Brain Contour

UPS is better in tracking information of your package than USPS. USPS does not update their tracking site often, which will leave you wondering where your package is — if it is still on its way or already lost somewhere. UPS, on the other hand, is efficient enough to scan the package in each and every arrival and departure.

I won’t say that UPS is faster than USPS in terms of delivery time. Both are actually slow. When I ordered my Swiss watch from buy.com and the seller opted for a UPS delivery, I know it will take a week for my order to arrive. And I was right. Exactly 7 days of shipping time.

ESRI released a beta version of its “Make a Map” application that website folks/bloggers can play around and embed on their sites/blogs.

The ESRI prototype application intended to highlight the ArcGIS API for Flex, the great demographic data available from ArcGIS Online, as well as the “Map Sandwich” web map layering technique proposed by the ESRI Mapping Center Team.

Join the South Dakota Giant Vision Awards 2009! This is a good opportunity for those students who have great business plans but don’t have the finances to start the business off. According to Hon. Mike Rounds, the Governor of South Dakota:

Was it really too much too soon for President Obama to win the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize? There were 205 nominations and the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee chose to give the prize to a president whose presidency is just few months old. What has Obama done to deserve the award?

Following the announcement, Geir Lundestad, Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told senior editor Simon Frantz in an interview why President Barack Obama fulfills the statues of Alfred Nobel’s will.

Jesse Trentadue, a Salt Lake City attorney, has obtained a copy of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing video tapes through the federal Freedom of Information Act. The video is now posted online.

If you watch the video, something is actually lacking. The video shows events minutes long before the blast and then goes blank before 9:02 a.m., when a truck bomb carrying a 4,000 pound fertilizer-and-fuel-oil bomb detonated in front of the Oklahoma City federal building. Where are the rest of the video? Why are they missing? There were four cameras monitoring the place at different locations and all of them coincidentally went blank at the same time! Coincidence. Really? Maybe not.

How could a man sue Bank Of America for an amount that is even bigger than the world’s $60 trillion GDP? Dalton Chiscolm is suing the bank for 1,784 billion trillion dollars. Ask what NYU math Professor Sylvain Cappell have to say about this: “These are the kind of numbers you deal with only on a cosmic scale.”

I think the amount is hilarious and Dalton Chiscolm is a joke! That is why lawsuits are clogging up the legal system because of jokes like this.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech at the UN today. Netanyahu’s address was seen as his response to Pres. Obama speech. The speech brought some good “signs of peace”. He called on his Palestinian neighbors to begin peace negotiations immediately, without preconditions. He address the wider Arab world to work with him, saying “Let’s make peace. I am willing to meet with you any time any place — in Damascus, Riyadh, Beirut and in Jerusalem.”

Watch the videos below (in 4 parts). It’s worth the time.

Full Netanyahu UN Speech Part 1 of 4

Pres. Barack Obama gave a historic speech today — his first address to the UN General Assembly as a President. Obama did not mention plans about Afghanistan and his efforts to contain the Al-Qaeda terrorist network. Instead, he challenges world leaders to do their part in keeping world peace and security rather than rely solely on America. Is this a sign of Obama’s government wavering on its counterinsurgency campaign in the war-torn Afghanistan?

Here is Obama’s speech (full text), as prepared for delivery. Below is the video via MSNBC.

Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentleman: it is my honor to address you for the first time as the forty-fourth President of the United States. I come before you humbled by the responsibility that the American people have placed upon me; mindful of the enormous challenges of our moment in history; and determined to act boldly and collectively on behalf of justice and prosperity at home and abroad.

I have been in office for just nine months, though some days it seems a lot longer. I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world. These expectations are not about me. Rather, they are rooted – I believe – in a discontent with a status quo that has allowed us to be increasingly defined by our differences, and outpaced by our problems. But they are also rooted in hope – the hope that real change is possible, and the hope that America will be a leader in bringing about such change.