Two [future] hurricanes are now being tracked bound for the south eastern US.  Gustav's Cone of Death shows it likely bound for the Mid-Gulf coast on Tuesday.  Hannah's Cone shows it just off the coast of Florida Tuesday.  Given the enormous size of hurricanes and their surrounding storms and such, Florida may be looking at some freaking weird and crazy weather.  Think of two Cat 2/3 hurricanes close enough to interact at least on the fringe.

Floridians should be praying that the eyes of these storms wind up  on the far edges of these probability cones.  If they wind up on the inside, we could be seeing some really unique weather.  Of course I don't know much about mereorology so it could wind up being just rainy, but it looks like it could be interesting at least.

Track and observe them here:

National Hurricane Center

or here:

http://www.weather.com/

or

http://hurricane.terrapin.com/

 

A night of inspired debaucheries with two genius', laughing their asses silly....Now we need a similarly enthusiastic comic book artist, to work on storyboards for the epic that unfolds, on a planet that Superman would leave for MYTZLPLK's dimension, rather than get involved.....


Top Ten Motherfuckers You Would Raise From The Dead & Give Superhuman Powers to

11. Walt Disney- while within range, of any living , non-human , he has the power to turn the unfortunate creature, into a random interpretation of the psyche of any number of humans, who happen to get in his way-

10. Ed Wood Jr.-Power to cause any man, to heartily embrace his feminine side

9.. Princess Di-
(The power to appear to any man that she was the most beautiful woman they had ever seen, while at the same time making his dick shrivel



8.Mr .Rodgers-Ability to make anyone in his vicinity, comfortable with who they are, and the ability to see their own self worth, (but only once a day for thirty minutes).


7.Emperor Norton-while within range, the average person will find themselves immersed in an alternate reality, that is Emperor Norton’s paradigm.

6. Elvis Aaron Presley
Has the ability, to turn peanut butter and banana sandwiches, ..into bricks.

5.Nikola Tesla- Has the ability to generate unlimited power, with enough titties in his face, by spinning Thomas Edison in his grave, at rotational vectors approaching the speed of light…



4.Adolf Hitler and the power to restore foreskins….but only on his knees wearing a bunny suit

3.Doc Holiday-Never runs out of ammo, nor is there loss of edge on his blade, and exudes an unlimited supply of coke and N2O, from any pore on his body...

2. Mark Twain-Sam Clemens-Ability to keep Doc holiday occupied, and otherwise distracted….

*.1. R.Buckminster Fuller-Will Realize his power when he comes up with a way to use Tesla’s corpse-generator, to get him the fuck off the planet for which he once saw unlimited human potential…..

* See Plan B

Tropical Storm Gustav (downgraded as I type) is not even in the Gulf of Mexico nor is it over Cuba, yet the local forecasters are already panicking our local populace with reminders about supplies they should purchase and things they should do in preparation. Here’s a bit of humor concerning the National Hurricane Center’s forecast cone.

The Weather Channel shows the cone and where the storm may hit along the Gulf Coast. Right now it extends from Texas to Florida.

Here are seven computer model projections. More of them have shifted west since I last looked at them. A high pressure system has been sitting over Florida. High pressure systems help protect an area. Too bad one isn't over my area right now.

Today, an ABC reporter on a public street was arrested while taking video and pictures of elected public officials.

The story goes like this:

ABC news was working on a story about the funding of the events surrounding the DNC.  Reporter Asa Eslocker was taking video and pictures of senators and lobbyists outside of the Brown Palace Hotel.  He was on the sidewalk of a public street.  He was first informed (falsely perhaps?) that the sidewalk was owned by the hotel and that he had to vacate it.  "The sheriff's officer is seen telling Eslocker the sidewalk is owned by the hotel. Later he is seen pushing Eslocker off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic, forcing him to the other side of the street.(1)"  Soon, a Denver police officer arrived, arrested him, and haulled him off in handcuffs...  Police on the scene refused (legally) to tell ABC lawyers the cause of the arrest.  Later they informed them that the charges were tresspassing, Interferance, and Refusal to obey a lawful order.

