Validate Your Life

Heath Ledger might win the oscar for his maniacal Joker character, making this the second posthumous “Best Actor” award in over 30 years, the most recent (hardly not recent) went to Peter Finch in Network in 1977.

Also, I noticed the ever-growing “I hate Paris club” has continued to spawn. Disdain for that woman — who, imho, is not really that bad, and in some areas, quite likeable, like her ability to handle media and magnetize press to her image (that also, of course, is the same reason why so many loathe her) — has become a “fad” a trendy thing to do. Even actresses I admire, like incredibly talented Tina Fey appear to loathe her: “She’s so unbelievably dumb and so proud of how dumb she is. She looks like a tranny up close. Her hair looks like fraggle.” What really stumps me is how she so effectively gets under the skin of so many successful people. Does she threaten? Are they confused by her success? If she was a nobody they wouldn’t bother commenting about her. Anyways, that ridicule, no doubt, satisfies Ms. Hilton’s image agenda rendering her more successful. Bad flack or Good flack still registers as some kind of attention, so if you objectively seek attention, she’s got it!

In other news, Matt LeBlanc’s former “Friends” agent, Camille Cerio (not to be confused with pregnant Camilla Alves, McConaughey’s girlfriend, of no relation) is trying to sue him for $1 million in unpaid commissions. He actually EARNED $1 million per show, though! And considering that the Friends’ series tallied NUMBER episodes, he should have no problem covering that, but gotta pay those dues!

That about raps it up for celebrity gossip, other than the usual — a lot of babies, a lot of pregnancies, a lot of marriages, and a lot of trips to the beach! One question, do they “time” these things. It just seems like babies are popping out all over the place in the summer with Pitt-Jolie’s twins and McConaughey-Alves’s expecting and more, it seems that way.

I also just noticed Gyllenhal’s been practicing swordsmanship for “Prince of Persia”. I’ve played almsot every video game in that series, so that video-game-to-movie conversation definitely pops onto the “Must-see” list.

I don’t like to focus to much on these people because they already get so much flak, but oh, one more thing I noticed is Jolie has some longitude and latitude coordinates tatooed on her left shoulder.

Navigation (along with precision and freedom) stands as one of my three core values, so anything with coordinates and nautical precision gets an A+ for cool in my book, but as a tattoo? That’s a pretty intellectual ink-skin maneuveur, especially when compared to a lot of the 2am drunken-stupor tattoos people get permanently emblazened onto their epidermal layer. 4 sets of nautical global coordinates — you can tell a lot of thought went into that — very cool. It turns out the represent the long. and lat. of the birthplace of her kids.

Cambodia (N11 33′ 0″ E104 51′ 00″)

Addis Abeba, Ethiopia (N09 02′ 00″ E038 45′ 00″)

Swakopmund, Namibia (S22 40′ 26″ E014 31′ 40″)

Vietnam (N10 40′ 00″ E106 41′ 40″).

This dude wrote an entry on finding these out.

Very impressed, Angelina. Awesome work with the nautical alignment. Sure, the ink might have been a bit much, but solid precision.

On the note of awesome navigational nerdiness, is this amazing hack for google maps. Maps doesn’t allow you to see Longitude and Latitude, but if you copy this bit of text into the URL field an instant detailed longitude and latitude will pop up detailing the corresponding longitude and latitude of the center of the map! Here’s the hack code:

javascript:void(prompt(”,gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

Try that hack out! And if you want to brush up in meridians and parrallels, I think if you understand everything in this page, you’ve got a great foundation of the fundamentals.

Along the lines of global positioning, here’s an awesome nifty site, too, that calibrates using Geotagged points any spot on the our Earth that you click with corresponding longitude and latitude I calibrated the link to a “starting base of sorts”. Greenwich is 51° 28′ 38″. With that sequence of getgags. Negative (-) = S latitudes or W longitudes, respectively and positive (+) = N latitudes or E longitudes, so for examplle, Los Angeles is lat:34, long:-118. It’s awesome to flip the symbols. Turns out the west coast of Australia is exactly on the complete flipside of the globe at lat:-34, long:118. Sure, you could go crazy with Google Earth, but I found the above tricks, the nifty-geotagged site and the google maps .getCenter() hack very fast and accessible.

After some tweaking, I discovered some cool navigational facts.

The closest spot to Greenwich’s 51° N latitude from Los Angeles’s -118W latitude is close to Calgary, Canada, so Greenwich (and London) is a bit further north than frequently, thought. I’ve been into Jules Verne, recently, so to have contingency with said author’s pin-point pecision-wisdom, here’s some other “longitudinal and latitudinal matchups):

Exactly one half-globe’s worth of latitude (-34 or 34°S) still at -118 (or 118W) longitude is smack dab in the center of the South Pacific, about half way between New Zealand and the South American coast of Chile.

The southern tip of Algeria is located along the same parrallel as Los Angeles, but at the Prime Meridian. That sparked fascination.

And, finally, as a tribute to Philleas Fogg, it’s interesting to note that the furthest south he went (which holds quite a distance) ended up at at Singapore after passing by Malaysia and before curling up the east coast of Malaysia and Vietnam before Reaching Hong Kong (22,114). His latitude at Singapore was about 1°N or slightly above the equator, a huge variation from London’s coordinates at (51°N) nearly 50 degrees difference in latitude, so maybe he did travel a bit further than simply “around the world”, well he stayed close enough to the equator in any case.

Just to provide some scope of how far Hawaii is from the US’s west coast, it’s coordinates are 20, -158, making it, 14 degrees of longitude and 30 degrees of latitude away, and slightly south from southwest US coast. New Guinea is 9,-82, or only 11° latitude and 70° of longitude away, which means that although Hawaii is part of the 50 states, in terms of latitude and longitude, it’s closer to New Guinea’s parrallel and if you add up the differences it’s 44° versus 81° from New Guinea. Just interesting views of proximity.

Head west (or east, you’ll end up in the same spot each way) one half globe from Los Angeles along the same 34°N line and you’ll find yourself in Nanjing, China, which is slightly Northeast of Shanghai. I can instantly see

If I commented on the number of births, marriages, and baby-gossip, this post would be about 20 times as long, so that’s it for now!