Please forgive me for this political agenda on my gardening blog

I hope you will take the time to read this essay Ive written. It describes the systematic failure of our political system.

The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1972 required candidates to disclose sources of campaign contributions and campaign expenditures. It also limited spending on media advertisements. But that portion of the law was ruled unconstitutional — and that actually opened the door for the Citizens United decision. This was a step forward for equality and transparency of our elected officials. But the very powerful very rich were still in pursuit of more control and contrived a treacherous plan to deceive us by suing in two important cases.

In 2010 the US Supreme Court ruled on the Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission and gave corporations and unions the right to spend unlimited sums on ads and other political tools. Its important to note that the Citizens United decision was about spending, not about contributions. This did not affect contributions. For that they created what is know as "independent-expenditure only committees" such as Speechnow.org which represent spending by individuals, groups, political committees, corporations or unions expressly advocating the election or defeat of clearly identified federal candidates.

In 2010 the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals also issued its ruling in the Speechnow.org v. FEC which removed contribution limits as applied to SpeechNow. Previously the courts had ruled that limits set by the Federal Election Campaign Act applied to this group called SpeechNow. It is still illegal for companies and labor unions to give money directly to candidates for federal office, but together with the Supreme Court’s earlier Citizens United decision allowing unlimited corporate expenditures, the SpeechNow ruling was just what the ultra wealth needed to create a government controlled by "Political Action Committees" (Super PAC) where most of the funding comes from just a few rich individuals.

The Supreme Court kept limits on disclosure in place, and super PACs are required to report regularly on who their donors are. The same can’t be said for “social welfare” groups and some other nonprofits, like business leagues leaving another loop hole for the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers to create a nonprofit called the “Association for American Innovation” that will act as a hub for funneling undisclosed spending towards the Kochs’ political projects.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is another "Business League" which allows corporations and wealthy individuals to use congressmen as lobbyist and collaborate on bills, often presenting industry-backed legislation as a grass-roots organization. It brings Republican state legislators and big corporations together to frame right wing legislative agendas in the form of model bills.

In November we will have an opportunity to vote on reversing the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling for Citizens United. Please vote.

As you know I am an advocate of the https://mayday.us/ superPac. Its time we used their trickery and corrupt laws against them and put an end to "Political Action Committees" (superPAC) . Jim Rubens is the only Republican running for Senate that supports Campaign Reform, but there must be others who would like to get back to running the country rather than spending 70% of their resources on being re-elected. If we persist we can make this happen. Please contribute to Mayday.us

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Photography New to me Canon EOS 20D camera

My new camera is a lot like my old camera in so far as they both take pictures, and they are both 8 megapixel cameras.

But after that they diverge a bit.

The Sanyo Xacti that Ive been using for the last 1300 photos Ive taken was gifted at me by someone (Thanks anonymous company) when I really needed a replacement because all the point and shoot digital cameras Ive bought to make this blog (I think its 3 now) fall over just after 5000 happy snaps.

5000 seems like a lot when I put it in print, but in terms of time, that equates to less than a year per camera.  Sure they cost less than AU$100, but I still want more than a year out of anything I buy.

This one that Ive been using is still going strong, and does a pretty good job of it I suppose, but I found the interface very heavy going.

It has quite a few options and features, but all of them have to be accessed via a clunky multi-level menu system. That means that every time you want to do anything other than what its set to do now, you have to explore a stack of menus to finally find what you need, and by the time youve found it, the ladybird has finished eating its aphid, and flown away.

My new camera on the other hand is a zillion times better to work with. Ive only had it for around 10 hours, but it already feels comfortable.

Its taken around 1200 pictures so far in its life.

I have very greasy fingers.

Im eating zucchini and haloumi fritters.

Delicious.


The new camera is a Canon 20D. It was originally sold for around AU$1500 (Australian dollar) in 2004, and was described as a "semi-professional" or "prosumer" camera at the time, which of course means substantially more than other imaginary words and their associated imaginary metrics.