ABC is naturally upset.  I'm not sure what to think seeing as how it seems that the hotel may have owned the property and had ordered him off of it.  He seemed to disobey this order, thus tresspassing.  But, it all seems eerily dubious, and I thought the sidewalks in cities were the property of the city and hence, the public.  They are in my town and in the last town I lived in.

Any thoughts?

I couldn't find video and I have a feeling we would only get to see the parts that look to exhonerate the reporter anyway.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Conventions/story?id=5668622

Edit, Thanks NordlichReiter:

http://www.videosift.com/video/ABC-Reporter-Arrested-Taking-Pictures-of-Senators-Donors

 

I hate displacements!!

Now entering hair-pulling territory. I think I've tried about as many displacement and memory settings I can think of.

 

 

(cry for help)

Here's my son modeling his mohawk and new fav t-shirt.   Grandma's gonna flip over the hair

 

_{Lawyers with too much integrity}

"The administration is likely to defend its effort to bring JAG lawyers into line with administration policies as a traditional exercise of civilian authority over the military. But civilian authority does not mean that presidential appointees with an agenda should have free rein over professional, nonpartisan service members. If the country is going to have a corps of high-quality uniformed attorneys in its armed services, Congress should kill any proposals for politicizing the JAG lawyers."

 

But don't worry guys, I'm into British pre-20th century chick flicks right now....

Aside from selling my soul in little pieces, have I mentioned lately that I love, love, love running VideoSift?

It's a satisfying feeling to read all the comments and see the connections and friendships that are here on the Sift. I'm not a naturally outgoing person- (kind of a hermit actually) but I value the friends I've made here and feel like I could probably sleep on many of your couches. (always a possibility)

I guess what I'm saying is that this is my dream job -- or maybe more of a dream pastime at the moment with job-like hours (ask Persephone) - but I wouldn't/couldn't give it up.

Beyond the personal connections- I'm hooked on Google Analytics and watching where in the world people are coming from for the first time to reach us. It gives me a sense of how big the Web really is. Today for example, we got linked in from what looks like a fairly tame link-dump site in India which will send us about 15,000 visitors by the end of the day. We also get regularly linked from this French gaming site that I wish I could read. Yesterday we got linked from some BBC radio show. Though I know it's self-serving (narcissistic?) to dwell on this stuff - it's such a blast to follow the web of links that leads back to our community. It's a big Sift world.

I don't usually gush like this, but there you are - big group hug. It is Friday, but I'm not drunk - I promise.

If you build it, they will come... depending on the disparity between the American / Canadian dollar.

Apparently, they've just opened Toronto's biggest movie studio, the Filmport, only...  no one's interested.  It's empty. The part that really struck me from the article was this:

Additionally, Universal is eyeing Filmport for its "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" project, which is based on a comic by local writer Bryan Lee O'Malley and set in Toronto. But with the Canadian dollar at near parity with the American greenback, and New York offering a 35 percent tax credit, Universal producers also are considering the Big Apple as a stand-in for Toronto.

New York as a stand-in for Toronto??  Wha...?  Toronto has doubled for New York in what I'm sure amounts to hundreds of movies and TV shows, but New York doubling for Toronto?  Has that ever happened?  What has the world come to?

VideoSift received Over 100K visits from Stumblers over the past month. Many of them to this post.

And from our stats it appears that Stumblers are the types to hang around and become members as well.

I have used StumbleUpon sparingly. I have the toolbar installed but to be honest I have to be pretty bored to want to hit a completely random site on a press of the button. But when I do use it I find that the pages it brings me to do pique my interest.

We used to have a row of those little "submit to" icons for Delicious, Digg etc - but they just took up room and StumbleUpon is now the only social site icon we use. ;-)

 I vividly remember the First Persian Gulf war, mostly because it was the first war which was widely followed and televised by a then still relatively new cable news company called CNN, they focused on the sheer military spectacle of showing Tomahawk missile launches, stealth bombers, tanks and grainy TV missile strikes in Iraq. At the time I thought it was good thing to do, to attack nation and punish it for it's despotic actions against its own people. Youthful, idealistic and very naive I believed strongly in interventionism.

I also believed very strongly in the ideals behind the formation of the UN.

