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Botswana in the news: Botswana AIDS Drug Lines Mushroom.

Excerpt:

Botswana, with the highest per-capita rate of HIV infection in world, is struggling to cope with the demand for treatment, despite pouring much of its diamond wealth into the battle against the killer disease.
"We are faced with an ever worsening, perpetual, insatiable demand," Ernest Darkoh, operations manager for Botswana's anti-retroviral drugs program, told a United Nations meeting on HIV/AIDS in the capital Gaborone Monday.

Now that's Chocolate!

Ever see this phenom on Amazon? A group of people get together, and hijack the always-helpful Customer Review threads for one of the more cheesy books/CDs/movies.

The latest one to get hit is the CD The Best of David Hasselhoff.

Last count: 821 reviews.

New Zealand News Reports: Diamonds are forever, but a cow is now. Funnily enough, just like the Hope Diamond, the $530,000 cow is called "Hope".

Got this in my email:

EVER SEE AN ICEBERG FROM TOP TO BOTTOM?

This is awesome! This came from a Rig Manager in St. Johns, Newfoundland. They actually have to divert the path of these things away from the rig by towing them with ships!

Anyway, in this particular case the water was calm & the sun was almost
directly overhead so that the diver was able to get into the water and
click this picture. Clear water huh? They estimated the weight at 300,000,000
tons.

Finally. some people were nailed in the Nigerian scam emails.

I am sad to report that DT member Mercier has passed away. He suffered complications from a surgical procedure. He was only 21 years old. If anyone would like to send cards please check here. Condolensces to his family from our whole community.

Enigma Hero Relives Exploits 60 Years Later...

Excerpt:

David Balme was a 20-year-old sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy in May 1941 when he led a boarding party down the conning tower of a German submarine south of Iceland and changed the course of World War II.

The prize at the bottom of three vertical ladders was the unbreakable German code machine Enigma and a set of code books that would finally enable the British to read enemy radio traffic and turn the tide of war in the Atlantic.
Now 82, Balme, who retired with the rank of Lieutenant Commander, still remembers vividly the details of the dangerous descent into the bowels of the crippled submarine but admits he had no idea how crucial his discovery would be.
"We didn't know what Enigma was. We thought it was a funny looking typewriter -- an interesting bit of kit," he told Reuters Friday.
"It was only when we got back to Scapa Flow (naval base) 10 days later that the senior intelligence officer came aboard and told me what we had got and how hard they had been looking for one."

This glacier is Breathtaking!

There is a Naughty Bunny for sale. I love when stories are told in pictures.

This is rather interesting. This person put together a chart of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.

There is a controversial Citywide Smoking Ban in New York. I'm a non-smoker and love watching hockey, baseball, basketball and auto racing in Sports Bars.

But I haven't done so much in years because I don't like coming home with smoky clothes just because I entered a sports bar.

I'm not sure how the city settled with Cigar Bars, but I think the law as it was initially proposed, was unfair to Cigar Bars. I'm no fan of Cigars, but if an establishment specializes in a bar for Cigar Afficianados, it should be legal.

Interestingly, I've talked to a lot of people here about the ban and was somewhat surprised by the results. You see, at least from people I've spoken to, pretty much everyone that smokes would like to quit. No smoker seems happy to be addicted to smoking. So this ban just helps them to smoke less. Last night I went to a great sports bar and asked the bartender what she thought of the ban and if it has had any effect on business.

She said she loves it. She never minded the second hand smoke but having her clothes smoky all the time really bothered her. But she has noticed no drop off in business as a result of the ban. People just smoke outside. The only time she said it may make a difference are on really cold days.

I can say it was a real pleasure to enter a sports bar, catch a hockey game, not cough all the way through and have to deal with asthma problems and then finally come home to smoke-free clothing. Perhaps at the end of the story, the few lost customers will be more than compensated by people like me, who have avoided these places for years due to the smoke.

Now that is one scary Pizza!

Carbon the exposition features some great art. Be sure to click on the images, the thumbnails don't do it justice.

I was really saddened to hear this news. Peggy Noonan has written a nice piece on him.

Weight Watchers recipe cards, circa 1974. Things have changed a bit...

How can people do this?

28 baby girls found in suitcases on Chinese bus

Wisconsin is seeing double.

