wasswasswass

April 7, 2009

New Method of Terrorist Attack?

A man stole a plane from a Canadian flight school and flew into the United States.

Will this be the new paradigm of attack? 9/11 caused the first shift. And then the Shoe Bomber, Richard Reid caused another shift. Thanks to him we have to take our shoes off now when going through security. Found out after looking at Wikipedia that I am 6 days older than the Shoe Bomber.

from Wikipedia – “He was sentenced by Judge Young to life imprisonment on each of the three charges, 20 years imprisonment on four other charges, and 30 years on four other counts, to be served consecutively, followed by five years of supervised release.”

So after the Shoe Bomber serves his life imprisonment term he will have 5 years of supervised release. Who is going to supervise that? And then once the supervision is done, will he be able to freely roam the after-life?

But back to the topic at hand – Are Cessnas from Canada the new dirty bomb? What about Mexico? Well, those from Mexico are probably too full of cocaine or weed to put any bombs in them. But then again, I heard that Canada grows some fine buds also…

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April 3, 2009

Aging

The older you get, the more slowly you age.

April 3, 2009

The Positions of the Human Form

360(shoulder) x 360 (shoulder) x 135(elbow) x 135(elbow) x 360 (wrist) x 360 (wrist) x 360 (spine) x 360 (hip) x 360 (hip) x 135(knee) x 135(knee) x 360 (ankle) x 360 (ankle) x 360 (head) =

12,143,953,109,659,430,000,000,000,000,000,000 body positions

Between 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 estimated number of stars in the universe.

Assuming 1 postion/sec (31,449,600 seconds in a year)

386,140,145,173,847,400,000,000,000 years for 1 person to do all positions.

These are rough calculations that do not take into account several factors. The fingers, the face, the wide range of mobility of the spine, the various sizes of circles that each rotation joint can do.

If you wanted to see how many possible positions there are in a duet, square the large number at the top. A trio – that number to the third power… a quartet that number to the fourth power etc.

Adding in costumes, lighting, repetition of movement, sound…there are an infinite number of dances possible.

Which leads me to a question of value. If so many dances are possible, how do we determine the good ones? Value and quantity usually have an inverse relationship – the greater the number of something, the less that something is valued. Take grains of sand and diamonds.

Are all of the dances that have been created of equal value because there are vastly fewer dances that have been created in comparison to dances that have not been created? Is every dance you will see in your lifetime of equal value?

March 30, 2009

Tax Cuts vs. Food Stamps

From Harper’s Index:

Estimated amount by which the U.S. GDP increases for each additional dollar of tax cuts:
$1.03
Amount for each additional dollar of infrastructure spending and food stamps, respectively:
$1.59, $1.73

Are Republicans, supposedly the business minded and business friendly party, unaware of this fact? Maybe I don’t have such a great business acumen but I have always thought a 73% or even a meagrer 59% return on investment is much better than a 3% return. But then again, the Republicans were at the helm when the economy went into the toilet, so what do they know.

What are we waiting for, Obama? Let’s start feeding people and building bridges!!!

March 28, 2009

Don’t candles also make greenhouses gases?

From an Antarctic research base to the Great Pyramids of Egypt and beyond, the world switched off the lights on Saturday for Earth Hour, dimming skyscrapers, city streets and some of the world’s most recognizable monuments for 60 minutes to highlight the threat of climate change.

Sounds like a good idea. But I am not sure if everyone got the idea completely.

“In Australia, people attended candlelit speed-dating events…“

Candles burn oxygen creating carbon dioxide, a green house gas. Therefore they were still adding to the problem.

“A key 2010 football World Cup qualifier against Serbia posed a dilemma for Romanians. “Shall we watch the match or turn off the lights?,” the 7plus daily asked in its main front-page headline.“

Couldn’t they just play the game during the day time when there is carbon free light?

“McDonald’s Corp. planned to dim its arches at 500 locations around the U.S. Midwest“

Why not stop selling burgers for an hour? The consumption of meat adds more to global warming than transportation.

February 19, 2009

Irish Police

Sounds like the police in Ireland could use the Rosetta Stone.

from the BBC –

“Details of how police in the Irish Republic finally caught up with the country’s most reckless driver have emerged.

He had been wanted from counties Cork to Cavan after racking up scores of speeding tickets and parking fines.

