06.30.05
Posted in Modern Life at 1:31 am by Thomas
This must be one of the best applications ever to be released for free… Google Earth
It’s a free PC download and it literally brings the world to your desktop. The basic concept is very similiar to Nasa’s World Wind, but in addition to a smooth 3D-rendered Earth, you also get the muscle of Google’s search engine.
It overlays the satellite maps of this world’s cities with icons for restaurants, cafes and shops and it provides driving directions courtesy of Google Maps.
Now… a Mac version would be nice. But otherwise it’s perfect.
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06.25.05
Posted in PhotoBlog: Found Film at 1:31 am by Thomas
A few days ago I found a Brownie Target Six-20 from the late 1940s with two rolls of exposed film. One was a color roll and I will have to see how to get that one developed, but I already have the developed black and white roll back from the shop… here are the results.
I assume that these pictures were taken in the early 1950s and judging from the shadows it looks like this parade happened somewhere in the south in summertime – maybe even close to the equator.
The roll is too far gone to decipher the banner the men are carrying… too bad.
Should anybody out there have some educated guesses on where or when this parade could have happened, please let me know….
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06.23.05
Posted in Rants at 2:17 am by Thomas
So much for staying away from politics…
One of Baghdad’s water mains has been blown up by the insurgents and more than two million of the residents have been without drinking water for the last two days… one would think that this is pretty big news, considering that it is now summer in Iraq, but I can not remember reading about this in major US papers like the San Francisco Chronicle.
What the fuck is going on? Are there any journalists with half a brain left in this country?
After two years in Iraq, the US can not even guarantee drinking water for the residents of the capital, and at least two million people have now the sudden choice between drinking polluted water or dehydrating in the desert heat. The main news all day today on the Chronicle’s web site: A 17-ton popsicle in New York melted prematurely in the summer heat.
What. The. Fuck.
The American public is willfully left in the dark about what a gigantic clusterfuck Iraq has become. In the name of every US citizen, a whole country has been ravaged and raped in front of the eyes of the world, and the only people who have nothing to say about it are these very same US citizens.
The All Spin Zone has a very moving piece about what the “Generational Commitment” will really mean for the average American.
I happen to have some personal experience with dealing with generational shame. I was born in Dachau, more than 20 years after the end of the war, and I can tell you that it is no fun to be identified with something that a previous generation had fucked up.
From here on out, every American will have to deal with the same thing, and trust me, I already feel sorry for the children.
Guantanamo Bay. Fallujah. Abu Ghraib.
These are the bloody scars in the once beautiful face of Lady Liberty.
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Posted in Photography at 12:07 am by Thomas
Well – I’ve done it again… I was trying to limit my political rants a bit, but it is very hard to resist… I have to relax a bit more.
…and now for something completely different!
Two weeks ago we spent a beautiful afternoon in the Arboretorium in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. It was so peaceful and relaxing. We had brought a number of cameras and immersed ourselves in photography, surrounded by nothing but nature… well, and probably something like 20,000 other people in the park!
Here are two pictures I took with my still-new Kodak Medalist (at least new to me!) in the Japanese section of the Arboretorium:
(click for a large version)
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06.21.05
Posted in Rants at 7:45 pm by Thomas
OK… here’s a little test for you. Read this paragraph and then tell me what country this seems to describe:
On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food, or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold…On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.
This is an FBI report from July 2004, describing one FBI agent’s experience in Guantanamo Bay.
Now people are getting attacked for pointing out that maybe, just maybe, this sounds a tiny little bit like a Soviet or Nazi prison camp, and the Republicans go absolutely ballistic.
What’s wrong with these people? Do they really want to argue that this is the American Way? That this is completely OK and that a country should be allowed to behave like that?
And since when is “not as bad as the Nazis” an acceptable description of the United States?
The Republicans in the US Congress seem to have absolutely no problem with the above behaviour. They clearly have lost all decency and humanity.
Shame on them.
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