Outposts of Tyranny

US secretary of State Condoleezza Rice once outlined six “outposts of tyranny”. I have lived in, and traveled through, many countries that were at some given time were out of favor of the American government and therefore the American press. I came to realize that perception is relative and the minutia of everyday life in these places provides a very different perpective on who “they” are and of the history of a region.

Although the political regimes of Ms. Rice’s “Tyrannical Six” may indeed be considered tyrannical, I began to consider the countries themselves. What joy to locals find amongst the horror and repression. Here’s what I found:

Properties inscribed on the World Heritage List:

Cuba:

Cultural

• Archaeological Landscape of the First Coffee Plantations in the South-East of Cuba (2000)
• Old Havana and its Fortifications (1982)
• San Pedro de la Roca Castle, Santiago de Cuba (1997)
• Trinidad and the Valley de los Ingenios (1988)
• Urban Historic Centre of Cienfuegos (2005)
• Viñales Valley (1999)

Natural

• Alejandro de Humboldt National Park (2001)
• Desembarco del Granma National Park (1999)

Zimbabwe

Cultural

Zimbabwe has no listed cultural World Heritage Sites

Natural

• Mana Pools National Park, Sapi and Chewore Safari Areas (1984)
• Great Zimbabwe National Monument (1986)
• Khami Ruins National Monument (1986)
• Mosi-oa-Tunya / Victoria Falls (1989) *
• Matobo Hills (2003)

Iran

Cultural

Iran has no listed cultural World Heritage Sites

Natural

• Meidan Emam, Esfahan (1979)
• Persepolis (1979)
• Tchogha Zanbil (1979)
• Takht-e Soleyman (2003)
• Bam and its Cultural Landscape (2004)
• Pasargadae (2004)
• Soltaniyeh (2005)

Belarus

Cultural

Belarus has no listed cultural World Heritage Sites

Natural

• Belovezhskaya Pushcha / Białowieża Forest (1979, 1992) *
• Mir Castle Complex (2000)
• Architectural, Residential and Cultural Complex of the Radziwill Family at Nesvizh (2005)
• Struve Geodetic Arc (2005)

North Korea

Cultural

North Korea has no listed cultural World Heritage Sites. I find this hard to believe considering the country has such a long history and there are sites such as the “Burial Mounds of Goguryo Dynasty: Kangseo Tumuli”. Image above.

Burma

Burma too has neither cultural nor natural heritage sites listed.

Don't Touch

I remember when I was growing up; one of the four television channels had frequent “Blasting Cap” commercials. I think they bought ad time between “After School Specials” and “Wild Kingdom”. They always stopped before the “Red Skelton Show”. I guess blasting cap danger didn’t affect Red’s demographic audience.

I love the web but it’s not yet perfect. I was able to find the following description of the actual commercial, but no footage. “Blasting Caps-Explosives: Nice Color (Late 1960’s: Institute of Makers of Explosives Production: Company is located in New York)-–film shows what you should do if you find a blasting cap laying around-–film uses a little boy as an example: little boy finds blasting caps in a park and calls the policegood shots of various types of blasting caps-–film ends with the words, ‘DON’T TOUCH’”.

Now that I think back, I always wanted to find one of these great explosive devices. Bottle rockets and firecrackers were boring. Cherry Bombs where a bit more dangerous. I even had a friend who blew his thumb off with this “eighth of a stick of dynamite!” But Cherry Bombs didn’t have TV commercials.

No matter where I looked, I could never find one of these magical devices. Perhaps because Moose Lake Minnesota didn’t have anything to blast. Except for the occasional “dynamite fishing” mishap, nothing big enough to require a blasting cap and dynamite was being built. So why were the commercials being displayed? What a conundrum. I remember thinking of the exciting danger lurking close; perhaps even a blasting cap in my back yard!

To this day, I still haven’t seen one of the elusive blasting caps…

Teenbeat

What can I add to this early 1980's picture of teen heart-throb Bill Gates? The cult of personality started early.

