Let's run the numbers

Notes on camera In my travel across Ireland, we had two cameras, a Minolta Freedom Explorer EX film camera, and a Minolta Dimage S414 digital camera. After we got back, I uploaded the pictures from the digital to Wal-mart.com, and for 26 cents they printed them onto photo paper. Shipped, we had 97 photos for around 27 or 28 dollars. I cannot tell a difference in the quality between the film camera and the digital, with one exception. The digital has a few pictures where the exposure wasn't adjusted as accurately. Whether this is because of the printing process I do not know. Otherwise color and contrast was pretty good. I may buy one more film SLR camera in my lifetime. But I don't think they'll be around 10 years from now. Overall I'm incredibly impressed by the digital. Once they can make it focus and shoot as quick as the smaller, lighter film camera, there will be less need for the film camera.

Notes from Ireland I (NOTE: These are the notes I e-mailed home to parents and family. Names of the Datanerd and Mrs. Datanerd changed. The rest of the details are fully factual.) I read in the Irish Times that "Confidence in Economy Continues to Climb", and I know I'm not in America. Friday and Saturday: Galway Caught every break possible, plane landed early, caught express bus, and was in Galway by 10:30. Spent the day decompressing, then took Mrs. Datanerd out for a birthday dinner. She had mixed grilled seafood, I had mussels. Mussels here are amazing. Saturday we took the city tour on a 1960's vintage double decker bus (Leyland Diesel). Took around city, rode to Salthill, a seaside resort town. Rode around once, stopped and had lunch of cheese and bread from local weekend market. Picked up bus again to go to Salthill. Salthill reminds me of a coastal Maine resort town. Very pleasant. Stopped in pub. Apparently this joint was the local a...

This is excreable I'm not sure what to think about this. On the one hand, this could have a chilling effect on people speaking their minds. On the other hand, the request is totally without merit. This could have the effect of finally totally and utterly discrediting Donald Luskin in the conservative blogosphere. Luskin, in my opinion, is becoming as unhinged as Bill O'Reilly, in my opinion. Luskin made a dreadful mistake. By siccing a lawyer on Atrios, he alienated a large part of the blogosphere, even the conservative ones. Perhaps I should say especially the conservative ones, the ones who see lawsuits in general as a nuisance of good bidnesses. Oh, and remember, Luskin titled a post on his blog "We stalked. He balked." Eschaton : JEFFREY J. UPTON October 29, 2003 “Atrios” Author and Publisher of “Eschaton” Weblog Dear “Atrios”: This firm represents Donald L. Luskin, a Contributing Editor to National Review Online and author and ...

The Capitol, not the White House I work a block away from the Capitol. Report: Capitol Was Sept. 11 Attackers Fourth Goal (washingtonpost.com) : BERLIN (Reuters) - The U.S. Capitol Building, not the White House, was the fourth target of the Sept. 11 attackers, a German magazine reported Sunday citing results of interrogations of suspected al Qaeda leaders." (snip) "The fourth plane, according to bin al-Shaibah's questioning, should have hit the Capitol, the U.S. parliament ... U.S. authorities long suspected that it should have hit the White House. Only bin al-Shaibah's statement corrected the error," the magazine reported.

Back I'm thinking of posting a bunch of my travel notes on here. Tell you about it later.

On Vacation Might try to post while in Ireland. I'll send you all a postcard if I can.

Columbus Day For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary October 13, 2003 Remarks by the President on Columbus Day THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, all, please be seated. Thank you all for coming. I'm honored to join you in observing Columbus Day and to celebrate Columbus Day in the District named after him. My fellow Americans, today we honor a man who helped shape our world's destiny. A man of science, a man of research, a man of discovery. Using the scientific principals of investigation, he found new things where people said they wouldn't be. He listened to others, but in the end knew he had to make his own decisions, and they turned out to be momentus. America is a stronger and finer nation because of his influence. And so, on this day, we celebrate the man, and Peter Falk who played him on TeeVee. Who else could have solved so many crimes in one hour, even with that cheese-eating surrender monkey car? God bless you, and may God continue to bl...

Economic status and obesity This is interesting. Even with the same diet, poor people (not just kids) gain more weight than rich folks. Further, in countries where the social system changed, such as the former East Germany or Lithuania, poor people have had an increase in body mass index and cardiovascular risk factors. And it seems to be based on the level of inequality, not on the absolute level of income. Of course, the skinny nazis would say that the poor should just eat less to compensate for their body producing too many stress hormones. Even better yet, take control of their bodies and tell their bodies to quit producing so many stress hormones. To which I reply: quit being rich and taking up so many scarce resources, crowding me out of the market. Then I might not be so stressed out about where I'm going to live when starter homes are going for $200,000 in the DC metro area, and who's going to pay for schools, and who's going to pay for retirement. It...

Datanerd's Corollary of Godwin's Law I was reading an article about a document connected with the Kent State shootings showing up on Antiques Roadshow. There was the usual discussion of how could they put a price on a piece of history, and how it was in bad taste to think about selling something so important. This quote struck me: As far as Lawson is concerned, May 4, 1970, is equal to Sept. 11, 2001, in its impact. "Between 1970 and 2000, what other event was as significant in American history? I think it's great that Steve Thomas has (the document) because he knows the significance of it. This isn't a day we should forget. We started shooting our own.'' Soon, as a discussion of anything grows longer, the probability that someone will compare it to the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 will approach one. And, like under Godwin's law, mentioning September 11 is probably good enough to end the discussion because people are getting o...

