Cicada Photography Resource

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 13:14:22 GMT

A.P.O.D.

BBC Arctic ice 'disappearing quickly'

... The current rate of shrinkage they calculate at 8% per decade; at this rate there may be no ice at all during the summer of 2060...

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 15:37:21 GMT

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 15:32:46 GMT

NY Times Waiting for a Leader

...While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection? It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 00:20:47 GMT

http://photography.cicada.com/stories/2005/09/02/20050902SwagAboutGasPrices.html On a recent trip to see family members, I began to make unscientific and unprovable speculations about the impact of $4/gallon gasoline on the U.S. economy. My speculations are stupid-wild-assed-guesses, but so far no one has tried to argue their conclusions are terribly off-base. Sure there are plenty of assumptions and vague misrepresentations involved. Here is one, I apparently assume that gas is free now, when actually it costs us all quite a bit. Here is another, to derive some of the figures, I would have to run my car down to fumes in the tank before any fill up. There are several attacks on my conclusions that are not countered or covered in any way, shape or form. That said, there are also factors that if accurately applied would make the outcome worse. I simply tried on some thoughts about the cost of gasoline and the economy to see how they fit. Sad to say, they feel about right or perhaps even a bit optimistic. I'll leave it to somebody else to prove me wrong and correct the overall picture. Here are the hilights.

Median families in the U.S. could easily spend 10% to 13% of their total income on gasoline for personal transportation.
The cost of transporting goods could easily add 3% to 5% to the cost of goods
The U.S. national savings rate is 0% and there is no easy place to find the additional 13% to 18% that is will cost to live

The entire article is here.

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 14:12:36 GMT

Gigapxl http://www.gigapxl.org/

This effort uses a 9"x18" film which is then processed and immediately scanned -- creating image files of up to 4 Gigapixels (roughly 25 GB file size). From the faq:
One way of visualizing the size of a four gigapixel image is to consider a photograph of a regulation football pitch (soccer in USA) which is 90m x 45m. A four gigapixel top-down photograph of the entire field at 1mm per pixel would cover an area of 89.4m x 44.7m, which is 99.38% of the indicated size. This mm-per-pixel scale represents perhaps as many as 100 pixels per blade of grass across an entire pitch captured in a single exposure.

Sat, 13 Aug 2005 12:54:02 GMT

CNN Bush: Force last resort on Iran

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 14:58:45 GMT

It is easy to come to the conclusion that while Geo. W. Bush *might* represent most of America, he does not represent the ideals of democracy. ABCNews Leaked emails claim Guantanamo trials rigged

...Maj Preston says he cannot continue to work on a process he considers morally, ethically and professionally intolerable. "I lie awake worrying about this every night," he wrote....

Mon, 18 Jul 2005 18:25:19 GMT

At what price loyalty? Reuters Bush qualifies pledge to fire CIA leaker. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush on Monday shifted from a broad pledge to fire whoever leaked a covert CIA agent's identity, by vowing to dismiss any person found in federal probe to have committed a crime. [Reuters: Politics News]