Fibs

From Slashdot: "April is National Poetry Month (and, it turns out, Math Awareness Month), and on my blog, I decided to get people writing poetry based on the Fibonacci sequence. The poems are six lines, 20 syllables long with the syllable pattern 1/1/2/3/5/8, though they can go longer, obviously. I've been calling 'em Fibs, and people have been writing them on pop culture, politics, math, and more."

My own personal Fib:

I
used
to like
Japanese
Haiku but I like
the Golden Proportion of Fibs.

And those of others:

So
you
no doubt
will not find
it interesting
to talk to me about this stuff.

Blogs
spread
gossip
and rumor
But how about a
Rare, geeky form of poetry?

I
like
to blog.
Frequently.
Theory matters.
Computer science (theory)
is my home and geometric algorithms are
sublime. Let P be a set of points in general position in the plane. Amen.

Fibs.
Terse.
Defined.
As your tools,
Twenty syllables;
How you use them is up to you.

Ants
Can’t
Wear pants
When they dance.
Plus I’ve heard the news
They never put on dancing shoes.

Greg
Wrote
Twenty
Brand new Fibs.
Why would he do that?
He had nothing better to do.

Sweat.
Grunts.
Big men.
Really big.
Wrestlemania.
Wrestemania, I love you.

Songs,
Jokes,
Unite.
These guys rocks!
Barenaked Ladies:
Love you like I love Kraft Dinner.

Sex.
Docs.
Troubles.
Medicine.
Grey's Anatomy:
You are my Sunday night pleasure.

Marbles

Lately I’ve been playing a lot of marbles. Marbles are one of those things you forget about for long periods of time and then re-discover in the eyes of children.

My favorites are the cat’s eyes.

Recently I was with one of my friends, Congo Kate, and she reminded me of steelies. I had completely forgotten about steelies. Puries, cat’s eyes, and shooters I remember. Google tells me there are other exotics such as Butterflies, Commies, Peanut Butter and Jelly and the rare Butterfly Agate. There were definitely no clay commies or PB&J marbles on my playground when I was growing up. Often time there was lots of mud and often times snow, but no commies.

Actually I remember the small one’s being shooters. The large ones were definitely boulders, but I don’t remember anything named half-pints. A little more research provides actual dissertations on the how marble game is played and a wealth of names. Names like bumbos, peawees, china, plaster, alley, opals, glimmers, bloods, rubies, and crystals.

The information available on the web is often overwhelming. Too many people with too much time to research too many things, including a wealth of information available on “marble dialects”.

But still, it makes me warm and smiley when I hear “daddy, do you want to play marbles with me?”

The Worst Polluter

India may now claim have the brightest researchers anywhere. I am especially intrigued by this research as my long tenure at Kodak included daily walking commutes past signs like the one above. I once read two items that distressed me: 1) Kodak of Rochester, NY was the worst polluter in NY State and 2) the process of making silver-halide film includes the use of methlene chloride, one of the most poisonous substances known to man.

The machines at Kodak that used this substance recovered 99.999% of the methlene chloride. The remaining .0001% escaped through the walls of the machines. This amount still violated federal EPA standards. So I was happy to hear that these brilliant young India researchers had stumbled upon this brilliant invention.

Computer monitors have been designed to produce images based on the falling of light rays on it. By mixing light rays at different frequencies, all colors of the light spectrum can be achieved. These are the same principles that govern the inter-working of computer monitors, televisions, etc. These bright sparks determined that a monitor should be able to capture the image in front of it by interpreting the change in the magnetic fields caused by your body. When you sit in front of the monitor, light rays fall on you and then from all parts of your body, they strike the monitor.

They invented this amazing software photographer. It has been coded in such a way that, it makes monitors analyze the rays falling on the screen and after it filters the infra-red rays and Ultra-Violet rays, it uses the basic light spectrum so that the monitor shows the image in front of it. A similar concept to that employed by the old-time “pin-hole camera”.

The interface to the software photographer clearly indicates this is still in research. It is also important not to move while the monitor is capturing the electromagnetic disturbance caused by your body in front of the screen. As such, don’t move while it’s processing. It’s actually very accurate. Also, I have virus checked this executable.

Enjoy!

