If the Rapture has occued....

Road Rage! And those Cameras...

Road ragers always suck. But there is a possible solution. The Car Cam. By adding a video camera to your car, you can potentially catch idiots on video and add it to YouTube.com to generate embarassment. Surely, you can get the chance to get the idiot busted if they get too carried away. While most road ragers are simple idiots, some are actually out to "get you". Things like ex-spouses come to mind, but it can be murderous coworkers or other enemies. What idiots of all types need to know is about the proliferation of cameras. Cameras are nearly everywhere. At any time you leave your home, chances are good that you will be seen by a camera.

Unless you get stupid, the tape will simply be reused and your image will be deleted... but if you do get stupid, the tape can show up in amazing places, not just used as evidence of the crime. It can show up on YouTube, or better, on TV news. Get stupid, and yes, you can become a TV star, but the wrong way. Take note idiots. Your number is up. Want to get splattered all over the Internet? Make my day. THAT is the beauty of camera proliferation. Also, electronic systems do not forget unless the user chooses to make it forget. When you reuse the tape the system forgets but if you catch an idiot and publish it the system does NOT forget. Someone will put a copy on a hard drive! Google remembers EVERYTHING.

Idiots, you are on notice. You will be caught on film. And put on the Internet.

Execution Methods and the Constitution.

The 8'th Amendment specifies that punishment for a crime cannot be "cruel and unusual". This rules out punishments like crucifixion. OK, what about death by lethal injection? Most every developed country gave up on the death penalty in favour of life in jail for the case of murder. One could argue that life in jail is actually worse than a decently humane method of death. It's hard to think of things more nightmarish than time in an American prison.

Now for something that'll sound like right out of the book _Freakonomics_. Punishment is finite but crime can be infinite. But punishment can get severe. One can see that time in prison is a nightmare come true by means of MSNBC and the series about prisons called "Lockup". Forensic science has gotten good enough that if you are going to commit a crime you will be most likely caught. This creates the "frealonomic" situation that one may as well commit suicide after a murder. That is, unless you want to run up a tab on the taxpayers!

As above, punishment is finite. Even if you kill 6 million people (like Hitler) you can get killed only _once_. Due to the exact situation in a prison, a hapless drunk driver going to prison for Reckless Homicide may well get AIDS or never exit the prison alive. For a drunk, it's not "worth it" to try to drive from that bar. But for a murderer it may well be "worth it" to commit suicide after the crime. After all, you avoid prosecution! This fact explains the school style suicide gunman and the suicide bomber. If you catch a murderer, you can only punish him by death once. If the probability of capture approaches a 1 then the killer may as well "get it over with".

As it turns out, crime and punishment has gotten like Booleanism. Either you commit the crime or you do not... and you die as the result or you do not - only by not doing the crime. Now for the fun part. If we are going to kill criminals as a punishment, we must find a humane method. So far, "lethal injection" is the execution method of choice. The lethal injection method goes like this:

A criminal is strapped to a gurney and an IV drip is started. The hose is hooked up to a machine. 3 drugs are inserted, first an anesthetic to knock out the prisoner, then a curare derivative is added to paralise him, then potassium chloride to cause a heart attack on purpose.
The problem comes up where the prisoner is a druggie and is all but immune to the sodium thiopenthol. With the second drug he is in "locked-in syndrome" aka anesthesia awareness, as the last drug is administered. All too many people underwent this "locked-in syndrome" during surgery as anesthesiologists have skimped on the knock-out dope. Some have actually commited suicide due to the X-Treme nightmarish situation of undergoing surgery while awake and being curare paralised. THIS situation of lethal injection is now at the Supreme Court as I type. The trick is the damn fact that a given prisoner is likely to be nearly immune to the sodium thiopenthol and thus is likely to undergo the above case.

