TRAVELHYPE: 33 Countries, 26 States

Places I've been (not including airport-only stops):

Imagine each of the flags as a link to the associated Wikipedia article.

For comments or guidance, leave a comment.

ANIMALHYPE: Dolphin Rings

This video is of dolphins playing with silver colored rings which they have the ability to make under water. It isn't known how they learn this, or if it's an inbred ability.

As if by magic the dolphin does a quick flip of its head and a silver ring appears in front of its pointed beak. The ring is a solid, donut shaped bubble about 2-ft across, yet it doesn't rise to the surface of the water! It stands upright in the water like a magic doorway to an unseen dimension. The dolphin then pulls a small silver donut from the larger one. Looking at the twisting ring for one last time a bite is taken from it, causing the small ring to collapse into a thousands of tiny bubbles which head upward toward the water's surface. After a few moments the dolphin creates another ring to play with. There also seems to be a separate mechanism for producing small rings, which a dolphin can accomplish by a quick flip of its head.

An explanation of how dolphins make these silver rings is that they are 'air-core vortex rings'. Invisible, spinning vortices in the water are generated from the tip of a dolphin's dorsal fin when it is moving rapidly and turning. When dolphins break the line, the ends are drawn together into a closed ring. The higher velocity fluid around the core of the vortex is at a lower pressure than the fluid circulating farther away. Air is injected into the rings via bubbles released from the dolphin's blowhole. The energy of the water vortex is enough to keep the bubbles from rising for a reasonably few seconds of play time.

LITERATUREHYPE: Jim Goad

Every now and then one comes across some writing that speaks the truth with no holds barred. Just yesterday I found Jim Goad's site (how is a different story completely), and would like to recommend that you have a look. If you can handle it, that is.

Aside from his frequent use of obscenity, there are a number of different topics that most writers would find too outrageous to touch. Make no mistake, political correctness is not of of Jim Goad's strengths - the lack of it is. In addition to publishing a few books, most notably The Redneck Manifesto, he's got his own page on Wikipedia. Nowadays, that's almost an accomplishment.

Here's a short sampling of his writings...

On Kurt Cobain (in haiku style, no less):

Musical genius?
Voice of a generation?
Or dead blond asshole?

...

I'm always depressed
I play depressing music
Guess I'll kill myself

On doing time in the joint:

You’ve heard all the rumors. You’ve seen all the TV movies. You own The Shawshank Redemption and Oz on DVD. You’ve read all the "You Are Going to be Raped in Prison" books.

You’re scared shitless.

You know that when the gavel falls and they send you up the river, you’ll be a "new fish" dumped into a pool of bloodthirsty piranhas. The first time you walk down the tier to your cell, praying for God to give your trembling knees the energy to keep pushing forward, you’ll hear the hoots and whistles and see the grimy hands reaching out to grab your ass, leering toothless mastodons making kissy-face at you, the nauseatingly horrifying amorous advances of drooling tattooed sociopaths ready to split your rectum open like they’re deboning a chicken. Your anus will pucker in terrified self-defense.

...

Believe me—prison is hell. Being salted away inside a steel box is worse than you could imagine. And it turns your worldview upside-down when you see it’s society…not the criminals…that is harming you. It fucks your head up to realize the system…not Bubba…is the predator.

The night I got out of prison, I went shopping at a local supermarket. While I was standing in the checkout line, someone bumped into me and kept walking without apologizing.

I was stunned. I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t been treated like that in years.

People are never that rude in prison.

On San Francisco "Bay Aryans":

San Francisco constantly struggles with itself to solve the question of how many assholes it's possible to fit into a square mile. How many cybersissies can you cram into a phone booth? How many Gaia-peddling belly-floppers? How many self-absorbed monkish Nerf® balls of ideological irrelevance? How many dayglo lemon-meringue fashion tarantulas? How many gaunt, cellophane-wrapped nipple-tweakers? How many prune-twatted hipster debutantes?

It's a star-lit ballroom full of elitists masquerading as egalitarians. Of snobs pretending to be socialists. Of petty backstabbers who appoint themselves as moral crusaders.

...

Perhaps it hasn't occurred to you, but human history is not entirely summarized by the bold struggle for the "right" to poke your veiny ding-dong through disco-bathroom glory holes. Not every act is political. Some are just silly and ugly and stinky.

On Success:

I have no control over the government. No control over their laws. No control over the taxes they bleed from me. Very little freedom from others and how they define me. Can’t even control my own body. Can’t force it to stay healthy. Can’t stop my inevitable death.

But I can control the words that I put onto a blank page. And so I take that limited domain of power more seriously than I take my own life.

...

The rednecks, at least, seem like they mean business. Their rebel yell is aimed right at the source: multinational corporations, tax-free foundations, the Federal Reserve, the IRS, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the media puppets who parrot the press releases of the insanely powerful. Pauperized whites seem to be the only group serious enough to declare war on the government. Serious enough to worry the government. Everyone else is just looking for free popcorn and a big-screen TV.

There is a lot more - why muslim girls are hot, The Clash - before they sucked, untold stories of sexual abuse by nuns, etc. I certainly don't agree with all of it, but it's still worth reading. Poke around (probably best not to read this at work) and you'll find even more material.

Jim Goad