The Best Job in the World!

Jeremy Clarkson has the best job in the world. First, consider this:

"More powerful than a McLaren F1" (2:00); " . . . the fastest road car in the world." (2:30); "It's just a ton-and-a-half of testosterone" (5:14)

Then, there's this:

"Sweet Mother of God this is fast!" (:20) and "Faster than the top speed of an Apache helicopter gunship!" (2:30).

Do jobs get any better than this?

When President Reagan Visited Greensboro Printing Company

One of my favorite bloggers, Ann Althouse, had a post today about a recent visit President Obama made to her home state of Wisconsin. I was reminded of the time President Reagan visited Greensboro Printing Company (well, sort of). It was a short visit in 1986, lasting only a couple of seconds in each direction on his way between the airport to a speech at the coliseum, but the GPC folks enjoyed the break and the chance to pay their respects. See some old pictures here.

I just had to join the ranks of the infamous AlthouseCommentors.

The Answer is "Chickensh**". What Is the Question?

Yep.

Best Kicker Headline of the Day: "Of Ire and Brimstone"

From my IBFF, this: "Churchgoers, strippers protest one another".

Every weekend for the last four years, Dunfee and members of his ministry have stood watch over George's joint, taking up residence in the right of way with signs, video cameras and bullhorns in hand. They videotape customers' license plates and post them online, and they try to save the souls of anyone who comes and goes.

Now, the dancers have turned the tables, so to speak. Fed up with the tactics of Dunfee and his flock, they say they have finally accepted his constant invitation to come to church.

It's just that they've come wearing see-through shorts and toting Super Soakers.

Where All That BP Oil Is

There seems to be some concern about where all the oil from the BP oil spill/leak in the Gulf of Mexico has gone. ABC News's report is here. I have a thought: maybe there just isn't that much oil to find. I did some figuring this morning. The EPA tells us that the Gulf of Mexico contains 6.43 x 10¹⁷ or 643 quadrillion gallons of water. The spill is said to be 200 million gallons (200 x 10⁶ gallons). By my math, that comes to about three gallons of oil in every 10⁹ (billion) gallons of water. Let's say for the sake argument that the spill area is only a thousandth of the Gulf. That makes the concentration in the spill area about 3 parts per million (ppm). The current legal EPA limit for oil discharge into the ocean is 15ppm--five times this calculated concentration. It looks like there just wasn't much oil in the spill/leak to begin with, so maybe it isn't missing.

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

I finished the book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo this afternoon. I enjoyed it, and it wasn't at all what I expected. I agree with James Lileks' critique:

What began as a book that was either banal in execution or banal in translation, or both, ended up as a book where these deficiencies didn’t matter at all, thanks to the headlong rush of the story. I also enjoyed the sheer Swedishness of it all, whatever that means.

It did take almost half the book before the plot really took off, but it was well worth the effort. The book does make one wish he knew more about Sweden, particularly the geography. Now to see the movie and see how close the two are.

Extreme Photographic Time Exposures

My Internet BFF today had an article about some lovely photographic time exposures. I don't do much with time exposures because they generally require a tripod, which is too much trouble to carry most of the time. These are beautiful photographs and you'll enjoy seeing them. For example:

Crematorium

By SergioTudela

This gorgeous sunset over the Mediterranean on Andalusia's Costa del Sol was captured on a Nikon D80 with an exposure of five seconds, creating the delicate fluff of the blurred waves and the deep colouration of the sky and clouds.

On Friday, John Nack of Adobe Systems linked to some time exposures of a different scale. These use a pinhole camera and have exposure times of up to several years.

When I attended the Nikon School thirty years ago, the instructors said the least expensive photographic accessory was film, so they advised taking a lot of pictures. I suppose that is not an option for someone taking a year-long time exposure.

With the cost of "film" today virtually zero, it is easy to take a lot of pictures. Now we must remember the Nikon School advice on the easiest way to be a better photographer: "Don't Show All Your Pictures". It does take some discipline to put the not-so-good ones in a separate folder and only show the good ones, even if they didn't take a year to make.