Letters to the Editor
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@ondelette
Nervous systems have clever ways of getting around limits. But there must be some hard limits. Do you know what is the highest resonant frequency of the hair cells in the inner ear? That seems like a hard limit, but I suppose it is possible that there are ways around that, as well.
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The latest in US Customs security measures
A little off-topic, I know, but important and pertinent to the ever more disgusting phony GWOT.
US Customs is seizing laptops and communications devices from anyone who enters the country whose name ends with a vowel.
Big Brother is stooping to knew lows....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2008/02/06/AR2008020604763.html?hpid=topnews
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Is the press changing its tune?
I watched yesterday's actions in the Senate because FISA was on the agenda and could be voted on with little notice. As a result, I saw the debate and voting on the economic stimulus package. What was at stake was that the House had already passed a package based on Bush's request and the Senate Finance Committee had made additions to the bill to extend unemployment benefits, provide money for utility bills for the poor and extend tax rebates to the elderly and veterans even if they had paid no taxes. I didn't listen closely to the debate, but the lineup was virtually the same as in the FISA debate, with opposition to these additions coming from the usual curmudgeons including Mitch McConnell and Kit Bombed.
The vote itself was fascinating, as it flirted with becoming the first counterexample of Glenn's recent article on "bipartisanship". As expected, the Republicans had filed a cloture motion on the Democratic version, so 60 votes were required to move ahead to actually voting on the bill. As the votes were being announced, it was clear that the Democrats were fully united behind the bill. A number of Republicans crossed over to vote in favor of moving ahead. The final vote would have been 59 to 40 in favor of moving ahead, so at the last second Reid changed his vote to yes so that he would be able to bring the matter up for reconsideration. The one Senator not voting was McCain. It seems he gave Clinton and Obama some real campaign ammunition here, since they both showed up and voted for the bill.
That long introduction is meant to set the stage for what I find truly amazing. The AP story reporting on this vote remarkably carries the headline "Republicans join to block stimulus bill" (http://tinyurl.com/28btm3). I find this just jaw-dropping. As the vote failed, I was already preparing to find the "Democrats fail to approve Bush stimulus package" headline. Can it be that the press has started to understand the level of support for the Democrats in the primaries this year and realize they need to change how they look at things? This could get interesting. Lest we get too excited, however, I should point out that very far down in the article they do note McCain did not vote, but they fail to point out that he was the only Senator not voting and thus, he could have moved the bill forward with a yes vote.
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US Customs is seizing laptops and communications devices
Has anyone else noticed that it's the people who complain incessantly about incompetent bureaucrats in government service who are strangely silent and reverent when the said bureaucrat is wearing a sidearm?
I find it quite curious myself.
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Not so off-topic
Speaking of fun and games with 'terrorist threats'...
Here is the latest from Dan Froomkin's White House Watch on the WH's shape-shifting on torture. Sure we torture but its not torture....and we will never do it again until we do but it will never be torture because torture is only torture when brown people do it to white people. In otherwords, this is not 'torture, its e-n-h-a-n-c-e-d i-n-T-e-r-r-o-r-G-a-t-i-o-n.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog
/2008/02/06/BL2008020602244.html
And here's the kicker: "Asked whether the White House's reasoning was that torture is illegal, the attorney general has certified that the interrogation practices are legal, therefore those practices are not torture, Fratto replied: 'Sure.'"
....'Sure.'
Is that a flippant enough response for you?
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The reason X rays still use film..
X ray machines are basically pinhole cameras, optics to image X rays are very complex and incredibly expensive since they must use nested grazing mirrors that work only at very low angles of incidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_optics
The reason film is used is because very large area, high resolution digital sensors are even more expensive than X ray imaging optics.
It's interesting that the X ray film is now often digitized so that image processing techniques can be used to enhance features with low observability. Not to mention that it is common to digitally transmit X ray images to places like India for foreign radiologists to perform the analysis at far lower cost than American radiologists.
A 640 x 480 jpeg is not all that far off in quality from a cheap 110 camera with a plastic lens and costs far less per shot taken.
A Sony A100 DSLR is less expensive in constant dollars than a Nikon FTn was in its day and costs almost infinitely less per shot. Even a Honeywell/Pentax Spotmatic was probably about as expensive as a consumer level DSLR in constant dollars.
Optical image stabilization has never been used on low end digital cameras.
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That would never happen here
2. As time passes, the chance that a warring twosome find each other, and take over the thread, increases.
3. There is a tendency to attack or respond to the stupidest or most controversial thing said, and the longer the comments thread runs for, the stupider this will get.
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bucky1
It's called "thread drift"... And I have a black belt in it :-)
A lot of times I find the side discussions far more interesting than the main topic, which is why I often pursue them with such vigor.
You might think that being obsessive and ADD are mutually exclusive traits, not so.
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Has anyone else noticed that it's the people who complain incessantly about incompetent bureaucrats in government service who are strangely silent and reverent when the said bureaucrat is wearing a sidearm?
Oh yes.
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Northwestwards
Those last two post almost disintegrated into a brawl with bucky1? You don't seem the type who heads towards pub-brawls.
We can feel lucky that bucky1 isn't Becky-o. That a no. Np Kitt-o. You here to bring peace? Let's sure hope so...sigh.
Unless you don't mind the armed-banned cops searching down
your pants at K-mart?
A 'o' is a ','...'bumped'
If your in a no comma mood,
but you may end up a comma singing with Perry Como? okay.
O, Mr. Comma has a name that end with a vowels. Now I understand. No bebop-z
'z'? whoa. be nice. go farm.
Nature takes care of zebras.
Light a Hanukkah candelabra?
We people can be apprehended.
The computer is now confiscated.
No wonder Bush team is constipated.