Les Jones

Reverend Silky Pony’s Sex Tape

Wednesday March 17th, 2010

So now there’s a sex tape of a pregnant Rielle Hunter and John Edwards, AKA TV Preacher, AKA The Breck Girl, AKA Silky Pony. There’s only one person I trust to bring the funny on this story and that’s Jim Treacher:

Wow. I’ve heard of politicians kissing babies, but usually not until they’re born!

Previously

• John Edwards admits Rielle Hunter’s child is his
• John Edwards, TV Preacher
• John Edwards, TV Preacher, Part 2
• John Edwards, TV Preacher, Part 3
• Victor David Hansen is sayin’ what I been bloggin’
• John Edwards Helps Himself to Poverty Funds
• Preacherman Talkin’ on the TV, He’s a-puttin’ Down the SUV

Politics | Link | No Comments |

Social Security Outlook Worsens. Again.

Tuesday March 16th, 2010

Reuters - Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam’s IOUs:

For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.

Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.

Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg’s municipal offices.

Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn’t be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.

I’ve been blogging about Social Security since 2004. The outlooks keeps getting worse, not better. From a 2006 post:

• The projected point at which tax revenues will fall below program costs comes in 2017 — the same as the estimate in last year’s report.
• The projected point at which the Trust Funds will be exhausted comes in 2040 — one year earlier than the projection in last year’s report.

Just two years ago, those same projections were for 2018 and 2042.

The actual time of the first projection will apparently be 2010. Same crisis, but eight years earlier, and at a time when our economy is least able to cope with it. The outlook for Medicare is even worse. Together, those two programs account for about 45% of federal spending and that’s set to rise as the ratio of workers to retirees decreases.

Social Security | Link | 5 Comments |

Cool Site: WhatsThatBug.com

Monday March 15th, 2010

Neat.

People I’m thinking about: Steve K and Rikki.

Nifty, Science | Link | 1 Comment |

Branislaw Malinowski on Science and Magic

Monday March 15th, 2010

“Science is founded on the conviction that experience, effort and reason are valid; magic on the belief that hope cannot fail nor desire deceive.”
– Branislaw Malinowski

Quotes, Science | Link | No Comments |

Conversation About Anderson Cooper

Sunday March 14th, 2010

MELISSA: I didn’t know Anderson Cooper was on 60 Minutes.
ME: Me neither.
MELISSA: I guess they had to bring in some fresh blood.
ME: Since everyone on the show is about to keel over dead.
MELISSA: Do you know who his mother is?
ME: No. Who?
MELISSA: Gloria Vanderbilt.
ME: Freaky.

Tags: conversations

News | Link | No Comments |

A Recycling Experiment

Sunday March 14th, 2010

Sippican the Rag Man:

Lots of stuff is worth recycling. It’s very simple: if someone will pay you to take it, or at the very least defray the cost of disposal with the value of the material, it’s worth recycling. Almost all metals fall into this category, for instance. No fair cheating with government funds.

I’ll give you an experiment you can try at home, whether you’re a raccoon or not. Strip the aluminum siding off your house, or the copper wiring, or steal a few manhole covers, or rip out all your copper plumbing, or cut all the steel fenders off your Prius. Go to the Yellow Pages and find a scrapyard and go there. They will weigh those items on a big scale for you. You don’t even have to get out of your now fenderless vehicle. They’ll weigh your vehicle coming in and out and calculate the difference. They will count money in your hand, because that stuff is worth money.

Step 2 is to repeat the experiment with plastic milk jugs and old newspapers and compare the results of the two experiments.

Hat tip to somebody. Ever open a ton of tabs and then forget where you found something?

And thanks to Sippican for this Penn and Teller “Bullshit” episode on recycling.

P.S. I’m surprised Penn and Tell showed Iron Eyes Cody, the Indian who was in all of those anti-littering ads in the Seventies, without mention that he wasn’t an Indian. Snopes and Wikipedia agree that he was an Italian whose real name was Espera DeCorti.

