Yeah, just a quick post here. No politics, no religion. I just want to say that I think Conan is getting shafted by the NBC executives. That said, Leno probably is, too.
Living in God’s town has its perks. I’m just a short distance from Liberty University, home of Liberty Council, the highly-litigious arm of the Christian Right.
I had a short discussion with a coworker about his belief (disclosure: he attends Liberty) that there is indeed a war on Christmas. It went something like this
Me: So wait, you think there’s an actual war on Christmas?
Him: Well, I mean, if you look at the retailers who aren’t saying “Merry Christmas” anymore and people fighting nativity scenes on public property…
Me: As is their right to do. But a war really?
Him: Well, you have to look
Me: A WAR, though?
And that retort of mine handled most of his objections to my satisfaction, anyway.
Also, recently I unfriended (defriended?) someone on Facebook for this very reason. It might be easier to lay it out here, and some have called what I did an over-reaction (I disagree), but here’s how it went. The person used their status update to tell people to “remember, Christ is the reason for the season, so wish people a Merry ‘Christ’mas.” This followed with several people agreeing, with one remarking how silly it was that people of other religions could get offended.
I’ll admit in that case, maybe I did fan the flames, but there are a few things I don’t get about the ‘war’ on Christmas.
Not everyone in America is a Christian. Sorry. And we who are not probably aren’t going to start any time soon. The United States government serves people of many faiths: Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Atheistm, Agnosticism, Hinduism and even Scientology (yes, it’s a religion — believing in such things is harmless).
We of non-Christian faiths already endorse a government that recognizes you over us, so why should we accept retailers (whose will we can control with our spending dollars) do the same? A catch-all phrase like “Happy Holidays” INCLUDES YOU. Why should retailers only acknowledge their Christian customers around this time of year?
The inspiration for this post came largely from the front page of the News & Advance today (in addition to the comments — always a hoot) and this post from WhoIsIOZ (which includes some wonderful graphics on how the war is expected to go).
Yep. IP address 194.8.75.141 is a spammer. Each time a comment gets posted to this blog, I get an email. I don’t auto-approve comments for that very reason — so I can check if it’s spam.
But this, this is terrible.
I’m going to ban this IP (and probably update WordPress AGAIN), but I thought you’d appreciate how annoying this is. Every time another one was posted (159 and counting, currently) I got an e-mail in my inbox… on my phone. Clogging up my inbox, making it hard for me to get to REAL important things I clearly have going on.
So, screw you 194.8.75.141.
Well, world, I’m back in Chicago. In an effort to save money, Julie and I opted to ride the Greyhound bus over flying or taking the train. The bus was considerably cheaper than flying or by train, but took the most time. It was slightly more expensive than driving, but if you’ve ever made a 13-hour car ride, you know why we didn’t want to drive.
The last time I took a bus was to visit Dave down at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. During that ride, I met a few interesting people, and made (as you do) bus friends.
This trip was different. The SUIC trip was many MANY years ago, and limited to Illinois, with one stop in St. Louis. This trip was different. 20 hours, 6 states, 2 transfers and a dozen stops. On this trip, I learned 10 key facts about life and traveling Greyhound.
1. Something in the driver handbook says he must repeat everything at least 4 times. “This is Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati, Ohio. Transfer here at gate 3 if you’re going to Cleveland or Columbus. This is Cincinnati, O-hio, transfer here at gate 3 if you’re going to Cleveland or Columbus. Cleveland or Columbus transfers here at gate 3.”
2. Chewing gum between your teeth will help you sleep. When the bus moves, it shakes. Don’t try to lay down across two seats, because the vibration will make your teeth clang against each other.
3 This American Life is great time killer. Each episode is an hour long, at least, and makes a 2-hour ride incredibly bearable. There’s a torrent floating around with at least 200 of their episodes enclosed. Look out for that for even a car ride.
4. Effingham, IllInois is not alone with the giant crosses. I was always under the impression that the giant cross was a novelty people traveled to see. I was first proved wrong in the movie “Jesus Camp” (or was it “Friends of God”?) and procurd wrong again on this trip. One cross was not 100 yards from an adult video store. The one I saw on my trip might have been the same one featured in the movie. God bless America, indeed.
