Having lived both places, the photos were a bit of a shock. However, turning them into overlays provided a bigger punch. Taking the baton from Mr. Carvin, here is the Israel-Palestine conflict in terms that an east coast American can understand.

I prepared these in two batches. The first is a direct overlay from the raw satellite photos. In the second photo, I rotated the Middle Eastern map so that Jerusalem was aligned with a major American city. In the case of the DC map, that city is Baltimore, and with New York it’s Manhattan.

Middle East over DC Raw	Middle East and DC Rotated
Middle East and NYC	Middle East and NYC Rotated

The end results cast an eerie shiver on the concept of distance that even I myself grew used to. If Jerusalem were placed in Manhattan, than both Gasa and the Gasa Strip would be located on Long Island. Placing Jerusalem over Baltimore puts Gasa in Loudon County and the Gasa Strip in northern Prince William.

These are short roadtrips or a handful of stops on the LIRR in the States. Across the world, they’re a shooting war.

An interesting bit of perspective, no matter how you feel about the conflict.

Still Pres has mad reflexes

Who throws a shoe?! In his farewell visit to Iraq, the person now known as “still President” Bush was greeted by a shoe-tossing journalist. In many parts of the world, the showing of a shoe is an insult, even when done accidentally. The hurling of shoes is considered a very large insult, and was even done to an effigy of the American president not too long ago. However, we in the West have a slightly different reaction to shoe-tossing. To quote Austin Powers, “That really hurt! I’m gonna have a lump there, you idiot! Who throws a shoe? Honestly! You fight like a woman!” Had still President Bush utter that phrase, he could have ended his second term on a high note.

In related news, it took the Secret Service several seconds to respond to the shoe thrower. Despite being in a controlled environment, like a private, heavily guarded room, you’d think they’d have a bit more control over their principle.

Unlike his hair, Blago's ethics are not bullet proof

gBay At the time of publishing this, Blagojevich (blah-go-jeh-vitch) has yet to resign from office despite requests to do so from just about everyone. He did reportedly spend about 8 hours buddied up with a high price Chicago defense attorney. For those out of the loop, foul mouth, Trump-coifed governor of Illinois is accused of a plethora of nasty allegations from attempting to sell President-elect Obama’s vacant Senate seat to attaching strings to money for hospitals and newspapers. And, I heard he called your mother a nasty name. Everyone kinda suspected that Blago was dirty, so the FBI got warrants (which they still apparently do on occasion) and bugged the hell out of him. The results? Incriminating evidence that would make a sailor smile with pride. This dude can swear. In fact, if he resigned by saying “That’s it, I fucking quit,” I don’t think too many people would be surprised.

While still President Bush was touring his wars, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was all over the subcontinent using strong words like “The time has come for action, and not words.” The Prime Minister is shuttling between India and Pakistan in the hopes to ease tensions between both nations following the Mumbai terror attacks of a few weeks ago. Prime Minister Brown is also attempting to insert the UK into the information loop as he noted that about 75% of the serious terror plots investigated in Britain originated in Pakistan.

Thailand’s got a new Prime Minister! Abhisit Vejjajiva, the 44 year old, Oxford education man was formerly the opposition leader. With a vote of 235 to 198 he beat out the old national police chief PRacha Promnok for the job. It’s a big move for Thailand, which has had its share of corruption and partisan politics for the better part of 7 years. You might recall that the protests of the current, sitting government got so bad recently that the national airports in Bangkok were closed for two weeks. It’s a big, democratic step.

In entertainment news – The Day the Earth Stood Still – a remake of one of the most powerful science fiction “message” films ever, took the top spot at the box office. Granted, the film did go through some updates. Keanu Reeves now plays the stiff alien-in-human-guise. And instead of being an anti-nuclear war, bring the world together movie, this one is purportedly about the environment. I say purportedly, because apparently that message fell drastically short. Not that I saw the movie, nor do I have any interest in doing so.

Don’t forget to stick around this week for my “Midseason Television Spectacular!” and the continuation of my Twitter feature as well as a bit of insight into my two fiction projects.

533K – Doesn’t really do the news justice, but that’s the number reported Friday morning for job loses. That’s not job loses in all of 2008, no, that’s jobs that were lost in just November. As the news was quick to note, that’s the biggest single month loss since December 1974.

2 million or 6.7% – It’s a recession! The folks at the National Bureau of Economic Review finished double checking all their facts last week, and it looks like we’ve been in a recession for a full year now. Adding in the 533k jobs lost in November, and the United States has lost over 2 million jobs, and our current unemployement rate is at 6.7% – no where near the 25% of the Great Depression, but it’s pretty large if you’re current out of work.

Bonus economic talking point – 12.5% – that’s the current underemployment rate, up from the 8% reported in October – the highest rate since the statistic was first tracked in 1994.

President-Elect Obama has started to tip his economic hand. He met with the nation’s Governors in Philly and there’s talk of largescale public works. The Washington Post said that this would be the largest such national infrastructure investment since Ike built the national highway system.

Obama’s use of public works certainly does make him look much more like FDR, and by contrast, Bush is looking much more like Herbert Hoover. This is important because apparently, calling people Hoover on Capital Hill is the new insult du jour.

