Quartz City

The much elusive Giant Squid has finally been photographed in the wild off the coast of Japan’s Ogasawara Islands.

Five things overheard while watching last week’s DARPA’s Minotaur launch from Vandenberg from Long Beach (all quotes verbatim from actual Long Beach residents):

1. “Look at that contrail, it was totally out of control!”

2. “It looks like a spaceship blew up!”

3. “Yeah, it was something launched from the desert”

4. “Did something crash?”

5. “As soon as it dumped that jet, it hit the rocket and just took off out of there!”

The launch contrail as seen from Mt. Wilson’s Towercam.

Flickr photos tagged “Vandenberg”

99: Oh, Max what a terrible weapon of destruction.

Max: Yes. You know, China, Russia, and France should outlaw all nuclear weapons. We should insist upon it.

99: What if they don’t, Max?

Max: Then we may have to blast them. That’s the only way to keep peace in the world.

Get Smart was one of the first television series I remember watching… I think it was KCOP that was syndicating it in the mid-70s - never missed an episode of it when I wasn’t in school. Sure I never missed a James Bond movie but Smart was, er, smarter and besides - Agent 99 and the Sunbeam Tiger if you get my drift. Put it this way, when early sysadmins gave computers on their network names from Greek mythology, Star Trek, or Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, when I had a chance to do it the names were max.*, agent99.*, control.*, larabee.*, siegfried.*, and hymie.*

Adams’ obituary is one of those amazing life stories that manage to stuff four or five lifetimes into one.

He joined the U.S. Marines in the early days of World War II and served as a drill instructor. He saw combat in the invasion of Guadalcanal and was the only survivor of his platoon. He contracted blackwater fever and nearly died, remaining hospitalized for more than a year.

Like his brother, the late comedian Dick Yarmy, Adams was an inveterate horse-player. His leisure time was largely spent either at racetracks or in card games at the Playboy Mansion, and with pals such as Hugh Hefner, James Caan, and Don Rickles. Divorced for the third time, he lived alone in a luxury apartment in Century City. He was a devoted history buff, and was an amateur expert on the lives of Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler. He was a talented poet and painter and had at one time considered a career as an artist.

I kinda wish he had written an autobiography.

Over the weekend, I saw an episode of Seinfeld where Elaine moves into a janitor’s closet so she could be within the delivery area of a favored Chinese restaurant.

I’m nowhere near the delivery zone of a Sam Woo, but if there’s one dish of theirs that sums up everything I like about Sam Woo it’s their beef chow fun with black bean sauce. Instead of the typical Asian spicing, the sauce has a dense smoky taste to it - reminding me more of a Caribbean or South American dish. I can’t get enough of it and it’s perfect for rainy weather (and the drive to get there).

File this under “one of those Charles Fort stories where the drought-stricken town prays for rain and gets a flood which destroys the town.”

A couple days ago I was thinking that it had been way too long since I’d been in a decent thunderstorm but it was just one of those idle thoughts. Until… I pulled into a gas station and just got out of the car when my entire field of vision goes WHITE with the sound of all the 12 gauge shotguns in the world going off.

After a couple moments of some serious WTF, I gathered my senses together to notice two things: the odd sizzling sound fluorescent lights make when they’re overloaded and burn out, and a couple of guys standing next to a CalTrans truck in front were laughing and pointing at a smoking telephone pole directly across the street.

“Careful what you wish for” and all that rot…

From Greg’s blog…

Dad’s long fight with cancer has come to an end. He passed away last night in peace. The room was filled with the kind of wonderful quiet he always loved. Dad was surrounded by loved ones who whispered beautiful things to him when all he had could do was listen. I held him and told him what a brave man, beautiful person and wonderful father he has been.

Dad asked me to carry out his final wishes. One of them is that there will be a grand wake. We will all mourn his passing. But Dad wanted us to celebrate all the beauty there is in life.

So how is it that China can evacuate over 800,000 people from a 5 million population city before a hurricane strike and the Feds can’t? Not to mention that they probably have less access to transportation and mass media.

I remember when I was four or so years old and figuring out how maps worked I was fascinated with great circle routes and globe topology even if I didn’t quite know what topology was. At some point, I attempted to dig a hole to China but I knew that if I dug straight-down I wasn’t going to make it to Shanghai, but somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

Anyway, when I build that unstable backyard nuclear reactor out of lowest-bidder parts I’m happy to have a Google Maps mash-up that shows me where on the Earth it’s going to pop-out.

I’m #1 in Google ranking for “Katrina Conspiracy Theories” and in celebration it’s time for some followup.

If you’re just getting started, Episode 27 of Benjamen Walker’s Theory Of Everything podcast will get you up to speed.

Ed Kostiuk of the Oklahoma State Dept of Health Emergency Management responds to the report on the mysterious and sinister FEMA camp in Oklahoma. I don’t doubt that he was trying to calm people down, but using the phrase ” faith-based groups” isn’t going to do it.

A geographer follows up on the 17th Street levee containment wall “bombing.” His PDF report is worth a read and is much more plausable than an intentional act of sabotage, but of course you can argue that not acting on a weakening levee accomplishes the same goals.

A zillion christian web sites are crowing about the Katrina aftermath and the New York Times takes a look.

All of this (and perhaps even myself) could be dis/mis-information, but if you have questions the government is always there to help.

I was looking forward to the day when I could hookup my DirecTivo box again, but now that TiVo has committed seppukku it’s going in the trash.

Hello MythTv!