DOWNLOAD PHOTOGRAPHER v.0.001(a)

Credits

Bloggers Anonymous

I think Blogging may, sometime in the future, be considered a drug. Blogging will come to be considered an addictive substance that will be regulated and banned. I think this based on a couple of my own datum.

First I noticed that my Blogging frequency rose dramatically when I was frustrated with my job. Even my Blog has a sub-title with a derivative of the word “cathartic”. First I declared to myself that I would only Blog “Sunday through Thursday”. Then, I started Blogging on weekends. Then I began to Blog everyday. My Blogging frequency increased in an inverse relationship with my happiness and self-importance at work. I even began to Blog alone, without others, and often without even a new idea, just statistics.

And then my friend Pundista stopped Blogging. At first I made on-line fun of her and ridiculed her anonymously for not Blogging. I had lost a fellow “user” and therefore she could no longer be in my links. I ostracized her by removing her from my “favorite links” sidebar. She indicated “when I Blog I spend all my weekends doing research and I become anti-social”. A sure indication of a Blogging problem.

Lately, I’ve stopped reading the über-blogger Robert Scoble’s blog Scobelizer. It’s because he’s temporarily checked out of blogging. He stated “I'm gonna take some time off, think more about what I want to do as a blogger, as an employee, as a husband, as a father, and come back fresh.” To find himself.

I remember in the 1970’s when cocaine was “a clean high”, “non-addictive” and “the rich person’s drug”. I also remember when Blogging had the benefit of being anonymous. All things trend toward closure and I am beginning to understand about this venue called Blogging.

I am going to create a new organization; Bloggers Anonymous. It’s credo will be:

The Twelve Steps of Bloggers Anonymous

1. We admitted we were powerless over blogging - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that blogging, a power greater than ourselves, could not restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives to a power other than search engines and Adsense.
4. Made a fearless moral inventory of ourselves without search.
5. Admitted to Google, MSN, Yahoo and Technorati, the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to remove all the SEO engineering I have performed.
7. Humbly asked the Internet Search Gods to remove our blog search listings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had blogged about, and became willing to stop blogging about them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would cause the Digg Effect to their sites.
10. Continued to take personal notes and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through work and time with our families, to improve our conscious contact with the Internet as we understood It, search only for knowledge of It’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to bloggers and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Easter Eggs

I just got done coloring Easter eggs.

It’s a great tradition I learned from my childhood and after a long absence of practice, the tradition has come unto itself again in the fantasy of my four year old daughter. The only problem is that I live approximately 500 feet above seat level. To my knowledge, there are no bunnies that can leap that far. Not even the attack rabbits from Monty Python.

At least Santa has a quick entrance and escape route. Luckily for the Santa fantasy, I have a chimney in my cloud-level existence. As we live at such a height and because today we locked ourselves out of our building, the only explanation I’ve been able to come up with for the giant-bunny-entering-our-flat so far has been: “he’s magic, like Harry Potter”. So far, it’s working.

Tonight I even blew eggs. The pin-hole-in-each-end-of-the-egg technique that magically leaves the shell intact. We only wrecked three eggs, including a complete yolk in my eye. I hate that. I also think I blew out a few blood vessels in my eyes trying to blow that bloody yolk out of the egg.

My newest theory: I believe egg-blowing is the closest approximation a man can come to giving birth. Trying to get the contents out of the egg through that little hole, I looked like a red-eyed Dizzy Gillespie.

But tonight the Easter Bunny will scale the walls of my 500 foot castle, hide the colored eggs sitting on my table, eat the carrot we carefully placed for his effort and read the crayon-drawn note we left for him.

I’m so excited.

Some history and other arcane facts

The tradition of exchanging colored eggs in the springtime predates Easter by several centuries.

