Eric P › Likes

Look at them sleeping. So daggone cute! - Hutch Carpenter

Bump for good times - Jesse Stay

16,000 down, 984,000 to go. - Thomas Hawk from Bookmarklet

@Chris Gulker. Someday I hope to work with a photo editor. God knows I need to. I like to think of my Flickrstream today more as the raw material in a lot of ways for future projects. A good photo editor adds tremendous value to shaping a photographer's imagery. - Thomas Hawk

On Investors Business Daily... "But my favorite part of the editorial deals with the British health-care system, which if you believe IBD is basically condemning the old and disabled to die. “People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless,” the editorial claims. Of course, that same Stephen Hawking who wouldn’t have a chance in the United Kingdom was in fact born in the United Kingdom, has lived his entire life in the United Kingdom and lives there still today, at the ripe old age of 67. (He was in fact hospitalized earlier this month.) Hawking is, you might say, living, breathing proof that these people are first-class fools." - John (a.k.a. dendroica) from Bookmarklet

Nah. I usually avoid newspaper comments. Always a trainwreck. - John (a.k.a. dendroica)

"Conservatives like Stewart because he's providing them a platform to reach an audience that usually tunes them out. And they often find that Stewart takes them more seriously than right-wing political hosts, who are often just using them to validate their broad positions, do. Stewart will poke fun, but he offers a good-faith debate on powder kegs — torture, abortion, nuclear weapons, health care — that explode on other networks. "Shepard Smith did the same discussion [on torture]," says May. "He kept yelling me at me: 'This is where I get off the bus! Not in my name!' He wasn't arguing with me. It was just assertions and anger. That's not what Jon deals in."" - Russellreno from Bookmarklet

Karen Strolia http://flickr.com/photos... - TODO - Mitchell Tsai

An old list. I have to update it... - Mitchell Tsai

LOVE... - FFing Enigma (aka Tina) from Bookmarklet

Okay coffee time for me, Tina could you get your families fried chicken recipe for me? - Joe

Clever and awesome all at once! - Jeff P. Henderson

50mm is considered the "normal" view lens for full frame cameras, for cropped frame digital cameras the 50mm becomes effectively 75mm. I think this explains the popularity of Nikon's new 35mm 1.8 which effectively becomes a 52mm lens on the cropped frame sensors. Of course it's available for $199 right now which is very reasonable too. ^^ - David C. Cooper

Got this lens a couple months ago. It rules. - Brian Newman

I have the new 35mm 1.8 and it is perfect with the DX sensors. - Robert Kenney

"The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned." - Sean McBride from Bookmarklet

@DaveH: when the oil is gone, it's gone. i still see a few folks who think there's some huge amount of it hidden somewhere in some easy-to-reach place we just haven't found, but i'm not optimistic. $20 oil makes sense in two scenarios: there's lots of it around; no one cares to use it anymore. i doubt either case will occur anytime in my lifetime, but it one of them does, it'll likely be the latter and not to former. - MikeAmundsen

“One of the people who was instrumental in pushing for laws to increase the legal drinking age to 21 now calls his actions ‘the single most regrettable decision’ of his career. ‘Legal Age 21 has not worked,’ Chafetz said in the piece. ‘To be sure, drunk driving fatalities are lower now than they were in 1982. But they are lower in all age groups. And they have declined just as much in Canada, where the age is 18 or 19, as they have in the United States.’” [h/t Erica: http://friendfeed.com/ericajoy] - Anthony Citrano

I was just reading a news story about some party where the police arrested a 20 yo who had a fake ID. I briefly thought "so what, he's a year over the limit, right?" and then I remembered BC's age limit is not the US's. - Andrew C

Just another example of useless and unnecessary government regulations. - David C. Cooper

"The American space program, the greatest, grandest, most Promethean — O.K. if I add “godlike”? — quest in the history of the world, died in infancy at 10:56 p.m. New York time on July 20, 1969, the moment the foot of Apollo 11’s Commander Armstrong touched the surface of the Moon. ... NASA’s annual budget sank like a stone from $5 billion in the mid-1960s to $3 billion in the mid-1970s. It was at this point that NASA’s lack of a philosopher corps became a real problem. The fact was, NASA had only one philosopher, Wernher von Braun. Toward the end of his life, von Braun knew he was dying of cancer and became very contemplative. I happened to hear him speak at a dinner in his honor in San Francisco. He raised the question of what the space program was really all about. It’s been a long time, but I remember him saying something like this: Here on Earth we live on a planet that is in orbit around the Sun. The Sun itself is a star that is on fire and will someday burn up, leaving our... more... - pg holmlov from Mento

