Category: Web

Google Earth Flight Sim Easter Egg

I’m going to try this later tonight, if my net connection at home is still up.

Apparently, the latest version of Google Earth has an easter egg: a flight simulator. It’s not quite like Microsoft Flight Simulator, but it’s a promising start.
How to see this feature. Make sure you have Google Earth 4.2. Open the application, click on the globe and then press Ctrl+Alt+A. You should see this dialog that lets you choose one of the two aircrafts (F16 “Viper” and SR22) and an airport.

Go read the full post.
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UPDATE: Don’t throw away your dedicated flight sims just yet. My slow net speed means the sim is constantly updating the stream and I’m flying over an endless blob of green and brown.

Yellowstone: Get Out of Jail Free?

Yellowstone National Park’s 260 square miles in Montana and 50 square miles in Idaho beckon with recreation, rugged terrain and wildlife.
But as the only place where a federal court district extends beyond state lines, it offers visitors and criminals a potential legal no man’s land.
Closing the loophole would be fairly simple, but the law professor who first analyzed the problem said it will require the political will to act while the crimes are still minor, like poaching elk, before someone tries to get away with murder.

An interesting theory for those not as rich as, say, OJ (was).
Read the full article here: The perfect place for the perfect crime?

Fugu me? No, fugu you!

From the “you shouldn’t be eating salmon in Thailand anyway” department:

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) – Unscrupulous vendors in Thailand have been selling meat of the deadly puffer fish disguised as salmon, causing the deaths of more than 15 people over the past three years, a doctor said Thursday.
Although banned since 2002, puffer fish continues to be sold in large quantities at local markets and restaurants, said Narin Hiransuthikul of Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University Hospital.
“Some sellers dye the meat of puffer fish and make it look like salmon which is very dangerous,” Narin said.
Narin said over the past three years more than 15 people have died and about 115 were hospitalized from eating the fish.
The ovaries, liver and intestines of the puffer fish contain tetrodotoxin, a poison so potent that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it can “produce rapid and violent death.”
The fish is called fugu in Japan, where it is consumed by thrill-seeking Japanese gourmets for whom the risk of poisoning adds piquancy.
Every year, there are reports of people dying or falling sick in Asia from eating puffer fish. Eating the fish can cause paralysis, vomiting, heart failure and death.

(Full story)
I call bullshit on this story. It sounds like an urban legend. Color aside, puffer meat neither looks nor tastes anything like salmon meat… and anybody that unfamiliar with the fish in question wouldn’t have to be convinced that it was salmon in order to buy it. It could just be sold cheaply, as is. Why go to the trouble of dying it?
Also, the second to last paragraph about Japanese eating fugu for thrills is something oft-seen in the foreign press, but was never evident in all the years I was living in Japan (everybody I knew ate fugu because they liked the taste). I’ve even heard claims from Japan know-it-alls that fugu chefs leave just enough tetrodotoxin on the flesh to give a thrill (but not enough to kill), but I never saw any evidence of this either. The two fugu chefs I asked about it laughed at the question. They also stated that the chances of convincing a licensed fugu chef to prepare fugu livers, ovaries, or intestines for a customer’s thrills are pretty much zero these days.

Kelp Highway

Were America’s first inhabitants Japanese fishermen?

Erlandson has been working with marine biologists for the last few years and believes Japanese fisherman could have been following the kelp highway which would have flourished even during the ice age. The kelp would have been attractive to all kinds of fish because it provides shelter and as well as giving nutrients to other sea creatures.
Mike Graham, a kelp expert who helped Erlandson, told New Scientist, “It’s quite likely that Japan’s ancient inhabitants were familiar with these systems before they came over. What people saw, as they moved, were familiar species, familiar ways of life, familiar associations.”

Well, if anyone would ever try to eat a garibaldi, it would be a Japanese fisherman.