The School is celebrating the first anniversary of the School’s success in winning the 2009 Gates Award for Global Health with an event in Geneva.

“Ned is fully committed to running for governor,” said Lamont spokeswoman Justine Sessions. “He’s running to create jobs, bring new leadership to Hartford, and he’s looking forward to working with Senator Blumenthal to move Connecticut forward.”

As for the Blumenthal matter, Lamont had this to say:

“I’ve known Dick for more than 25 years.  He is a good friend and a dedicated public servant who works day in and day out on behalf of the people of Connecticut.  As our Attorney General, he has been a tireless champion for Connecticut families, and as our next Senator he’ll bring that unwavering work ethic and record of results to Washington.”

 

 

Tracey Meadows Jackson Facebook Picture, Along With Mark Souder’s Picture

Tracey Meadows Jackson is the latest person to be embroiled in a Republican sex scandal, with Indiana Republican Mark Souder resigning today after admitting to an affair with the part time staffer.

There’s always some irony with family value Republicans getting caught up in sex scandals, but Tracey Jackson and Mark Souder really cranked it to 11. The two actually filmed an abstinence only video together in November of 2009. Watch the Mark Souder abstinence video below and revel in the hypocrisy of a guy who can’t stay faithful to his wife talking about how important it is to wait until marriage to have sex:

Tracey Jackson was also a frequent commenter on Mark Souder’s facebook page:

There’s no doubt about it – we cover quite a few mobile phone OSes in this industry.  And they all have their various pros and cons.  Some are exceptionally great at e-mail, while others excel in the media category, while others are fantastic in the web browsing department.  At the end of the day, there’s a mobile phone OS out there for just about everyone.

So, we ask you – what mobile phone OS do you use?  If you use more than one device, you can pick up to three (3) answers (if you use more than three, pick the top three that you use).  Cast your vote, and defend your OS (or OSes) in the comments!

{Widget type=”poll” id=”3221801″ name=””Which mobile phone OS do you use? (Pick up to 3)”}

[JURIST] The UK coalition government will review the country’s Human Rights Act [BBC backgrounder] after two Pakistani terror suspects successfully avoided deportation by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission [official website] due to concerns for their safety. The commission identified both Abid Naseer and Ahmed Faraz Khan as terrorism suspects but concluded that it was not possible for them to be deported to Pakistan, where terrorism suspects face torture or death.The Human Rights Act was created in 1988 to encompass the fundamental rights in the European Convention of Human Rights [text]. Policymakers hope that, by reviewing the act, they can develop a plan of action for ensuring deportees would be treated properly upon returning to their native countries. Since the act does not allow the two suspects to be detained without trial, the two men will most likely be subjected to control orders that would restrict their movement and require them to be under constant watch. Naseer and Khan were two of 10 Pakistani men captured last year in connection with a terrorism plot targeting Manchester and Liverpool.

The Human Rights Act has been a point of contention between liberal and conservative groups in the UK. In 2006, then-prime minister Tony Blair called for an amendment to the act to allow the government greater discretion to protect public safety, while conservative leaders called for the act to be repealed [JURIST reports]. Human Rights Watch [official website] urged the new UK government to continue its support of the act last week in addition to a request for the government to set up a judiciary inquiry [JURIST report] on torture [JURIST news archive] allegations. The rights group claimed that allegations of complicity in the torture of terrorism suspects have badly damaged the nation’s reputation and that steps need to be taken to restore the nation’s reputation as “a nation that respects human rights.”

Vanessa Williams has joined the cast of ABC’s Desperate Housewives!

Williams — who departed her role as Wilhelmina Slater when the network pulled the plug on Ugly Betty last month — is venturing over to The Alphabet’s other hit dramedy to stir up a ruckus on Wisteria Lane, TV Guide has learned.

Just a few weeks ago, talk show chatterbox Wendy Williams squealed that Desperate Housewives was a casting an African-American actress to fill the prominent role of an “intelligent restaurteur” on the show. Now we know it is Vanessa who will appear as a series regular on DH next season.

“I’m a big fan of Vanessa’s work and I’m so excited that she’ll be moving into the neighborhood next season to cause trouble in all the ladies’ lives,” says series creator Marc Cherry. “But don’t expect Vanessa to be at the center of next season’s big mystery. “I think our mystery is going to involve Paul Young [returning cast member Mark Moses].”

In related news, on Sunday night, actress Dana Delaney wrapped up her two season run on Desperate Housewives for the new ABC show Body of Proof.

by Emilie Karrick Surrusco

We’ve all seen the horrifying footage of the oil leaking,
leaking and still leaking into the Gulf of Mexico.
And we’ve watched as BP’s CEO Tony Hayward has made such ludicrous statements
as the Gulf is a big place, there really isn’t that much oil if you compare it
to all that water. What’s more, we’ve read that BP repeatedly told Minerals
Management Service (MMS), the federal agency charged with overseeing offshore
drilling in our nation’s waters, that their proposed plans for the Deepwater
Horizon rig posed minimal risk to the environment so there really was no reason
to prepare for a disaster. And, MMS took them at their word.

Fast forward 43 days and we could be watching the same story
unfold in one of our nation’s last pristine, untouched places—Alaska’s
Arctic Ocean.

Right now, Shell Oil is moving forward with plans for
exploratory drilling, the very same type that Deepwater Horizon was doing in
the Gulf, in the Arctic’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. As they await the final
permits from MMS, Shell has submitted their final assurances on the soundness
of their plans—a letter sent on Friday contains such common sense-defying
assertions as “in Arctic conditions, ice can aid oil spill response.” Like BP,
they never bothered to put together much of a plan for a blowout because “a
large oil spill, such as a crude release from a blowout, is extremely rare and
not considered a reasonably foreseeable impact.” And just as they did with BP,
MMS thus far has taken Shell at their word. 

