More from the voyage of learning

Continuing the theme of my last post on the most endearing things I encountered on my recent trip to India, I offer you now the 10 most infuriating things I encountered on my recent trip to the deep south of India:

10. Petty bureaucracy: Seemingly since individuals have very little control over various aspects of their lives, when they are put in positions of power, however trivial, they exercise the small amount of authority vested in them with an almost feudal vigor. A great example was a clothing store where I had taken my mother to get her a sari for her birthday. After picking the sari, you couldn't just pay for it. All the saris are shown to you by a sales clerk, who then hands the chosen sari to another guy, who walks with you to a cash counter where you pay for the sari. You would expect then that the sari would be handed to you. Not so much. They give you a receipt in 2 copies, which you then take to another counter where they examine the receipt carefully, tear off one copy and hand you the sari along with the receipt. On your way out, you hand the sari and the receipt to a guy at the door who examines the whole deal to make sure that you're not decamping with contraband. He then stamps the receipt and lets you out of the store with the sari. Any attempt to short-circuit this "make work" exercise is frowned upon.

9. Complete lack of civic responsibility: You need only to see people living in large homes surrounded by high fences dumping their garbage and refuse over the tops of their fences onto the street to get this. Another example is where little boys work at gas stations and garages for the express purpose of dumping used motor oil and lubricants at the street corner. The attitude is "Not in my backyard, but in my neighbor's front yard is just fine". The only truly authentic way to describe it in Hindi is "मेरा बाप का क्या जाता है"। ( Man, I just love this new Hindi transliteration capability in blogger. This is going to add so much more this blog. Even fewer people will read it now.)

8. The double standard: What's right for the goose is most certainly not right for the gander. Certain attitudes and activities are reserved for men. Women just cannot aspire to them. For example a frankly appraising glance at a member of the opposite sex is absolutely reserved for men. A woman who looks at a man in any way other a purely furtive glance risks being branded a harlot.

7. The status of women: While women seem to enjoy parity in the work place, at least in middle and lower-middle level jobs, and India was one of the first countries to have had a woman leader, women seem to be conspicuously absent from most the management teams of most large companies. Women entrepreneurs seem to be restricted to micro-businesses, and in employment seem to be restricted to traditional roles such as nurses, school teachers and ob-gyns.

6. 'Eve teasing': A innocent and somewhat romantic-sounding term unique to India, that hides a darker, more unpleasant truth. In this euphemism for harassment, hordes of young men grope, push and rub against women in buses, trains and other crowded public places, causing intolerable and unacceptable stress to young women. A young girl told me she decided to drop out of college some distance away from her home due the uninvited attentions of several 'roadside Romeos'. While in Italy it's not uncommon to find men leaning languorously on Vespas, making frankly appreciative comments about women passing by, they draw the line at physical molestation. And if the woman in question doesn't appreciate the wolf whistles, the Italians pack it in. The young college age Indian men see lack of enthusiasm for their advances as a challenge. Perhaps bred on a steady diet of Bollywood movies where all it takes is a couple of songs to turn the heroine's anger and disgust into undying love for the hero, they ratchet up the level of harassment to frankly appalling levels.

5. Driving habits: You realize the true horror of Indian driving habits only when you are traveling on an Indian highway in a car (which from the quality of the ride appears to have square wheels) that's approaching 3 oncoming vehicles, only one of which is on its own side of the road. The oncoming bus is being passed on a blind corner by another bus, which in turn is being passed by a large truck and they are all hurtling at you 3 abreast with their headlights and all manner of auxiliary lights on. So what does your driver do? Get off the pavement onto the shoulder and allow these suicidal lunatics to go past? Hell no. What kind of man would he be if he did that? This is clearly a call to arms. So he turns his headlights on high beam, leans on the horn and continues to barrel straight at the oncoming vehicles in this high stakes game of chicken. These contests of manhood are not resolved in the same way on every occasion. Sometimes the outermost oncoming vehicle decides at the last minute to hang back a little allowing enough room for the three others to just squeak by. Sometimes your driver loses his nerve and goes off the road onto the shoulder, waving his fists and making lurid suggestions about the sexual practices of the other drivers' mothers and sisters. In either case, you would be needing a change of underwear about now.

4. The obsession with lighter complexions: Perhaps as a result of hundreds of years of colonization (first the Mughals from Central Asia ruled India for 250 years from 1525 to 1775 and then the British ruled for a further 200 years until 1947) by light-skinned foreigners who were always in positions of authority, caused the average Indian to prize the lighter complexion. But the emphasis on the desirability of a 'fair' complexion is bordering on the ridiculous. Skin lightening products have created a $140 Million market and matrimonial ads in the papers and on internet marriage sites asking for and offering "fair" brides abound. There is change on the way with more successful dark-skinned Bollywood actresses, but it's far too gradual. The common man (and woman) still thinks lighter complexions are prettier.

3. A strong anti-American sentiment coupled with a desire to migrate there: It would be an extremely rare social gathering in India where the topic does not eventually turn to the war in Iraq or American politics. Inevitably at these times, the popular response from the whisky- soaked guests is either a disparaging remark about the bumptious Americans, or a George Bush joke illustrating just how clueless the 43rd President is. Admittedly, the President doesn't do himself any favors and has been providing rich fodder for comedians the world over since his first inauguration. But what makes this contempt for America and things American, more puzzling is that every middle class family has at least one child (sometimes every child) in the United States, who is pointed to with great pride. India accounts for the largest number of foreign students admitted to American Universities each year. In the immortal words of Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware,"you can't go into Dunkin Donuts or a 7-11 if you don't have a slight Indian accent". Seemingly the same rule applies to Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, Yale, MIT and Stanford. So why the contempt?

2. Flies: They are the most ubiquitous creatures and are to be found equally plentifully on the piles of garbage piled on street corners as they are on sweets and candies in roadside stalls. They fill me with dread every time I see them swarming around food, and I can imagine myself contracting some particularly virulent form of hemorrhagic fever. Enough said.

1. Mosquitoes: Having donated many pints of my blood to the swarms of mosquitoes that invade Indian homes every night, I should now be on fairly congenial terms with them. But I am not. When I awoke on the second morning in India with my face and head covered in hundreds of angry red bumps, my heart lurched sickeningly and visions of small pox isolation wards came unbidden to my mind. Pulling up my T-shirt and examining my chest and stomach closely, and finding no bumps convinced me that these were indeed evidence of the nocturnal visitations of my buzzing nemeses. My horror at the viral fevers spread by these critters and the casual way in which people in India refer to a recent bout of such a mosquito-borne illness called Chikungunya, causes this to be ranked the #1 most infuriating thing I encountered in India.

A voyage of learning and understanding

And I'm back. The trip to India, despite my trepidations turned out to be better than I had anticipated. Visiting the place of my birth after an absence of nearly 35 years was interesting, informative and revealing. The warmth of the people and their unquestioning acceptance of ways they probably thought were weird, was complete.

