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Most of the time, the farther Left I look on the continuum of political opinions, the more I see people who do not reason well or are ignorant about history. Maybe I am overgeneralizing from my own experience. Most of the conservatives and libertarians I meet seem to have coherent worldviews even if I don’t always agree with them. A much larger fraction of the leftists I meet seem to have incoherent worldviews in which issues that I see as related exist as unconnected islands, or in which events that I see as consistent with spontaneous order and feedback mechanisms are seen as manifestations of conspiracy.

Perhaps the “Screwed Generation” would have benefited from better education. Perhaps they will learn from experience.

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James Q. Wilson reviews Tim Groseclose’s recent book, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. (Via Power Line.)

Peter Robinson recently interviewed Tim Groseclose here.

It’s easy to believe what we want to believe, and often we want to believe things that aren’t true. That’s human nature and it’s why empiricism is important. Many people believe that our big media impart a leftist slant to the news; many people believe there is no slant or that the slant doesn’t affect media consumers’ voting behavior. Groseclose and other researchers mentioned by Wilson have been trying to quantify media bias and its effects. So far they appear to have confirmed conservatives’ beliefs about leftist bias. Of course it’s possible that the researchers are wrong, and it will be interesting to see how other researchers respond to Groseclose’s work over time.

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Predictions about the year 2000 made by Robert Heinlein in 1952.

via Newmark’s Door

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Does this story mean that the US govt is not only not collaborating with Israel but is trying to undermine Israeli covert efforts? If so that is very bad news. We need more information. If the story is valid and our govt has decided to leak it to the press now, that suggests that we are 1) shockingly inept or 2) may be trying to cut a deal with the mullahs by sacrificing our ally or 3) both. Either way it sounds bad. I hope there’s more to the story.

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The shooting of James King – political murder disguised as a justifiable response to a personal insult – inflamed the city of San Francisco immediately. King, shot in the chest but still clinging to life was taken to his house. Meanwhile, an enormous mob gathered at the police station, and the police realized almost at once that the accused James Casey could not be kept secure. He was removed under guard to the county jail. The indignant mob was not appeased, not even when the mayor of San Francisco attempted to address the crowd, pleading for them to disperse and assuring them that the law would run its proper course and justice would be done. The crowd jeered, “What about Richardson? Where is the law in Cora’s case?” The mayor hastily retreated, as the square – already guarded by armed marshals, soon filled with armed soldiers. The angry mob dispersed, still frustrated and furious. No doubt everyone in authority in the city breathed a sigh of relief, confident that this matter would blow over. After all, they controlled the political apparatus of the city, at least one newspaper, as well as the adjudicators and enforcers of the law … little comprehending that this shooting represented the last, the very last straw.

Several days later, a small advertisement appeared on the front pages of several morning papers: “The members of the Vigilance Committee in good standing will please meet at number 105 ½ Sacramento Street, this day, Thursday, fifteenth instant, at nine o’clock A.M. By order of the Committee of Thirteen.”

The effect on the general public was electrifying. Crowds descended on the building at the designated address – a three-story hall which had been built for the short-lived local chapter of the Know-Nothings. The Vigilance Committee of five years before, which seemed to have been an age ago, so quickly had the city grown, had been brutally efficient in sorting out the criminal gang called the “Hounds.” And now, many members of the original committee – who had whipped and housebroken the Hounds – were taking up responsibility again. The image of a ‘vigilante’ most usually implies a disorganized mob; lawless, mindlessly violent, easily steered but ultimately uncontrollable.

This Vigilance Committee was something much, much worse than that.

They were organized, they were in earnest, they would not compromise … and they would not back down.
And they proved to be very, very efficient. Immediate support for the Committee was overwhelming. A dozen members of the original committee reconstituted themselves, chose a leader and an executive committee, and began enlisting members. The line to enroll in the Committee was day-long: eventually there would be 6,000 – all of them vetted and vouched for, sworn to secrecy. Two thousand of the first-enrolled were assigned to military-styled companies of a hundred. The organization had to move operations to another building – swiftly fortified and eventually called Fort Gunnybags.

