Jana Uriel, rock princess

Jade, rock princess

Jade, now 8, and her mom just visited. I gave Jade one of my older iPods, she was very excited, couldn't stop bouncing and chattering. :-)

Abominable

"Abominable" web comic.
The humor is quite gentle at times, but I don't think I've seen a more beautifully drawn web comic.

Sex Guide

Sex Guide for everybody.

I think it's meant in all seriousness, and can surely be helpful, but still it's sometimes pretty funny.

"The penis can be very frightening to some, but it really is very fun to play with."

"There are many toys out there for men to get some thrusting action from."

"When engaging in spanking or whipping, you don't always have to restrain your partner."

"After she reached orgasm, my g/f decided that she wanted to try f***ing me…Holy Awesome!!!!"
-

Poor record covers

Poor record covers.

IS testing

So here arrives the first attempt at objective testing of Image Stabilization (reduction of hand-shake in pictures) in cameras and lenses.
"We expected to find a range of performance among IS systems, but were a little surprised at just how wide that range is. We measured IS performance ranging from zero stops (no detectable improvement at all) to about 3.5 stops. The conclusion: Just seeing the label "IS" (or VR, OS, VC, etc.) on a lens or camera body says little about how much it will improve your percentage of sharp shots."

Imaging-Resource/SLR-Gear does excellent testing, so I'm quite hopeful of the usefulness of this new resource.

Silly pics

Slow recovery

We would all like a speedy recovery to the economy, but I'm afraid it just ain't realistic. It'll take years, folks, perhaps many years.

Why? Because the cause of the problems was debt, and every time it started acting up, the goverments and banks (surely with the backing of the emotional response of the public) tried to fix it with, what? More debt. And now the whole thing is collapsing.

It's like you built a big house without adequate support structure, merely cheap board all through the walls. And the walls rotted, and what did you do? You slapped more cheap boards over them. And the same next time, and next. And now the point is reached where the house is collapsing under each own weight, and we're trying to control the collapse.

We may or may not be able to, but the fact remains that what looked like a big impressive house was made of cards, and if we want a similarly sized house, and one which will last, we will need a sound structure from the ground up. A structure of production, not debt. And that takes time. You can create "a billion dollars" out of thin air, but you can't create "ten new factories and educated workers" out of thin air.

Chastity, thoughts on

Pascal commented on the sexy woman-pirate statue:
"Methinks the good inquisitor is just feeling frustrated at his foolish chastity commitment this day, aye?"

I suspect there may be more truth to this than we normally realize. If all porn and nudity were banned, that would be a lot of his temptation gone right there, wouldn't it? (Actually I don't think it would be, but that would be the feeling for anybody in that situation.)

I heard the chastity demand for priests was only invented by a pope in the seventh century. How does the cath church get any takers at all under those conditions?

The ability to rise above the sex drive is so rare. I thought about it recently, watching an old Saturday Night Live episode (I'm still not overly impressed by that show) were Led Zeppelin was playing. They had this gorgeous co-singer. And I found myself wondering who of all the male members she was sleeping with. If you think about it, can you imagine a pretty young female (heck, even a plain one) touring with several young males, and not sleeping with anybody? No friggin way, it just doesn't happen. Should tell us something.

But even though the sex drive is perhaps never non-existent in anybody, it will be either weaker or overruled in a minority. For example, while geeks and nerds are often sexually frustrated, they are not so to a degree which will make them go out of their way to "get some". This is completely incomprehensible to normal people, especially jock-types, and so they assume that when nerds are not getting laid, it's not only a failure, it's the failure in life. Because for them, life is all about getting laid.

Vending machines galore

Vending machines galore.

Subscribing etc

I am confused by the "follow" option on blogger. What does it do?

In a space station

Breasty Pirate Enrages Local Priest

Breasty Pirate Enrages Local Priest, article.
'I curse you. I curse this place. I want to see this destroyed. I want her destroyed.'
If he really spoke like that, he is rather out of touch with the world.
(By the way, I don't think there's such a word as "breasty". It must be one of those words newspapers make up for their headlines.)

(Update: actually the title refers to the article which lead me there.)

Drei Variatione Der Sonne

Sonnenvariationendreifachbild

(Thanks to Walter.)




Today's sunset.

(Nikon D90, Nikkor 70-300mm VR.)

René Maltête

René Maltête photography. This guy was fabulous, I can't believe I never heard of him.

Fundamentalists

It seems that the story now in some quarters of the conservative West, like Fox News, is that the reasons many Europeans dislike Dubya is that he's a Christian! And that "Europe is no longer a Christian continent, it's a pagan continent, and they hate Christians".
My comments to that:

• Europe has not been all that Christian for a long time now. It's a great mix of many beliefs.
• It's not a choice between "Christian" and "pagan". That's a false choice, like the one between, um, "intelligent design" and "divine creation" or however that nonsense goes.
• I don't know a single European who "hates Christians". What they don't like are fundamentalists from any religion, especially when the fundamentalism is used to wage war.
• I personally have strong doubts that Bush is really a Christian. I can't see that bubble-head being sincere about any devotion. I think that if the USA were, say, mostly a hindu country, a person like him would don the dress and lingo of hinduism to further his political career.

Pascal offered:

Here are the descriptions for three authentic candidates to their country's leadership:

- First one is associated with seedy politicians and consults astrologists. He's had two mistresses, smokes like a factory and downs 8 to 10 martinis a day.

