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gerry
The last week has been pretty up and down with Zoe's mom Gerry. More down than up. I've been putting off what to say not knowing how to say it. Zoe said it best: A short update on my Mom. It has been heartbreaking.
We have a little respite today. We will be off soon to pick up my mom and take her over to my brother Terry's for his 60th birthday. I can't believe that I have a younger brother that old! ;^) My mom's sister and husband will be there. I haven't seen them for some time. An old friend of the family will also be there. It will be some good family time. Links later.
israel and www3
We're Being Set Up for Wider War in the Middle East
Israel's path to total war
Some Questions Regarding Israel's Objectives: Is Israel Trying to Curb America's Deal-Making in Middle East?
Punching Above Its Weight
by Billmon
Failed States
by Billmon
Military Hubris
by Billmon
To Be Or Not To Be
by Billmon
Is Hezbollah in the Sweet Spot?
An Emerging Consensus on Israel's Goals in the US's Foreign Policy Establishment?
'If our Prime Minister is crying, what are we to do?'
by Robert Fisk
What I am watching in Lebanon each day is an outrage
by Robert Fisk
From my home, I saw what the 'war on terror' meant
by Robert Fisk
Israeli is preparing the battlefield
by Robert Fisk
Inside the Mind of Hezbollah
thanks to Magpie
War Traps New Yorkers
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There is a real sense of panic here among people. The foreigners and young people who have never experienced war are freaked out. And the Lebanese who lived through the civil war and remember it well are freaked out. I seem to be the only one walking around, noting the closed stores and subdued traffic and thinking, “hm, compared to Baghdad, this isn’t so bad.”
I think I was in Iraq too long.
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Look who's been kidnapped!
Hundreds of Palestinian 'suspects' have been kidnapped from their homes and will never stand trial
Bush: Lean on Syria
Israel Makes Its 'Clean Break'
The Real Aim
Tomgram: Bush's Faith and the Middle East Aflame
Politicians and Media Selling America's Soul for an Israeli Shekel :: Forcing America to Pay and Die for Israel's Invasions, Occupations, and Massacres
thanks to Yolanda Flanagan
Oh Happy Day
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Is it time to get excited? I can't help the way I feel. For the first time in my Christian walk, I have no doubts that the day of the Lords appearing is upon us. I have never felt this way before, I have a joy that bubbles up every-time I think of him, for I know this is truly the time I have waited for so long. Am I alone in feeling guilty about the human suffering like my joy at his appearing some how fuels the evil I see everywhere. If it were not for the souls that hang in the balance and the horror that stalks man daily on this earth, my joy would be complete. For those of us who await his arrival know, somehow we just know it won't be long now, the Bridegroom cometh rather man is ready are not.
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photography
Aaron Siskind - Harlem Document
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thanks to wood s lot
oil
Taken for a Ride on the Interstate Highway System
50 Years Driving in the Wrong Direction
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The 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower's signing of the Interstate Highway Act is a good time to dust off this review of the PBS documentary, "Taken for a Ride" that I wrote 10 years ago when President Clinton visited my city during the 1996 presidential campaign.
Riding a "Presidential Special" from Columbus to Toledo on tracks that no longer carry passenger trains, Clinton crowed, "I'm goin' to Chicago (for the Democratic Party convention) and I'm goin' on a train!"
I wanted to ask him why the rest of us could no longer travel to our state capital by train; why we are the only industrialized nation on earth that refuses to subsidize its passenger rail system? And I asked a question that makes me sick to my stomach to read 10 years later: "How many more billions of dollars and how many more lives will we pay for Mideast oil.?"
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Peak Oil and L.A.
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I have visited 43 states, about 20 foreign countries, and 4 continents, but somehow never made it out to California. That changed last week when I had to take a business trip to L.A. I spent 5 days there, seeing some sights and taking care of business. I visited the La Brea Tar Pits, toured Hollywood, got harassed by the LAPD at Hollywood and Vine, spent a day at Universal Studios, checked out Venice Beach, and drove around the city quite a bit. The topics of Peak Oil and energy utilization were constantly on my mind, but what I saw there was mostly depressing.
