I've been slogging to keep blogging and have jumped to a new blogging platform using Movable Type. It took a long time to set it up, but if you're interested in THE SHOW SO FAR's new and improved incarnation, check out THE SHOW SO FAR at oliverk.org. I will continue posting to this (oliverk.com) blogger site for a while until most of you readers start to make the switch, so change those bookmarks, when you get the chance ! The cool thing is that Moveable Type allows *comments*, so the blog will be way more interactive.

Sorry for the long wait, but it has taken me a long time to *geek-out* enough to learn how to do the install.

BTW, Moveable Type sucks on old browsers that don't read style sheets well. THE SHOW SO FAR looks fine in newer Netscape, Mozilla Firebird and Safari browsers. It's quite readable in Internet explorer but you don't get the benefit of the style sheets. Internet Explorer is a sucky browser anyway, so my advice is to bail ASAP. Once you get addicted to *tabbed -browsing*, you'll never go back.

Orange Alert:

Mars: January 2004&rArr "shock and awe"

Iraq: March 2003&rArr "shock and awe"

At this time of year, many people suffer from the blues. I seem to suffering from an annoying case of the 'oranges' (er, maybe the 'reddish oranges')

Jim Bell of Cornell University and member of NASA's Mars probe team told a press conference he was "in shock and awe" over the quality of the images delivered by Spirit's panoramic camera. The orange tinted picture, shows a desolate plain full of small boulders and dust. It was eerily reminiscent of another kind of picture that we have been seeing a lot of lately. It seems sad, while humanity mounts its most determined effort ever to see if life once existed on the planet named for the god of war, that back here on earth life has never been cheaper. The picture on the right appeared on the ElectronicIraq.net site last March 27 and shows the aftermath of American cluster bombs dropped on a farm, just outside Baghdad. Four people were killed and many others gravely injured. The journalist recounted:

"Even the farm animals were killed. We were told that yellow cylinders landed in their yard, and when they and the animals crept closer to investigate, the bombs detonated."

One eyewitness describes the aftermath:

"The sky took on colors I've never seen before in my 43 years. Every Iraqi I've talked to says they've never seen anything like it."

Amidst all of the excitement about the search for life on the red planet, the journal Nature reports that our own earth is rapidly becoming a *dead* planet, with a staggering one million species of animals and plants predicted to go extinct within the next 50 years, due to habitat diminishment caused by global warming. Sadly, even species residing in protected areas will go extinct, as the climate changes around them. This happened recently to Costa Rica's exquisite Golden Toad which vanished forever, after an unprecedented drought made its breeding impossible.

Golden toad: extinct 1991

Well at least we can look forward to Chinese New Year. January 22nd ushers in the Year of the Monkey. Orange trees are considered lucky by many Chinese, symbolizing good fortune and prosperity and hence are often displayed around the New Year. I snapped this pic of a beautiful pet orange tree in New York's Chinatown.

"Happy New Year to all my dear readers"