Posted 10:40 AM by Angie Schultz

Ashram Giant

Come on down to Ashram Giant, where we have 50% off Holy Aphid Ashram this week.

I love the idea of a business named Ashram Giant. I see that I have invented it, since it is unknown to Google.

Begin your spiritual journey here.

Or procede to next year.

Posted 12:57 PM by Angie Schultz

Reading, Interrupted

This morning I picked up the front page of the newspaper to read these words:

Clutching a Quran, Saddam Hussein went to the gallows before sunrise Saturday, executed by vengeful countrymen

And there I stopped.

Vengeful.

You know, if the US had turned Saddam immediately over to the Iraqis, who then turned him loose in a Shia or Kurdish area, and the inhabitants had attacked him with stones, bricks, kitchen knives, their bare hands -- that would have been vengeful.

But the Iraqis didn't do that. They gave him a trial. It's difficult to judge the fairness of the trial because there was no doubt as to his guilt. But they went through the motions, at least, and let him have a phalanx of the most deranged lawyers stolen money could buy, and let him occasionally point his finger and shout that the proceedings were illegal because he was still president, dammit.

And still, it's "vengeful". And the lesson here, children, is that it doesn't pay to do things by the book, because the right-thinking "civilized" people will still think of you as barbarians as long as there isn't forgiveness and a big group hug at the end.

Niles suggests that "vengeful" is not necessarily meant as a criticism. He's wrong, of course, but I mention it as a gesture to the Deluded-American community.

Now, you'll notice that there is no link to the article. That's because the Houston Chronicle's online article bears no resemblance to the one in the paper, despite being written by the same two authors. There is some overlap in information between the two, but only a handful of paragraphs.

Protein Wisdom designated-blogger Darleen comments on this story too, finding the Chronicle's dead-trees version at Forbes. The Forbes story is time-stamped 1:10am Eastern, whereas the online Chronicle story is time-stamped 10:50am. (Although, as we learned during the Qana photo-staging controversy, apparently time stamps on photos mean bupkis. Is it any different for stories?)

Charles Johnson also finds a vengeful photograph caption.

In other Saddam execution news, apparently some of his last words were, God is great. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab. I have to wonder at this report, since I find it hard to believe that Saddam found his mind concentrated on the Palestinians at that moment. They sure appreciated the thought, though. Aside from his family and some Kos Kidz, the Palestinians are really the only ones sorry to see him go.

However, Hot Air brings us an execution round-up in which multiple witnesses report multiple last words, including a contemptuous "Muqtada" [al-Sadr].

Returning to our theme of interrupted reading: that Hot Air post also noted this [London] Times obituary, which I abandoned in the middle of the fourth paragraph:

[Saddam] clearly felt that the international community did not have the stomach for a fight. He may have been right in that. But a new American President, George W Bush, determined to find a scapegoat for the Muslim terrorist attacks on the US in September 2001, was in no mood to abide by the niceties of international law.

It goes on for fifty-seven more paragraphs. But after inaccuracies on that scale, what's the point of reading the rest of the piece?

Posted 11:16 AM by Angie Schultz

Main Tsar Hag

OK, now the petits fours are calling someone else's name. I'm certainly not the posh lady. Petits fours are so fickle, such little tortes. I mean, tarts. Ha, I malign the tarts. A humble pie would never be so faithless. Next year, apple pies for everyone.

My mental illness began here.

Posted 11:06 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Church of the Holy Apostles

Church of the Holy Apostles Athens, June, 1990

This church looks terribly small -- not big enough to hold a dozen lumpy American tourists -- but it's not as small as it looks. This page has a photo at the top of the ancient Agora; the Church of the Holy Apostles is at the bottom of the picture, slightly to the left of center.

I was going to go in and look around, as this fellow did, but there was a sign at the front of the church reminding us that it was still a church, and that we should enter respectfully, not clomping in loudly in our hot pants and photographing everything willy-nilly[1]. A few black-robed Greek women slipping in for prayers highlighted this message.

I couldn't find out a lot about the church, except that it was built in the 11th century over an ancient nymphaion. Apparently it was restored in the last century, so the building you see did not survive ten centuries as it is.

[1]It's possible that I am misremembering this. Michael Lima -- he of the first link on the page -- says that the church was deconsecrated 50 years ago. Perhaps I saw a similar sign somewhere else, or I may be confusing the Church of the Holy Apostles with some other tiny polygonal church in Athens. But wherever they were, the black-robed women were real.

Labels: Foto Friday, Greece

Posted 7:28 AM by Angie Schultz

Anti-Mars Hag

I hear the pastries call my name.

Begin at the beginning.

Posted 10:56 AM by Angie Schultz

Ham Air Angst

David Mamet's Swedish Pancake

Series starts here.

Posted 8:55 AM by Angie Schultz

A Shaming Art

Start here, scroll up.

Posted 8:26 AM by Angie Schultz

A Mashing Tar

Hellooooo, Sailor!


See here for the beginning of the series.

Posted 12:37 PM by Angie Schultz

Anagram This

These are some petits fours we ordered from the Swiss Colony.

You'll see them again.

Muahahahaha.

Posted 10:31 AM by Angie Schultz

Mele Kalikimaka!

Mele Kalikimaka, Kaunakakai, Molokai, Jan. 2002

Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaii's way to say Merry Christmas to you!

Posted 11:01 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Warrumbungles

Sunset at Warrumbungles National Park
Australia, July 2000

Warrumbungles N.P. is in central New South Wales. It takes eight hours to get there from Sydney by car (less if you're a lead-footed Indian, but I digress), and looking at the map you see there's still plenty more NSW where that came from.

As you can see, the landscape there is stunning. Off to the left of the picture the land flattens, and, I was told, remains flat until you get to the other side of the continent. A Google image search on "Warrumbungles" leads you to many beautiful photographs, most better than any I have. I was unable to do the actual hiking required to get those pictures while I was there, but I did play "Astrogulf" at the Skywatch Observatory in nearby Coonabarabran. I have pictures of that, too, but they're less than stunning.

This Coonabarabran page has a nice close-up of the same view. The layered hill in the center of that picture (and to the right in mine) is called the "Wedding Cake".

I had forgotten exactly when this picture was taken, so I was surprised to find that it was on the same roll as the Tasman Bridge photo from two weeks ago. That means that was the time I left Hobart before dawn, flew to Sydney, and drove straight to Coonabarabran, arriving in time for dinner. This itinerary is not recommended.

Got a good picture out of it, though.

Labels: Australia, Foto Friday

Posted 7:53 PM by Angie Schultz

Bringing in the Trees

We went to the local garden center on Friday and picked out our Christmas tree, a Fraser fir. Naturally there was much judging and considering, hoisting out trees and pulling on their needles and spreading their branches. Finally it came down to two trees. I was plucking deciduous leaves from one when I came upon...a rock.

"Look Niles, a rock! There was a rock in this tree! Feel how light it is. Feels like pumice."

"Hmmm! Must've come from Oregon, or Washington. Wherever the tree was grown."[1]

"Wow. This can't be some local rock, right? This is pumice, red pumice."

"Yeah, that's volcanic. None of that around here."

"Well, we should get this tree. I'm going to take this rock home, and we can't do that and not get the tree. This is a cool rock. Imagine this rock coming all that way, riding in this tree, just waiting for us to---er, what's all that on the ground?"

