Spoiler
We were having a big film fest in Pensacola, and five minutes into The Prestige my son asked me if I knew how it was going to end.
This started a long time ago. They think I am amazing. Most of the time, I get it right. Sometimes, with Law and Order, or CSI, there is a twist I hadn’t thought of. I read a lot of mysteries and . . . there is a secret.
Don’t go any further if you like NOT knowing how a show is going to end.
Here is the secret. A movie or a TV show only has a limited amount of time to tell the story. You can figure that most of the information they give you is significant. Like in Law and Order, a lot of times it’s one of the people they originally interview, even if they came off well in the interview. (Those guys have gotten more and more tricky, though, and it gets harder to figure out all the time.) Listen for something that could be a lie.
The Prestige suffered a little from it’s own arrogance. They TELL us right at the beginning what the story will be, what the twist is, and how it will be accomplished, if you are watching closely and thinking “why might this be important?”
My son had already seen it. I told him “this, this and this” and he didn’t say anything, just said I had to see if I was right. Hee Hee heee . . . I was. And he was so poker faced I didn’t know how blown away he was that I had figured it out.
You can, too.
And if you haven’t seen The Prestige, it is a very good movie. It appears to be coming to Super Movies sometime soon.
New Google Earth Hi Res
New high resolution:
Canada:
Whistler, BC; Waterloo & Toronto, Ontario; Nanaimo, BC; and Fort Saskatchewan, AB
England: Base 50cm coverage of nearly entire country, and Avon
Germany: Cities/Regions of Greifswald, Trier, Köln, Stuttgart, Bonn, Oldenburg, Rostock, Saarbrücken, Hamburg, Hannover, and Ritterhude
Austria: Villach region
France: Cities of Caen, Dijon, Metz, St Etienne, Toulouse and Rouen
Spain: Valencia Andorra
US: Imperial County (CA); Yellowstone National Park (WY); Galveston/Houston (TX); Peterborough (NH); Cheyenne (WY); Burke, Wake, and Cabarrus Counties (NC); Racine and Kenosha Counties (WI); Washington, DC; St Paul (MN); and the State of Alabama
Japan: City/Regions of Kochi, Asahikawa, Koriyama, Miyazaki, Nagano, Utsunomiya, Akita, and Toyama
Large Digital Globe (60cm) update includes areas in Sudan, expanded Africa, Australia, Mexico coverage and smaller areas of coverage in Asia, Polynesia, South America, Canada, Europe, Middle East plus some interesting islands in Antarctica and Greenland.
Updated Imagery:
Americas:
Bogotá, Columbia; Mission Viejo (CA, US); Hillsborough County (FL, US)
EU: Dublin, Ireland
Middle East/Africa: Beirut, Lebanon and Tripoli, Libya
Asia: Hong Kong and Manila, Philippine
Updated Terrain:
Western US 10m, Canary Islands 10m
Google Street View Peeping?
I found this article on AOL, but it is from the New York Times originally.
Google Zooms In Too Close for Some
By MIGUEL HELFT, The New York Times
The New York Times
OAKLAND, Calif. (June 2) – For Mary Kalin-Casey, it was never about her cat.
Google said it takes privacy seriously and considered the implications of its service before it was introduced. “Street View only features imagery taken on public property,” it said.
Ms. Kalin-Casey, who manages an apartment building here with her husband, John Casey, was a bit shaken when she tried a new feature in Google’s map service called Street View. She typed in her address and the screen showed a street-level view of her building. As she zoomed in, she could see Monty, her cat, sitting on a perch in the living room window of her second-floor apartment.
“The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people’s lives,” Ms. Kalin-Casey said in an interview Thursday on the front steps of the building. “The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged.”
Her husband quickly added, “It’s like peeping.”
Ms. Kalin-Casey first shared her concerns about the service in an e-mail message to the blog Boing Boing on Wednesday. Since then, the Web has been buzzing about the privacy implications of Street View — with varying degrees of seriousness. Several sites have been asking users to submit interesting images captured by the Google service, which offers panoramic views of miles of streets around San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver.