Almost immediately, the established political machine – which termed itself without irony as the “Law and Order Party” – demanded that the Governor of California call out the militia against this citizens’ insurrection. The Governor came hustling from Sacramento and requested an interview with the head of the Vigilance Committee, one William Tell Coleman. Coleman was polite, but firm; insisting that the Committee proposed no insurrection against civil authority – they merely wished to see that established laws were enforced. The Governor was mollified; he would not call out the state militia – but he was not yet aware that the Committee intended to take Charles Cora and James Casey into custody, give them a fair trial and administer such punishment as would be dictated by the verdict.

Which operation was carried out, with military precision and efficiency, on the following day, which was a Sunday morning. Of course, rumors and speculation ran wild, all over town that something was about to happen at the county jail building where Casey was being held. It couldn’t be denied that the Law and Order party might have been spoiling for a fight. Spectators gathered on the rooftops, at the windows of buildings around the square, and on every eminence which offered a view. Their patience was rewarded: a column of marching men – in civilian clothes, but carrying rifles with fixed bayonets appeared at the end of a street which emptied into the square – then another column, from another converging street. Then a third column, joined by a fourth: they marched into the square and took their places in regular ranks four-deep all around the square. An observer, a Southerner remarked to a friend, “When you see those damned psalm-singing Yankees turn out of their churches, shoulder their guns and march away of a Sunday, you may know that hell is going to crack shortly.”

But there was more. The silent ranks of men stood, waiting … waiting for a command which came presently. From out of a side street came a body of sixty men – drawing a field gun by means of a long rope. The cannon was wheeled into the middle of the square, aimed at the front door of the jail. Slowly and deliberately, it was charged with powder and shot, while another man lit a slow-burning match and stood at attention. And there they all waited silently … until a Vigilante on horseback rode into the square, and up to the door of the jail. He leaned down, rapped on the door with the butt of his riding whip and passed a note to someone within the jail … Silence descended on the square, on the men standing at attention by the cannon, on those in ranks around the edge of the square, and watching from rooftop and window. An eerie silence, broken only by the sound of carriage wheels.

(To be continued, yet again. It’s an exciting story, isn’t it? And I’m not making anything up.)

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The first stored-program electronic computer capable of doing useful work was the EDSAC, built at Cambridge University and commissioned in 1949. It supported research in several scientific disciplines as well as the development of software techniques until being scrapped as obsolete in 1958. There is now a project to rebuild this pioneering computer: the reconstructed version will be made as close as possible to the original, with one exception…and the reasons for the exception, I think, are perhaps more related to social history than to the history of technology.

EDSAC used vacuum tubes (valves, in Britspeak) for its arithmetical and logical functions; for memory, it used something called a mercury delay line, an idea borrowed from WWII radar technology. (EDSAC=Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator.) information to be stored was introduced at one end of a tube of mercury, down which it traveled in the form of pulses of sound. About 1 millisecond later, at the other end of the tank, the pulses were picked up, amplified, and emitted again at the starting point, with the whole train of information bits in the line thereby being kept in continuous circulation as long as the power was on.

Can you guess how the reconstructed EDSAC is going to differ from the original version?

That’s right…no mercury. “Health and safety regulations” have led to a decision that mercury cannot be used in the rebuild.

Certainly, mercury can be hazardous when not handled carefully–see the material safety data sheet. But it’s not plutonium. It’s not even nitroglycerin. Is it perhaps an overreaction to ban the use of this substance, which would be contained in metal tubes, in a one-of-a-kind museum piece?

Now, much of the EDSAC rebuild work will be done by volunteers–maybe even in the absence of government and/or insurance regulations, the team would have preferred to avoid the cumbersomeness of working with mercury. And I’m sure they’ll do as good a job as possible in coming up with an alternative non-mercury approach to the machine’s memory. (Maybe gin for a delay medium, as was suggested by Alan Turing for the original machine.)

