HOPING FOR THE BEST, EXPECTING THE WORST SINCE 1837.

HOPING FOR THE BEST, EXPECTING THE WORST SINCE 1837.
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In Sydney they set off more than 3.5 tons of fireworks with its Harbor Bridge serving as a backdrop. 1.5 million people watched and it must have been an eye-melter because they did it in 12 minutes.  That is over a quarter of a ton per minute.  I wonder what the finale was, a small atomic device?
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Social Networks, Let's talk.  There a bunch of them and as long as all your friends belong to the same one everything is cool. 

Of course there are the 'normal' networks like FaceBook (350,000,000 members)and, Twitter (44,000,000) or MySpace (271,000,000 members).  But now there is something for everybody.

There are some 'specialty' networks out there and a couple of them are really out there.
I think I will start with the more mainstream ones and work toward really odd.

Xt3 - Catholic social networking, created after World Youth Day 2008.  Nothing strange here just a social network for religious youth.

WiserEarth - Community space for the social justice and environmental movement and they have over 28,000 members.  Still pretty normal, just a little extra tree hugging.

WeOurFamily - This site wants you to be able to share your life with your friends but not everybody on the planet.  You have to pay money to join and then there is supposed to be more privacy control and security controls.  Me personally I believe that a piece of data put on the Internet is like a gazelle on the Serengeti plains, just hanging out until the lions stop by.

Vkontakte - Russian social network with 54,000,000.  Just sort of a Russian FaceBook, with YouTube, MySpace and Pandora thrown in.

Tuenti     Spanish-based university and High School social network. Very Popular in Spain with 4,500,000.  Before some perv starts drooling over the idea of wandering through all these kid's pages, it is invitation only.  I think you have to be enrolled in a Spanish school.

Stickam - Live video streaming and chat.  2,000,000 member's faces (one assumes) chatting away.

ScienceStage - Science-oriented multimedia platform and network for scientists.  Scientists exchanging naughty formulas or what ever scientists do.  Really nothing too strange yet.

Ravelry - Knitting and crochet.  Kind of hard to type and knit as well.

Plaxo - If you change contact information much then you need this.  You update your info and Plaxo sends that information to everyone that you have listed as a contact.  20,000,000 users so far.  They were first set up by the people that brought you Napster.

deviantART - Art community.  People upload their art work.  Some of it is beautiful, Some of it is very disturbing and some is beautiful and disturbing.  You never now what to expect.

Vampirefreaks.com - Gothic and industrial subculture.  Welcome to the dark side.  This network has been linked to several violent crimes, including:

-Triple homicide in Medicine Hat, Alberta.  12 year old girl and her 23 year old boyfriend, whom she met on Vampirefreaks.com, were charged in the murders.

-A murder-suicide at Dawson College in Montreal.

-Two Toronto men were charged with carrying out the bidding of a woman they met on the site by stabbing a 12-year-old boy 73 times, killing him.

-Arson in Minnesota.

-Rapes of under age women in New York and Texas.

-In Australia, Carly Ryan (15) was drowned.  A (as yet unidentified) 50-year-old man and his 19-year-old son are accused of using vampirefreaks.com to create fictitious identities to use to set up a meeting with Carly Ryan.

About 2,000,000 people belong to this site.  Beware.  Not all people who claim to be a vampires are bad, but when you get one that is, they are really bad.

For a list of over 150 of the most popular Social Networks goto:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

There are many interests, languages and different features so if you like this kind of stuff, check it out. 

I just remembered, if you are into SciFi/Fantasy there is the Elftown network at:
http://www.elftown.com/start.html
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Now for the 'OFFICIAL' complaint of the week.  Somewhere in this country there are researchers whose job it is to figure out how many times a person will watch the same TV program before they vomit.  They should be hunted down and have such horrible things done to them that they thank the mob when they finally kill them. 