On a Wired magazine blog, for instance, readers can vote on the “Best Urban Images” that others find in Street View. On Thursday afternoon, a picture of two young women sunbathing in their bikinis on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, Calif., ranked near the top. Another showed a man scaling the front gate of an apartment building in San Francisco. The caption read, “Is he breaking in or has he just locked himself out?”
Google said in a statement that it takes privacy seriously and considered the privacy implications of its service before it was introduced on Tuesday. “Street View only features imagery taken on public property,” the company said. “This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street.”
You can read the rest of the article on AOL MOney News by clicking here.
My comment: I am a huge fan of transparency, so you might think this new ability wouldn’t bother me. But the transparency I favor is transparency of business and government transactions, not people taking in my behavior in my own house! I am also a huge fan of personal privacy, and while a street view that just shows my cat in the window wouldn’t be alarming, it tells me that photos shot at night, which would show the interior of my residence, are also possible, and that thought troubles me very much.
Our homes are our castles! If my husband wants to walk around in his underwear (or less 😉 ) and I want to wear my nightgown all day when I am working on a special project, honestly, it is not YOUR business, nor anyone else on the internet! Do you want photos published, taken of you unaware in your own house? This capability is terrifying!
Who’s Checking Kuwait’s Toothpaste?
US checks toothpaste for toxins
Toothpaste is the latest Chinese export to raise safety concerns
Health officials in the United States say they are checking all shipments of toothpaste imported from China for contamination with toxic chemicals.
Panama and the Dominican Republic have reported finding diethylene glycol, a chemical used in engine coolants, in toothpaste from China.
The toothpaste scare is the latest involving products from China.
Earlier this year, contaminated pet food ingredients killed a number of cats and dogs in North America.
The toxic chemical, melamine, was found in wheat gluten exports from China for use in pet food, prompting a recall of at least 100 pet food brands.
The tainted wheat gluten was even thought to have made its way into livestock feed.
Low-cost substitute
Cough syrup containing containing diethylene glycol originating from China killed more than 50 people in Panama last year.
The New York Times said a Chinese chemical maker had sold the industrial-grade chemical as glycerine, which is often used as a moistener in products from toothpaste to soap and cosmetics.
CHINESE FOOD SCARES
May 2007 China probes reports that contaminated toothpaste was sent to Central America
March 2007 Melamine is found in wheat gluten exports from China for use in pet food, prompting a recall of at least 100 pet food brands
Nov 2006 A dye farmers fed to ducks to make their eggs look fresher is found to contain cancer-causing properties and 5,000 ducks are culled
August 2006 About 40 people in Beijing contract meningitis after eating partially cooked snails at a chain of restaurants
Diethylene glycol is sometimes used as a low-cost substitute for glycerine and Chinese toothpaste makers have said small amounts of the chemical are harmless in toothpaste.
“We are going to be sampling and testing all shipments of toothpaste that come from China,” said Doug Arbesfeld, a spokesman for the US Food and Drug Administration.
The FDA says China is the second-largest exporter of toothpaste to the US after Canada.
Food safety investigators in Panama said two brands of toothpaste were imported illegally from China through a free-trade zone.
Chinese officials say they are investigating the claims.
The Dominican Republic and Panama have pulled thousands of tubes of Chinese toothpaste brands Excel and Mr Cool from store shelves.
Beijing recently pledged to clean up its tainted food and drug industry after the series of safety scares. The subject was raised by the US in bilateral trade talks this week.
The former head of China’s State Food and Drug Administration is facing trial, accused of taking large bribes to approve untested medicines.
From today’s BBC News.
Emergency Service in Kuwait
I had an emergency. Now YOU may not consider it an emergency, but I have a piece of equipment, and I have a major project and a deadline, and to meet that deadline, I need that piece of equipment. And, of course, that piece of equipment began to fail me.
Not to worry. I had heard of a place in Kuwait that could fix my machine. I had that pit in the stomach feeling, like “why didn’t I do some homework and find this place before my machine needed fixing. . . ” Do you ever say things like that to yourself?