There are some differences between the Gulf and the Arctic.
One difference, that Shell continues to trot out as their top
nothing-to-worry-about-here talking point, is that the Arctic
is much shallower than the Gulf. While this may be true and this may sound
oddly reassuring to those of us who like to be able to see the bottom of the
pool when we’re treading water, it doesn’t mean much when it comes to an
offshore well blowout. In fact, according to a recent report by Elmer P.
Danenberger III, who was an expert witness in front of Congress just last week,
blowouts are more likely in shallow waters than in deep waters.  From 1992
to 2006, the majority of the blowouts that occurred in our nation’s offshore
waters were from shallow water wells. So much for Shell’s “we don’t need to
plan for a blowout because it would never happen in shallow water” messaging.

And the ice thing. First thing I should mention is that not
only does sea ice cover the Arctic Ocean for much of the year but the weather
conditions that come with it are far from hospitable to activities such as
cleaning up an offshore oil spill. In the Gulf, clean up was held up by 8-foot
waves. In the Arctic, the waves tend to form
20-foot crests, with gale force winds and negative temperatures in October. It
could be months before the clean-up crews could travel the hundreds of miles
between them and an Arctic spill site—and find conditions that would lend
themselves to effective spill response. In the Gulf, there were 32 vessels on
hand within 24 hours of the Deepwater Horizon explosion. In the Arctic,
that capacity is 13 vessels. The closest boat dock is 250 miles away from the
proposed well sites in the Chukchi Sea and it abuts the tiny village of
Wainwright (population: 546). As numerous other federal agencies
(including MMS) and the U.S. Coast Guard have said: “There has been little
experience with under-ice or broken-ice oil spills, and there is little
evidence to suggest that the capability exists currently to successfully clean
up a spill of this type up in a timely manner.”

But all that’s okay because in Shell’s world, the ice will
take care of things and the oil will be easier to clean up because it will be
contained within the ice that forms the basis of one of our planet’s most
abundant and unique ecosystems. This isn’t just ice we’re talking about people—the ice plays host to algae, that feeds a phytoplankton bloom in the water
beneath the ice, that feeds crustaceans and other invertebrates, that feeds numerous
fish species, that feed seals, birds and whales, that feed polar bears and
humans. I’m no scientist, but that sounds like a lot of life under that ice
that would be destroyed by oil. And, as a young man in Point Hope, Alaska,
who grew up hunting, eating and celebrating fish, birds, seals, whales, and
polar bears and now feeds his own family with the same subsistence traditions,
said: “The ice may contain the spill but who will contain the ice?”

Folks like that young man, who call the Arctic Ocean their
garden because it feeds their past, their future, their way of being, have been
watching the footage in the Gulf with a horrific sense of foreboding. We and
the Obama administration owe it to them—not to mention our planet—to stop
taking oil companies at their word. The Gulf disaster has shown us what can
happen. Let’s not tempt fate and wait for worse to happen in the Arctic.

Related Links:

U.S. bans more Gulf fishing as oil fears grow for Florida

Obama’s ocean chief dismisses loop current threat: ‘Very little tarballs!’

A new oil rush endangers the Gulf of Mexico and the planet

It’s been almost a month since the sirens of the Deep Water Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico lacerated the night with tortured warnings of impending doom. Chief electronic technician Mike Williams, who nearly perished in the catastrophe, recounted in excruciating detail on CBS’s 60 Minutes on May 16 the horror of that night and the appalling negligence that contributed to the worst human-made disaster in recorded history.

Essentially what Williams tells us is that the Deep Water drilling operation was under unparalleled pressure to drill faster and deeper, cutting corners and defying essential aspects of the industry’s well established drilling protocol. We can argue about whether BP and other oil giants are ramping up drilling due to the end of cheap and abundant oil on this planet or simply because of greed and a voracious obsession with profits. To engage in that kind of debate, however, is to ignore the most fundamental issue at the root of this disaster. Corporate culture, media, politicians, and the misguided American public are all failing to grasp the issue, and I suggest, are behaving like enablers responding to an addict’s fatal overdose, as well as failing to recognize the extent to which they themselves are addicts.

Let me clarify: The addict is the oblivious citizen of industrial civilization who delusionally demands that he/she must at all costs maintain a lifestyle made possible by cheap hydrocarbon energy. That citizen overdosed on April 20, 2010 and may have taken the planet to their grave with them.

Now let me count the ways in which this cataclysmic oil spill is very much like a fatal drug overdose. In order to fully understand the analogy, it’s necessary to grasp the extent to which the culture of industrial civilization is addictive. What makes it addictive?

Quite simply, an uncompromising—yes relentless insistence on maintaining the lifestyle to which it has become addicted, and like the addict, willing to do whatever it takes to do so, despite voluminous evidence to the contrary. This includes evidence that the addiction itself will ultimately and invariably prove fatal for the addict, for the addict has little interest in rational, scientific research. He is obsessed with only one thing: lifestyle. It doesn’t matter what it costs him or anyone else. Life is all about the next fix, period. The fix could be a possession, a person, or a position in life.

So when the addict, the culture of empire, overdoses and takes everyone and everything with him, he can use the defense mechanism of blame. It wasn’t my lifestyle that caused this, he says, but the corporation that pumped the oil. Furthermore, it was the administration’s fault for not adopting tougher regulation. While these factors may have entered into the equation, they are not the fundamental issue. Focus on blame works beautifully for awhile to distract attention from the devastation caused by the addict. But eventually, it wears thin.

Another favorite distracting tactic of the addict is “Look how I’m trying to fix it.” He mobilizes his enablers to convince the world that something is being done to reverse the repercussions of his latest shitstorm. First we’ll try a dome structure to cover the oil leak and capture the oil. Or if that doesn’t work, we’ll blast garbage into the leak. Or if that doesn’t work, we’ll use a siphoning tube. In fact, even as I write this article, BP is proclaiming that it has “turned a corner” in the oil spill. This should reassure all the oil addicts, facilitating their craving and assuaging any embarrassing traces of guilt. It’s all better now; this temporary nightmare is going to go away. Ya see, human ingenuity, especially of the corporate kind, will solve all problems and clean up all messes created by the addict.

