zimbabwe

i just read an interesting analysis of the zimbabwe elections which were taking place today.

mugabe has got the country under siege with the land grabs and violence taking place, and much of the country in poverty and ruin.

however for the opposition party, the MDC (movement for democratic change) to win the election, they require 76 seats out of the 120 seats up for grabs - the reason for this is that the remaining 30 seats are appointed by the ruling party, and thus mugabe can nominate all 30 of those seats to his zanu-pf party.

however, in the likely event that the MDC gains the required 76 seats, mugabe has openly stated that he refuses to allow the opposition party to win.

so unfortunately, this is one election that is neither free nor fair, and the losers in this power struggle are the citizens of zimbabwe

fish running out

i heard on the news this morning that due to over harvesting of fish world wide, their could be the possiblity that we have a fish shortage in the future.

the last 50 years have been disasterous for fishing.

i know that there are fish farms springing up throughout the world, but that doesn't make me feel any better, that the oceans, which are massive and take up far more space than the land mass in the world, could be void of fish, due to the plundering of man!

skype phone

i've got one of these new olympia skype phones, and they are fantastic.

what happens is that it's a handsfree phone that works with both your normal telephone line, and voice over ip (VOIP), so that you can dial through the phone via skype, while lying on the couch.

my only gripe is that when using a laptop, which is what i do, the skype base station plugs into the usb port on my laptop. however, i'm constantly moving my laptop around, so unplugging and plugging in the usb port.

the base station should connect to the laptop via bluetooth or something along those lines, so that it can be a wireless solution.

otherwise, i'm very happy with my olympia skype phone.

googlewhacking

it's such an interesting site - the google whacking site.
the objective is for people around the world to find 2 words on google, when typed in together, don't bring up any results.

so the latest posting is humpbacks leatherworking. that means that if you take the word humpbacks, and the word leatherworking, and type them individually into google, you'll get results for each of them.

however, when typing in both words into the search engine, you're suppose to get no results.

the issue is that as soon as the person has found the combination, in this case, humpbacks leatherworking, and added it to the google whacking site, then it appears on a website, and google indexes it, and thus it no longer deserves to be in the googlewhacking hall of fame.

so as a test, i'm going to go to google now and type in the combination i've been looking at - humpbacks leatherworking - to see if it truly is a google whack on this date, or if google does have results for it.

well, there are currently 2 results for the term humpbacks leatherworking. one appears. the other you seem to have to click through to if you want to see it.

the site that has the term humpbacks leatherworking is:

Cabo San Lucas, San Jose del Cabo, East Cape
... occupations like cattle ranching, farming, leatherworking and mining. ...
Grays, humpbacks, orcas, blues and other whales can be seen in local waters. ...
www.cabobob.com/pages/01cabos.html

when i'm in the mood sometime in the future, i'll take a few of the other google whack words, and see if they appear.

kofi annan

interesting to see that the head of the united nations, kofi annans, is being questioned over the contract on the "oil for food" program, which was awarded to his son's employer.

i'm curious to know how Annan couldn't have known that his son worked for that particular company that was awarded the contract?

tsunami

i've just heard the news about another large earthquake in the thailand region. apparently it measures 8.3 on the richter scale, which is massive considering that the previous earthquake in december, was 9, and it resulted in the horrific death or missing count of around three hundred thousand.

the december earthquake resulted in the devestating tsunami's.

i'm busy watching cnn for updates at the moment.

in the beginning, they said that the earthquakes could potentially result in tsunami's, which would go south from the earthquake epicenter, but now they're saying that the tsunami might not happen.

hopefully there won't be a tsunami. guess i'm going to be up half the night.