One Canuck's Radio Weblog

  Thursday, 17 June 2004

.< 1:21:15 PM >
Is Forgoing Digital for Medium Format for You?

It seems as though everyone in photography is moving to digital. Consumer digital cameras will outsell film cameras this year. Even professionals are moving into digital; photojournalism is practically all digital now. I have followed the development of digital cameras quite closely since first digital SLRs (those big cameras with changeable lenses) came out. As a prosumer and someone who is critical of quality of enlargements I have been saying that I will move to digital when an affordable 8 megapixel SLR comes out. Recently Canon delivered with their EOS-1D Mark II priced at around $3000. Now would be a good time to move to digital as a serious amateur photographer. Instead, I'm moving to medium format. Should you? [Kuro5hin.org]

< 12:41:30 PM >

Wired News: BBC to Open Content Floodgates. The project, announced last year, will make thousands of audio and video clips available to the public for noncommercial viewing, sharing and editing. It will debut with natural-history programming, including clips that focus on plants, animals and birds. [Tomalak's Realm]

< 12:35:52 PM >

Fun Neal Pollack article in The Stranger about President Bush's kooky religious beliefs.

This is also the kind of country where the president meets with the members of a radical, far-right millennialist Christian sect three weeks before he counteracts all known international law and opinion regarding the Israeli-Palestinian situation. That sect, known as the Apostolic Congress, opposes any deal with the Palestinians because it believes that Christ won't return to Earth until all of Israel belongs to the Jews and Solomon's temple is rebuilt.

Link (Thanks, Kirsten!) [Boing Boing]

< 11:59:26 AM >

Lisa Rein has posted some Daily Show clips from June including the stunning segment on Ashcroft's weaselling on torture before Congress. Watching Ashcroft spin and dodge and weave around Contempt of Congress is astonishing -- why isn't this man in jail RIGHT NOW?

Link [Boing Boing]

< 1:00:43 AM >

The prisoner and other "ghost detainees" were hidden largely to prevent the Red Cross from monitoring their treatment. [New York Times: International] 'Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, the Army officer who in February investigated abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, criticized the practice of allowing ghost detainees there and at other detention centers as "deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law."

This prisoner, who has not been named, is believed to be the first to have been kept off the books at the orders of Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Tenet. He was not held at Abu Ghraib, but at another prison, Camp Cropper, on the outskirts of Baghdad International Airport, officials said.'

< 12:49:48 AM >

US commission's findings bluntly contradict White House claims. [Guardian Unlimited] 'A poll by the University of Maryland in April found that 57% of Americans believed that Iraq helped al-Qaida before the war, and 20% believed Iraq was linked to the September 11 attacks.'

Good grief.

< 12:39:02 AM >

Online: The iTunes Music Store in the US has been a huge success. As Apple launches its UK store, Neil McIntosh looks at the prospect of a repeat performance. [Guardian Unlimited]

< 12:31:25 AM >

Harper says Liberals can't win majority

Stephen Harper says Canadians should throw their support behind the Conservatives if they want a majority government. He says there's no way the Liberals can win enough votes to form one. FULL STORY [CBC News]

< 12:27:46 AM >

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland staged its biggest literary carnival on Wednesday, drawing thousands onto Dublin's streets for the centenary of "Bloomsday" -- the day set in fictional stone by James Joyce in his epic novel "Ulysses." [Reuters: World]

< 12:23:40 AM >

Former US diplomats and generals condemn a foreign policy they see as marked by ideology and indifference. [BBC News | World | UK Edition] 'Another former ambassador, Phyllis Oakley, said the need for change was unprecedented.

"Today we see that structure crumbling under an administration blinded by ideology and a callous indifference to the realities of the world around it," she said.

"Never before have so many of us felt the need for a major change in the direction of our foreign policy."

The former officials have launched their call for change in a presidential election year, but the group is made up of both Democrats and members of Mr Bush's Republican Party.

Known critics of the administration were deliberately excluded from it.'

Read this article. The report is extraordinarily (but appropriately) damning.