Environment | Link | No Comments |

“Out of Control Toyota Prius” a Scam?

Saturday March 13th, 2010

Forbes - Toyota Hybrid Horror Hoax:

“On the very day Toyota was making a high-profile defense of its cars, one of them was speeding out of control,” said CBS News–and a vast number of other media outlets worldwide. The driver of a 2008 Toyota Prius, James Sikes, called 911 to say his accelerator was stuck, he was zooming faster than 90 miles per hour and absolutely couldn’t slow down.

It got far more dramatic, though. The California Highway Patrol responded and “To get the runaway car to stop, they actually had to put their patrol car in front of the Prius and step on the brakes.” During over 20 harrowing minutes, according to NBC’s report, Sikes “did everything he could to try to slow down that Prius.” Others said, “Radio traffic indicated the driver was unable to turn off the engine or shift the car into neutral.”

Where to begin?

Well, the patrol car didn’t slow down the Prius; the bumpers never touched. The officers used a loudspeaker to tell Sikes to use the brakes and emergency brake together. He did; the car slowed to about 55 mph. Sikes turned off the engine and coasted to a halt. He stopped the car on his own.

There wasn’t anything wrong with the transmission or the Prius engine button either.

Over a 23-minute period the 911 dispatcher repeatedly pleaded with Sikes to shift into neutral. He simply refused and then essentially stopped talking to her except to say that he thought he could smell his brakes burning.

So why did he do it? Sleuth work at the Web sites Jalopnik.com and Gawker.com reveals that Sikes and his wife Patty in 2008 filed for bankruptcy and are over $700,000 in debt. Among their creditors is Toyota Financial Services for a lease on a 2008 Toyota Prius, with value at time of bankruptcy of $20,494. The Jalopnik Web site shows a copy of Toyota’s secured claims form, though when Jalopnik questioned Sikes by e-mail he denied being behind on his Prius payments.

Sikes also has a history of filing insurance claims for allegedly stolen items that are slowly coming to light. In 2001 he filed a police report with the Merced County Sheriff’s Department for $58,000 in stolen property, including jewelry, a prosumer mini-DV camera and gear, and $24,000 in cash, according to Fox40 in Sacramento. His bankruptcy documents show a 2008 payment of $7,400 for an allegedly stolen saxophone and clothes.

Previously - Edgar Martins, photographer and bullshit artist

LATER: Investigation questions Prius driver’s story: report:

“But the investigation of the vehicle, carried out jointly by safety officials … didn’t find signs the brake had been applied at full force at high speeds over a sustained period of time,” the Journal said, citing three people familiar with the investigation. (Reporting by Ransdell Pierson; editing by Gunna Dickson)

Tags: bullshit artists

Media Behaving Badly, Misc | Link | 3 Comments |

First Infrared Pictures with the Hoya R-72 IR Filter

Friday March 12th, 2010

I dig the outrageous contrast between the black and white ends of the histogram. The IR filter turned this serene city park into something incredibly dramatic. For comparison, here’s a plain Jane non-IR photograph of Natalie, same place same time. You can see from the light on her face that it was a bright, sunny day.

Technical Stuff

I took these on a whim freehand with a Nikon D40 camera, a Nikon 35mm/F1.8 lens, and a Hoya R-72 infrared filter. The D40 is unusual in that it’s sensitive enough to near-infrared light that it’s actually possible to use it to take handheld IR photos. Apparently that would be a pipedream on many other DSLRs.

Infrared pictures are red out of the camera. I converted them to black and white with Google Picasa’s Filtered B&W effect, filtering on green after using the Auto Contrast and Sharpening effects. Filtering on red produces interesting results that are a touch less dramatic, but still interesting and contrasty. Compare the trees above with this version filtered on red.

Since this was a quickie experiment I used automatic mode on the camera. That worked better than expected. The first two photos are at F2.8. The last one pointing into the sun is at F6.4. (WARNING: Don’t look at the sun through an IR filter. It looks black, but it passes near-IR rays that I’ve read can blind you in seconds. I just aimed without looking through the viewfinder.)

