So I'm heading off to a work meeting for two days. It's a meeting for the Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute, basically "We'll give you money if you find out another reason why smoking will kill you". What will my schedule look like? Not all that exciting. I'll probably find out a lot more than I ever wanted to know about what causes smoking diseases. (here's a hint: SMOKING causes smoking diseases) Ah well, at least it gets me out of the office for two days. I wish that my laptop at the meeting had an internet connection, cause then I could check out an eBook and read while I pretended to be interested in what all of these famous-in-their-field Ph.D.'s have to say. I know that after this meeting I will have all sorts of medical facts and figures to pull out of my butt in order to support any anti-smoking agenda. However, I get the sneaking suspicion that on friday night I'll head out to a bar to relax and have a pint then turn to the person next to me and say "I would kill for a smoke".

So I had the whole day off of work and what did I do with it? Played Harry Potter and fooled around on my computer of course! Here is what I have to show for it.

In my new obsession of learning all things HTML I have since discovered the enjoyment of blinking text!!! This is great! I'm sure you are all having a wonderful time reading it as well!! Well I guess if you are using Internet Explorer it's not a problem since those silly people over there at IE don't seem to understand the enjoyment and fullfillment that one can receive by making their webpage extremely annoying. Here is what HTML for the World Wide Web 4 has to say on the subject of blinking tags:

Blinking text is considered a bit gauche in the sophisticated world of Web design. You might want to be careful where and how much you use it.

Internet Explorer does not recognize the BLINK tag and probably never will. Could it be because the BLINK tag was one of the driving factors behind arch rival Netscaps's rise to fame?

I'm glad that giant computer companies are just as petty as the rest of us, but could someone please explain to me how blinking helped Netscape's rise to fame exactly?

Hey so I heard this on the radio this morning. I was so excited, hydrogen cars being sold to the public by 2010! This is great! There are currently only a handfull of hydrogen fuel pumps in the nation this one in D.C. is the first hydrogen pump at a commercial fuel station. The future is now. The answer to foreign fuel dependence is here! There is only one problem that this does not solve and that is pollution. Confused? read on my dear friend.

"The major unanswered questions about hydrogen are not whether you can run a car on it. They are, how do you make it? What is it going to cost? And what is going to be the public investment in infrastructure?" said David Hamilton, director of global warming and energy programs at the Sierra Club. The Shell station on Benning Road NE is "devoid of economic reality. [Hydrogen power] doesn't exist in the real world except as a hugely subsidized example of something that the companies want you to see."

Hydrogen is a common element, but it has to be extracted from other sources in ways that can be environmentally damaging. The most common method for producing hydrogen involves burning natural gas, but with natural gas already in increasing demand and short supply, it's not practical to expect it to be a major source for powering vehicles, Hamilton said.

That leads to the next most common way to produce hydrogen: a method that involves burning coal. But that produces vast amounts of carbon dioxide, a "greenhouse gas" that's thought to contribute to global climate change.

I read this and my soaring thoughts plummeted. Is this really true? Is hydrogen gas still so bad for the environment? I'd imagine that it's got to be a lot better for it than what we have now, but how much better? It seems to me that the car and gas companies have only found a way to change the packaging. I was immediately struck by the idea of people protesting cow slaughter while enjoying a lovely meal at McDonalds the next day. Is this just a way to make the average consumer feel better about themselves without actually making any meaningful changes? I sincerely hope not. I hope that the genious Gas and Car minds find a way to produce hydrogen with replenishable and non-polluting resources, or that they find a new fuel that can be produced as an answer to these problems. And please oh please do this before Hydrogen becomes so ingrained in our economy making it just as adverse to change as the Gas is today. There is one other uplifting thought in this whole hydrogen powered future, however, sometime in the next century car fuel prices may actually return to sub $1.00 levels!

Scott and I went to see Motorcycle Diaries yesterday. It was a brilliant story but I think that Scott and I both agreed that it probably made a better book than it did a movie (even though neither of us have read the book). The movie was full of heart wrenching pictures of the poor and down trodden of south america which served as a sort of look into the formation of the man that became the famous Che Guevara. Not knowing practically anything about Senor Guevara before the movie, and still not knowing anything about his later life, I'm a little confused as to how this Argentinian Med Student became a Cuban Revolutionary leader. The one thing that I was not confused about after seeing this movie, however, was that Gael Garcia Bernal is hott! Arati, who saw Alfie this weekend, and I are currently in a who is hotter fued at work. She is a die hard Jude Law fan while I tend to back Gael Garcia in the sheer sexiness category. Sadly, I do not have much ammunition in my fight since it seems that Gael does not photograph as well as Jude but alas I will fight to the bitter end.

Mother, mother ocean, i have heard you call
Wanted to sail upon your waters since i was three feet tall
You've seen it all, you've seen it all

Watched the men who rode you switch from sails to steam
And in your belly you hold the treasures few have ever seen
Most of 'em dream, most of 'em dream

Yes i am a pirate, two hundred years too late
The cannons don't thunder, there's nothin' to plunder
I'm an over-forty victim of fate
Arriving too late, arriving too late

I've done a bit of smugglin', i've run my share of grass
I made enough money to buy miami, but i pissed it away so fast
Never meant to last, never meant to last

And i have been drunk now for over two weeks
I passed out and i rallied and i sprung a few leaks
But i got stop wishin', got to go fishin'
Down to rock bottom again
Just a few friends, just a few friends

I go for younger women, lived with several awhile
Though i ran 'em away, they'd come back one day
Still could manage to smile
Just takes a while, just takes a while

Mother, mother ocean, after all the years i've found
My occupational hazard being my occupation's just not around
I feel like i've drowned, gonna head uptown
I feel like i've drowned, gonna head uptown

~jimmy buffett

Alright guys I'd like to take a vote on what I should do.

