suboptimal information

My camera kit

Since my flickr page links here, I figure this is as good a place as any to document my camera kit.

First, my camera (body only, I skipped the kit lens):
Canon Digital Rebel XT

and the lens I got with it right off the bat, my general lens:
Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Standard Zoom Lens

the vertical battery grip, which I use just for the extra grip surface and control buttons, but also provides more battery capacity:
Canon BG-E3 Battery Grip

a macro lens, for pet photography:
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens

The classic “standard” 50mm self instruction lens:
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens

A wide angle lens, to deal with the sub-frame sensor cropping factor:
Canon EF 20-35mm f/3.5-4.5 USM Ultra Wide Angle Zoom Lens

and the flash:
Canon Speedlite 430EX Flash

How crazy do you have to be to go on Food Network

With all these award winning cooks getting challenged on Throwdown with Bobby Flay, how crazy do they have to be when they get approached for their “Food Network Profile”.  Just once I’d like to see Flay show up at a victim’s faux profile and have the victim immediately blurt out “You’re ON FLAY!  You’re GOIN DOWN!” or something.

Should it be legal to discriminate against honor killer families?

Honor killings are often carried out against family members perceived or suspected of having brought shame onto the family, usually by a sibling or previous generation relative.

While most certainly illegal, it should be fair in a big picture point of view to discriminate against the same class of shamed people if they or their kin carry out an honor killing. I may not care that some dude’s sister married a person of a lesser caste, but if his mother and brothers killed her over it, maybe I don’t want to risk giving him a job or renting him an apartmenet. Who knows what the risks are - I could be out a large investment in training if he’s later arrested for conspiracy in the original honor killing or involvement in some other honor killing of some other family member.

Continue reading Should it be legal to discriminate against honor killer families?…

The absurdity of an over-abundance of caution

Allen Lee is told to write anything, without consideration of appropriate or even inappropriate censorship, as part of a creative writing assignment. For his troubles he’s arrested for two counts of disturbing the peace, effectively expelled (the action taken isn’t expulsion, but the result is the same - he’s no longer going to that school, it’s a disciplinary action, and against his will), and has been released from his chosen future - the United States Marine Corps.

What would people - parents of students - do if the teacher had given them an assignment under the pretext of writing in a thought crime society where every possible thought crime contrary to the interests of the the greater good is prosecuted. What would they have done if the teacher instructed the students to write a paper under this premise and insisted that they not identify themselves, gave every student a copy of every essay, and then told them all that they would get a failing grade on the assignment unless they found a plausible neo-conservative, ultra fundamentalist, or otherwise extremist reason for prosecuting the writer of every essay.

Continue reading The absurdity of an over-abundance of caution…