Then there’s my favorite addict appeasement approach: alternative energy. Don’t worry, says the enabler. We’ll get wind or solar or something online for you as soon as we can so that your lifestyle won’t miss a beat. Yes, that may take fifty years, but meanwhile, we’ll think of something to keep it going for you because this is America, and the lights never permanently go out here.

Before the addict experiences a fatal overdose and ravages everyone and everything around him, there is always the choice to end the addiction and enter treatment. Treatment involves withdrawal from the substance, then taking a long, exhaustive, meticulous look inside oneself to confront the demon of the addiction. Much support is necessary; the addict cannot make the journey alone.

The Transition Handbook frames our dependence on hydrocarbon energy in terms of an addiction. We can blame, rationalize, project, deny—we can employ whatever defense mechanism we choose from humanity’s vast repertoire of them, but like the hard core addict, the human race is committing suicide. It is willing to kill every form of life in the oceans, cause the extinction of every species on earth, pollute every cubic inch of breathable air, poison every drop of water on the planet, and yes, enable an unfathomable cataclysm such as we are witnessing in the Gulf of Mexico at this moment, in order to perpetuate the lifestyle to which it feels entitled. Like all addictions, this one is both irrational and insane.

Every person who has chosen to research Peak Oil, climate change, global economic meltdown, species extinction, and population overshoot is not unlike an addict who has some moment of clarity in which he can actually choose to walk to the nearest rehab facility and fall on his face screaming for help. None of us can do that investigative work without the massive support of other “cheap energy addicts in recovery”. None of us can do it without a spiritual as well as a logistical recovery program which all authentic recovery absolutely requires.

Like the recovering addict there will be moments of terror about what the future holds, and the greater the devastation we have created, such as the largest oil spill in the history of the world, the more daunting the future will feel. Like the recovery of the addict, our recovery will require rigorous honesty and a commitment to finding meaning and purpose, not in the substance, which is killing us and the planet, but in a different kind of lifestyle. This will be a lifestyle of simplicity, cooperation, and deep connection with nature and our fellow humans. It may mean alterations in our behavior that feel like sacrifices until we realize that the joy, meaning, and contentment they bring us are what we wanted all along.

Therefore, as we witness the spread of the most devastating and widespread oil slick in history; as we see the photos of oil saturated wildlife and watch frantic fisherman in despair because they have lost their livelihood; as we watch enablers blaming and scrambling to fix the un-fixable, let us do as they say in Twelve Step programs, and take a searching and fearless moral (and energy) inventory of our lives and notice where we are in our recovery from addiction to cheap and abundant fossil fuels. Richard Heinberg’s book The Party’s Over documents how brief in the history of the human race the party was, how much fun it was, and of course, how lethal it was and is. So while the enablers are blaming and fixing, it behooves all of us to ask of ourselves the toughest question of all: What are we doing to recover?

This is a guest post from Carolyn Baker.

Join the conversation about this story »

James Madison owned 5,000 acres. George W. Bush ran an oil business. But no president amassed more wealth than our first one. George Washington’s net worth was equal to $525 million in 2010 dollars, according to a study from 24/7 Wall Street.  By comparison, eight presidents — including Lincoln, Grant and Wilson — had net worths below one million dollars.

An arresting thought: President George Washington’s salary was two percent of the total US budget in 1789.

It’s interesting to see the list as a kind of shadow economic history of the United States. The first dozen presidents tended to have significant, but fragile, fortunes predicated on real estate and commodity speculation that was tied to fluctuating crop yields. James Madison, for example, amassed a $100 million fortune (remember, all numbers are adjusted for inflation to 2010 dollars) but died after significant depreciation of his tobacco plantation.

But our presidents’ net worth numbers take a plunge in the mid-19th century after the Panic of 1837 produced a six year recession. 24/7 explains:

Beginning with Millard Fillmore in 1850, the financial history of the
presidency entered a new era. Most presidents were lawyers who spent
years in public service. They rarely amassed large fortunes and their
incomes were often almost entirely from their salaries. From Fillmore
to Garfield, these American presidents were distinctly middle class.
These men often retired without the money to support themselves in a
fashion anywhere close to the one that they had as president. Buchanan,
Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Hayes, and Garfield had almost no net worth at
all.

Starting in the early part of the 20th century, many presidents came into office with significant inheritance through corporations (Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and both of the Bushes). But since LBJ, five presidents from Nixon through Obama came from little or no inheritance.

Most of what you’ve read lately about the “crisis of economics” is rubbish. The Great Recession poses no challenge to the core ideas of modern macroeconomics. The notion that mainstream economics claimed that bubbles cannot happen, or deplored any and all financial regulation, or advocated laissez faire, or upheld any of the other shibboleths that the past two years have supposedly refuted, is ridiculous. Please note that critics of the policies that helped cause the recession almost invariably do so from within the prevailing paradigm–using lines of argument that were already well developed.

The nearest thing to an exception to this is central-bank independence. Here is an idea that was very widely accepted–not as a foundational principle of mainstream macroeconomics, obviously, but nonetheless as a clear-cut commandment. This principle has been cast aside–and rightly so–during the response to the emergency, first in the US and now in Europe. But the idea is so tenacious that nobody seems willing to admit it. Here, as my new column for the FT argues, is a big idea of orthodox economics that really does need to be re-examined.    

Filed under: Etc., Europe, Toys/Games

Gran Turismo 5 is taking longer to push to market than most automakers need to bring a vehicle from CAD drawing to the showroom floor, but Polyphony Digital is taking every opportunity to show off just how fantastic the racing simulator will (eventually) be. Spectators arriving at the 24 Hours of Nürburgring were surprised with a series of GT5 demo stations featuring the Grand Prix, Nordschleife, and the 24 Hours courses.

