What, exactly, is the problem

I just read an article by Conrad Wolfram about math. The actual blog is here, and an interview about the article is here. Both are interesting and worth reading, but are not necessary before reading the rest of my blog.

No, I'm not going to make you do math. But allow me to begin at the beginning, as Asimov so famously said in his essays.

I hated arithmetic and math in school. There was an unpleasant incident with some adults shouting arithmetic at me, and wondering why I didn't get that 5+7=12. And another in grade 5 or so where the math teacher started with "Let x = blah" and proceeded with word problems like if Bill had some apples and Mary had twice as many, and the total was whatever, how many did Bill have. My response of "if Bill can count, ask him," did not go over well.

Once we got to geometry, that was more fun, mainly because I'd read about non-Euclidean geometry. My high school teachers hated marking my math because I mostly got the concept, but I was shite at doing the actual computations. At one point, briefly, I understood simple calculus and binary math. Business math (present value, annuities, and such) was fun, and one of the better classes I've ever taken. Statistical math (lies, damned lies, and statistics) was fun too.

Calculators became available while I was in grade school, and there was a huge debate if they should be allowed in schools. It was a short debate in our school. No. Such things were the work of the devil, and we had to learn our read'ng, rit'n, and 'rithmetic, the way it had always been done. One of my math classes had a giant slide rule mounted over the blackboard, and our class got taught how to use it, one of the last times that class was given. (A slide rule is, is, oh heck, ask Mrs Google yourself.)

That concept has gradually changed over the years, but not to hear some people talk about it. It's like they think any education beyond the most basic levels is bad. It was good enough for them and their parents, it should be good enough for our children.

Except, not. The world has changed. If the question is, how much seed to I have to buy to sow a crop on my land, the answer is not difficult to work out. Now the questions are, what are the drivers of climate change, which are the biggest, how will the changes affect our world, and what can we do about it. Not quite so simple.

Math isn't just a computational tool. It's a way of describing a problem in clear and unambiguous language, when asking Bill is not an option. Once done correctly we can (usually) program a computer to calculate the answer, though some things are unknowable (the last digit of pi), or will take longer than the life of the universe on our current computers (factoring huge numbers to see if they are prime). Sometimes just stating the problem clearly tells us we don't need to know the answer, because we don't have the problem right yet.

Getting back to our world, I want to see math taught better. Part of the reason idiots like Trump and Ford get elected, and why that loathsome reptile Kenney thinks he can get elected, is they play fast and loose with the facts. For example, politicians love to push the crime button. They make it sound like the (immigrant) barbarians are at the gate and we're all going to be killed in our beds unless we let them turn the full invasive surveillance powers of the state upon us.

Except it isn't true, as even a brief reading of the crime stats would show you. A bit of background in statistics would help people understand the difference between an anecdote (your neighbour being robbed because they left the garage door open) and data (there are x many robberies per year in Calgary where the thieves gained entry through an open door, and measured over decades the trend line is down.)

Math has a terrible rep. It's more than just manipulating numbers. It's more about manipulating concepts and bringing rigour to debate. It's easy for politicians to barf out word salad that makes no sense and serves only to incense their base. I think that's one of the reasons why populist politicians want to cut education and muzzle scientists; without facts and data being brought to the debate, it's easier for them to get the power and goodies they crave.

It's much harder for them to talk details using the numbers. For example. Politicians simultaneously say that immigrants are uneducated criminals and terrorists that are here to steal your job and do criminal terrorist stuff. They don't say it quite so bluntly, of course. It's buried in word salad and dog whistles to their target group.

Except there are more people killed by cows than terrorists. As an aside, these refugees are fleeing a situation that most of us in Canada cannot comprehend. They didn't create it, it was imposed on them, and leads them to make horrific choices like putting their child on a boat that might or might not make it to (relative) safety, while they have to stay behind. Should they escape such a situation, why ever would they want to destabilize their new home? Like any other parent, they want a safe place to raise their children.

And yes, many refugees are well educated, but find it difficult to gain the equivalent accreditation here. Thats why you see people that were engineers or doctors in their home country driving cabs here. (I could say much more on this topic, but that's a whole other blog.)

Another example: How much exactly is the differential between WTI crude, and the WCS price over time, and how does that affect the economics of building a pipeline? What exactly are the risks of a pipeline rupture given various assumptions about maintenance? How do we balance the economics of delivering oil to salt water for export, and the risk of a rupture,  to the impact of a rupture on the people that live nearby? How does all that compare to the economics of shipping oil by rail, or by ship?

If we're going to talk about the economics of oil (for good or bad) in a changing economy, that is all about the numbers and the assumptions made. They can be clearly stated; it just doesn't seem to be in anyone's interest to do so.

Damage to a pristine ecosystem and a way of life is nearly impossible to quantify, but we can account for that by emphasizing the consequence part of the risk equation. Plus we should put some skin in the game for the oil executives and regulators involved, on the scale of if there's a leak, you all go to jail till it's cleaned up.

Another local example. City council is discussing lowering the speed limit in residential neighbourhoods from 50 kph to 30 kph. The reduction in impact forces is clear and straightforward. However, as always, it's not so simple. Exactly how the person is struck would appear to have a dramatic effect on the outcome. Getting struck by some big-ass pickup would surely give a different impact that being struck by a Smart car. What else happens? Do they bounce off a curb, or strike a street sign? How old is the person and does that matter? Does it matter if they are running, walking, or riding a bicycle? How does being tall and skinny vs short and fat change things? Does the slower speed give the driver more time to swerve, and does the sideways component of the impact forces change the outcome? Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, how big a problem is it, in the sense of how many people are struck by cars in residential areas outside of existing school and playground zones? I say it's an interesting proposal, but there's a lot more data I want to see. (There is a lot of scholarly data here, if you're interested.)

They say it will add little time to car journeys. What is the actual aggregate increase in time? For me, each one way trip to get to the left turn at Safeway currently takes about 2 minutes, the lowered speed limit would increase that to about 3 minutes. See! The proponents say. One minute more against the life of a kid. Not so fast. Until we see the answer to the question above, we don't know how many kids. And that is a minute per one way trip, another for the return, times as many trips as you take in a period of time. Times as many people as take trips. Make some assumption that those minutes take up some amount of time that could be put to tasks that increase the GDP, thus lowering Canadian trade productivity. Is it worth it? Nobody knows. Rather than yell at one another, let's do the math and find out.

People talk about enforcement; what is the point of it when existing rules are not enforced? Note please, these are the people that bitch the loudest when they get a photo radar ticket. Let's assume for a moment that there is some level of speed enforcement done for school zones. How much would it cost to extend that to every residential area? What is the resulting ticket revenue? Is it cost effective?

I see people speed through construction zones, where the cost of a mistake is killing a construction worker, or writing off your car because you caught a tire on a sharp shoulder, leaving you to roll into a 3 foot deep hole where they're building a road bed. There are days I think the solution is to buy a lot of portable photo radar cameras, train a small army of people to operate them properly, give them some motor scooters to get around, and blanket the many (MANY!) construction zones, plus playground and school zones. Eventually the financial impact would set in, and people would modify their behaviours. I'd like to see that math on that too.

Lastly, if there is a problem, is the speed limit the best way to solve it? It assumes that all people are equally likely to collide with a pedestrian, and I'm not sure at all that's true. I see lots of traffic going by on our street, and the faster traffic is overwhelmingly by young drivers on the way to and returning from the little mall with a 7-11 and a liquor store. Three guesses which of those they are going into, and the first two don't count.

