Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot...

The other shoe

nobody@vox.com(Jay) — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:32:58 -0500

Speaking of climatic changes, want to know where the "big shoe" is going to drop into?

The ocean. The ocean currents, specifically. That's the stuff to look out for. Screw with those, and the whole playing field changes.

(By the way.....we're screwing with those. Check out the Arctic ice.)

Here's an article that describes how the ice cap affects the planet-wide energy conveyor belt of the ocean currents.

The thawing of sea ice covering the Arctic could disturb or even halt large currents in the Atlantic Ocean. Without the vast heat that these ocean currents deliver--comparable to the power generation of a million nuclear power plants--Europe's average temperature would likely drop 5 to 10°C (9 to 18°F), and parts of eastern North America would be chilled somewhat less. Such a dip in temperature would be similar to global average temperatures toward the end of the last ice age roughly 20,000 years ago.

Note the date of the article. March 5, 2004.

Over four years ago.

In May of 06, this video was added to YouTube.

NORTH POLE ICE CRACKING (global warming, Arctic, climate)

The contributor's caption says:
The sea ice at the North Pole is only a few feet thick. It floats on an ocean that is 14,000 feet deep. And it's cracking under our feet. A global warming expert suggests what to do... Everything you hear -- all the chugging and huffing and banging -- is the ice beneath us.

Pretty.

A few weeks ago, this (albeit cryptic) video was added to YouTube. What it basically shows is a winter Arctic season lapsing while the cap never solidifies, instead shunting its ice off along the eastern coast of Greenland.

North Pole could be ice free in 2008

Taking this info, and looking back at that 2004 article, one can only surmise what will be coming in the not-too-distant future.

Maybe next Sunday. A.D.

But no.....it's all a bunch of hooey drummed up by tree-hugging 'scientists' on a Liberal payroll. That's right again.

Relax kids. God's in control anyway.

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Climactic climatic changes...

nobody@vox.com(Jay) — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:23:04 -0500

From the CNN SciBlog:

Nature Gone Wild
Posted: 09:30 AM ET
On the heels of the disastrous Myanmar cyclone ten days ago, nature has had a busy week — with more human tragedy as a consequence.
We awoke this morning to reports of a massive quake near a Chinese city most Westerners have never heard of.    Sichuan Province may be better known to Americans as the home of the giant pandas, and for the region’s spicy cuisine. But Chengdu, obscure to most of us over here, has a metro area larger than any in the U.S. except for New York and Los Angeles.
At CNN, our first info on a quake anywhere in the world often comes from an automatic email warning system from the U.S. Geological Survey    The 7.8 quake, post-midnight on the East Coast but mid-afternoon in Sichuan Province, China, has a reported death toll in the thousands.   There have been several aftershocks, the largest in the 5 and 6 range on the intensity scale. The main quake was felt over thousands of miles.
Numerically tame by comparison but just as tragic to those affected were this weekend’s tornadoes. At least 22 Americans died in the Midwest and Southeast. A relatively small twister ripped up some homes about ten miles from my own house in Ellenwood, Georgia. Things were much worse in the midwest, where a storm estimated in the EF3 or EF4 range tore through a wide swath of lead-mining country in northeastern Oklahoma and southwestern Missouri.   The National Weather Service has counted 66 tornadoes over the weekend, and the one that ravaged Picher, Oklahoma stayed on the ground for 63 miles. 2008 is well ahead of pace for both the number of tornadoes (over 500), and the death toll they’ve produced — now 98 for the year.
Had enough?   Heavy rains combined with high tides to force evacuations along the Delaware coast.   On Sunday high winds and low humidity conspired to spark large, sudden wildfires along Florida’s East Coast, temporarily closing Interstate 95.
We cover all of this stuff through CNN’s domestic and international weather center.   One of our summer interns is starting her first day. It will be a learning experience.
Peter Dykstra Executive Producer   CNN Science, Tech, and Weather

What are we to make of this? Sure, earthquakes have nothing to do with the weather or climate. But you'd have to be living in a cast-iron box to not have noticed all the severe weather that we have been seeing here in the US these past months, especially in the plains and southeast. Add that to climbing global temperatures and all the scientists scrambling up to the North Pole to watch the last of the ice caps shrivel away to nothing, and one has to wonder when the big shoe is going to drop. And what it will mean when it does.

It can't be too far off. If we don't see it, our kids surely will.

We can make computer models and hypothesize all we want.....changes are coming, and there's no way we can foresee all the consequences we will all be dealing with.

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Two Review Haiku

nobody@vox.com(Jay) — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:18:32 -0500

Juno

smart ass high school girl

finds out teen pregnancy sucks.

