What happens when hackers get hold of road signs

Happy New Year! And kiss your @&$ goodbye!

I'm caught up in the blog family spirit after reading the recent round of posts. So in that spirit, I will 1) quit blagging, and 2) resume my role as resident pessimist.

Most of y'all are science nuts, so you may have heard about the recent earthquakes in Yellowstone. If you haven't, well, it's probably better. All those neat geysers and hot springs are geothermal, of course. And geothermal means heat. And heat means magma. And magma, when it blows out in a big way, means calderas. Yellowstone caldera was formed from a volcanic eruption and is roughly 34 x 45 miles. That's a heap 'o magma. When you see that much, you're going to have a very bad day. Don't trust me on this, trust the Discovery Channel:

the Yellowstone eruption of 2.1 million years ago, which is described on the VEI as an eight: mega-colossal, with a towering ash cloud 10 miles high that pours out at least a thousand cubic miles of ash. That Yellowstone eruption had 10 times the ejected material as a VEI 7 volcano, which modern humans have never seen either.

In fact, the last VEI 7 eruption was in Toba, Indonesia, 74,000 years ago, and it caused such global cooling that some scientists think it nearly drove humans to extinction.

On the other hand, it might just be some water moving around, or a little seismic hiccup, and some other poor schmucks will have to endure global extinction. Happy news for us! I can take a drink, and we can go on with planning game night.

Eternal Sunset

From the Department of Aimless Surfing On Painkillers, here's a pointless feel-good website: Eternal Sunset, a collection of webcams set to rotate according to sundown. No more impatiently waiting for your local sunset, tune in anytime. Plus, it's kind of cool to compare a day's sunset in Ontario and Key West.
Like, wow, man. Far out. Uh, could someone please pass me the Cheetos?

Random information moment

I’ve been tagged for a meme by Cheryl, or possibly Dianne or Laura, I think the whole blog family is tagging each other so it's getting confused. So if you're reading this...you're it.

A meme consists of any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Here are the rules:1) Pick up the nearest book. 2) Open to page 123. 3) Find the fifth sentence. 4) Post the next three sentences. 5) Tag five people and acknowledge who tagged you.

Here's mine. Y'all are going to be sorry, since I'm studying for a final. This is from Biology with Physiology: Life On Earth :

Meanwhile, light rays have also been striking the pigment molecules of photosystem I (step 5 in Fig. 7-7, middle of Fig 7-8). Energy from the light photons is captured by these pigment molecules and funneled to the two reaction center chlorophyll molecules, which then eject high-energy electrons (step 6). These electons jump to the electron transport chain associated with photosystem I (step 7).

This is part of the answer to that nagging question---how do plants generate NADPH? I'm sure y'all are on pins and needles wondering what eventually happens to those high-energy electrons. Don't worry, the textbook goes on to explain they end up retiring to a small Mexican fishing village, where they run a hotel and deep-sea charter fishing service.

The End.

I'd rather be in California

Especially after the tornado last night, and more storms rolling in today. Now Laura taunts me by sending pictures.


The cat and the dog seem to be working together, but that rat looks like he's ready to bail. Maybe posing isn't in his contact.

The annual running of the imbeciles

Next time you lose your car keys or exit an elevator on the wrong floor, console yourself---you're not dumb. This is dumb.

Score for the bulls this year: 2 gorings, 7 crushes. And one photographer scored the picture of a lifetime.

I used to think the people of Pamplona were an isolated group of crazies before I met a guy from Spain in one of my classes. He lived in a small town (I don't remember the name) where they had the same ritual of trying to get themselves trampled or stuck while running the local streets. To prove it, he had a scar on his upper arm from a goring. He was incredibly modest about his idiocy, saying that their bulls were just "little ones". From the look of his scar they were damned well big enough to skewer his bicep.

Happy hurricane season!

Oh, just freakin' great. The Atlantic is cranking up to flood the East coast, and half the people who forecast and track the storms have mutinied, saying their boss is getting too involved in politics instead of checking the damn barometer.

What the hell is up with the Bush administration? Is it just me, or have all government agencies (NASA, CDC, anybody who might even mention global warming, Attorney General's office, etc.) become ideologically driven? I can't wait to see how they're going to fill the Air Traffic Controller vacancies. Your next flight will be guided by a conservative anti-abortion homophobic misogynist pro-Iraq war white male. Let's hope they tear themselves away from the the Rush Limbaugh show long enough to land a couple of planes.

Wayyyy too much time and technology on my hands

Since I'm not in school right now, I volunteered to take my friend Jamie to the airport this morning. Everyone should have a friend who's a bum if they need a lift at 5am. She's taking a flight to Taipei, 19 hours of flying with a short layover in San Francisco. After I dropped her off, she called me on my cellphone since there was no one else to talk to at that hour of the morning, and she was unable to read, physically move or otherwise entertain herself, due to getting up early enough to be at Hartsfield at 5:30am. Unlike me, Jamie has a job, and can't just sleep whenever she wants. So via the internet, computer, and cellphone I managed to:

• Keep her updated on her flight status. At one point I told her her flight would be landing 10 minutes later than scheduled in San Francisco, even before that information was posted at the gate. I am such a smartypants!
  
• Give her directions to a spa located in the San Francisco airport. (Not that she asked. Just more smartypants behavior on my part.) I also informed her that only the Christian Scientists have their own space in the airport, everyone else (including Jewish folk like her tribe) have to get along and share the same room which is supposed to be for "quiet reflection and meditation". By the way, the map icon--a little kneeling person--- for the "reflection and meditation" room cracked me up. Maybe it was the fact that I'd gotten up too early. Come to think of it the icon for the shower room was funny too. I must get Photoshop and start making my own icons. Places like Fark.com are just screaming my name.
  
• Find the flight numbers and numerous details on her other flights, like what type of aircraft, the inflight movies, what meals to be served, where the video screens were located, if the plane would be crowded, and if her seat was over a wing.
• Play a clip over the cellphone of "Airplane", the Indigo Girls song about white-knuckle flying. I don't think Jamie found it as funny as I did. At least it kept her awake so she wouldn't be snoozing in the gate area as her plane departed.
• Find out how to literally track the plane in flight, via google earth and fboweb. I can now see why air traffic controllers eat a lot of Rolaids. There are dozens of little airplane markers around every major city, all of them representing flights taking off and landing. My most likely reaction to directing all those damn things would be to s&%t my pants. I may do so next time I'm flying in or out of a major airport, and recall those airplane markers that could collide at any moment if the air traffic controller is thinking about his fishing trip or unpaidVisa bill.
  
• Completely blow off breakfast and my morning hike in favor of all this cyberspace stuff.

It amazes me what information we have at our fingertips, and how we can communicate it so easily, compared to even twenty years ago. The downside is that we spend (okay, I spend) more time with our gadgets, to the detriment of things like nutrition and exercise. The upside is that we are more connected and informed in some ways. It's hard to remember that when I want to smack the dude in the grocery store who is talking loudly about his ingrown toenail on a cellphone. And holding up the checkout line while he does so.

Well, at least I have a post for my blog. Now I'm going to go follow random flights out of Hartsfield International until I get bored enough to go hiking. The thought of being trapped on a plane for 14 hours makes me want to get up and move around. Violently.