Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Bad News for China and India

link
So, it's now possible to sort bull semen so that dairy farmers have a 90 % chance of having a cow.
After it is collected from a bull at a stud farm, semen is mixed with a dye that sticks to DNA. A machine detects the extra dye sticking to X chromosomes and sorts the sperm. The sorted semen is frozen and sold to farmers who use it to inseminate their livestock.

(A fertility institute outside Washington is studying whether the same technique can be used safely in people. If it won approval from the Food and Drug Administration, the technology would let parents choose their baby’s sex.)
You can bet technologically advanced patriarchical cultures are working on this technology the world over. If it went into American cows in 2006, it'll go into Chinese and Indian people by 2011. So, 20 year old women per capita will drop to 0.1 in 2031, and China and India will suck the women out of Afghanistan, Iran, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and what have you. They will then be at war with these countries by 2041, and will have to drop their front with us, giving us some breathing room to rebuild our shattered economies far from our submerged coastal cities.

So, that's it. 32 years from today, we'll be back in business!

Monday, September 28, 2009

ACE in August 30 % Higher Than Normal

link
So, check this out.
FOUR TROPICAL STORMS FORMED IN AUGUST...ONE OF WHICH REACHED MAJOR HURRICANE STATUS.

Well, OK. Fine. That sounds like a lot, but is it more than average?
THE LONG-TERM AVERAGE FOR AUGUST IS ABOUT 4
TROPICAL STORMS...2 HURRICANES...AND 1 MAJOR HURRICANE.

Oh, OK. So, despite the climate change and all, cyclone activity is down? We should have had another hurricane. That's good, right? Does this mean Kerry Emanuel is correct?
IN TERMS OF ACCUMULATED CYCLONE ENERGY...ACE...WHICH MEASURES THE COMBINED STRENGTH AND DURATION OF TROPICAL STORMS AND HURRICANES...AUGUST WAS ABOUT 30 PERCENT ABOVE THE LONG-TERM MEAN...PRIMARILY DUE TO HURRICANE BILL.

Well, to be fair, Dr. Emanuel has given up his conviction that climate change has nothing to do with hurricanes, which should make seeing him Tuesday night less contentious. But, the promise wasn't really more hurricanes. It was more hurricanes that did an insane amount of damage. So, ACE is up 30 per cent. I know the tendency is to simply count, so I wanted to bring that out.

The hurricanes in 2009 have apparently given up striking places we don't care about, like Mexico and the Confederacy, and barreling straight for the Union States, uncomfortably close to Manhattan. Sorry, Brooklyn. Danny canceled a boat ride I should have been on. That's not a good trend, either.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Mail.com: Gangsters of the Internet

there's no link

I logged in to my mail.com account -- they offered free forwarding addresses for a few years, which degraded to crappy web mail. I think they've been bought and sold a few times. I gave a lot of people that address, because it was free forwarding. Like bigfoot.com. Don't use my bigfoot.com address, either, but that ship sailed years ago. Anyway, I have free forwarding from more reliable providers now, so I use my mail.com account to

1) see if anyone I knew in the 90s was trying to get back in touch. It happens.
2) look up email I received or sent from the mail.com web mail service.

All gone. The mail was all gone. This was their response to my complaint:
Dear Member,

Your account was deactivated because you had not logged in for 120 days.
UNFORTUNATELY THE EMAILS AND FOLDERS HAVE BEEN DELETED AND WE CANNOT RECOVER
THEM.

To avoid this type of unfortunate incident, we suggest you consider
purchasing one of our premium email services, which can be found in our
Premium Services section. They may be purchased for a reasonable price per
year, and your account will be safe from deactivation as long as the
subscription is current.

If you do not subscribe to one of our premium email services, you must log in
at least once every 120 days in order to keep your account active.

Please let us know if we can assist further.

Regards,
Your Support Team

--



Oscar P
Mail.com Support

"This type of unfortunate incident?" That's like "my brother's clumsy, he breaks things." So, mail.com was a corporation based in New Jersey a few years ago, I recall that they invited me to apply for some sort of position in 1998 or so. But, their business model seemed stupid. So, they were bought by some Hong Kong corporation, and passed through some hands. But, now they seem to be back under Jay Penske. And probably back in New Jersey, from their Sopranos-style emails.

So, Mail.com apparently owns Movieline and OnCars. I'd recommend staying away from those properties as well.