Here's some net coverage of Gulf War 2: Raed is apparently a blogger based out of Iraq. His perspective is quite interesting and worth a look. Another one blogging from Iraq is Kevin Sites, a CNN correspondent (although the site is his personal one, not affiliated to CNN).

Elsewhere, on one side of the equation you have michael moore's message to George Bush and on the other side you have a statement to France by someone who is not as attached to the statue of liberty as some others are.

Some 30 years after telemarketing became a real big problem for anyone with a phone in their home the Federal Government has created a National Do Not Call List, to be implemented by summertime. If they continue with the same pace on email, that means that We the People, by 2025 or so, can count on our government to make junk mail not using a do not email registry, illegal.... Let's just hope some smart techies can come up with something better in the meantime...

The Observer has a couple of reports recently about the US spying on UN officials.

Newsmax reports Diamonds are Saddam's Best Friends.

Excerpt:

Diamonds Are Saddam's Best Friends
If London's Sunday Times has it right, Saddam Hussein may be getting ready to hit the road. He's bought millions of dollars' worth of diamonds - the traditional hard currency of fleeing refugees.
According to the Times, Saddam dispatched a "personal jeweler" to Bangkok, Thailand, to pick up a small mountain of the gems, prompting, the paper reports, speculation that the Iraqi dictator may be getting ready to get out of town while the getting is good.
It was the jeweler%u2019s second visit to Bangkok, the paper reported. Three months ago, Saddam's son, Uday, had sent him to buy a $750,000 diamond ring from an American dealer, according to a Times source.
Saddam, reputed to be worth at least $2 billion, is one of the world's richest men. Although he told Dan Rather last week he would never leave Iraq, the Times suggests that the diamond purchase may signify a change of mind, adding that he might have decided to convert part of his wealth into diamonds because it is easier to hide and move around than paper currency when one is on the lam.

The Cola Wars are alive and well.

Google has unveiled a new logo:

I guess they missed my favorite scene from the movie Falling Down.

Newsday reports that Twins separated at Birth, Adriana Scott and Tamara Rabi, were reunited accidentally after 20 years...

Livio De Marchi has designed some great water cars, like this Ferrari, being driven in Venice during Carnaval:

There's a new very cool Online Etymology Dictionary.

Sotheby's was on the verge of selling, but decided to hold back.

Yahoo! News - Phony Police Officer Stops Colo. Driver

A woman was stopped on Interstate 76 by a man posing as a police officer, police said Saturday.

This follows reports that a man impersonating an officer abducted and killed a 20 year old woman from Fort Collins. This is very scary...

Idlewords has some info on how to prepare for terrorist attacks: Ready.gov - Be Informed - Killer Germs - Visual Guide.

PBS's Frontline has a story on: The war behind closed doors.

Someone has created an automated Nigerian email reply generator that you can use anytime you get an email from a Nigerian scammer.

P.S. I just read that a Nigerian Diplomat has been Slain Over E-Mail Scam.

This Condor has been shot by poachers....

Remember Colonel David Hackworth, a military man and reporter making the rounds of the news shows during the first Gulf War? Well you can probably expect to see more of him shortly. His columns contain the kind of info I haven't really seen anywhere else. He gets people in the military sending him letters and it provides an insight into the military that you can't find on TV.

I don't know where these Congress Statistics come from, but it wouldn't surprise me. How sad that these are the people making our laws...here's an excerpt:

Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 500 employees and has the following statistics: 29 have been accused of spousal abuse 7 have been arrested for fraud 19 have been accused of writing bad checks 117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses

A Soldier's Viewpoint on Surviving Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Attacks is something a lot of people are reading these days with a war in Iraq imminent.

He kindly allowed reproduction of his letter (With attribution) so here's the full test:

A Soldier's Viewpoint on Surviving Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Attacks From: SFC Red Thomas (Ret) Armor Master Gunner Mesa, AZ

Unlimited reproduction and distribution is authorized. Just give me credit for my work, and, keep in context.

Since the media has decided to scare everyone with predictions of chemical, biological, or nuclear warfare on our turf I decided to write a paper and keep things in their proper perspective. I am a retired military weapons, munitions, and training expert.

Lesson number one: In the mid 1990s there were a series of nerve gas attacks on crowded Japanese subway stations. Given perfect conditions for an attack less than 10% of the people there were injured (the injured were better in a few hours) and only one percent of the injured died.