We have been both expecting and demanding that the full Nürburgring experience be included in every copy of the long-awaited game when it finally (hopefully) hits store shelves in time for Christmas, and it looks like our expectations will be met. Check out our ever-increasing gallery of GT5 images below. The first eight shots come straight from Germany, and the quality of the images is very impressive. And make sure to check out the aerial photo of tent city. In true Euro form, almost every virtual vehicle is a wagon.

[Source: Polyphony Digital]

Gran Turismo 5 releases new Nürburgring shots, complete with tent city! originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 18 May 2010 15:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember the “megapixel myth” that has driven camera specs for the last decade or so? Yeah, it’s still here; it’s called the “HD hoax” now. I just made that up. But seriously. The idea behind the megapixel myth was that simply increasing the size of the output image didn’t usually result in a better picture in any way. In fact, in addition to filling up the memory card faster, this megapixel bloat led to images that were noticeably less sharp and true to life. Similarly, so-called HD cameras and sensors are now being sold strictly on numbers and not on features or performance. But more data for the image is always better, right? Not quite.

What set this post off was that yesterday, Omnivision announced that they were packing 1080p onto a 1/6″ sensor. An admirable feat of miniaturization. But the reality is that this “high definition” is anything but.

First, a quick crash course in digital imaging. Forgive me if I gloss over or miss some of the more technical particulars.

1. Light approaches and hits the “event horizon” of the lens.
It’s not actually called the event horizon, but it’s the very outside of the lens, and the shape and placement of this determines the focal length of the lens — wide angle, portrait, telephoto, and so on. More bulbous, extruded lenses capture more light from a larger field of view. Lenses with physically larger surface areas collect more light, which is why lenses with low F numbers often have large front elements.

2. The light passes through a number of lens elements in order to be straightened and resized.
Light comes into a lens from a number of directions. Wider lenses can have light coming in from very disparate angles, and even telephotos have to deal with light hitting the lens at the “wrong” angle and creating flare and glow. Once the “right” light enters the lens assembly, it passes through a number of optic elements, bending and re-bending the light to produce a projected image on the other side of the lens. Depending on the aperture selected, it will have a certain amount of the scene in focus, but the total light that comes out the interior end of the lens depends on the amount of light that came in the exterior end.

3. The light hits the sensor.
Where there was originally film, there is now a sensor, usually a CMOS in most cameras, though a few still use CCDs. Imagine a vast surface of little buckets made to collect light. The image seen by the lens on the outside is projected onto these, with a small amount of error introduced by flaws in the lens elements (there can be dozens in zoom lenses) or arrangement thereof. This creates things like chromatic aberration, vignetting, and softness at some apertures. The light is meant to be going as straight as possible into these buckets; a bit of light from a red dress must not end up in a bucket which is holding the light from the green grass behind the dress. If there must be overlap, it must be as small as possible — this produces sharpness and contrast. The distance between the buckets and the size of the buckets determines (to an extent) sensitivity and pixel pitch. And the buckets must be able to hold a lot or a little of light and dump it out accurately later; this produces correct exposure and dynamic range.

4. The sensor dumps the data.
Someone has to empty the buckets. The graphics processor or CPU does this by unloading them from the top to the bottom. Looking down on the sensor, the top left bucket gets emptied first, then the next one to the right and so on, until the CPU reaches the end, at which point it starts over at the left on the next row. It does this as fast as it can, but sometimes it’s not fast enough. While it’s unloading the buckets, it’s often the case that they’ve started filling up again. This is called a rolling shutter, and it’s a major problem with digital cameras: it creates (among other things) something called skew, which distorts vertical lines and features. The faster the data is pulled off the sensor, the less skew there is and the more accurate the output image is.

5. The data is processed.
Now the raw data must be encoded into a form that’s compact and readable by devices and programs designed to “play” that content. Pictures are often saved to JPEGs. Video these days is often saved to codecs such as H.264 or AVCHD. The quality of encoding depends largely on the amount of processing power applied to the original data. If you are encoding a movie on your computer and set quality to “draft,” it will search for edges only on a gross scale, only sample color every X pixels instead of Y pixels, and so on. You understand: shortcuts are taken. You trade quality for speed, as in other things. Dedicated processors for this are a big help, as they utilize parallel processing to accelerate the job, and can do more in a second or cycle than an ordinary CPU. The finished file is then stored on whatever medium is available.

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Sorry, that ended up being longer than I expected it to be. But now, if you didn’t before, you know the rudiments of the process. Now, let’s get on with the news. Omnivision, an established creator of image sensors, has created a sensor that is 1/6th of an inch diagonally that records 1080p video. To give you an idea of how large a 1/6″ sensor is, here is a very handy little chart. The largest frame represents the size of a 35mm film frame, considered the referential standard for these things.

My Rebel XSi, the T2i I just reviewed, and many other DSLRs fall under the 1.5 and 1.6x crop factor (APS-C) squares. The new Micro four thirds cameras are there as 4/3″, and a large majority of compact digital cameras and camcorders I’ve seen and reported use a 1/2.3″ sensor, a bit smaller than the 1/2″ one. The rugged cameras I reviewed recently, for example, all had 1/2.3″ sensors or thereabouts. A sensor 1/6″ of an inch across would be approximately half the size of the (already tiny) 1/3″ sensor there.

Now, every camera that I’ve shot with, including the impressive T2i, has problems with HD. Somewhere along the line, in one of those steps I mentioned above, something goes wrong. And with imaging, it only takes one weak link to create a bad photo or video. High definition shouldn’t just be a name for a resolution. It should mean the level of definition in the image is high.

The pocket cams out there, for instance, can barely ape “HD.” Under the correct circumstances, in good lighting and with no motion, you would look at the 720p image and think “yes, that’s high definition.” For the most part, though, motion is blurry, colors are mixed, edges are indistinct, and there’s a weird sort of texture over the whole frame. What the hell? You paid good money for “full HD” (as the pocket cams are now advertising: 1080p in a phone-sized package). Why aren’t you getting images like the ones you see on TV?

