Blog, Jvstin Style

An Ant empire the Romans or Genghis Khan might envy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8127000/8127519.stm

A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.

While ants are usually highly territorial, those living within each super-colony are tolerant of one another, even if they live tens or hundreds of kilometres apart. Each super-colony, however, was thought to be quite distinct.

And according to the article, its probably the fault of humans, for carrying sub colonies of the original population throughout the world.

Genghis Khan, Augustus Ceasar and other potentates in history can only envy the extent that this ant colony has managed to spread across the world.

Hint to Microsoft regarding their IE marketing campaign

Featuring projective vomiting in an ad for IE 8 is not a winning strategy!

Oh, and alas, how far has poor Superman (ie, Dean Cain) has fallen in taking this gig.

Canada Day

Happy Canada Day!
I've only been to Canada three times:

The first time was with my family on a trip to Niagara Falls. This trip was noteworthy for the Station Wagon we rented with the weird mushroom smell and my older brother dangerously speeding (so much that the speedometer went "beneath the dashboard"). While in Niagara Falls, US, we decided to briefly jump over to the Canadian side and see the falls from that side too.

The second time was my 2007 visit to Jasper, Banff and Waterton Parks in Canada with My Friends The Olsons™.

The third time was just this past April on my own personal trip that led me to Thunder Bay.

MN Supreme Court rules on Franken-Coleman case

MN Supreme Court rules on Franken-Coleman case

And Coleman concedes not long after. It's over.

Senator Franken, here we come.

Book Review 2009 #29: The Affinity Bridge

I received a copy of an ARC of George Mann's Steampunk novel The Affinity Bridge, as part of the Amazon Vine program.

Book Review 2009 #28: Yellowstone's Treasures

Yellowstone Treasures is a guidebook to Yellowstone National Park, written by Janet Chapple

2009 Vacation Photos!

Finally, after a lot of work, I have completed choosing, editing and uploading my pictures from my June vacation to Yellowstone and points beyond.

I uploaded a total of 633 photos from my trip. The entire collection is here.

But don't despair if that sounds like too much. Taking the excellent advice given to me by Carl on my last photographic venture, I have chosen 50 representative pictures from my trip. They may not necessarily be the best, but they give the width and breadth of my experience. So why not take a look at those?

The Highlights from my trip are available here

So, go, enjoy, and let me know what you think.

Summer Sunset Time

Via Paul Huttner's mention on Updraft.

The later sunsets and long evening twilight provide valuable extra time for outdoor evening activities this time of year. They also occur a week after the summer solstice due to a quirk in earth's orbit. Because earth's orbit is an ellipse instead of a circle, small differences in sunrise and sunset times occur near the solstice. That reuslts in the latest sunsets of the year coming just after the summer solstice. A similar quirk effects sunrise and sunset times near the winter solstice.

So let's do some comparisons.

Here in the Twin Cities, tonight, the sun will set at 9:04 pm. (Oh, by comparison, on December 13th, the sun will set here at 4:30 pm!)

Other Cities:

New York, my home, has a sunset time tonight of 8:31 pm.
Anaheim, CA, where I used to live, has a sunset time of 8:06 pm.
London, UK has a sunset time of 9:21 pm.

Wherever you live, enjoy your extra sunlight!

Time Wastes Too Fast--Jefferson

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/time-wastes-too-fast/

If you want to understand the United States and its people, says Maira Kalman, you need to visit Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home in Virginia.

I really need to see Monticello.

First a pitchman, then an angel, and now a Pop Star

Rest in Peace: Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson.

Ed McMahon:

Not being a fan of the Tonight Show (none in my family, really, so it never really was something I wanted to watch) (because I preferred to go to sleep for school; other people in my family watched it) paradoxically, I first remember encountering Ed McMahon in his role as a pitchman (especially for a sweepstakes) and for Star Search. I only later realized his main job.

(As an aside, this also happened with Phil Rizzuto, who was a pitchman for "The Money Store" and I had no idea for years that he was a famous Yankee player and announcer--he was "the Money Store" guy to me first)

Farrah Fawcett--One of Charlie's Angels. What else can I say?

