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On the morning of June 25, 2009, Jackson reportedly collapsed at a rented home in west Los Angeles. Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics responded to a 911 call at 12:21 pm local (Pacific) time and arrived at 12:30 pm. Jackson was reportedly not breathing and CPR was quickly performed. He fell into a coma and died shortly after being rushed to UCLA Medical Center. The cause of death is reported to be cardiac arrest. Jackson was pronounced dead at about 2:26 pm local time. Although there is no evidence of criminality, Los Angeles Police Department detectives have opened an investigation into his death. An autopsy is said to be scheduled for Friday, June 26, 2009.

The quest to make knowledge computable has a long and distinguished history. Indeed, when computers were first imagined, it was almost taken for granted that they would eventually have the kinds of question-answering capabilities that we now begin to see in Wolfram|Alpha.

What has now made Wolfram|Alpha possible today is a somewhat unique set of circumstances—and the singular vision of Stephen Wolfram.

For the first time in history, we have computers that are powerful enough to support the capabilities of Wolfram|Alpha, and we have the web as a broad-based means of delivery. But this technology alone was not enough to make Wolfram|Alpha possible.

What was needed were also two developments that have been driven by Stephen Wolfram over the course of nearly 30 years.

In September 1969 at a conference in Seattle, Washington, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin announced that in spring 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on the environment. This occurred during a time of great concern about overpopulation and when there was a strong movement towards “Zero Population Growth.”

Nelson viewed the stabilization of the nation’s population as an important aspect of environmentalism and later said:

“The bigger the population gets, the more serious the problems become … We have to address the population issue. The United Kingdom, with the U.S. supporting it, took the position in Cairo in 1994 that every country was responsible for stabilizing its own population. It can be done. But in this country, it’s phony to say ‘I’m for the environment but not for limiting immigration.’”

Senator Nelson first proposed the nationwide environmental protest to thrust the environment onto the national agenda.” “It was a gamble,” he recalls, “but it worked.”

Five months before the first April 22 Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the rising hysteria of “global cooling”:

“Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation’s campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam…a national day of observance of environmental problems…is being planned for next spring…when a nationwide environmental ‘teach-in’…coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned….” Senator Nelson also hired Denis Hayes as the coordinator.

April 22, 1970, Earth Day marks the beginning of the modern environmental movement. Approximately 20 million Americans participated, with a goal of a healthy, sustainable environment. (continue reading…)

UPDATE: Shortly after posting this article I was made aware this couple made MULTIPLE videos, some featured here: http://consumerist.com/

CONOVER, NORTH CAROLINA — Two Domino’s employees in Conover, North Carolina have been fired after posting a video of themselves on YouTube showing them mishandling food and are now facing criminal charges.

Kristy Lynn Hammonds, 31, and Michael Anthony Setzer, 32, turned themselves in to authorities this afternoon. Hammonds and Setzer are being held in jail on $7,500 bond each. If convicted, they could spend four months to one year behind bars.

According to WCNC.com, “Hammonds, who also goes by the name Kristy Lynn Thompson, has a rap sheet that includes charges for communicating threats and making harassing phone calls. Those charges were ultimately dismissed. But Catawba County authorities did confirm that Hammonds is a registered sex offender from Alexander County.”

Hammonds is also a registered sex offender and is listed in the NC Sex Offenders registry stemming from a charge of sexual battery.

The justifiably angry response from Patrick Doyle, President, Domino’s U.S.A was applauded by sympathetic YouTube viewers.  The original video ([above] which Hammonds and Setzer claim was a prank showing food that was never delivered) was widely criticized.

The video shows Michael Anthony Setzer putting cheese in his nose and then onto bread and he prepares a Domino’s sandwich. He fakes a sneeze, but breathes all over the food items. He then touches it as if burying what came out of his nose.

The sandwich making was intentionally caught on video by the narrator and co-worker at a North Carolina pizza store, Kristy Lynn Hammonds, then purposely posted on the internet. In the video, the pair joked about “booger bread” and say if they ever opened their own restaurant, it would be shut down within 24 hours.

The video gets progressively worse as time elapses. At one point, one of the employees grabs a sponge and pulls his pants down. He wipes himself then washes dishes.

The employees admit they were being immature and have apologized for hurting the company.

