2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony

That wasn't art, it was Teletubbies on acid. It was the dumbest thing I have ever seen. -Jeff Ward, on the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony

While going through some old notes, I found this quote. Ward sure has a way with words sometimes.

The Iron Law of Bureaucracy

This actually came up in casual conversation today. In case you missed it, there exists the Iron Law of Bureaucracy.

Farewell, Indifferent Masses

I got too much to do to be hanging out on the computer alla time. Going to bed after midnight on the daily has got to stop! You people will have to either kill yourselves or go to Instapundit if you need to read something every day. For the forseeable future, unless I do or think of something clever, or unless I just hafta get something off my chest, the posteveryday pattern here is officially broken. But you know I still love you people!

You people!? What you mean, you people?!

I mean you, people. Thanks for reading!

At Least The Basket-Weaving Was Pretty

Here I sit, reading the headlines, and I realize that on a personal level, things are going pretty well . . . while on an international level, the economy and culture of the entire world is going to hell in a handbasket. It's a bit surreal, actually but there you have it.

The only thing that would really be a bit unusual these days is a shooting war in the USA. Aside from that, go back in time twenty years and ask someone to invent a ridiculous headline and you can find it reported in the last week.

You Got Bad Vibes, Is Why

"They" say that we all vibrate. Everything vibrates, just a little bit, not so you would notice, but everything moves. Also that most of matter is empty space. Stuff looks solid but the atoms of which everything is composed are mostly void, with a few small charged particles whirling about. They're small and close together, but still.

So?

So I gotta theory.

The reason you can't walk through walls is that you can't vibrate the right way. The reason you can't see through them is that they vibrate the wrong way. You can pick up a radio station by making a crystal in your radio vibrate the right way. That is easy. If you could change your own body's resonance, could you walk right through a wall? If you could change the harmonics of the wall, could you see through it?

Jesus knows how to do everything, right? Especially after he was glorified, he can do whatever. So why is it a big deal that he knows how to change his resonance to match the house and walks in on a closed-door church meeting?

Troy Hurtubise invented the Angel Light but he doesn't know how it works. I'm thinking maybe it changes the resonance of the walls you shine it on, just enough to allow light to pass through. And if you do the same thing to a living creature, or anything electronic, it dies. Then he had an engineer help him change it into the God light, and it's curing cancer.

Compare the amazing unknown with what happens when folks know what they are doing, and it's like "real" scientists are taking baby steps. Using sound and light to image disease progress is hardly reversing brain damage and curing cancer, but they know what they are doing.

If you could change your resonant frequency to make you lighter than air, or so that air moved over you, could you fly? If you tuned in a lightning bolt, could you shock a bad guy? Would that make you a wizard - or a scientist?

Pray for Mike

Mike Vanderboegh, recovering from a sickness that put one of his feet in the grave, dragging an IV bottle around, is STILL doing more actual reporting and disseminating of important news than about anyone with an Offishul Press Credential.

He's still sick. Christians, please pray for him. He's also still broke so if you have a buck to spare, hit up his tip jar while you're there.

Eff Dem Guys!

Seventy Two Dollars and Forty One Cents. That's what I just wrote out on a check to AT&T. That would be our now-soon-to-be-FORMER phone and internet service provider.

I switched to AT&T's DSL internet service many moons ago when it was the same $10 as Everyone's Internet (EV1.net). They have been ratcheting up their cost of service, and the final straw has been placed on this camel's back. Last month for their slow-ass basic DSL service, we paid $19.95. This month, with no warning or notice, it's an even $25.00. This upcoming week, imma be shoppin. We had been considering dropping our landline altogether. This might be the jumping-off point.

Our phone bill for the SAME service (DSL and a landline with an unlisted number with NO long distance) was $42. Then it went up and up and up and now $72 frikken dollars already. F those cats, AT&T just lost a(nother) customer due to bill creep.

Gone.

Barbaric Treatment of Prisoners . . . Okay or Not?

I'm not sure how to feel about this one. Connecticut has a prohibition against prisoners committing suicide. They also mandate that jailers must care for the health of their prisoners. On the other hand, who is anyone to force feed another adult, if he be on a hunger strike in protest of his ill treatment? Well, their supreme Court just said the jailers are those anyones. It is (for now) okay for prisoners in CT to be restrained and force-fed against their will. This is barbaric, I freely grant. But in the case of a prisoner whose well-being the State must maintain,

is it acceptable?

That's Too Much!

Think of a 75 year-old woman on The Price Is Right telling Bob Barker "THAT'S TOO MUCH!"

That's what I think when I hear the US Postal Service is going to $0.50 stamps for first-class mail service.

This is the final straw. Half a buck pushes me over the line. This is going to kill the USPS even deader than it is already. If there was an incentive required to stop sending checks through the mails for bill payment, it's this.

