Doofus Of The Day #428

Also courtesy of Rev. Paul (see the post below this one), we learn of one Gene Utley of Fairbanks, Alaska, who certainly qualifies as our latest Doofus Of The Day. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports:

Alaska State Troopers didn’t have to do much work to come up with a suspect in the New Year’s Day theft of an ATV trailer.

His wallet was found in the snow next to where the trailer had been parked. And when they went to the address listed on the ID in the wallet, they found the trailer.

. . .

Utley’s mother was home at the time. She told the trooper she didn’t know where Utley was, or how the trailer got there, but that if it had been stolen she said Utley probably had something to do with it, according to charging documents.

There's more at the link.

Could he possibly have made it any easier for the police? And you've got to love his mother's comment . . . she sounds as if she's very, very tired of his antics!



Peter

Anyone looking for a spiffy vintage acoustic guitar?

Rev. Paul, an Alaskan blogging buddy of Miss D. and myself, has had some unusually good fortune. Some years ago he was given an older-model Martin acoustic guitar, which he's never used much. He just took it down to the shop to be valued . . . and found it was a 1963 Martin 00-21NY, which are apparently as rare as hens' teeth (only 906 were made) and twice as valuable. It's still in mint condition, to boot!




My landlord, himself a guitarist, moaned piteously when he saw the photograph, and cursed that the guitar was so far away. In this area, there are many guitarists who'd drool over it. Rev. Paul is talking about trading it in for shop credit up in Alaska, but I know there are other guitar players reading this blog. If any of you want this magnificent specimen, click over to his blog post about it and leave a message for him as a comment, along with your contact information. If you wave sufficient green stuff in his general direction, I daresay he won't object to shipping it in your general direction!

Nice find, Paul. I know you and your wife will enjoy the instrument(s) you get in exchange for it, and use them well.

Peter

More on Tobias Bräuning

Yesterday I linked to an article in the Daily Mail about the photography of Tobias Bräuning.

In a comment to that post, fellow blogger Mitzi of The Purple Magpie's Nest (formerly writing at Miz Minka's Musings) mentioned that Bräuning's gallery could be found at this link. Here are a few more examples of his work from the gallery, reduced in size to fit this blog.










His gallery's got a whole lot more of his pictures, and is well worth a visit.

Thanks, Mitzi! I appreciate your help and interest. Good luck with the new blog!

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #427

Hint: Hazard warning tape is normally stretched around an area because . . . well, because there's a hazard there!

Disregarding that warning can lead to . . . this.

He's definitely our Doofus Of The Day for that one!



Peter

When a drop is a snap!

I'm amazed by the photography of Tobias Braeuning. The Daily Mail reports:

The stunning pictures show drops of red, green and yellow ink bouncing off the water to create mesmerising mid-air shapes not visible to the naked eye.

Each image captures in startlingly sharp detail the droplets frozen in time and cascading as bright colours in all directions.




. . .

The pictures were taken by full-time software engineer Tobias Brauening, 27, from Reutingen, Germany.

He said: 'The most fascinating aspect for me is that a water drop is such a simple thing which happens every day in nature.

'It's wonderful what nature can create, and I like to make this visible to others.'

The secret to Mr Brauening's success lies in his interest in technology, computers and photography.

He decided to study the little known subject of mechatronics, which combines all three subjects together to produce the outstanding and challenging images.

There's more at the link, including more (and larger) photographs. Highly recommended viewing.

Peter

Politics as usual . . . and just as nauseating!

I noted two news reports with displeasure and disgust today. The first summarized former Speaker Nancy Pelosi's time in office in financial terms.

In the 1,461 days that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) served as speaker of the House, the national debt increased by a total of $5.343 trillion ($5,343,452,800,321.37) or $3.66 billion per day ($3.657,394,113.84), according to official debt numbers published by the U.S. Treasury.

Pelosi was the 52nd speaker of the House. During her tenure, she amassed more debt than the first 49 speakers combined.

The total national debt did not climb above $5.343 trillion (the amount amassed during Pelosi’s four years as speaker) until Feb. 26, 1997, when Rep. Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.) was serving as the nation’s 50th House speaker.

When Pelosi was sworn in on Jan. 4, 2007, the national debt stood at $8,670,596,242,973.04. At the close of business on Jan. 4, 2011, her last full day in the speakership, it stood at 14,014,049,043,294.41--an increase of $5,343,452,800,321.37.

Pelosi served as speaker for four full years, including one leap year, making her time in that office 1,461 days. On average, the federal government added $3.66 billion ($3,657,394,113.84) in new debt for each of those days.

Pelosi not only outstripped her predecessors in the total volume of debt added to the national debt during her tenure as speaker, but also in the rate at which new debt was added. In fact, Pelosi added debt at a rate more than three times faster than her nearest competitor.

There's more at the link.

The second examined Republican contenders for the 2012 Presidential election.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney continues to hold the pole position for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination in the latest National Journal Political Insiders Poll. But the surprise runner-up to Romney was the two-term Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who moved up from fifth place when the last ranking of the potential GOP White House contenders was conducted a year ago.

Romney's assets and liabilities are well known and haven't changed much since last January. He has a national network of political and financial supporters left over from his unsuccessful run for the 2008 Republican nomination, a command of economic issues derived from his days in the private sector as a corporate turnaround artist, and the hard-won experience from have run for the presidency before.

But Romney must also figure out a way to convince Republican activists that the health care reform measure that he signed as governor of Massachusetts is different from the national health care reform passed by Pres. Obama and congressional Democrats that is anathema to the GOP rank-and-file. He also has a perceived authenticity deficit.

. . .

The standings were determined by Republican Insiders.

Again, there's more at the link. Bold print is my emphasis.

The last line in the extract above sums up the problem for both parties. Pelosi and Romney are both 'insiders'. There are too many like them, professional politicians who are familiar - and comfortable - with the 'old way' of doing things. Spend like drunken sailors; avoid any problem that might be unpopular with the electorate; 'go along to get along'; compromise, prevaricate, equivocate, duck and dive . . .

I'm sick of insiders in politics!

What US politics needs is a thoroughgoing purge of insiders. We need to get rid of them, lock, stock and barrel, and elect politicians who will answer to the electorate and take the Constitution and their oaths of office seriously. Anything less will simply perpetuate the mess we're already in!

