Artistic Thursday - Emily's Playing In The Sand.

Emily's 'believe'

Emily's 'Just Dream'

Emily's 'Hope Threatened'

Emily's 'Hope Diminished'

The above pictures were taken by Emily when we went 'shell collecting' a few weeks ago.  I always try to be the teacher but end up learning from my children, more times than not.  The creativity they have is both a source of pride and shame for me.  Proud that they can create beauty and understand their environment.  Shame because somewhere in my journey between youth and maturity I have lost the ability to see the writing in the sand.

GREED!

I'm tired of hearing and reading people bitch about the greed of big corporations. It's usually the people who are the greediest of them all, Walmart shoppers. I know there are people out there saying, "Reed, how does shopping at Walmart make me greedier than a corporation or one of  'those rich people'? It's really simple, when you break it down. Walmart came up with a great way to cash in on the greed of the American people. Greed is defined as: excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions.

Walmart shoppers want everything for nothing. They don't care if it costs a worker in borlakistan an arm and a leg(literally) and/or an American worker their job, as long as they can afford to get more and more items for cheaper and cheaper. After all, aren't they entitled to everything everyone else who works harder than them has?

Want to know the second most greedy people? Union members! These people are so greedy, they fight for more money and benefits regardless of the worth of their actual work. They pay money to an organization whose sole purpose is to buy politicians, have unfair laws passed and monopolize a work force that could/should be easily replaced by non-union members and people who, gasp, actually want to work for a fair wage. Union members I know the words, 'fair wage', are very confusing to you and have not been explained by your union leadership, do not panic, I will help you out. Fair wage is the amount the market is willing to pay for a service, not the greedy amount you want to embezzle from them.

I know there may be a couple of union members out there saying, 'Reed, I had to join a union and didn't have a choice.'. I genuinely feel bad for you. As someone who was FORCED to be in a union in my younger life, I know how much it sucks to be FORCED to give up part of your pay to a corrupt organization that does not share your morals or beliefs. I also know how hard it is to deal with unintelligent co-workers who would die to keep the corruption intact.

Some executives are greedy. Some are just hard working people who deserve a salary. Who can say what is a fair salary for an executive? The next group of greedy people, shareholders/investors.

Investors commit capital in order to gain financial returns. Who is an investor? Anyone who has stock, retirement funds, money markets, mutual funds or other financial vehicles. Why do investors part with their money? They desire as much return as possible. That sounds excessive to me.

A corporation is defined as: A company or group of people authorized to act as a single entity. So big corporations are NOT greedy. Even though our government gives the legal rights of an individual to a corporation, a corporations is an entity and therefore can not have desire.

So let's take a run down.

Who is greedy:

• All Walmart shoppers.
• Majority of Union Members.
• Some executives.
• All investors

Who isn't greedy:

• Corporations
• Someone who doesn't shop at Walmart, isn't a union member, probably isn't an executive and doesn't invest.

Who does that leave?

SOPA Box

Politicians never cease to amaze me. We have the democrats telling us that we need to raise taxes on mean rich people for the good of the few on programs. The Republicans say that rich people should, get this, be treated like every other citizen.  In reality, neither party is effective, people who make significant money generally pay less taxes(percentage wise).  New taxes on a certain group will not cure that, fixing current tax law or a flat tax will.

I Digress.

Now republicans and democrats are banding together to protect the gravy train of funds from lobbyists of the movie, music and drug industries. Putting those three industries together, puts my brain in joke overload.

For those who have been living under a rock for the last few weeks, I'm talking about a pair of anti-piracy bills pending in the house and senate, SOPA and PIPA(HR 3261 and S.968). Our politicians would like you to believe these bills are being passed to protect intellectual properties on the internet. They are not!  We already have a bill for that purpose. It was passed in 1988 and is called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act(DMCA). The DMCA protects the intellectual property rights by allowing the property owner to go after the person or group that infringes on their rights. Sounds pretty fair and straight forward to me, but I'm not a corrupt politician. Well the industries that are lobbying realized how hard it was to enforce this law overseas, so they've decided (through the politicians they've bought) to write these two new bills. In essence the two new bills allow the property holder to not only go after an alleged 'infringer' without due process but force the search engine, ip or website to block the content or face legal recourse.

