danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

I don’t quite understand the way Flickr’s “Explore” works.  It is supposed to be a daily review of the 500 “most interesting” photos on the site.  But what they consider “interesting” is generally self-portraits of pretty girls, and excessively Photoshopped HDR images.  Plus, it seems like your pictures must have received lots of comments and been favorited frequently, which makes it that much more likely that pretty girls make Explore.

Being neither a pretty girl, nor a contact of very many other Flickr users, I get few comments for my pictures, and they are seldom favorited.  Thus, it was surprising to see that another photo of mine, of a toucan skull on display at the Miami Metro Zoo made Explore in early August.  I just don’t get it.

Filed under: Photography, Technology on September 21st, 2007 | No Comments »

I enjoy taking pictures, and I have photographed weddings aplenty. But there is one apparent trend I had not ever heard of: proposal photographs. Fellows about to become engaged hire photographers to hide somewhere in a restaurant, a park, or where ever the ring is to be given (possibly lighthouses or ancient Spanish forts) to snap a picture the instant the girl accepts the proposal.

My initial surprise is that guys even thought of this. I am the most sentimental man in the world, and I had a camera handy when I proposed to my beloved, but it would not have occurred to me to hire a paparazzo to record the event. My second thought, rooted in devilish Schadenfreude, is that I hope someone is collecting the candid photos of proposals gone wrong. A Flickr group consisting of disgusted or bewildered girls rejecting men on bended knee might be funny.

Filed under: Musings, Photography on September 20th, 2007 | No Comments »

One of my heroes, Paul Krugman, has a new blog entitled “The Conscience of a Liberal”, which is also the title of his upcoming book.  His new blog is appreciated, since, as he says, the limited space he is afforded in his New York Times column precludes the inclusion of charts and/or graphs.

The first graph I see in “The Conscience of a Liberal” depicts American economic disparity over the past 90 years.  It is stunning to see how the Second World War utterly crushed the preceding Gilded Age, when the very few wealthy controlled everything, and every other American was poor.  Following the War, there arose a vast middle class, which included my grandparents, and probably yours.  These people enjoyed decent wages thanks in part to high union membership.

Then came the “great divergence”.  Krugman writes that:

Since the late 1970s the America I knew has unraveled. We’re no longer a middle-class society, in which the benefits of economic growth are widely shared: between 1979 and 2005 the real income of the median household rose only 13 percent, but the income of the richest 0.1% of Americans rose 296 percent.

So much for a rising tide raising all boats.  Even in the time that I have been employed–roughly the last ten years–the wages of Americans have remained flat when adjusted for inflation, and, after accounting for skyrocketing housing and health care costs, a huge number of people find that it is getting harder and harder to make ends meet.

Education alone isn’t going to solve this problem.  We need a more progressive tax structure that really collects a fair share from those who most benefit from the society built with the sweat of working men.

Filed under: Literature and Books, Politics, Rantings on September 19th, 2007 | No Comments »

UPDATE:  I have now seen video footage of the taser incident at the University Auditorium yesterday, and I think I can safely say that Andrew Meyer will eventually be receiving a large settlement from the University of Florida.  It’s kind of a shame, really, because he is a jerk who has a history of harassing people.  But it’s pretty clear that using a taser against him was excessive.  I predict that a lawsuit will soon be filed, and the University will settle for a large sum.  So, way to go, jerk, you made yourself rich.

Filed under: Current Events, Gainesville on September 18th, 2007 | No Comments »

Yesterday morning the weather was a bit threatening, and it was already raining lightly around eleven o’clock when I would have needed to be on my bike riding to campus in order to attend the speech by John Kerry.  So, regretfully, I didn’t go.  Come to find out, some punk got tasered by University Police.

Now, this doesn’t surprise me for several reasons.  First, UPD are kind of jerky.  I am as law abiding as they come, but I am on campus every day, and have been for the last seven years, so in that time I have, of course, had occasion to interact with UPD, and the exchanges have not always been friendly.  There is one nice motorcycle officer who pulled me over once for a broken tail light–he just gave me a warning–and I see him directing traffic each day, and he does a fine job.  But there is another guy who is a total jerk, and I see him sometimes directing traffic very poorly.  Second, this tasered student is a known troublemaker.  And, while it is disturbing that he was tasered when he was, from what I hear, already handcuffed, at least partially, every protester should know that you don’t resist arrest.  That’s a basic tenet of non-violent civil disobedience.  And don’t be so obnoxious in a public forum.

That said, I do think that police have a tendency to resort to tasers in incidents that might call for less force.  This guy obviously did not pose a serious danger to anyone, and there is no reason that two officers could not have subdued him without tasering.

From what I have read, John Kerry has stated now that he had no problem answering this kid’s question, even though the announced last question had already been asked.  But I also read what the kid wanted to ask, and he sounds like a huge wanker just trying to give Kerry a hard time.  I’m just glad he wasn’t a Republican.  Can you imagine the uproar his tasering would have caused then?  Every right-wing blogger and radio host would have turned it into the scandal of the century.

Filed under: Current Events, Gainesville, Politics on September 18th, 2007 | No Comments »