My concern here isn’t really mainly with the rebuild project per se, but rather a more general one–the growing timidity of our western societies, often enforced by regulations of one kind or another. A couple of years ago, I wrote about the Congressional suppression of passenger service on the historic steamboat Delta Queen, on fire-safety grounds–despite the fact that the vessel has been outfitted with fire detection and suppression systems, is never more than a mile or so from shore, and surely provides a vacation experience which is significantly safer than most other things people could do with the same amount of time. And throughout the US, many kinds of playground equipment…swings, jungle gyms, merry-go-rounds, for example…have been removed on safety grounds. See the boys and girls in the plastic bubble…see also, via a commenter at that post, this story about the fate of space-program-themed playgrounds constructed in the 1960s.

The pros and cons of safety-related tradeoffs can of course be debated for individual cases, whether we’re talking about playground equipment or a computer reconstruction. But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the general level of timidity in our societies has increased substantially, and that there is some level of such timidity that leads to individual psychological harm and to social dysfunction.

Some countervailing forces to the drift toward timidity have arisen…see for example the free-range kids movement created by Lenore Skezany. But I’m afraid the general trend is much in the other direction.

The EDSAC rebuild project site is here.

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-from SHOTS, NPR’s Health Care Blog:

Health care reform is no laughing matter, but MIT economist Jonathan Gruber’s new comic book on the subject aims to communicate some pretty complicated policy details in a way that, if not exactly side-splitting, is at least engaging.
 
In Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works, Gruber steps into the pages of a comic book to guide readers through many of the major elements of the law, including the individual mandate to buy insurance, the health insurance exchanges where people will be able to buy coverage starting in 2014 and how the law tackles controlling health care costs.

I draw your attention to another graphic novel: The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation.

While I was buying a copy of Persepolis from a real-life book store a few years ago, a young woman at the sales counter mentioned that there was a “great” graphic novel about North Korea that I might like. I’m not a graphic novel reader and I think Persepolis is it for me unless I decide to review the health care book, but it interested me that she seemed so enthusiastic about the topic of North Korea and graphic novels. I guess it makes sense given our “information overload” society. I don’t know. Why not look for clarity?

PS: Linking is not endorsement and all that.

PPS: What’s the “all that” about? Eh, I’ve been burning the candle at both ends for the past week or so and my blogging has been pretty terrible because of it. I linked the health care graphic novel because it amused me, not because I am simpatico with the message. I think you all knew that already….

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This Chicago area event – Faith Under Fire — looks like it will be excellent.

This Conference is designed to address the plight of persecuted religious minorities in Muslim countries. Join us to learn the real nature of their hardships and what each of us can do to advance religious liberty for suffering indigenous communities.
 
Leaders of the indigenous communities describe their plight.
 
Eyewitnesses offer riveting testimony about this harsh reality.
 
Key members of U.S. Congress discuss action to prevent genocide.
 
Global experts offer critical analysis of the international threats.
 
Panelists discuss policy issues and opportunities for action.
 

We hear about a mythical Arab Spring.

But for many non-Muslims in the region, it is a Winter of persecution and the destruction of ancient communities.

These atrocities should be getting more attention.

Buy tickets here.

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I was going to vote republican, but since some bimbo with cleavage likes Obama, I have no choice but to discard my reasoned analysis and run with the herd. It’s the only intelligent thing to do.

-Commenter “Pizzullo” in Reply #10 to Politico’s article about “Obama Girl”

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Just released and looks like the hottest digital camera yet. 36 megapixels puts it in the performance category of specialist high-res cameras used for landscapes and commercial photography that cost many times more and are less versatile. For a few extra bucks the D800E has even higher resolution because it lacks the D800′s anti-aliasing filter. The D800/E won’t ship for a month or two, but you can order it and cancel or return it if you change your mind — IOW, a free option.

