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The little things that give pause


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I''m not sure this fits this forum but here goes. I was using Google Earth the other day and it struck me:

in the search box the instructions said, "Fly to". OK, that''s fine. But if you look at the example, it says, "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue 20006"

Is this some kind of sick joke? The first thought I had was, "why didn''t Google just give a fictitious address for the example?" I mean instead of giving the next hijacked airplane the address and a wonderful satellite image for a flight plan?

 

Or maybe this is just my weird way to look at things. Another delicious irony for the collection. Anyway, it gave me pause. Sorry to interrupt your day.

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Google earth is being used by human rights groups to map and track genocidal attacks and attempts at "ethnic cleansing" in places like Darfur. Just yesterday I was talking with someone who told me their group was attempting to track military crackdowns on Buddhist temples in Burma using google earth. Amazing, really.

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Two possibilities come to mind to explain this. First, the Google people may be a bunch of pinkos who would like to overthrow the empire, oops, I mean the Bush administration.

Alternatively, they are ultra-right-wing religious looneytoons who have already figured out that the next occupant is going to be someone from New York and they are just setting the stage....

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So they blur out Google Earth. The address and phone number of the White House is all over the internet. Or they could just ask the cab driver, Mohammed. Every school kid used to know it was 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Now they don''t even know there IS a White House or who lives there (except for the untainted homeschoolers, of course).

 

BTW, for detailed directions to the Naval Observatory, including a Mapquest map, see:

http://www.usno.navy.mil/directions.shtml

Public tours are available.

 

 

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Calico, turn off all the buttons except for terrain. Punch in:

North 13 degrees, 00 minutes, 35.39 seconds

West 61 degrees, 14 minutes, 23.10 seconds

Zoom in.

 

This is the spot. The castaways were assimilated into native culture. Great place to go and hide if you want to be forgotten.

One of my favorites anyway.

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I don''t mean to hijack this but is something that has caused me to give pause, whatever that really means.

 

Has anyone else noticed the security forces of Myanmar wear neckerchiefs? Is there any other modern military or law enforcement group that wears them?

 

SA

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The definition I like best is ''to cause to stop and think carefully''. Regarding neckerchiefs, I keep coming back to the guys in black hats, who were robbing banks in old westerns. Kind of fits in with the Myanmar gang, doesn''t it?

If a scarf would qualify, I suspect you might find a few more instances, maybe in the RAF in WWI or something. I think a scarf is currently part of our Navy uniform, maybe someone else can give a more accurate account.

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Well, as far as I can tell, all the "bad guys" (and I will let you all define who is bad in your own terms)always wear clothes

 

Therefore, to disassociate myself from the bad guys, I renounce the wearing of clothes as evil and hence forth shall only be seen in what I was born with (This message has been edited by a staff member.)

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Hey, who says they're bad? As far as I know, they're just more clean-cut American youth out having a good time, making some hasty withdrawals.

 

GWD-scouter, Hey ever hear of a time warp? Three hours out from Hawaii puts you a long way from almost anywhere. I figure it was an alien abduction and I'm suspicious that Mrs. Howell was not really that clueless. She was really an alien replacement to keep track of the experiment. This also explains all those other extremely improbably events on that island.

So...did you get the name of the island? Nice place, BTW. The big cruise ships don't go there. Really nice place.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

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