2009.06.20

In a peculiarly relieving way, the city of Austin reportedly approves a particular composting toilet.

That is a good story to upon which to end seasonally based news rants.

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ProPublica has a very curious article out that relates to the healthcare debate, but is specifically about insurance companies’ denials of medical care payments to civilians injured in war zones. Here’s a paragraph I find particularly illuminating:

A retired U.S. Army Reserve general who served in Iraq, Fay called the war-zone insurance program “a flawed statutory and regulatory scheme.” He noted that the law requires payments for injuries within 14 days — a timetable he said required carriers to issue denials to protect their legal rights.

I find the quote revealing because shows how some war-zone insurance companies presume guilt instead of innocence with regards to those humans submitting claims.

2009.05.28 (more…)

Some changes will be made to this weblog over the next few days or weeks. This means there will be times when this website will be completely non-operational, and other times when what appears will not even look like a webpage. These less-than-ideal changes will be temporary, as we upgrade some of the software.

We currently use ancient (in android time) weblog and anti-spam software. While it used to work superbly, changes our host has made, that I will not attempt to explain except to say we now have hanging MySQL queries, are causing problems for folks trying to comment.

So, be advised that our websites will be non-operational at times, but that these glitches will hopefully be temporary.

Update (of same day): The upgrades went a lot smoother on this weblog than I expected. Now I have to watch how it reacts in actual operation. This weblog is the test box.

Update (Saturday, March 21 2009): Made it through the night without any apparent issues requiring manual maintenance! This is a tentative, “Yay!” Even if the current solution is not as good as the old one (it may be better), our need to make the change seems somewhat forced by realities of our current host’s and the recently-increased existence of the hanging queries that manifested as several different interactivity problems.

Here are some aerial photos of the Greensburg tornado damage by Jaime Oppenheimer of The Wichita Eagle. This is major damage that, while different in cause, is reminiscent of Katrina and New Orleans.

In the middle of the devastation, it appears there is a grain silo, or perhaps some other type of building, that escaped relatively unharmed. A sequentially earlier photo, in the upper right quadrant, shows some less-damaged commercial (presumably) buildings, on what may be a main street, judging by the street’s apparent greater width, running diagonally towards the grain silo. It appears to me the two photos are taken from opposite sides of the silo.

In areas subject to tornadoes, perhaps all buildings should be constructed similarly to those that were less damaged. From the photos, it appears the worst damaged buildings were possibly people’s homes, judging from cars amidst the timber debris (that suggest former garages).

The cynic in me says that nothing will likely change, local building codes will probably continue to approve the same types of construction for rebuilt homes, possibly because, while tragic, rebuilding is good for certain business sectors.

It is quite curious that what seems to be business or commercial buildings seem less damaged. Perhaps those were buildings constructed in an earlier era.

I don’t watch much TV, but this evening I sat down to dinner and decided to see what was on MSNBC. Their top story? It was about a kid who had jumped into a net at some stadium. Wow. Big news, leading story, must be important. Right?

Why not cover the Cindy Sheehan peace protest in Crawford Texas, where President Bush is said to be vacationing while troops die in Iraq? Why not cover the 600 truckers in Florida who are protesting high fuel prices?

There are other much more important stories that happened today in the United States, but a kid jumping into a stadium and captured by a net is more important?

after watching this broadcast for a few minutes where they continued with talking heads analyzing the kid in the net, I switched the channel. Well, here’s my news for today, MSNBC, you just lost me as a satellite subscriber, if you can’t bring me the top stories of the day, you’re going to have to pay me to pipe your propaganda into my TV.

Is 2003UB313 the transneptunian Apollo? Or Admetos, Kronos, or Vulcanos? It’s orbital period most closely matches Apollo.

That guess is based upon the orbital period as defined by Astrolog’s calculation routines of about 577 years. In contrast Kronos is about 510 years, and Admetos about 614.

UB313 is reported to have an orbital period of 557 years.

However, if one goes by Brown’s quote, “… is currently almost directly overhead in the early-morning eastern sky, in the constellation Cetus,” then I’d have to modify my guess to Admetos, Hades, Kronos, or Vulcanos.

Admetos (614 years) Hades (360 years) Kronos (521 years) Vulcanos (663 years) http://finblake.home.mindspring.com/tnpdata.htm

We can probably eliminate Hades, since the orbital period is so far from the observations of 2005UB313, as too is the mean distance. The mean distances of Admetos, Kronos, or Vulcanos are the most likely candidates, if the new name is to correlate to any of Witte and Sieggrun’s transneptuninan hypotheticals.

Therefore, we’re left with Admetos, Kronos, or Vulcanos.

Isn’t there a lot of volcanic activity lately?

The ants have come out in force. Weather maps at COLA IGES suggest southern California will have some drying over the next week. Coincidence? Perhaps the ants sense that spring is on the way. (more…)

I websurfed across this chart while looking for some information on bottled water—the chart is courtesy of Palomar Mountain Spring Water. All the analyses of competitors’ water are also claimed as spring water sourced, except for Sparkletts which is classified as well water. Both are underground sources, aren’t they? What’s the difference?

According to the International Bottled Water Organization, the IBWO, well water and spring water are two FDA approved label designations for the source of the water that’s been bottled; in addition, the approved labeling list also includes: artesian water or artesian well water, purified water, mineral water, and sparkling bottled water. (more…)

To answer the question, “What’s a blog?”, first we could look up the quoted phrase “what is a blog” at Google, however, it is clear to me that those over-simplified definitions walk a fine line between conciseness and inaccuracy, as glossary entries often do.

If you didn’t get lost at that last hyperlink, and you’re still reading this, then I better move along with answering the question.

A weblog, or simply blog, is a type of database driven website. Its purpose is often similar to a paper journal and it lends itself to common use as a simple web-publishing system. However, blog usage isn’t limited solely to journalizing or journaling, its uses are likely as varied as the imaginations of bloggers are diverse. (more…)