Les Jones

Home Life > Katie's Very Important Lesson About Caterpillars

Felix the cat makes has a cameo.

A&E > Free NIN MP3s

You can download free MP3s of The Slip and the first nine tracks of Ghosts. For The Slip there are even some higher-quality-than-CD formats available, which is amazing, seeing as how they're going to turn around and ask money for the CD in July.

Did I mention it's free?

Food & Drink > I Miss Frank and Stein's

Hot dog pictures. Via the often not safe for work Fantasygoat.

Guns > I Like Cameras. I Like Guns.

But cameras that look like guns just seem like a bad idea.

Looks to be about a 400mm. You'd definitely want the recoil pad when you fired that sucker.

Via Breda via Xavier Breath.

Home Life > Natalie Having Lunch with a Camel

Photo by Melissa. Taken with a Panasonic FZ5 at the Knoxville Zoo.

Population > WaPo Notices Japan's Population Decline

Washington Post - Japan Steadily Becoming a Land Of Few Children:

The economic and social consequences of these trends are difficult to overstate. Japan, now the world's second-largest economy, will lose 70 percent of its workforce by 2050 and economic growth will slow to zero, according to a report this year by the nonprofit Japan Center for Economic Research.

Population shrinkage began three years ago and is gathering pace. Within 50 years, the population, now 127 million, will fall by a third, the government projects. Within a century, two-thirds of the population will be gone.

In what is now being called a "super-aging" society, department and grocery stores have recorded declining sales for a decade -- and new car sales have fallen for 18 consecutive years.

Rural Japan, thus far, has borne the brunt of the slide. In depopulated small towns, stores are closing, governments are desperate for tax revenue and there are chronic shortages of doctors and nurses. The government is subsidizing the development of robots as caregivers for the old.

There's always the hope that Japan's government will change the policies that led to the baby bust, but it may not be pretty. People have fewer children because they depend more on government programs than the family, and because of the taxes required to fund the programs they have no choice but to have fewer children. Japan is likely to have to cut those government retirement and health programs or else the burden on the ever-shrinking working population will grow more burdensome. Else young people will realize they're better off taking their college degrees and their passports to a country that doesn't punish them for the poor decisions foisted on them by politicians who will have passed on by then. Either way, one generation or another is going to have to pay for those decisions.

Dear Lazyweb > Mystery PC Beeping Solved

Dear Lazyweb,

The mystery PC beep has been solved. It was the NetGear WiFi card after all. I didn't see any settings in the program for sounds, but my wife discovered that if you right-clicked on the menu bar icon there was a check mark next to "Enable 'Internet Connected' Notification." Once she unchecked it the problem went away.

Photos > Dragonflies with the New 70-300mm Lens

This lens makes it easy to throw the background out of focus at large apertures. In this case the depth of field is so short that the eyes are in focus but the tail is a little blurry. Next time I'll try a little bit smaller aperture and a little bit longer exposure to get a slightly greater depth of field.

Environment > "Undoing America's Ethanol Mistake"

A U.S. Senator is calling for a freeze in ethanol subsidies rather than continuing on the present course of expanding them through 2022.

On December 19, 2007, President Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act. This legislation had several positive features, including higher fuel standards for cars and greater investment in renewable energies, such as solar power. However, the bill required a huge spike in the biofuel production requirement from 7.5 billion in 2012 to 36 billion gallons in 2022. This was a well-intentioned measure, but it was also impractical. Nearly all our domestic corn and grain supply is needed to meet this mandate, robbing the world of one of its most important sources of food.

We are already seeing the ill effects of this measure. Last year, 25 percent of America’s corn crop was diverted to produce ethanol. In 2008, that number will grow to 30-35 percent, and it will soar even higher in the years to come. Furthermore, the trend of farmers supplanting other grains with corn is decreasing the supply of numerous agricultural products. When the supply of those products goes down, the price inevitably goes up. Subsequently, the cost of feeding farm and ranch animals increases and the cost is passed to consumers of beef, poultry, and pork products. Since February 2006, the price of corn, wheat, and soybean has increased by more than 240%. Rising food prices are hitting the pockets of lower-income Americans and people who live on fixed incomes.

