We Don't Need No Stinking Badges!

I had never read this before. I had heard the word Areopagitica before a few times in reference to the freedom of the Press, but never took the time to track down what it meant.

It took me an hour and a half to read, but it was worth the time. Set aside two or three hours (I can read pretty quickly) and read this speech. Then, the next time somebody mentions this smart idea they have of licensing bloggers, reporters, &c., you will understand that they are either ignorant or malignant. In either case, they are wrong.

A couple of quotes from Areopagitica to make a couple of points. The recent discussion about licensing bloggers does indeed come from people who think you are stupid.

"Nor is it to the common people less than a reproach; for if we be so jealous over them, as that we dare not trust them with an English pamphlet, what do we but censure them for a giddy, vicious, and ungrounded people; in such a sick and weak state of faith and discretion, as to be able to take nothing down but through the pipe of a licenser."

The argument that you people must have guardians over your information sources is as weak now as it was at the time of the Inquisition. Truth stands the test of time, and unless the proponents of licensure suspect they themselves are on the wrong side of the line, there is no reason for them to try to pursue this idea.

"And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?"
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"For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty? She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious; those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power."

The very first Amendment to the Constitution for the United States of America established the freedom of the Press. For those unfamiliar with the concept: requiring approval from the government to speak or to publish ideas is something only the worst of tyrants would seek to do. To quote one of the worse tyrants of modern times:

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?" - Joseph Stalin

They Think You're A Dummy

The President's teleprompter writer has so little respect for your intellectual prowess that they have tipped his hand. They don't think you are smart enough to notice that they made the announcement, and/or smart enough to catch on when they are doing what they said they will do.

Years before his run at the white house, Herman Cain the radio talk show host said that leftists do three things when they are unable to win an argument: they SIN.

• Shift the subject
• Ignore the question
• Name call

The President announced a proposal he knew would never get past the Congress (the "jobs bill"). Then even his own Democrat party majority in the Senate didn't want to touch it with a ten-foot pole. The president's response is that he will have to run [for president] against a "do-nothing" Congress.

VFD, didn't he have a majority in both houses of congress for the first two years of his term?

You bet your sweet patootie he did, but that doesn't make a difference to someone who is willing to SIN when he can't win the argument. So the President sets up a bill the Republicans (*cough*anddemocrats*cough*) won't pass. The President, having previously done nothing noteworthy besides get elected, has no record of accomplishment. The Republican candidate will rightly blame him for lack of accomplishment of anything good in three years of being the President. The President will then turn sideways and point to the Congress and say "YOU people didn't let me do anything!"

The way to think about this argument is that Congress does what the People tell them to do, or they do what they think is necessary to win the next election. The people don't want what the President is trying to give them and your Elected Heroes know it.

So the President is going to run against a do-nothing Congress? The strategy here is to hope you are not bright enough to notice that the Republican candidate *cough*hermancain*cough* actually has done good in his life. You are going to hear "here's what I did, what did the President do?" and then the President will say "LOOK the goodyear blimp!" and you are supposed to look for the blimp. Then again, he did get elected on a slogan the last time, so how bright can you really be?

Well Ain't I Fancy!

Give me something fun and I'll likely play with it. Call this* "Towers on the Moon." It was a technical exercise that turned out to look neat, so there you go.

(630kB much bigger bigger version click here)


This is a pair of screws on the side of a roll of black electrician's tape. The smaller of the two screws is ~3mm from end to tip. I was playing with a new macro adapter lens at work. The adapter is for manual lenses and my lens is a "G" series so there is no aperture control; only minimum aperture is available. I had to shoot at f/22, which meant this was a long exposure, high-ISO shot.

The dark background was actually a fairly bright white, but the exposure is funky. It turns out my camera has a bunch of hot pixels at high ISO on long exposures. The color spots are not a good sign for the sensor as such, but I basically never use the camera this way, so it is still okay-enough for what we do where I work. If you don't see the colored dots, you didn't click through to the full size version.

