My Christmas Present (Early) - The Celestron 44340 LCD Digital Microscope

Nothing says "Merry Christmas" to a geek like a new piece of technology. Here is mine, a Celestron LCD digital microscope. (Or is it digital LCD microscope? Oh, whatever.) I've already taken several images with it, including the ubiquitous "let me image my hair follicle". That to people who work with microscopes is analogous to the "Hello, World!" program that all new programmers compile and run.
How is this new microscope? In a word, cool! I love the images it takes, which it will do at 1600x1200 without going to the (always crappy) digital interpolation. It takes really good videos, too, which is nice if you need to be able to look at a particular object at several depths. As always, the depth of field of this scope is poor, but that's physics, not poor design or bad engineering. It came with 5 slides, which is not even close to being enough. I've already gone through all five. I'm now working my way through, well, any object that will fit under the lens. And being the engineer that I am, I've already got a list of improvements I'd like to see incorporated.

1) Add an option to delay the taking of the picture. This is a must-have. Right now, when you take a picture, the scope, while well made, moves ever so slightly. I'm having a helluva time taking clear images because the scope is still moving when the image is snapped. I'd prefer a short delay to allow me to push the button, let the scope stabilize again, then have it take the image.

2) It provides the option to put the date on the image. I'd prefer a metadata field that provides the magnification of the image, the color lens being used for setting the light color, and the type of lighting (underneath, above, or both).

3) Make the image capture remotely controllable. Yes, I realize this will take some more work. I want the ability to plug in the USB cord and be able to take the images from the computer. Hit a "Snap" button in a window, it takes the image and instantly transfers it to the computer. That solves the shaking problem AND the transfer problem all in one.

4) Make the codes for talking to the scope over USB open source. You want to get some buzz going for your scope? Do this and you'll have programmers the world over snapping up scopes left and right. They'll hack the living crap outta your scope and have it doing things you never thought possible. And you'll sell a boatload of scopes, to boot. So, why not? Oh, and you'd be able to ignore all of my suggestions because the hackers will do it for you!

Merry Christmas all!

The "Ghost Radio" Web Site

Ever heard of EVP? It stands for "electronic voice phenomena". I'd never heard of it until today, when I happened to read a story on the JREF web site asking for comments on a Youtube video. This particular video (from a Brit based on his accent) claimed to show EVP. And what, pray tell, is EVP? Allegedly, it's the "voices" that radios make when they are not tuned to an actual signal. People are claiming that the radios are actually producing real, honest-to-God voices.
And like all things that anyone believes, there's even a web site for it. Except, in this case, it's not just a web site. Oh, no. For something of this vast, cosmological importance, we need an association. And not just any association. The American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena.
On the very first page of their web site, they make the following claim:

People report experiences such as hauntings events or EVP, and these experiences can be verified and often replicated as objective events.

What?!?! Really!?!? You're out and out making the claim that "these experiences can be verified and often replicated as objective events"? Really?!?! So, tell me this: On what are you making these claims? What's your criteria? In what type of settings are you doing the experiments? What's your test group and what's your control group? How are you controlling for bias in the tests? You are performing multiple tests, aren't you? Not just one with a couple of your friends over for ... whatever? And why isn't this evidence openly available on your web site? Why isn't it presented so that outsiders (or disbelievers, such as myself) and check your claims?
Here's a test that I would want to try: Make a recording of what you believe to be EVP. Then I would want to play it back to 20 people (just for a start) and see if they hear anything. If so, what? If they all agree that they're hearing the exact, same thing, then we go to the next stage. Oh, and when you make the recording, I'd want to control for outside disturbances. I'd want the radio to (a) be tuned to nothing at all and (b) not scanning. Let's control for outside disturbances, shall we?
P.T. Barnum, even though he didn't actually say it, was still right.

Why I want the score to read, "Col Barfoot: 1, HOA: 0"

In case you've not heard about it, Col Van Barfoot, a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, has been told by his homeowners association to take down his flagpole that he uses to fly his American flag. Due to his age, the fact that he's a veteran of three wars (WWII, Korea and Vietnam), and (probably most importantly) a Medal of Honor winner, this has caused quite a stir.
I support Col Barfoot in this. First, I hate HOA's. I've read all of the comments about how they keep home prices up. But I've not heard anyone provide any evidence of that. To me, they are simply an artifice cooked up to "keep out the undesirables". Since when were we willing to sell out our liberty for some unspecified "Your house price will stay high" crap?
Second, as someone who (unfortunately) lives in an area that has an HOA, I'd ask this of all of the people who state, "He agreed to the HOA rules when he bought that house." My question is this, "How carefully did you read your covenants before you bought?" Of the two houses I've owned, both had HOAs. The covenants are legalese guacamole. They are designed by lawyers for lawyers. Did his explicitly state, "No poles in the front yard?" I'm willing to bet it didn't. I'm further willing to be he asked about the flag pole before erecting it because the covenants did not explicitly cover poles in the front yard.
Third, and to me most important, he earned the Medal of Honor. He gets a pass. Period. Considering that the majority of MoH awards are given posthumously, that takes some doing. I've had an argument with one person who blew that off by saying, "That was over 40 years ago." To which my response is that does not matter. He earned a frickin' MoH. He gets a pass. Forever. Period.
Fourth, the flagpole issue is not a violation of a law. At most, it's a violation of a contract. That means that he cannot be arrested. The police will not be coming to his house.
Finally, don't bother with all of the "what if" games. Those are the people who say, "What if he decides to paint his house purple?" or "What if he decides to put a car up on blocks in his front yard?" or "What if he decides to fly the Confederate flag instead?" He didn't. He put up a nice flag pole to fly an American flag, and he more than earned that right. End of discussion.