Let me try and put this in a way that even a politician may be able to understand. Let's say that I create a product(intellectual property). This product starts getting knocked off(pirated) by a company in Badlandistan and freighted by an American shipping company(search engine, website or isp) to a port in N.J.(persons computer). Currently I can sue the company in Badlandistan for damages. Due to political climate, its tough to sue a company in Badlandistan, so I lobby congress for a bill. Now, I don't have to sue the company in Badlandistan, I don't even need to start legal action. I can force the American freight company to inspect every crate(streams of information going over the internet) and force them to not ship the knockoff goods. Wow, that sounds like a slam dunk No knockoffs can get through from that shipping company. There are several problems with this methodology.

1. There is no due process provided in the bills, so the property owner can blame everyone of infringement and force the shipping company to not do business with them.
2. It doesn't stop the flow of illegal property, just forces it to change routes. 
3. It violates everyone's privacy because all crates, not just the illegal ones would need to be opened, searched and verified as good.
4. It unfairly puts the job of enforcement on the shipper and not the property owner.
5. It forces the cost of all those legitimate goods to go up because of the increased responsibilities placed on the shipper.
6. If the shipper fails enforcement, they are breaking the law.

The above analogy is only pointing out an infinitesimal portion of these bills. I could write pages of negatives against their entirety. These two bills are a bad idea. 

Everyone with at least half a brain (sorry most college students and all politicians) agrees that intellectual properties need to be protected. They should not be protected at everyone’s expense.

Best quote on the topic: "When the Chinese told Google that they had to block sites or they couldn't do [business] in their country, they managed to figure out how to block sites."
Chris Dodd – ex-Senator (D) from Connecticut, cause for one of the biggest financial failures in this country and now head of the MPAA(I guess the Republicans aren't the only ones stroking big business in return for a big payday when they can't get reelected.).

Be proud Connecticut, now your ex-senator believes China is a good model for freedom of speech and human rights.

Update 1: I left out that President Obama did the right thing and said he would not support these bills even if they passed.   

Update 2: The bills have been indefinitely put on hold in the house and senate.  The MPAA via Dodd(dud) has threatened to pull all campaign funding, but not lobbying money.

Creative Thursday - He was a Fungi

 

Creative Thursday - Shell Collecting

Lizzy's 'Perspective'

I switched out my photography gear several months ago and gave Emily my old dslr. I was feeling kind of bad that I had not gone out on a photo safari with her. Well, this Saturday was unusually warm, so in the afternoon the girls and I went to the lake and then to the beach on a photo safari. When we got to the lake, I showed Emily how her camera worked and different shooting techniques. I was her age when I got my first Canon SLR, I saved for half a year so that I could afford it. It was magical! I could capture memories on paper, now in pixels she had the same opportunity. Lizzy was jealous when Emily got my old dslr, but Lizzy is still too young to get one of her own, so I bought her a simple digital camera and she usually uses one of the various point and shoots we have around the house.

We got done at the lake quickly and the kids wanted to go to the beach. I showed Emily the impact of shadow and motion on the lens and we took several hundred shots each before the light ran away to the west. When we got home, we downloaded our photographic treasures and viewed them.

Out of all the pictures, one of Lizzy's from the lake, stuck out. It was a shot of a hole in a fallen tree. I laughed to myself as I realized the wonder of a child's perspective. Out of all the pictures taken that day, Lizzy captured the true treasure on the little point and shoot camera, that's quality is mediocre at best. Emily and I had some nice shots, but I was so deep in the technical for Emily, I overlooked that which made me fall in love with photography, the beauty that no one else would see, because they didn't look at something just a little differently.

