I found this article today - it’s one of those “it’ll-scare-you” type pieces that predicts doom and gloom…maybe. Still, a good read in light of the events of the last week.

The western flank of Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma in the Canaries is going to slide into the Atlantic one of these days: a diagonal fracture has already separated it from the main body of the volcano, and only friction still keeps it attached. “When it goes, it will likely collapse in about 90 seconds,” said Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Centre at University College London. And when it goes, probably during an eruption, the splash will create a mega-tsunami that races across the Atlantic and drowns the facing coastlines.

Fortunately the nearest coast to the Canary Islands, where the waves will be around 300 feet (100 metres) high when they hit, is lightly populated Western Sahara. Few people living in the coastal plains of Morocco, south-western Spain and Portugal will survive either, but the waves will drop in height as they travel. The coasts of southern Ireland and south-western England will also take a beating, but by then the wave height will be down to about 30 feet (10 metres).

The real carnage will be on the western side of the Atlantic, from Newfoundland all the way down the east coast of Canada and the United States to Cuba, Hispaniola, the Lesser Antilles and north-eastern Brazil. With a clear run across the Atlantic, the wall of water will still be between 60 and 150 feet (20 and 50 metres) high when it hits the eastern seaboard of North America, and it will keep coming for ten to fifteen minutes.

Worst hit will be harbours and estuaries that funnel the waves inland: goodbye Halifax, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, DC. Miami and Havana go under almost entirely, as do low-lying islands like the Bahamas and Barbados. Likely death toll, if there is no mass evacuation beforehand? A hundred million people, give or take fifty million.

The last time the volcano erupted, in 1949, its whole western side slid 13 feet (4 metres) down towards the sea, and even now it is still slipping very slowly downwards. Given the scale of the catastrophe if the next eruption sends this mountain crashing into the water, Dr. McGuire is angry that there is so little monitoring equipment on La Palma to give advance warning: “The US government must be aware of the La Palma threat. They should certainly be worried, and so should the island states in the Caribbean that will really bear the brunt of a collapse.”

“They’re not taking it seriously,” McGuire concluded. “Governments change every four or five years and generally they’re not interested in these things.” It was a classic scene, revisited in every natural disaster movie: crusading scientist calls feckless governments to account, squalid politicos ignore the call. The science journalists couldn’t wait to get their pieces into print.

But hold on a minute. Haven’t we heard about this threat before? What’s new this time? Nothing, except that there hasn’t been a stampede to cover La Palma with seismometers. Now, why do you think that is?

Suppose that the governments whose coastlines are at risk, from Morocco to the US, did get a warning that Cumbre Vieja was waking up again. What would they do with the warning? Evacuate one or two hundred million people from the low-lying lands indefinitely?

They don’t know if there is really going to be an eruption (seismology is not that precise), or how big it will be, or whether this will be the one that finally shakes the side of the mountain loose. It could happen in the next eruption, but it might not happen for a thousand years.

No national leader wants to evacuate the entire coast for an indefinite period of time, causing an economic and refugee crisis on the scale of a world war, for what might be a false alarm. But nobody wants to ignore a warning, and perhaps be responsible for tens of millions of deaths. From a political standpoint, it’s better not to have the warning at all.

Natural disasters that can affect the whole planet are known to scientists as “global geophysical events” — gee-gees, for short — and they come in two kinds: ones you might be able to do something useful about, and ones you can’t. When governments are faced with the first kind, they can respond quite sensibly.

Since we first realised two decades ago that asteroids and comets smashing into the earth have caused a number of mass extinctions, a US government project has identified and started to track 3,000 “near-earth objects” whose orbits make them potentially dangerous. In another generation, we may even be able to divert ones that are on a collision course — and if there’s one gee-gee that you would want to prevent above all others, that’s the one. But there’s no similar remedy on the horizon for volcanos or earthquakes, or the tsunamis they might cause. On this one, we just have to keep our fingers crossed.

I’ve been dabbling with online photo finishers for a while now. I’ve tried all the big ones, iPhoto, Shutterfly, Ofoto, Dot Photo; you name it and I’ve probably tried it. And they’ve all been okay and doing what I expected, but none of them really blew me away with their service, shipping or web site.

Then I found Mpix - a division of Miller’s Professional Imaging - and I’m hooked. I initially ordered a couple of 8″ x 10″ prints on their basic color paper. The shipping charges initially shocked me a little at $4.95, but then I received my first order. It was packed so well I think I could take it outside and run over it with a truck and the photos wouldn’t be damaged.

First, everything was flat packed. No more trying to unroll a large print and try to keep it flat and straight while mounting and framing it! Second, everything was sealed to a heavy cardboard backing with a foam pad between the print and the cardboard. And the photos were all placed in their own envelopes before being shrink-wrapped to the cardboard and placed in a box. The packing is truly wonderful after using Shutterfly and the like.

Mpix also uses Kodak professional paper. This isn’t much unless you’re trying to sell your prints and then the pro paper with it’s imprinted back - “PROFESSIONAL” - is nice because maybe those drug store photo clerks will think before helping someone duplicate my work. It’s not a problem now, but it might be one of these days.