I don't really care which party those politicians come from. If someone's a good person, honest, trustworthy, loyal to the Constitution, and not afraid to tackle the hard issues that confront us, I'll vote for him or her, irrespective of party affiliation. A plague on the 'insiders' of both the Democratic and Republican parties! They're all just as bad as one another, and there's little or nothing to choose between them. We need fresh blood, and new leaders who are unpolluted by the malaise of their forebears.

Out with the insiders! Now!





Peter

Is a Federal law enforcement agency out of control?

I've been growing more and more disturbed by reports suggesting that officials of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) are responsible for deliberate violations of the law, which may have contributed to the death of a Border Patrol agent last month.

These reports have come from three sources. The first is a forum called CleanupATF.org, which claims to have been set up by employees and officials of the BATFE who are disgusted at the corruption and mismanagement that they claim is endemic there. You can read their allegations in this explosive post on their forum. If they are who they say they are, and if their allegations are true, one has to accept that the BATFE is so far out of control as to be a rogue agency, desperately in need of Congressional oversight, and possibly so far gone as to require termination as the only way to remedy the situation. Unfortunately, we have no way of independently confirming their allegations . . . yet.

The other sources are a blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars, and the newspaper columns of David Codrea. A search on both sources will reveal many relevant entries, two of which are linked in the first paragraph above. Both sources have drawn on CleanupATF.org for much of their material.

I've mentioned several times that I'm a retired prison chaplain. This included service with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a law enforcement agency of the US Department of Justice. While serving with that bureau, I had contact with agents of the FBI, the US Marshals Service, and other Federal law enforcement agencies. As an enthusiastic shooter and supporter of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, I took the opportunity to shoot with them from time to time, and to discuss the gun laws of this country. Literally every single agent from those agencies, without exception, spoke with disdain, even disgust, about the BATFE and its personnel. They described the latter to me as 'cowboys', 'amateurs' and even 'idiots'. The BATFE's role in the Waco siege came in for particular criticism. All concerned (including some who'd been there during the crisis) maintained that if its agents hadn't tried to stage a public relations coup with their armed assault on the compound, the situation could have been handled much more easily, and the eventual tragic loss of life could have been avoided.

That background gives me no reason to trust the BATFE, particularly since so many agents from so many other Federal law enforcement agencies seemed to distrust the agency as well. If the allegations made on CleanupATF.org and elsewhere can be substantiated, it'll a scandal of mind-boggling proportions. If it can be proved that a BATFE supervisor encouraged the smuggling of the weapon that killed an agent of another Federal law enforcement agency . . . let's just say that'll be the equivalent of a thermonuclear bomb exploding in the halls of power! The fallout will be catastrophic, not only for the BATFE, but for all those responsible for overseeing, directing and controlling Federal law enforcement overall.

The problem is that such allegations are going to be difficult, if not impossible, to substantiate if the BATFE is left to investigate itself, or if the investigation is handled by another Federal agency that might be subject to pressure to 'back off', or 'whitewash' the agency. I believe the situation has evolved to the point that only a formal Congressional inquiry can establish the facts of the matter.

I'd therefore like to ask you, dear readers, to please read the sources I've linked above for yourselves. If you agree with me that there's sufficient smoke to suspect that there's a fire beneath it, will you please write to your Congressional representatives, asking for such an inquiry?

Thank you very much, not just for myself, but in memory of Border Patrol Officer Brian A. Terry. May his soul rest in peace; may his family receive what comfort they may; and may the truth about the circumstances surrounding his death come to light, so that this tragedy may be ended, one way or another, and his family may be at peace instead of being tormented by doubts.

Peter

The ultimate kids' toy?

A Swiss billionaire has bought what may be the ultimate toy for his children. The Daily Mail reports:

For anyone who has shed blood, sweat and tears creating a creaky play house for their beloved offspring, this beautifully sculpted version will come as a hammer blow.

Costing £150,000 [about US $232,000] - almost as much as the average house in England and Wales - the two-storey timber structure has double glazing, solid pine flooring with underfloor heating, and 400 decorative bulbs.




Inside there are four rooms, including a large living room with a stone chimney that is illuminated by red LED lights, custom-made furniture and TV equipment.

The fully-fitted kitchen has mod cons including fitted cupboards, a hob, fridge, sink and microwave and the two bedrooms, one on a mezzanine level, have two beds each for sleepovers.

The Wendy house now standing in Gstaad was built by a British company for a Swiss billionaire who gave it to his children as a Christmas present. It is an exact replica of a chalet the businessman owns in the foothills of the Alps.

There's more at the link.

I don't know how the locals in Gstaad plan to 'keep up with the Joneses' on this one! Given that one has to be extremely rich to afford to live there, will we see a rash of 'my-Wendy-house-is-better-than-yours' structures breaking out like pimples all over the Swiss landscape?





Peter

'Kissing the planet'?

That's what these skiers and snowboarders are said to be doing!

The clip above is a short version of a much longer video (almost three-quarters of an hour) showing more of the same. Click over to Vimeo to watch it, if you have the time and are so inclined.



Peter

The perils of taxing witches

Romania has apparently decided to tax witches, astrologers and fortune-tellers with effect from the beginning of 2011. The new law has produced a rather unusual backlash.

Angry witches are using cat excrement and dead dogs to cast spells on the president and government, which is forcing them to pay taxes. Also in the eye of the taxman are fortune tellers, who should have seen it coming.

And President Traian Basescu isn't laughing it off. In a country where superstition is mainstream, the president and his aides wear purple on Thursdays, allegedly to ward off evil spirits.

Witches from Romania's eastern and western regions will descend to the southern plains and the Danube River on Thursday to threaten the government with spells and spirits. Mauve has a high vibration, it makes the wearer superior and wards off evil attacks, according to the esoteric group Violet Flame — which practices on Thursdays.

A dozen witches will head to the Danube to put a hex on the government and hurl mandrake into the river "so evil will befall them," said a witch named Alisia. She identified herself with one name, as is customary among witches.

There's more at the link.

I'll be watching with interest to see whether the witches' measures work. If they do, I think I'll offer some of them free tickets to Washington DC. There are any number of politicians there, on both sides of the aisle, whom I'd love to curse with boils, Biblical plagues and general discombobulation . . .