Sunday came and the girls wanted to go back to the beach for “Shell Collecting”, as I call beach photography. We drove to Sandy Hook State Park. If there is photgraphers' heaven, Sandy Hook is definitely part of it. Two lighthouses, the beach, bay, wildlife preserve, bird migration path, old military fort and the New York Skyline are just some of the sites. We weren't looking for those though, Sunday it was time to take Lizzy's lead and I gave the kids the goal of looking at things from a different perspective.

On the way, I explained to the girls, “Anyone can take pictures of a skyline, birds or lighthouses a photographer makes what he takes his own.”.  When we arrived, we were ill prepared for the weather that we were about to face. The mercury dropped the night before and though it is usually colder on the hook than the other beaches, Sunday was especially brutal. I asked the kids if they wanted to leave, but they were too excited and trekked to the beach between the dunes and sand grass.

After an hour and a half, my body was going numb, a good indication that the kids were probably feeling the same. We started our walk back, this time inland from the water. We had been shooting from different angles but I still felt there would not be enough impact in the pictures. It was time to reach into my youth; time to remember the young man with an slr for the first time; time to remember why I want so much to leave the warmth or the cool of the indoors to struggle through unkempt trails and wet lands and anywhere else with the weight of a camera on my shoulder.

I watched Lizzy and thought how things must look from her height and I knew what I had to do, I laid flat on the beach and looked at a spent nautilus shell. From above it was nothing special, but looking at it from the level of the beach, it was amazing, a beauty that most would never see. The kids watching me thought I was crazy but after coaxing them to try the same thing, by offering the warm sand, they tried it.

When we got home, Emily made hot cocoa and we sat together while we went through the pictures.. We were pretty happy with the results and as always, I was proud of my girls. We had a great day, “Collecting Shells”

Emily's 'Into The Broken Mouth'

Emily's 'Drift Wood Off Into The Distance'

Emily's 'Post Apocalyptic Gotham'

Lizzy's 'The Resident'

Lizzy's 'Three Sheaths to the wind'

Lizzy's 'Dumbo is Falling'

Lizzy's 'It's a Small, Small World'

Reed's 'Finding Peter Pan'

Reed's 'Guardian of the Night Sand'

Reed's 'Entering the Nautilus'

Reed's 'Just Below The Shellf'

Reed's 'Shell Collecting'

Tuesday Tips for living alone – A Wii bit Crazy

I took my first tennis lesson this past week. I've been talking about taking lessons for a while, but never really got the oomph to start. Thankfully, a really good friend bought me a lesson at the local racquet club as a Christmas gift. I like taking sports lessons.

The first thing you learn when taking a sports lesson is that you need more lessons. This isn't usually a product of instructors wanting extra money, more the byproduct of poor body mechanics and the counter-intuitive nature of most sports.

When I was younger I took bowling lessons and I'm pretty good at that. I took a couple of golf lessons and I still suck at that. I'll take more golf lessons in the spring, but tennis can be indoors or out, so it makes a nice winter sport. I hope to stick with tennis lessons and am going to schedule one every two weeks.

Tennis and sports really aren't the point of this post though.  It is about something the instructor told me to do. He said, in order to get my muscle memory in tune, I should practice my swing at home without a racquet making sure the blinds were closed, so that no one would think I was crazy.

I laughed maniacally. People think me crazy? 

I leave my blinds and curtains open all of the time. I bought my co-op because of the amount of light that comes into the rooms at any given point of the day. When I do my dishes, any passerby gets a concert. They get to see me dance, sing out of tune and fling suds all over. At night, all of my neighbors can watch me walk around my den, like a dog preparing to sit while I look for my tv remote, cell phone, keys or fill item in here. On nights when I really can't find an item, they watch me fling pillows in the air and pick them back up, cursing to myself the whole time.

I'm guessing someone watching me would think playing air tennis was the least of my ailments. Even so, I came up with a simple solution. It was an epiphany, of sorts, as I watched my kids play wii this weekend. You can do any stupid thing at all with a wii controller in your hand and people will dismiss it as playing some cool video game.

