The more things change, the more they stay the same. What I really need to remind myself of:
* The beginning is probably the most difficult part. Think how you struggle to get out of bed every morning thinking that you are about to die, only to sober up in a few minutes like it never happened.
* Stop worrying that you are not doing good enough. The one who laughs last is not the best player but the one who made the least mistakes. It is always too early to give up.
I was driving home yesterday when I saw an old acquaintance.
The 1973 MiG-21 was imported in the 1980s through a third country to Australia with the intention of selling it to the RAAF for combat simulation, however the Cold War ended too soon for the jet to me put into real use. The sale fell through, and the aircraft somehow ended up in God's own country following some ambiguous circumstances.
The last time I found it in a derelict hanger in Christchurch airport, I did not have the chance to take a photo however I remember it was already in a dire condition however intact. It also did not have the BOOB 8008 marking. I wonder if the number actually meant anything.
It was put on auction last year without the flaps and some other small bits. Right now it is sitting in a makeshift pen in Penrose and missing her wingtips. I have no idea who bought it to Auckland and why, however I really suspect that it will eventually be scrapped and turned into cans and windows frames.
Statistically speaking, vending machines, with their intrinstic instability, are more deadly than sharks. But the danger is more than acquiring atherosclerosis from the fizzy drinks, or getting crushed by a steel box filled with fizzy delights.
I have been researching for my toxicology report on Paraquat, a readily available toxin to bring quick and clean death to pesky plants and, painfully slow death to animals including humans. Paraquat is a potent quaternary ammounium viologen that induces reactive oxygen species in cells and cause havoc in any living organism; two teaspoons p.o. is more than enough to kill an adult. If any of my readers happens to ingest some (hopefully through an accident) I would recommed that you take another gulp after leaving a concise will. Assuming survival after the first 24 hours, lung fibrosis develops, and the major organs all gradually shut down over a period up to 30 days. The toxin does not harm the central nervous system in anyway, and there is no antidote as yet.
Coming back to vending machines,its relevance in this post is one incident in 1984, when 12 people of different backgrounds died from soft drinks lacked with paraquat from inside vending machines. None of the 12 survived; some died in a few days while others lingered on in agony for weeks.
The modus operandi successfully applied several principles of perfect crime:
Acts are against innocent people with no obvious motive, therefore no suspects could be narrowed down.
Similarly, all vending machines involved are in places of high traffic volume with no surveillance.
Instead of leaving bottles of popular drinks in the open, placing them inside the vending machine make people ASSUME it had came FROM the machine. (hey somebody left their purchase here/two drinks came out when I ordered one, the vending god must be smiling today!) Particularly for the last female victim, who took a poisoned drink from a vending machine that had a notice posted warning consumers against suspicious "free drinks".
Like successful rat poisons, paraquat is guaranteed to kill with a slow onset of symptoms, hence most victims are already beyond rescue before they reach out for help.
One unintended fallout is a sharp rise in paraquat suicides due to the extensive coverage. This is consistent with anecdotal evidence that suicide rates tend to surge following the publicity of other high-profile cases.
Other relevant development included the demise of screw-top bottles in Japan because they are much easier to tamper with than cans. Well, maybe we should view the recent re-introduction of classic coke bottle as a mixed blessing.
(Below is a post i tried to finish before the soccer world cup but never had the interest to go back to it. I'd rather post it now than leaving it forgotten for years. Who knows, I might complete it one day.)
Yes, the soccer world cup is ON! Argentina is set to play against Nigeria later and I don't have Sky TV...
A short cosmopolitan list of various sports teams I support with inconclusive reasons:
Men's Soccer - Argentina, they have not been very good recently, but still has my unwavered support.Oh and they have the best fans!
Women's Soccer - Sweden, as long as L8 is on their national team.
Rugby Union - South Africa, yeah, a shameless bokke here in Kiwiland, so what, they are good, i mean very good despite their lackluster coach.
I wish there is for for the AB
Baseball - Japan, unlike most other time-limited sports, baseball (cricket as well) has a very different gameplay, where the losing team could turn the table in a brief moment. The USA probably has most of the top players, but in Japan, baseball has become a part of the national psyche. The annual High School Baseball tournament to Japan, is what the Super Bowl is to the US.
Women's Curling - Germany, I have images to prove this
Alaska: Igloos, period
Canada: Bloody ice hockey nation
Iceland: Autonomous Danish territory, still hunting seals
Quebec: Business as usual, wine/aids
USA: World Police, modeled after Gen. MacArthur
The little ball with the hat: Republic of Texas
Mexico: Lazy latino, duh.
