Keeping perspective
I hate, despise, loathe, anathematize, deprecate, shun, spurn, spit upon and disdain having to defend, in even the tiniest possible way, the abominable clown Terry Jones. He is the pastor of some meaningless fundamentalist Christian church in Gainesville Florida who got his 15 minutes of fame last summer by threatening to burn a copy of the Koran. Eventually he got enough publicity, and phone calls from the White House and Gen. Petraeus,and agreed to not be a jerk.
He couldn’t stand it though, and last week he found it necessary to “put the Koran” on trial. Astonishingly, the book was found guilty, (of something), and sentenced to be burned. All of this was of course streamed live on satellite TV as well as recorded and uploaded to You Tube. No point in being an ignorant, bigoted jerk if you can’t tell the world just how big an ignorant bigot you are.
Now comes the bad part of this saga–fundamentalist, extremist Muslims in Afghanistan, upon hearing of the desecration of their holy book, went nuts. Riots ensued. Many UN workers were killed.
Here’s where I am forced to defend the execrable Terry Jones–people are saying the deaths were his fault. A UN worker posted a blog commenting about the massacre and the comments have a disturbing number of people blaming the pastor for the deaths. Here are a some tweets, the first from an NBC reporter:
There is no moral equivalency here. The fact that he is a jerk is no excuse for riots and murder. It is more than safe to say that if some Islamic fanatic burned a busload of bibles, there would be no riots and murders, even in Gainesville.
Jones, naturally, is smug and unapologetic, convinced that he is doing God’s work. If he is so certain of an omnipotent God, why doesn’t Jones think He could do the job Himself?
The whole affair is sickening. Intolerance, hatred and bigotry on both sides are inexcusable. But bad manners don’t justify beheadings, ever.
530 on the 18th
We’ve been enjoying fine dining here in Orlando, at a locally famous place called 530 on the 18th. The menu is incredibly varied, ranging all over the world from Guam to Italy and many points in between. Last night, we started with Escargots à la Bourguignonne, one of Gail’s favorites–and that works out for me because I just like to dip my bread in the garlic butter.
Specialty of the house.
The chef is known as Julian. He is self-taught, and makes a specialty of trying new dishes with locally sourced ingredients. He is off on his motorcycle early in the morning to check the farmers markets and the seafood houses to find the freshest and newest.
The restaurant is in an unlikely location–an 18th floor condo in a residential building in downtown Orlando. It has no license, of course, but I trust that the food is healthy and safely prepared.
The inestimable Julian
The chef always wears his embroidered coat, but the wait staff is quite casual.
It's apparently staff break time.
The food here is excellent, and the price is very attractive. I recommend 530 on the 18th highly.
Photoshop World wrap-up
The little tiny guy waaaaay up front is Scott Kelby, saying goodbye to everyone
It’s over. Done. Finished. Photoshop World East 2011 is in the history books. And a good thing, too, since I’m about as full of information as I can be, there isn’t room for any more learning.
That’s without getting to the 8:15 class, either. I just couldn’t get up early enough, so I wandered in about 9:30 to enjoy the Expo area. I’ve enjoyed the trade show part just as much as the classes–and learned as much, too. There are always lessons and lectures going on–the Wacom booth had a particularly excellent list of classes, including Scott himself giving a portrait retouching demo Friday morning.
My last two classes were Frank Doorhof, a young Dutch photographer who talked about inspiration and making do with cheap lights and prop, and Scott Kelby, with Lightroom tips. Although totally different in approach, I enjoyed them both.
Scott supports an orphanage in Kenya, Springs of Hope. I have been trying, with no success, to get him to put together a volunteer trip to aid them, and perhaps a 4 or 5 day photo-safari afterwards. So after our class, I cornered him and asked him straight out if I was ever going to get him to go, and he said he wanted to but would have to go with his church, so I guess that plan isn’t working.
The end of show sendoff was pretty interesting–great slideshows from Frank Doorhof, Jack Black and Moose Petersen. Tons of door prize giveaways–not that I ever win anything. Big exhortations to come back in September for Photoshop World Las Vegas–which I won’t be going to.
I enjoyed this immensely, but don’t think I need to repeat for at least a year and more likely two. By then, there will be new versions of both Photoshop and Lightroom out and it will be time to take more classes. Now I just need to take more photos and spend more time making them look great.
Trapped like a wet rat
Awakened early by thunder and lightning, I got my act together and headed towards the convention center. It wasn’t raining much as I left, but it got worse as I got closer to the site.