And of course, because I was desperate, when I would go into stores and ask if they knew where this place was, I was told, over and over, there was no such place.
Until one brave young Pakistani guy contradicted his employer and told me where he thought the place might be. Because of one way streets, and a convoluted traffic pattern, it took me several more passes before I spotted the place – which fortunately had one very small sign in English, as I can’t read Arabic very quickly, I still have to sound out all the letters until it sounds like a word I know. Like I am really good at “sharia” being street, but not very good at things I don’t see all the time.
And, by the grace of God, not only do I see the store, but there is – and this is truly a miracle – a decent parking spot fairly close to the shop. Thanks be to God.
I went into the shop, and there is another woman there, with her machine. I tell the man behind the counter that I have a small emergency. He doesn’t understand me, but he understands my tone, and sends a man to help bring in my machine.
It’s like the stand-off at the OK Corral. She looks at my machine, evaluating whether her’s is better, or mine. Seconds tick by, and she smiles, and the crisis is averted. She tells the man she will be back for her machine, which he sets aside to take a look at mine.
My machine is one of those simple machines, you are supposed to be able to do almost everything yourself. He does everything I have already done, and sits back, stumped. We both know what the problem is, and I know he can’t fix it. He calls a friend. He orders tea. We sit and talk as customers come in and out, checking on their machines, asking prices on new machines. We are speaking in Arabic, a language we both speak badly, so conversation often lulls. I’m not sure his friend is coming.
Finally, I pack up my machine, and of course, as soon as I get ready to leave, the friend arrives, and we need to unpack it again. Ten minutes, and my machine is good as new. He tells me what the replacement part would cost in Kuwait (if he hadn’t been able to fix it) and I gasp in horror – I will have to look for a replacement part this summer, back in the US, because I have checked online and yes, they are expensive, but cost about the same in dollars as it would in KD – i.e. $49 vs KD 40. Aaarrgh.
I’ve spent two hours sitting and drinking tea in a shop that is sort of air conditioned, but the door was always open. I am hot, and sweaty, but my machine is fixed, at least enough that I can work on my project.
This is not the way it would happen in the United States. In the United States, I might get some sympathy, but I would not get same day service. I would have to leave my machine, I would have to be served in order, and I would not get my machine back until it were fixed, if it were fixed – people are not so good at fixing old things in the United States, you have to be really lucky. Mostly, when machines break, you buy a new one.
So I am feeling really lucky, really lucky, really blessed, to have had my machine emergency in Kuwait, where things are done differently, and my machine could be fixed on am emergency basis, while I waited.
P.S. The man who fixed my machine earns KD 80 a month – $280 for my US readers.
Tornado Before and After
Imagery provided in Ogle Earth of the recent tornado damage in Greensburg, Kansas on May 4th.
If you go to Ogle Earth, you can see the before and after shots. The destruction is unbelievable. The immediacy with which the damage could be assessed with the help of these shots helps emergency workers and insurance assessors do their job more quickly.
Word Press and Stats
On a quiet Thursday morning, I have some time to get an overview of what kind of articles my viewers like the best. It’s always a surprise to me. I put the most effort into my travel and book reviews. What, you, the viewer, likes best are recipes and photos.
In the last 30 days, the all time favorite has been – I hope you’re sitting down – Scalloped Potatoes. I mean like whoda thunk?? Second is Kuwaiti Customs, which I am guessing is of interest mostly to my non-Kuwaiti readers who are fascinated by the differences in our way of life, as well as the similarities, and third is one of my all time favorites Porn For Women. Fourth for the 30 day period is “Make This Case Go Away” where a Minister makes the police drop what appears to be an air tight case against two young men who abduct and rape a maid, and fifth, one of those anomalies, Tudo’s Vietnamese Restaurant in Pensacola.
What I like about WordPress is that there are options for all levels of users. I’m just a writer. My page is pretty vanilla, not a lot of bells and whistles, but the bells and whistles are out there if I go to the trouble of learning how to use them. I can include music, videos, and all kinds of other tools.