Peter

Another fraudulent product is exposed

I never believed the claims of Power Balance for its 'hologram therapy' bracelets. I'm delighted to learn it's been forced to admit that its products are a sham, a fake and a fraud.

A wristband worn by high profile sports stars that claims to improve athletic performance has been exposed as a sham by the consumer watchdog.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has ordered Power Balance Australia to refund all customers who feel they were misled by the supposed benefits of Power Balance bands.

The wristbands were touted as providing better balance, strength and flexibility by working with the wearer's "natural energy field".

. . .

ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel said in a statement: “Power Balance has admitted that there is no credible scientific basis for the claims and therefore no reasonable grounds for making representations about the benefits of the product.

“Its conduct may have contravened the misleading and deceptive conduction section of the Trade Practices Act 1974," Mr Samuel said.

. . .

Power Balance acknowledged it had breached the code and said the relevant claims had been removed from its website.

. . .

Consumer advocate group Choice found the bracelets were just rubber bands with plastic holograms.

"The band was tested at CHOICE under controlled lab conditions which showed it did little else than empty purchasers' wallets," Choice said in October.

There's more at the link. Italy has also fined Power Balance for making unsubstantiated claims in its advertising.

In one of the most brazen displays of bare-faced gall I've ever seen, Power Balance is still trying to market its products to gullible consumers!

The company unleashed a torrent of its own tweets, playing off the word "admit."

In one, it said: "Power Balance Admits products have been worn during the last world series, nba finals and super bowl champions!"

. . .

Power Balance, for its part, doesn't claim to have science on its side, said Adam Selwyn, a spokesman for the Laguna Niguel, Calif.-based company.

Rather, it relies on testimonials from famous athletes and users to tout the products' effects. The company says it pays some athletes for the right to use their images wearing the bracelets, including O'Neal and Odom.

Josh Rodarmel, one of the company's co-founders, said in a statement he knows there may be skeptics. "We're not trying to win over every person in the world," he said.

Again, more at the link.

Power Balance bracelets join horoscopes, fortune-tellers and other quacks and quack nostrums on the long, long list of frauds perpetrated on the gullible. I sincerely hope those guilty of this crime do hard time in jail.

Peter

Ambulance Driver's free book, revisited

A couple of days ago I mentioned that Ambulance Driver's book would be available as a free download from his publisher for a short period. Unfortunately, the link they provided didn't work!

That's now been rectified. You can go to this page on Ambulance Driver's blog to find a link to his publisher's download page; and this entry gives more information on the Kindle version of the download, which is apparently still giving problems. They'll (hopefully) be solved shortly.

Peter

Phosphate follies

I'm sure many readers have been as frustrated as I to discover that the new 'phosphate-free' dishwashing detergents don't remove ingrained grime or dried food worth a damn. I'd say they're no more than 70% as effective as the old, phosphated varieties. I now have to hand-wash dishes, using regular sink detergent, and make sure they're clean, before I put them in the dishwasher for a disinfecting run-through. Something's wrong with this picture . . .

Of course, this is only the beginning. As Treehugger points out:

Activists have been trying to get phosphates banned for 40 years, but soap-makers have lobbied intensively, claiming that it was impossible to remove that ingredient from their products (or that if they could do it with laundry detergent, it couldn't be done with dishwasher detergent, and so on). But over the years, many green soap-makers have shown the public that it could be done.

The next step will be to reduce agricultural run-offs of nitrogen and phosphorus that also cause algae blooms and aquatic dead zones. Agriculture is a huge source of these chemicals, mostly because it pays more for farmers to put more fertilizer than they need "just in case" than to put only what's required. Better farming techniques (more high-tech soil sensors, etc) and organic farming techniques could help reduce that problem.

There's more at the link.

They won't stop at detergents and fertilizers, either. How about genetically modifying farm animals to reduce their phosphate 'footprint'?

Researchers have been working on the Enviropig for more than a decade.

They believe it will be the first GM [genetically modified] animal to be allowed into the food chain and could one day provide sausages, bacon and pork for the world.

Like all creatures, pigs need phosphorus in their diet to help form strong bones, teeth and cell walls.

They are fed primarily on cereals which contains a type of phosphorus that they cannot digest. Most farmers have to feed pigs an enzyme called phytase to make plant phosphorus digestible.

But phytase supplements are not very good at breaking down phosphorus, so a large amount is flushed out of their bodies in waste.

The phosphorous-rich manure can make its way into the water supply where it triggers algal blooms, which choke aquatic life and create ‘dead zones’ for fish.

Unlike normal pigs, Enviropigs have been designed to produce their own phytase.

Researchers took a gene responsible for the creation of phytase from an E.coli bacteria and added it to the genetical make-up of a Yorkshire pig.

To make sure the bacterium gene would work in the animal, they combined it with a gene taken from a mouse before inserting it into the Enviropig’s DNA.

In tests, the Enviropig was able to absorb more phosphorous from its feed. Its waste contained less of the potentially toxic substance.

Its meat also appears to be identical to cuts from a traditional Yorkshire pig.

Again, more at the link.

OK. For the sake of the environment, I'm willing to cut back on phosphates in detergents, fertilizers, even in my bacon and ham . . . but would somebody please invent something to replace phosphates that works as well as they used to??? Is that too much to ask? If I can no longer get my dishes and cooking utensils properly clean, isn't that as much of a risk to my health (and that of my family and guests) as too much phosphate released into the environment?

Sheesh . . .





Peter

Danger - slides!

This compilation of accidents on, near and around slides of all types had me chuckling.

Peter

Seafarers may have been around much earlier than we thought

The Daily Mail reports that discoveries in Crete suggest that our perspective on early human exploration may have to be radically amended.

Archaeologists have discovered a set of tools they believe prove that man sailed the sea tens of thousands of years earlier than previously thought.

Rough axes and other tools thought to be between 130,000 and 700,000 years old were found close to shelters on the south coast of the Mediterranean island of Crete.




Crete has been separated from the mainland of Greece for about five million years, so whoever made the tools must have travelled there by sea, a distance of at least 40 miles.

The previous earliest evidence was of sea travel was 60,000 years ago; in Greece it was 11,000 years ago.

The findings upset the current view that human ancestors migrated to Europe from Africa by land alone.

