Month: December 2005

This reads like a list of utopian towns or even worlds from a bad space opera . . . . maybe they would actually be dystopias?

Movin’ On Up (Harpers.org):

The following is a list of residential high-rises constructed in the last few years in Beijing. As of March 2004 there were more than 3,500 registered developers in Beijing, and the government is promoting a building campaign under the slogan “Development is the only principle.” Translated from the Chinese by Mike Meyer. Originally from Harper’s Magazine, March 2004.

• American Rock
• Bank Landscape
• Bobo House
• Boning Park
• By Yourself
• CEO
• Easy Port
• European Culture Park
• Glamour International
• Glory Vogue
• Ideal Life
• Latte Town
• Luxuriant City
• Manhattan Garden
• Margarita Island
• Merlin Champagne Town
• Minority Live
• Moderate Shangri-La
• MoMA
• New Fortune Garden
• Palm Springs
• Paris Station
• Park Avenue
• Pink Box ER
• Shining Book
• SoHo
• Sun City
• Top Aristocrat
• Upper East Side
• Vitality Building
• Warm Homeland
• Wonderful Digital Jungle
• Younghot
• Youth Town
• Yuppie International Garden

Local celeb Michael Hanscom was writing about the remake of a 70s era disaster movie when he stumbled in the realm of imagination made real.

Poseidon:

Whoa. Such [rogue] waves are real? Apparently so!

Rogue waves are freakishly large waves, much bigger than the surrounding swell. They seem to rear up out of nowhere, sometimes out of a fairly calm sea, and disappear just as quickly. Mariners have recounted tales of such waves for centuries, but until recently oceanographers discounted them, along with sightings of sea monsters and mermaids. Naval architects, however, have analyzed the wrecks of ships sunk in recent decades, and have found that a large proportion of them have damage consistent with an encounter with a rogue wave, which can reach heights of a hundred feet. Even supertankers have been sunk by these monster waves. Now the evidence is too great to ignore, and physicists are trying to understand how rogue waves are generated. The issue is important not only for our understanding of the ocean, but also because rogue waves seem to be responsible for the loss of many lives at sea.

Piqued my interest, especially the bit about supertankers being sunk by these monsters.

Turns out 2 ships — by ships, I mean 600+ foot long container ships and the like — are lost every week. That’s 100 a year. You’d think that would be more widely known.

Scotsman.com News – Latest News – Giant Waves ‘More Common Than Thought’:

“The same phenomenon could have sunk many less lucky vessels. Two large ships sink every week on average, but the cause is never studied to the same detail as an air crash. It simply gets put down to ‘bad weather’.”

Continue reading “a stranger world than we know”

My DSL circuit has been flapping again. Frustrating for me as well . . . .

I still suspect the underlying telco wiring, even though phone service works just fine.

Now playing: Violin Concerto, Movt. II by Hilary Hahn/St Paul Chamber Orchestra/Hugo Wolff from the album “Barber & Meyer Violin Concertos”
Continue reading “apologies if you stopped by and no one was here”

Some more stuff scanned in.
Continue reading “cataloging my obsessions”

Another shot from May 1993. Late evening in early summer.

Continue reading “another glimpse into the past”

I took delivery of a Nikon Coolscan V last week and I plan to work through my backcatalog of literally 1000s of images, slides and negatives.

Here’s my first attempt at something for the internets. This is a rock formation known as the Logan Rock. That one at the top is balanced and according the notes I just looked up, weighs 80 tons.

Taken on our honeymoon trip, May 1993. Nikon F4, Fujichrome (Velvia?). Exposure otherwise unrecorded.
Continue reading “learning from my mistakes”

Wikipedia Class Action :: Lawsuit [www.wikipediaclassaction.org]:

There is a problem with the operation and functionality of Wikipedia. The basic problem is that none of the Trustees of Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., nor any of the volunteers who are connected with Wikipedia, consider themselves responsible and therefore accountable for the content.

They believe themselves to be above the law.

WikipediaClassAction.org is currently gathering complaints from the entire Internet community, including individuals, corporations, partnerships, etc., who believe that they have been defamed and or who have been or are the subject of anonymous and malicious postings to the popular online encyclopedia WikiPedia.

Alternatively, if you are aware of postings on Wikipedia that are either untrue and or potentially libellous to another, please contact them and make them aware of the offending content and this website so that they may file a complaint with our group.

Our intention and the purpose of this website is multi-fold. Specifically, we seek to achieve the following:

• Expose the inherent faults and flaws of the Wikipedia online encyclopedia
• Force Wikimedia Foundation Inc., through legal action, to change its current practices that permit anyone to post content to their website, without formal attribution and without recourse back to Wikimedia Foundation and or the author of the content
• Recover substantial monetary damages, on behalf of those who have suffered as a direct result of Wikimedia’s flawed business model
• Establish a precedent that will ensure similar websites are held responsible for their content

I am wary of any legal proceeding that claims “anguish” as part of its justification. While I sympathize with John Seigenthaler I have to wonder why one guy takes issue with any automated indexing system, other than the fact that he makes his living as an indexer himself.

Rather than work with these services to address the issues (if they have any basis), some would rather tear them down.

[reference]