The Stars Make Me Dream

“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”

~ Vincent van Gogh

All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word “no.” To “no” there is only one answer and that is “yes.” Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. Man lives more by affirmation than by bread.

~ Victor Hugo

Death is One of Two Things

Death is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or, as we are told, it is really a change: a migration of the soul from one place to another.

~ Socrates

Death and the Sun

Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily.

~ La Rochefoucald

Death a Dreary Affair

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

~ W. Somerset Maugham

kVadrum.

kVadrum.

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Nader 2008

OK - so here's a debacle. The super-smart, super-educated, really rich, somewhat old, incredibly confident Nader has just declared his candidacy.

This is complicated. Some point blame to him for Gore's loss in Florida (Bush won by a couple hundred votes, Nader gathered almost 100K votes). Some analysts have attempted to show that his presence on the ballot increased voter turnout, and actually increased net votes to the other candidates, and by such ratio that the results would have gone the same way had he not been on the ballot.

He's got a lot of good, very liberal ideas, and he clearly gets right into the thick of things - why not tax Wall Street instead of clothing and dish washers?

But a nation under his leadership is probably simply not in question. Moderate and Conservative Repubs will not vote for him. The Rebub outsiders that lean way left by party standards may cast him a look; for the Dems, the radical leftists make up a much more substantial % of the party - and seemingly, this creates a potential disproportionate impact on the campaigns of each party - Democrats risk far more of its masses going the way of Nader.

Assuming that is the case - and entertaining that he has literally just shy of absolutely NO chance of winning - his candidacy means good for Repubs, bad for Dems.

So Nader, step down.

Right?

OR - is his candidacy a prime example of the electoral system working as it should - Independents weilding a heavy sword late in the game - with the ability to shave votes from one party or the other and sway the pendulum?

(Or is this even what it's about?)

Maybe Nader is secretly supporting McCain.

Joking.

No, seriously.

No, no, just joking.

But seriously.

YES WE CAN

Orange Julio

Smoothies rock.

Remember the Orange Julius? Mercer Mall in Princeton - the best Orange Julius. Hmmm.

This is the recipe, sorta, along with some minor spin-off alternations:

1 cup - Water
1/2 cup - Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice
2 cups - Milk
1/2 cup - Sugar
1 tsp. - Vanilla Extract
8-9 - Ice Cubes

Of course, the REAL recipe is locked underground somewhere (or maybe this is it?), and experimenting to get your own version just right is more fun than precicesly replicating someone else's smoothie anyway (and sometimes, will taste better too). Variations are infinite.

Some Common Variations and Alternatives:

- Experiment with the ratio of milk to water. More milk makes it creamier and heavier.

- Using more or less sugar - include experimenting with no sugar at all

- Add ice cream, vanilla is a good place to start

- Add plain, vanilla, or fruit-infused yogurt

- Add frozen yogurt

- Add sorbet

- Use simple syrup instead of vanilla syrup

- Add a teaspoon or two of lemon and/or lime juice

- Add 1-2 raw eggs

- Use less/more ice cubes

- Include a teaspoon of salt

- Use fresh squeezed orange juice instead of frozen concentrate

- Use 1-2 whole, peeled & seeded oranges instead of juice

- Add apples, berries of any genre, pears, bananas or any other fruit you like

- Add anywhere from 1 teaspoon to 1 full package of vanilla pudding mix

- Add a drizzle up to 1/2 cup of cream of coconut

- Add 1/2 - 1 teaspoon of orange-flavored extract (or even orange liqueur)

- Add a pinch of grated orange, lemon, or lime peel

- Add a pinch of ground cardamon seed

- Add a teaspoon of honey, or substitute greater quantities by replacing sugar

- Try using crushed instead of cubed ice

- Try freezing ice-cubes made from orange (or other) juice - and use in place of regular cubes

- Anything else you can think of...

Blend on high until frothy. Drink up.

Tip for achieving ideal consistency - add all ingredients, and then begin blending in ice little-by-little, cube-by-cube, etc until it is your desire thickness.

Enjoy!

Don't Lose Your Data!

Ancient technology proverb (at least 10 years old): "It's not a matter of if your hard drive will crash, but when."

