by Glenn Hefley

--Santee, California

Allen Carlisle Park & Recreation Manager of the Santee Lakes Recreation Preserve is very excited about a pet project of his; the Cable Ski Park, which is proposed for Lake 1 of the seven lake system. Despite the fact that Zebra Mussels are already in California water systems, and that they have been found to travel from lake system to lake system via boats, water ski, inner-tubes, boat trailer and anything else that touches lake water, and is not cleaned with great attention.

The eggs of the Zebra Mussels are incredibly small, so it is unlikely that a visual inspection of water equipment would discover their existence. Being kin to what are termed the "super glue" of the aquatic world, it is very unlikely that if eggs of the Zebra Mussel have adhered to a water ski, a simple hosing off (more than most kid's skis are given), is going to dislodge the tiny eggs. In fact, even a good scrubbing will likely miss Zebra Mussel eggs.

Zebra Mussel eggs can survive great lengths of time outside of the water while adhered to skis and other water equipment, allowing them to transverse great distances. Once introduced again to suitable lake water, the eggs hatch. Which is exactly how the Zebra Mussels crossed the Rocky Mountains and landed hard in the California water systems of Hollister-area reservoir that serves growers and residents in San Benito County. (This infestation was discovered January of 2008).

Santee Lakes Recreation Preserve proposes to use Lake 1, a lake which is connected to the entire water supply (both the main well, the connecting other six lakes and the recycled water plant), of the City of Santee. The infestation of Zebra Mussels would cripple the city itself, plummet Real Estate values, remove major business interests, and be disastrous to the surrounding areas. Yet Allen Carlisle and Santee Councilman Brian Jones are "enthusiastic" about the project after a trip to Texas where they got to play on ski for a weekend (according to a San Diego Tribune news article).

No area in the United States which has been infested with Zebra Mussels has come close to recovering the Real Estate and /or business value of the area previous to the infestation. No infestation has ever been reversed or controlled once Zebra Mussels have entered the water system. No eco-system (wildlife, fish, game, etc) has ever recovered from a Zebra Mussel infestation, the fish and plant life of the infested lakes are eradicated by the Zebra Mussel. "Even a moderate infestation can cause a 60 percent reduction in the fishery," said Jay Cowan, Lake Wohlford ranger supervisor who is on a San Diego County task force fighting the invasion of Zebra Mussels.

… still excited about a Ski Park in Santee?

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Like many writers and web site developers, I use tools such as Google Trends to focus my vocabulary and article topics in the realm of hot trends and interests. There are numerous reasons for doing this, but the big one of course is money.

I pop in some keywords gleaned from sources like the keyword suggestion tool, and see the relation comparisons. Google Trends doesn't give a numeric value for the amount of searches for these keywords however, it just shows a comparison graph.

To get an idea of global high mark value, I typically will compare sets of words to the term "free sex". Despite how we may feel about this, sex sells, and on the Internet, sex is the high water mark. Just popping in sex however is a misleading value, because sex is all over the place in various meaning, so I use "free sex" or some other, more exacting phrase.

Rarely, if ever, does any phrase come close to the "free sex" mark, but today I'm writing and developing for my Scarn.com website, and found that Anime, and Magic are not only close to the "free sex" water mark, but in some time periods, actually rise above the interest line.

The term Anime Porn, which I first thought would account for the seemingly misleading high mark for Anime, actually registers much lower than the term Anime. You can mess around with the keywords yourself.

Anime Music Videos, Glenn's Desk, Web Content, Where's the Money

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The Seekers

Let's pretend for a moment that there is no place to hide on the Internet. That no matter what you do, or who you are, your tracks always lead right back to you and your various ID's on the network. Whether these ID's are email boxes, IP addresses, street addresses or your company, there is no way for you to hide or alter the records of where you have been, or where this hour's personal interests may have taken you in today's travels.

Feel comfortable? Don't worry about it, most intelligent people would not feel comfortable with this state of affairs.

Having nothing to hide does not equate to casual consent for privacy invasion.

The Hiders

Now let's swing our mythical perspective pendulum to the other extreme of the spectrum. What if the opposite state of affairs existed? No matter what was attempted or how a server connection was configured, there was no way to track you at all? This would include your emails, your web site visits, your searches, your forum posts, even down to how many times you viewed the same web page.

Are you okay with this cyber environment?

Continued Here -> »

Glenn's Desk, Search Engines, Web Content, Where's the Money

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