It’ll be nice to be able to put the lenses from my K1000 back into action.  In particular, I have a 35-200mm zoom that should be useful at airshows and such as a 56-320mm (effective) lens.  I also have a couple of prime lenses kicking around: a 24mm f/2.8 and a 50mm f/2.

Amazon.com : Pentax PK Lens to Canon EOS EF Mount Adapter : Camera Lens Adapters : Camera & Photo.

“As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the People. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron.”

— H. L. Mencken

Of course, it helps that it’s frozen over:

Adventurer completes first-ever climb up frozen Niagara Falls

Canadian climber Will Gadd has become the first person to ever climb frozen Niagara Falls.

More commonly associated with the daredevil pursuits of highwire walks or riding the powerful cascades in a barrel, Gadd, 47, made history when he took the opportunity of the area’s annual freeze to scale the 180-foot frozen cliffs next to Horseshoe Falls.

“I checked out the spot we were thinking of climbing in the summer,” Gadd told Redbull.com. “You’d be swept away by the torrential downpour then.”

Gadd may have claimed the glory of being first over the lip, but he didn’t climb alone. His partner — who achieved the same remarkable climb just hours later — was a fellow Canadian, 34-year-old Sarah Hueniken.

She was left huddling in an ice cave for several hours partway up the route, to avoid being hit with chunks of ice, National Geographic reports.

[…]

The vulnerable ice formations posed peculiar challenges to the experienced climbers. “The ice is formed in layers,” Gadd said. “That means there’s a layer of ice, then snow (with a lot of air), then another layer of ice. It’s unstable, for sure.”

Abolish it and hand its job back to the states.  By pretty much every measure, we were better off without them for our first 200 years:

Department of Education nearly fails ‘plain writing’ rules with ‘D’

The federal agency that suggests what American schools should teach and grades the performance of millions of students with ever-expanding federal standards barely passes Uncle Sam’s biggest demand: complying with rules to write in plain English.

A new study of how federal agencies write public documents gave the Department of Education an embarrassing grade of “D.” Even the Treasury Department, home to the Internal Revenue Service, got an “A.”

Education’s low grade was one of the highlights of the Center for Plain Language’s annual Federal Plain Language Report Card. It judges how well agencies are complying with the Plain Writing Act of 2010.

A top grade of “A” went to 19 of 22 agencies covered by the law. That puts Education’s “D” in the lowest percentile, so to speak. Only State and Interior did worse, with an “F.” However, they could actually be better, but they refused to work with the grading group.

In our present Idiocracy, the bad guys can’t even pull off a carjacking because they’re flummoxed by one of these:

Stick shift defeats carjackers in downtown Ocala | Ocala.com

Are you better off now than you were six years ago? Most aren’t. Have a look at this:

(cribbed from Theo Spark)

All that progress since the early ’60s? Nearly wiped out.