The Greek Culture Ministry said in a statement yesterday: 'The results of the survey not only provide evidence of sea voyages in the Mediterranean tens of thousands of years earlier than we were aware of so far, but also change our understanding of early hominids' cognitive abilities.'

There's more at the link.

This is very important news. If it can be proved that these tools are associated with seafaring, and that the purported dates are correct, it'll lead to a wholesale re-evaluation of the dates at which various civilizations emerged along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Our whole perspective on ancient history may have to be substantially altered. This should keep archaeologists hard at work for decades to come!

I do love it when new discoveries throw a monkey-wrench or two into the gears of accepted academic consensus . . .





Peter

Your online habits - what they know about you

Last month I published two articles about online privacy and how your activities are tracked. The Wall Street Journal has now published another article in its ongoing series 'What They Know', examining how Web sites are tracking your every activity. They provide this very useful video introduction.

The WSJ also provides a very interesting interactive graphic, examining the extent to which the 50 most popular US Web sites track your movements. Here, for example, is how Dictionary.com is depicted. It's the worst offender, with no fewer than 11 first-party and 223 third-party tracking software applications trying to follow you as you enter and leave the site.




You can check the other 49 top sites, and find out how many software trackers they unleash on you, at the WSJ's Web page. Very interesting and disturbing viewing - and highly recommended.

Peter

Information overload - not a new phenomenon!

Yesterday I published an article about what was called Information Deprivation Disorder, which attracted a certain amount of negative comment from readers. I note that the problem of information overload, and subsequent withdrawal symptoms, isn't new. Boston.com reports:

Worry about information overload has become one of the drumbeats of our time. The world’s books are being digitized, online magazines and newspapers and academic papers are steadily augmented by an endless stream of blog posts and Twitter feeds; and the gadgets to keep us participating in the digital deluge are more numerous and sophisticated. The total amount of information created on the world’s electronic devices is expected to surpass the zettabyte mark this year (a barely conceivable 1 with 21 zeroes after it).

. . .

Beneath all this concern lies the sense that humanity is experiencing an unprecedented change — that modern technology is creating a problem that our culture and even our brains are ill equipped to handle. We stand on the brink of a future that no one can ever have experienced before.

But is it really so novel? Human history is a long process of accumulating information, especially once writing made it possible to record texts and preserve them beyond the capacity of our memories. And if we look closely, we can find a striking parallel to our own time: what Western Europe experienced in the wake of Gutenberg’s invention of printing in the 15th century, when thousands upon thousands of books began flooding the market, generating millions of copies for sale. The literate classes experienced exactly the kind of overload we feel today — suddenly, there were far more books than any single person could master, and no end in sight. Scholars, at first delighted with the new access to information, began to despair. “Is there anywhere on earth exempt from these swarms of new books?” asked Erasmus, the great humanist of the early 16th century.

But amid the concern, that crisis began to generate something else: a raft of innovative new methods for dealing with the accumulation of information. These included early plans for public libraries, the first universal bibliographies that tried to list all books ever written, the first advice books on how to take notes, and encyclopedic compilations larger and more broadly diffused than ever before. Detailed outlines and alphabetical indexes let readers consult books without reading them through, and the makers of large books experimented with slips of paper for cutting and pasting information from manuscripts and printed matter — a technique that, centuries later, would become essential to modern word processing.

. . .

The early modern experience of overload was different in many ways from today’s. For example, then only an educated elite and a few areas of life were affected. Today people in nearly every walk of life, at least in the developed world, rely on the Internet for much of their basic information.

What we share with our ancestors, though, is the sense of excess. Most Internet searches will turn up vastly more results than can be used. Too much of the bad stuff, not enough of the good, has been the subtext of complaints about overload from the beginning. But like the early modern compilers, we too are devising ways to cope. In many ways, our key methods of coping with overload haven’t changed since the 16th century: We still need to select, summarize, and sort, and ultimately need human judgment and attention to guide the process.

There's more at the link. The article provides a lot of detail about how Renaissance scholars developed new tools and techniques to handle the flood of information, including useful inventions like the 'florilegium'. Interesting and recommended reading.

Peter

Mexican drug cartels spread their tentacles

I've written before about the danger from Mexican drug cartels, both in that country and in the USA. They're operating in most major US centers already. Now it appears they're spreading their operations - and their violence - to other South American nations as well. Guatemala is their latest target.

Men claiming to belong to the Zetas drug gang forced radio stations to broadcast a threat of war in a northern Guatemalan province where the government declared a state of siege last week, authorities said Tuesday.

The men arrived at three radio stations in the northern city of Coban and threatened to burn the premises down and kill journalists and their families if the message was not broadcast, Interior Ministry spokesman Nery Morales said.

The message, which the radio broadcasters read out Monday, threatened violence if Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom does not fulfill unspecified promises. It said "war will start in this country, in shopping malls, schools and police stations."

Guatemala declared a month long state of siege Dec. 19 in the northern province of Alta Verapaz, a prime corridor for smuggling drugs from Honduras to Mexico and a bastion of Mexico's brutal Zetas drug gang.

Residents in the city of Coban say gangs roam the streets with assault rifles and armored vehicles, extorting and kidnapping people. Shootouts have become a daily occurrence.

There's more at the link.

It's more and more clear that the Mexican drug cartels are no longer merely criminal organizations. They've grown so strong through decades of criminal activity, official corruption and enormous profits that they're as well organized and financed as many national governments. They can buy the same quantities of military equipment as many small armies, and hire and train their own 'soldiers' to carry out paramilitary operations in defiance of security forces. So far, their activities in the USA have not risen to this level, but that's not the case in Guatemala and elsewhere. There are also worrying indications that the cartels have linked up with terrorist movements such as FARC in Colombia, and perhaps even with Muslim terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda and Hezbollah. How long can it be before such ties lead to terrorist actions on US soil?

Peter

This makes me feel cold all over!

How not to snowboard across a frozen pond . . .

Excuse me while I take a (very!) hot shower, will you?

Brrrr!!!

Peter

Prayers for Brigid, please

Many of my readers are also regular visitors to Home On The Range. Our hostess there, Brigid, has had some bad news, medically speaking, and is to undergo surgery Real Soon. I'd be grateful for your prayers for her, please; and if you'd like to click over there and leave an encouraging comment and/or good wishes, please do so.

Your messages and encouragement meant a lot to me when I had my heart attack in 2009, so I'd be personally very grateful if you'd please do the same for Brigid. Thanks, friends.

