Bjorn Lomborg’s important new book “Cool It”

[amazonify]030738652X:right:product[/amazonify]I recently saw Bjorn Lomborg interviewed about ‘global warming’ and his views on what we should do seemed about the most practical and effective imaginable.  Instead of the shrill, slick, non-scientific, and dishonest ‘marketing’ by people like Al Gore, Lomborg looks at the effectiveness of solutions proposed by others.  For example, he says if all … Read more

Hillary Clinton campaign fails

Despite all the great minds involved in the campaign such as James Carville, Terry McAuliffe, Harold Ickes, and both Clintons (see the rest here), their Achilles heel did them in. And what was that? Arrogance! Their original plan appears to have been: Raise a bunch of money from a few rich donors Make speeches carefully … Read more

U.S. department of energy – your tax dollars at work

With all this talk of oil and energy, I decided to look at the Department of Energy web site to see what it claims to be doing. Loads of good sounding info, but I decided to go to the budget, as that’s where things usually reveal themselves (follow the money…). I had no idea how … Read more

Great Canon 40D shots without computer processing

OK – call me lazy. Tell me I’m not getting the full benefit of my Canon 40D digital SLR camera. Yes I know about RAW files, curves, unsharpening, HDR, etc. But sometimes, well, most of the time, I just want to take pictures and have them look great on screen and printable at anything less than a HUGE print without loads of, ok ANY, computer ‘post processing’.

Little point and shoot digital cameras in decent light situations (i.e., outdoors) take great pictures in most circumstances. But they’re still slow, cannot do shallow depth of field, often don’t have a very wide angle field of view, and to me at least, are generally irritating (except for their size)! Once you’ve seen the quality of pictures and enjoyed the flexibility and range of options and control with an SLR, it’s hard to go back. I know, I tried. Got tired of lugging the Canon 20D and lenses around, sold the lot. But less than a year later, I was ready to throw my Canon point and shoot camera in a fire pit.

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U.S. gas prices – thank you environmentalists

Sooner or later I guess this topic was going to get mentioned here.

U.S. gas prices have doubled and more in the past couple of years.  It must be hurting millions of people directly (getting to and from work or school for example), and hurting many businesses too, which must deliver things and have things delivered to them and so they must raise prices on everything in turn to make up for it.  It seems the U.S. government has totally distorted how it reports inflation because gasoline and food prices alone are skyrocketing.  Maybe the drop in house prices is counteracting that some!

The politicians are arguing over causes and remedies, but while they do NOTHING, quietly, millions of people are driving a little less, maybe trading in the old clunker or big SUV for something much more efficient, sales of hybrids have skyrocketed, and the American people are being very sensible about all this.

We’ve all heard it’s ‘greedy oil companies’ that are the cause but that really isn’t the case – they process crude oil and refine it, etc., and pass along the costs they must pay.  Now global demand for oil and gasoline has been climbing and is projected to climb a great deal more as prosperity increases in China and India in particular, as they hold almost half the world’s population!  U.S. gasoline consumption has not increased significantly in decades.  Increasing overall demand puts upward pressure on prices if supply is not increased.

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