'Law and Order' (one of the four programs) has been on seven different cable channels in the same week.  Once I remember that it was on three channels at once.  Now it is not too bad with 'Law and Order' since there are hundreds and hundreds of shows (about 860 for all four shows).  But NCIS only has 148 shows and if you show it three times a day, five times a week you repeat every two and a half months.  Throw in a handful of 'Marathons' and you could end up seeing each show 5 or 6 times a year.  I have bought DVDs for things I don't want to see that many times.  JAG has 227 episodes, Criminal Minds has 102, CSI (all three) has 522 episodes and Bones has 94.  Those add up to over 1800 episodes so what am I complaining about?  Spread out over seven cable stations, figuring about 16 hours (total for all stations together -I think that is low) of these shows are shown per day (I am only counting week days) and you start repeating all of it in 5 months.  If you keep showing the stuff for years it does not take long for even the most casual viewer to to have seen every episode of every show.  Are they trying to make us read?

And whose idea was it to show the same movie over and over again for 24 hours?  Or show the same movie 10 or more times in a month.  I love Star Wars but I only saw it 6 times the month that it was released, in the theaters, and it was a mind blowing movie (remember this was 1977).  I am not going to watch Elf, 6 times in a month, at gun point (actually I have not seen it once).

One thing the TV industry forgot when they started going to all of the reality shows is that they really do badly in syndication.  Who cares about who gets voted off the Island when you already know who won.  I really like some of the cable shows like 'The Closer' or 'In Plain Sight' but the Closer and In Plain Sight only made 15 episodes, each, in 2009.  You still have to fill 8700 hours of programing per channel, per year.  In Johnstown we get 70 stations and that means over 600,000 hours of television available every year.  As far as Debbie and I are concerned there are only about 10 hours, a week, of new shows that are any good.  So we are watching one tenth of one percent of the TV available. 

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If you really need to find someone or find out something about them, Google is not the first place you should look.  Try Pipl.com first.  It is specialized people search engine.  I was looking for info about someone I had lost touch with and I spent hours trying to scrape up a phone number.  Pipl gave it to me in 30 seconds.  Try it at:
http://www.pipl.com/
Be aware that some of the sites you will be directed to have 'teaser' screens that ask you for money before the actual information is revealed. 
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January is:

Silent Record Week

Universal Letter Writing Week

"Weeks" Week

Braille Literacy Week

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Now to the reasons to be happy this week
(or at least civil).
Here goes:

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monday 4 january
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birthdays:
1809 – Louis Braille - the blind French teacher of the blind and inventor of braille.  He did develop braille but he did not think of the raised dot code.  The raised dot code was originally developed for Napoleon's army as a means to silently read orders at night, in the dark.  It was too complicated for most soldier's to learn and was scraped. 

Charles Barbier (he did invent the code for Napoleon) met Braille, in Paris, in 1821.  Braille figured out how to overcome the complexity of Barbier's code and modified it to the form it has today.

Main streaming Blind students, the high cost of braille instructors and advances in technology have dropped braille literacy rates (for children) from 50% (in 1950) to 10% (today).  Most readers end up learning later in life and have a harder time doing it, as well as developing large vocabulary.  This is unfortunate since studies have shown early literacy in braille allows a child to develop language skills and vocabulary at a rate comparable to sighted students.  Also as an adult 90% of early Braille literate students are employed where only one in three braille non-literates have jobs.

1874 – Josef Suk, Czech composer.  While Suk probably comes from an Arab word meaning 'open air market' it would be an inconvenient name for a kid to have in the US.  I hope Josef's contemporaries did not know English.

1900 – James Bond, The American ornithologist and not the British Spy.  He is the namesake of 007 though.  The real James Bond was an ornithologist and his books 'Birds of the West Indies' shows up in the movie 'Die Another Day'.  Also 007 identifies himself as an ornithologist in one movie and Dr.No's island has a large Bird Sanctuary on it.  Fleming was a bird watcher, was familiar with Bond's book and did have permission to use the name, having corresponded with James on the matter.

