Space Probe, Cassini, has passed within a couple hundreds of miles of Saturn's moon, Titan. There're some pretty cool pictures so far, though not many cool predictions as of yet. Titan is an anomaly in our solar system, a moon with an atmosphere and a secretive surface lying shrouded under inclement weather. Will we finally find life there? Well, probably not, but the hope is that Titan is very much today what earth was millions of years ago, a place where the conditions are right for some form of life to be realized. I still hope for little green men.


A series of images of Titan.


A neat look at mother Saturn.

(e:paul) may not have any excuses anymore for not loving the little furballs. A new company has already begun accepting orders on a hypo-allergenic cat. Yup, a genetically altered cat, whose RNA has been tweaked so that it produces nearly none of the protein that leads to allergies in humans. They plan to charge $3,500 a piece in the United States and $10,000 each in Japan, ouch, gotta really love the buggers for that hefty price tag (and in Japan, forget it)

Nice mix, mister (e:shawnr) i thank you for the reference, and so, I assure you, does my Itunes. Though, I am having not so much luck with your actual song, Archeteuthis (Squid Hunter), my WMP doesn't seem to want to stream it correctly, hmmmm... I liked the government is watching me very much...

I also like the Eminem link [inlink]shawnr,28[/inlink] quite the little white-bread revolutionary, eh? But really, I respect that he has the guts to just come out and say it, fuck you Bush, WMD that we elected. Let's get rid of 'em, and vote muthafuckas! Slim Shady does put out the hit or two that I find myself jammin to. He's a little over the edge sometimes, but that's better than sittin on the fence.

And, maybe, just maybe, I might think about writing about that dumb game I'm playing. I just hate to take it that seriously, you know what I mean? It takes up enough of my time (not that I do anything very productive with it otherwise...) already. I will think on it though.

Who knew there were so many people running for president? I knew there were the 2 plus 4 or 5 others. I didn't realize there were over 100 of them! Such choice, though of course it all comes down to the binary decision between Dem or Rep. Money money money!

In the future, says George Carlin "at birth, religions will charge people an initial fee of $50,000 and then pretty much leave them alone." Amen, sir! If only I believed in such a bright future...

So (e:jason) [inlink]jason,22[/inlink] the game is pretty darn fun, though it's my first online gaming attempt so I don't really have a good frame of reference for comparison. We have a dual-processor 2.8 gig with a 256 ATI Fire GL X1 and it works very well (I don't think you need that kinda firepower really), though it does kinda tend to take over the whole system and make everything crash once in awhile (mostly when the server you're attempting to contact is too full). Which is the other problem: they have 10 servers but the one my friend signed me up to is the busiest one, and during peek hours (evenings/weekends) it becomes very crowded. Once you're in you're generally OK (if it's too full you may have to wait awhile to even get in), though if you go to a crowded city it can lag a bit. Gameplay is pretty easy. Standard rpg format: kill monsters for experience, level up, earn new spells/techs, buy new weapons/armor (though this is in my opinion is a bit prohibitively expensive for beginners). Leveling is a little slow. I am now level 21 and I've been playing about 3 weeks for usually between 1-3 hours a day (I know, I need a life). You can form groups and go on quests, you can join a clan...there's tons of stuff to do. And the graphics really are pretty darn cool. So, if you want give it a try. I don't think it's too expensive to try out for a month or two. Maybe I'll see you online (though I might reccomend not using the busy server (Bartz) that I am on).

sidenote: Chief Justice Rehnquist just went through surgery for thyroid cancer. The dude's now 80 and has cancer: he's going soon (one way or the other). This is something that really matters for a very very long time. Maybe it'll even sway me to vote for Evil #2 instead of an alternative... I still am not sure who I'm pulling the lever for on Nov. 2, I'm leaving it to my gut to make the final decision (my head is overtired from thinking about it for years now). But, I really don't want to see a courthouse populated by right-wing nuts and Christian fanatics. Really.

Sorry (e:ajay), didn't mean to offend, or give slight with my oh-so-careless use of the "c" word [inlink]ajay,165[/inlink]. I really have no idea how the Flamboya got there, or for that matter how there's bougainvillea in Dehli and San Diego. More of a colonization of agriculture and ideas than people and society. But as you say, India has a long history of colonization (which started way before the whities ever got there). And I agree that tons of cross-border integration can inspire wonderful meshings of concepts, cultures and cuisines.

Actually, in the same book, The Age of Kali Dalrymple visits the island of Réunion which is located miles south of India, halfway between Sri Lanka and Madagascar. There he finds a great mingling of cultures, ranging from exported French convicts to Madagascan ex-slaves with dashes of Tamils, North-Indian Muslims, Canton Chinese, and Yemeni Arabs (most of which were imported originally as slave-labor). Each of these cultures has brought with them a steady stream of peculiarites associated with their native lands, languages, religions, and cuisines. The result, after a couple hundred years is a truly unique blend of all of the above. He is told of an island legend:

"Grandmère Kale, who is said to live in the island's volcano, emerging to eat up Réunionais children who don't finish their homework, is a cross between the witches of European and African folklore, and Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction."

Later a Tamil (a people from Sri Lanka) Catholic priest tells him that, "In the same family you can find a Chinese Taoist, an Indian Muslim, a Metropolitan Catholic, an African witch-doctor and a Tamil Hindu...I have many Chinese Catholics in my parish who are involved in ancestor-worship, as well as Indian ones who believe in reincarnation...it is the same with other religions: the Hindus here all eat meat and perform blood sacrifices...and it probably derives from the African gris gris [voodoo]."