The travel itself was wearying. When I actually did the calculation, I was somewhat dismayed to discover that the door-to-door travel time, from leaving my home in Boulder, Colorado to entering my mother's house in the deep south of India took an eye watering 40 hours of elapsed time.

When I got back my friends badgered me over beers as to the things I found most changed, the most intriguing, the most infuriating and most endearing about the country and its people. So I thought I would share my thoughts in that regard:

The 10 most endearing things I encountered:

10. The 'wag' of the head, a uniquely Indian body expression, meaning 'I agree' or 'OK', where it is neither a nod nor a headshake.
9. People wanting to do things for you - like carry your suitcase or open doors for you
8. Everyone wants to feed you. If you're visiting you must eat. Or you must drink tea or coffee. How people remain relatively slim with all this eating is beyond me.
7. The incredible food. After the first few meals at the homes of relatives I visited, I stopped complaining that I had just eaten lunch. The food was so good, that if they wanted to feed me lunch twice, who was I to object?
6. People get offended if you thank them. They see expressions of thanks as 'formality' and are offended that you're treating them as you would a stranger.
5. The "We'll adjust somehow" attitude. In the face of daunting adversity people find it in their hearts to be charitable and accommodating to others. A bus may be full beyond its designed capacity, with people hanging on to every possible protuberance of the vehicle (including the roof) but there's always room for one more passenger and his stuff.
4. The attitude towards animals. Domestic animals and strays alike are treated with such acceptance that goats, cows, dogs and chickens wander through village and small town streets without any fear of harm. Traffic stops to let them pass and moves on.
3. The cleanliness of small villages. Be they however poor, everyone seems to freshly showered and changed in the morning often with wet hair, and the outside of the homes are freshly sprinkled with water and a design with rice flour (to feed the ants) is made on the doorstep.
2. The love of music. Every street corner seems to have a little tea shop that plays music loudly seemingly to attract customers. From devotional songs early in the morning to popular film music through the day, the radio falls silent only when the shop closes for the night at 11:00.
1. The smiles. From shy schoolgirls smiling behind henna'd fingers to the toothless grin of the grizzled farm hand, everyone seems to be smiling all the time. And it's not the rictus of forced mirth. It's the open smile of welcome, of hope and just pure happiness.

Not everything is sweetness and light however. My next post shall be about the most infuriating things I encountered.

Back to the roots

I leave tomorrow for a week's sojourn to the land of my birth - actually the very place of my birth. All those many years ago, families of a certain middle-class (some may say bourgeois) sensibility in small-town India would rarely have their children born in a hospital or nursing home. The event would usually occur at home attended by a mid-wife and the female relatives of the pregnant woman.

When my mother was carrying me, it was just such a scenario that caused me to be born in a special birthing room in my grandfather's house deep in South India. This room has seen the birth of many of my cousins and some of their own children as well, and is now used as a spare room. My uncle's family lives in the house now and many of the things I remember from childhood visits to this house in the late 50s and 60s have remained.

This weekend, I travel to India to attend my mother's birthday - she turns 80 next week and what more fitting tribute can I pay than to be present to record her crossing that momentous milestone?

I approach this trip with some trepidation. Trips to India are (at least for me) fraught with tension. You cannot possibly visit all the relatives in the time you have. How do you make the choice of which ones to see? How do you appease the ones you don't see? What gifts are approriate for people you haven't seen in 30 years?

You have no idea of their interests, or likes or dislikes. Or even of their physical size. What are age and gender-appropriate gifts half a world and whole planet away? Does this toy look cheap? Is this top too immodest for a high school girl?

How do you maintain some semblance of a healthy diet when everyone insists on forcing rich sweets and desserts down your throat? How does someone who drinks neither coffee not tea politely refuse the profferred drinks at each visit, without throwing your hosts in to a welter of confusion?

When I return in a week, I may be none the wiser on these and other imponderables, but I will at least have the trip behind me.

So passes another year

As 2006 drew to a close, the confluence of a number of events conspired to prevent me from blogging. First there was the return of the prodigal son from the Orient, the seat of the chrysanthemum throne, if only for the celebration of the winter solstice. His brief visit was the cause of much anticipation and of the preparation of a sizeable feast.

Then, no sooner had the wrapping paper been ripped away from the various and sundry gifts given by each of us to the other, and the celebratory meal gorged, than we found ourselves winging our way to San Diego, California as the rendezvous point for the family reunion and vacation.

The complicated logistics of coordinating the arrival of 13 members of the extended family on four different flights and the subsequent rendezvous in the parking lot of the Vons grocery store just north of the Mexican border, would have been impossible were it not for the magic of GPS systems and cellphones.

Rendezvous accomplished, and loaded with over $350 worth of beer, liquor and other staples like Tropicana orange juice, Quaker Oatmeal, Diet Coke and bottled water, the caravan of 2 cars and a mini-van journeyed south into Mexico to the Baja peninsula. Having rented 3 villas in a gated resort community, the plan was to see just how much 13 people could eat, drink and carouse without being ejected from the country.

Eat, drink and carouse we did.

When the girls went shopping, the guys hit the hot tub, or the pool or the beach club. The braver and younger males attempted boogie-boarding in the cold ocean waters, and recovered their breath in the hot tub thereafter.

With 6 of the 13 people below the age of 30, there was no danger that we would go to bed early each day. Though some of the older members (or at least, those that were older at heart) did keep rather more sedate hours, with yoga at sunrise and moderate amounts of alcohol. This was dubbed 'The 23 Lifestyle' by a young nephew, for the number of the villa they occupied.

For New Year's Eve we booked a table (a large one) at La Fonda, a spectacular open air restaurant overlooking the Pacific. When I called to make the reservation the very accommodating young woman said they were setting up for the New Year's Eve party, but if we could come in and have drinks and order dinner by 6:30, they would take care of us.

When finally the caravan wound its way to the restaurant past cliffs tinted orange by the setting sun, and wheeling pelicans swooping down into a bay below to scoop up the catch of the day, we were told that we were welcome to have drinks but we couldn't order dinner as the kitchen was closed.

Now, telling 13 individuals who have been burned by the sun and battered by the ocean under the broad rubric of having fun at the beach, that there is no food at journey's end is a risky proposition at the best of times. Try that on New Year's Eve and there's likely to be gun play in the streets.

Claiming indignantly that we had been promised seating and dinner was to no avail. We could either have a few drinks and leave, or leave right away.

A quick consultation with the group and an executive decision was made. We would have a couple of quick margaritas , watch the setting sun and then go elsewhere for dinner. But where? A carefully orchestrated plan to ring in the New Year, to the sound of surf crashing on the rocks below the restaurant terrace was coming unglued.