"It looks like, um, pumice. Red pumice."

"Oh. It must be that stuff they use for ground covering. That rock didn't come from Oregon. It came from right here."

"Yeah. Still want the tree?"

"Yes. I guess."

"Still want the rock?"

"No."

Stupid rocks.


At least it wasn't a bat.

[1]But the National Christmas Tree Association informs us that Fraser firs are native to the Appalachians, and grown primarily in North Carolina. So we're idiots.

Posted 10:11 AM by Angie Schultz

Gangsta Wrappers

The Houston Chronicle today published one of those little What-Are-They-Smoking articles in the "star" section (which actually doesn't have a title, just a star), which is what most papers would call their lifestyles section.

It's all about how you can get all creative with your Christmas wrapping, if you have just oodles and oodles of time on your hands. And a substance abuse problem.

Rather than haul out the same tired wrapping paper you've used for years, wrap a little of yourself around your gifts this season.

Yeah, well, unfortunately, this is what they think my "self" is.

A "living" box wrapped by Joanne Brigham incorporates colored wire, moss, cactus buds, a sculptural stick and red paper from an art supply store.

As Niles pointed out, if you received something like that in the mail, you'd call the bomb squad to come blow it up.

And then there's this nightmare.

Dixie Friend Gay gathered items from her garden and home to wrap a package that incorporates a stick, bubble wrap, gauze, metallic thread, a snake skin, feathers, a cicada shell and fur from an old collar.

All wrapped up in an old mattress cover.

These putrid things
Remind me of you...

By the way, somewhere a drag queen weeps because he didn't think of calling himself Dixie Friend Gay first. And then he realizes that he can call himself Gay Dixie Friend, and he's happy again and goes right out and whips up something like this.

A boa wrapped around the side of Blakely Bering's package offers textural contrast to the glitter, Mardi Gras beads and sequin crown on top.

Faaabulous, dahling!

You know, inside each of these boxes is a gift certificate for a Big Mac.

Remember, friends don't let friends take decorating advice from the lifestyles section.

Posted 6:37 AM by Angie Schultz

The Prodigal Returns

A lot of people take up this here now blogging thing for a while, and then other things intervene -- babies, houses, work, whatever -- and they just slowly drop it. This happens to even good, entertaining bloggers who seem devoted to their blogs (as opposed to dilettantes like me).

And that's what I figured happened to Stephen Green of VodkaPundit. He got him a fancy new look to his blog, and then he got him a baby and the blog took a back seat. He last posted on September 11, but hadn't posted regularly since late August. So I figured he'd just found fatherhood more interesting or challenging, and he was letting the blog die. Piker.

But no. In fact, he's been sick. Scary sick. Go over there and read, and wish him a speedy recovery. And get him to eat some of that fatted calf.

Posted 12:41 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Tunnel Vision

Just got off an eight-hour flight, and boy are my legs tired!

Yeah, I know that's not the joke, but they are. The plane was jam-packed, and I have long legs, and the guy in front of me insisted on his God-given right to recline his seat to the fullest. I retaliated by giving him a knee in the back at every opportunity. (Actually, I had no choice.)

After four hours my legs lost all sensation, and it wasn't so bad.

Anyhow, I have challenged the Fleck y Breen to a Yosemite picture contest. Here's my entry: The View---

Tunnel View, Yosemite National Park, Aug. 1995

David Fleck put it very well in his post: That can't be real. The earth has done an impossible thing here.

It's called "Tunnel View" because it's directly in front of a tunnel. As I told David, I'm surprised there aren't more wrecks there, where the drivers are suddenly confronted with the impossible.

That's scanned from a print, not from the negative. Often that doesn't work well, but it did in this case (after considerable cosmetic spot-cleaning). I previously posted this Yosemite photo:

Yosemite Falls, Aug. 1995

That image was scanned from a negative, and you see that the colors are not as warm as those in the Tunnel View photo (the colors in the two prints are comparable). I couldn't quite recover that warmth when I was fiddling with it, but I didn't try very hard. I was torn between the more natural look of the negative scan and the warmer, prettier print colors.

Here's a famous photograph of the Tunnel View, made back when you couldn't fiddle with the levels in GIMP or Photoshop. I have that as a poster. Apparently you can buy that original for an undisclosed price. If, you know, you're Bill Gates.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 6:23 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Tas-mania!

Tasman Bridge from Mt. Nelson
Hobart, July 2000

This is one o' them there arty type pictures. I was aiming for something more like this, but it was an overcast winter day, and I had to take what I could get.

The Tasmanian parliament has a batch of web pages on the gripping saga of Derwent bridges, including the actually-gripping story of how an ore freighter smashed into the bridge in 1975, killing twelve people. Here's a contemporary article from the Melbourne Age, reporting "dozens killed". (That's part of the Age's 150th anniversary, and you might wait another 150 years before the page loads.)

In my photo you can see a gap in the supports at the highest part of the bridge, and another on the right. That right-hand gap wasn't meant to be there; it's one of the two that the freighter took out. They decided there was too much freighter at the bottom of the river to put in a new one (it's still there, by the way).

Hobart cam!

Wikipedia entry.

Labels: Australia, Foto Friday

Posted 11:44 AM by Angie Schultz

Let's Get Small

The hell?? Suddenly the font is very small. I didn't do it. Please bear with me while I call the exorcist.

UPDATE: Stand down the missiles. It turned out to be the stupid tiny Mathematica fonts I installed the other day. Although that doesn't explain why no one else got small.

Posted 10:57 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Hit the Beaches!

Baby, it's cold outside![1][2]

It was in the low 70s and muggy Wednesday night, so we put on the air conditioning. I knew a front was expected, so when I woke up I opened the window to find a cold breeze blowing. I turned off the air. Niles objected, saying it was still warm when he brought in the paper, about twenty minutes before.

But in that twenty minutes the temperature had dropped at least ten degrees. This morning the paper said that it had dropped twenty degrees in an hour, but I think that's only because they only take the temperature once an hour.

Sometime yesterday it was snowing in Dallas (although I don't imagine they got more than a dusting). They were predicting 2-4 inches in St. Louis and 2-4 feet in Chicago (or something like that; it wasn't very clear).

Is Al Gore on one of his global warming warning tours? That's usually good for a sudden cold snap.

UPDATE: Niles says that Al Gore was on the Tonight Show on Wednesday. Ah-HA! It's a miracle we're all still alive!


So: December! Let's see what they're doing in Australia...

Coogee Beach, Sydney, Dec. 1999

(Technically, Coogee Beach is in Coogee, but let's not quibble.)

Ahhh. It's summer down there, of course. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that it'll be 80 down there today (which, strangely enough, is what it was here, Wednesday afternoon). Perhaps Al's legacy is still lingering down there. The above photo was taken later in the month, around Christmas.

Can you find Tim Blair in this picture?[3]


[1]This one's going out to my very special friend, Sayyid Qutb.

[2]Oh, and I blame Bush.

[3]Actually, Tim lives in Bondi.

Labels: Australia, Foto Friday

Posted 1:54 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: The Bluest Skies You've Ever Seen

Frankly, I've seen bluer skies, but who am I to upset their little fantasy?

