The Olympics are this year?!?!

I usually get excited for the Olympics. This year ... meh. There just doesn't seem to be a compelling storyline for me to latch onto to make me care enough to want to watch.

For reals?

Nice SNAFU here by the State Department. This woman has spent her life thinking she was an American citizen.

A State Department spokeswoman, Adriana Gallegos, declined to discuss Boneva's situation, citing confidentiality laws. She sought to clarify the overall matter in an e-mailed comment, saying, "We don't revoke citizenship; we revoke documents." But she declined to elaborate on what that means for Boneva.

What the heck is that supposed to mean? You don't revoke citizenship, just documents. Sheesh.

Just Shoot Me

The bullet-proof tailor. Interesting read and watch.

Hubble captures mystery object ...

What could it be?

The weirdest thing, however, is not only the prettyful X-shaped debris pattern, but the fact that its 460-foot-wide nucleus is outside the dust halo and separated from the trail. This behavior is something which has never been seen before in a comet or any other solar-system-swooshing object.

I wonder how far away this thing is ... to get that good of a resolution (capturing detail on a 460 foot wide object) is pretty impressive. Yet another reason to keep Hubble up and running.

Here is NASA's press release on the object.

At the time of the Hubble observations, the object was approximately 180 million miles from the sun and 90 million miles from Earth. The Hubble images were recorded with the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

Ok, so that answers my question ... a resolution of 460 feet (probably can go lower) from 90 million miles away. Makes you wonder exactly what spy satellites can do, huh? Probably read your text messages on your phone from outer space. You better shield your iPhone from prying eyes when you're outside!

Food for thought ...

How we access and store data is critical.

In 2008, for instance, it emerged that the US had "forgotten" how to make a secret ingredient of some nuclear warheads, dubbed Fogbank. Adequate records had not been kept and all the key personnel had retired or left the agency responsible. The fiasco ended up adding $69 million to the cost of a warhead refurbishment programme.

I'll see your humans, and raise you two turtles and a mouse

Iran *ahem* enters space race.

"The scientific arena is where we could defeat the (West's) domination," Ahmadinejad said in remarks broadcast live on state TV.

Launching worms (along with the aforementioned critters) into space is a step, I suppose, in that direction. I think they have a long way to go though.

The Mediteranean is a cesspool ...

... and it appears that organized crime has taken killing to a whole other level.

That African nation possibly holds clues to the kinds of health hazards Italians might face. “My committee heard from Somalians who said many people in that area had symptoms of poisoning and some died,” Scalia attests, referring to a stretch of highway along which Alpi and Hrovatin may have witnessed the offloading of toxic substances. The tsunami of December 2004 dredged up giant metal containers from the seabed and placed them on Somali beaches—proving that the country’s coastal waters had also received questionable trash. A United Nations report blamed fumes from these unidentified objects for internal hemorrhages and deaths of local people.

In April 2007 Calabrian authorities had temporarily halted fishing in waters off Cetraro (where the Cunski lies, according to a turncoat from the ’Ndrangheta mafia) because of dangerous levels of heavy metals in marine sediment. In the region around Amantea, mortality from cancer between 1992 and 2001 exceeded that in neighboring areas, a study found; just as worrisome, hospitalizations for certain malignancies have risen in recent years.

Why can't we treat the Earth better than we have?

It has begun ...

... my foray into P90X territory has started. I've been taking notes on my diet, have a shopping list for the next few nights dinner (very high in protein, low in carbohydrates), and a one hour date with my DVD player this evening. Wish me luck!

Haiti the 51st state?

I think a number of Haitians would want that.

"I want the Americans to take over the country. The Haitian government can't do anything for us," said Jean-Louis Geffrard, a laborer who lives under a tarp in the crowded square.

Currently ...

Playing


If you love strategy games, you have to try the Advance Wars series. Two Gameboy Advance titles, and two DS titles.

Listening To

Laugh or Cry?

Bin Laden blames US for global warming, calls for boycott of American goods.

