PolarLava::Blog

While getting ready for work in the morning I often watch the History Channel's Cable in the classroom program.  This show consists largely of a couple of those (usually old) 10-15 minute news reel clips.  I don't know what today's show was, but it wasn't what's listed on their website.  Anyhow, today's show was about the Germans overrunning Poland and France with little effort.  At one point they show Adolph Hitler dining and they are talking about him eating a celebratory meal.  Not just any meal, but a vegetarian meal.  Gasp!  You'd likely have to see it to appreciate it, but the tone was the classic "he's a vegetarian, he's evil and this is one of the reasons for it".  Quite amusing by today's standards, particularly from a vegetarian viewpoint.

Last week I stumbled upon the website Undercaffeinated.  I don't currently subscribe to the right-wing rhetoric that he seems to be infatuated with, but I did find one thing of interest.  In the menu bar there's a link to The Political Compass, that I think everyone should check out.

So I went and took their political test.  The results basically say I'm a "centrist, liberal, libertarian".  I scored: Economic Left/Right: -1.25, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.95.  This is in contrasts with Undercaffeinated's score of Economic Left/Right: 6.12, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.44.  Thus I'd say we share a similar outlook on social issues, but apparently differ on how to achieve the goals…whatever they may be.

It really doesn't matter because our government seems to be on a constant downward (death?) spiral. Congress refuses to kill pork barrel projects and deal with the increasing burden of the national debt and the many entitlement programs.  We really need to reel in spending, but that isn't going to be happening anytime soon.  Gotta get re-elected you know!  Which is quite unfortunate for us, particularly our future generations.  Neither of the two major political parties really seem "gets it" anymore.  Your choice now is the "tax and spend" Democrats or the "tax cut and spend" Republicans.  Can someone please let me know when there's a "tax moderately and stop spending so damn much money we don't have" candidate/party?

Apparently God doesn't like George W. and the people in Florida that voted for him.

Chaffing, rash and/or itch problems boys?  Maybe you're not taking care of things the way you should.  This might help:

8/7/08
And here we are one month shy of four years of using this camera…and I'm here to report that it died this past weekend.  It's not completely dead, but certainly unusable.  It appears that the sensor is shot as it's massively overexposing any picture you attempt to take.  Of course I discovered this out of town, outdoors and at a family reunion this past weekend.  :(  So new camera is definitely on the horizon.  Likely a Canon S5 IS which it the updated 8MP, 12x zoom version of the S1 IS which I've very much have enjoyed.  Another option would be a Canon A650 IS which is a 12MP, 6x zoom.  From doing some research the A650 has a little better picture quality, but I'm having a hard time giving up the zoom range of the S series.  We will see.

A most exciting treat arrived on my doorstep yesterday as my parents bought me a Canon PowerShot S1 IS digital camera for my birthday.  Or as I told them when I called to thank them, my "birthmas" as this should easily cover Christmas as well as my birthday for me.  I've been longing for a digital camera for a good 3 years now, but simply haven't had the cash available for such luxuries.  And a few months ago I found this gem and have been lusting after it ever since.  My best hope was that a new higher mega-pixel version would come out and force the price down.

The reason I desired this camera was the 10x optical zoom.  Most digital cameras are only 3x because you can't take handheld photos beyond that because of image blurring due to camera shake.  But with this one you can because its got this really cool image stabilization feature.  And based on some of the reviews I read (here and here), all of them give this camera very high marks.  So here it is:



And the backside…



That's all the good happy news.  Now the bad stuff…  …more