Urban Scrawl: April 2007 archives

April 2007 archives

The following are all the entries published for the month of April 2007.
Follow these links for other archives: « January 2007 | current entries | archive index | May 2007 »

sheep or poodle

Friday 27 April, 2007 at 10:31PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (0)

Thousands of Japanese have been swindled in a scam in which they were sold sheep and told they were poodles. Seriously. The scam was uncovered when Japanese movie star Maiko Kawamaki went on a talk-show and wondered why her new pet would not bark or eat dog food (bwahahaha!). She was crestfallen when told it was a sheep. Shortly afterwards, hundreds of other women got in touch with police to say they feared their new 'poodle' was also a sheep.

It seems flocks of sheep were imported to Japan and then sold by a company called 'Poodles as Pets' which marketed them as fashionable accessories, available at $1,600 each. That price is cheap compared to a real poodle which retails for twice that much in Japan. Of course the question that immediately springs to my mind is, if you're going to spend that much money on a dog, wouldn't you want to find out what it actually looks like first?

One couple said they became suspicious when they took their 'dog' to have its claws trimmed and were told it had hooves (bwahahaha!). Japanese police believe there could be 2,000 people affected by the scam, which operated in Sapporo and capitalized on the fact that sheep are rare in Japan, so many do not know what they look like.

Ok people, just to clear things up, click the image above.

Source: NineMSN Australia, April 27, 2007.

new york lightning storm

Friday 20 April, 2007 at 8:03PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (0)

The following animation is made from a sequence of frames of a single bolt of lightning captured on a digital camera in video mode during a lightning storm in NYC on Monday, 10th May 2004. It's an old image I was going to trash, but decided to post it here instead.

lightning bolt animation

I thought it was strange how this particular bolt of lightning actually pulsed twice, but thanks to information from the NOAA, I now know why. What happens with a bolt of lightning is that initially a charge moves downward from the clouds in sections called step leaders, which produce a channel along which charge is deposited. Eventually it encounters something on the ground that is a good connection, and at that stage the 'circuit' is complete and the charge is lowered from cloud to ground. There is then a return stroke (or pulse) which is a flow of charge (or current) which produces a luminosity much brighter than the part that came down. This entire event usually takes less than half a second. The series of images below are the frame-by-frame sequence that makes up the animation, and clearly illustrates the much brighter second pulse.

lightning bolt sequence

The storm itself lasted a couple of hours at pretty high intensity. I had a few other shots, however the images captured from the video were very grainy and hard to clean up because the video resolution is very small compared to the still shots (and of course the fact that this was all recorded at night didn't help either), so this is all you get.

brilliant interview question

Sunday 15 April, 2007 at 2:09PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (3)

You are driving along in your car on a wild, stormy night. You pass by a bus stop, and you see three people waiting for the bus:

An old lady who looks as if she is about to die.
An old friend who once saved your life.
The perfect woman (or man) of your dreams.

There can only be one passenger in your car and you can't return to the bus stop once you have left it. Which one would you choose to offer a ride to?

Think before you continue reading. This is a moral / ethical dilemma that was once actually used as part of a job selection process, so your future could depend on how you answer this question.

You could (A) pick up the old lady because she is near death, and thus you should save her first, or you could (B) pick up the old friend because he once saved your life and this would be the perfect chance to pay him back, however, (C) you may never be able to find the perfect love of your dreams again, so you should take this one opportunity while it's available.

The candidate who was hired had no trouble coming up with an answer. Their answer:

I would give the car keys to my old friend and let him take the old lady to the hospital while I waited in the rain for the bus with the woman / man of my dreams.

The moral of the story is that we can gain more if we are able to give up our stubborn thought limitations and 'think outside the box'.

Of course nobody came up with the ultimate correct answer, which is, of course, to run over the old lady and put her out of her misery, shag the perfect woman silly on the bonnet of the car, and then drive off with your old friend to the nearest pub to get drunk and talk about old times.

seeing the unseen

Friday 13 April, 2007 at 3:11PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (0)

An must-read series of articles (well, two of three) titled 'Seeing the Unseen' from the website Eject! Eject! Eject! which discuss paranoid attitudes, conspiracy theories and beliefs that defy, or rather shut a blind eye to reason and common sense - an increasingly common affliction in todays society of Political Correctness to the point of complete lunacy. In the author's words:

Today, it seems that legions of people – growing legions – are falling victims to ideas and beliefs that on the face of it are patently false…things that are so clearly and obviously nuts that you really have to wonder what deep, mighty engine of emotional need could possibly drive a brain so deep into a hole.

link : Seeing the Unseen - part one
link : Seeing the Unseen - part two

I happened across the second article thanks to a link from the site of Michell Malkin. The author's name is Bill Whittle, using the moniker Proteus. The articles discuss things such as the Bush stereotype, that 911 was staged (just like the moon landing was), that contrails seen in the sky from passing jets (aka vapor trails) are actually slow-acting toxins designed to reduce the world population by 85%, and similar such fantasies. It's lengthy, so perhaps print it out and read it on the subway - if you're not too busy trying to figure which people in your subway car are part of some nefarious plot against the rest of the people in your subway car, of course.

nereus

Monday 9 April, 2007 at 1:54PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (0)

Note that I have changed my nickname from DemonSurfer to the moniker Nereus. For those wondering about the terminology, a moniker is a pseudonym which one gives to oneself, whereas a nickname is generally given to one by another, and not chosen for oneself.

Why Nereus? Because of his character, his relative obscurity in mythology, and also because I just liked the name. Nereus, in Greek mythology, was a Titan - a wise and gentle sea-god, and the eldest son of Pontus and Gaia, the Sea and the Earth. Nereus, also known as the Old Man of the Sea, had the gift of prophecy and could change himself into any shape, and was known for his truthfulness and virtue:

But Pontos, the great sea, was father of truthful Nereus who tells no lies, eldest of his sons. They call him the Old Gentleman because he is trustworthy, and gentle, and never forgetful of what is right, but the thoughts of his mind are mild and righteous. — Hesiod, Theogony 233

In the Iliad, the Old Man of the Sea is the father of Nereids, though Nereus is not directly named. He was one of the manifestations of the Old Man of the Sea, never more so than when he was described, like Proteus, as a shapeshifter with the power of prophecy, who would aid heroes such as Heracles who managed to catch him even as he changed shapes. Nereus and Proteus seem to be two manifestations of the god of the sea who was supplanted by Poseidon when Zeus overthrew Cronus.

Attic vase-painters portrayed Nereus with a human torso issuing from a long coiling scaly fishlike tail, often wielding a staff of authority. Nereus was also shown in scenes depicting the flight of the Nereides as Peleus wrestled their sister Thetis. In Aelian's natural history, written in the early third century of the Common Era, Nereus was also the father of a watery consort of Aphrodite named Nerites who was transformed into "a shellfish with a spiral shell, small in size but of surpassing beauty."

Nereus dwelled with Doris and their daughters, the fifty Nereides, in the depths of the Aegean sea. He had a temple near Trachin in Thessaly (Metamorphoses I, 177-198; XI, 346-409).

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