After managing to get some sleep in our delightful cama bus cama means bed in Spanish we arrived in Sucre 12 hours south of La Paz on luxuriously paved roads. It is also at a delightfully lower elevation than La Paz at only 2600m. Sucre is the historical capital of Bolivia and upon seeing it it is clear why it has a lovely look all the buildings are white with red tile roofs. The main
Pictures And the first day of class
Thanks to Christine for suggesting that I borrow her camera and take pictures for you guys I hope this gives you an idea of where I'll be spending the better part of the next five months.Before I get into my first day of class I'd like to tell you about a game that I recently invented. It's called Trashball. HISTORY invented out of bordom and laziness. YOU WILL NEED one bag of tras
no salmon no sunny day
From Villa Manuales to Villa Amangual it was only 60 km The road was paved for the first 20km and the last 20km but that I did not know.The morning started out not like promised. No salmon for breakfast and no blue skies to start cycling. My friends kept friendly we drank coffee and said goodbye. Wind in the wrong direction and after some time it started really raining. When it came to the bad pa
Work continues at Beachlands
The next stage of development at Beachlands was the deck. Quite an undertaking both in size and the amount of sweat that was expended during the building of the deck.Joel and Chelle had begun the work on the deck before Graham went out to help.We are having a very hot dry summer and the ground is like concrete. They had to dig many holes to put posts concrete etc in. They all worked so very hard
what a sunshine
It started out cloudy but then the sun traveled with me. I saw a lot of cyclists. Two French couples a Chilean Alvaro and Martin from Germany. Two French on a tandem and two on the low bikes. The low bikes were going around the globe and had crossed the ocean from Tokyo to Santiago. In an airplane off course. Today Parc Quelat was on schedule with a nasty climb which was only 7 km from my side. T
Nearly there with the deck at Beachlands
The following photos were supposed to be in the previous blog but it didn't happen. Something to do with the website.So here we go again.On the Sunday Chelle and Joel really worked so hard to finish the deck so they could host a BBQ dinner.It was a fantastic dinner and thankyou so much for having us over to in share the christening of the new deck.Graham was so tired from working the Saturday on t
Garden Vivian Wilson Drive Bucklands Beach
We have had such a lovely sunny summer and the garden has loved it as long as it gets watered regularly at night.The water bill will be a little frightening I fear.I have harvested lots of veges from the vege garden. There is nothing like lovely organic veges from your own garden.
Saint Margarets Karaka South Auckland
I spent a lovely day out with my two friends Gaylene and Lyn.We went out to St Margarets for a beautiful lunch.The gardens were so lovely and the setting was gorgeous.
Presidental election
So I just thought this was very interesting and thought I'd write a note because I guess that's what bloggers do Yesterday was the election and I was just walking with some friends trying to find some food. Anyhow around 830 people started honking and waving flags etc. As the night progressed so did the honking and chants and cheering. It's like how Vancouver would be if Canucks ever won a s
just a monday
It was a typical monday. Nothing much happened I was so tired from the weekend that I stayed in bed till half eleven. Once I finally got up I had to go to a tutorial for one of my classes I learned that tests are pretty much what the normal art history test is back home. So Adan prepared me well. When I came back my roommate and I went to the english market which is a pretty interesting place w
Book Excerpt: The Play of Light
Louis Masson on the importance of silence.
Resurrecting Tammany Hall: MSNBC’s Chris Matthews suggests old time Voter intimidation and Vote buying as a way to save Democrat Martha Coakley
by Eric Dondero
He was known as "Boss Tweed," and he ran New York City Democrat politics for over two decades. He used tactics such as voter intimidation, vote buying, trading votes through booze, prostitutes and cold hard cash. He muscled political opponents through staged strikes, protests, street demonstrations, and sometimes even fistfights and rumbles.
Boston itself has its own history of voter intimidation and rough-edged politics.
From the essay "The Boston Irish: A Political History" by Thomas H. O'Connor:
Based in the ghetto network of churches, clubs and bars, the sometimes ruthless and always populist ethnic class politics of Irish party bosses would turn out to be an effective strategy against Anglo-American "brahmins". By virtue of their sheer number and well oiled (and infamous) "poltical machines" - the boss of the local precinct (like John F. Kennedy's grandfather, e.g.) acting the role of mediator between the individual and collective interests of his district and the municipal government - they were able to force the leaders of the Protestant Yankee establishment first to share and later to yield political power. With the election of John F. Fitzgerald (Rose F. Kennedy's father) as mayor of the city in 1905, the Boston Irish would take full control over the city and use their political power to further their own social and economic aspirations.
Now one very prominent TV Cable News talk show host, coincidentally himself of Irish descent and a New Yorker, wants to resurrect the old traditions of Tammany to save the Boston-based seat of the proud ole' irishman Ted Kennedy.
