If you have to ask…

Al Denelsbeck

I know, I know, this is hardly ‘timely,’ insofar as what provoked the post anyway, but the content still applies, and I prefer to take the time to do the subject justice rather than dash off something so it’s “fresh.”

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on Paris a few weeks ago, Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, admitted that the attacks had caused him to question where god was. Unsurprisingly, he got a quick answer that apparently made everything okay, and then, happy with this superficial response, failed to pose any of the hundreds of followup questions that any sane person would have asked, given the opportunity of a direct line to god. I’m with Professor Ceiling Cat on this one: I think Welby is just using current events in a grotesque method of promoting himself and his agenda, as unbelievable as that may seem coming from a man of the cloth. You are welcome to view that interview video at the first link above and see if this strikes you as the manner of someone conversing with god – I have to admit I’ve seen more convincing performances coming from 10-year-olds…

Curiously, the same question has been asked millions of times in the past, always in the face of terrible events, and while the churches keep reiterating the same responses, they don’t seem to be sticking. There is a regular conflict with the idea of a loving and caring god, especially one that favors the “right” people, that nevertheless permits some pretty atrocious behavior; it’s almost as if the idea of “right” isn’t really worth anything. But what happens if we ask such questions honestly, without immediately finding a self-justifying way of dismissing the subject? Where does the question of where god was during the attacks actually lead?

1. The most obvious response is, god was on the side of the terrorists. Let’s face it, nobody thwarted the attacks, no one was forewarned by vision or divine communication, including the archbishop himself and his casual conversations. Hell, Welby says god admitted to being in the middle of it! Further, there’s also the statement that the victims’ tears were being saved. Now, obviously the stalwart christians find this to be somehow reassuring, but it sounds pretty damn sadistic to me, like a serial killer recording his victims’ screams.

2. Religious folk are inordinately fond of raising possibilities as justification for their beliefs, so none of them should have any problem with the possibility that human suffering is simply not a mitigating factor in god’s actions. This is the biggest stumbling block, because 2.8 seconds of thought demonstrates how this conflicts with a loving and caring god. According to every religion on the planet, we were created this way, including our ability to suffer, so we can only conclude that suffering is completely intentional. After all, this is a being that created the universe, including the laws of physics, so cannot possibly be constrained by anything at all; everything imaginable could be accomplished without human input, period, and certainly without human suffering, so it could only exist because god wanted it to exist – which makes this a definition of “loving and caring” that no sane person should even contemplate. The usual counter-argument is that this world is a test to see how we get to spend the afterlife, which doesn’t actually change anything and ignores numerous facets, like how many people suffer way out of proportion to others. Do starving children in economically depressed countries really require more ‘testing’ than the rich fuckers in Europe? Because this seems like a seriously inefficient system…

3. It doesn’t make any difference whatsoever. This is also an answer that is forwarded by religious folk fairly often, in the guise of, “it’s all part of a master plan,” and variations thereof. Fine, no problem; if it’s all part of a plan then it doesn’t matter what the hell humans get up to, does it? Good and bad have no meaning in such circumstances, and guidance is pointless – which means that archbishops and all other holy men have no actual purpose. If we don’t know what the plan is, then we cannot act on it, and free will and all that jazz is pointless. Do whatever you want. The terrorists could be acting as god’s right hand – we don’t know.

4. It’s all nonsense; there’s no supreme authority, no plans, no goals, just the laws of physics and the pettiness of imperfect humans. Shockingly, this doesn’t run afoul of any evidence that has ever been put forth in the history of mankind, despite people like the archbishop and their conversations that somehow fail to produce any useful results. Of course, what this means is that we deal with adversity, not as a plan that we don’t know, not as retribution for some unknown affront to magic sky pony, but as simply undirected events. Except, of course, for the directed actions of people like the terrorists – and, not to leave anyone out, the inquisitors, the holy tribunals, the purgemasters, the fundamentalists pressuring the lawmakers, and all of those who believe they’re acting on some divine authority because we still fuck around with such flimsy and insubstantial excuses.