(strippers can write too.)

Ironman

rehab to rockets

RDJ in gadget pr0n.

i smell a sequel.

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QotD: Fictional Friend

nobody@vox.com(Jay) — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:51 -0500

What fictional character do you relate to most and why?

Seems pretty obvious to me.

Calvin

Actually, elementary school Calvin was really close to elementary school Jay....self-absorbed, over-imaginative, under-achieving, athletically-challenged bully fodder. With a marked lack of knowing When To Shut Up.

Be careful or be roadkill

And they said it was just a phase. Hah.

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QotD: My First Car

nobody@vox.com(Jay) — Mon, 05 May 2008 10:12:32 -0500

What was your first car?

Uspiazza

When I was 17 I inherited my mom's Isuzu Impulse (it was called the "Piazza" in the international markets.) It was a hatchback, silver, and had headlights that partly opened up that were so popular in the 80s. I really liked this car, and was lucky to have gotten it actually since most of my friends drove serious pieces of crap like Omnis and Hyundais, if they had new cars at all. The kind of cars that leaked oil like sieves, with squealing belts and rusty floors. This was luxury in comparison.

I just liked it because it had a cockpit-like dashboard, and kind of looked like the DeLorean from Back to the Future.

Unfortunately it was not the turbo model, and the automatic transmission was a pig. It had some serious delay on hitting the gas, and had its fuel injection changed more than a few times. In fact, it was in the shop more than I'd like to remember.....I became quite familiar with the mechanics in the neighborhood.

It also came standard with a Bad Mojonator....it was plagued by awful luck like having its mirrors sheared off by garbage trucks, having a deer run full-tilt into the driver's side (fun!) and then the head gasket cracked. Twice.

Eventually it was in such bad shape, I just scrapped it for $50 to a junkyard owner in a trailer with a one-eyed bulldog on the steps. Grrr.

Still.....it was fun while it worked.

Had a phat cassette-player with 10-band equalizer, yo. :P

PIAZZA

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Bryce in Pan-O-Vision!

nobody@vox.com(Jay) — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:28:18 -0500

Bryce_panLR

It's not the World's Best Panoramic Assemblage but it gets the feeling of the immense vista across nicely. Spliced together from 5 photos.

Check it out full-size.

Note to self: self, next time use a narrower angle to avoid distortion and make splicing easier. 18mm makes for too much pincushioning at the edges to match the frames up perfectly.

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QotD: Personality Trait = Trouble

nobody@vox.com(Jay) — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:18:30 -0500

What personality trait has gotten you in the most trouble?

Oh! Why, it must be a tie between my flippant irreverance and my propensity to tell the truth as far as I see it.

Don't you agree? ^__^

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Volume UP.

nobody@vox.com(Jay) — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:08:23 -0500

I listen to mostly dance tracks during the day.....they're energetic enough to keep my mind going and vapid enough to not require actual attention. Most are just "there", some are downright irritating, but a couple make me punch the Volume-Up key a couple of times whenever they come on.

Here's two of the latter.

In-Grid - You Promised Me

Mark Brown fSarah Cracknell - The Journey Continues (Vocal Radio Edit)

Sorry there's no schnazzy album art. I ripped them from the broadcast.

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QotD: Ghost Stories

nobody@vox.com(Jay) — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:25:20 -0500

Do you believe in ghosts? If so, have you ever seen one?

Ha. This sounds an awful lot like one of my recent posts.

(If you're gonna rip a QotD idea, at least give some cred. Ffft.)

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I'm in an Evil Overlord kinda mood....

nobody@vox.com(Jay) — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:17:18 -0500

And so, I felt it would be apropos to dig up:

The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

If it's good enough for Tony

4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

6. I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.

7. When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."

8. After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

9. I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.

10. I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

11. I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.

12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

13. All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

14. The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.

15. I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

16. I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."

17. When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

18. I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.

19. I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.

20. Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

Unemployment

21. I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

22. No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.

23. I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way -- even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless -- my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.

24. I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)

25. No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.

26. No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.

27. I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.

28. My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.

29. I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.

Sorry Orko

30. All bumbling conjurers, clumsy squires, no-talent bards, and cowardly thieves in the land will be preemptively put to death. My foes will surely give up and abandon their quest if they have no source of comic relief.

31. All naive, busty tavern wenches in my realm will be replaced with surly, world-weary waitresses who will provide no unexpected reinforcement and/or romantic subplot for the hero or his sidekick.

32. I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.

33. I won't require high-ranking female members of my organization to wear a stainless-steel bustier. Morale is better with a more casual dress-code. Similarly, outfits made entirely from black leather will be reserved for formal occasions.