Of course, some of the greatest cross-culture successes arise from the clash of cuisine. On the island they cook a unique brand of Créole which "mixes French and Indian culinary enthusiasm with a dash of Arab, Chinese, and Malagasy influence. The result is a fusion startlingly unlike any of its parent traditions. A typical Réunion meal might consist, for example, of cari z'ourite et cari poulpe (a creamy sea urchin and octopus curry) with a scattering of side dishes of puy lentils, choux choux (crystophene), rougaille (a spicy tomato chutney) and bredes (a spinach-like digestive); pudding might be gâteau patate (a sweet, heavy potato-cake)."

The inhabitants mostly speak French but also use "an impenetrable Créole patois which mixes Malagasy, Tamil and Arabic on a base of eighteenth century nautical French."

Anyone want to go for an extended Indian sea vacation? Of course it's not all happy times, as the mostly poor agrarian residents slowly cope with the rise of international tourism and the complexities which come along. Like many other tourist destinations you find a few harbor towns enjoying the material wealth of vacationers while just a half-hour's walk away dwell farmers who have never used a telephone. The clash of cultures has somehow worked to the islander's advantage now it's time to see how the real clash of a globalized economy will play out on this beautiful melting-pot of an island.

Another book by William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali, mentions the Flamboya tree. I was wondering if this was yet another India-word that we white people have converted. Alas, I find that it's a Mediterranean species, which must have been transplanted to India (like so much else in the colonized world). But who knows, maybe it was the other way around. Yet it is a beauty to behold either way.

well thanks for asking...

I have been roaming in other lands. Daring perilous quests in search of honor and the ever elusive booty. In short, I've somehow become hooked on an online game, a massively multi-player one at that. I am an elf-wizard right now. I have spells and such. I've met some friends online, well maybe friends is a strong word, but we go on quests together and earn experience points. Yeah, it's pretty much a gigantic waste of time, but I have no excuse or defense, it has sucked me in.

The game is Lineage II : The Chaotic Chronicle. The graphics are pretty neat, and there really is tons of stuff to do. There're five races, each of which has different classes to choose from. I am an Elven Mystic right now, though I'm about to advance to the next stage and have to choose between wizard and oracle. I'm leaning towards oracle, which is basically a support character, you heal and protect others with spells. Well that's it, if you don't see me ever again it's because my brain has permanently interfaced with the computer (like there wasn't enough of that going on in my house already). Here're some pictures:


Here's me with Sang, the guy who introduced me to the game in the first place, Damn you Sang!


Here's my beautiful elven face. I'm hanging out on a mountain now...


This is this hottie dark elf boy I met. We partied for awhile, and then I took him out back for a good...


A hottie-girl of my own race and me, staring into the moonlight together. How peaceful and serene the elven race is. If only...

So as a federal employee I am paid according to the General Schedule (GS). You advance laterally across the "steps" depending on weeks served (52 weeks = 1 step), and up and down the "grades" depending on hours worked (2080 hours (or 40 hrs. x 52 wks.) = 1 grade). So anyways, to get to the point here, my coworker (e:southernyankee) got her grade advancement like two weeks ago. As of this week I still had not received mine, which was strange as I got my last grade before her and we had worked the same schedule for the last year or so (we carpool together so there's not much doubt). So I go and ask my secretary (they're in charge of reporting our hours and keeping track of these sort of things), and tell her I think there's something wrong. She then pulls out these stapled together pieces of papers and starts to look through them. I ask her what she's looking at and she says that it's my records, I ask her for a copy of them. When I get back to my desk I realize that what I have is my three-year record of attendance. It is literally three pages of numbers in a couple columns scrawled in and hasty arithmetic totalling the numbers up. Every week for the last three years a secretary has been manually counting my hours and writing them down on these peices of paper. There are things crossed-out, written-over, scrawls in the margins, it's a big mess. It boggles my mind that I get a paycheck issued from the Dept. of Agriculture (which is not the Dept. I work for) that comes from Atlanta and ends up direct deposited into my bank account, but there's no kind of central system coordinating something as crucial as my raise!

Well, I looked through the thing and right off the bat spotted some problems. I work a full pay period - 80 hrs. I work another - 80 hrs. Total time worked so far - 16 hrs. What's that? Maybe you forgot a fucking zero, and lost 144 hrs. there buddy! Another pay period had me as working just one week instead of two - 32 hrs. difference. After I had dissected the thing, I came to the conclusion that I was behind 292 hrs. (almost a month of full-time work). I should have received my raise three weeks ago. I guess that's what you get when working for the government though. At least they're going to fix it and credit me with the lost pay, just sucks that I had to fix it for them.

sidenoteish: On our last pay stubs we got a little reminder to vote in November. It very nicely told us that we could use administrative leave to vote if necessary. Take a look:



Notice anything wrong? Maybe something to do with when the election is? Yes, that's right, they've got the wrong fucking date. The election is on the 2nd not the 4th. Now I'm not saying this was intentional (though it's a fact that the highly unionized federal workforce generally favors Democratic candidates) but it's a least pretty fucking lazy. Hasn't everyone of us who's at least sorta intersted in politics heard the date, 11/2, like 1000 times this season? How is it that the D.C. employee (most likely a GS-15, see above payscale) who submitted this little helpful blurb was unaware of the correct date? I will say, to be forthright, that they did have a correction on the website this morning, which hopefully everyone who may have been led astray saw. Time will tell just how many feds are standing in line to vote two weeks from Thursday.

[size=xxl] Happy Birthday Lilho!!! [/size]

Have a wonderful day, and get your ass smashed.