Month: February 2006

Giant Book of the Month Club:

I thought I’d mention Martin Rudwick’s new book, Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution, a (very, very large) history of how scientists in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries figured out that the earth was very, very old. Certainly much older than six thousand years. The problem of the age of the earth is a good one partly because because it’s so tangible, partly because it’s a good story (the French and English scientists are great, and Thomas Jefferson gets a look-in as well), and partly because it was solved more than two hundred years ago.

I was unfortunate enough to hear a program on my local NPR affiliate featuring some of these “ideas,” viz, there were dinosaurs on the ark (ickle baby ones, of course), the earth is 6000 years old, and the naturalistic evolution is only believed by a tiny minority of people, most of whom are university educators or similar indoctrinators.

PZ Myers said it best: we have failed a generation — or more — if the ideas of the Enlightenment are so poorly understood of distributed.

Taking some advice from a local artist, I hunted up an old folding camera to convert to a pinhole camera and at the same time, work with larger format film.

I found what I sought at Jim’s Cameras in the University business district. The junk box in any place like that is always worth digging through and for $10, I came away with this.

It looks OK, worn and dusty, but bellows looks good and the mechanicals — such as they are — seem fine.

I even have the manual thanks to Mike Butkus. Not that it matters now. The thing has two shutter speeds — 1/50th and Bulb. And thank to a couple of well-placed blows, the lens and shutter protector — all the glass — are in shards on my workbench.

I just had my first misadventure with roll film, making me glad I bought a changing bag a week or so back. I loaded the camera, and wound on some film, but I had no idea when to stop. These new-fangled cameras link the shutter release to the winder. The artistic potential of this camera would never be achieved with such blatant distrust of the photographer. I ended up winding the whole roll through, and then re-spooling it onto the original spool, and then reloading.

Evidently, the little red window on the back of the camera is designed to let the numbers on the backing of the film to show through as a guide. It’s a tad too murky to see the numbers, as it turns out. Shoulda wiped it out before I got too carried away.

I hope to take some time and use this thing in the next few days just to get the hang of it. I fear that first roll is going to be pretty rough: I couldn’t help getting my paws on the emulsion as I fought with it in the changing bag.

via

Policing Porn Is Not Part of Job Description:

Two uniformed men strolled into the main room of the Little Falls library in Bethesda one day last week and demanded the attention of all patrons using the computers. Then they made their announcement: The viewing of Internet pornography was forbidden.

The men looked stern and wore baseball caps emblazoned with the words “Homeland Security.” The bizarre scene unfolded Feb. 9, leaving some residents confused and forcing county officials to explain how employees assigned to protect county buildings against terrorists came to see it as their job to police the viewing of pornography.

The unarmed (and lightly trained, it appears) men are part of a Homeland Security agency (your tax dollars — $3.6 million worth — at work). I wonder if this would happen with just one officer: I have to think there was a sense of “I’ll do it if you do it” or “We have to stop this” going on.

My experience with wikis is recent and slight, but this is still pretty amazing. A full-on wiki (does that work, conceptually?) in a single document?

TiddlyWiki – a reusable non-linear personal web notebook:

Welcome to TiddlyWiki, a free MicroContent WikiWikiWeb by JeremyRuston. It’s written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript to run on any modern browser without needing any ServerSide logic. It allows anyone to create personal SelfContained hypertext documents that can be posted to any WebServer, sent by email or kept on a USB thumb drive to make a WikiOnAStick. This is revision 2.0.4 of TiddlyWiki, and is published under an OpenSourceLicense.

I badly need to get a handle on my many responsibilities, obligations and interests: could this help?

Now playing: Symphony 8 – Beethoven by BBC Philharmonic conducted by Gianandrea Noseda from the album “The Beethoven Experience – Downloads” | Get it

School of Hard Knocks (Harpers.org):

From a school-trip permission form sent in September 2005 to parents of eighth-grade pupils at the Queen Elizabeth Junior and Senior High School, in Calgary, Canada. Originally from Harper’s Magazine, December 2005.

POTENTIAL HAZARDS MAY INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO THE FOLLOWING: Bus travel to and from site: Motion sickness, injury from other person’s motion sickness, injury from being thrown during sudden massive negative or positive acceleration, tripping hazard when entering or exiting vehicle or moving down the aisle, overheating during transit, objects coming through open windows, injuries from vehicle being involved in accident, chill hazard from open windows, injury from student putting head or limbs out of window, injury caused by own or other student’s inappropriate behavior.

Entire trip: Slipping or tripping getting on or off the bus, slipping while climbing stairs or pathway on the trail, exposure to pollens, food, dust, or other materials that might induce allergic reaction, dehydration, exposure to environmental conditions including cold, damp, warm, dry, hot, and sunny, tripping on sidewalk or paved pathways, attack or injury from wild animals, food-borne organisms in own or other students’ lunches, snacks, or drinks, electrical storms including lightning strikes, landslides on hills. Viewing indoor exhibits at site: tripping hazard on stairs, bumping hazard from other viewers, pinching hazard from doors, slipping hazard on wet floor or pavement, injury from collapsing exhibits.

Viewing outdoor section at site: Slipping on wet ground, excessive dust from dry ground, exposure to various fungi, bacteria, or viruses in the air, soil, or rocks, falling down small hillside or trails, chill from exposure to wet or cool weather conditions, exposure to excessive heat or sunlight, falling in pond and getting hypothermia, falling in pond and drowning, drinking water from pond and developing giardiasis (beaver fever) or ingesting other potentially harmful organisms, rash from touching some plants, infection from skin puncture from some plants, risk of getting lost or harmed if student sneaks away from group, risk of injuring foot, leg, or body by stepping into animal-made or erosion-created holes, risk of tree falling and landing on student.

Wow. Sounds too risky.

someone finally caught up with me:

Four jobs I’ve had in my life:
1. Commercial bakery: yes, I made the doughnuts (among other things)
2. Glass and mirror installer
3. Newspaper copy editor
4. Computer support operative

Four movies I can watch over and over
How boring am I? I can’t think of one that isn’t animated (wonder why that is?)
1. The Wallace & Gromit omnibus (A grand day out, The wrong trousers, A close shave)
2. The Incredibles
3. Toy Story

Four TV shows I love to watch
Don’t watch any TV, so this is easy.

Four places I’ve been on vacation
1. Ireland
2. Scotland
3. San Francisco
4. Portland

Four of my favorite dishes
1. A grilled filet of ahi tuna
2. Onion tofu @ Uwajimaya
3. Mess, drippy fish burrito from Taco Del Mar
4. Vine ripened, homegrown, grape tomatoes off the vine

Four websites I visit daily
1. Talking Points Memo (only because he doesn’t publish a full feed)
All others, I read in an RSS reader

[variation] Four places I would like to go to but haven’t – yet
1. Vancouver/Victoria BC (yeah, I know)
2. Alaska
3. Paris (I’ve been through it but never spent time there)
4. A minor-league ballpark to watch a game with my future Hall of Famer

Four bloggers I am tagging
Is there anyone who hasn’t been tagged?

MoveOn.org Political Action: Should we take on right-wing Democrats?:

Part of our work together is to hold Democrats to their Party’s highest values on issues like foreign policy, economic prosperity and good government.
That sometimes means grappling with specific right-wing Democrats who consistently side with big corporations and right-wing Republicans.
One approach is to support progressive primary challengers to right-wing Democrats. We think this makes sense but it’s a big decision so we wanted to check with you and other MoveOn members. What do you think? Complete the survey below to let us know.

I vote for option 1.