From Chris Matthews, Hardball MSNBC, Friday, Jan. 16:
CHUCK TODD: Everybody is going to blame Coakley... she wanted to coast. They were whispering in her ear, you know once you won the primary you were the virtual Senator, Senator-elect, you might as well start thinking that way. And the Republicans, you know this guy Brown, he's not a neophyte. He's been a candidate that the Republicans have identified for the longest time... wanted to get him to run for Congress, believed he was a rising star. When the spotlight got turned on, he performed, and she turned out to be, ya know, a cross between a technocrat a little bit, I think, doesn't seem to have this automatic warmth... hasn't been able to connect. Now they're grasping for messages... just shows you they never had a consistent message: Why not Brown. Elections are about choices.
MATTHEWS: You know in the old days, it shouldn't be hard getting back to the old days. If the Democrats faced a kinda disaster in the works, you'd go back to your ones, the people you were sure were going to vote Democrat and you'd make sure they got to the polling place. You'd get them lunch. You'd get them a car. You'd make sure they'd got there. And in some cases you'd be buying people to get them. Not officially buying them. But getting them there as block secretaries. Block captains. You'd be getting them street money. Legitimate. But it's a little bit old school.
CHUCK TODD: Right... right.
MATTHEWS: But I hear talking to some people today, they're aren't people like that up in Massachusetts any more. They're aren't those automatic Democrat votes out there any more. You can't count on anybody...
CHUCK TODD: You're right Chris. It isn't the old machine that's up there.
MATTHEWS: Well, the street corner guys are getting called upon, perhaps a little too late. Perhaps. We'll see. It could still be very close. Thank you Chuck Todd.
See the full video of the exchange at MSNBC.
Today's modern day political street thugs are of course, ACORN and SEIU. They no longer descend from the Irish ghettos. But the same mentality of intimidation and street thuggery remains. Will see next Tuesday, if Matthews does indeed get his wish, and that mentality prevails.
Photos - Cartoon of Boss Tweed protecting the ballot box, Boston street thugs, and Tammany Hall, NYC.
Free Spirit: Mired at Troy
Click here to view the embedded video.
I don’t know and I’m hoping for the best, but this could be it for the little rover. There is a good team working on it so who knows – good luck!!
Immunization FAQs, and some nice stories | Bad Astronomy
I’m a fan of the Colorado Children’s Immunization Coalition, whose purpose is to make sure my home state’s kids are healthy and not susceptible to preventable diseases (they’re on Twitter, too!). Last Thanksgiving, they had a "Thanks-a-thon", letting Coloradans post their messages and stories about their kids. It’s a great read, with lots of heart-warming — and some harrowing — stories.
And while I’m at it, here is a great immunization FAQ posted by the American Academy of Pediatrics. In it you’ll see something very hard to find on the web: actual science-based facts about vaccinations, without the scare tactics employed constantly by the antivax (what some people call the pro-disease) crowd. If you’re wondering about getting yourself or your kids vaccinated, please check out that site and read it carefully. You may be saving not only your child’s life, but the lives of other children as well.
Rob’s Post: Black Holes
It doesn’t matter how much you say about them, there’s still more to say. It doesn’t matter how much you know about them, you barely know anything at all. We’ve talked at length about what black holes are, what they do, how they do it, and what may happen after they’ve done it. We all know about Hawking Radiation, microscopic black holes, and event horizons.
Doesn’t the term “event horizon” sound like it fell right out of The Twilight Zone?
Since most people know I’m very interested in black holes, I get a lot of questions and comments on the subject. Here are a few of the topics most discussed in my email:
Image created by ESA/NASA/JPL – a Black Hole Concept drawing
A good “rule of thumb” in the empirical sciences goes like this: For every action there is an equal, and opposite, reaction. How does that work with black holes?
The “flip-side” to the black hole coin could very well be the hypothetical “white hole”. Matter is drawn inexorably into the black hole, compressed by enormous energy into a singularity, and released (explosively) by the white hole. The puzzler in this theory is if it happens at all (and it seems as if it must), why don’t we see it happen around us all the time? After all, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of black holes. Some scientists are saying that the ejection of matter at the white hole is happening all around us, all the time. It simply creates another “universe” when it happens. The next step along this line of thought is the speculation that we have indeed experienced a white hole in this universe. We called it “The Big Bang”.
Remember, the existence of a white hole it purely hypothetical. By its very definition, we couldn’t produce one in this universe since its existence could only be manifest by the formation of another universe. Tricky little problem in logic, that.
NASA/ESA STScl X-Rays from heated material falling into a black hole
Let me give you a quick aside here; if you fall into a black hole, you are not going to encounter a “worm hole” and travel through time, space, or dimension. If you fall into a black hole, the only thing you’re going to encounter is a singularity, and that’s not a pleasant prospect. Worm holes are an even iffier proposition than white holes. Even if they did exist, and there was a way to travel through them (and control where you were going), you would not want to go through one. Trust me, you do not want to go there.
