Good quote

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
-- Bertrand Russell

Exceedingly sound advice.

Horsemen

Do you know what are the five horsemen of the apocolypse? Death, War, Hunger, Plague, and Italian Pop Music.

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They could write some spooky stories in the olden days...

"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth."

But what's up with the "beasts of the earth"? I thought the fourth Horseman was Pestilence?

Movie scans

Dr. Macro's quality movie scans.

Quotes/comments July 2

Quotes of the Day for July 2, 2008
http://www.quotationspage.com/qotd.html
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Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.
-- David Letterman

Yep. And that's probably healthier overall.

A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.
-- Carl Reiner

Sounds like he was the anti-W.C. Fields.

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
-- Andre Gide

I agree if by God he means Inspiration, but not if he means Nature.

Some of the worst mistakes of my life have been haircuts.
-- Jim Morrison

Sounds like Jimmy led a blessed life. (Up to a point, of course.)

Ministry: Psalm Sixty-Nine

I took my religious gramma to a concert with these guys, thinking she'd like a song called "Psalm 69" with "praise Jesus" in the lyrics. But she said they lacked edge.

Gettysburg pickets and lilies

My pen pal Suzanna Smith took this photo today. I like it. She says: "it was taken in Gettysburg, Pensylvania. On the battlefield. General Meade's Headquarters off Taneytown Road. The pickets were hewn a century or more ago. This is the fence around a small homestead that became Meade's Headquarters at the time of the Battle of Gettysburg. The day lilies are wild."

English manners

We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.
-- George Bernard Shaw, "You Never Can Tell" (1898), act I

That's a surprising statement, based on movies you'd think England was the one place where dress and manners really matter.

Not that you'd notice here in Northern England, around here people think they are Dressing Up when they change from track suit to blue jeans. :-)

(I'm no fashion beacon, but at least I haven't worn track suits or blue jeans since I was a kid.)

Anon said:
Most people wear jeans, it doesn't make you trailer trash. I only wear a suit to the office.

Yes, Steve Jobs even wears them on stage. And maybe it's just because most people wear them that I don't like them. And to be precise, it's only blue jeans I dislike. Black, red, grey, white, or green jeans I don't mind. Heck, I've worn black and green ones myself. I just think the blue variety is so aggressively blah.

Nikon D700

The Nikon D700 has been officially announced today. Like was rumored, it's pretty much a D3, but in a smaller and less expensive package. Which doesn't mean "small" and "cheap" though, the body alone is a kilogram and three kilo dollaros. Still, it's a professional camera, and this should take over a lot of the D3 sales for all those who want the pro features and low-light capabilities, but don't need their camera to be able to stop any charging rhinos.
Article - article - press release -

Update: reading closer, this camera is actually bigger and heavier than the D300, sitting between that one and the D3 in all kinds of ways. Which means it's not exactly something which would have been the first choice of Henri Cartier-Bresson, sadly. (He was famous for using the compact early Leica cameras because they were fast and discreet in the street landscape.)

Update: Thom writes that some people worry that Nikon is going to abandon the reduced-frame (Dx) format. Why would anybody imagine that? That format is way cheaper (and more compact) to produce both in lenses and bodies, and as such, it's a cash cow. Not to mention that there's virtually no difference in image quality currently, only in sensitivity. (This could change with better lenses, but that would make the price difference bigger.)

The Thom article also talks about, in detail, the aspect which (apart from size/weight) keeps me from being all that interested in the D700: The Nikon lens line. They are missing a lot of professional lenses, like sharp wide primes and a good "normal" zoom with VR (like Canon's excellent 24-105mm). They just don't yet have the lenses to really take advantage of the full frame format. A few years ago I bought friggin' three Nikkor 24mm lenses on eBay because I couldn't believe that I hadn't gotten a bum sample, it is so lousy.

Update: some interesting info/speculation from Mike Reichman.

Julie Andrews

Julie Andrews, still a babe at 71. I saw her interviews for Shrek III's Behind the Scenes material, and couldn't believe my eyes.


Shrek III wasn't bad. Not a revelation, but enjoyable.

Penalty kick contest

Penalty kick contest for women in bikini, silly post of the day. For those who don't understand Danish, I can report that the commentary is very tongue-in-cheek, sometimes bordering on the sarcastic.

I'm not sure the whole thing is worth it, the ball playing, obviously, is mediocre (I would be worse myself), and you can see girls dressed in less on most beaches.

Mango Falls

It's interesting how you can just get lucky with a snapshot, and make a really nice picture. Mango Falls. Thanks to Mike.

Inger Nilsson at 48

Inger Nilsson at 48. Sadly my German is not so strong, so I couldn't follow all of it.