Sunday Photo(s)

Since I still haven't done all the research I wanted to for a follow-on article to the caboose story, I thought I'd just post a few test shots from the new camera. It's a Canon SX260 HS. Its work has debuted already, and last week's "Sunday Photo(s)" featured some early pictures I took with it. The main reason I bought it was that it's supposed to have good low-light performance, and I'd say that's true. It also has a 20X zoom, which I find incredible for a point-and-shoot camera. I almost didn't buy it because of that huge zoom, figuring that the mechanism would be so complicated and delicate that it would be broken in a few years. On that point, we'll see.

Still, as you can see, I've found uses for the zoom lens. I took these photos of aircraft flying overhead in Federal Way. The airport is a few miles north of here, so I'm not shooting them flying at high altitude. It's a lot more than my last camera could do, though. Both of these are cropped from the original photo image files. Neither is retouched.

This appears to be an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-400:

Image credit: All photos by Cujo359

[All photos that appear on this page are reduced-size from the originals. Click on the pictures to see the full-size images that I'm describing.]

This looks like a Lufthansa Airbus A330-300:

The images aren't retouched, so you can see what is possible straight from the camera. As you can see in the photo of the A330, there's a bit of ISO noise, but considering that it's a photo of a moving object at high zoom on a cloudy day, not too bad. It's good enough for the web, at least.

Speaking of which, this one is also cropped, but otherwise unprocessed:

I used the night scene mode, of course, and with full zoom. The trick to getting this photo, it turned out, was to make the camera use just the center of the picture as basis for setting the light level.

Here's another night scene, a bit more prosaic but still interesting:

This was also taken with the night scene mode, and it turned out well. Both the cup and the woman in the background (who was moving, of course) can be seen without difficulty. It's reduced in size, of course, but otherwise unaltered.

Finally, I took this of Mt. Rainier around dusk the other day:

Once again, that photo was reduced, since I'm limited to a maximum image width of 1600 pixels by Picassa. I also retouched it, using a contrast-enhancing overlay of GIMP. This, however, is an unretouched section of that image:

It's a medium zoom for this camera. Even with my not-so-steady hands, it managed to take a picture clear enough to see the steps on that water tower on one of our notoriously dim winter days. There's some ISO noise here as well. The EXIF data of the image says that it was taken at ISO 200 (I had that setting on automatic), which is a bit disappointing. But, given the circumstances, it's acceptable, particularly for the automatic mode in low light.

The camera has a bad habit or two. The worst is that it takes some effort to turn it on. I don't know what it is about the ON/OFF button yet, but it always seems to take multiple presses. I'm still learning the controls, which are more complicated than the old Kodak's were. I figure once I get the feel for that little knob/button combo control I'll be most of the way there. There's an automatic mode, of course, which takes reasonably good pictures in daylight and bright indoor settings. For other settings, there are modes that let you choose either shutter speed, F-stop, ISO level, or a combination. All of that takes some getting used to, before you'll have an idea what works for you in particular light conditions.

That's about it for now. Hopefully, I'll be displaying more of this camera's work in the future. For anyone wondering, I've been getting roughly 250 photos per battery charge. I'll also recommend that you look at Radio Shack for replacement/supplemental batteries. They sell a knock-off that's about half the price of the Canon battery.

Have a good Sunday.

Fiscal Cliffs And Reality

This week's Moyers & Company features economics bloggers Bruce Bartlett and Yves Smith. I've embedded the video here:

Watch it to find out:

• Why the so-called "fiscal cliff" is a whole lot of nothing masquerading as a crisis.
• Why I will never vote for a Democratic Party candidate who has the values Barack Obama does.
• Why I spend so much time trying to dispel progressive nonsense, even though I'm a progressive, and should thus be spending time criticizing and demonizing conservatives.

That latter point is made by Bruce Bartlett with this quote from the show:

BRUCE BARTLETT: There was a poll just the other day that you probably saw. Something like half of all Republicans believe that the 2012 election was stolen for Obama by a group called ACORN, which was-- which went out of business several years ago. It doesn't even exist. I mean, they just believe these conspiracy theories. And they circulate without barrier, because nobody will say anything to disagree with it. And if you hear the same propaganda over and over and over again, eventually you're going to start to believe it.