Nikon D800/D800E at Amazon

Nikon D800 at B&H

Nikon D800E at B&H

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To be American is to forget…

Or, having exhausting every other opportunity to forget, to remember poorly.

In the course of a series of posts on how the United States of America has implemented selected clauses from its constitution…

a well-regulated militia

• “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions”
• “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress”
• “The President shall be Commander in Chief…of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States”
• “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress…keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
• “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

…Dmitri Rotov has unearthed some forgotten yet particularly shiny pebbles:

James S. Wadworth

1. The ill-starred military career of James S. Wadworth of New York, an ambitious New York Republican Party politician who Abraham Lincoln dragooned into the Army to neutralize him as a political threat. Wadworth who bungled along like a stereotypical ”political” general but died well in the Wilderness.
   

   John M. Palmer

2. By way of contrast, the distinguished military career of John M. Palmer, political general, friend of Lincoln’s, key supporter in Lincoln’s rise, and post-Civil War governor of Illinois.
   

   Emory Upton

3. The tragic rise, death, failure, and victory of Emory Upton, professional soldier and Civil War prodigy whom William Tecumseh Sherman dispatched overseas to tour foreign military establishments and report back his findings. Upton’s reports, The Armies of Asia and Europe, published after his return, and The Military Policy of the United States, published in 1904, well after Upton’s death in 1881, heavily influenced future U.S. military policy. Upton also wrote Tactics for Non-Military Bodies: Adapted for the Instruction of Political Associations, Police Forces, Fire Organizations, Masonic, Odd-Fellows, and other Civic Societies, a book for which the world is not yet prepared.
   

   James A. Garfield

4. Future president (and political general) James Garfield’s doomed attempt to implement Upton’s central idea: the “expansible army“. Says Rotov: “The expansible army consists of a large regular standing army, men and officers, with a capability of expanding further in crisis. Upton rejected the idea of a small standing army bolstered in war by militias and volunteers.”
   

   Peyton C. March, Sr.

5. The clash between Peyton C. March, the George C. Marshall of World War I, and Colonel John M. Palmer, grandson of John M. Palmer, before the Senate Military Affairs Committee led by Sen. James W. Wadsworth, Jr. (R-NY), grandson of James S. Wadworth.
   

   Willard M. Romney, who cares

6. The curious case of citing the Militia Act of 1792 as a precedent for “Romneycare” and its child “Obamacare”.

James W. Wadworth, Jr.

This post in particular caught my eye:

With March’s “Uptonian” plan off the table, Wadsworth and Palmer began designing their own army. This (after political give and take) became the National Defense Act of 1920. There is a handy summary of what follows in The Second World War: Asia and the Pacific. I excerpt here at length:

Palmer’s ideas were not those of the majority of the Army’s general staff officers, who were disciples of the pensive Emory Upton, the Army’s most influential 19th Century theorist. [...] The staff had updated the “expansible army” of John Calhoun and modernized Upton; but while it had convinced a reluctant chief of staff, Peyton March, to support the plan, it could not sell the program to Congress.

Palmer recommended a citizen-based army, which he felt was far more appropriate for a democracy. In his plan, while the Regular Army would be the vanguard of the ground forces, the National Guard and the Organized Reserves would provide the bulk of the wartime army. Citizen officers would command most of the citizen soldiers. In peacetime, the Regulars would train their associates in the Guard and Reserves. While Palmer also hoped for universal military service [in Swiss-type reserves - DR], this unpalatable position was not acceptable in peacetime.

The old Hamilton-Jefferson controversy between a purely professional and a militia-based defense force had been resolved in favor, once again, of the militia. Palmer had proposed an army in the American tradition. Politically feasible, the proposal was favored and accepted by the Wadsworth Committee. The Army’s official [March] program was discarded because it was too un-American, was so much of the philosophy of the Germanophile, Emory Upton. [...]

All of this looked good on paper, but unfortunately Congress did not provide sufficient funds to implement the National Defense Act [of 1920] fully until 1940.

