>I downloaded, installed, and played with TITAN the other day. Honestly, I cannot see the utility of this, but it sounds like a cool tool. TITAN is like Google Earth with an Instant Messenger and P2P built-in, and you have the ability to share your local imagery with others in your contact list. So, I…

>The ESRI UC2007 conference is over. I did not attend this year. The conferences are tiring. And too big. Too big to be really helpful. Previous experience at the conference has shown me that spending time at the Doctor’s Office is the biggest aid of all. The rest is just too overwhelming. I will attend…

>I haven’t posted in a long while. Several reasons for that, the biggest is laziness, outside of family, coaching basketball and baseball, committee service, updating my website, getting computers to cooperate, and teaching World Geography. I am going to endeavor to improve this. Also, I will try to stick to more geographic-related rantings and less…

>India’s Bangalore city renamed Bengalooru – washingtonpost.com Now for a more traditional geographical topic – the renaming of a city. Why would India, or any place for that matter, want to change a name of a city, particularly the name of a city of some importance? They might feel compelled if the city’s name was…

>Pope’s comments on Islam hit ‘civilization clash’ fault line csmonitor.com I recommend reading the Pope’s actual statement rather than reading any synopsis. Having said that, here is an analysis by Joshua Trevino (The Brussels Journal) and from the desk of Dan Murphy (The Christian Science Monitor). The irony of Muslim extremist calling for suicide attacks…

>FreeTheDog Andrew Luster is a sociopath. The heir to the Max Factor cosmetics fortune was convicted and found guilty of 84 acts of drugging, rape, and abuse of women over a 4-yr time period. He is currently serving a life sentence in federal prison. Thanks to Duane “The Dog” Chapman, the world’s most famous bounty…

>GOP hopes to parlay deal on detainees Let’s take a quiz: In what country can you be arrested, detained indefinitely, and have any combination of the following happen?a) Be delivered into the hands of another countryb) Be torturedb) Have what you say under duress be used against youc) Not be allowed to see the evidence…

>Rendition Rendered – Yahoo! News Ok, so let me get this straight: President Bush establishes the membership of the Axis of Evil. I think it goes something like this: Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Libya, and Iraq. These countries the government feels are developing WMDs for use, directly or indirectly, against the United States. However,…

>Some news-worthy items from yesterday and today bear noting. First, lets start with Condolezza Rice and her back-tracking on the use of aluminum tubes. The tubes, Rice said, “are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs.” Apparently, the information is based on one CIA analyst’s idea and has been widely discounted by nuclear…

>Sure, why not? Are you a native American? NO! Well, maybe you are. Perhaps you are Cherokee, Pawnee, Navajo, Cree, or a member of one of the numerous First Nation peoples. But if you aren’t, then you are the product of immigrants. You either arrived here from somewhere else and, hopefully, become a naturalized citizen;…