jims musings

So what should the gov­ern­ment do? Elim­i­nate those poli­cies that gen­er­ated the cur­rent mess. This means, at a gen­eral level, aban­don­ing the goal of home own­er­ship inde­pen­dent of abil­ity to pay. This means, in par­tic­u­lar, get­ting rid of Fan­nie Mae and Fred­die Mac, along with poli­cies like the Com­mu­nity Rein­vest­ment Act that pres­sure banks into sub­prime lending.

–Jeff Miron

So Microsoft, bless their hard-working lit­tle hearts, has devel­oped an inter­est­ing tool which digests pho­tographs of the same sub­ject and presents them in a pseudo-3D space. Con­trols are pro­vided so you can click around and ‘visit’ the sub­ject.
Its very cool, and its called Pho­to­synth.
I bring it up, because A) its flat-out cool, and B) I think this (or some­thing like it) will even­tu­ally enable a type of vir­tual tourism and per­haps even edu­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties. Want to visit the inside of Tutankhamen’s tomb? How about the Lou­vre? Or maybe you just want to show your best friend the liv­ing room you just redec­o­rated.
Even­tu­ally, I’d like to see HD video incor­po­rated into this tool. Give me a 3D mon­i­tor or gog­gles, and I could have a great time.
Any­ways, I’ve made my first pho­to­synth from some old pic­tures I just scanned. Go check it out.

I’ve been asked to post some links to sites I find infor­ma­tive and useful.

http://www.opencongress.org
   Barack Obama’s vot­ing record
   John McCain’s vot­ing record

http://www.govtrack.us/
   Inter­est­ing Con­gres­sional Sta­tis­tics
   Con­gres­sional polit­i­cal spectrum

http://www.opensecrets.org
   Con­tri­bu­tions received from Fan­nie Mae and Fred­die Mac
   See who is receiv­ing money from which indus­try
   Top lob­by­ing expen­di­tures by indus­try
   Top Pres­i­den­tial Cam­paign con­trib­u­tors
   Con­tri­bu­tions by Indus­try
(I thought the Lawyers & Lob­by­ists sec­tion illuminating.)