If we REALLY want to kill prisoners, may I suggest a new method. I call it the "inert gas method". This is a case where a prisoner is placed in a situation where he breathes in nitrogen instead of ordinary air so he gets no oxygen. He passes out then dies. Many fighter plane pilots can attest to the fact that extreme altitude will cause the desired effect of passing out painlessly - as they get training in an altitude chamber. Think of "Top Gun" with the altitude chamber scene. This was also discussed in the newsgroup "alt.suicide.methods" as about the most painless and humane mode of suicide. The inert gas method has the further advantage of not causing your ears to "pop" unlike the altitude chamber. Arranging the situation for the prisoner is an easy engineering problem. One need not be a fighter jock to know about high altitude. An old friend of mine told me about a good way to get a mother in law to shut up if you're driving a Cessna. You use your plane's oxygen bar and go up to "12 - 5" 12500 feet up and have her go to sleep. CAUTION: She could go to sleep for good! Mountain climbers also know about altitude like pilots and aviation enthusiasts do. The inert gas method is about the best method known to man so far.

The only way to improve on it would be vapourisation within a few nanoseconds. i.e. you place the criminal right next to a nuke as you set it off. Of course, that would be bad for the environment. Because we can't set off a couple hundred nukes a year, we are stuck with the inert gas method - or to not execute anyone unless they WANT to get it over with.

A Test of a Lack of Faith: A car accident.

Here is a thought experiment. Take an intersection, a pedestrian, and a car making a left turn. Now, the car hits the pedestrian. If the pedestrian is an atheist and comes out uninjured (except for a small scrape) the atheist will think "I lucked out by being uninjured". Meanwhile, if a Christian fundimentalist in the same case but with both legs broken would think :"Thank God I was not killed".

I actually was involved in a car accident as described above as the hapless pedestrian. I was hit by a car and once I landed beside the car, my first thought was "I lucked out" not "Thank God I lucked out". I had the light, but so did the left turner. The driver failed to divert the car AND SO DID ANY GOD.

To avoid the accident, all it would have taken was for the driver to move the car's "flight yoke" just 2 inches or so to divert it by a foot and a half. Or a god to move the yoke the two inches. You would think that an all-knowing and all-powerful god would be able to move a car's steering wheel 5 centimetres (two inches) to avoid an accident. If there is this god, I'd raqther worship a devil. This god would have to be up to no good. With a god like the one advertised, who needs a devil?

A Christian fundimentalist would likely say I underwent a miracle. I call it a low-probability event. But that doesn't answer why a god would not divert the car from the intended "flight plan". If there is a god trying to get my attention, it sure did not work. The event only made me MORE atheist! Any "good" god willing to allow a driver to 9/11 a pedestrian is not a good god. Period.

The Royal Canadian Air Force inavasion of America!

I work at a place (an airport) that has an infiltration of The Royal Canadian Air Force, Canada Geese. It is of course a part of the Rogue Airwing. If you live in or work at a suburban spot, you know what I mean about these natural aircraft. It's enought to get you to dream up the idea of getting hunters with 12-gauge shotguns to serve as an antiaircraft battery.

When you watch them fly around, it's a nice scene to see, as it's about like a natural airshow. They like to fly in formation, honking all the way. They run to take off, like ducks, but when they land, they flare like a plane but stall out on purpose, to only have to make 3 little steps. They could teach a pilot a few things.

Sea gulls like to glide or ridge-soar near buildings. It's like large birds act like aircraft with an innate "pilot" at the "flight yoke". ( for the non- aviation enthusiast: "drivers seat" or "wheel") A Canada Goose is about like nature's version of a Concorde. When flying, the neck and head are forward but the fusalage is a little nose-up. Swans do similar. Both gulls and geese like areas near bodies of water. Being waterfowl, they can sure do flight ops to and from water. So can ducks. Watching a duck take off from water is hilarious. It looks just like a plane, as it runs, just pulls up a little and gradually climbs to desired altitude.

Due to the fact that it's a little (more than a bit) illegal to station hunters as an anti"aircraft" battery, we need to live with the Royal Canadian Air Force in our midst. It is an air force to be reckoned with! Like us, they want airports too! :) By O'Hare (ORD) they sure got their own airport. If I had farmland, I'd allow geese to set up their own airport on my land, so I could call it "Poulos Internation Airport". I'd also set up runways for the ultralight pilots who show the whooping cranes how to migrate. Who knows? Mayby space aliens would want to land at my airport.