• The ancient Egyptians buried eggs, a symbol of resurrection and birth, in their tombs.
• The ancient Greeks placed eggs atop graves. When the Greeks took over ancient Israel, many Jews adopted Hellenistic practices. To this day, Jews place rocks atop gravestones to signal that the grave has been visited and the loved one remembered (perhaps as a substitute for eggs).
• Legend holds that Simon of Cyrene, the egg merchant who helped carry Christ's crucifix to Calvary, returned to his farm to discover that all of his hens' eggs had turned to a rainbow of colors.
• For Jews a roasted egg on the Passover Seder plate stands for life and the hope of salvation for many, many centuries. Christians have adopted the egg to represent Christ’s Resurrection.
• In China, parents might give family members and friends a red-dyed egg to announce the birth of a child.
• Germans use green eggs as a symbol of mourning on Maundy Thursday, the Thursday before Easter.
• During the Renaissance in Italy, romantic young men tossed empty eggshells filled with perfume or cologne at young women (Undoubtedly whilst looking like Dizzy Gillespie). The custom spread to Austria, France and Spain. Later, in Mexico, empty eggshells were filled with confetti and used to make wishes. The eggshells, called cascarones, are still used today at Easter and for other happy occasions.
• For a special celebration, Japanese parents give their children eggs that are decorated to look just like the children!
• When the Tsars ruled Russia, the jeweler named Peter Carl Faberge made eggs out of precious metals and gems. The tsars gave the eggs to family members as special gifts.
• Using wax, many colors of dye and special designs, Slavs make very fancy decorated eggs called pysanky. Long ago, people believed that the pysanky helped keep the world going around. The beautiful pysanky are still made in modern times and some collectors display them all year.
• Raw eggs harden when boiled in water because the water's intense heat causes the egg's protein strands to unravel, exposing their ends, which then bond together with other unraveled protein strands.
• Since the protein structure of egg white and egg yolk vary slightly, the egg white hardens at 176 degrees Fahrenheit, while the egg yolk hardens at 185 degrees Fahrenheit.
• During the week of Easter, egg sales in the US reach approximately 100 million dozen. The week after Easter, sales drop to 70.0 million.

Duluth

So I’m from Duluth. The Finnish Riviera. To this day, most of my relatives live in Duluth.

And Duluth has very a very international heritage. Check out this demographic information from 100 years ago:

Pop. (1880) 3483; (1890) 33,115; (1900) 52,969, of whom 20,983 were foreign born, 357 were negroes; 5099 were English-Canadians, 5047 Swedes, 2655 Norwegians, 1685 Germans, and 1285 French-Canadians. And it hasn’t changed since then, today there are only 86,918 people and the demographic info is about the same.

I love Duluth…except in the winter.

Unless you live there, it’s hard to remember how cold it actually gets in the winter. In 1994, the Duluth Airport recorded a record number of consecutive hours of below zero temperatures. 186 hours. I remember growing up near Duluth and the thrill of being able to break your hair. It has to be cold to be able to break your hair.

In the past ten years, the governor of Minnesota (Jesse "The Body" Ventura would've been The Gov during some of these years) has closed public schools statewide twice because of cold weather. Here is a look at Duluth's weather for those days:

JANUARY 18, 1994

• HIGH TEMP: -21
• LOW TEMP: -33
• WIND CHILLS: -55 TO -65
• 
  

FEBRUARY 2, 1996

• HIGH TEMP: -21
• LOW TEMP: -39
• WIND CHILLS -50 TO -60

One of the reasons I so love this place is not for the beer, the bitter cold, nor for the John BearGrease Sled Dog Race but for the events that happen there. For example:

"For the fourth year in a row, a gull has made a pilgrimage to a Duluth motel to beg for doughnuts. It's an unlikely sign of spring.

"We're on pins and needles until he shows up again," said Jodi Chambers, the general manager of the Super 8 motel in Duluth.

Chambers was seated at the motel's front desk when she heard shrieks and then a tapping at the lobby door.

It was him - Steven Seagull.

This ring-billed gull has shown up around this time of year for the past four years. His routine consists of knocking on the lobby's glass door with his beak until Chambers offers him a doughnut.

"The other employees here keep saying, 'It's Jodi's bird,' but I catch them out there feeding him, too," Chambers said.

The gull has a penchant for the motel's cake doughnuts, but won't touch the cranberry muffins.

Bryan Olson, head of maintenance at the motel, has a soft spot for the gull, but also a grudge. "I have to clean up after him," Olson said."

God bless Duluth.

