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I don’t know anything about the “deleteme” group in Flickr but apparently it’s some kind of criticism pool, where people can submit pictures for review. 

Someone submitted this shot by Cartier-Bresson and it was voted down. Not sharp, not clear what the subject is, weak tones, you name it. 

Read the thread, if you’re up for it. I can’t see a lot of value in a group/process like that. For people to claim that HCB would take a different picture today, given the technology we have now, misses the point. As noted in the comments, people made the same arguments at the time, as small-format cameras became more widely used, resulting in more pictures, due to their ease of use, and new ways to express ideas. 

This image captures time in several different ways: where is the cyclist going, where is he coming from? What time of day is it? A tack-sharp representational shot might not have said as much. 

They didn’t name his technique, his style, the “Decisive Moment” for nothing. 

Study: Americans have fewer closer friends:

A new study reveals that Americans are sharply more isolated than they were 50 years ago. “I don’t see this as the end of the world but part of a larger puzzle. My guess is people only have so much energy, and right now they are switching around a number of networks…. We are getting a division of labor in relationships. Some people give emotional aid, some people give financial aid.” Barry Wellman, University of Toronto sociologist. (thanks, lizard!)

This tidbit seems to be getting a lot of exposure today, but I haven’t seen a link between this phenomenon and the pervasive use of cheap energy. What else enables us to:

• travel alone in cars rather than walk, bicycle, or ride public transport
• sit indoors more than outdoors

Think about it. If you sit outdoors of an evening, as people used to do, you know more people around you, just from the sounds of their conversations, if not from seeing them walk by. If you use some other method of getting to work than a single-occupant vehicle, you would see your fellow commuters as something other than competitors for space on the road.

There was a book sometime back called Bowling Alone that dealt with the unraveling of the social fabric, the demise of bowling leagues, service clubs, and other staples of American society in the first half of the 20th Century.

I had a letter published in the Times and in my haste (and to be frank, heightened irritation) I misread a chart about the one of the local schools. I skipped to the last column — where the district totals are displayed — and used those numbers.

How do I know this? The education theorist who wrote the OpEd I was replying to called me at home to complain about how I called him a liar. It would never occur to me to call someone at home in response to something I saw in the paper, unless I knew them: it just sounds creepy.

His claim “When Manhas removed Sacajawea Elementary School from the closure list, with its 61-percent white student population, he intensified the racist character of his proposal” makes a link between the ethnicity of the students and the disposition of the school (see more below). I think that’s a serious accusation to make and my anger at seeing that made me hasty.

I have sent a letter to the Times, taking responsibility for the error: we’ll see what they do.

Continue reading “mea culpa”

PZ Myers dissects the state of reality-based — ie, empirical, rational — education. Theocracies don’t have a strong track record as long-lasting, vibrant nation-states and if we’re headed that way, we should know what to expect.

Pharyngula: My YearlyKos talk:

A recent review in PLoS Biology summarized the state of the nation on evolution. One third of Americans reject it outright, saying it is definitely false. In another survey, 43% agreed with the statement that god created humans as they are, and we did not evolve from other forms of life. In yet another survey comparing attitudes towards evolution in America, Japan, and Europe, the US ranked 33rd out of 34—we beat Turkey. Go, USA.

Imagine being an electrical engineer and hearing that a third of the country doesn’t believe all that stuff about electricity and radio waves, but thinks there actually are little people moving about inside their televisions. That’s how biologists feel about the state of knowledge about biology here; we’ve got a lot of people with medieval attitudes about the subject. This is the pool from which we have to draw our students, and that worries us.

It gets worse.

Evolution is a lightning rod issue, attracting more attention than it should: the underlying issue is whether the scientific method, the idea of formulating and testing hypotheses, the correct approach to understanding and solving problems. I would like to see the scientific method put forward with some examples that even the people who believe in Pat Robertson prophecies can understand. Evolution is too big a leap for some.

Continue reading “the Enlightenment: is it still relevant?”

The more I look at this, the more I like it, though it is not what I intended to do at all.

The annual question:

Yesterday being the 11th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, I suppose I should just be grateful that, this year at least, we’re not cursed with an Ann Coulter profile in Time.

Still, every year since 2002, this sad anniversary reminds me of a question I still haven’t heard answered:

Why wasn’t April 19, 1995 the “day that changed everything”?

Where were you on that April morning?
Continue reading “a good question”

I have been giving away some stuff this week: the moderators of our local group put out a call to see more OFFERED listings. I obliged.

So I unloaded:

• a two-seat wagon my kids have outgrown
• a telescope
• an old SCSI scanner
• a sandbox

All spoken for or gone. Got a couple more things listed that are not meeting with any love, and a couple more to list when I get the particulars.

Continue reading “Spring Cleaning, FreeCycle style”

Mac OS X turns Five:

Isn’t that about time to start kindergarten?

John Siracusa has a nice look at five years of OS X on Ars Technica today.

Coming on the heels of MSFT’s announcement of a delayed VISTA launch, it makes for some interesting comparisons. As Siracusa says, “Apple’s ability to plan and execute its OS strategy is not open for debate.”

In the 5 years since the Public Beta, we have seen 4 major releases, with a 5th due in June, a raft of updates and patches, parallel development in applications (the iLife and iWorks suites, the pro products — Aperture, Final Cut), and a some hardware news as well.
No sign of them slowing down, either.

Following up on a podcast I listened to the other week, I am reading this book:

“Parable of the Sower” (Octavia E. Butler)

I’m pretty disappointed in the editing of the book.

The editors let stuff slip like peddling instead of pedalling for the way you propel a bike. They have left out numerous open quotes following attributions, so I’ve had to go back and re-read passages to see if the bit I just read was a descriptive passage or a continuation of the speech. Sloppy stuff, really. Some random words are capitalized, and not in a way that makes sense within the story.

It’s all pretty distracting. The book itself is OK: passes the 50 page test (you give a book 50 pages to hook you before you give up on it). I think I have Kindred on order as well, and those are her best-known books, I think.

Continue reading “she deserves better”

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: March 19, 2006 – March 25, 2006 Archives:

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” from Lincoln’s second annual address to Congress, December 1862.

Reminds me of this thought by Einstein:

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

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