The story of my life

It's official. The Internet is now everywhere. On my desktop, my laptop, my phone and even, as it turns out, my childhood.

For the first time in history, every home I have ever lived in is now visible on Google Street View... with the exception of the Budget Building, whose Abu Dhabi locale a) doesn't have a searchable address and b) Google probably doesn't want to bother with anyway.

And I actually had a lengthy post planned out, as you can embed a pannable, zoomable Street View frame in the blog. Wouldn't it be neat to show people all these places, I thought to myself?

Yes, Smarter Self replied, but it would be a lot less neat for anyone with a keyboard to be able to see your entire residence history, steal your identity and use it to start an online brothel in Bangkok.

So never mind.

Suffice to say it was a roller-coaster journey from Midtown Kansas City to almost Abu Dhabi. As I said, Google, like good customer service and excellent club sandwiches, has not yet arrived in the UAE. Perhaps someday it will, and when you type "Muroor Road, after Delma Bridge, opposite Al Wadi Furniture... no, farther down. Yes, stop by grocery" it will pop right up on Street View.

For now, though, I think I'll just enjoy entertaining applications of technology and basking in the fact that I have lived in a lot of great places.

Tournament time

Yes, the most glorious time of year is upon us. Hordes of fans are huddled in front of their TVs for the days' worth of wall-to-wall basketball known as the NCAA tournament. Of course, in my case, this actually means sitting alone in front of a computer screen because of the obscene eight- to 11-hour time difference between here and the courts where the games are taking place.

Kansas' two games have started at 2:30 and 4:45 a.m. Abu Dhabi time and I, being a big fan of basketball in general and Kansas in particular, have watched both. It's fine at the time but hard not to regret the next day.

As Mrs. Blog can attest, I am not at my best after three hours' sleep. That meant most of Saturday was wasted, dissolved into a blur of recovery, and on Monday my brain cells were powered almost exclusively by caffeine.

A pre-dawn dunking against Illinois.

And I'm not out of the woods yet. Kansas has advanced to the Sweet Sixteen, and game time is... 3:30 a.m on Saturday. As long as they keep winning, though, I'll happily suffer a little grogginess--and I apologize in advance for inflicting Zombie Gerry on the rest of the world.

The Muppets have an answer for everything

Or at least a song. Whether you're talking about the Fourth of July or Christmas, they just have a gift for being able to express the pitch-perfect emotions of the moment.

And so I bring you--shamelessly cribbed from Friend of the Blog Craig--a Muppet St. Patrick's Day.

Animal and I know the lyrics about equally well.

Hope everyone is has a great day of eating corned beef and cabbage and dying things green!

For some reason, I thought this would be more secret

The Navy has been developing stealthy, unmanned combat aircraft for a while now. It seems like the kind of thing you would want to keep under wraps and then, you know, make a dramatic announcement like "we have invented the sound barrier" or "all your base are belong to us."

But no, here it is, right on YouTube, making its maiden test flight:

B-2 lite?

Besides being neat-looking and, apparently, quite deadly, I wonder whether this is part of a permanent shift toward robotic combat. Not in a Mechwarrior kind of way, but just in the sense that systems like this allow generals to bomb the enemy without putting their own people in the line of fire... will battles eventually be decided by who blows up the most drones? I guess that's not a bad idea. You could certainly come up with worse premises for a science-fiction novel.

The really tall building by that one mall in Dubai

Conversations involving directions are always a bit comical in the UAE. Taxiese, for instance, exists solely because there is no other way (besides learning Urdu) to navigate via cab.

Food delivery is also an adventure, mostly because there are no addresses. It's all "after Delma bridge" this and "opposite mosque" that. And even navigating by landmark is difficult, as the definition of landmark varies from person to person. Some landmarks, however, should be universal, as illustrated by this conversation related to me by a friend (note--"Du" is one of the two telecoms providers in the UAE):

DU

What is your location, ma'am, so we can send our engineer?

FRIEND

Burj Khalifa.

DU

And what is your landmark?

F

I live in Burj Khalifa.

DU

Yes, ma'am, but we need a landmark so our engineer can locate you.

F

I live in Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.

DU

But we need a landmark.

F

Really? OK, Dubai Mall. Are you actually in Dubai?

DU

Yes, ma'am. And how do you spell Burj Khalifa?

F

K-H-A-L-I-F-A.

DU

S for sugar.

F

No, F for Freddie.

DU

OK, we will send our engineer to you at Burj Khalisa near to the Dubai Mall.

Now, in Abu Dhabi, they are considering addressing (ha) this problem by using GPS coordinates for mail delivery and, it is assumed, things like emergency services. I guess if you throw enough money at that solution, it could work. Still seems a little more expensive and complicated, however, than just putting numbers on all the buildings....

The optician of the future

We have been watching a lot of TV these days. Some of it is entertainment--thanks to the miracle of torrenting (and the disaster that is satellite TV in the Middle East, unless you're a Marine) we have watched several complete seasons of some great shows that we missed simply by living here.

A large part of it is also, of course, news. You might have heard of a minor event called the Egyptian Revolution. Well, it most definitely was televised and streamed online... Mrs Blog and I found ourselves glued to the TV or my laptop screen more than once, watching protests convulse Cairo.

It is riveting in two dimensions. But how much would it hurt our eyes in three?

Squint hard and you can see Princess Leia.

Yeah, I get a headache just thinking about that. Not to mention the annoyance of audience members literally seeing the show from different points of view. Villains couldn't lurk in the shadows (because you could see the action from over their shoulder) and a "surprise" bunch of roses held behind the protagonist's back would be visible for the world to see.

So holography is cool and all, but maybe it's better left for things like delivering secret messages and detailing space station plans. In the meantime, we'll rely on the Internet for both news and Glee.

The fiyl* in the room

The last week and a half has been an interesting one in the Middle East. In what amounts to an unprecedented wave of popular unrest, crowds of ordinary people have challenged established regimes across the region... and won.

Tunisia's Zine Ben Ali is long gone. Yemen's Ali Abudullah Saleh has said he won't run for the presidency again when his term expires.

And Egypt. Oh, Egypt. I have been trying to figure out what, exactly, I wanted to write about the situation there. It has been uplifting to see so many people get involved, asking directly for change in a regime that has the window-dressing of a democracy but the innards of a harsh autocracy.

It has also been saddening, at times, to see evil acts unfold in places where we have actually been and recognize. Mrs. Blog, I, and my parents walked through Al Tahrir Square (and by walked, I mean frantically looked for a way to cross the impossibly busy street) after getting off a train one afternoon. The day before, we had dodged hustlers on the same stretch of sidewalk near the Egyptian Museum where protesters hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at each other this week:

Wednesday night.

So much anger and hostility. I don't know how things will turn out, but I hope the throngs of people who have repeatedly gathered this week in Cairo and Alexandria are able to use their sheer mass to bring about change and a better life for their countrymen.

*Elephant, as pronounced in Arabic