STINGINESS UPDATE: Mark Steyn observes:

If America were to emulate Ireland and Norway, there’d be a lot more dead Indonesians and Sri Lankans. Mr Eddison may not have noticed, but the actual relief effort going on right now is being done by the Yanks: it’s the USAF and a couple of diverted naval groups shuttling in food and medicine, with solid help from the Aussies, Singapore and a couple of others. The Irish can’t fly in relief supplies, because they don’t have any C-130s. All they can do is wait for the UN to swing by and pick up their cheque.

The Americans send the UN the occasional postal order, too. In fact, 40 per cent of Egeland’s budget comes from Washington, which suggests the Europeans aren’t being quite as “proportionate” as Mr Eddison thinks. But, when disaster strikes, what matters is not whether your cheque is “prompt”, but whether you are. For all the money lavished on them, the UN is hard to rouse to action. Egeland’s full-time round-the-clock 24/7 Big Humanitarians are conspicuous by their all but total absence on the ground.

So I hear.

MORE HEALTHCARE BLOGGING: This week’s Grand Rounds is up.

AMAZONIAN COMPASSION: Jackson Kuhl and Nick Schulz do a country comparison.

HOW TO BLOG: Joe Carter has posted the latest in his series of posts on how to start a blog and get readers. However, I’d like to add a caveat to his “don’t bother Glenn” post. I don’t mind being bothered! But so often people send me email that says “I’ve started a new blog — check it out!” and when I do check it out there’s not much beyond an introductory post. As Eugene Volokh says, sell the post, not the blog. I love to hear about new blogs, and I love to call attention to them. But it works best when there’s an interesting post about a currently hot topic. Sometimes I’ll link to a specialty blog in an interesting area (e.g., nanotechnology) just because of its subject matter. But generally it’s the post that’s linkworthy. That’s how I feel, anyway, and I think it’s how most other bloggers feel.

JEFF JARVIS:

Mark Cuban, my favorite billionaire blogger, has called for the cancellation of the presidential inauguration festivities so that funds can be diverted to tsunami relief. Huh? Why not call for the cancellation of the NBA season and take all the dollars advertisers have committed for broadcasting it and send those funds to tsunami relief? What, the advertisers won’t do that? Have you asked?

Sounds like a good idea to me.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis emails that he was quoting Rex Hammock, but because of a formatting error you couldn’t tell until he fixed things. Follow this link for the original.

CANADA’S SHORT REACH:

There’s little to say about the tragedy of Canada’s response to the tsunami tragedy that hasn’t already been said. A lot of excuses have been bandied about for why Canadian soldiers weren’t sent, when Australia, Taiwan, Israel, and other countries despatched forces early, and the American military launched its largest operation in the area since Vietnam to try to save lives.

In the end, though, the answer’s pretty simple: 600 tonnes.

That’s the amount of airlift required to move the DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team). Since Canada only has the 4 CC-150 Polaris (modified Airbuses) for strategic airlift, with a cargo capacity of 13 tonnes each, rapid deployment of DART anywhere outside the effective ferry range of our 30-odd additional short-range Herc transports (ie, off this continent) was a mathematical impossibility, without civilian airlift… and civilian airlift is in pretty short supply at the moment. . . .

The lack of airlift was a conscious decision, based on the little remarked-upon shift in the tail-end Chretien period, during John McCallum’s time as defence minister. . . . “The world needs more Canada,” Bono said. Well, it’s unlikely at the moment to get it, at least not in the uniformed variety.

Read the whole thing.

AMERICA: LESS FREE IN 2004?

BLOG ROUNDUPS: The latest Canadian Blog Roundup, the Red Ensign Standard, is up. So is this weeks’ Carnival of the Liberated, a roundup of Iraqi blog posts. And though I was distracted and neglected to link it, the recipes from last week’s Carnival of the Recipes are just as tasty this week.

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY FOLLOWUP: Reader Ted Armstrong emails:

As digital camera central, you have not addressed those of us with hundreds of slides that would like to convert them to digital. Any services you can recommend?

No, and as one of those people myself (make it thousands, not hundreds) I’d like to know. There are slide and negative scanners that can do that, but I haven’t used one and don’t know anyone who owns one. I’m sure that there are services (here’s one that I found via google, but I don’t have any experience with them) but I can’t attest to the results. If anyone knows, let me know.

Meanwhile, reader (and frequent source of photo links) Jim Herd emails that the Nikon Coolpix 8800 has gotten an in-depth review at DPreview.com (the real digital-photography central). Much as I love my Nikon D70 SLR, there’s a lot to be said for these all-in-one cameras. They’ve got limitations, but for the size and price they’re ferociously capable, really.

Finally, my earlier post on printers led some people to ask about smaller and cheaper printers for cranking out snapshots. I gave my brother — who has a new baby and needs it — this little HP for Christmas. Unfortunately, he just moved into a new house and I don’t think he’s even unpacked it yet, so there’s no report from him yet. But it got a good writeup in Consumer Reports and it looks good: reads cards directly, has a small built-in LCD screen, doesn’t take up too much room.

UPDATE: Reader Mark Bridger emails with this link to some scanner reviews and reports:

I use an older Canon FS2720U and am in the process of scanning a couple hundred old slides I found when cleaning out my Dad’s house after he died. Most of them are 50+ years old. There are two problems scanning slides: Dust, and dust. Can’t get rid of all of it. The better scanners have hardware and software (Digital ICE or FARE) that greatly reduce it. Polaroid has a free plug-in for Photoshop that does a great job as well.

The consensus seems to be don’t use flatbeds for 35mm slides or negatives, but the do work pretty well for medium format or large format transparencies.

Scanning the slides is slow, and fairly tedious, but I’m having a great time seeing my older sister and brother as babies, my grandparents young and healthy, and my parents so young. I ultimately intend to create a book at mypublisher.com and send copies to my siblings and my aunts.

That’s cool.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Wow, this generated a lot of email. Whenever I think that I’m being self-indulgent by blogging on digital photography, the massive amount of email that posts like this generate serves as a reminder that plenty of people care about it.

Professional photographer Rick Lee emails:

I was reading your post on the chore of slide scanning. I was also thinking about this the other day when Lileks was talking about the huge chore of scanning a bunch of material out of books.

The best scanner you’ll ever own is in your camera bag. How do you like the idea of completing a scan in 1/30th of a second?

To “scan” flat material such as photos… Just get a copy stand.. Such as:
Link

To “scan” slides, get some sort of slide-duping device….Link

This works really well. I’ve even shot negatives before… In Photoshop I just reverse the image and hit “Auto-balance” and voile… A pretty darn good image. The other day I shot a page out of a book and ran the JPG through character-recognition software and it worked perfectly…. Turned the jpg into a Word doc.

That’s pretty cool. Photographer-reader Jim Hogue emails:

I’ve been scanning slides since Christmas into my Christmas present the Pacific Image 1800 AFL slide and negative scanner. It was, literally, a surprise gift from my not-so-tech oriented wife who’d got it on sale at Fry’s Electronic.

It uses Adobe Photoshop elements 2.0 with a Pacific Image import software utility.

I’m impressed with the scanner and the job Adobe PS Elements does in enhancing 45+ years-old slides. The auto color correction and auto level corrections are very good. I’m certainly no expert but the pictures look better to me now after that green age tint is removed.

I have my father’s family slides he began taking in 1957 and my own family slides I started taking in 1979 and so far the results have been very gratifying. have a total of almost 6,000 slides.

The downside it the scanner is it manpower intensive. Only one slide at a time and it can be a bit tedious. With practice, I’m now scanning and enhancing 40-45 slides in a little over one hour, to be fair, I find myself reminiscing over slides of my sons or my parents, so that time might be a little on the high side. Personally, I’ve set a goal of 40 – 80 slides a day to avoid burnout.

Also, the saved images are 12.5 Megs apiece and that might bump up against memory on lower end computers.

Yeah, that’s a bit labor-intensive if you’ve got a lot of slides. Reader Harvey Schneider writes:

Please see the attached links. One is for Microtek scanners, the other is an adapter that hooks to a Microtek flatbed scanner to scan slides. Mine works great. Full disclosure, I worked for Microtek in the late 90’s, which is how I obtained the scanner and the adapter. They scanners sold well, the 35 MM adapters not so well. Good product, limited market. I have visited Microtek’s factory in hsinchu science park, in Taiwan on several occasions. It is a world class facility. They do OEM for H-P and other major brands.

Link 1
Link 2

Reader James Martin sends this link to an info-rich page on scanning and sends this link to a discusison of bulk scanning of slides. Jonathan Gewirtz of ChicagoBoyz, who’s a superb photographer emails:

I’ve successfully scanned thousands of slides and negatives using an obsolete HP S20 film scanner (1998-ish technology). My scans are more than adequate for Web use and printing to 8×10. Newer scanners are more capable and typically include dust-correction software that works with most color films (though not with B&W negatives, and perhaps not always with Kodachromes).