I now sing to my wii controller while doing dishes, practice my golf swing with my wii controller in hand and even pompously jump in front of my window while practicing wii-mote tennis.

Now if I could just find my wii-mote, I wouldn't have to toss my pillows so often.

WARNING!  Using wii controller at home prevents you from looking crazy, using wii controller in your car, on the beach or in any other public setting has the opposite effect.

Bullying and Suicide.

Where to begin? When I was younger I don't remember bullying or being bullied too often, not that I wasn't, just no more or less than anyone else. I believe I ran into more bullies when I got to corporate America, than I ever did on a playground. Now when I watch the news, I can't believe the anti-bullying crap that spurts out of celebrities' and politicians' face holes.  Being bullied, like so much in life, may not be just but is still an integral social interaction; one that builds resilience, character and ultimately tolerance.

As a child, my mom always taught me to feel sorry for bullies. They were just people with severe inferiority complexes that lashed out at those they felt threatened by, in some way.  Through the years, I have come to realize that some people have inferiority complexes when they are younger but many more have them when they grow older and realize, they really are inferior to other people.

Guess what? In spite of what our government and liberal friends would like us to believe, we may all be created as equals in the eyes of our creator, but that does not mean we all have the same strengths and weaknesses.

Almost anyone could act or read from a teleprompter but not everyone could be a professional soccer player.

I digress.

Bullying is something that happens in human nature and nature in general. The weak are herded out and the strong survive. If someone gets their feelings hurt, they learn to deal with it. If someone is a bully they will be taught, usually in a harsh way, that bullying is wrong.

Yes, if bullying becomes too physical it can be dangerous and should be dealt with. If parents don't teach their children that not everyone is going to like them and that, gasp, their feelings get hurt, these children shouldn't commit suicide, but parenticide.

Creative Thursday - Howe Cavern

This past summer the girls and I went to upstate NY.  We visited Howe and Secret Caverns.  They were alright, but not as neat at Bristol Caverns in Tn. or Lurray Caverns in Va.

I digress.

I was showing a friend my cavern pictures and they asked, "How did you get those pictures in the dark of the caverns?".  I of course corrected them and said, "You mean in the light of the caverns?"
So I started thinking that most people who have to take pictures in less than optimal conditions with less than optimal equipment (I really need to start using a tripod), probably miss out on a lot of their better shots.  Digital cameras have an amazing ability to hold much more information than is visibly conveyed.  What this means in English is that  simple enhancements can be done to make a seemingly bad picture into a good one.
For a quick example, I found two pictures I took in the cavern.  One appears dark (photographer error, but one a typical auto camera would make.) and one with the correct exposure (I'll blame the first one on the kids).
Below are the pictures.  The first two pictures are the same picture, one is dark and the other was Auto color enhanced using the freeware Irfanview.  The third picture is a different picture, taken of the same subject but correctly.

Dark picture that would normally  be tossed.

Same dark picture run through free color enhancer.

Correctly exposed picture.

The colors in the enhanced version, do not match the correctly exposed picture because a lot of the color enhancers over do it a bit.  Gimp, X3, Photoshop and Photo Studio will all do a better job at getting the correct colors, or you can correct them manually.  Some people even like the juiced up color a bit.

The above examples were done with good equipment but I found this trick while using a Canon S1-IS point and shoot at the Grand Canyon several (5+) years ago.  It was night time, under a full moon, and I took a bunch of shots that I thought would amount to nothing.  After throwing them through a color enhancer, the shots changed from a moon lit sky to a unique view of the canyon.  I'll post those at a later date, when I find them. 

Next time you take a picture in a less than optimal light condition or with less than optimal equipment (don't we all have at least one, if not more point and shoots).  Don't toss them, throw them through a color enhancer.  You'd be surprised how much more the camera sees than you do.

I tend to keep most of my images in an unedited state and don't let my camera do any sharpening, but all of the shots in this post have been lightly sharpened.

