Blogging allowed me to stumble on at least one simple description of my approach to economics. There are $100 bills lying round all over the place, in the form of perfectly simple things that we could do to improve things, that we don’t. That’s one of the reasons I get so animated about idiotic things like the doctrine of consideration and the rule against hearsay. The first doctrine could go straight in the bin without any harm being done whatsoever. The rule against hearsay is equally stupid, but would require an alternative legal framework to be developed before it was abolished.
Given that there are lots of difficult things, lots of things that can’t be improved without considerable cost, risk and/or rare insight, it would be nice if we could at least focus on not doing completely stupid things – not participating in farce. Not, for instance, handing down the ACT budget a week or so before the Federal Budget which will completely change all its parameters. I guess it could be worse. It could be the day before the Budget. Intrepid reporter Peter Martin has the story.
Wot happening to this camera?
Looks like a paper plate to me. Much cheaper than the fancy-pants stuff from the camera shop…
Na, I reckon its a home-made lens extension for macro shots, with a good reflector to get even lighting. Quite clever really.
On the ACT Budget, you have to set Budget parameters quite early in the development process in order to allow accurate costing of proposed measures. So if a state has a May, June or even July Budget it would not be easily able to use the Federal budget parameters (which are themselves usually set in March) anyway. Politically its less embarrassing to bring your Budget down a week before the Fed budget than a month or two after it using the same “wrong” parameters.
Dunno about that, dd. The camera looks to be a Canon S2IS, which shouldn’t need an extension tube to focus up close (I’ve got an older S1IS, and it’ll focus on things almost touching the lens. In any case, the S2IS isn’t an SLR, and doesn’t have a removable lens, so it can’t possibly be an extension tube.
My guess would be that it’s for taking photos through glass.
On second thought, dd, you’re probably right about the plate being a diffuser for macro work.
http://www.georgestarcher.net/Site/CCRRFD.html
Dunno what the rest of the crap is for. Maybe it’s Nick’s idea of an illustration of “farce”.