101-365

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Hey kara, is there a name for this one, the last full moon of the summer?

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Why are the Republicans having a convention? Is there any doubt that Bush and Cheney will be their candidates? Oh, I guess there was a question of the vice president spot, but our very own John McCain put that hope to bed.

How come John didn't overtly ask the president to renounce the Swiftboaters for Bush TV ads in his anti-Moore speech at the convention?
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It's that time again. I've collected enough links in my OSX dock that the icons have become microscopic. Please visit these - especially those that link back to me.

• Disarranging Mine - Marie of central Illinois isn't too fond of Kerry, but likes Bush less.
• The Orwellian Times - A blog that combines humor and Democratic politics. This is an especially good story.
• Idealog - A far ranging blog pointed out to me by the blogless Dilberta (not her real name), that contains occasionally interesting entries from someone named Jasmine.
• Time out of Mind - Arch-conservative and shrill hawkish Republican who frequently comments here is also a competant photographer of the American west. Look here and here to see some photos he's taken of southern California.
• Ebay Nikon Lens listing -see what Nikon lesnses and accessories are currently available on eBay/
• Randomize - Richard Tallent writes this technology news blog and points to me!
• Fox News - Bill O'Reilly and Michael Moore discuss President Bush's veracity
• Picture Code - produces noise reduction for Macintosh called Noise Ninja.
• The Travelling Camera Odyssey - Bill Moss has sent two single use cameras around the word to be exposed by two dozen photographers, includiing me.
• Jeweled Platypus - a list of links, many of which don't work, brings popup windows to your computer. Included because it links to me.
• Bob Atkins Photography - An informative site that focusses on Canon digital SLR cameras and how to use them. Included because of this interesting article on DOF in digital cameras.
• DP Review Nikon D100 (etc.) forum - How to replace the focussing screen in your D100. Warning: Will void warranty.
• That Happy Feeling - A pleasant blog from Morrie, an Austrailian veteran and help desk person. Links prominantly to me.
• Ambivalent Imbroglio - A law student writes about politics (left) and law school. Defines the term gunner which apparently means students who ask time consuming and off topic questions in class in order to impress the instructor. NOTE: actually we hate this - it wastes everybody's time, especially the teacher's who doesn't get paid by the hour.
• MP3Blogs Aggregator - Hey! Look over there! It's Elvis!
• Kali Is My Copilot - An eclectic blog from a Floridian (?) named Jen.
• Crazy Purple Squeaky Octopus - Benway's tripod.com blog pops up many annoying and neurotic extra windows. He's the ex-boyfriend of a popular blogger around here and links to neither her nor me, so if you want, you can skip this one.
• Broadband Speed Test - Find out how fast your broadband connection really is.
• Manila Interactive Websites - historic reference to when I was a Manilla guru at MCCD. Now gives a lame 'can't find server' error.
• G r a p e z - blog that is nominally about poetry. Good meme for the RNC.
• Justice is Duckblind - Flash movie produced by Julie Bergman Sender and Roy Sekoff about the seperation of power that is so essential to the American government
• Center for American Progress - A liberal news and analysis website from the American Progress Action Fund. It's nice to see a well produced website extolling Kerry's virtues.
• The Financial Forecast Center - With this site, you too can see the future and ride it to riches beyond your wildest dreams.
• Wyatt's Haven of Bliss - The blog of a twenty five-ish, christian, resident of Lansing Michigan who works for an insurance company.

As always, I may have made errors or totally misinterpreted your website in these one-liners. If you feel any error reflects poorly on you, please complain loudly in the comments section, below:
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This article has been substantially corrected. I named the wrong guy as the spy. The fact of a high level person in the office of the Undersecretary of Defence for Policy is under investigation for spying for Israel, and other facts presented in this article remain true.

Why would our "most cherished friend and ally" in the Middle East want to spy on our government? Although spokes-persons for the Secretary of Defence state that "He [name deleted] had a certain expertise and had access to things, but he wasn't a policymaker", the org-chart [removed] and mission statement of his office suggest differently.

Since the revelation nearly twenty years ago, by Israeli scientist Mordechai Vanunu, that our 'cheished ally' had built a secret thermo-nuclear arsenal of untold hundreds of weapons, it seems that Israel's goals are not in keeping with democratic ideals and the desire for peace among nations. In the words of the late Stanley Kubrick, "but the... whole point of the doomsday machine... is lost... if you keep it a secret!" Thus, the goal of Israel's neo-conservatives is world domination, not survival as a bastion of democracy in a region filled with autocratic monarchies, dictatorships and fundamentalist theocracies, as many (if not most) Israeli citizens believe.

Ironically, one of the scenes in the Columbine movie was of a Lockheed executive, claiming that the weapons produced by his company were used only as a deterent to attack by our enemies. 'We don't shoot first', he claimed in my paraphrase. That posture no longer true with the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive attack. We must have been spying as well.