For some reason the camera cranked up the ISO to the 600-700 range, rather than using its maximum aperture. I used NeatImage to reduce the ISO noise. Shutter speeds for the first two pictures were a longish 1/30s, which is why the pictures aren’t sharp. For serious IR work I’d use a tripod. The next time I try shooting handheld I’ll use manual exposure and set the aperture to F1.8 with a shutter speed one stop faster.

One thing I quickly learned is that the viewfinder is worthless for IR photography. There’s so little visible light (as opposed to near-IR light) passing through an IR filter that the viewfinder is completely black. I had to aim the camera, take a picture, look at the LCD, and then re-aim and take another picture until I got it right. A camera with LiveView might help with composition. For tripod use it seems that most people compose the picture and then mount the IR filter.

Photos taken at Everett Recreation Center, Maryville TN after Katie’s recital.

Previously - Infrared Photography Links

Tags: infrared photography, nikon, nikon d40

Photos | Link | 1 Comment |

Return of the polarizing filter

Thursday March 11th, 2010

When my camera bag was stolen last year I thought I had lost my Nikon polarizing filter. It was usually mounted on the 70-300MM VR lens which was in the bag.

Losing the filter sucked about as much as losing the lenses. The Nikon C-PLII is the Cadillac of polarizing filters, it wasn’t cheap, and I used it all the time for outdoor photography to block glare and give deeper colors. The fact that it was compatible with Nikon lens caps was a sweet bonus.

When I was taking pictures today after Katie’s recital I found it. It had been attached to the 67mm to 52mm step-down ring all this time. That made my day. I totally love this filter.

Previously - Why every photographer needs a polarizing filter

Tags: nikon

Photos | Link | No Comments |

Google Explains Adwords Quality Scores, Bids and Ranking

Thursday March 11th, 2010

Super clear explanation of how bids and quality scores determine your ad position and cost per click. RSS readers can follow this link.

Here’s another Google video explaining the basics of calculating bids to get a return on investment.

Tags: google adwords

E-commerce | Link | No Comments |

My million dollar furniture idea

Thursday March 11th, 2010

I’m going to open a furniture store that sells nothing but Barcoloungers and La-Z-Boys. I’ll call it “The Recline of Western Civilization.”

Tags: million dollar ideas

Funny Ha-Ha | Link | No Comments |

More Nikon camera/lens rebates

Tuesday March 9th, 2010

Ken Rockwell has a chart that explains all.

Photos | Link | No Comments |

Word of the Day: Patronymic (Geneaology)

Tuesday March 9th, 2010

Found in a comment at Tam’s: “Russians don’t use middle names, they have patronymics. Lenin’s was Ilyich, Stalin’s was Vissarionovich, because their father’s names were Ilya and Vissarion.”

Cool word. From Wikipedia:

A patronym, or patronymic, is a component of a personal name based on the name of one’s father, grandfather or an even earlier male ancestor. A component of a name based on the name of one’s mother or a female ancestor is a matronym. Each is a means of conveying lineage. During singular naming there was a considerable time of loose patronomization before they became a formal part of a person’s name in the 1700s.

In many areas patronyms predate the use of family names. They are common as middle names in Russia, and in Iceland surnames are an exception, with the law in favour of patronyms (or more recently, matronyms).

Many Celtic, English, Iberian, Scandinavian and Slavic surnames originate from patronyms, e.g. Wilson (son of William), Powell (from “ap Hywel“), Fernández (son of Fernando), Rodríguez (son of Rodrigo), Carlsson (son of Carl), Stefanović (son of Stefan) and O’Connor (from “Ó Conchobhair”, meaning grandson/descendant of Conchobhar). Similarly, other cultures which formerly used patronyms have since switched to the more widespread style of passing the father’s last name to the children (and wife) as their own.

