Halloween Candy Possessed by Demons (according to CBN.com network)

Religulousness taken to its absurd extreme:


Preacher Pat Robertsons CBN.com network claims most Halloween candy has been demonized by witches. And no, they were not joking.

CBN.com staff writer Kimberly Daniels verbatim: "THE DANGERS OF CELEBRATING HALLOWEEN --- Most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches, I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference.
Halloween is much more than a holiday filled with fun and tricks or treats, it is a time for the gathering of evil that masquerades behind the fictitious characters of Dracula, werewolves, mummies and witches on brooms. The truth is that these demons that have been presented as scary cartoons actually exist. I have prayed for witches who are addicted to drinking blood and howling at the moon".

Be warned thusly: Eat to much candy and you start howling at the moon and drinking blood. Alternatively you can become a clinically paranound Christian nut job!

Advertising Gone Wild :: Cool actually!

Los Angeles sort of inoculates one against awe. Yet, once in a while you see something just remarkable. I just had my jaw drop, when I plucked the current issue of Entertainment Weekly from the mailbox. The magazine was a little stiff and though “yeah another stinkvertisement  or a promo CD. Yet, when I opened it a the fold I saw this 

and had my mind blown: A fully functional videoplayer sandwiched into a magazine.The actual picture- and audio-quality was stunningly good: A 2.5" (6.35cm) clean and crisp video screen and a 1.5" (~ 4 cm) not-to-tinny speaker. The whole package not even 5mm <1/4" thick.

The entire contraption presented as a double-page spread:

 

promoting the CBS-TV Fall 2009 season and Pepsi Max (Slogan: The only diet cola for men).  In total it contains about a half hour of previews and Pepsi ads suggesting a rather beefy memory chip.

This is marketing really taken to a completely different level. It is a stunning eye-catcher, but I can only imagine it comes at equally stunning cost. A quick check at a newsstand on Main Street, St. Monica revealed, that the over-the-counter copies of the magazine do not contain the player. Yet, I can actually not imagine that all ~ 700.000 subscription copies were so equipped, the cost would be plainly prohibitive. It is easy to see why:

A little destructive materials testing revealed this. A quite sophisti- cated setup that has the processor and memory under the shielding foil to the right of the screen. Five buttons with excellent tactile quality allow to select five indvidual video clips in additon to the auto-start message shown above. 

In the center of the page is the power switch that is triggered in conventional manner by a plastic tongue that pulls out when the left leaf is opened. Remarkably the device is equipped with a rather capable 350 mA/h rechargable Li-Ion battery (blue) and even a USB-recharging port (below the screen) that can be accessed through a punch-out flap in the back.

Let's assume all the hardware is sourced a bargain-basement prices in China. The screen will probably come in at about $ 5.-, battery $ 3.- processor, memory and miscellaneous parts another $ 5.- Add assembly (clearly a manual job), programming and printing for another $ 2.- the cost of the whole thingamajig is somewhere around $ 15.- and that is before the fee charged by Entertainment Weekly. 

That cost level suggests that the campaign is most likely limited to subscribers in certain target areas in Los Angeles and New York City where there is a perceived concentration of entertainment industry and media workers.

Will I now rush to my couch and watch and gush about such drivel as "Two and a half men", and "Accidentally on purpose" or the rather lame NCIS spin-off "NCIS Los Angeles"? Probably - make that definitively - not! Will I keep this thing, charge it and show it off as proof that I was there when advertisement jumped the shark? You betcha! 

Footnote: Given, that is is pretty much a deconstructed iPod in a cardboard sandwich you get a pretty good idea how much Apple is making on these things, even given a somewhat better screen, a nice aluminum housing and 16GB of memory ($20.-)

Cheney cleans up

Dick Cheney doing some post-interrogation clean-up??? Just wondering...

Obnoxious little heckler boy

Despite the fact, that certain elements of the Republican Party have been mining for a bottom ever since Barak Obama was inaugurated President, a new low in the American political discourse has been reached earlier today, when Joe Wilson a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representative (2^nd District, South Carolina) shouts out to taunt and interrupt the President during his address to the Joint Session of Congress, in fact calling him a liar. Obviously the guy is a nimrod, since quick perusal of the document in question would have revealed, that the President in fact was correct, yet the lack of civility is astonishing. But that is not the end of it…

Little heckler boy Joe Wilson

Now, as Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) readily pointed out, Barak Obama "is a big boy", who can take silly stuff like this, and in fact the President just gave Wilson a quick stink-eye and moved on. This could also be easily dismissed as just another manifestation of the belligerent heckling, that all things democratic get these days from the right-wingnuts.