About the funniest things in the world are those crop circles. If I owned several square miles of land, I'd carve a duplication of O'Hare and have Christmas lights so I could allow a UFO to land on my "interstellar spaceport". I would gladly talk the bloke down. This could be good for wayward aviation enthusiasts turned pilots! Imagine a real pilot seeing a "duplicate O"Hare" during a night flight as he flies to OKC! (Oklahoma City)

Steve Fossett"s Latest Joyride

Congratulations to Steve Fossett with his round-the-world joyride flight. Thanks to technology, he had an easier time than Charles Lindbergh. Why? Lindbergh had no auto-pilot to do the "driving" like when Fossett got sleepy! Also, even without an autopilot, Lindbergh did his flight before the invention of methamphetamine. Nowadays, you can go to any rural area and get all the meth you want! The autopilot means that meth was NOT needed.

The plane he used is a real gem, being a Burt Rutan invention. It looks like a cross between two Schweitzer gliders and a Heinkel 162 Volksjager. Everyone who plays Flight Sim will know what a Schweitzer glider is, as it's one of the featured aircraft representations, but not the He-162 VJ.

What does this round-the-world joyride prove? It proves that if you have a planeload of money, you can engage in conspicuous consumption in the grand style. Lindbergh had to "drive" the WHOLE 33 hours to fly scross the Atlantic - without meth. Unless you are a world-class insomniac, that's a decent achievement. Armed with an autopilot, Fossett could sleep at least a little, thus making meth (or any "go pill") unnecessary.

Here's a fun challenge for our intrepid rich fuck: Drive around the world on a FORKLIFT. It will be a lot slower mission, but it would be more impressive, surely for the blue-collar types, than his blowing a pallet of money on a custom jet. Let's see how far he gets on a forklift carrying a pallet of money.

I'm much more impressed by Burt Rutan for having invented the custom jet used by Fossett. The plane would be pretty handy for long-range flights, like to and from Sydney on one load of fuel. Stop off in Venezuela both ways to get your fuel cheap. In Venezuela, gasoline and diesel costs 17 cents a gallon. Fill 'er up with a 50/50 mix. The military could use it as spy plane. The famous U-2 looks similar, but comes in Stealth Aircraft Black. Fossett could recoup the costs by selling the plane to North Korea, where Kim Jung Il could use it as a cruise missile by placing some briefcase nukes in the cockpit after adding an old PC and GPS gizmo to fly it. Just have someone in Bangalore write the software. A nuke delivery plane needs only go HALF WAY around the world to bring ANYWHERE into range as a target. More range means only that you can programme it to fly around other opponent countries toward the target city. Gee, thanks a lot for adding yet another enabler for fuckheads. Even without a nuke, adding fertiliser to some of the tanks can still knock down a building.

If I was ridiculously rich like a Bill Gates or Donald Trump, I'd buy myself a copy of the Global Flyer but name it the Joyrider - and use it as a method of very long range commuting, like to and from Europe and Australia, just to go and party it up at the destination. Go to Nice France for Mardi Gras, or to Benidorm Spain in the summer. In the winter, maybe go to Melbourne Australia just becuse I can. Then, stop off in Sydney to drink up in King's Cross. Then go to Moscow to pick up some bottles of Stoli on my way back. I guess I'd get Burt Rutan to make a few small improvements just to improve fuel economy (the original gets 6mpg) and add luxury avionics like the Lear Jet's dash. If you're going to waste money on a global joyriding plane, you may as well do it right. Don't forget an XM radio receiver for the tunes in your ride!

Sure must be nice to be so rich that when you get bored, you can order up a custom plane like a pizza, then use it for a completely pointless waste of diesel/gasoline like a joyride around the world. Sheesh.

Lunch Thieves and Legal/WMD Hazards.

In nearly every American workplace (apart from crime labs) there are idiots who steal their lunch from other lunches. They are the dreaded lunch thieves. A lunch thief will not go far in the case of a crime lab as the workplace, simply becuse the "vic" is a C.S.I. type who will dust off the bag for fingerprints, run them (and ALL government workers are fingerprinted), and it's Game Over for the idiot. Forget the TV show, the real deal CSI type will figure it out!