60 Minutes once had a fellow telling us that one drop of nerve gas could kill a thousand people, well he didn't tell you the thousand dead people per drop was theoretical.

Drill Sergeants exaggerate how terrible this stuff was to keep the recruits awake in class (I know this because I was a Drill Sergeant too). Forget everything you've ever seen on TV, in the movies, or read in a novel about this stuff, it was all a lie (read this sentence again out loud!). These weapons are about terror, if you remain calm, you will probably not die. This is far less scary than the media and their "Experts," make it sound.

Chemical Weapons

Chemical weapons are categorized as nerve, blood, blister, and Incapacitating agents. Contrary to the hype of reporters and politicians they are not weapons of mass destruction they are "area denial," and terror weapons that don't destroy anything. When you leave the area you almost always leave the risk. That's the difference; you can leave the area and the risk but soldiers may have to stay put and sit through it and that's why they need all that spiffy gear.

These are not gasses, they are vapors and/or air borne particles. The agent must be delivered in sufficient quantity to kill/injure, and that defines when/how it's used. Every day we have a morning and evening inversion where "stuff," suspended in the air gets pushed down. This inversion is why allergies (pollen) and air pollution are worst at these times of the day.

So, a chemical attack will have it's best effect an hour of so either side of sunrise/sunset. Also, being vapors and airborne particles they are heavier than air so they will seek low places like ditches, basements and underground garages. This stuff won't work when it's freezing, it doesn't last when it's hot, and wind spreads it too thin too fast. They've got to get this stuff on you, or, get you to inhale it for it to work. They also have to get the concentration of chemicals high enough to kill or wound you. Too little and it's nothing, too much and it's wasted.

What I hope you've gathered by this point is that a chemical weapons attack that kills a lot of people is incredibly hard to do with military grade agents and equipment so you can imagine how hard it will be for terrorists. The more you know about this stuff the more you realize how hard it is to use.

We'll start by talking about nerve agents. You have these in your house, plain old bug killer (like Raid) is nerve agent. All nerve agents work the same way; they are cholinesterase inhibitors that mess up the signals your nervous system uses to make your body function. It can harm you if you get it on your skin but it works best if they can get you to inhale it. If you don't die in the first minute and you can leave the area you're probably gonna live. The military's antidote for all nerve agents is atropine and pralidoxime chloride. Neither one of these does anything to cure the nerve agent, they send your body into overdrive to keep you alive for five minutes,
after that the agent is used up. Your best protection is fresh air and staying calm.

Listed below are the symptoms for nerve agent poisoning:

Sudden headache, Dimness of vision (someone you're looking at will have pinpointed pupils), runny nose, excessive saliva or drooling, difficulty breathing, tightness in chest, nausea, stomach cramps, twitching of exposed skin where a liquid just got on you.

If you are in public and you start experiencing these symptoms, first ask yourself, did anything out of the ordinary just happen, a loud pop, did someone spray something on the crowd? Are other people getting sick too? Is there an odor of new mown hay, green corn, something fruity, or camphor where it shouldn't be? If the answer is yes, then calmly (if you panic you breathe faster and inhale more air/poison) leave the area and head up wind, or, outside.

Fresh air is the best "right now antidote." If you have a blob of liquid that looks like molasses or Kayro syrup on you; blot it or scrape it off and away from yourself with anything disposable. This stuff works based on your body weight, what a crop duster uses to kill bugs won't hurt you unless you stand there and breathe it in real deep, then lick the residue off the ground for a while. Remember they have to do all the work, they have to get the concentration up and keep it up for several minutes while all you have to do is quit getting it on you/quit breathing it by putting space between you and the attack.

Blood agents are cyanide or arsine which effect your blood's ability to provide oxygen to your tissue. The scenario for attack would be the same as nerve agent. Look for a pop or someone splashing/spraying something and folks around there getting woozy/falling down. The telltale smells are bitter almonds or garlic where it shouldn't be. The symptoms are blue lips, blue under the fingernails rapid breathing.

The military's antidote is amyl nitride and just like nerve agent antidote it just keeps your body working for five minutes till the toxins are used up. Fresh air is the your best individual chance.