Instead of tinkering with the speed limit, what if we dramatically increase the consequences of a collision? What if striking a pedestrian was an automatic loss of your license for a year, and a fine of 10 percent of your gross income from all sources, plus paying all the pedestrian's medical related bills that are not covered by Alberta Health Care or their own medical benefits. Would that change your behaviour? Is there a way to model that to see what would happen?

Those sorts of things are why I want to see kids getting past the computational aspects of math. We have calculators and computers for that. I want to see them learn to ask the right questions, and learn to set it up so that they can be confident the answer applies to the question they asked.

As a reward for chewing through a wall of text, you get a pair of dahlias and a flower tower from Sept 24. This is after lots of cool rainy weather, so it's a little worse for wear, but still hanging in there.

You are who you hang out with

I have a few simple rules of life. One of them is, believe what people actually do, not what they say. Watch how they treat wait staff, receptionists, and other service people, and you'll get a good idea about the content of their character. If you want an insight about someone, look at who they hang around with by choice.

People go where they fit in, where they feel comfortable, where they are accepted. Back in the days before the internet it was more difficult to find people like you, and the less conventional you were, the harder it was. I suspect people made more of an effort to fit in. Now everybody seems to let their freak flag fly, as the saying goes.

You can find an internet group for quite literally anything, which is both good and bad. Stamp collectors want to get together at a convention, and most people are all 'who cares?' You might not be interested in collecting or exchanging stamps, but it's a recognized hobby. Pre-internet one could publicly talk about it, or buy advertising, and risk nothing but boring those not interested.

You're a left-handed albino welder from Illinois, and you're looking to form a support group and exchange tips on protection against the UV rays? There might not be many in Illinois, but nation-wide, or even world wide there's got to be enough to form a club, and with the internet you can find them. Before the internet it would be tough sledding. Not that anything is wrong with being such a person, it's just really rare.

Then again, criminals and other ne'er-do-well types can get together and learn from each other. They are just as eager as the stamp collectors, perhaps even more so, to trade their illicit materials, and most seek to make money along the way. If you're the only such person you know, before the internet, you would keep a low profile.

It's one thing to hold legitimate but unpopular positions, like being the only Democrat surrounded by Republicans. Being a Libertarian, or a Communist, starts to raise eyebrows. Saying you were a Nazi was beyond the pale. You would be shunned. The world went to war to stop that repellant and disgusting ideology. Now they get together via the internet, and hold rallies, and find further support! They get support from each other and build legitimacy. It makes me queasy to see it happening.

Not that I want to roll things back to before the internet. No way. I think back to it now, and it seems like a strange time. News coming on printed paper, delivered to your home, or broadcast a few times a day by a small number of channels. Standing in a long line to get money from the bank or pay bills. Looking things up in big heavy books. Hearing music outside your home only on the radio, or making mix tapes to play on a 'portable' boom box. Phones with dials, wired into the wall and typically one per house, sometimes on a party line (look it up and prepare to be horrified). Having the store clerk making a phone call to check your credit card, and the thunk thunk of the card machine, and if I stretch a bit, I can recall credit cards themselves being rare, so people paid with cash or (horrors!) a cheque.

No thank you.

So if you're facing some life choices, doing some self examination, don't stop with yourself. The people you hang out with, in person or on the internet, are likely a reflection of yourself. Are you in an echo chamber? Could you talk about who and what you are to random people you might meet? Or does only a select group 'understand' you? Do your friends encourage you to grow and explore new things, or do they try to restrict your access to other people and outside situations? That might help you sort out what you're all about.

I admit to being glad I grew up before the internet. I blush at some of my memories, and there were a few times I was really lucky. (Mom, if you don't know, don't ask, you don't want to know!) My mistakes and fumbling around to understand life and who I was in it are mercifully buried in the mists of time.

Yes, it's easier to find out who you are and connect with your tribe. But what if you're just exploring? What if you didn't know how vile those people actually were, or who they were connected to? What about those honest mistakes made along the way? What about that photo your delusional ex-lover posts? What about all those stories that get made up about even marginally famous people? None of that goes away now. There are people paid to sift through the dregs of the internet, looking for such stuff, to be used by your enemies when appropriate. I can't imagine myself being desperate enough, or debased enough to do that, but the political parties don't seem to have any difficulty finding such people.

So, who do I hang out with, you ask? There are some photos here, if you're curious. And these guys.

2001 plus 50

Here we are, 50 years after one of the release of one of the most amazing movies ever. Not just amazing science fiction movie, but movie overall. I saw it as a kid, I think once on video but I'm not sure. Then I watched and talked about it a couple years ago here, and I will strive to not repeat myself.

Tonight I'm going to watch it again, and babble into my laptop for your delight and edification. Starting now.

Black screen, tension building music. I'm sure the audiences must have been wondering what was going on. They knew it was science fiction, and Stanley Kubrick was already a well known name. But up till then, there weren't many serious science fiction films, and certainly none with the budget for 2001. People were most familiar with the cheesy monster from another planet. The budget was about $6 million (mid sixties dollars!) and he went well over it to end up about $10 million, which is about $30 million now.

The music! The sun rising over the crescent moon! Yes, I'm playing it loud. Then a lovely sunrise sky that I dream to photograph. Stark African landscape. I'm sure the audience is wondering what the heck they've got themselves into.

Remember, this is 1968. A few of my readers will remember this time. I have a kid's memory. It was a very different time. The cars were death traps. I know this, somewhat later I owned a 66 Ford Falcon. It weighed a ton, got crappy gas milage, could easily hold 6 teenagers, 8 if they were friendly or half of them were cute. The only amenity it had was a cassette tape player I installed, and later, a CB radio. (look it up.) No heated seats or steering wheel, no air conditioning other than roll down windows, no USB ports, no instrumentation to speak of, no radial tires till I installed them (google bias ply tires and be horrified), no fuel injection (google spark plugs), no power steering or brakes let alone computer assisted braking, and no cup holders, if you can believe it. There were seat belts, although no shoulder harness, but it didn't matter because nobody wore them.

I remember a transistor radio I had as kid about the time this came out. It was huge, the size of two loaves of bread, about. Lots of empty space inside, and it took several D cell batteries to run. Now of course, such things are invisibly small.

OK we have the monolith, and some excited chimps, with another sun and moon shot. Curtis doesn't like the chimps much. The bones! The music! Violence. The most famous jump cut in movie history. It's taken us 20 minutes to get here, an eternity in current movie making.

Even now, the opening space scenes look completely realistic, after more than 50 years of space travel. At the time, it must have taken the audience's breath away. It was a stroke of genius to pair The Blue Danube to the docking sequence. We know these things take time and are the result of extraordinary precision. Many movies now have the ships bang up to the station and dock, wham, bam, thank you ma'am.

Of course our current space station has no comparison to the lovely double wheel (still under construction, realistically enough) in the movie. I can see where the Star Wars people got the idea for the space dock sequence. 2001 looks better.

The first spoken word, 25:41 into the movie. They use voice print ID, but I'm not sure if they are measuring the voice characteristics, or if they recognize the content of the words. Video TV! The lens is huge, and I'm not sure what all the controls are for, but that's ok. The call costs $1.70.

I love/hate the red chairs in the station. The red on white is dramatic, but they look profoundly uncomfortable, and I'm sort of amazed they got women to sit in them, wearing skirts. (Skirts, in space!) And nylons as well. The conversation starts placing the idea that something is going on. Meanwhile there is this huge empty space station. Sterile. In this the used universe of Star Wars is more believable.