However, each time the serial offender was stopped he managed to evade justice by giving a different address.

Poles are Ireland’s largest immigrant population

But then his cover was blown.

It was discovered that the man every member of the Irish police’s rank and file had been looking for – a Mr Prawo Jazdy – wasn’t exactly the sort of prized villain whose apprehension leads to an officer winning an award.

In fact he wasn’t even human.

“Prawo Jazdy is actually the Polish for driving licence and not the first and surname on the licence,” read a letter from June 2007 from an officer working within the Garda’s traffic division.

“Having noticed this, I decided to check and see how many times officers have made this mistake.

“It is quite embarrassing to see that the system has created Prawo Jazdy as a person with over 50 identities.”

The officer added that the “mistake” needed to be rectified immediately and asked that a memo be circulated throughout the force.

In a bid to avoid similar mistakes being made in future relevant guidelines were also amended.

And if nothing else is learnt from this driving-related debacle, Irish police officers should now know at least two words of Polish.

As for the seemingly elusive Mr Prawo Jazdy, he has presumably become a cult hero among Ireland’s largest immigrant population”

February 15, 2009

Solar Panels over Parking Lots

After seeing this on the news yesterday, I had one of those moments of – Duh, why didn’t I think of that? (a feeling that also happens when viewing contemporary art) In Sunnyvale, Ca, the parking lot of Applied Materials is covered in solar panels. Electric vehicles can charge up in that lot.

Why are we not covering every single parking lot south of San Francisco with such structures? I remember listening to a Science Friday on NPR that talked about solar panels and part of the problem is that there isn’t enough room for solar farms near where the power is needed, i.e. urban areas.

Well, doesn’t this just solve that problem? How many parking lots, huge parking lots, are there in L.A., in Pheonix, in Houston, that are just baking in the sun 300+ days of the year? Why are we not demanding these solar farms be built? They could be a revenue source by charging people to recharge their cars while they are at the mall or the movies or at Disneyland or the golf courses outside Palm Springs.

Why are we not doing this? Are projects like this in the Stimulus Package?

p.s. why are there golf courses in the desert?

February 13, 2009

A piece of the Pi

3.
14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510
58209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679
82148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128
48111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196
44288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091
45648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273
72458700660631558817488152092096282925409171536436
78925903600113305305488204665213841469519415116094
33057270365759591953092186117381932611793105118548
07446237996274956735188575272489122793818301194912
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00056812714526356082778577134275778960917363717872
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50244594553469083026425223082533446850352619311881
71010003137838752886587533208381420617177669147303
59825349042875546873115956286388235378759375195778
18577805321712268066130019278766111959092164201989
38095257201065485863278865936153381827968230301952
03530185296899577362259941389124972177528347913151
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85836160356370766010471018194295559619894676783744
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93313677028989152104752162056966024058038150193511
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56887671790494601653466804988627232791786085784383
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73929848960841284886269456042419652850222106611863
06744278622039194945047123713786960956364371917287
46776465757396241389086583264599581339047802759009
94657640789512694683983525957098258226205224894077
26719478268482601476990902640136394437455305068203
49625245174939965143142980919065925093722169646151
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22658804857564014270477555132379641451523746234364
54285844479526586782105114135473573952311342716610

February 12, 2009

Art = Science

“[Art] is what it is simply because it can break down fetishes and superstitions and is bold in explorations and because it opposes following the beaten path and dares to destroy outmoded conventions and bad customs.”

– Hu Yaobang, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

The first word in his quote is “science”, but art works just as well, if not better. In many repressive regimes throughout history, art is suppressed. As is science.

Galileo, Degenerate Art, Evolution…just to name a few.

January 27, 2009

Love Hurts With Frequency

Love hurts with frequency.

Drinking a lot of beer is what ails me.

The young lad wept loudly because he didn’t catch the ball.

Johnnie Carson was as good as a host as Jack Paar.

Hank always wore nylons when he went stalking

The geologist thought the coarsely foliated and crystallized rock was nice.

After a vigorous food fight, the Maitré d was gored by the spaghetti squash.

Hank spends much of his time looking at a book about reeds and other marsh flora.

He chewed in rhythm while eating a beet salad with a nice balsamic vinaigrette dressing.