The heads of the Big 3 returned to Washington, half the nation is for a loan, the other half is against a bailout.

In international news…

It looks like militants in Pakistan are borrowing from classical military doctrine and are attacking the NATO supply chain. It’s a damn effective tactic, just ask Napoleon or Hitler how Russia went. The latest attack was against a truck depot, which destroyed between 62 and 106 vehicles (reports are a bit mixed).

Image by Teacher Dude's BBQ (Flickr)

The youth are marching on the streets of Greece and they’re growing violent. The protests, which started peaceful, stem from a police shooting of a youth. However, reports are leaving Greece that Molotov Cocktails are being used against police, who are responding with tear gas. In places, Athens and Thessaloniki (that’s Greece’s second largest city) are named in reports while others are suggested, riots have sparked in pockets and lead to the destruction of private property and looting. Other than the killing which sparked the protests to begin with, no deaths have been reported. I’m awaiting confirmation from a friend in Thessaloniki.

From the Culture Desk…

It looks like Four Christmas took first place at the box office this weekend, giving people reason to think that movie goers would like to see mindless holiday comedies in times of economic down turn. As the movie took in a paltry 18 million dollars, I think the link is tenuous at best.

The RIAA has filed suit against a 19 year old from near Pittsburgh. While this doesn’t seem like news, the accused was not able to respond and judgment was passed against her. Her reason for not being at court? She has pancreatitis and was hospitalized to receive an islet cell transplant. I know the RIAA is the only business to actually sue their customers, but they don’t seem to pick very good ones to sue.

Speaking of the music industry, signs are pointing to Britney Spears’ new “album” debuting at #1 on the Billboard chart. It seems one sure fire way to stop piracy is to release music that’s not worth stealing. You go RIAA, you’ll show them pirates eventually.

And as we’re getting close to the end of the year, that can mean only one things – the Spring 2009 television season is right around the corner. Trailers have already started running for the January premiers and there’s a handful that I’m quite excited about. Expect to hear all about that.

If all that economic news got you down, here’s this week’s address from the President-Elect. He talks about some really bold moves, specifically getting computers and internet to more people.

Smiling for the Camera

Wednesday there was an invasion of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India. The attacks were launched from the water and instead of being quick suicide attacks, the tactics marked a shift towards a more military invasion. The targets were chosen from a more philosophical standpoint (a couple of pro-Western hotels, a Western-style restaurant) as well as a practical reasons (a gas station was blown up, a busy train station was attacked). Several locations became lengthy hostage standoffs.

Thursday was, of course, Thanksgiving. And with it came the Macy’s Parade. This year’s parade saw a twist that displayed just how large the digital divide really is. The twist? The Cartoon Network Rick Rolled the parade. Those of us on the connected side of the divide had to explain to those on the other side just what that odd combination of funny and sad was. Things only got worse Friday when Barry Manilow covered “Never Going to Give You Up” (warning: video) on the Today show – rather than simply cutting to a video of it. Thanks, Manilow, for officially ending the trend.

Friday, of course, saw its own share of tragedy. A part-time employee, Jdimytai Damour (aged 34) was killed by a stampede of holiday shoppers rushing through the broken doors of a Walmart in Long Island. He was purportedly holding the doors shut against the more than 2000 people lined up for ironically titled “door buster” sales. Such sales saw shoving matches for items like the Xbox 360 Guitar Hero combination. And in California, a shoving and shouting match between two women escalated into a shooting match between their two men. According to the AP, the event had nothing to do with the Black Friday shopping deals. No word yet on whether it was about Rick Rolling.

On Friday night, Rosie O’donnell’s Variety show premiered to record few people. How few? Less than five million viewers. NBC doesn’t look like it’s going to pick up the show. One’s left to wonder, with guest like “Alanis Morissette, Alec Baldwin, Clay Aiken, Ne-Yo and Liza Minnelli,” how couldn’t they?

The weekend saw good news, however. The rioting in Jos which had claimed the lives of hundreds, was apparently brought under control. The riot was started over claims that the Nigerian elections were rigged. Citizens of Jos, one of the largest cities in Nigeria, suffered hundreds of fatalities by the time the rioting was quelled on Sunday. At this time, it is unknown how princes were affected. Also on Sunday, the last remnants of the terrorists who invaded Mumbai were swept from the hotels. The final death count has fallen to 174.

Your Net on Bot - Photo from Infiltrated.Net

And finally, Srizbi’s back! Everyone’s favorite little Trojan, the botnet responsible for up to 50% or even 75% of the spam on the internet recently lost all central control when hosting provider McColo had their internet providers all ditch them at once. However, a temporary connection was opened into McColo last week. This allowed those responsible for the Srizbi spam wave to purportedly pull out the necessary control elements, relocating the spam haven to a hosting company in Estonia. Once setup, it was only time before computers infected with Srizbi worked through a list of seemingly random domain names to find the new home of our Spam Overlords. This is the logical reason why you’re looking at heavy spam in your inbox or junk mail box, after a week or two of mere trickles.
Things aren’t all gravy for Srizbi, however. IDG is reporting that Starline Web Services (the new home for Srizbi) has pulled the plug. It took about a week for me to see a marked decline in spam after McColo was shut off, so hopefully this weekend shall bear better news.