Seattle from the Space Needle, Sep. 2005

If you look closely on the right you can see, floating eerily above the city, the ghost of Mt. Rainier. Here's a close-up.


Apparently the city has gotten sick and tired of all the damned tourists mucking up the place, flinging dollars left and right. So they're trying to make a dent in tourist traffic by screwing up the view with a couple of skyscrapers. That'll show 'em!

This photo was taken at a bad time of day for Rainier photos. Should've waiting until later in the afternoon. My dream "killer app" is a program that shows what time of day and year is the best for taking photos of various scenic spots.

You get a stale picture of Washington because, again I didn't get around to scanning. (As if my nonexistent readers care.) In fact, time is going to be scarce for the next two weeks, as I have something big coming up.

And if it works out, my nonexistent readers are going to get really, really sick of a Certain State.

Labels: Foto Friday, Washington

Posted 12:14 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Blue Hawaii

Yes, AGAIN, Hawaii. (No opportunities for scanning this week.) And what's more, the odds are good that there'll be more. So just choke it down.

Kahoolawe and Molokini from Wailea, Maui
Sep. 2003

The large island is Kahoolawe (pronounced Ka-ho-o-LA-way). This is the smallest of the eight main Hawaiian islands. It doesn't have any fresh water, and so is uninhabitable.

That wasn't always the case, though. The last four paragraphs on this page cite a timeline for human settlement of Kahoolawe. The author of the timeline suggests that the interior of the island (which is higher and rainier) was well-settled for about 150 years, during which agriculture changed the "rather fragile" environment, resulting in "ecological disruption" and "island-wide degradation".[1] (Note, when reading that, that Polynesians did not arrive in Hawaii until around 1000 AD.)

Anyhow, by the time the Europeans came, the human population was reduced to some temporary fishing settlements. Since then it's been used as a penal colony for men (punishing such crimes as theft, murder, and Catholocism), as well as a ranch. During WWII, Kahoolawe was used as a naval gunnery range. Recently, the Navy was supposed to have been cleaning it up to render it fit for human traffic, but last I heard they were way behind, and unexploded ordnance still litters some beaches.

The ultimate goal is to clean the place up and restore the native vegetation, but commercial use will be prohibited (according to the Kahoolawe Island Reserve site, linked above). The island will be kept as an archaeological site, and as a place where native Hawaiians can carry out spiritual practices. I'm not sure what part of Kahoolawe has any special sacred signficance.

You can take a virtual field trip with a group doing a restoration project here.

Now, if you look at the waterline below the hump of Kahoolawe, you can see a sliver of orange-ish rock. That's Molokini, the remains of a volcanic crater that lies between Maui and Kahoolawe. It's a very popular snorkeling area (I haven't had a chance to snorkel there). Here's a nice aerial picture showing the tour boats at anchor, and this page includes several close up photos. They must have been taken in or near the rainy season, since the island is pretty green. If you look at the large version of my photo, above, you'll see the white speck of a boat inside the crater.

[1] I blame Bush.

Labels: Foto Friday, Hawaii

Posted 3:07 PM by Angie Schultz

Mighty Mo

Niles suggested (too late) that yesterday's photo should pertain to Veterans' Day. I don't have much that's relevant, but I do have some pictures of Pearl Harbor.

Somewhere I may have better pictures, from an earlier trip, but I don't know what's become of those, so this will have to do.

USS Arizona Memorial from the USS Missouri
Pearl Harbor, HI, Jan. 2002

I've been to Hawaii several times, but rarely stop in Honolulu. The trip in 2002 was only the second time. The first time, in 1989, I visited the Arizona Memorial. I remember there were a surprising number of Japanese tourists.

The Missouri wasn't in Pearl Harbor when I visited in '89, though, since it had been de-mothballed in 1986 and was off doing battleshippy things, like making a Cher video. In 1991, however, she had a more dignified duty, in the first Gulf War. (The Missouri, remember, was fifty years old that year.)

I had a lot of chatty nonsense to say about the Missouri, but it's not appropriate to the occasion. For now, then, just links to the Arizona and Missouri memorials.

Posted 2:07 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Chasing Waterfalls

Waterfalls aren't known for their mobility, so there's really no need to chase them. In Yosemite, however, it is best to go at certain times of the year, else some of them dry up.

Yosemite Falls, Aug. 1995

Technically, that's Upper Yosemite Falls. The lower falls are hidden behind the trees.

This was part of the Great Vacation of '95, in which we went to Yosemite, Mono Lake, and down to Death Valley (which hasn't been posted yet). We missed much on the way (like the Devil's Postpile[1]), so we'll probably have to do it again one day.

[1]That would be a good name for a blog.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 4:37 PM by Angie Schultz

Thank You, Ted Rall!

Thank you for making us laugh about paranoid delusions...again.

Hey, remember when Bush was going to cancel the 2004 elections? Guess the fascist takeover is running behind schedule. It's probably tied to the brutal Afghan winter.

(The Yahoo link in that LGF post has rotted. See here for full text (I assume). Current twitchings and mutterings via Hot Air.)

Posted 4:56 PM by Angie Schultz

He Called Dibs[1]

Hot Air is outraged over an anti-Talent ad created by some lefty group. It features a middle-aged woman, a teenaged boy, and a cute lithping little girl talking about stem cells. Jim Talent voted against them! Against stem cells! Nobody doesn't love stem cells! What if one day, you needed a stem cell, and couldn't have it, because Jim Talent voted against it, huh? As the little girl says in the end: "How come he thinks he gets to decide who lives and who dies? Who is he?"

I'm afraid I cannot share Allahpundit's outrage. I'm too jaded. ("More jaded than Allah!" now there's a tagline.) It did induce Severe Heavenward Eye-Rolling Exasperation Syndrome H (SHEESH)[2]. The ad is apparently aimed at the enormous Dullard-American demographic. They would be those who:

1. Sorta kinda know what stem cells are, but never ever once considered, for the tiniest moment, that they might need a stem cell-originated medical treatment. "Sha-ZAYAM! My religious beliefs say stem cells come from murdered babies[3], but if I might need 'em some day, to hell with the babies! Bring 'em on!"
   
2. OR, people who haven't the foggiest damned idea what stem cells are, except that they cure all known diseases and Senator Talent single-handedly eradicated them from the Earth. Prolly has something to do with Halliburton.
   

Actually, I have known people who do fit into the latter category. They're sort of the socially-conservative counterparts to hardcore X-Files groupies who see government/corporate conspiracies under every rock. The Man is always coming down on the People! The upside is, these people are usually too lazy and embittered to vote.

Liberals aren't the only ones who appeal to the dullard demographic, of course. I remember an anti-abortion ad from the 1980s, in which a pregnant woman admitted that she'd felt differently about abortion back when she was younger and unmarried. The ad concluded with her asking us: "Why was it choice then, but it's a child now?" I dunno? Because you were an idiot who never considered the question before? What's that got to do with me?

In other fun campaign news, we got a heap o' campaign literature here at the old homestead. One of them asks: "What do John Kerry and Chris Bell have in common?" Turn it over to find the answer: "Everything."

My first question was: who the hell is Chris Bell? And my second is: what does John Kerry have to do with anything?