Someone suggested that we should buy some dessert which we could take back to the villas. So enquiries were made. Yes, they had flan. La Fonda's very special flan, known far and wide. But just enough for the New Year's party that we couldn't attend. So we did the only thing you can do in such situations. The maitre d's palm was crossed with silver and the entire supply of flan found its way to our car outside.

So while the diners caroused their way to the dessert course, they would do so blissfully unaware that their much anticipated flan had been spirited away under their very noses. Not for them the warm sticky golden goodness of flan sliding down their throats chased down by sips of Almond Tequila. No. They would have to content themselves with a mixed fruit salad.

As the caravan of cars left La Fonda in search of dinner, the rooster plumes of dust kicked up by the tyres, hung in the air as mute testimony to the vanished dessert.

If revenge is a dish best served cold, there could be no sweeter revenge than this.

You could say La Fonda and its diners got their just desserts.

Be environmentally responsible - have fewer kids

When I meet people at cocktail parties and the conversation turns to cars, it inevitably emerges that I have four cars, of which two are Jeeps. All the cars have six cylinders, and the smallest engine of the lot is the BMW at 3.0 liters. This revelation usually causes people to look at me with furrowed brows and a sharp intake of breath, as if to say "How could you?" There are a few people (usually women with bad hair, cracked feet and bitten nails) who actually utter the words.

When these same people learn that we have only 2 people in our household (the wife and yours truly), the sharp intakes of breath come close to hyper-ventilation.

The immediate assumption is that I am personally responsible for the deforestation of the Amazon, the depletion of all the earth's natural resources, and all the other ills that ail us. If they could find a way to connect the genocide in Darfur to my cars, they would do so happily.

But in my defense, I have a clear, logical and completely rational explanation why two people need (note, I didn't say want) four cars. I suppose I could confound and frustrate the greenies by saying I have four cars because I can. But I don't. I have excellent reasons.

First, we live in Colorado, just outside of Boulder, at a height of 6,000 ft above sea-level. And while we have glorious dry summers, we also have snowy winters. In fact as I write this, we've just dug ourselves out of the Blizzard of 06 with snowfall around 28 inches where we are, and drifts up to 4 feet on our driveway. Just to put that in perspective, that's snow up to an average man's hips. The only vehicles that can get up to our house on days like this are 4 wheel drives with lockable front and rear differentials. But you don't want to drive the Jeeps in the summer. So the BMW is for fun driving in the summer and the Mercedes for family outings in the summer.

Also, we have 2 golden retrievers - make that 2 rambunctious golden retrievers. You cannot possibly suggest seriously that we take the dogs out to the park or to the vets in the back of either the Mercedes or the BMW. Hence the Jeeps. Makes eminent sense when you think about it doesn't it?

But my point is not that, because of where I choose to live or the pets I choose to have, I somehow have a pass to treat the environment with willful abandon. No, quite the contrary. I think I, with my four cars, have a smaller sustained effect on the environment than the average American.

Here's my reasoning: Despite the fact that I have four cars, due to the immutable laws of physics, I can only drive one car at a time. The same applies to my wife. So no matter how profligate I am, the maximum impact I can have on the environment at any given time, is that which is caused by 2 cars. Not four.

The average American of my age has 3 or 4 kids, who all drive. They in turn will have 3 or 4 kids each. And if each of them heeds the Birkenstock brigade and has only one hybrid each, their impact on the planet and its environment will still be far greater than mine.

So my suggestion to all the women with cracked feet who look at me accusingly, is that perhaps their contribution to saving the environment might be tubal ligation. In any event you don't want their kind propagating do you?

Blind leading the blinds?

The remote control blinds in our master bedroom stopped working. They have remained stubbornly in the retracted position for a few weeks now. Usually I am all for sunshine, and in Colorado we get more than 290 days of sunshine a year. However, when you're attempting to recover from the excesses of a Friday evening, sunshine streaming into the bedroom early on a Saturday morning is not ideal.

My attempts at trying to diagnose the problem petered out after changing the batteries that drive the blind motor. A quick google of Hunter-Douglas repair locations revealed a facility quite close by. An even quicker phone call established that for a technician to come out and take a look at the offending blind would cost $85, but if I were to take the blind down and bring it in to the repair facility, I could avoid the $85 charge.

So I addressed myself to the task of taking the blind down. The blind is secured to the window frame by a set of three brackets of sturdy plastic, and try as I might I could not pry the blind from the surly grasp of these brackets. There were no screws or other fasteners in evidence, and the screws that held the brackets to the window frame were hidden behind the top of the blind and therefore inaccessible.

I must pause here to mention that I am no stranger to home improvement projects. I once left the family room in our house in Canada in a state of considerable chaos for nearly a year as I attempted to build a new fireplace. That the fireplace was finally built and did not cause the house to fill with smoke or combust spontaneously, is I think, a testament to my skill. My wife's version of events is slightly different. But we digress.

Assuming that the application of brute force would be ill-advised I looked on the web for installation instructions for the Hunter-Douglas Duette blind with the PowerRise option. While the instructions helpfully gave me a step-by-step plan to install the blind, they rather truculently suggested that to take the blinds down I would just have to follow the instructions in the reverse order. Problem with no visible fasteners and the reluctance to use brute force. (Were our government only to use such restraint!)

Convinced that I was missing a simple trick that would cause the blind to separate from its moorings and drop into my waiting hands, I decided to take the coward's way out. The glowering visage of the wife mouthing "J'accuse" while pointing a painted talon my way did nothing to help.
Not that she'd ever say anything like that.

I decided to go to the repair facility and ask for their help to bring the blind down.

So it was, that this morning found me striding into the repair facility looking for dismantling instructions. As I walked in, the woman with the streaked blonde hair and not unattractive features shot a glance at me and said "I'll be right with you, Sir".

As she was attending to another customer, I wandered around the store, sucking my teeth trying to dislodge the piece of gristle from last night's dinner wedged in the back. The thing finally came loose leaving me wondering what I would do next.

As I dug around absently, I noticed that the lint in the pocket of my jeans were a darker blue than the jeans themselves. That occupied my attention for a while, until I spotted a new Range Rover Sport in the parking lot outside the store. As I was computing the precise number of my current cars I would have to sell to afford the beast, Blondie sidled up to me and said "Can I help you?"

I explained the problem with the paucity of exposed fasteners and the reluctance to use brute force. She looked witheringly at me and said "It's quite easy, really. You twist the top of the blind towards you, and they'll pop right off."

"Oh, that's great" I said ingratiatingly "Could you show me how?"

With a toss of her streaked blonde mane and an upward roll of her eyes, she walked over to the demo model of a blind in the showroom, grasped the top of the blind.