"The "umpire" analogy is belied by Chief Justice Roberts, though he cast himself as an "umpire" during his confirmation hearings. Jeffrey Toobin, a well-respected legal commentator, has recently reported that "[i]n every major case since he became the nation's seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff." Some umpire. And is it a coincidence that this pattern, to continue Toobin's quote, "has served the interests, and reflected the values of the contemporary Republican party"? Some coincidence." - Andrew C from Bookmarklet

I'm astounded that Senator Whitehouse shows so much optimism for the system...usually by his age men in the law turn cynical. For example, "If everyone on the Court always voted for the prosecution against the defendant, for the corporation against the plaintiffs, and for the government against the condemned, a vital spark of American democracy would be extinguished." Go Sheldon! He's not pulling in punches to Roberts ,-) - Jess

"A group of Wisconsin Christians filed a lawsuit seeking the right to burn a gay teen novel. The group claimed the novel is "explicitly vulgar, and anti-Christian". The novel in question is Francesca Lia Block's Baby Be-Bop, a young adult novel in which a boy, struggling with his homosexuality, is beaten up by a homophobic gang. According to the American Library Association the complaint also demands $120,000 in compensatory damages. The complaint has been lodged by a group identified as the Christian Civil Liberties Union. Their suit claims that "the plaintiffs, all of whom are elderly, claim their mental and emotional well-being was damaged by this book at the library." - sofarsoShawn from Bookmarklet

I suppose if one has the right to burn a flag, one has the right to burn a book, as long as the fire doesn't harm anybody and as long as they buy their own copy to burn. - John (a.k.a. dendroica)

louds of glowing hydrogen gas fill this colorful skyscape in the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. A star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant and mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark interstellar dust clouds. Where the otherwise obscuring dust clouds lie close to the hot, young stars they also reflect starlight, forming blue reflection nebulae. The wide mosaic spans about 3/4 degree or nearly 1.5 full moons, covering 40 light-years at the distance of NGC 2264. Its cast of cosmic characters includes the the Fox Fur Nebula, whose convoluted pelt lies at the upper left, bright variable star S Mon immersed in the blue-tinted haze just below the Fox Fur, and the Cone Nebula at the far right. - Mitchell Tsai from Bookmarklet

Of course, the stars of NGC 2264 are also known as the Christmas Tree star cluster. http://www.zianet.com/rrichin... The triangular tree shape traced by the stars appears sideways here, with its apex at the C - Mitchell Tsai

Larger version [2383x1282] http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod... Awesome colors... - Mitchell Tsai

"Horsetail Falls in Yosemite Valley is selectively backlit by the setting sun. This was an amazing spectacle to witness. Happening only two weeks out of the year, the setting sun falls behind the vertical face of El Capitan, selectively lighting this waterfall with its orange sunset light." - M F from Bookmarklet

Did you just simply....walk into Mordor? - Matthew DeVries

This is a very welcome development. - Gordon Herd

https://www.evernote.com/pub... There will eventually be over 200 medical lists: some with links. - Gordon Herd

"In April, a "mere" 322,000 people lost their jobs. That was part of the whole "bad news, good trend" thing that had everyone talking about green shoots. In May, economists predicted a pretty similar result: 350,000 lost jobs. They got it wrong. We lost 467,000 jobs in May. The unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent. And that actually underplays the problems. It's always worth remembering that the unemployment rate is, at best, a partial indicator of people who are unhappily unemployed." - John (a.k.a. dendroica) from Bookmarklet

The job numbers are frequently revised a month later -- I vaguely understand the current estimates have a fudge factor for unmeasurable jobs due to new enterprises... but while in good times that's an undercount - there are more new ventures than the estimated - in bad times not only do people lose measurable jobs, but there are simply not as many new ventures getting started. - Andrew C

“Try your hand at closing California’s budget shortfall, estimated at $24 billion. It’s not easy, but it can be done. Cut spending, raise taxes and/or borrow to get the state out of the red. For each choice -- drawn from proposals from across the political spectrum -- we’ve tried to give some sense of the effects. As you craft your proposal, the Deficit Meter will show your progress.” - Anthony Citrano

The thing is, paying more isn't even an option, since the Governator will terminate any bill that tries to raise taxes. Although I wonder how long that stance is going to last. - Victor Ganata

