Merry Christmas to everyone and a Happy New Year!
A touching animated vid by Hanna Abi-Hanna.
Beneath the Rubber Tree from Hanna on Vimeo.
I read about Jamie Lynn Spears (Britney Spears’ 16 year old sister) announcing that she is 12 weeks pregnant yesterday. Wasn’t at all surprised, considering her big sister isn’t exactly a good role model. Ok, maybe that statement was a little harsh but she is a Nickelodeon girl, of *squickly clean* Disney… what in the world was she thinking?
It is reported that her 18 year old boyfriend is allegedly the father. Correct me if I’m wrong here but if an 18 year old guy gets a 16 year old girl pregnant, isn’t that a sex offense? Regardless of whether both of them had consensual sex.
Personally, I’m afraid of what it might look to the millions of kids who are fans of her show. Will they now think it’s ok to have a baby that young? How would you even explain to your kid about her pregnancy? To have young kids look up to someone like that is a little worrying. Britney Spears is causing enough trouble. If I had kids, not sure whether I would like them to watch Nickelodeon, especially her show. This is something that makes me so nervous if I had a daughter.
Disney is also not having much luck in the controversy department too. This is the second controversial incident this year — High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens had nude pictures circulating on the internet not too long ago.
And to think … she looks so angelic, so innocent! I guess looks can be deceiving.
What happens if you have only a certain amount of time to live? Would you want to take a trip of a lifetime or just sit at home counting down the days?
For me, I would want to experience some exciting adventures and do some things that I’ll never forget. Here is my top 10 list (in no particular order):
Freefall and dive like there’s no tomorrow! A helicopter will fly to the top of Mt. Everest (29035 ft above the ground), where you will freefall past some of the world’s highest mountains and land on the highest drop zone in the world. You will then experience the Himalayan environment, visit the Kathmandu and Serpa lands on the Everest region.
Train on sophisticated simulators used on astronauts and fighter pilots, test your reaction to space flights zero gravity and more. It’s a two day intense training course by the National Aerospace Training & Research (NASTAR) Center in Pennsylvania. Those who experienced it called it “Disney’s Mission Space on steroids”.
3) Experience an Air Combat duel
Be a fighter pilot for a day, engage in aerial dogfighting with choice of 4 aircrafts including a world war II fighter plane. Maneuver the plane acrobatically and dog fight like the movies. You will get to fire with electronic bullets, so you can’t run out of it. Each plane is equipped with laser weapon systems, smoke and sound effects for realistic experiences.
4) Star in a personal Top Gun gun style documentary
Fly the L-39 jet fighter and play the role of the fighter pilot. Work with the same people and the same plane that was used in the movie Jarhead. Coordinate and create your own action/ flying sequence. While you are in the plane flying, everything will be filmed and at the end of it, you get to keep your the personalized documentary film and movie footage.
5) Exploring the Grand Canyon on a raft
A 14 day expedition down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon that includes hiking and rafting experiencing the history, archeology, ecology and geology of the Canyon. Imagine rafting down a canyon that is 6000 feet deep, 277 miles long and 18 miles wide (at its widest). This is a trip like no other.
6) Explore Europe, Africa and the Carribean on the Picton-Castle
The Picton-Castle is a sailing ship reminiscent of what commercial sailing ships were a 100 years ago. With 12,450 feet of canvas sails, an 1893 cooking stove, a galley on deck, two tiers with bunks, steel hull, mast and pine decks; you get to experience traveling the world like Christopher Columbus did. While on it, you will be a ship trainee seaman, learning navigation and square rigging.
7) Trekking in the Tibetan valleys seeing the last Shangri-La
Experience a 3 week hike up the eastern valleys of Merak and Sakten and tour the ancient monasteries. You will trek across 13,500 feet of the mountain, exploring ancient traditional villages and finally visiting with monks who follow the Nyingma sec of Tibetan Buddhism.
