Giving credit where credit is due

After the 2004 election I was quite vocal about wanting a viable second party. I will say the Democrats have come quite a long way since then. If you take the new blood on the scene in Jim Webb and Harold Ford you will find very little of the baby-boomer narcissism and navel gazing that affected most of the 2004 candidates.

There is starting to be a concensus plan on Iraq among Democrats as well, in the form of partition. I think that is the option we will take (along with looking the other way on ethnic cleansing) once all the others are exhausted, which should be in around 10 months or so.

All that being said, none of them are any closer to me ideologically (except for the partition, which I do like) than the Republicans but new blood will probably not be as talented at corruption as the current folks.

Not that I think the dems will take the House or Senate, but I do think they will take some seats.

My contest entry

More blogging while uploading. I entered this contest recently. I submitted the first photo listed, though now I kind of wish I'd used the other one.

Eating the elephant

The more I think about it, I think the GTD "Open Loops" theory of anxiety is true. Which is why one eats the elephant one bite at a time I suppose.

Aspects of the conventional wisdom

• Oil is the lifeblood of the Global Economy - I remember paying 94 cents a gallon in October of 2001, to $3.05 this summer, to $1.98 today (yes I realize that the price of oil does not track gas exactly, but it's close). Given that the economy of the oil consuming world has growing mildly (Europe), moderately (the US), and highly (China and India), it would seem that this is simply not true, or if true, not meaningful.
• The invasion of Iraq will turn the Muslim world against the US. Given that it's been three and a half years, and all of the opposition is still based in Iraq (with some degree of foreign investment in people and capital) this would seem not to be meaningful.
  

This is quite clever

Web 2.0 validator, or as they put it:
Web 2.0 Validator : We're the dot in Web 2.0

Line of the moment

The message you get when one is about to delete something in BlinkSale

This action is wholly irrevocable and utterly non-undoable.

Blogging will be light

For the next ten days or so. I've got a crushing workload until then.

Also, I apologize if I've been rude or distant or anything like that lately. Everything is getting to me more than it usually does.

Quote of the moment

I think my life will run out before my work does.
Townes van Zandt

Overstreet at the Overlook

The fiddle series continues. On this particular occasion I got the lighting on most of the shots wrong, but some of them turned out well nice. Check out Overstreet at the Overlook, featuring the lovely and talented Michelle.



I came across an interesting Sin City effect with levels in, as seen below.

Photo stragglers

This guy was on my screen door on Thursday and Friday


An ordinary stairway. There were some nice lines here. I decided to make it creepy via the use of Photoshop Curves. It's an interesting effect.

Darfur

It escapes me how anyone expects the "Rock for Darfur" campaign to do any good. The conflict in Darfur is an ethnic and territorial war that isn't based on any sort of historical misunderstanding or trivial difference. It's also true that anything the US or any major power would do would wind up looking like Iraq. The duke of Wellington's adage "For a great power there are no small wars" is being proven true everywhere.

So then what? Another adage "If a problem seems insolvable, enlarge it". In this case, don't act as a great power, or more specifically, use small powers, like private military companies, like Blackwater et. al. The money could be raised privately, they're relatively cheap by military standards, and it wouldn't require a massive US commitment.

There are massive legal and oversight problems involved with using PMCs, but using private means for what are essentially humanitarian efforts seems far better in every way than making a national commitment.

Semantics

I've always rejected the notion of Iraq being in a civil war due to the notion that a civil war requires two clearly defined sides and usually territories, be it Davis and Lincoln or Lenin and Kerensky.

While the two defining concepts in Iraq, Sunni and Shia, are clear, the fighting seems to be split up into 14-20 (from what I've read) different parties. Also, the fighting does not seem to be for control over the country, but rather ethnic cleansing of the classic variety, that is removing one group from a particular chunk of land.

What do you call that? It's not quite anarchy, malignant diversity? Failure of integration? What?

Tales of the Black Freighter

It was a meta story in Alan Moore's greatest work, the Watchmen. And it's now online, on it's own!

Quick Wednsday rapid fire

• Free Fusion Razors
• Folk Alley seems cool
• Photoshop Tutorials
• Microsoft launches an html editor called Expressions. I'm quite curious.
• Republican uses animals, mariachi band to critique border security
• Google goes solar
  
• Crunching the Numbers on Hydrogen
  

Happiness and the devil....

Are both in the details. I was tidying up around the office and came across my original Logitech trackball mouse. I'd always meant to mess with it a bit to see if I can get it working, no other mouse has even come close. I did get it working, and I'm happier now that I've been in several days. I'm not even a bit peeved that I'm working at 1:20 in the morning, with several hours left to go. That's odd when you think about it.

The funniest thing I read today - Monday edition

From the Navy Seal recruitment page

The SEAL program consists of more than 12 months — followed by an additional 18 months — of intensive training designed to push you to your physical and mental limits — again and again

More than 12 months, followed by 18 months?

Shadows, mist, and a smoking gun

From the Rusty Nail on Buford Highway


Another View


This just turned out kind of creepy.

The under reported flashpoint of the moment

It's Russia vs Georgia. One, financially strong due to a high oil price, but weakening everywhere else it seems, and the other a scrappy underdog with some smart leadership. Coming Anarchy has a nice synopsis of the current sort-of crisis. Expect this to become big news over the next few weeks.

It's 38 degrees outside

In October no less. How odd.

Here are two random photos

Outside guitar center


From a rest area near Chattanooga.

This took a while....

Air America Radio Files for Chapter 11

At long last...

I finally get the wireless router to work with my laptop. I think it was changing the channel that did the trick. I'm typing this from my living room.

The quote of the moment is "Sometimes you have to murder your sweetheart" from a History Channel engineering program. It refers to stopping work on a favored project when it proves unworkable.

Random photo

From the hotel room in Elizabthtown. I set the auto timer on the Canon 630 and set it on a shelf behind me.

Assorted Photos

Random shots from the Canon 630


These are both from the Jos. A Bank parking deck near Lenox.

For those keeping track

At the moment I'm back in town, leaving tommorow and coming back on Tuesday. Photo below of my dad's driveway, taken on Thursday.

Gone for a while

I'll be out of town for a few days....

Still uploading

Pesky large files. Anyway, here is some lovely reading material for you.

• This is the strangest article you will read this week. By a lot.
• Profanity across languages- the Dutch "May you get the measles" is my favorite
• Deadweight Loss / Excess Burden - if more people understood this, the world would be improved remarkably. Short version, it's a cost to someone with no benefit to anyone.
• Human Powered Vehicles - a bike that goes over 40 miles per hour

Photo composition round up

If it weren't for long uploads, I don't think I would ever post anything. Here are the good sites I found while looking for info on photographic composition

• articles on the Golden Mean
• a nice little manifesto, with math!
• Short descriptions
• Selective Vision
• Another nice article
• Plugs for photoshop on the matters above
• The Golden Sections
  

Quote of the moment

From the comments of this post at Coming Anarchy

"generalizations are a willful display of ignorance"

There's much to be said

for working until exhaustion sets in, and none of it good. Humbug.

I have listened to the first five Freakwater albums while I've been working on this particular project, it's good stuff for the late night/early morning.