The fact that the ad is paid for by "Texans for Rick Perry" tells me that Bell is running for governor (against Perry, the current governor). Poor Bell is sort of the also-ran in this election. Besides Governor Hair (as Niles calls him; I think he stole it from Molly Ivins), we have the entertaining but doomed Kinky Friedman, and Carole Keeton Strayhorn, the state Comptroller, who's running as an Independent. Her main claim to fame (as far as I'm concerned) is that she wanted to go down on the ballot as Carole Keeton "Grandma" Strayhorn. She figured that if Kinky could be Kinky, she could have a nickname too.

But the Secretary of State (who decides these things), Roger "Not the Founder of Rhode Island" Williams, said no way. It's a campaign slogan, he said, not a nickname (her slogan is "One Tough Grandma"). She pitched a hissy fit and sued, but eventually dropped it, declaring victory and retiring from the field. The whole megillah put her in the laughingstock category, as far as we're concerned.

Anyhow, out of this field, Bell -- the Democrat -- is best known as "that other guy, Wossname". Here's his bio off his campaign page. Five years in the Houston City Council, two years as Congressman (losing to the "infamous" Republican redistricting of 2003), and he's ready for the Governorship? Oh, I don't know.

Anyhow, the ad has me scratching my head. Is Kerry really the anti-Bush? That is, a man so toxic to certain voters that they'll go out of their way to vote against him, even when he's not running? The ad has a photo of Bell and Kerry shaking hands, captioned "Congressman Chris Bell and Senator John Kerry together at a campaign rally last Friday." (URL added by me.) So that's fast work, tainting Bell with his known Kerry associations in just a week. I guess it's just Bell's good luck that Kerry's recent attack of foot-in-mouth disease didn't come a little earlier. All Perry can manage is to assert that, unlike that flip-flopping Kerry, Bell consistently votes against Our Troops!

So I'm wondering if this is a sign of desperation on Perry's part. Is his campaign faltering, that he has to reach for something to attack Bell with? (Look! My Democratic opponent is hobnobbing with the most recent Democratic Presidential candidate! Aiieee! Can Bill Clinton be next??) Or does his campaign really believe that a hint of Kerry is enough to get swing voters to don crosses and garlic and push the "R" button?

Apparently it's not his poll results. According to that article, nobody much likes Perry, but they like his opponents even less, with Chris "Wossname" Bell beating "Grandma" Strayhorn by one point, with 22 and 21 percent, resp., while Kinky "Richard" Friedman languishes at 10.5, and Rick "Hair" Perry leads the pack by a solid sixteen points. (There's also a Libertarian, James "One Percent" Werner.)

I see that back on October 27, Hot Air noted Perry's anti-Bell radio ad, "Mr. Way-Too-Liberal-for-Texas Guy", in imitation of those Budweiser "Real Men of Genius" ads.

Announcer: And you voted to let the United Nations oversee elections in America, because nobody stands up for democracy like the French!
Singer: Je m'appelle Christophe Bell.
Announcer: So wear your fancy beret with pride, Congressman Bell! Liberals everywhere salute you!

OUCH. That is LOW. (I can't stop laughing, that's how low it is.)

After thinking about it a bit, I figure that this is not so much aimed at swing voters as at those disgruntled Republicans who're thinking they'll just sit this election out. "Stay home, Republicans, and Jean and Christophe will be running Texas." L'Aiieee!

[1]From an old MST3K sketch:
Joel: Who can decide who lives and who dies?
Crow: I do, remember? I called dibs.
He did, too. That's what he wanted for Christmas: "I wanna decide who lives and who dies." I never thought to ask for that. Dang!

[2]I wonder if stem cells can cure that?
[3]Complex and nuanced philosophical and religious arguments truncated in the interest of brevity, not to mention a cheap laugh. You know what they are anyway.

Posted 2:38 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Phall

View from Mt. Lemmon, AZ
Oct. 1994

We're having unseasonably cool weather here today (i.e., we're not drowning in our own sweat)[1]. So here's a fall-like image for you. I meant to post this last month (since it was taken in October), but didn't get many scanning opportunities.

When I took this picture I thought, "Damn that pesky dead tree! It would be a beautiful view if that thing wasn't in the way!" Now I know that's Art.

A nice mountain-top vista? That's nothing. Crap. Anyone could photograph that. But find some ugly thing blocking the view, and you've got artistic gold, baby. Only the most exquisitely-tuned sensibilities can recognize the beauty in an old dead tree.

[1]UPDATE: I blame Bush.

Labels: Arizona, Foto Friday

Posted 8:38 PM by Angie Schultz

A Note to My Readers

It has come to my attention that many of you -- if not most of you -- do not exist. I discovered this last week when I wrote my post about the book signing. This post required some fancy style sheet footwork (well, fancy for me, anyway), and I was having trouble getting it just right. So I used Niles's computer (which is almost always booted to Windows) to see if it looked any better in Explorer.

It looked horrible. I worked and worked to get the images in the right shape, to no avail. Then I discovered that it was not the images at all, it was the new blockquotes I was using. I had sweated and sweated to make the blog prettier (for YOU), which entailed setting the quote box width as a percentage of the screen width so the blockquotes would look nicer (for YOU) when the quotes were short.

But Explorer, apparently, doesn't think it needs to play nicely with all the CSS specifications, and sets the screen width to some ridiculous size (like a mile).

Now, I changed the style sheet (for YOU) on Sep. 1, so for two months the blog has been virtually unreadable to users of IE. And no one bothered to tell me.

Since approximately 97% of web surfers use IE[1], I conclude that the reason no one told me is because no one is reading the blog.[2] Well! That's gratitude for you!

Sure, sure, I realize that this blog is infrequently-posted drivel, but look at it this way: it could be frequently-posted drivel. I could post reviews of dreadful science fiction movies. Book reviews. Goldsteinian conversations with inanimate objects. Endless geeky descriptions of my various collections. You don't want that, do you? No. So pay attention, dammit! DON'T MAKE ME GET OUT THE FRUIT STICKERS.

NOTE: The Fleck y Breens[3] are exempted from this outrage, as I'm pretty sure they are devout Linux users.

[1]Remembering that 75% of all statistics are made up.
[2]Yes, I realize that I could find a sitemeter that would tell me exactly how many hits I'm not getting, but that a)often slows loading down to a frustrating extent and b) is for people who give a damn.
[3]Speaking of them, and their hot time in Vegas, I am tempted to post about the time that we went to Vegas for the sole purpose of seeing the "Star Trek Experience" at the Las Vegas Hilton (speaking of geeky). The thing is, I apparently didn't take my camera, so Niles's photos form our only record of the trip. And inside the actual "Experience," we---but I'll save that.

Posted 9:17 PM by Angie Schultz

Awww, and He Didn't Get Them Anything

Well, Niles has had a very nice birthday present: a Cardinals victory.

Garfield is feeling a little sheepish:

I remember their last win, in '82. That was twenty-four years ago. I was in college then. I am soooo oooold.

Posted 11:31 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Birthday Boy

Someone has a birthday today, which means he is home from work, hanging around bugging me again.

In retaliation, I get to post this picture:

Katherine Gorge, N.T., Australia, Aug. 2000

Here we see the famous explorer Sacageekwea in full Pommie-Seppo tourist mode.

Well, for anyone else it would be, but he dresses like that at home, too. No floppy hat, but he makes up for it with Hawaiian shirts and sandals with his socks. (Back off, ladies. He's all mine.)

