It looks obvious

I am finding a lot of pleasure in developing my new hobby and acquiring new skills. Ronie is the immediate victim - as she is very cute and to young to resist, but I’m expending my range. In the picture below I was able to execute a reasonable panning and the results are in front of you:

Few more pictures can be found here. On the way home Ronie was excited that she can see the sunlight through the tree’s leafs, so we stopped to take a picture. The composition isn’t great but I like the arrangements of colors so here it is:

This list is hilarious:

For most of the year, it is the duty of the press to scour the known universe looking for ways to ruin your day. The more fear, guilt or angst a news story induces, the better. But with August upon us, perhaps you’re in the mood for a break, so I’ve rounded up a list of 10 things not to worry about on your vacation.

Now, I can’t guarantee you that any of these worries is groundless, because I can’t guarantee you that anything is absolutely safe, including the act of reading a newspaper. With enough money, an enterprising researcher could surely identify a chemical in newsprint or keyboards that is dangerously carcinogenic for any rat that reads a trillion science columns every day.

What I can guarantee is that I wouldn’t spend a nanosecond of my vacation worrying about any of these 10 things. (You can make your own nominations in the TierneyLab blog.)

1. Killer hot dogs. What is it about frankfurters? There was the nitrite scare. Then the grilling-creates-carcinogens alarm. And then, when those menaces ebbed, the weenie warriors fell back on that old reliable villain: saturated fat.

But now even saturated fat isn’t looking so bad, thanks to a rigorous experiment in Israel reported this month. The people on a low-carb, unrestricted-calorie diet consumed more saturated fat than another group forced to cut back on both fat and calories, but those fatophiles lost more weight and ended up with a better cholesterol profile. And this was just the latest in a series of studies contradicting the medical establishment’s predictions about saturated fat.

If you must worry, focus on the carbs in the bun. But when it comes to the fatty frank — or the fatty anything else on vacation — I’d relax.

And as a general comments - Tierney Lab is one of those things that keeps the NY Times worth reading.

When I was reading this I could not avoid make the reference to the “Blame the speculators” trend among the Presidential candidates here:

Zimbabwe announced Wednesday that it is knocking 10 zeros off its hyper-inflated currency — a move that turns 10 billion dollars into one.

[...]

“Entrepreneurs across the board, don’t drive us further,” Mugabe warned in a nationally televised address after the currency announcement. “If you drive us even more, we will impose emergency measures. … They can be tough rules.”

I only wonder who should be more worried from the comparison - Mugabe or McCain and Obama…

I run ads in this blog mostly because they are there. I don’t pay to much attention to them, nor do most of the visitors of the blog - which is fine with me. But today I couldn’t not notice how Google’s matching algorithm was able to Associate the title of the post, or the content of one of the links, to Davy Crockett and to the Alamo, which I find pretty impressive.

Reason.TV has a pretty god segments about earmarks. I wish they would highlight several points more than they did - including the lack of actual control and questing of the use of public money, the problematic ties between the money recipients and those who awards it and the question of the use of federal budget for projects that at best should have been funded locally.

Dear John Ensign,

I received your letter as the chairman of the Republican Presidential Task Force and I read it with great level of amazement. I wonder how disconnected is the GOP if you produce letters like this.

I have no interest in helping electing the presumed nominee, nor most of what the GOP has to offer for the Senate or the Congress. Since the GOP took over you betray the promise to reduce the scope of government, reduce our involvement overseas and to promote individual liberties. Instead the gang that took over was busy increasing the deficit, increasing the scope of government into areas no democrat would ever dream to do and set a record on abuses of human rights. The GOP leadership ,including you - Senator Ensign, used “conservative values” as a mockery and excuse to prevent other from making their own choices about their own life.

In the last eight years the GOP gave its active support for one of the most serious attacks on human rights in the history of the US. Using the terror treat as an excuse you helped - by legislation and executive orders - promoting strong executive branch and a set of practices that limits our civil liberties. Calling yourself a Conservative, pretending to follow Barry Goldwater, is a very sad joke.

I still believe, the naive that I am, that the GOP has a chance to reform itself. This is why I joined the Republican Liberty Caucus. The only hope the GOP has to become relevant again is by returning to the basics of promoting Individual liberty.

At this point you probably understand that I will not help - not with donation nor with volunteering action - your mission of electing Senate majority. However I really want to take this opportunity for the nice picture you included in the envelope. We intend to use the high quality picture, of one of the worst Presidents in the history of the US, for playing darts.

Did you here about lolcats before? probably yes. But did you here about the Liberty locats?

The spelling should look familiar to regular visitors of this blog…

(via Kids Prefer Cheese)

George Will, my favorite political columnist, gave a speech in the Cato Institute to introduce his new book, One Man’s America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation. It is, not surprising, a very interesting speech, and followed by interesting Q&A, and recommended watching.

I think that I’m becoming better in capturing Ronie’s expressions and behavior. I took few pictures today that I really like, and obviously you get to suffer

As usual, the rest of the batch is here

I guess I’m not the only one that was not impress with Obama’s visit in Israel; after all it was as useful as any campaign visit usually is, none at all.

On the other hand Obama deserve some credit: unlike his rival he didn’t confuse between the different factions in the Islam and their long rivalry….