Now that I’m here, I seem to be right under the storm. The old guy (and this is the place for 75 year old men to get a job) selling parking just waved me through, I guess it was too wet for him to come out of his little cage. It’s pouring so hard I won’t get out of the car until it eases.
This rain is fun to watch and listen to, especially from inside a warm and dry car. Hope I get to the convention today.
Photoshop World
Lighting suppliers provide lights and models, and photo geeks practice their form
So I’m here in Orlando to attend Photoshop World, a semi-annual convention of photographers, graphic designers, web designers and any and all who use Adobe Photoshop.
It’s impressive–over 3000 of us here to learn to improve our skills with an inordinately complex piece of inbound marketing software. People come from all over the world for this. There are classes from 8 am to 7 pm, given by some of the biggest names in the industry. There is a trade show where you can see all the newest and best, and talk to the people who create it–I had an offbeat question today that the got answered from one of the guys at Adobe who created the software in the first place.
It’s held in the Orange County Convention Center, the 2nd largest convention facility in the world (in a constant arms race with McCormick Hall in Chicago to be the biggest. Right now Chicago is winning.) We are occupying one small part of the the place, and by no means using it to capacity.
The opening event was quite an extravaganza. It was a parody of some reality show I wouldn’t watch, where the participants (all the top instructors from the sponsoring organization, NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals)) had to design a dress using their favorite Photoshop tool as a theme. There were models, incredible dressed (designed by students from a local design school), hysterical short films, loud music, balloons, bad jokes, and a keynote speech. Scott Kelby (head honcho of all of this) did a star turn. Important people from Adobe came out to speak and show new things. Awards were awarded. Polls were taken in real time by sending text messages to a special number. It was astounding and impressive and professional.
I took a class in Lightroom (an image handling program) today from Matt Kloskowski, who literally has written the book on the subject. Yes, I have the book. He gives a great class, and I learned another tiny per cent of the capabilities of the program.
Then a class in facial retouching from RC Concepcion, who is interesting and amusing but tends to wander all over the subject, and a half dozen other subjects, so you don’t really get as much information as you would like. I saw him later teaching in on of the trade-show booths, and it is clearly his style to be all over the map in what he talks about, the man just can’t stay on point.
Then Joe McNally was talking, and you just had to listen. He showed some of his photos and talked about making them, and what it means to be a photographer. Joe is a salt of the earth Irishman from Boston, and it is impossible not to like him. I’d go listen to him if he was billed as reading the phonebook–he could make that interesting, too.
This show isn’t cheap—I wangled a $150 discount, and it’s still $450 for the three days. But since we can stay with Susan and Karl and fly on frequent flyer miles, it works out for us. I love to take photos, and then have to be able t get the most out of the them in the computer. When I was in high school I did all this in a darkroom, but they have pretty much gone the way of the crank starter on cars. Why spend a fortune of film and chemicals when electrons are free?
The first class is at 8:15 tomorrow, but I’m not likely to make it. I’ll be there for the 9:30 class, and then straight through until 7 at night. Then back to the condo where we will undoubtedly have some kind of party–every night is a party at Susan’s house. Then do it again on Friday, then collapse here until it is time to fly home on Sunday.
Dallas
We’re in Dallas for an hour. Again.
Here two weeks ago on our way home from the nationals in Louisville. this time we’re on our way to Orlando. I’m going to photoshop world for 3 days of serious photo geeking. Gail will have to content herself with carousing with evil twin Susan.
The photo is because Gail thinks it must be illegal to walk through DFW without talking on your phone. She may well be right, but traffic seems to be down considerably as there are fewer people roaming the halls like lost souls than usual.
Our plane was full–I can hardly remember an empty seat in ages. how can the airlines lose money when all the seats are full?
I’ll be in Dallas again on Sunday on the way home, then twice more for the trip to Gatlinburg next month. Someday, I may even get to see the city.
Ruined
At Berkeley Rep, Oberon K.A. Adjepong (left) and Tonye Patano star in Ruined, a powerful new play by Lynn Nottage that won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Photo courtesy of kevinberne.com
We’re fighting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. The loss of life is terrible. And in comparison to what has happened in the Congo, it is nothing. The Congo conflict has caused the greatest loss of life of any war since WWII, and almost nobody in the US seems to know of it.
Beyond the loss of life, there has been a consistent and ongoing assault on women–over 200,000 known rapes, which is used as a weapon of terror, of control, of punishment, and is now seen as almost a right of the uneducated, poorly trained “troops”.
Berkeley Rep’s new play Ruined, written by Lynn Nottage and directed by Liesl Tommy, takes on the subject of women, rape and the war. It tells the story of a small bar in the middle of nowhere Congo, patronized by miners and troops of both sides–preferably not at the same time. Mama Nadi (Tonye Patano) runs the place with an iron hand and a heart of gold. She takes in two new girls to work in her establishment, refugees who have been badly mistreated by troops of one side or the other, it’s hard to tell. Sophie can hardly walk, she has been “ruined”, a phrase which is never quite defined–mistreated, maimed, gang-raped, general bad things have happened to her. Fortunately, she sings like an angel so she can entertain the customers after all.
The set is wonderful. The costumes are wonderful. The actors are wonderful, except that they are speaking in authentic west African accents, and are often impossible to understand. We saw the play with Manfred and Margit Michlmayr, and none of us could follow the dialog easily. If I’m more than a little uncertain of what was happening at all times, it’s because I couldn’t hear it.
The rebels visit the bar. The militia visit the bar. Salima’s husband, from whom she was abducted, comes looking for her but she is unwilling to see him. Mama pays to have Sophie taken to the big city where she can get an operation to fix her problems, but she misses her ride in the hurlyburly of the war–and some dramatic emotion-mongering by the playwright.
More things happen (can’t give it all away), and the play builds to what you think is the conclusion, then goes on for another 15 minutes in what felt to us like a tacked-on happy ending with gaping logical holes.
We liked the play, indeed almost everyone does, that’s why it won a Pulitzer prize. We just would have liked it better if we could have heard it.
Just a harmonica
Okay, so lots of guys can play Home on the Range on the mouth organ. This guy plays Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. I can’t figure out how to embed the video, you’ll have to click on it. Go ahead, it’s worth your time.
What in Creation?
If you took any high school science classes, you were introduced to the concept of the scientific method. It goes like this:
Beginning without preconceptions, you observe nature, ask questions, form hypotheses, test them, and attempt to construct a logical system that explains the world around us. It’s a good system, which has served scientists for hundreds of years as they have striven to unlock the secrets of our world.
There is another method, one used by certain fundamentalist Christians, but it can’t really be considered scientific. Read a book written 2-4000 years ago by a variety of people, none of whom had any scientific training. Apply an arcane and illogical interpretation to this book, then attempt to squeeze all modern human knowledge into that framework. It isn’t much of a system, but it’s what they use at the Creation Museum.
Situated in Petersburg, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati, the Creation Museum is a $27 million dollar monument to the triumph of faith over reason and science. It is run by a ministry known as Answers in Genesis, a fundamentalist group who contend that the Bible “proves” that the world is only 6000 years old, and that evolution is a myth.
Last week, after 6 desultory days of mediocre bridge, Toby (Gail’s 21 year old son) and I drove from Louisville to Petersburg to see for myself just how they would manage to shoehorn all of geologic history into 6 millenia. The answer is: professionally, if not convincingly.
The Creation Museum is very well done–a gorgeous modern building filled with excellent exhibits and displays. If you want to believe that man coexisted with the dinosaurs and Methuselah lived to be 900 years old, this is the place for you. Bring money, it isn’t cheap. Adult admission was $24.95, I got the seniors rate of $19.95. Planetarium show is extra, and don’t forget to stop in the gift store on your way out.
Lots of dinosaurs here.
Are scientists really puzzled? I don't think I believe that assertion.
More unfounded assertions--this seems to be the strong point of creation logic.
In attempting to prove the validity of their creationist theories, the sponsors of the museum have twisted and tortured logic until it cries. They use their hypothesis, that the earth is only 6000 years old, as proof that the earth is only 6000 years old. It hurts less if you say it faster.
A perfect example of "begging the question"--using the assumption as proof of the conclusion.
I miss her already
It’s a sad day: Margaret Kozak retired. After more than 30 years of directing the Wednesday noon game, she’s going to relax and stop dealing with petulant and obstinate bridge players. Margaret has the best people skills of anyone I ever met, and has made her game the most pleasant in the entire Bay Area.
Of course there was cake, and of course Margaret was in charge of cutting it.
Stopping to talk to everyone slows the process, but nobody cared.
Hugger-in-Chief Kozak
Totally Unauthorized 