Month: October 2007

• Holga Images
  Just to show it’s the photographer, not the camera. These are great images, enhanced by the crappiness of the Holga.
  (tags: Holga photography Art media)

Robert Reich explains Why Charity Doesn’t Begin at Home:

It turns out that only an estimated 10% of all charitable deductions are directed at the poor.

So here’s a modest proposal. At a time when the number of needy continues to rise, when government doesn’t have the money to do what’s necessary for them and when America’s very rich are richer than ever, we should revise the tax code: Focus the charitable deduction on real charities.

If the donation goes to an institution or agency set up to help the poor, the donor gets a full deduction. If the donation goes somewhere else — to an art palace, a university, a symphony or any other nonprofit — the donor gets to deduct only half of the contribution.

The money that goes to a Lincoln Center gala or naming rights to an opera house would do a lot of good if given to a real charity.

• ZIPskinny
  how does your ‘hood look? This is all 2000 Census data, so it might be a little off.
  (tags: maps census society science)
• Mr. Romney’s eldest son, Tagg, 37, says that back in the early 1990s, he told his father privately that he was thinking about becoming a Democrat . . .
  first, what 37 year old still needs approval to choose a political party? Oh, right, one with a trust fund . . . .
  (tags: politics culture values)

Looking at the pictures I get from my Nikon P&S (POS is how I usually think of it) and I think more and more of a dSLR. It looks like D50 and D70 are holding their prices pretty well, but I found a D70 with some water damage. I need to call my local authorized Nikon repair center and see what a rebuild would cost, but what do you think? Is that a good plan or am I asking for trouble? I assume the repairs will make it as good as newâ„¢ . . .

And re-reading the description of the 5400 at Amazon reminds me why I picked it. What a disappointment. It sounds like a different camera to me.

Rafe learns that The North Carolina lottery is a bust:

Bottom line: lotteries don’t achieve much in terms of funding schools, are a regressive form of taxation, mislead voters into thinking that schools are mostly funded by lotteries and that taxes and bond issues to fund schools aren’t needed, and contribute to gambling addiction. Who ever thought they were a good idea in the first place?

Of course, most of the issues can be traced to the fact that NC was late to the game. And not all lotteries are run the same way: some send quite a bit of money to schools (I think Georgia’s lottery was only allowed to start after that was written into the authorization). But the regressive tax thing is a killer: the people who can least afford to play are most likely to.

California – Joel on Software:

the iPod slogan Designed by Apple in California triggers a flood of emotional responses that just make you happy to have selected this MP3 player.

Of course, Microsoft’s Apple Envy is so impossible to disguise that the back of the Zune says, “Hello from Seattle:”

California covers a lot of ground: Seattle, not so much. MSFT isn’t in Seattle. So the envy extends to California and the Big Smoke across the lake.

DSCN1847.JPG

Originally uploaded by paulbeard [luck is my copilot].

Sunset. Low tide. Canoe dock @ Warm Beach, Washington.

• Religious Right Threatens to Run Third Party Candidate
  Oh, please, $DEITY$ . . . . . I know I haven’t been that good, but still . . .
  (tags: religion politics hypocrisy gop electioneering)

I think the corpulent pill-popper has opened a can of whoop-ass he shoulda left alone. General Clark is after him.

Take Action: Tell Congress to Dump Rush:

Today, I am asking you to join 394 other Americans and email Congress urging them to take Rush Limbaugh off Armed Forces Radio.

Last week, Rush Limbaugh labeled American servicemembers who support an end to the war in Iraq “phony soldiers.”

We’re going directly to Congress to take him off the Armed Forces Radio airwaves. Elected officials in Congress have the power to prevent Limbaugh from using taxpayers’ money to disrespect and censure the voices of our soldiers.

Join us and hold Rush Limbaugh accountable for his offensive and outrageous comments — tell your member of Congress to Dump Rush From Armed Forces Radio today!

Go send in your comments.

A significant spike in web traffic today, a lot of it down to these requests (the URI is good so why the 404?)

61.175.139.6 – – [02/Oct/2007:00:44:59 -0700] “GET /wordpress/index.php/archives/2005/04/11/your-wish-is-my-command/#comment-332774 HTTP/1.1” 404 32880 “http://www.paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php/archives/2005/04/11/your-wish-is-my-command/” “Opera/7.02 Bork-edition (Windows NT 5.0; U) [en]”

and these, like 9000 of them from some rogue web crawler.

75.126.214.21 – – [02/Oct/2007:18:35:14 -0700] “GET /wordpress/index.php/page/54/ HTTP/1.1” 200 40581 “-” “Jakarta Commons-HttpClient/3.0.1”

Annoyances. I don’t get the first one at all. And I don’t get why I have 12,000 lines of data but can only get less than 200 to be recognized by this regexp:

ARGF.each_line do |line|
if line =~ %r{GET ([^ .]+) }
puts $1
counts[$1] += 1
end
end