Author: colter

Attention Visa Cardholders

If you have a Visa card, and you have a wreck that requires a rental vehicle while your car gets fixed, it’s very likely that you’re eligible for Visa to pay for your rental car insurance, and maybe even your insurance company’s deductible for the repair of your car.

For example, my insurance company is covering my rental car rate, but not the extra insurance on the rental vehicle. Because I’m paranoid, I opt for the $16 a day insurance on the damnable GMC truck I’ve been driving for two weeks. Visa could have paid for that, and maybe even my $500 deductible…if only I had notified Visa within 45 days of my accident.

Don’t be a doofus! If you have a wreck, ask Visa what they can do to help! Chances are the answer is, a heckuva lot. God only knows what I’m paying Enterprise Rent a Car for the damnable GMC that I will hopefully turn in today.

What’s So Great About Elongated Trapezoids?

Rainy days make for peculiar interior adventures. I started off trying to record some music for my friend Jessie’s art project at RISD, but I’m having some weird flutter in my audio signal so I gave up and practiced scales and arpeggios on piano for an hour or two. Then I ate some dinner and started catching up on my DVDs of Mysterious Cities of Gold, which then led me, naturally, to start investigating the Nazca Lines on Google Maps.

I had always assumed that the Nazca Lines were reasonably organized and well-laid out. They really aren’t; they’re remarkably scattershot, and if there’s an overall theme it appears to be “failed rectangles.”

There are a lot of these.
And a lot of these.
And mixtures thereof.
I think the curly part here is the tail of a monkey but it’s hard to tell.

The entire plain northwest of the town of Nazca was apparently treated like a giant Etch-a-Sketch, only there was never any shaking up to erase anything. For me this pretty much dashes any UFO-related theories as to the lines’ origins; clearly these were people making it up as they went along. And unfortunately the most artistic designs (the hummingbird, the condor, the spider, and the human) are too small for Google Maps to show. Still fascinating to think about, though.

Oh and I found a cool shot of an airplane in flight.

And as long as we’re in Peru, let’s check out Machu Picchu, which looks totally odd from the sky because you have no depth perception. It just doesn’t look as impressive because you can’t tell, for example, that its entire west side is an incredibly steep dropoff.  Google Earth, however, will allow you to get some idea of just how freakishly high up that place is.

Creative Giving

My favorite part of Christmas this year was making wrapping paper out of old Entertainment Weekly photo issues.

I think this means I’ve officially reached adulthood, because I enjoyed giving more than receiving, and because I’ve reached a point where there is nothing that I want that I can’t buy myself.

What am I Listening To?

I’ve added the Mog widget to the left nav. Mog tracks the music I’m listening to, and if those songs are in their database, you can hear samples. If you click the widget, it takes you to my profile and in the list below “Last Songs Played,” you can click on the speaker icon to hear a sample of that song.

My new favorite song is “Got Nothing” by Under the Influence of Giants. Check it out. Also take a listen to “Lost in a Whirlpool” by Frank Zappa. Captain Beefheart is the vocalist, and it was recorded in the late 60’s. I really have to wonder if that song wasn’t somehow the inspiration for South Park’s Mr. Hanky.

Unhealthy Questions Redux

Perhaps the most timely example of a question that does not deserve an answer is “are we winning the war in Iraq?”

The question presupposes that we have a clearly defined enemy and objective. At least in Vietnam we had these things: the people from the North needed to be moved back up North. Success could be quantified by geographic gains, plus enemy body count estimates and defined targets destroyed. In Iraq we have a variety of ethnic groups chaotically striking at us and at each other with guerilla terrorism. You can’t fight an enemy you can’t see[1], so Iraq really isn’t a war per se.

This is where the Bush Administration’s deft abuse of language is coming back to haunt them. They’ve successfully manipulated most Americans into thinking that we’re in a war on Terror, but Terror is not an enemy. Terror is an abstract concept, so while they thought it would be a great way to scare up some cheap oil, take out a bad guy, and install a democracy, it turns out the War on Terror has gone so poorly that they have no way to answer the question of whether or not this war can be won.

So now Bush is stumbling on his words even more, because by the Iraq Study Group’s admission, the situation in Iraq is dire. He can no longer say that we’re “winning” this sham of a war, and I wonder how much longer he can stay in that position. Maybe he can successfully convince America, for whom he has set up a win-lose duality, that we can simultaneously not be winning, yet not be losing. To do that he’d have to leave the comfortable world of black and white that this administration has built its policy on, and that’s a tall order for Mr. “Fer us or agin us.”

1.) In the post-Cold War era, who would have thought that the remaining superpower could be undone by small enemy forces too small to detect? The War on Terror is roughly akin to trying to shoot bullets at a swarm of mosquitoes.

Plog Splurge

Finally added two new sets of photos to the much-neglected photo log. The first is a collection of random pictures from New York and the second mostly from Harrison. The highlight is a finely kept and festively decorated home in Harrison, just a few blocks from my dad’s house. It was such a delight that my uncle Barry wanted to be in the picture.

Note the tasteful addition of candy canes in the yard, glad tidings of holiday cheer.

Also, Emily wants to say hi: