03.27.04
Posted in Modern Life at 12:52 am by Thomas
It’s now 18 years that a highly radiaoctive cloud gave practically everybody in Europe a rapid, un-anticipated lesson in the dangers of nuclear power. Agriculture all over Europe was impacted, and a huge area around the power plant in Chernobyl had to evacuated. Several hundred thousand Russians died in the following years due to the effects of the radiation and some areas will be too dangerous to live in for the next thousand years.
But now some people are visiting Chernobyl, more or less legally. Here is a photo report from a young Russian woman who has visited Chernobyl several times over the last few years on her motorbike.
Stunning, scary and thought-provoking.
We will have to live with nuclear power for the forseeable future and not all about it is bad considering the global-warming-inducing alternatives, but we should always remember Chernobyl as an example of what happens if we let our guard down.
Permalink
03.20.04
Posted in China at 2:12 am by Thomas
I’ve noticed that many people come to my site in search of information about Chinese History. I’ve had a small table of Chinese History as supplemental data in the China Room section of this site since 1996, and this long-term exposure to search engines is definitely driving up my site traffic.
Since there seems to be so much interest in a quick overview of Chinese History, I guess there is a market for printed versions, too – and so here I present you a short overview of the History of China in the largest format possible – as a wall poster.
My hope is that this could become a handy tool for history teachers and students of Chinese History and I’m also planning smaller versions as small but beautiful cheat sheets. More to come soon!
Permalink
Posted in Rants at 12:17 am by Thomas
Well, I guess the current US government is now well on its way to proof that you can’t lie to all the people all the time…
Here’s a quote from a 60 Minutes interview with Richard Clarke, a former White House terrorism advisor.
“Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq….We all said, ‘but no, no. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan,” recounts Clarke, “and Rumsfeld said, ‘There aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.’ I said, ‘Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with [the September 11 attacks].’”
That sounds like Exhibit A for a future war crimes tribunal.
Permalink
03.13.04
Posted in Photography at 2:35 am by Thomas
This is the newest addition to my camera collection – a golden Kodak Brownie Bull’s-Eye camera from the late 1950s. As you can see, the camera is in great condition.
The camera originally worked with the obsolete 620 film format, but it is possible to load modern 120 film without too many problems. Here are two examples taken with Agfa black and white film and with Agfa color film. The Bull’s-Eye negatives are 6 by 9 cm large – slightly too big to scan in my Epson scanner which has maybe a 5.5 cm wide area where negatives can be scanned!
Here are two examples of pictures I’ve taken with this camera – click on the images for a larger version.
Japantown, San Francisco
|
|
Chinatown, San Francisco
|
Permalink
03.02.04
Posted in Modern Life at 12:26 am by Thomas
Well… pure genius.
I’ll never look at a subway map in the same way…
Permalink
03.01.04
Posted in Photography at 11:12 pm by Thomas
While looking for other sources for 3D-reconstructions of the Mars Rover images, I stumbled over the Extreme Photo Constructions site by David Neufer.
David hosts some of the best 3D anaglyphs of the Mars Rover pictures that I have seen up to now, but he has also been doing amazing things by combining still images from old movies to create new pseudo-3D anaglyphs – he is creating 3D pictures from 2D movies!
He calls this technique Dual Moment Stereo, and if you are at all interested in 3D anaglyphs, then take a look at his Pearl Harbor images… there is a huge amount of old films that can be harvested for 3D imagery in this way.
I’m tempted to go to the Prelinger Archives right now and see if I can do this myself!
Permalink
