6 Degrees Of Me

At the very end of the movie, Doc returns in a beefed up Delorean that does a couple of things different from the old version. The first thing is that it no longer requires a huge strip of runway to gain the 88 mph it needs to travel in time. The car with the lambo-syled doors can now fly. The second thing is that it no longer needs plutonium to power it’s time travel. When doc comes back to pick up Marty and his girlfriend, he goes to the nearest trash bin and pulls out some old coffee and a banana and dumps it into the flux capacitor. Pretty neat science fiction huh? Not really

Pictured above is a trash zapper which breaks down refuse into its molecular components. Here’s a litttle bit more about it:

The process is called “plasma gasification”. There are two byproducts: one is a “syngas” composed mostly of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which can be converted into fuel. The other is molten glass that can be sold for use in household tiles or road asphalt.

You can read more about the zapper at Tree Hugger.

Popularity: 30%

How pumped was I when I saw this book sitting in the library at Ramya’s house?

This is a classic popup book that just so happens to be older than Ramya (1980). I borrowed it so that I could take some pics to post up on degreesofme. The book is literally 15 pages long but does a pretty good job of highlighting all of the important ideas of the movie. I’m getting so excited just glancing at the book every so often on my dining room table. I’m definitely bringing it to my room tonight and tucking it under my pillow. Hopefully, when I wake up tomorrow there’ll be a lightsaber, or millenium falcon, or natalie portman hiding underneath my pillow. Here are some other pics from the book.

Luke on the taun-taun

and of course, everyone’s favorite bad guy:

and for the hell of it here are some additional star wars related clips:

STAR WARS VS. STAR TREK – who wins?

Popularity: 22%

The world’s greatest wrestling fan was actually my grandmother. She used to get so into wrestling matches it was almost comical. “BOOOOM!…. BOOOOM!” She would actually scream out in unison every time one wrestler hit another with a vicious forearm.

I was probably the world’s 2nd greatest wrestling fan at one point. I absolutely loved it as a kid. That’s why my buddy’s encounter with Hulk Hogan was such a big deal. Well there’s a blog that I go to almost every day, that has some clips from one of my all time favorite wrestlers of all time, The ULTIMATE WARRIOR. What I’ve realized in the past two decades since I last saw the warrior is that a) I am not a little boy anymore b) the ultimate warrior was absolutely insane. Enjoy the clip and if you like this one definitely check out Brohans, where I snatched it from. The site is STOCK FULL of awesome clips like the top 20 TV shows of the 80s. You Shall Like It Very Mucho!

By the way for the real wrestling-heads out there, did you check out Sargeant Slaughter in the middle of the clip. Holy horse crap that guy looks bunk!

Popularity: 25%

Equatorial Guinea. That little island in West Africa now known as Malabo is where my father was born. It’s a small place with about 500K residents. Mobil oil found a huge oil deposit offshore in the mid nineties and they’ve been drilling ever since. The oil companies pull tens of thousands of gallons of oil out of the ground every day. Like most sub-saharan nations, there is one ruling party that rules over all. It run under the guise of being a republic but in actuality it’s much more tribal.

I’d like to clarify something here. When I was younger I assumed that when my father told me that his family was a part of a tribe that this meant certain things. I immediately envisioned a primitive lifestyle (I’m talking huts and topless women). Hell, I was only like 10 years old and all I’d ever known of Africa was stuff I’d seen in National Georgraphic and on PBS. Also, every year one of the major networks would show the Shaka Zulu miniseries to further hammer home those beliefs. So if I, a 1st generation African American believed these things then I can only imagine what those who haven’t seen Africa think. Here’s a decent shot of what my pops place looks like

So yea. No huts. But tribes do exist. Just in a different sense than what you and I might think. Just think of a tribe as an extended family. The ruling party is from the Fang (pronounced FONG) tribe. My grandmother is from the Bubi tribe, which is native to the island. Then there are other tribes which originated on other smaller islands but have since migrated to Malabo. My grandfather’s ancestry is not tribal. His people are called criollo, which means creole. They are actually descendants of slaves that were in the united states at one point and returned to Africa. Their language is pidgeon english a mix of english, spanish, and other languages.

Back to the ruling party. Fang. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo is the name of the president. He’s been in power longer than some of the readers of this blog have been alive. He came into power by overthrowing the old government and assassinating the old president. The old president also happened to be his uncle. Obiang is probably one of the richest men in Africa, since the majority of the oil money that’s given to Malabo goes directly to him and indirectly to his family.

As you can imagine there are a lot of natives that aren’t too happy with the current situation of their homeland. Most of them, my father included, left the country in the 60s and 70s and haven’t really been back since. We have a bunch of family that settled in Europe and some family and friends that also settled in the states. One of pops’ friends, Adolfo Obiang (same “tribe” as the president but no direct relationship), is one of those friends.

After living here for almost 30 years and hearing of all of the atrocities occurring in his homeland, Adolfo decided to see about bringing about a change. My family and I heard about most of the events that occurred, after the fact. Apparently Adolfo had gone back to the African mainland to gather forces together to lead a coup attempt to overtake the government. Well the coup attempt grew in numbers but they never made it to the island. They were confronted in Gabon and most were killed on the spot.

Having an American Passport has some perks. If not for that Adolfo might have been on that list of rebel forces that were summarily executed. Instead he was extradited to a jail cell where he was sent to rot. With a lot of help from his family in the US and a good deal of lobbying our own government he was granted his release ( and sent back to the US.

I remember sitting in absolute shock as my mom recounted the details of this story. One, because of Adolfo narrowly escaping death as well as the idea of him sitting in an African prison cell. Please, get the idea of a Martha Stewart style incarceration out of your head. A prison in the third world is something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. The other shocking point was that he was older (65) when he decided that he was going to overthrow the government AND he’d be living in relatively comfort in the states for a 1/4 of a century. Who the hell decides one day that they’re gonna overthrow their government and then actually has the balls to actually try it?

That’s when my mom, in a classic family-secret-unveiled moment says:

Your father was part of a coup attempt back in the 60s

[insert blank stare here]

Popularity: 43%

Most bloggers and internet business types have heard of the wayback machine. The wayback is a way for anyone who visits the site to enter a web address and see what the site looked like years ago. Internet business types use the wayback machine when purchasing a website from another party. The older a website is, the more it’s respected by search engines. There’s also a higher likelihood that the site has more backlinks.

I used the wayback today to see what some of the sites that I visit frequently looked like back in the day. Click on the thumbs to see bigger screenshots.

I go to ESPN every once in a while to check on what’s happening in the sports world. Here’s what it looked like way back when.

Here’s Gizmodo’s website

Google hasn’t changed much

But Yahoo definitely has

How about Match dot com?

Pretty neat huh? Go to the wayback machine and try it yourself.

Popularity: 11%