Blister agents (distilled mustard) are so nasty that nobody wants to even handle it let alone use it. It's almost impossible to handle safely and may have delayed effect of up to 12 hours. The attack scenario is also limited to the things you'd see from other chemicals. If you do get large, painful blisters for no apparent reason, don't pop them, if you must, don't let the liquid from the blister get on any other area, the stuff just keeps on spreading. It's just as likely to harm the user as the target. Soap, water, sunshine, and fresh air are this stuff's enemy.

Bottom line on chemical weapons (it's the same if they use industrial chemical spills); they are intended to make you panic, to terrorize you, to heard you like sheep to the wolves. If there is an attack, leave the area and go upwind, or to the sides of the wind stream. They have to get the stuff to you, and on you. You're more likely to be hurt by a drunk driver on any given day than be hurt by one of these attacks. Your odds get better if you leave the area. Soap, water, time, and fresh air really deal this stuff a knock-out-punch. Don't let fear of an isolated attack rule your life. The odds are really on your side.

Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear bombs. These are the only weapons of mass destruction on earth. The effects of a nuclear bomb are heat, blast, EMP, and radiation. If you see a bright flash of light like the sun, where the sun isn't, fall to the ground! The heat will be over a second. Then there will be two blast waves, one out going, and one on it's way back. Don't stand up to see what happened after the first wave; anything that's going to happen will have happened in two full minutes.

These will be low yield devices and will not level whole cities. If you live through the heat, blast, and initial burst of radiation, you'll probably live for a very, very long time. Radiation will not create fifty foot tall women, or giant ants and grass hoppers the size of tanks. These will be at the most 1 kiloton bombs; that's the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT.

Here's the real deal, flying debris and radiation will kill a lot of exposed (not all!) people within a half mile of the blast. Under perfect conditions this is about a half mile circle of death and destruction, but, when it's done it's done. EMP stands for Electro Magnetic Pulse and it will fry every electronic device for a good distance, it's impossible to say what and how far but probably not over a couple of miles from ground zero is a good guess. Cars, cell phones, computers, ATMs, you name it, all will be out of order.

There are lots of kinds of radiation, you only need to worry about three, the others you have lived with for years. You need to worry about "Ionizing radiation," these are little sub atomic particles that go whizzing along at the speed of light. They hit individual cells in your body, kill the nucleus and keep on going. That's how you get radiation poisoning, you have so many dead cells in your body that the decaying cells poison you.

It's the same as people getting radiation treatments for cancer, only a bigger area gets radiated. The good news is you don't have to just sit there and take it, and there's lots you can do rather than panic. First; your skin will stop alpha particles, a page of a news paper or your clothing will stop beta particles, you just gotta try and avoid inhaling dust that's contaminated with atoms that are emitting these things and you'll be generally safe from them.

Gamma rays are particles that travel like rays (quantum physics makes my brain hurt) and they create the same damage as alpha and beta particles only they keep going and kill lots of cells as they go all the way through your body. It takes a lot to stop these things, lots of dense material, on the other hand it takes a lot of this to kill you.

Your defense is as always to not panic. Basic hygiene and normal preparation are your friends. All canned or frozen food is safe to eat. The radiation poisoning will not effect plants so fruits and vegetables are OK if there's no dust on em (rinse em off if there is). If you don't have running water and you need to collect rain water or use water from wherever, just let it sit for thirty minutes and skim off the water gently from the top. The dust with the bad stuff in it will settle and the remaining water can be used for the toilet which will still work if you have a bucket of water to pour in the
tank.

Biological Weapons

Finally there's biological warfare. There's not much to cover here. Basic personal hygiene and sanitation will take you further than a million doctors. Wash your hands often, don't share drinks, food, sloppy kisses, etc., .... with strangers. Keep your garbage can with a tight lid on it, don't have standing water (like old buckets, ditches, or kiddie pools) laying around to allow mosquitoes breeding room. This stuff is carried by vectors, that is bugs, rodents, and contaminated material. If biological warfare is so easy as the TV makes it sound, why has Saddam Hussein spent twenty years, millions, and millions of dollars trying to get it right? If you're clean of person and home you eat well and are active you're gonna live.

Overall preparation for any terrorist attack is the same as you'd take for a big storm. If you want a gas mask, fine, go get one. I know this stuff and I'm not getting one and I told my Mom not to bother with one either (how's that for confidence). We have a week's worth of cash, several days worth of canned goods and plenty of soap and water. We don't leave stuff out to attract bugs or rodents so we don't have them.