Michael Jackson--I never was a big fan. However, I remember the bizarre-but-entertaining Captain EO, since I got to see it in Disney World on my one trip there.

His scandal plagued life diminished his star and made him a joke, but there is no denying his influence and power at the height of his powers and fame. I think that, today, in our Fractured Media Landscape, Michael Jackson would not have done as well as he did in the 80's. So, for the sake of his influence on music, he was definitely born at the right time.

Ten Best Picture Nominees next year?

You've probably seen this announcement by now:

The 82nd Academy Awards, which will be presented on March 7, 2010, will have 10 feature films vying in the Best Picture category, Academy Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis announced today (June 24) at a press conference in Beverly Hills.

"Having 10 best picture nominees is going allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize," said Acad prexy Sid Ganis in announcing the shift. "I can't wait to see what that list of 10 looks like when the nominees are announced in February."

Clearly they are trying to shake things up, given declining ratings and the atomziation of consumer interest in media overall. We have so many choices, the individual share of anything is smaller than it used to be. I suppose this is an attempt by the Academy to get interest in movies in general and the Oscar telecast in particular to rise.

I agree with the Monkey See blog, though: This probably will make the Oscar telecast longer.

In a good and strong year, this change wouldn't be a bad thing. There have been years where a deserving 6th and 7th movie might have been added to the list, or at least would be there alongside a weaker nomination. The Dark Knight last year, for example.

In a weak year, though, this change would just lead to even weaker offerings than usual being touted as "Oscar Nominee!"

From the Fed: Better Late Than Never: Addressing Too-Big-To-Fail

From the Fed: Better Late Than Never: Addressing Too-Big-To-Fail by Gary Stern

Destiny did not require society to bear the cost of the current financial crisis. To at least some extent, the outcome reflects decisions, implicit or explicit, to ignore warnings of the large and growing too-big-to-fail problem and a failure to prepare for and address potential spillovers. While I am, as usual, speaking only for myself, there is now I think broad agreement that policymakers vastly underestimated the scale and scope of too-big-to-fail and that addressing it should be among our highest priorities.

From the Fed: Why the Bank Holiday Succeeded

http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/epr/forthcoming/0906silb.html

After a month-long run on American banks, Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed a Bank Holiday, beginning March 6, 1933, that shut down the banking system. When the banks reopened on March 13, depositors stood in line to return their hoarded cash. This article attributes the success of the Bank Holiday and the remarkable turnaround in the public's confidence to the Emergency Banking Act, passed by Congress on March 9, 1933. Roosevelt used the emergency currency provisions of the Act to encourage the Federal Reserve to create de facto 100 percent deposit insurance in the reopened banks. The contemporary press confirms that the public recognized the implicit guarantee and, as a result, believed that the reopened banks would be safe, as the President explained in his first Fireside Chat on March 12, 1933. Americans responded by returning more than half of their hoarded cash to the banks within two weeks and by bidding up stock prices by the largest ever one-day percentage price increase on March 15--the first trading day after the Bank Holiday ended. The study concludes that the Bank Holiday and the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 reestablished the integrity of the U.S. payments system and demonstrated the power of credible regime-shifting policies.

Mama, they took my Kodochrome away

Kodak announced today that it will stop selling the film after 74 years on the market:

Sales of KODACHROME Film, which became the world's first commercially successful color film in 1935, have declined dramatically in recent years as photographers turned to newer KODAK Films or to the digital imaging technologies that Kodak pioneered. Today, KODACHROME Film represents just a fraction of one percent of Kodak's total sales of still-picture films...

As part of a tribute to KODACHROME Film, Kodak will donate the last rolls of the film to George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, which houses the world's largest collection of cameras and related artifacts.

Paul Simon is wrong about one thing though. Everything does NOT always look worse in black and white. I like some of my monochromatic shots, thank you.

The One and Only Old Faithful

IMG_9814b
Originally uploaded by Jvstin

Kenneth Hite's Ragnarok

I'm a big fan of Kenneth Hite's work (back to when a good friend introduced me to Suppressed Transmission). So the announcement that his latest effort, The Day after Ragnarok, is soon to be released ,fills me with glee.

