I think on the whole winter is a thing I will miss, at least after a while in Mexico, where the bottom of the Baja barely deviates ten degrees yearly. It's not so much the cold I'd miss as the visuals… Snow of course, but more so subtle things like fog over an almost freezing lake. I tried to take a picture of it off the balcony; it's not entirely easy to photograph through a pair of binoculars!
I was reading earlier about how light emitting diodes (LEDs) are now able to replace incandescent lightbulbs in most situations (more) — not only are they brighter, but they consume less power and create far less pollution. As a point of trivia, if you could change all the lightbulbs in America to LEDs, you'd save enough money to give every American that wanted it a “free” university education. Plus it would allow America to shut down 17 power plants… there are an endless number of “little” things like this that could revolutionize the way people live.
Not that they will ever happen, or at least not any time soon. I think that people in America (and probably people everywhere in the world), don't see very far out of their own class — to illustrate, did you know that between ten and twenty million Americans still don't even have telephone service (more) due largely to poverty (to make it worse, often in geographically harsh regions — although if it can support a ski chalet, no amount of money will stop phone service from getting there). As a point of trivia, there is virtually no home in America that does not have a TV… not that watching TV helps lift people up out of the darkness. That clip is from CNN and Fox — if that's what's being presented as journalism, how are people supposed to become informed?
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But then, some people just don't want to be helped… Religious sensibilities have gotten so out of whack that homeless shelters are turning down donations because they come from “the wrong kinds of people” (more). Yeah, I'm sure that guy fresh back from Iraq (more) would rather be homeless than take money from strippers with hearts of gold. I mentioned last week about Bush getting behind the ban on gay books (more; I guess the business bans aren't effective enough), but I wanted to mention another Alabama story.
As you know, courthouses were told that they couldn't put up monuments of the Christian ten commandments. So now these nutcase judges are printing the ten commandments on their robes as a general “fuck you” to the heathens (more).
[Judge] McKathan told The Associated Press that he believes the Ten Commandments represent the truth “and you can't divorce the law from the truth. … The Ten Commandments can help a judge know the difference between right and wrong.”[Former Alabama Chief Justice] Moore said Tuesday he supports McKathan's decision to wear the Ten Commandments robe. “I applaud Judge McKathan. It is time for our judiciary to recognize the moral basis of our law,” Moore said.
If you want an ancient basis for law, you don't have to look at the Judeo-Christian mythos — ever heard of Hammurabi? In any case, as far as I'm concerned, as soon as a judge starts sayingh they're ruling on cases based on superstition, they should be instantly and without question fired.
Did you know that at this point over a million Americans have served tours of duty in Iraq (more), and that a third of those have been asked to serve more than one tour? Understand that number. Understand that the casualty rates (as in kids having their hands blown off) are higher than they were in Vietnam. I read a lot about how the kids dying in Iraq are just there to escape crappy lives in America and maybe get money for school… this story illustrates all too well how you can't cure one wrong with another.
Someone sent me this photo recently, but I'm 99% sure they didn't take it themselves (and from the filename I think there may be more in the series), and in any case it's not as if they're replying to my email. So I'm posting it here to see if anyone has any more information…
If anyone has any good links to alternate designs of modern tattoo machines around the world, I'm interested in seeing them as well.
This short story was written and illustrated by my friend Scott Fox a few years before he drowned.
It was an unfinished sketch for a graphic novel he was working on.
Scott is missed deeply by many, as is his brother Todd.
[via MeFi] I've talked about the the starving ocean here before, but I just saw a very disturbing story about something that's going on in the central Pacific Ocean. It's a region that not a lot of people travel through, but is unique because it's one of those places that ocean currents swirl… if you drop something in the ocean, the Pacific Gyre is where it eventually ends up.
If plastic — which is not biodegradable — is thrown in the ocean, it breaks down into smaller pieces, but never fully disappears. If you are sailing around the world and take a swim out in the middle of the ocean, thousands of miles away from land (the Pacific Gyre is about half way between Hawaii and California), even after a few minutes in the ocean you will emerge covered in small bits of plastic.
Currently these regions contain about five times as much plastic as they do plankton. Conservative estimates suggest that this could go as high as a sixty to one ratio over the next decade, with the rest of the ocean being affected as well. The end result of this is significant damage to the entire ocean ecosystem, which is what the rest of the planet relies on as a buffer.
Drain a man of his blood, and you destroy his flesh. Watch this video and understand something important.
I've just posted the last experience update of the year with about 150 new stories (a total of 9,081 for the year) — although I've taken the leaderboards offline, so unless you grabbed them about five minutes ago before I deleted them, you're going to have to wait a little to find out who are the top contributors and top reviewers for the year. I will tell you though that for this update the top ten reviewers are:
drip (85), Cerra (79), maryofdoom (70), Mandrake (65), der_narr (63), seahorse girl (59), Enid (42), rebekah (39), Ruby (38), and Don (38).
Thank you as always to the writers and the review team, although I'm sort of thinking that I need to add a spellcheck to the comment system… I get some angry retorts when a story is rejected with comments like “I've read better written nostral experience, read some and get idea on how to write a better experience.” Here are some responses from the last few updates:
pretty lame guys, oh well your probably americans, your country was founded on censorship, print what you want.Fuck you all my story was fine who gives a shit if “I” put i in lowercase everybody knows what it mean oh and fuck your stupid ass 800 word count thats bullshit anyways by the way whoever said that it is unsafe to strech your ears too fast and ill find that out soon enough can eat my nuts cuz my ears are fine and if nothing to a 2g is too fast for you shitheads whats this whole scalping from nothing to a 00g about yeah so what it was done in my bathroom instead at tattoo shop who cares well what i guess i am saying is that it was stupid of yall to denie me for the reasons yall did and i dont realy give a shit so in all fuck off (oh did you notice there was no capital words and it is all a run on sentence) bitches, love always the 17 yr old punk
god its not school.. i spent time writing this and resubmitted it to what they said and it gets turned down.. its not freakin school .. im done
Gosh how far up their own arses are some of your members? They obviously are so blinkered they have no room for normal people. HOW DARE that arsehole slate my grammar, I am dyslexic and struggled to make 800 words and struggled to write the whole damn thing for bugger all. And you (staff) are just as bad allowing narrow minded bigots say what goes and allow personal comments to be made and then worse still get passed on!
Thank you as well to la negra for another wonderful cover shot — photo by Antonio Florez Gutierrez.
Well, I've got some programming to do this afternoon, and if I can squeeze in the time I really, really want to do some video editing (for myself, not work or BME related)… Since that box is being dismantled temporarily, it might be a little while before I can edit video again so if I can do it now I'd like to… but that's a matter of figuring out how to squeeze it into my insane schedule. One of the sad things about having a lot of “real work” projects is that it affords you so little time to just relax and jam.
Oh, and I have to complete the design of the 2004 year-end shirts!