Domino’s issued this statement in response to the video:

“We are appalled by the actions of these individuals and they do not represent the 125,000 hard-working men and women of Domino’s Pizza across the country and in 60 countries around the world. During our investigation last night, we were able to identify these individuals, who have confessed to a “prank” and claimed that they did not serve any food to customers. The franchise owner will be terminating the employment of these individuals today. We are also pursuing criminal and legal action against them. Below, please see the email I received from the female in the video. She sent it to me this morning at 1:38 a.m. — I am sorry about all of this! It was all a prank and me nor Michael expected to have this much attention from the videos that were uploaded! No food was ever sent out to any customer. We would never put something like that on you tube if it were real!! It was fake and I wish that everyone knew that!!!! Michael never would do that to any customer, EVER!! I AM SOO SORRY! You see all the time of the pranks that people upload and the pranks need to seem real in order to get a laugh out of people but this prank was very very immature and I am sorry for the embarrassment that I have caused your company!”

– Tim McIntyre Vice President, Communications

How about Tetris?

This Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at 8:30pm local time, I’ll be turning all my lights out for at least an hour to observe Earth Hour, a global effort to vote earth. To take it a step further, all four desktops, three laptops, XBox 360s, various stereo equipment, television DVRs and whatever else I can find will also be stopped, turned off and unplugged for at least an hour. The room mates don’t know yet but they’ll be fine, ;0)

Chip in and relax with company by candle light for an hour tomorrow to show your support.

Homepage: http://www.earthhour.org/
News: http://www.cnn.com/

Fascinated with listening in on Fire, EMS, police or local radio traffic? ScanAmerica.us allows you to listen to scanners from around the country through online streams from volunteer providers throughout the nation for no cost. If you have a scanner you’re not using and you would like to provide a scanner feed for ScanAmerica, e-mail Gordon at gordon@scanamerica.us and he’ll send you easy to follow instructions on how to set up a scanner to stream to the internet. You can use the computer you normally use to surf the web as long as you leave it on all the time to provide the feed. In addition, you’ll also need a DSL or Cable Modem connection to the internet and an audio cable to connect the earphone jack of your scanner to the Line In input of your computer’s sound card.

joelstad.net streams Missoula, Montana to ScanAmerica.us!

I don’t normally focus on a single day in history but today marks a very important day for many Americans in history. On March 19th, 2003, President George Bush launched Operation Iraqi Freedom. The History Channel says the initial air strikes were meant to ‘inspire shock and awe,’ they instead sparked world wide protest.

Whether it’s a family member, friend, casual acquaintance or someone you passed by while out and about, we all know or have seen someone recently that serves in some branch of the military. I want to take a moment to thank our troops, thank their families and all those responsible for bringing them home safely. Ryan, Luke, Candice, Melissa and her family, my brother Patrick, Mary, Ego and anyone else I may have forgotten, Thank you!

Keep up on it:

• http://www.mnf-iraq.com/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War

Who do you want to thank?

It’s Saint Patrick’s Day and I’m feeling pretty damn green today! Although the snow is coming down outside (wtf is up with that anyways?), the spirit of green is everywhere. One of my favorite companies to talk about, Google, really (really!) puts their money where their mouth is when they go green. Take a minute and watch their green initiative video here: http://www.google.com/corporate/green/ Be sure and take a look at this shot of the Googleplex where you can see just about every square inch of it’s roof is covered with solar panels (9,212 to be exact!).

Need some ideas to celebrate this very green day? Try adding 3-4 shots of blue food coloring to your yellow beer to make a true green worthy of St. Patty’s Day. If you’re a hard liquor person, green jello shots  are a good way to get your night started. The traditional corned beef and cabbage dinner is always a hit and will help make sure those shots don’t get you too lit up before a night out. During your pub crawls you may here some really good music along the way. Here is a quick list of popular music you might hear:

• It’s St. Patrick’s Day / NRBQ
• Mustang Sally / The Commitments Soundtrack
• Orinoco Flow / Enya
• Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore / Chieftains
• St. Patrick’s Day / Andy White
• There’s A Little Bit Of Irish / Patrick O’Hagen
• What’s Left Of The Flag / Flogging Molly
• I Don’t Like Mondays / Boomtown Rats
• Mandinka / Sinead O’Connor
• The Boys Are Back in Town / Thin Lizzy
• The Irish Rovers / The Pogues

Enjoy coffee? Try this:

Irish Coffee (serves 1)

• 1 1/2 oz. Irish whiskey
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar
• 6 oz. hot coffee
• (to taste) heavy cream

In a mug, combine whiskey, sugar and coffee. Stir to dissolve. Top with heavy cream to taste.