Friendly reminder! Don't forget to back-up your data. Burn CDs/DVDs, copy to external drives, use an online storage service, etc. Don't let yourself be exposed to risk.

If your laptop was stolen today, would you be covered?

Back-up.

The Joker by Heath Ledger

 

Philosophy into Folly.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

~ George Bernard Shaw

Meaninglessness - all the better?

It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.

~ Albert Camus

USC Strength Coach Chuck Berry

Plane Crashes into New York City!

You have GOT to be kidding me...

I am seriously stumped, shocked, bumfazzled.

Let's just get this out of the way - who cares that the pilot was Cory Lidle from the Yankees? With all due respect, and my condolences to his family for their loss - but that we are discussing the Yanks, and the rider in Lidle's contract which would allow the Yanks to not fulfill the financial obligations of his contract should he die while piloting an airplane!

(He finished the season, btw, so was paid fully anyway.)

But why are we talking about it? Who cares who it was? It could have been Barney the purple dinosaur.

What is provocative is that an AIRPLANE flew into a BUILDING in NEW YORK CITY.

Let's not divert our attention too far from that fact alone, eh?

Let's explore just for a moment. A plane takes off from an area airport - happens to be in Jersey, west of the city. Flies east, hits NYC, starts following the East River north, and after about 15 minutes (total) in the air, smashes into a building on the Upper East Side.

So an AIRPLANE "attacked" NYC successfully, again. Whether it was driven by terrorists or not is IRRELEVANT - I hope everyone sees that. It COULD have been driven by terrorists - why shouldn't it have been? The fact that the pilot was a Yanks pitcher who sat the bullpen during the short-lived playoffs is no more or less important to the story than if the pilot had been a hardened "evildoer" trained in terrorist camps. An AIRPLANE flew into a BUILDING in NYC. These are the key points, period.

I ask - how is it possible? I mean - a private plane, flying near Manhattan. Does that seem like a good idea at all? A private plane flying REALLY LOW near Manhattan. Does this sound like an even better idea? The plane impacted at the 30th floor of a 50-story building - that means the plane was just 250-300 feet off the ground.

(Try to resist asking why, assuming as the news sources are noting, that technical failure is the cause of the crash, the pilot did not go for the abundant water beneath him but rather banked TOWARDS the buildings. It is hard to uinderstand - but for our discussion here, ultimately, irrelevant.)

So a little private plane ripping up the East River, just feet from the east side of Manhattan, flying 300 feet above the water - this didn't fire some alarms? After all the boisterous chat about amping up our resources, technology, manpower, the creation of Homeland Security, the billions of dollars justified by increasing our ability to protect our nation - I wouldn't have been surprised if Transformers rose out of the river, or the Metlife building starting firing missiles, or a synthetic net sprung from Central Park, covering all of Manhattan in a protective sheathe. I mean - let's see those billions at work! Show me robots, show me invisible fences - whatever you got! But don't, please don't you dare let another airplane fly casually into the city in the middle of the day and crash into a building.

Did you know the Empire State Building suffered a blow from a military plane back in 1945?

Listen - maybe airplanes flying over and around New York City (and other cities) is just not a good idea.

How disruptive would it really be to world travel if the city and surrounding areas became a no-fly zone. I mean come on - La Guardia can go north of the city, JFK can go south of the city. Jersey airports can take their pick - just no one fly over or around (within a certain distance).

What? It adds 75 seconds to a flight? 240 seconds? For what? Peace of mind that an airplane is not going to fly into your apartment building. Hmmmm...

Or maybe you Homeland Security / FAA / NSA / etc dudes just need some new ideas.

You know when you go into the tunnel - it takes over your radio? Why not hijack every radio within a certain range of no-fly or limited fly-zones with specific instruction on where and how to fly away.

Obviously, for planes that are not lost but are instead on a purposed mission, a friendly radio message may not do the trick - how about extending the idea - figure out a way to hijack the controls for remote control - planes within a certain distance from a no-fly, get their system hijacked - maybe it leads them to a specific location, maybe it just increases their altitude. Come on - with the mobile technology of today, most planes being armed with autopilot systems - don't tell me we can't figure out how to hijack a plane's controls...