In other words, the infamously puny and underfunded interwar Regular Army was “half a loaf” – just a slice of the Wadsworth-Palmer plan.

There is a profound lesson in this for military theorists and planners. There is also an odd twist. Palmer lived to see the Act of 1920 funded…

p.s. To read more about the March-Palmer contest, you have to dig into out-of-print works like Toward a Post World War I Military Policy: Peyton C. March vs. John McAuley Palmer.

John J. Pershing

Palmer was a key architect of American strategy. He drafted his first plan for organizing the Army in 1911 under orders from Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Army Chief of Staff Dr. Leonard Wood. He played a major role in drafting the plan enacted as the Selective Service Act and operationalized as the American Expeditionary Forces. AEF commander John J. Pershing made Palmer his assistant Chief of Staff over in France. After the war, Palmer played a key role in reorganizing the Army, including the efforts Rotov narrates. At the beginning of World War II, Palmer friend and disciple George C. Marshall recalled Palmer (retired in 1926) to active duty as his special advisor. By the end of the war, as Rotov notes, Palmer was “the oldest American in uniform by the end of WWII” at age 75.

Palmer’s contribution is as fundamental to twentieth century American strategy formation as those of more famous men like Upton, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Billy Mitchell, or George Frost Kennan. Yet he merits little more than a Russell Weigley footnote.

John M. Palmer

I bought a vintage 1945 paperback of Palmer’s America In Arms (it has never been reprinted) to learn more. I’ve read two pages so far.

So far it’s gold:

Prologue

 

What is War?

 

A Diagnosis and a Remedy

 

I

 

The aspects of war involving weapons and modes of transportation have changed at each stage of human development. There is a vast difference between war as it was waged by Alexander the Great and as it is now fought by Rommel and Yamashita. But in its inner essence, war is the same now as was when an unknown conquerer built the first pyramid as a monument to his name and prowess. It is not a separate, isolated form of human activity. It is instead, as the German soldier-philosopher Clausewitz said a century ago, a special violent form of political action.

 

We customarily think that no two things can be more unlike than peaceful international relations and war-like international relations. And so we may be startled when we first grasp the thought that these are simply two phases of the same thing—human politics.

 

This was brought home to us in December, 1941. For years it had been the political program of Japan to dominate China and Southeast Asia and control the Western Pacific. When normal political action in Washington failed to gain our acuquiecense, Japan’s next argument was delivered at Pearl Harbor. Her purpose was still political and precisely what it was before her treacherous surprise attack. The only difference was that she used dive-bombers instead of diplomats.

 

II

 

Even before Clausewitz, George Washington understood that war is simply a phase of politics. Thus when his countrymen called him to establish a new political system, he realized clearly that any complete system must include the machinery for dealing with that special violent phase of international politics known as war. This is the principle thought in his political writings from the close of the Revolution to the end of his life. In the light of his knowledge of war and its great significance in international affairs, his Farewell Address may be summarized as follows:

 

Rely on just dealings with other nations. Seek your legitimate political ends through peaceful negotiation and understanding. But lest some agressor impose the other form of political action known as war upon you, maintain yourselves in a “respectable defensive posture”.

 

If you do this other nations will not be tempted to depart from the normal and peaceful methods of political action in their dealings with you.

 

The non-aggressive military organization proposed by Washington to prevent normal political action from degenerating into the violent form known as war would have tended to preserve peace. But his countrymen ignored his advice for a century and a half. If he had been able to implement the new American republic with effective military institutions suited to a self-governing free people, Japan would never have dared to take a change of venue from the Court of Reason to the Court of Brute Force.