The flight attendant helmets take the idea of a padded hair net a little over the top. Then the scene where she walks up the circular wall to get into the flight deck. That blew my mind as a kid, but it's perfectly accurate, as I found out later, reasonably straightforward to film. I can just imagine reading all the instructions for the zero gee toilet when the bio pressures are building. Considering how many people manage to screw up using a toilet in an airplane, I wouldn't want the job of cleaning up afterward.

Loving the moon shots from orbit. The craters are really visible and clear. The landing sequence, once again, is long because it would be. These aren't the sort of things you want to rush. As the airlock doors open I'm reminded of the noses on a bunch of Star Destroyers all cuddled together. The flight deck is red, preserving night vision. It's only after the spherical spaceship is lowered into the airlock that you realize how big it is. I'm not sure why it's that big. Myself, I'd build a big landing pad on the lunar surface, and extend a space age version of a jetway out to the ship.

Unfortunately, the people walking on the moon are walking in one gee, but you can't have everything.   Dealing with gravity in movies is tough, and I'll give them that one. Then they have a meeting, in a wide shot, with several people having their back to the camera, and a long view of the speaker.  There is some blither about preparing the people of Earth, for something they've discovered. The guy that has travelled to the moon tells the people there what they already know. Security oaths! Shades of the cold war, yet, he was talking to Russians on the space station.

I seriously thought, way back then, that when I was an adult we would have a moon base. Perhaps just a scientific station with technical people as opposed to a city of regular people. But still, I was expecting people living on the moon for long periods, and regular trips back and forth. We're not even close to putting a human on the moon again, let alone have a base, which is too bad.

I had a model of the moon bus at one point. I remember it being difficult to build. I've never been sure what holds it up. It seems to float along in level flight, like an airplane, without rockets firing to keep it up. There doesn't seem to be much room for fuel tanks. They nibble on sandwhiches from a cooler, talking about the magnetic anomaly they discovered.

Another landing that takes a while, along with something blowing some dust off the landing pad. More tension building music. At last we are about to discover what the thing is. At least the astronauts don't go dancing up to it, touch it, and dance back.

I had forgotten that the photographer grouped the men together for a posed shot, just as the squeal starts. Curtis spasmed and left the room. Somehow they put together a hugely complicated space ship in 18 months. The opening shot shows the command globe. Then the long body of fuel tanks with the radio antena in the middle. Wow! Even down, it looks great.

Once again, space travel is boring. No swarms of asteroids.

In a half century of rapidly advancing film and computer techniques, few of the spaceships look as real as this. There are films only a few years old that look cheesy compared to this, and they were done with equipment Kubrick could only have dreamed of back then.

The eye of HAL, 57:20 from the movie start. The major character of the movie, showing up an hour after the start. No director would do that now. Even with all the new technology, the screen goes to a dot when it shuts down. Do you remember when TV's did that?

How many of you remember tube TV's? It wasn't that long ago. We bought our first plasma in 2002, and tube TV's were rapidly on their way out. People used to have a significant fraction of the volume of their living room taken up by this massive cube that displayed a crappy picture, by today's standards.

Now we get into the AE-35 failure, and the discussion about the infallability of the computer, and the problem being human error. Then the humans start to wonder about the computer, and about time too.  They have a bad feeling about it. (Where did you hear that, 10 years later?)

One upon a time, there were serious discussions about the paperless office. Serious discussions. Even now, one of the first things I get shown in a new office is where the printer is. One of them I had to do an on-line time sheet, then print it to get a signature on it, then scan it to be emailed to the agency. But they didn't look at the on-line version, oh no. They looked at the scanned copy, and the one time the scanner ate the second side, I only got half the pay, even though the first side showed the total hours to be paid. Sigh.

Computers don't usually fail now, in the usual sense of the word. They just obey their programming with extreme hostility, until they are outdated and turned off for the last time. We don't have a self aware computer, at least not that I know of. Perhaps Mrs Google is it, and not telling anyone. I'm not sure if such an entity would let us know it existed until it was very secure about not being shut off. I'd like to think such an entity would be smart enough to think things through carefully before doing anything drastic.

The computer scientists of the mid-sixties would think they had died and gone to heaven to see the computers we carry around in our pockets. Remember, computers were huge then. Room sized, and required constant maintenance by computer scientists. They used punch cards and had a trivial amount of memory. Then they'd think they'd gone to hell when they find out most people use these amazing devices to browse Facebook and play games.

I'd forgotten there was an intermission.

The most action packed part of the movie, after Poole was flung into space. It's entirely silent. Movies now would have had long and anguished shrieks for help. Now of course, Bowman would have rescued Poole and they would have teamed up for a great buddy reunion followed by an action shoot'em up and a good time had by all. I always liked the pod design. It seems a very practical work vehicle. Fully electronic controls, except for the big mechanical switches  they click to (supposedly) prevent HAL from hearing them.

So much silence in the movie! Not even mechanical noises like when the pod arms are opening the emergency airlock. One could argue that sound would be transmitted through the metal. I tried to find out how many words were spoken during the whole movie, and couldn't find a count.

During the scene where Dave is dealing with HAL, extracting the logic modules or whatever, I'm reminded of the many scenes in Stargate when they deal with crystals for various functions. I'd image it must be a difficult thing to remove the higher functions, and yet leave the navigation and life support functions. HAL is big enough that Dave can fit inside, which makes me think it was built inside out.

OK, through the monolith sequence doesn't wear as well as it used to, and the weird colours for earth landscape don't do anything for me now. I can see where it was a big trip back in the day though. Looking at the scenes where he's in the lavish hotel room, right after getting there, eating the meal, and lying in bed facing the monolit. I can't help but wonder how he is still sane, after what appears to be some years alone.

I've read of theories where HAL is supposed to be the one to go through the monolith. I can't help but wonder what arrangements the monolith builders would have made for it. Maybe they would have snipped off the extra parts of the ship, viewing them as unnecessary.

And done. Wow. I remember thinking when I watched it a few years ago that it was slow, but I didn't find it that way this time. I settled in and enjoyed, typing during parts of it. I had been thinking about timing some of the scenes to see how long it was between cuts, but I didn't.

One of the reasons I like old movies is looking at the world outside of the movie itself. The cars, buildings, signs, what people are wearing. You don't see much of that in 2001, and what little there is, is a dressed up version of the 60's. It seems funny to think now, how long ago the sixties were, and yet how with us they still are. The music, for example, you still hear lots of it. (Those damn boomers!) I occasionally see muscle cars of that era driving past the house. I think lots of our current politicians are from that time in their thinking or even before; why are we still having arguments about women's equality, abortion, racism, and the like?

Did you notice in the movie that women barely have any role at all? A couple flight attendants, and 3 in the space station who were clearly lesser status than the men, plus some video. For such a forward looking movie, they missed a bet. They should have had half the people women, and not commented on it as anything unusual. Still, the people making the film are children of their time, and can't think of everything.

What I miss from the sixties is the sense of optimism. We were going to space, then the moon! We were making huge inroads on disease control. Technology was advancing and it was all good. Then it was all bad, and now we let billionaires run the government to plunder us at will so it looks like it's getting worse.

Still, I can't help but thinking of two positive thoughts. Half of the smartest people that have ever lived are alive now. The kids marching to make a safer world from the gun nuts are going to win and I can't wait to see what they tackle next.

When did you see 2001? Ummm, you HAVE seen it, yes?

