We are going to lose our ass and we deserve it

The Seven Gummie Sins: Greed
Originally uploaded by Wiedmaier

I was going to make a note about the american dollar and some of the recent bad signs. But I just got caught in the tractor beam that is the E! channel, and I have something to add to that.

So I just basically watched an hour of television about spoiled rich people. The Kiamora show and the show about the Kardasian girls. (yes i'm misspelling that but a. I don't want to search for how to spell it and b. I like Star Trek references) The shit that these people care about. Kiamora takes 20 pieces of luggage on her trip to Cannes, says that she will probably change 4 times a day. She tells us that she loves yacht. They are one of her "Passions."

Honey, if you can have yachts because your husband is a huge record producer and you happen to have the ability to realistically enjoy spending time on them and getting a different one, that is not a passion. That is just thinking "Holy shit I'm on a yacht! And its mine!" That is what anyone that could afford to have a yacht would think. Its a fucking yacht.

Through the rest of the show she is generaly bossy and has a i know that the hell Im doing attitude while running the new fashion business she is starting.

Next the Kardasians are even worse. They are not ultra rich like Kiamora Simmons but just as snotty and disconnected from the reality that 95% of the world lives in, and the Kardasians are loving it! They get a call from the Girls Gone Wild guy (from jail) asking them to do a swimsuit photoshoot. They take his plane to his house in Puerta Viarta where they are served hand and foot. Meanwhile back at home the little girls that are back home (about 11?) do their GGW impression on the stripper pole that is of course installed in their family home while the brothers manager holds a camera (all in jest) talking about how he will manage them (in jest again). Oh my how hilarious that these girls are playing girls gone wild. Just girls playing harmless games. I'll play along with my stupid guy jokes since I dont see anything wrong with GGW. Im am so funny. I is harmless right!? Right?

On a related note, the dollar is going to drop, soon, and we deserve it.

In the last couple months there have been some signs about the dollar, the Chinese hinted that if they really wanted to they could dump some of their dollar reserves and hints that Saudi Arabia might get out of the dollar currency for their accts and might go to euros (Venezuela and Iran have already done this). Last week the dollar hit an all time low against the Euro and more and more people are saying get out of the dollar.

Dollar, please drop and take these useless fucking people off of the screen.

Postscript: When viewing the IMF chief story, there was an add for a 60 Minutes special "Mansions Gone Wild." Kill me now.

Many customers are buying one for each side of the bed

You heard the man, get up now, and call the number on your screen!

An interesting use of Geotags

Firenze
Originally uploaded by fgirardin

Here's an interesting use of Flickr data. Thanks to ASC for pointing it out.

"We retrieved from Flickr, large amounts of photo taken by thousands of users in the world’s most photographed cities. Based on the time, explicit location and people’s description of their photos, we design geovisualizations. They reveal patterns of tourists and citizens consuming a city, such as the flow of people between city attractions (see figures below), the monuments areas of influence or what is happening with day/night and working/weekend periodicity."

http://www.girardin.org/fabien/tracing/

That is not what I saw tonight.

[No image available]

Tonight I looked up at the night sky from a place with almost no ambient ground light. I cannot show you what it looked like.
My camera will not capture the milky way, much less the stars.
No camera will show you how deep and dark the sky is.
No moving camera will show you the twinkle of the stars, especially on a chilly night like tonight where everything seems a little more crisp.
Neither the black image my camera captured or anything I can write will let you see what I have seen tonight, miles from any planetary light.
I can only hope that you have looked up at the sky, miles from any light placed there to make you safe or show you your way so you have a memory of what I saw tonight.

Tomorrow I will drive out of the desert to go to my job the day after. I am excited. But I will miss the desert and the night. You can always be yourself here because there is no stimuli and nothing there except what you bring and what you have left behind.