As on Earth, they Key for Real Estate is Location, Location, Location

For fantasy/science fiction writers (or just those curious about the solar system): A toy to play with. NASA/JPL is calling this site "Eyes," and will show you perspectives from just about every object in the solar system relative to everything else.

Two views here, one of the Saturn system from Iapetus, the other from Mimas. Clearly, for more dramatic Saturn views, the location to be is Mimas.

Here's the view from Iapetus. Now for the pedantic (and there are plenty of those in science fiction and fantasy) the views won't be perfect, but I think this puts any writer close enough for government work.

Amd from Mimas.

The webiste lets you scroll around all over, so you can see relative distances to other objects in the soler system. Ought to be a pretty helpful tool.

WE OUGHT TO DOOOOO SOMETHING!

I’ve thought a lot about this story, and the more I think about it, the more I’m just not sure what the point of it is.

And I know it’s an op-ed, which should make finding the point even easier. Nevertheless.

Here’s the gist: Two tragedies occur at sea on the same day. One involves a lot of hubris, rich folks, even more hubris, and the ultimate death of five people. The other involves a lesser amount of hubris, poor folks, long-time crisis inertia, and the possible death of up to 700 people.

I think the point of the article is that while the first tragedy – the loss of an experimental submersible taking five rich people, including the CEO of the “exploration” company to view the remains of the Titanic, resulted in massive media coverage and an expensive search and rescue effort, while the other tragedy attracted little media attention and the result of ongoing minimal efforts to mitigate a slow-motion crisis that’s been underway for years.

That these events occurred on the same day is coincidental. That one event received more media coverage than the other is a product of news media. But the more I look at the tragedy in the Mediterranean that claimed the lives of 700 migrants, the more I think the tragedy lies not in the effort put into the sub rescue or the media coverage it gained, but in the “What, me worry?” attitude that seems to prevail in Europe – where that particular tragedy is one of many that have happened in a slow-motion crisis that’s been occurring over years with a lot of finger-pointing among governments, NGOs, and others without a lot of positive result coming from the effort.

In other words: There’s been a lot of hoo-hah about the level of effort that went into the search for the submersible and the ensuing media circus it became, with a lot of people screaming “If they can spend that much time and money and resources trying to help five people, why aren’t they doing the same for the 700?”

That’s a good question. Why aren’t Europe and the finger-pointing NGOs doing more, causing more hoo-hah, over that slow-motion crisis in their own backyard? There’s a lot of people screaming WE OUGHT TO DO SOMETHING without really doing much of anything coordinated at all. If the United States and Canada can pool resources to look for a submersible, you’d think the 20-odd nations in Europe would be able to come up with something more than boats watching boats until it all becomes too late to do anything about it?

Europe likes to point fingers at how poorly the United States is handling its own immigration crisis. And we are handling it poorly. But it doesn’t appear Europe is doing all that much better, and if they think media coverage of it all is going to make things better, maybe they ought to be talking to the European media about better coordinated efforts, with European governments and NGOs about better cooperation and efforts to save lives and sort out who gets to handle the crisis when it’s still a crisis and before it turns into a tragedy. It would have been a better day for everyone – certainly those migrants – had the submersible story overwhelmed another story of a coordinated effort among nations and organizations that rescued 700 migrants, rather than twiddling thumbs and pointing fingers until those 700 were dead.

And I’m sure there’s a lot of that going on that we just don’t hear about. Maybe effort is better extended in actually helping, rather than complaining about who’s getting the better tragedy public relations on a given day.

That may be happening, as the story points out the EU is "close" to an agreement on handling these refugees. An agreement years in the making. The question we should be asking is "Why is it taking so long?"

On the Injured and Stupid List

From the "I'd Give My Right Arm to Be Ambidextrous" department:

A week or so ago, I injured something in my right elbow. It's probably a repetetive stress injury from typing way too much on the computer and using my right hand heavily to hand-cut vinyl siding.

I talked to my doctor about it, and she gave me a brace to wear on my elbow. I've been faithful in wearing it, and I've been careful with my activities to try to give that arm a rest.

Today, I felt in fine fettle, so I decided to work on the siding some more (as evidenced below) as I took a break from working a little overtime for the full-time job.