But on the whole, the camera rocks.

Thats my official rating out of 5.

It has a 4 GB CF memory card, which is the size of a bulky circa 2012 64GB mp3 player, and that cost around the same as a bulky circa 2012 64GB mp3 player. It takes a while to transfer photos, but it has very nice functionality, and best of all has an interface that works.

It also comes with some nice lumps of glass in the lens. It seems to be the lens that lets down lots of little point and shoot cameras. The quality of the photos taken by my new 8 megapixel camera is a lot better than those Ive taken with an 8 megapixel point and shoot style camera.

The second lens feels a bit like it might blow away, but at $10 its a very nice thing to have around.

The camera came with a Canon 18-55mm f3.5 image lens, with image stabalizer. Ive just discovered I love image stabalizing. Image stabalizing allows you to be a bit shakey, and have the lens do some stuff to fix it.

As I understand it, there are exactly two ways to do image stabilizing.

• 1. Project an image onto the censor, so that the image is a little larger than the censor, and the image has some extra image in the margins. Then have the camera track your shakey projection, and then use magic or software or something to knit together a nice crisp image.

• 2. Track some points on the image, and move the lens around a bit so that any given point on the censor always sees the same bit of the image, or move the censor to achieve the same thing.

• 3. Use gyroscopes mounted on at least two axes to resist the movement of the entire camera. Things spinning around like to keep doing it. If you take the tire off your bike (stop first) and hold the axle while someone else spins it as fast as they can, it becomes difficult to change the angle its on. This is why a spinning top (do they still have those?) stays upright, and is simply due to the universe being an amazing place.

Amazing!

The camera shows its age through its 8 megapixelness, as at the time of writing, thats about 16 megapixels short of where it should be.

I bought it from a second hand camera store in Japan for $150 with the Canon 18-55mm zoom, and I got the second lens, a Tamron 100-300 zoom, for $10 from the bargain bin.

Thanks Tom.

Toms a friend of mine.

Hes really good at buying way too much camera gear from junk bins. His hobby includes buying those instamatic film cameras that were big in the 70s. He likes to buy them when they have rolls of film still in them so he can process the film. In some subtle way, thats slightly different from buying some old photos.

Which is nice.

For him.

Hes kind of a time traveller, but he only gets to look, and doesnt get to choose what he looks at.

Mostly he gets to look at darkness.

Sometimes darkness, but with slightly mouldy edges.

Luckily, I dont suffer from collecting things other than my collection of odd people I know.

Toms one of my favourites.

Thanks Tom.




120 Things in 20 years - One of the best parts about getting my new, second hand Canon 20D camera, was getting to look at the Japanese supermarket junkmail it was packed in. Its been 20 years since I was in Japan, and the junkmail paper is now of even better quality.

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Loving me some Bluegill

Lepomis macrochirus, aka Bluegill

So in considering my outdoor aquaponics system, I was at a loss for what kind of fish I wanted to do.

Channel catfish were looking excellent. I figured out a layout if I were to do channel cats. TCLynx in Florida recommends at least a 300 gallon tank for catfish, but I worried because even she had a problem with fish deaths because it got cold and the channel cats stopped eating (while the automatic feeder kept dispensing). Thats Florida cold, not DC cold.

I mean, what is OK in warm water and OK in near-freezing or even frozen water? What is legal for me to have outside (i.e., NOT tilapia)? What eats just about anything?

Turns out Bluegill may be just what the doctor ordered.

Bluegill will eat just about anything. They are pretty prolific, but in ponds are usually kept in check by larger predator fish (think largemouth bass). As for eating, its a clue that they are called "pan fish."

They do OK in freezing temperatures. In fact, some ice fishers swear they are amongst the best fish to try for. Theyre fierce, making them a good sport fish, though they tend to run small.

And I finally found the list on the DGIF website for local commercial fish hatcheries. So now I know where to go to buy fish.

