Thanks to Bill Diehl, and who ever forwarded this email to him, and whoever forwarded it to….

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Remember that bone-headed idea floated during the election season that both John McCain and Hilary Clinton floated, about removing the tax on gasoline when it spiked to $4 a gallon?

That idea would have caused gas prices to continue to rise (because demand wouldn’t have softened as much) while at the same time deprived America of much needed revenues to fix our failing infrastructure. Minnesota bridge collapse, anyone?

Well, here’s a wacky idea. Now that prices have plummeted to about $2 or less a gallon, let’s have a temporary tax increase on gasoline.

Please, hear me out.

First, I do mean temporary. We could tie it into the price of gasoline; let’s say the when the national average shoots up again to $3 (or whatever number we could agree upon) the tax goes away, or it could be more of a rolling target that abates as the average goes up.

In the meantime, we would get a surge of new revenues that should be split two ways. Half would go to rebuilding America’s infrastructure; that would lead to better, safer roads and bridges, while putting more people to work, and hopefully taking a nibble out of the depression unemployment numbers.

The other half would go to offset tax breaks on fuel efficient, American-built cars. I’m not talking about cars made by the big 3 necessarily, I’m talking about any car manufactured in the US by tax paying Americans. Toyota, Honda, or any “US” company as well.

It’s my strong belief that we need to get off of our addiction to foreign oil asap for the safety and security of our nation. It’s not (just) a tree-hugging idea; it’s a matter of national security. You don’t put the future of your energy needs in the hands of people who genuinely don’t like you.

OK, well, that’s my .02. Fire away.

Rich Brooks
Yes, I Realize the Hypocrisy That I Drive an SUV

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My dad sent me a link to this Flickr slide show from Barack Obama and his family on election night. It’s a mixture of intimate and public moments. Very nice.

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Keep this on file for the next Commute Another Way Day here in Maine.

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If you didn’t catch the opening segment of SNL this week you can thank Hulu that you’ll be able to watch it now. Tina Fey nails Sarah Palin again, but not enough has been made of the other characters in the sketch, Jason Sudeikis as Biden and Queen Latifah as Gwen Ifill.

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I finally finished the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer…WOW. It was pretty awesome. Ok, I’m am slightly embarrassed that I’m reading the same thing as my 15 year old babysitter, but I guess I was a late bloomer and still have a soft spot for teenage romance. Despite the fact that this was written to a “young adult” or YA audience, Stephenie did manage to create a little bit of heat.

Well maybe a tiny bit.

The author profusely defends her YA audience and claims that she was writing books her kids would read, and eventually movies would be made that her kids would see. Phoey! My sister, Leila, who is about to begin the 4th and final book, and who began the series upon my insistence has complained loudly and numerously to me about the lack of heat, and “when are they going to get it on”, “hurry up and make her a vampire already!”.

Well I won’t spoil it for those who may still be working their way through. I will say that that I found the end satisfying. Although not in the happy ending sense.

Now, I’ll quickly mention another book that I read in the days following my completion of Twilight. And it’s party due to my sister who came to visit this past weekend and watched “True Blood” with us on Sunday night (HBO). Now that is a show with some heat, and chemistry.

More vampires, again with the human girl and vampire guy…but this show is not for the young adult crowd. It’s kind of vulgar and spicy (caliente)…directed by Alan Ball (our man from Six Feet Under). So anyway, Leila told me that she envisions Bill when she’s reading Twilight and pictures him as Edward. This got me thinking about envisioning characters while reading a book. I decided that since I like the characters Alan Ball cast for his show, I should go and read Charlaine Harris’s books that are the basis for his show.

The first book “Dead Until Dark” provides the basis for pretty much the first season, I’m told. And even though I know how it turns out and ‘who dun it’, it was way satisfying in the happy ending sense. So for those of you adult fans of the Twilight series who are looking for a little more punch, I would strongly recommend Charlaine Harris. I can vouch for her first book, I have no doubt that the other 8 in her Sookie Stackhouse series are just as good.

Cybele, vampire groupie

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Tall Chairs at the Abromson Center

Last week I had my first class of Introduction to the SLR Camera at the University of Maine’s Center for Continuing Education. Since my buddy Dave “Sully” Sullivan couldn’t make it to class, he asked me to take notes for him.

This brought back to my jr. high school days when I would do the cool kids homework, surrender my lunch money to the football team and spent a lot of time contemplating my life from the inside of my locker.