So long, post office. It's been real.

Why Doesn't WalMart Do Housing?

Presented for your consideration:

Why doesn't a store with 500 employees have a 200-unit apartment building on top of it? Some employees would never leave, and happily never spend their money anywhere but their own store! Why would they NOT choose to do this? Ditto for Home Depot, or any other mega-lo-mart chain store.

You are Supporting a Cult

IRS publication 502 (medical and dental expenses) says "You can include in medical expenses fees you pay to Christian Science practitioners for medical care"

That is to say, when they tell you they have done something to bring you closer to "clear" you can claim that as a tax deduction . . . regardless of if anything was actually done. This is in addition to any "charitable contribution" you might deduct as well.

Oh well, when's the next foosball game on the teevee?

Bell Stole The Telephone

Radio frequency energy is magic. Black magic. It is a little-known fact* that Alexander Bell STOLE the invention of the telephone. The first guy didn't protest, however, because he had been BURNED AS A WITCH!!!

I had a piece of test equipment fail on me today. It was reading anywhere from -30dB to -70dB down from the levels it should have. I figured out that the cable between one part and another was broken. There was no physical contact at all, and the signal was still passing - though it was greatly attenuated at lower frequencies. There was NO physical connection and the signal was still going through at a useful level! Witchcraft I tell you. Repairing the cable made it work all better again.

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*little-known because I just made it up.

208V 3phase, 230V Single Phase, With 120V?

You can get 120V AC to give you 240V, or 208V, depending on how it is generated, transformed, and delivered. Sometimes, losing a wire in the circuit does not affect the voltage at your appliance. This is a black art to the uninitiated.

Set aside a couple of hours for reading and pondering, and go educate yourself. Read this for a discussion more directed at the layperson, and then read this slightly more technical discussion which is heavier on theory and several pages long.

Camera Porn: Kodak "Easyshare" Z712IS Image Stabilized Digital Camera w/ K8500 Charger, KLIC-8000 Battery

This was my "shop" camera for documenting my projects. The manual controls and electronic viewfinder were highlights for me.

Please click on any image to see it at 4x higher resolution.

The long-lasting battery and charger are a worthy addition.



There is a little light wear from normal use, but you have to look for it pretty hard to see anything.







There are four defects worth mentioning, none of which ever bothered me or interfered with using the camera.

The date memory battery is dead - when you change batteries you have to reset the date, or ignore the message and just start shooting and it will remember the wrong date for when the picture was taken. No big deal, and apparently common with this model.

The lens retracts all the way into a plastic barrel, which protects the sides of the lens when the camera is off. If you look carefully you will see that this protective shield is slightly out-of-round.



And the display has a tiny scratch on the back. It took clever lighting to get the scratch to show up for the photo. As you can see, it really does not interfere with the image onscreen. Also, the display is offset upward a few pixels onscreen. The image is cut off by a few pixels at the top and there is a very narrow black band at the bottom. The stuff shown at the top is still legible, and the more-important stuff (including full-manual controls settings) shown on the bottom shows up perfectly. This is only a problem with the rear panel LCD, the viewfinder display shows up normally.



The displays are bright and clear, and the controls are easy to use. The Automatic and Program modes all work fine - but if you want to, you can use Aperture, Shutter, or even full Manual control! It has a pretty fast f/2.8 lens AND image stabilization, which helps you make better pictures in lower light.

When you don't want to use the LCD display, when you want to save power, or when you want to see what it is showing on top of the display, push the button to use the electronic viewfinder.

Look back up at the LCD screen at the top/right there is a "remaining capacity" indication - The memory card coming with the camera to you is not the biggest - 26 shots at maximum resolution, many more at lower resolution settings. There is also a small onboard memory in case you accidentally leave the card in your reader. It takes SD memory cards, which are available in high capacities for cheap, so no worries there.

The battery and charger didn't come with the camera. At Amazon they are a $69 separate purchase. It is amazing how much longer this battery lasts than AA batteries. Yes it can take AAs but they go pretty quick. This battery will let you fill the memory card many times over, then you recharge it instead of throwing it away. Kodak should be ashamed they did not include this charger and battery with the camera, but I am including it for you.

The User Guide and Easyshare software are available online -free- from Kodak.

The data plate is on the bottom

Lens Porn: Canon 70-210mm Telephoto Zoom/Macro SLR Camera Lens FD Mount

Click any picture to see it 4x larger

This is a clean, dust-free sample with very minor wear from light use. It was used with a prophylactic filter, which was donated to my dad's photography kit. This would be a nice LONG telephoto/macro lens for somebody with a 4/3 or micro 4/3 camera, so long as they don't mind full-manual-everything lens control (some of us would call that "a feature")

The full text on the front ring says "CANON ZOOM LENS FD 70-210mm 1:4 CANON LENS MADE IN JAPAN"



Go ahead, spin it around, it looks good from any angle. The "skinny end" has more opportunity for wear, and there is almost none. The "fat end" by the front element has even less. The control surfaces are in great condition.



