Beauty in the mundane

Spiral is the shell, the motion is the matter.

All things are scaled

By scaled, for example, imagine this picture represents the gravity wells of Blackholes, where the clouds represent our space/time, and the funnels represent gravity wells caused by the Blackhole.

At this point in time, we know the following about Blackholes:

- Giant versions of them exist at the center of every galaxy.

- At the center point of a blackhole, our physics breaks down and we understand nothing. This is the definition of a Singularity, just like the one that birthed our Universe. I don't think that's a co-incidence.

- They exist in microscopic form, coming into and swiftly exiting out of existence all around us.

- No one really knows what a blackhole is, other than a phenomena we observe defined by gravity in the extreme - extreme into the Singularity, where gravity is so dense there is no more matter, no more energy. Where it goes, what happens, no one knows.

Everyone's betting multiple dimensions, however. So, consider.

Glinda is your villain

Next time you watch The Wizard of Oz, watch it from this perspective: Glinda is the secret villain, and everything that happens in the movie is at her directive or imperative (even the Wizard tasking Dorothy to retrieve the Witch's broom, for example).  By the end of the movie (SPOILER!), Glinda has, through Dorothy, taken out all of her rivals in Oz, and is in complete control. Are these not the works of a master villain?

Spirals are Viral

The spiral shape appears everywhere in our reality - toilet bowl, galaxy, sunflower, seashell, so on and etc. You know this to be true, yes? How do you explain the fecundity of this pattern?

I have a crazy theory: The spiral is the result of gravity spread over multiple dimensions.


Seriously.

Also, seriously: The Spiral is Holy, as we humans understand Holy, or, as I understand Holy, which is the state of being in complete harmony.

We'll define Harmony later.

Where Stars Come From

A cosmic womb, if you will: The Orion Nebula, birthplace of stars. A Nebula is a nice name for the debris left over after a massive supernovae. Of course, as with all things, this act of destruction in turn creates stars by the bushel, as well as swell pictures for us wicked smart apes to ogle. It's all a big cycle, you see, a dialectic the French or Post-Grad might say, creation - destruction = recombinations leading to new creations, then new destructions of course, as Big Mary's Wheel keeps on turning. Unless you're talking about the Singularity which created our Universe, there are no beginnings or ends, only endless transformations.

Surreal Landscape

I wish I knew who to attribute this art to, but I don't. Randomly found in the great haystack that is the Interweb. It's wonderful. Also, a somewhat accurate representation of inside my head. It is a landscape, if you look closely enough.


This makes me think about the issues of attribution. To be clear, the vast majority of pictures I post here are not mine - pretty much only the travel pics with corresponding date. In many cases, I do not know the creator of these photos; in some cases I do, but can't be bothered to properly attribute - news photos, for example, or astronomy pics from Hubble. I'm claiming fair use, but I would never claim ownership of anything that I myself did not create. I would hope that, by whatever small degree, I can contribute to the spread of these photos on the web - go forth, puking grandma, and  prosper.

This issue - attribution - is a real thorny subject on the internet. I would say the only way to ensure attribution of photographs is to stamp them. Writing, on the other hand, has no easy protection. One reason I would be very skeptical of publishing any serious writing on this blog, or anywhere on the internet. Also, the anonymous mocking.

So, enjoy this fluff!

Revenge of the Pumas

These assholes in the Repuglican party have almost made me wistful for the days of the Primaries in 2008, Hillary and Pennsylvania and "SHAME ON YOU BARACK OBAMA!" and the rest, it was downright collegial compared to these megaton douchebags and crankpots from the so called Right.

But alas! Since the loss of the Public Option in the health care bill (Thanks Joe!), the Pumas have turned on Obama, attacking him from the left and in some cases teaming up with Teabaggers to protest the President.

Attacked viciously from the Right, and now the Left, and yet I still think Obama is doing a great job. What's wrong here: The world, or me?

Saturday Night

1972 is calling - are you sure you want to pick it up?

Living in Paradise

If you could step back and think about it from time to time, you'd realize we, in what we call "Western Civilization", have had it pretty good for the past 50 years or so. Historically epic, in fact. We're pretty lucky to be living the miracle.