events:
1847 – Samuel Colt sells his first revolver pistol to the United States government.  He sold the US millions of firearms since.  A Colt employee (and firearm legend) named John Browning designed a .38 cal semi-automatic pistol but the US Military wanted something with more stopping power so it was redesigned to fire .45 cal.  In 1911 it was made the official sidearm of out military.  We bought 2.7 million M1911 and M1911 A1s.  It was our official sidearm from 1911 until 1984 when it was replaced by the Beretta 92F, 9mm semi-automatic pistols.  Funny thing is that several special units in our military still use the Colt M1911 as well as police or military units in several other countries.  Historically the M1911 was used officially used in at least 25 countries including The People's Republic of China, Viet Nam, Nazi Germany and The Russian Empire.  There are huge numbers of originals and copies floating around and while numerous improved semi-automatic pistols are available the .45 cal M1911 is still very popular.  Every gun dealer around knows how to work on them.  There are spare parts, custom parts, add ons and gadgets galore.  Examples run from $250 USD (for a very used or cheap imported model) to over $5000 USD (for a customized hand made new weapon).  The pistol is being redesigned to meet future needs so keep a look out for the M1911 A2, at your gun stores soon (probably about $2500 USD).

1854 – The McDonald Islands are discovered by Captain William McDonald.  He must have had self esteem issues to name a place like this after himself.  There is nothing there.  No port, no buildings, no roads, no people.... OOPS, there are a couple of things there, a volcano on one island and a volcano on the other island.  Both volcanoes are active having erupted several times in recent years.  These two barren islands are where you go to be alone since they are uninhabited and 2500 miles from Perth, 2600 miles from South Africa, 2400 miles from Madagascar, 1000 miles from Antarctica, and the closest inhabited place is the French Science outpost on the Desolation Islands some 280 miles away.  If this is your happy place you need to add a couple of Zoloft to your Prozac prescription.

1884 – The Fabian Society is founded in London.  Now this is not a fan club for an aging ex-teen idol. but rather a British intellectual socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy through gradual reforms, instead of  revolution.   If you do not like socialism then you should dislike these people a lot.  They are some the advocates of (what they hope will be) a democratically elected, 'soft' revolution.  Free public education, nationalized health care, social security, welfare, integration, multi-multiculturalism and Unions are some of the many things they advocate.  All of these items exist to some some extent in many of the countries of the world.  They have been very busy.

Many members of the Fabian Society would also claim that their beliefs are inspired by religion.  The Christian Socialists claim Jesus was a socialist.  With His teachings about wealth and His actions against the money lenders, I can see the basis for their claims.  Buddhists, Jews and Muslims also have their own socialist groups that believe in a spiritual basis for their beliefs, as well.  Of course agreement with each others goals does not automatically mean you all get along and many of these religious socialist would go medieval on each other even as they try to totally transform their own countries peacefully.

1885 – The first successful appendectomy is performed by William W. Grant on Mary Gartside.  She was incredibly lucky.  Appendectomy is the only treatment for appendicitis.  Without an appendectomy the chances of dying a slow and extremely painful death are very high.  Without antibiotics and surgery appendicitis is a serious killer and not the inconvenience that it is in the developed world.  The undeveloped world is another story.  Places with little access to surgery have reduced average life expectancies (as compared to the developed world) due to appendicitis.   20 or more years, in some countries. 

holidays:
Passport Presentation Day (Russia) - This is the first workday of the new year and I do not know to what it refers.

Get Out Your Boxer Shorts Day - Hey! its January and I am in the Northern Hemisphere.  I am looking for insulated shorts, not Boxers.

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tuesday 5 january
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birthdays:
1778 – Zebulon Pike, American explorer.  He discovered a peak, guess which one.

1829 – Sir Roger Tichborne, missing U.K. heir who is the subject of the longest criminal trial in British history.  Sir Roger went missing (never to be seen again).  Arthur Orton, an impostor popped up and claimed to be the missing heir.  There was a 102 day trial to determine if he was the heir and when they decided that he was a fake there was a 188 day criminal trial.  These were unbelievably long for the UK legal system.  They should be glad that they were not in California.  The trial would still be going on.

1855 – King Camp Gillette, American inventor.  He invented the Safety Razor and with it he made Capitalist History.  He realized that it you had a business model based on the fact that your product was needed and could only be used for one or two days and then needed to be replaced, you were on the Gravy Train.

In modern times Gillette companies have also sold products under the brand names: Gillette, Braun, Oral-B, and Duracell. 

events:
1759 – George Washington marries Martha Dandridge Custis.  Happy 251st Wedding Anniversary.

