Hello, Goodbye

The Canon PowerShot S3 IS has arrived. The Canon PowerShot SD110 is out. Yay!

I have a lot of buttons to figure out. There’s a lot of features to learn. However, I can already tell just from toying with it even in the dreary, rainy, overcast light we have today that the new camera is 100 times better. It’s going to be so much more fun to use.

Tuesday night my mother pointed out that I was really hard on the SD110. I’m going to have to be much nicer and kinder and carefuller with the S3. I guess that means it might be a few weeks before I start being really daring with it.

Here are a few of the 100 photos I took in the first day. I can already tell an amazing difference in the quality of the photographs the new camera produces. These were all taken from my living room through my picture window. I used to have to stand about a foot away from my bird feeder very still and wait without breathing for a very long time to get a close up of a bird…and still the photo wouldn’t be sharp enough to really identify the bird.

Tags: bird watching, Rusty Blackbird, Blue Jay, Northern Cardinal, Chipping Sparrow, photo blogging, Canon PowerShot S3 IS, camera, Canon PowerShot SD110

Splurging On A Camera

I’ve decided to splurge. Like a really big splurge. Not like “Hmmm, it’s Friday; I think I’ll have some sushi” but like “I really am frustrated with this rinky-dink camera and I want to take better photos” splurge.

At first I thought I was desperate for a DSLR camera. You know, with all of the different, really expensive lenses and equipment? For months, I’ve been drooling over those professional-type cameras and their complexities and the brilliant photography I could do with them.

After the suffering I’ve done with my Canon Powershot SD110 and it’s measly 3MP and 2X optical zoom, just imagine how brilliant I could be!

Now, let’s assume that I have $800 to $1,000 to just through at the initial investment of a Canon Rebel XTi and one lens (probably a 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6), the zoom isn’t any better than what I have now, though I’d get 8 or 10MP. I’d still have to acquire another lens for better zoom and extra lenses cost about the same as the camera if not way more.

Talk about an expensive investment!
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Tags: Canon, Canon Powershot, camera

Quote of the Day: On Bad News

Bad news isn’t wine. It doesn’t improve with age.
– Colin Powell

Tags: Quote of the Day, Colin Powell

Work Your Brain — 09/20/06

• Thank a Democrat for Lower Gas Prices — Richard Cranium @ The All Spin Zone reminds us that it was Democratic Party Congressional candidate Larry Kissell who held a campaign rally at a gas station in Biscoe, NC on August 3rd to remind voters that the price of gasoline was $1.22/gallon when the GOP incumbent in his district took office. Ever since then, the price of gas has been dropping nationwide.
  

  With third quarter oil industry profit statements due out just before the upcoming elections, it’s pretty easy to assume that the Gouging Oil Party boys in the backroom figured that something had to be done, even if (for the oil companies) it meant taking a bit of a hit on the bottom line for a few months. Ergo, gasoline prices have dropped by nearly 30% in the space of a couple of weeks, even as BP’s shutdown of their Alaskan pipeline continues, and middle east tensions continue apace, and (strangely) the cost of a barrel of crude has dropped by maybe 10%. The good news is that, based on my own water cooler conversation, even the most hard core neocons in our midst understand the play.

  So, the next time you fill up your tank and you don’t have to sign over a second mortgage on house to do it, remember that Democratic Party congressional candidate Larry Kissell from NC-8, is more responsible for the drop in prices than anyone else on the planet. Here’s an idea on how to thank Larry: take $10 of that gas savings, and drop it in Larry’s campaign bucket.

• Gas Prices a Republican Dirty Trick — Becky @ Preemptive Karma takes a different look at how the Republicans are using their Big Oil friends to lower gas prices before the 2006 election.

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Tags: gas prices, oil industry, privacy, CIA, CIA Interrogation Program, George W. Bush, Article 3, Geneva Convention, Congress, John Warner, Colin Powell, Jack Vessey, Lindsay Graham, John McCain, POW, torture, detainees, terrorism, White House, politics, anthrax, 9/11, phobic nation, J. Edgar Hoover, FBI, Martin Luther King Jr., Iraq, International Red Cross, Maher Arar, Canada, Syria, JFK Airport

comments See also in Politics & Causes, In the News, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, 9-11 & Terrorism, Iraq & Afghanistan, The Middle East

Work Your Brain — 09/02/06

First Some Fun

• Thursday Thirteen #3 — Baggage @ Baggage That Goes With Mine wrote thirteen reasons why the internet is better than real life. This is my favorite.
  