$60 Billion Theft

Ridiculous!

Officials said Medicare pilferage is so widespread, with so much of it never detected, that no one can accurately say how much it costs American taxpayers. But a figure widely used by law enforcement officials suggests a staggering $60 billion a year is stolen from the national entitlement program, which funds medical treatment, equipment and prescriptions for 45 million seniors and the disabled.

I'd rather we create jobs hiring people to better police Medicare, which would cut down on this theft in the long run ... than continue to let this happen without doing anything significant to prevent it. Say we spend $100 million (1/600th of the $60 billion in fraud) hiring people to combat this fraud. Say we set the average salary + benefits at $100,000 per person hired. That gives us a thousand people to track down these cases. Seems like that would get the job done, no?

Probably not.

Change I can believe in ...

... when the President of the United States says that the USA needs to be the leader in clean energy initiatives, jobs, and technologies because whichever country does so will be the one with the largest influence on global policy, I believe it and agree with it.

Now, can our government make it happen?

Currently ...

Listening To



Gasoline
So you tried to put the fire out
But you used gasoline
When the congregation gathered around
You're screamin' "It wasn't me,"
So there is a sickness that's going around
But no one's got a vaccine
I think it drowned in holy water
I think it's time we all come clean

I swear it's like dying
To catch a ghost
It feels like I'm trying
To hold smoke
I swear it's like dying
To catch a ghost
It feels like I'm trying
To hold smoke

When the army had to hold the line
Well you were nowhere near the front
Before the kids could tell their dog goodbye
Well you were loadin' up your gun
I want to know why there's a great divide
I wanna know what I've become
You think that no one else is lonesome?
You think that you're the only one?

It feels like I'm jumping towards a train
It feels like I'm jumping towards a train
We all try to make our way

It feels like I'm jumping towards a train
It feels like I'm jumping towards a train
We all try to fake a way

Lasers!

It's true, lasers CAN make you slimmer.

Overall, participants in the treatment group demonstrated a total girth reduction across all four sites of 89 millimetres (3.51 inches) compared with control subjects who showed a 17-millimetre reduction. Maloney says the reduction in the placebo group is a reflection of the typical placebo response. The results were published last month in Lasers in Surgery and Medicine (vol 41, p 799).

Sheesh, that sure would be easier than what I'm currently about to do ... P90X.

Yep, I'm an idiot. I've finally decided that I just can't tolerate my *ahem* girth any longer. It (my body) is a far cry from what it looked like during my track and field days, and I just can't stand it any longer. So I got P90X, an iron gym (that doorway pull up bar) and resistance bands and I'm going to start torturing myself soon. First I need to get everything together to keep my nutrition in line with what the program recommends because I figure if I'm slurping down Mickey D's every day, no amount of pull-ups is going to help my waistline.

So why am I telling you about this? Well, for one simple reason. I hope that by putting this out in public, if I don't follow through, I will be publicly shamed. A perverse sort of peer pressure I suppose.

So while I'm out grocery shopping, I suppose I need to look and see if I can get myself into one of these laser trials.

So close, but yet ...

... so far. For the first 28 minutes of the game last night I thought it looked like the Jets could be going to the Super Bowl for the first time in my life. Then Peyton Manning found Austin Collie* not once but twice, the last time in the back of the end zone for six, and things started to fall apart at the seams. Manning, Garcon, and Collie abused everyone in the Jets secondary not named Darelle Revis ... in particular Lowery and Sheppard. It's obvious where the Jets need to focus this offseason.

With that said, I don't think anyone (except maybe Rex Ryan) thought the Jets would make it this far this year. There are high hopes for next year though.

Congratulations on the win Indy. A friend asked me how many scores I thought you guys could muster and the Jets stll get the win, and I said two. Well, I would have been correct if that had happened, but it didn't. You definitely outplayed us and you deserve that berth. Now I hope you get stomped by New Orleans.


*What is with my teams losing to BYU players this year?