Over the years my understanding of geopolitics and military policy grew, through understanding of Soviet advances into Afghanistan, the 2nd world war and numerous other conflicts. I saw that most military actions are not carried out for ideals of freedom or overthrowing despotic rulers.

But I still believed in interventionism as a way to 'free' a nation from a tyrannically ruler, reinforced by seeing such a person take power within my own nation in Central Asia and countries around Central Africa where I lived at the time.

Seeing wars sprout out while the international world set on it's hands and watched made me angry, I wondered why military intervention doesn't take place in places like Somalia and Rwanda. Somalia was eventually addressed haphazardly as a humanitarian AID mission first, a military operation a far distant second, with limited ROE and slim political support from the Clinton Whitehouse and International world. It underestimated the Somalian people and paid for it in American lives, with some of it's own troops dragged through the streets. Post Somalia there was no space for intervention in Rwanda, the US kept away, European powers sent limited forces. All in all the Rwanda people entered a ethnic civil war of barbaric proportions. The UN set on its hands because no one wanted to get involved in what they regarded as a insignificant nation with internal problems. It was disheartening.

Then 9/11 occurred, I knew the US government would most definitely cease its containment of terrorism policy in Afghanistan and take a far keener interest in Central Asia as a whole.

I supported the war in Afghanistan, I felt that the SF approach of letting the Northern Alliance lead the way with US over watch and NATO support was indicative of how military intervention should be carried out. I knew it wouldn't work totally because a nation that has been at war with itself for close to 30 years takes decades to recover, political intervention by other Central Asian nations and proxy Cold war conflicts saw to that. But I still have hope.

The Iraq war was a far difficult proposition, unilateral intervention, lack of concrete allies, superceding UN policy; all this after leaving after 1991, with no support for the rebel movement that Bush Senior himself urged to "Rise up against Saddam". While I supported righting the wrong, I also thought it was pure suicide at the same time akin to dumping a girlfriend to her abusive father and then coming back years later to resuce her again.

I knew the reasons behind going to Iraq were wrong, but if the case was built properly with international support it would be far easier to support what basically is an invasion of a soverign nation. We all know how it was played and what the consequences have become.

We have seen over the last year and a half abuses and uprisings in Burma, Tibet, Darfur and Georgia. The whole wordl is again sititing on its hands, the UN is quickly becoming as insignificant as the League of Nations before it. The Security Council is a hotly played Poker face game between super powers with totally different agendas and viewpoints.

With the actions in Iraq and now Georgia the policy of interventionism is completely shelved for a long time. I don't think this is completely good idea. The US was wrong in going at it alone under compeltely dubious and false reasons, but it gave Russia the impetus to essentially do the same in Southern Assetia. The US cannot even criticize the Russian actions because it would bring up the reasons for going into Iraq, a dialog the government as a whole wants to avoid taking place in main stream media.

I still believe that balanced, planned, multilateral peace keeping force can be a force for democractic change in nations where there is conflict.  I hope that multilateral peace kepping force gone emerge under a more focused and concrete UN structure.

Gee I guess this is more than head practice now! A video and a rough test pose, and then probably no more progress on this one until/unless I kludge out some more progress to its finalish point.. The old blog entry becomes a general practice sketchpad...

 

Updated: Aug 21/08

... more inside ...

This is from the Vallejo Times Herald:

Dolores Aguilar, born in 1929 in New Mexico, left us on August 7, 2008. ....

Dolores had no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life. I speak for the majority of her family when I say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed and there will be no lamenting over her passing.

Her family will remember Dolores and amongst ourselves we will remember her in our own way, which were mostly sad and troubling times throughout the years. We may have some fond memories of her and perhaps we will think of those times too. But I truly believe at the end of the day ALL of us will really only miss what we never had, a good and kind mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. I hope she is finally at peace with herself. As for the rest of us left behind, I hope this is the beginning of a time of healing and learning to be a family again.

There will be no service, no prayers and no closure for the family she spent a lifetime tearing apart. We cannot come together in the end to see to it that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren can say their goodbyes. So I say here for all of us, GOOD BYE, MOM.

Wow.