Because, as long as we keep trying to see such things in religious terms, they’re never going to improve. There’s a huge difference between what’s “right,” according to any religious nitwit you care to ask, and what’s “beneficial” according to a secular outlook: “beneficial” is measurable and largely objective, while “right” is any fucking thing that somebody can loosely interpret from their supposedly holy scripture. The archbishop is quite sure that he’s right… and so are the terrorists, and for that matter, every other religious person that exists. Well, that certainly clarified matters. And instead of believing that “right” is something that should be both demonstrable and convincing – in other words, capable of converting everyone in the world to the One True Religion™ – religious folk tend to believe that everyone that doesn’t agree with them is mistaken and, all too often, an infidel. This has been going on for centuries; obviously it ain’t accomplishing jack shit.

Doubt is a very useful emotion; it makes us examine our decisions and and actions to ensure that we’re correct, and makes us pause before acting rashly. Yet it’s imperfect, because it can easily be overridden by ego, as in, the process of finding justifications for an existing attitude so that we never discover that we had been wrong. Welby’s ‘answer’ very quickly made everything okay, even reassuring him that his own brand of christianity was correct despite no evidence at all that demonstrated this. It’s not safe to assume that the terrorists did the same exact thing… and it’s not safe to assume that they did not, either. When the practice is so prevalent within religion – indeed, religion cannot actually exist without it – then it’s not a matter of whether this dismal trait of humans contributed to so many vicious acts all throughout history, but how often.

I’m not comparing Welby, or the bulk of religious folk, to terrorists; I’m simply pointing out that a common trait among all religions not only permits, but passively condones, actions of this nature. This is a pretty wretched state of affairs from something that is supposed to guide mankind towards good. You’ll notice that Welby, high priest that he is, did not actually offer anything of any use whatsoever to the situation – he simply tried to alleviate the doubts among the other christians who might consider him an authority. He could, while in conversation with god, have sought some functional action to take, but somehow did not; no question of where to find the responsible parties, no inquiry about changing their motivations, not even a request for a hint about how to avoid such things in the future. This is like climbing the mountain to speak to the wise man and asking him what the elevation is. None of this strikes me as odd, but I have to wonder why so many of the religious folk never seem to grasp such things. Feel free to ask about it yourself; you know all you’re going to hear are even more excuses…

There are further problems with this kind of self-indulgent lip-service, though. First off, it’s very easy to play armchair psychologist in such situations and assume we know what was motivating the terrorists, when we have a hard enough time knowing what motivates ourselves. However, if we really are dealing with religious extremism, the archbishop of Canterbury appearing on TV and claiming that the attacks made him doubt his god are not exactly helping, for countless reasons. The most obvious is that this is something they’d be delighted to hear, and Welby’s quick follow-up that his faith was still intact (and that the terrorists were “perverted” in theirs) could very well be motivation to try harder on their part. The second bit is, couching any of this in terms of religion would simply be validation (something that, to their credit, many people in Paris specifically avoided and denigrated.) It is not a holy war, and as an atheist I can say this even while calling religion absurd; this is simply an act of over-emotional but not-very-bright people, who haven’t grasped how little their actions are really going to accomplish. I can give the faintest bit of credit, at least, to both Welby and cardinal Vincent Nichols for not trying to provoke a christian response, instead saying this was best left up to the governments. While that’s kind of a “duh” thing, it makes them at least marginally brighter than any terrorists.