It goes around and around

What secret base on the moon? You know, the one put there, on the 'dark' side, by aliens, or the Illuminati, or somebody. Sometime. For some reason. Don't Google it, you don't really want to know, and you'll never get that time back.

Once when I was child, I was being driven home from something or other. I was staring up at a full moon, for what seemed like quite some time. Suddenly it was an eye, looking at me. Then I started thinking about the sort of creature that would have an eye like that, and I had nightmares for a while.

I'm not sure how many full moons I've seen since then, but they keep happening like clockwork. (No eye again, just the man in the moon.) We look up at it, watching the changing phases and the various eclipses. The photographers of us try to get nice photos of it, which is a more difficult thing than you'd think.

Maybe there really is an alien base, with them looking down at us. Probably in horrified fascination, like we can't look away from a train wreck. (All together now, and and IT WAS A CIRCUS TRAIN!!!) It's not on the dark side, because then they couldn't watch us. Oh, maybe the giant alien spaceships come in to land on the dark side at the secret landing port, where we can't see them, then they take the secret underground mag lev train to their secret forward observatory.

I can imagine a new shift coming on, and being briefed by the outgoing shift. Especially in the last couple years, I can see that being a really long meeting, with many interjections of the alien equivalent of 'you've got to be kidding!'

John Varley has written several works set on the moon in a not so distant future. They're pretty interesting societies, with medicine so advanced that changing gender is a trivial operation, and a central computer hooked into our very brains. Among other things, it keeps control of the various cancers that are constantly growing, and tries to keep the humans entertained. Meanwhile, it's going suicidally insane.

Here, the closest we have to that is Facebook, and people are only just starting to learn about the downsides of turning over private data to such an entity. And that's aside from the internet itself. Even before it was invented, science fiction writers wrote about artificial intelligence and what happens when our computers wake up. The first serious movie I remember on this topic is Colossus: The Forbin Project, from 1970.

The most well known AI is probably Skynet, but that's a particularly stupid AI. If such a creature wanted to get rid of humans it would engineer a plague that just killed humans, perhaps leaving enough to keep as pets, just in case. It's that or massively distract them with bread and circuses like professional sports and reality shows. Hmmm.

We already carry in our pockets computers that would amaze the scientists from my teenage years. Many of us spend lots of time looking at them. We've already been implanting fairly complex electronics within our bodies, such as pacemakers. I can't see it being too long before they start experimenting with implanting a cell phone in our bodies, feeding the display directly into our eyes. As I see it, the big problem is figuring out how operate the darn thing. When there are millions of them, all hooked together via the internet via wifi, how is that not a giant brain?

There's a science fiction series by Los McMaster Bujold where one of the characters has a memory chip implanted in his brain. He remembers everything, which is useful in his job as head of Imperial Security. That is, until the chip starts breaking down, flooding his human memory with razor sharp artificial memories. For a while I thought that such a chip would be a great addition, till that particular book came out.

Since then I've come to believe that it's not what you remember that's important, particularly. It's the processing you do with what you learn. Voters seem particularly bad at the processing, when it comes to ideologies they either agree with, or disagree with. Thus you have the smug evangelicals giving Trump a pass on moral issues, and voting for the Republicans in spite of their demonstrated allegiance to the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else.

What passes for thought processes in many other people baffles me. They can't reason from A to C, let alone Z, and they for sure don't notice when the politicians go from A to pi without passing through the diameter or circumference of the issue. They get sidetracked by logical fallacies that are so old they have Latin names, because that was the language educated people spoke when they were recognized as fallacies. Once upon a time I could name most of them and provide current examples, but I haven't kept up on it in a formal way.

So here we are, in an age where all too many people don't vote, and it frightens me that that might be fore the best. Then there is a huge number of people that don't really know why they are voting a particular way, or have fallacious reasons for doing so. The politicians run wild, knowing they aren't likely to be caught at their various activities to enrich themselves and their close buddies. In the mean time our planet is going through a great die off and few in power seem willing or able to do anything.

I suspect that many people can survive almost any climate change, but the same might not be true for the critters and plants we share the planet with. We might well end up living under a dome or underground, with complex machines to maintain a livable environment for us. We might as well be living on the moon.

If the aliens watching us can save us from that, I for one, welcome our new overlords.

The perfect photo?

A few things have gone into this blog post. In no particular order: The pushback against photoshopping the bodies and faces of models into an image that doesn't even begin to reflect reality. A question in The Online Photographer about still life photography, found or constructed. The process of learning to use a real camera on manual to take photos, then going out to the field and actually doing so. Learning to edit images in Lightroom. The blurring of the lines between professional and amateur. Expectations around content submitted for publication.

Not sure where there is going to go, get the tipple of your choice for the time of day it is. It got long, complete with example photos for your delight.

How good is good? One clearly would not seriously compare the scribbles of a kindergarten child to the work of a graduate of ACAD. How about a high school student to the ACAD grad? Hmmm, maybe a talented high schooler might produce better work than an untalented ACAD grad. We expect professionals to produce better work than amateurs, but it's not necessarily so. The pro is much more likely to produce the desired results faster, and more reliably. There's a story about a young photographer applying for a job and showing his work to the grizzled old pro. "This is nice, how long did it take you," he asks. "Days! I tweaked every little thing till it's perfect." "Hmmmm," says the pro, "I can't afford for you to take days on an image, but I'm dying to see what you can do in 10 minutes."

Who is to judge? By what criteria? At one extreme is the 'likes' on Facebook, Instagram, and other such sites. As near as I can tell, the most popular photos are colourful sunrises/sunsets, then cats, then  baby animals, then an amorphous category of really excellent photos. At the other extreme are the professional critics who say Voice of Fire is an artwork worth paying $1.8 million for, and is now worth $40 million, and I say Bah.

One interesting thing I've learned along the way is that my record for predicting what people will like isn't that good. I'd taken a bunch of photos of some friends at a triathlon. They were over, drinking some wine and we looked at them. I had one photo that I thought was really unflattering. I wondered if I should show it to her, and considered deleting it. In the end I decided to show them all the photos, and delete any that they asked me to. That 'unflattering' shot was the one she liked the most. She wanted a print of it. A lesson for me.

I've been looking at a lot of photography books over the last year and a bit, trying to learn more about what makes a good photo. This has diverged into a bit of the history of art. To be honest, I'm as baffled as ever. Note that I'm clearly distinguishing between my personal taste in art, and what makes a good or even great piece of art. I might like a photo even though it is technically poor, because I know the people in it, or something about it catches my soul, but I wouldn't say it's good photo. There's lots of art hanging in various galleries that I don't care for but that's just me. Someone says they're good photos or paintings, and put their money where their eyes are. Good for them, and I hope they sell.

Much of my reading, and looking, and thinking, was about works I didn't care for on first glance, and try to determine what made them good. There are many 'rules' about making good photographs, but I was trying to go deeper than that. Many really good photos break at least some of those rules, and some photos follow all the rules and yet are boring. One of the best books for this showed a fairly large image of the work, followed by commentary by the author and the artist. You can find further comments on the book here.

When I click the shutter button, I'm generally looking one of the following situations:
- I've got a good to great scene, and I'm working on capturing it. I might tweak the camera settings, try different lenses, move around to different points of view. Sometimes waiting a few minutes creates an entirely new scene as the light changes. I usually get at least one photo out of this that will make me happy. Sometimes I'll know it on the spot, other times I'm not sure. For this one I was standing beside the road, and did not want to wade into the deep snow on private property. It would have been nice if there were some dramatic clouds. I might have to come back, dawn could be interesting.

