Off track

A few years back, I rode with a friend who had a speaking GPS. As we exited the interstate to get gas, the functional female voice said, “Off trail.” But then we turned left onto the overpass and crossed the interstate, provoking the voice to update us with, “On trail… off trail,” with barely a pause in between. Credit for picking up on our brief position above the read more

Say it isn’t so!

Courtesy, once again, of Why Evolution Is True, comes another article in the New York Times, this one about a bible-belt pastor that left religion behind. Despite the fact that the author, like many journalists, has only a superficial understanding read more

It’s a bargain!

Every once in a while this topic gets brought up again in my mind, and I just feel the need to put some of it down.

It is no surprise that, as a photographer, I notice the countless people who want to get some kind of reduced rate on photographic services – and because of this, I may be mistaken when I perceive it to be extremely common. It certainly doesn’t help that I peruse Craigslist read more

Personal god

Walkabout podcast – Personal god

I am, if nothing else, a fan of perspective. One of the greatest benefits of critical thinking is that it can often encourage people to take stock of a situation, compare it against other experiences, and most especially, to see where a common attitude can lead us to fall for unwarranted assumptions or misleading values. So I’m slightly irked in that read more

But that’s different!

To everyone reading this right now, kindly send me your Social Security number. I am a taxpayer, and I help pay to support this program, so you need to send it to me so that I may confirm that your own contributions are in order. I have no intention of carrying more than my share of the burden while you remain off of the grid, shrouded in privacy.

I also need to know what car you drive read more

Save the kilobytes!

xkcd speaks to me this morning (click for original):


And this time, don’t think about pocketable, or not having to carry extra lenses, or that big LCD on the back.

I cover this with my students, first thing, so I might as well hit it here too: The first and foremost cause of bad photos, the thing that wrecks more of them than anything else, is motion blur – camera shake. read more

You keep using that word…

…I do not think it means what you think it means.

Okay, it would seem that even simple things go above people’s heads sometimes. Let’s try and make it even simpler.

In the US, we have this thing that sets up what the government is supposed to do, we call it the Constitution. Among many of its principles there sits a simple little thing called “no favor,” occasionally read more

But it’s not Snow White

It’s not particularly hard to find news stories where the excesses of religious belief have led to something objectionable, damaging, and even fatal. Actually, this can be done almost daily, and quite often doesn’t even have to extend outside of our own country – this is what the New/Gnu/Nv/Nouveaux Atheists refer to when pointing out why religion really isn’t a read more

I’m glad somebody said it

I had originally started a post on largely this topic when the news was full of the epic awesome wonderfulness of Steve Jobs, the man who, according to the media hype, was the most amazing businessman on the planet. When these died out rather quickly, I let the post go, but now The New Yorker has a kind of biographical article on Jobs, and I’ll simply read more

But is it art?

It’s funny, now that I think about it, that I haven’t tackled this subject here before. I mean, what’s a blog for?

The photographer part of me has this little hate-affair with the “art world.” While opinions vary a great deal, it isn’t hard to find the prejudice that photography is not art, and this is distinctly noticeable right where I live, in a community that read more

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