unassimilated people

One link going around today is a story about a tribe of people, native to "the Amazon rainforest near the Brazil-Peru border" and presumably as-of-yet contacted by anyone, who were recently photographed from the air. Their body language communicates something akin to "WTF!? Sulu, lock on phasers!" Another writeup at Reuters has 7 other pictures, which give a good view of their dwellings.

Meanwhile, in the matrix, tens of millions of cubicle-dwellers are peering down upon them through magic glass.

Make your time, unassimiliated people. All your rainforest are belong to us.

Edit: Check out this page at BBC News, which labels and discusses some things seen in the photos.

trippy web experience of the day

My morning started by clicking on a CNN video entitled "Bible Promotes Polygamy, Preacher Says". The segment mostly amounts to Nancy Grace wagging her finger about the sexual practices of some preacher-dude. She implies that his dipstick is checking the oil on more engines than god allows, spawning children at a rate of one every 4 months or something. He tries to downplay how much he's getting, but cannot go into detail because of a lawyer at his side and pending-charges-of-Damocles dangling above him.

Just as pangs of shame (over having taken a bite of CNN's prurient bait) started to make my mouse pointer migrate up towards my browser's back-button, said preacher-dude dropped the phrases "nuclear baby" and "about to be turned loose". Immediately, my reflex to type bizarre things into various search engines kicked in.

The first hit at google (searching for "nuclear baby") revealed that the preacher dude is Yisrayl Hawkins. His website clearly communicates "wacky religious fruitcake", including an attention-grabbing graphic, in the sidebar on the right, of a demonic baby — like Chucky, but wielding a missile instead of a knife. I couldn't resist clicking on ol' nuclear Chucky, and was soon glancing through chapter 4 — which seems to be concerned about Israel, Iran, and bunker-busting bombs with low-yield nuclear warheads (presumably the same ones talked about here, only buried in layer upon layer of scripture-babble).

I quickly had enough of that, but decided to search YouTube to see what "nuclear baby" brought up. The result was a freaky video that feels like Alice is trying to send a steganographic message to Bob that looks, superficially, like an amateur post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie.

Which made me wonder, if something were going on, would we even be told? Or would it just play in the press like a raid on a polygamist cult?

1992

The space shuttle Endeavour flew her maiden voyage. Dan Quayle gave his famous Murphy Brown speech. Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaimed independence from Yugoslavia. Nirvana replaced Michael Jackson at the top of the Billboard charts.

Johnny Carson retired, Jay Leno took over, and I bought a bike.

I lived in the near-south neighborhood, and walked every day past a bicycle shop on my way to work. (Was it on 13th street? What shop would that have been?) I was fully-employed for the first time in my life and was (relatively speaking) feeling flush with cash. I made an impulse purchase: an off-the-rack Giant Prodigy: TIG-welded chromoly steel frame, 700C wheels, Shimano 400CX components,...zzz...*snore*... Sorry. I get narcoleptic fits talking about bike specs.

While others around me have gone through bikes like Imelda Marcos through shoes, this is still my only ride today, sixteen years later — albeit slightly morphed into a towny/commuter bike.

My commute to work has shortened from 6 miles to 3 blocks, though, and so my time on two wheels is almost entirely recreational. On Sunday I took the salt creek levee trail south to wilderness park and, without hesitation, rode the whole loop on this old beast. It was my first time ever on those trails, and this bike was not at all suited to those conditions.

But it was a shit-ton of fun to have to constantly remind myself to keep my eyes on where I want the wheel to be — and now I have 29er-fever.

Should I, or shouldn't I?

the amazing intelligence of crows

I, for one, welcome our new Joshua-Klein-trained underlings.

Lincoln Marathon 2008

One great aspect of downtown apartment living is the extremely low threshold for civic participation. This morning I woke up to people making sounds of encouragement. This is a picture of what I could see from my living room window.

So I took a shower, made myself an iced soy mocha, grabbed my camera, and went down to get a closer view. Does anybody recognize any of the runners? There are one or two people for whom one of these pictures might make a nice keepsake.

Despite a ban on iPods this year, there was a constant stream of people sporting earbuds.    Fortunately,  as the article states, "those who are photographed wearing earbuds won't be disqualified."

I was surprised that a couple of runners (Lana McCracken and Melissa Landis) spotted me on the sidelines and said hi. Unfortunately, neither my camera nor my will to make encouraging noise were at-the-ready. Congratulations, you two, on getting out there and doing it! Did you finish?