Need some gear? How about this catalog: http://party411.makesparties.com

Did you know that wearing blue was actually the color long associated with Saint Patrick’s Day in honor of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland? According to Wikipedia, wearing green on this day “may have gained its prominence through the phrase “the wearing of the green” meaning to wear a shamrock on one’s clothing.” Interesting!

Armin van Buuren has been named number one in the prestigious DJ Top 100 poll twice in a row, in 2007 and 2008– voted for by over 350,000 people across the world, and an indication of his prolific output over the 10 years he’s been dj’ing and producing. Being the official World’s Most Popular DJ is just one of his many achievements, but the driving force behind his success is an overriding passion for dance music.

2008 began with the success that the number one DJ seems to attract; he was awarded with the prestigious Buma Cultuur Pop Award in January. This was followed by being voted as the Best Trance Artist in the Beatport Music Awards in March; judged on the musician’s artistic achievements, national and international success, it is evident that Armin van Buuren has become one of the decade’s most influential trance acts.

Even a basic list of recent successes reads like a lifetime of work: ‘Best Album’ for artist album ‘Shivers’ at both the Dutch Release Dance Awards and the prestigious Edison Awards; ‘Best Compilation’ for ‘A State Of Trance’, in 2006, claiming the ‘Best European DJ’ award in 2007 and ‘Best Mix Radio Show’ at the Miami Winter Music Conference in 2006 and 2007, for radio show ‘A State Of Trance’ – now broadcasting on a massive 40 FM stations as well as satellite and internet radio, with over 26 million listeners a week; a 5th year residency in Ibiza at Amnesia and over 50,000 downloads every week from podcasting high end chart-bothering positions all over the world for singles, albums and compilations , with single ‘Rush Hour’ used as the theme tune to the UEFA European Youth Championship; the #1 entry in the Dutch album charts with his artist album ‘Imagine’, the #1 entry of the DVD registration of ‘Armin Only ‘ Imagine’ – the landmarks just keep coming!

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist. He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass–energy equivalence, expressed by the equation E = mc2. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.” Einstein published over 300 scientific works and over 150 non-scientific works. In 1999 Time magazine named him the “Person of the Century”, and according to Einstein biographer Don Howard, “to the scientifically literate and the public at large, Einstein is synonymous with genius.”

Happy Birthday!

March 14th, 1879 – April 18th, 1955

What doesn’t Google have their hand in these days? Yesterday the company announced on it’s blog (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/) that a new free voice service will become available soon. After acquiring the parent company, Grand Central (http://www.grandcentral.com/), Google has re-worked the system to include free conference calling, SMS support, voice transcriptions and more. Right now the service is in closed beta but Google expects to be able to make the service available to users outside of Grand Central within the coming weeks. Soon you’ll be able to have one phone number that can transfer calls to any other phone you like based on who’s calling or the time of day they’re calling. Groups can be created to automatically send personal calls to your mobile phone if you like, work calls to the office phone or phone calls the boss to all of your phones at once. Be sure and check out the Google voice features videos below.

Google Voice Blog: http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/
Google Voice Features: https://www.google.com/voice/about

Although I agree with IVR systems (interactive voice response systems) most of the time and understand their place, systems that are poorly designed or difficult to use can be nothing less than frustrating, often conjuring thoughts of spooning out the designers heart with something dull and rusty. My boss told me about GetHuman.com and I’d like to pass this great website on to you. Although the founder is not actively contributing to or maintaining the database anymore, volunteers have taken on the responsibility with ‘occasional oversight’ from the Paul English, the great mind behind this wonderful website.

http://gethuman.com

I was working in Ronan, Polson and Kalispell yesterday and managed to take a few pictures along the way. Here is a panoramic of the Mission Mountains in late afternoon.

This shot was taken with my cell phone so there are some weird spots in it and the colors are off but I’m taking my camera along from now on so I can take better pictures in the future. Click the image above to see the entire shot. Enjoy!

As many of you may have noticed, the old joelstad.net was becoming grossly outdated and it was difficult to keep current. I’ve decided to change the website completely, delete most of the old content and switch to more of a blog-like format. I’ll keep it a bit more personal from now as well, only writing articles about products or services I find interesting or have actually experienced, my family,  my life and updates about me.