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From the DoD website, the Mission Statement of the Undersecretary of Defence for Policy:

"Under direction of the Secretary of Defense, the USD(P) is the principal staff assistant and advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense for all matters concerning the formation of national security and defense policy and the integration and oversight of DoD policy and plans to achieve national security objective"

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Although the Belief-o-Matic says I should be some sort of Buddhist, I've decided to become a Nihilist.

The realization struck me as I pulled into work, taking the very last parking space in the lot that wouldn't result in my getting serious unintentional exercise. I was listening to the Diane Reem show - some guy had written a book on Osama bin Laden, and the news was spending time demonstrating how to pronounce the name, Abu Ghraib.

Meanwhile, Donald Rumsfeld was at the Biltmore, meeting with our very own governor, Johnette Napolitano. I dunno what they talked about, maybe comparing prison scandals. I shouldn't talk like that, she's my boss, so I might get fired, or tortured, or maybe forced into a humilliating sexual position. ...

Harold Brown, president Carter's secretary of defence, and a member of the Schlessinger committee appointed by secretary Rumsfeld, was saying that Rumsfeld was indeed to blame for the abuse at the infamous Iraqi prison. Apparently Rumsfeld's "boss" gave him permission to torture a couple Al Quaidans being held in Guantanimo. Goering, I mean Rumsfeld, then told the information extraction specialists that it was cool, and transferred them to Abu Ghraib (pronounced ebuhgjhrrehb) without instructions to quit making with the 'ways to make them talk'.

But Brown emphasized that it was only a dotted line responsibility, and the true blame went to that chick with the attitude, cigarette and thumbs up sign. Two thumbs - way up, as they say. Now I'm in a movie mood, so I sat down with My Attorney to watch Bowling for Columbine. We only got half way through before the booze and Valium kicked in, but the lesson I got from it was that the only thing we really had to fear was six foot tall, black males.

Living in South Phoenix as I do, I could either distrust half my neighbors or Colin Powell. Personally, I'm gonna fear that Cobb guy.
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Last night's, just past half, moon:

Click image for larger version

Notice the difference in detail between the 400mm lens's image and this one, taken with the 2670mm f/15 Maksutov.
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I used to shoot film, but it was so distorted.

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The view from my new office window:

I can't decide if I want to cover it up with a poster (I'm thinking Hopper's Girl in a White Dress) or let some natural light in. I'm leaning toward the poster.
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Tonight's (almost) half moon:

Instead of using a telescope, I hooked an ancient, bargain bin Vivitar 400mm lens up to the D100, and shot away. This one looked best, at ISO 800, f/8 and a five millisecond exposure. This picture has been downsized one third and slightly sharpened (unsharp mask: 200:0.2:0.) The white balance was set for daylight to show the atmospheric reddening as Luna was very low in the sky when I shot it about an hour ago (at 10:00 MST.)
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And this one's just pretty:

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More in the theme of Neruda's line, Breaking abandoned things

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Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday (according to NPR's news) that he was still weighing the recommendations of the Nine Eleven Commission before deciding if they would be implemented. He said that he would not implement any recommendations that would prevent intelligence from reaching soldiers in the field. This last statement implying that the intent of the commission was to weaken US intelligence.

Who does Secretary Rumsfeld think he is, Alexander Haig?

President Bush has let Rumsfeld. Wolfowitz and Cheney divert the war against our real enemies and thus weakening our defense against real terrorism. The president needs to remind them that he, Mr. Bush, is president. It is the President and our Congress who will decide how to implement the ideas presented by the Nine Eleven report. Not his secretary.
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Peaceful

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Two microbiologists were walking along the beach at sunset, when they happend upon a huge blob of some sort of sea slime.

"Eucaryote?" one asks the other.

After sizing up the mass of slime, the second microbiologist replies "No, you carry it."
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Richie Havens is still at it!

[Thanks Joe Jenett]
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Oh my God! Julia Child has died. Julia, you were great. Everything I have learned about cooking and eating I learned from you or those you taught.

You will be missed.

[link from Tim Jarrett]
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Sorry to do this to all you art and science lovers, but since Dave Winer spread my letter from Democratic contender, John Kerry, around and Don Larson has responded with the Republican party line, I feel I must answer it in a louder voice than the comment section allows. I apologize in advance for the profanity.

Don, you got me all wrong bud. I remember that day three years ago like it was yesterday. We gotta kill those fuckers. You've got the right idea, but the wrong crusader. I was all for Bush when he boldly charged into Afghanastan to kill that bastard and his horde. But then, I started wondering - why the fuck wasn't he sending in the Marines?!! And all of a sudden - whoops - bin Laid-fuck got away. And we weren't chasing him. He's sitting in some fucking Pakistani dialysis clinic, making his tapes and pulling Ridge's strings for shits and grins. (Pakistan: you know, the country that's been selling Iran nuclear technology. Now where do you suppose our good ally - anti-Soviet Pakistan - got that nuclear technology?)