To Brigid: Dear sister, may the Lord hold you in the hollow of His Hand, and bring comfort and healing to you. You'll be in my thoughts and prayers, and those of Miss D. as well. Keep us posted about your progress on your blog, as and when you can. Remember - you're not allowed to shoot the nurses when they come in with the big needles!

Peter

The Facebook generation: addicted to the Internet?

The Telegraph reports that avid computer users and Web surfers are demonstrating physical withdrawal symptoms when deprived of their technological 'fix'.

Turning off mobile phones, avoiding the internet and tuning out of the television and radio can leave people suffering from symptoms similar to those seen in drug addicts trying to go cold turkey, researchers have found.

The scientists asked volunteers to stay away from all emails, text messages, Facebook and Twitter updates for 24 hours. They found that the participants began to develop symptoms typically seen in smokers attempting to give up.

Some of those taking part said they felt like they were undergoing "cold turkey" to break a hard drug habit, while others said it felt like going on a diet. The condition is now being described as Information Deprivation Disorder.

. . .

The findings will fuel concerns raised by neurologists and psychologists about the impact that excessive use of the internet, computer games and social networking sites are having on the so-called "Net Generation" of teenagers and young adults.

There's more at the link.

I'm not sure what to make of this. Part of me wants to kick many teenagers out of the house, get them out into the fresh air doing something physical rather than sitting in front of TV sets or computers or game consoles all day long. I think that would solve a great deal of the problem, right there. On the other hand, there have always been people (relatively few in number) who obsessively fixate on certain elements in their lives to the exclusion and/or detriment of others. (The expression 'cat lady' perfectly describes at least one such personality type.) The Internet is merely the latest thing for such people to fixate upon, and as such, I don't think it's necessarily to blame for their condition.

I'm also rather dubious about giving this 'condition' a defined name and place in psychotherapy. Calling it 'Information Deprivation Disorder' seems like overkill at the very least. Psychological and psychiatric 'disorders' have multiplied like particularly energetic and fertile rabbits over the past few decades, often without any clear reason for doing so. It's almost as if a psychotherapist's professional reputation depends on having 'discovered' a new 'disorder'! This may be more of the same.

What say you, readers? Is this something that's serious enough to be classified as a disorder, or is it just a case of people needing to be kicked out of the house and into the fresh air for a while?

Peter

Making Web searches more useful

TechCrunch suggests that Google is now so swamped with spam that it's almost useless as a means to find the information we want. There may be a better alternative.

Google has become a jungle: a tropical paradise for spammers and marketers. Almost every search takes you to websites that want you to click on links that make them money, or to sponsored sites that make Google money. There’s no way to do a meaningful chronological search.

We ended up using instead a web-search tool called Blekko. It’s a new technology and is far from perfect; but it is innovative and fills the vacuum of competition with Google (and Bing).

. . .

In addition to providing regular search capabilities like Google’s, Blekko allows you to define what it calls “slashtags” and filter the information you retrieve according to your own criteria. Slashtags are mostly human-curated sets of websites built around a specific topic, such as health, finance, sports, tech, and colleges. So if you are looking for information about swine flu, you can add “/health” to your query and search only the top 70 or so relevant health sites rather than tens of thousands spam sites. Blekko crowdsources the editorial judgment for what should and should not be in a slashtag, as Wikipedia does. One Blekko user created a slashtag for 2100 college websites. So anyone can do a targeted search for all the schools offering courses in molecular biology, for example. Most searches are like this—they can be restricted to a few thousand relevant sites. The results become much more relevant and trustworthy when you can filter out all the garbage.

. . .

Blekko makes an effort to index the page by the date on which it was actually created (by analyzing other information embedded in its HTML). So if I want to search for articles that mention my name, I can do a regular search; sort the results chronologically; limit them to tech blog sites or to any blog sites for a particular year; and perhaps find any references related to the subject of economics. Try doing any of this in Google or Bing.

. . .

The bottom line is that we’re fighting a losing battle for the web and need alternative ways of finding the information that we need. I hope that Blekko and a new breed of startups fill this void: that they do to Google what Google did to the web in the late 90’s — clean up the spam and clutter.

There's more at the link. Here's a video introduction to Blekko.

Looks like a promising start. I'll use it for a while, and if I like it, I'll report back on my experiences. I have to agree with TechCrunch - I'm getting awfully tired of spam sites popping up on Google searches! There are even companies offering optimization tools to help your Web site show up better in response to users' search queries on Google. When things have gone that far, it means one can't rely on a search to return honest answers . . . and it's time that changed. I hope Blekko gets it right, and that others follow.

Peter

Ambulance Driver has some good news

My blogbuddy Ambulance Driver is also a published author, having written one of the best I-was-there paramedic accounts I've ever read.

His publisher, Kaplan, is trying to build up its e-book business, and is offering a free download of his book (and several others) from January 4th-10th.

If you haven't already read AD's book, you need to. Click over to his blog to find out how to get it on your e-reader or computer, and enjoy!

It's also AD's fourth blogversary, a day or two after my third. Congratulations, AD, and thanks for many engrossing and entertaining posts! I look forward to many more.

Peter

When poor sportsmanship backfires on the poor sportsman!

This video clip shows a distinctly unsporting gesture from a competitor . . . that ended up helping the victim win the race!

Talk about being hoist with your own petard . . .



Peter

Things I never knew about ancient mathematics

I was surprised to read an article on CNN about Babylonian mathematics. Here's an excerpt.

Over 1,000 years before Pythagoras was calculating the length of a hypotenuse, sophisticated scribes in Mesopotamia were working with the same theory to calculate the area of their farmland.

Working on clay tablets, students would "write" out their math problems in cuneiform script, a method that involved making wedge-shaped impressions in the clay with a blunt reed.

These tablets bear evidence of practical as well as more advanced theoretical math and show just how sophisticated the ancient Babylonians were with numbers -- more than a millennium before Pythagoras and Euclid were doing the same in ancient Greece.

"They are the most sophisticated mathematics from anywhere in the world at that time," said Alexander Jones, a Professor of the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity at New York University.

He is co-curator of "Before Pythagoras: The Culture of Old Babylonian Mathematics", an exhibition at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in New York.

. . .

