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Thursday, September 11, 2008

Remember, Remember, the 11th of September



Neatorama has a list of all the victims.

Funtasticus has a beautiful collection of photos from that day.

Profiles of the victims: here and here (from Miss Celellania)

Miss Celellania also has a host of other links here.


Where were you?

I was at home, enjoying a day off with my husband and oldest child. I was pregnant with my youngest. We would keep the TV off as much as possible when we were off to make it “quality time” together. My mother in law called us from work and told us to turn on the TV. She didn’t tell us a channel, just “turn on the tv, now.”
Oh, my, we just stood there, staring. It had been on Headline News, so we saw pictures of the first tower. My hands covered my belly where my daughter was growing and my husband held our son. We just sat there in front of the tv all day. All our plans were on hold.
All we could think was, “The world has moved on.” (from Stephen King’s The Dark Tower novels)
In a way, it was like the Challenger explosion. We talked about it being a defining moment in history, like the Kennedy assasination.
My first reaction when I saw the list above was to put my hand on the screen and pray for the people who died and especially their families. I pray that theay have been able to move on. Having lost my parents and other family (before that day), I know they will never “get over it,” but I hope they have been able to “move on” with their lives.
My prayers also go out to the people living in hardship and dying of hunger and violence around the world - in the past and today.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

We need to address why we went into Irac, but I'll leave that for later.

Computers Explained According to Movies

1. Word processors never display a cursor.

2. You never have to use the spacebar when typing long sentences.

3. All monitors display 2 inch high letters.

4. High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, have easy-to-understand graphical interfaces.

5. Those that don’t will have incredibly powerful text-based command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English.

6. Corollary: You can gain access to any information you want by simply typing “access ALL OF THE SECRET FILES” on any keyboard.

7. Likewise, you can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing “UPLOAD VIRUS.” Viruses cause temperatures in computers, just like they do in humans. After a while, smoke billows out of disk drives and monitors.

8. All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain’s desktop computer, even if it’s turned off.


9. Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn’t go faster than you can read. The *really* advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer as the characters come across the screen.

10. All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backward. See #7, above)

11. People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data.

12. A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.

13. Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function.

14. Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. In the movies, modems transmit data at two gigabytes per second.

15. When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.

16. If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen. There are no ways to copy a backup file — and there are no undelete utilities.

17. If a disk has got encrypted files, you are automatically asked for a password when you try to access it.

18. No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it’ll be readable by any system you put it into. All application software is usable by all computer platforms.

19. The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has. However, everyone must have been highly trained, because the buttons aren’t labelled.

20. Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, real-time, photo-realistic animated graphics capability.

21. Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY-MP.

22. Whenever a character looks at a VDU, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face.

23. Computers never crash during key, high-intensity activities. Humans operating computers never make mistakes under stress.

24. Programs are fiendishly perfect and never have bugs that slow down users.

25. Any photograph can have minute details pulled out of it. You can zoom into any picture as far as you want to. Example: “What’s that fuzzy thing in the corner? I don’t know, let’s check. It’s the murder weapon! Let’s look under the bed for the killers shoes. no, just some comics books (Marvel 1954, very rare). Let’s check the closet shelves…!”

found at Funtasticus

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Fun With Gas

I just love the Mythbusters! Here's Adam having fun with inhaling helium and sulfur hexafluoride.

Still bored? Here's another site with great stuff to read!