These people can't conceive a nation this big with this much resources. These weapons are made to cause panic, terror, and to demoralize. If we don't run around like sheep they won't use this stuff after they find out it's no fun. The government is going nuts over this stuff because they have to protect every inch of America. You've only gotta protect yourself, and by doing that, you help the country.

Finally, there are millions of caveats to everything I wrote here and you can think up specific scenarios where my advice isn't the best. This letter is supposed to help the greatest number of people under the greatest number of situations. If you don't like my work, don't nit pick, just sit down and explain chemical, nuclear, and biological warfare in a document around three pages long yourself. This is how we the people of the United States can rob these people of their most desired goal, your terror.

SFC Red Thomas (Ret)
Armor Master Gunner
Mesa, AZ

Had important matters of the past been handled with the current technology, this is what The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation might have looked like.

Everyone is talking about gulf war 2, a new Flash take on the war...

In case you missed it, the Internet is talking about an article written by John LeCarre called The United States of America has gone mad.

PHOTOFORUMS - A Pixel Picture Community is a great site for photography lovers.

A website has been put together to help get Nigerian Scam Victims United.

There are a couple of interesting stories in Bloomberg today:

1. Retailers in U.S. Are Headed for Weakest Holiday Sales in Three Decades
2. CEOs with the most stock options
3. Federated, Sears Look to Jewelry to Help Save Holiday

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has an interesting story today: Nixon's nuclear ploy

An excerpt:

Nixon's nuclear ploy
By William Burr & Jeffrey Kimball

Richard Nixon thought a secret, worldwide nuclear alert would remain unknown to the American public, and he was right. But his strategy to threaten the Soviets into helping bring an end to the Vietnam war was unsuccessful. They may not even have noticed.

This site is high Kaliber

The Student Doctor Network is a must see site for Med Students!

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Ask a Scientist is a really cool resource!

The George Lucas Educational Foundation is a nonprofit organization that documents and disseminates stories about exemplary practices in K-12 public education.

If you have high school age kids, you may want to see High School Hub, it looks like an excellent directory of informative sites...

birdhouse.org has the funniest comment about (mis)use of quotation marks. "Warning", the above link is "funny".

TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime blogs about the auctions the US Government runs. Auction lovers may find this link of great interest...

The number of Journalists with blogs is huge... A great way to find out what's really going on...

Personally, I don't and cannot cook, but I love fine dining and eat out most meals. If I had ever tried to cook a meal, I'd wind up putting something on the stove, get involved in some code until I smelled something burning :)

However, for those of you that do cook, I just ran into a very cool blog and I will make it my Aortal Link: Food Blog. Bon Apetit!

This year's Persons of the year is dedicated to whistleblowers: Cynthia Cooper, Coleen Rowley and Sherron Watkins.

I would certainly have given Robert Wright the co-nod ahead of corporate whistleblowers, but I guess the marketing department had to have their say of which candidates and general theme would sell more magazines...

Shorlty after 9/11, I subscribed to the ABC news Emergency alert system. Rarely is it even worth reading what they send, but FBI Called off Terror Investigations is.

Nonetheless, it is rather self serving for them to call this a breaking news story worthy of sending a message for their emergency alert system....

All that happened is ABC News staff interviewed some FBI whistleblowers... the actual news that deserved an alert was not when ABC News interviewed them, but a long time ago, when they went public with their allegations... for those who've been following us for a long time, you may remember reading here about Robert Wright along with some other whistleblowers using Judicial Watch's services...

Speaking of Judicial Watch, if anyone has seen Fatal Neglect, please drop a comment here and tell us what you thought of it...

Happy Holidays!

P.S. They put up an ad first, sorry.

Just wanted to offer heartfelt thanks to Daisy for naming the Diamond Blog her Aortal link.

In the spirit of the holidays and in the best tradition of blogging, I will make sure to Pay it forward by thinking of an independent site to offer an Aortal link to as well...

The Register reports that the Nigerian population wants to help US out with our National Debt. Here's an excerpt:

Every man, woman and child (and, I feel the evidence will show, a good percentage of the house pets) in Nigeria is secreting away a vast fortune in American currency! These caches rang from 18 to 58 million dollars (or, as they would say, "EIGHTEEN MILLION TO FIFTY-EIGHT MILLION AMERICAN DOLLARS"). It is kept in various trunks, hidden accounts and mattresses across the globe.