N.T., for the shut-ins among us, stands for "Northern Territory", aka the Top End of Australia. We went there after visiting Uluru on the advice of my Australian boss, who urged us to see Kakadu National Park. "It's bigger than most US states!" he said. Wow!

That sounded kind of funny, so I checked it out, and he turned out to be absolutely right! That is, in some alternate universe where the US never expanded beyond the original 13 colonies, and the South succeeded in seceding. (Kakadu is about the size of New Jersey.)

Katherine Gorge is not in Kakadu N.P., but quite a bit south. We drove down there, which enabled us to experience the famous speed limit-free Stuart Highway, and partake of quaint local customs such as not getting squashed by road trains and avoiding roving psycho murderers.

It's a little hard to see in the picture, but Niles is standing on cliffs overlooking the river. We went on a tour boat with a couple dozen other people, but there were many people out on their own, paddling down the river in canoes -- despite the obvious presence of crocodiles. (The crocodiles could be detected by a glimpse of their eyes or snouts above the water, and by the signs saying CROCODILE NESTING SITE: PISS OFF at certain points along the shoreline.)

These were freshwater crocodiles, and so (nominally) harmless. Occasionally, they told us, they did get dangerous "salties" in the river. These they laid traps for: cylindrical metal cages baited with a dead pig. (Or tourist, in season.)

During the dry season, the boats can't get all the way up the river, so you have to keep getting out and scrambling over rocks to the next boat. This would be OK, but the river was very low and there was sometimes a drop of two feet (looked higher to me) between rocks and river. This sort of thing was not made clear at the beginning of the trip. It's a wonder no one broke anything. My knees would never stand for that sort of thing, nowadays.

When the picture above was taken, our group had clambered up the cliffs to a waterfall-fed pool above the river. This is a charming idea, recalling romantic visions of secluded jungle spots where Tarzan and Jane might canoodle. Not so romantic with pasty tourists and screaming Spawn of All Nations along, however.

Labels: Australia, Foto Friday

Posted 1:24 PM by Angie Schultz

The Hedgie Blasts Off Launch

We love hedgehogs, and we love the work of Jan Brett, a children's book author and illustrator known for her beautiful, detailed artwork. So we were totally jazzed to find out that she was writing a book called Hedgie Blasts Off. And then we found that Brett was coming to Houston for a signing! Wow!

So yesterday we went to a nearby Barnes & Noble for what we thought would be about a half hour. The signing was at six, and we figured that we'd be there until six-thirty, maybe seven at the outside, and then we'd go to dinner (which is awfully early for us to have dinner). Eventually we began to hope the restaurant would still be open by the time we left (it closes at 11). I think we finally got out of there at 8:15.

Niles forgot to bring the camera[1], so we had to make do with cell phone pictures, and so will you. In the end, we exceeded the phone's capacity, so Niles was frantically emailing himself photos so he could delete them and take more.

The first thing that we saw, upon rolling up to B&N, was Brett's rock star-style tour bus:




Inside the store, there was quite a line. The middle of the floor was filled with people (with a large proportion of kids, of course), and quite a few more arrived after us. At the front they were giving out purple wristbands to the first 275 people (or rather, groups), and orange wristbands to anyone else. The orange people might not get their books signed, depending on how late it got. But we never saw anyone with an orange wristband, not even at the tail end.

I wish we'd taken pictures of the crowd, but I didn't think of it, and besides, we didn't have a lot of room on the phone. But I did get Niles to document the massive police presence:



No, really. These weren't security guards, but HPD officers. Armed! The one on the right was there the entire time. For the first hour or so he kept looking around alertly, as if a jihadi might spring from behind the coffee table books. Really, did they have trouble at a previous signing? Tots rioting? Parents hitting each other with hefty copies of Jan Brett's Christmas Treasury? Dirty bomb threats?[2]

We weren't there for too long before Jan Brett arrived and gave a little talk.



She talked to the kids in the audience about drawing and creativity and whatnot. She said that when she was a little girl, she looooved horses, and usually that's all she drew. But sometimes she drew other things, usually to do with space. Hey! I did that too! Sometimes I combined the two by imagining winged horses that traveled through outer space.

In the photo above she's beginning a sketch of Hedgie. Watching an artist at work is a little like watching magic. The pen flicks around, making random marks, and before you know it there's a picture. Not cartoon like anyone could draw, but a real picture, with depth and shadow. That's the mysterious part -- knowing where to put the random pen-flickings.

Brett talked a little bit about that, about adding details to flesh out the image. But it still seems like magic to me.

That's the finished sketch.

On the floor behind Brett you see the Undead Hedgehog Army of Cuteness:

After the store closed, they rose and began their takeover of the Earth! If they woke up from their naps in time. Maybe the cops were there to keep them from mischief.

I think these were puppets. They were everywhere. There were two cute little blonde girls in front of us who had puppets, and we got to hear the puppets play the clapping game (e.g. "A sailor went to sea sea sea to see what he could see see see...") for about an hour. Joy.

Later, Hedgie himself turned up:

Awwww!

Many of the kids[3] had their pictures taken with him, including the two in front of us. That was just the cutest, blondest, pinkest thing you ever saw (they were wearing pink) and all by itself spiked my blood sugar enough to be able to carry on to the end of the signing.

At last we made it to the front of the line:


That's not a terribly good picture of Jan Brett. I think Niles was trying to make sure he got the banner behind her. Being (nominal) grown-ups, we didn't have a lot to say to her. She mentioned her web site (did I say she has a web site?) and we said that we liked the cross-stitch patterns she has there. I've stitched one of them:




We got two books signed, Hedgie Blasts Off, and an older book, The Mitten, which also stars a hedgehog, and which, inexplicably, we didn't already have.

We also got goodies! There was a card of the book cover:



and a sort of newsletter for the book:


That's just its cover. Inside there were some drawings and pictures, an explanation of how Brett came to write this particular book (she went up with the Blue Angels once! -- as a passenger, I mean), and a picture of Hedgie to color.

And we also got a poster which turned out to be for her Africa book, Honey...Honey...Lion! Beautiful, but disappointing, in that it contained no hedgehogs. (I couldn't find a picture on the web, and it was too big to scan.)

Linky Love:
Jan Brett's home page: Coloring books! Cross-stitching! Murals! Ideas! Projects! Rides! Games! All singing! All dancing!

Jan Brett books at Barnes & Noble.

Jan Brett books at Amazon.

Go there! DO IT NOW![TM]

[1] Not exactly true. We discussed it, but neither of us thought there'd be much to take pictures of, except Brett herself, and she might not want her picture taken. So we just didn't bring it. But I'm going to blame Niles anyway.

[2]Does anyone see the words "dirty bomb" and imagine a shower of Hustler centerfolds? No, huh?

[3]And one or two adults. But not me -- I still have some dignity. Just a smidgen. I'm saving it for an emergency.

Posted 10:20 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Rocket Rest Home

Niles was home with a cold for three days this week, hanging around the house, bugging me. So I couldn't get any scanning in; I'll have to post a picture we had scanned at camera store.

