Nugland

Hey, all (all, like, four of you),

In case you haven’t heard about this plan already: I am in week two of a six week ‘vacation’ (I use the quotes because I’m sitting in Munith, not on a beach somewhere) that has, as its goal, the end of my cigarette smoking nicotine addiction.

I am taking the time off because, A, I get so miserable while trying to… Continue reading

How were all the books I want to read ever written? The people who wrote these books must have wanted to read, like, a bazillion other books about all the stuff they were interested in.

Today, I cleaned the bathroom and got through about 3.72% of The Third Reich at War. I’m proud of the fact that I read Richard Evans’ two previous books, but that dude freaking… Continue reading

I am a self-identified liberal, and I know in my heart that voting for Obama will be my best opportunity to express my feelings in November 2012, but I am starting to think that another (semi-)serious way to express my current feelings would be to not vote at all in 2012.… Continue reading

(One among many, but this is the real deal-breaker for me.)

Obama’s plan to reduce the FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) contribution.

This is money that is separate from your income tax and is the money that is intended to pay for your Social Security benefits.

Republicans have a long history of hating Social Security and hoping that it would go away. One of their favorite tactics… Continue reading

I recently went deaf in my left ear. At first, I only noticed tinnitus in my left ear, and this concerned me enough to look into tinnitus. Online.

I found that tinnitus is, basically, untreatable. OK, then, no need for health-care. (read the whole post)

I am now, annoyingly, deaf in my left ear, but the news isn’t all bad: this deafness was not caused by a tumor (at least as far as the MRI exam I had last Monday can tell).

My right ear is fine as well, so I’m not just healthy, I can also hear. The world is as mono for me as an early Beatles album is for the rest of you, and background noise is hard to separate from foreground noise, but I can hear. Continue reading

Broadly (and, perhaps, obviously): Information. [read more]

But I did some calculations to determine how much time you actually lose, and the numbers suggest that we should all relax a little. Continue reading

We left her, the last time we were here, with the halyards and lazy-jacks loose and less than ship-shape. I went back on Saturday …

…they are funded separately from the income tax and the general budget.

Take a look at one of your pay-stubs if you don’t believe me. Them’r separate deductions.

I only bring this up because were entering an era (hopefully brief) where some politicians [cough-republicans-cough] will try and tell you that Social Security and Medicare have to be ‘fixed’ in order to save the general budget.

The people… Continue reading

Joanna and I made the trip to show our support for a more rational political discourse here in the US. Perhaps ironically, we were answering the call of a professional comedian named, for show-business reasons, Jon Stewart.

Stewart’s complaint (and mine as well) is that our political discourse has been turned into theater by the US cable news outfits (and the non-cable news outlets have been forced to follow… Continue reading

Juan Williams, formerly of NPR and Fox News, is no longer employed by NPR, according to this New York Times story.

I have a feeling that NPR probably had an intern reviewing all of his public statements, and were waiting for him to go that last millimeter too far. I figure that it took this long because, in his usual smarmy way, Williams would always very carefully hedge… Continue reading

Some people think so, apparently. But if a quote like this:

Wordiness is a problem for one white woman who spoke to researchers about NPR: “I think it can be clever and quirky, and smart and insightful. But I don’t choose to listen to it because it’s too much talking for me.

… is anything to go by, then I think that NPR would be better off… Continue reading

Ah, well. We didn’t get the boat in the water…. Continue reading

I’m not bringing this up because of any call I saw tonight (though there is a recent call that now comes to mind), I’m just tired of American baseball being so awful about adding a video replay official to their game.

It is simple. Give the on-field officials one more, er, official hand gesture: ‘go to the video’ (Cricket, a game that has been played since

First, some links:
HDR according to Wikipedia

Here’s some of my attempts at HDR

OK, then. I’ve been asked to share some of my thoughts and tips on using Photoshop to create HDR images. So I will.

Why HDR?

All cameras are limited in the range of values that they can capture in one exposure. Ansel Adams… Continue reading

…and dogs were (still) stupid enough to chase them:

“Woof woof” this, motherfucker! [BLAM! BLAM!]

Craig Ferguson is a funny, funny man… Continue reading

NPR obituary here. The fact that he was still working at 93 made me feel like he’d be around forever… Continue reading

As I’m sure many of you are aware of, there are some immediate economic problems facing the United States right now. A big one is that our economy isn’t doing much lately; it’s in a bit of a stall.

The idea behind capitalism, as a system, is that people with money available to invest in things actually invest in things that will make these wealthy people more money. A… Continue reading

As you can see, the tornados that menaced this corner of Ohio mercifully skipped Meinke’s Marina.

I had thought that villains had taken two of the steering wheel handles, but we found the missing ones today in the footwell. Somebody unscrewed them, but at least they left them there for us.

There’s a red wing blackbird nest under the… Continue reading