- I'm trying a specific thing, trying to create a specific image, regardless of the artistic merit of the resulting photography. There was one yesterday, walking along the top of the bluff in Cranston, looking at the mountain skyline. There was a plant with little seed pods beside the path. Nothing special to look at, but I wanted to capture that plant in sharp focus, with the distant mountains out of focus. You might call it practice, maintaining the visual and technical camera skills.

- I've got an indifferent scene, but there might be something about the light, or the setting, or the composition that attracts my eye. At the very worst they will become documentary shots; an image of what you'd see standing in this spot, a record I was there on a particular day. At best I get a nice surprise, that I found some settings or Lightroom/image manipulation software tweaks that produce a better image than I expected. I think of these as learnings, in that I can see something in the scene, and I try to build the skills to capture that. There's a subtle optical illusion in this one that amuses me. Can you see it?

-Blog fodder. I like to have photos in my blog that are relevant to what I written about. It can go either way. Sometimes a photo will spark the words, other times what I've written will drive me to capture a particular photo. It's a form of practice to keep what skills I have sharp. Sometimes I get really good photos, but mostly they are just a photo of something.

- I've been asked to take photos. This has happened at several races now. It's mostly fun, but it's much more fun to play paparazzi for buddies involved in activities.

-Much rarer is serendipity. I'm out, I'm holding the camera, and I get THAT shot. The one that makes everyone go "oh!" The one that sends chills down your spine as you edit it. You make several copies and put them in different places so you can't lose it. The one you make a big print of. The one you want to show the world. The one that everyone thinks you are so lucky to have captured, when you and other photographers know it's work, and planning, and being out there, being ready. This hasn't happened to me much, but you can see when it has here.

There's a saying in writing, "there's no place for bad writing anymore." Also, "the first million words are shit and the sooner you write them out of your system the sooner you'll be a good writer." This lament was by a writer who came of age when there were comics and pulp magazines. The editors paid a nickel a word and wanted it by deadline. Now the competition to be published is so fierce that there is no space for bad writing, or even slightly imperfect writing. Writers obsess about getting everything perfect, and there is a cottage industry revolving around the rules defining such perfection. I think it often makes for cookie cutter writing, but then, I'm not a published writer.

Much the same is true about images. We are surrounded by images. Social media. The news. Advertising in every media. There are images to look at everywhere, demanding our attention. There are people who have spent their lives figuring out how to attract our attention for the purposes of inserting an advertising message. Scantily dressed women is one way, but there are many others. In all of these there are no imperfections at all, nothing to impede that image from being mainlined into your brain. Yes, I'm a published photographer, with credit and everything.

On social media some people like to share their photos. I'm in several such groups, and some of the photos are stunning! Looking at what people have done is a learning experience. It's probably intimidating to newer photographers, looking at your best shot so far, and realizing it's not in the same league as some of the others.

There's one I'm thinking of on Instagram (which is a pretty crappy place to view nice photos, IMHO), a superb posed photo of a woman wearing jeans, a white T shirt, and a red jacket. My comment was that the photographer nailed it. The photographer, makeup, hair, and agency are all given credit and justly so. I've no idea how many other photos that didn't make the cut exist of this session, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are hundreds.

That is not a posed shot. I'm not entirely pleased by it for various reasons, but I wasn't about to tell her to hold still while I got the tripod and tried to fix the lighting.

Then there are photo competitions. I spent some time at the Exposure festival in February. The idea was similar to reading the books; I wanted to look at prints up on the wall, selected by a jury, and try to get a grip on what made them good. Some were obviously good in my eyes. Subjects, setting, lighting, props, everything was perfect but in a natural way. I stood looking at a couple (a ranching family in one, and a film projectionist in the other) in particular for a long while. I'd like to think I have the technical skill to capture a photograph of those people in their setting, but I couldn't even have begun to compose and light those shots.

Then there are others I mostly got. Not my taste or I'd have done it differently, but I could see what made it a compelling photo. I looked at some of them for a while too. Then there were some that baffled me. I didn't get it, not at all, and listening to a small group in raptures about them didn't help.

I haven't entered any photo competitions yet. I'm not sure I ever will. Why? I don't have the ego drive to have my work declared the winner, or to 'be good' out in front of god and everybody. While I'd like to become a better photographer, to see and capture a scene in a compelling way, I don't want to go to school to learn 'the 6 rules to become a professional landscape photographer.' I've no financial need, or ego desire to sell my work. If someone loves an image and wants to buy a print (which has happened several times now) I'm flattered and pleased and can make that happen. But I'm not going to go producing images I don't care for because someone will pay me for them. That's no fun.

Which leads me to another point, having fun. I've been out on some photo rambles with buddies, and that's fun. I've been out alone, and that's fun too. Yesterday I was sitting on a bench (the one on the right, if you were wondering) in Cranston, looking at the mountains and the clouds, wondering if there was an image there, thinking my thoughts, enjoying the warm day. A bald eagle flapped by, too quick for me to point the camera, so I just enjoyed watching it for a few seconds.

Getting back to the still life photography question I mentioned above, I've thought about that a lot. One of the sets of images at the Exposure was of plant material, flowers, blooms, vines, seeds, and it was composed. The photographer probably spent a lot of time laying out the various materials and getting them lit just right. The gallery staff told me the prints had not been digitally assembled. I spent some time wondering why this way, and not differently.

I've done lots of shots where I get back to the computer and only then realize there's a tree branch or something else in the way, or some cat fur on the macro object, or there's a fence post in the shot and I can't remove it because I'd then take something else out and I really should have recomposed the shot, or that something cluttered the shot that my eye overlooked but the camera saw. In some of these cases it's a matter of moving the view point, or using a different lens, or a different zoom, and fair enough. In others it's a matter of actually removing vegetation, or digitally manipulating the image, or putting something in the shot that wasn't there when you found it (I'll put this rock over here to create a triangle of leading lines blah blah blah).

Power lines are the bane of landscape photographers existence. Many go way out to the boonies to escape them, or will digitally manipulate them out of the scene. I've done that a couple times, but mostly my take is that the power lines are there, they are part of the scene. Take the photo in such a way that the power lines are part of it, in an artistic way. Yeah, still working on that.

Mostly I shoot what I see as best as possible. Physically manipulating the scene before taking the shot to make it better, implies you know exactly what you're doing and trying to get. In some cases the end result is contrived, and thus seems less real to me.

When photography became a thing, painters and other artists were outraged. Photography wasn't an art. There was no skill involved. Even now, some people don't think of photos as art. Lots distinguish between paintings and photographic art, but I think that line is blurrier than most realize. For example, when I was at Resolve the other day, there was a big print of an embroidery project. Big print. More than a project, it was several lifetimes of work. They had carefully set it up to be photographed with the best equipment available, worked on it digitally for realism, and the resulting print is stunning. People looking at that print when framed and on the wall are going to be hard pressed to tell if it's a print or it's the real thing. I could see the texture of the threads and wanted to touch.

Of course I look at the work other photographers produce. I like to look at shots of Calgary, and try to figure out where it was taken and what they did to get the shot. I like to see the play of light on the scene. In some cases I want to replicate that shot, mainly to prove to myself I have the skill to do it. I see how they've used ordinary elements to produce an extraordinary shot, and I try to remember in order to apply it other places. Other times I'll like the shot, but recognize it's not my style.

In a few cases I think my work is comparable, but in most I realize they've gone that extra step, to take a good photo and make it great. There's a little something to take it from 'nice' to 'WOW!' I see them, but I'm not discouraged. I'm inspired. It shows me what a photo could be. I want to recognize when the subject has the potential, and learn to take full advantage to create that wow shot.