And what does our president do - he claims Al Queda's not important anymore. He's got Karzai installed, so Afghanistan's now a business op for the boys in the biz.

I'm sure there's a bit of vendetta involved in Iraq, but face it - those "asshole Islamic radicals" there were no more a threat to America now than they were 13 years ago, when we told them we'd back them if they rebeled against Saddam Hussein - oh, wait, we just meant we'd back them philospohically.

So now we've installed Allawi in Iraq. Looks like more biz opportunities to me. Meanwhile. we're wasting time chasing down his political opponents, and still not fighting the organization that has been attacking us. It is for not defeating our enemies that I oppose president Bush's continued leadership of our country. He's playing petro-politics while our enemy plots their next attack.

Our government hasn't a clue as to how to defeat them. Fuck.

PS, Don, you seem like an articulate (if misguided) guy. What say, next time I'm in town, we get together, under the I-5 bridge just south of Pendelton, pass the crack pipe (thus supporting the Afghani economy) and mourn the seven guys I knew personally from Oceanside who won't be coming home?

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Airy disk:

I wanted to show you all the wave nature of light first hand. The bottom part of the picture above is a half millimeter hole in a piece of copper. I beamed a 670nm laser through the hole and photographed it with my 180mm lens at a distance of 8 meters away. The center bright spot is the pinhole, the concentric circle around it is diffracted light - only waves can do that. The star patterned rays around it are reflections off the aperture blades of the lens.

Ok that satisfied my curiosity about that.
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Upon getting home from work, I checked the mailbox, and it contained this Extremely Urgent Letter (like a potty emergency?)

from

Wow! John Kerry writing to me, personally! I mean he must've addressed the letter himself, look at the smudged ink. Machines don't do that, ya know. So excitedly (I mean, he probably reads this blog and knows he's not my favorite Democrat) I opened the letter. Well, it turns out he wants some of my money. Sorry John, I've got a three figure account right now, and it has to last until next Friday. Maybe I'll catch you next time.

Well, hold on a second. I agree with you that we need to change presidents this year, but are you telling us you'll do better than Mr. Bush? How? You'll make more and better jobs? How? You'll even out the taxation? How? My taxes actually went up last year in proportion to my pay (yeah Republicans, it did.)

And yesterday, on the radio, I heard you (or someone who claimed to be you) say that within six months of being elected, that you would begin to bring our soldiers home from Iraq. So let me get this straight. About fifty Americans are being killed every month in Iraq, and you'd kill 300 more before starting to decrease those numbers?

Then what? You've got be a whole lot more specific if you want REAL undecided voters to swing your way. It's time to quit with the "I'm a war hero" and "I'm not Bush" kind of campaining and get real with us.

Whatcha gonna do?
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If you enjoy photography and humor, curmudgeon-in-training Mike Johnson puts them together in his monthly column, The Sunday Morning Photographer. Enjoy.

PS, you might have to fix a few of the urls by hand. Shareware web pages - sheesh!
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I find Nicholas Kristof's prediction of a atomic bomb in New York to be especially disquieting.

Not unrelatedly, here are the only photographs I ever made of the World Trade Center:

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Superstition

(a photograph)

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With the coming Republican convention in Manhattan, the questions are not whether vice president Cheney will spin it, or if the current president will get a bounce, but rather: will bloggers blog about blogging at the convention?
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This Jib-Jab mini-movie is truly hillarious. The site throws up a bunch of pop-ups and on screen ads, but it's worth it, and it doesn't matter if you support Kerry or our current president. Here's a direct link that may save you some of the pop-ups:

This Land

[Thanks to Dave-the-Slave for the link.]

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Blue moon:

The terminator has had about an hour to creep over the eastern limb of the moon, revealing the features along the edge in detail. Check out the illuminated peaks of the huge crater Neper, while the basin remains in shadow. And look at how well defined the cliffs along the wall of the circular Mare Smythii are. (Is that sea named after the chicken hearted stowaway in the 60's TV show Lost in Space?) Some other features visible under this glancing light are the Sea of Fertility and some large craters.

For more about the Blue Moon go see the Space Tramp's weblog.
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Car under the blue moon:

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After shooting the blue moon, I took some snaps from my (now totally familiar to y'all) front porch. I accidentally turned the flash on and look:

I have no idea what those dots are - it wasn't raining, nor was there any visible dust in the air. And I don't believe in orbs, or any other supernatural explanation. I'd just like to know what these dots are.
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Richard Tallent points to the Belief-o-Matic, 20 questions that will determine the correct religous slot for one to fit into. Ok, I took the test and here are my results:

1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Mahayana Buddhism (93%)
3. Theravada Buddhism (90%)

Damn! I knew that 28 inch pony tail would peg me, but listen, I've been in a Unitarian church once in my life. There was a large picture of an angel who had his crotch bitten out by some sort of raptor. I never went back.
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