The reason is that although the technology in one area or another may have advanced (lately it’s been sensors), the other bits of the camera are torpedoing the image quality all day long. Let’s go through the problems that occur during the process described above, in a $200 camcorder or phone shooting at 1080p.

1. and 2. The lens of the camera is garbage to begin with.
Think about it: devices which need tiny sensors are almost guaranteed to have terrible lenses. First, they’re tiny. You’re not getting a lot of light in one end, which means you don’t get a lot out the other end. Second, they’re cheap. The elements even in the nicest autofocus phone cameras are extremely small and (I’m guessing) are ground down from pieces too flawed to be used for large elements. Even perfectly good medium-sized digital cameras get tons of fringing and CA. Third, you’re losing a lot of detail through the plastic lens protectors and whatever oil and grime is on there. You can often tell a good camera by how well it picks up the flaws in the lens assembly.

3. Not only is the sensor small, but the “buckets” are small
Remember how we imagined a bunch of buckets next to each other? Now imagine those buckets are thimbles, and are expected to do the same job as buckets. This can only be done by using a boosted ISO to guesstimate how much light would have hit the buckets, but it creates a huge amount of error and noise. Not only that, but now that the buckets are thimbles, tiny things packed close together (high pixel pitch) there is even less tolerance for optic error! The tiny amount of error present even in a perfectly good lens is multiplied many times because the targets are so small — think what the shabby optics of a $3 lens assembly will do to the light. Now the red dress and the green grass are overlapping by a huge amount, resulting in a huge drop in sharpness and contrast. Even within stretches of a single color, the “sample size” for determining what color a pixel should be is totally distorted by boosted sensitivity, and color accuracy suffers as a result. These things can be minimized by predicting them and intelligently correcting for them, but only to a certain extent.

4. and 5. The sensor is slow and the CPU is slow
Granted, this issue is something that will only improve; RED One cameras, plagued by slow sensor offloading speeds, worked hard to produce firmware that fixed this, and now rolling shutter artifacts (while still present) are much reduced. Also, hardware encoding chips are getting cheaper and smaller, and will probably be featured in most video-shooting devices within a year or so. But now and for the next generation of imaging devices, you’re looking at a lot of skew (vertical and horizontal). And on the encoding front: 1080p video from the T2i, at 30 frames per second, was about 340MB. It’s a lot of space and takes a fair amount of data bandwidth to handle. It’s pretty much guaranteed that these smaller devices, Snapdragon processor or not, are going to be throttling it in order to make sure there are no missed frames, errors, or that sort of thing. This hurried processing results in a muddy look to the video, high resolution as it is, because edges and details have been rubbed out by a single hasty encoding pass.

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Now, I’m not trying to break Omnivision’s balls here. Creating such a tiny sensor that is capable of producing such a high-res image however many times a second is a serious achievement. Mission accomplished. The thing is, unfortunately, said sensor doesn’t really enable devices to do anything different. You’re just going to magnify the problems that are already there, and fill up your SD card faster to boot. Will it take pictures and video? Sure. High resolution pictures and high definition video… of a low-quality image. It’s a bit like taking a picture of another picture, and expecting the second picture to be better than the first. So if it’s not really high definition, why is it being recorded and stored in high definition? So they have a big number to sell you, of course, like 240Hz and 18 megapixels.

How can you avoid this? Well, just like the megapixel race, you really can’t. Video recording devices are simply going to overdo it the way still cameras overdid it, and now we all have hundreds or thousands of dubious images which despite being 10 or 15 megapixels, if you look closely or print too big, have all kinds of weird artifacts in them. It’ll be the same for video. You can choose to record at a lower resolution; 720p (even VGA sometimes) is just fine, after all, and often will record at the same framerate, meaning better image quality. And actually look at the lenses on the cameras you buy. Lenses that are bigger across are (generally speaking) better, and every lens has its F numbers printed on it or in its spec sheet. If you’re trying to decide between a few cameras, look at their lenses: if one device maker is shirking on the lens, arguably the most important part of the camera, then you can be sure they shirked elsewhere too. Also, don’t buy anything that shoots in 1080i. Interlacing is a monster deserving of its own post.

I’d like to say that my issue with inflated video resolutions (and megapixels) is something that will be alleviated by time, like some of Ebert’s objections to 3D. But the cost of good optics isn’t really coming down, and really, the size of the lens is a physical barrier not likely to be surmounted any time soon. The methods we have for collecting and measuring light aren’t sufficient, and the improvements yet to be made for them will do nothing to help the fact that with bad components, it’s garbage in, garbage out.

PALATINE, IL – Illinois Governor Pat Quinn will deliver the Commencement address to Harper College graduates at 2 PM Sunday, May 23 on the College’s main campus in Palatine, IL.  Governor Quinn is expected to speak to over 400 graduates about the critical role community colleges play in providing affordable access to higher education and training workers for 21^st century jobs.

Enrollment at Illinois community colleges surged 8% during the spring semester to an all-time record headcount of 390,142 students. At Harper, enrollment was up more than 8%, with a record spring headcount of 16,878 students.

“We are pleased Governor Quinn has chosen to speak at Harper,” said Harper College President Dr. Ken Ender. “Community colleges are a key catalyst for job growth as workers look to us to enhance their skills or retrain for new careers in the wake of the economic downturn.”

Dr. Ender is presiding over his first Harper College commencement. Dr. Ender came to Harper in July of 2009 after serving as president of Cumberland County College in New Jersey. In his short time at Harper, Dr. Ender is already positioning the College to be a leader in the national student success movement, which includes creating new programs to increase student completion, forming new partnerships with local high schools, businesses and four-year universities, and increasing accountability and transparency in programs and operations.