Rocket Garden, Kennedy Space Center,
Nov. 2004

This is part of the rocket garden of the Kennedy Space Center. From left to right we have the Mercury-Atlas, the Redstone, and the Atlas-Agena. That Restone is probably a Mercury too, i.e., it was used in the Mercury program. The red spires on top of the Atlas and Redstone are escape towers (so you know they were from manned missions). The black cones beneath the towers are the actual space capsules, where the astronauts sat.

Naturally, these particular rockets were never launched; they were either space program spares, or military spares refurbished to sit in the garden. They might be even be replicas. See this site for more than you ever wanted to know (especially here and here.)

This is a time exposure, of course. I have a little tabletop tripod, about as high as my outstretched hand, that I usually carry around. I don't remember if I had it with me that day -- we were there several days, and by the end I was getting tired of lugging my enormous camera bag through security -- but I do remember I took this photo by resting my camera on top of a handy garbage can. Mmmm-mm! That's a good smell. There were also bees.

This is not too shabby a photo. Some in that set are out of focus. It's hard to focus at night while you're bent over double with your hair in the garbage and bees buzzing around.

Labels: Florida, Foto Friday

Posted 10:57 AM by Angie Schultz

A Cunning Plan

The New York Times brings us the shocking (zzz) news that North Korea's nuclear fizzle was a plutonium, rather than uranium, design. I could've told them that: if it had been a uranium bomb, it would've worked. The Trinity test (and subsequent Nagasaki bomb) was a plutonium device. The design of the uranium bomb was considered so simple that there wasn't any need to test it. Plutonium bombs require an explosive lens which must compress the plutonium symmetrically. Else you get an embarrassing pre-detonation and a tiny yield (and the chicks all laugh at you). The problem with uranium bombs is that they require tedious and time-consuming (and expensive) enrichment of the uranium.

Anyhow, this leads me to my brilliant (and cunning) plan for dealing with the North Koreans. The element uranium (atomic number 92) was named for the planet Uranus, discovered eight years earlier. Neptunium (93) and Plutonium (94) were subsequently named for the planets Neptune and Pluto.

Now we all know that Pluto is no longer a planet. But what few people realize is that means plutonium is no longer an element! Which means you can't make bombs with it!

Think about it: has anyone else successfully detonated a plutonium bomb since the IAU met? NO. QED, res ipsa loquitur, caveat emptor et cetera et cetera.

At least, this is what we'll tell Kimmie. Hell, it can't work worse than anything else we've tried.

UPDATE: And if it works on him, we'll try it on the Iranians.

Posted 9:54 AM by Angie Schultz

Up Denial River

Brendan O'Neill frets over a new religious intolerance -- that of the global warming True Believers. These pure and holy people, who know that only Man is vile, are seeking to silence the infidels and freethinkers. His article begins:

One Australian columnist has proposed outlawing 'climate change denial'. 'David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial', she wrote. 'Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence. It is a crime against humanity, after all.'

But if you scroll down to his first footnote, you find that the Austraian columnist in question is...Margo Kingston! Frankly, if you're taking Margo Kingston seriously, you've got bigger problems than the end of the world.

But perhaps we should not be so quick to dismiss this concept, just because it comes from the dim and shadowy recesses of Kingston's cranium. Just think of all the people we could villify merely by going bug-eyed with indignation and insisting on trials for denying various things. Trials for all! Fair trials, of course, and afterwards, fair hangings.

For example, anthropogenic global warming is small beans indeed compared to what even a smallish asteroid could do to us. And yet you don't see musicians jetting all over the Earth to prevent it, like they do global warming. No. In fact, except for a few obsessed far-sighted individuals, the whole issue is pretty much non-existent. DENIERS! How dare you ignore the coming bolide genocide?!

And then there's the imminent Second Holocaust -- you know, the one the Iranians are cooking up. Iran is sure to get the bomb. Everyone says so. We're just going to have to live with it. And when I say "we", I mean the US. The Israelis will not have to live it. The Iranian plan is for them to die with it.

So, since Iranian nukes are inevitable, and since the Iranians seem determined to wipe out Israel once they have them, the Second Holocaust is inevitable. And anyone who says it isn't is a SECOND HOLOCAUST DENIER and SHOULD BE TRIED. I'm sure that will be a great comfort to the dead Israelis. I mean, at least we tried.

And then there's North Korea. Kim hasn't explicitly threatened to wipe out anybody just on general principles (yet), so he's off the hook there. But he is starving his own people. Eventually that'll become genocide. HOW DARE YOU DENY IT?!

But the real beauty lies the fact that, between the asteroids, the Iranians, the North Koreans -- and whatever else we can dream up -- Margo's got to be guilty of denying something.


Condolences to David Roberts of Grist[1], who also suggested that "global warming deniers" be subjected to "some sort of climate Nuremberg", but only last month, and so wasn't included in O'Neill's article. He can take comfort, though, in being attacked by an actual US Senator (James Inhofe). Here he is in the HuffPo, taking comfort.

[1]By casually mentioning Grist in this manner, I act as if I am familiar with the publication. I am not. In clarifying, though, I'd have to say something like, "Grist, some sort of earthy-crunchy publication" (or, like Melanie Phillips, "something called Grist magazine"), which seems unnecessarily dismissive. Besides, if it's beneath my notice, why am I stooping to criticize? (Because when I googled for "'global warming' Nuremberg" this article floated to the surface, that's why.)

Posted 1:26 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Golden Grouch

Am not feeling well today. None of my pictures look good. So you'll take what's coming and like it:

Golden Gate Bridge, April 1994

I scanned another roll yesterday (Thursday has become scanning day). They all came out in weird colors, with dust and spots the software wouldn't remove. It's so hard to judge what the colors will be from the laptop screen. I'm going to have to bring the scanner into the study so that I can use the big Samsung monitor, like I am right now. Of course, that doesn't mean that the colors that I'm seeing are the ones you're seeing.

There's a "fade correction" (something like that) on the scanner software. Sometimes it works great, sometimes it doesn't do much, and sometimes, as in the above picture, it seems to do too much. The color of the bridge doesn't look right, but a quick image search shows that others get this color, too, so maybe it's OK.

The prints made off this negative have a pink tinge to the clouds, while the hills and ocean have a dreamy, blurred look to them (which also shows up in this image). I wouldn't be surprised if the film was old.

I like the way the famous beautiful view is enhanced with a caution sign. Next time I'll bring a box to stand on, and maybe I can get a photo without it. (It's not as if I'm short, either.)

This was taken a day or so after I moved to California. I sure miss it. Wish I could go back to stay.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 11:57 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Grand Ole Opry House

I realized last week that my last three or four (or five or six) photos have all been of Hawaii. I didn't mean to do that, it just worked out that way. Since each was from a different island, I toyed with the idea of completing the set, posting a different island each week until I was finished with them. But, I thought, to hell with it. Let's go somewhere different.

So today's photo is for gentle Emily, who just can't get enough of the establishing shots in Lost.


Sydney, Oct. 1999

That was taken from a ferry on the way to Taronga Zoo, which is on the north side of Sydney Harbo[u]r. Betty, a friend of mine from California, was coming through town with a friend, and the three of us went to the zoo together.

The remainder of this post is a little depressing. Just ignore it and look at the pretty picture if you like.

Betty was a fascinating lady. She must have been 75 or so when I met her, and she was still working. In her youth she'd been a computer, back in the days when that word applied to people, and in the '60s had been on many exciting projects for NASA.

