{"id":9322,"date":"2014-05-31T08:43:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-31T15:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=9322"},"modified":"2014-05-31T13:11:38","modified_gmt":"2014-05-31T20:11:38","slug":"seeing-things-differently","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=9322","title":{"rendered":"Seeing Things Differently"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-5009\" src=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/userpicobservations.jpg\" alt=\"userpic=observations\" width=\"100\" height=\"72\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" \/>Yesterday morning, while putting on my shoes, my lower back slipped out of whack again. This, of course, has put a kink into day. So while I work up the gumption to move, here are some news articles from the week. All of these deal with different ways of seeing things.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>What If I Sailed West?<\/strong> Quite a few years ago, I posted a link to a site that asked the question: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ubasics.com\/dighole\/\">Where would you get if you dug a hole straight through the middle of the earth<\/a>? The answer, for most places, is &#8220;in the middle of the water&#8221; somewhere (most of the US ends up in the Indian ocean). Here&#8217;s a map that answers a different question: <a href=\"http:\/\/knowmore.washingtonpost.com\/2014\/05\/22\/if-youre-on-the-beach-this-map-shows-you-whats-across-the-ocean\/\">Suppose you were at the beach and swum in a straight line across the ocean &#8212; where would you end up<\/a>? Unlike digging, the answer for most place is someone interesting (only rarely do you end up on the same continent you left). Further, there are few spaces where it is a complete circle of water.<\/li>\n<li><strong>And They&#8217;re Watching &#8220;I Love Lucy&#8221;<\/strong>. You&#8217;ve heard, of course, that our TV broadcasts have been going out into space? But how far? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lastwordonnothing.com\/2014\/05\/27\/abstruse-goose-tv-on-the-stars\/\">Here&#8217;s a map that shows what star systems are watching what<\/a>. Aldebaran is about to watch the first Emmy awards, while Acrturus is up to &#8220;The Facts of Life&#8221; and Formalhaut is watching &#8220;The Arsenio Hall Show&#8221; (the first one, not the one just cancelled). But of course, they are always watching &#8220;I Love Lucy&#8221; somewhere.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hiding in Plain Sight<\/strong>. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/article\/20140523\/NEWS04\/305230076\/Army-selects-new-camo-pattern\">Army Times is reporting that the Army has chosen a new camouflage pattern<\/a>. This replaces the unpopular Universal Camouflage Pattern; supposedly, the service has elected Scorpion W2 as its next Army combat uniform camo, a pattern born out of Army Natick labs. According to Army Times, the new pattern will serve as the service\u2019s primary camo pattern, but Army uniform leaders have said they envision a \u201cfamily\u201d of patterns with a dark jungle-woodland variant and a lighter pattern for desert environs. The main camouflage pattern would be worn in garrison, and the others would go to deploying troops. Why a new pattern? The problem is that the services have seen <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gao.gov\/modules\/ereport\/handler.php?1=1&amp;path=\/ereport\/GAO-13-279SP\/data_center\/Defense\/2._Combat_Uniforms\">an explosion in the number of camo patterns<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/article\/20131212\/NEWS\/312120029\/Congress-wants-common-camouflage-uniform\">Congress is reining them in<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Empty Freeways<\/strong>. This week the new HOV lane on the 405 has been open, and the change has been dramatic &#8212; what had been an 85 minute ride home on good days has been, on average, 15-20 minutes shorter. The freeway has been free-flowing at Wilshire, which is something I&#8217;ve never seen. <a href=\"http:\/\/southland.gizmodo.com\/photos-when-southern-californias-freeways-were-new-an-1567410615\">Here are some pictures from even earlier times &#8212; when freeways were first opened and were empty<\/a>. So where did the traffic go? Most likely to LAX &#8212; as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/travel\/la-trb-lax-construction-20140529-story.html\">they are doing a major construction project there over the summer<\/a>. Want the skinny? Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.laxishappening.com\/\">the LAWA page with updates<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Something for Nothing<\/strong>. Two hacks in the news: one bad, one good. For those of us with WordPress sites &#8212; either self-hosted (as this blog is) or on wordpress.com (where tasnorthridge-motas.org is): <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/2158771\/wordpress-com-vulnerable-to-account-hijacking.html#tk.rss_all\">it appears WordPress leaves cookies that make it easier to hijack an account<\/a>. Hopefully, a patch will fix this soon.\u00a0 For those using Windows XP: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/2310301\/windows-xp-registry-hack-keeps-the-security-updates-rolling.html#tk.rss_all\">it appears you can tell the registry to lie that you are XP Embedded&#8230; and still get updates<\/a>. Of course, you do this at your own risk.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday morning, while putting on my shoes, my lower back slipped out of whack again. This, of course, has put a kink into day. So while I work up the gumption to move, here are some news articles from the week. All of these deal with different ways of seeing things. What If I Sailed <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=9322\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-chum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9322"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9324,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9322\/revisions\/9324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}