Patronyms can simplify or complicate genealogical research. A father’s first name is easily determinable when his children have a patronym; however, migration has frequently resulted in a switch from a patronymic to a family name due to different local customs. Most immigrants adapt as soon as birth, marriage, and death certificates must be written. Depending on the countries concerned, family research in the nineteenth century or earlier needs to take this into account.

In biological taxonomy, a patronym is a specific epithet which is a Latinized surname. These often honor associates of the biologist who named the organism rather than the biologist himself. Examples include Gopherus agassizii, named by James Graham Cooper after Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, and Acacia greggii, named by botanist Asa Gray after explorer Josiah Gregg.

Previous WOTD - Tautology

Tags: geneaology

Word of the Day | Link | No Comments |

Nikon camera/lens deals at Adorama

Tuesday March 9th, 2010

Via NikonRumors. Too many to list here, but this one caught my attention. A Nikon D90 camera (normally $914) and a Nikon 70-300mm VR lens (normally $539) for $1,236. $217 savings. Not bad.

In some cases you can buy the camera with two lenses and get an even better deal.

Tags: frugality

Photos | Link | 1 Comment |

Today’s parenting heart attack

Monday March 8th, 2010

Melissa called me today worried sick about five year old Katie. Three year old Natalie was sick, so Melissa hadn’t wanted to have to take her with to pick up Katie from school, so she called the school and told them to send Katie home on the bus.

The bus came up the street, the bus went down the street. No Katie.

Melissa kept it under control as best she could and called the school. They said Katie wasn’t there, but that sometimes a child will fall asleep in the bus. That’s why at the end of the bus route the driver walks to the back of the bus and checks for kids.

That’s when Melissa called me. I told her to call the school and have them call the bus driver on his cell phone or radio and find out if Katie was in the bus.

She called back. He didn’t have a cell phone. When he got to the end of his route and checked in they could talk to him. “Doesn’t he have a dispatch radio?” I asked.

Just about that time Melissa said she saw the bus coming back up the street. Katie was on it. The bus driver said he had finished his route and was heading back when he saw Katie’s head pop up in his rearview mirror.

Melissa asked Katie, “Why didn’t you get off the bus on our street?” Her answer? Her friend Abby was reading her a story and she wanted to find out how it ended. “You still should have gotten off the bus!” “But I wanted to see where the bus went.”

So, new rule. Either get off the bus when you’re supposed to, or no more riding the bus (which Katie loves).

Home Life | Link | 2 Comments |

Word of the Day: Tautology

Monday March 8th, 2010

From Wikipedia:

In rhetoric, a tautology is an unnecessary or unessential (and sometimes unintentional) repetition of meaning, using different and dissimilar words that effectively say the same thing twice (often originally from different languages). It is often regarded as a fault of style and was defined by Fowler as “saying the same thing twice.” It is not apparently necessary or essential for the entire meaning of a phrase to be repeated. If a part of the meaning is repeated in such a way that it appears as unintentional, clumsy, or lacking in dexterity, then it may be described as tautology. On the other hand, a repetition of meaning which improves the style of a piece of speech or writing is not necessarily described as tautology.

Previous WOTD - Charticle

Word of the Day | Link | 2 Comments |

What magazines (clips) for a Commando Mark 9?

Saturday March 6th, 2010

From an email:

I’m searching for a clip for a commando mark 9. 9mm semi-auto. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Jimmy

The Commando Mark 45 uses Thompson submachinegun magazines. What does the Mark 9 use?

Tags: commando rifle

Guns | Link | 1 Comment |

NASA/GISS has been adjusting temperatures since 2000

Thursday March 4th, 2010

Thanks to emails revealed via FOIA requests, we now know that NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies has been adjusting satellite temperature data since 2000.

But adjusting temperatures which way? Down? Sideways? In three-dimensional space?

I’m kidding. Of course they adjusted them up.