Transcript: Fiscal Cliffs and Fiscal Realities

[Go to that quote link to see the high definition version of the show, if you'd prefer. At either location, those who disable Javascript must allow it for the vimeo.com and vimeocdn.com domains at a minimum.]

ACORN folded its tents back in 2010, after Democrats joined Republicans in passing a nonsensical bill to deprive it of funds for crimes it didn't even commit.

Bartlett is correct in saying that conservatism these days is a big echo chamber. So is progressivism, though to a lesser extent, I think. It's always a great applause line to talk about how awful the other guys are. Talking about how foolish or awful your own side can be is going to get you ignored at best, and ostracized at worst, if you make the mistake of doing it somewhere like Daily Kos. Yet, it's at least as important, because considered self-criticism leads to self-correction. Without criticism, correction doesn't happen. No one on the conservative side tells people that ACORN is gone. It's far too convenient a bogey man, even when it's gone. People who insist that you don't say things that will upset the readers are people who want you to persist in error.

Right or wrong, that won't happen here.

As for the "fiscal cliff", yes, it's a sham. I haven't written about it much because, quite frankly, no one is listening. The Democrats are promoting this fantasy as much as the Republicans are, and I'm tired of making the point that there's no difference between them. There's no difference between them. They're lying. Democrats will continue to lie to you until you stop voting for them, and maybe even after, but certainly not until. If you think voting for them makes you the adult in the room, you're part of the problem, and if you ever get over yourself, you'll be able to figure out on your own why it's a sham.

Enjoy the video. Consider it your Saturday Entertainment.

What's Wrong With The Rice Nomination

A longish response to this article by Taylor Marsh concerning the Susan Rice debacle:

The sad truth is that in the U.S. career foreign policy establishment there are no diplomatic candidates that an elite politician as president could appoint that wouldn’t fall in line with more wars over more diplomacy.

John Kerry is a Better Choice for State Than Susan Rice

Well, yes, other than the thousands of former Foreign Service officers and thousands of former military officers whose careers included a lot of work with foreign militaries and the like. Surely, there are at least a few politically-savvy people among them.

Way back in 2008 I could already see the rough outlines of what Obama’s foreign policy was likely to be, thanks to who he listened to on the issues. Continuation of the “War on Terrorism” and rampant interventionism were likely goals, and most folks with a few functioning brain cells to call their own figured that out when they looked. Susan Rice was one of the reasons.

Leaders don’t appoint advisers who are likely to disagree with them. They don’t want to waste time listening to pitches and having discussions about things they’ve already decided. People who are likely to oppose a leader’s decisions are better off being part of the opposition. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in itself. When a smart leader realizes he’s been setting the wrong agenda, he can change, and find different advisers.

What makes that tendency a bad thing these days in America is that DC is full of people who are always willing to praise the leaders of their party no matter what. People dissenting on matters of fact or principle are rarely part of the conversation, and even when they are can be dismissed as either cranks or partisans. After all, how can you not be either a crank or a partisan and not recognize the wonder that is [Bush|Obama]? What amazes me about both George W. Bush and Barack Obama is how often and blatantly they disregarded the values of their base, and yet were praised to the heavens by many of the people who said they believed in those things. In an environment like this, I have to believe that leaders are even less likely to recognize their own failures and make adjustments.

To me, that’s the most basic problem that Susan Rice represents, even more basic than the particular problem of the nonsensical foreign policy priorities she represents. I don’t like her conflicts of interest, but just about anyone who is chosen from the inner circle of DC is likely to have at least a couple. It would be just lovely if people were chosen for cabinet positions based on their knowledge of the subject matter and willingness to speak out when they think the President is wrong, but that ain’t happening.