My elbow, which had no complaints this morning, is now screaming at me and calling me a lot of names. And I didn't finish the siding spot I hoped to finish today because the last bits will require a lot of cutting.

Just tell me the siding looks good.

Also, don't let that ladder fool you. I got onto the roof like a man: Climbing out of a bedroom window onto the porch roof.

This Music Played, my Shows Were Over

I tend to open up YouTube as I'm falling asleep and drift off to random music. Last night, however, I was awoken when this tune played.

As I lay there in the darkness listening, I knew I'd heard the song a thousand times before. I couldn't peg it, though. So I played it several times, round about 2 am, and finally drifted off to sleep again, hoping maybe I'd remember where the song came from in my dreams.

Something significant, I was sure.

But nothing.

So tonight it came up in the rotation again. I googled it, and discovered this: Among its many uses, it was used as the theme for the soap opera "The Young and the Restless."

Then it hit me: The melancholy the tune brought me last night stemmed from knowing that the game shows I watched when I was home sick from school ended when "The Young and the Restless" came on.

A Rough Quarter, Tooth-Wise

Round about the end of April, I was sitting in the bishop's office with the priests' quorum. Nearby, a tiny box of Milk Duds, in the free-for-all candy bowl.

So I yoink the box and start chewing.

First two duds, fine.

Third dud, uh-oh.

There's suddenly a bare spot in my mouth where a decade-old crown had been. And, along with that last dud, it's no longer in my mouth.

Many moons ago, my Dad also swallowed a crown. So he kept an eye on his output, and took the likely sausage out to the garden in the back yard, in Mom's kitchen strainer, to fish it out. That proved difficult as:

1. He'd eaten a lot of corn.

2. The next-door-neighbor spotted him sifting his output.

I was not going to do that. But I had to have the tooth fixed, because a few weeks before that something broke on the other side of my mouth and it was making chewing more of a challenge.

So I got a new tooth. Pretty cool I did not have to wait two weeks for the new crown; they crafted it in-office, thus:

I then went in for a regular checkup a few months later. Remember that part that broke off on the other side? Well, it now warranted a root canal and crown of its own, so I have yet another new tooth:

While I'm grateful I didn't have to wait for this new tooth as well, I could wish that all of this hadn't happened in the same quarter.

So it's been a rough year, tooth-wise. My next appointment isn't until 2024, so here's to hoping nothing untoward happens tooth-wise.

My Zipper is Missing

I spent an hour rolling around on the roof removing old siding and getting the area prepped for new siding.

I rolled around so much my pants rotated about 45 degrees so when I went to use the bathroom my zipper was missing.

Those Darn Amigos . . .

MIND. BLOWN.

We're watching The Three Amigos tonight.

There's an establishing shot of the Goldsmith Pictures studio, right before the Amigos catch Harry Flugelman on a bad day. The shot contains a billboard of The Three Amigos, but as the shot expands another billboard comes into view. Tonight I noticed it is for Those Darn Amigos, a box office failure.

If you look closely, the film also stars Miss Rene, who has a billboard of her own, and who is probably the blond we see in the Amigos film Carmen and Rodrigo see at the church.  I'm just saying this film has layers, man.

I also know the movie would have been quite different had Carmen and Rodrigo seen "Those Darn Amigos" at the church instead.

Hey Scammers, Do Better

I used to sincerely worry that if I kept pointing out that a tell-tale sign of a scam is poor sentence structure and grammar on the website that the scammers would get smarter, brush up their English, and thus slip, undetected, into the continued maelstrom that is social media scam-baiting.

But I guess I needn't worry; even with "About Us" pages this bad, the scammers keep finding enough willing dupes to make their efforts worthwhile, and probably profitable.

Behold:

In case your eyes are like mine and can't make out the small print, I'll transcribe:

Welcome to our online shopping store!

We're devoted to giving you the leading and a assortment of the items with most elevated quality of items, that are ensured to meet your needs and keep you fulfilled! We have committed staffs and key accomplices who help us investigate and make the items that bring the foremost esteem to our clients. We continuously keep an eye on the most recent patterns for such kind of our items and ceaselessly improve our items and out our customer's wishes first.

