Well, a lot’s happened to me in the past year or so. I’ve fallen off the wagon with photography but not for good. I’ve been busy buying a house and being married and kind of neglected all the fun things I used to do.
Time to start living again. I’m going to try to get the photoblog back up and running, more galleries up and together, etc. Life is too short.
I added a photoblog to the site after a minor redesign this week, another gallery update, and a general renewal of interest in photography.
So now the general layout is going to be as follows: major projects/adventures are going up on the gallery site, minor day-to-day photography is going up on the photoblog, and text thoughts/rants/etc are going up on this blog right here. Hopefully this will keep me more engaged on a daily basis.
RSS feeds are available for both the photoblog and this blog, so add them to your Google Reader or other RSS feed aggregator.
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For those of us who don’t remember this time period… it seems like a whole different country now. Well, kind of. Not really. There will always be corporations trying to sell things to people and marketing them as being healthy when they clearly aren’t. Or saying they have health benefits when they don’t.
Never take medical advice from someone who is trying to sell you something.
WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security will proceed with the first phase of a controversial satellite-surveillance program, even though an independent review found the department hasn’t yet ensured the program will comply with privacy laws.
Congress provided partial funding for the program in a little-debated $634 billion spending measure that will fund the government until early March. For the past year, the Bush administration had been fighting Democratic lawmakers over the spy program, known as the National Applications Office.
The program is designed to provide federal, state and local officials with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery — but no eavesdropping — to assist with emergency response and other domestic-security needs, such as identifying where ports or border areas are vulnerable to terrorism.
Since the department proposed the program a year ago, several Democratic lawmakers have said that turning the spy lens on America could violate Americans’ privacy and civil liberties unless adequate safeguards were required.
A new 60-page Government Accountability Office report said the department “lacks assurance that NAO operations will comply with applicable laws and privacy and civil liberties standards,” according to a person familiar with the document. The report, which is unclassified but considered sensitive, hasn’t been publicly released, but was described and quoted by several people who have read it.
The report cites gaps in privacy safeguards. The department, it found, lacks controls to prevent improper use of domestic-intelligence data by other agencies and provided insufficient assurance that requests for classified information will be fully reviewed to ensure it can be legally provided.
So let me get this straight, American public/mainstream media: $634 billion spent on a satellite-based spying program that arguably compromises the civil liberties of up to and including everybody in this country = barely a blip on the radar. $700 billion spent to keep the economy alive and keep the country from turning into a flaming wreck on the side of the road is OH MY GOD WE’RE ALL FUCKED? Oh and by the way the $700 billion will mostly be seen again as the economy improves and the investments pay themselves off, whereas the $634 billion is just going to remain a huge hunk of metal in the sky that invades our privacy until it crashes and burns in the atmosphere on re-entry.
Billions for defense contractors = good. Billions to stave off depression = bad. Jesus christ.
IRC quote: “apparently being the most cunning politician in Alaska is like being the smartest guy at a nickelback concert”
So now about a month and a half ago I bought a bike, a ‘92 GSX1100G bought off of the wonderful craigslist. I never thought I’d be interested in riding, say, three months ago. Part of the reason was that I wanted to learn to be a little bit of a mechanic rather than just throwing my hands in the air when something happens in the car or bike or whatever. But there’s just something invigorating about riding versus driving. When you ride, you’re really connected. Part of this is not being walled in behind the steel and glass of the car. But part of it is that because you need to be so much more attentive while driving, you don’t suddenly end up home forgetting all of the little things along the way that took you there by getting lost in your radio or cell phone or whatever. But you’re really just there, man. It’s great. I’ve put a probably four or five hundred miles on already just going for nightly rides.
Unfortunately, it’s starting to get cold - now for the first time I understand feeling jealous of people who live where it’s sunny all year. In a few weeks, I’ll need to garage the bike until probably April or May of next year. Seriously, that sucks. Although it’ll give me time and motivation to do big bike projects - we’re going to take the entire thing apart piece by piece and clean/fix up everything so that it runs like new when it’s let out in the spring. That’s an exciting thought.
So, that’s been my past few months. Politics and motorcycles. The other part of the plan is that the motorcycle should go well with photography. I’ve definitely fallen off with my photography hobby, but I think it’s because I’m really only interested in taking photos when it’s something new. Like on vacations and that sort of thing. It’s tough to force myself out driving to cover the same areas in Syracuse again and again. So with the bike, that’ll encourage me to take more vacations and I’ll bring the camera in tow. Those are two damn good reasons to get out of the house.
It’s awesome. It’s also made me realize that a lot of people say a lot of things a lot better than I ever can (a lot).
If you’ve been watching –>that way–> then you’d see that i’ve been sharing blog posts daily from my RSS subscriptions. So you can subscribe to my shared items that I cull from the dozens of blogs I subscribe to. If I were to subscribe to someone else’s RSS digest, you can see how it can also get pretty meta pretty quickly.
So if anyone out there is curious at all as to what I’m reading, check it out. It’s typically a lot of stuff from lefty blogs and news and videogame sites and science and that sort of thing. Do it.
Love this comic. No comment really necessary.
Many other blogs (and Keith Olbermann last night) have covered this, but hey it’s a blog so I get to point it out too. John McCain fumbled a question on the surge, saying that it was the cause for the Sunni/Anbar Awakening, when in fact the Awakening was happening months before the surge occurred and the surge was only taking place in Baghdad, nowhere near the Anbar province where the Awakening was happening. So basically they are two separate entities, yet McCain was trying to link them - another display of his mastery of foreign policy.
But the big news here is that CBS purposefully edited out his answer to the question. Not the question entirely, mind you; they showed Katie Couric asking the question and basically cut and pasted another of McCain’s answers as if he was giving a different answer than the one he actually gave! Honestly I wouldn’t have quite blown up if it was just the question getting cut. But seriously… lying for the man to pretend that he didn’t give a completely wrong answer? As much as John McCain likes to pretend that it’s actually Obama whom the press loves, the press would never cover up an error like this on Obama’s part. In fact, if you’ve been watching the news lately, you’d see that they are positively salivating at the chance to catch Obama making a gaffe on his overseas trip.
The whole situation of McCain accusing Obama of being the media darling is summed up nicely by Mark Halperin:
This is like Britney Spears complaining that the hype around Miley Cyrus far exceeds her talent.
EDIT:
I’m updating this with text of the questions and responses, both the uncut version and the CBS-aired version with the cut parts bolded.
Original question and answer:
Couric: Senator McCain, Senator Obama says, while the increased number of US troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What’s your response to that?
McCain: I don’t know how you respond to something that is as– such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel MacFarland was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history. Thanks to General Petraeus, our leadership, and the sacrifice of brave young Americans. I mean, to deny that their sacrifice didn’t make possible the success of the surge in Iraq, I think, does a great disservice to young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed.
Edited version (with stock video of “the troops” to cover the splice, might I add):
Katie Couric: Senator McCain, Senator Obama says, while the increased number of US troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What’s your response to that?
McCain: Sen. Obama has indicated that by his failure to acknowledge the success of the surge, that he would rather lose a war than lose a campaign. Thanks to General Petraeus, our leadership, and the sacrifice of brave young Americans. I mean, to deny that their sacrifice didn’t make possible the success of the surge in Iraq, I think, does a great disservice to young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed.
Great cartoon from today’s Tom the Dancing Bug:
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