8) Bungee jump off the highest dam in the world
Bungee jump 722 feet off the Verzasca dam in Ticino, Switzerland. It takes about 7.5 to 8 seconds to reach the lowest point of the jump. Verzasca dam is the same dam James Bond jumped off in GoldenEye.
5 days reliving the adventures of the Wild West in South Dakota; getting up close and personal with a roaming buffalo herd, riding with the cowboys, bouncing along the prairie through the mountains on authentic wagon ride, horse through the back country and joining the native Americans in a traditional Indian pow wow.
10) Drive off-road down the Baja Peninsula
The ultimate in off-road adventure… one will drive an off-road car/ truck from the international border at Tijuana, along the Baja coast through Punta San Francisquito and finally to ending at Cabo San Lucas. Through the 7 day off-road journey, you will experience the variety of vegetation, wilderness, geographical terrain, beautiful valleys, and enjoy the Pacific coastline.
So what will your top 10 list be like?
Sad but true
Posting my Lifestream, confirms what I already know but didn’t want to hear – that I spend WAY too much time on the web and my computer (even though it’s part of my daily work routine). Sad but true.
Facebook buzz
The buzz yesterday was Microsoft buying a piece of Facebook – a $240 million stake and the rights to have exclusive third party advertisement rights possibly paving the way for a Microsoft Live Facebook search engine too. There are also reports that they may have secured another $500 million from two New York investors.
Although being only 3 years old, the company is already valued at $15 billion and is currently the 5th most valuable US internet company (via Techcrunch) behind the likes of Google, Ebay, Amazon and Yahoo. Facebook currently has about 47 million users/ members, records 15 billion page views a month and registers about 150,000 new users a day.
Mark Zuckerberg has really done well for himself, especially for a 23 year old that initially started Facebook in his Harvard dorm to keep in touch with his old friends. Mark has since held off selling off the company, apparently turning down a $750 million buyout offer. Good for him to keep his baby close to his heart, taking the extra risk and having business savvy.
No one really knows for sure what the revenue of Facebook is but Techcrunch reports that it may bring in an estimated revenue of about $1.5 million a week. I personally think it’s a good move to hold out on a sale as Facebook has not even matured as a company yet and its potential is tremendous.
I just love to hear about success stories like Mark Zuckerburg and Kevin Rose (of the Digg fame). It gives us hope and the proof that if you put your mind to something, dreams can be achieved.
Cryptology is not for kids
Came across a site called Cryptokids. It’s designed by the governmental branch NSA (National Security Agency) and tailored to teaching kids Cryptology in a fun and amusing way. While I love Cryptology, I do think introducing it to young kids isn’t entirely appropriate. Teaching and encouraging the use of Cryptology at that young an age opens up the possibilities of kids using it negatively and illegally for their own amusement e.g hacking. The majority of kids out there just aren’t mature enough to appreciate it.
Last.fm rocks!
Recently joined the free music site Last.fm after hearing rave reviews about it. I’ve not regretted my decision! It is a great site to find and listen to the music you like, listen to music recommendations and network with those who have the same taste in the music.
Using a unique music recommendation system known as “Audioscrobbler”, Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user’s musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations or on the user’s computer or portable music device. This information is transferred to Last.fm’s database (“Scrobbled”) via a plugin installed into the user’s music player. The profile data is displayed on a personal web page.
Users can create custom radio stations and playlists from any of the audio tracks in Last.fm’s music library, but are not able to listen to individual tracks on demand, or to download tracks unless the rightsholder has previously authorized it. Registration is required to acquire a profile but is not necessary to view any part of the site or to listen to radio stations.
(Via Wikipedia)
Since I’ve downloaded their software, I’ve used it as an internet radio. All I have to do is put a singer or type of music of my choice into the software, and it will then stream music indefinitely until you stop it (advertisement free). You can see the songs I’ve listen to so far in my Lifestream or going to my Last.fm profile. I happen to like Indie, India Pop and Alternative music and my song list reflects that.