However, this was not an incident at some county fair in the sticks of the Deep South, no, this was in legislative chambers in D.C., giving it a different quality altogether.

What really makes this so appalling, is the fact it coming from one of the same guys who – during the previous administration – incessantly and loudly demanded “respect for the office [of the President]” at any and all times. Even when somebody raised the most  timid – and heavens beware, legitimate – question or criticism. At the same time this country had a government for eight years that immediately and aggressively labeled anybody not willing to  goose-step with bowed head and cap in hand behind their ideas as "un-American".  The petty little boys that run the Party of Lincoln these days have some serious growing up to do!

Update: Apparently many citizens of this country are entirely not happy with Hecklejoe's behavior. His official website at http://www.joewilson.house.gov/ was taken "down for maintenance" only a few ours after his solipsistic and sophomoric outbreak.

Update: Creep boy apologizes. Sort of... "I was contacted by the [Republican] leadership and told that my comments were inappropriate. They suggested that I called the White House to apologize and I did." He needed the leadership to tell him that?

The beauty of disaster

With the "Station"-Fire now into its sixth day and no wind to speak of, the sky over Los Angeles is blanketed by a gossamer of smoke, creating a mesmerizing yet somewhat eerie spectrum of colors. 

Oldtimers tell me, that the smog ca. 1960 had a similar effect, but this is certainly very pronounced. Yet, while decidedly unhealthy to breathe, the smoke creates spectacular sunsets.

More pictures here.

The Mighty Martin Mars (Fire fighting aircraft)

There are a lot of fire-fighting aircraft buzzing over L.A. these days: The helos: Bell 412's, Eurocopter AS 350B2 Ecureuil , Sikorsky S-70A Firehawks, Sikorsky S-64E Skycranes and the fixed wings: DC-3, DC-4, DC-7, Lockheed P-3 Orion, Canadair CL-215, Bombardier CL-415, Consolidated PBY Catalina, Grumman S-2 Tracker, Lockheed C-130 Hercules and now DC-10's and even a Boeing 747. If you can cram a tank into it, it is now flying over the "Station"-Fire in the Angeles National Forest. 

(Hawaii Mars, above, in current paint,
Philipine Mars, below, at NAS Alameda, CA in 1945) 

I thought I had seen it all. Until today, when a 1945' Martin-Mars (Coulson Flying Tankers' "Hawaii Mars") swooped in from Canada to join the fray. The biggest flying boat of all times has a wingspan (200 ft, 60m) wider than a Boeing 747 and while considerably shorter, it is several stories high, looks very intimidating floating, and even more impressive flying. 

Only seven were ever built, "Hawaii Mars" and "Philippine Mars" are the last two surviving specimens. Now tanking up at Lake Elsinore "Hawaii Mars", (video) - doing drop-after-drop - is an amazing WWII museum piece, doing some very impressive work and awing airplane fans in the process.

However, the cost is stunning: At $ 2.50 per gallon of water ($ 0.66/liter) dropped the Martin Mars is one of the cheapest fire-fighting aircraft. Average cost for all aircraft is $ 4.00 / gal ( $ 1.06 / liter )

The health care discussion.

The whole health care discussion summed up in one cartoon panel by Mike Luckovich in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Nuff said.

http://blogs.ajc.com/mike-luckovich/2009/08/27/aug-28-cartoon/

Teaching yoga to nude gay men

As far as life goals go, "teaching yoga to nude gay men" is certainly one of the more interesting ones. Life from New York (by way of Sweden) it's ... naked guys twisted into a pretzel! (Thank you Aftonbladet thank you!)

100 years of misguided fire management biting us in the butt.

Heavy plumes of smoke from the STATION fire near La Cañada Flintridge billow up to 15,000 ft over the Hollywood Hills on Saturday Aug. 29, at 4:00pm.

I can't but gasp at the fire in the Angeles National Forest. An area larger than the size of the District of Columbia has now burned.

An area, where fuel has been allowed to accumulate for 40+ years, because the pigheaded policy of the U.S. Forest Service in the last 100- year has been suppression at all cost and allowing humans to settle in natural burn areas.

Scary impressive firepix here, and here

An updated fire-map is here

Fighting brush fires in the Southland

Buschfeuer sind in der Steppenlandschaft rund um L.A. grundsätzlich nicht zu vermeiden. Der "Brush" trocknet irgendwann im Sommer / Herbst aus und dann zündelt es schnell: Ein Auto fährt um die Kurve, der  Auspuff schlägt auf, Funken stieben, brushfire... ... eine achtlos weggeworfene Kippe ... Bauarbeiter ... Funkenflug aus dem Schornstein eine Kamins ... Blitzschlag ... downed power lines ... und immer wieder Brandstifter.

