My sense of things after talking to non political folks I know: Bernie might just get traction

No one really seems to know who he is at the moment but when I point out a few things about Bernie then metaphorical eyebrows go up...

I'm part of an informal and ongoing morning coffee get together group at a local breakfast joint and sometimes politics comes up. Most of the people I know in the group are or were small contractors/subs and of course they tend to lean Republican but are also practical minded because if you're not you don't stay in business as a sub, all in all a cynical group that tends to look for the gotchas in things but isn't necessarily informed beyond what they need for work and hobbies. None of them really follow politics to any great extent so there are a lot of misconceptions floating around that I try to gently correct. Posting online a lot has made me well informed and conscious of choosing my words carefully and I'm not too bad at it in real life now.

So I brought the conversation around to Presidential candidates and then after a bit of talk showed a couple of short video clips on my phone of Bernie speaking and mentioned a few things about him, like he's been in politics since 1971 but his net worth is actually less than some of these guys, he's Jewish but it's not a big deal to him, he was against the Iraq war, etc.

Bernie's words ring true to them, they are primed to pass off anything they hear from a politician as just so much BS but Bernie's words seem more genuine to the ones I bothered or had the chance to show him to. The waitresses too are impressed, no one is more cynical than a fifty year old waitress and if you can make their ears perk up you have a smooth line indeed or are actually genuine. I'm friendly, sympathetic and a dependable tipper so the waitresses are primed to be receptive to what I have to say.

I have been thinking that the way Bernie looks made him unelectable and I haven't really got on his or anyone's bandwagon all the way, I'm not much of a bandwagon type person in the first place. Now I'm starting to think Bernie might just capture the imagination of the public.

The Macro Fly

Wandered around with the macro rings on the camera some more today and got these shots I thought were interesting, the caterpillar might be an inch long, the fly is much smaller.

Macro: Colorful little spiders in garden webs

I got a pair of macro extension rings yesterday and had to rush out today and try them, I found two of these little spiders in different places around the yard, these shots are several times life size.

Sony NEX w kit 18-55 on a 10mm macro extension, f14 and 1/200 or so at ISO 6400. I had a bunch of blurry shots but managed to get get a few good ones.

If you don't like spiders don't scroll down...

Imagine a Bulworth come forth today

I guessing a lot of DU has seen the movie, it stars Warren Beatty as a politician who finally tells the truth about what's happening behind closed doors. Someone who comes to the point of not giving a damn any more and decides to unload every dirty thing he knows, every back room deal, every quid pro quo.

It's a movie that's not only funny but sad and terrifying and I wonder if it would make any difference at all if a high level politician actually did it.

John Scalzi: On Being Poor

I posted this in GD a couple of years ago, now that we have more poor people than then I thought it appropriate to post again.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/

New Anger-Powered Cars May Revolutionize The Way We Drive

Flat Earthers deserve more respect than either theists or atheists for their ideas

By which I mean that Flat Earthers at least have some objective evidence for their ideas, you can look around and clearly see that the Earth is indeed flat with your own eyes.

On the other hand neither theists nor atheists have the slightest bit of evidence visible or otherwise to inform their ideas.

Yes, yes, we all "know" the Earth is round because we have been taught that but how many of us have direct proof of it? How many of us have gone out and measured the diameter of our planet? For that matter how many of us would have a clue how to go about proving the Earth is round to an Earthbound misfit skeptic?

Garden flowers with a new old lens

Spring has come and almost gone here it seems (it was 88 degrees yesterday) but we still have some flowers left in the garden.

Lens is a recently acquired old Vivitar 28mm f2.0 in an M42 mount I have adapted to my NEX C3.. At f2.0 it's a hot mess but by 2.8 it's cleaned up nicely, all of these shots were @ f2.8 and ISO 200









And here is shot backlit by the sun and then HDR processed..

Is religion a science?

Since some people believe that other people treat science as their religion then does it also follow that religion is a science?

Venus and Mars are alright tonight

Looking directly to the West about forty five minutes after sundown last night, Venus is the bright object at the very top corner while Mars is considerably dimmer about three quarters of the way down and a little to right of the center, the bright spot in the sky immediately over the trees on the right is a plane and the star near the right edge of the frame is Sheratan. Tipping the camera at a diagonal was the only way I could get everything I wanted into the frame with the lens I was using.

NEX C3, 4 sec & ISO 400, Auto Rikenon 55 1.4 @ f2.8. That exposure left me with a very bright frame which I darkened with the curves tool in Paintshop Pro to approximate the way the sky looked to the eye, the stars and planets show up much better that way than doing just a "correct" exposure in camera which would have been about one second.