BWare : The swimmers the dolphins push away from shore don't live to tell the tale

Yet another B. Ware

Tagged YABW

2012 01 09 Brent Comment Comments Off Permalink

Red tails

There are two red tail hawks circling at the height of my window about 50 m away. It’s another perfect 72 F So Cal day, visibility absolutely crystal.

The iPhone 4S not good enough to capture this, unfortunately. And the D700, lovely though it is, is too big, and too expensive, to bicycle in with. Which is why a NEX-7 is in my future. Though the Fuji X-Pro1 looks very sweet. Big, expensive, and no IS. And the Olympus OM-D… It’s the best of times, and the worst of time to be a photographer. Lots of good affordable gear, but no way to make a living doing it anymore.

2012 01 09 Brent Comment Comments Off Permalink

X of the year, 2011

Song: Bloodbuzz Ohio, The National, High Violet. Driving deserted freeways across Ohio at 4 AM in a big American sports car, on cold dark wet shining October roads, after 10 days of climbing at the RRG, with the drum beat from this song going over and over…
Concert: The National, Hollywood Bowl, Sunday, September 11. I didn’t go to a lot of concerts, but this was one of the best I’ve been to in years. I went for Neko Case and walked away a National fan.
Album: Foo Fighters, Wasting Light. On shuffle all year. Close second: Jason & The Scorchers, Halcyon Times.
Book(s): Tie: The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton, and The Lost Books of the Odyssey, Zachary Mason. And I’m on my Nth trip through Moby Dick. Seriously. I have read this book more times than I can count. And for that matter, on another journey through Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Exhibit: Tie: Venice Biennale, and William Eggleston: Democratic Camera—Photographs and Video, 1961–2008, Broad Contemporary Art Museum, LACMA, October 31, 2010–January 16, 2011. Where it dawned on me, 25 years later, that I very likely met Mr. Eggleston in a former life in Dallas, Texas. tl;dr involving an actress ex, David Byrne, True Stories, and an early Spalding Gray spoken word performance in Deep Ellum. Ain’t life strange. Cool story, bro.

: Eggleston – Over Kentucky, Airplane Drink

2012 01 09 Brent Comment
Picture of the day Comments Off Permalink

Windpocalypse

2012 01 07 Brent Comment Comments Off Permalink

89 F

2012 01 04 Brent Comment Comments Off Permalink

Trolley cars

2012 01 04 Brent Picture of the day Comments Off Permalink

Quote of the day, 3 January 2012

This is a test of the XXX public announcement system. If you can’t hear this announcement, please contact your floor warden.

I am not making this up. Yes, I work at a semi-famous FFRDC, which supposedly hires smart people.

2012 01 03 Brent Quote of the day Comments Off Permalink

Why I don’t go to the movie theatre anymore

Yeah, that screen is about as big as it looks. No trickery here.

2011 12 29 Brent Picture of the day Comments Off Permalink

Free money

[T]here was a way to hand it free money which would benefit all of us and the banksters. I’m partial to the “just drop money from helicopters” way of giving out free money, but there were other ways. The “here’s a $20,000 voucher to pay off your mortgage and/or credit card” would have been a way. The point is, the banks would have gotten their money anyway and the rest of us would have benefited too.

I know I’m repeating myself on this issue. It’s because people’s brains freeze up a bit when you talk about the central bank creating money and handing it out. But that’s what they’re doing! They’re just not doing it in a way which benefits people broadly, they’re doing it in a way which benefits rich assholes.

This has been another edition of “What Atrios said, 28 December 2011.”

2011 12 28 Brent Photography Comments Off Permalink

Ending short term thinking

A large number of rent-collectors and financial middlemen making vast amounts of money are keeping the current system in place. The fact that what they are doing is destroying the economy will not sway their thinking. As Upton Sinclair noted, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

—Steve Denning, reviewing Roger L. Martin’s Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL. Harvard Business Review Press 2011.

2011 12 28 Brent Quote of the day Comments Off Permalink

Golden Gun Investigations & Bloom’s Saloon

2011 12 26 Brent Picture of the day Comments Off Permalink

Quote of the day, 26 December 2011

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.

–George Orwell, ‘In Front of Your Nose’, Tribune, March 22, 1946.

2011 12 26 Brent Quote of the day Comments Off Permalink

I’ll take the fifth…

Or not, it seems.

Another amendment down.

Tagged another amendment down

2011 12 26 Brent Rant Comments Off Permalink

Reflections on dogs

Two days before Xmas in Southern California. Warm water, warm breeze, barefoot on the beach.

Reflections on dogs; or of dogs

2011 12 23 Brent Dogs
Picture of the day Comments Off Permalink

You never want to see your pilot do this…

You never want to see your pilot do this...

I can see my house from here

Probably shouldn’t be flying when the forecast is for 50 knot Santa Ana winds. But what the heck. It was quiet as a church on the ground, nary a whisper, but quite bumpy in the air, so we didn’t stay up long.

2011 12 23 Brent Picture of the day Comments Off Permalink

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