She and her husband had become wealthy over the years, and during her last few years she traveled to Egypt and China and, for her last big trip, Australia. She also went once a year to Vegas with some girlfriends. She was a millionaire, but she told me that she allowed herself twenty (or it may have been fifty) dollars to gamble away, and when that was gone she was done.

When she came through Sydney she was having a little trouble with her arm. She had strained it, she thought, and it was taking an awful long time in healing. Then again, she was getting on in years.

After she got back to California she found out that she had ALS. I got to go back to the US for a visit in 2001, and was able to see her on my last day. She couldn't speak much by then. She had a little keyboard to type on, but she was mostly beyond that, too. So I had to do most of the talking, and bored her with accounts of what I'd been doing in Australia.

When I left her, I found I had nothing to say, no words of parting. When you leave someone you don't see very often, you say things like, "see you soon," or "hope I can get back in town before too long". When you leave a sick person, you say, "get well soon". None of these was appropriate. She wasn't going to get well, and I wouldn't be seeing her again.

She died about a week after I got back to Sydney.

This post turned out to be kind of a downer, though I didn't mean for it to be.

Labels: Australia, Foto Friday

Posted 7:27 AM by Angie Schultz

The Return of the Natalie

Look who's back, without so much as a "sorry to have kept you waiting". She must have been through strange and transformative adventures in the belly of the Earth, for now she is claiming superpowers. Clairvoyance, here, and, well, something about a plibble way of knowing. (I was going to accuse her of claiming the knowledge of the angels, as opposed to the inferior knowledge of man, except I couldn't remember the proper Greek terms or the C.S. Lewis book I'd read them in. Stupid memory.)

I suppose she'll be wanting us to call her Natalie the White now.

Posted 10:07 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Lookout!

Thanks to the new scanner, I can post photos that just didn't scan well from prints, like this one:


Kalalau Lookout, Kauai, Sep. 1995

This of course is the beautiful Kalalalalalau Lookout on the Na Pali coast of Kauai. We had to drive up there twice to get that picture. On our first try it looked a lot like this:



"Um, gosh, breathtaking," we said. We hung around for a while, hoping for the fog to clear, but it just swirled around, taunting us. I think I heard it laughing. But then the next day we went again and got an entire roll of beautiful pictures.

Which led, eleven years later, to me spending the entire flipping afternoon scanning in the damn thing, and only getting 3/4ths of the roll done! I've decided to scan only the best pictures at 4800dpi, but since nearly every shot in this roll was gorgeous, I had to scan most of them in at high resolution, which takes six minutes each. The most frustrating and time-wasting thing, though, was the failure of the scanner to detect all of the frames.

The film holder has space for twelve 35mm frames. My negatives are cut into four-frame strips, so I can only scan eight frames at a time. The scanner is supposed to detect how many frames you have in there, but often it will only find five or six of the eight frames. Then you have to fiddle with it, and move the negatives around in the holder, and curse a lot. I've read reviews for many scanners where that was a problem, so I don't think it's unique to mine. Still, grr. I found myself wondering whether it wouldn't have been better just to have the camera store do it.

I can't afford that, though, and more importantly I can't control the finished product. That certainly turned out great in this case. The print scan had little horizontal lines in the mountainside and ocean over on the left. This one does too, if you look close, but those are actually intrinsic to the mountain, and not artifacts. The greens in the print scan were also richer and darker, which gave a sort of distance to the image. It was a beautiful photo, but it was clear that it was a photo. I'm using this image as wallpaper, and now when I look at it I feel slightly dizzy. I might fall in!

(One day the wallpaper will be animated, so that the clouds move and the trees shiver in the wind. And one day that will be on your actual wall.)

Labels: Foto Friday, Hawaii

Posted 6:36 PM by Angie Schultz

Hogpile!

You've probably heard about the little ruckus regarding Arizona's new 9/11 memorial.

But what you probably didn't know is that Arizona also has a new World War II memorial, and my operatives deep within the Scorchy State have returned with photos:


Acknowledging the root causes
See also here.




Coincidence? Read the link.
A familiar name appears.




Disproportionate response



Distractions from the real war

Wonder if they have a memorial for the Mexican-American War?


Other memorial versions:
Six Meat Buffet
Sean Gleeson
Macker's World
Iowahawk

UPDATE: By the way, one of the panels in the real Arizona 9/11 memorial notes that Avtar Singh Cheira, a Sikh, was shot in Phoenix on 5/19/03. You can read a little about that here. Cheira has recovered, but his assailants were never found. It certainly does sound like a crime motivated by bigotry. But I must point out that, sadly, bigotry existed in the world before 9/11, and will no doubt be with us for some time to come. I couldn't find anything which indicated that this shooting had anything to do with 9/11, nearly two years earlier.

ALSO: It should be noted that the backgrounds to images in this post came from the photos by "AZ Patriot" in the Hot Air link, above.

Posted 9:46 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Scanners Do Not Live in Vain

Two weeks ago I mentioned wanting to get a scanner to digitize my large photo collection. Last Saturday I finally found one, and so I'm able to bring you one of my favorite pictures.


Lanai, Hawaii, Sep. 03

This is the road to the Garden of the Gods on the Hawaiian Island of Lanai. The actual Garden -- an area of colorful rocks -- is a not as impressive as its Colorado namesake, but it does have its charms. I'll be posting some pictures of the rocks eventually.

This is a very simple picture, of pretty much nothing, and I'm not quite sure why I'm so fond of it. I think it's the colors, and the soft banks of cloud.

This was taken at sunset, which is the best time to see the Garden. It's on the way out, back to Lanai City. It's easy to get out of the Garden, because if you just head toward the mountains you'll get back to town eventually. There's nowhere else to go. Getting there is harder. "Go north out of town. Turn onto the third dirt road on your left. Where you see the fence knocked down, turn right. Drive until you get to the Garden." The directions were something like that, and it's quite a ways from the knocked-down fence, and all the while you're wondering whether you're on the right dirt track.

As I said in that previous post, I really wanted a dedicated film scanner, but they're very expensive. This one -- a CanoScan 8600F -- was less than $200, and so far seems to do a good job. It was easy to get set up, too, somewhat to my surprise. (When you're used to Linux/Unix, installing software without some sort of crash or complaint is virtually a miracle. And damned suspicious.)

Here's a comparison between a scan made at the camera store, and the one made by the new scanner. (For reference, this is the blue cooler seen at the right hand side of the bridge in last week's photo.)




I've fiddled with the color saturation and contrast in order to facilitate a comparison (though I didn't work very hard at it). There are certainly more pixels, which gives a much smoother appearance. A crude calculation shows that the store scan has a resolution of about 2200, whereas the CanoScan scan has about 4800. But there's not anything like twice as much detail, which suggests that we're coming up on the limitation of the photo itself (which was, after all, a quick hand-held snapshot). I think I read that the most resolution you're going to squeeze out of a piece of 35mm film is something like 3000 dpi, using a tripod in good light with perfect focus.

I got the scanner in order 1) to archive all my old photos, in case of fire or something, 2) so that I could shoot more slides, which have much richer color than prints, and 3) so that I could digitize them and post them here.

The CanoScan takes six minutes to scan a frame like the ones above, that's at 4800 dpi with the dust removal set on high. I have thousands of photos, so scanning them all in at that resolution is not going to be practical.