It took a young Austrian mathematician in the 1920s, named Otto Neugebauer, to crack the mathematical system and work out what the ancient Babylonians were calculating. But despite his advances, it is only recently that interest in Babylonian math has started to take hold.

"I think that before Neugebauer and even after Neugebauer, there wasn't a lot of attention placed on mathematical training in Babylon even though we have this rich cuneiform history with the tablets," said Jennifer Chi, Associate Director for Exhibitions and Public Programs at Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.

. . .

And though ancient Babylonia is often referred to in popular culture as a "lost" world, in fact much more evidence of mathematical learning from the period exists than from ancient Greece, said Chi.

There's more at the link.

Intrigued, I decided to do a bit more research. I was frankly amazed by what I found. Babylonian mathematics is a subject that's only recently achieved prominence, with the deciphering of its numerals, symbols and techniques. It's proven to have been remarkably advanced. I never knew, for example, that it was Babylon which first divided the day into 24 hours of 60 minutes each, with 60 seconds in each minute, almost 4,000 years ago.

Babylonian numerals

It's claimed that the most famous Babylonian mathematical 'document' is Plimpton 322, a clay tablet purchased from an antiquities dealer in 1922/23. It's said to show a table of four columns and fifteen rows of numbers in Cuneiform script.

Plimpton 322

I never realized that so much had recently come to light about Babylonian mathematics. A Google search lists tens of thousands of results about the subject. I can see I'm going to have to read up more about it, and discover what I've been missing.

Peter

Getting excited . . . about getting bored???

The Wall Street Journal reports on a rather strange conference held in London, England.

"Brace yourself for five piping-hot minutes of inertia," said William Barrett. Then he began reciting the names of every single one of 415 colors listed in a paint catalog: damson dream, dauphin, dayroom yellow, dead salmon…and on and on and on.

Mr. Barrett's talk was titled, "Like Listening to Paint Dry," and to judge from the droopy faces in the audience, it was a hit. He was speaking, after all, at a conference of boredom enthusiasts called Boring 2010, held here Dec. 11.

For seven hours on that Saturday, 20 speakers held forth on a range of seemingly dreary diversions, from "The Intangible Beauty of Car Park Roofs" and "Personal Reflections on the English Breakfast," to "The Draw in Test Match Cricket" and "My Relationship With Bus Routes." Meanwhile, some of the 200 audience members—each of whom had paid £15 (about $24) for a ticket—tried not to nod off.

Not many did, surprisingly. "It is quintessentially English to look at something dull as ditchwater and find it interesting," said Hamish Thompson, who runs a public-relations firm and was in the audience.

. . .

Boredom has become a serious subject for scientific inquiry. For example, a 25-year study of British civil servants published earlier this year found that some people really can be bored to death: People who complain about "high levels" of boredom in their lives are at double the risk of dying from a stroke or heart disease, the study concluded.

The "Boring Institute," in South Orange, N.J., started as a spoof. Its website says it now plays a more serious role describing "the dangers that are associated with too much boredom and offers advice on how to avoid it."

. . .

Boring 2010 sprang to life when Mr. Ward heard that an event called the Interesting Conference had been canceled, and he sent out a joke tweet about the need to have a Boring Conference instead. He was taken aback when dozens of people responded enthusiastically.

Soon, he was hatching plans for the first-ever meet-up of the like-mindedly mundane. The first 50 tickets for Boring 2010 sold in seven minutes.

"I guess the joke is on me," said the laid-back Mr. Ward. "I've created this trap and there's no way out."

. . .

[Next year] Mr. Ward plans to play host to Boring 2011. He hopes to include a talk that didn't make it on the roster this year entitled "The Ease of Extracting Electricity From Municipal Buildings and Beyond: A Comparison."

It's about electric sockets.

There's more at the link. Amusing and entertaining reading.

In light of this article, I've had to re-evaluate the usefulness of the International Institute of Not Doing Much, also known as Slow Down Now. The organization offers what it calls the Slow Manifesto:

There are those who urge us to speed. We resist!

We shall not flag or fail. We shall slow down in the office, and on the roads. We shall slow down with growing confidence when all those around us are in a shrill state of hyperactivity (signifying nothing). We shall defend our state of calm, whatever the cost may be. We shall slow down in the fields and in the streets, we shall slow down in the hills, we shall never surrender!

If you can slow down when all around you are speeding up, then you're one of us. Be proud that you are one of us and not one of them. For they are fast, and we are slow. If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly. Some are born to slowness—others have it thrust upon them. And still others know that lying in bed with a morning cup of tea is the supreme state for mankind.

Again, there's more at the link. Fun stuff - and the organization looks like a natural partner for the Boring conferences!





Peter

A whole new can of scientific weather worms

The Daily Mail reports that scientists claim to have successfully modified the weather over Abu Dhabi to produce rain.

Fifty rainstorms were created last year in the state's eastern Al Ain region using technology designed to control the weather.

Most of the storms were at the height of the summer in July and August when there is no rain at all.

People living in Abu Dhabi were baffled by the rainfall which sometimes turned into hail and included gales and lightening.

The scientists have been working secretly for United Arab Emirates president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

. . .

In a confidential company video, the founder of the Swiss company in charge of the project, Metro Systems International, boasted of success.

. . .

The Metro System scientists used ionisers to produce negatively charged particles called electrons.

They have a natural tendency to attach to tiny specks of dust which are ever-present in the atmosphere in the desert-regions.

These are then carried up from the emitters by convection - upward currents of air generated by the heat release from sunlight as it hits the ground.

Once the dust particles reach the right height for cloud formation, the charges will attract water molecules floating in the air which then start to condense around them.

If there is sufficient moisture in the air, it induces billions of droplets to form which finally means cloud and rain.




. . .

Last June Metro Systems built five ionising sites each with 20 emitters which can send trillions of cloud-forming ions into the atmosphere.

Over four summer months the emitters were switched on when the required atmospheric level of humidity reached 30 per cent or more.

While the country's weather experts predicted no clouds or rain in the Al Ain region, rain fell on FIFTY-TWO occasions.

There's more at the link.

This raises two very serious questions. First, what effect will such weather modifications have on surrounding nations? If the moisture in the atmosphere would normally have drifted with air currents to another place, and there formed part of that area's normal rainfall pattern, what will happen to that pattern if the moisture is induced to fall as rain before it gets there? By overcoming its own drought, one nation may induce drought conditions elsewhere.