"See? Just like this" she said as she gave the blind a forceful wrench upward and outward. There was a crack and the retaining bracket on the left came down to the floor in a small shower of white plastic pieces. The screw holding the bracket to the window frame was left in place with a ring of broken plastic around it, where the bracket had once been.

"That's exactly what I was trying to avoid" I said, trying very hard not to sound smug, and failing.

"Oh, it's not meant to do that" she said. "Well, let's try the bracket on the other side, a bit more gently"

She went over to the other edge of the blind and attempted the same motion, but this time without quite so much of the flourish. At first the blind didn't budge, but then as she progressively applied greater pressure, it seemed to move. And then the fatal crack.

The right hand side bracket joined its recently departed brother on the floor, but in fewer pieces, due no doubt to the delicate touch employed this time.

Quite clearly flustered now, Blondie said "Well, if your break the brackets taking the blind down, we'll give you new ones."

"How much are they?"

"Did you buy the blind here?"

"I don't remember" I said. A lie. "Why?"

"Well, if you bought the blinds here, we'd give you the brackets for free"

"Oh, now that I think about it" glancing upwards thoughtfully, "I think we did"

And so armed with 2 spare brackets and no wiser about taking the blind down without breaking the brackets, I returned home.

This afternoon I once again squared away in front of the blind show it who's boss. I grasped the blind on the left edge, pushed up and out in a smooth motion. I think I must have telegraphed my unhesitant confidence, buoyed by the 2 spare brackets nestled on my work bench.

As I twisted the top of the blind, it parted from its mooring but not without first splintering the bracket into a few large shards. Oh well, I still had one spare bracket. On to the right hand side, and the same upward push and twist.

This one came free easily, and broke only the tip of the bracket. No shower of plastic. Just a broken edge of the bracket, rendering it useless, but no pile of while plastic on the floor.

So the way I figure it, if I had another 16 sets of inoperable blinds, by the time I get to the 16th blind I would have got the hang of this dismantling thing. But as it is, I am going to be making good use of the spare brackets I scored.

And I'm going to have to get rid of the 2 Jeeps and the BMW to make the Range Rover Sport work. Still, there's a thought.....

The death of charm and grace

As I walked past the front desk of the health club where I work out, the neatly printed paper sign pasted on the wall of the office behind the counter caught my eye.

I'm due on Dec 28th.
It's a boy.
If you have anything to say to me
other than "Congratulations" or Good Luck"
Keep it to yourself

Now, I should explain. The woman who is the manager of the club and sits in the office behind the front desk, has in the years I have been a member of the club, gone from callow flirtatious girl, to moonstruck newly-betrothed, to starry-eyed young bride, and on to her latest incarnation - cantankerous shrew swollen with child.

I have never made the acquaintance of this young woman, and if asked could not tell you her name. And that's not because I had anything against her, but when I go to the health club it's for one purpose - to work out.

I say this only to point out that I have no previous knowledge of the woman's mental state. I don't know what the trigger was for this clearly egregious example of churlishness. Was she a sweet and loving young girl who was pushed to her limits and beyond, by the demands of marriage? Or did she find herself pregnant soon after the wedding, dashing her plans of years of wedded bliss unspoiled by the arrival of a mewling, puking child? Or was the job of sitting behind the counter and explaining membership details to a unappreciative clientele so taxing that she just snapped?

Or, horror of horrors, was she so beset by the killing solicitousness of members who ask the most inappropriate questions? Are you gaining weight? Do you have any morning sickness at all? What color are you doing the nursery in? Do you know the sex of the child? What are you hoping for?

What earthly reason could there be for this extraordinary display of bad humor?

Whatever the reason, I can't think of one that justifies emblazoning your rudeness for all to see. If I had given the woman any thought previously, this certainly would cause me to think the worst of her now.

As I walked back out after my work-out, I saw another sign that she had pasted on the back of her computer monitor.

A fit woman
is a
powerful woman

It was an effort of will to not run in and change "fit" to "gracious" on the sign. Perhaps I should have done, but what good would that do?

Changing the sign would have done nothing to change the poor charmless wretch.

Thank you for smoking

Just saw 'Thank You for Smoking' yesterday. I was intrigued by the title and the fact that Rotten Tomatoes had given it an 87% fresh rating, made it at least for me, a 'must see'. Centered around a lobbyist who works for big tobacco (Aaron Eckhart) and has flexible moral convictions, the film explores the morality of big tobacco companies selling cigarettes while still being aware of the obvious health risks of smoking.

The film explores the moral ambiguities of the climate of lawsuits against big tobacco companies by long-time smokers who hope to receive a large settlement from the defendant, or if the case goes to court, a juicy award by a sympathetic jury. The film asks whether the individual who chose to smoke while being fully aware of the health risks should have some ownership of the problem.

In a particularly funny scene, one of the hero's drinking buddies asks him "When a plane crashes due to pilot error, do you sue the Boeing Company?" Ironically, someone actually tried to sue the airline and Boeing for a crash that occured due to pilot error, claiming that the airline did not provide adequate training to its pilots, and that Boeing made its planes complicated to operate, causing the pilot to make the error resulting in the crash.

Tobacco companies dearly want to keep selling cigarettes to an ever expanding market, but the inconvenient fact is that the more their customers use their products, the less likely they are to be around in the long term. Big tobacco attracts more revulsion and public derision than any other category of company. But they quietly go about their business, making smoking appear cool and selling cancer sticks to poor pathetic losers.

The tobacco industry is probably the only one which spends billions of dollars in campaigns ostensibly intended to keep people from using their products. But their revenues keep increasing.

Altria, the holding company that was previously known as Philip Morris owns the Marlboro and Virginia Slims brands amongst others, is a $97 Billion corporation whose revenues grew 9% from 2004 to 2005. From all accounts 2006 looks like it will be a banner year as well.

But revile them as you will, the libertarian in me believes that for as long as there are people in this day and age stupid enough to believe that they look cool when they smoke or that they will lose weight if they smoke, the tobacco companies deserve to sell them cigarettes and despatch them to an early grave.

Think about this: Wouldn't we be doing a lot of good to clean up the gene pool of the world if the idiots who are dumb enough to smoke, wiped themselves off the map? And paid handsomely for the privilege too?

There is sweet irony in that. Thank you for smoking, indeed. Here, light up another.

Smoking
Cigarettes
Thank you for smoking

On having nothing to say

For the first time in a long time, I find myself with nothing to say. I am not suggesting that there is nothing blogworthy going on. All I am saying is that I cannot think of anything remotely interesting to say about anything.

Lest you start wondering whether my listlessness portends deep depression, let me assure you that I am not listless in the least. If you're thinking that I don't have anything to say because I am so jaded and cynical that nothing surprises me any more, I can assure you that's not true.

