walk away by *~~ stef ~~ [bunty]
Ξ March 23rd, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Arts, Photography |
60. walk away - 23rd March
60. walk away - 23rd March
1937 myspace autoportrait by *~~ stef ~~ [bunty]
Ξ March 23rd, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Arts, Photography |
59. 1937 mySpace autoportrait - 21st March
wind blows blossoms : ii by *~~ stef ~~ [bunty]
Ξ March 23rd, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Arts, Photography |
58. wind blows blossoms : ii - 20th March
wind blows blossoms : i by *~~ stef ~~ [bunty]
Ξ March 23rd, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Arts, Photography |
58. wind blows blossoms : i - 20th March
Out my window by *~~ stef ~~ [bunty]
Ξ March 23rd, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Arts, Photography |
57. Out my Window (Being Josef Sudek) - 19th March - My first attempt at large format photography. Not sure how on earth it came out.
For a start it was taken with a camera that had had me dissemble and re-glue the bellows as they were completely worn and unstuck.
Then there was the gluing back together of the plate holders, and creation of a rather inaccurate cardboard envelope to hold the film where the plate would be, so it didn't just fall out when the dark slide was opened.
Not to mention the lens cap (used to make the exposure) made of a toilet roll tube, a vitamin container lid, and loads of electrical tape. I did try and figure out what exposure would be proper, but gave up on the maths and just gave it 4 seconds (and one extra for luck) at f/44 with it balanced on top of my PC monitor.
Developed, of course, by stuffing it into a paterson universal tank with the top of the spiral taken off so it would fit. I wasn't sure whether it was going to be all black, or all white... an actual photograph, I wasn't really expecting, mainly I just wanted a sheet of film to figure out how to mount it in the plate holder more accurately
foichemil
Ξ March 22nd, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Misc |
Stumbleupon Review
foichemil
- The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning.
-- Jean Baudrillard
AlterNet: EnviroHealth: Why Having More No Longer Makes Us Happy
Ξ March 22nd, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Politics and Society |
- Excerpt: "Because traditional economists think of human beings primarily as individuals and not as members of a community, they miss out on a major part of the satisfaction index. Economists lay it out almost as a mathematical equation: Overall, "evidence shows that companionship ... contributes more to well-being than does income," writes Robert E. Lane, a Yale political science professor who is the author ofThe Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies.
But there is a notable difference between poor and wealthy countries: When people have lots of companionship but not much money, income "makes more of a contribution to subjective well-being." By contrast, "where money is relatively plentiful and companionship relatively scarce, companionship will add more to subjective well-being."
If you are a poor person in China, you have plenty of friends and family around all the time -- perhaps there are four other people living in your room. Adding a sixth doesn't make you happier. But adding enough money so that all five of you can eat some meat from time to time pleases you greatly.
By contrast, if you live in a suburban American home, buying another coffeemaker adds very little to your quantity of happiness -- trying to figure out where to store it, or wondering if you picked the perfect model, may in fact decrease your total pleasure. But a new friend, a new connection, is a big deal. We have a surplus of individualism and a deficit of companionship, and so the second becomes more valuable.
Indeed, we seem to be genetically wired for community. As biologist Edward O. Wilson found, most primates live in groups and get sad when they're separated -- "an isolated individual will repeatedly pull a lever with no reward other than the glimpse of another monkey." Why do people so often look back on their college days as the best years of their lives? Because their classes were so fascinating? Or because in college, we live more closely and intensely with a community than most of us ever do before or after?
Every measure of psychological health points to the same conclusion: People who "are married, who have good friends, and who are close to their families are happier than those who do not," says Swarthmore psychologist Barry Schwartz. "People who participate in religious communities are happier than those who are not." Which is striking, Schwartz adds, because social ties "actually decrease freedom of choice" -- being a good friend involves sacrifice.
Do we just think we're happier in communities? Is it merely some sentimental good-night-John-Boy affectation? No -- our bodies react in measurable ways. According to research cited by Harvard professor Robert Putnam in his classic book Bowling Alone, if you do not belong to any group at present, joining a club or a society of some kind cuts in half the risk that you will die in the next year.