But worst of all, any mention of religion at all in such circumstances is simply implying that religion has any relevance or application whatsoever – even when it manifests in such a wishy-washy ‘answer.’ We don’t need to be validating and encouraging such pointless and vapid thinking; there are real issues out there, and we need real solutions, and the ability to seek them rather than hiding behind a cloak of self-righteousness. Every day we have some fucktard that does something incredibly stupid and very often harmful, based on their belief of ‘what god wants,’ and none of us can call it stupid if we do the exact same thing ourselves. There is nothing that we will ever do to eradicate extremism completely; psychosis is not going to go away. However, psychosis is not a dividing line, but a spectrum, a large grey area, in many ways defined by what culture and society have established in the first place. If believing that you can talk to some magic puff of smoke is actually seen as aberrant and unhinged (rather than as a supremely arrogant bragging point,) there’s simply going to be a hell of a lot less of it. Not to mention, those that still do will be easier to spot.

I was afraid of that

Al Denelsbeck

juvenile magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis under parsley leafOver the years, I have determined that spiders, even tiny ones, are remarkably good at dealing with cold weather; the newborn green lynx spiders that I observed all winter long on the rosemary bush drove that point home quite well. So at present, I have two magnolia green jumping spiders (Lyssomanes viridis) that live in a small terrarium on the porch, feeding on the fruit flies and midges that I capture when the weather is warm enough. And today, when poking around halfheartedly outside, I found another that was so small I had to look twice to assure myself of what species it really was. The image seen here is a ‘studio’ shot on a potted parsley leaf, but represents how I found it closely enough.

We’ll get to a proper visualization of the size in just a moment; for now I’ll say that, in wrangling it for the photo, it scampered off of the index card that I often use for manipulating such small subjects, over to the edge of the glass-topped table on the porch, and disappeared into the edge; the table has a metal frame that the glass is set into, of course. And the wee spider not only ducked into the frame, but completely around the edge of the glass and came out on the underside – finding it again was a great deal of luck coupled with a wild hunch. Since I had not yet managed a single shot, this whole session could have ended before it even started.

I couldn’t begin to tell you how young this one was, but it was much smaller than the two I have currently and I know they’re still juveniles. Nonetheless, after the escapade around the edge of the table, it proved rather cooperative from that point on, allowing me to get quite a few frames. Oh, it still hid on the underside of the leaf whenever it could, but flushing it back on top only required some gentle suggestions with the tip of the tweezers, upon which it would stay up there for a minute or two as the flash fired off again and again. It was small enough to require the reversed 28-105, so to begin with, here’s the full-frame image:

juvenile magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis on parsley leaf
… while below is the tighter crop for detail.

juvenile magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis on parsley leaf
You’ll notice that the depth-of-field extends only as far back as the back of the ‘head’ (cephalothorax) – the abdomen is already well out of focus. We’ll see how short this range is in a moment. Of course, you can also see the wandering eyes that make this species so much fun to observe (you have seen the video, right?) and how big the secondary eyes are at this age, plus the absence of the ‘Lurch haircut.’

juvenile magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis on parsley leaf
I took enough frames to ensure that I had at least a few that were sharp; this is not at all evident at the time, because the focal point is so small that a tiny twitch can render the spider fuzzy, and I’m not that perfectly steady when handholding the camera. Hell, even exhaling too hard can send the leaf swaying. The goal is to trip the shutter in the brief period that the spider has become as sharp as possible in the viewfinder, hoping that the minuscule delay in capture was not enough to twitch out of focus again, but also taking enough shots to increase the chances cumulatively.

juvenile magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis on parsley leaf
I had a minor advantage with a subject this size, too: she was small enough that the distance to the looming macro lens was too great for her to consider jumping across, something the larger specimens often didn’t hesitate to do. I’d either have to pull back sharply to thwart the impending jump, or stop and get them off the lens as they ran around avoiding me like an impish child in a shopping mall. In fact…

juvenile magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis on measuring scale
… here’s an actual scale shot, and the position indicates that the spider is about to jump – I’ve seen it enough times now to recognize the minute repositioning and the gathering of the legs, which you can see are evenly placed. You can see that the body length of the spider is perhaps just over 2mm, with the cephalothorax (and thus the depth-of-field) to be 1mm at best. So if you want to see what it’s like, try this: hold a pen in your teeth, and lean over a table without touching it and try to keep the point of the pen precisely at a particular millimeter marking on a ruler, without wavering a millimeter. That’s about comparable to focusing on such a small species, and reason enough why I try to lean against something steady whenever possible. Of course, if it’s the table that the subject sits upon, I can end up shaking it slightly even by breathing, and if it’s a parsley leaf on a slender stalk, this vibration gets magnified. Get the idea? Studio work is easier, but not exactly effortless.