  11. On the internet, you can pop into a forum or a blog and tell a person that their beliefs are dumb, they should be breastfeeding, they should never co-sleep, they should divorce their husband, they should shave their legs, and they should stop wearing mom jeans. In real life, people would punch you in the face.

In Memory Of Katrina

• But you can keep them for the birds and bees — Mac @ PeskyApostrophe wonders about all of that Katrina aid money the U.S. asked for and got from other countries last year. She comes to the same conclusion I did.
  

  I’m appalled at a variety of things when it comes to the Katrina rebuilding effort and FEMA’s role in it all, but this is a whole new level of incompetence. As part of my new job, I am now involved in grant-writing. In a good portion of grants, the grantee expects a report as to how the money was used. While I’m sure these gifts did not come with any reporting requirements, if one of our grantees found out their money had been either wasted or didn’t got to the program for which it was intended that would pretty much guarantee they’d never give money to us again. And you have to wonder if, should another emergency situation arise, these countries would think twice about giving aid money to the U.S. if we’re not going to use it and use it wisely.

• First the Flood, Now the Fight — Spencer S. Hsu @ WashingtonPost.com wrote a special report on the butting of heads between FEMA and state and city officials in the rebuilding of the Gulf States and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. FEMA swears it’s not trying to be difficult but the process seems to be designed to wear down those requesting help until they just give up and either take what little they’ve been given, which isn’t much if anything.
  

  Through hundreds of such disputes large and small, the most costly disaster in U.S. history is fast becoming its most contentious, with appeals and disputes worth nearly a billion dollars bogging down repairs of critical public systems and delaying the return of residents.

  Current and former officials at all levels blame FEMA workers’ inexperience with eligibility rules, weaknesses in U.S. disaster laws and inconsistent treatment by Congress for much of the wrangling. The huge scale of the storm and honest disagreement over whether federal or local taxpayers should pay the tab add to the conflict.

  “Disasters should be difficult to declare. . . . But once you get them, FEMA should not worry about cutting costs,” said Daniel A. Craig, who stepped down in October as head of FEMA’s recovery division and is now consulting for New Orleans. “Public entities are eligible for everything they have lost due to the disaster. It is not up to FEMA to cut corners or makes sure money is saved.”

  Gil H. Jamieson, FEMA’s deputy director for Gulf Coast recovery, agreed that “we’re in this to rebuild the city” and added: “We are not in it to delay for the sake of delay. Are there folks who sometimes hose it up? Absolutely. But I think we’re doing a good job of helping it recover.”

  The disputes come as the costliest part of the recovery begins: restoring water, power, roads, bridges, schools and other public facilities along the Gulf Coast. Agency veterans said the spending will have more impact on the physical rebuilding of the Gulf area than anything else FEMA does over the next decade, possibly eclipsing its role in aiding individual victims of the storm.

  The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans, for instance, sustained $446 million in storm losses, said Executive Director Marcia St. Martin. But FEMA has committed just $113 million so far.

  FEMA notes that New Orleans promised U.S. environmental regulators $640 million in repairs before Katrina, and that the antiquated system is too big for the Crescent City’s reduced population.

  “That’s what makes a city — if you don’t have water, sewer and drainage, you don’t have a city,” lamented Robert Jackson, spokesman for the sewer board. “The money so far only scratches the surface of the devastation.

  Hat Tip: Susie @ Suburban Guerrilla

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Tags: Thursday Thirteen, Internet, Hurricane Katrina, FEMA, aid money, Gil H. Jamieson, Daniel A. Craig, Gulf Coast recovery, New Orleans, Islamofascism, George W. Bush, Muslims, women in the media, Support the Troops, defense appropriation bill, Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, Iraq, Afghanistan, Congress, Pentagon, Lower 9th Ward, National Hurricane Canter, 9/11, Max Mayfield, Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah, terrorism, Ann Jones, Taliban, NATO, Christians, American Dream, Martin Niemoller, Germany, Nazis, Rocky Anderson, Utah, Salt Lake Tribune, patriotism, lie, Walter Jones, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Caddam Hussein, Donald Rumsfeld

CNN: “Dead Wrong — Inside an Intelligence Meltdown.”

CNN will be airing a special entitled Dead Wrong — Inside an Intelligence Meltdown this coming Sunday night. In it Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a longtime Powell adviser who served as his chief of staff from 2002 through 2005, is one of several insiders interviewed.

A former top aide to Colin Powell says his involvement in the former secretary of state’s presentation to the United Nations on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was “the lowest point” in his life. [“Former aide: Powell WMD speech ‘lowest point in my life’” (CNN.com)]

Makes you wonder what he knows that we don’t, doesn’t it? I’m thinking of that song from one of the Charlie Brown musicals “If I knew then what I know now.” If only I knew then and now.

