Thursday, November 23, 2006

THANKSGIVING 2006 | 5.0 mag. Earthquake shakes Hawaii November 23rd at 9:20 HST


According to official USGS data on the area, a 5.0 magnitude quake centered 13 miles north of Kailua-Kona on the Big Island, Hawaii, rumbled through the island chain at 9:20 AM, Thanksgiving morning. Of those who noticed the tremor, most were closest to the epicenter. No tsunami was triggered by the quake; nor causing significant interruption to normal island life.

This morning's earthquake is the sixth minor to moderate quake (3.0 ≾ above) for the Hawaiian Islands since the 6.7 quake last October 15, which caused serious property damage and resulted in power outages on all islands, including tourist mecca Waikiki Beach.


Quakes

13 miles N of Kailua Kona, Hawaii, Hawaii NOV 23 2006 09:20:11 HST 5.0

36 miles NW of Hilo, Hawaii, Hawaii NOV 18 2006 18:18:57 HST 3.0

15 miles NE of Kailua Kona, Hawaii, Hawaii NOV 12 2006 15:36:07 HST 3.7

33 miles NE of Kailua Kona, Hawaii, Hawaii NOV 6 2006 10:38:51 HST 3.2

31 miles NE of Kailua Kona, Hawaii, Hawaii OCT 30 2006 18:24:31 HST 3.6

25 miles N of Kailua Kona, Hawaii, Hawaii OCT 15 2006 10:35:21 HST 4.2

10 miles NNW of Kailua Kona, Hawaii, Hawaii OCT 15 2006 07:07:48 HST 6.7


This morning on the windward side of O'ahu, I felt zip, nada, nothing. The October 15th, 6.7 one -- yep, that one I definitely noticed -- and while living through it, I watched the water in my pool bounce around like boiling water -- a very weird visual which I dare any special effects artist to realistically recreate.
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Thanksgiving quake link:
5.0 mag. Earthquake shakes Hawaii November 23rd at 9:20 HST

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Quid novi ex Africa | Same-sex marriage become legal in South Africa

On December 1, 2005, South Africa's Constitutional Court gave Parliament a year to reconcile a definition of marriage that is not unconstitutional in terms of common law marriage. Failing this directive, on December 1, 2006 same-sex marriages will become legally recognized and permissible by the State.

As it is common everywhere else this issue comes under public debate, major opposition comes from staunch religious organizations.

Nations of the world that sanction same-sex unions, South Africa will join The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Canada.

On the African continent, homosexual behavior is illegal in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Ghana and most other sub-Saharan countries.


On-line References:

Associated Press: South African parliament OKs gay marriage
CBC NEWS South Africa passes same-sex marriage bill
Wikipedia Same-sex marriage in South Africa

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Smaller than the naked eye... | The sharpest man-made thing.

Shawn, my brooding, dangerously articulate, and cynical dear friend and compatriot, believes it to be a raspberry. He's admitted to seeing things frequently; things that have turned out to be not really there. I guess he figures that that's a clear demonstration his superlative visual perception skills. I certainly won't argue with that. But... I don't know. It looks like every other tungsten needle I've ever seen.

Wait a minute... Now, that I think about it ... A few of those atoms look awfully familiar. I know we've met ... somewhere ... before. Hmmm ... ? OMG!! It was a salacious encounter from which I fled from, a very long time ago; Capris on a dark summer's day in 1989? Quelle Horror!

Sharp and man-made? Really, huh. That description excludes a whole lot of stuff, undoubtedly "my wit" would be near the top of that list. Naturally, I was right. They look nothing alike.

A raspberry, my wit, Capris ...? You decide >> Sharpest Manmade Thing

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Non Compos Mentis | Lurid impressions of my encounters with the dumb-fuck generation.


Face it! Every generation has leading contenders, their giants who tower over the issue-ridden brain-dead battles to determine the best. But, it takes more than a few stellar figures to be able to lay claim to such an esteemed crown. It takes a entire bonded throng whose inner-most aspirations gave rise to each ubiquitous mass-fabricated iota that pervades every part and particle of your homogenized modern life.

