The Smarmy Carny

NASA's World Wind

I stumbled upon NASA's World Wind program and just had to check it out. Think of it as a vast, worldwide map program. It's not something you would use to get directions to your grandmother's house (where those directions would be "over the river and through the woods"), but more of a tool for geography class. I installed it last night, had some technical difficulties, and then finally had fun playing around the various features of NASA's World Wind. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to test out all of the features available due to time and lack of documentation, but from what I've seen already, it's worth commenting on and sharing with everyone . . . or at least the 5 people who read my blog. The website describes it like this:

World Wind allows any user to zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth, leveraging high resolution LandSat imagery and SRTM elevation data to experience Earth in visually rich 3D, just as if they were really there.

Of course, the description says "just as if they were really there," but fails to add the phrase "several thousand feet in the air." If you ever had the chance to click the "aerial view" button in MapQuest (which is no longer there), then you've got a pretty good idea of what you'll find in one of the views. Some of the screenshots are really great, but unless you're looking at largely populated cities or extremely popular or prestigious landmarks, you're not going to see the best pictures. Generally what you'll see of interest is a series of black and white satellite photographs. Still, I was able to easily find my hometown (with town names turned on, of course) and then find my particular house from there. Perhaps I'll make a screenshot of my home town and put it up when I get the chance.

You really need a broadband connection to use this program, because it downloads only what you're looking at. The upside is that you don't have to download terrabytes of information. The downside is that the servers are sometimes overloaded due to the popularity of this software. The various views are quite interesting:

• Land Sat 7: As I mentioned this is the tool I use most often. It gives you the black and white photos similar to the picture posted on this entry. The resolution on this is amazing: 15m/pixel.
• MODIS: This is a neat feature that allows you to see fires, floods, dust, smoke, storms and volcanic activity. You first see icons spattered on the globe, and then when you click one you are able to see images of them. For instance, you could see the smoke from the 2003 California fires. Resolution: 250m/pixel. I'm still having issues getting this to work to my satisfaction due to lack of documentation.
• Blue Marble: This gives you a true-color image of the earth. Resolution: 1km/pixel. It's nice to see things in true color, but you're not going to see the details of your hometown.
• GLOBE: Allows you to view temperatures, rainfall, barometric pressure, cloud cover for any given day.
• More:Country & state borders, place names, latitude and longitude lines and values, the Lewis and Clark trail, the Iditarod path, and other info are also available. It's nice that if you're looking at the USA portion of the globe, you will see the state borders and some state names. As you zoom in on a region, the state names remain while major cities appear, followed by smaller cities. Zoom as far in as you can, and you'll even see the different township names. This works for much more than just the USA, by the way.

The program's utter lack of documentation is embarassing. The program sends you to their website, and their website has three paragraphs that tell you how to move, rotate, and zoom. No information whatsoever is provided for using the various Land Sat, GLOBE, MODIS, or other neat tools. I'm slowly getting the hang of these tools, but it's much more frustrating than just reading up on what to do.

Just as an aside: I have not yet figured out how to pronounce this program's name, specifically "wind". Is is pronounced "wind," the meteorological phenomenon? Or is it "wind," what you do to old grandfather clocks? I'm thinking that "World Wind" is a pun, but that still doesn't clear things up. The pun could be that it sounds similar to "whirlwind," but I also realize that it could be pronounced similar to "worldwide".

If you're interested, you can get World Wind. Keep in mind that it wouldn't work for me until I also installed the latest patch (currently the 1.2d patch) on top of the install.

Which Colossal Death
Robot Are You?

Have you ever taken time out of your day to think about exactly what type of colossal death robot you would be if you were a colossal death robot? If not, then today is that day.

This one has been around for quite some time, but since I have a new venue to publish my findings, I will throw in some old classics every so often. Some of these classics are so old that people who have only gotten online in the past five years have never seen them, and people like myself who have been online for ten years have just plain forgotten about them.

Go ahead. Answer the simple questions and find out the answer to "Which Colossal Death Robot Are You?"

I took the test, and it turns out that I am Gigantor. Bigger than big! Stronger than strong!

You are Gigantor!
Born in 1963, You are possibly the original colossal death robot, being one of the patriarchs of the current crop, and definitely an advocate of old-skool enemy-bashing. Why use a clumsy particle weapon when you can create supernovas just by flexing your arms? Your one minor weakness is that you are entirely dominated by some kid with a remote contol - still, don't let it get you down. You can sink a nuclear submarine with jazz music.