Speaking of altitude - why aren't there minimum altitude requirements? (are if there are requirements - why aren't they higher? Or if they are higher, why aren't they enforcerd?) Flying at 300 feet over the East River sounds like lighting a cigarette while fueling your car.

All planes should have to be a minimum of X feet off the ground if they are within the "zone." And what is X? Well, let's see - maybe we should derive it from something practical - I dunno - X should be an altitude at which, if said plane dropped into a dead-dive right for midtown, the number of seconds or minutes it would take to reach it would be greater than our response time to prevent the attack. So if it's going to take 60 seconds to get from X to Ground Zero, pun intended, it better take us 59 seconds or less to realize what is going on and act to resolve the crisis.

So - I are a college student but probably a little absent with the physics of a diving aircraft - but let's rough it. Let's say there was a 10000 foot "floor" in the city zone - all planes must fly at 10K or above. If one hit a deep dive, they could not travel faster than terminal velocity or let's say around 1700 feet per minute - so it would take them more than five minutes to crash a plane into the ground from that altitude.

A satellite projected laser trip-wire indicates an alarm when any aircraft breaks the 10000 foot floor. The alarm is handled by individuals who identify the aircraft via radar, and contact it via radio. Let's say hijacking the plane's controls remotely is not a possibility. OK. The plane is diving and we know where it is, what it is doing, and we are telling it to "pull up," "change your course," "whatever." No response.

OK, so this is not an accident - this is a purposed attack. Or even if it is not purposed - it doesn't matter - at some point, a highly calculated point-of-no-return, the plane crashing into the ground (the City, in this case) is imminent. And the primary goal of our systems are to protect our people, to protect our land, protect our towns and cities. That's when the missile silos that are (or should be) embedded in the East and Hudson Rivers release missiles into the air, destroying the plane and saving the day.

If we don't have a missile that will sufficiently shred the plane into particles small enough to not still render damage to the people below? So then create one.

(Maybe those calculations are completely wrong - but you get the point.)

Sound a little sci-fi? Come on. This all exists - or it nearly exists. I mean, just watch any of the Technology and/or Military shows on the Discovery channel for a couple hours - and that's the stuff we're showing off on public TV, presumably our most top secret projects are under slightly tighter wraps.

I recently conversed with a friend who was nonetheless shocked by the event, but seemingly justified the lack of action by referencing risk-analysis ratios, etc - what is the likelihood of an event ocurring and what is the possible damage that will be caused? The powers-that-be are not focusing energy and resources on little private planes - because it is the big commerical airlines that can really do the damage.

Well, I don't know if that's true - but if it is, it's a fundamentally flawed approach. Do not treat small aircraft and big aircraft as separate threats. Treat aircraft, PERIOD, as a single, unfied threat - and create protocols, systems, and responses that deal with all aircraft equally. That plane crashed into a building maybe a half-mile from the UN Headquarters. If perchance a backpack of C4 explosives had made it on-board, and it was Barney the purple terrorist instead of a baseball player flying it - that little plane could have made a reckoning.

We know there are no absolutes - and we know there is no such thing as "perfect" safe. So long as kamikazes (intentional or otherwise) exist, we, like everyone else in the world, will be vulnerable. But we don't want to hear excuses. We want to see a clear image - supporting the now years of promises - you have made America safer?

Today would still be a tragedy - a pilot and his companion would have died under unfortunate circumstances - and their loved ones (and in this case, Yankee fans alike) would mourn. But if Transformers and Go-Bots came out of the East River when that plane got too close to the City and diverted it, or if the plane came under remote control and was flown to safety, or albeit brazen, even if missiles had blown it to shreds - the nation would have stood at its feet and applauded, and it would have felt just a little bit better, a little more understanding - after all the Code Orange smoke Homeland Security has blown up all our rears.

So, really - see if you can prevent an AIRPLANE from flying into a BUILDING in NEW YORK CITY. We're not talking about hidden bio-chemical-molecular-agents floating through the air secretly and invisibly in a town of 400 somewhere up a mountain off the grid.

No, no.

AIRPLANES. Don't let them fly into BUILDINGS in NEW YORK CITY.

Bjork explains, in somewhat great technical terms - just how a TV works.

The Best and Worst of Times

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...in short, the period was so far like the present period....

~ Charles Dickens