Earth Web Sites

On the other hand, fedworld.gov is still posting these images, which thoroughly invalidates the premise of my previous post. 

Nevermind.

University of Wisconsin-Madison has stopped serving my favorite desktop wallpaper, which were weather satellite images of the US (one of the east coast and another of the west coast). 

I suppose if enemies of America want to know what the weather was (or more specifically, the cloud patterns, not the actual weather) on May 11, 2001, this photo will help.  If they want to know what the weather is today thay can still go here.  News flash to the government: Just because it's a satellite image doesn't mean it qualifies as intelligence.  And just because we do it out of fear does not mean it is intelligent. 

I am wide open for attack here; what possible benefit is there in having an image of my planet on my desktop, from a satellite in geostationary orbit, updated every 30 minutes?  None, of course.  There is no value to the comfort of seeing us as a single earth from an impossible altitude, no advantage to observing -- as if removed from it all -- the peaceful countenance of our strife- and hate-riddled world, and of course no gain in preserving (as much as possible) the way we lived our lives before September 11 -- including such frivolities as a desktop with panache. 

If they are looking for Florida or Texas, they know where to find them without this image.  Concealing information that might be useful to terrorists is not the purpose of removing these images from the Internet.  This image has a resolution of about a mile -- objects smaller than that do not appear as discreet objects, rather they are melded into their surroundings.  Furthermore these images remained available up until October 18, 2001, a full five weeks after the WTC attack.  Even as uncharitable as is my opinion of governmental competence, I think if these images mattered, they'd have been gone sooner.  There could be a lot of reasons that this view has been blocked, the misconception that it has a strategic value not least among them.  Forgive my cynicism, but five weeks after the fact is about when I would expect the newly assembled iron fist of Homeland Security to start tightening, and the place where oppression -- however well intentioned it may be -- first occurs is at educational institutions where free thought and dissent are nurtured and cultivated. 

Shame on the University of Wisconsin for not protesting.  It may be politically impossible to sustain such a protest in this case, since public access to satellite images is pretty much doomed these days, no matter how useless they might be to our enemies.  But the truth of the matter, both technically and morally, is that government should keep its hands off when compelling and legitimate government interests are not at stake.  The thing I fear is that the government today does have interests which are threatened by academic autonomy, as such those interests are illegitimate. 

Where did the free world go?

It represents only 1 ping every ten minutes, and in the space of ten minutes this DSL connection goes up and down more often than me on a good night.  In the time it takes me to write a sentence this link dumps me twice; that's means either that I write very slowly, or that this connection is infinitely frustrating. 

Yeah, I know, it's a free connection.  All that green on the graph represents free bandwidth -- how can I possibly complain, you might ask.  Well, for one thing, I am not sure it is free.  Somebody could show up tomorrow and hand me a bill for $2000.  Besides, I would have already found an ISP to adopt me if everything was not in flux -- i.e.: I am going to move this week, next week, next month, or the month after next, and apart from that, ISPs are dropping like flies, declaring bankruptcy and vanishing into the bit-o-sphere as fast as I can look up their phone numbers. 

The problem is not the spotty connection, though.  Used to be that green part of the graph was like a dense hedgerow; in it I hid.  Now there's lots of splits and gaping breaches and there's not a lot of bandwidth anymore to distract me from looking at myself.  You see, I don't have a TV -- right now, I don't even have a phone.  I do everything here, at this screen, on this keyboard.  I watch the world, I learn, I relax, I run away.  But it doesn't work so good anymore. 

I'm feeling kinda naked, and not in a happy sort of way. 

Bedtime. 

Thanks HMS.  I know it's not so, but sometimes it seems, on dark pre-winter nights, that no one sees these cobbly thoughts -- no one, that is, but the 'bots and me. 

Guten nacht. 

This is a URL from my website's referrer log.  I wish it was from a former boyfriend trying to send me a subtle (or not-so-subtle) message. 

I wonder how many other lonely men -- who have little better to do than pore over their server logs -- were similarly reminded of a Daniel from their own pasts?  And I wonder how many of them wished him back again?

cache - ntc - ab01 . proxy . aol . com - - [16/Oct/2001:04:08:24 -0400] "GET /blog.js HTTP/1.0" 200 7040 "http://www.google.com / search?q=cache : Hu_VtCzWyBc : burgwinkel.com / blog.htm + boyfriend + gone + beg + cock + deep + inside + me & hl=en" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; AOL 6.0; Windows 98)"

Woke today in that confused state which precedes a seizure.  This condition was at one time difficult for me to distinguish from normal life.  Partly because at one time I enjoyed disjointed thoughts which disappeared in mid-thinking, and partly because at one time when these neurological electrical storms would rage inside my brain, it did not much matter to me whether they intensified into a seizure because at one time I could endure a seizure without any lasting effects.  But now I tend to dislocate shoulders, and such.

First, sleep flees; no matter how tired I might be, and regardless of how lazy I normally am, I cannot stay in bed when these storms come.  It is not that I want to be awake -- as if to greet the bright day, make coffee, and be alive -- oh no, I want more than anything to be asleep again, because just simple consciousness exacerbates the storm.  Every brain cell contributes to the propagation of incoherent energy across my brain, stirring my thoughts into a melee of memories, images, words, ideas, questions and disorientations; I have a pot of coffee and a near-empty container of dilantin capsules and it seems to make sense that I should pour one into the other.  But is it the coffee into the pill bottle, or do I put the pills into the coffee pot?  And why can't I seem to recall anything about how I always must have done this in the past. 

Sleep flees because when the normal neurological pathways of thought careen out of control, they tangle with and sever other pathways, sending them out of control thus spreading pockets of anarchy across my brain at the speed of light.  This intense random electrical activity sets off alarms in my cerebellum and brain stem causing the release of adrenalin and signalling the higher functioning levels of my brain to wake up and pay attention.  And so the cycle goes, until either I have a seizure, or I avoid it somehow. 

Today I avoided it by taking the emergency stash of Ativan given to me by my neurologist for such occasions.  It calms the panicking brain cells that are increasingly losing connection with other brain cells -- being isolated really upsets a brain cell -- and all the little fighting children and their broken toys are given a time-out nap, and when I wake up a few hours later, things are usually better. 

But I am nonetheless annoyed today because, seizure or not, this kinda crap takes a day right out of my life, crumples it up and throws it away. 

BlogBack is now in use.  Can't say why I switched from reblogger, I just liked it. :

I am having packet envy.