While the blame for higher costs shouldn’t rest exclusively with biofuels – drought and rising oil costs are contributing factors – the expansion of biofuels has been a major source of the problem. The International Food Policy Research Institute estimates that biofuel production accounts for between one-quarter and one-third of the recent spike in global commodity prices. For the first time in 30 years, food riots are breaking out in many parts of the globe, including major countries such as Mexico, Pakistan, and Indonesia. The fact that America’s energy policies are creating global instability should concern the leaders of both political parties.

Hat tip to DRK at Patterico.com.

Photos > Danged Good Picture from a Cell Phone

Check it out.

See also:
- Phun With Photoshop and Phone Cameras

Quotes > Pope St. Gregory I

"Be not anxious about what you have, but about what you are."
  -- Pope St. Gregory I

Word of the Day > Word of the Day: EBITDA

EBITDA - Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization. Pronounced "ee bit dah." A non-GAAP means of accounting that helps make unprofitable businesses sound profitable, basically. It was popular in the dot-com era. More info at Investopedia.

And that WOTD is prelude to Phil Greenspun's post on Enron, in which he explains how bogus EBITDA is:

Conspiracy of Fools chronicles one of the discussions about EBITDA among Enron senior managers. One guy pointed out to Rebecca Mark, a Harvard Business School graduate star of the company, that EBITDA was meaningless because one could improve EBITDA simply by borrowing money at 10 percent and investing it in T-Bills at 5 percent and that was essentially what Mark was doing. She was borrowing money at X% to purchase businesses that would return no more than (X-4)% in a best-case scenario. This fattened her paycheck, but led the company towards bankruptcy.

And from a commenter at Phil's I found Malcom Gladwell's New Yorker piece, Open Secrets: Enron, intelligence, and the perils of too much information. He makes the case that Enron gave investors all the information they needed to see the problems with the company's business, information that an investigative reporter sifted through, prompting Enron's downfall.

I think Gladwell lets Enron off too easily, but it's probably true that many modern financial transactions are so large and complex that they're impenetrable. Warren Buffett said as much in a recent Fortune interview:

Your OFHEO example implies you're not too optimistic about regulation.

Finance has gotten so complex, with so much interdependency. I argued with Alan Greenspan some about this at [Washington Post chairman] Don Graham's dinner. He would say that you've spread risk throughout the world by all these instruments, and now you didn't have it all concentrated in your banks. But what you've done is you've interconnected the solvency of institutions to a degree that probably nobody anticipated. And it's very hard to evaluate. If Bear Stearns had not had a derivatives book, my guess is the Fed wouldn't have had to do what it did.

Do you find it striking that banks keep looking into their investments and not knowing what they have?

I read a few prospectuses for residential-mortgage-backed securities - mortgages, thousands of mortgages backing them, and then those all tranched into maybe 30 slices. You create a CDO by taking one of the lower tranches of that one and 50 others like it. Now if you're going to understand that CDO, you've got 50-times-300 pages to read, it's 15,000. If you take one of the lower tranches of the CDO and take 50 of those and create a CDO squared, you're now up to 750,000 pages to read to understand one security. I mean, it can't be done. When you start buying tranches of other instruments, nobody knows what the hell they're doing. It's ridiculous.

Previous WOTD - WORM

Guns > Whacky Clandestine Shotguns

Colt Defender and Winchester Liberator - compact, multi-barrelled shotguns designed for spooks by Robert Hillberg.

The Colt Defender was the logical successor to Hillberg's earlier liberator gun. With the war in Southeast Asia winding down, Hillberg sought to design a weapon that would have appeal to other purchasers - primarily law enforcement agencies. Hillberg believed his initial concept was sound, but sought to increase its versatility. The final design was completed in 1967. In designing the new gun, Hillberg reverted to the 20 gauge 3 inch magnum. He felt that this gave a more compact and easily controlled weapon with nearly identical hit potential and lethality to the 12 gauge. The new weapon was nothing if not visually impressive. Eight 12 inch barrels were joined together around a central axis. The gun possessed the familiar pistol grip revolver action mechanism with a second forward pistol grip for instinctive shooting. Overall length was 17.75 inches with a weight of 8.6 pounds. The weapon was composed of an aluminum alloy receiver with steel inserts and was covered in an epoxy paint finish.