[By the way, the chromatic aberration visible here on the rule, the green and magenta borders to the black lines, is not coming from my lens, but from the printer that produced the rules for me – they’re actually small Photoshop images tacked onto the border of my business card photos, that I fussed with in small increments until they reproduced at the right size. Photo prints, even meticulously-sized ones, are rarely printed at exact proportions, but enlarged slightly to overlap the edges enough to hide any registration errors, so even if I included a precise millimeter scale according to DPI and all that, they wouldn’t be accurate – I believe I’m sending them reduced by 3% to match up to the enlargement by the printer.]

But here’s another scale shot, perhaps a more illustrative one:

juvenile magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis on edge of dime
This was the first shot that I attempted, ruined when the spider took off and disappeared within the table, but successfully captured a little later on; the metal surface you are seeing here is a dime. Does that illustrate the size well enough?

And then, I made the mistake of slipping my subject here (the spider, not the dime) into the terrarium with the other two spiders and a half-dozen fruit flies. I have already seen the territoriality of the two occupants, which largely stay at opposite ends; the little addition didn’t even last an hour before I found her in the chelicerae of one of the larger ones. Worse, that one had just recently chowed down on a fruit fly, so this was either gluttony or spite. I attempted to get an image of this to follow through, but callous larger spider had perched onto the silk screen that serves as the ceiling and closure of the terrarium, which is only held on with a rubber band right now until I construct a new lid, so I couldn’t get a clear shot without disturbing her. Now, at least, I know not to introduce any more in with those two.

All of these shots save for the first, by the way, were done with the new reflector, no changes from that configuration. I’d say it’s working pretty well.

Monday color 44

Al Denelsbeck

purple ornamental peppers
I have no good idea what these are, other than peppers bred specifically for ornamentation. I also couldn’t tell you if this color works in their favor or not. The bright color of most fruits attracts critters to eat them, but in the case of peppers, the high capsaicin content (the stuff that makes them hot) targets their consumption by birds and not mammals, since birds cannot taste it – this enables peppers to spread faster because, you know, birds flying about and all that. But are birds gastronomically attracted to purple?

We all need a bug

Al Denelsbeck

blue dasher Pachydiplax longipennis dragonfly on dried rosebudObviously, we’re getting well away from arthropod season right now, plus I’ve had little opportunity to chase photos anyway, so we’re going to step back to July with this one, the same cooperative dragonfly as seen here. This is a female blue dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis,) posing on a dried rosebud. The ‘blue’ bits would still be out of the frame had this been a male, showing primarily on the long abdomen, but the females don’t display this anyway – I guess calling the species ‘sometimes blue dasher’ just didn’t sound right.

Going slow with dragonflies can often permit nice, close approaches, since they seem more alerted by sudden movement than by proximity. In fact, it’s not hard to get them to perch on your fingertip; just slide your finger very slowly towards them, straight in from the front and slightly beneath, and when right under the chin, push up gently under the head until they have to step onto your finger or fly away – most times they’ll simply take a new perch on your finger, perhaps after tilting their head around rapidly a few times in apparent confusion. Don’t worry about biting – even when they’re so inclined (usually only if they feel threatened,) their mouthparts aren’t strong enough to do anything more than tickle us. It’s good practice for moving slowly, and really impresses the babes (I’m guessing, anyway – I mean, it has to, right?)

