Tales Of Brave Ulysses

Harper’s has another article up about America’s weird fascination with Christianity, The Christian Paradox. It discusses how people across the country describe themselves as Christian, but are unfamiliar with all Ten Commandments, or who wrote the four Gospels. Most Christian Americans believe the Bible teaches that the Lord helps those who help themselves, an aphorism actually scribbled down by Ben Franklin. I guess all that stuff about helping the poor, feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and the imprisoned was a lot baloney.

Also available is this biting cartoon which summarizes the situation perfectly.

This San Francisco cabbie’s photo website is pretty interesting.

In lieu of Chris’ purchase of a Toyota Prius this week, here is After Oil: Alternative energy slow to take hold, from MSNBC.

And yeah, the Prius is pretty cool.

Interesting article in the New York Times today about the high enlistment rates in the insular territories of the Pacific. Guam, Saipan, and American Samoa lead the nation in per capita enlistment to the armed forces. It’s a very interesting article.

This one is for my sister. Cops caught a homeless robber hiding out in Hagatna library. He’d been sleeping there for some time, hiding out on the fourth floor storage area, stealing food and money from the employee lounge and vending machines.

Some pictures from my friend Dave in Tokyo.

So my phone is completely out now. GTA is hopefully coming next week to dig up the yard, break up the driveway, and install a new line from the pedestal to the house. Joy. So it will be nothing but cell phone service for a few days if anybody wants to reach me. The number is (671) 678-7469 folks.

Thankfully I still have internet, thanks to the miracle of Dianne’s cable modem and bridging my Airport Express with her Airport Extreme Base Station. It was so damn easy. Thanks again Apple.

I promised to report the results of this week’s DNA test of suspected Bigfoot hairs found up in the Yukon Territory. It’s, it’s PEOPLE! Soylent green is people! Oh wait sorry, having a Heston moment there. The hairs belonged to a bison, not some sasquatch or a particularly hirsute hominid. Sorry folks.

Wow! For the first time ever, I got my quarterly announcement from Amazon about my referral associate account (the link to all the books I mention here) and there was actually some money in it! Not enough to mention, but somebody out there bought a book from me. Holy smokes, I never thought that would happen.

ESA - Mars Express – Water ice in crater at Martian north pole

New Scientist Breaking News – New solar system world has a moon. Cool. Mike Brown’s page at Cal Tech has the story.

Well the cat’s finally out of the bag… Read this story about how PacifiCare 2Q Profit Jumps 22 Percent. The second and third paragraphs are the important ones.

...the company also said it is selling its Guam operations and reduced its membership growth forecast to reflect the loss of 27,000 members in those commercial health plans.

Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Phanstiel said in a conference call that the Guam business, while profitable, was “volatile” and did not post sufficient returns to retain the unit. PacifiCare said it now expects commercial membership to increase by 1.5 percent to 2.5 percent over 2004, down from its earlier prediction for 5 percent to 6 percent growth.

KUAM has the story, pretty much straight from the press release that was put out today.

I guess he didn’t do this either. O.J. Simpson told to pay DirecTV $25,000 in damages.

Here’s two great tastes that go great together: The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick, a comic magazine written by R. Crumb and Weirdo Magazine.

I got an email this morning with a bunch of photos of Julian Beever’s pavement drawings. He is a ‘pavement artist’ from the U.K. who does these fantastic forced perspective chalk drawings on sidewalks.

Check out the website – this photo is just a taste of what he can do. It’s pretty amazing.

I think I’ve mentioned how cool these personal supercomputers are from Orion Multisystems. Well they are having a contest to win one for a two week project in life sciences. So all the gene splicers, protein folders and medical imaging types take note. This is coming up quick too, August 2005.

I’ve been going through turmoil and bureaucracy trying to get my phone fixed. I can call out, and my DSL line is okay, but nobody can call in. GTA’s sent out repairmen a couple times and I finally got a straight answer this morning. The problem isn’t the wiring in my house, it’s not the box outside the house, and it’s not the pedestal out on the road. The line from the pedestal to the house is bad – the line underground. The guy this morning couldn’t even begin to give me a timeline; he said he needs to report this problem higher up the foodchain. So if anybody wants to reach me for the foreseeable future, use my cellphone. Heck you can even text me with this new camera phone. Here’s my mobile number: (671) 678-7469. I have no idea when my landline will be working again.

I don’t want to seem like I’m bitching about GTA, their service since privatization last year has improved 200% or more. I remember when I first moved down to Yoña, it took the old government run GTA four months to install my phone line. And forget about getting any service, it was a pointless effort unless you had ‘connections.’ Now they get somebody out to the house in a day or two. That’s much better.

Happy Birthday Jimbo – I’ll toast to your good health today!

Scientists test ‘Bigfoot’ hairs – wouldn’t it be amazing if these DNA tests actually came back with something unexpected? I’ll keep an eye out for the test results, which are expected later this week.

Programming for the Mac: Introducing AppleScript