Still Fighting

Once again, if you had only watched our terrible American media this weekend (all of them - I'm not singling out Fox on this, though of course Fox is by far the worst of the bunch), you would have learned little about the amazing developments in Iran. To wit: The protests continue, but wider spread, and the protesters have really started fighting back. Instead, you would have learned very little about the Underwear Bomber, though you would have heard alot of noise about him. But, hard questions were asked, like "Should Obama be on vacation?" etc.


What is happening in Iran is historic; the underwear bomber is nothing. And yet, here we are.

Enthralled, captured, to a media that is purposefully stoking fears, for ratings, purposely not covering real news (ratings), engaging in mass disinformation that I wonder, at times, if this can be chocked up to actual, intentional malice, or the usual collections of greed and ignorance.

Regardless, remember the real news here: The Iranians are poised to overthrow their government, and this will be but the first domino in a social revolution across the Islamic World, and thus the entire world. Here's the proof:

SORRY!

Hi everyone! So sorry for all that child molestation. After this last batch of priests die - give it another ten years or so - we - THE INFALLIBLE CATHOLIC CHURCH - will finally have resolved this prickly situation. Not that you can question us, of course.

Lack of Faith

Disturbing. Actually, curious: Are one set of make believe dress up clothes more serious than another?

Take This Ship to Yavin 4!

Vader doesn't seem the sitting down type - I bet it's Picard hidden in Vader's armor, waiting to spring his trap and retake the ship.

And.... this fulfills my 2009 nerd quota.

Merry Science Fiction and Fantasy!

It's all in there.

80's Nerd for your Consideration

I love Wil, but whoo boy is this a nerdy pic! Check out the watch.

Also, this future has not come to pass:

 

Almost Vacation Time!

What kind of worker's benefits do Santa's elves get? Do they even get paid, or are they slaves? Does Santa, like the evil Keebler, exploit his elves?

The Nabe

Here's our local neighborhood.  Interesting to note the scarcity of close-by stars - that, despite pictures like the one below, space is vast, and mostly empty. This picture is on a scale beyond our comprehension, and yet, in the scheme of things, it's a tiny little corner of a tiny little portion of an average sized galaxy in a universe of hundreds of billions of galaxies. Again, perspective.

More Stars than Mann's Chinese

Click pic for wicked big n' awesome.


I don't know about you, but I always feel spiritual when looking at the stars. It's the vastness of it all, I think. But, there might be something to the fact that, well, the stars are where we're from, what we're made of.  It's our home. And I think we all feel this, to some degree or another.

This is another pic from the new Hubble camera they installed earlier this year - what an awesome shuttle mission that was. When history looks back at this period, the Hubble Telescope is going to have a good sized blurb.

Drug Free!

Odds are, your Xmas will be more comfortable than theirs.

Flying Spaghetti Monster wishes you Happy Holidays!

May the FSM bring you many spicy treats!

A view into the Internet's Brain

Lookie over there to the right - "Google Hot Trends". It shows an up-to-the date list of the top google searches at the time. I find it endlessly fascinating, since to view this list is to see precisely what the "internet" is "thinking". Fer instance, of no great import but revelatory of the phenomena, this past Saturday night, at about 7PM, the top four searches listed were some derivation of "what channels the Cowboy's game on?". A few hours later, once the game was underway, those searches disappeared.

You may say: So what? And I would answer: Are you sure you're on the right blog?

A metaphor for Non-Violent Protest

We've reached an age where people are routinely "Tazed" for minor infractions or accusations of infractions - you think the Stormtroopers are gonna let a bunch of dirty hippies stage a sit-in of any import?

A metaphor for Capitalism

I've got a bad feeling about this...

Bacon Pagans

Dear FSM please let this be an internet stunt, or, solely a product of the American South. Thanks in advance!

The Reason for the Season

Let us not forget the real reason for the season this Holiday period: The Winter Solstice, together with the Summer Solstice one of the two most important days of the year. Today the old year died, and the new one is born. Reborn, or resurrected, if you will. 