Here's the background:

I was on the plane from New York to Hong Kong by way of Vancouver and the entire ride I spent seated next to this little Taiwanese man. We chatted briefly as you will on longer flights but most of the time was spent either sleeping or watching our own personal televisions. He was wonderful, the perfect seatmate for the incredibly long flight. He didn't bother me, he politely asked when he needed to get out of the seat; I had the aisle seat. He wasn't a perfect english speaker so our conversations were a bit jumpy but not too bad. In fact we chatted just the perfect amount for a plane flight, not enough to really learn anything about the other person but enough so that you didn't have any fears that the person next to you was about to loose it and take over the plane with the little file on his nail clippers. Towards the end of the flight he was watching a special on Janet Jackson and asked me who she was because he didn't think that she was Whitney Houston. I explained that she was Michael Jackson's sister and this seemed to make him happy. I didn't even find out until the landing gear was almost down that this man was a Chinese language teacher (I don't remember which language) and that he had been to Canada and New York to visit an old school chum of his. I explained that I was heading to Bali and Hong Kong to vacation with old school friends as well. I was a little surprised when we were taxing at the Hong Kong airport and he pulls out this piece of paper with his name, phone number, and email address. He told me that if I ever got the chance to go to Taiwan that I should look him up and he would be happy to help me out or show me around or whatever. I didn't think anything of this at the time since this exchanging of contact information is rather common when travelling on your own, at least in Australia and Scotland. The only thing is that generally people don't follow up on it. It's like asking someone how they are, usually you don't want an accurate response, you just want the person to say "all right" and then you move on. Well this is what I thought was happening, so of course I ripped out my own piece of paper and quickly jotted down my name and email address. Now this man was not all that attractive he was older, about 40 I'd say, and I there didn't seem to be anything sketchy about him, he seemed a genuinely nice guy.

This is what I received in my email this morning:

Hi, Miss Julie:
Did you remember me last month when traveling from N.Y to Hong kong. I turned to Taipei, and you to Australia.
How about your this tour for sightseeing in Southern Hemisphere. I think it very interesting and fantastic! Would you
mind if I ask you to give me some landscape picture. Let me share with you.
I am not sure if you are free or willing to answer me. I will wait for your letter. You really impress me. I'll miss you.
Good luck!
Peter 2004.11.02 Taiwan

Ok so this man's grasp of the english language isn't perfect but, "You really impress me"? What is going on here?

So should I assume:

A) this man is innocuous and be the nice person and email him back with a couple of pictures or

B) this guy is a real skeeve and I should ignore the email completely?

If you believe that you are not a fully informed voter please ask questions.

"Vote or Die"

I heard this poem on NPR this morning and thought I'd share it with the rest of you. John Greenleaf Whittier may not be one of my favorite poets, if only because I know few of his poems. He did, however, write one of my favorite poems of all time, "Maud Muller". Anyway, here is his tribute to the American election day tradition. Keep in mind that he wrote this poem before the Civil war, JG Whittier was strongly against slavery.

"The Poor Voter on Election Day."
by John Greenleaf Whittier


To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people's hall,
The ballot-box my throne!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.
To-day let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide;
I set a plain man's common sense
Against the pedant's pride.
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!

Going to watch your friends run a marathon is not unlike being an astronomer and waiting for the next solar eclipse, or so I imagine. Not being an astronomer I can only draw my opinion from those 3 weeks I spent in Astronomy 101 at UVa because I was told it was a gut class. I have since realised that G.U.T. really stands for: Getting Ulcers from Teargas or possibly Galactically Unbearable Talkinghead. Anyway, after three weeks I saw the error of my ways and transfered into a class infinitely more uplifting like The Study of Extinctions: Past, Present and Future. I came away from the This-is-Not-a-Class-About-UFOs class with three kernals of wisdom:

1. That bright ring around the sun is named after a Mexican Beer
2. Astronomists are even more boring than Physicists and Philosophers combined.
3. Astronomers tend to do a lot of staring and waiting, which sheds some light on kernal number 2.

Which brings me back to going to the Marine Corp Marathon to watch your friends run 26.2 gruelling miles. I imagine that solar eclipse specialists spend most of their time calculating and recalculating the time and best viewing spot of their next sighting. They then spend what seems like years waiting for the planets to align for that one brief moment of joy and excitement before it's over and they face another arduous trip to the next viewing area, which is likely on the other side of the world, and more stagnant waiting. They see their fellow astronomers come and go getting their own brief hoorahs with meteor showers and comets, sometimes you even get to share a little in their excitement, but mostly you're too caught up with staring and waiting for your own eclipse. When that exclipse does come, you throw a party, there's drinks and munchies, lots of pictures and then it's over and you're off again. So goes the life of a marathon cheerleader.

On Sunday, Naomi and Catherine and some thousands of other asylum escapies ran 26.2 miles for seemingly no apparent reason besides the chance of completely guilt free gluttony that follows a marathon. I saw one guy who's shirt read "The reward is in the Journey" but he must have been talking about the band cause I saw a lot of punishment and no rewards around Mile 21 or so. Why you people do it, I may never fully understand but I'd still like to say congrats and that you have more determination, endurance, and will-power than I will ever see in my entire life! You guys continue to amaze me.