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We all knew there would be opposition to Obama’s presidency. We all knew that he would be attacked and maligned. This would have been true regardless of his politics. But I, for one, have been surprised by how cartoonishly absurd and hallucinatory the opposition is.

“When the focus is narrowed to Republicans, a Harris poll finds 57 percent of party members believe he is a Muslim, 22% believe he “wants the terrorists to win,” and 24% believe he is the Antichrist.” (Roger Ebert, Sept. 1st 2010)

If this is true — if over half of republicans think that Obama is a Muslim and one in four actually thinks he’s the Antichrist, then there really is no point in debate. There’s no point in talking about this. There is no point because the US is completely screwed.

It’s one thing to disagree over economic or military policy. It’s one thing to argue over whether our government should be strong or weak. But what we’re seeing here is complete and hysterical meltdown. If this is the reaction that conservatives have to having a progressive president with an unusual name, what would they do if Hitler came back to life and was elected president? Would their reaction be any more extreme?

Or, more to the point, could their reaction be any more extreme?

I bought my first digital camera eleven years ago, in 1999. A Nikon 950. It was fantastic. It was fantastic for all the advantages that digital cameras have over film cameras. I liked being able to experiment without fretting about film and processing costs. I liked seeing the results of my experiments right away. And I liked being able to delete mistakes and never having to pay a cent for making that mistake. I replaced the 950 with a Nikon 990 the next year, and then got my first digital SLR — the Nikon D1 — in 2003. Three years later I got a D40. They were all great cameras in their own ways, and I squeezed a lot of images out of each one (particularly the D40, which is still a fantastic deal for the money.)

But all of these cameras were restrictive too. The 950 and the 990 are impressive considering their sizes, but lacked interchangeable lenses. And the DSLRs, while they do have interchangeable lenses, have small sensors that change the way that the lenses work, reducing the effectiveness of wide-angle lenses in particular. (more…)

Last month we traveled to Portugal with my parents for a seven-day river cruise. We flew to Porto (a city I must admit I’d never heard of before) and sailed from there up the Douro river, in the heart of Portuguese wine country. I learned a lot. For one thing, Portuguese sounds nothing like Spanish in my opinion.

Porto is surprising. It’s pretty big for one thing — especially for a city I didn’t know existed. It is second only to Lisbon in size, with about 1.3 million people.

Porto is a city of sharp contrasts. The airport is modern and pleasant, with a metro line that takes you downtown quietly and efficiently. The metro stations reminded me a little of Copenhagen’s metro stations. And then you climb the stairs to the street and BAM! – there’s the contrast. Porto is full of beautiful old buildings… many of which have clearly been abandoned and some of which appear ready to be condemned. (more…)

It seems crazy, but the US has given a huge gift to criminal gangs: virtually unlimited profit. Furthermore, the US has given this gift more than once.

In 1920, alcohol was banned in the US. The idea was well intentioned but wrong-headed. Supporters of an alcohol-free America naively thought that making alcohol illegal would make it go away. There is little evidence to that effect. Passing a law does not magically change appetites.

What the change in law did do was put legitimate bar owners, merchants, truck drivers, and brewery workers out of business and simultaneously opened up vast new business opportunities for outlaws. Suddenly, instead of providing a living for legitimate, law-abiding people, it was a criminal enterprise.

This period saw explosive growth for gangsters like Al Capone, who went to work putting together bootlegging networks. Inevitably, turf wars started, and violence followed. Additionally, since it was outlaws making the stuff, there was no regulation or safety inspection. People died and went blind regularly during this time due to bad batches of home-made spirits. (more…)

Having lived in Copenhagen for over four years now, and having ridden my bike pretty consistently since arriving, I know the area pretty well. I have a lot of routes memorized, and I can ride them without thinking about where I am or being worried about getting lost. But often I get tired of my familiar routes, and strike out in a new direction.

Sometimes these experiments don’t turn out well — I work myself into a dead end, or I find myself on the entrance to a highway where bikes aren’t allowed, for example. But sometimes I discover great paths. This happened to me a few months ago when I ventured just a few blocks down from one of my regular paths, and found a quiet, leafy path that goes on for miles.

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Our apartment is next to Bella Center, the largest conference center in Scandinavia. Bella Center is where COP15, the global climate conference was held. President Obama has been to Bella Center twice in the year that we’ve lived here, once for his attempt to get the Olympic committee to choose Chicago, and once for the climate conference.

A hotel is under construction at Bella Center. Bella Hotel will be the largest hotel in Scandinavia. It’ll have 800 rooms, and an estimated 300,000 people will stay there every year. It features two leaning towers that are joined by a bridge at the top. The images below are depictions of the finished hotel.

Apparently it’ll be a four star hotel (I don’t even know what that means except that we’ll never stay there.) According to this site, the design is in part due to a height restriction due to the the relatively close proximity of the airport.

It won’t be finished for another year, but it’s already quite impressive.

Summer solstice as come and gone, and apparently I’m already worried about a lack of light. You wouldn’t think so, since I like low-light photography so much (see my favorites here.) But I’ve found that I was missing a lot of good shots in poor quality light, certainly indoors, but also as dusk.

And so I got a new lens — one that is primarily designed to make the most of available light. (The Nikon 50mm 1.4 AFS). It’s pretty wild. It lets in four times the amount of light as my next “fastest” lens. It might be a little too good: the resulting shots frequently don’t appear to have been taken in bad light at all.

And yet, almost all of the shots on in this entry would not have been possible with my other lenses. Sure, I could have taken them, but they would have been blurred because the shutter would have needed to stay open half a second or more in order to collect sufficient light.

The last one on this page takes a little explanation. It’s a roll of paper towels on our dining table. The left side is illuminated by a candle, and the right side by ambient outside light  (10:30 pm). It’s not as sharp as it could be, but still impressive considering it’s a hand-held shot.

We would say we’re sorry, but we’re not. We have our country, and you have yours. It’s not our fault that your country sucks. So nice try – trying to take our country away from us — but it’s not going to work. We’re going to beat you back across the border, whatever it takes, so you might as well get moving along now and make things easier for yourself.

Naturally, there are bleeding hearts here that constantly stick up for you. These are the same people that are determined to ruin our great country with tolerance, consideration, empathy, compassion, and a bunch of other stuff that can only lead to communism. These are the same people that say things like “this country was built by immigrants”, and “doesn’t the constitution say that all men are created equal and that we all have a right to pursue happiness?”

That’s just stupid. Everyone knows that what they meant was that all citizens are created equal. And even though it says “all”, they really meant all white citizens. That’s what they meant, but they didn’t feel that they had to spell it out because at the time America was all white, and they couldn’t imagine that it would ever become the way it is now.

The founding fathers never meant to include Mexicans, or blacks, or communists, gays, atheists, Muslims, or any of the other people that want nothing more than to destroy our country. These are the same people that elected Obama, and after we’ve run you out of the country, we’re going to run them out too. (more…)

So now we’re awash in pictures of oil-slicked wildlife, and the satellite images of a massive plume of toxic sludge swirling around the Gulf of Mexico. It’s depressing for the obvious reasons — that it’s a crime against nature — that it’s a devastating blow to both wildlife and to humans. There are no winners in this situation.

But it’s also depressing to read reactions and rationales. From Rush Limbaugh opining that the explosion on the oil rig was sabotage by liberals for political gain, to Newt Gingrich blathering about how it is unfortunate, but it shouldn’t stop us from expanding off-shore drilling. To Rand Paul, who apparently feels that being critical of a company that is responsible for the largest oil spill in US history is “Un-American.” (more…)

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

– Benjamin Franklin