Twitter update

@DrFreud: McCain just said mORGYges instead of mortgages.  What’s that mean and how should it affect my vote? Thx.

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bailout bill stalled by democracy

While I totally disagree with Barney Frank’s support of this bill, he is one of the most entertaining people in politics today.  The above video is his response to acusations that Nancy Pelosi’s speech before the vote was the reason it failed.

Why are the major parties blaming each other for causing this bailout bill to fail?  What happened yesterday is what democracy is all about, right?  Legislation was proposed by the White House containing no oversight (in fact it had provisions against oversight) and all kinds of fishy talk about expediency.  Congress did their job and threw on the brakes.  The bill was re-written, voted on, and failed.  That is democracy people.  There is now more time for considered debate.  Hooray, I say.

Democracy Now interviewed Rep. Dennis Kucinich before the vote.  While the press has swallowed the initial premise, Kucinich makes the case that the whole thing has a smell to it (he was interviewed before the vote yesterday):

AMY GOODMAN: Is it any better than when it was first introduced by the Treasury Secretary, by Henry Paulson?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, you know, that implies that you would accept the underlying premise. I reject the underlying premise that we needed this bill. And as a matter of fact, that we’re putting this up before an adjournment in an election season shows that Congress is being put under extraordinary pressure to bail out Wall Street. We haven’t looked at any alternatives, Amy. This is—you know, it isn’t as though, if you had a liquidity crisis, that—you know, a real one—that you’d start to look at all the alternatives. We haven’t done that. We have a bill here, a bill of more than a hundred pages, that we haven’t had a single hearing on the bill, you know—on the concept, yes, on what Paulson and Bernanke asked for initially. But, you know, we need to have hearings on this. There’s 400 economists and three Nobel Prize-winning economists who have said, “Whoa, wait a minute! What are you doing? Why are you rushing this?” You know, this thing doesn’t smell right, frankly.

Twitter update

Just inhaled non-dairy creamer.  Wonder what that looks like in an autopsy.

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The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book For Digital Photographers

1/200 f/1.8 ISO 100

Picked up Scott Kelby’s new book on LR 2.  Unfortunately, I have been busy with school and reading other titles to get a grasp of how useful it will be.  I bought it because Scott Kelby focuses on real world workflow rather than describe software feature by feature.  I’ll update you when I know more.

The image above was shot on Saturday and developed on Sunday.  There is a common phrase among both photography and software instructors: Get it right in the camera.  I wonder sometimes, though, how much of the final image is done in camera versus during development.  As long as composition, depth of field and sharpness, and exposure are close to what you had in mind, the rest can be done in post.  I believe this insistence on in-camera perfection stems from the stigma of image manipulation.  Luckily, I grew up in the digital age and have never owned my own film camera (other than disposable).  I don’t have that hesitation to make my images better through software.  To those that say too much manipulation is cheating, I say the following.

The level of expertise necessary to paint with light in software is at least equal to the expertise necessary to do it in camera.  But if one can master both, the possibilities are endless.

virtual unknown for president

This guy has my vote!

http://www.tsgnet.com/pres.php?id=46832&altf=Ebojfm1Mvdbt&altl=3Uif1Gmbtilvcf3

Twitter update

This show looks pretty funny http://www.hbo.com/tim

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Twitter update

The gate at the tollbooth came down on my windshield this morning.  Scared the crap out of me but no damage.

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strictly aesthetic

1/180 f/1.8 ISO 200

My wife had these shoes on our daughter this morning, but took them off because they looked terribly uncomfortable.  So many things around us are designed for aesthetics at the expense of function.  Great designers are able to balance both.  Myself as consumer, I tend to favor function over form.   The couch must be comfortable above all else.

Twitter update

If you live in the CO it is really easy to vote by mail.  http://pascovotes.com.  Democracy for the lazy.  Schizzle.

Twitter update

Just posted some black and whites of O on her site.  http://olivia.thelucaslife.com 

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hangin at beefs

shot with a blackberry curve

The three great Bs. Buffalo Wings, Beer, and Babies. My mug is so cold scientists took core samples before they brought it out. Mmmmm…core samples.

Twitter update

…"F**k it, we’ll do it live!" -Bill O’reilly

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Twitter update

Refuse to read another word about marginal productivity and cost curves. Going to take the midterm cold….

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Twitter update

McCain is left-handed! He might as well concede right now.  What a weirdo. ; )

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Twitter update

Pres. debate @ 9.  Pick a channel.

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unlikely online tools for photographers

 

Dave Cross has a short article on his blog about how he used Google’s Street View to plan out a photowalk.  There are many online resources to not only pre-plan shoots but to figure out exactly what time the best light will be, check the weather, etc.  It reminded me of a post I did about using the archived images of a webcam to figure out what the light would be like the next day.  Check that post out here.

how’s my blogging?