Christians appropriated much of existing Pagan celebrations of this time, and it is the pagan traditions we still celebrate, with Christian lies frosting the top. Be sure to mention this to the next mouth breather ranting about Christ in Christmas.

Happy Solstice everyone! Best wishes in the new year!

Fireflies and Stars

It sure does look as if the stars are spinning over our heads, and it's hard to shake the thought they don't, even when you know better. We say the sun rises and sets even though it does no such thing. Fireflies do not use fire, nor are flies. Being wrong is ok when its colloquial.

Voyager Forever

Quite literally, this artifact will last forever, far longer than anything on Earth. What it says, I have no idea, so I'm not sure how the space aliens will figure it out. But it looks cool, and ultimately, that's good enough.

Don't Take Candy From Crystaline Entities

Obscure lore from a different era.

Behold the Internet

This is a graphical representation of the Internet. It's gussied up to make it look interesting, but what it represents is accurate: The core connections which make up the network we call the Internet. It is a distributed network, in that multiple main nodes can be lost and the network will still function, and in this, and more, the internet shares many characteristics with a living nervous system.

AI awaits, I assume.

Full of Stars

Say hello to the Omega Centauri globular cluster - a globular cluster is like a mini-galaxy. This one orbits our own galaxy, with a black hole at the center (it appears all dense aggregations of stars have black holes at their centers, leading some people to posit that black holes are the origin of galaxies).

Anywho, this is a pic from one of the new cameras installed in Hubble. This picture shows approximately a million stars. To put this into perspective, when you are looking up into the night sky on earth, from the darkest spot and the clearest view, you will only see a maximum of 7-8 thousand stars.The Milky Way galaxy is believed to contain approximately 400 billion stars.


Perspective.

Upside Down World

Our world looks very different when viewed a different way - a completely valid way. It's an important lesson to hold onto, because often meaning is only derived from perspective, and thus the meaning can change if the perspective changes.

Where the white women at

They're in Europe, Northern Europe specifically. Interesting map, which quickly illustrates that white people are a small minority of human population.

It's important to remember that skin color is a relatively recent adaptation - all humans originally came from East Africa, and spread across the world. Those that migrated to northern climates became paler, due to the genetic advantage of pale skin absorbing more sunlight in conditions where sunlight can be scarce. Darker skin makes more evolutionary sense in environments with more and stronger sunlight.

What is fascinating going forward is that while those evolutionary conditions are still present, our society has far surpassed their influence. Global travel is a reality, and far, far, far more people of different skin color types have kids than in the past.

We're swiftly moving towards our collective mocha future. And with the coming climate issues, this might all be for the good.

20 years

Incredibly, this Sunday will be the 20th anniversary of The Simpsons. For perspective, when The Simpsons first aired, they were making fresh Reagan jokes. Egads!

There's no doubt the show has lost a lot of the zip it once had, but it's still funny enough, and the impact this show has had on popular culture worldwide is hard to underestimate.

Also:

Granny V. Riot-trooper

No idea what the background is here, but regardless, give 'em hell Granny!

Banditotrooper

Soon to be followed by Suicidetrooper and Prussiantrooper, among many other trooper models. Just trick your trooper anyway you want to roll, really.

Lego my Legions

In case you were not aware, Lego is a big thing for many adults. There are very advanced sets with machines and such. In fact, over there in Europe, supposedly, there is an entire theme park of Legos. Don't know how they do it, but they do it, them crafty Danes.

Also, Lego Spinal Tap.

Chickenhawks and the cost

American Chickenhawks - The Keyboard Kommandos of the Fighting Internet 404 - are uniformly resident in one party: The Repuglican party. And they want war -- always, war. Here's what they dream of:

Endless war, fought by the poor of America. Here's the inevitable cost:

To engage in war, you must be prepared to pay the cost, in blood. Unfortunately, the Chickenhawks will never have to pay this cost themselves -- others, poorer people, pay it for them. For them, war is a game, a rooting concern, something to watch on Fox News. It's pure abstraction. Bush banned any and all displays of dead soldiers. Obama lifted that ban -- the reason Bush banned it was to avoid anyone knowing the real costs of these wars. Well, look above, that's the cost.