The final version of the weapon was available in four configurations: One version contained a receptacle for a canister of tear gas between the barrels. Pressing the trigger on the foregrip allowed the shooter to spray the target with teargas, giving him a non-lethal option. Another version incorporated a barrel selector on the rotating striker on the hammer. This allowed the shooter to select any one of the eight barrel. This meant that the weapon could be loaded with a variety of ammunition and the shooter could select which round was most appropriate for the situation in question. A third variant include both features, and the fourth had neither.

Photos > Bad Reviews for 1 Way Photo; My Review of Abe's of Maine

Remember when I asked about zoom lenses? I decided to go with the Nikon 70-300mm. Via an Adsense ad on my own blog I saw lowpricedigital (no love, so no link) which advertised the lens for $379. Turns out they're a price comparison service and it was 1 way photo that had the $379 price (again, no link, no love, for reasons that will become clear).

Luckily before I ordered I did a quick Google and found dozens of horrible reviews for 1 way photo:

Do NOT do business with these cheats. They advertise low prices, take your order, then call you to "verify" your order. During the call they tell you lies about how the product will perform poorlyu unless you upgrade the memory card, add a lens, buy the filter, etc. - and then they give you prices for these "additions" that are 4-5 times what you can buy them for at any retailer. They will tell you a camera doesn't come with a battery or charger, when the manufacturer says it's included in the box. It's all about scamming you.

Another:

This company's prices are fictitious. They have no intention of letting you buy the item at the stated price. If you resist their aggressive up-selling your item is now suddenly back-ordered. This will give them some time to work on selling you more accessories which should rightfully be packaged with the product. Example: I tried to order a Nikon D80 w/18-135 lens at the unbelievable price of $710.00 (I know, I know, if it sounds too good.......). After looking carefully I couldn't find the "Whats in the box" button common with most electronics retailers. Well, they don't want to say "whats in the box" because they have removed alot of it and will now attempt to sell it back to you at an OUTRAGEOUS price.

And one more:

LIARS, misrepresentation, wrongful advertising, etc... they claim to have "in stock" but they DO NOT have the items (I first ordered the Canon EOS40d and later the Nikon D300 - similar stories on both accounts!!!). A friend subsequently told me that he'd heard of someone who received the body, but no battery pack, no charger, not even a cover for the lens mount - to which they said that was how they kept their low prices. THIEVES!!!

And possible aliases:

FYI - I hate scumbags like these.... in the past I was burned with adoramacamera same crap, but I was actually a gov contractor trying to buy product for our military and couldn't fulfill my contract and they never delivered but took the money of course. I found this info and thought it would be helpful- J&V Marketing Inc., d.b.a 1 Way Photo, 1WayPhoto.com, Lenses N' More, LensesNMore.com 5407-5409 18th Ave, Borough Park Address from web site. Corporate name from front door. Entity database has 5409 address. The 5407 number appeared at one time on ShopCartUSA and would be the wider red door. The white one at the far left is labeled 5405. Lenses N' More has this address in their whois. http://donwiss.com/pictures/brooklynstores/#out

Lots more at that link. Me, I won't be buying from them and I've blocked lowpricedigital and 1wayphoto from buying Google Adsense ads on my site.

Abe's of Maine

I bought the lens for $453 from Abe's of Maine, which has been around a long time and has good reviews. Here's mine. I called and confirmed that the item was in stock and would ship the same day. (I had passed on another store that was 15 bucks cheaper because they would only commit to shipping the item in "three to four days.") Their overnight shipping charge was very reasonable. As soon as I placed my order I received an order confirmation email.