In addition to Governor Quinn’s address, Harper’s commencement ceremony will also recognize the winners of the Motorola “Award for Excellence” scholarship. The award is given annually to a traditional and a non-traditional Harper student who exhibits exemplary achievement in academics, community service, leadership and extracurricular activities.

About Harper: Harper College is one of the nation’s premier community colleges and one of the largest, serving 40,000 students annually in Chicago’s northwest suburbs. Harper’s rigorous academic programs prepare students for rewarding careers and for transfer to four-year universities. Harper offers outstanding and affordable associate degree and certification programs, career programs, workforce training, professional development, continuing education classes and developmental education programs. For more information, visit www.harpercollege.edu or call 847.925.6000.

Stocks were wobbly all morning, but the situation in the eurozone went from uneasy confidence to nervousness in the blink of an eye after the German government idiotically announced a temporary emergency naked short-selling ban. It applies to certain bank stocks, and the new regulations will also go after bond and currency speculators. Naturally,t he move is being re as a gigantic no-confidence move.

But first, the scoreboard:

Dow: -115
S&P 500: -16
NASDAQ: -37

And now for some key stories:

• Story #1 is Germany’s short-selling regulations. The ramifications of this move will certainly be felt overnight, and possibly for some time to come.

• The euro has fallen to a new four-year low, following the German news. It is now below $1.23.

• Goldman Sachs continues to get hammered, and the stock is now down to close to book value. Other financials were hit hard as well.

• The one big winner today: Wal-Mart. The firm’s decent earnings helped carry the stock into the green all day.

• Commodities sold off across the board. Oil is below $70 again. Copper did manage to rally back a bit. Gold slipped.

• The BP oil slick is taking an ominous turn for the worse, with the emergence of a large “tail” extending to Florida.

Join the conversation about this story »

This teeny little robot is the size of a toy truck – just 50 square inches. It’d be cute, almost, if it wasn’t armed with “dozens” of eight-inch rockets. More »

Ever saw The Price is Right on TV and thought you could do better than the contestants? Now you can see for yourself. The game show that has been on the air for more than 38 years

Sonic welding comes to the New Balance 574 model. What exactly is sonic welding? Used for technical clothing, tents, and industrial fabrics, sonic welding is an environmentally friendly alternate to sewing or gluing. The process of heat and pressure application to the seams of pattern pieces fuses the shoe together cutting out waste. The result for the 574? A sneaker that is airtight and watertight. The Sonic 574 is deconstructed in design, beautifully executed in rich, basic-colored suedes with pops of neons on the Encap. Available in black suede/electric blue, brown suede/neon orange and grey suede/neon yellow.

Continue reading for more images.

Below are links to news stories of interest from newspapers that came up during a search today.  These links were active at the time of this e-mail, but should you want to save a story, printing it or cutting and pasting the entire article and saving it to your computer is recommended 

State News 

 Belvidere middle schoolers protest in Springfield  Seventy Belvidere Central Middle School students went to Springfield on Friday to protest the lack of state payments to Belvidere School District 100. Attending with the backing of parents and support of educators, the students discovered their 12- and 13-year-old voices could be heard, said student Jonathan Coulter.   

District 204 reaches tentative teacher contract agreement
Chicago Daily Herald – Indian Prairie Unit District 204 and its teachers union have reached a tentative agreement on a two-year contract, officials said Monday. District and Indian Prairie Education Association officials would not discuss details of the proposed pact. But sources familiar with the negotiations said the first year of the contract calls for a freeze on all salary   

D204, teachers reach tentative agreement :: Fox Valley Villages Sun :: News
Suburban Chicago News – School District 204 has reached a tentative agreement with its teachers for a new contract. In an e-news message sent to residents Monday afternoon, the Board of Education and the Indian Prairie Education Association announced they reached a tentative agreement on a new two-year contract. District and union officials would not offer specific details of the agreement until they are present  

D204 approves ‘Plan C’ for music
Suburban Chicago News – In a 5-2 vote, the board approved Plan C, which calls for each student involved in instrumental activity to pay a $108 fee to help fund the cost of bringing back some of the music staff members that previously had been laid off. Doing so increases the technique class instruction that was cut under the earlier proposals.   

Tentative U-46 teachers pact keeps salaries flat, increases class sizes
Chicago Daily Herald – The tentative one-year contract for Elgin Area School District U-46 teachers would keep salaries flat and increase both class sizes and case loads. Teachers, according to a PowerPoint presentation on the Elgin teachers’ Association website, would receive no base salary …   

Parents question district’s expenses, results
Alton Telegraph –  Parents are looking for answers as to why students’ test scores are the lowest in the region and yet the East Alton School District’s operating expenses are the highest. “I’m concerned, because teachers are going to be laid off, yet there are no plans to cut administration costs,” said Brendan McKee, a concerned parent.   

School board’s tentative budget has $4.6M deficit
Springfield State Journal Register – Meanwhile, the district has more pressing money matters to attend to. Its projected deficit for the fiscal year that begins July 1 could be worse if state government doesn’t keep education funding at least level with this year, which was propped up with millions of federal stimulus dollars that are no longer available. Although Gov. Pat Quinn has proposed an income tax   

Rockford schools out in cold on state’s vow to pay  Illinois school districts found out last week that millions of dollars promised in fiscal 2002 are finally on the way, although none of it is coming to the Rock River Valley.  The Capital Development Board promised the money as part of school construction in which the state and each district would split the cost of a project.   

State owes Kewanee schools $791,000
Kewanee Star Courier – school breakfast and lunch programs, bilingual services and so on. Sullens noted that the state legislature went home earlier this month without approving a budget. Now, it’s up to Gov. Pat Quinn to come up with a budget, and that might not happen until July. Until then, schools won’t really know where they stand financially, Sullens said.   