5. Every TV in every Greyhound station plays the Fox “News” Channel in HD. Enough said.
6. Nobody steals anyones cell phone from the charging station. The geniuses at Greyhound provide, at major stations, a surge protector-style charging station for the increasing number of people who, like myself, drown themselves in their phones for long rides. 8 to 10 phones at a time are sitting on this table, and nobody touches a phone that isn’t theirs. Even when another bus boarded and a giant group of people attacked the table to grab their phone, the only one left was mine.
7. Femullets are back in style. A lady boarded with us at Lynchburg and stayed with us till Indianapolis. She had a huge mullet. Huge. It did NOT look attractive. Business in the front, party in the back.
8. Feel free to discuss your probation officer, your priors and your favorite cigarettes with perfect strangers. People who have never met before exchanged details of their petty thefts of old ladies, their reasons for travel (to see “my baby daddy,” she offered) and why Newports are better than Marlboro Mild 72s. This all seemed bizarre to me at first, but then I thought, “well, you’re probably never going to see these people ever again, might as well tell your life story.”
9. Music from guitar sounds better in bus terminal at 3am. It’s a long-standing rule of mine that if I cross someone on the street or in a bus terminal who is playing an instrument, my wallet opens. I’m not going to give you a dollar for sitting on your ass holding a badly-misspelled cardboard sign. Food stamps and welfare from my tax dollars are yours to take, but i’ll be damned if you’re taking my cash from my actual wallet pre-destined for other purposes. At least you’re procuring a skill. My $2 that night blessed that guitarist, somehow.
And finally…
10. Some people will violate the cardinal rule after removing their shirt, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Julie and I invested in a Canon Rebel XT recently. I love it. Every little thing it does is magic. One of my first purchases regarding the camera was (of course) clear filters to protect the lenses. I was going to go with just the straight-up clear filters, but the guy at Ritz Photo was convincing enough to sell me on UV filters, “like sunglasses for your camera,” was his pitch.
I figured what the heck, right? It’s only a few dollars more and maybe I’ll get some use out of them some really sunny day. I put them on the lenses and didn’t think about them.
That was until about 2 weeks ago. I wanted to shoot at 100 ISO outside, because it’s just too much fun to see my photos with almost no noise in them. I affixed the UV lens and went out to shoot in the generally sunny day. In affecting how much light entered the camera, the UV lens has to be turned, so I did so, and for comparison, I took one at the least-powerful setting. Check out the result, though. These photos were both shot at the same ISO, same f-stop, same shutter speed:
Low filter versus high filter:
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Here’s your change, sir. Have a wonderful day.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Uh… sure,” I replied, knowing that it probably wouldn’t end well.
“Are you a believer?
“In what?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Well, I believe he existed, but that’s as far as I feel like going at work. Maybe catch me after work.”
I get asked questions like that all the time. Growing up, my answer to the question of “Are you a believer?” would be, “Yes. Jesus Christ is my Lord and personal savior.”
Which is all well and nice. I really enjoy my parents’ church, and the pastor and his wife & kids are probably the strongest (and coolest) people in their faith that I know, next to my friend Eric.
But I’ve grown out of the church as of late, mainly because my chosen place of worship was 200 miles away when I went away to school. That’s a terrible excuse, and I know it’s a terrible excuse, but it’s the truth. I’ve grown accustomed to the secular society.
It’s fun, and I don’t live in fear of the Judeo-Christian God that most of the people in this town seem to know.
So, what, are you an Atheist?
Pardon the expression, but hell no. I’m what you’d call an Agnostic. There’s nothing that any religious person can present to me that could prove beyond a shadow of doubt that their God exists. Similarly, there is nothing an Atheist could present to me that could prove beyond a similar doubt that a god exists.
In the words of Bill Maher, I don’t know! I don’ t know if there is or isn’t a god. I don’t know if there is a heaven or a hell, and I don’t know what happens when we die. Neither do you.
So, I use the generally moral teachings instilled in me by my parents to live my life. Even though I’m not a believer of the Judeo-Christian God, I’m not a murderer or even a rapist. I’m actually a moral human being.
Which reminds me of another point. The ultra right-wing co-worker of mine tried to convince me once that irreligious people cannot be moral. At all. Morals, he believes, must come from a fear or belief in a higher power. What’s your take?
You like my drawing? I dig it. © Mitch Surprenant 2009.