A little later I got a call from Abe's to confirm my shipping and billing address. Then they tried to sell me $70 worth of filters. I politely declined. They asked again, and I declined again. Within an hour I had shipping confirmation and a UPS tracking number.

The box arrived when they said it would, but it wasn't packed especially well. The box looked like it had been through UPS a couple of times before and the package felt loose. Inside it was padded with inflatable plastic, but the boxed lens was wedged up against a corner where it could be damaged from either side.

For all this I only saved $20 or so compared to buying from Amazon with my Amazon Prime membership (unlimited free two-day shipping for $79 a year). I'd buy from Abe's again, but only if I could save more than $20 over Amazon's price.

Dear Lazyweb > Why is My PC Beeping All the Time?

Dear Lazyweb,

My new PC beeps pretty frequently. (It sounds like bing-bing or ching-ching - two pleasant notes.) OS is Windows XP Home Edition SP2. I have a Netgear wireless card with a mildly hyperactive status bar icon. I checked its prefs but didn't see any sound settings.

It happens when nothing is running except Firefox. It isn't happening on the hour or half hour. There are not alert boxes or anything. It's happened as far as I can tell ever since I got the computer.

What's up with that?

UPDATE: Mystery solved. It was the NetGear wireless card after all.

Environment > Celebrity Environmental Hypocrisy

Daily Mail - You hippy-crites! When it comes to saving the planet do celebrities practise what they preach?:

John Travolta

WHAT HE SAYS: "Everyone can do their bit," Travolta said when he visited Britain last year to promote the launch of his little-seen movie Wild Hogs, and went on to declare that global warming is "a very valid issue - we have to think about alternative methods of fuel".

WHAT HE DOES: Travolta, a licensed pilot, owns five private planes - a customised £2million Boeing 707, three Gulfstreams and a Learjet - which he keeps in his garden next to a private runway.

When he was flying himself back to the U.S. the staggering scale of his environmental vandalism was revealed when he landed the 707 in Ireland to refuel and it was reported that he was the only person on board the flying stretch-limo. In a normal configuration, a 707 can carry 150 passengers.

Media Behaving Badly > NYTimes Admits Flawed Reporting on Wright/Obama

When Barack Obama made his gaffe on Pennslvania's bitter voters the NY Times reported on the controversy, but demoted coverage of what was actually said. Now the Times' public editor has issued a mea culpa:

While The Times was aggressive with its coverage on the Web, it was slow to fully engage the Wright story in print and angered some readers by putting opinion about it on the front page — a review by the television critic of his appearances on PBS, at an N.A.A.C.P. convention and at the National Press Club — before ever reporting in any depth what he actually said, how it squared with reality and what it might mean as Democrats ponder Obama as their potential nominee.

Carol Hebb of Narberth, Pa., spoke for many when she wrote that she found the newspaper’s initial coverage “very strange.” If editors did not think Wright’s remarks were newsworthy enough to be on the front page, she asked, why did they put the review by Alessandra Stanley there? “I was very surprised that her piece was not accompanied by a ‘factual’ article reporting the content of Mr. Wright’s comments more completely and perhaps adding some meaningful context.”

And for the record, Obama didn't just say that rural voters were bitter, or that they clung to guns and religion, which is the sanitized version being peddled today. He also said that rural voters clung to racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. Here's the complete Obama quote:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Blogging > Should You Blog Under Your Own Name?

Marko and SayUncle are blogging about blogging under your own name and anonymously/pseudonymously, respectively. Uncle refers to it as pseudonymity, because many people know who he is. As we'll see that's probably the correct point of view.

I understand why some people don't want to blog under their own names. Truth be told, blogging under a pseudonym should be the default decision for most people. You can always reveal your name later. Some of the reasons you might not want your name out there include the potential for stalking or for future employers searching for your name to see what you've been up to online, which is happening more and more.

Having said that there's a downside to pseudonymity that's rarely discussed. If you assume most people won't know who you are you're more likely to blog about topics you wouldn't otherwise, to reveal details you shouldn't, or to behave in a manner or tone that you wouldn't if your words were attached to your name for all the world to see.

