Ain't Complicated

Yoder, Oregon: UFO Convention

Strange lights in the sky.

Strange sights on the ground.

And that in our little community of Yoder, Oregon.

No, I didn’t see them.

In fact, I don’t know that any were around to be seen.

But as I was driving through “town” on my way to the Molalla Post Office with a batch of business packages to mail, I saw some pretty balloons out of the corner of my eye. (The right one, that is.)

I looked over quickly…and did the proverbial double-take.

So on the way back home, I stopped to take some pictures with my cell phone.

UFO sightings? -- Yoder, Oregon

I actually worked up the courage to get out of my car to take a closer-up shot:

So there you are — a UFO fly-in about a mile up Kropf Road from us. So if we see strange sights and sounds to the north of us….

Maybe I should go down there tonight and scope out the visitors.

And find out what it takes to join the local U.F.O. Club.

Another Reason for a Fence

As someone who grew up in Mexico (I lived there close to 22 years), I don’t understand the logic behind unmarked and/or unfenced boundaries.

Makes no good sense to me at all.

Border patrol agent held at gunpoint

A U.S. Border Patrol agent was held at gunpoint Sunday night by members of the Mexican military who had crossed the border into Arizona, but the soldiers returned to Mexico without incident when backup agents responded to assist.

Agents assigned to the Border Patrol station at Ajo, Ariz., said the Mexican soldiers crossed the international border in an isolated area about 100 miles southwest of Tucson and pointed rifles at the agent, who was not identified.

It was unclear what the soldiers were doing in the United States, but U.S. law enforcement authorities have long said that current and former Mexican military personnel have been hired to protect drug and migrant smugglers.

In a Roth Administration, both US borders would be well-fenced and well-monitored and well-enforced.

In the period up to the completion of a secure physical structure, two spy satellites would be “parked” over each border and fully-authorized-to-detain-or-repel agents would be exclusively assigned to the most troublesome areas. Wherever there is an incursion, drone aircraft would supplement satellite coverage.

It took me less than two minutes to figure that out. 😯

Maybe I have more common sense than’s required to be one of them there run-of-the-mill political types. 🙄 😆

All that aside, how about some good news?

Good news keeps pouring out of the epicenter. Oil prices are falling (20% of record highs earlier this summer). Domestic gas prices are falling. Violence in Iraq continues dropping steadily. Moqtada al-Sadr, head of the Mahdi Army, is telling his forces to lay down their arms. And the U.S. just convicted one of Osama bin Laden’s closest aides in the first military trial in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Are more tough times ahead? Undoubtedly. But let’s take a moment to say a prayer of thanksgiving.

Number 97

That’s where the United States ranks in the 2008 Global Peace Index. 😯

And this in a list of 140.

That means I live in a country that is less at peace than most.

And the folks in Bhutan (26), Vietnam (37), Libya (61), Cuba (62), China (67) and Rwanda (76) are better off in that department. 🙄

Something seems wrong with that picture.

It looks like Scandinavia is the place to be.

Last year’s #97?

Iran.

(The US ranked 96 in 2007.)

I say someone doesn’t know how to correctly define peace.

Lemme see if the folks at Dictionary.com know a good definition.

Hmmmm. Methinks I’ll save my observations on that subject for another post.

Islamic Debit Card

Please note that my headline is more accurate than is NewsMax’s, which at this point still reads: MasterCard Starts Islamic Credit Card:

MasterCard Worldwide and Malaysia’s EonCap Islamic Bank have jointly launched what they are calling the world’s first Islamic debit MasterCard.

The EonCap Islamic Debit MasterCard is basically a debit card with ATM functions, as well, Business Week reports. It also works on PayPass systems and is compliant with Islamic religious law, which prohibits earning or paying interest.

“The card ensures that purchases are automatically deducted from the cardholder’s account and approved only if enough funds exist within the account,” said Fozia Amanulla, chief executive officer of EonCap Islamic Bank.

I’d go for a two-way-interest-free debit card.

Especially if its use is approved only when sufficient funds exist in the account. (No more overdraft fees, you know.)

I should ask MasterCard for equality with the Muslims (on this score, anyway). 😆

Thank You!

You’re not entitled, so be thankful!

Who has encouraged you throughout your life?

Be grateful to each and every person who has said things to you that have given you the inner strength to do what you might not have done without that encouragement.

There are projects and courses of action that we might not have followed through on. We might have been ready to give up. We were feeling discouraged. We might have thought that we were wasting our time and effort. We might not have realized that we had the necessary skills, talents and intelligence. Someone believed in our abilities. Someone was willing to tell us that we should continue going further. Be grateful for what those people have done for you.

There’s too much ungratefulness goin’ on out there.

Because there’s too much unthankfulness goin’ on in here.

So develop a thankful heart.

Six Degrees of Separation

Instant messaging world confirms six degrees of separation

A social graph derived from billions of instant messages validates folklore that there are about six degrees of separation between any two strangers on the planet.

Any two? 😯

So Bin Laden isn’t all that far removed from President Bush after all. And neither of them is so far from me. Weird.

A research team at US software giant Microsoft studied 30 billion instant messages sent by 240 million people in June of 2006 and determined that, on average, any two could be linked in 6.6 steps.

"Weve been able to put our finger on the social pulse of human connectivity – on a planetary scale – and weve confirmed that its indeed a small world." Microsoft researcher Eric Horvitz told AFP on Monday.

[…]

Horvitz and colleague Jure Leskovec estimate that the Microsoft Messenger chats they studied amount to half of the instant messages sent worldwide in June two years ago.

That’s a staggering amount of messages!

(What a boring job.)

The researchers stress that they were not privy to the contents of messages and that information indicating peoples identities was removed.

Yeah. Sure. 🙄

Olympics: Something Big Coming Down?

I thought of that earlier this morning when I first saw this story.

Item Number One:

Attackers with home-made bombs and knives killed 16 police in a restive western region of China on Monday, state media said, in just the sort of violence Beijing had hoped to avoid four days before the Olympics.

The attack, which occurred about 4,000 km 2,500 miles from the capital in the old Silk Road city of Kashgar, was a reminder of internal tensions in China, especially in its ethnically mixed and largely Muslim west.

Police said they had information separatists from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement had been planning attacks in the run-up to the Games.

I wonder if this is the forerunner to a Big Event masterminded by Big Terror.

Item Number Two is more benign in nature:

American swimming phenomenon Michael Phelps slipped into town to begin an Olympic adventure that could end with him breaking Mark Spitzs record of seven golds in a single Olympics.

[…]

Phelps won six gold and two bronze medals at the 2004 Athens Olympics and will get a $1 million bonus from sponsor Speedo if he can equal compatriot Spitzs haul from the 1972 Munich Games.

I remember Spitz.

Note to Phelps: Stay off the dope.