Finally, the Kodak metallic paper is amazing. I had tried their E-Surface and Black and White paper and was very impressed with the prints. So I ordered up a batch of 8″x10″ and 11″x14″ prints - a combination of color and black and white prints - on their metallic paper.

One word…amazing! The slightly silvery surface has a wonderful gleam that really does make the colors pop. It gives them a unique look that you don’t often see. You know it’s a photo, but it’s just enough different that you’ll look at the picture more closley. On the black and white prints the light greys and whites have a creamy silver glint when the light hits them just right. They have a sparkle that’s just perfect. There are times you have to have real honest-to-God black and white paper, but you should really try putting some black and white prints on their metallic paper.

They have a place online where you can order a paper sample kit and can see what the papers look like side-by-side. They don’t even charge for shipping, so click over there and get yours ordered!

I’m a convert; I will only use Mpix for my print ordering from now on. If you’ve never used them check them out, and if you’ve never tried their metallic paper, go try it right now!

It’s rare to find a company like this, but it’s great when you do!

Some things are just unnecessary. For example, have you seen all those annoying “win-a-free-iPod” flash ads that have been plastered all over the Internet in the last few months? They are almost impossible to ignore because they’re flashing and blinking and generally drawing attention away from the content and to themselves, but I guess that’s the point. I can live with those ads, but I don’t like ‘em.

Today I saw this ad:

Yep, pop Santa’s zit and win a free iPod. It’s from the same people who have brought us all the other God-awful “win-an-iPod” ads out there with the added bonus of being totally disgusting to boot.

The free iPod scheme is bad enough. I cannot believe people fall for selling out all their demographic information and filling out a couple of credit card offers for a “free” iPod. People have no idea what their information is worth, or that it’s not necessarily a great idea to just randomly open credit card accounts.

This is just the icing on the cake by inticing people to do stupid things and being the most pointless and disgusting ad I’ve ever seen online (and I’ve been online a loooong time).

The FCC announced Wednesday that it would lift its restriction on cell phone useage in planes. As you can imagine, this has caused a flurry of stories on radio and TV promising, “It’s coming reaaaal soooon nooow, you’ll be able to use your cell phone on an air plane!”

Pardon me? I don’t want people to be able to use their cell phone on a plane. That’s just rude to everyone who has to suffer through one half of their conversation.

I feel qualified to make this statement because I was once a cell phone junkie too. There was a time - in the not so distant past - where I was never without my cell phone. I didn’t hesitate to hand out those seven little numbers to anyone who showed the slightest interest in the ability to get in touch with me at any time.

I carried my cell phone everywhere and I always had it near. I had home chargers, office chargers, travel chargers, car chargers and spare batteries. There was no chance I would not have a full battery and be able to make or take any call that was beamed, over the aether, to my phone.

Oh, I tried to be polite and not use my phone where it would have gotten me killed. Movie theaters, libraries and job interviews were right out! Almost anywhere else though was fair game.

I lived like this for about 4 years. Making and taking calls, being a “mover and shaker” and being universally available. There was a period of time in the late nineties where I didn’t bother to have a home phone. I was far ahead of the “no-phone-but-a-cell-phone” trend that’s so popular now. The only difficulty at the time was ordering a pizza from Pizza Hut, but since their pizza is terrible I actually came out ahead - no more Pizza Hut brand pizza!

So the FCC may lift their ban on cell phone usage in the friendly skies but we need to pray that the FAA doesn’t lift their restriction. Ahh, what’s that? The FAA? Yep, there are actually two bans on cell phone usage in the air. The FCC’s ban was to ensure that ground interference was minimized and the FAA’s ban was to ensure that the radios in the cell phones wouldn’t cause a problem with the air plane’s electronics. The media isn’t making a big deal about the FAA angle.

Fortunately for us all the FAA’s commissioned study results aren’t due until 2006. So we should have at least another year of peace and quiet in the great blue yonder.

Happy birthday to…me! Cazz.org is one year old today! I can honestly say that I never thought a year would fly by so quickly.

Life is full of double standards, but what makes people tolerate one outcome and villify another? Case in point, Debra Lafave’s “exploitation” of a 14 year old student. This past summer she had sex with a student and is now facing criminal charges since, well, it’s illegal to have sex with minors.

The double standard? She’s a she and she’s an arguably attractive “she” at that. The arguement could be made, “Well, what 14 year old wouldn’t want to have sex with a hot, 24 year old teacher?” This is the very arguement I heard thrown out on a radio show this morning. The radio show’s point was most people could look at a young, attractive woman and her crime and be a little leinient because…well…what 14 year old wouldn’t want to make it with a hot, 24 year old teacher?

The problem I have is this; suppose the teacher was a very attractive 24 year old man, and the student was a 14 year old girl. Is it the same thing or worse? I would submit it’s worse. When innapropriate sex occurs between a man and an underage girl it’s pretty universally vilified, but if it happens the other way around…well…it’s not so bad.

Why is sex, and the thought of sex so perverted and full of double standards like this? Either it’s just as bad both ways or it’s not as bad both ways. I know why we protect our children, but when we promote - and let society promote - these double standards it doesn’t do any of us any good.