It is that special group who saw the delusional brilliance behind branding and packaging of food into something even better -- food products. Their collective vision is fundamentally about inertia, and it's their unrelenting zeitgeist that holds that a valid existence is defined by comparative consumption. They are the forbears of banal, the folkmote of feign, of “Who the-fuck really cares... ” but “Oh, did you see my petunias this year?”

I say bow down to the true masters of trite. Indeed, these are the folks who can make rightful claim to the title and crown, known as the venerated and eluxated dumb-fuck generation – or just DFG, if you just don't want to have to remember that much.

As for me, I give them my most sincere vote of thanks, more formally now with a one-finger wave.

Friday, August 25, 2006

PC Help | Looking for computer help that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?

As I was catching up on projects, and doing some research, I ran across this extremely useful page on a site called eConsultant.com. It's a list of links of some of the best and most useful "free" software programs for PCs on the web. At least that's the way it is appears to me, since I use or have used a few on the list. I've thought about compiling my own list but this one is much more comprehensive. This list is testiment to the "sharing" nature that many of us out there have benefited from. I don't know about you but I'm grateful for the efforts of these generous programmers and I want to say; "Thank you!"

Click this link to view this list >> http://www.econsultant.com/i-want-freeware-utilities/

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Conscientious Objector | Army officer from Honolulu refuses to report for Iraq duty

As reported in the Honolulu Star Bulletin on June 6th, a commisioned officer, 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, puts his neck on the line, inspite of the legal jeopardy of this position, questions the basis of the War in Iraq. In all probability when you consider the military's zealous need to reinforce it's linear power structure, will punish this officer, and burke a sentence as quietly as it can, becasue any publicity will only undermine the military's and executive branch's position. Whether you agree with him or not, in itself this is an act of courage--and very American--the willingness to stand up for what you believe in.

Speaking of questions, I have some questions:

1. Why, when we are one of the most technically advanced and richest countries in world, are we not able to find any bombs of mass distruction? Hasn't it been awhile now? Does Iraq have that many hiding places?

2. Why are we having a war on a metaphor?

3. How is it that automible manufacturers seemed caught off guard about the dramatic rise in oil prices, when the oil companies were predicting it over a year ago? Don't auto execs go out to lunch with oil execs anymore?

4. How is it that Brazil got the worlds biggest car manufacturer's to make multi-fuel cars and the same sort of thing is declared years away in the U.S.? How far away is Brazil anyway -- that it would take GM several years even to import a car from it's own manufacturing plant in Brazil?

5. Do mexican's need to shop more in this country to prevent a wall going up? Can't they take a lesson from our seniors' playbook and their Canadian drug runs?

Those are just few...

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Referenced Citations:

Army officer from Honolulu refuses to report for Iraq duty http://starbulletin.com/breaking/breaking.php?id=4527

Friday, January 27, 2006

Liberal & Conservative | Political partisanship reflects neither reality nor a sound basis for leadership













A sign of sophistication,
of the state of the modern body politic,
of shrewd mature experiences,
of all such tools I thought were needed to govern a society.
A postulate, evolution of a golden rule--
distilled down to two essentials,
revealing the natural duality of a paradigm?

Liberal or Conservative:
this is more than the edict of the hegemony.
Nay, it's sanctified, ordained, delivered and trusted,
this is artifice practiced at the highest levels.
Almost without exception,
upon this point our public representation all agree,
it doth appear.

Of the two, which are you?
What sense, what logic, what benefit is there,
in this that I cannot seem to find?
I see my truth, my reality.

It’s a lie if I deny that I am both,
liberal and conservative,
a conclusion I fear they will deride.

