Nowhere-Fast.net

Yes, the economy is in a freefall and yes, the government failed to find a workable solution and yes, politicians are all trying to score political points by blaming everyone else even as place collapses around them but the important news is that the SpaceX rocket finally worked!  And next they want to help people get to the moon!

Sure, the Earth stock markets are tanking and the Earth economy is potentially on the verge of collapse, but there’s nothing but growth potential for the lunar markets.

The network I’m using right now is pitifully slow and unreliable, so rather then risk losing a long and complex post I’ll just put up a link to the best article ever.

You really do have to wonder what was going through that hamster’s mind.  Seriously, read the article.

This is going to be a brief post about something completely unimportant that I nonetheless feel compelled to mention.  I’m watching a show on the discovery channel about Noah (of The Ark fame) and one of the experts just said that the traditional view of Noah is, and I shit you not, a “Hollywood illusion.”

Yes, a Hollywood illusion.  From Hollywood.  California.  See, Noah is, apparently, a construct of the 20th century California film industry.  An expert on the subject says this.

I thought - and I’m a layman - that the traditional view of Noah predated Hollywood by a number of millennium.  Yeah, I’d say that I - and remember here, I’m a layman - am pretty certain that the traditional view of Noah was developed and popularized by the Old fucking Testament.

Not Hollywood.

Dumbass.

Today I’m going to mention a few random, unrelated stories.

First, the state of Alabama is considering charging obese people an additional fee on their health insurance premiums - $25 a month - if they are unwilling to attempt to improve their health.  Unsurprisingly, some of the be-girthed Alabamans have problems with this.

Me?  I don’t have a problem with it.  In fact, I think that it should be more widespread.  I mean, if they’re already charging smokers an extra $24 a month for their added burden on the system then they should similarly charge the willfully fat.  That, though, is the key - they’re charging an additional fee for people who make no effort to improve their health.  They’re charging people who get fat, are fat and then say, “you know what?  Even though I’m so fat that I’m likely going to be an added burden on my friends, family and community I choose to do absolutely nothing about it.”  That is OK by me.

Next, there’s a priest in Italy who wants to organize a nun beauty pageant.  I… I don’t really know what to say about this one.  Sure, it can be done tastefully and certainly beauty pageants don’t always have to be sexual, but it strikes me that if you’re trying to raise awareness of the work being done by a group of people showcasing the most attractive individuals might not be the way to do it.

Finally, a couple in Florida are an example of the times when things just won’t work out.  See, the guy wants to be monogamous and the girl doesn’t.  They’ve been together for seven years.  I imagine it hasn’t been a smooth ride.

A relationship needs work and disagreements, arguments and issues should not be considered harbingers of doom.  However, understanding that there are certain issues that really are deal breakers - and the monogamy/polygamy issue is one of them.  If person A wants person B and person B wants persons A, C, D and possibly E or F on weekends… well, there’s an issue that isn’t likely to get resolved anytime soon.

Well, that’s my random selection of news for today.

Wait, one more thing.  The Olympics just ended with another extravagent ceremony.  These past few weeks have shown us why we should be afraid of China.  And Russia, now that I think about it.

Recently I was watching a show about the Hittite empire and their impressive capital city.  As they described Hatucia I couldn’t help but imagine laying out and planning the city walls, various buildings and defensive structures in the context of some Civilization style video game.

Also, watching this show makes me want to learn Cuneiform and become a linguist - but I fear that it might be a little too slow-paced for me.

It’s big news that Mars could have, at some point in its history, supported life.  Life hasn’t been found, nor have any records of life been found (the probe there currently isn’t capable of detecting fossil remains or life, unless, of course, they just walked up and said “hey”) but there is evidence that the conditions would have been ripe for life to have existed on our red neighbor.