Enjoy.

This mindlessly entertaining link is dedicated to Johnny Carson, may he rest in peace.

The kids on the bus go 'Bang! Bang! Bang!'

Think back . . . What were you doing in 5th grade? Have you conjured up any memories? Was one of them "hijacking my school bus?" No? Good.

Pennsylvania state police reported yesterday that an 11-year-old boy pulled a knife and tried to hijack his school bus along with three of his friends. Yep, you read it correctly . . . eleven years old.

From the information I collected from multiple news stories, three 11-year-old boys and a 10-year-old girl plotted to hijack their school bus and drive it to Nevada. The leader pulled a knife and held it up to the neck of one of the other accomplices, and the accomplice pretended to be hurt. He demanded that the bus driver pull the school bus over and get out. The bus driver, Janet McQuown, pulled the bus over and asked the boy (without raising her voice) to give her the knife. After several requests, he gave up the knife. She instructed the four kids to go sit still and be quiet until they reached school twenty minutes later. By that point, she had radioed in and school administration was waiting for the children. Two of the boys were given to juvenile authorities, and the other two went home with their parents.

I can only assume that they will be grounded from their Playstation for a week.

I got a laugh out of a particular line in one news story:

As to why the children gave up so easily, McQuown said she wasn't sure.
"Apparently, they did not have a Plan B."

As pitiful as this story is, it just cracks me up because children can be so insightful. Why did they think they could actually hijack their school bus and drive it to Nevada? Let's think about this . . .

1. What makes an 11-year-old think that he could force a 52-year-old bus driver to leave a bus full of children with a kid wielding a knife? Of all types of people, bus drivers are some of the toughest. I know my bus driver could still beat me up today, and she's gotta be 60 or so by now, if not older. Dealing with screaming children twice every school day (four times if you count elementary and high school) will make a person hardcore! Let's just assume they were able to get the bus driver off of the bus and continue on with the list of problems . . .
2. I don't know about buses these days, but when I graduated, they all still had manual transmission. I know 30-year-olds who can't drive stick, and I doubt those four 5th graders could, either.
3. One article noted that they couldn't even reach the accellerator and brake pedals and see out of the windshield at the same time. That could be a possible obstacle.
4. Punxsutawney: Northeast. Nevada: Southeast. Over 2200 miles. 34 hours. I guess that's why there were four of them, so they could drive in shifts and drive the 34 hours straight.
5. Buses aren't exactly the most gas-efficient vehicles on the road. I certainly don't think they can get over 2000 miles per tank. This would require a gas stop. Several of them, really. I'm assuming they would have stolen all of the kids' lunch money to pay for the gas. Let's assume none of the kids brought their lunch, but they all brought $2. That would be $80 or so. If the bus gets 20 miles per gallon, that would be about 110 gallons of gas. If they could buy gas at an average of $0.72/gallon, they could pull it off.
6. Police, roadblocks, etc. . . . it wouldn't be tough for police to track down a busload of children driven by a child, would it? Once found, it really wouldn't be difficult to keep close tabs on them, O.J. style.

Oh well . . . what are you going to do? Felons grow up so fast these days.

The FDA is on the case!

Is that a banana in your pocket, or are you just going to watch a movie?

One of my friends sent me an interesting piece of information regarding a UPS shipment he is waiting for. A fairly standard CD-RW/DVD combo drive from IBM was delayed in transit because of — get this — an FDA hold. (Take a look at the explanation text from UPS' website by clicking on the second picture.)

There are some weird things about that whole deal. First off, this CD-RW/DVD combo drive is a common drive that IBM puts in most of their laptops. Therefore, you'd think that your local warehouse might have it on stock, ready to ship. Instead, the information shows that the package was shipped from Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong. You'd think that Big Blue might be a little smarter about their shipments.

Click here for full text

One entry says "A special customs delay is required for this live entry." What is a "live entry," anyway? I didn't pay attention too closely in science class, but I can tell you without a doubt that a DVD drive is not live. Then again, I haven't ruled out the possibility that a "live entry" is just some sort of shipping lingo that I'm not familiar with.

I've been thinking about this for a day or so, and I have yet to figure out whether a CD-RW/DVD combo drive would be categorized as a food, a drug, or an administration. The answer eludes me.

