Otto W.

So, I'd revealed a thought I had about Otto Warmbier's situation today: that North Korea didn't want anyone to think it was possible — or that anyone would do it in their country — but that Otto Warmbier may have tried to take his own life unsuccessfully.

Naturally, since this is one of those "unthinkable" things, and because it does sound somewhat callous to think it, it's not a thought that would go over well.

I'm a person who tends to have logical leaps, thinking things that seem so probable and right, but not being able to substantiate it with hard evidence. Some may call them hunches, but it's more than that. I think of things with having experienced, read, thought, or otherwise went over them before, but I just can't cite my sources (I usually can't remember them). I did have such a leap a while ago when someone in the news had died and I'd figured it s suicide.

It turned out to be such, and they left it alone after that (I suppose to not "glorify" the act).

It shouldn't be so wild to think someone might try suicide if under conditions where oppression, lack of freedom, and hardship are almost the whole of one's day. A friend of mine brought up that it would probably be painful for the parents to hear someone think their son might have tried to kill himself. I did mention there's nothing to refute completely that option, but I did understand that line of thinking.

It wouldn't excuse North Korea if they didn't contribute directly to his death (as in, he would have been the initiator, if it was attempted suicide), but they'd be at least manslaughterers.

It would be another turn on the Massachusetts case that found the girl guilty for egging on her ex-boyfriend to kill himself: the judge convicted her of involuntary manslaughter.

Betsy Randolph Shouldn't Have Access to A Time Machine Ever

Betsy Randolph remembers run-in with warehouse suspect
http://m.koco.com/news/betsy-randolph-remembers-runin-with-warehouse-suspect/28277510

So, she regrets she couldn't have done more and feels she could have averted a tragedy. She's expressed her innermost feelings on the public record, and those thoughts probably should have remained inside.

Those thoughts and feelings are those of a hurt and grieving woman, yes, but she's also a law enforcement official. One shouldn't have to think, as I am now, that should there be a time machine that one would have to hold her in custody because we'd worry she would alter the timeline to relieve the guilt she feels.

She would kill him because she knows what he has done now, but that's still not a responsible thing to say in her position.

Grab Your Big Pouch

http://youtu.be/_-fOJgsUEPU

I had seen this commercial on live TV maybe only twice, but on Internet streaming it's popped up a little more. 

Every time I see it, I think a few things:

1) This Big Pouch Man character is quirky and pretty attractive. When he's upside-down you don't see it, but the moment he uprights himself in the back seat, you can see it, especially in the eyes.

2) His character is also kind of creepy. It almost seems they're making double-entendres with the product. This is fine, and I'd giggled. Simultaneously, is the character of the driving test guy supposed to be a teenager or an adult still living with mum? Perhaps it's that California's driving test age is

18, in which case it's "fine"?

3) The creepiness is kind of hot. 

Because the commercial is just barely kind of edgy, that might be why it's not gotten as much airtime, seemingly, on live television, but I'm glad for the Internet and it's archival of human creation, destruction, and weirdness.

Fraud, I Think - Martins Yellow Foundation

You know what's more frustrating than job-hunting? Frauds.

After having written in response to a job posting, my name and all, I get this:

Dear Applicant,

Thanks for your response for our Admin Receptionist/Personal Assistant opening, we really do appreciate your willingness to work for MARTINS YELLOW FOUNDATION.

I am Mrs. Shannon Hunt, SALES/LOCATION MANAGER for MARTINS YELLOW FOUNDATION. We are seeking an individual who is motivated, a team player, energetic and reliable to work with good understanding in setting up our new locations in different locations in the United States. You will be needed to assist in setting up the new office location in your area and keep me updated with activities on needed supplies and office items.

We are establishing a new location in specific areas in the United States which you will be a part of the team upon office completion. I'll need your services 30-40 hours weekly in helping out with running errands for the orphanage home prior to our arrival for start up. We will set up a formal interview as soon as possible to sign all necessary documentations including a W2-W4 Forms.

Duties and Requirements:
*Scheduling programmer's, flights and keeping me up-to-date with them.
*Handling and monitoring some of my financial activities.
*Filing, Faxing, Creating and sending out letters, scanning documents.
*Purchases of office supplies for the new location
*Meeting and picking up clients from airports upon arrival to the states

Weekly Salary: $500

Please note that this position is not office based for now until the office is officially open in your area and the  flexibility means that there will be busier weeks than others. I would like to give you an immediate trial, so if you are interested kindly get back to me with the following information.

Full Names:
Mailing Address(apt):
City, State, Zip Code:
Cell Phone Number:
Home Number:
Personal email for correspondence:

Thanks in anticipation of your prompt response.

Yours Sincerely.