Example. In comments at one blog I was surprised by a person's anti-handgun stance and said something to the effect of but you've got a so-and-so pistol yourself. His response was gee, thanks for telling everyone I've got that gun, to which I responded, dude, the only reason I know you've got it is because you told the whole world about it on your blog. His reply was, yeah, but back then I was anonymous so I didn't care that people knew I owned a gun. Once he started blogging under his own name he regretted having revealed that detail when he was writing under his nome de blog.

If you blog pseudonymously your name may not be splashed on the page, but inevitably some people will learn who you are. At that point concealment of your true name becomes a matter of Internet etiquette - most people will respect your pseudonymity unless you piss them off. At that point the threat of revealing your identity becomes leverage that can be used to intimidate you.

Secrecy is fragile. Once it's broken all its protections are gone forever. If secrecy is your only defense you only have one fragile wall of protection. It's probably best to use discretion as your primary defense, with secrecy as a second wall in case your discretion fails.

On my blog my name is right there in the URL. Consequently I try to measure what I say and reveal details about my personal life and my family selectively. It would be trivial to find me in the real world, but I don't worry too much about that because I'm a guy, a big guy, and I also blog about the fact that I'm armed. (Conversely, blogging about guns could become a problem if a future employer who didn't like guns Googled my name.) For others, the threat of harassment or stalking is very real. For a single, unarmed woman the problem looms much larger.

I also know that some people I work with read what I write. That's why I only talk about work in the most general terms and don't gossip about my company or co-workers. If there's something at work I don't like I get it out of my system the old-fashioned way: I complain about it to my wife.

Photos > Bearded Iris

Evening picture above and morning picture below. We thought we had a lot of irises last year, but this year we had many times as many. I cut three dozen flowers out of our garden to take to work and the girls' preschool and even after that we still had a bumper crop.

Blogging > Congratulations to LesJones.com's 3 Millionth Visitor

who won a lifetime supply of net.fame, the San Francisco Treat.

Home Life > Natalie Beating a Drum at the East TN Discovery Center

This shooting toddlers from above thing works pretty well.

(And I don't know what that black stuff is on her arm. Something she, uh, discovered, I guess.)

Comic Books > Iron Man Opens Today

95% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. I've going to let my hopes get up for potential dashing.

Quotes > Mark Steyn on Obama and Wright

"Imagine if Colin Powell, the genuinely post-racial man Obama merely claims to be, had run in 1996. Would the campaign have dwindled down to Aids conspiracy theories and the genetic predisposition of clapping rhythms? No. Because that's not where Colin Powell lives. There are no Jeremiah Wrights in his life. This problem is of Obama's making, and it's killing him."
 -- Mark Steyn

Blogging > Nashville Knucklehead is a Dirty Stinking Liar...

when he says he's quitting blogging.

He'll be back. They all come back.

Blogging > Hey, Les, What's With All the Not Blogging?

Had a bad case of allergies the past few weeks. That was mostly it. Then there was Photoshop class, computer problems, shopping for a new computer, and setting up a new computer. Now the new computer is up and I've about licked my allergies, so all's well.

Guns > Gun Control, or, I Like Those Odds

Chris Byrne - Never tell me the odds:

Each year in the United States, there are 26-30,000 deaths by firearm. As of 2006, Roughly 55% of them are suicides (the number varies greatly year to year, between 40% and 60%).

Of the remaining 10,000 to 18,000, somewhere between 60% and 80% (depending on the year) are one felon killing another (according to the FBI).

The number of non-felons killed (other than suicides) using a gun in the US is anywhere from 2,000 to 7,000 a year (again, highly variable year to year). About 20% of those are accidents, and 80% are murders. Of those murders approximately 80% were committed by people with felony records.

Whenever someone quotes statistics on U.S. gun deaths it's important to remember that more than half of those deaths are suicides. Chris has more stats comparing gun deaths to other causes of death in the U.S. By his count if you don't plan on committing suicide and you're not a felon you're more likely to be struck by lightning or hit by a train than to be killed by a gun.