The setting's premise: In 1945, the Germans turn to their SS occultists to turn the tide of war to their favor by starting the end of the world! They magically summon Jörmungandr, the world-spanning Midgard Serpent of the Norse sagas, to attack the Allies. In response, Truman sends a lone atom-bomb-armed B-29 on a suicide mission against the titanic, 300 mile wide, snake. The blast kills the creature, but its immense carcass falls across Europe and Africa crushing millions and sending a mega-tsunami to drown the Eastern United States while the Serpent's poisonous (and now radioactive) venom enters the environment, creating all manner of bizarre and malevolent life.

Other arcane things have been kicked up too, including the appearance of some Norse Giants awoken by Stalin in his attempt to seize power in this suddenly savage world.

Take a look at the map of the post Serpentfall world!

While I don't play Savage Worlds, I probably will buy this for the entertainment value alone, as well as the opportunity to mine ideas from more Ken Hite stuff...

Shared Worlds

Spreading across a couple of blogs and sites, and definitely worth checking out is Shared Worlds.

What real life places inspire fantasy and science fiction. Between the main Shared Worlds site which asks this of 5 authors (Elizabeth Hand, Nalo Hopkinson, Ursula Le Guin, China Miéville, and Michael Moorcock) and the SF Signal version which asks a bunch more writers ranging from Alan Dean Foster to James Enge, this is a nice knot of interesting stuff to look at.

So what about me? What do I think?

Well, not to choose any of the answers that the real published authors have already picked, the city I think of when I think of the genre is New York City.

Not just because its my hometown, of course, but, well, Television Tropes puts it best in their entry Big Applesauce.

Are aliens landing in UFOs? They'll land in Queens.

Is there a neighborhood full of world-class martial artists with superhuman powers? It's in New York's Chinatown.

Is there a magical gateway between worlds? It's in the Queens Midtown Tunnel. (Or in Central Park, or maybe in the subway tunnels, depending on the cuteness-darkness factor of the story being told).

Is a giant alien monster attacking? It's attacking Manhattan.

Is there a mysterious gigantic cavern hidden just beneath the earth's surface, wherein aliens once upon a time created all life on earth? It's underneath the Battery.

Is there only one person with the special gifts needed to save a distant planet or alternate dimension? He lives in Tribeca; not the SUV, but the place that surely everyone has heard of, 'cause New York is just that famous.

Is a prominent figure from religion or myth manifest once more and living in the world of humans? He's in Central Park.

An Ultimate Showdown Of Ultimate Destiny? Madison Square Garden's got front row seats.

Is your maternal grandmother visiting your home in Phoenix, Arizona? She's fluent only in Bronx-accented Yinglish.

Want to do a Reality Show focusing into the culinary field, or art, or dance or theatre? New York is the place to be, since people don't eat, paint, dance or act anywhere else.

What Tokyo Is The Center Of The Universe is to Anime and Japanese TV, Big Applesauce seems to be to American TV: the clichéd idea that anything that occurs in, or references, New York is automatically more interesting to the average American viewer than anything elsewhere. At the very least, like Tokyo, New York is where more than half of television's writers are, which makes it more interesting to the writers than anything elsewhere.

The rule seems to be that if a series or movie proposal does not require another setting (Kirks Rock, for instance), it should be set in New York. If an original, successful series is set in Las Vegas, its Spin Off will be more successful if set in New York. If you can't possibly get the show to happen in New York, have at least one main character and as many minor ones as possible be from New York, and continually harp on about how much better New York is.

The bias is especially obvious when characters speak about specific parts of New York casually, while the entirety of Middle America usually consists of about ten distinct places.

Everything is better served with Big Applesauce. And that especially includes Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Vatican declares Cathedral of St. Paul a national shrine

Via MPR.

The Vatican has designated the Cathedral of Saint Paul as a national shrine, the first in Minnesota. The cathedral also becomes the the only national shrine in North America dedicated to honor the Apostle Paul.

It really is a beautiful Cathedral, as you can see by my photo. Personally, if you will permit me to be immodest for a moment, I like *my* photo more than the one on the full MPR story.