soapbox

I always forget which is which between apogee and perigee, so I had to look it up the other day.

In the dictionary that Apple uses, it says that apogee is “the point in orbit where an object is furthest from the Earth.” It then gives a figurative definition that apogee is also “the highest point or climax of something” and uses the example “the White House is considered the apogee of American achievement.

Of course, that made me mix the two in my head and think that the White House is the point in human achievement is the point where you’re furthest from the Earth. Given the short sighted policies in a lot of our politics, you have to wonder if that isn’t actually the case.

From what little I know of the situation, Venkatesan is not as out-there as she seems in the article. That said, it’s a pretty weird situation no matter how you spin it… and there is no way that the College will find against its students, that’s for sure. Faculty members just don’t rank that high on the priority ladder.

A london man was fined 225 quid and (more importantly) given a criminal record for having a rubbish bin (big wheeled trash can) full enough that the lid wouldn’t quite shut.  Keeping in mind that things are only collected every two weeks, and… meh, can’t be bothered to make a good post.  Read the whole nonsense yourself.

Last week Whitehaven magistrates convicted him in his absence of “over-filling the receptacle used to dispose of waste” - a criminal offence.

Yeesh.

I find it really interesting when infighting in a religious group causes huge issues. Like the protestants versus the Catholics in Ireland. Really, the major tenets of your religion are the same, it’s just minor details.

Now, there’s a fight brewing between al-Qaida and Iran. Apparently, al-Qaida is mostly Sunni while Iran is Shiite. The Iranians, being the crazies that they are, have lately been trying to shift blame for 9/11 onto the Israelis. Of course, the whole thing must have been pulled off by Israel to make Arabs look bad. Plus, it really plays into the way Iran wants to view the world and how it wants to be THE powerbroker in the mideast.

Needless to say, al-Qaida is pretty proud of 9/11 so they’re having to wage a PR war of “Hey, we’re the ones who did 9/11! Don’t listen to Iran!” It’s really an odd situation.

I wonder what’s next… a terrorist attack on Iran? Hmm, they might blame that on the Americans.

The cherry trees are in bloom in Washington DC right now. Kirsten and I have never seen the spectacle that is 3000 Japanese cherries in bloom, so this Saturday we drove down to check it all out.

Here’s the takeaway: if you read in the news that 1,000,000 million people are going to be somewhere to do a thing, you don’t want to be doing that thing as well. There wasn’t enough room to turn around, much less get a good picture of the blossoms. Throw in the normal DC problems of lousy parking and confusing streets and you have a recipe for disaster.

It would have been really cool if there were no people though. The trees were very impressive, although they’re also looking pretty old. I’m not sure what the life span of a flowering cherry tree is, but some of the trees are starting to look pretty old and a little bit diseased.

I found the news that Ford sold Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata interesting. An Indian company is buying the two main car companies of England. I’ll be Gandhi didn’t see that one coming.

We’ll ignore the fact that buying the two companies in the first place has turned out to be a $3.5 billion mistake. I wonder if they’re going to sell off Volvo too. Maybe Volvo is making them money though?

Not to sound like some grumpy old man, but RFID just scares me.   It just seems so vulnerable to hacking while simultaneously too convenient for Big Brother-style monitoring; not a combo I like.  (Then again, I guess it’s better for it to be easily hackable in that case, beats the alternative.)  And plus, you can get the animal rates for pay-access public beaches!

[RFID implant]

Anyway, it’s probably silly, but there’s no way I’m getting a speedpass anytime soon.