My journey through the annals of Life continues apace.  The magazine that is.  I’ve now reached August 1955, the month and year of my birth.  What keeps it interesting I suppose is finding tidbits of long forgotten stories and then trying to discern what happened next.  Okay, so I’m easily entertained.  But let me share a sad tale from the August 15 issue.

Life did a short feature on a group of American airmen who were shot down over China during the Korean war and had been imprisoned as spies ever since.  They were finally released after years of negotiations between two hostile governments .  One of these was Airman 2/c Daniel Schmidt.

An unlucky flyer, but things could be always be worse. And then they were.

While sad sack Schmidt was enduring years of Chinese torture, his lovely redheaded bride Una, who was also the mother of the child Schmidt had never seen, had remarried to a local lumberjack by the name of Alford Fine.  Schmidt was understandably distraught to learn this news upon his return to the U.S. and promptly filed for divorce.

Things then got rather messy as local news accounts of the time portrayed.  Una moved out of Alford’s trailer home and desperately sought reconciliation with Schmidt.  Schmidt, however, was not in a forgiving mood.  Meanwhile, the local sheriff pursued an investigation into whether Una was guilty of bigamy.  The Air Force insisted it had notified Una that her husband was still alive in China prior to her remarriage, but Una denied it.  It appeared the woman with two husbands might soon wind up with none.

Finally, Schmidt’s mother intervened and arranged a meeting between the two star crossed lovers.   And when Schmidt saw Una, he fell in love all over again. 

The newly reunited family makes an appearance on the Art Linkletter show.

It was a tale worthy of Hollywood, except for the happy ending part.  As this outstanding blog post recounts, Una and Schmidt divorced in 1960 and Daniel died in 1962 of a broken heart.  Well, during open heart surgery anyway.  He was 31.

Came across this mind boggling and thought provoking article that claims we are moving closer to having the capability to map a human brain to the extent that a person could live on in a “virtual” world after the mortal body has turned to dust.

Imagine a future in which your mind never dies. When your body begins to fail, a machine scans your brain in enough detail to capture its unique wiring. A computer system uses that data to simulate your brain. It won’t need to replicate every last detail. Like the phonograph, it will strip away the irrelevant physical structures, leaving only the essence of the patterns. And then there is a second you, with your memories, your emotions, your way of thinking and making decisions, translated onto computer hardware as easily as we copy a text file these days.

 

That second version of you could live in a simulated world and hardly know the difference. You could walk around a simulated city street, feel a cool breeze, eat at a café, talk to other simulated people, play games, watch movies, enjoy yourself. Pain and disease would be programmed out of existence. If you’re still interested in the world outside your simulated playground, you could Skype yourself into board meetings or family Christmas dinners.

The author goes on to make the case that actual creation of this technology is not necessarily a good thing, noting that the moral and societal implications of implementation will “transform humanity in ways that are more disturbing than helpful.”  I guess I can see the downsides, but given my lack of faith in any form of afterlife, I’d probably be inclined to accept immortality wherever I might find it.  Of course, that might be it’s own kind of hell.   I’m reminded of a story I read back in the 1970s entitled “I have eternal life and it’s killing me”.

Speaking of virtual worlds, of late I’ve been crafting a rather detailed fantasy life in my mind.  Yeah, I’ve got too much time on my hands I suppose.  But really, I just use these fantasies as a sleep aid.  A detailed version of counting sheep if you will.   I won’t bore you with the details of that world, although I’m young, handsome, and have the benefit of 20-20 hindsight.  So yeah, I avoid all the mistakes I’ve made along the way in my real life and do things like invest in start-up companies with odd names like Microsoft and Apple.  Anyway, I imagine novelists go through similar exercises as they craft their stories and create fictional characters to populate those worlds.  Which is to say I don’t think I’ve gone totally off the rails.

So that’s how I kind of imagine what a virtual afterlife might look like.  What do you think?  Do you prefer the great unknown of death or would you rather have a computerized version of yourself live on through infinity?

The midpoint of my life’s journey leads to this bridge in Saratoga, WY.

Well, I guess gravity has nothing to do with it.  But finding your geographic center is pretty cool and fun to do (linked fixed, sorry!). Turns out the midpoint of everywhere I lived is tiny Saratoga, Wyoming.  Population 1,690 proud souls and home of the annual Steinly Cup microbrew competition.  Gonna have to pay those punny folks a visit one of these days I suppose.

Westminster, CA (23 years), Prescott, AZ (5 years), Fort Smith, AR (3 years), Columbia, SC (12 years and counting), Stafford, VA (8 years) and Seoul, ROK (6 years) winds up looking like this.

And where pray tell is your center?

UPDATE: I changed the headline for this post after a commenter graciously pointed out that I had invented a new word for stupid…

Doing the treadmill can get a little boring.  But through the power of imagination aided by the wonder of the internet, I can almost see myself hiking here. While shitting my pants.

I like the pictures at the link, but here’s a little video as well.

Of course, I combine bad writing with poor grammar, and I’m sure that makes at least one person I know suffer…

I guess I can relate to this couple somewhat.  After all, I’m pretty sure I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body…

Where have all the comfort girls gone?                                                                            Long time passing                                                                                                            Where have the comfort girls gone?                                                                                 Long time ago                                                                                                                 Where have all the comfort girls gone?                                                                           Gone to Syria everyone                                                                                                   When will they ever learn?                                                                                                      When will they ever learn?

with apologies to Pete Seeger

I suppose it’s an inapt comparison to the Korean comfort women of WWII since there is no indication these Tunisian lasses are being forced to fuck the Syrian terrorists rebels freedom fighters.  The folks back home are none to pleased that their women folk are returning preggers.  But as they say, terrorist babies don’t grow on trees.

