October 2004 Archives

"France has just launched its first gay TV station ('Pink TV' - Digital Spy article) and the first programme was a Rugby match - a straight team versus a gay team. Apparently the score was 15 tries and 2 conversions..."

Now Jamie Oliver... he's the sort of person who has less personality than the last dregs of sponge at the bottom of a trifle. If there are any schizophrenics out there then please send him one of yours... I'm sure the NHS can somehow graft one into him.

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Subservient Chicken - It's fun... a guy in a chicken suit. Doing what you ask him. Get him to dance, it's great!

Cute Dogs - A Japanese guy took hilariously cute photos of little puppies through a fisheye lens. It's cute!

Well, Bush won the election.

Ohio would've been the state they'd have fought about this time, but it doesn't matter. I imagined that Kerry would hold out his concession for a long time. People were of course screaming for all the votes to be counted, and I agree. But at some point, the maths just wasn't going to be there.

What I really didn't understand, despite many of our news programmes desperately trying to explain, was the whole electoral voting system. This is pretty much the system where each state works out who's got the most votes and "pledge" to vote for who they've chosen, with the most densely populated states getting more votes. I think California for instance gets 55 votes, whereas Maine gets 3 (maybe). Who knows?

This leads to maps of states where everywhere is pretty much Bush red with Kerry blue down the sides. However, America is not red or blue as many of the news programmes seem to think. It is clearly, obviously, just shades of purple. Not right, not left, all in the middle, with a twist of red or a twist of blue. This is really eye-opening, and a brilliant act of visualization and programming. Enjoy this election map, in shades of purple, by county, not state. Brilliant.

Evening everyone...

I don't really understand people who decide to settle down and live in the paths of obvious natural disasters. The people of Pompeii learned their lesson well, but for some reason we still have people living in tin boxes in Florida waiting for the 5th hurricane to blow their "home" away.

I learned at an early age that in the face of wind (or the breath of a big bad wolf) one should construct their home out of bricks. I guess they don't have that one in Florida.

I got an email today from a good friend of mine. It's an excerpt from an article by a very experienced rescuer. I guess it's good information for us all to have. I guess I'm pretty well prepared for most situations, but I have never heard of the "triangle of life" before... Read on and learn.

"The following is an: Extract from Doug Copp's article on the "Triangle Of Life", Edited by Larry Linn for MAA Safety Committee brief on 4/13/04.

My name is Doug Copp. I am the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International (ARTI), the world's most experienced rescue team. The information in this article will save lives in an earthquake. I have crawled inside 875 collapsed buildings, worked with rescue teams from 60 countries, founded rescue teams in several countries, and I am a member of many rescue teams from many countries. I was the United Nations expert in Disaster Mitigation for two years. I have worked at every major disaster in the world since 1985, except for simultaneous disasters.

In 1996 we made a film which proved my survival methodology to be correct. The Turkish Federal Government, City of Istanbul, University of Istanbul Case Productions and ARTI cooperated to film this practical, scientific test. We collapsed a school and a home with 20 mannequins inside. Ten mannequins did "duck and cover," and ten mannequins I used in my "triangle of life" survival method. After the simulated earthquake collapse we crawled through the rubble and entered the building to film and document the results.

The film, in which I practiced my survival techniques under directly observable, scientific conditions, relevant to building collapse, showed there would have been zero percent survival for those doing duck and cover. There would likely have been 100 percent survivability for people using my method of the "triangle of life." This film has been seen by millions of viewers on television in Turkey and the rest of Europe, and it was seen in the USA, Canada and Latin America on the TV program Real TV.

The first building I ever crawled inside of was a school in Mexico City during the 1985 earthquake. Every child was under their desk. Every child was crushed to the thickness of their bones. They could have survived by lying down next to their desks in the aisles. It was obscene, unnecessary and I wondered why the children were not in the aisles. I didn't at the time know that the children were told to hide under something. Simply stated, when buildings collapse, the weight of the ceilings falling upon the objects or furniture inside crushes these objects, leaving a space or void next to them. This space is what I call the "triangle of life". The larger the object, the stronger, the less it will compact. The less the object compacts, the larger the void, the greater the probability that the person who is using this void for safety will not be injured. The next time you watch collapsed buildings, on television, count the "triangles" you see formed. They are everywhere. It is the most common shape, you will see, in a collapsed building. They are everywhere.

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1) Don't Let It Get Your Cursor! - It's cute!

2) Mass Pillow-Fight - I love the idea of this: pillowy violence breaking out in the city of London. Let's hope it doesn't get out of hand and the police have to turn up with riot cushions.

3) Talk Like A Pirate Day - I must've mentioned this before, but for those who didn't know, September 19 is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Find out all about it. Official British Site For TLAPD.

Today's well thought out point is that John Kerry will not win the US election on November 2. Or at least, I don't think he should win. Plasticene men shouldn't be allowed to run...

Now, you're probably thinking that this has started out a lot weirder than usual. And you're right. I'll get this out of the way right now. The reason John Kerry can't win the election is that he looks like Postman Pat.