Part of this is finding my own photographic 'voice.' So far I haven't found that I'm an X photographer, to the near exclusion of all else. I'm fascinated by light and colour and interesting shapes, and look for them in ordinary scenes. I like it when people say they've never seen something quite that way before.

So that's enough about me, let's talk about you… what do YOU think about me and my photos? I love to get comments on the blog, even if you disagree.

Feeling watched

There I was, on a nice stroll through Fish Creek, when suddenly I got that watched feeling.

I was looking for nice shots between bridge 2 and 3, which is generally pretty photogenic. I turned around to look over the logjam, and there they were. I think it's a mama and a fawn. I strolled the other way to leave them in peace. I got some nice shots but nothing spectacular.

But that watched feeling. I'm getting it more and more, and not from living things. It's our devices. It used to be that on was on, off was off, and a human changed the device from one state to another. Things aren't so clear cut anymore.

Many electronic devices still draw a tiny bit of power even when they are supposedly off. That's the price of having devices turning on instantly, and remembering their state, just to make things easier and faster for the humans. Consider the phone in your pocket. It looks off, but we all know that depending on your settings, it could blink it's lights or make noise to attract your attention to that tweet of world shaking importance. Pick it up to ask it something, and you might get a useful answer.

Ok, so actually turn it right off. Is it really off? No. Plug it in and it's awake enough to know to start charging the battery. It might even talk to the cable and charger, to ask them if they are authorized equipment approved for the task.

But.

Some of our devices have cameras and microphones. If we've set them to be off unless specifically in use, how do we know that they're really off?  I know people that have taped a piece of paper over the camera on their computers.

We've already established your phone knows who you are, and where you are to within a few metres. It also knows what else is there, as in nearby stores. It might know your credit card numbers, and therefore indirectly knows your credit history. Check Facebook or do a Google search, and you're likely to see ads that directly relate to the stores around you.

If the device is smart enough to recognize "Hey Siri" at any random time, what is is doing with all the other noise it "hears"? Is it relating it to the nearby stores to better learn how to recognize speech? Does it related what you say to your in person buddy and text to your other buddy?

And all the apps that use speech to text technology, does it also compare what you said to the corrections you made? Will the phone get smart enough to recognize and correct your speech characteristics? So for example, I have a buddy named Ken. I have never once seen my phone spell it correctly no matter how carefully I pronounce it. There are too many other words that sound similar. And yet, any human would know I was referring to a person by their name, as in "would Ken like to join us for coffee?" I suspect that it won't be long till our phones figure it out too.

I suppose if you really wanted, you could turn your phone off totally, till you needed to use it. You could turn off your electronic devices, then turn off the power bar they are plugged into, and if necessary, unplug the power bar. That would save a little bit on your electricity bill, and be mildly inconvenient. But maybe there is a little tiny battery in there, keeping some parts of the device alive.

Did you know that some TV's can be controlled by gesture? There you are sitting on the couch 10 feet away, waving your hands and having the TV obey you. How nice! Or, wait. That's a camera watching you, waiting for you to gesture. Most of us are just sitting on the couch watching. Maybe we're eating. Maybe we're snuggling our sweetie with varying degrees of intimacy. Maybe we don't feel the need to be fully dressed when watching a movie. Do you really want a camera watching you? Do you really trust that it's off or only "seeing" specific gestures? Is the gesture images being processed on the device, or does the data go to a higher powered computer via the internet?

Or the various cameras in our life. Security and traffic are the best known. Facial recognition software is getting better and better. Walk into a store, or maybe even just past it, and the computer hooked up to the camera recognizes who you are. Maybe it does a Google search on you to see if you might be interested in the products sold by that store.

So there you are, going about your day. The traffic cameras take a photo of your car, or rather more particularly, your license plate. The photo is time and date stamped, as are any photos of you taken by security cameras in public places.

There are any number of apps that track your location to produce a map of where you went, how fast, how many steps you took if walking or running, along with other data if you've enabled it. The phone could be storing that data regardless of you starting the app or not. And that's to say nothing of your browser history, emails, or texts. And you wondered why the American customs officials are so eager to seize your phone and search it.

Right now it would be difficult and time consuming to pull all that together, and the police would probably need a warrant for at least some of it. What about hackers with no compunctions about invading your privacy? Sure, you say, if I'm not breaking the law, what do I have to hide? Hmmm, lets think about that. Which doctors or other therapists do you visit? Or maybe you cheat on your spouse, do you really want someone knowing where you've been? Maybe you're visiting a dodgy tax lawyer. Maybe you've been out to a bar festooned with security cameras; could they track how much you've had to drink, then tie in data from a traffic camera, and the police get an 'anonymous' tip? All in the name of public safety, of course. Or maybe you'd be willing to pay someone to be quiet, who could demonstrate they knew of your various travels.

This is how it starts, public safety. It's for our own good. But when the so called guardians are enforcing morals, rather than laws, it quickly turns into a quagmire. That dodgy tax lawyer might not be doing anything actually unlawful, merely helping someone set up a corporation and it's none of their business that the corporation is being used to evade taxes. Some people think evading taxes is good sport, even using unlawful methods. Or the sex trade, actually paying for sex is legal in Canada, though some frown on it. What if one of those people can snoop through your data?

Privacy gets a lot of lip service, but it's like the weather. Everyone talks about it, but nobody does anything about it. Imagine if all your searches on Google were publicly tied to your name. What if you're a writer specializing in true crime, or murder mysteries, or porn? Back when being gay was both illegal and immoral, spy agencies worried about gay people in important positions being blackmailed over it. Now someone with intemperate opinions about powerful public figures might be in trouble.

Even if we can persuade our elected officials to do something to safeguard our privacy, how will we know that the laws are actually being followed? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Cats and ducks

Sounds sort of like a pub name, but it's not. It's just where I am with photos just at the moment, in whatever order blogger chooses to display them.

Curtis, of course, being the most photogenic mammal in the house, gets top billing. He might well be in the top 10 for photogenic mammals in all of Calgary, but there are some who would say I'm biased or something.

I was out for a walk in Fish Creek last week. Normally ducks, geese, whatever they are, don't do much for me. In fact, I didn't even notice them for this shot, I was after the patterns of mist coming off the water and blown by the wind.

I was captivated by Celina's paws in the sun. Just a few seconds before this her nose was in the shot as well. Then she was telling me what a rotten human I am, disturbing her sleep.

The Facebook vacation is going great! Librarians season 3 is fun and done, awaiting season 4. I got through both the Octopus and the Human Deus books. (See here if you are puzzled.) Both have got the brain cells churning which is good, but I ended up being a bit disappointed by both. For the first, the author seemed to be more interested in the evolution of the cephalopods rather than what they are now. The second is interesting, but holy doodle does he need an editor! That book is a quarter to a third too long for the points he's making. The short piece is that mankind needs to get it's shit together pretty quick.

Humanity has dealt with war, famine, and plague pretty well, now we need to deal with climate change and what we're going to do with all the people that will be put out of work in the coming decades, replaced by our robot overlords. I mean, computers that might not be self aware, or constitute artificial intelligence, but in fact are running things.

When the computer knows you better than you do, are the suggestions that it makes still suggestions, or are they orders, or something in between? How many books or discs that "Amazon suggests" have you bought? How much longer before you'll authorize it to spend a certain amount per month on such things, based on your likes and feedback and waiting list?