On the Home Front
On the home front, Miles (my cat) keeps following me around the house. Doesn’t he know he is a cat? Only dogs follow.
I keep killing fruitflies but they just keep coming back. At first we thought it may come from the pumpkins and apples we had but the apples are now gone and the pumpkin is outside. There are also no food lying about or in the trash. Weird and annoying! J has a home remedy of soap, vinegar and water which seems to attract and kill them — know any other ways?
You can smell a scam with this one. It just cracks me up how badly written and unprofessional most of the email scams are. The stupidity of these scammers are just unbelievable. Not condoning it in anyway but if you want to scam, do it cleverly. I guess you are so busy wanting to scam and sending those 1000s of emails out that you forget the whole reason why you want to scam in the first place. It’s bad enough with spammers and scammers existing in this world but brainless ones are worse yet.
Lets breakdown the areas that jumped out at me when I was reading it:
1) If you say you are from Oxford (United Kingdom), why is your email from a gmu.edu address? That domain points to George Mason University here in Washington, DC. I know it’s a mask and a fake, but why choose a .edu address? How dumb can you be?
2) If you are Tina Howard, how come the email sender says Katie A. Walnetski?
3) Why don’t you have a website for TN fabrics and Textiles?
4) Your email reply is tnfabrics07@yahoo.de which points to Yahoo Germany. Wait a minute, didn’t you say you were from Oxford, United Kingdom?
So let me get this straight, you are Tina Howard but actually Katie A. Walnetski, you live in Oxford, have a German email address but somehow you are emailing me from a student or staff member’s account at George Mason University here in the United States.
Wow! TN fabrics and Textiles must send you all of the world. Another thing Ms. Tina Howard, Manager of TN fabrics and Textiles — have you heard of something called the spell checker? I would love to deal with your sopplies in the United Kindgom and am sure that your payments will be recieved promptly.
Hope you like my Delete Items box as that’s where you are now.
—–Original Message—–
From: Katie A Walnetski [mailto:kwalnets@gmu.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 12:50 PM
Subject: ***EMPLOYMENT OFFER***
TN Fabrics
89 Newport ave, Scoffford Area,
Oxford, L349HA
Phone #:+(44) 704-011-3837
Fax:+442075043690
I am Tina Howard the Manager of TN fabrics and Textiles and i live and work here in United Kindgom, Would you like to work online from home and get paid without affecting your present job?
Actually i need a representative who can be working for our company as online book-keeper.
We make lots of sopplies to some of our clients in the USA/CANADA for which i do come down to recieve payment and have it cashed after i supply them raw materials. Its always too expensive and stressful for me to come down and recieve such payment twice in a month, so i therefore decided to contact you. I am willing to pay you 10% for every payment recieved by you from our clients who makes payment through you.
Reply by filling the form below if interested,
NAME………………….
FULL ADDRESS(not p.o. box)……………
ZIP CODE…..
PHONE NUMBER (S)………………..
AGE…..
OCCUPATION………………
REPLY ASAP : tnfabrics07@yahoo.de
Tina Howard
TN FABRICS AND TEXTILES
So there was the judge that sued his dry cleaner for ruining his pants, now there’s the lawyer that’s suing her florist for $400k.
The reason … the flowers at her wedding were not arranged properly, the wrong color and it caused “extreme disappointment, distress and embarrassment.”
By the way, those flowers she ordered cost her $27k. That’s ridiculous! Seems like she’s a rich spoil brat and a litigation lawyer — a pretty bad combination to me. I wonder whether she was stomping and kicking her feet like a 5 year old when she saw the different colored flowers.
What is wrong with people nowadays? Potentially putting a florist out of business to appease your vanity is just wrong. People like this just make me sick. There really should be a law against people wasting the courts time and money on frivolous suits just because they can, they know the law and they want to prove a point.
