philly

Philly NYE

Still sick, but Advil Cold & Sinus is working its magic pretty well. Let's see if Lady and I will make it out. We may just have a night to ourselves with yummy food. Hopefully I'll be able to taste it. No alcohol for me. Oh well.

Sick, Sick, Sick

Going home early and going to lie in bed. The D70 will have to rest today.

NYT Editorial on $35M Pledge

The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush's turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

Bush administration officials help create that perception gap. Fuming at the charge of stinginess, Mr. Powell pointed to disaster relief and said the United States "has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world." But for development aid, America gave $16.2 billion in 2003; the European Union gave $37.1 billion. In 2002, those numbers were $13.2 billion for America, and $29.9 billion for Europe.

Making things worse, we often pledge more money than we actually deliver. Victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year ago are still living in tents because aid, including ours, has not materialized in the amounts pledged. And back in 2002, Mr. Bush announced his Millennium Challenge account to give African countries development assistance of up to $5 billion a year, but the account has yet to disperse a single dollar.

Mr. Bush said yesterday that the $35 million we've now pledged "is only the beginning" of the United States' recovery effort. Let's hope that is true, and that this time, our actions will match our promises.

Full essay here.

While I'm not saying that the $35M won't go to good use or anything, but when we're spending $1 Billion a week on an unnecessary war, that puts things into perspective.

U.S. Airways

US Airways appealed to employees to work at Philadelphia's airport over the New Year's weekend - for free in some cases - to avoid a repeat of a Christmas fiasco that left the airline with too few workers to fly its planes and process baggage.

Via AP

Cartoon: Signe Wilkinson

First Day with the D70

I went out and took about 90 shots or so, barely made a dent in my 1GB card which can hold about 300 fine resolution .jpg shots. That shot above was taken from Market St & 16th St looking northeast towards Billy Penn. I gotta get a set of filters. I'll revisit this shot with a polarizer at some point.

The D70 is oh so cool. Not too heavy, feels great in my hand. The grip is nice and tacky. And it truly is instantaneous. The camera is ready to shoot quicker than I can get the lens cap off. I don't think I'll have an issue where I'll be missing shots. My F717 took several seconds to turn on and then get ready for a shot, that was annoying.

More D70 photos will be up on dragonballyee.com soon.

Lives Could've Been Saved

So, now I read in the Chicago Tribune that lives could've been saved had there been a system in place in the Indian Ocean's rim countries. Such a system exists for the Pacific Ocean

For 40 years, governments around the Pacific Ocean have known the giant waves caused by massive undersea earthquakes could reach across thousands of miles of ocean and devastate coastal areas, and they had prepared accordingly.
...
Only after the first waves hit Sri Lanka did workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and others in Hawaii start making phone calls to American diplomats in Madagascar and Mauritius in an attempt to head off further disaster.

The U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka, Jeffrey J. Lunstead, called Hawaii for more information.

Military officials in the Pacific were called and asked to relay warnings to U.S. forces in the Indian Ocean.

"We didn't have a contact in place where you could just pick up the phone," Dolores Clark, a spokeswoman for the International Tsunami Information Center in Hawaii, said Monday.
...
In the Indian Ocean, there is a far less extensive history of tsunamis and no such warning system. Only three of the countries that happened to be members of the Pacific alert system were warned--Australia, Thailand and Indonesia.

I guess the lesson is: Prepare for the worst.

Illustration: AFP/Getty Images

Privatizing Social Security

I was listening to Air America Radio yesterday [they're on repeat for the week] and on the Al Franken Show, they re-aired a segment with NY Times columnist and Princeton University economics professor Paul Krugman. Krugman was on to discuss the privatizing of Social Security and why it is bad, bad, bad for everyone [except those fuckers in cahoots with W & Co. that is].

Basically, it boils down to this... First off, there's enough money in the Social Security fund to last until about 2050 or so. Or if you're estimating a 1.3% growth rate for the U.S. economy, 2030 or so. But if you estimate that kind of growth rate, we have some serious fucking problems at hand for the economy. So, let's stick with that 2050 date for this exercise. Social Security is currently very safe. It is not an absolutely pressing matter. Even when the fund can no longer meet a 100% payout in 2050, those receiving the benefits will still receive a check, most likely 80% of what they normally receive. It won't be 0% as those right-wingers would have you believe.

Then let's get onto the whole privatization part. This is very, very bad. Why? Well, with this "privatization" people are going to think that they're going to be big "players" in the stock market - wake up folks. You'll only be able to invest about 2% of your income. So, if you're making $45,000 that's a whopping $900. Do you think that a broker is going to want to touch that $900 with a 900' pole? They have bigger fish to fry. A $900 trade is a shitstain to them. They don't need it and they don't want to bother with it. Plus, you'd be a total headcase, calling your broker every time the stock went up or down a point [á la Boiler Room]. The government knows this, so what to do about it?

Well, our friends in the W administration will probably pick out some nice safe mutual funds for Jane and Jo Taxpayer to invest their hard earned money. Which mutual funds do you think this administration will pick out? Some neutral companies? Some liberal companies? Fuck no. They're going to be companies W & Co. like and deal with on a daily basis. Companies who dole out millions in campaign dollars and inagural balls. A little pat on the back for getting him into office again. And mutual funds aren't going to get you much money anyways. So, unless the stock market starts going nutso or you're putting in a cool Mill into them, you won't see shit either.

If the economy grows at a rate which would make those investments lucrative, Social Security - as it stands now - will have more money coming in than it will be paying out; there is absolutely no need for Social Security to be privatized.

And also, just what if all of the people who have the option to privatize went ahead and did so? Well, there'd be a gigantic hole in the Social Security fund. Billions. Billions. Billions. Where would the government get the money to pay out the full 100% benefits? By borrowing from other countries. A Trillion here, a Trillion there, no biggie right? Fuck no. There is just no point in having to borrow this money when it's already there, in place, right now. If the current system is messed with, my generation and the generations following will have a national debt that will not be paid off in our lifetimes - not even close. It's too big a hole to dig out of.

See? Bad, bad, bad. This is just another method W & Co. want to take the average person's money.

Oh and by the way, W & Co. are still trying to make those tax cuts which benefit only the top 5% of the people in the U.S. permanent. Fucking us yet again.

All that info was garnered from Krugman on Air America Radio. Go out there and do some more reasearch and find out more for yourselves. If this thing passes, we're fucked.

Death Counts Keep Rising

More than 57,000 now is what I hear. It's really hard to read about all of this. I was feeling sick and really busy at work so I didn't read anything during the day, but just skimming the articles now just makes my heart sink.

D70 Has Arrived

The battery is charging under my desk as I type - and a full day early! First photos will be up later tonight.

But I'm feeling sick and generally pretty shitty. Can't guarantee much more than shots from inside of my apartment.

More Donation Avenues

Via CNN.com: here

The United Nations group UNICEF said Monday it was sending a team of experts to assess damage and how to mobilize relief to the region.

Mercy Corp, an international coalition of humanitarian agencies based in Portland, Oregon, also said it was accepting financial aid for tsunami victims.

Donations to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies are being accepted at its Web site.

Doctors Without Borders said it is getting ready to bring help to the region. Its Web site also has a place to provide donations.

CARE said it also is assessing the situation and is "mounting an emergency response."

AmeriCares reports that it is sending relief shipments to Sri Lanka and other areas hit by the tsunamis.