I’m still working through the photographs I took on holiday in German a few weeks ago. I’ve put the latest few online on Flickr. Some of the shots are pretty grainy (like this one) as they were taken in absolutely appalling light — in the case of this shot it was very grey and overcast and getting on towards dusk. Lots more to come which I intend to put up about 8-10 at a time over the next few weeks — and I’m keeping the best of the steam train shots ’til last (probably). I still have some 30% of the shots to look at in detail.
Thinking
Thinking, originally uploaded by kcm76.
Apologies for the long silence here; I’ve had a very hectic 3 weeks: a week’s holiday in Germany (pictures here with many more to come; I’m still working my way through the 1000 shots I took!), a business trip to the enticements of Manchester, a really filthy headcold and mountains of work. But with luck normal service will be resumed RSN.
I actually took a day off work today, and apart from a doctor’s appointment, I’ve done almost nothing. The most creative enterprise of the day is this self-portrait. It really is about all I’ve got to show for the day!
I have Monday off as well, so if the weather is good I might take myself off on a photographic trip somewhere. If I can get myself out of the sloth of lying in bed that is. 🙂
QED
I came across this book today.
Unintended Consequences
The Law of Unintended Consequences is alive and well! Diary of a Nudist has blogged about the reaction to recent attempts to clamp down on perceived indecent images. In two cases, ABC being fined for showing female buttocks before the watershed (see here and here) and the charging of a store for using almost revealing photographs (see here), the result has been that the images in question are now far more widely spread that they otherwise would have been. Moreover some parts of the US are also cocking a snook at their “stripper” laws. Such activity is always one of the possible outcomes of censorship. Great that the officious have had their bluff called. Let’s keep it up chaps and expose this stupidity for what it is!
Open Government
There’s an excellent short post over at Evolving Thoughts which succinctly addresses the need for open government. In fact it is so good I’m going to quote the key two paragraphs here:
Whenever a government […] wants to be free from oversight, the motivation, whether they are aware of it or not, is empire building and control. No government activity, not even those pertaining to that hold-all of rights denial, national security, should automatically be free from supervision. Democracy only works when government is done in the open. Otherwise it simply becomes a matter of who can rort the system most effectively, as we see with the Bush administration today.
No special powers are required to prevent terrorism, just good old fashioned police work. No special acts of parliament are needed to prosecute them, for insurgency and murder are already crimes. And no special politicians are needed to “lead us out of this mess”, because either every political authority can do this, or we have no hope. And a democratic government, legislature or judiciary knows this already, and will act to protect our rights in a time of stress.
Precisely what I’ve been saying for years.
Going to the Dogs
Going to the dogs is what a lot of children in Shropshire might be doing today. Why? Because Shropshire County Council have apparently closed a lot of schools today because it might snow later in the day. For heaven’s sake what are these people on? We now have disruption because it might snow – not even because it’s the wrong type of snow.
In my school days (1956-1969) school was never closed, and, unlike now, we were guaranteed snowfall every winter. Even during the very bad winter of 1962-63 my school didn’t close. For almost the whole of that winter term we had up to 2″ (5 cm) of ice on our playground, but school never closed; we came very close to being sent home (within 2-3 hours) as we were running out of heating oil but were saved by the arrival of a tanker at the 11th hour. Boo! Hiss!
How have we got to the situation where things are shut down “because it might snow”?
Mammal Senses
There was an interesting article in last week’s New Scientist about the strange anatomy of the brain. It contained this quote:
No matter how bizarre a vertebrate is, it receives only three types of incoming sensory data: chemical (smell and taste), electromagnetic (light, and electric and magnetic fields) and movement (touch and sound).
I’d never quite looked at it this way before, but of course it is right. The only bit I don’t understand is what organ we use to detect electric and magnetic fields. Maybe we don’t. Maybe this is the preserve only of pigeons, which have been shown to have lodestone like sensors in their brains. Interesting though.
US TV Network Fined $1.4m for Nudity
BBC News reports that US television network ABC may have to pay a fine of $1.4m for the 2003 screening of an episode of NYPD Blue which depicted female nudity before the watershed. What was so offensive? Multiple close-up views of a woman’s buttocks.
Pleeaase! How pathetic can this get? Get a life!
Inappropriate Christian Kitsch
PZ Myers over at Pharyngula has highlighted a wonderfully hilarious piece of totally inappropriate Christian iconography and has solicited appropriate captions! It is so wonderful I nearly choked on my bedtime cocoa!
What on earth can the designers have been thinking of? No, maybe don’t answer that. 🙂
Camel Cavalry
This wonderful picture appeared in today’s Times, in their “Image of the Day” series.
It is captioned “Members of India’s Border Security Force rehearse … for the Republic Day parade in Delhi on Saturday”. This is the sort of pomp and fancy dress which only the British, and the Raj, do so brilliantly.