how easy it is to configure Linux. I'm surprised AAPL hasn't tried to sue, but if they can find someone to sue, it might give Linux more attention and help drive AAPL into the ground. I suppose if they are not concerned about the Hackintosh, they won't care about someone simply displaying an AAPL logo in another OS.

Strike dumb this fool, we beseech thee.

Christofascist Buttcasting Nutwerx' 666 Klub host Rat Pobertson pulls some weird racist BS out of his ass. You'll have to listen carefully through his labored heavy breathing to make out what he's saying. This may be his biggest hate-speech hit since he called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, a little fatwa from Jesusland.


An entry at Wikipedia suggests he may be referring to Dutty Boukman. There are reports that a pig may have been fatally injured in the making of the republic.

Members of the reality-based community are urged to send money to Haiti through more reputable channels.

Happy New Year! Have a blast!

Having a blast! Wish you were here!
Your tax dollars at work. The Strontium-90 in your teeth and bones are compliments of the house.
Photograph by US Navy, copyright by National Geographic. How does that work?
You have to wonder if the US Navy wasn't setting of H-bombs just to get their photos into National Geographic. "We can't compete on any 'Bridges of Madison County' but, by God, let's see them beat this! Make sure only Navy photographers are there."
That whole 20th-century missile gap competition with the Soviets has to be the biggest scam ever perpetuated in history. From America's nearly invulnerable position it would have been able to resist successfully with no military at all, just bicycles (like the Swiss national defense) and small arms, like Afghanistan. The USSR couldn't even hold down Afghanistan and we're supposed to believe they would have defeated the United States? Using more than a handful of nukes would have risked bringing on a nuclear winter. Some umbrella.
Photo re-appropriated by the people, for the people.
Maybe the photo is the same as the one here? In that case Nat'l Geog. may just slap their Copyright mark on everything even though it's clearly in the public domain.
Should have used that. Damn. Found it too late.
The people of the Marshall Islands continue to suffer from what was done to them--Castle Bravo.