Aren't both needed,
to function properly,
essential to survive?
Obvious,
axiomatic,
of practical assumption is this principle notion,
not something exclusive or contrived,
I thought?
Not so, it seems,
and I quite earnestly don’t know why.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Brains over Easy | A recipe for controlling the entire home electronic consumer market


Wrapped in the humid Hawaiian tropical evening air, I helped bring my not-so-mechanically-inclined friend, Les, up to the modest but respectable level worthy of his new home electronic entertainment system by connecting together his 54” Sony LCD Rear-projection TV, JVC 5-disc CD/DVD player with 5.1 surround sound speaker array, and Panasonic dual VCR/DVD player. After performing this minor miracle of electronic wizardry, I patiently explained the new, and of course, horrifying minutia required to correctly use the new universal remote, the universal remote that came with his JVC surround sound system – which, by the way, would effectively reduce his remote control count from three to two.

Although I can’t remember precisely when, somewhere along the way, as we made our way through this mind-numbing hell (hell for both of us but for different reasons) it occurred to me, that for every household – actually for every purchaser – of a consumer electronic product, for every item that is a hair more sophisticated that the average cassette tape recorder, there must be at least one individual who has the talent and skill to install and make that fantastic new item fully functional.

Traditionally in the western mass consumption world, that job has gone to anyone who was born somewhere around1960, or after – basically anyone who had to come to terms with the necessity of using a calculator that could perform standard logarithmic functions for math class (that is if you hoped to get a passing grade) and who has not completely reverted to the ball-scratching hominid you were before, retaining some of that knowledge after leaving school. Or, perhaps, you’ve just pasted your eighth birthday, or if you're somewhere in between. It really doesn’t matter how old you are. The point is you’re the one who isn’t the complete idiot compared with rest of the clan, cappice?

With the exception of existing in a rare enclave such as the genius-drenched halls of MIT, the vast majority of you – or us – the fearless residential gurus, the fearsome home-techies, in terms of sheer demographic numbers, we are vastly far out-numbered by the hordes of others, the sea of desperate electronic consumers who purchase these items by the millions every year, and who berate everyone and anyone with ear-shot of why the “damn thing doesn’t work”, all the while reassuring everyone of his or her gnat-like attention span. You know this, like you know that the sun will rise. These feckless fools don’t know crap, to put it bluntly, but they do know the most important for their needs at that moment and that is how to make a B-line to you.

Forget that idiotic Wired magazine headline a year ago or so that claimed that “Teenage Japanese Girls Rule the World.” That’s a load rubbish! Do you realize the level of power we, I mean the “collect-we”, home-techies actually wield? Well, do you? What do you suppose would happen if we simply went on strike, if we refused to plug in another RCA coaxial cable, neglected to find that universal remote’s brand code, never managed to figure out why some analog and digital apparatus simply don’t play well together, or just flat out refused to reset another digital clock?

I tell you precisely what would happen. The entire electronic consumer market would be brought to its shield twisted-pair knees! This is real power, boys and girls. Oh, yeah, this is scary big-ass, not-even-OPEC has anything like it, kind of power.

Well, what do say? Or, better yet, what do you want? I’ll probably be on my second “list of demands” by time you finish this sentence – but we all know, of course, that bottom-line is that this is a group effort. Regardless, I know one thing, however, I won't mind at all working with a group where it won’t be necessary to have to explain, for up-teenth million time, something pretty basic, like the reason that “damn thing” will not work is because you first must hook it up with a supply a power source – either put a battery in it, or plug it in to a wall socket – duh!! You bet I will work with this group. Hell, I might by a couple of you a cup of coffee.

Oh, umm … I was thinking, I never really like that name Toshiba. I’m thinking maybe Hung-booboo, or Bolo-Rasta! Yeah, definitely, I like that much better.

Oh no, gotta go ... somebody just grabbed that new remote control. Next time, mi amani.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

War with Iran

It seems obvious that the Bush propaganda machine is ramping up for war with Iran. Why? Well, the obvious, of course. Iran sits between Afghanistan and Iraq. Where esle is the oil pipeline going to go?