But, like one of those excuses for why the economy isn’t jumping up and succeeding, it’s not because there aren’t qualified people out there. It’s because DC doesn’t want to pay for them. In this case, that price isn't in wages, but in the bad publicity and "confusion" open disagreement among government leaders supposedly causes the public.

That's the sad truth of Susan Rice. Personally, I don't think John Kerry would be a better Secretary of State. For one thing, I don't think he has the ability to charm people that Hillary Clinton clearly had. But, more importantly, there's little reason to believe that he'd either speak out or resign on principle if President Obama tried to involve us in another costly and ultimately fruitless foreign adventure. He wouldn't even stand on principle when he was thinking about being our country's leader. How likely is he to fall on his sword now?

Sunday Photo(s)

Continuing with my "walking around and taking pictures" theme, I took some of Mt. Rainier yesterday. I'm learning to use a new camera, but already I'm able to do lots of things I hadn't before. Here's a photo of the mountain that I took with the old camera. See how little contrast there is between the mountain, some its features, and the sky?

Image credit: Photos taken and processed by Cujo359

Here are a couple shots of the mountain that I took from the same location as these.

Senate Democrats Might Do Something About The Filibuster, Kinda...

Image credit: public domain/Wikimedia

Frustrated by years of "obstructionism", in which the Republicans have used the power of filibuster to block measures that the Democratic Senate caucus probably didn't want to pass anyway, the Democrats have finally focused their righteous anger and are, maybe, willing to so something thoroughly underwhelming about it. Yesterday, Talking Points Memo's Sahil Kapur writes:

Currently the minority party can mount “silent” filibusters, so long as the majority can’t muster 60 supportive votes. That means they can block a bill from moving to debate or to a final vote without necessarily occupying the floor and speaking, just like the iconic scene in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. If even a single member of the minority objects quietly to a simple-majority vote on a piece of legislation or a nominee, the majority must muster 60 votes to end debate.

The Democrats want to alter these incentives by implementing a “talking” filibuster that shifts some of the burden to the filibustering minority. The reforms under consideration would take away obstructing senators’ shortcuts in scuttling a bill, forcing them to occupy the floor and speak ceaselessly until one party or the other loses its will and gives up.

How Democrats’ Main Filibuster Reform Would Work

Don't get me wrong - this is not nothing. It does at least make the minority party earn its filibuster, making it somewhat more costly for them to block legislation, including making some poor schlub stand up and waste the Senate's time in a visible and very public manner. Sad to say, it does nothing to make it more costly for the majority party to counter.

To break a filibuster, the majority party needs to have at least 60 Senators ready to vote for it at the next opportunity. The minority party only needs to have the one speaking, and a couple of relief Senators at any time. As things stand now, that still gives the Republicans an advantage.

And that, I think, is the point. They still don't want to honk off their benefactors by doing what their supporters want.

As long as that's true, real change is worth about as much as a filibustering Senator's words.

What Pearl Harbor Should Teach Us

Caption: The mast of a United States Navy battleship near the end of the day on December 7, 1941. All the observation masts, and the radar, couldn't help America see the Japanese coming that day. That was because we didn't want to look.

Image credit: Screenshot of PBS' NOVA episode "Killer Subs In Pearl Harbor" by Cujo359 (see NOTE 1)

Once again, it's Pearl Harbor Day. Once again, I'm sure there will be people reminding us about how Pearl Harbor taught us that we should all be vigilant, and never forget, blah, blah. I've written before that there are other, perhaps more profound, lessons we can learn from our experience, and from those of the other major participants. I've also written that often times we make our judgments about history based on an incomplete or erroneous understanding of events.

Caption: Historians looked at grainy photos like this of the Pearl Harbor attack to see if a Japanese minisub managed to fire its torpedoes. Too bad we don't pay this kind of attention to the economic history of that time.

Image credit: Screenshot of PBS' NOVA episode "Killer Subs In Pearl Harbor" by Cujo359

I'm reminded of a NOVA program I saw a couple of years ago on a search some historians and World War II veterans undertook to find a missing Japanase miniature submarine that was involved in the Pearl Harbor operation. They used submersibles, computer simulations, and even a few explosions to try to figure out what might have happened to it.