I can manage a fair bit of outrage at the antics of the Republican Congressman Mark Foley with young male Congressional pages. In fact I can even manage some surprise, when there should be none, that a Catholic priest has acknowledged that he cavorted in the nude with a young Mark Foley in 1967, when the latter was a choir boy. Wouldn't surprise at the news of a Catholic priest having abused a young boy, be akin to expressing surprise that bears occasionaly use the woods as a bathroom? But despite feeling this surprise, I cannot find anything interesting to say about it.

I am baffled by the latest wave of political correctness to have overtaken Britain, where common sense has been overtaken by a craven desire to appear unbiased. British Airways ground staff are allowed to wear turbans, veils and headscarves, but a Christian employee was sent home for wearing small crucifix around her neck. Even the British Home Office has got in on the act, allowing Muslim women to wear head-scarves in passport photographs. You could even say I am dismayed by this obvious and blatant double standard. But I can't find anything remotely interesting to say about it.

If all these happenings cause such surprise, anger and outrage, why then am I not able to find anything pithy and memorable to say about it? Not for me apparently, the well-turned phrase that lampoons the creators of these situations. Just a general air of incomprehension and befuddlement.

The world seems to be providing us all with such surreal opportunities to witness a system of order gone so completely awry, that I am left quite speechless.

I am just going to lie down until the feeling passes. Perhaps then I'll have something to say.

Mark Foley
Headscarves
Islam

Top 10 things about writing a blog no one reads

10. You can't get your mother to read your blog. (It doesn't help that she doesn't have a computer)
9. You can say whatever you want without offending your readership.
8. You get your friends and family to blog, so that they can link to you.
7. Technorati says there are precisely 0 blogs linking to your blog.
6. You send emails to your friends and family saying 'Check out my blog'.
5. Sitemeter was not built for you.
4. You get 0 Diggs on Digg.com
3. Even though Google owns Blogger, they don't know your blog exists.
2. You're a link whore.
1. No one tags you.

Sitemeter
Digg
Technorati
Blogger
Google

Plane Wars

The New York Times reports that delivery of the Airbus A380 is going to be delayed by a further year. This is after an announcement some months ago that the largest commercial airliner ever built, was going to be delayed by as much as a year. This puts the A380 a full 2 years behind schedule and the first few airlines who ordered these $300Million monsters are feeling a bit peeved to say the least.

When Airbus first announced the 380, there was much crowing in Toulouse, the headquarters of EADS, the parent company of Airbus, that they had surpassed Boeing as the pre-eminent manufacturer of large commercial aircraft in the world. They outsold Boeing and shipped more planes than Boeing in 2005 and now had shown off the A380, a plane larger than Boeing's 747, at the Farnborough Air Show in the UK. They were the Masters of the Universe!! A combination of spectacular Gallic Engineering and European Unity (parts for the Airbus are manufactured in 6 European countries) had succeeded in showing the lazy Americans the door.

Boeing meanwhile was reeling from internal scandals ranging from the then-CEO writing x-rated emails to his head of Human Resources, to promising a Director level job to the head of procurement at the Defense Department. Undoubtedly Boeing, having gone through the acquisition and digestion of McDonnell-Douglas, the only other manufacturer of large commercial aircraft in the US, had become complacent and overconfident.

However, Boeing's retort when Airbus announced the A380 was that the world of airline travel had changed. People didn't want to travel to big hubs in major cities from smaller cities so that they could then get on enormous planes the size of small planets and travel to another large city. Boeing's bet was that people would prefer longer range planes that were smaller, making it possible for them to fly directly between city-pairs.

If you think that's sophistry, consider this: If you live in the Greater Denver area as I do, the only direct non-stop international flights out of here (other than to Canada and Mexico) are to London (British Airways) and Frankfurt (Lufthansa). For all other international flights you have to fly to a hub like Chicago, Newark, Washington Dulles, Atlanta, San Francisco or LA and then get on another plane. Would I like to fly non-stop from Denver to Honolulu or Amsterdam? Absolutely! Is there enough traffic to justify direct flights? Again, absolutely!

Enter the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. It's designed to do exactly that - to connect city-pairs in a cost effective way so that airlines can make money in their capital intensive, fossil-fuel dependant, terrorism-prone business, by offering passengers more choices. And it uses existing airport facilities, and doesn't require the building of massive new terminals like the A380 does.

While Boeing's bet on the 787's city-pair concept seems to be paying off - Boeing has 315 firm orders for the 787 as Aug 20th -the A380 has only 168 firm orders , and that's the most optimistic estimate. According to EADS, Airbus needs another 150 orders to just break even on the program.

But there are those airlines that absolutely need the ability to move approximately 500 people a pop, on a massive globe-girdling aircraft, without worrying about city-pairs. That's because they don't have two cities in their countries. Singapore Airlines and Emirates Airline, both big customers of the A380 come to mind. Qantas, another 380 customer has 2 cities - just about. Let's face it: other than Sydney and Melbourne there are no cities in Australia that have the terminal capability or the traffic to justify a monster the size of the 380.

And for these airlines, Boeing has the new 747-8. A new take on an established theme, the reconstituted 747 with a new wing profile and the next generation of GE and Rolls-Royce engines, is quieter, more fuel efficient and vastly cheaper than the 380 and costs 6% less per seat-mile to operate than the 380, while carrying only 46 fewer passengers. And it will operate out of more than 200 airports in the world that can accommodate the 747 today vs. only 22 airports in the world today that can accommodate the 380. As of the end of September Boeing had 41 firm orders for the 747-8.

With the recently announced delays in the delivery of the A380, Emirates and Singapore Airlines are looking at switching at least part of their A380 orders to the 747-8. So expect the 380 number to go down and the 747-8 numbers to go up, to say nothing of the 787 Dreamliner.

So who's crowing now?


Boeing
Airbus
A380
747-8

High Dynamic Range - and that's no lying!

I have blogged before about the relatively poor dynamic range of digital camera sensors over film. My post Film vs. Digital... and Film won...almost earlier in this blog chronicles my having to fall back on film to save the day that would have otherwise have been ruined by the smaller dynamic range of a digital sensor. But I would spoil the story by telling it here, and there's nothing more tiresome than a twice-told tale. So, please do read the post.

The human eye can detect tonal differences of approximately 1,000,000,000 to 1, or on a logarithmic scale 90dB. Film can detect far less, and digital sensors less still. Camera sensor manufacturers and film manufacturers before them have been trying for the last 100 years or so to compress the tonal range in a scene visible to the human eye, to that which can be captured on the imperfect medium. And they have had to make trade-offs to achieve this.

This is the cause of the oft-heard lament of the amateur snap-shooter that "the picture looked so much better in person" and the camera didn't quite do justice to the scene. The film or the camera sensor is designed to compress the vast tonal range of the scene into that which it can capture by eliminating the tones that are above and below its capacity to record. So the brightest and the darkest parts of the scene are 'clipped', resulting in blown highlights and inky shadows with no detail.