Mrs. Shannon Hunt
shan.hunt11@outlook.com
admin@martinsyellowfoundation.com
http://www.martinsyellowfoundation.com/

Now, this already looked weird, because why in the world would this be so generic after my having replied? Still, just to give it complete fairness, I started by doing an Internet search for "Martins Yellow Foundation", which gave nothing, of course.

So, I'd gone to the provided website. It was already looking dicey:

Generic-looking handsome guy at the top, marginal-at-best web designing, pixellated pictures that only result when copying it so many times... Woman wearing a tee-shirt from a completely different organization... It's just... wow!

Then one ventures to the "About Us" page, where i don't even think I'm going to go into a full-on analysis of its contents.

The first entry is the president/executive director, who has a completely weird name for an Italian, "Martins Yellow", is perhaps a hermaphrodite.

One would think with credentials linking [s]himself to Oxford, [s]he'd take a little more pride in English grammar.

Then you have a media specialist whose birthdate is on the website:

A person on the website who doesn't even seem to be part of the foundation at all (and strangely, she kind of looks like someone I'd gone to high school with):

And the writer of the generic e-mail, pictured with her ghost dog:

The establishment date of the website is 2000, which means effectively that in 13 years and four people in the "About Us" section who are, apparently, Metro-Atlanta-based and have been for a while, they've not been able to establish an office here at all?

I go to the trouble of this because it's these types of probably-scams that completely disenchant people like me. These types of scams, where people who want to believe so badly they'll fall for even the most glaringly obvious of non-sequiturs, are baneful parts of human existence I wish were gone.

It's not fair for those of us who want to have hope that his/her dream job is out there and that we'll actually achieve those dreams in our lifetimes.

I want my dreams to come true, but this just sliced a little bit away.

NewScientist - Viruses 'r' Us

I found this article fascinating because it could mean that the only reason we're so different from all other forms of life on this planet, why we're the only things capable of dooming the planet entirely, is because we're a mélange of what was and millions of years of viral activity.

My Christian upbringing side of my brain yields this: God is a being that uses what we've known as science, subtle interactions of everything in the universe - physics, chemistry, and whatever else - to make things as they are. He experimented, came up with viruses, and experimented with those to eventually make us.

The sci-fi-ish part of me says otherwise. Define otherwise as something like the Alterani/Ancients, experimenting millions of years ago with whatever life comes on a planet in their ever-expanding goal of ascenscion. This is just one sci-fi view though. As pesky and arrogant as they've been in the Stargate universe, they're pretty cool-like.

My mind keeps spooling me to think about the divergeance between what a good number of Christian researchers have said in regards to how old everything truly is and what conventional science has said. My wanting to reconcile the two always leads me to think perhaps they're both on to something, but then we need to work on some things. Perhaps we've not discovered it yet, but it might be that time flows differently for God, and perhaps He's arranged a slowed-down version of time for us.

Always the experimenter.

I don't know; I'm a bit confused myself.

Regenerating a Mammoth for $10 Million

NYTimes.com: Greatly fascinating, moderately scary at the extension of this research. They died for a reason, right?

Political Dashboard

2008 Presidential Election on Yahoo! News: A prognostication... It's rather interesting to just go through the map, thinking about it all, taking it all in...

Seven days left and then we'll all be able to put this year and a half to rest.

Thank God.

Ditch Your Cable Company With Free, Legal Alternatives

MakeUseOf.com: Just in case you hadn't heard of any of these...

PETA to Ben and Jerry's: Breast Is Best!

The PETA Files: Okay, so... Yeah. I'd be willing to try it, but commercially and logistically, it's a very hard venture. I agree with a number of the commenters that, at least, make the current process for obtaining cow's milk more "humane," if what they say about forced pregnancy is true.

I'm a soy milk drinker myself, so I don't even have a stake in it, and I drink soy milk mostly because I think I've become very, very mildly lactose-intolerant (and the fact that soy milk in WholeFoods and Publix is less expensive than cow's milk).

To each, his own.

Food Myths

AOL Food: Some food myths that, apparently, one must take with a grain of salt.

Hypermiling Becoming More Popular as Gas Prices Rise

TreeHugger: I know I've been doing this more and more, and so have risen my mileage from 32 to 37.2 miles per gallon at last fill-up. Hey, it's savings. Granted, the only thing I've done is alter my braking habits, but yeah.

Rotten Eggs: Secret Ingredient for Suspended Animation?

Rotten Eggs: Secret Ingredient for Suspended Animation? LiveScience: "Science fiction usually sticks hibernating spaceflyers in glowing capsules of goo, but a real-life ingredient for suspended animation may not be too far off, scientists say."

So, yeah... When we are uncovered 400 years later by the Enterprise-D crew, the first thing they're going to smell is not our rotting corpses, but our living corpses smelling like rotting corpses...

Splendid! :-)