Be sure to keep all your files backed up on external media. This is a good example of one of those "Wipe Outs" which gives "Surfing the Web" its meaning. In this case, system files were not lost, but merely made invisible by Tripod, which still allowed me to access and edit the files, which I could then transfer elsewhere. Note that in the image I resemble Blackie, the Lycos mascot. I remember years ago when Lycos decided to blow me away for something or other from the free web page system, they showed a Thanksgiving cartoon figure of a turkey coming out with a shotgun to shoot a pilgrim. I see that Lycos is coming though in this weather vision as a turkey or turkey buzzard of some sort.
Finally, after 2 days of flashing my home page with my photo showing, then lowering the curtain on my act, Lycos let up and let me have the web pages without bringing down the barrier!!! I was surprised and pleased to still have something on Tripod, after all. This "lowering of the curtain" episode reminds me of my story of the Psychedelic Buddha Blink, in which the supervisor you have been reading can seem to lower a curtain over your vision temporarily and take over from space, but may then relent and let you have control back again.

Today I spent some time on election analysis notes and links for a while, defining a new file for the purpose of gathering supplemental notes and analysis on the 2008 elections. The installation of many buttons for the purpose of looking into things seems to be mirrored in the "Let your fingers do the walking theme", which I have seen in the cloud cover before. The head of the elephant-like walking figure seems to be above the Republic Convention in Minneapolis-St.Paul. He seems to be flanked by a Democrat figure to the West that resembles a donkey, gazelle, or reindeer.

"English is the Language of These United States!" - This is a song from the National Security section of the Republican Platform online (see the 2nd video down from Anton - Auburn, Washington, containing the associated rock-and-roll video). The Republican Party Platform is supplemented with Republican party songs, email remarks, and video communications in a supplemental column to the right. I played the pro-English song the last time I was seated at the terminal, so that what I get back is a "I-see-you, do-you-see-me?" feedback signal, Ouija-board style, from the mystic signaling Spirit of the Divine Wind, say the Great Spirit. I note that I hear foreign languages spoken more on campus now than in former times, because we in Wichita at WSU are now more like the Wide World of International Business and less like a school for Friends and neighbors, like Friends University in Wichita might possibly be. One can feel the tension between romantic nationalism, in which you might meet your wife on campus, and the cosmopolitan world of proletarian internationalism, or the jet-set, which sometimes seems a bit more like Mos Eisely Spaceport in Star Wars, although WSU is certainly no "low hive scum and villiany" like Mos Eisely Cantina. That requires an expedition off-campus.
I read in Newsweek that Obama roasted McCain in a TV debate over another song elsewhere on the Republican party platform comments "communique column" singing for bombing Iran. The Newsweek piece presents McCain as being Mr. Hot and Obama as being Mr. Cool, but I think many folks are afraid "Barack Obama" might concentrate on living up to his name, blowing rocky fortifications to smithereens. Perhaps he will be the first American President to shoot down an asteroid, as we can now track them down into the earth's atmosphere for the first time. A large meteor exploded over Africa above the Sudan on October 9, 2008 with a force approaching that of a nuclear weapon. "Barack Obama!", it said, as it blew up.

Genocide must end. The horrendous suffering of the people in the Darfur region of the Sudan, as well as less publicized human tragedies elsewhere, calls for a far more energetic and determined response from Africa's elected leaders. The United States stands ready to assist them with materiel, transportation, and humanitarian supplies. We will continue America's diplomatic efforts to secure a comprehensive and humane settlement for the people of the southern and western Sudan. - The 2008 Republican Platform.

The choice of candidates reminds us of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by Joan Baez, these scenes of Blowin' in the Wind, or "You don't need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows!"
In the meantime, I see from the 3rd Presidential Debate that McCain can also be cool.

Coincidentally, I started to read the 2006 edition of Nightwatch by Terence Dickenson last night, a book I have read before in earlier editions. Just before I go to bed I can see the zero hour of sidereal time on the celestial sphere passing right through the zenith from the street. "When Chill the Kite brings home the Night that Mang the Bat set free", I think to myself, remembering Rudyard Kipling, as I watch constellation Cygnus with its Northern Cross starting to touch down in the West, heralding the rise of Orion in the East. I have just sent a 4-page set of my astronomical maps to an old friend in the South by the Ocean. The arms of the Northern Cross seem to span the 10,000 lightyear width of the Milky Way in a manner that reminds me of my theorems on the widths of galaxies formed at the He++ to He+ phase transition temperature, which gave rise to a pressure jog associated with galactic scale waves of the Jeans Length. I assumed that the expanding Big Bang fireball was at Milky Way density when the galaxy formation process toook place as a consequence of this phase transition associated with the formation of the first bound atomic systems. I showed that flat spirals would be about 10,000 lightyears thick if idealized as coin-model galaxies, and a little over 12,000 lightyears thick at the center when modeled as flattened ellipsoidal galaxies. For details, see Galaxy Formation by James A. Green. My results bear on the cosmic distance ladder problem. According to my calculations, flattened spirals have a diameter of about 88 kilolightyears, and a thickness between 10 and 12 kilolightyears every time. According to my advanced calculations for the expanding universe, which incorporate observational time delay, we should see the universe expanding away at the speed of light as we approach L = (3/5)ct, where t is the age of the universe in seconds. At close to that distance we see galaxies close together in the Hubble Deep Field, rushing away from each other in all directions, so that they have many different colors. However, the era of galaxy formation is permanently hidden from our view, and we are sitting inside A Bigger Bang, like the Rolling Stones said, with a good part of it out of sight.
Music: 2000 Lightyears from Home by the Rolling Stones.