1896 – An Austrian newspaper reports that Wilhelm Roentgen has discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays.  I just had two a couple of days before Christmas (Dental), I have a small cavity in rear molar.  Thank you Wilhelm.

1914 – The Ford Motor Company announces an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage of $5 for a day's labor.  One more step toward the eight-hour day.  This is a fight that went on for over 100 years.  The normal work day in the US (in the early 1800s) was sunrise to sunset 5 days a week and a half day on Saturday.  You were given Sunday off but were expected to go to church and participate in church activities for most of the day.  The 5 and a half day week was still the rule when I was in the Army in 1970-71 (although they actually had you 24/7/365 if they needed you).

1996 – Hamas operative Yahya Ayyash is killed by an Israeli-planted booby-trapped cell phone.  The old cell phones were so big that you could put enough explosives in one to blow up a 1970 Chrysler Imperial.  Now they are so small that you would probably just maim someone and really piss them off.

holidays:
National Whipped Cream Day - A fun way to celebrate is to figure out the strangest place you can put whipped cream without getting arrested.  There are a few states in the US where it is illegal to think about what I just said so be careful.

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wednesday 6 january
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birthdays:
1412 – Joan of Arc, Roman Catholic Saint and national heroine of France.  This may be her birthday or maybe not.  Some people think it is on the 7th and others think it is an even different date.  I like the nice roundness of the 6 so I am sticking to today.

1745 – Étienne Montgolfier, French inventor.  He invented the hot air balloon.  The first human beings to ascend into the sky (without the application of explosives) rode one of his balloons.

1898 – James Fitzmaurice, Irish aviation pioneer.  He was the co-pilot of the First successful East to West airplane flight across the Atlantic.  He and two German Nationals flew a Junkers W33 airplane (named Bremen) from Ireland to Canada.  They landed on a shallow, ice covered lake, made a perfect three point landing, rolled to a stop and broke through the ice.  Nobody got hurt and the plane did not sink, it just stuck its nose in the water and its tail up in the air.  The cold water may have ruined the hot engine because the crank shaft was bent and the engine could not be restarted to fly the plane out.  The crew (dubbed the Three Musketeers) made a two month tour around the US, Canada, Germany and the UK which included a New York City parade that took a 10 mile long route.  They received the Distinguished Flying Cross from President Coolidge in Washington, DC.
The Bremen is owned by the Henry Ford Museum but is currently on loan to the Bremen Airport Museum in Germany.  To see a photo of the restored Bremen aircraft goto:
http://www.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de/~vernalek/JunkersUS.html

events:
1853 – President-elect of the United States Franklin Pierce and his family are involved in a train wreck near Andover, Mass.  You notice that in the old days a 'train wreck' actually involved a train.  Now all you need is for your wife to hit you in the head with a Nine Iron, then wreck your SUV and you have an instant train wreck.

1907 – Maria Montessori opens her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome.

1929 – Mother Teresa arrives in Calcutta to begin a her work amongst India's poorest and diseased people. 

1931 – Thomas Edison submits his last patent application.  He holds 1,093 U.S. patents and numerous foreign patents.  I don't want to burst your bubble but he did not invent everyone of those things he has patents for.  He invented the modern Research lab and made sure his name was on every patent submitted, from his lab, regardless of who did the actual inventing.  That does not take away from the fact that he invented a sled load of stuff including the first commercially available fluoroscope and the first practical light bulb.  Light bulbs existed before Edison started experimenting with them but they would only burn for an impractically short period of time.  Edison figured how to make those minutes turn into months.

1942 – Pan American Airlines becomes the first commercial airline to schedule a flight around the world.  Considering the war in Europe and in the Pacific, I am sure they flew a southern route. 

1994 – Nancy Kerrigan is clubbed in the knee at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit.  Tonya Harding still shows up on TV and I can not even remember what Nancy looks like.  Life is funny that way.  Sometimes you are remembered for how great you were and sometimes you are remembered for how rotten you are.  So if you want to be remembered be really Good or really Bad (it makes no difference), just remember to have Great PR.

holidays:
Bean Day - Whip Cream might be romantic but Beans... Not So Much.  Just make sure everybody eats them together.  It is the only way to survive.

