Reagan Motorcade

I hoped to get pictures this morning of a grand event when the the Reagan motorcade passed en route to Point Mugu. But it was surprisingly small: Only about a half dozen black vehicles in a group, not really decorated at all. (That’s not including over a dozen motorcycles, mostly CHP, that were scattered ahead of the main vehicles and clearly having fun zipping around an empty freeway at about 90 mph.)

I took a couple of pictures, but they’re not worth putting up here. If it wasn’t for the people standing around and the traffic going the other direction being at a dead stop, you wouldn’t know it was anything special.

Instant Island

Due to its immense scale and unique shape, The Palm, Jumeirah and The Palm, Jebel Ali are visible from space with the naked eye. If all the fill materials used to build one Palm island were placed end to end, a wall two meters high and half a metre thick could circle the world three times. PalmSales probably gives the nicest overview of this monster.

  • Dubbed the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” about 350 million cubic feet of rock, sand, and earth is being placed in the Persian Gulf in the shape of two palm trees off the coast of Dubai. – link
  • The Palm-Jumeirah extends approximately 3.5 miles out into the ocean and provides for 35 miles of new beachfront — a 75% increase to Dubai’s existing beachfront. On the fronds of The Palm, 1,800 luxury villas have been sold. On the trunk of The Palm there will be 2,200 condominiums (all sold out), five hotels, two marinas and a major retail centre. – link
  • The Golden Mile apartments, to be housed in two waterfront buildings, went on sale this week at Arabian Travel Market 2004, the Middle East’s premier travel and tourism show at prices ranging from US $250,000 for a one-bedroom, garden-view unit to $550,000 for the high-end waterfront three-bedroomed properties. 780 freehold apartments on their joint venture Golden Mile, on the Palm, Jumeirah were sold within 48 hours of them being placed on the market. – link

This location just seems a bit risky to me for vacation property. – map

Top 50 Song Parts

It’s a combination of votes and one person’s opinion about a great riff or lyric or whatever, but not the whole song. I didn’t agree with some selections, and given a year or so to think about it I could probably do better. None the less, there’s a lot of really cool stuff listed at The 50 Coolest Song Parts.

I looked at all 50 and listened to about half to make sure I knew exactly which part they were referring to. And because I wanted to hear them again.

Don't Play With Your Food

The makers of Pringles introduced Pringles Prints, featuring a “unique, fun design printed on every crisp”. The revolutionary technology allows P&G to customize the crisps by printing words and images in a variety of colors directly on the chip. P&G is partnering with Hasbro to use Trivial Pursuit Junior trivia content. Pringles Prints will feature 2,400 fun trivia questions and answers from six different Trivial Pursuit Junior categories randomly printed on the potato crisps.

I wonder what the first movie tie-in will be?

Pykrete

Pykrete is sawdust reinforced ice that you can make at home. It takes a lot longer than regular ice or Blue Ice to melt. It doesn’t shatter like regular ice when shot with a .243 bullet, but that doesn’t help keep my food cold.

Why do I care about this stuff? If you go on 3, sometimes 4 day camping trips, you know that ice is a big problem. Dry ice keeps everything cold, but it also freezes stuff. Who want’s to have a frozen beer? This may be the solution.

Here’s an interesting history about its possible use as a boat in World War II.

The FCC Song

My friend Andy sent a song to me a week or so ago which was so big it caused my email provider to warn me that my account had passed the “high water mark”. Knowing that some of my friends still use dial-up, I didn’t send it on to anyone.

It turns out that it’s a song by Eric Idle of Monty Python fame. You can get it at Pythonline.com. Eric says:

“Here’s a little song I wrote the other day while I was out duck hunting with a judge. It’s a new song, it’s dedicated to the FCC and if they broadcast it, it will cost a quarter of a million dollars.”

It should probably be called “Fuck You, Very Much”, but then nobody would be able to talk about it on the air.

One Less Reason

I avoid Blockbuster Video for a few reasons, but the main ones are their preference for the pan-and-scan, edited for TV versions of movies. There has been a lot of discussion and denial about them supplying edited versions, but my suspicion is that it really came down to use their using the TV version. They won’t carry an “unrated” version, and some DVDs come out with the Director’s Cut, which makes them unrated.

Because of Blockbuster’s clout, I didn’t want to support something that might move movie makers to eliminate the widescreen version. But according to a Slate article, “Blockbuster Video, the country’s dominant rental chain, announced that from that point on it officially preferred widescreen DVDs to pan-and-scan (also known as “full screen”).”

The small video stores in my area have already been put out of business, so it’s probably okay for me to rent G, PG and mild R movies there now.

Paper Trail

I just signed this petition to count every vote this November. There are already articles posted here about this (Part 1, Part 2), so there’s no point in repeating it. What follows is the letter they suggest sending after you sign the petition.

We must act now to ensure that our voting systems produce accurate and verifiable results.

Some states are planning to use machines that will not allow voters to verify their choices. This means that any flaws in the machine or software will never be caught — and no recount will be possible.

And the head of the largest e-voting machine company — who is a major contributor to George Bush and has promised to deliver Ohio to him — asks that we just trust him.

Please join me by signing this call for accountability:

http://petition.democracyforamerica.com/page/p/verify/113648