They are hideously cheap, poorly constructed film cameras that result in some awesome and funky effects, with characteristic darkened edges and streaks from leaked light and a slightly surreal result to the colours. Such as here

This is all very exciting. It also gives me a chance to shoot medium format (can adapt this camera to shoot square photos rather than rectangle), which I've wanted to try for ages but my wish list topping medium format digital camera - The Hasselblad is about £20k out of my price range.

So, Holga it is... Eeek!

Ad astra per aspera

You should be able to login using your ET username and password from a few months ago - it's currently working off an older version of the DB - I'll fix that shortly. You have to login to edit pages, and you have to have an ET account.

The link to the ET database for authentication is all my own work.

Do we need a better name than "ETpedia" for it?

For half a century, Germany was divided by an internal border, running between democratic West Germany and communist East Germany. Now, 18 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the nature that found refuge in no-man's-land may finally be given official protection.

The "inner German border," which separated East and West Germany, stretched 1,400 kilometers (879 miles) from the Baltic Sea down to the Czech Republic. It was covered in barbed wire, surrounded by mines and booby trapped with automatic spring guns, while soldiers patrolled the barrier intent on preventing any East German citizens escaping to the West.

At the same time, this strange border developed a completely different function: It became a haven for wildlife. The no-man's-land that emerged, ranging from 60 to 200 meters wide, provided the ideal conditions for the flourishing of flora and fauna. Up to 600 endangered species, including the black stork and the lady's slipper orchid, thrived in this unusual terrain...

But 18 years after reunification there has been little done to legally protect the area, which has been caught in bureaucratic limbo. Since reunification, the Green Belt has been the responsibility of the federal government. But in Germany it is the 16 states and not the federal government in Berlin that are responsible for nature protection policies. Handing over the reins to the states, however, has proved difficult. Finally, after years of wrangling over which side should bear the costs, the states along the former border and the Berlin government struck a deal last month.

The so called "Twentieth high jacker" has had the pentagon drop charges against him, as the information was obtained by harsh interrogation authorised by Donald Rumsfeld.

As we journey through life, we should keep an iron grip, to the very end, on the capacity for silliness. It preserves the soul from dessication.

A hydrogen-powered fleet could replace half of the world's gas-guzzling cars in the next three years, according to Swiss entrepreneur Nicolas Hayek.

The Swatch Group chairman has launched a project to speed up research into an ecological energy system, harnessing sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. This could be used to power car engines.

Hayek was speaking at a conference staged by the world motoring organisation Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) in Lucerne on Wednesday. The theme of the conference was how automobile clubs can face up to environmental challenges.

Some experts say it will take decades before hydrogen-powered cars can go into commercial production, but Hayek believes that automobile giants have made enough progress in recent years to achieve results more quickly.

"It is a question of how many people work energetically on the solution. If all the automobile companies who are now working on fuel cells put 100,000 cars on the road in the next three or four years, we could have a fleet big enough to replace 50 per cent of the cars we currently have in the world in the next ten years," he said.

The Government's private fears over the dire state of the UK property market were laid bare today.

Click here to read the notes

Housing Minister Caroline Flint warned the Cabinet that "at best" prices are set to fall by 5 to 10 per cent this year.

She also briefed colleagues that housebuilding was "stalling", adding starkly: "We can't know how bad it will get."

The bleak assessment emerged when Ms Flint carelessly exposed a sheet of typed notes to photographers as she entered Number 10 for the weekly Cabinet session.

The document, headed "Caroline Flint - speaking notes", had a sticker attached which said "Papers for Cabinet meeting 13 May 2008".

No, seriously, that's what the man said. Almost verbatim:

"It's pretty clear to me that the Democratic agenda is to turn us into France," the Kentucky Republican told The Washington Times in an unusually blunt interview at his office in the Capitol. "Americans may want change, but the question is, what kind of change?"

Seriously, I don't get all the France-bashing. They've got excellent food, excellent wine, they've produced some fine writers and philosophers, and they've won a World Cup.

I guess one could bash France for having elected Nicolas Sarkozy, but somehow I doubt that's what McConnell is getting at.

NASA has scheduled a media teleconference Wednesday, May 14, at 1 p.m. EDT, to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years. This finding was made by combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with ground-based observations.

you are the media you consume.

Setback for Sarkozy as parliament throws out GM bill
32 minutes ago

PARIS (AFP) -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy's government suffered a setback on Tuesday as lawmakers unexpectedly threw out a controversial bill on genetically-modified (GM) crops.

Although Sarkozy's ruling right holds an absolute majority in the National Assembly, one third of his UMP party rebelled and joined left-wing lawmakers to vote out the text on technical grounds, by a whisker-thin 136 votes to 135.

Cheers broke out outside the parliament building where anti-GM campaigners had gathered in protest as the bill, which aimed to bring France into line with a 2001 European Union law, was rejected.
Anti-globalisation activist Jose Bove, who has been jailed several times for ripping up GM crops, called it a "historic victory".

"This is a collective victory for the citizens of this country who refuse GMOs (genetically-modified organisms). The government will not be able to do anything it wants after this," said a cheering Bove.

Left-wing critics attacked the legislation, drawn up following a national conference on the environment last October, as lacking strong enough safeguards to protect conventional crops from possible contamination from GMOs.

Obviously, stress at work is a medical condition, because working is hard. HR people are trying to help their workers deal with it, etc...

Why is there stress at work ? The question is not even asked. That it might be about employees being asked too much by exploitative hierarchies ? Unthinkable.

The concept that socialisation has to be linked to business relationships is a great victory for business relationships, not for socialisation...

Via Cyrus Safdari a flyer (front, back) by the Counterterrorism Intelligence Unit of the Texas Department of Public Safety. The title:TERRORISM - What the Public Needs to Know

This brochure is intended to provide information that will help YOU to help US in our everyday effort to identify and stop terrorism-before it becomes a deadly and tragic reality.

The flyer goes on to list "Some Characteristics of Terrorists":

The Reps will throw a shitfit if we win that.

Where's your motherf*%&ing flag pin?

Childers, the Democrat, just took it.  

I've never seen anything like this year.  Not even the 'blow-out' GOP take-over in '94 comes close.  

Have epistemological model of Complex Information environments. Will Travel.

you are the media you consume.