Central American isthmus: Nobody knows about them, just never assume Belize is a province of Guatemala or Lord Ashcroft's fury will descend upon thee; also, note the divided Panama.
The Bahamas: Oil-sucking tourist island.
Bermuda: Obvious allusion, the other triangle is probably Singapore or Nepal.
Turks and Caico: Not unlike the Bahamas, with Canadians running most of the offshore financial services.
Cuba: Socialist
Hispaniola: Dominican Republic and, er, Haiti
Puerto Rico: De facto 51st state of the USA
Jamaica: Rastafarian
Antilles: Not much going on, the 8-shaped Siamese twin is Dutch Antilles and French St. Martin. BTW, Grenada only produce 20% of the world's nutmeg, the rest most likely originates in Indonesia. A, B and C are Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao respectively.
Colombia: Meth lab Vassal of the USA.
Venezuela: Can afford to diss the US and pretend to be socialist because they've got the oil.
Guyana and Suriname: Majority of population have ancestry in Uttar Pradesh.
French Guiana: 90% wasteland and the rest comprises of the French space facilities.
Ecuador: I am really surprised by the lack of Banana jokes.
Peru: Meh
Bolivia: 150 years later, still missing its shores.
Brazil: HEUHEUHEUHEUHEU
Paraguay: No idea
Uruguay: I am trying to find out what is he drinking
Argentina: Still desperate to get the Falklands
Chile: Gone fishin'
Europe
Iceland: Sulfide and Ash generator, I mean Eyjafjallajökull, pronounce it, it's fun. Whale riderkiller.
Ireland: Still drunk on EU aid money
Nothern Ireland: Raging UDFIRA
Scotland: Nationalistic since WWII, obvious allusion to a certain Mel Gibson movie
Wales: with a sheep...?!
England: Bloated and troubled, note that when the UK is represented as Britainball, it always dons a top hat and a monocle.
Channel Islands: Half french, half British
Portugal: is a towel
Spain: Rather unconcerned about the breakaway Catalanball and Basqueball.
France: Funny cap, baguettes.
Bengium: No, Belgiumball does not exist, you have rivalling Flandernball, Walloniaball and tiny tiny Brusselsball.
Man-up cooking to cuisine is like German pornography to adult entertainment. Tasting good is not enough; the food has to appear somewhat revolting (think mushy peas), or at least visually unpolished to be considered manly. Another added-on advantage is that anybody sees it won't steal it due to the engrossing look.
Examples are abound
Awesome pub food, did I just mention mushy peas?
A somewhat less toxic variety with baked beans
One, two, three, four.....thirteen kranskies, on rice with miso soup, Freud would be impressed.
Rule #1: Deep fry everything and top up with curry or gravy
Another murder by the brown sauce
Man-up breakfast, made commercially
School Lunch in Japan, junior version
Traditional tea dish in the JMSDF, some officers are known to spend their entire allowance for this treat. BTW, Kimlan Soy Paste is another hidden gem, try it!
Attempt to make lemon chicken today, it tastes better than it looks, period.
Finally, a hearty lunch made to my definition, thank you darling.
According to what was told the movie Scent of a Woman, Lt.Col. Frank Slade played by Al Pacino served in Vietnam, have been on Lyndon Johnson's staff and almost got promoted a general. What does his payslip ribbons and badges say about his service?
Should I shoot you or adopt you?
Left side contain four unit awards: Presidential Unit Citation: Awarded for exceptional in major operations, relatively common Valorous Unit Award: The lesser version of the previous. Vietnam Presidential Unit Citation: Slade could have served as one of the early US military advisers, however considering his age it is more likely to have come from a later date. Vietnam Gallantry Cross Unit Citation with Palm: Frequently issued to foreign combatants by RoVN so nothing special here, nearly everyone has got it.
Right side have both skill badges and individual decoration racks, starting from the top then top-left:
Combat Infantryman Badge: Basic Group I skill badge, issued to every trooper with front line service
Basic Parachutist Badge: a.k.a. Snow Cone, awarded following at least one combat parachute jump. Slade does not appear to have served in the airborne divisions, so it is most likely that he picked this up while in Fort Benning.
Distinguished Service Cross: Highest army decoration just second to MoH. Awarded in excess of 1000 for action in Vietnam, out of those about 400 are posthumous. Silver Star: Third-placed US service medal, Slade must have done something right...twice. John McCain also has one.
Bronze Star: Further down the hierarchy. Slade's however, bear both Valor device and oak leaves, which translate into multiple decorations for some exceptional deeds. Purple Heart: i.e. would medal. Probably one of the most abundant medals out there because the DoD minted 500,000 for the invasion of Japan which never happened, and they still have not used up that old supply. Officers carry spares into battle and use them to plug broken femoral arteries, well, jokes.
