Picasa 3.5 - A Fantastic Photo Program Just Got Tons Better

I've long been an avid fan of Picasa, Google's free photo organizer and simple editor. No other application comes close to ease of tagging, simple editing and exporting of images. Now they've added two long-awaited and very desirable features: facial recognition and geotagging.

Picasa's online companion, picasaweb.com, has featured facial recognition for many months now. I find the service rather limiting, however, and it lacks much of the social aspect of my preferred online photo site, flickr.com. Now that Google has ported that technology into the Picasa desktop client, I can enjoy the feature with abandon. Because I have a lot of faces in my collection to be recognized. Nearly 20,000 photos worth.

The other new feature, geotagging, isn't really new with Picasa 3.5, but it is a vast improvement from previous versions. It offers a nice big Google Map right in the window upon which to drop whatever photo you please. Very slick.

What makes everything nearly perfect is the Picasa2Flickr add-on that I use. By simply selecting the photos I wish to move online, then clicking the Send to Flickr button, the photos are automatically placed in the separate Flickr Uploadr application, ready for upload.

The nice thing about the Flickr/Google combination is that they share the basic tagging/geotagging functions. So whatever data I give a picture offline in Picasa is automatically recognized by Flickr. The one drawback is that Flickr doesn't recognize the facial data tags it gives when recognizing faces.

In short, thank you Google for finally adding these features to Picasa. You definitely beat Flickr to the punch on this one--and you have retained at least one solid fan.

Compassion by Compulsion

Allow me to interject some religious philosophy for a moment.

All you hear about in the news these last few weeks is the hubbub over the Democratic plan to socialize health care. The arguments against it are many and valid: debilitating cost to the taxpayer, loss of control of one's own health decisions, degraded quality of rationed medical care, the overall negative economic impact. The list goes on and on.

But there's an underlying violation dealt by socialized health care (and all types of government handouts, for that matter) that offends the very essence of what it means to be human: Agency.

Agency is the one thing that makes mankind unique in the universe. Self-directed thought, combined with the ability to act on that thought to a degree, is why we can rightly consider ourselves special.

Agency was a key concept in the movie The Matrix, illustrated when the computer program/virus Mr. Smith cannot comprehend the human hero's motivation to keep fighting regardless of his inevitable demise.

Agent Smith: Why, Mr. Anderson? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting for something? For more that your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Yes? No? Could it be for love? ...You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?

Neo: Because I choose to.

Back to health care.

The proposed health care legislation is yet another giant step in the ongoing slide into what is portrayed as a "compassionate" society. Every government program that gives out something for nothing is created in the name of compassion. But is it really compassion? Compassion by whom? The lawmakers?

What good is compassion when it's mandated by another person? It even defies its own definition. Compassion comes about only through a personal choice to sacrifice for someone else. Compassion is the result of acting on one's own agency to help another.

Social programs, like the proposed health care legislation, invalidate any human choice in the matter. It takes away one's freedom to choose compassion. If I have $10 to give to a cause, the government would prefer to distribute it rather allow me the opportunity to give it of my own accord--thereby diminishing my agency and the core of my very humanity.

Giant social handouts are not programs of compassion. They're programs of compulsion. And when we become a society of compulsion, we have truly lost our freedom.

Mormons: Conservators of Americansim?

Generally speaking, I don't typically hold much with what online magazine Slate has to say. It's too pretentious and "progressive" for my taste – despite a depth of content that sets it apart from other magazines.

Here's an article, though, that I found thoroughly intriguing. It discusses why Mormons are uniquely prepared to carry the culture of America beyond our nation's demise. The author is dispassionate and evenhanded, which makes it stand apart from typical Slate pieces. This one's worth reading. Even if you're not Mormon like me :)

Glenn Beck Wins vs. Barbara Walters/Whoopie Goldberg

It's not very often that I watch an entire minutes-long news segment on the Internet. But this one totally intrigued me: The real story behind the ambush of Glenn Beck on The View. Enjoy.

Summer Travel Photos

This year I enjoyed a cool roadtrip in the southwest. Here's a taste of the (mostly) desert beauty.

How Many Ways Can You Say Squid?

One thing I find mildly amusing about some news writers is what seems to be a personal challenge to use as many different synonym phrases for the subject matter as possible. For example, a story about a dog would include "pooch," "canine," "man's best friend," and others.

Today the subject is squid. In this article, the writer mentions:

"jumbo flying squid"
"sea monsters"
"carnivorous calamari"
"alien-like cephalopods"
"deep-sea giants"
"so-called Humboldt squid"
"red devils"

Apparently halfway through the piece the writer ran out of synonymical word combinations, and retreated to using the word squid throughout the rest of the article. She must have taken off her cutesy creative hat.

Romney the Early Frontrunner for 2012

It's very, very early, yet--but it's still noteworthy to point out that after Sarah Palin's spectacular crash and burn, Mitt Romney has emerged as frontrunner in the 2012 election. How the likes of Sarah Palin and John McCain rose to the top last year in the first place is beyond me--but let's leave that for another discussion.

From the Fox News article:

Of all the Republicans and Republican-leaning respondents polled, 26 percent favored Romney as the nominee while 21 percent preferred Palin. Nineteen percent favored former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and 14 percent chose former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

A lot can change in three years. However, I'm convinced that a devastated economy will remain the top issue as the Obama administration continues to gut the potential for free-market prosperity. This plays to Romney's strength, and will land him in a strong position to contend for the office.