Can someone get me this shirt for x-mas?  In white though.  Thanks.

Good morning

My second Friday of the week is starting out smoothly.* (Haven’t been in a fender bender.)  NOTE: This is not a picture of the dirt on my windshield.

*I have two Fridays and two Mondays because I work 4 10hr days with Wednesdays off now.

Tollbooth

This is what a tollbooth looks like when one has a Sun Pass.

rogue portrait photographer shunned, applauded

During a portrait shoot for The Atlantic Monthly of Senator John McCain, Jill Greenberg snapped some images of the presidential candidate for later alteration.  Personally, I think this was a hilarious and courageous move.  After all, a photographer owns their work regardless of who they are working for.  On the other hand, she may have ruined her own career and potentially damaged the image of other portrait photographers.  There is an article about this at The Online Photographer.  Check out Jill’s website.

Photo Submission Rule #8

This just cracked me up.

NO Downstairs Nudity

JPG is okay with artful nudes, but we do not allow photos where the genitalia region is visible or photos that are explicitly pornographic. (That’s “or”… we know the two aren’t synonymous.) As a general guideline — no penises, no vaginas, and nothing in that immediate vicinity — period.

Twitter update

If I wire these UPSs right I could have a hybrid. Finally found somebody who will take them. *sigh*

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Twitter update

My xD just doesn’t have as much pickup with 400lbs worth of battery backups in it.

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Twitter update

Just got rear-ended.  No damage to person or property.

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decapitator is back

In January a story went around the net that there was an artist in London photoshopping advertisements and essentially decapitating the actors or characters in them.  An example is above and an article about this person can be found at Laughing Squid.  They call him/her “The Decapitator” and the artist has a flickr photostream which you simply must check out.  I love this kind of countercultural art, sticking it to the man if you will.  Our senses are assaulted with a constant bombardment of marketing.  It is refreshing (and amusing) to see an artist making a statement against such consumerism in our society.

Well, The Decapitator is back.  Check out the second Laughing Squid article for details.

Twitter update

Have all the windows open for the first time in a while.  How’s the weather where you are?

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Twitter update

Made the mistake of straying slightly from Toyota’s service department.  Sales people were eyeing me like fresh meat.

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resist wall street’s shock doctrine

 

Thank goodness there is at least some debate happening in congress about the 700 billion dollar bailout proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and backed up by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Not enough questions have been asked by the media about this issue. There is a big one that would be at the top of my list: why is it so imperative that this legislation be passed by Friday?  This crash has been apparently long predicted.  Why the rush now?  I believe the answer can be found in a book I am now reading called The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.

Though I am only halfway through (the book has 701 pages mind you), the author’s point is quite clear.  Chicago School, free market economics requires some kind of overwhelming and disastrous event (a hurricane, a terrorist attack, a coup d’etat, the fall of communism) to be accepted and implemented.  The following is a quote from the father of this free market ideology, Milton Friedman:

Only a crisis–actual or perceived–produces real change.  When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.  That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

Check out the Wikipedia.org entry on The Shock Doctrine.  It has a brief summary and a fair description of the book’s praise and criticism.

The current economic crisis is a disaster by anyone’s measure.  Klein now warns of the rush by those in power to implement otherwise unacceptable policies.  She has written an article in “The Huffington Post” that lays out her warning and the reasons we all should take a measured and skeptical look at the deals being made between Washington and Wall Street.  This morning she was also on “Democracy Now.” I urge you to read/listen/watch these resources to get an alternative perspective on this bailout.

the wisdom of wives

This is a quote from Scott Kelby’s guest blogger today, Michael Tapes.  His wife is as wise as mine. ; )

Thankfully my wife was insightful enough to convince me to buy the D30 instead of the Canon G1 P&S which had also just been released She said to me that we could not afford the G1 ($1,000) and that I must buy the D30 ($3,200)! She knew in her ultimate wisdom, that a G1 purchase would only have satisfied my gear lust mentality for a week or 2, and would be followed by the inevitable D30 purchase for a total cost of $4,200. Hence we could not afford the G1 <g>. Thankfully it still applies today. D300 vs. D90 – 85 f1.8 vs.85 f1.4. “We cannot afford the cheaper one!” Have I mentioned how much I love my wife?

obama kicks

I feel like I just got off of the Obama ride at disney and was dumped into the Obama giftshop.  This sneaker is the height of absurdity.  Hopefully, it is just citizen satire and not official merchandise.  Yesterday I discovered obamamobile.mobi for the mobile platform.  It fit perfectly in my blackberry browser.  They have wallpapers and even ringtones.  I’m sure you are familiar with such classics as “Bring Our Troops Home” and “Healthcare.”  No, I’m not joking.  It looks like you can’t get to the ringtones without a mobile browser though.  Bummer.

All of this hype is only going to hurt him as president.