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thursday 7 january
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birthdays:
1845 – King Ludwig III of Bavaria.  The Ludwigs were an interesting bunch. 

Ludwig I gave us Oktoberfest, which commemorates the festivities surrounding his marriage. 

Ludwig II sent Bavaria to the poor house by building insanely beautiful palaces and castles.  Disney's Cinderella castle is based strongly on Neuschwanstein (absolutely beautiful place and the restaurant at the bottom of the hill has great soup).  Was rumored to be mad and committed suicide (or was murdered, the jury is still out).  Of course modern Bavaria has earned much more money (tourist dollars) than was ever spent on the castles. 

By the time Ludwig III rolled around, Germany was trending away from kings and more interested in making the whole united Germany thing work.  Ludwig III was the last king of Bavaria.  He reigned from 1913 to 1918.  The king and his wife were reported to be very happy and much in love, perhaps this explains the 13 children they had.

Ludwig III's great grand son (Franz, Duke of Bavaria) is the current pretender to the throne.  He is not a slacker royal though.  He and his parents opposed the Nazis (before WWII) and fled to Hungary when things got hot.  They were arrested when the Nazis occupied Hungary and spent the last seven months of the war in concentration camps.  The US Third Army liberated their camp (Dachau) in April 1945.  Even with his degree in business management I don't think he has a very good chance of reclaiming the throne.

According to the Jacobites Franz is, also, the rightful King of England and Scotland. Jacobites refer to him as King Francis II of England, Scotland, France and Ireland.  Jacobites want to see the 'Stuart' bloodline returned to the throne, but hey they were deposed in 1688 so things look pretty thin.

1895 – Sir Hudson Fysh, Australian aviator and co-founder of QANTAS.  QANTAS is all in caps and this is proper since it is an acronym and stands for "Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services".  Unlike the comment in the movie 'Rainman' they have not been crash free, they have been lucky though.  They have not had a fatality since 1951 and never lost a jet to a crash.  Prior to that they lost two aircraft to crashes, lost one to enemy gun fire (WWII) and had eight other type of fatal incidents.

Now since 1951 they have had 5 major incidents.  They have had two aircraft run off the end to the runway (one was lost to fire), with no injuries.  They had a rapid decompression (no one hurt).  They had a landing gear accident (1949), the gear collapsed and the plane burned (no one hurt) and finally they had a computer control go squirrelly and try to dive the plane (the computer thought the plane was climbing too steeply).  30 people got seriously injured while the pilot reacquired control of the plane.  So the second oldest airline in the world has a pretty decent safety record.

1912 – Charles Addams, American cartoonist.  He humor was dark, dark, dark.... and funny.  I loved his stuff when I was a kid and bought his books when he became popular again when the first Addams Family Movie came out.

events:
1598 – Boris Godunov becomes Tsar of Russia.  350 years later a cartoon spy from Pottsylvania will be named Boris Badunov as kind of a back handed homage.  In case you are unfamiliar Boris is the spy that always is trying to kill Bullwinkle the Moose and Rocky the Squirrel (Rocket Jet Squirrel is his full name). 

1797 – The modern Italian flag is first used.  It always amazes me when I learn something like this.  We then to think of Italy as an extension of Rome and so they are a very old country, but our flag is older than theirs.

1904 – The distress signal "CQD" is established.  It means Calling all stations (CQ), Distress (D) and in Morse code it is  "—·—·  — —·—   —··"  and that proved to be tough to signal when the sink is sinking.  It was a lot to think about.  So a mere two years later it was replaced by "SOS" which is "··· — — — ···". 

In 1999 "SOS" was replaced by the Global Maritime Distress Safety System.  This consists of radio procedures, locator beacons, satellites and and whole bushel barrel of gimcrackery.  As long as the technology works it is totally better.

1959 – The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of Fidel Castro.  And we have spent most of the next 50 years wishing he would go away.  He is 83, in poor health and I think he really has retired.  He claimed that he was really happy to have reached 80 and never thought that he would live that long.  If the CIA made better plans he would not have made it that long. 