Caption: Forensic engineers and explosives experts destroy a metal tube to determine how the Japanese minisub was destroyed. Nowadays, it's just not a proper television show unless you blow something up.

Image credit: Screenshot of PBS' NOVA episode "Killer Subs In Pearl Harbor" by Cujo359

You might wonder why they bothered. I think there are several reasons, but maybe the most important thing one has to do to learn the lessons of history is to understand what really went on. What that program ought to tell you is that the Japanese had some very courageous people - people who ended up serving in a cause that was based on some very bad assumptions, and that the many deaths that resulted were especially tragic in that light. There are also lessons to learn about military tactics - about how an attack that is pressed in different ways can often succeed where one based on a single approach might not. Had the Japanese only used their submarines that day, our war in the Pacific may have been much shorter, but possibly kinder to the Japanese.

Whatever lessons you try to draw, you're more likely to draw correct ones if you understand that time and the things that actually happened.

Unfortunately, the economic history of that era, which is in some ways as interesting as the reasons we became involved in World War II, is not studied with enough intensity by nearly enough people. If it weren't for Pearl Harbor, it's possible we'd still be in the Great Depression, given the attitudes among our elites both then and now.

A Holiday Tradition

It's that time of year, when traditionally all those established progressive blogs beg for money so they can keep going for another year. This year is no different, but I thought I'd highlight one that both needs and deserves progressives' help, Corrente. As DC Blogger noted today:

If we are to take our country back we need a place to discuss what is being done and what needs to be done. lambert, at enormous personal cost, both in terms of money and opportunity cost, has built a public square where that discussion can take place. He has created a public square where everyone is a front pager; a place where each of us can post about those things we know and care about, thus creating a treasure trove of expert commentary. But there is a limit to what sweat equity can do for our movement. lambert needs your help, please donate.

Help lambert help the rest of us save America

In contrast to quite a few blogs I could link, Corrente has never had a policy of not telling people the stuff they shouldn't hear about. They have always been honest. In America, at least, the price of honesty is that you're on your own. You don't get the big corporate contracts or the big advertising dollars, and relatively few people visit you because they might read something upsetting or unpleasant.

Instead, to keep the lights on, you're forced to write things like this:

Corrente is not part of any political tribe or faction. That makes us unusually dependent on contributions from individual readers. Won’t you help?

Help the hamsters with their winter heating bill ...

… as they power the wheels that turn the servers at The Mighty Corrente Building. Please, won’t you help them keep their cages shiny?

To which all I can say is, Dude, fusion power! It's what powers the Cujo Labs (tm). Much less trouble than hamsters, who are always demanding lettuce or fresh kibble or clean cages. We stopped using them ages ago. All you need is lots of sea water and a big magnetic field. Once Reactor Seven is online, we'll have all the backup power we need, and maybe I can turn off Reactor Five and get the furniture unstuck from the ceiling.

So, if you can help out, please consider going over there and contributing. If you can't help out, go over anyway, and say hi.

UPDATE/Afterword: I figured that I could put the extra notice (thanks, Tengrain!) this blog was receiving today to good use.

In Praise Of Coffee

Caption: Go here for an explanation of this cup's artwork.

Image credit: Cujo359

Apparently, it's safe to drink coffee again:

"What I tell patients is, if you like coffee, go ahead and drink as much as you want and can," says Dr. Peter Martin, director of the Institute for Coffee Studies at Vanderbilt University. He's even developed a metric for monitoring your dosage: If you are having trouble sleeping, cut back on your last cup of the day. From there, he says, "If you drink that much, it's not going to do you any harm, and it might actually help you. A lot."

Officially, the American Medical Association recommends conservatively that "moderate tea or coffee drinking likely has no negative effect on health, as long as you live an otherwise healthy lifestyle." That is a lackluster endorsement in light of so much recent glowing research.