It’s strange to me, but we’re actually at a point where I would be shocked to discover that life hadn’t existed on Mars at some point.  No longer is the idea of extraterrestrial life something that people vaguely admit “is pretty likely” but all the while off in some far-flung corner of the universe.  No, we’re now at a point where life is understood to be so hearty and so diverse that it’s practically absurd to suggest that life only ever existed on one planet in our own solar system.  That isn’t even considering the multitude of planets that exist beyond our grasp.

Google and Virgin used the “Virgle” project as their April Fool’s joke this year.  It was an open source, private enterprise, manned mission to colonize Mars.  Any one who truly believed that they released such a project on April 1st can deservedly be called a fool but the thing is that what they proposed really isn’t so far-fetched.  Quite the contrary, many people consider it a monumental failure that we haven’t been to Mars already.

My father told me once that people would be on Mars before he died.  Sadly, that didn’t come to pass but I really do have hope that my lifetime will see that achievement.

It seems that those braniacs over at MIT have figured out how to make solar panels produce power 24 hours a day.  That’s a good thing.  Now we just need to up the efficiency on that, tidal power and wind power and we might be able to consider someday starting to make a dent in our energy problems.

Until then - build some damned nuclear reactors and start selling electric cars!!!

There were a few more serious things that I was going to talk about today, but instead I’ll just post a link to misspelled tattoos.

I have found two new things to do on the computer when I’m bored and suffering from writer’s block.

The first involves Firefox 3.0 so if you don’t have that then you can’t do this first new thing.  Also, if you’ve only just now gotten Firefox 3.0 you can, technically, do this new thing but you won’t get any enjoyment out of it.  Well, I could be wrong there.  If you’re very easily amused then you might get some enjoyment out of it, but not much.  Here’s the thing: Firefox 3.0 has a great address bar that intelligently searches through previous web addresses, page names and page descriptions as you type into it.  It’s actually really good at figuring out what you want to find with only a few letters and I’ve been able to get back to pages thought long lost by tossing out a couple of relevant keywords.  The new thing to do is just randomly jam down some keys and see what comes up.  It could be all consonants, doesn’t matter - Firefox will probably find something.

The second new thing involves Google Documents but can be done with any word processor that supports the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test.  For those of you that don’t know, the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test is a simple, algorithmic way to determine how easy a given passage is to read and it assigns a “grade level” to it.  So what you do is quite simple, you take a simple sentence that scores very high on the test - meaning it’s simple to understand - and turn it into something that scores very low on the test - meaning it’s nigh-impenetrable.  It’s a good way to waste some quality time that could be spent doing other, more productive things.  On the flip side you’ll become very familiar with thesaurus.com.

Well it turns out that people aren’t happy with the new IPhone pricing structure or that in order to get one you need to sign an AT&T contract.  I understand that well enough - after all, it really is bullshit to be tied into a two year service contract in order to buy a gadget.  As an added bonus AT&T is royally screwing over their current non-IPhone using customers by requiring them to pay a higher price then even new customers.  It’s sort of like a customer loyalty reward only instead of rewarding their loyal customers they’re kicking them in the nuts.  One wonders if this is a good long-term plan.

Here’s a quick run-down of the pricing structure.  For the 8GB model a current IPhone user, a new AT&T customer or a current AT&T customer who has a contract that’s either about to expire or has expired and is currently on a month-to-month plan can “purchase” the phone for $199.  An AT&T customer who does not currently have an IPhone and who is still under contract has to pay $399.  In effect they’re punishing AT&T customers who made the decision to wait for the new IPhone rather then purchase a device that would be made obsolete in a few months.

Shit like this is why I’m so very glad that I’m not an Apple whore.  In approximately six months the market will be flooded by Google Android powered smartphones that have as much capability as the IPhone out of the box but that are also wonderfully, beautifully open platforms.  See, with Android anyone can develop nifty little apps and offer them to other phone users.  With the IPhone… not so much.

Hell, I’m already thinking of all the cool stuff you could do with some creative apps and a bunch of friends who have open platform phones with integrated GPSs.