Olympus XA, timeless design, state-of-the-art in 1979.
Colombia invades Ecuador, therefore it’s Venezuela’s fault. Hello? Doesn’t something seem just slightly odd about the story the establishment media is asking us to believe?
What’s the chance that Colombia’s story can really be taken at face value? Less than even, in my opinion. FARC guerrillas have had bases on the Ecuadorian side of the border for over a decade, and just by some amazing coincidence, a US-allied rightist government decides to attack after Ecuador elects a leftist government. Color me skeptical.
And regarding Colombia’s supposed captured “evidence,” it has yet to be examined by a disinterested third party. Remember, Bush had documents “proving” Saddam Hussein had bought yellowcake from Niger at one time.
Olympus XA, timeless design, state-of-the-art in 1979.
The caption says it all. It looks very futuristic, even after all these years. Glance at it, and you’re sure it’s a modern compact digital camera of some sort, or perhaps a APS point and shoot.
Then you notice things: a film door, a manual film-advance thumbwheel and rewind crank (no motor here). A mechanical exposure counter (no LCD display, either). F-stop numbers appear prominently on a front control (no programmed exposure). Open up the nifty integrated dust cap, and see a manual-focus lens. Peer through the rangefinder and see not an LED display but an old-fashioned mechanical match needle showing the shutter speed.
Yes, the shutter speed: the one automatic thing about the camera is that it’s always in aperture-priority mode. I would have liked a metered manual mode, but the small size (smallest ever full-frame 35mm camera with a rangefinder) won out. I started bidding for on on eBay because I wanted a camera to always carry with me (and to take on trips where photography was not going to be a major priority), and was disappointed with the quality of the lenses (both optical and build) on compact digital cameras.
And judging from the test roll I shot this morning, the lens is indeed much nicer than the standard compact digicam fare:
Frosty car on my street this morning.
We’ll see how much service life I get out of it, given that it is about 25 years old, after all. Pity there’s nothing equivalent being made today.
It seems that iron-clad, definitive evidence that Hugo Chávez was funding FARC is not so iron-clad and definitive after all, now that third parties have started to look at it. From an AP article about the released files:
But do [the documents] prove that Venezuela was actually financing the FARC’s bid to overthrow a democratically elected government? That’s not clear.Naranjo alleges the “300,” called the “dossier” in a Dec. 23 message signed by Marquez, refers to a $300 million gift from Chavez to the rebels.
In a Jan. 14 missive, Briceno discusses what to do with the “dossier.”
“Who, where, when and how will we receive the dollars and store them?” he asks fellow members of the FARC’s seven-man ruling secretariat.
Full article here.
It’s interesting to note that even the center-right government in Mexico is condemning Colombia for escalating this conflict by invading a neighboring nation:
The attack on Saturday, which killed at least 21 members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), including a senior commander, Raúl Reyes, also prompted condemnation from Brazil, Chile, Peru, Mexico and Argentina. [emphasis added]Full article here.
While we’re on the subject of governments with connections to Colombian terrorist groups, one might be interested in reading this, this, this, or this.
While we’re on the subject of outside groups that give aid to such organizations, one might be interested in reading this. (And note, the evidence for this one has actually stood cross-examination in a court of law.)
I wasn’t going to comment more on this, but this little gem from the domestic right-wing press is just so precious that I can’t resist:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez reached for what he considered the ultimate insult when he called Colombia “the new Israel.” If by that he means a country better governed than its immediate neighbors, that dares to protect itself against terrorists across its border despite getting bludgeoned for it by the international left — he had a point.
Yeah, right.
That’s why the place has such a history of violent conflict between its two main establishment political parties, to the point that neither was capable of addressing the growing inequities in society (particularly in rural areas, where a state of de facto feudalism prevailed).
Eventually enough peasants can’t put up with it any more and start taking up arms against the big landlords’ goon squads. And therein lies the roots of both the left-wing guerrillas and the right-wing death squads. (All it took was some years of escalating retaliations between the two.)
Yes, that’s why Colombia has an ongoing civil war while it’s neighbors don’t. Because it’s “better governed.”
What a sycophantic ignoramus!
…that the whole damn system is anything other than a complete joke, whose rationalizations cannot be taken seriously, the whole Spitzer thing should drive it home.
Sure, the guy broke the law. but he didn’t transgress any fundamental constitutional principles, and he didn’t kill anyone with his lawbreaking. Contrast both with bush’s illegal war against Iraq.
Yet it’s Spitzer that’s a shoo-in for impeachment and a likely jail term, and Bush that will retire as an elder statesman.
Fuck the system.
…for forgetting how much UPS and it’s joke of a “three-day” service sucks yellow donkey dicks.
Well, not completely: I’ve had nothing but successful UPS deliveries to my work address in Portland, so I had written off their previous awfulness as simply related to residential delivery.
Apparently it was just pure luck. Their tracking for the “three-day” (snort!) shipment shows it simply disappeared after departing their Louisville, KY hub last Friday morning. Not a scan since then.
Which means one of two things: either it’s lost, or it’s actually here in Portland, and the local UPS employees are doing a bit of CYA by not scanning it in so they can’t get shit from corporate1 about letting packages collect dust for a week in their warehouse.
Either one seems completely likely and in character for that outfit. A little Googling uncovers story after story of residential deliveries that were never attempted even though UPS claims they were. It’s also apparently routine for packages to linger a week or more in the local warehouse. I guess I should feel lucky: many of those customers never even got so much as a “UPS spoor” from their delivery person.
The (shit) icing on the cake is that it’s a digital camera that only became economically rational for me to purchase as a result of it having been discontinued and marked down. Given that it takes about a month to resolve lost package issues with UPS, this means that by the time the shipper gets reimbursed for the lost shipment, there won’t be any more cameras to ship.
So, there’s a good chance that the opportunity has been lost permanently, and in the meantime I don’t dare spend anything on accessories that would incrementally improve my existing film camera outfit for the next month (because the digital one might show up after all), thus losing the opportunity to use such equipment for about one third of this year’s spring wildflower season.
Fuck you very much, UPS.
1 On the other hand, I shouldn’t blame the local guys that much: some of the UPS gripes out there have had UPS employees chime in: it’s corporate that’s been trying to cram an unrealistic amount of deliveries into each worker’s hours as a profit-maximizing measure.
Unexpectedly, the camera actually arrived today, after being scanned in at Portland just before it was scanned out for delivery. So we know what they’re up to in the local depot.
Well, hopefully. The thing is giving SD card errors, which either means the card or the camera is at fault. Then again, if it’s the latter, there’s a fair chance Pentax will replace it with a K20D if it is defective, since the K10D is a discontinued item. I wouldn’t complain.
Read here if you want to understand why the Mac makes such an ugly, washed-out, desaturated mess of most JPEG files on (or saved for) the Web, and just what you can do about it.
Sometimes, broken color management can be worse than no color management at all.
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