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Monday, oil topped $79 a barrel. It's fluctuating and you might want to watch it here:
321energy
And, if that isn't enough fun, here is a page with some more nightmares:
DrumBeat: July 16, 2006
specimen art
Gallery of fantastic creatures
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Gensou Hyouhon Hakubutsukan (”Museum of Fantastic Specimens”) is an online collection of creatures “curated” by Hajime Emoto. The three-story virtual museum consists of 9 rooms chock full of water- and land-dwelling monstrosities from all corners of the globe. Each specimen has a clickable thumbnail that links to additional photos and historical and background information (in Japanese). The basement contains a bookshop and a cafeteria serving dishes prepared with some of the beasts featured in the museum (such as umiushi sashimi, served fresh from the tank and wriggling on your plate, with a balsamic vinegar sauce).
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thanks to Coudal Partners
america the beautiful
Joe Bageant has two new essays up. Must reads.
Contemplations from the Cheap Beer Zone
Two kingpins of the sweating class deconstruct popular culture, Jon Stewart as opiate of the liberal masses and the Lake Tohopekaliga Bassmaster five-fish Classic.
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What I like about Virgil is that, despite watching television half his waking hours, he seems to have escaped the effects of red state media here in Virginia, such as the Christian Broadcasting Network ("If I wanna know what God thinks, I'll ask him myself.") Or the Fox Network's Iraq War drums ("You gotta wonder where the coffins and the cripples are. Sumthin fishy there.") Or the effects of advertising ("If I could afford it I'd buy a case of that Cialis stuff and smuggle a boner downtown on Friday nights. And if it last over four hours that's just fine with me.") OK, so he hasn't completely escaped media's shaping effects. As for the rest of us, with the exception of those getting up at 4 a.m. for vespers in monasteries, most Americans under 70 live lives almost entirely shaped by media. The past two generations of Americans derive their functioning cultural knowledge and self-identity from media, though they will swear it ain't so, and indeed do not believe it themselves, so permeated is their existence. We reduce all things to personality, consumer products, celebrity and entertainment.
Especially politics. For example, liberal TV watchers see Jon Stewart of The Daily Show as being political or about politics in some way. Of course it is about entertainment. Period. It's a comedic entertainment, created for profit by a global corporation and designed to fit the tastes and self-images of people who identify themselves as politically progressive. Stewart is a hip identity symbol for white middle class liberals. Which comes down to being, as Virgil terms it, "a smartass." Yet Stewart is a fundamental political input for millions, even though his show has about as much to do with an informative, actionable reality as Sponge Bob or ABC News (which delivered to my email this morning the following story: Castrated California Child Molester Wants His Freedom.) If you are a Stewart watcher who thinks you do not unquestioningly take him as a primary source of information, remember this: The Daily Show is being piped directly into your brain stem -- as any neuropsychologist or cognitive scientist can tell you, you don't have a choice in the matter.
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The Beauty of the System
A tale of shopping, blackmail and slow death in the lost Cul de Sac
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America is a dark half continent of grotesque notions made manifest, such as Scientology, the GOP and the McDonald's "Big Bowl" meal. Americans seem to possess psychic flypaper that attracts strange unsavory notions. Worse yet, we act upon them.
One notion we got into our heads right after World War II was that each generation must live better than the previous one. Not such a bad idea at the time, considering the number of folks in the previous generation who grew up during the Depression and knew what it was like to scratch with the chickens to survive. Consequently, the post-war generation was more than satisfied with a 900-square foot home, a refrigerator, a television, a car and presentable clothing -- any of which beat the hell out of drafty outhouses and scarlet fever. Throw in the GI bill entitlement for vets and you're looking at a pretty nice package for the post-war generation who brought us the baby boom and the two-ton, 17-foot 1954 Ford Customline 8 sedan. Further excess was inescapable. As Cotton Mather might well have said, had he the benefit of blasting down America's new interstates with a Chesterfield dangling from his lips and a cold Pabst in his pale Protestant claw, "BRING IT ON!"