In preparation for Powell’s Valentines’ Day (2003) call to arms, Wilkerson makes it sound like Powell was unprepared and had not been given all of the information he needed to be well-prepared.

“(Powell) came through the door … and he had in his hands a sheaf of papers, and he said, ‘This is what I’ve got to present at the United Nations according to the White House, and you need to look at it,’” Wilkerson says in the program. “It was anything but an intelligence document. It was, as some people characterized it later, sort of a Chinese menu from which you could pick and choose.”

Wilkerson and Powell spent four days and nights in a CIA conference room with then-Director George Tenet and other top officials trying to ensure the accuracy of the presentation, Wilkerson says. [“Former aide: Powell WMD speech ‘lowest point in my life’”(CNN.com)]

According to Wilkerson, what they later discovered was that it was innacurate despite their four days and nights. At least one of their sources was untrustworthy — something Powell didn’t know at the time, though apparently the Defense Intelligence Agency knew. More lack of communication between departments and government tentacles.

In one dramatic accusation in his speech, Powell showed slides alleging that Saddam had bioweapons labs mounted on trucks that would be almost impossible to find.

“In fact, Secretary Powell was not told that one of the sources he was given as a source of this information had indeed been flagged by the Defense Intelligence Agency as a liar, a fabricator,” says David Kay, who served as the CIA’s chief weapons inspector in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. That source, an Iraqi defector had never been debriefed by the CIA, was known within the intelligence community as “Curveball.”

After searching Iraq for several months across the summer of 2003, Kay began e-mailing Tenet to tell him the WMD evidence was falling apart. At one point, Wilkerson says, Tenet called Powell to tell him the claims about mobile bioweapons labs were apparently not true. [“Former aide: Powell WMD speech ‘lowest point in my life’”(CNN.com)]

So, more conflicting information spilling into the media. I’m going to have to try to remember to set my DVR so I don’t forget to watch this.

Somewhere out there really is the truth. I’d like to find it, but I’m starting to feel like we’ll never really know the whole story.

Tags: CNN, Iraq, Colin Powell, Intelligence, WMD, Conspiracy Theories, politics

True or False — Grand Jury Indicts Bush & Others?

I’ve seen this in a couple places on the internet the last couple of days. As I haven’t seen it yet printed in any “official” sites, I don’t know how true it is (and these days it’s really hard to tell who’s telling the truth and who’s not…which I think was the GOP’s plan all along.)

Federal Whistle Blower Claims Chicago Grand Jury Indicted Bush And Others For Perjury and Obstruction Of Justice; U.S. Attorney’s Office Says ‘No Comment,’ Refusing To Confirm Or Deny Alleged Indictments

That headline comes from the Artic Beacon, which hails itself as “the last frontier of truth”. As I just stumbled on them, I can’t say one way or another if that’s true.

Although the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago is staying silent, it is well known that Fitzgerald is digging deep into an assortment of serious improprieties among many Bush administration figures based, in part, on subpoenaed testimony provided by former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

According to federal whistleblower Tom Heneghen, who recently reported on www.truthradio.com, Powell testified before the citizen grand jury that President Bush had taken the U.S. to war illegally based on lies, which is a capital crime involving treason under the U.S. Code.

“Regarding the Powell testimony, there is no comment,” said Sanborn.

However, sources close to the federal grade jury probe also allegedly told Heneghen a host of administration figures besides Bush were also indicted, including Vice-President Richard Cheney, Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, imprisoned New York Times reporter Judith Miller and former Senior Cheney advisor Mary Matalin.

Heneghen, unavailable for comment and first reported by internet reporter Tom Flocco, allegedly also told sources White House Advisor Karl Rove was indicted for perjury in a major document shredding operation cover-up and that Prime Minister Tony Blair was also indicted for obstruction of justice charges.

The article goes on to discuss a whole Watergate-type conspiracy involving bomb scares and attempts to get Fitzgerald, who is “Special Counsel to investigate the CIA- Valerie Plame case,” fired.

As much as I want this to be true, I hate to admit that I need more “reliable’ confirmation. I mean, Kenneth Star’s investigation was daily big news and so far, I haven’t heard a peep, even on NPR, my most trusted source…though lately, I’ve been wondering about them too.

Tags: Patrick Fitzgerald, George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Andrew Card, Scooter Libby, Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft, Judy Miller, Karl Rove, PlameGate, Conspiracy Theories