Anyway, I just liked the juxtaposition of sharp elements and delicate colors with this one, so it’s been sitting in my blog folder waiting for an opportunity. And here we are…

The cosmic ballet goes on

Al Denelsbeck

I had intended to post this earlier, but life got in the way, mostly in the form of an illness that caused me to cancel out on two students this weekend. ‘Tis the season…

VenusOccultationStellariumAnyway, there is a cool event going on tomorrow (Monday, December 7th) during daylight hours, one that may be worth going out at a specific set of times to try and see. Venus is going to pass behind the crescent moon – or be occulted by the moon, if you want to be accurate/pedantic. No, this does not mean chickens and pentagrams and all that, it just means ‘pass behind;‘ astronomers aren’t that exciting. You might think that this wouldn’t be visible in daylight, or at least not the Venus part, but Venus is often visible during the day in clear skies – you just have to know where to look to see a small bright spot against a reasonably bright sky. And, by all accounts, it will be notably bright. Check out this post on Universe Today for the viewing details.

The image here is courtesy of the program Stellarium, which is handy for things like this – it accurately shows occultations, eclipses, and other such events, though it does not have satellites and comets included. With the program, you can figure out exactly when Venus will disappear behind the moon and later emerge, and what position in the sky they will be – all you need is a reasonably accurate longitude for your locale. If you’re near central Carolina, the time shown here is emergence tomorrow.

By the way, you should be checking out Universe Today on a regular basis anyway – it’s got loads of neat posts.

not G.I. JoePart two of this post is just for giggles. I was in need of a small, specific joint for a photo project, but wasn’t willing to pay a lot for it. After much poking around, I found what I needed in this action figure from WalMart: Carlos Perez, AKA “Gills,” from The Corps! Elite. His pose here is slightly indicative of why I chose him, though in truth any one of his fellow Corps!members would have worked – his fingers aren’t articulated or he’d be flashing a gang sign (or perhaps a Girl Scout salute – I’m not up on such things.) This is the last time you’ll see him intact…

Too cool, part 29: Flatulent Enceladus

Al Denelsbeck

Cassini images, plumes of Enceladus above Saturn's rings
Courtesy: NASA
Yesterday’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is a masterpiece of subtlety, belying the fascination to be found in one of Saturn’s moons. Enceladus is a small frozen satellite, actually a thick crust of ice over what is believed to be a global ocean atop a rocky core. In other words, a hard center suspended in a ‘water’ drop with a frozen outer layer. This outer layer of ice is heavily cracked, allowing the liquid within to escape through geysers. And that’s exactly what you’re seeing here. Backlit by the sun into a thin crescent, Enceladus is venting liquid from the bottom here, seen as wispy jets above Saturn’s rings.

The very fact that there is liquid underneath that ice, so far from the sun, is what makes Enceladus one of our solar system’s most interesting bodies, and a target for future missions. The transport, binding, and catalyzing of elements into molecules takes place readily in liquid water, and is considered the prime factor in the development of life; things gotta mix. Liquid water not only needs a certain temperature, but a certain pressure, otherwise water exists either as ice or vapor. When we look at exoplanets around other stars, we’re looking for planets of a certain size and a certain distance from the star, to not only maintain the necessary temperature, but also to attract an atmosphere dense enough to keep water in place for billions of years. Mars was a little too small, and lost most of what water it had because the atmosphere got too thin to keep the moisture and it, literally, wafted off into space. Comets have ice that sublimates directly into vapor because there’s no atmosphere to speak of.

Enceladus, however, is different. We have to extrapolate everything about it from distant observations, but what we have now indicates that both radioactive decay in the core and the strong tidal influences of Saturn and other nearby moons keeps the rocky core hot – hot enough to maintain liquid water underneath a shielding layer of ice, melted from within rather than from the distant sun. What this means is that this moon of Saturn might be a self-contained ecosystem, capable of developing and supporting life completely underneath its thick ice mantle. It’s a long shot, of course, but a handful of both Saturn’s and Jupiter’s moons with similar conditions are the best chances we have of seeing extraterrestrial life.