Of course, not all scenes require the use of the whole dynamic range that the human eye can see. And in these cases the camera, whether film or digital is perfectly capable of producing an acceptable, even beautiful picture. In the movie business, directors use artificial lighting and reflectors to light the shadows to reduce the dynamic range of the picture, so that when we see the final product in the theaters, the picture seems entirely natural.

That is until now. With computing power at the desktop becoming cheap and plentiful, a breed of software programs has emerged that allows the user to merge several pictures of the same scene, each exposed for a different part of the scene - shadows, midtones, highlights - to create a final image that approximates the tonal dynamic range that the human eye can perceive.

The software does the complex mathematical jugglery to take the correctly exposed parts of each of the images and mash them together seamlessly to create the final image. A niche piece of software called Photomatix does this well and of course an HDR function is available as part of Photoshop CS2.

Since all this mathematical jiggery-pokery made my head hurt, I decided to create a modest HDR image of my own, and so I offer this example for your delectation. It was made from 3 exposures - one exposed for the view outside the balcony, one for the table and chairs in the foreground, and one for the ceiling of the loggia. I now regret that I didn't make one more exposure for the red-brick floor in the sunlight where the detail is blown out, but you get the idea.

Photography
High Dynamic Range
HDR

Friends and old cars, or is that cars and old friends?

It's been quite a while since I blogged. The reasons are fairly typical - being rushed off my feet at work, a fairly hectic travel schedule, and visiting friends. Good friends KK and AS were in town over the weekend and a good deal of time was spent in debating obtuse topics over lots of wine and excellent food.

KK is a old friend and lives in Munich and what endeared him to me when we first met was that he loves cars and photography, two of my own passions. AS who also is an enthusiastic photographer, combines a passion for motorcycles - another of my many diversions.

But, not for KK the pedestrian pursuit of photography as done with a digital point and shoot and mini-lab prints. He wields an antique Linhof plate camera that uses 8X10 sheet film. The pictures that he produces are ethereally beautiful, capable of extremely large enlargements. Due to the relative immobility of his gear, he specializes in landscapes using very small apertures and long shutter speeds to achieve incredible depth of field. His objective for the visit was to capture the fall colors in the aspen trees in the higher elevations of the Rocky Mountains.

His interest in cars is every bit as esoteric as his inclination to photography. He is passionate about old Mercedes-Benz cars and collects them. His current collection in Munich contains a 1978 280SL pagoda roof coupe and a 1960 190D Ponton amongst other very nice old Mercedes. He is still hopeful that he will make the proverbial discovery in a disused barn of a 1959 300SL.

This is of course the classic-car lover's version of alchemy. The story goes something like this: Our protagonist is helping a friend clear out the run-down farm of a distant and now deceased relative, and upon opening up the ramshackle barn is confronted with a large object covered in a tarpaulin. Upon whipping off the tarpaulin and recovering from an attack of sneezes brought on by decades of dust collected thereupon, he glimpses the bulging and curvaceous flanks of a 1950s Mercedes. Closer inspection reveals a gull-wing 300SL in silver with cracked red leather upholstery, sitting on rotted deflated tires. Then begins the long, painful and expensive process of restoration, culminating in the winning of the Pebble Beach Concours. The transformation of a hunk of junk from the barn to a half-million dollar super sports car. Alchemy indeed.

The colors of the aspen were truly breathtaking this weekend and we tooled along the Peak to Peak Highway in crisp 65 degree weather with eyeball-searing colors on either side of the highway, talking old Mercedes. I can't think of a better way to spend a fall Saturday morning.

Mercedes
Classic Cars
Photography

Sturgis the Great Leveller

And we're back..

After an entertaining but exhausting 2 weeks, putting some 2,600 miles on a new Mercedes, we're back. The weather in all of Europe was incredibly hot, averaging 36 to 38 degrees Celsius (98 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit).

Much as I love Europe, and travel there often, there are things about Europe that amaze and confound me everytime I am there. They are:

1. Why is air-conditioning so rare, even in new buildings? In hotels and airports where air-conditioning is available, why do they keep things so warm? I am convinced that Europeans do not understand that air-conditioning means not having to perspire freely, even while relaxing in an armchair.

2. Why is smoking so common even amongst educated people? Has the news of the dangers of smoking not reached Europe? Or is it considered cool and ensouciant to kill yourself, all the while reeking of burning leaves?

3. Why can you not get ice in your drinks unless you beg, plead and beseech your waiter, who regards you with the withering pity reserved for imbeciles and Americans?

Anyway, be that as it may. Europe was everything it always is. Gracious, breathtakingly beautiful, and seductive in its wise and wonderful ways.

No sooner than we returned from the Old World, was I sucked head-long into the phenomenon that typifies Americana at its brashest, loudest and most narcissistic - the Annual Bike Week in Sturgis.

Now, for those unfamiliar with Sturgis, it is a small South Dakota town with a population of about 6,000 which swells to about a hundred times that during the annual week long festival celebrating motorcycling in general and Harley-Davidsons in particular. A friend and I had decided to ride to Sturgis to participate in the festivities and the fact that the weekend occurred just after we returned from Europe did not deter me one bit.

So with the trusty RoadKing loaded with a tour-pack and two saddle-bags, we set off on Saturday at dawn. The 'King rumbled through the nearly 400 miles from Boulder to Sturgis at a pretty good pace, and we arrived in time for lunch on Main Street in Sturgis.

As I wandered up Main St., I was struck by the sheer diversity of the people and machines gathered at this annual pilgrimage - a sort of Haj for the motorcycling faithful. The bars were packed with investment bankers who had trailered their extravagantly customised Ultra Classic Electra Glides from the East Coast along with their trophy wives, rubbing shoulders with truck drivers from the South who were spending their annual vacations riding up to the holiest of holy shrines to motorcycling. Roadside stalls which previously might have exclusively sold T-shirts, jackets, chaps and other motorcycling wear now were joined by tonier boutique stalls selling expensive lingerie and jewelry - a nod to the increasing presence of women in motorcycling, as passengers and as riders in their own right.

At the Full Throttle saloon, that evening I met Fred and Francine - he's a coal truck driver from Kentucky and she's a nurse practioner, who had spent the previous 2 days riding all the way to Sturgis and were getting ready enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of Bike Week. Gentle and friendly folk, they were not in the least abashed by their thick Southern accent as they plied everyone in their vicinity with friendly banter. Dean a real-estate developer from Chicago, his arm weighed down by the solid gold Rolex he sported, bought a round of drinks for everyone around him as his friends Chuck and Bill, a banker and a lawyer, also from the Chicago area passed around cigars. A cosier picture of bonhomie could not be found.