Infromed

Be thankful this is not a .gif file. Mercy!

The Bible says so!

It's in there! So, afraid to say, all you painted Jezebels out there: When America finally becomes a full fledged Theocracy, you're on the list.

Also: Shellfish

Uh-Oh (or Tasty Snacks)

It seems likely - probable - destined - that if you are reading this sign from your wheelchair, it's already too late.

We Report, You Decide

And based on smart reporting such as this, what do you think Fox News viewers will decide?

Indeed.

Smokin' Clean

You know what it costs. In biscuits!

Behold the power of the internet

This is a mobile phone store in Japan. Maybe - who knows? I found the destination randomly, through the dark arts of advanced Google searches. Beware the knowledge I am about to impart:

Really, a caution: As with any web search, some websites have malicious software and/or code that can harm your computer if you are not adequately protected by a system of firewalls, antivirus programs, and properly patched software. The Internet is a wild and wonderful place, but dangers lurk everywhere, even in an unsuspecting places. You'll never know for sure, so the best bet is to use common sense, but more importantly, secure your computer.

So, with that general caution, clear your mind of preconceptions: If you go down this search you will enter a world you might have never conceived of before. This may frighten you - that's natural. Turn away if you dare not go on. But if you do dare, then wonders await you behind.... the unsecured Webcam.

Simply place any one of these phrases into the Google machine and begin your search*:

inurl:”ViewerFrame?Mode=
intitle:Axis 2400 video server
inurl:/view.shtml
intitle:”Live View / - AXIS” | inurl:view/view.shtml^
inurl:ViewerFrame?Mode=
inurl:ViewerFrame?Mode=Refresh
inurl:axis-cgi/jpg
inurl:axis-cgi/mjpg (motion-JPEG)
inurl:view/indexFrame.shtml
inurl:view/index.shtml
inurl:view/view.shtml
liveapplet
intitle:”live view” intitle:axis
intitle:liveapplet
allintitle:”Network Camera NetworkCamera”
intitle:axis intitle:”video server”
intitle:liveapplet inurl:LvAppl
intitle:”EvoCam” inurl:”webcam.html”
intitle:”Live NetSnap Cam-Server feed”
intitle:”Live View / - AXIS”
intitle:”Live View / - AXIS 206M”
intitle:”Live View / - AXIS 206W”
intitle:”Live View / - AXIS 210Åç
inurl:indexFrame.shtml Axis
inurl:”MultiCameraFrame?Mode=Motion”
intitle:start inurl:cgistart
intitle:”WJ-NT104 Main Page”
intext:”MOBOTIX M1Åç intext:”Open Menu”
intext:”MOBOTIX M10Åç intext:”Open Menu”
intext:”MOBOTIX D10Åç intext:”Open Menu”
intitle:snc-z20 inurl:home/
intitle:snc-cs3 inurl:home/
intitle:snc-rz30 inurl:home/
intitle:”sony network camera snc-p1Åç
intitle:”sony network camera snc-m1Åç
site:.viewnetcam.com -www.viewnetcam.com
intitle:”Toshiba Network Camera” user login
intitle:”netcam live image”
intitle:”i-Catcher Console - Web Monitor”

And then follow the links. You'll find Walrus cams, Gator cams, lots and lots of puppy cams; commercial cameras, government cameras, cameras all over the world, completely open to the Internet. And in some cases you will be able to remote control the camera.

And thus, consider this mighty power of the Internet, as in the picture above: This store camera was being controlled by some anonymous person on the internet as these folks went into buy whatever it is they are buying, in Japan, being watched, and mocked, by dozens, across the world.

UNLIMITED POWER!


*User assumes all responsibility for searches

Stop the Presses!

The newspaper is not long for this earth. Given terrible papers like the Washington Post or the Washington Times, I'm tempted to say, good riddance. But what this will really do is remove whatever, if any, scrutiny pols at all levels of government receive. No local scandal, no payback schemes, no school board hi-jinks. Overall, the loss of the newspaper is going to be a bad trip for free expression. I'm doubtful the web will be able to fill that role.