JWalk Blogs about Nigerian Scams, one of our favorite topics :), pointing to a funny new entry in the genre.

Dido TV, how cute.

Here's an interesting portal for the Hair Salon Industry. It's called Behind The Chair and is really well done.

I've been fascinated by the secret Vatican Archives for a long time. How delightful to come across the official site of the Vatican Secret Archives.

If you enjoyed reading Machiavelli, or Sun Tzu's the Art of War, you will love the Carl Von Clausewitz Homepage. Clausewitz was a brilliant military thinker whose ideas have great relevance to this day.

Expanding their concept, The Mirror Project introduces Themes: here's Weddings

50states.com - States and Capitals

I like it!

I'm thinking of trying Ortho-K instead of Lasik. Far safer...Here's a log of one person's experience. Not that encouraging but still sounds better than lasik to me.. Every medical professional I know personally shudders when I mention lasik so I'm not a believer in it..

May I help you?

What a difference 1.2 inches of glass makes:

Overstock.com showing triple digit sales growth.

Overstock.com, which sells a lot of Jewelry btw, is really doing well lately. Seems they are selling a lot of books as well, at about 50% of the prices of Amazon.com according to Patrick Bryne.

As the holiday season is approaching, DT member Cassandra has Dug up her old White House pics . Pretty cool!

We were discussing optical illusions on Diamond Talk recently. Well this helps you visually understand how it works and may give you a headache at the same time. Read it while I go get some tylenol.

I remember Samantha. This was the 10 year old girl who wrote a letter to Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov and got a letter back and an invitation to the Soviet Union. She got to meet Andropov and the local population. Put a face to the people in the Soviet Union. An interesting letter to see how a child of 10 perceives the world and politics. Life should be so simple and in some ways, it comes down to her questions: "I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not? If you aren't please tell me how you are going to help to not have a war. This question you do not have to answer, but I would like to know why you want to conquer the world or at least our country. God made the world for us to live together in peace and not to fight."

I didn't know and am rather sad to hear that she died at 13 in a plane crash.... As the saying goes, the good die young...

Tetris is Hard (warning, link is PDF file)

An article for you technical types who also happen to like tetris.

On remembering.

Singing like a Hummingbird.

This is a great story of a company that revolutionized fishing, with depth finders and eventually imaging. They initiated a stock option plan for employees who landed a 2,000 percent gain in value. Bravo.

A Blog Ringing in the Empty Sky

This blog has a great photo in infrared...interesting effect.

This Guide to NY is making the rounds on the net and the blogosphere...

The hassle. New York is a hassle. It will drive you crazy, this will help:

Cabs change shift at around 4 (am and pm), this means that from 3:30 to about 4:45 it is impossible to get a cab.

There are no cabs in the rain.

Cabs are legally obligated to take you to any destination in the 5 boroughs, if they refuse, say you'll report them and make a scene.

Try not to engage cabbies in conversations, lest you be hearing about all sorts of things you don't wish to know --

It's a shame this news story: Woman Survives 34-Hour Ordeal in Bog didn't take this opportunity to go into why people who wind up submerged in water in their cars often drown:

A woman was recovering in a Dublin hospital on Tuesday after surviving 34 hours in a car submerged in a bog, the Irish Independent reported.

An air pocket which allowed her to breathe was believed to have saved English-born Lisa Landau, 39, after her car swerved off a road in County Wicklow south of Dublin on Saturday night and sank upside-down in the waterlogged bog, the paper said.

Power windows mean that as soon as the car is submerged, you can't open the window because the power short circuits. The water pressure is very difficult to deal with and as the car is submerging, attempting to open the car door is extremely difficult. The best time to try and open the car door is after there is, yikes, sorry to say this, water pressure evened out because water is inside the car...don't panic...stay alert and think. Even though the car may be full of water, if you keep your wits about you and focus on what to do, you may get out alive. If you have a strong sharp object, smash the SIDE WINDOW right above the lock. That is the weakest area and is built to be breakable. Don't bother with the windshield....

I think it would be nice if cars were designed to have the windows cave in once there was a certain uniform water pressure from outside. Probably easier said than done, but the task given to engineers, I bet they could come up with something...

Mark Pilgrim points out Doonesbury is doing weblogs.

If you're into marketing, or how a company gets a tagline like "A Diamond is Forever", you'll like this article.