Climategate: This Time It’s NASA

In another email, he reveals that NASA had inflated its temperature data since 2000 on a questionable basis. “[NASA's] assumption that the adjustments made the older data consistent with future data… may not have been correct,” he says. “Indeed, in 490 of the 1057 stations the USHCN data were up to 1C colder than the corresponding GHCN data, in 77 stations the data were the same, and in the remaining 490 stations the USHCN data were warmer than the GHCN data.”

And there’s this:

The emails reveal that GISS, like CRU, has done a poor job of preserving and managing its data. Although there is no evidence that GISS has destroyed its data, as CRU did in the late 1980s, Dr. Reto Ruedy of GISS admits in an email that “[The United States Historical Climate Network] data are not routinely kept up-to-date.”

Who cares about preserving your data when science is just a figleaf to further your agenda?

Tags: climategate, global warming

Environment | Link | 3 Comments |

Alan Gura

Wednesday March 3rd, 2010

“Justice Sotomayor, States may have grown accustomed to violating the rights of American citizens, but that does not bootstrap those violations into something that is constitutional.”
– Alan Gura today in arguments before the Supreme Court

Guns, Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Link | No Comments |

It’s true what they say about Baptists

Tuesday March 2nd, 2010

Jews don’t recognize Jesus as the Son of God.
Protestants don’t recognize the Pope as the Ruler of the Church.
Baptists don’t recognize each other in a liquor store. *

Tags: iz funny cuz iz true

Funny Ha-Ha | Link | 4 Comments |

Comics and Politics

Monday March 1st, 2010

Tam notes the politics at play in comic books.

Looking back I realize that Spiderman and Daredevil were bigtime bleeding heart liberals despite being anonymous vigilantes who dispensed rough justice outside of the law.

In one storyline Daredevil decides he’s had enough of Punisher’s violent, vigilante ways so Daredevil … (wait for the delicious irony) shoots Punisher and sends him to jail, where he’s targeted for murder by everyone he’s ever put away.

Never mind that Daredevil never felt the need to shoot any actual bad guys. Never mind that Daredevil dropped Bullseye to his intended death to avenge Elektra’s murder. Daredevil was indignant enough about Punisher’s marginally-more vigilante, slightly-more violent methods to pop a cap in his ass.

Comic Books | Link | 2 Comments |

Abraham Lincoln

Thursday February 25th, 2010

“The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is difficult to verify their authenticity.”
– President Abraham Lincoln

Via Unc.

Funny Ha-Ha, Quotes | Link | 1 Comment |

The Internet called. It wants another Web site.

Wednesday February 24th, 2010

The new one should launch tomorrow after tons of work. Who knew getting great performance out of a custom WordPress theme could take this much time?

Not long after this I hope to find some time to blog regularly. Soon, me Droogies.

Tech | Link | No Comments |

Knoxville Social Media Summit 2010

Wednesday February 24th, 2010

It’s today. Hope to see some of you there. Twitter hashtag is #knoxsummit.

East Tennessee | Link | No Comments |

All In One SEO Pack for WordPress is a Pig

Tuesday February 23rd, 2010

I’m just about to launch a new WordPress site at work and I’m tuning everything to be as fast as possible. In trying to track down inconsistent performance I installed WP Tuner and discovered that the All In One SEO Pack plugin is sometimes driving up database loads like crazy, even with half of the options disabled.

On this page it’s adding 4.9 seconds to the page loading time. More, actually, since wp-blog-header uses less database time when AIOSP is deactivated.

On other pages AIOSP is only adding a couple of hundred milliseconds to the page loads.

When I set WP Tuner to “Show Everything” so I can see all queries, it’s obvious that AIOSP is doing SQL queries for every link on the page. Why I have no idea.

If I can’t make AIOSP behave then I’m going to figure out how to replicate the features. Adding nofollow tags to the appropriate pages is pretty easy. My theme framework can insert canonical URLs. I think I can create meta descriptions via custom fields and then code that into the templates.

P.S. When I contacted tech support at my Web host about sluggish performance one of their first questions was if I was using an SEO plugin. I had previously tried SEO Ultimate and it had the same problem.

Tags: wordpress

Tech | Link | 3 Comments |