Dinar For Two

I guess I'm slow on the uptake, but only recently have I heard of the vastly lucrative and hot investment opportunities afforded by purchasing Iraqi Dinar currency, which has a value of around $.0007. The sales pitch is, when the Iraq economy rebounds, the Dinar will skyrocket to 100s or 1000s of times its current value, making millionaires out of all of those who ever-so-wisely bought $1000.00 worth. And hey, it's backed up by all that Iraqi oil!

Uh-huh.

If you view this "investment" with the mindset that it's actually a gamble, say like buying 100 California lottery tickets, and you've got a few extra bucks that just fell off your money tree, then go for it.

But before you do, here are a couple of insightful articles on the subject, one from CNN Money and another from XE.com.

Or, you could just send your money to Spindizzy. Weirder things have happened.

Holiday Caption Contest

What title would you give to this photo? Probably not, "Celebrants rejoice at another Christian Science Reading Room grand opening."

I tell you, this photo speaks volumes, and somewhere in chapter one there lies the incandescent truth that instead of meeting my friends Mike (pictured) and Darlene and their associates (Chuck, Tammy, JP, and Tim-O-T) at Baja Willie's I should have joined my wife at the local screening of Pride and Prejudice. The price of wisdom is high indeed, my friends.

Mas Latinos in 2020

According to a report issued by the California Budget Project (CBP), the population of Latinos in California will increase by 70.3 percent between 2000 and 2020. Latinos will comprise 43% of the state population, compared to whites' share falling to 33.7%. Blacks remain close to current levels, changing from 6.5% to 6.7%, and Asians modestly increase from 11% to 12.7%. You can read the CBP report here. It's actually quite interesting. Readable and succinct.

The report further describes possible impacts on education due to the projected demographic trends, noting that there will be many English learners in the classrooms. That's one reason I applaud publications in English that are written for Latinos.

An excellent example of one such publication is Mas, a weekly paper and associated website geared toward the local Latino community in Bakersfield. The website is clean and uncluttered, the content is interesting, and the overall impression is one of freshness and vitality. Check out Mas here.

Full disclosure: Mary Lou Fulton, the general manager of Mas, is a good friend of mine, except maybe not at the moment, because I got her cat Bootsy in trouble, but that's another story.

They Hunger

When not pontificating, cogitating, scrivening (say, "scrivener" is another good description of some bloggists), or simply being sesquipedalian, one of the most absolutely frightening tasks I sometimes force myself to undertake is the grim job of killing zombies, usually with a heavy gauge steel crowbar.

If you've never played the FPS (First Person Shooter) They Hunger series of zombie mods created by Neil Manke utilizing the Half-Life game engine, then, well, you haven't. But talk about scary. Many times I've been ensconsed in the upstairs study, my headphones on, the lights out, senses aquiver, trying to avoid the moaning, slow-moving Undead, not to mention the goddam head crabs that jump at you from out of nowhere, when here comes my wife, stealthily coming up behind, and she touches my shoulder, and HOLY SHIT! I jump out of my chair like a thunderbolt has smashed into the back of my neck! Kim laughs at me, and 10 seconds later I've recovered my capacity for humor, (and the ability to breathe) and I laugh too. Ha ha. Pretty funny. Whew.

So now Neil has announced that he's close to finishing They Hunger: Lost Souls, based on the Half-Life 2 engine, and I urge all zombie killers to check out the latest news from Black Widow Games here.

And here's a link to the earlier They Hunger file download site. Be afraid, very afraid...

Windmill Trees

27.3 light years from Earth, on the planet Newhope, which orbits the Sol-type star Chara in the Hunting Dogs constellation, there exists a strange plant species known to the locals as the windmill tree. About ten feet tall when mature, its interesting feature is the set of six radially spoked fronds attached to a central hub protruding from a cavity near the top of the tree's trunk. Wind forces cause the fronds to rotate, much like a windmill. Inside the trunk, a cartilaginous ligament is attached to the hub, which stretches and winds around the shaft as the fronds turn in one direction. When tight, rotation ceases, and the fronds, triggered by the tightening of the ligament, change their aspect (similar to a sailboat tacking), and rotation continues in the opposite direction. The cycle repeats continuously, as long as wind pressure exists.

Most locals maintain a copse of windmills. Some attach small, lightweight shells to the tips of the fronds to produce a soft, pleasant whistling.

The only living creature on Earth to have rotation characteristics is the lowly E. Coli bacterium, which uses a little rotor to crank its flagellum for motation. Detailed information from a Physics Today article can be found here.

Yale School of Music - Tuition Free

Amid the gloom and doomery of the chaotic churning blare of evil tidings that passes for MSM (i.e. mainstream media) news these days, some good stories do sometimes come to light. One such is that an anonymous $100 million gift received by the Yale School of Music allows that institution to, among other things, fully subsidize the tuition of its students. They pay nil. Whoa. That is incredible. Yale's press release is here.

Of course, the alternate view is, why subsidize rich kids back east when thousands of other so-called "more deserving" projects and people are out there, begging for support? Sorry, I don't buy that view. Anyone who spends $100 mil on the arts has my full support. I mean, how much money was wasted on our ridiculous California "special election" yesterday? The mind reels.

Baghdad to Green Zone 10K Fun Ride

Not being a slacker, I've decided to gingerly lumber up onto the "brains not required" bandwagon and join the ranks of extreme sports enthusiasts. My role, at the outset at least, will not be that of an active participant, but is better described as a project manager or event coordinator type position.

So I'm pleased to announce my first planned event: The Baghdad International Airport to Green Zone 10K Fun Ride.

Dude, just think of the rush you'll have after finishing a ride on what's been billed as "the most dangerous road in the world!" Like, totally awesome!

Details and entry forms will be posted shortly, as soon as my crack team of laywers puts the finishing touches on the Release of Liability, Waiver of Claims form.

Hurricane Carlsbad

You know how you have those weekends sometimes when the fun never stops and you try to think back about your experiences, kind of ruminating on Monday, "Er, let's see, I did WHAT while dancing my ass off at the Common Sense concert?!" Well, if you're a responsible adult, maybe you don't have weekends like that, but what can I say. Yes your honor, guilty as charged.

I re-read the preceding paragraph, and it occurs to me that who in their right mind wants to post, on the internet for chrissakes, details of craziness, shennanigans, and tomfoolery wantonly engaged in for no other purpose than to have fun while visiting my good friends down in Carlsbad, CA? That would seriously jeopardize any chances of me landing on the Supreme Court, I'm sure. So I'll cut this short, but will make a plea to my friend Mike to please put my sunglasses in a little box and send them to me, my wife paid good money for them, and I'll pay you back for postage as soon as the ATM will spit out some more money to me, but that may take several days because of the serious cash depletion which occurred sometime between the off-track betting at Del Mar and the pool playing at the Tidewater, then having to drive back the next day to get my car, and it's like, hey we're here, let's have a cold one, and wild political discussions ensue, where I'm repeatedly called a slobbering "left wing apologist", with my cries that I'm more of a "centrist" being soundly ignored, just because logic had left the building along with Elvis, so to speak, which brings me to a much better title for this post, which is now a brand new phrase in the English language:

The Moons of Pluto

Two new little moons have been discovered via Hubble images, so Pluto can lift it's head up with pride and say, "I really am a planet dammit! Not just some lowly Kuiper Belt vagabond!"
More about this here.