District 65 plan outlines 3 financial scenarios, proposed budget cuts
Evanston Daily Northwestern –  about the district’s financial situation despite a looming budget deficit of up to $5.8 million. Several board members praised the administration for its plan for proposed budget cuts at a school board meeting Monday night. “Initially I was very stressed out and worried about this budget when it first hit,” member Andrew Pigozzi said. “Where the budget stands today   

Schools prepare for worst  With the school year winding down in Southern Illinois, many district officials remain unsure of what their financial situation will be when students return in August.  Superintendents across the region are waiting for solid numbers in the state budget to materialize. 

Naperville Dist. 204 fighting to keep payroll tax  The State Journal-Register – ?The Illinois tax code has proved to be too tough for Indian Prairie Unit District 204 and its president, Curt Bradshaw, so officials are going to fight to … 

District 26 may outsource busing
Chicago Daily Herald – may be the next area to feel the effects of the district’s recurring budget deficit. In an effort to balance the district’s budget and get off the state’s financial watch list, the District 26 school board is considering outsourcing transportation. Because the bids have not come back yet, no estimate is available on how much the district could save by hiring a company to bus the district’s   

Let’s hear alternatives to voucher plan  By The Pantagraph Editorial Board  – Legislators who voted against a bill to provide vouchers for students in the worst of Chicago’s public schools cited a variety of reasons for their negative votes. In the end, the voucher plan had too much going against it. Teachers unions were against what they saw as a threat to their jobs. Downstate residents were against what they saw as a gift to Chicago that left out their children.   

High school hoops team wants out of national immigration debate  The heated debate over a decision not to allow an Illinois high school basketball team to play at a tournament in Arizona is cooling off with word that the girls are going to Florida instead.   

5 vying to lead Chicago teachers
Chicago Sun Times – A packed field of five candidates will vie for the presidency of the Chicago teachers Union later this week amid extraordinarily tense times: a record Board of Education deficit, plans to raise class size to 35 and the prospect of salary concessions. 

Salutes in order as regional education office abolished
Chicago Daily Southtown – That’s why it was with particular pride that the SouthtownStar watched as the Suburban Cook County Regional Office of Education was eliminated this week. The now-defunct office oversaw, in theory, teacher certifications, bus driver training, background checks and other services for 144 school districts in suburban Cook County.  

Cure could be worse than illness
Champaign News Gazette – Unfortunately, legislators’ proposed cure ultimately may make things worse.  Both the Senate and House passed by overwhelming margins a bill authorizing universities to borrow money to help pay operating costs.  Noting the irony, state Sen. Matt Murphy, a Republican from the suburbs, spoke out vehemently against the measure.  “Here we are with a ticking time bomb, once again. And what’s the solution? Borrow more money,” he said. 

Loans may help SIUE meet payroll
Belleville News-Democrat – A bill on Gov. Pat Quinn’s desk may solve SIUE’s problems meeting payroll, but at a cost.  Last week, the state legislature approved a bill that Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard lobbied for,   

Gov. Quinn at Harper graduation ceremony:  Chicago Daily Herald – ? Pat Quinn will deliver the commencement address at the Harper College graduation ceremony, at 2 pm Sunday, May 23 on the college’s main campus in Palatine. …

Political News

Quinn foresees fast budget work in Springfield
Quad Cities Dispatch Argus Leader – SPRINGFIELD – Illinois lawmakers are going to cut it close, but Gov. Pat Quinn said he’s confident they will have a budget by this month’s deadline. The Illinois General Assembly adjourned May 7 without coming to terms on a state spending plan. On Monday, Quinn said  

What’s Left To Debate In Springfield?  Progress Illinois (blog) –   Yesterday, we offered a glimpse of what’s in store for lawmakers when they reconvene next week to hash out a state budget deal. The state’s spending plan, however, isn’t the only issue left on the docket. Both chambers still have some important bills to consider and Gov. Pat Quinn has to decide whether or not to sign some of the big-ticket items that the General Assembly has already passed. Here are a few things to keep an eye on:   

A taxing debate in the Rhubarb Patch: Where does Illinois go from here?  We have seen Greece, and it is us.  When Greek mobs were rioting over government austerity measures needed to secure sufficient international loans to keep the country afloat, the discussion on CNBC immediately turned to whether the indebtedness contagion would spread to the United States.   

Quinn blames prison board for early releases
Springfield State Journal Register – Gov. Pat Quinn criticized the Prisoner Review Board over the weekend for the early release of a man now charged with murder, but he ignored a vital fact: While he says the board should have ordered   

CAPITOL FACTS: Brady TV on the air
Streator Times-Press – labor unions, which give lots of campaign cash. If he hadn’t backed House Speaker Michael Madigan’s pension reform plan and stuck to the Senate Democrats’ negotiations with the Illinois Federation of teachers instead, he almost assuredly would’ve had the money to be up on the air right now. But those unions are in no mood to give. You can almost sense the panic with the governor,   

Brady begins Chicago campaign assault
Quad Cities Dispatch Argus –  The Republican state senator from Bloomington is taking to the broadcast and cable airwaves to let Chicagoland residents know his plan for Illinois’ economy. The 30-second spot blasts Gov. Pat Quinn’s “big government policies” and takes aim at his proposed 33 percent income tax increase. “(Quinn) thinks government growth is more important than ours,” Brady says   

Giannoulias pushes to end ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’  CHICAGO — Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, who’s running for President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat, launched a petition drive Monday to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gays in the military.   

Blagojevich jurors will be anonymous, says judge
Crains Chicago Business –  was convicted in June 2008 of fraud, money laundering and bribery in connection with an alleged $7 million scheme to shake down a contractor and money managers seeking to do business with a state teachers pension fund. His sentencing has been postponed indefinitely.   

State audit raps Blagojevich for legal costs  A new report from the state auditor general’s office says former Gov. Rod Blagojevich spent millions to hire outside lawyers, often without seeking bids for the best price. He also charged the legal costs to other state agencies instead of the governor’s office.   

Blagojevich knew Rezko was talking, feds say  CHICAGO — Prosecutors say former Gov. Rod Blagojevich considered naming himself to President Barack Obama’s former Senate seat because he knew convicted fixer Tony Rezko was talking and believed he could find himself under indictment as a result. 