Not that it would be easy. The frozen crust of Enceladus is estimated to be about 30-40 kilometers thick, or 19-25 miles. Unless we devised some method of negotiating down through one of the cracks that allow the geysers seen in the photo, we’d have to have a probe that could melt its way down through all that, which is a serious amount of energy. It would also have to avoid any contamination of the ocean beneath, and leave some kind of antenna or transmitter on the surface since no signal would be able to be sent from the probe beneath that much ice. The entire prospect is a massive physics exercise.

And just as a bit of trivia, Enceladus is only 500 km across, in comparison to our own moon’s diameter of 3,500 km, and thus possesses a commensurately lower gravity. Most of the water vapor escaping out through those cracks doesn’t remain near the moon’s surface, but instead forms Saturn’s E-ring – wispy, near-invisible, and stretching out many times the diameter of the rings we can see from Earth.

This highlights some of the accomplishments of the Cassini probe. None of this information has been provided by direct contact, and even visually, there’s only so much that can be determined from looking at the surface. Since its arrival in orbit around Saturn in 2004, the probe has been vastly expanding our knowledge of the ringed planet and its abundant collection of satellites. The composition of Enceladus, among many other aspects of the probe’s mission, has been interpolated from gravitational measurements and observations of orbital eccentricities; the floating ice crust, for instance, appears to be moving too much to be anchored to any solid surface beneath. Check out NASA’s pages on the Cassini mission for more info, including this one of Enceladus images, and Wikipedia’s page on Enceladus is remarkably detailed.

And another bit of trivia, because I’m a photographer. The image above is at or near full resolution (depending on your monitor settings) – if you want a closer or more detailed look at the geysers, too bad. The optical camera on Cassini is a mere one megapixel, which seems ridiculous to us now, but the probe was launched in 1997, and designed long before that; the digital options for consumers at that time weren’t significantly better, and certainly not affordable. If you’re curious, see this page for more details on how imagery in space probes is handled.

There are some more observations about related topics to come, but this is all I have time for right now. Check back shortly.

November’s abstract (a day late)

Al Denelsbeck

Dammit, I meant to post this yesterday, and forgot all about it. I’m disappointing my legions of readers…

submerged autumn leaf with glitter trail sparkles
While I’ve had it in the back of my mind to maintain this new ‘tradition’ of posting an abstract at month’s end, it hasn’t worked out for every month. But I knew this one was in the running the moment I saw how it had turned out. With most subjects, I already know how the image is going to look because every aspect is predictable; I know how the depth-of-field is going to render, and what the contrast will become and all that. And with some, I never know until I see the final image, like in this case. The gently undulating water reflecting the sunlight would be frozen at the moment the shutter tripped, producing a specific set of sparkles, while the bright light coming in would cause an exposure entirely different from what I was seeing in the viewfinder. I shot several frames, and picked this one for the layout of the starbursts. Those starbursts, however, were largely known, or at least the effect was, since it’s produced by using a small aperture. Two of them falling onto the leaf as they did was serendipity.

cherry tomatoes felled by frostMeanwhile, a follow-up to last week’s Monday color, because. An overnight frost finally convinced the cherry tomato plant to give it up and discard its fruit onto the porch below.

Monday color 43

Al Denelsbeck

eastern tiger swallowtail Papilio glaucus on unknown pink flowers
Today’s Monday color is another from this session back in August; some days I get one or two solid ‘keepers,’ some days I get dozens. On rare occasions I’m pleased with nothing and throw out almost everything I shoot. On those days, I pretend I was busy doing something else…

BIAB: Colin Hay fourfer

Al Denelsbeck

Yes, we’re digging back into the deposits of ancient music again, because it’s a blog (see title.) The choice this time around is Colin Hay, formerly the lead singer and guitarist of the Australian group Men At Work, then going solo in the late 80s, then headlining the Colin Hay Band (curious coincidence, that) in the early 90s before going solo again. He’s still producing albums and is currently touring, but right now we’re going to look back at the older stuff.

