Students Trade Bibles for Porn – XBIZ.com: You have to admit it’s a pretty dramatic statement. Mind you it really doesn’t involve the commitment that The Blasphemy Challenge demands.
How secure are YOU in your belief… or NON belief?
Chocomap!
If you know me, you know I love chocolate (yeah, yeah, and fries too..), King sent me this link to a resource that shows a little promise.
Heh, maybe someday this will grow into a useful resource. I took a peek and couldn’t find any of the places I like. Most notably absent is Rheo Thompson Candies in Stratford Ontario (their milk chocolate mint smoothies are out of this world!).
I wanted to add them but they seem to only want the actual chocolatiers to do that. I’m pretty sure this site won’t *really* take off until they encourage chocolate *lovers* to keep it up-to-date. It’s been my experience that “artistes” and the computer savvy crowd frequently do not overlap…
Time Lapse Ant Project
I didn’t know that ants were quite this ambitious. I rather thought that, when confronted with something this big, they would work to chop it up or otherwise make it more manageable. It’s a pity that we don’t get to see what finally happens.
You might not want to view this if the sight of lots of ants makes you squeamish…
Antarctic Weather – Condition 1
You may think that the weather isn’t quite perfect where you live. You should try living in the Antarctic for a bit. At first I thought that the lady in this video was dressed pretty much the way folks in Canada dress for winter. That is until I realized that she’s likely dressed that way just to be comfortable INDOORS.
That’s One Spectacular Storm!
Classical Barbie Girl
Mike and Louise – this is for you in memory of that tape we heard MANY times while driving up the gold coast!
Mark, put your hands over your ears and try not to cringe…
Bad Cleverness…
July 4 Fireworks from the air
On Tuesday evening (July 3) I rented a Piper Warrior and regained my night proficiency. I practiced soft field and short field landings and takeoffs both with and without obstacles as well as just general takeoffs and landings. I really do need to get out during the day and hone my other skills (steep turns, S-curves, emergency procedures) but it was good to get out after a long hiatus. I haven’t been up in the air since that Thanksgiving trip.
That paved the way to taking Michelle up to watch the Independence Day fireworks over Atlanta. There are always surprisingly few folks up there doing this. I suppose one of the downsides is that you can’t do any alcoholic drinking during the day and I think a lot of folks like to kick back with a cold one and relax on the holiday.
There are several factors to balance, fireworks generally don’t exceed 1,300 feet AGL so you obviously don’t want to be flying anywhere near that low, ignoring the fact that you’d be daring some of the taller broadcast antennae to pop up on your route of travel. In addition to that you have the ceiling imposed on you by Atlanta’s Bravo-class airspace (about 5-6 thousand feet AGL in the area of interest to me) and the minimum altitudes required to not violate Peachtree-Dekalb’s and Dobbins Air Force base’s airspace (3500 and 3400 feet AGL respectively). I opted to simply fly around those. I’d suggest you really want to be comfortable flying before you do this without an instructor or another experienced pilot in the airplane with you.
Even though there are relatively few folks “flight-seeing” the fireworks, they are all concentrated both at the big fireworks displays and again back at their home airports as the fireworks end. The lower airspace within which we view the fireworks is largely uncontrolled meaning that there is no standard altitude/direction scheme like you have from 3,000 feet AGL on up so you need to be vigilant in avoiding the other aircraft out there. I’ve found that everybody is pretty good at picking altitudes and keeping out of each other’s way.
In the past we found that it seems to be VERY difficult taking digital pictures at night from an airplane. We discovered that film cameras aren’t much better this time around. The constant vibration of the airplane makes long shutter times impractical and we had only 400 ASA film. Pretty much the entire role was a write-off. That picture at the beginning of this blog entry was one that I just found on the Internet to pretty up this posting. We *did* get two pictures but they are so blurry as to be laughable 🙁
Anyway, we appreciated the Phipps plaza and Centennial Olympic park fireworks and, as always, the HUNDREDS of local fireworks displays that you can see from the air. It seems nearly every cul-de-sac, not to mention municipality, has their own show and they look spectacular when you look out and can see them all happening simultaneously.
Nearly as spectacular has to be witnessing the absolute standstill of traffic as we overflew the various venue parking lots after the shows ended. Literally like the last scene of “Field of Dreams” only with both white AND red lights stretching out into the distance and none of them going anywhere as Atlanta drivers, typically, gridlocked all of the intersections. All that chaos was done with by the time we landed and secured our aircraft and we had a pleasant drive home.
House Corrino (Dune: House Trilogy, Book 3)
The final installment of the “Dune: House Trilogy”, this offering rounds it out acceptably and *does* tie up many loose ends that had been created by the previous two books. However I found the final third of the book to be a rush of bring-up-issue, resolve, repeat.
Also disappointing is that the richness of the characters was neither exploited nor acknowledged. Characters folded into single dimensional entities that acted and re-acted to situations in a way that was simply expedient to move the story along to its conclusion rather than with the greater depth and complexity that Dune readers would expect.
If you have read the preceeding two books of this trilogy then you’ll definitely want to read this book to wrap up the series. I would not recommend this as a standalone read, but as a cap it is quite adequate. If you’re a die-hard Dune fan, then I expect you’ll still enjoy this prequel that leads directly to the original “Dune” book. Personally I found the “Legends of Dune” trilogy vastly more epic and entertaining than the “House Trilogy”.
My recommendation? Read Dune first, then any of the other post-Dune books, *then* “Legends of Dune”. Only read the “House Trilogy” if you find you are so “Dune” mad that you begin suffering withdrawal without some kind of Dune fix. 🙂
Yes!! It’s about time!! Real Journalism trying desperately to cut through the crap!
I don’t watch TV newscasts anymore. But if more people sided with Mika Brzezinski, especially so-called journalists fronting the major networks, maybe we could have less Paris Hilton, Anna Nicole and other drivel and focus on topics that actually *do* affect us. Such as our continuing rape at the gas pumps, the travesty of the Patriot Act and whatever legislation your Municipal, State or Federal representatives are dreaming up today.
Go MIKA!
Great Zip line in Africa
I’ve done a much smaller, but still thrilling zip line up in Collingwood, Ontario:
3rd Person:
1st Person:
But this looks to be a very slick one-up on that experience. Holy cow! The speed really does not come across in the “zipper’s” footage so I’m glad they had a camera in the landing area so you could see how fast you can go!