Our View: Organ donation shouldn’t be a state mandate
DeKalb Daily Chronicle – We do not support a bill filed in the state General Assembly that would require Illinoisans to prove that they do not wish to be organ donors. If the bill becomes law, the legislation would mandate that everyone in Illinois is an organ donor upon their death unless they decide to opt out. While well-intentioned, this legislation goes beyond anything that government should mandate.

National News

White House Blog: Time for Bold Action to Save Teachers‘ Jobs

?(Melody Barnes, News, National)

“As the President has said, we live in a global economy where the greatest job qualification isn’t what you can do but what you know.  Our teachers are vital to our nation’s success and if we don’t act now and act boldly, we will not only endanger the future of tens of millions of students but threaten to undermine the recovery of our economy.”

New York Times: The Teachers‘ Unions’ Last Stand

(Steven Brill, Op-Ed, National)

“Michael Mulgrew is an affable former Brooklyn vocational-high-school teacher who took over last year as head of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers when his predecessor, Randi Weingarten, moved to Washington to run the national American Federation of Teachers. Over breakfast in March, we talked about a movement spreading across the country to hold public-school teachers accountable by compensating, promoting or even removing them according to the results they produce in class, as measured in part by student test scores.”

Washington Post: Study says more students struggling with reading at end of pivotal

(Michael Alison Chandler, Ed Blog, National)

“Nearly two-thirds of students in Virginia and Maryland do not read proficiently by the time they finish third grade, a pivotal milestone when material becomes more complex and children are more likely to slip behind, according to a national report released Tuesday.”

The New York Post: Bill raps the cap

(Carl Campanile, News, New York)

“Ratcheting up the pressure on Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, former President Bill Clinton yesterday urged the state Assembly to pass legislation to lift the cap on charter schools.”

TIME.com Today’s Top Stories

Primary Tuesday: Sending the Bums the Right Message

Nothing has the potential to cleanse the body politic as fully as the sacking of incumbents and establishment favorites

Some Success in the Gulf — and Trouble in Washington

On Sunday, BP managed to thread a mile-long tube into the broken oil pipe in the Gulf of Mexico to siphon about 1,000 barrels of oil a day to a drilling ship. But criticism continues to build against the oil company — and in Washington

A Sunni Awakening: Not So Easy in Afghanistan

An attempt to use an Iraqi solution to insurgency backfires when members of a tribe receiving U.S. funding start shooting at each other

Cell Phones and Cancer: a Study’s Muddled Findings

Do cell phones cause brain cancer? A long-awaited study of cancer risk and cell-phone use poses more questions than it answers

White Dog Rising: Moonshine’s Moment

Artisanal moonshine is the liquor of the moment for the same reason absinthe was a few years ago. Because it’s delicious. Because it’s illegal. And because it’s cool 

In primaries, a bellwether for November
Tuesday’s crucial primary elections in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Arkansas have drawn extraordinary attention from politicians and strategists in both parties who are eager to read an unsettled electorate.
(By Dan Balz, The Washington Post)

The euro may keep falling even if debt crisis subsides
LONDON — The once-mighty euro, which briefly plunged to a four-year low against the dollar on Monday, may be doomed to keep falling whether or not European leaders can contain the region’s roiling debt crisis.
(By Anthony Faiola, The Washington Post)

Increase in health tests, procedures is raising costs in frugal Utah
PROVO, UTAH — If there is any place that should have medical spending under control, this is it. Residents of Provo, many of them Mormons who don’t smoke or drink, are among the healthiest in the country. The city’s biggest hospital is run by Intermountain Healthcare, which President Obama has l…
(By Jordan Rau, The Washington Post)

Justices restrict life terms for youths
Juveniles may not be sentenced to life in prison without parole for any crime short of homicide, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday, expanding its command that young offenders must be treated differently from adults even for heinous crimes.
(By Robert Barnes, The Washington Post)

The oil rig’s forgotten few
EUNICE, LA. — Keith Jones lingered outside the imposing doors of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church debating whether to step into the memorial service inside. Earlier, back at the funeral home, Jones had introduced himself to the family of Blair Manuel, one of the 11 victims of the oil rig explosion…
(By Lonnae O’Neal Parker, The Washington Post)

 

Word of the Day for Tuesday, May 18, 2010

tipple \TIP-uhl\, verb:

1. To drink intoxicating liquor, esp. habitually or to some excess.
2. To drink (intoxicating liquor), esp. repeatedly, in small quantities.

noun:
1. Intoxicating liquor.
2. A device that tilts or overturns a freight car to dump its contents.

Even though Jeremy Clarkson thinks that the BMW X1 is complete “rubbish,” sales of the compact crossover have been doing well for the German automaker.

“The BMW X1 has significantly exceeded even our own ambitious expectations: Since its introduction last fall, we have delivered more than 36,000 units to customers,” BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer said that the company’s annual shareholder’s meeting. “Among these customers are plenty of younger people for whom BMW was not a serious option before.”

The BMW X1 will go on sale in the United States in 2011.

Refresher: The BMW X1 will hit markets next year and will be available with three engine choices. Kicking of the lineup is the X1 xDrive20d, which is powered by a 177-hp diesel engine. Second is the X1 xDrive23d, which is powered boy 204-hp turbodiesel. The X1 xDrive28i gasoline model is powered by a 3.0 6-cylinder making 231-hp and a 199 lb-ft of torque. It will be the only model offered in North America.

2011 BMW X1:

– By: Omar Rana

Apple has a special policy for iPad and iPhone purchases: Credit or Debit Cards only (or gift cards for iPhone), and limited quantities per customer. Why? To curtail black market sales? To track consumers’ habits? Apple won’t officially say why.

I was on CNBC’s Street Signs today discussing the issue. What say you? Is Apple’s “No Cash for iPad and iPhone” policy okay or does it rub you the wrong way?