34. I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

Mingy-poo

35. I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.

36. I will not imprison members of the same party in the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to the cell door on my person instead of handing out copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.

37. If my trusted lieutenant tells me my Legions of Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him. After all, he's my trusted lieutenant.

38. If an enemy I have just killed has a younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age.

39. If I absolutely must ride into battle, I will certainly not ride at the forefront of my Legions of Terror, nor will I seek out my opposite number among his army.

Use it first, use it often

40. I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.

41. Once my power is secure, I will destroy all those pesky time-travel devices.

42. When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.

43. I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.

44. I will only employ bounty hunters who work for money. Those who work for the pleasure of the hunt tend to do dumb things like even the odds to give the other guy a sporting chance.

45. I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say "And here is the price for failure," then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.

46. If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply "This." and kill the advisor.

47. If I learn that a callow youth has begun a quest to destroy me, I will slay him while he is still a callow youth instead of waiting for him to mature.

48. I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.

49. If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.

50. My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

51. If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing concern over the conditions in the beautiful princess' cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less people-oriented position.

52. I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.

53. If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.

54. I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel like being contrary.

Try flossing

5. The deformed mutants and odd-ball psychotics will have their place in my Legions of Terror. However before I send them out on important covert missions that require tact and subtlety, I will first see if there is anyone else equally qualified who would attract less attention.

56. My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

57. Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner's manual.

58. If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.

59. I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am.

60. My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.

61. If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.

62. I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.

63. Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.

64. I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive habits which could prove to be a disadvantage.

65. If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

66. My security keypad will actually be a fingerprint scanner. Anyone who watches someone press a sequence of buttons or dusts the pad for fingerprints then subsequently tries to enter by repeating that sequence will trigger the alarm system.

We're all fine....how are you?

67. No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.

68. I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages others to do so. However, the offer is good one time only. If they want me to spare them again, they'd better save my life again.

69. All midwives will be banned from the realm. All babies will be delivered at state-approved hospitals. Orphans will be placed in foster-homes, not abandoned in the woods to be raised by creatures of the wild.

70. When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.

71. If I decide to test a lieutenant's loyalty and see if he/she should be made a trusted lieutenant, I will have a crack squad of marksmen standing by in case the answer is no.

72. If all the heroes are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a conventional weapon instead of using my unstoppable superweapon on them.

73. I will not agree to let the heroes go free if they win a rigged contest, even though my advisors assure me it is impossible for them to win.

74. When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk "Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my desk.

75. I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two at a time.

76. If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)

77. If I have a fit of temporary insanity and decide to give the hero the chance to reject a job as my trusted lieutentant, I will retain enough sanity to wait until my current trusted lieutenant is out of earshot before making the offer.

78. I will not tell my Legions of Terror "And he must be taken alive!" The command will be "And try to take him alive if it is reasonably practical."

79. If my doomsday device happens to come with a reverse switch, as soon as it has been employed it will be melted down and made into limited-edition commemorative coins.

80. If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and closer to my fortress.

Atats

81. If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.

82. I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.

83. If I'm eating dinner with the hero, put poison in his goblet, then have to leave the table for any reason, I will order new drinks for both of us instead of trying to decide whether or not to switch with him.

84. I will not have captives of one sex guarded by members of the opposite sex.

85. I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. "Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse." Instead it will be more along the lines of "Push the button."

86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.

87. My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.

88. If a group of henchmen fail miserably at a task, I will not berate them for incompetence then send the same group out to try the task again.

89. After I captures the hero's superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.

90. I will not design my Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.

91. I will not ignore the messenger that stumbles in exhausted and obviously agitated until my personal grooming or current entertainment is finished. It might actually be important.

92. If I ever talk to the hero on the phone, I will not taunt him. Instead I will say this his dogged perseverance has given me new insight on the futility of my evil ways and that if he leaves me alone for a few months of quiet contemplation I will likely return to the path of righteousness. (Heroes are incredibly gullible in this regard.)

93. If I decide to hold a double execution of the hero and an underling who failed or betrayed me, I will see to it that the hero is scheduled to go first.

94. When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow them to stop and grab a useless trinket of purely sentimental value.

95. My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it's an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.

96. My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa.

97. My dungeon cells will not be furnished with objects that contain reflective surfaces or anything that can be unravelled.

98. If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others' lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.

99. Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.

100. Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access.

This Evil Overlord List is Copyright 1996-1997 by Peter Anspach. If you enjoy it, feel free to pass it along or post it anywhere, provided that (1) it is not altered in any way, and (2) this copyright notice is attached.

Ahhhh. An oldie but still a goodie.

Oh, and.........BWA HA HAAAA!

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