Counter Terra

The Hazards of Reading Cryptonomicon?

In 1934, the Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek was facing a twin threat - from the invading Japanese and from the Communist rebels of Mao Tse-tung. For safekeeping, his supporters sent 125,000 tons of Chinese gold to America and, in a covert deal with the president Franklin D Roosevelt, were given US bonds in return. The sum was so large that it led to the creation of Fort Knox and paved the way for America to abandon the gold standard.

But the bonds never reached China. The B-29 plane carrying them crashed shortly after stopping to refuel at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. The gilt-edged US government IOUs, packed in metal containers, lay undiscovered in the jungle on the island of Mindanao for decades, until found by local tribesmen who sold them to a former Yugoslav spy named Michael Slamaj.

Read more here.

Avian Terrorism

· Over 155 people have been killed world-wide as a result of bird strikes since 1990.
· Over 3,700 bird strikes were reported by the U.S. Air Force in 2002.
· Over 6,100 bird strikes were reported for U.S. civil aircraft in 2002.
· An estimated 80% of bird strikes to U.S. civil aircraft go unreported.
· Over 600 civil aircraft collisions with deer were reported in the U.S., 1990-2003.
· A 12-lb Canada goose struck by an 150-mph aircraft at lift-off generates the force of a 1,000-lb weight dropped from a height of 10 feet.
· Starlings are "feathered bullets", having a body density 27% higher than herring gulls.

Feathered bullets?

· The North American non-migratory Canada goose population tripled, 1990-2002, to 3.5 million birds.

A Canadian conspiracy?

· About 90% of all bird strikes in the U.S. are by species federally protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

An environmentalist conspiracy?

The Bird Strike Committee is on the job, as are the US Bird Avoidance Model (BAM) and USAF Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard Team (BASH). Pyrotechnics/propane cannons, acoustic distress tapes, decoys/animal mock corpses, and lasers are included in the arsenal to defeat such species as the American White Pelican ($257 million in damage from 7 strikes, undoubtedly the Al Qaeda of the avian world) and the Horned Lark (1243 strikes as of 14 January 2003). The BAM incorporates GIS technology and maps where the value for each pixel is equivalent to the sum of the mean bird mass in ounces for all bird species present during a particular daily time period.

Brain Off also points us to the Temporary Flight Restrictions Viewer, which shows restricted airspaces. Some notable, current restrictions include airspace over the California wildfires and Bush's ranch near Waco.

Frogs and Lobsters

Well, maybe the semantic web is nutty, but...

RDF, FOAF, RSS, SOAP... These acronyms seem to have the same effect on many technologists: eyes rolling, head shaking, and murmurs of "Ah, yes, the utopian Semantic Web. Isn't that a cute idea." Most think the notion of standardized, shared metadata being embraced by the masses is a pipe dream. My feeling is that it's more akin to boiling a frog. You can't toss the poor beast in hot water -- he'll jump right out. But put him in water at room temperature and slowly increase the heat, and he'll never see it coming. It's standards-based services like the ones I'm playing with here that will slowly turn up the metadata heat, until the Semantic Web is boiling around us before we have a chance to scoff again.

Mapparium

The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity in Boston has a Mapparium, a 30-foot diameter globe made of colored glass in bronze panes built in 1935. Finish it with a walkway running through the center and some decent light and you've got something pretty bloody cool. Bucky would have liked it, I suspect.

Thanks, Nicole!

And Don't Forget PKD

"I forget whether, in the Virtual Light books, Arnold is president of the US or merely Governor of SoCal, but, hey, it looks like I've gone and been prescient again. I hate it when that happens."

Left vs. Right

"What gods do you pray to?"
"I pray to the Four Winds, and you?"
"To Crom, but he doesn't listen."
"Heh, what good is he than?"
"Crom is strong! When I die, I will go to Valhalla, and he will ask me: What is the riddle of steel? And if I don't know it, he will cast me out of Valhalla laughing. That's Crom, strong in his mountain."
"My god is greater."
"Hah! Crom laughs at your Four Winds. Laughs from his mountain."
"My god is the everlasting sky. Your god lives beneath him."

"Crom! I've never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad, why we fought, or why we died. No. What's important is that two stood against many. That's what is important! Battle pleases you, Lord Crom, so I ask you to grant me one request, grant me REVENGE! And if you do not listen, then the hell with you!"