Somebody better be indicted Let's run the chronology: Ambassador Wilson criticizes Bush Administration for lying of uranium from Niger, which he had debunked for the CIA. Source inside White House leaks Ambassador Wilson's wife's name, says she's an operative for CIA on Weapons of Mass Destruction, implies Wilson only got Niger assignment out of her connections. Robert Novak publishes her name in his column. CIA askes Justice Department to investigate this. This gets leaked to the press last week. White House takes "Slime and defend" stance, to sully the name of Ambassador Wilson. Robert Novak announces the name of the company that Ambassador Wilson's wife worked for on CNN last night, in connection with his and her donations to Al Gore in 2000. The company was a CIA front. Thanks, Bob. Fucking Prince of Darkness. This guy's a one-man intelligence destruction agent. I thought columnists were supposed to add to our discourse ...

Airlines don't want air cargo scanned So, I'm supposed to give up personal information and allow criminal background checks on me before I board a plane, but any shipper can put whatever he wants to onboard, and no one at the airline wants to make sure its not a bomb? Why am I being held to such a high standard, when a shipping company isn't? If I'm on the plane, doesn't it stand to reason that I'm less likely to want to see the thing blow up than some shipping company? I guess it means we can inconvenience people, just don't bother businesses. Shit, I may just start shipping myself in containers. Report Faults Air Cargo Security (washingtonpost.com) The government is undertaking inadequate measures to prevent terrorists from planting a bomb in the cargo holds of passenger aircraft, according to many pilots, flight attendants, families of victims of terrorist attacks, and one major European airline. The warning was raised by dissenters in a r...

More bad news about the economy Consumer side was pushed up thanks to the tax rebate. Government side was pushed up due to military spending. But what's happened now that there isn't as much stimulus on consumers or government? BEA doesn't release third quarter numbers until the end of October, but it looks like things might be slowing down. They Spent the Tax Rebate. Now What Will Consumers Do? If you send it, they will spend it. The third quarter was a phenomenal one for the American economy, which probably grew at an annual rate of above 5 percent. Corporate profits soared. As that growth occurred, economic optimism grew both in this country and overseas. There was talk that the American engine was again pulling the world back into acceptable growth patterns. Even American business leaders began to seem a little more optimistic, with capital spending plans starting to edge up. Only the negative job market outlook put a shadow on the sunny picture. Ov...

This isn't good news about the job market I noticed this in the Employment Situation report on Friday, and was wondering why nobody was talking about it. What this means is that the economy is adding jobs, as was announced on Friday. We had lost more jobs than we thought we had, though, so our overall number of jobs is lower. This will be incorporated into the establishment survey's job estimates next February. Yahoo! News - Data Revision Confirms Weak Jobs Picture Statisticians at the Labor Department said they expect to revise down U.S. payroll employment by about 145,000 for the March 2003 reference month -- effectively showing even greater weakness in the sluggish labor market than previously thought. The downward adjustment surprised Wall Street, which had been rife with speculation this week that Labor would adjust the figures up, bringing payrolls more in line with another survey which has shown a recent improvement in the job market. "The expect...

Retaliation The White House and the Republican National Committee turned up the heat Wednesday on Wilson. The GOP's communication office highlighted remarks in which Wilson backtracked from his original assertion that Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist, was responsible for the leak. McClellan said Wilson "has said a lot of things and then backed away from what he said. So I think part of your role is to do some further questioning there." How does this resolve the scandal of the White House releasing his wife's name? We know that someone in the White House released his wife's name as retaliation. Now you get snippy and want him investigated more? Remove the log from you own eye, Mr. President, before you go hunting for the motes in others eyes. Rash speech is one thing, damaging national security for revenge on a person who speaks truth to power another. Oh, and I predict Scooter Libby and Dan Bartlett are the ones who did the leaking, ...

Last year: The sniper attacks This was a lesson in how all of the speculation on cable TV can be completely, totally wrong. It's a white box truck or van. They're not attacking on holidays or weekends because they use the van for work, and cannot use it on the weekends. It's a disaffected, angry white man. A loner. A former special forces officer. All wrong. Yes, one of them was a former Army enlisted man, but not a special forces type. Otherwise, all wrong. When you start speculating, recall this and be humbled.

North Korea Says It Is Making Nuclear Bombs Can anyone point out one Bush administration foreign policy that has made the world safer? Anyone? Granted, this was a colossal cock-up of the first order, but I cannot think of any foreign policy triumphs of this administration to offset this. Europe is telling us "You broke Iraq, you fix it back up". Russia isn't helping, even as it slides back into a quasi-authoritarian maybe-democracy(no free media). Every country in the Middle East is watching us warily. I've got a new book to read, Crisis on the Korean Penninsula, by Michael O'Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki. I'll tell you all about it when I'm done. Yahoo! News - N. Korea Says It Is Making Nuclear Bombs SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea said Thursday it is using plutonium extracted from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods to make atomic weapons, a move that could dramatically escalate tensions on the Korean peninsula and strengthen its hand in neg...