Blah blah blah show us the GLASS, man!





As is only right for a manual lens, this has a full set of scales and labels, in color, right where they should be.



The iris has no oil and no wear marks



A cut-out lens cap was used to stop-down the aperture for these photos . . .



. . . and to open the aperture for these. Looking through the lens from the camera end



and from the front



It is a used lens, so there are a few light scratched spots on the paint. Here is the absolute worst cosmetic blemish that I didn't even see until I started looking this lens over closely before shooting photos for this writeup:



It takes careful lighting to make it look that bad. The 2nd worst spot:



The 3rd worst . . . it's all pretty well smooth sailing from here on . . .



The original Canon rear lens cap was included. Note the lack of wear on the metal mounting surface.



The zoom ring stays put, even when this lens is stood on its end at 210mm and its mount at 70mm . . . No zoom creep. In the MACRO mode, it is physically impossible for the zoom to creep. There is a "right" amount of resistance to zoom and focus changes, and nothing feels odd when shifting into the Macro range, it just slips in smoothly.

Phone Porn: Samsung Instinct S30 SPH-M810

Sold!

This phone was in daily use by a lady friend of mine until she was given a new phone on an upgrade/contract deal. It works perfectly well, but she has no use for it and I'm on a different network.

Click on any picture to see it at 4x higher resolution.



Don't let any of the following images fool you: the screen has vivid color and good contrast, but the lights on my bench are WAY bright and throw glare off the screen.



With the case on it looks like any other phone. With the case off it is actually rather handsome and slender-looking.









Those light spots on the back won't clean off with a gentle cleaning solution. Fortunately that is the easiest part of the body skins to change, it just slips off and a new one clicks in place.



The few scratches on the screen are small, shallow, and don't distract from normal use of the device.



This is the worst cosmetic blemish on the whole phone, and it's on the colored skins (not the phone body itself): Fingernail marks by the power port. This is hidden when the black cover is installed, by the way.

Hey Whydoncha Talkabout . . .

You have noticed that I don't cover the major news of the day. It occurred to me again the reason for this is simple: you can get that anyplace and (if you are like me) you hear it all day. You don't need another blatherer-on about the headlines. If I've got a different take on something, or something to say, then I might talk about the news. Failing something creative, I'll just let you go to Instapundit

I Mull

It won't work, but it could get ugly if the Obama "Justice" Department wanted to go farther. If there were really a case against Sheriff Arpaio, there would be charges. What there appears to be is a bunch of aggreived brown people bitching to investigators, but no actual violations, and a Federal attempt to intimidate Joe Arpaio into not trying to see the law gets enforced.

The feds did such a great job taking care of a huge problem of illegal immigrants causing trouble in Phoenix that it isn't the number one city for kidnappings. NO, Phoenix (Maricopa County) Arizona is only the SECOND worst city in the world for kidnappings and the worst for car thefts in the country. So what's the problem? Why do those yokels in Arizona think they have to take the law in their own hands and start enforcing NATIONAL immigration law at the STATE level? Why, they must be a bunch of RAAAAACISTS!

The feds say the good people in Maricopa County no longer have permission to detain people on immigration charges instead of letting the feds to it . . . and no, the feds won't do it, either. Will the people of Phoenix tolerate a sanctuary city created by the dictates of some leftist bureaucrat in the District of Columbia?

The feds won't enforce the border, and they will gin up a bunch of hassle for you if you do. Borders. Language. Culture. The three elements that define a nation are hated by the top levels of the government in the nation. What, then, do we have left?

No, I don't believe the allegations rise to the level you hear trumped up on the news broadcasts. Maybe Sheriff Arpaio is hard on criminals. And?

I Never Thought I Would Live to See the Day!

There is a scene in one Star Trek movie* where one guy says to another that he never thought he would see the day when a murder was committed on earth(!). That version of Earth may have been modeled after this place.

Coll, a Scottish island (population: 200) has had the first official Crime in - well, since anyone can remember. A public bathroom** was slightly damaged. They had to call the next island over to send a policeman, because they don't have one on Coll. To someone who grew up in urban and suburban Metropolis, this is . . . different. I guess it's nice to know places like this still exist, anyway.

********

In related news, if you want to have a bit of a robbing spree I know this place where there are no cops. You have to bring your own getaway boat though, because the ferry to Coll doesn't run every day.

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*not being a Trekkie (Trekker?) I couldn't tell you which movie, or who the people were supposed to be

**in a city of 200 people they need a public bathroom?

Pi is . . .