The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like

Well, yes, next to that glowing review from the Institute for Coffee, that AMA endorsement seems downright noncommittal. Still, if you don't like what nutritionists are saying about something now, just wait a few years. It used to be that we had to be concerned about all sorts of things when we were ingesting our java. Now, apparently, folks think it does more good than harm. Must be all those extra ingredients besides caffeine:

[T]hat caffeine is [not the] only mechanism behind coffee's health effects is supported by a small study of 554 Japanese adults from October that looked at coffee and green tea drinking habits in relation to the bundle of risk factors for coronary artery disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes known together as metabolic syndrome. Only coffee -- not tea -- was associated with reduced risk, mostly because of dramatic reductions observed in serum triglyceride levels.

The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like

I usually stop at three, or is it six? If it's those little "cups" they mark on the sides of the coffee pots, I guess we mean six. Who knows? I'm just glad I don't have to worry about that anymore. Not that I did...

I'll caution that many of the studies quoted are small, or have a very select group of people in the sample. Correlation doesn't prove cause, particularly when the correlation is seen only in a small group of college students foolish enough to participate in a medical experiment.

As always, a healthy skepticism is in order.

Quote Of The Day

Glenn Greenwald explains why we have rights:

[E]ven in most of the worst tyrannies, those who are content with the status quo and who refrain from meaningfully challenging prevailing power systems are free of punishment. Rights exist to protect dissidents and those who challenge orthodoxies, not those who acquiesce to those orthodoxies or support state power; the latter group rarely needs any such protections. The effect, and intent, of this climate of fear is to force as many citizens as possible into the latter group.

The true measure of how free a society is how its dissidents are treated, not those who refrain from meaningful anti-government activism and dissent. To apply that metric to the US, just look at what the American citizens quoted in this Times article this morning are saying and doing.

Laptop seizures by US government highlight 9/11-era climate of fear

I can't think of anything to add, other than that if I had ten dollars for every American who doesn't understand this, I could buy my own island, and not have to worry if there weren't enough who give a damn anymore.

I think the rest of the article is worth reading, by the way, because it shows how our government tries to intimidate dissenters into being quiet nowadays. It's an object lesson in why the Bill of Rights exists, and why when "the people" cannot "be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures", there really is no such thing as freedom any longer.

And I will note that the things Greenwald describes in that article have almost exclusively happened during the Obama Administration. This is yet another reason when people tell me what responsible adults they were for voting for Barack Obama this year, that I am not always successful in suppressing the urge to tell them to go screw themselves and the brain-dead horse they rode in on.

At The Mall

While I was at our city's local shopping mall last night, I was confronted with this scene:

Image credit: Photo taken and processed by Cujo359

Yes, it's a farmers' market inside a shopping mall. Yes, that's a Santa Claus in there. The Farmers' Market is open during winter for the first time this year. It's hard to imagine what local products would be available there, but I'm told they grow winter vegetables here. Not too surprising given that, but for someone who is used to thinking of farmers' markets as being something that go on when the local farmers can sell their crops, it's a bit strange.

It gets stranger, though. The shopping mall is named The Commons. Yes, it's privately owned, which would seem to me to be the antithesis of something called "The Commons". There was a time when this, too, might have seemed remarkable. Now, I seem to be the only resident in a city of 85,000 who finds this at all odd.

In addition, this used to be the Borders, one of two chain bookstores in town. In Federal Way, there are few retail businesses that aren't chains, which means, of course, that this was one of two bookstores in Federal Way, assuming you don't count the Christian bookstore, or the family Christian bookstore, which I don't. Now, there is just one. The other bookstore is a fairly disappointing one, particularly if you are looking for anything to do with science, computers, or politics. Well, progressive politics, at least, is underrepresented. They stock what looks to be just about every book by Glenn Beck ever written. Maybe if we had more bookstores, more people would know what a commons is, because there'd be something to read that wasn't written by religious fanatics or lunatics.

There's something quintessentially early Twenty-First Century American about a farmers' market operating in a shopping mall named The Commons in the middle of winter in place of one of the few bookstores that once existed here. It's almost as though cognitive dissonance is just another price you pay to live here.