I am not sure what she stands to gain from all this too. Maybe she likes the negative publicity. Reading the few articles around the web, she is not particularly popular with her peers and co workers alike. She’s not going to gain many friends (probably lose a lot) with her actions and it may have an impact on her future clientèle. It does impact the rest of the law community too. Lawyers in particular are often seen as unscrupulous, cold hearted and money hungry predators — this situation puts a further dent to their already tainted image. My condolences to her husband as he may not have known what he has got himself into.
What she has done now is irreversible, she will always be reminded of what she has done. The next time her relatives, future kids or future clients Google her name to find out more on her or whether to hire her, this story (and the many other thousands written) will always be linked to her name in a negative way.
Well Mrs. Elana Elbogen, as they say “what goes around, comes around“. I hope you sleep well at night knowing that.
Other Links
NY Times
Gawker
Mrs. Elbogen’s Bloomingdale’s Wedding Registry
Via Shoemoney and SEOmoz, thought I might also try to list 5 websites that I can’t do without.
It was near impossible to narrow it down to five, so I did ten sites instead. Here’s my top 10 favorite sites and daily reads (in no particular order):
1. Techcrunch
Daily (and latest) news of tech businesses and Web 2.0 startups from Michael Arrington
2. USA Today
Daily news around the globe
3. ESPN
Can’t miss the latest sports news!
4. Techmeme
Compilations of tech news around the internet and blogosphere
5. New Scientist
The latest science trends and discoveries of the day
6. How to change the world
A marketing blog of Guy Kawasaki, director of a venture capitalist company and columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine
7. Michelle Malkin
Conservative syndicated columnist, author, and Fox News Channel contributor
8. Lifehacker
Gina Trapani recommends downloads, web sites and shortcuts that save time
9. O’Reilly Radar
Tim O’Reilly’s blog about tech, emerging markets, publishing and more.
10. The Dilbert Blog
Amusing and opinionated blog of Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert)
These came close but didn’t make the top 10 list:
Mashable, JohnChow.com, Engadget, Luxist, GigaOm, Matt Cutts, Read/Write Web, Go2Web2
These would have made the list a year ago but I’ve since lost interested in them:
Problogger, Scobleizer, Blog Maverick, Digg, Valleywag, Crunchgear, 43 Folders, Gizmodo
So what does your list look like? Let me know in the comments. I would love to learn about new and interesting sites.
Train derails (not far from where we live) causing a huge fire and couple of schools closing. There was supposedly hazardous materials on the train.
14 year old gets suspended for fighting, comes back to school with two guns, starts shooting and then kills himself. Four shot and wounded. Just unbelievable! I hate the fact that things like that happen, especially since J is a teacher too. I get worried everytime she goes to school. What’s the world coming too when we can’t even be safe in schools and colleges?
18 year old gets drunk and accidentally falls to his death from the 11th floor of his condominium residence.
To say it’s a bad day in Ohio is a major understatement.
Amazing how many Australian/ English Soap Opera stars are coming to America to make their name. I know this because I used to watch a couple of the soaps (namely Neighbors and Home & Away) when I was schooling in England. They are doing pretty well for themselves…
1. Michelle Ryan
She was Zoe from the English soap Eastenders. Currently the star of Bionic Woman.
2. Jesse Spencer
He was the Billy Kennedy in the Australian soap called Neighbors. Currently starring in House.
3. Melissa George
From England’s soap Home and Away (Angel Brook). Starred in the movie Amityville Horror (2005), Sugar and Spice, Alias and more.
4. Anna Friel
From England’s Brookside and Emmerdale Farm. Currently starring in Pushing Daisies.
5. Isla Fisher
She was Shannon Reed on the English soap Home and Away. Starred in Wedding Crashers, Scooby Doo, Hot Rod and more. Famous for being Sacha Baron Cohen’s (Borat) fiancee.