The Disembodied Floating Clausewitz Head approved this message

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When gold was discovered in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in 1848, it seemed as if most of the world rushed in to California – which, until then had been a sparsely-settled outpost of Mexico, dreaming the decades away. The climate was enchantingly mild, Mediterranean – warm enough for groves of olive trees and citrus to thrive, and the old missions crumbled away as if nothing had or would ever change. The old, proud Californio families with names like Verdugo, Vasquez, Pico and Vallejo kept vast cattle herds and lived in extensive but rather Spartan-plain estates. There were a few handfuls of American settlers who had come overland, or by sea; they tended to what little trade there was, and an energetic and slightly shady Swiss entrepreneur named Johann Sutter had a vast agricultural and establishment centered around a fortified holding in present-day Sacramento. It was on his property, and in the course of building a saw-mill that gold was discovered. And change came upon the enchanted land – and the place called Yerba Buena turned almost overnight from a hamlet of eight hundred souls on the shore of San Francisco Bay into a ramshackle metropolis of 25,000 and more in the space of two years.

The responsible citizens had once before resorted to a Committee of Vigilance, in response to a riot instigated by a criminal element known as the ‘Hounds’ in 1851. The Hounds were housebroken, following a judicious culling of the most notorious ring-leaders – either hung or exiled, but it was only a temporary solution. Five years, a couple of devastating fires, and who-knows-how-many thousand hopeful Argonauts later, the situation in San Francisco had degenerated to a point beyond the toleration of responsible and civic-minded citizens … again.

And this time, it was more than just a situation of sober citizens faced with obstreperous criminals – by 1856 it was a collective of sober citizens arrayed against a corrupt, criminal-allied, and crony-capitalist big-city machine. Several decades after the event, popular historian Stewart E. White wrote, “The elections of those days would have been a joke had they not been so tragically significant… the polls were guarded by bullies who did not hesitate at command to manhandle any decent citizen indicated by the local leaders. Such men were openly hired for the purposes of intimidation. Votes could be bought in the open market. ‘Floaters’ were shamelessly imported into districts that might prove doubtful; and, if things looked close, the election inspectors and the judges could be relied on to make things come out all right in the final count…” White also noted, “With the proper officials in charge of the executive end of the government and with a trained crew of lawyers making their own rules as they went along, almost any crime of violence, corruption, theft, or the higher grades of finance could be committed with absolute impunity…” White contributed a lot of the corruption to an influx of what he called low-grade Southerners, who were apt to use what he called ‘pseudo-chivalry’ in response to personal or political criticism, ‘battering down opposition by the simple expedient of claiming that he had been insulted.’

In the midst of all this, there were business reversals; a local and trusted financial and express firm failed. Its assets were taken over in what was suspected to be shady means which benefitted – of course – certain businessmen closely associated with the local machine. A crusading newspaper editor, James King of William and his Daily Evening Bulletin riveted and titillated the reading public as thoroughly as he angered those whom he targeted. King criticized various pillars of the city, in editorials and in straight news stories. He pulled no punches; he named names, explained methods and connections. About the same time a gambler, Charles Cora, shot and killed a well-known and well-liked US Marshal named William Richardson who was unarmed at the time. This was an unprovoked, cold-blooded shooting. Conviction seemed almost certain, although Cora was a good friend – a very good friend of both the local sheriff and the keeper of the jail, where he waited trial in considerable luxury and comfort. No expense was spared in Cora’s defense – and when the case came to trial, the jury couldn’t come to a decision and Cora was released. The law-abiding element in town seethed.

Several months later, King wrote another sizzling editorial – this one concerning an appointee to the position in the federal customs house. The appointee was the choice of one James P. Casey – a member of the board of county supervisors, and also a member in good standing of the political establishment. This, no doubt accounted for the curious circumstance of being elected to the board despite the fact that he didn’t live in the district, had not been on the ticket, nor been a candidate … and no one could be found who voted for him. Doubtless, Casey was already in King’s sights – for besides disparaging the customs-house appointee, King also noted that Casey had previously been an inmate in Sing-Sing. Casey accounted himself affronted, and paid a visit to the Daily Evening Bulletin offices to demand an apology – which was not forthcoming. After some hours drinking and fuming, Casey left the bar and waited just across the street for King to pass on his way home. At about 5 PM, King left the newspaper office, and as he passed by on his way home, Casey shot him. King fell, mortally wounded – while Casey’s friends hustled him off to safety in a nearby police station lock-up.
(to be continued – cross-posted at The Daily Brief, and at my book-blog)

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Today marks 60 years since she acceded to the throne. Chicagoboyz wish her all the best.
 