This, in turn, raises the question of weather warfare. Technically, this is banned through the United Nations Environmental Modification Convention of the late 1970's . . . but back then, there were no really effective weather modification techniques available. If those techniques have become more effective - which, judging from the Daily Mail report, they have - surely the temptation for some nation to use them against another will become well-nigh irresistible? And if such techniques use ions, which are, by definition, biodegradable, disappearing without trace after use, what evidence will there be to convict the guilty party?

Thoughts to ponder . . .

Peter

Around the blogs

Travis mentioned an article by Doctor Professor on 'Why I Quit [World of Warcraft] And Started Working Out'. Here's an excerpt.

My cross-country move brought me within a short drive of my guild leader, and one evening she invited me over for a home-cooked meal. The experience irrevocably changed how I saw WoW [World of Warcraft].

She was perfectly nice, and an excellent cook. But it was hard not to notice certain things - no matter how bad I felt for noticing them. It was hard not to notice she lived in a crappy apartment in a crappy neighborhood. It was hard not to notice she was fat. It was hard not to notice that despite her dreams of going back to school and becoming a paramedic, she just worked part-time at a local pizza joint.

She marveled at one point that she'd been playing WoW for four and a half years, ever since the beta. And she'd spent a good chunk of that leading a substantial, successful guild - itself nearly a full-time job.

What, exactly, did she have to show for all the time and work she'd poured into this game? The rest of her life was just the same as it'd been when she'd started. If she'd instead spent the last four and a half years working on her dream, she would be a paramedic by now. Easily.

. . .

I didn't want to look around one day and discover I'd turned into my guild leader, dreams on the horizon but unachieved because my days added up to nothing. The idea frightened and depressed me.

So I quit. I quit hard enough that the way the game had pulled me in the last time wasn't an option anymore. And instead of spending an hour every day doing my daily quests in-game, I spent an hour every day doing "daily quests" in real life - I started working out. I started leveling my actual skills and stats.

I started small - some push ups, some bicep curls, some jogging. Nobody told me I'd gained 50 reputation and 100 experience. And without visible feedback, I had to rely on internal motivation. Whenever I thought to myself, "I could just skip today. It's just one day; it's not that big of a deal," I remembered my guild leader, and I thought about how every day is a decision.

. . .

Before too long, I was seeing real results. I was doing more push ups, lifting heavier weights, running faster for longer. And my appearance improved too. I'm hot now. I feel better and have more energy and confidence. It extends into every aspect of my life. It's far, far more satisfying than hitting Exalted with some faction and earning the right to buy their tabard and mount. The only problem, in fact, is that now I need to buy tighter clothes.

So why do people throw so much time into WoW? Because it's very cleverly designed to hook you, to addict you, and to trick you.

. . .

WoW isn't the only game to hook people this way. It's becoming increasingly commonplace. The same tricks form the foundation of an even more popular game: Farmville.

. . .

Although WoW is a much better game than Farmville, with a substantially different business model, their tactics are fundamentally the same: use your social obligations to keep you clicking. Exploit your friendships, sense of reciprocity, and the joy of being part of a group with shared goals. Turn it all from something commendable to something frivolous that serves mainly to increase the game developer's profits.

This is the trap which caught my guild leader. The same desire to help people that made her want to be a paramedic is exactly what was caught and shamelessly exploited by WoW, holding her in a useless cycle of fake altruism. But tug the thread and it all unravels - all she's really helping people do is play a game. She isn't saving lives. She's just helping people kill time.

How do you avoid this trap? How do you prevent WoW (or games like it) from hooking you into a shadow of what you really want? The answer is simple: don't play blindly. Consider what it is you get out of WoW. Nearly everything the game provides can be found better and more real elsewhere.

. . .

Ultimately, you have to ask yourself: do you want to do something real or something fake? You can't do both at once. Every day you face this decision.

What do you want to do today?

There's more at the link. Doctor Professor encapsulates all of my misgivings about such time-, energy- and resource-consuming games, and adds a few wrinkles about which I hadn't thought. I've never joined either WoW or Farmville, and now I have even more reasons not to do so!

Then, Roberta X linked to an article on Wondermark. I followed the link, and browsed around there for a while when I was done. I came across this wonderfully funny article published in the New York Times in 1890. It describes the commotion (aural, social and legal) caused by the unveiling (or should that be 'unleashing'?) of a steam trombone in Scranton, PA. Here's an extract.

Archaeologists have identified the trombone as the Scriptural 'sackbut' ... Perhaps a future revision of the Old Testament will show that it was not a harp but a sackbut which incited the sick SAUL to give a practical and exemplary turn to his musical criticism. In that case he displayed upon the whole a most commendable moderation. Whosoever has inhabited an apartment near to that in which a practitioner upon the trombone has struggled with the difficulties of the instrument will agree that nailing the student to the wall with a javelin is about the mildest form of expostulation that is appropriate to the offense.

But a steam trombone, a steam trombone of two hundred horsepower, even as a freak of the imagination, shows a terrible malignity, and the embodiment of such cynicism in actual brass, and the pouring through it of volumes of sonorous steam, show what the statute defining murder describes as a depraved mind regardless of human life.

. . .

It is asserted that the appliance of torture introduced by this miscreant in Scranton, against the peace of the people of that town and their dignity, is as much more cacophonous than the more familiar calliope as the calliope is than any instrument properly called musical ... The arrangement of music for an instrument of such requirements is calculated to unsettle the human intellect, while the performance must make the reason of the hearer to totter on its throne.

. . .

It is almost a proof of poverty of spirit that the owner of the awful engine is still alive and at large, and that his victims have gone about to abate his trombone by the mild process of injunction, instead of the more appropriate and effective form of a public riot, which should not have left a foot of brass in the tubing of the instrument, nor one limb upon another of its cruel and unusual proprietor.

There's more at the link. It's so over-the-top, in an utterly genteel way . . . marvelously done! I think H. L. Mencken (who was only ten years old at the time) must surely have derived some inspiration from it. Wondermark has also published a follow-up to the original post, giving more details about the steam trombone and the objections to it. Worthwhile reading.

Thanks to Travis and Roberta for linking to some highly entertaining and thought-provoking reading.

Peter

Golf balls and clay pigeons!

