Wednesday, October 31, 2007

America Online - What a joke

What a joke this company has become over the last 15 years. From being an internet darling in the early 90s to an afterthought today. I was a loyal AOL
customer thru the 90s, but switched to Comcast a few years back. Good luck trying to deal with AOL to cancel an account. First off you cant even think about speaking to someone in the United States about your problem. Off you go to Pakistan or India where the people neither care or can help. All they ask is your security question and such. Well who the hell knows what my security answer was that I made in 1992. Its been 15 years! So theres no possible way to close my account. Thus, I tell them they wont get paid....and they wont cuz they are retards.
What a joke....and they wonder why they have fallen so far.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

New Amazing Race starting next month

Oh yeah! The new Amazing Race starts on November 4th. Defintely one of my favorite shows every year. It looks like some very interesting teams will be competing. A goth couple??? A father/daughter team that looks like one everyone will be cheering for. A pair of LA blondes. Should be fun. Get your tivo ready!

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Opinions on Kid Nation?

Well when I first saw the commerials for Kid Nation I thought "how dumb". Something though tweeked my interest and made me check it out. Surprisingly enough it actually has pretty interesting moments as the kids delve into topics such as religion, curfews and responsibilities around town.

It is kind of a "Survivor" based show as there are challenges for rewards and town status. The town has been broken into 4 groups...Upper Class, merchants, cooks, and laborers. Each group has their own responsibilities within the town and get paid accordingly. Each of the 4 groups also has a leader that represents it on the town council.

Each week there are great things to see, such as how the town council interacts with their group. It's very interesting to see the 8-14 yr olds dealing with politics and such. Meals seem to always be an adventure as you would expect. The kids are completely responsible for preparing meals and cleaning up after meals. Seems nobody wants to do dishes and the town was flipped into a frenzy when killing and cooking a chicken was proposed.

Anyway, check out Kid Nation if you havent already seen it....you might be surprised by the entertainment value.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Planet in Peril on CNN this week

Check out Planet in Peril on CNN this week.

Heres a brief overview from yahoo news:
It's a tough world, all right. Too bad it's not tougher. Right now Earth is looking pretty fragile as it suffers from increasing human punishment. This isn't really news, of course. But CNN has packed the two-night, four-hour "Planet in Peril" with information and images that give a familiar story new urgency. Here is an eye-opening, often heart-wrenching exploration.

Airing Tuesday and Wednesday at 9 p.m. EDT, "Planet in Peril" dispatched correspondents Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, as well as Animal Planet wildlife biologist Jeff Corwin, to report on far-flung instances of "environmental change." This term encompasses four key areas: climate change, vanishing natural habitats, disappearing species and human overpopulation. By taking on so much, the series risks becoming a catchall bin of environmental woes.

"At first glance, it may seem unfocused," said executive producer Charlie Moore. "But those are the four pillars. Almost everything falls under them, and they're all interconnected. For instance, you can't talk about endangered species without dealing with overconsumption of the world's natural resources and overpopulation."

Just a few days before his airdate, Moore was racing to put the final touches on a project that began, he said, about a year ago, during a conversation with David Doss, his producing colleague on "Anderson Cooper 360," who served as senior EP for "Planet in Peril."

"We wanted to take a look at all of the world's environmental problems in one big swipe," said Moore, "and we wanted to avoid the clinical, classroom approach by going to the front lines of the stories."

CNN's first high-def production, "Planet in Peril" was shot — beautifully — all over the world, beginning last February in Brazil, where Cooper and Corwin explore connections between the rapid deforestation of the Amazon River Basin and changes in the world's climate.

Other points of interest include Cambodia, Alaska, Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park, Greenland and the African nation of Chad. One segment finds Cooper and Corwin in Bangkok. They accompany undercover police attempting, with little success, to raid shops that illegally traffic in wildlife from all over the world. Among dozens of other threatened creatures for sale, rare tortoises are glimpsed by CNN's hidden camera. They were imported all the way from Madagascar.

So off goes Corwin to Madagascar — a large island off the southeast coast of Africa — for the next segment. With 90 percent of its wildlife found nowhere else, Madagascar is a powerful draw for poachers. Meanwhile, deforestation and other environmental assault has left only 10 percent of its original habitat to support all that life, Corwin reports.

In a segment from China, Gupta reports that, partly thanks to economic boom and a surging population, China can claim 16 of the world's 20 most air-polluted cities. More than half of that vast country's rivers are severely polluted, he adds. He interviews the young widow of a farmer who died of colon cancer at age 30, just one of many cases in a community dubbed a "cancer village." No wonder. The local river used for drinking and irrigation is polluted with carcinogens from nearby iron-ore mining operations that have gone on for decades.

For the average viewer, this is a troubling story. But then, a bit later, the scene shifts to New York, where Cooper submits to a "body burden assessment" — a complex, comprehensive blood test measuring the presence of 246 synthetic chemicals. Weeks pass while Cooper's blood is analyzed. Then he learns, not happily, that he tested positive for more than 100 of those chemicals, including the long-banned carcinogens DDT and PCBs.

No worries, says the president of the American Chemistry Council in an interview: "Just because we find chemicals in the body doesn't mean that it causes disease."

Maybe not. But, as Cooper notes, no one knows for sure what the health implications might be. Questions far outstrip any research to answer them. This is how Tuesday's installment ends.

"I wanted each night's episode to end up at home," Moore explained. "The fact that bad things are happening in faraway places doesn't make them any less important. But I wanted to make sure that the issues don't feel too removed from the viewer's everyday life."

No doubt about it: "Planet in Peril" has an up-close-and-personal global reach. Its immediacy can be measured in the blood flowing through the veins of one of its reporters.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Kurds and Turks...Kooks and Turds

Looks like we are heading for a conflict between the Kurds and Turkey. Can anyone say $100 a barrell oil and $3.50 a gallon gas soon? Here it comes.

Turkey (Reuters) - Kurdish rebels killed 17 Turkish soldiers and wounded 16 others in an ambush on Sunday, prompting Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to call crisis talks to consider a military strike against rebel bases in Iraq. The attack, the worst in more than a decade by rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), came four days after Turkey's parliament overwhelmingly approved a motion to allow troops to enter northern Iraq to fight guerrillas hiding there.

"We are very angry. ... Our parliament has granted us the authority to act and within this framework we will do whatever has to be done," an ashen-faced Erdogan told reporters. Senior military and government officials began the crisis talks on Sunday evening at the presidential palace in Ankara under President Abdullah Gul to plot Turkey's response.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Band of the Week - THE BLOW

The band of the week is THE BLOW. You need to check them out. Ironically it's not even really a band. It's basically Khaela Maricich, a fabulously talented artist. Her lyrics are simple yet borderline brilliant if I must say so.

Check out The Blow at their myspace page. There are 4 songs available there to sample as well as a clever 50 questions about the band by Khaela. The Blow also has its website at The Blow


Thursday, October 18, 2007

Check out The Ecoist Abode

Everyone interested in perserving our environment and green ideals should check out The Ecoist Abode . It's a wonderful source of information and ideas on everything from global warming to organic foods and going green. Come share your ideas, learn and post a comment or two!

The Ecoist Abode

Welcome to Mull This Over

Welcome to my personal blog. This is where I'll post all kinds of thoughts and ideas for you to "mull over"!

Thought for the day --- Well done to the US mens soccer team that won in Switzerland yesterday. We played alot of youngsters like Michael Bradley, Freddy Adu, Danny Szetela and Maurice Edu. They pulled through and grabbed a rare win for the US on European soil. Read about it at
Soccer Mogul .