My favorite t-shirts and bumper stickers and license plate frames

• I fuck like a girl (worn on a girl).
• I hate the summer.
• I don’t care about littering.
• Cheating, like love, is a choice.
• You Should.
• Nobody ever died saying they should have worked more.
• Bees and dogs can smell fear.
• If you’re going to ride my ass, at least pull my hair.
• The harder I work, the luckier I get.
• You have no messages.

The Right Brothers

The other day I had my first small plane experience. I have flown eight-seaters and sixteen-seaters into islands and small airports and such but I had never before flown in a truly small plane.

The plane was new. A four-seat Cirrus prop plane, built in the town I was born, Duluth. The most encouraging fact about this plane is that it has a parachute in the airframe. In case of emergency and at 3000 feet, you can pull a lever in the ceiling of the plane and a rocket-propelled chute will land you safely.

This is unless you land in water, on a house, a busy freeway or other such formidable landscape. But nonetheless, the parachute is and was comforting.

The morning of the last flight on this particular trip, we took off from Henderson Airport near Las Vegas. The flight was great and the sights interesting, flying near Death Valley and numerous, restricted air bases, including the western landing site of the space shuttle.

The first sense of trouble came during an approach to Monterey Airport. Coming from the Central Valley of California, the airport suddenly appears in a canyon, just over a small mountain. Because of the topology of the area, the wind gusts curling off the mountain provide an exhilarating ride on the way into the airport. The approaching storm made the gusts intolerable and my pilot aborted the landing on approach. I thanked him and God as it was becoming very scary.

The pilot informed the control tower of our re-route to our end destination; Palo-Alto airport. We skirted the edge of the storm and proceeded up the valley toward San Jose. As the population density increased, the storm did too. As we began to near the San Jose airspace, the wind gusts began throwing the plane around like a small toy. I began to worry when the pilot pulled the safety pin from the parachute. He gave me a sly smile.

The stall speed on this small aircraft is 60 knots. The maximum flap speed 120 knots. As we were flying over San Jose at approximately 95 knots, the wind was gusting ferociously, throwing the plane about violently. The gauge on the plane was oscillating between 120 and 60 knots. Wind shear.

This was my first week on my new job. The pilot was my new boss. I started to really worry as he called for an unscheduled landing at San Jose International airport, amongst all the big jets. He told the control tower we were experiencing severe wind shear during his explanatory conversation with the tower.

We landed safely and later he told me that was the scariest flight he had ever flown. He’s 48 years old and he obtained his pilots license at age 17…

Following are the most recent statistics for small aircraft accidents from the NTSB :

Accidents Aircraft Hours Flown

Year Major Serious (millions)

2000 3 3 18.299

2001 5 1 17.752

2002 1 1 18.012

Definitions of NTSB Classifications

Major - an accident in which any of three conditions is met:

• a Part 121 aircraft was destroyed, or
• there were multiple fatalities, or
• there was one fatality and a Part 121 aircraft was substantially damaged.

Serious - an accident in which at least one of two conditions is met:

• there was one fatality without substantial damage to a Part 121 aircraft, or
• there was at least one serious injury and a Part 121 aircraft was substantially damaged.

Fruitarians

Earlier this week, I was with a friend from the UK who told me about a whole different class of strangeness: Fruitarians.

Now these Fruitarians seem to be an even stranger breed than those I read about in an article about a new class of people-who-don’t-eat-meat. First some definitions:

Vegetarian Classes

• A true vegetarian eats no meat, whether beef, fish or poultry. They also don’t eat meat by-products (beef or chicken stock, marshmallows, gelatin, etc.) either.

• A lacto ovo vegetarian doesn’t eat meat like a vegetarian but does eat eggs and dairy products.

• A semi-vegetarian cuts back on their meat intake on a daily basis.

• Pesco vegetarians eat fish but no other meat.

• Pollo vegetarians eat poultry but no other meat.

• A vegan is a strict vegetarian who also avoids all animal products, including wool, silk, leather and any other item made from an animal.

“Orthodox vegetarians” will not touch paper money because of the vegetable oils used in the bills. Credit card’s are manufactured with plastic and plastic contains animal fats. These people only use coins.