*Two artificial habitats on the rim of a crater. The hot pixels remind me of stars ("my god, it's full of stars!") and the grainy high-ISO noise makes it look like a film shot from super-dee-uper far 'way.

Capturing The Stereotypical Moment

We went to NASA and acted touristy all day today. I felt a bit silly taking the same photographs everyone else who ever went to NASA also took, but I did get a couple of winners (if they turn out well in processing). The Red Telephone on an empty Control Room command station desk. Birds on a wire that held up a rocket, pecking at each other. People standing in the blast zone of rocket engines. My favorite picture of the day was taken twice, in a vain attempt to get a nice standard tourist shot.

I had been walking #3 around showing him the sights with three year-old appropriate commentary, and we were almost done for the day when a couple of JSC employees walked through. One was an elbow-grabber/guide for the other who could not hear and probably could barely see. The other was walking around in a fool-a-first grader moderatly-cheesy gen-u-wine SPACEMAN SUIT zOMG GETAPICTURE!!!1! So the Zoo lined up in front of the "astronaut" who gave a lame thumbs up or something for the two-hundredth time that day. #1 and #2 stood and faced the camera, smiling like good little tourists. #3 was incorrigible. He stood there in front, turned 3/4 away from the camera, slack-jawed, staring up at the "gold" face shield on this guy's costume helmet. The elbow-grabber and #1 and #2 all told him he was not being a good stereotypical Say Cheeser, and he was physically rotated to face the camera. By the time I could get a second shot off, it didn't work and he was back to the astonished gaping at the spaceman's helmet. We laughed at the whole situation and called it a photo.

I wished many, many times that I had brought my work camera. I'm going to have to sell some stuff and get a real camera.

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In related news, how jaded am I? I was standing there photographing genuine world history and thinking about the fact that there are a million other photos unlooked-at on hard drives around the world, taken by other tourists in exactly the same circumstances.

Houston to Austin: Driving Comparison

We just drove back from Houston to Austin. We left the far side of Houston before rush hour and hit serious traffic on the near side. Let me give this to the people of Houston: them drivers don't play. If there's a speed limit, they drive it if possible. They leave something like safe clear following distances between cars. When you put on a turn signal they don't zoom up to cut you off. If they pass you, it's done at a rate of speed that makes sense (no snail racing). If you are near, they will not drive into you. They take off from lights at a reasonably high rate of acceleration. There is no jamming of brakes. There is no cut-you-off-and-slow-down action. The people of Houston have places to be and don't dick around getting there. It was almost like driving with a million of myself on the road.

Then we got closer to home and the jackassery started. We were cut off within a car length so the car that cut us off could go zero miles per hour faster because the car in front of us was going the same speed as the car in the "passing" lane. We were very nearly passed on the right on the SHOULDER by someone in a hurry to turn off the highway. These incidents were within two miles of each other, just past the "AUSTIN 30 MILES" sign. I started to mutter badwords under my breath and my Darling Wife wondered out loud what was going on . . . then we realized that these were Austin drivers.

Oh well, it was nice for the dayandahalf we were in Houston, anyway.

That Was A Mistake!

Never test-drive a car you could never afford.

In related news, if your family snapshot-taking camera is something you have to fight to make good pictures with, never take your production camera home. Now I REALLY wish I had a better camera of my own. Oh well. Step 1: pay off debts.

Source of The Mondays: De DEBIL!

I figured out why people will sometimes catch a "case of the Mondays" - the Devil uses his people to poke at God's people on Monday for going to Church and doing well on Sunday. Sometimes. Sometimes you just get what you get.

In related news, congratulate me: I didn't lose my cool at anybody, all day long. Don't ask my car how I drove. It is as my Pastor sometimes says: some of us have to try harder than others to be nice.

Keep Tied Thine Own Strings!