But I digress…Dave, this is for you.

There are three variables for taking pictures, no matter your camera:

• F-stop: how wide your camera aperture opens. F-stop is often confused w/aperture; the difference is that aperture is the physical opening while F-stop is the designation of the scale.
• Shutter speed: how fast your aperture opens and closes.
• ISO: the film speed, which current digital camera mimic by increasing the voltage in the camera…which, oddly enough, increases the heat in the camera, causing more noise, which is the same effect of using very fast speed films.

With photography there’s always a trade off. By changing one of these variables, you often have to change another.

Common F-stops include: 2.8, 4.0, 5.6, 8.0, 11.0, 16.0, 22.0 and 32.0. The lower the number the more light the camera lets in. Confusing, I know. Also, the smaller the f-stop the larger the depth of field (meaning more of your picture–near and far–will be in focus.) The F in F-stop most commonly stands for fraction, not full.

Shutter speed is all about how much time the film/sensor is exposed; new cameras often go to 1/2000 of a second. Common full stops include 2000, 1000, 500, 250, 125, and 60. The shutter speed is often related to how much blur the photo has; faster shutter speeds mean less blur, but that may be an artistic decision.

ISO (International Standards Organisation) is all about film speed, even though digital cameras have no film. Common speeds include 100, 200, 400, 800 & 1,600. The higher the speed, the grainer the picture. The less light you have, the faster the film speed you need. Our substitute–you weren’t the only one missing–said that he prefers grainy over blurry any time, because you can fix grainy in the lab. Another way of taking pictures in low light is…add more light! (Lights, flash, etc.)

Your DSLR will have an automatic setting. Automatic = average. In an average setting, automatic is often fine. However, great photos often fall outside of an average situation. To get more out of your camera you’ll need to start exploring the other settings on the camera.

• Auto: All control is given to the camera. (All your base are belong to us.)
• P - Program: Same as auto but with some options and no auto-flash.
• S - Shutter (sometimes listed as Tv): You choose the shutter speed and the camera does the rest.
• A - Aperture value (sometimes listed as Av): You choose the aperture and the camera does the rest.
• M - Manual: You’re on your own.

Focus is controlled separately through the lens; you can have auto-focus on a manual setting or manual focus on an other automatic setting.

White Balance: In the old days you had to use the right filter for specific types of light (indoor vs. outdoor vs. cloudy, etc.) Now you just need to choose the right icon. You can access the WB menu from the screen on the back of your camera.

One of the big benefits is that you don’t need a filter, so you’re not trading f-stop or shutter speed when using digital.

If you have your camera saving photos on the RAW setting you can actually apply the white balance after you take the shot, during development. Crazy.

One of the WB settings is PRE; this will allow you to set the balance on something specific in the photo as white. The other colors should line up.

The camera can save photos in many different formats.

• RAW: Best file, but huge and needs special software to develop.
• JPG: Common Web-friendly format. Comes in compression levels of Fine, Normal, Basic and Strawberry.
• Images can also be saved as large, medium or small.

Best thing you can do when you get a new camera is RTFM!

HOMEWORK:

• Aperture: Find a scene that shows off depth. Play around w/f-stop and take several pictures w/different settings.
• Shutter: Find a scene that shows off movement and do the same.
• ISO: Find a scene in low light, esp. if there’s highlights and dark shadows and do the same.

See you in class, Sully!

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This was the great article that I was talking about the other day about how close we are to electric cars. Not physically close, but technologically close.

Driven: Shai Agassi’s Audacious Plan to Put Electric Cars on the Road

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Google Street View caught this Aussie passed out drunk in front of his house.

A man who fell asleep in a drunken stupor on the grass outside his home was horrified to find his embarrassment posted on the internet.

He had been drowning his sorrows over the death of a friend and collapsed after climbing out of a taxi.

As he slept off his excesses, a car-mounted video camera passed by to record pictures of the street for Google’s StreetView website.

Ouch. For more on the story…

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In the Op/Ed section of the Maine Sunday Telegram (aka the Sunday edition of the Portland Press Herald) read the headline:

The newspaper industry’s demise has been exaggerated, but current conditions do mean we must offfer less.

Ouch. I guess one place in which they are cutting back is in their spellcheck. Perhaps they could save money by only using two “f’s” in offer.

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