More pictures about firefighting efforts in Southern California are here.

Wie schlimm es dann wird hängt von den klimatischen Umständen ab. Jeden Herbst haben wir hier eine Wetterlage, die sich "Santa Ana Winds" nennt, wenn es sehr warm und sehr trocken aus der Wüste bläst.

Falls dann ein Feuer ausbricht, gibt es kein Halten mehr: Trockener Treibstoff auf den Hängen und 40C Winde die die Flammen die Hänge hochtreiben.

Die Santa Ana's haben in diesem Jahr (2009) noch keine sehr große Rolle gespielt, aber wir hatten einige sehr trockene Winter mit Niederschlägen unter 50% des normalen Mittels. Seit März sind wir hier offziell auf "drought-conditions" einschließlich Wasserrationierung. Sprinkler sind nur noch Dienstag und Donnerstag nach 19:00 erlaubt!

Bereits im Juni konnte man sehen, wie die Hügel braun wurden. Das passiert jedes Jahr, aber normalerweise im Oktober - mit Feuern im Oktober und November - wie die dokumentierten Bemühungen das Corral Fire im November 2007 zu bekämpfen. Was die aktuelle (2009) Lage so besonders schlimm macht ist der Umstand, daß die Temperaturen im Okt. und Nov. generell niedrigern sind, als jetzt - hier in L.A. - noch im Hochsommer.

Natürlich haben wir hier eine großartige Feuerwehr, oder besser Feuerwehren. Siehe diese Bildstrecke.

Allein hier in L.A. gibt es das

* Los Angeles City Fire Department das sich in erster Linie mit Bränden in der urbanen Stadt beschäftigt und darum eher konventionell städtischen Löschfahrzeuge hat. (Tanklöschfahrzeug, Drehleiterwagen, Rüstwagen etc.) Aber sie haben auch eine handvoll sehr nützlicher Feuerlöschhubschrauber.

* Los Angeles County Fire Department das sich in den "unicorporated areas" auch um die Stadtfeuer kümmert, aber ansonsten gaaaanz viel Landkreis um sich herum hat. Dort kommen Flugzeuge, Hubschrauber, Speziallöschfahrzeuge, konventionelle Löschfahrzeuge und Hand Crews zum Einsatz. Hand Crews sind Teams, die nur wenig mit Wasser ausrichten und in erster Linie mit Axt, Kettensäge, Spaten und Feuerpatsche unterwegs sind um Fire Breaks zu schneiden (über die das Feuer nicht hinwegbrennt) oder kontrollierte Back Fires zu legen (die dann auch einen Fire Break schaffen)

• Californa Dept. of Forestry (CDF) / Department of Corrections - Das ist die Sträflingsfeuerwehr, die die allerschmutzigsten, allerheißesten, allertrockensten Jobs bekommt, und die oft tagelang nur mit Bergmarschausrüstung unterwegs sind.
• Californa Office of Emergency Services - Landesweite Einsatzteams im Bereitschaftsystem.
• US-Deptartment of Forestry Smoke Jumper - ( www.fs.fed.us/fire/people/smokejumpers/ ) Die kommen wenn gar nix mehr geht. Die springen mit Fallschirmen aus wackeligen Schrottfliegern direkt ins Feuer, Kettensäge und Schaufel auf dem Rücken. Und wenn sie ihre Arbeit gemacht haben, sind sie oft Tage unterwegs um wieder aus dem Walt in bewohnte Gegenden zu marschieren.
• Amtshilfe: Wie man auch auf den Bildern sehen kann, kommt Mann und Gerät von Agenturen der Umgebung, oder sogar aus anderen Bundesstaaten. Bei den großen Malibu Feuern in den 90er hatten wir hier sogar New Yorker Teams.
  

Die einzig richtige Antwort auf die Feuer wäre eigentlich den ganze Schrott brennen zu lassen. Die Natur ist halt so eingerichtet. Es gibt in der Mesa sogar verschieden Planzensorten, deren Samen nur dann aufplatzen, wenn die Pflanze verbrennt! Aber um das zuzulassen, müßte man über die Besiedelung der Steppe nachdenken aber nach 150 Jahren Siedlungsdrang und 100 Jahren "fire suppression policy" ist mit solchen Ideen natürlich kein Blumentopf zu gewinnen