Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

All the flights to La Paz were full so I got stranded in Los Angeles. I had a reservation at the Howard Johnson because our original route back (via Cabo) required an overnight stop-over. I'd just missed the shuttle bus to the hotel so I decided just to hop in a cab and get there quickly so I could rest after sixteen hours of traveling.

Where to?
To the Howard Johnson please.
You want a cheap hotel?
Yeah, the Howard Johnson is a pretty cheap hotel.
So I take you to a cheap hotel?
You can take me to the Howard Johnson.
Johnson? I don't know that hotel.
You've never heard of the Howard Johnson?
I don't know this Johnson. What is the address?
I have no idea. It's the Howard Johnson, here by the airport.
I take you to a cheap hotel? I recommend one.
No, I'm going to the Howard Johnson. I have a reservation.
I have never heard of this Johnson hotel.
No. Howard Johnson. You know, HoJo?
You should really write down the address of this Johnson hotel.
Look, just let me out and I'm going to take the shuttle bus instead.
Wait, wait, I call.

At this point he calls his dispatch, and they speak intermittently in English and in Russian. The dispatch is eventually able to explain to him that the Howard Johnson does in fact exist and provided the address, although I think even he was unable to transform it from simply “The Johnson”. Am I assuming to much that an airport cabbie should know the major hotels around the airport? It's not as if it's an unusual or unheard of hotel. It's one thing to not know the exact address, but not knowing it exists?

I was going to go out for dinner, but time shift caught up to me and I didn't wake up until about 3 AM. Since direct flights to La Paz appear to be full, in a few hours I'll be headed off to a very brief stop in beautiful Mazatlan and then take a second flight into La Paz via Aero California.

I still have lots and lots of photos that I haven't posted, but I wanted to include a couple more from the stop-over in Amsterdam. I think if I moved to Amsterdam, I'd like to live on a houseboat, but I don't think I'd enjoy it for more than six months or so. They're fairly expensive too… the ones I've seen online are sitting in the quarter-million Euro range, which makes them more expensive than many apartments!

One of the things that's always funny to me is all the half-sunk little boats that line the canals. I'm not sure if it's just temporary swamping from the wake of many tour-boats, or if they're truly derelict and abandoned. In either case, the ducks prefer them.

I already miss Africa… That said, I miss working as well, and while I did work on this trip, I wasn't putting in my usual hours — and given the backlog that has developed, I'll certainly have that wish fulfilled for probably a little longer than I can handle.

Keith wrote recently on geoinformatics (essentially the inclusion of location information in a data set, and the subsequent use of that data). I wrote a script a while ago that I'd intended to use as the basis for a short film that (not so seriously) declared that the real power of geo-informatics is in sacred geometry and magic. I may have mentioned it here before but I can't remember. I even partially built it into IAM as a proof-of-concept (or at least to generate real-world screen shots).

If you take a look at satellite maps of Europe and many other regions of this world, you'll see that it's far from “my” idea — the Knights Templar arranged their churches to appear as holy symbols (most often the five pointed star) from orbit, and landscape geometry permeate many cultures, and as David Miller points out, it's not that uncommon in most data sets and the analysis is a little dubious.

I've been working with geolocation data since the early 90s when it was relevant to phone dating systems (which I used to develop), so as you know it's always been an integral part of IAM as well. Below is a world map of all users online on IAM as I currently write this entry.

Anyway, the core of the story was writing software to identify moments in time when sacred symbols existed based on these location points (and the routes between them). Because each of these computers (and their human users) were accessing the same website, what the user was viewing — and thinking — could be controlled… by simultaneously displaying holy symbols in what they were viewing, spells were cast by involving individuals laid out over huge distances, all fixated on the same symbol, all located on the symbol itself, and all being electrically bombarded by the symbol as well.

Above is a zoom of this morning's map as well.

Don't worry if you're one of the datapoints, no spell was cast. ;-)

But seriously, I suspect that the power of advertising and capitalism — another area that geoinformatics shines — easily outdoes the magic. But really, what is advertising and capitalism if not a way to consolidate power and control into the hands of the minority? What is it but a way of taking the work of a group and ensuring that only a small number collect its blessings? Perhaps capitalism, born and nurtured with the help of major religions, is simply the next step in a multi-millennium long spell.

If you want to really see something scary, plot a map of all the Wal-Mart stores… you'll see that they've all been carefully placed in accordance to the laws of sacred geometry — immense Maltese crosses hundreds of miles across, Pentagrams spanning continents, and more. As to why or what it means or the power it's given them, I'll leave that up to you.