Tag: news

Little boy becomes superhero for a day

This story is just amazing.  It still seems like one of those things that happens in after-school specials or in one of those Hallmark channel movies.

Miles Scott, who at age five has already been fighting cancer for three years, lives in California and like many kids his age he loves superheroes.  He especially loves Batman and would apparently wear the costume quite a bit.  So the Make-A-Wish Foundation decided to turn Miles’ dream into reality by transforming San Francisco into Gotham City for a day.

But the most amazing part to me is how many people, many of them random strangers, became involved.  Literally thousands of people.

One of Batman’s creators drew the little boy a comic featuring villain Bane retreating from Miles as Batkid.  The mayor, the chief of police, the TV news, the San Francisco Chronicle, even President Obama, all got involved.  And thousands of strangers (many of them carrying Batkid signs and such) showed up to cheer him on as he “rescued” people from villains that included the Riddler and the Joker.

The links I included have a lot of good photos and video.  Watch, read, and try not to tear up.  I dare you.

-Geoff

Terrible news from the Philippines

Now that Typhoon Haiyan has passed over the Philippines and headed west towards Vietnam, the people there have had a chance to begin initial assessments of the damage done, and it doesn’t look good.  One observer has described the scene as “apocalyptic”.  Some areas are so devastated that there is no communication from them at all.   Accurate assessments of casualties at this point are impossible, but it looks as if the loss of life will easily be in the hundreds, if not the thousands.

If you have any ability to help at all, here’s some groups that are assisting with relief efforts: the Philippine Red Cross; the World Food Program; Shelter Box; and Americares.

-Geoff

Possibly the strongest typhoon ever recorded

Wow.  Glad we don’t have a storm like this anywhere near us.

Super Typhoon Haiyan is definitely the strongest storm of 2013, and it may just be one of the strongest ones ever recorded, with sustained winds of 195 miles per hour and gusts of up to 230 mph.  Imagine that.  Good God, an EF5 tornado has winds of 200 plus miles an hour.  And this is a tropical cyclone, causing damage over a much wider area.   They probably won’t even know for a while just everything that it has done.  The size and power of it are just mind-boggling.  Hopefully the loss of life in the Philippines and other places in its path will be minimal.  They seem to have been quite prepared, at least.

I will settle for some cooler weather and rain here, thank you very much.

-Geoff

Wow, this is weird

Kelly and I awoke to the smell of smoke, especially when I opened the back door to let the dogs out into the yard.  Turns out there was a major fire near the Somerville/Cambridge line on the other side of Inman Square.  The fire was on Calvin Street.  It got up to seven alarms.  I hope no one was hurt.

I looked at a map to figure out where the fire was and thought “wait, weren’t there some other fires in that neighborhood recently?”  It turns out that for once my memory was right.  In fact, one morning a couple of weeks ago two fires broke out at almost the same time, just a few blocks apart: one on Lewis and one on Dane.  That alone seems fishy, but now this huge fire happens, and in the same part of Somerville.  What are the odds that three fires would break out in two weeks in the same neighborhood?   I mean, these three fires are literally within a couple hundred yards of each other.  Am I nuts or does this seem a little fishy?  I mean, we have friends who live in this neighborhood.  I am just wondering if they need to worry about someone sneaking around in the wee hours setting fires or something.  I hope that arson is not the problem, but it sure seems like a possibility.

-Geoff

Faith in humanity being restored

Slowly.

I have to admit that the Texas Anti-Woman Law and the Zimmerman verdict coming within hours of one another made me really unhappy with humanity for a while.  Then there was the announcement that The View was hiring Jenny McCarthy to fill its patented Obnoxious Vapid Contentious Blond Host seat.

That about did me in.  How does somebody like her get paid $$$ to sit on TV and spew that dangerous crap when Geoff and I are working constantly, are far smarter and funnier, and we’re barely making ends meet?

Continue reading “Faith in humanity being restored”

MEMO

July 14, 2013

TO: The State of Florida

FROM: Common Sense

RE: Last Night’s Court Decision

Please remedy the error in last night’s court decision.  If the unfortunate laws cited in the case are not overturned forthwith, please refer to the the following remedy.

CC: Texas State Legislature, re: The Bill That Shall Not Be Named

 

This is why I left IT

I tried for over three years to find a decent job in IT after I was laid off.  Looking for work, and generally trying to improve my IT knowledge and skills, became my new job.  I went back to school to improve my IT skills.  I gained several new certifications, picked up many more books and attempted to improve my skills as best I could.  Over three years of job fairs, workshops, endless resume rewrites, countless applications, all sorts of professional and personal networking, honing of cover letters, (you name it, and I did it) but nothing worked.  In three years I got less than five interviews.  I tried everything.  Of course, plenty of people had advice for me on how to find a job. Some was good, a lot was bad, and much of it was contradictory.

Continue reading “This is why I left IT”

Owning the past

The whole mess with Paula Deen has me thinking about a lot of people I knew when I lived in the South.  Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia were all places I spent a lot of time.  And the more I think about it, the more I think the image problem the South has in regards to much of the rest of the country (and even the world, to some extent) is this:

The South (as a region) still hasn’t come to grips with slavery, even now, some 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation.  Collectively, the South thinks that it has, but really it hasn’t.  I am saying this as someone who was born there and lived there for decades who also happens to be a specialist in the area of 19th century American history.

Continue reading “Owning the past”

A rare event, indeed

It’s not often I get to talk about three of my favorite subjects in a single post: cetaceans; 19th century technology; and maritime archaeology.  But it seems an exceedingly rare Howell torpedo has been found off the coast of Coronado, California – by dolphins trained by the U.S. Navy.

Honestly, this is amazing.  There was only one of these that was known to exist, and now another has been found in the ocean… by dolphins.  It just boggles the mind.  It makes me wonder if anyone has ever tried using dolphins to deliberately search for shipwrecks.

-Geoff