Our mission is to bring clients the leading involvement when utilizing our items in both item quality and benefit quality. The interface of our clients are continuously the best priority for us, so we trust you may appreciate our items as much as we appreciate making them accessible to you.

Follow us for the latest products, news, and updates.

Store owner.

I'll go over this a few times to make sure I don't introduce any errors; they've got enough on their own. Oh, the spelling is on point. But this sounds like what 99% of scammy websites sound like: Something that's been poured into a translator and spat back out, a la Jimmy James:

Of course, no one is going to see this, because they're all too focused on the up-from-obscurity and by-his-bootstraps story of the inevitable genius college youngster who saw a need and filled it but is being pushed around by Big whatever -- in this case, Big Bug Zapper -- and is struggling to bring his product to market. Nevermind that the same product can be found advertized by a dozen different names, some of which end up linked to nifty little web pages like this:

Every site you find live mentions there are only X number in stock, with X,XXX number of people hovering on the page which has one of those handly little clocks counting down in MINUTES from when the deal will end, only for the clock to either reset or start counting in negative numbers. The number of items available never changes, but the number of people watching soars toward the end, likely to present the idea of scarcity.

And the comments are no better; filled with bots and accounts of people that've been taken over as if they were San Franciscans and Donald Sutherland had spotted them.

It's fun because sometimes the bots talk to each other in their cute little babble-speak and you get a nice warm, atificicial feeling, the same you get when two bits of electrical equipment are interfering with each other.

But they must sell enough product to make the pages worthwhile, and the customers get what they paid for: A shiny bomb casing filled with used pinball machine parts.

In Video Blogging, Cats Should Be Optional

Helpful tip for video bloggers or whatever it is you call yourself:

I occasionally watch a guy who delivers his sometimes informative screeds while seated in a rather large overstuffed recliner with a big boom mic hanging near his face and a keyboard in his lap. I know I'm a champion of casualness, going as far as suggesting had I drawn Superman, I would have drawn him flying as if he were sitting in a chair, not in the manner preferred: Arms straight out, legs held high with massive core strength. But delivering a video from such a position makes you look unprofessional.

Also, if you have a cat, I know there are people out there who love to see cats but if the cat comes in and you have to interrupt your flow because the cat is on the "wrong side of the chair," and it won't move as if cats are in any way trainable, maybe keep the cat out and the door closed.

Also, if you're reading a script and have to shift between the script on one screen and your camera in another part of your setup, maybe move the script and camera closer together.

And when you go off script, keep the number of naughty words to a minimum.

We Tackle the *Big* Issues

We tackle the big issues on Facebook, we do.

I'm having Gen X difficulties in capturing the entire thread. Go here to see it in all its inane glory.

[Acropolis, Back View]

I was pleased as punch to find a DVD of Gene Deitch's Tom and Jerry episodes in the DVD bin at Walmart a few weeks ago. Go here for a mostly running commentary.

I was a big Tom and Jerry fan when I was younger, mainly because they had a half-hour show on TV after I got out of school. I didn't know who Deitch was at the time, but his episodes stood out (and not in the bad 1970s episodes way with that stupid, stupid recycled music in EVERY episode). (Yes, I am a cartoon snob.)

What stood out where Deitch's calling cards: Very little dialogue, odd noises, weird situations. I didn't know the word surrealist at the time, and it's a word apparently he didn't like applied to his work, but I think it fits.

I remembered most of the episodes, there were only a few I didn't recognize.

He lived in Czechoslovakia at the time, spied on by the Russians, but given money by Warner Brothers to make cartoons. They picked up a lot of Eastern European animation sensibilities, which made them stand out.

They're still a joy to watch, more than 50 years later.

June . . .

 

Hippies got June right.

Here we are. Scrambling to get things ready to send people off to camp, after a week of Michelle being gone to California with Cheryl Seedleman at national camp school.

We live and breathe Scouting, and it's wearing on me. I get all the fix up/clean up/patch up end of it, while everyone else gets the fun of it.

I don't want this to be a pity party, because that does nothing constructive. All I know is if the camper lights were working, I'd be feeling a lot better about the situation.