Pretty much everyone knows “Overkill,” from Men At Work’s second album Cargo, released in 1983 and in my opinion the most compelling track from two very strong albums; the other, their first, was Business As Usual from 1981. Far too many people nowadays know the song from the TV show Scrubs, which is fine, but it probably means they’re ignoring the superb collection of other tracks from both albums. If you haven’t heard it in a while, or haven’t bothered to listen to it closely, it’s worth another shot. In particular, pay attention to how everything has its place, none of the instruments crashing into white noise or feedback, instead providing a very pleasant and subtle blend that was typical of music from the 80s. There’s a background ‘breeze’ that comes and goes, at times clearly vocals but at others (such as during the instrumental bridge) the tones are indistinct and may or may not still be vocal samples. Regardless, it manifests a pleasant and slightly ethereal choir underneath the more obvious instruments. Special credit goes to those responsible for the mix, which brings in gentle surges of the keyboards or bass just to counterpoint the lyrics.

Overkill – Men At Work

I always interpreted the song as being about the cold war, which was seeing a resurgence in the eighties before it finally collapsed in the early nineties, but according to Hay, the meaning is more generic, the anxiety of sudden success and the changes it brings.

“It’s a Mistake” runs a close second behind this one, even more recognizable and featuring an arguably better vocal performance from Hay (listen for the subtle tremolos that come in, most often at the ends of bars.) The guitar work is unsurpassable as well, but the song lacks the mellow vibe of “Overkill,” so I’m sticking to my guns for this personal preference.

Some of the bandmembers split after Cargo, leaving three to produce Two Hearts before Men At Work dissolved for good. A few years later in 1987, Colin Hay released the solo album Looking For Jack, with the assistance of a laundry list of studio musicians. Though there are a few exceptions among the tracks, the album showed a distinctive progression from the pop sound of Men At Work to a softer rock feel, as well as betraying Hay’s interests in world travel. The cover art makes it clear that the ‘Jack’ that is sought is Nicholson, though why this should be is unclear, and not corrected terribly well by the lyrics of the title track. Nonetheless, it is a pleasant little song, with a piano and guitar playing a duet as the main instruments in a sprightly composition:

Looking For Jack – Colin Hay

cover art, Colin Hay Band Wayfaring SonsIn 1990, Hay teamed with three new musicians to form the Colin Hay Band, and released Wayfaring Sons, featuring musical styles that, I feel, were the strongest throughout his long career. With this album comes the first indications of the acoustic influence that would later dominate Hay’s work and define his later albums, yet at this point it was only one aspect of a widely varied instrument lineup. The album itself has more of a ‘soundtrack’ vibe to me, milder and able to work strongly as background music, which is not to minimize the performances at all – it’s just a different feel. There’s more use of studio vocalists for backing, and a generally breezier tone.

Among the majority of very strong tracks comes the playfully naughty “Dream On (In The Night)” – hardly risqué by any standards today, but seeming slightly out of line with the mellow musical style and thus highlighted by that. We’re not talking “sex” here, but “foolin’ around,” and the difference is evident enough when you listen to it. But also pay attention to the bass wandering around in the background and offering mildly sardonic commentary.

Dream On (In The Night) – Colin Hay

Other great works from the album are the title track “Wayfaring Sons,” “Not So Lonely,” and the pleasant prerequiem “Ya (Rest In Peace),” but virtually all of the album is solid – the only one I’m likely to skip the MP3 player over is “Help Me,” but that’s due to its sharper tones that don’t blend as well with the rest of the lineup. If you liked the track I’ve included, definitely check out the rest of the album.

