iwilnotbsilnt

I just had lunch at KFC with a great-grandfather named Colossal.  He was in a tractor trailer accident 18 years ago and had a paralyzed toe, a brain aneurysm and all sorts of other issues and "looked up in the sky and thanked God every day to be alive."  He spent most of his life here in Richmond working near Broad Street and Boulevard.  His family was largely in North Carolina.  He went to NC State and nearly all of them went to UNC.  He is a free mason.  I saw pictures of his grandson, granddaughter, and great grandson.  I think I made his day.  All I did was hold the door and then listen.  It is amazing how big an impact holding a door and a little patience can make in this fast paced world.

"As the Earth lies at an average distance of 93 million miles from the sun, it must travel some 584 million miles in a year. In other words, we on earth are whipping along at 67,000 mph."

"Our world completes one full rotation on it's axis every 24 hours. That means that a point on the equator must whirl at nearly 1,100 mph to cover a distance of 26,000 miles every 24 hours."

The closest star to the earth other than the sun, proxima centauri, lies some 26 trillion miles away.

means and methods:

1)  Everyone on the planet run east and push off really hard with your feet simultaneously...and if you stop don't dig your feet in, slow down slowly so that your inertia doesn't pull it the other way.

2) Make billions of huge sails and set them on all the highest mountains and in the biggest open fields.  Each of the sails would have to be rigged sturdily to the earth and wind would have to be monitored individually at each location.  When the wind blows west, put your sails up, when it blows east take them down quick.  (this theory could be greatly improved with the help of some modern sailors who use the wind to pull them with the sail acting as a big air foil  rather than push them like a stupid Columbus ship, because I still live in 1492.)

3) Rig up a giant truss firmly mounted to the earth that extends way way up into the sky (our giants scale lever arm).  Actually...lets rig up lots of them.  Then we mount all of our biggest rockets right to the top as to maximize leverage.  (The rockets would face west and the hypotenuse of the triangle would probably want to be facing east so that the load was putting it in tension and not compression...im afraid if it was miles long it would just buckle in compression.)  3-2-1 BLASTOFF!

4) Same idea as 3 but a little more...explosive.  Let's create giant cup shaped alloy blast deflection devices that would focus the energy of an explosion into a beam kind of like a jet engine.  Then we mount these to the top of the trusses described in step 3 and face the opening to the east.  We gather all of our atomic weaponry as a planet and dispose of it simultaneously 100s of miles above the earths surface directing the energy to the east.  And even if it doesn't work at least we will get rid of the crap.  (we may need to rig up something to ensure the fallout doesn't kill everything on the planet)

that's all for now...but its a start... 

Have you ever noticed which way you are oriented? Which way your mental map
always puts at the top? For me the top is never north. Even though I know
which way north is when I look through my lense it is rotated 180 and South
is at the top of the page. At least while I am in Richmond. I think as I
move farther from home the map rather quickly switches to the top being
North (I prefer to look at my maps with north at the top, and I prefer to
look at my maps before I travel) but when I am home there is something
grounding me. What grounds me is home. Not where I have lived for 2 years
but where I grew up. I live about 40 minutes North of where I grew up and
whenever I visualize where I am West is on my right.

I spend 40 hours a week facing Southwest at my desk.

Probably 50 or so facing out into space with my feet faced to the North.

The couch and my favorite chair face East.

Sitting on the patio I face West.

Eating at my table I face South.

Go to the mirror, look in it, and say to yourself three times you and me got some thinking to do, then tell me there is not two things standing there looking back at each other.

As Vonnegut asks in timequake...

Art? Or not?

http://us.mobile.reuters.com/m/FullArticle/p.rdt/CTOP/ntopNews_uUSTRE50H1WG20090119

Ayfkm?
Sent to you via Google Reader

Surging shoppers kill New York Wal-Mart worker

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A man working for Wal-Mart was killed on Friday when a throng of shoppers surged into a Long Island, New York, store and physically broke down the doors, a police spokesman said.

Food for thought:

The Economist's: Global Electoral College

Only good thing to come out of the election so far...