okay?

Light, or synthetic don't necessarily mean bad. Once upon a time, I worked as a cash register repairman for NCR. Cash registers from the 1890s had cast brass cases, and quarter-inch hardened steel keystems. They'd have lasted forever. Would we have wanted them to? (In fact, we had standing orders, when one came in for repair, to smash them with a sledgehammer, tell the customer we couldn't get parts, and send out a salesman. Was that wrong?}

The population of the U.S. has more than doubled in my lifetime. Should everyone still have solid mahogany furniture, even if they could afford it. Could there ever be that much mahogany?

I like plastic furniture, and the wonders of materials science that make the shiny chrome on my new Honda's door handles about a micron thick. Saving the planet is a subtle thing. Politically correct or not, plastic plays its part.

CCDs are so superior to film in sensitivity and dynamic range that film hasn't been used in astronomy for at least a couple of decades and even amateur astrophotographers are moving to CCDs at a rapid pace. An eleven megapixel peltier cooled astronomical CCD was available in the marketplace for amateurs about five years ago.

Unless you're talking about potential, this doesn't describe a consumer digital camera at all. They aren't 11 megapixels, many of them are CMOS technology anyway, nobody cools them to take pictures, and they have the dynamic range of their output format, which is JPEG and uses 8 bits. Many of them also have tiny little lenses and folded optics as a front end, as well.

The point wasn't that new technology can never be as good as old, rather that corporate product manufacturers and marketers frequently employ what they call "educating the market" as a means to a goal, instead of even bothering to equal the quality that has gone before. Seen any cell phones that have even the sound quality of a POTS line lately?

I'm gonna attend a farm 'gig' and will be away... I'm reading 'The Runaway Bunny' by Margaret Wise Brown. Pictures by Clement Hurd.

It's about a little bunny who wanted to run away

But no matter how or where the bunny decided to go,

his mother was always there --- for she loved the bunny very much.

A Good Mother's nature....

`

Within a framework of mutual love a bunny tells how a human/bunny,

answers the challenge by indicating how love will catch --- Warmth prevails.

The pictures are great.

What hospitality.

John McCain, October, 2007:

http://nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/politics/26giuliani.html

“All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today,” Mr. McCain, who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, said in a telephone interview.

Of presidential candidates like Mr. Giuliani, who say that they are unsure whether waterboarding is torture, Mr. McCain said: “They should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.”

- - John McCain (D-AZ), October, 2007

WT... I guess my point was that given their importance as an instrument for wealth creation, their contribution to quality and permanence to the built environment, building materials should have a much longer design life, as they do in Europe.

Also, mass produced materials built in far-flung factories are generally made by less skilled labor, with the exploitation that entails, and must be shipped long distances, with the attendant environmental costs.

Quality products designed for long life require skilled maintenance, but reduce waste while creating a sense of and attachment to place we have come to lack.

It is enormously depressing to see two identical 100 year old houses; one "neglected" and therefore a valuable gem with great potential, and the other busily "improved" over the years that might as well be torn down.

What a waste.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/
/0208/Bush_ups_the_ante_in_nomination_fight.html

February 06, 2008
Category: LEADERSHIP

Bush ups the ante in nomination fight

President Bush plans to meet at the White House on Thursday with some of his nominees still awaiting confirmation by the Senate, reigniting a fight over their appointments with Senate Democrats.

While there are scores of pending appointments, much of the acrimony can be traced back to Steven Bradbury, nominated to the post of assistant attorney general, office of legal counsel.

Despite the banal title, the office issues legal opinions which are binding on the executive branch. While serving in the position as acting assistant attorney general, Bradbury signed memorandums authorizing the use of harsh CIA interrogation techniques, which Democrats have characterized as torture.

- - "The Politico"

I just watched a documentary on HBO about a Baghdad ER It followed some of the doctors, workers and patients as they did their best to cope with an unimaginable situation. One of the most powerful scenes was a Shiite woman in an ambulance, screaming for the return of Saddam. They'd prefer the known terror of his rule to the unknown, powerless situation they are in, now. It really defies words, and should be seen by all. We have done a great evil to that country. Damn Bush and his followers for making all of us a party to his evil. How can anyone who voted for him, or worse yet, voted to re-elect him, stand to look themselves in the mirror?

my account when into the ozone a couple years ago. i panicked, figured i'd forgotten to re-up. now i'm subsrcibed long beyond what could be my natural life.

beware

could be a business model...

not!

Fantastically apropos as usual.

What we need now is a deluge of mail to 100 Senators and 435 Congresspeople asserting that torture should not go unindicted and unpunished. Wouldn't hurt to hear it from 170 countries in addition to their own constituents.

And yes, art guerrilla, the press silence is deafening.

Thanks for responding. It is indeed very worrisome. It's my opinion, and I hope I'm wrong, that neither Hilary or Obama have what it takes. They will be up against, for lack of a better term, the "military-industrial" complex, which is even, I feel, more powerful than the Repugs. And neither Hilary nor Obama has any experience in standing up to them.

Frankly, I'm still haunted by how easy it was to get Democratic politicians on board to start the war. No independent viewpoint at all, they just took at face value whatever crap the neo-cons put out.

Are Hilary and Obama even aware that the War Party is independent of and not beholden to the Republicans? (In fact, it's the other way round)

Gosh, wouldn't it be fun if a crisis forced the Democrats to re-start the draft? They'll be taking the economic consequences of the econo-cons right in the shorts as a favor to the Repubs, so why not the draft, too.

Sorry, but I have no faith at all in anyone who was not %100 against Bush from the start.