What I find interesting is that apparently in Islam everything goes–murder, torture, sexual intercourse–provided you announce that you are doing it for the purpose of jihad.  Hey, it worked for the Prophet!

http://youtu.be/IvC9sbK725M

In the news:

This guy apparently didn’t have the balls to just “speak now or forever hold your peace”.

And no one better tell them redskins Indians Native Americans that they should be offended.

Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe.
…
They forget that in time of danger, in the face of the Enemy, they must trust and confide in each other, or perish.

They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the Enemy. And that, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the Enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary. An enemy was just a friend we hadn’t done enough for — yet. Or perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, or an oversight on our part — something that we could correct. And this means that that our first task is that we must try to grasp what the concept of the Enemy really means.

 

The Enemy is someone who is willing to die in order to kill you. And while it is true that the Enemy always hates us for a reason — it is his reason, and not ours.

–Lee Harris

This is a test to see if I’ve managed to figure out how to post documents from Word and Excel on a WordPress blog.

CSL standings

CSLstandings

Hmm, I was hoping to actually display those pages as opposed to creating hyperlinks.  Now, the only way I’ve been able view them is to right click and open them in a new window.  At least it works that way on my computer, but then, I have the documents saved to my hard drive.

Will some lucky reader try the links above and advise if they can access the documents?  Thanks in advance.

UPDATE:  Interesting.  Once I actually published the post, those hyperlinks turned into sweet little document-like looking things.  Again, they work when I click them, do they work for you?

I’ve installed another WordPress plugin, let’s see how (if) it works.

Leader Board

SIDL_TShirt_3

Yesterday I was waiting in the car while Jee Yeun had her physical therapy session.  I was fooling around with the smartphone and when I tried to do a Google search for LTG, this website popped up.

Imagine my surprise and delight at discovering that out of 30 million domains, mccrarey.com is sitting pretty at 12,296,726!  That’s practically the big time.  Even better, according to webstatsdomain.net LTG is worth an astonishing $1364.00!  Not bad for just under nine years of work.

I should have left well enough alone I suppose.  Instead I went and checked out johnmccrarey.com.  That was my original domain, but through some miscommunication with my host the registration expired and some spammer puke in Poland purchased my name. My former domain, which only publishes spam (currently an ad for payday loans) is ranked 2,630,595 and is valued at $2820.00.

It’s all good, a deflated ego never killed anyone.

Via Drudge comes this story about Mexico displacing the United States as the world’s most obese nation.  Damn.  I reckon if the immigration bill passes we can reclaim our fat crown.

Sorry if I’ve let my country down.  This week I broke the 240 barrier, weighing in at 239.5.  That’s a sweet 39 pounds lost since February.

Onward and downward!

“Dick”.

She’s certainly nothing like the centenarian I encountered recently.

http://youtu.be/YdxD1uhmvxQ

Via Althouse

This is a video I made documenting my last stay in the Land of the Morning Calm, October 2012-February 2013.  I’m anxious to get back!

It was the best of times (mostly)

I’m trying to figure out how to operate my new fangled blog.  Like putting up YouTube videos that show up as a video rather than a link.  Did it work?

http://youtu.be/8D8vudr3vjU

I was at least able to create a blog roll, something that had stopped working here years ago.

Update:  Nope, no dice on the video.  Hmmm.

J&j

Let’s try it this way:

Success!?

*format, font, and user interface have been upgraded. Actual content will remain weak and generally uninspired.

Bigger! Better! Badder! And once again featuring photos and videos (applications that over time had deteriorated and finally stopped working).

I believe the upgrades are almost complete. Still a couple of tweaks I want to incorporate, but I’m generally happy with the new appearance. I like that the blog is actually bigger and that the font size makes for easier reading. Also, I no longer have to manually resize photos prior to uploading. Photographs now post as thumbnails which can be expanded to full size with a simple mouse click. I also like the captioning feature.

So, easier for me to post, easier for you to read and respond.

Let me add my thanks to Alex at WordPress Customization Service for his most excellent assistance.

Welcome to my new home!

As mentioned in the previous post, I’ve been despairing about the fate of my blogging history.  In an act of desperation I contacted the former owner of my current blog host, Lisa Sabin-Wilson and asked if she could assist.  This morning I received an email from someone at Blogs-About, I told him what I needed (the Cpanel login and password) and within the hour I had the info I’ve been seeking for weeks.

Anyway, I really appreciate that Ms. Sabin-Wilson took some time to help me out with this.  What a relief.

Of course, I won’t rest easy until everything has transferred over to my new host (HostGator, who have also been great) and the WordPress update has been completed.

I can’t promise bigger and better blogging than ever before, but at least I’ll be able to post photos again.  So there’s that.

The effort to update my blog has failed.  It seems I need a Cpanel access login to move data from the servers of my current blog host, Blogs-About.  Blogs-About has been totally unresponsive to my repeated requests for assistance.  I gave their website some close scrutiny today and discovered nothing has been updated there since 2010.

I did an internet search of Blogs-About’s founder and noted that she is with a new company.  I emailed her and asked what the heck was going on with Blogs-About.  Hopefully she’ll respond.

In the meantime, I am faced with the prospect of losing everything I have written these past 9 years.  Which means nothing to anyone but me I suppose.  It makes me sick to my stomach though.

We’ll see what happens.

“You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog.”

The New York Times is shocked, shocked I tell ya, that every single Buddhist in the world is not temperamentally exactly like the Dalai Lama.  They must have missed stories like this.

I obviously do not approve of these tactics, no matter who the perpetrator. Still, it is quite fascinating to see radicalized Buddhists utilize the same methods that radicalized Muslims have been employing against Christians and Jews for centuries.  Dare I say it?  This Crusade is quite the Revelation.  Ahem.