The good news is that there is some art to scanning, and one can learn how to produce good scans using even less-than-best equipment. The bad news is that scanning is a time-consuming nuisance that is difficult to automate (though I think Nikon offers a film-roll feeder). I don’t know enough to recommend a modern scanner, but they must all be better than mine so I doubt that you can go far wrong. Minolta and Nikon are frequently recommended in online photography discussions.

Some of my best photo experiences were associated with scanning long-forgotten slides of family events. Kodachromes are durable, but IMO it’s prudent to scan other types of slides ASAP, before major deterioration sets in. You can always touch up the dust marks later.

I guess I’d better get to it. Meanwhile, reader Scott Gonyea sends this:

I am a former retail sales associate for Epson. I’ll divide my e-mail into two sections: printing and scanning.

I’ll accept that you want to do photo printing, despite the outstanding costs associated with it. You’re basically looking at either Epson or Canon to do your consumer printing. Two types of ink exist in the consumer printing world: dye and pigment, or solid. Dye ink is a liquid that strikes a coating on the paper and gets absorbed below it. The alcohol inside the ink dries the liquid and bonds it with the coating to form light and gas resistance.

The problem with dye ink is that it is water based, so if you leave your print in a humid climate then it will eventually lose its vibrance. Dye inks are easy and cheap, which makes them popular in a competitive, consumer market. But they’re not long lasting or resilient. Epson R2/300 and the Canon i9900 are both dye based.

Pigmented inks, such as the Epson R800, PictureMate, and 2200 are much more resistant to physical disturbances. The reason is because you have tiny particles (think: microscopic laser toner) that form a bond within the fibers of paper. They don’t bond to everything, but when they do they are not coming off unless you break down the paper itself.

Now, were you to make a decision this very moment between the i9900 and the Epson 2200, I would suggest the 2200. The pigmented inks a large advantage.
The paper optimized black inks have a significant improvement on output quality, as does the gray scale cartridge. But what makes the 2200 so great is that it has 3 paper paths: you can do panoramas (13×44) and also do a straight feed of foam board through the back. The 2200 has more bang for your buck.

The other advantage that Epson has is that professional papers are manufactured with Epson printers in mind first. Not only does Epson make great quality paper, but Ilford specifically designs their paper around the Epson print engine.

As for scanners, they depend on your price range. If you have the money, I suggest the Canon CanoScan 9950, because you can scan 32 film negatives at a time. It also has lots of built-in hardware features such as restoration, Digital ICE (bend and scratch repair), and a Matrix CCD. If $400 is out of your price range, the Epson 2580 is also a very good buy at $150, namely for its auto-feed film scanner. Word is that it has difficulty with black and white 35mm, but I can’t personally confirm this.

The scanner is a great investment, and the CanoScan is nothing but wonderful. Photo printers are a bad investment; if you want to share photos then get an Epson PictureMate. It’s guaranteed $.29 per photo and is pigment based. You can mail vacation photos to your nephew and know they’ll hold up. For your larger printing, go to a place like Costco. They have exceptional printing facilities at dirt cheap rates. The quality is professional and nowhere near the cost of doing it yourself. You just lose a little flexibility. But for that, have it done over the internet.

And that’s probably enough on this subject for now!

FINISHED READING JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL last night. I liked it very much. Kind of like Dickens-does-Harry Potter.

BILL STUNTZ FOLLOWS UP AN EARLIER COLUMN, which David Brooks listed among the top ten essays of 2004, with more on the Christian right and the academic left.

IS IT A MAINSTREAM MEDIA MELTDOWN? Certainly some people are losing it.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus notes an exit-poll smoking gun: “It wasn’t the dumb bloggers who didn’t understand on Nov. 2 that they were being leaked ‘complex displays intended for trained statisticians,’ as Mitofsky would have it–or the dumb Kerry aides and dumb Bush aides who believed the same numbers. It was that the weighted results Mitofsky’s statisticians put out were full of it!”

STRATEGYPAGE WRITES ON IRAN’S STRATEGY: Bully the Bloggers and Pretend for the Europeans.

TSUNAMI UPDATE: China’s limited role in the relief effort shows that it’s not ready for prime time when it comes to superpower status:

BEIJING China’s new and growing influence in Asia, which some analysts say has come at the expense of the United States, is showing its limits as the aspiring superpower plays an active but secondary role in responding to the tsunami disaster.

The Chinese response is significant by even the recent standards of its inward-looking history. But it is also a reminder that the world’s most populous country is far from being the dominant power in Asia.

On the other hand, that’s now. Some people think we’re not worried enough about where China is headed.

JAPANESE PHOTOGRAPHER SHOTO SHIMOMURA travelled the world in 1934-35. You can see some of his photos online here.