Check this out: When researchers at Carnegie Mellon (somewhat disgustingly) dropped samples of cold virus directly into subjects' nostrils, those with rich social networks were four times less likely to get sick. An economy that produces only individualism undermines us in the most basic ways.
Here's another statistic worth keeping in mind: Consumers have 10 times as many conversations at farmers' markets as they do at supermarkets -- an order of magnitude difference. By itself, that's hardly life-changing, but it points at something that could be: living in an economy where you are participant as well as consumer, where you have a sense of who's in your universe and how it fits together.
The Shia militias in Iraq
Ξ March 22nd, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Misc |
Stumbleupon Review
The Shia militias in Iraq might stay on side. The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq could remain a bulwark of democracy against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Brits might withdraw from the south in good order, or hunker down, leaving Badrists and Sadrists to fight it out with each other. And if there does happen to be some kind of blowback in Iraq, well, the 'surge' of 21 500 more troops might be enough to hold the line.
I'm not saying that doesn't add up to a lot of things that could go wrong, any one of which could flip the world on its back, but hey. It could work. The Islamic Republic could fall, or fold, and the US bestride the Middle East like a colossus.
That victory would be the moment we'd some day look back on, and say, 'And that was when our troubles began.' Fortunately for America and its allies, such a victory is unlikely. What is far more likely is an ever-widening catastrophe across the Middle East if not beyond. But if a US victory does come about, the rest of the world would find itself facing a lone superpower that had successfully carried out an attack, perhaps even a nuclear attack, on a country that had no nuclear weapons and that had not attacked or threatened it. From then on we would all be living in interesting times; and on borrowed time.
The time to do what we can to stop this is now.
Worry that a
Ξ March 22nd, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Misc |
Stumbleupon Review
Worry that a US and/or Israeli attack is in the works has spread beyond the usual suspects of left and right, and has seeped into the mainstream. Some even see it as imminent. By next month there will be two carrier groups in the Gulf. The Israeli air force is practicing bombing runs to Gibraltar and back. Bush blames Iran for instability in Iraq. The pieces are moving into place. You'll find lots of links to details of troubling recent developments here (As you can see from Jorge Hirsch's sidebar, he's cried wolf about an imminent attack before, but it's a useful collection of links.)
Very likely there will be no US or Israeli attack on Iran. No, what's far more probable is what will be presented as an Iranian attack on the US. As conservative pundit William S. Lind puts it:
It now looks as if the Bush administration may have realized that an out-of-the-blue, Pearl Harbor-style air and missile attack on Iran's nuclear facilities is politically infeasible. Instead, the White House will order a series of small "border incidents," pinpricks similar to last week's raid on an Iranian mission in Kurdistan, intended to provoke Iranian retaliation. That retaliation will then be presented as an Iranian attack on [US] forces, with the air raids on Iranian nuclear targets called "retaliation."
A Humvee blasted by an IED with Revolutionary Guard fingerprints on the circuitry, some luckless patrol-boat drawing fire, whatever. No matter how minor the skirmish, that's how it could be spun. And then, purely in self-defence, the stealth bombers and cruise missiles and who knows what else would be on their way to turn Iran's defences and nuclear facilities into 10 000 points of light.
It would be a mistake to predict immediate and inevitable disaster ensuing. The mullahs might sit and take it, even tactical nukes, refraining from retaliation for fear of worse. (This assumes, interestingly, that the 'mad mullahs' are in fact rational and deterrable, as well as cowardly.) The Strait of Hormuz might stay unblocked, thanks to Iranian caution or US boldness
Iran's supposedly unstoppable sea-skimming cruise missiles might be all destroyed in the first strike, or held in reserve, or turn out not to be unstoppable after all. Russian or Chinese technicians might not be killed, or if they are, Putin might be content to let communists and nationalists rage in Red Square until it all blows over; modulo Beijing. After a brief spike in the oil price the markets might settle their nerves and resume their upward trend. The Chinese banks might decide not to dump dollars.