Whenever I go to Vegas, I skip the casinos and enjoy the best the area has to offer. And part of that is Red Rock Canyon. And PhotoDude has a done a great job of documenting the area during one of his trips...

Halley wants coke as an advertiser. She also makes a couple of points about advertorials. Halley, did you catch the CNN links story?

BTW, I like Coke too.

This Bike Desk goes right along with the Get Smart Shoe phone. I like it!

Model Tamie presents the new 'bike-desk' from Danish SIS International company from Helsinge, during a preview show of the International fair for office funiture and objects ORGATEC in Cologne, Germany, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2002. Exercise while at work, to fight fatigue and loss of concentration, should be not only for fitness freaks. About 1,000 companies from 46 countries will present their ideas and creations round the modern office from Oct. 22, until Oct. 26, 2002 in Cologne.

How bad can it get? Now you don't even have to turn on Internet Explorer to get a popup. What's next? Popups without even turning on your computer?

From the We have brains weblog comes a link to an exhibit on Women in Espionage. Interesting.

I agree with Simon Willison' comments about this new url prefetching mechanism. It is a nice enhancement. Soon we'll hear articles about Google giving higher rankings for url's linked to with the prefetch tag and then SEO specialists and Porn sites creating splash pages with Linkrels to get google to increase their pagerank. The truth is, on DSL I don't personally feel the need for prefetching but on dial up it can sure come in handy.

A development team is hoping to interest some developers in a project that is, shall we say, Pie in the Sky.

I've enjoyed watching Wayne Gretzky for a long long time. And it was definitely a special moment to meet him one day as he happened to be walking towards my home. Well, his Jersey is now retired in Los Angeles.

I'll never forget one of the two hat tricks in his final postseason for the New York Rangers. In the clutch. The puck took a weird bounce behind the net and wound up on ole Wayne's skate with no one between him and the goalie. As if he did this every day he stayed as cool as ice, like he was walking to the store or something, he simply deflected the puck onto his stick and put it in the net. I don't think words can convey the matter of fact manner he pulled this one off. By then his scoring touch was long gone, but come playoff time, thinking gets turned off and some athletes just do what they do naturally. Playing like he did those days, you felt like he could get a Hat Trick every day at 40 (almost). Too bad in the back office they were planning to let Messier go and the on-ice chemistry messed up NY. They didn't get the cup that year and haven't been back to the playoffs since.

Anyways, let me just say one last toast to #99 and enjoy the memories.

P.S. This didn't happen without controversy. I remember there being other issues but "puckupdate" cites a USA Today article saying that 99 wouldn't participate in the Kings' ceremony until McNall was allowed to participate. I don't know what's going on behind the scenes, but I'm glad Mcnall was there. I don't know much about that coin fraud thing buthe did bring 99 and vitality to Hockey in the West Coast.

Every year this family takes a picture. Cool progression.

I think that this article prompted CNN to take action because when I scanned their site I saw on top of those links.

Although I really didn't like the Yahoo ads lately, I didn't realize exactly what bothered me until
now. It's one thing to stick a popover or popunder. Even if it gets in the way of reading what you want to read. Don't get me wrong, that is supremely annoying and I really hate it. But loud music????. They've graduated to a whole new level of annoying.

That's just disturbing the peace a bit too much. I will now actively seek to replace everything I use Yahoo for.

I'm happy to report that the techniques described here worked fabulously and from 5-10 calls a day it is very rare that I get a cold call at all.

EGBG has published a new counterscript.

My only purpose in bringing up the following is to show how some stories are more thoroughly investigated online than in the media. This is partly why blogs captivate the media so much. John Gruber did a fine job tracking down almost all the elements of the story. Along with everyone else I've read on the story, he did miss a couple of people and things I found from looking at all the links from the original story and googling it. But overall he did a better job than the media.

As we know, there are a lot of Nigerian letters going out. Well Simon Willison has found a site that scams the scammers. Enjoy.

Mark Pilgrim who lost his dog for awhile, found this interesting device that helps make sure you don't lose your dog. Ah, technology.

Dave Winer took a Cameric self-portrait. Following in the footsteps of some other projects, is he trying to start a new one? If you find other bloggers doing the same, comment here.

Master interviewer Studs Terkel on May 16, 2002, celebrated his 90th Birthday!