Illustration of space-time “fabric” being warped by a black hole
Black holes are now thought to be at the center of most, if not all galaxies. The gravitational pull of the black hole may very well be instrumental in holding the galaxy together. When galaxies collide, or “merge”, it appears that their respective black holes orbit each other, creating a binary system, until they also collide. The largest black hole located so far, OJ287 (a BL Lac object), is believed to be one center of such a collision of galaxies. OJ287 is thought to contain 18 billion (that’s “b” as in “boy”) solar masses, and is one member of a binary system. Its smaller companion (“only” 100 million solar masses), will eventually be absorbed. OJ287 is in the constellation of Cancer.
There is indeed a black hole at the center of The Milky Way. It’s about 27,000 ly away, and is believed to be 4 million solar masses. Here is an image of the center of our galaxy, combining images from Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer.
Brought to you by NASA/ESA, SSC, CXC, and STScI
And finally, to look at our galactic center, churning around our own black hole:
Recycle Your Old Cellphone To Fund Haiti Relief [Haiti]
ReCellular, the world's leading recycler of cellphones, has launched Phones For Haiti—a relief effort that donates 100% of the value of your recycled phone to quake victims via the American Red Cross. [Phones for Haiti via Inhabitat]
Ninjas Employ Their Own Method Of Unboxing a Nexus One [Nexus One]
In this Google-sponsored video by Patrick Boivin, stop-motion ninjas show us only the second unboxing that I can describe as "action-packed." They easily defeated the Nexus One packaging, but their arch-rival Blister Pack won't go down so easy. [Engadget]
Windows Mobile 7 Rumor Explosion: Two Versions, New Name, First Hardware [Microsoft]
As Mobile World Congress—and presumably Window Mobile 7—careens closer and closer, we're going to hear a lot more of this. Today's batch? Business and consumer versions of the OS, a sexxxy new name, and possible first hardware.
WMExperts' post is essentially a digest of everything they think they know from a variety of sources, including this very site. Even as a summary, though, it's pretty huge, and the rumors sprawl from totally ridiculous to fairly credible, so here are the meaty bits:
&bull Windows Mobile 7 won't be marketed as Windows Mobile 7. We sort of knew this already, since Microsoft has been marketing Windows Mobile and "Windows Phone" since the announcement of 6.5. But it's not even going to be that, apparently. The new name? "Seven."
&bull There will be two versions of the OS: one for OEMs and businesses, a stripped-down that's being referred to in development as Business Edition; and one media-oriented version for consumers, tentatiely called Media Edition. Business edition will be focused on enterprise tools, like collaborative document editing, while the media edition will be focused on, well, media.
&bull If we see Seven at MWC, it won't be a full product—we'll see HD video playback, a Zune-like media interface, and some of the rest of the UI, but not all of it. This sounds odd! But the rumor consensus is that the OS won't hit phones until late 2010, so it's plausible that they're just not done yet,
There's nothing earth-shattering here, and most of these rumors just prompt more questions. Perhaps the juiciest part of this whole mess, though, is the rumored hardware from LG and HTC. What's so great about the LG Apollo and HTC Obsession, assuming they actually exist? Well, seeing as they're supposed to be Seven launch devices, they represent the new baseline for Windows Mobile phones. And this baseline is high: WMExperts reports both have 1GHz+ Snapdragon processors, 3.7-inch AMOLED screens, and 512MB to 1GB of RAM. In other words, Windows Mobile 7's dumpiest handsets will be gutsier than anything you can buy today—something that will get less and less impressive the longer Microsoft waits to release this thing.
Anyway, if you're still feeling a little lost as to what on earth WinMo 7 may or may not be, WMExperts' breakdown is worth a read. [WMExperts]
On Lego Pandora, Everyone Gets Along Just Fine [Legos]
I'd like to give a tiny Golden Globe to all the fine people who put together these incredibly detailed Avatar Lego dioramas. That's my kind of 3D.
Many of these are repurposed from older Lego sets, such as Halo and (gasp!) Toy Story, which in a way is an apt metaphor for Avatar itself, no? Either way, another win for the hobbyists! [Flickr via The Brothers Brick]
Apple Tablet Might Have Decent Graphical Capabilities For Gaming? [Apple Tablet]
Even though the existence and announcement of the Apple Tablet is pretty much a lock for January 27, we still don't know much about specs or capabilities. But it might do gaming at least decently.
Apple invited our sister site Kotaku to the event as well. Not much, on the surface of things, but because details are so slim about the tablet, small tells give us a sneak peek into what Apple's engineers are planning.
Because the tablet's not a phone, both in terms of computing capability and input mechanics, people are going to be expecting more from its performance. Especially in the gaming realm, which Apple has been pushing hard in their ads for the iPod Touch and iPhone. If the guess that Apple will include iPhone App Store support on the tablet is true, it'll at least enough graphical capability to run those games.
But our guess is that we'll see at least an Nvidia Ion-esque solution (like the Nvidia 9400M found in MacBooks), supposing the whole thing runs with at least as much power as a decently specced netbook.
Who knows though—we could be reading too much into this.