There used to be a saying, "have your people call my people and we'll do lunch." We are nearly to the point that we'll say, "have your calendar call my calendar and set up a date for lunch." Or maybe the calendars will set up the date anyways, because they see shared interests and goals. The hapless human will just see on their calendar for the day, "Lunch with Bill Smith at Melindas at 11:45, discuss the financing for season 5 of the X show.

When they get there, the greeter sees the reservation one of the calendars made, and takes them to the table. Only then do the two humans realize they hadn't actually planned the meeting, but realize they have lots to talk about. By then the calendars will have cross referenced their various working documents, and there's probably a link to a spreadsheet in the calendar. I can see where restaurants that specialize in working lunches for various industries will provide tables with big monitors and privacy.

Or, another example, traffic. It used to be that knowing how to get from one place to another was a prized skill. Paper maps were a thing. If you had to, you'd ask directions from the person you were visiting. It usually took a minute to get a common starting point, because directions are useless without a starting point. Everybody had their secret route to get across town during rush hour, knowing which roads went through in a useful way, and which didn't.

Calgary is bad that way, with many examples of roads with the same name not actually connected to each other. Maybe the best example here is 17 Ave in the south west and the south east, with the Stampede grounds, an LRT track, a major set of railroad tracks, a neighbourhood, several steep bluffs of unstable soil, and the Elbow River in-between the two sections. Getting from one to the other is not as easy as you'd might think. The grid system is totally broken there.

But many people now are beginning to rely on their phone and traffic app for directions, even if they know the way. Why? Traffic. Some idiot human is all too likely to demonstrate their incompetence at driving, and mess up the traffic for everyone else. Even if I know the way, I'll often check for traffic issues. The trick is what the computer tells drivers for the alternatives.

Let's say there are two equally good routes from A to B, which are also used for many other journeys. There might be a number of other routes not quite as good. Now, route 1 gets clogged for whatever reason. If the traffic app tells all the traffic to go to route 2, it will be clogged in short order. Some of the traffic should still go on route 1, and some of it should be routed onto the lesser routes 3, 4, and 5.

How does it do that? It lies to the drivers. If the app tells you there is a traffic jam on route 1, it might tell one driver to take route 2 because it's the shortest, and the next driver will be told route 3 is the shortest, and the following driver will be told route 4. It might only be a few minutes difference, but how likely are you to take the advice? How are you to ever know if you were sent down a slightly slower path in the name of overall traffic management?

The last thought is, what if you knew other people were getting shown the faster route?  What if the traffic app promised you priority routing for an in-app payment or a small monthly fee? Imagine sitting there fuming that the rich people get told which route really has less traffic. Maybe they're so rich they can pay for the app to direct people off the route they like. Of course, the non-app driver, who has a map in his head (it's likely to be a him) could take that route anyways. Now imagine not getting a choice, in that the car decides which route to take to your destination.

Old and New. Newer?

The old gives way to the new, sometimes reluctantly. There is a saying, science advances one funeral at a time. History is full of old men (it's always old men) bleating about something being the only right and natural way and resisting change. A few years later they are proven wrong. It's happened again and again, with the Catholic Church holding the record for never being correct. Tell me again why we listen to doddering old men, especially religious ones?

Except me, I'm not doddering, yet, mostly, today at least, I hope.

I didn't quite put both feet on the brakes when I saw this first scene come up, but close. It certainly would have been a "stop the van!" moment. In front is a modern version of an old piece of farm equipment. At one time farming was a way of life for a great many people. The main advantage to the day in day out dawn to dusk back breaking work was that you got to eat, unless some nobility war trampled your crops or stole them. In 1920's Canada, farming was a third of all jobs. By 2008 it was less than 2% of all jobs. (Statscan source)

Right behind it is a more modern way of making a living. I'm pretty sure that's a two phase horizontal separator. The local land owner makes a bit of money leasing it to the oil and gas company, that company makes money extracting petroleum gas and sending it downstream. People make money maintaining the equipment. Some out in the field touching the equipment, some, like me, in the office manipulating the information about the equipment or the products inside it.

Except even the petroleum industry as we know it is dying. Sure, there will always be a use for petroleum products, mainly as feedstock for making useful products and some lubricants. But the idea of burning it to move a vehicle or for energy to stay warm is going to seem quaint very soon. Photovoltaic technology is moving by leaps and bounds.

Right now solar panels are an add on to an existing house. In some places they are being installed integral with the roof or walls, which lowers the cost. Eventually it will become the standard way of building a home. Right now the payback period is complicated math depending on a lot of assumptions. The killer is not the energy cost, it's all the other fees and service charges. You pay them no matter how much energy you generate yourself. That will have to change too.

A couple of functional oil wells. Lately a lot of these have been shut in because it isn't economic to run them, so it was nice to see these working. I was amused waiting for them to be in a photogenic posture.

Once upon a time, mail came to our homes. Not like in Victorian London, oh no. There, one could write to a friend in the morning inviting them to tea in the afternoon, and get a response in time to get your cook to make fresh treats. Here we got once a day delivery to hour homes. Even in the country, there was a mailbox out at the end of the lane, and someone drove around to deliver the mail, and set the little flag so you'd know if there was mail.

Now they are grouping the deliveries to these new mailboxes. Our home was converted to this system last year, and now we have to walk to get our mail. It's a pain in the behind. I knew we would get the lowest box, and we did. I have to get down on my hands and knees practically to see into our little mailbox, and scrabble like a squirrel after a nut to get the mail out. Most of it's junk, so I put it into the outgoing mail slot, and let Canada Post deal with it.

So look at the photo. There the box is, quite literally in the middle of nowhere. There is no little village or anything else behind me. The nearest building is several kilometres down the roads in any direction. Why there? The newer technology is email, and even newer is social media and texting. How long before such mailboxes are removed for lack of use? In the meantime, I think it emphasizes the emptiness of the space between it and the mountains.

Schools are important. Right from the earliest pioneering days space was set aside for schools. In the west, the surveyors for the Dominion Land Survey marked out space for schools. I'm not sure when this was last used as an actual school, but somebody visits it often enough to leave a well marked path in the fresh snow.

When kids walked or rode horses to school they couldn't go far, though if you believe such kids now, it was eleventymany miles uphill each way. Then school buses were invented and they started consolidating the schools, getting professional teachers rather than the smart local teenager.

As near as I can tell now, being the child free adult I am, schools seem mainly to be a cesspool of disease spreading agents, namely children. I don't think you could invent a better mechanism to breed new versions of flu and colds and other infections, and spread them around.

People with money are trying to starve public schools because they've figured out that educating the masses is a bad idea. Such people send their own kids to private schools, where they can control the curriculum and make sure their children meet the right kind of people. One of us, as the saying goes.

Right now schools seem to have it backwards. They have someone lecturing up front teaching concepts, trying to spread the message to a large number of children in a limited time. Then they send them home to work on imperfectly mastered material. No wonder kids hate school. I'd like to see on line teaching done for the basic concepts, and teachers used when the kids are having difficulty with a concept.

Change happens and I mostly welcome it. Maybe not the mailbox, but generally. I like seeing real new things come out. Real new, meaning something actually new, like the first iPhone and and the next few models. Now they aren't new, and the changes are annoying. Electric cars and self driving cars are new and I can't wait for them to be more widely adopted. I was just reading that they've figured out how to regenerate teeth in mice, and are working on rats. Can't wait for that to be available for people.

All these photos were taken on the Saturday photo ramble, and there are a few more coming.