The Daily Mail reports on a strange golf challenge recently held in Dubai.

Looking for an activity to pass the time, four golfing friends took to the sands in Dubai and accepted the challenge set by them: to shoot their golf balls at - and directly hit - clay pigeons, fired up into the Middle East sky.

Their efforts were filmed - and the video has become an internet sensation, attracting almost half a million hits in just a fortnight.

Thongchai Jaidee, a four-time European Tour Winner and the man who holds the record for most career victories and most career earnings on the Asian Tour, headed the star-studded four-ball team who swung their clubs in the dunes.

The Thai golfer was joined by Swede Johan Edfors, a three-time European Tour Winner, and Englishmen Simon Khan and David Horsey.

There's more at the link. Here's a video clip of the fun and games.

That's amazing! I would have said it was a pure fluke that one ball hit a clay pigeon, but looking at how close they got, so often, clearly it wasn't a fluke. Lucky, perhaps, but that still took real skill!

Peter

Best modern quotations?

DirJournal has published an interesting list which it headlines, 'The Best Quotes Of All Time'. I don't think that's an entirely accurate description of the contents, because the majority of the quotations cited are relatively modern, dating back only a couple of centuries, and thus exclude much of our history and heritage. Nevertheless, it's an interesting and often amusing collection. Here are a few examples.

AGE: “Middle age is when you’re sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn’t for you” - Ogden Nash

BEAUTY: “I’m tired of all the nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want – an adorable pancreas?” - Jean Kerr

CHANGE: “Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you’ll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others” - Jacob M. Braude

COURAGE: “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen” - Winston Churchill

EQUALITY: “I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers” - Mohandas Gandhi

HUMOR: “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it” - E.B. White

MONEY: “If you’re given a choice between money and sex appeal, take the money. As you get older, the money will become your sex appeal” - Katherine Hepburn

SUCCESS: “Opportunity is missed by most people, because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work” - Thomas Edison

There are many more at the link. Recommended and frequently amusing reading.

Peter

A New Year's resolution I can fully support!

Daphne, one of the contributors to Jaded Haven, writes about her New Year resolution: to avoid big-box stores.

I spent an hour at Best Buy this morning and walked out without buying the item I came to purchase. My son needs a laptop, they had the model I wanted in stock, unfortunately they only had one sales associate for the ten people milling around the computer department. I was number two in line, but the guy in front of me had three million questions and didn’t seem to give a shit that others were patiently waiting for attention. The manager I hunted down didn’t seem to give a shit either. I bought the thing from the company direct online after I got home. Free shipping, too.

Lowes didn’t schedule anyone to staff the paint department at ten in the morning last Tuesday. After a futile, thirty minute wait for the manager to find someone to mix up a can of white, I headed over to the ceiling fan section and discovered nobody on staff there either. The small Benjamin Moore store got my paint business and a local lighting company snagged two hundred bucks in a quick exchange.

Macy’s shoe department gave me a migraine. Two harried girls trying to wait on fifty women does not make for a pleasant shopping experience. At Marni’s, a little jewel box of a local shop, the charming owner waited on me and had three less pairs of shoes in stock when I walked out the door thirty minutes later.

The checkers at Target and Walmart appear to be drugged on Thorazine, deciphering the balkanized Spanglish or Ebonics at fast food drive-thru’s is an endemic pastime and suffering the illiterate thugs working the return desk at any big box store is a brutal nightmare.

I am tired of being treated like rabble, a cockroach annoyance that must be endured by the hired help when I choose to take my time and money to shop at these anonymous places of business. Yes, I’ll spend a little more out-of-pocket going local and small, but at least I won’t feel enraged, disgusted or abused when I walk out the door. I might even feel quite satisfied after spending my money.

There's more at the link.

I'm with Daphne on this one. I've gotten fed up with lousy service from the big-box stores more times than I can tell. I'll go to them for the basics like groceries, T-shirts and the like, but if I want something more expensive, or where I'll need some advice and guidance, I've more and more turned to smaller, more knowledgeable suppliers. It may cost more, but it saves me a great deal of aggravation!

Now, if we can just get companies to locate their help desks in America, and staff them with Americans, rather than use foreign call centers where the staff speak little or no English and have accents so thick as to be almost incomprehensible . . .

Peter

Weirdest headlines of 2010?

Two news headlines in particular caught my eye during the course of last year, so much so that I bookmarked them for possible blog use. They were:

Man arrested after shooting up hotel room in Albion, putting alarm clock in microwave and leaving note saying 'God delivered me from evil and placed me in Albion'

1 in 10 Americans prefer colonoscopies to PC security (Don't even ask what they get up to on honeymoon)

Reading either one makes me blink, do a double-take, and ask "What the . . . ???" Go read the stories at the links, if you dare, and have a good laugh.

How about you, readers? Did any weird and wonderful headlines or stories catch your eye in recent months? If so, please link to them in Comments, so we can all enjoy them!





Peter

Happy Blogversary to me!

Three years ago, at 8.11 p.m. on January 1st, 2008, I posted the first article on this blog.

At the same time this evening, I had a Sitemeter visit total of 1,803,532, and a page view total of 2,585,150. Those totals aren't comprehensive, because Sitemeter can't follow those who come here via my RSS feed. Google Feedburner, to which I've subscribed since mid-July last year, monitors such visitors. It tells me that over the past five-and-a-half months, I've averaged RSS feed viewership of 1,317 pages per day, over and above the page view figures recorded by Sitemeter. At a ratio of page views to visits (based on Sitemeter's figures) of 1.43:1, that equates to an extra 917 visitors per day via RSS feed. Assuming that RSS readership has been relatively constant as a proportion of daily readers since this blog's inception, that means my total visit count is probably about 2.3 million, give or take a few thousand here or there.

I'm still a little mystified that so many of you find this blog of such interest that you come back to it again and again. (I'm not complaining, mind you!) I started it as an idle outlet for excess creative juices, and a way of sharing with friends the things that interested me, or caught my eye, on a daily basis. I'm very pleased that you find them interesting, too. As this blog enters its fourth year, you may be sure I'll continue to invest time and energy into it. I'm also hoping for good news this year about several publishing projects. If and when they bear fruit, this blog will expand its horizons into new endeavors. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Thanks for joining me here. I enjoy your company.

Peter