These people who populated this corner of the earth on this weekend could not have been more different than one another, and in any other situation might never have been in same place at the same time, let alone speak to one another. But here, in Sturgis, brought together by their shared love of motorcycling, they were not banker, lawyer, developer and truck driver, but just fellow acolytes at the temple.

I think there's a lesson in there for the troubled world we live in. I can't think of what it might be. I am heady from imbibing exhaust fumes and rubber smoke from the burnouts on Main St.

Sturgis
Harley-Davidson
Motorcycles

Off on vacation

I will not be blogging for the next couple of weeks as we leave this weekend for Europe. We pick up a new car in Stuttgart, Germany and drive through Southern Germany stopping to visit friends in Munich, and then over Tyrolean Alps across the Brenner Pass into Austria. A day in Innsbruck followed by a few days dawdling along the Italian lake district will get us to Tuscany.

In Tuscany we shall install ourselves at a villa for a week and gorge on Chianti and Tuscan food. Then we wander up northern Tuscany and into Switzerland stopping in Lugano on the border of Italy and Switzerland for a bit. A night in Zurich to re-visit some old haunts and we mosey on over to Munich to drop off the car for shipment home.

We stay the weekend in Munich to catch up with other friends, and fly home on Monday July 31.

If the spirit moves you, follow along as we make our way through Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland on my other blog The Mercedes Chronicles.

You will be spared my self-important pontification for the next couple of weeks, but I hope to be back full of vim and vitriol in August.

Friends in High Places

The New York Times reports that pop music producer Dallas Austin was released from detention in Dubai after being convicted of drug possession charges, due to the intervention of Lionel Richie, (who apparently is huge in the Middle East - like Jerry Lewis is in France or David Hasselhof in Germany) Quincy Jones and a third connection that beggars belief - Sen Orrin Hatch (R-UT).

Apparently the man who is named for two Texas cities, entered Dubai to attend the 3 day birthday bash of Naomi Campbell, the super model, at the super swanky Burj Al Arab hotel with a little over a gram of cocaine in his possession. He was frisked at the airport upon arrival and frog-marched to detention where he remained (except for court apperances) from May 19 to July 4. In a supremely symbolic gesture, the Dubai government decided it would be appropriate to give him his freedom on Independence Day.

Now there are several things that puzzle me about this story. Firstly, I can understand Quincy Jones and Lionel Richie rallying to the support of one of their own - I mean music industry types of course. But The Honorable Gentleman from Utah? The staunch supporter of the bid to amend the Constitution to make flag burning illegal? The same upstanding gentleman who is the bulwark of support behind the administration's warrantless surveillance program? The same person who himself eschews alcohol, tea, coffee and all manner of stimulants? Why would he want to be associated with Dallas Austin's seamy situation?

It turns out that Sen Hatch is a musician himself. While his music has perhaps not enjoyed the success of some of Austin's other clients like Madonna, Gwen Stefani and Janet Jackson, he presumably entertains some ambitions in that direction. Apparently his mostly religious recordings have made about $36,000. No platinum there.

Now it all starts to make sense. What better way to ingratiate yourself to the music industry establishment than by leveraging your connections with the government of Dubai (obtained through the enthusiastic backing of the deal where Dubai Ports was going to buy control of a number of American ports) to release one of the music industry's errant sons, from the ignominous fate of rotting in a Middle Eastern prison?

OK I get it. Now only one question remains. Were Austin's name to be say, Buffalo Binghampton or Trenton Newark or even Dayton Cleveland, (that is to say, just another oddly named individual unconnected to the music industry) would he have received the attention of the many luminaries? Probably not.

Oh and just one last thing. Who has 3 day long birthday parties? Clearly no one I know.

A convenient lie

Think for just a moment. If you had invented the Internet, what would you do? You would send a letter to the guys at CERN (the oh-so-efficient Swiss who claim to have actually invented the thing) to say that your price for silence would be say $10 Million (a year), all the while holding your left pinky up to your lips. Then wait for the checks to roll in. Chilling on a beach in the Azores sipping fruity drinks with little umbrellas in them would not be out of the question.

Not good enough for Al Gore. No sir. Not content with having invented the internet, he is now taking on the knotty problem of Global Warming. Yes - with a capital G and W.

Having written this tome called an Inconvenient Truth and toured the country with his slide show, he is now hectoring us with the eponymous movie. The point he makes, and not too subtly at that, is that Global Warming is the result of human activities and the earth is the warmest it has been for 2000 years. We had all better give up our profligate ways, or there will be no earth for our grandchildren to enjoy.

OK, fine. I have the following questions for the creator of the greatest human endeavor since the wheel:

1. If this is the warmest the Earth has been for 2000 years, it suggests that it was as warm 2000 years ago. What caused the inhabitants of the planet not to be plunged into calamity from which to never recover?
2. I'm pretty sure GM wasn't making Hummers back then, so what caused the Earth to warm so alarmingly? There weren't air-conditioning plants pumping hot air into the atmosphere, and jets streaking across the sky. How are we sure the warming is human induced?
3. My 7th grade Biology class taught me that plants needed carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. They absorb CO2 and give out oxygen in the process. So if there is more CO2 in the world today is that not good for re-forestation? With the abundance of CO2 purportedly caused by people driving fast cars (like me) wouldn't there be more for plants to grow more and greener?
4. Do you think Al Gore after delivering his killer presentation rode a bicycle home? Not so much. He had a chartered Boeing 707 ferry him home. And in so doing, emitted more CO2 than all the Hummer H3s produced to date.

Here's a quote from the guys who know - The DRUDGE REPORT:

"Vice President Al Gore is burning more than 439,500 pounds of fuel, or 65,600 gallons, at a cost of more than $131,000 on his 16,000 mile daytrip, just to deliver the warning. Gore's plane, a Boeing 707 gas guzzler burns on average 4.1 gallons a mile. The complete Washington to Florida to Washington to Alaska to Japan and return to Washington trip calculated from commercial air mileage tables is just over 16,000 miles total. Gas gallons needed for AIR FORCE II to go 16,000 miles: 65,600. Applying the average price of $2.01 per gallon of Jet A to the 16,000 mile r/t -- the fuel cost alone passes $131,000.00. There are 6.7 pounds per gallon of jet fuel. Total pounds of fuel burned on Gore's Global Warming Express -- 439,500"

Do you think there might be just a touch of hypocrisy here?

Oh, and I almost forgot my last question for that consummate environmentalist and inventor of that Information Super-Highway thingummy:

5. Dude, can you do something about this spam? This thing you created is a monster.


Al Gore
Global Warming
An Inconvenient Truth
Climate Change

Work, travel and a conundrum

I have been falling behind in my blogging as the work and travel schedule during the last week has been pretty hectic. The result of all this rushing around has meant that I have not been able to take any pictures, go out for a motorcycle ride or wash and wax the cars, for more than a week - all things I consider to be balance-restoring and therapeutic.