But it’s things like being able to look at the stats and track a post from birth to present, see what has had the biggest following in the last 30 days, and then in the last seven days, see how many people have me on feeds on a daily basis – all those things matter to me, and WordPress has them.
Best of all, it is just so easy. I don’t want to make a clock, I just want to know the time! WordPress is a great tool.
“Who Am I?”
As DNA testing becomes more and more common, surprises are popping up everywhere. This article from BBC is about two Englishwomen who discover they have Native American blood when they send their DNA in for testing.
It’s fascinating to think that migration and trade has left it’s traces generations later. I love the work that is being done with bloodlines these days.
Native American DNA found in UK
DNA testing has uncovered British descendents of Native Americans brought to the UK centuries ago as slaves, translators or tribal representatives.
Genetic analysis turned up two white British women with a DNA signature characteristic of American Indians.
An Oxford scientist said it was extremely unusual to find these DNA lineages in Britons with no previous knowledge of Native American ancestry.
Indigenous Americans were brought over to the UK as early as the 1500s.
It rocked me completely. It made think: who am I?
Doreen Isherwood
Many were brought over as curiosities; but others travelled here in delegations during the 18th Century to petition the British imperial government over trade or protection from other tribes.
Experts say it is probable that some stayed in Britain and married into local communities.
Doreen Isherwood, 64, from Putney, and Anne Hall, 53, of Huddersfield, only found out about their New World heritage after paying for commercial DNA ancestry tests.
Mrs Isherwood told BBC News: “I was expecting the results to say I belonged to one of the common European tribes, but when I got them back, my first thought was that they were a mistake.
“It rocked me completely. It made think: who am I?”
You can read the rest of the article at BBC Science/Nature News, here.
MOC Bans Porno Film Sites
Today’s Kuwait Times:
Internet Porno Film Sites
The Ministry of Communication has closed down all new sites that advertise pornographic films. The ministry of Communication represented by Undersecretary Eng. Abdulaziz Al-Osaimi and his counterpart at the Ministry of Information achieved this new step. This move was done in order to have control over the sites, which are being followed by the Ministry of Information. Al-Osaimi has assigned administration director Nassar Al-Kandari to work on closing those sites from the Internet and ensuring that companies do not use other systems to re-open it. The ministry succeeded in coordinating with local internet companies to close all porno sites, but lately the ministry realized that there are new sites marketing through drama films to porno films.
My comments:
I truly hate porn. I hate it because it creates a fantasy world that real women can barely compete with. I bet if men spent half the time and attention on their wives and families that they spend on porn, there wouldn’t be so much divorce. And guys – those women are PAID. They’re ACTING. Most of them would rather be doing anything but what they are doing, but they do it for the MONEY. It’s about as real as the World Wide Wrestling Federation Matches, it’s all staging and airbrushing and making money off YOUR fantasies.
Rant over – reality strikes. How do you ban pornography?
First, how do you define pornography? When I was a student in political science, we spent a week of class time trying to come up with a definition that everyone could buy into. We never succeeded.
There is some pretty powerful erotic literature, erotic art out there, stuff I don’t find pornographic in the least. So what are the guidelines?
Second, WHO defines pornography?
Third, how on earth will the Ministry of Communication and the Ministry of Information keep up with all the new porn sites that keep popping up? These sites make people a LOT of money, they have the money to pay ingenious high tech guys to keep devising new ways to get their product to market.
And last, who is the poor porno-guy who has to watch all this garbage and enforce the ban?
And – is your internet phone still working? 😉
Audio and Video Streaming Stopped?
My neice, Little Diamond, checking on Kuwaiti Censorship went to the Ministry on Information where she found this statement:
الإذاعة والتلفزيون
على الإنترنت
حتى إشعار أخر
Audio & Video Streaming is stopped
until further notice
And I just checked it, but I can’t figure out if it means they are discontinuing audio and video streaming from their site, or if they intend to discountinue audio and video streaming into Kuwait?
Anyone know anything?
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