Site-Wide Search

Is there a site-wide label search for Blogger? I know I can search within a blog. That is great if I know about the blog. It sucks for finding new blogs to follow. One would think the king of search (Google) would have solved the search problem LiveJournal, Wordpress, and others blogging platforms did 5 years ago.

Just Call Me the Anole Whisperer

Just Call Me the Anole Whisperer
Originally uploaded by Ezra S F

Got a couple of feet close to this anole. They seem to trust me enough to get close enough to grab them like I did as a kid. These days I just take a photo. (Not as traumatizing for both when grabbing results in getting bitten.) Also, this was about halfway the color change from green to brown.

Desoto Falls

Desoto Falls
Originally uploaded by Ezra S F

Gift Hat

Gift Hat
Originally uploaded by Ezra S F

Last year at the Easter Eggtravaganza, I took a water gun from Mason (a couple times). This year he let me know as soon as he saw me I was going down in the water balloon fight. I declined to play. So he gave me this part of the Easter pinata he won.

COVER THE EARTH

COVER THE EARTH
Originally uploaded by Ezra S F

... in toxic chemicals?

Gunfighters MC

Gunfighters MC
Originally uploaded by Ezra S F

Driving off from brunch downtown, I followed these three (well, five) for several miles. My motorcycle gang expertise being extremely limited, I used the power of Google to see just what notorious trouble these people have caused. Brawls? Drug dealing? Executions? Terrorism? Probably not Hell's Angels league but there must be dozens of organizations from forking and the popularity of badassness.

Gunfighters MC appears to be:

Original Gunfighters MC World is a male only international retired and active law enforcement motor cycle club.

Oh.

It was definitely great weather for a bike ride.

In retrospect, yellow and blue do not really seem like the colors of someone seeking to intimidate.

Lotus Temple I

Lotus Temple I
Originally uploaded by Kaushlendra

Wonderful article 21 Stunning Photos of Baha’i Houses of Worship features this photo. Baha'i Houses of Worship are located all over the world. All of them are beautiful. Check out the one near you.

Fire in the Sky

Fire in the Sky
Originally uploaded by Ezra S F

(No humans were abducted in the making of this photo.)

Odyssey Dawn?

One interpretation of Operation Odyssey Dawn is a ten year struggle to get home. Instead of ten years, I think it refers to a single day.

The Odyssey is a Greek epic poem by Homer describing the ten year adventure of the craftiest Greek general attempting to return home from the Trojan War. Odysseus wandered the Adriatic Sea and Mediterranean Sea for ten years. One place he briefly stayed was Libya:

Across the fishy deep for nine whole days,
On the tenth day we reached the land where dwell
The Lotus-eaters, men whose food is flowers.
We landed on the mainland, and our crews
Near the fleet galleys took their evening meal.
And when we all had eaten and had drunk
I sent explorers forth -- two chosen men,
A herald was the third -- to learn what race
Of mortals nourished by the fruits of earth
Possessed the land. They went and found themselves
Among the Lotus-eaters soon, who used
No violence against their lives, but gave
Into their hands the lotus plant to taste.
Whoever tasted once of that sweet food
Wished not to see his native country more,
Nor give his friends the knowledge of his fate.
And then my messengers desired to dwell
Among the Lotus-eaters, and to feed
Upon the lotus, never to return.
By force I led them weeping to the fleet,
And bound them in the hollow ships beneath
The benches. Then I ordered all the rest
Of my beloved comrades to embark
In haste, lest, tasting of the lotus, they
Should think no more of home. All straightway went
On board, and on the benches took their place,
And smote the hoary ocean with their oars.

Odysseus' men consumed the lotus narcotic and would have stayed forever. Only by quickly extricating themselves before more men consumed it, aka cut their losses, could they return home. Maybe that is the intent for the operation name. Do what they need to do quickly and get out before they get mired in yet another quagmire. Of course, that was the intent of Afghanistan and Iraq.

As a child reading the Odyssey for the first time, I thought better to under the influence of the lotus than Circe. Dunno that is still the case.

(Originally posted to Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4)

Margin of Error

Cross post from: Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4. (Original: here)

The New York Times article "Nuclear Agency Tells a Concerned Congress That U.S. Industry Remains Safe" had a curious statement from Gregory Jaczko, of the chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in front of Congress.

“U.S. nuclear facilities remain safe,” Mr. Jaczko told two House Energy and Commerce subcommittees, which had originally planned to consider his agency’s budget for the coming fiscal year at the hearing. “We will continue to work to maintain that level of protection.” Reactors are designed to meet the challenges of “the most severe natural phenomena historically reported,” he said. For earthquakes, that means any that occur within 200 miles of the reactor, and a margin of error, he said.

Jaczko sounds similar to the planning the Japanese did. Earlier I read a Wired Science article, Japan Quake Epicenter Was in Unexpected Location, which said the Japanese looked to patterns in the past to determine the future. Therefore they expected a strong earthquake in the south where the Phillipine plate is overdue for a massive event.

Japan has been expecting and preparing for the “big one” for more than 30 years. But the magnitude-9.0 temblor that struck March 11 — the world’s fourth biggest quake since 1900 — wasn’t the catastrophe the island nation had in mind. The epicenter of the quake was about 80 miles east of the city of Sendai, in a strip of ocean crust previously thought unlikely to be capable of unleashing such energy. “This area has a long history of earthquakes, but [the Sendai earthquake] doesn’t fit the pattern,” says Harold Tobin, a marine geophysicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The expectation was high for a 7.5, but that’s a hundred times smaller than a 9.0.”

It sounds to me like, if in the United States the most powerful earthquake in the area of a nuclear reactor was a 7.5 magnitude event, then a 9.0 could surprise those running it. Given a 9.0 is a hundred times more powerful and a broken reactor so dangerous, I would hope the preparedness is for the larger even where seemingly unlikely.

The Haiti quake was "expected". However the Chilean, both New Zealand, and the Sendai earthquakes have all sounded unexpected. Of course, living on the Ring of Fire, how can any earthquake be unexpected?

What's the best place near you to get a pizza?

Go to a grocery store and get California Pizza Kitchen frozen pizzas. Or DiGornos. These are comparable to the restaurant pizza restaurants around here. Thus I tend to go with strombolis or calzones at the pizza places.

Ask me anything

Who inspires you the most?

Kindness, especially in the face of difficulty. It is something I would like to better emulate. So I watch for it hoping to get ideas to copy.

Ask me anything