Ill have to ask about what size tank Ill need, and whether I should add a largemouth bass or two to help keep the eventual juvenile population in check. Since I need to be permitted for these fish as well, Ill be asking if I can amend the permit I already got for the tilapia (its the same form).

So do I do bluegill or catfish?

The greenhouse layout with a 300 gallon tank Id need for catfish would be 3 feet longer (18x8), which was getting a bit big for my tastes. And a 300 gallon tank runs a bit over $210, while I can get a 150 gallon tank I originally planned for is $130 (higher price per gallon, but lower unit price). At this time I dont know whether or not Id need the 300 gallon tank for bluegill or not.

I see a bit more research in my future, but its fun knowing I have multiple options for making this work.

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Aquaponics Flow meter

I got up in the night a week ago, went for a stroll through my house, and promptly fell over a lump of furniture nesting in my hallway. The last few weeks has seen us deciding that we really dont need a ... whatever you call that room with couches and a TV in your part of the world ... living room, lounge room... something like that if you speak English. Anyway, we decided we dont do enough "living" or "lounging" to really need a room dedicated to it, so we filled it full of floor to ceiling shelving, some desks and benches, and turned it into something more like a factory. A factory that doesnt actually produce anything, but does a heap of product development.

We figure when we want to entertain, well just do it at our guests house.

The result of all this that meandering about our house, is a river of transient furniture acting as flotsam and jetsam and nesting where it feels most comfortable, or simply where it last got stuck.

The result of that, is I tripped over an upturned thing with casters on the legs and impaled myself in the lower rib cage.

The next day I went to a doctor with a temperature of 39.7 c.

Who knew falling down gives you a temperature?  The doc thought I had ruptured my spleen so he suggested I go to hospital. The hospital decided I had three cracked ribs and pneumonia. A week later they finally disconnected all the feeding tubes, the morphine drip, and the catheter and let me go home.

The interesting upshot of all this, is that as a result of being given some kind of lung exercise device, I now have an excellent flow metre for my aquaponics system.


Which is nice.

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Thinking Beam me up Scotty

Dear The-President,

Im reasonably sure that the pressure difference between the Enterprise and (statistically speaking), pretty much every planets surface, would result in a lot of sinus pain and some scenes involving explosive snot.

I feel these scenes were conspicuously absent in the filming of the Star Trek franchise during beaming exercises.

I further feel that in the interest of reality, this should be easily rectified.

The absence of snot is the absence of reality...

Boomshanka.




120 Things in 20 years - Its possible that I have a cold.

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Stirling Engines My second attempt

I think I may have actually built something.

Or nearly built something.

It looks like this and almost works.

Most of that junk in the picture isnt part of it. The bits that are part of it are the bits that look like a Stirling engine.

Sometimes Stirling engines look like tin cans, and wire, and pink balloons. They also look like cardboard disks with blu-tac stuck weights all over the place to act as a flywheel.



I planned on posting a video of it working today, but it doesnt.

What it does do is spin around freely for a few seconds when you spin the flywheel. It also has a displacer and power piston that are configured in such a way as to do what they are meant to.

I think.

When I put it on the stove top, it nearly feels a bit like its trying to work, then smoke starts pouring out of the seals, so I take it off the heat before it catches fire.

Who knew tape might burn.

Yes. Thats right. I thought Id make my engine using gaffer tape for the seals.

It doesnt work so well.

Tomorrow, Ill buy some glue. I seem to remember hearing of someone who used two part epoxy on a real engine crankcase, so it should cope with the heat.

Maybe.

My next choice will be solder. Solder melts when you get it hot, so Im guessing that wont work so well either.

But the glue might.

If it works, Ill put up a big build post. If it doesnt Ill try something different.




120 Things in 20 years - Using a random evolutionary approach to building a Stirling engine. Chuck some bits in a bag, shake, then cull anything that doesnt work like a Stirling engine. Ill get there eventually.


[edit from the future - For anyone concerned that time may not be linear any more, this post was actually written two days ago, but for some reason didnt get posted. As a result the post after this one was actually two days after this one.]

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