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Fire on Tilghman Island???

Looking out over the Bay tonight was quite pretty as we had some clear skies and a rather large moon rising. But then I noticed this really bright light about 9:00 PM that wasn’t usually there (the other side of the Bay is rather desolate–I can often count the number of lights I see pretty easily)

This was a bit different. It blazed brightly and flickered a bit, kind of like a fire. The odd thing was it was about 40 feet up in the air, and I also saw another flickering light down below (fire truck?).

Unfortunately distortion over the water prevents me from seeing clearly just what is going on over there. The Naval Research Lab has a large tower over there for radar research. I hope that’s not what I saw on fire (maybe they were doing laser tests or something).

UPDATE: Went and got the bigger binoculars out of the basement and…still no idea. It might not be a fire but some really powerful light, being distorted in shape and intensity due to the water vapor over the Bay tonight. It’s still going on after 40 minutes and that tower really doesn’t have the much fuel (it’s not that big). Guess I’ll just have to wait and see…

We’ll check the Eastern Shore papers tomorrow and see what’s what.

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Sirius XM Bankruptcy: Told you so…

Next target, rock and/or roll..

When I published my thoughts on how the iPhone would kill Sirius / XM, I was linked in the Sirius XM financial messageboards (probably by some shorts). Needless to say some of the longs went after me screaming ‘this guy is a moron’ and some other harshness. Even today when I talk about how amazing it is to play radio on my iPhone, I get some radio purists come in an whine ‘but but but, HD radio is better because…’ or something like that. (It reminds me of the guy who told me mp3’s would never take off because they didn’t sound as good as CDs).

Anyway, SiriusXM are preparing to file for bankruptcy. Told you this would happen.

It’s not really the iPhone that is the killer, directly. It is the mountains and mountains of debt that were attached to Sirius. These guys borrowed BILLIONS to put their birds up in orbit. It just never made sense–NEVER MADE SENSE–to recreate the broadcast radio model up in space with a hugely more expensive infrastructure, not when a simpler hack together system is available to deliver more content easier (iPhone tethered to a car stereo). And with more and more 4G services being planned (wimax, LTE) I can understand why investors were running scared about satellite radio.

Sadly, a bunch of truckers are going to be really depressed. One of the strongest fan bases for satellite radio is long haul truckers who got their fix of news, information, music and even trucking stories no matter where they were in the USA. I suspect many of them are going to have some withdraw pains should the service shutter.

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Faster than Drudge: Using Twitter for your Breaking News

TweetDeck http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/ is a beta application that sits on your desktop and updates every 2 minutes with ‘Twitter’ messages from the people you follow on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com) It turns twitter into something like an Instant Messenger (though one you don’t have to be troubled to deal with a reply).

While you may think Twitter is kind of silly (”I’m going for a pizza”–”I’m going to the bathroom”) more and more professional organizations are using this as a primary communications device for ‘urgent and breaking’ news.

Right now, I’m now subscribed to several ‘breaking news’ alert services, which pop up on my screen anywhere from 5-30 minutes before they show up on CNN or other websites. With tweetdeck it just sort of ‘appears’ on my screen — an ‘ambient’ way to watch the news go by, but still be ahead of everyone else.

Here are a few of the ones I’m following.

http://twitter.com/BreakingNewsOn

You can find other breaking news services as well using Twitter search:

http://twitter.com/search/users?q=breaking

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Text of Steve Jobs letter to Apple re: Medical Leave of Absence

Steve Jobs has announced a medical leave of absence until June.

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal
with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health
continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else
at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my
health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to
allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have
decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and
I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As
CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our
board of directors fully supports this plan.

I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

Steve

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Can Mexico Survive? US military prepares contingency plans.

A new US military report is asking the what if question (as military reports often do) about the possible failure of the Mexican government.

The command’s “Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)” report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. “In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.

“The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.”

The issue of Mexico being a ‘failed state‘ is being discussed in Washington, but this is the first US military analysis of the situation that I’ve seen. You can read the full report here

Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if we start to see contingency plans, including military intervention, should the government of Mexico collapse. Though I don’t foresee such a situation (i.e. the destruction of the Mexican government) anytime in the near future. But if you remember what happened with Noriega in Panama, should we start to see corruption reach the highest levels of the Mexican government, could a military ‘regime change’ be a possibility?

This will be an interesting one to watch.

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