A lunch thief will often (but not always) be really omnivorous. Think about it. A lunch thief will have to be willing to eat most anything, so long as he or she finds it tasty. A fussy eater will not be a good suspect. They will not be prone to known (or any) food allergies. Thus, in offices, where you find yuppies you will be more likely to find a lunch thief. Only in larger blue-collar type workplaces will you find this criminal.

I mention "yuppies" becuse those who are high-wage young professionals are prone to visiting ethnic restaurants while most blue-collar types stay out, due to culinary non-adventurism. This is an ingredient in the profile of the lunch thief. Unless you pack a lunch like Bolute Eggs (as made famous by "Fear Factor") a lunch thief will at least try it.

Oddly enough, it's not from hunger in most cases, but a willing to try new foods or finding a mark's food tast's tasty that drives food thieves... but not always. As I found out the hard way. At work, I drink Diet 7-Up, becuse I want to lose weight. The lack of sugar/carbs and lack of caffeine was no deterrent. The purp may have well dumped it after one swig.

There are two strategies available to the one worker:

1: You can try to find the purp. this can be a real pain in the arse.

2: Ensure your lunch is secure, so the thief steals from others instead.

The first involves things like setting a trap, which can be funny, but problematic. The second, is easier, but you get no "satisfaction" from finding the purp. A third method, not mentioned, is the old "Ex-Lax" method. I chose to not mention it is becuse of legally murky issues, involving boobytraps, liability issues, and the like. If you are an AIDS patient, it can include bioterror/WMD issues! Lunch thieves take notice. There ARE gays with AIDS on meds walking around. Put that sandwich down, unless you want to be an unwitting WMD. I shall not describe how an AIDS patient can make himself or their fluids into a WMD by using you as the delivery system.

The best method is to simply lock up your food. (second method) You can always buy a lunchbox and attach a hasp and add a padlock. This way, the purp goes elsewhere for the meal, and possibly falls into a trap set by an idiot, possibly by an unwitting AIDS patient who doesn't realise that he has the power of making a WMD out of a mere lunch thief. You can never know, but you did your part to prevent it, by locking up your food.

If you are a boss, you want to avoid liability to your company. Thus, you want to slow lunch theft, given the lawsuit hazard it imposes, let alone the bioterror hazard. Your employees will like not having to worry about stolen lunches, and you can worry less about ending up being a source of a pandemic. Also, it helps to not be anal-retentive about sick leave.

Naturally-occuring illness (like the flu) is another source of lawsuit hazard for a company. If a worker takes the L becuse he can't afford a car OR can't drive, any smallpoxer can cause your company a huge liability, by giving said worker the smallpox. While a smallpoxer is a terrorist, an Asian Bird Fluer is a naturally-occuring version waiting to happen. Anyone who's forced to ride the L from O'Hare is potentially subject tocatching Asian Bird Flu from an immigrant. Is it REALLY worth it to underpay your workers, so they can't afford to drive?

My Weight Loss Adventure

I started at 237 pounds (about 105 kilos) around October 2003. Now at 2/18/2005 I broke the 190 pound/85 kilo barrier. I weigh less than 190 pounds... and I'm continuing on the adventure. My height in the afternoon (due to gravity) is 5 foot 4 inches tall. (1.62 metres) In accord with our government's own charts, I should weigh 140 lb (64Kg).

So, I have a ways to go... but the guidelines are suspect. The guidelines do not take into account things like GENDER, or bone mass, or the like. The so-called 'ideal weight' could get me to look anexorec! I will sure find out.

I am bucking a trend here in America. Americans are gaining weight as I lose my little bit a week. All it takes is to eat (and drink) less calories than you use up. Of course, it's easier said than done. After all, you have to go hungry a lot of the time. But the old equation does work... and that's my not-so-secret.

The "secret" to dieting is simply that of designing a 'diet' that you can live with for years at a crack. You must design an eating pattern you can live with long term. I've been at it for a year and 4 months. Due to "habitual force" I have the potential to keep up the 'diet' for good.

What I call "habitual force" is that force that comes from a habit. A habit can be hard to break... or make. A habit is what you need for a 'diet' to work, even if you "splurge" once in a while.