Update: I was able to find a definition of "Live Entry" that proves that this is some sort of international shipping jargon. I found this on a glossary at ups.com:

Live Entry: Requires that the commercial invoice, original export license (if applicable), customs entry, and estimated duties must be submitted to U.S. Customs and Border Protection before the shipment can be released. There is normally a one day delay on live entry shipments. If additional information is needed, UPS will contact the consignee.

Badlands says: Where's the Beef?

Where's the beef? It's hiding in that gi-normous bun, that's where.

Apparently a 115-pound sandwich ate an 11-pound girl this week. No, wait, it was the other way around. An 11-pound sandwich ate a 115-pound girl this week. Wait . . . strike that. Reverse it. Grab the details on this story anywhere you want, but I most enjoyed this Foodmarket.com article.

Imagine working at a restaurant that has this 6-pound burger (11 pounds after all the fixin's) in order to bring tourists and other general business around. You've seen Badlands Booker come in three times to attempt to eat this monster in under three hours and fail miserably. You've seen dozens of tourists come in and take a shot at it, only to eat a quarter of the burger before giving up. And then, one morning you see a 115-pound girl named Kate Stelnick enter. Going for the monster burger, eh? Shrug your shoulders and deliver it up. Imagine the surprise, three hours later, when the plate is clean!

Competitive eater Badlands Booker attempted the feat three times, and only finished it once. This is what amazes me. When I heard that a lightweight ate a huge burger, I shrugged my shoulders. After all, many of the professional eaters are quite skinny. Badlands (who does not fit into either the "skinny" category or any compact cars) does this for a living and has won many eating contests, but he hasn't conquered this one yet, even after three attempts. This Kate girl is apparently an amateur. I think I can compare this with a random (non-all star) high school football team beating the Steelers. It's just mind-blowing.

In an era of "healthy" fast food (because when I head for McDonald's, I'm really thinking about a salad and bottled water) and in the wake of the "Super Size Me" documentary, we still take a moment to appreciate Kate's feat. See? We really haven't changed, and that's pretty darn comforting.

Update: katestelnick.com has linked to my blog!

This article has been re-posted at Idle Idols, the site for the funniest American Idol auditions.

The only episodes of American Idol that I watch (or half-watch, to be accurate) are the audition episodes. Psychodiva Mary Roche (aka Mary Guilbeaux and sometimes written "Mary Roche") was the final contestant shown on last night's show. Basically she acted a little strange (a bit Canadian, if you ask me) and did some standard awful singing, self-described as "pop rock meets broadway meets jazz and R&B". The judges then hand it over to Simon to explain to her that she is one of the worst they have ever heard. This prompted Mary to later say "The fact that they said that . . . that doesn't make me want to pursue any kind of singing career." I really don't think she understands that this really was their goal.
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Rhymes with "Tax Laud"

Remember: when you win a million dollars in front of 59 million people on the most popular reality show of all time, you might not try to keep that money a secret. If anyone is paying attention, it's the IRS.

The Smoking Gun released this document, in which the IRS claims that Richard Hatch not only failed to claim his Survivor million in 2000, but also did not report $321,000 in 2001. Whoops.

Any time someone wins a large sum from a game show, lottery, etc., I immediately figure out roughly what they have won after taxes. With a million dollars, can't you afford a decent accountant?

This all makes me curious about how often winners of large sums of money fail to report their large winnings on their taxes. I can't imagine how it wouldn't cross your mind during tax time. I remember biting my nails one year over $2 that I won on a free Bingo website. You'd hope that Jeopardy winners and the like would be intelligent enough to claim the winnings, but the lottery is the complete opposite. Not only do you need zero intelligence to win, I think that it's more likely that people playing the lottery regularly are more likely to lack that certain je ne sais quoi regarding financial intelligence. Lotto winners are the neanderthals of winners. I don't expect them to last a year with a million dollars, and many of them don't.

The odd thing is that reality show winners, for the most part, are neither of these two categories per se. Reality shows get a bad rap from the general public, and so do reality show contestants, for the most part. Most of these generalizations are formed by some of these half-baked reality shows that crop up. Still, even though Survivor has its fair share of losers, one has to be at least half-sane and half-brained in order to win. (Note: Of course, I could be wrong. I don't actually watch Survivor. *cough*) I did see enough of Richard Hatch to believe him to be someone with a properly functioning brain.

Crunch!"

I just wonder what the problem is. Lack of foresight? Awful accounting? Greed? The world may never know how many dollars it takes to get to the tax fraud center of a Survivor Pop.