I wonder if they have metal keyboards instead of the plastic one I’m using. And how do they drive cars? I suppose metal steering wheels?

Fruitarians

The fruitarian diet consists of raw fruit and seeds only.

Thankfully, their biblical web site provides ample definitions of these things called fruits.

“Examples of fruits are: Pineapple, mango, banana, avocado, apple, melon, orange, etc., all kinds of berries, and the vegetable fruits such as tomato, cucumber, olives; and dried fruits such as nuts, hazelnuts, cashews, chestnuts, etc.. And seeds including sprouted seeds.”

Now I am a bit confused as to the significance of the next passage as I don’t believe water is technically a meat, milk, bread, vegetable or any other food group but another factoid from the biblical web site:

“Fruitarians live for years without drinking much additional water. Most of the water that they get is "dietary" water, the water that is in their foods: melons, pineapple, oranges, etc.”

"The proper application of fruitarian dietary and lifestyle is calculated to allow the human to live happily, produce healthy offspring, live to more than 100 years of age, be free of all disease, and only "mature" while not aging enjoying all the benefits of a permanent joyful and healthy body."

I imagine the next step is to progress to Orthodox Fruitarians. Imagine, in fifty years, a world filled with only those who eat fruit and use coins.

Snowmobile Poker

I’ve always loved the concept of snowmobile poker. But I also remember an event when I was growing up in Minnesota when a “poker run participant” ran into a mail truck at 70MPH. He died in the accident.

During the 1996-97 snowmobiling season there was a Minnesota death toll of 32 and 703 nonfatal accidents. The average victim was 30 years old and male.

A contributing factor to the use of alcohol by snowmobilers is a game that has become known as the "snowmobile poker"." In the game, a map of the participating bars is given to each participant and the game begins. Players then proceed to the first bar indicated on the map, sometimes in a group or often alone, to receive their first card. Five bars... five cards received, or seven depending on the game.

At each bar, a staff member records the cards drawn by each individual on a form that is carried from one point to the next for additional entries. All entries on the form get a mark from each bar to keep the game fair. At the last stop on the map, cash or prizes are awarded for the highest, second highest, third highest and lowest hand of the group. Alcohol is usually consumed at each stop.

Snowmobile Poker carries my vote for the next Olympics.

What Color Is Your Parachute?

Back in the day, when Netscape was the hot company to work for, I flew to California from my then current gig in Tokyo for an interview. The dinner interview took place near the Berkley Marina at a restaurant. The interviewer was a former colleague of mine that I had met once or twice.

All the previous times I had met her, I had been impressed and during our other encounters, was often was regaled with fascinating stories about her previous jobs and experiences. I was excited and encouraged at the opportunity to work for this Web 1.0 company.

I got to the restaurant early and sat in the bar awaiting her arrival. When she arrived, we sat and ordered a bottle of wine to share at dinner. The whole night was going well and as she knew a lot about my previous experience, the conversation settled into a more personal cadence.

All of the sudden and without any warning, her part of the conversation veered off into the bizarre. Something I had never personally experienced. She started to tell me that she had multiple personalities, two male and five female. The tale was tragic, starting with an abusive uncle and progressing until the present.

I remember sitting across from her at the two person table trying to figure out what kind of facial expression to portrait. This was an interview and required special guidance and instruction. I thought quickly back to my guidance counselor’s office in Moose Lake, Minnesota when I was in high school and to the book What Color Is Your Parachute. That idea was a bust as I couldn’t remember any chapters on multiple-personality-disorder-during-an-interview.

Should I show my surprised face? Concerned? Sad? Inquisitive? Frightened? I was definitely a bit freaked out and drained my glass of wine. Fidgeting nervously, I then drank my water and re-arranged my silverware, wondering how to respond appropriately. And then it came to me.

I asked her who was interviewing me.

Definitely a good question as if it was actually one of the guys, I could relax and perhaps do a bit of off-beat humor. If it would have been one of the females, perhaps Sybil, it would be a whole different thing, biting the head off rabbits and all.

Perhaps I should have thought of a better question because the interview ended shortly thereafter and I flew back to Tokyo the next day, to resume my old job.