I miss the bonding experience with the cars and I am sure the cars miss it too. The black brake dust turning the silver wheels into burnished gun-metal, offers mute testimony to my lassitude.

The lathering of the body with suds and the washing down of the flanks with a soft sponge. The gentle coaxing of tar and tree-sap spots with a warm wet rag and drying off with soft terry cloth towels. The brushing between wheel nooks and crevices with a soft toothbrush and the final detail with a gloss enhancer spray. The ritual of car washing allows me to spend some quiet time with the cars, perhaps with Mark Knopfler on the iPod Sound Dock in the garage, re-acquainting myself with every curve and crease-line of their bodies as the late afternoon light glances off the surface. When I don't find the time to enjoy this communion with one of my favorite art-forms, I am a lot poorer for it.

On one of my trips last week, we had just boarded our flight from Denver to Minneapolis, and I settled myself into the window seat at the exit row. As the rest of the passengers filed in, there was a significant contingent of young families, off on vacation at the start of the summer. The air started to fill with the cry of babies who seemed to sense their impending incarceration in an air-tight aluminum tube, making their displeasure known.

As a young family squeezed into the seats behind me, the father with 2 kids stowed away his hand baggage and got the kids settled. The mother with another child moved to another row further behind. The kids ranged in ages from about 3 to about 8. The oldest, the 8 year old boy occupied the seat directly behind me, and decided to make my acquaintance by delivering a vicious kick to the back of my seat, causing me to almost plant my face in the back of the seat in front of me.

I thought a baleful glare would be sufficient admonishment at this time, and so turned around and delivered what I thought would be my most piercing old-fashioned look. The kid seemed not be in the least bit affected by my efforts and continued to page through a coloring book. The father, I thought was being particularly cavalier about his parental responsibilities, having buried his nose in a sudoku puzzle book that he had brought along.

My attempt at shaming the family into an apology having failed miserably, I turned around and started getting into my book again. Barely a paragraph into my reading, came a couple of swift belts to the back of my seat that caused me think that I had mistaken a mule for an 8 year old boy. So violent and determined was the kick, that it shook not just my seat but the entire set of 3 seats causing the couple next to me to put their reading down and look quizzically at each other.

Just as I mustered up the will to turn around and say something, the boy delivered a couple of well-aimed wallops to the small of my back. The thought of enduring the hour and half flight to Minneapolis, all the while being subjected to this assault was unthinkable.

I turned around, and having attracted the father's attention by waving my hand in front of his face and shouting "Excuse me", I said " Could you please see that your son doesn't kick my seat? It really is quite unpleasant".

"Can't do that, man" he said. Very matter of fact. No apologetic tone. Just a statement. Providing information.

My face must have registered the incredulity I felt. The dark thoughts that came to mind at the time all involved inflicting pain on both the child and the fatuous father.

Just short of becoming apoplectic, I could only muster a feeble "But...." when the father continued.

" He's got mild cerebral palsy, with autism as well. He doesn't listen very well, and doesn't have very good control over his limbs. So tends to kick his legs and throw his arms about, and there's nothing we can do. We can switch seats if you want and he can sit next to you, but he could shout and scream. He does that without warning as well"

" I'm not making this stuff up, man. These are problems you don't joke about" said the father without any trace of apology or irony.

I turned around wordlessly in my seat and devoted my attention my book, trying to zone out the periodic kicks and the occasional yelp emanating from the seat behind me. Bewildered and confused I hunkered down in my seat with a dark cloud hovering over my head.

As the flight came mercifully to its end at the gate in Minneapolis, the family gathered up their things and vanished into the terminal, with the boy playing and teasing his siblings, seeming to be at no perceptible disadvantage.

Was he really........? The thought remained unformed in my head as I watched the family traipse off together to begin their summer holiday.

Travel
Cars
Irony

Bokeh and the circle of confusion

Photographers spend an extraordinary amount of money and effort in trying to get pin-sharp images that are exactly in focus. They agonize about whether auto-focus lenses get fooled by various elements in the picture like bright colors (especially yellow) which cause the auto-focus mechanism to focus slightly behind the image, rendering the image slightly fuzzy. They buy ever more expensive lenses looking for that elusive sharpness in the image.

But there is a whole art form hidden in the part of the picture that is out of focus. You may have noticed that out-of-focus specular highlights (like sources of light or shiny objects) in images devolve into circles of confusion. The shape of the circle of confusion created by an out-of-focus object depends on many things - the number of blades in the lens iris (more blades equals a more rounded circle of confusion), the focal length of the lens (longer lenses create more smooth circles of confusion) and of course the quality of the glass itself.

Other than the rather long-winded and pedestrian term 'circle of confusion' we really don't have a good way to describe the quality of the out of focus part of the picture. The Japanese on the other hand have done a considerable amount of study into the quality of the out-of-focus part of the image and even have a term for it: they call it 'Bokeh'.

For the discerning photographer, there is now a range of lenses from each of the major manufacturers the gives you excellent bokeh. The kind of creamy soft out of focus images that are used in the new movies.

I find the aesthetic of bokeh fascinating, and I offer you this picture as an example of very good bokeh.

Addenda and Corrigenda

Peter Foster of the Daily Telegraph took me to task (in the nicest possible way) for my post Should Rumsfeld Resign?

Peter's point was, and I quote "It's only when senior soldiers, who have the credibility, speak out that we get some kind of perspective on the lunacy of the Iraq adventure. I think they're brave to break the rules. The very fact that they did so - which goes totally against the grain of military values and discipline - shows how strongly they feel." End quote.

I agree with Peter that it took courage, and it certainly is a chilling reminder that the country must heed. I feel that by compromising many years of military values and discipline, they may have created a crack in the dam. What lies before us? Serving military officers questioning their tasking orders, because they don't feel the cause is just?

Once that genie is out of the bottle, it would be impossible to recapture. That way, in my opinion, lies disaster. I have military men amongst my readers - both serving and retired. I would welcome your comments. Am I deluded?

Also, Dee, another reader chided me for deriding reality shows as lacking informational and entertainment value in my post Reality Bites.

She felt that reality shows do inform and entertain. I wanted to clarify that the type of reality shows that drew my ire were shows that pitted contestants against one another in ever-more degrading situations and brought out the worst traits in human nature. I thoroughly enjoy shows that deal with reality in informative circumstances. They are many - The National Geographic Channel, Animal Planet, Speed, The History Channel, Arts & Entertainment. Not even just the high-brow shows. I enjoy the cooking shows on the Food Network, even Monster Garage or Junkyard Wars on the Discovery Channel. Just not the asinine "Who's going to get voted off the island, now that Kirk and Alissa have formed an alliance?"

That just panders to voyeurism of the worst kind. Tell me I'm wrong if you think so.

Television
Daily Telegraph
Rumsfeld
Iraq