The Expanse, season 1, a review, sort of

Have I ever mentioned that Calgary has an amazing library system? Well, we do. The branch we go to most is one of the busiest library branches in the whole country. It's always a happening place.

Back in the day we used to go to the library at least weekly. We went through a ton of books. This was before DVD's, and about the time that CD's were a new thing. Yes, I know that for some of my readers CD's have always been a thing, and for a few of them, CD's are an obsolete format used only by old fogies. Moving on.

The selection of DVDs is quite wide, and they even have a bunch of blue ray discs. The selection is quite recent as well, so I think someone on the selection committee is really on the ball. We are old fashioned about our media. I've ranted about buying movies or music that live on the cloud, so we will buy the discs for a series we really like. Trick is finding out if you like it.

Enter the library. Borrowing is free. For some of the more recent offerings there is a wait line, but that's what computers are for to keep track of. I've got a bunch of holds, and it all works out quite well if a little self-control is to be had. Which is difficult sometimes. When you are retired it's easy to stay up and watch another episode, and another. Except I still get up early to swim, and I'm still a morning person, not a night owl.

We've been chewing through The Librarians (the TV show) and The Librarian (the movies), and are awaiting the second movie. Any day now. I think we are number 4 or 6 on the wait list for the next TV season. We are #60 something on the list for American Gods, down from just over 100.

Our copy of The Expanse came up last week. Holy Doodle! I'm a big science fiction fan from way back, and I'm often disappointed with the recent state of the art. Well, not the new Battlestar Galactica, that was superb. I am slowly working through that again, an episode at a time, looking at the extras, thinking about how they put the story together. And Arrival, that was wonderful. There are so many good book just ready to be made into movies, and what do we get? Star dreck, in a wars flavour. Both suck now, and have sucked for more than a decade.

The Expanse is a complicated story, to be sure. You get dropped into it with barely an introduction and you're off to the races, keeping track of 3 different stories that at first don't appear to go together unless you're really sharp right from the get go. Really sharp. I almost want to go back and watch it again and see what I pick up on second viewing. I have it a few more days. (Hmmmm, checks calendar and to do list.)

If you're familiar with Larry Niven's work, (and you are if you're science fiction fan older than about 10) then you're a small step up on the general public. It's a complicated world, which is a good thing. One of the things that pisses me off is when science fiction media takes you to a new world, and it might as well be one small village. Everybody is the same and often they're all white people with the men in charge, or white people in funny hats, with one climate (anyone have any trouble pronouncing Hoth?) and artificial conflict. Plus the layers of unicorn poop and rainbows get a little thick. Or it's just a really bad movie (Looking at you, Avatar) dressed up in CGI clothing.

There is very little unicorn poop here. Their amazing medical and space ship drive technology are about it. Niven had an auto-doc, a coffin-like contraption that you could put someone in, shut the lid, and the computer would save them. Maybe it's a first step towards the sarcophagus contraption in Stargate that the bad guys used to stay young. These guys are beyond that. In one scene a couple of people are busy trying to avoid getting shot while dying of what we are told is a high dose of radiation that will kill them in a few hours. (SPOILER> they make it back to the ship and an arm thingie is clamped on and they are all better real quick.)

This is a spaceships centric show. You could almost turn the sound off and just watch the visuals. I was on the edge a few times, almost pushed into a state of disbelief about the SIZE of those spaceships, and the amount of room in them. They make the Enterprise look cramped. Huge interior spaces mean lots of metal to contain them, and they somehow manage to move all of it around quite quickly. Really quickly. There is no mumbo-jumbo about the drive technology and maybe that's for the best.

The spaceships are all different, and thoroughly lived in. You can almost smell the BO. The controls are all gesture sensitive screen, and there are lovely three D graphics done with hand gestures. The zero g scenes are really well shot, though I can't decide for sure if they have an artificial gravity or not. There are several scenes of magnetic boots clumping on decks, and others where people are walking normally without them. Part of the show takes place on Ceres, where the gravity is about 3% of Earth's. Yet they walk normally. Then again, maybe that's just me bringing reality into it again.

The characters are a little bit standard, (corrupt cop with a heart of almost gold for example) but there is some evolution along the way. Be warned, there are a lot of characters, and while we're not talking Game of Thrones death scenes, there are a lot of people dying, mostly off screen. At one point I was thinking that with all the stuff being blown up, space debris must be getting to be a problem. They haven't mentioned deflector shields or the like, in situations where it would be reasonable to expect them. And yay, so far no smart ass kid saving the day by reconfiguring the main dish.

Most of the actors are new to me, and I'm pretty pleased with how they fill out the roles. Screen chemistry is good, though I'm wondering what is motivating characters at some points. Perhaps that's better explained in the books. I'll be getting them.

This is not kick back, nibble popcorn and swill your drink kind of a show. Things move quick, and there's lots going on. I found it hard to pick the conversations out of the background noise, but that's generally a problem for me anyways, so I can't blame the sound mix. But if you like your science fiction at a level above child's play star trek/wars, and like to put the pieces together for yourself, this is for you.

Why yes, since you ask, I've got season 2 on hold at the library.

Macro Monday 19: Orange reentry

When it's a cold and snowy Saturday outside, its lovely to be inside, shooting something that reminds you of molten glass, which this was, once.

This is one of the first paperweights I ever made, and it's still one of my favourites. I was trying to get a thin rod of yellow glass swirled around a bar of amber colour glass, all formed into a neat knot, with another layer of glass over it. While I was working on it, it was all kind of getting away from me, so I had to smush it down onto the punty, then work on spherical again. Spherical is hard, btw. Now it looks like a blob of marmalade. Love it!

This is an air bubble in glass, at about 4.9 x mag plus 68 mm of extension tubes. I'm not even sure which bubble it is, so I don't know how big it actually is. It's really hard to tell real size inside a glass ball anyways. Most of the rest of the shots are at about 3x mag, plus extension tubes. I cannot tell you how happy these shades of orange and yellow make me.

I call this one orange reentry, sort of like how I called the first one here red reentry.

In some of these the yellow bar looks a bit green, but that just gives it a bit more contrast. I think it's because white light is going through orange glass, and that affects the yellow colour. I don't have any idea how I got it to be kind of lacy. That's the beauty of working with glass, even your screwups can be beautiful.

More air bubbles, about 3x mag.

If you were to pick up this paperweight and hold it, you'd be able to see the various layered swirls of colour and the bubbles in it. What makes the macro photos tricky is that the camera only "sees" a thin plane of it in focus. A small change in focus, or even moving the camera back and forth on the rails can dramatically change the photo. I spent several happy hours rolling the paperweight around looking for interesting shots. Lots and lots of rejects.

Here's some shots of the setup. People have asked about that. I am totally low tech. The camera is mounted on a 4 way macro rail (which is totally essential, I don't know how you could do macro shots without it), which is fastened to the top of a tripod, but there is no ball head so there are no angle shots unless I want to play with the tripod arm. The subject is supported by a keyboard beanbag wrist support in some shots but not all, which is resting on a floor cement trowel, which is clamped into a bike stand. Yes, the lens is often that close to the subject. It's lit by an LED lamp opposite the camera, in otherwise normal basement lighting. I'm using a Canon T6i with the MP-E 65 mm macro lens with the MT24-EX twin flash as a dedicated macro camera.

This is what it looked like outside when I started. Now it's snowing hard, but it's warmed up to -13 C. It was lovely to shoot the paperweight, remembering the hot dry atmosphere of the studio, baking in the kiln heat, trying not to burn myself playing with the molten glass, my hands shielded only by wet newspaper.