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I suppose that the truth about Face Book is not what it is technically, but how people use it and the ways are as diverse as the 700 million who now use it. I saw early on that the "Six Degrees of Spraration" applies which says that everyone is separated from everyone else in the world by networks of shallow depth but great width, and with that you see through your closest associates their connection to large numbers of others. Just getting a glimpse into the lives of my children is worth it.
But the surprizing thing about Face Book is the potential to draw together materials, especially videos, around your urge to explain things to people when topics you know about capture the attention of people. So, last Friday there was a very large earthquake off Northern Honshu, Japan that unleased a tsunami which devasted the coast nearby killing at least 40,000 and maybe as much as 100,000 people and caused millions of dollars of damage here when it got across the Pacific. What was truely an amazing opportunity was to use images and videos that were being published on the web to answer questions and to illustrate facts. To explain the inexorable force of a tsaunami surge that makes it so different from an ordianry swell, to share videos of effects like soil liquifaction, rayleigh waves, and aftershock sequences, and to do research on the web, such as finding tide gage records that document the local effects along with videos, especially time lapse videos pubished on the web.
This new aspect of social networking was reveraled to me somewhat earlier when as an experiment I published some comments about Bach Cantatas I was studying. My son John suggested that I provide links to recordings. I found some videos and shared these and got some minimal response. But when the quake happened and people were interested in that then the potential for the medium was made clear. I may yet write more on music I am studying, but there are really only a couple of people who are interested. Other people post family pictures, my kids got some baby pictures on their walls, and most of Bobbi's family are there and friended me. One thing I did that caused a stir was to scan the program from our High School Graduation in 1965 and post the images. That was appreciated by many of my classmates. The only think I don't much like is that content seems to vanish after about a month. I have been saving pages with my browser.
TopIn the wake, literally, of the M = 9.0 megashear earthquake in the Japan Trench off Honshu Japan, and resulting tsunami, four fission reactors on the coast lost main power and backup power and have been hard to get under control with explosions form accmulated hydrogen and small but by now possibly larger radiation releases and at least partial core meltdown, due to loss of coolant. Much the same pattern of withholding information or giving out conflicting information that we see in the local PG&E response to its pipeline explosion is seen in the way the Japanese Government and the utility that runs the reactors has been seen, causing a widespread feeling of mistrust of the government there.
Here, six months after the gas line explosion in San Bruno, the PUC ordered PG&E to produce documentation of its gas pipeline system by yesterday, and with it only partially compling, it has to pay $ 1 million a day it doesn't fully comply. It seems that the Japanese face similar uncertainties about what its nuclear reactor operators knew and when and like our utility they and the government, who is relying on the operators tell it, seem to be less than forthcomming. And the ultimate consequences have not played out yet, either the cores are brought under control or we go on to a full meltdown which means contamination and a protracted quarentine for the plants and loss of available electricity to Tokyo.
TopEven though as time goes on I dislike Republicans and other Conservatives more and more, they are creating a Class War in America, I am really disappointed in Barak Obama's leadership yet again. The quake in Japan has pushed the civil war in Lybia out of the headlines and Obama is sitting on his hands while the strongman Moumar Gadhafi attacks his own people with army and air force loyal to him, and may have tipped the balance against the rebellion. The U.S. said that it would ask NATO to enforce a no-fly zone over Lybia and U.S. warships are in the Mediterrian and yet nothing is happening as either diplomats dither and our President fails to act. He was also late in asking Hosne Mubarak to step down. If I were an arab I'd think that the U.S. despite its high sounding rhetoric was equivocal on actually helping to wrest the fruits of freedom from these corrupt Croney Capitalist regimes.
The UN approved the inposition of a No Fly Zone, but the Turkish Foreign Minister agreed if only no ground forces are sent in. This may give Gadhafi time to still crush the rebellion, although he has said there is a cease fire even though people in Bengasi say his troops are still shooting. There is still the possibility that hitting Gadhafi's Command and Control and his Air Forces will yet tip the balance away from him, but it remains to be seen.
TopToday, after confronting, again, the new $8 Cashier's Check charge at Chase, I went around to some other banks to see what their personal account policies were. First, at Chase it seems that the best way around the new fees is to pay bills online, but the rules at the other banks differ by how much money you need to committ to them in the accounts to avoid fees. Chase has lower limits than some other national or Wall-Street banks, but some of the local banks have still lower limits. I haven't decided what I am going to do. The banker at Chase gave me the Cashier's check this time, but it is clear I have to change the way I do this. My housemate has said that he wants a piece of paper and thinks that it is reasonable for me to hand him a personal check, so that rules out on-line banking for him. I may leave Chase if I can't get free checking. Just today came the news that Chase may charge $5 for ATM transactions; hopefuly that applies to thrid party transactions, and yesterday or the day before it was announced that they may instutute a limit on the size of debit card transactions in a fight they are in with the government on the fees they collect from merchants. By itself, this doesn't bother me because all of my debit card transactions are well below the limit they would set, but I have lost trust in them. I am quite disgusted with these games and if I can find a good deal, prehaps at a small regional bank, I may move my accounts there.
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