And so here we are sixty years after the Big War with an expanded American sense of middle class entitlement. Ramcharged by extreme American capitalism and abetted by the carnie barkers of Madison Avenue, everyone in the middle class now feels entitled to the full-blown suburban lifestyle, every last digitized, low fat, high density, energy sucking bit of it. It all starts with a college degree. Then in return for knocking down those hard earned Cs in university business or technical schools, the children and grandchildren of people who thought a big closet was one so deep you could reach your entire arm into it ("That sucker must be two feet deep Helen! Now THAT'S storage!") feel entitled to 3,000-4,000 square-foot houses. And forget the lone old family wagon. The suburban middle class expects a car for every family member, not to mention an investment portfolio, several household cell phones, multiple television screens, (36 percent of buyers under age 35 rated having a "home theater" as important or very important in their lives, according to National Association of Home Builders), multiple baths, central air conditioning, DVD players, washer-dryer combinations, laptops, iPods, answering machines, MP3 players, patio furniture, outdoor gas barbecues, digital cameras, car audio, security and navigational systems, microwave ovens, camcorders, HDTV receivers, satellite systems, VCRs, Xbox controllers, water purifiers, coffee/espresso maker combos, closet organizers, software, mountain bikes, camping and hiking equipment, software ...
Phew! I can remember a time when my wife and I felt upscale because we bought a Sunbeam blender -- one of those solid chrome plated babies with the heavy glass 34-ounce jar. Hoooweee! Invite the neighbors. Banana smoothies for everybody! At any rate, Americans now have entire rooms specialized by appliance such as entertainment systems, home computers, and exercise equipment … It was not inevitable that we would arrive at such a point. It took a helluva lot of public greed and capitalist sucker-bait to make us the very spoiled and dangerous porcine folk we have become, people whose lives under the Empire constitute the most extreme material luxury and wealth the world has ever known, and the most oppressive and nihilistic one from a global standpoint.
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A tale of two cameras and a horror story
A tale of two cameras
Pretty little things, aren't they? Yesterday we celebrated the birthdays of my two younger kids. Katie was 26 on Sunday and Robby turns 24 today. Both are interested in photography and have taken photography courses but are without cameras. Katie does have a camera but it is a broken OM1. The Red FED 2 had been my primary rangefinder but with the repair of the Leica IIIc and the fortunate acquisition of a Zorki 3M, the little FED has been sitting on a shelf. I got the Zorki 4 in a trade. I was interested primarily in the lens on it, a tabbed J8 50mm lens. The black lens on the Red FED was my favorite minty J8. I hadn't had a chance to relube the tabbed J8 yet but I went ahead and put it on the Red FED for Katie. I had an extra I-61 50mm lens that I put on the Zorki 4 for Robby. Neither had light meters so I made a couple.
The business card has the Sunny 16 rule on it. It pretty much covers what you need to know to make good exposures outdoors. A fancier version is a slide rule exposure calculator I found on the web. It needed some modification in Photoshop, printing out, and some assembly. My kids are in their mid 20s and I'm still up late the night before assembling toys for them. I'm thankful for that. I printed out some camera instructions and threw in a roll of film apiece. Of course I made some wrist straps for them. I'm glad to see them taking pictues again.
A horror story
This is a depressing story. Proceed at your own risk. There was another item I ordered for Katie and Robby's cameras, a ventilated lens hood from heavystar on eBay.
They arrived yesterday (Actually it is Tuesday but I'm still up from Monday so is Monday today or yesterday?) They are very nice. I got an extra one for my tabbed J8. I tried it out first on my 35mm J12.
That's my lovely J12. Truly a wonderful lens. It's self hooded so a lens hood is a little reduntant but the lens hood looked nice on the J12 and made changing apertures much easier. I then got out the tabbed J8 that I need to relube.
That's the tabbed J8 50mm lens on my Zork 3M. The J8 and J12 are my primary lenses for my rangefinders. I tried to screw the lens hood on to the J8. It just didn't want to go on. Then I remembered that the outer ring with the filter threads was dented. So I put the lens hood back on the 35mm J12. It screwed on harder then the first time. When it was on I noticed it was not on square. I had cross threaded it. Then things went bad. I unscrewed it. It was on tight and, with the leverage of the lens hood, I apparently sheared off in internal pin and inscrewed the front element off of the lens body destroying the lens. So, in a space of about two minutes I screwed up the threads on the J8, screwed up the threads on the lens hood, and destroyed my J12. The J8 won't really be usable for me unless I can screw on filters or a lens hood so it is pretty much toast. And then I discovered I was out of beer.
Fortunately I have a 50mm f3.5 I-50 so I still can use a rangefinder. It's not like I don't have my Pentax SLRs to take up any slack for 35mm photography but this is pretty depressing.
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