How do we fix the problem of Cuba.  I contend that we need to lift the trade embargo and open up commerce with them.  The more money the Cubans can make from cigars, tourism and sugar the better.  Two things are going to happen.  One - The average worker makes more money and buys more stuff.  This is good.  The more personal property you have the harder it is to be a Communist.   Two the Government gets dependent on trade with the US and now the threat of cutting something off has a meaning.  Right now we have as close to Zero leverage as is possible.  So open up the markets and let us get going on buying Cuba.  I think in hindsight we helped keep Castro in power with the embargo.  I always gave him somebody besides himself to blame for shortages and the poverty.  If you are a cigar smoker, you can cross over into Canada and buy Cuban cigars.  Smoke them there because if you get caught bringing then back into the US they will be confiscated and there are other legal ramifications.

holidays:
National Pass Gas Day - A follow on holiday to Bean Day.  All instructions are in the name.

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friday 8 january
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birthdays:
1823 - Alfred Russel Wallace, was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist.  He is best known for independently proposing a theory of natural selection which prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own theory.  Survival of the fittest theory, in action.

1843 - Frederick George Abberline was a Chief Inspector for the London Metropolitan Police and was a prominent police figure in the investigation into the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.  He has been a character in several movies (mostly about the Ripper) and has been played by Micheal Caine and Johnny Depp (among others).

"Francis" (his nickname) worked for the London Police for 29 years and received 84 awards and commendations.  After he left the force he headed up the European Division of of the Pinkerton Detective Agency for 12 years.

1931 – Bill Graham, German-born American music promoter.  He made good, strange, loud, new, cool music available to the masses.... well if you were one of the masses that lived in New York City or San Francisco.  Fillmore West and later Fillmore East had the biggest names in Rock, Folk and Blues and the San Francisco advertising posters were total works of psychedelic art.  You can see them various places around the Internet.  Search Google images for "Fillmore West" and poster.  These things are collectible and posters in good shape are worth tons of money.  They hang them in Museums.  I have a book that has small pictures of hundreds (maybe thousands) of Bill Graham's advertising posters.  The name of it is "The Art of the Fillmore: The Poster Series 1966-1971".  It is an expensive book.  When I got the Hardback edition 15 years ago it was $75 dollars, the paperback version is now $125.  It is available at Amazon.com.

If you want to see some of the posters you can search or check out the hits I found.
Here are a few of the hits:
http://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/1671

http://www.thetrickismusic.com/?p=881
(Scroll down)

Buy and sell (and look at) posters here:
https://www.fillmoreposter.com/?gclid=CITbw7-piZ8CFZAN5Qod-zvRMQ

http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_first_rays/4001884379/

Denver Art Museum Exhibit at (scroll through 10 posters):
http://denver.about.com/od/artsentertainment/ig/The-Psychedelic-Experience-/Psychedelic--Grateful-Dead.-12L.htm

events:
1746 – Second Jacobite Rising - Remember just yesterday I was telling you about the Jacobites and how I thought they were not going to get back in power?  Well it isn't from lack of trying.  The following is a list of several attempts to reestablish the Stuart monarchy:

Jacobite war in Ireland (1690s)
Dundee's rising in Scotland (1689)
The abortive invasion of 1708 (Dutch)
The Rebellion/Rising of 1715 ('The Fifteen')
The Rebellion/Rising of 1719 ('The Nineteen')
1744 French invasion attempt
The Rebellion/Rising of 1745 ('The Forty-Five')
Planned Invasion of 1759 (French)

Many Scots still want to be a separate country.  I expect some of them are Jacobites.

1926 – Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud becomes the King of Hejaz and renames it Saudi Arabia.

1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a "War on Poverty" in the United States.  Poverty not only did not surrender but it fought back.

1994 – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 leaves for Mir. He would stay on the space station until March 22, 1995, for a record 437 days in space.  Over 14 months.

2005 – The nuclear sub USS San Francisco (SSN-711) collides with an undersea mountain at full speed south of Guam. The sub surfaces and is repaired.  Can you imagine the trip report?  You hit WHAT?  You are not getting your deposit back!

holidays:
Rock 'n' Roll Day - Ain't they all Sweetie?

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