HIGHER PRAISE THAN I USUALLY GET, OR DESERVE:

The best editor in America today isn’t a journalist. He’s Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, also known as the “Instapundit.” He’s endangering my livelihood.

I don’t think so.

ARTHUR CHRENKOFF HAS A massive tsunami news roundup.

JIM LINDGREN: “The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) has a story by Corey Pein on Rathergate that seems to leave out quite a lot that might seem relevant to his argument. CJR came under early criticism for sticking its head in the sand when the story was breaking, thus missing one of the biggest stories of the year about the media and its coverage–what would seem to be CJR’s beat. Now CJR is dismissing those who got the story essentially right.”

Not very impressive.

HERE’S A UKRAINE UPDATE, plus notes on Putin’s Fifth Column in the West. A singularly ineffectual Fifth Column, if that.

I’LL BE ON HUGH HEWITT’S SHOW shortly, along with Jeff Jarvis. You can listen live here.

And don’t forget to buy the book! It’s blogerrific! (In case you missed it over the holidays, my review is here.)

DON D’CRUZ WRITES IN THE AUSTRALIAN THAT TRADE IS BETTER THAN AID:

Setting aside the emergency relief being rushed to tsunami survivors, which is vital and absolutely necessary, foreign aid has, in general, not been very effective. Indeed, if the aid industry’s effectiveness was judged by its success in poverty alleviation, it would have been shut down years ago. . . .

Aid is only a part of the development picture. For instance, while ODA flows stand at about $US63 billion ($80.8 billion), foreign direct investment has in recent years been twice the level of aid flows. Even remittances from workers employed abroad are worth about $US80 billion to the developing world. Moreover, most capital accumulation comes from domestic sources rather than from abroad. Indeed, economic growth is largely about freeing up local equity and getting locals to invest locally.

The true insignificance of aid is revealed by the fact that trade contributes almost $US1.7 trillion to the developing world, making free trade an imperative – hence the emergence of the slogan “trade, not aid”.

Yes, emergency relief is necessary, but long-term aid is often destructive. In that light, it’s worth reading this piece from the San Francisco Chronicle, too:

According to a recent study by the World Bank, 2004’s growth reflected “an expansion without precedent over the past 30 years.” Equally encouraging, the report notes that “the rapid growth of developing economies … has produced a spectacular, if not historic, fall in poverty.”

Amazingly, the World Bank report did not get much coverage in our mainstream media. It seems the press was more interested in covering the evils of globalization than in taking notice of how world trade — which grew by an astounding 10.2 percent this year — is driving economic growth. . . .

It is undeniable that 2004 was a great year for the poor. The World Bank’s prediction that global poverty will continue plummeting is particularly encouraging. But if we are ever to wipe poverty from the face of the Earth, our next generation of leaders must first understand what makes the global economy tick — the fundamental relationship between free trade and economic growth.

Read the whole thing.

ANTIWAR SAILOR SHIRKS RESCUE DUTY, LETS HELPLESS DIE UNHELPED: Power Line has an interesting item:

One of the ships helping is the U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault vessel carrying U.S. Marines. This is the same ship that [critical phrase deleted] Navy Petty Officer Third Class and darling of the anti-war left, Pablo Paredes, refused to board back in Decemeber because his ship was aiding in the “illegal” war in Irag. This sailor went AWOL back in December and staged a little media party in San Diego back in December. This is a wonderful irony.

Indeed it is.

ALI, FORMERLY OF IRAQ THE MODEL, offers an explanation for his departure.

KEVIN AYLWARD says the Columbia Journalism Review is rewriting RatherGate history.

UPDATE: Corey Pein, the author of the CJR piece, was voted most likely to bring down a Presidential administration by his Columbia classmates. Really, that says it all about what’s wrong with contemporary journalism, doesn’t it?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis:

In this, The Times is trying to marginalize blogs — making them look like the domain of nuts — without realizing that they are only marginalizing their own readers. See this weekend’s Pew study: The people are reading blogs. And I’ll just bet that Times readers read blogs disproportionately.

I could be wrong, but I smell the fine hand of a grizzled, old, grouchy, change-hating editor in this. When a story is mangled in such a way, when the facts in the story don’t back up the spin of the headline and lead, that’s often the case, from my experience: An editor sent a reporter out to create a story with a prefab spin and didn’t want to be bothered with the actual reporting that came back.

At the Times? Shocking.

MORE: Typographic expert Meryl Yourish calls Corey Pein’s article “utterly clueless.” Ouch.

ECONOBLOGARAMA: This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up.