arson and nerd laughs

One of my favourite cartoon sites, xkcd.com has recently sent me on a trip down memory lane. First, let’s look at the cartoon:

The Hum strikes again

All over the world there are more and more reports of a strange phenomenon known as "the hum". I would simply dismiss it, but I myself have heard it just a few days ago.

top 10 causes of die-offs

Whenever I drive around with my hunter friend watching the wild geese on Canadian roads, he tells me that "you can never go hungry in this country; look at'em!". Then the hunting season starts and I don't hear from him for a while..

The first step..

…in unmasking the great Wordpress conspiracy is to actually write the first post. This is kinda hard, since if I have sum pin 2 say, I usually say it wid Blogger/Blogspot. But it wouldn’t be fair to give up before I have given Wordpress a fair chance to grow on me.

Growing on me… He he he… This reminds me of - no, not Uma in Batman, but of a doctor many decades ago who was convinced that a highly contagious disease (typhoid fever, or yellow fever, or something like that) was not contagious. It was a nasty disease that was transmitted through one of the things he tried (can’t remember who or what). To prove his point that the disease was not contagious, he ate the vomit of infected people, splashed himself with diarrhea, and did crazy things with his blood and the blood of the infected. Miraculously, he did not get the disease, but didn’t get the Nobel either.

I feel very much like that lunatic. I dabble in Wordpress just to prove that Blogger / Blogspot is better

Cracanel, welcome, hello world, greetings, salutations

Obama finds Osama!

It's not exactly Obama, but rather a few professors, and he's not exactly found, but rather his location was determined. Still, isn't that a reason to celebrate good times, open a bottle of champagne and go shopping?!?

Two profs from UCLA, Thomas Gillespie and John Agnew used a variety of methods to pinpoint Osama’s location.

 

Forget remote caves, science and deduction put Al Qaeda leader in city near border
Feb 19, 2009 04:30 AM

Steve Holland
Reuters News Agency

WASHINGTON–After all these years, where is Osama bin Laden? Two geography professors think they know.

Professors Thomas Gillespie and John Agnew of the University of California at Los Angeles used satellite-imagery analysis and elaborate geographic methods to theorize that bin Laden is in the city of Parachinar in the mountains of northwestern Pakistan.

The professors believe bin Laden might be in one of three walled compounds in the city, about 20 kilometres from the Afghan border.

The Al Qaeda leader has been hiding since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., occasionally surfacing in video recordings released by supporters.

He has resisted efforts to find him, even with a $25 million (U.S.) reward for information.

"We believe that our work involves the first scientific approach to establishing his current location," Gillespie and Agnew wrote in the MIT International Review. "The methods are repeatable and can be updated with new information obtained from the U.S. intelligence community."

Using bin Laden's last reported whereabouts, the mountains of Tora Bora, Afghanistan, they employed "theories that predict how plants and animals distribute themselves over space and over time." They deduced that Parachinar is the most likely refuge, where the Al Qaeda leader could have electricity, personal privacy and a few bodyguards while remaining protected from aerial view.

Staying near a large city should reduce the risk of being found in a military raid, compared to a small city or isolated structure, they said.

What is more, "Parachinar has a long history of housing mujahideen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, so it most likely contains a large number of Taliban soldiers who cross over from here into Afghanistan."

Gillespie and Agnew did not believe bin Laden was holed up in a cave, a popular view fostered by former U.S. president George W. Bush.

"A cave would have to have a sealed entrance, be heated and ventilated, and have supplies transported to the cave monthly or annually," they said.

"We feel that most of these requirements would have physical manifestation that might easily be seen from space, and that the cave hypothesis is unlikely but could be tested."

I’m willing to bet $1000 that they’re right. Then again, we wouldn’t be able to check, and has Power ever listened to Reason?

Source: torstar

Verba Volant,conspiracy, science, terror, terrorism, terrororism, Osama, Ossama, Obama, bin Laden, bounty

Lisa Kennedy Montgomerry

It's not just that her name is annoyingly long, she is easily the most annoying 40-50 y.o. on the face of the Earth. And that says a lot..

Lufthansa’s Lange to Powell, iPhone loser

In a masterful move, the director of marketing and customer relations from Lufthansa wrote a letter to the Apple programmer who lost the iPhone in the German beer bar.

As you might have heard by now, the happless and unlucky Gray Powell got drunk in a German beermarkt and lost his phone.

Which was found by someone, identified as an iPhone HD (4th gen) and sold to Gizmodo for $5000. At least, this is the official story. I’m sure that conspiracy theorists have their own story, with Powell being a disgruntled employee who wanted to break free from Jobs’ jail.

Did he actually jailbreak? We don’t know, probably not, but Gizmodo had a field month dissecting this phone. It’s also possible that it is all a brilliant marketing move concocted by Jobs and his Gizmodo minions. Talking about brilliant marketing moves, here’s another one, courtesy of Nicola C. Lange, Lufthansa’s director of marketing and customer relations.

The letter states:

I recently read in the news that you lost a very special phone at a German beer bar in California, We all know how frustrating it can be to lose personal belongings.. at Lufthansa we also noted with great interest your passion for German beer and culture. Lufthansa would like to offer you complimentary Business Class transportation to Munich where you can literally pick up where you left off.

“German culture”? Sounds to me like the two German beer lovers plan to watch lots of German scheisse movies together – the kind popularized by an early episode of Southpark.

Note 4 Powell: dude, if you’re somehow reading this, you shouldn’t. It’s all a joke, you were hired there for a reason, don’t take German scheisse seriously. After all, even the Woz is laughing:

Sources / More info: lufthansa-tweet, iphone-dissected, iphone-hd-ichat, iphone-hd-video, iphone-hd-tale, cnet-devastated,

yt-sp-sch

VerbaVolant, flight, fly, airline, iPhone, 4G, iPhone HD, marketing, advertising, open letter