East Tennessee > WBIR's New Site, Complete with Pistol-Packin' Fun Zone

WBIR has a snazzy new Web site with forums, including a guns and gun rights forum.

I don't think I've mentioned it before, but kudos to Jake Yost at WBIR for reaching out to the shooting community. He even signed up for an account at The High Road a while back to talk to gun owners following a WBIR report on handgun carry permits in Tennessee.

Media Behaving Badly > Sarcastro on the Miley Cyrus Photos

I'm with Sarcastro on the Vanity Fair controversy:

First problem I have with this is, she isn’t topless. Not that I really want to see Hannah’s little Montanas, but if there is faux-outrage over supposedly topless photos, shouldn’t she be a little more, you know, topless? Her back is exposed. Her front is covered with a sheet. No boob, no foul.

What is the responsibility of the media in all of this? It is similar to a self-aggrandizing interview Paul McCartney did back in the 60’s where he admitted quite openly to doing all sorts of drugs, much to the chagrin of the rest of the band who were far ahead in the drug taking. The interviewer asked about his responsibility to the Beatles’ young fans. McCartney rightly countered that it was up to the press to publicize it or not. If they were so worried about “the kids” maybe they shouldn’t air the interview.

I don’t see any difference here. If the high moral pillars of decency that make up the news departments across the country were interested in the impact that pictures (from a magazine that 90 out of 100 Disney Channel viewers have never heard of) would have on young, impressionable girls, then why did they show them to the point of parody on every news program in the last 48 hours?

Photos > NY Times Request for Flying Squirrel Pic Explained

The other day I mentioned that the New York Times had asked me for a flying squirrel picture to use in their Dining section. Countertop discovered why they wanted the picture.

The New York Times - To Save a Species, Serve It for Dinner:

SOME people would just as soon ignore the culinary potential of the Carolina flying squirrel or the Waldoboro green neck rutabaga. To them, the creamy Hutterite soup bean is too obscure and the Tennessee fainting goat, which keels over when startled, sounds more like a sideshow act than the centerpiece of a barbecue.

But not Gary Paul Nabhan. He has spent most of the past four years compiling a list of endangered plants and animals that were once fairly commonplace in American kitchens but are now threatened, endangered or essentially extinct in the marketplace. He has set out to save them, which often involves urging people to eat them.

Mr. Nabhan’s list, 1,080 items and growing, forms the basis of his new book, an engaging journey through the nooks and crannies of American culinary history titled “Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods” (Chelsea Green Publishing, $35).

[...]

He supports the notion that you’ve got to eat something to save it.

“If you’re keeping them for a museum piece,” he said, “you’ve just signed their death warrant.”

But Mr. Nabhan doesn’t want people to eat everything on his list. The idea of eater-based conservation, which holds that to save something, one has to eat it, works well for agricultural products and some wild foods like clams that benefit from regular harvesting. For some wild species, however, like the foot-long, pink-fleshed Carolina flying squirrel, a harvest would create too much pressure on a tiny population.

The squirrels used to make regular appearances in Appalachian game-meat stews. But as their forests declined, so did the squirrel population; they are now on state and federal endangered species lists. Even if catching them were legal, Mr. Nabhan says a trapper would be hard-pressed to bag more than half a dozen a season.

Because the squirrel was once so important to the diets of North Carolina and east Tennessee, Mr. Nabhan included it on his list, along with a recipe for the thick vegetable stew called Kentucky burgoo.

It calls for corn, lima beans, spring water and two pounds of cubed and fried squirrel meat. Just don’t use flying squirrel. At least not yet.

Misc > Least Likely Hobby

First, read about the musician's hobby:

And the 57-year-old hopes he will now have more time to indulge in his favourite hobby - collecting memorabilia from the Battle Of The Alamo, the historical 1836 clash between the Republic of Mexico and the rebel Texan forces in San Antonio, Texas.

He says, "It's not that unusual for a man of my age who grew up reading (books about American hero) Davy Crockett."

Now guess who it is. Answer here. Didn't see that one comin', didja?