Okay, I confess, I did not watch the debate between Obama and Romney. In my opinion, it doesn’t count for much. I’ve been listening to both sides now since last spring and I’ve made my decision, so exactly what good would listening to the debate do me? Or for a committed Romney supporter, for that matter? None to speak of. So, observation number one: I’ve never known anyone who changed their vote because of something in the debates. [More . . . ]
Romney misleads voters 27 times in 38 minutes at the first debate - Think Progress lays them out. Daily Kos is setting out Romney's many misrepresentations too. Steve Benen has it right. We can't decide who won a debate without considering the extent to which the candidates told the truth:
President Obama, meanwhile, was listless and timid. He stumbled on his words. At times he seemed distracted and unfocused. There were key opportunities for the president to go on the offensive, but for whatever reason, he chose not to engage. For pundits checking boxes -- who gave the appearance of being "in control"? -- Romney excelled. But all of this overlooks an element I like to think it sometimes important: substance. The men on the stage last night aren't actors; they're candidates for the nation's highest office. Delivering lines well is a nice quality, but as the dust settles, it's worth pausing to reflect on whether those lines were true and reflect reality in any meaningful way. Indeed, it seems to me Romney thrived in large part because he abandoned the pretense of honesty. And as it turns out, winning a debate is surprisingly easy when a candidate decides he can say anything and expect to get away with it.
At "Bible Funmentionables," Michael Morris points out that Muslims are the only folks that are under orders to to kill blasphemers:
But let’s not get the mistaken notion that punishment for blasphemy is a uniquely Muslim idea. The Bible clearly comes down on the side of freedom FROM blasphemy as opposed to freedom of speech. And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death. —Leviticus 24:16Then Morris raises a basic issue I hadn't considered. Why should religion deserve any special protection from criticism and insults?
No one likes to be insulted, but why is it that only one institution, religion, has its own name for insults hurled against it. I don’t call it blasphemy when someone berates my kid’s soccer team or ridicules the all-time best movie trilogy ever made on planet Earth!
A new video pours out all of the lies about birth control that I've ever heard. Amy Phillips Bursch reports at Alternet. Here are the first three lies:
When women use the birth control pill, they are no longer desirable to men. Women who use contraception have to dress all naughty to get male attention. The World Health Organization has classified contraception as a Class 1 carcinogen.
There's a new generation of little cameras out there, and I took the plunge. I've been looking for a powerful zoom, but I didn't want to lug a big camera around. Then I noticed that several camera makers have come out with some extraordinarily small cameras with big zooms. I went to a couple of areas stores and looked at several of them, including the Canon SX260 and the Panasonic Lumix ZS20. They were both impressive looking, but I eventually went to Costco where I purchased the Sony HX10V for $260. It looks like a run-of-the-mill compact camera until you turn it on and use the 16x optical zoom. I don't quite understand how the engineers figured out how to get the 2" of zoom lens to protrude from a 1" camera body. It's quite an impressive work of engineering.
How well does the zoom work? I've tested it out at the Forest Park Grand Basin. The first photo is looking toward the St. Louis Art Museum without any zoom. The second photo, shot while standing in the same spot, is with full zoom. Click on the photos for more detail (these are lo-res versions of the images--the camera max is 18.2 mega-pixels).
This is going to be fun for shooting wildlife and many other types of shots where you don't want to distract the subjects. And the camera easily fits in a pocket, and it's loaded with many features above and beyond its magical zoom lens.
No Zoom
Full Zoom
Sony touts this camera's ability to take low light shots with good reason. This final image was a hand held shot of my street taken at midnight. I'm really impressed that the camera took a sharp photo in this very low light. I took this shot on full automatic--the camera recognized this to be a low light shot and automatically compensated.