Meritorious Service Medal: Awarded for exceptional non-combat duty. Air Medal: Awarded for frequent fliers in warzone, no, you don't have to pilot the aircraft yourself. Joint Service Commendation: Lesser version of the Bronze Star.
Army Achievement Medal: Probably with oak leaves, can't see very clear. I need bluray :( National Defense Service Medal: Blanket campaign medal for the Nam, as well as Korea, Afganistan and Iraq. Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal: Supplementary campaign medal, probably for service elsewhere in Indo-China.
Vietnam Service Medal: Mostly covered however quite identifiable, created by Lyndon Johnson for service in the Vietnam theater. Army Service Ribbon: For every member of the armed serviced in 1981 and thereafter. One of the uglier ribbons out there. Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Palm: This is not the unit award and bears more weight. Vietnam Campaign Medal: Universally awarded. The bar device read "1960", the year of the start of conflict. It is intended to issue a second bar when the North is defeated, however it never came.
Overall, we can see a typical route of ascension for a model soldier from the rice paddies to the war room. His personality destined him to the eventual downfall, however he could not have scored all that glory without it.
Let's watch him tango with an adorable Gabrielle Anwar again:
I have mentioned before that sometimes luck is very important in an actor/actresses' success. Nicholas Cage is a prime example of someone repeatedly receiving flops. Anne Hathaway had her share of mistakes when she turned down the leading role of Christine in the Phantom movie due to her commitment to make Princess Dairies 2.
Al Pacino's luck is on par with Bruce Willis, they both had a down period however recovered quickly with one or two major hits. To prove the point that nobody is immune to occasional hiccups:
A young Sean Connery here, you probably wouldn't have guessed....
To make up for the shock, let's end the post with some pretty females with weapons
M4 with too many bling blings, used by a 5"2' shooter
She really knows how to aim
The End is based on a real person, you will never know...
Every once in a while I was asked the name of the song by the German officers in the Cafe scene from the B/W classic Casablanca.
Stereotype would dismiss it as some non-relevant stock Nazi huzzah, yet the song couldn't be any more remote from that. Wacht am Rhein is a patriotic song written in the 1850s, at a time when Germany was a geographical term, in response to French claims in Rhineland. Words are overrated when it comes to songs, just sit back, turn your volume up and let your heart decide.
A bit of rant here: Elsaß-Lothringen (or A-something-Lorriane as the Frenchies say) is German proper from the days of the HRE. Louis XIV took it by force and the latter day French brainwashed the poor Allemagne so successfully that they regard them as French. The consequence? Following the war in 1875, people from the left bank of Rhine was never afforded full rights in the German Empire, and it was soon lost in the Treaty of Versailles anyway. Presently, Strasbourg still had the German character, however the demographic is more French than ever in history.
Back to the film, the circumstances of the selection is no less ironic: The director intended to cast a handful of Waffen-SS officers singing to the actual Nazi anthem Horst Wessel Lied. The scene would have been perfect as planned, however international copyright laws prevented it from happening since Wessel (Did he really compose the song?) has only died for a couple of years so his family still holds the copyright to the song. So it was done, and my personal favorite march is forever branded with the Huns.
Bonus: Vocal performance by the University of Kyushu Choir. Out of place as it might seem, however the song's (wrongful) associations with German militarism (for the love of our lord, the Prussian nation is Baltic pagan in origin, and GröFAZ is from Austria) made it way too non-PC in any country with a significant hippie population. In Japan they either don't care, or they are Aryan wannabes, whatever, it 's all good sing along:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- More on copyright, since I discussed my view of movie piracy with someone today, and I feel the need to clarify my position further.
I like to watch a movie in the cinema, complete with overpriced popcorn and icecream. I spend a good proportion of my disposable income on DVDs and other merchandise for the movies and TV shows that I like. However for titles that I am not sure whether it was worth my money, I'd still download it first before committing myself to the bigger sum. I know this is fundamentally illegal and morally wrong, however I challenge you readers, and most of you would have downloaded something that you should not have. He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. Aaaaaanybody?
I am ample unapologetic and reactionary to find excuses: First of all, genuine law-abiding citizens are not rewarded for their good deeds. Every time I watch a non-pirated DVD there will be a few minutes of rather graphical propaganda against piracy that is very difficult to skip. No, thank you, I'd rather watch the pirated version with the insulting bits thoughtfully spliced out. Instead of telling people the right thing, people were intimidated to refrain from doing it. And alas, intimidation does not always work.