From that point on, Hay stayed almost strictly acoustic, and most of his songs display only his own instrumental work mixed with one another. For his 2003 album Man @ Work, several of the old classics had been re-recorded as acoustic versions. I have to admit I’m not a big fan of acoustic guitar, at least not as the primary or sole instrument – it receives far more attention than is warranted, especially with the ‘American’ style that is seen so often (as opposed to, say, flamenco-style, which is entirely different and far more dynamic.) The Girlfriend and I had the opportunity to see Hay in concert locally, in 2009 I believe, at a small venue that made the most of acoustic music – there were perhaps 200 people in attendance. Knowing that the audience was probably more familiar with the older stuff than the newer, Hay’s set featured only the most popular of his later work and a good mix of the earlier stuff, often showcasing a clever little digital addition to his acoustic guitar that could simultaneously play a pre-recorded loop from the same guitar, so he was in fact doing a duet with himself, live. With the small stage, Hay was able to relate a lot of anecdotes from his years in the various bands and touring with others, including playing with Ringo Starr and a somewhat surreal story about lamingtons. It was Men At Work that brought vegemite to the consciousness of the greater world, to almost no one’s delight, but lamingtons sound a lot more palatable.

Anyway, in comparison, we return to the first song featured, this time acoustically – you can decide for yourself which one works better.

Overkill (acoustic) – Colin Hay

I can say, however, that the effect is entirely different with everyone in a small auditorium singing along – unbeatable, actually. Maybe we can talk him into releasing that version.

Thursday color

Al Denelsbeck

Canada geese Branta canadensis against pink-orange sunset skyJust a few pics without a lot of explanation, because they don’t need it. Two are fairly recent, and one has actually been seen before, dating from May.

Two weeks back, I was at the nearby pond watching what the sunset colors were doing when the Canada geese (Branta canadensis) departed, though a handful of them circled the pond at low level, honking loudly – I can only surmise they were trying to convince the others to follow. This is one of those slightly tricky situations, because one can track the geese as they circle, but framing them against an interesting portion of sky takes a little bit of timing and foresight – it’s easy to realize afterward that it would have looked better if they had been captured there instead of here, but by then it’s too late. This is where being able to shoot with both eyes open can help, because you can ‘scout’ the background they are about to cross with the other eye before they reach it and plan accordingly. You can also hear the honking that signifies their impending takeoff and realize that they’re likely to appear or cross there, and be ready. This includes thinking if a horizontal or vertical composition will work better, and whether you can pull off a shutter speed that’s fast enough. It’s not hard, it just requires being on your toes. The hint of trees included at the bottom of the frame here ‘grounds’ the geese near the horizon instead of simply being someplace overhead, as they would appear without it.

wild turkey Meleagris gallopavo under rhododendronsNaturally, in honor of the day I have to include this pic from earlier in the year, during a trip to NJ. This turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) really was wild, even though it was one of many accustomed to a semi-domestic situation, wandering through yards in a Jersey housing development. Art Carlson was actually somewhat correct: wild turkeys can fly, just not the over-fattened domestic ones raised for food.

two lone sweetgum leaves against sunset skyAnd another, taken minutes apart from the geese shot, because. I’ll leave this here for a second and let you soak it in, before I start talking about it.

Now, did you notice that vertical band of clouds to the right? It’s actually a contrail, one of the things that makes sunrise and sunset pics in this area such a pain in the ass – they’ll appear in the same conditions as the clouds that make for interesting skies, but of course clouds don’t make these narrow long lines across the sky. To me, it adds the wrong kind of element to the scene, but in this case it was broad enough and subtle enough that I don’t think it actually registers – correct me if I’m wrong. I did another composition where I aligned the edge of the contrail with the bigger branch right alongside the leaves, making it even subtler, but then the change in position meant the leaves were crossed by other branches instead of being framed in space as seen here, and I didn’t like it as much. Decisions, decisions…

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