Branching off from the discourse on the rights to life and property.

IF you are capable of supporting yourself, you should. It's your life, and it's your job to keep it up. IF you have a job, it is your responsibility to spend only what you can bring in. IF you have children, it is for YOU to support hem.

We know that children are expensive. We know that sh*t happens and you sometimes end up with children you can't support on your own. We know groceries aren't free and somebody has to pay to keep your heater running. If you find yourself disabled or between jobs and without the ability to support yourself and your family, we care. There is CHIP, there is WIC, there are various welfare programs from the State and your local church.

If you take from these programs, you are taking little bits of other peoples' very lives. It is not polite to kill people, even if they are down with the agenda. It is up to you to decide to give, or take, but it is (as they say) more blessed to give than to receive.

Yes, there are ways to get money from other people directly, and through the food banks, the church and the State. But you ought not to take from them if you can avoid it. You are your own responsibility. Your children are your responsibility. If you can avoid making children you can't afford, it is incumbent upon you to do so. If you have to take a second job to keep food on the table, it is for you to do it instead of making someone else do it for you so their money can pay your bills.

Is your life worth more than the life of another man? Are your children worth more than mine? By what right do you take the things provided by others? Are you superior?

You are a man. Your life is worth as much as another's, unless you are evil in which case you are worth less.

I think I am not expressing this properly, but my point is something like this: Because you are "only" another human of equal value to your fellow men, it is an act of nearly unspeakable arrogance for you to accept aid that you do not absolutely need to take. If you can any way legally provide for your responsibilities in this life, you should strive so to do, before taking from the lives of other people

Crooked? These Guys? Never!

The Environmental Protection Agency did a bad job on the studies, had one of their cronies on the panel, failed to release the studies to the public, and then clearly failed to apply logic to their assessment of their rulings's economic impact. They were studying whether the gas you produce as you breathe out is poison. It has been declared poison, and the EPA regulates it. At the time, one man in the agency was vilified for speaking out against the scientific farce underway. Turns out he was right.

Now is the time to write your Congressman. The economy of our nation is about to be crushed under watermelon* regulations. And they are planning to do nothing about it. Congress MUST force the EPA to re-do this ridiculous study, properly. If they do that, the result must be different or there is no point in having an America anymore.

That the timing of the EPA's declaration is highly political should not be a surprise. The Obama administration is crooked as . . . well, crooked as a Chi-town politician. Sad, but not surprising.

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*watermelon: green (environmentalist) on the outside, red (commies!) on the inside

New Alabama Law Great for Alabama School Children!

Everybody is always crying about how they want lower class sizes. Alabama just passed a law that has lowered class sizes by 2% in some parts of the State, and now they are complaining?

Anti-illegality campaingers have long said that illegal aliens will self-deport when local laws make it difficult for them to live normal lives without being caught breaking national immigration law. The immediate effects of this new law proves the theorem to be true in some cases.

Sob stories abound, but here's the bottom line: class sizes are shrinking because parents are taking their children out of the schools. If they take their children elsewhere, preferably wherever the parents have legal residency status, then it is extremely likely that the children will be back in school in short order, wherever the parents end up taking them.

That the children suffer upheaval in their lives is the PARENTS' fault, not the States'. Good for Alabama.

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You think that's controversial? Howabout this: I hope those lawbreaking Mexican parents stay in the USA and work, paying sales taxes and property taxes (through their landlords' tax bills) and DON'T get caught being illegally in the U.S. I hope that they put their efforts toward homeschooling their children. It is theoretically possible that this law could lead to BETTER education for these children because they will be homeschooled. Of course (stand by for the really insensitive controversial bit) if they just pull their children out of school and stop their education altogether, the parents should be arrested for neglect, serve prison time and then get deported. The children would of course be made wards of the State, which would counteract this positive effect of the new law: The State would put them back into school, raising class sizes again!

Deport the parents. Let them deal with their own children, wherever they came from.