"Health insurance is supposed to offer protection — both medically and financially. But as it turns out, an estimated three-quarters of people who are pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured. And so, even as Washington tries to cover the tens of millions of Americans without medical insurance, many health policy experts say simply giving everyone an insurance card will not be enough to fix what is wrong with the system. Too many other people already have coverage so meager that a medical crisis means financial calamity." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet

And let's see ... the insurance companies want everyone to buy health insurance and then they'll provide the services we've been paying them for all along? - Tom Landini

"If the world's governments fail to reach an immediate agreement on how to manage water resources by 2030, half the planet's population will not have enough water to survive, scientist Jonathan Baillie told Tierramérica." - Sean McBride

The mainstream media are paying much less attention to issues like the water crisis than they are to Mark Sanford's tryst in Argentina. - Sean McBride

Note, I'm not saying "okay," just socially acceptable. - The Letter M

Gingers. - Dave Roth

""It made some liberals very angry, my phone rang off the hook, my email filled up and Nancy Pelosi got so mad her face moved. Look, folks, I like Obama too, I'm just saying let's not make it a religion. And as far as you folks on the right who think that we're now somehow in league, we're not in league. I was criticising Obama for not being hard enough on the corporate douchebags you live to defend. I don't want to be on your team, pick another kid."" - Myrna from Bookmarklet

Dune wins - Josh Haley

I need to add a bunch of these to my Netflix queue! - Drew

"According to Wyatt Cenac, Iranians are bravely marching in the streets to show unity with their GOP brethren." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet

*facepalm*...................................................................... *facepalm* - Johnny Worthington

Michael, are you in favor of splitting the GOP into "freaks" and "conservatives?" It does seem to be a good time to separate the wheat from the chaff, if you will :) - Richard ¿digame? Walker

Earlier this week she tried to list one of the CDs, Blind Faith’s self titled CD. It’s a pretty famous album but on the cover there’s a photo of a young girl holding a silver space ship without a top on. I certainly wouldn’t consider it child porn. You can see the album cover if you want simply doing a Google Image Search for “Blind Faith” “self titled.” After listing the CD along with an image of it eBay pulled the listing. She figured it was because of the album cover and so she relisted it, only this time without a photo of the cover and eBay pulled the listing again sending her the following email explanation: To protect our users, recognizing that images of nude children often raise legal concerns, eBay has made a policy decision that it will not permit the listing of any item that depicts images of nude minors (under 18 years of age). - Thomas Hawk

"It all started with a simple, foolish tweet. On June 17th, GOP Congressman Pete Hoekstra compared the life and death struggle of Iranians trying to get their message out via Twitter to the Republican Party’s tussle with Democrats. " - Rob Haas from Bookmarklet

Perspective...he has none - Mo Kargas

As a long time Twitter skeptic, I'm finally coming around on the service for its seemingly unique ability to inspire Congresscritters to put their stupidity on display for all to see. - Eric P

While some, like Clay Shirky, will proclaim regarding this so-called “Twitter revolution in Iran,” that “this is it, this is the big one” (thanks to Anthropology.net) the “it” and the “one” are what are most in doubt. Yet it is doubt that is most absent from the analyses that have been hastily proffered — and when skepticism is absent from analysis, what are we left with? Hype, promotional propaganda, wishful thinking — a rush to the headline-grabbing punchline. Shirky thinks the whole world is watching, and he may be right, but he is wrong about Twitter and other social media. This is indeed a “revolution”…but it’s for Twitter, this entity whose very existence resembles the classic story of the start up from the last dot com bust of the late 1990s, a “Bubble 2.0″ firm operating in a recession no less, without ever producing a business plan, and yet getting $20 million here and $30 million there in financing (see this, this, this, and that). Twitter may be as irrelevant to Iran as it... more... - james reilly from Bookmarklet

<333 - Live4Emma (L4S) from Bookmarklet

BTW, Morgan, I posted this pic on my (14yo) daughter's FaceBook Wall, and shared with her your interpretation. She LOVES it! I now get "BZZZZT!"s from her all the time. :-D - Ladybug Heather

In a move sure to upset many long-standing flickr veterans as well as to possibly please many newer users, Flickr is currently in the process of a major overhaul to their popular Explore page where they showcase and feature 500 photos each day. The Explore page was started back in 2005 by Flickr as a place to showcase some of what Flickr considers, “the most awesome content on Flickr.” Flickr has continuously referred to a “magic donkey” at Flickr that selects the images that are included each day. - Thomas Hawk

I had no idea I had been on the Explore page. Just once, but I was on it. :) - Jeff Jones