Posts from — May 2008

It was a blast to watch the live NASA broadcast of Phoenix landing on Mars from sleepy Salem, Massachusetts! Since my buddy, Don, who lives in Beverly doesn’t have cable t.v. or internet, I called him up on my cellphone and turned up the volume so he could listen along to the first powered landing on Mars since Viking, 32 years ago. As we were all listening to the transmissions from Mission Control at JPL in California, the whole communications scenario appeared in my mind. What a far out world we live in! As a space vehicle hurtles into the atmosphere of Mars, heat shields flaring up to plasma, it is sending a live signal to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at 32 KB / second. This signal is then piped back to JPL on earth, taking 15 minutes to traverse the 173,000,000 miles of space that currently separates the two planets. At JPL, the communications of the Mission Control crew, along with video of them sitting in their closed booth, is sent out as a live t.v. broadcast, which is, in turn, converted into a live video stream over the internet. So, here in Salem, Mass, I logged on and while watching this all happen live, decide to ring up Don, across the way in Beverly. Therefore, Don, with nothing more than his cellphone, can listen to the live landing sequence on Mars, as he potters around his back deck lighting up some charcoal on the grill.  Is this amazing, or what?   Now back the hum-drum surface ops on twitter.

Here is an amusing offshoot of the LOLcats - photoshopping phenomenon, which takes up the subliminal algebra of brands. The emphasis is on visual semantics of famous brand logos, but there seems to be plenty of room for subvertising. What strikes me as interesting is that the subversive elements of the composition could be completely unintentional!

After speaking to a sea of 75,000 people in Portland, Oregon, it seems as if the wind is lifting Obama’s wings. But it’s a long road to November, and he may turn out to be the same old cog in the machine, forcing us to back the Bigfoot-Nessie ticket.

In any case, we hope that the monster-swine who are currently looting the U.S. Treasury for their phony global black-ops don’t get all autistic and 9-11 repeat on us. Of course they will try.

Thus we turn to this image floating around the web, which reminds us that the hell-bats are ALWAYS going to fly at dusk, the lizard-goons will ALWAYS gather in Las Vegas… So we have to get a firm grip on the vial of psilocibin, steer a course out onto the open road towards freedom, and see how fast this baby can move!

Mahalo!

Made a sudden trip to Taidong to see Sophia’s family, and joined the throngs of scooters and sputtering blue mini-trucks that fill the streets. We also had a chance to visit the Taidong Harbor for a seafood feast last night. Quite a colorful slab of fish on the ice.

We visited the central market in Taidong as the jet fighters roared over the rooftops. Then today we drove out to the mountains nearby for a magnificent wild vegetable buffet (at Chulu Ranch). Tables lined with bushels of greens, you take whichever leaves you fancy and toss them in your own personal hotpot. From sweet to bitter to sticky, the wild vegetables all have their own flavours. After filling up on a huge feast of greens, we then wandered around the gardens in the cool mountain air. In floating ponds full of goldfish, were a bunch of exotic trees, vines and flowers, including Butterfly Orchids, which I’m told originate from the nearby Orchid Island.

As we wandered around the gardens we encountered ostriches–yes, ostriches!–and some sort of incredible black and white beetle. You know you are on a tropical island when you see one of these guys lazily strolling down a branch.