And it is no particular secret that artists receives little dividend from the operational income, with the most swallowed by the various middlemen. Similarly, the more successful digital content delivery systems including Steam, Kindle and iTunes, all offer a higher cut of the price to the copyright holder than their traditional counterparts of publishers and record companies.
The real risk with uncontrolled piracy, however, is that people no longer recognise the hard work behind the content they were getting with a click of mouse. To quote Laura Marling:
"People don't appreciate music any more, they don't adore it. They don't buy vinyl and just love it. They love their laptops like their best friend, but they don't love a record for its sound quality and its artwork."
The anime fansub community usually handles the same issue with respect and dignity, as they pledge to cease their work once a title has been licensed in the country where they operate from. And indeed, there is no better publicity than the good word of mouth based on community efforts.
There has be a selfish rein in what I do, too, and this is how life works out. The internet had been the anarchists' refuge for the last 10 years or so, but Big Brother is catching up fast. Oh the joys of legal relativism.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Telecom is pulling the plug on their unlimited Big Time plan. (Shortened to BT for the rest of the post, not to be confused with British Telecom)
As a user of BT from day 1, I am particularly disappointed. As posters at Geekzone had noted, BT had many issues in the past year, and it was only in the last couple of months that it had been consistently good, i.e. no slowdown of http traffic during peak hours, YouTube plays smooth etc. The announcement of its closure after all the issues were ironed out is adding insult to injury already inflicted.
Nonetheless, with hindsight, BT did have some fundamental flaws that doomed it from the start.
First: Uncapped speed+uncapped data = leecher heaven, period
Secondly, because of the nature of ADSL technology, users never gets the same experience out of the same plan. Howick has severe congestion at their local exchange with the highest attainable bandwidth never going above 3Mbps regardless of location; I live in an old house 1km away from the exchange, situated in an old neighborhood with ugly overhead cables and the best I can manage is 5Mbps with ADSL2+ (closer to 4Mbps with G.DMT); for someone I worked with lived right next the DSLAM in Panmure, his failing D-Link modem gets a full 8Mbps (G.DMT Max) and I have no doubt that 20Mbps is possible. There is huge discrepancy between locations. My friend in Howick is paying more than both of us for a Go Pro plan to feed his mother's MMO habits, (very promising topic for another post someday) yet he is not getting better service.
Some leechers are said to download terabytes of data every month, and they must have rather large calibres of networking and storage. The all-in-one wireless router I had tends to crash over a few hundred concurrent TCP sessions, thus according to my own figures I have downloaded less than 300GB in the first six months on BT, later Dad moved in to hog all the bandwidth that is left so I did not really enjoy the advantage of unlimited data save for downloading OS patches and the odd night spent on digging YouTube archives.
My dear father, along with many other geeks suffer form Squirrel Syndrome: they collect, store and hoard all sorts of useful and useless information, most of those they will not view for a second time, yet they enjoy gathering data for the sake of it like the autumn squirrels stockpiling nuts for winter, except the winter never really comes. You only live so many years in life, and there are so many new things to be done that makes the entire archiving movement pointless.
On the other hand, I can see which theoretical background they based their successive moves on. They thought so could shape P2P traffic, however as it turns out there are too many methods to disguise traffic as long as the golden rule of network neutrality stands, not to mention the prevalent use of file hosting sites as distribution media. The infallible A.S.Tanenbaum once wrote: "One can always pay for more bandwidth but latency." Unlimited data brings too much uncertainly to traffic that they are simply unmanageable, this is why the Go Large plan had to go even with its meager 256kbps bottleneck.
I am not too certain what replacement plans they are considering, however it is most likely that BT users will be moved to the existing 20GB uncapped adventure plan within 6 months. A more favorable outcome is if they bring back the old Go Large, with an adjusted speed cap say 1Mbps with unlimited data, however unlikely.
The Big Time party is over, life moves on. Now there is one less reason for me to stay here after I finish my degree.
Not very interesting on its own. Nonetheless somewhere in the article they mentioned British Free Corps, which turned out had never been more than a handful of nutty Poms.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Free_Corps
That entry was particularly meticulous and confusing, however one Frankish name really stands out of all the Teutonic hullabahoo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Pierrepoint
Fascinating figure, must be taken together with the story-within-a-story part of The Sandman #55. The content even branches out to include some interesting criminal stories, which I am still reading through ATM. A few of them more or less relate back to the previous entry of people committed of treachery (How do you pronounce that word again?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Joyce
A.K.A. Lord Haw-Haw, we all know about him, but of his boss....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Mosley
...who married someone of a prominent family.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitford_sisters
...one of which owns this piece of outstanding estate!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatsworth_House
This is how far I have covered tonight, wait and behold, it may even go on and cover every page there is in Wikipedia.