On the other hand, I don't really have to. A 4x6 print doesn't need anything like 4800dpi and, if the negatives should be destroyed, I wouldn't want to re-print all the pictures anyway. So only the best ones really need the full resolution.

Anyhow: Fun! More pretty pictures! Teh Yay!

UPDATE: To wax tedious on the subject, I tried scanning the print with the all-in-one HP scanner, but the contrast was too much for it, or something. The dark area on the side didn't come out black, but a mottled dark purple. I spent hours and hours trying to get rid of it, to no avail. The same thing happened on a number of photos.

Labels: Foto Friday, Hawaii

Posted 5:22 PM by Angie Schultz

Speechifyin'

Avast, ye scurvy pups! It be Talk Like a Pirate Day. Coincidentally, the Presydent gave those lubbers at the UN a talkin' to. Did he give it in pirate speech? Arrr, he did NOT. Did he threaten 'em with keel haulings and plank walkings? NO. He didn't even order that cur Ahmadinejad to the gratings.

Arr, well that settles it. I'll not be voting for Mr. Bush in the next election. That'll learn him. Arr.

I had me a thoughtful post on the 9/11 movie that had the rabble all up in arms t'other day, but I decided to post this instead. Yer right welcome.

Arr.

Posted 4:36 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Unnatural Bridge

Well, again I don't have a lot of time to write, so, since David Fleck (scroll around for more) is offering only hard, brown, jaggedy things, I thought I'd give you something in a nice, soft green:


Liliuokalani Gardens, Hilo, Hawaii, Dec. 2004

Ahhhh....

The person on the right side of the bridge was fishing for some little critters in the water---tadpoles, maybe. Don't know why, maybe they were bait, maybe some Japanese delicacy.

Labels: Foto Friday, Hawaii

Posted 11:06 AM by Angie Schultz

It Begins

Listen! What's that sound, that distant rumble? Could that be, finally, the turning of the worm?

That's Martin Amis's long and digressive Observer essay, "The Age of Horrorism". Touching on a variety of seemingly-unrelated topics (his daughter, an abandoned novella, the liquor laws of Greeley, Colorado in 1949), it has the feel of a long walk in a meadow with a vicar who reveals, in between pointing out the interesting flora and fauna, that he has become a Moonie. (Or a Muslim, Mormon, atheist, Zoroastrian, neo-pagan...whatever you find most shocking. Or a Christian, for the truly jaded.)

Perhaps that's the reason for the nature walk, to reassure you that he hasn't gone off his rocker, that he's still the same thoughtful, tolerant, gently-contemptuous, fashionably-ironic fellow we've always known. It's just that these chaps want to kill us all, you see. And for the most illiberal of reasons! True, the Americans are ghastly, but these Muslim chappies are even more ghastly, if you can credit such a thing.

On his rambles, Amis touches on something we of a more direct (and ghastly) nature have realized (and said) for years: that terrorism is less a product of American foreign policy than of the pathologies of the Islamic world.

We should understand that the Islamists' hatred of America is as much abstract as historical, and irrationally abstract, too; none of the usual things can be expected to appease it. The hatred contains much historical emotion, but it is their history, and not ours, that haunts them.

And:

The main distinction is that the paradise which the Nazis (pagan) and the Bolsheviks (atheist) sought to bring about was an earthly one, raised from the mulch of millions of corpses. For them, death was creative, right enough, but death was still death. For the Islamists, death is a consummation and a sacrament; death is a beginning.

And:

That's what all this was supposed to be: not a clash of civilisations or anything like that, but a civil war within Islam. Well, the civil war appears to be over. And Islamism won it. The loser, moderate Islam, is always deceptively well-represented on the level of the op-ed page and the public debate; elsewhere, it is supine and inaudible.

And:

The most extreme Islamists want to kill everyone on earth except the most extreme Islamists; but every jihadi sees the need for eliminating all non-Muslims, either by conversion or by execution.

(Note the distinction between "Islamists" and "jihadis", suggesting that the latter are more numerous than the former.)

And (regarding suicide bombings during the "Second Intifada"):

The parallel process was the intensive demonisation of Israel (academic ostracism, and so on); every act of suicide-mass murder 'testified' to the extremity of the oppression, so that 'Palestinian terror, in this view, was the measure of Israeli guilt'.

(Amis's quotes are from Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism.)

These are ideas that his Guardian audience would reject, coming from neocon warmongers like Bush. Will they take them any better from kindly padre Amis?

Perhaps they will, since he washes these bitter truths down with a few teaspoonfuls of sugar in the form of obligatory genuflection to the Other...

Let us make the position clear. We can begin by saying, not only that we respect Muhammad, but that no serious person could fail to respect Muhammad - a unique and luminous historical being.

...swipes at the vulgar cowboys we are saddled with...

The fatal turn [in the Iraq war] was the American President's all too palpable submission to the intoxicant of power. His walk, his voice, his idiom, right up to his mortifying appearance in the flight suit on the aircraft-carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln ('Mission Accomplished') - every dash and comma in his body language betrayed the unscrupulous confidence of the power surge.

...and ritual self-flagellation:

Since [9/11/01] the world has undergone a moral crash - the spiritual equivalent, in its global depth and reach, of the Great Depression of the Thirties. On our side, extraordinary rendition, coercive psychological procedures, enhanced interrogation techniques, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Mahmudiya, two wars, and tens of thousands of dead bodies.

These reminders may comfort those who would flee from sharing any cause with the "mortifying" Bush.

However, this essay will likely give his reluctant audience the wrong ideas. His recounting of Sayyid Qutb's exile to the bubbling fleshpot of Greeley, Colorado is fascinating, for those who don't know the story. (Short version: Qutb decided America was Satan at a dance in a church basement in Greeley in 1949, which was at that time a dry town.) While Amis is no doubt correct that the horror of the female is one of the major psychoses of the Muslim (more likely, the Arab) world, his history will probably give unneeded support to those who believe that Bush's nasty bellicosity results from his unsatisfactory sex life. (And, yes, I have read lefty blogs where this was seriously suggested.)

He also blames religion, all religion, not just Islam or its extreme forms. I might be on board with that, if not for the previous example of fascism and Communism.

Anyway, it's possible this is the first step to at least some of those who claim to cherish liberty to wake the hell up and start defending it, if only with words.

The other day, Scrappleface had a post on ABC's special on the fiftieth anniversary of 9/11. At the risk of spoiling the joke:

But then the tide turns in favor of the budding Islamic caliphate (Allah be praised!). As memories of the 2001 attacks fade, world opinion turns against the Great Satan. Then the Great Satan turns on itself, consumed from within by a toxic combination of political ambition and cowardice masquerading as tolerance.

But that's not how it's going to go.

No, in 2051 9/11 will be remembered as a heroic time when the entire country woke up to the peril, thanks to the pleading of liberal intellectuals who alone recognized the barbaric, implacable nature of Islamofascism. The country rallied behind the President, the news media supported his policies, and patriotic celebrities cheered up the troops and the public. And so America united to whip yet another totalitarian ideology, and gained the eternal gratitude of the world.

(Speaking of implausible alternate histories, see here.)

Posted 9:53 PM by Angie Schultz

A Thousand Words

Haleakala National Park H.Q., Maui
Sep. 11, 2003