- Second candidate has already gotten fired from two jobs. He sleeps until noon. In college, he used to smoke opium, and he downs a quarter liter of whisky every evening.

- Third candidate is a medal-awarded war hero. He's a vegetarian, supports legislation against animal cruelty and experimentation, firmly believes in family values, and is also an amateur artist. He barely drinks the occasional beer, and never had any extra-marital affair.

Now, which whould you vote for, based on that CV?

Take your time, think about it.

Now I'll tell you the names of these three persons.

Each once got elected as leader of a major country.

#1 : Franklin D. Roosevelt.

#2 : Winston Churchill.

#3 : Adolf Hitler.

Gabriel & Dresden "Tracking Treasure Down"

The Politics Of Sex

The Politics Of Sex, David Steinberg article.
"...there's a clear and dramatic difference between people whose basic reflex is to embrace sex, and people whose basic attitude about sex is one of worry and concern -- and this difference in sexual perspective is what the most virulent political battles of these times are all about"

I think there's a lot of truth to that, and I suspect this is symptomatic of a deep difference, related to where a person stands with mental energy, how he/she handles emotion. Namely, does he tend to want it flowing, or does he tend to want to keep it stuck? Making and keeping it flowing is the healthier option in the long run, but it can be a painful and frightening experience if one is quite stuck. Heck, it can be so even at the best of times, and at the worst it can be virtually impossible, or only very, very slowly and gently.

---
I asked David what "four-legs-good" means, and he explained:
"this is a reference to George Orwell's novel, Animal Farm, where the pig class, to solidify their control of the animals that have overthrown their human oppressors, teach everyone to think very simple-mindedly that anything with four legs is good and anything with two legs is bad."

Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D

Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D, wiki article. The movie and the 3D is getting very good reviews. I hope it will work well also on a home screen, because I rarely have the patience these days for movie theatres.

Taxi and jeans

I'm just watching season 1 of Taxi. Generally I prefer TV shows from the nineties and forward, but Taxi is one of the good ones from the late seventies. Andy Kaufman was funny, and Marilu Henner was hot. And still is, she had a guest part on the outstanding Greg The Bunny.

Watching this reminds me of one of the few things that I miss from the seventies: tight jeans on pretty girls. That was heaven. How can such an excellent, simple, and sexy fashion just go away?

Rollei Compactline 90

Serious photographers of some age will know the venerable German brand Rollei, a classic high quality camera for pros and discerning amateurs. Recently we were told the brand had dies along with the company, but it seems not. See the newest Rollei at the bottom. In more than one sense...
A red Rollei with "smile detection". Sigh. What's next, a Hasselblad with every Happy Meal?

Hahn on Bach

I'm a metrosexual

I've kept this quiet for a long time, but what with Lindsay Lohan coming out as a bisexual and similar courageous developments recently, I feel it's time for me to step up.

I'm a metrosexual.

I don't mean a straight man who dresses well and likes clubs, I mean in the original sense: somebody who gets turned on by cities.

Since this came into full bloom about fifteen years ago, I've been unable to live in a city, and only able to visit them briefly. I can't be centrally in a city without getting raging iron, which is very uncomfortable after a while, and which my doctor says can be dangerous for a middle-aged man. The last time I rode a subway, I climaxed three times just from the vibration.

I've long ago gotten rid of all my porn, and I get off now by watching films like Manhattan, Blade Runner, New York Stories, and Eight Million Ways To Die.

Well, that's the long and the short of it. Hope you won't judge me too hard. April fool.

The property market now

This article by Neil Jenman is partly about the aussie/kiwi property market, but it contains several general principles which will be interesting to people who are looking at the property market. Neil Jenman was the first writer I found a few years ago who predicted the current crash in that market.
"He showed graphs of the stock market over a series of years. When the graph was high, people were buying. When the graph was low, people were not buying.
Of course, most people were doing the opposite to what they should have been doing, namely, buying in the gloom.
Now, to be sure, there's a lot of gloom in the property market right now. And that's why it seems like a good time to be investing.
But investing in property is more than just about buying in gloomy times, it's also about buying when the numbers are right."
-

Advertising and phoniness

Apropos phoney, Don pointed to this video. An advertising executive explains how advertising people can do something that others can't do, make the public feel something for the product. I think this points to why I've always felt so uneasy about advertising: it's phoney by definition.

It's not made by people who love the product, it's made by people who are paid to make others love a product they probably don't even care about themselves.

And what's more, if they can make the public love the product for reasons which have nothing whatsoever to do with the product itself, that's not considered a downside or any kind of a lie. If I've been drinking Cola my whole life because as a youngster I fell in love with a girl in a Cola commercial, that will be considered a legitimate victory by advertising people and their customers, not a swindle.

I think the ultimate in this kind of 'think' is that if such people could make people love and continue to buy an empty box and somehow never notice that it's empty, they would consider that the ultimate business. Honesty and delivering a valuable product simply has no consideration in their world, only how much money they make.

The trailer voice

You know that voice which they always use for trailers for dramatic movies and thrillers? I'm not sure it's always the same man, but it always sound the same: deep, booming, thrilling, important, and very, very, very, dramatic.
I am soooo sick of that voice. It just seems so phoney to me now, and I can't watch more than five seconds of a trailer which uses it.
Am I the only one?