If you've never read his books you are missing out on something. He interviews people from all walks of life about all kinds of topics and really gets you to see what life is like from different angles. A great learning experience. Happy to see he is doing well and his website just looks great!

Internet toolbars are trendy these days. eBay is the latest to offer one up. Has anyone used it? Is it any good?

This Bait car is a great technology. It would be cool if they could add this technology to regular cars. Imagine calling the police, informing them your car was stolen and they lock the thieves in your car & pick them up!

A man is attempting to file a claim w/ his insurance company trying to recover cost of a $12,475 engagement ring. He met a woman online, apparently she lied about her identity and once she received her engagement ring she disappeared.

Although the "Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that an engagement ring is a conditional gift that must be returned if a wedding does not take place...failing to abide by that standard would be considered a breach of contract, rather than a criminal offense."

This is a very unfortunate story and really shows how important it is to play it very safe on the internet.

This is rathergood.

In P2P Smoke Shelley argues correctly that the claims of kazaa being totally peer to peer is a bit overblown. I think there is a long battle ahead and that P2P won't win. Although there are some laudable and fair uses of this technology, the unfair uses are far more prevalent and go against powerful rich forces.

Power will kill this technology. And it seems the only ones with the wherewithal to fight it are associating themselves with spyware and slimeware, which their customers hate so I don't really see how this can wind up being a long-term success. But you never know..

Books are a topic near and dear to my heart. I love books. I love reading them. I love writing. I love learning about the industry and talking to authors. It's nice to see when a publisher like O'Reilly, a consistently top shelf tech publisher, has the guts to use the technology they teach people about. They have opened up to the public the upcoming book called Practical RDF. There is a public online review. Everyone is welcome to post comments.

Best of luck Shelley! Great use of the medium.

Vino!, which dubs itself as The Guide to Wine, looks like a promising new site. Enjoy!

Maybe this new technology will be able to improve the art of lip synching. I'd love to test this out. The special speakers can focus like a laser beam and make it appear as if the sound is coming from anywhere.

Joi Ito, who runs a top notch Japanese/English Blog, links to some cool tools he uses. One of them seems like a real gem. TMDA, Tagged Message Delivery Agent. It plays more or less on some of the ideas mentioned here.

Daniel W. Drezner writes about blogging as a scholar. I've found the part about electronic communication to be as true about forums as they are in email ;)

CherylIP has tracked down the God's Billboards links. Enjoy.

c71123, a web designer for Andrew Sullivan, sure does seem to take

a lot of pictures of himself. One a day.

Mark Pilgrim has rightly reduced the visibility of incoming links so that the "words" in the "Further Reading" list become more important than the popularity. Here is an excerpt:

"Anyway, my further reading lists now include excerpts from the referring page. The visitor counts are still around, but they're now stuffed in the title attribute of the links (hover your cursor over the links to see them). I hope that, if anyone are going to do any judging around here, they'll judge based on people's words and not on their relative traffic. "Words, words, they're all we have to go on."

Great idea Mark! So if the words are what counts, why are you sorting the comments by the amount of incoming links ;)

Maybe you can create a new AI tool that sorts by intelligence of posts? :)

Thanks to kadyellebee for pointing out the newsletter "photoshop roadmap". This looks like a great newsletter for people who use graphics and Photoshop especially.

For those interested in marketing and some history on innovative companies who didn't succeed with a new product, this Slate article, is worth the popup ad you have to close before reading it.

A friend of mine caught a Minor League game recently and said it was a lot more fun than at the pro level. I think I will follow suit. With what is happening in baseball (despite the Yankees not going beyond first level this year for a change) and Formula 1 and other sports, seems the little leagues still retain some spirit in a way that majors don't anymore. Too bad it had to get to this level.

Hahah. Looks like Tony Soprano woke up this mornin' & got himself a Blog

Houdini was an amazing and interesting magician and human being. Inside Magic does a fine job in talking about the man who died this very month in 1926.

The NY Times has a blog. Sort of...

This Blog, pick up your own damn socks, catering to wives & girlfriends, sure has an interesting name :)

A couple of guys managed to recreate Escher's "Ascending and Descending" in LEGO.

And here are some more works of art Lego'ized.

Welcome to DiamondBlog.com. Some of you may be new to this but it should be a lot of fun to experiment! Check out some of the links on the left to get a flavor of the bold new world of Blogging!