The Sky is Falling

This news story came and went really quickly. So quickly, in fact, I wondered to myself if something was being hidden from us ... for our own good.

This map shows the pattern of mass deaths of birds and fish around the world.


View Mass Animal Deaths in a larger map

... and the link will take you to an article that tries to separate the truth from the non-truth.

Personally, I believe these birds and fish are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, and whatever is going on, whether natural or induced by man, they appear to be an indication of something or some things going awry.  DR. MERCOLA 

Sand-rash and sun-burn

Yesterday was a relaxing day with not much to do - my sister drove into Panama City for some business banking, so Mom and I were left at home until they got back.

As part of our ongoing experiment to determine when the best times to surf are, we found this helpful chart that shows the tides. At 2pm, which was low tide, we went down to the beach to see how the waves were. Nothing to write home about (even tho I am doing that here! LOL), mostly because there are strong offshore breezes that don't make the waves bigger.

Nevertheless, we did manage to find a spot where there were waves long enough to get a fun ride into shore - maybe about 50 feet. Once you get to shore, of course, the unprotected lower parts of our bodies scrape along the pebbles and shells until you stop. Nothing too serious in terms of injury but something we later tried to avoid.

Once we were worn out, we lent our boogie boards to 5 teen/twenty aged Panamanian kids who were playing next to us. They were happy to accept our offer and played with them for about 1/2 hour then brought our boards back to us with gratitude.

That meant that my sister and I were in the sun for a couple of hours. Even though my previous exposures to the sun hadn't really changed my colouration, by the time we were playing Dominoes after dinner, my upper torso was glowing with a lovely Papaya red.

Our family has long believed that putting vinegar (white or apple cider) on sunburn takes some of the heat out of it and turns it to a tan faster. So, my sister was delighted to be able to pull the white vinegar OUT OF THE FRIDGE and douse me in it! The towel over my mouth muffled my screams of, "It's COLD!" and I was soon smelling like a yum-yum pickle (others might suggest more dill, but it's my blog!).

Later today, we are taking a drive down the coast to see a new "Super Resort" called "The Breezes" - a destination for many of the people who were on our flight down here. We think it might be a good place for future visitors to my sister - esp. those who want 4.5-star luxury when they travel.

After that we are going out for Margaritas at a local establishment called Cholos (REVIEW) with a couple of my sister's friends. I will let you know how that goes!

Here is a link to some high-quality maps on Panama.

Protect your privacy in public

Google will be driving around 11 Canadian cities across the country again "in coming weeks" to take images for the Canadian version of its Street View service, which it hopes to launch "very soon," the company announced earlier this week.

The service, which is already available in cities in the U.S., the U.K., Spain, Australia, Japan and several other countries, provides close-up, 360-degree views of city streets as they would be seen by someone driving along them. The images are linked to the company's Google Maps and Google Earth applications.

Google has collected such images of Canadian cities before, but this time it is letting residents know about it as part of an effort to address privacy concerns that were brought up by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada after the service first launched in the U.S. in 2007, Google spokeswoman Tamara Micner said Thursday.

Click here to see some examples of images caught on Street View

The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!

I hope this article doesn't create panic as did Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, but I bet there are lots of Americans who are keeping their rifles loaded just in case

"i herd on the news that rusia has invaded but i dont see them no where wats going on."

Test your knowledge of what's where

I was surprised at how little I really knew about Middle Eastern geography when I tried to identify the countries on this map. The only thing that would make it better would be if the page kept track of how many correct answers vs overall attempts - then I would know if I was learning anything.