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The IRS has a proposed new regulation which would prohibit charter-school teachers from participating in state retirement plans. (At present, all of the states which authorize charter schools permit, and in some cases require, the charter-school teachers to participate in these plans.) Furthermore, the new regulation would apparently apply retroactively and would cause the teachers to lose the state contributions to their accounts which have been accrued, and on which they were no doubt relying, unless they give up their employment. More here.

Today, February 6, is the last day for public comments on this issue under IRS procedures.

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Our friend J. Scott Shipman, who has been blogging at zenpundit.com, has a new website, blog and forthcoming book.

Check them out.

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Following a couple of posts (here and here) about time-lapse videos I did some experimenting. It turns out to be simple to create a passable time-lapse sequence using an inexpensive digicam and some freeware.

You need an interval timer. I don’t know how many cameras have this feature. However, if you have a Canon PowerShot camera you can download a quite sophisticated bit of freeware called CHDK that, among other capabilities, functions as a user configurable interval timer. CHDK is well documented but the online wiki is a bit intimidating. Don’t worry. Go to this page and work your way down. It gives the essentials.

I used my Canon S95 with CHDK, configured to take photos continuously at five-second intervals. Put the camera on a tripod or other support, use JPEG rather than RAW if this is an option and deactivate your camera’s stabilizer if it has one. Focus manually if you can. Then point the camera at something interesting and start the interval timer. The video below represents about an hour and a quarter in real time, 924 exposures. (Your camera battery will run down pretty quickly doing this, so you may want to turn off the camera’s LCD if possible. The CHDK documentation mentions a way to trick the camera into turning off its LCD by plugging something into the “video out” socket, but I haven’t tried this yet.)

There are probably many ways to stitch the photos into a video sequence. I used Microsoft Windows Live Movie Maker, which is part of Windows Live Essentials, which may have come with your computer if you use Windows 7. (It’s also available as a free download here.) Simple to use: Start a new project, import your photos (batch edit them first if you want), select all of the imported photos, click the Edit tab, set Duration to .03 seconds (the minimum), hit the enter key to apply this duration to all of your photos, then save your movie using the quality setting of your choice.
 

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A thoughtful interview, here.

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Misawa AB, late fall, 1977. If it were later in the year, the field would have been under about four feet of snow. I think I took this picture because some of the FEN-Misawa staff were playing. They would have been for one of the larger unit teams – FEN wasn’t large enough to field a team of our own.

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Previous in the series:
I, II, III, IV

First there was TEDx, the low cost/no cost to the original TED initiative to spread the TED message around the world in local affiliated events. Now there is MITx, an initiative to create free/low cost classes with an MIT affiliation but no degree. So why isn’t there AFL-CIOx? There is no great leap necessary to figure this out. Fire up a web site and provide tools for all workers to improve their position. AFL-CIOx could provide templates on how to lobby their local governments to diversify local economies and cater to entrepreneurs so the increase in businesses operating locally would improve the chance that different employers would compete for local workers. Employers bidding up salaries in order to compete is how non-union workers get salary increases and it’s a successful strategy. It used to be that union workers earned more than non-union. That is no longer true.

And they could provide “plus” services that would carry a fee that you could take or leave. Hat sales alone would probably cover most of the electricity bill. And yes, I’d buy one. I’d also use the site as I assume a lot of people who would viscerally reject joining a union, ever. Google will index it and people will use compelling content, giving unions a 2nd chance at a large part of the population that have long written them off as irrelevant and outdated.

So where is that site? Where is the effort to improve the position of all American workers by providing a 21st century education on how to be a smart, savvy worker?