The above shot is the only one color enhanced, out of the group.

The F-Bomb

Sorry, I love saying that. Not the actual F-word, though I've been known to use that too. It's like a conversation grenade. I almost expect a plane to fly overheard and bomb the 'F' out of something. It never ceases to amaze me, the power we give words. If I actually pull the pin and lob the proverbial F-bomb, people are appalled but if I say, “F-word”, or, “F-bomb”, people know exactly what I mean and yet it is, somehow, less offensive. Yes, there are plenty of examples. Putting the starting letter of an offensive word in front of the word, "word" makes the implied meaning acceptable.

Where is this going? I have no F´ing idea.

Maybe we should start using this methodology for all offensive words. I've never heard words like fat called the Fa-word or ugly as the U-word or awkward as the aw-word. Are these any less offensive or hurtful? The whole situation seems the st-word to me. I think the problem is that most people are NH's (kNuckle Heads), a story unto itself.

How Many Times Did You Vote?

I'm a little confused. Not that that doesn't happen often. I've been reading a lot about the voter ID situation. A group of people want Americans to have a photo ID in order to vote for the fate of their country. The basis behind this is to reduce voter fraud by people voting more than once or under a false name. Another group calls this racist, classist and unfair.

What prompted me to write about this was Eric Holder, the Attorney General of The United States, is challenging a law passed in South Carolina that requires a picture ID in order for someone to vote. In 2008 the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s law requiring citizens to show a government-issued ID before voting. This means that Holder believes he can supersede the Supreme Court. This should be grounds alone to kick his corrupt ass out, not to mention many other instances where this idiot has failed to do his job competently.

I digress.

So I started thinking about this.

Things you need a picture ID for:

Operate a vehicle / Drive a car.

Take an airplane or cruise.

Purchase alcohol.

Purchase tobacco.

Go to a doctor (unless under 18, then the parents have to show a picture ID)

Purchase a house or rent an apartment.

Get a credit card.

Get a government job.

Open a bank account.

Cash a check at a supermarket or other legitimate concern.

Get a library card.

I know there are more, but how many more do I need to prove my point?

Who would be restricted from voting?

People who have:

NEVER traveled in any form other than bus or train.

NEVER had an alcoholic beverage.

NEVER smoked or chewed a tobacco product.

NEVER filled out paperwork in a doctors office.

NEVER lived in an apartment or house.

NEVER had a government job. (or most real jobs.)

NEVER Had a credit card or bank account.

NEVER went to a public library.

So, who are we disenfranchising? Looking at the above list, you would need to live in a cave, never travel, drink, smoke, work, have credit, gone to the doctors or put money in the bank. If I've described a race in America here, I'd like to know which one. So how is requiring an ID for voting racist?

Yes the press is also on a classist kick. Having no real reporting skills or brains of their own (Yeah, I'm talking about you, you useless piece of pond scum (sorry pond scum) Chris Mathews.) the press has started 'Not so urban' legends. These myths look like a mad lib game and when read in the papers or online, look something like this...

There is an __________old woman

                  age over eighty 

in ____________________ that has never driven a car.

    Town too small to be on a map

She is very ____________ and lives in a

                   synonym for poor

 modest __________________.  She can not drive and does

             Type of low income dwelling

not get around very well because she has ___________________.

                                                                   Type of Ailment or disability

Her ______________________ struggle to bring her

       Member of family or organization

_______ food every week.

Type of pet

If the voter ID law passes, she will not be able to afford a valid ID to vote with.

These stories, meant to tug at your heart strings would make sense if:

A. There wasn't so many different but similar versions of the story in the media.

B. Voter ID cards weren't FREE in Indiana and South Carolina!

Yes, you read that right, FREE. In order to make sure that people were not disenfranchised, these states offer a FREE voter ID card for people that fit into all of the categories mentioned above.

If you ever run into a person that is opposed to voting laws requiring picture ID's (or Eric 'the incompetent' Holder), scream, “FRAUDSTER!!!!”, at them.