I can’t listen for too long to Glenn Beck, because the last time I tried, he had some words on the chalkboard with arrows between them, then decided to erase whatever word was at the top and replace it with “OBAMA.” Yeah, because political concepts are interchangable. Clearly SOCIALIAM = FASCISM = COMMUNISM = MARXISM.
But I had a conversation with a coworker the other day about, among other things the fact that the United Nations assesses the USA the most money in dues. This coworker brought up an interesting point about Glenn Beck. Beck closes his show (apparently?) with a phrase similar to “every day, I find myself becoming more libertarian.”
Heck it’s even in this transcript on Beck’s own website where he talks with Bob Barr:
[Beck:] Bob, I appreciate you joining me, sir. I’m kind of in a quandary here. I don’t know exactly what to do and I find myself becoming more and more libertarian every day because I just don’t see us solving any of our problems unless we solve our problems here at home first, which is spending out of control, you know, getting the dollar back on track and then also going for our own energy.
So why is good for the left? Because the libertarians are already an established third party. Beck himself and many will no doubt vote for Republican candidates in the 2010 elections, but a good number of his listeners and viewers are going to look in to the libertarian movement, which may very well appeal to them. They sure as hell won’t vote Democrat (the party of on-demand abortions and forced sodomy), so the libertarian party will take from where these people would normally vote — that is, the Republican party.
I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as a complete vote splitting situation, but I think it’s going to hurt Republicans’ chances of winning as many seats as they want to in the midterms.
GO GLENN!
Sometimes, I forget there are liberals and Democrats in this town. I mean, i do work in Campbell County. 
Courtesy: WaPo
When I moved to Lynchburg in June, I used to talk up that I lived in Chicago, because most people were generally interested. It’s new and exciting to meet people not from the next county over.
When I told one old woman I was from Chicago, she smiled and asked if I had voted for Barack Obama. When I told her that I had, she smiled harder. This woman told me then that she was finally proud of the vote she had cast in November for Obama. “I think he’s finally going to change something.”
But that woman and people like her are few and far between, so when I find them, it makes me all warm inside.
A woman came up to me at about 8:30pm tonight (Monday), and demanded to speak to a manager. It’s common for customers to ask, so I paged the manager on duty to the front of the store. While she waited, I turned away from my conversation with a co-worker and asked, “Is there anything I can help you with?” “No. I need to talk to a manager.”
When the manager arrived, the woman huffed, “I need to speak to you outside.”
“Uh, ma’am,” the manager replied, “I’m the only manager on duty, and we’re not really supposed to leave the store if we’re the only ones here.” This woman was not having it, and demanded that he come outside. There was quite a bit of commotion, but I couldn’t make out what was being said.
Another woman, already in the store, had started to give her view to the manager as well. “Oh,” said my coworker, “they’re talking about my car.”
Indeed, they were. That’s the “Don’t Tread on Me” sticker and a bumper sticker for Liberty University. (On an unrelated note, what does LFFL mean?)
The other woman had come back in to the store briefly, and I heard the first woman yell, “If that’s an employee’s, I’m going to take my business elsewhere.” She continued to chew the manager’s ear while I turned my attention back to the coworker. The manager was trying his best to calm the obviously irate woman down.
Not being the kind of person who steps down on political issues, my coworker yells, “Well I guess they’re the kind of people who are okay with living in a totalitarian society.”
“Dude,” I mutter to him, “don’t polarize at work. It can’t end well.”
The second woman rushed back to the front door shouting, “I now know whose that is, it’s an employee.” Both women left, and didn’t spend a dime. They probably went to CVS across the street, where politics won’t be shoved down their throat.
The manager took the coworker aside and I don’t know what they talked about, but it probably wasn’t good. Apparently that manager called several other managers to ask about specific company policy. Nobody knew it, but I intend to track it down. I’ll keep you posted.
This coworker then came up to me and stated that it was his belief that if they (Walgreens) forces him to remove it, he will get the Liberty Council to sue the company.
I tried, in vein, to explain to him that his First Amendment rights do not apply in this case, as he was AT WORK and, contrary to popular belief, Walgreens is NOT the federal government. What is it about conservatives and misinterpreting the first amendment? (Sorry, but it’s sometimes too easy to pick on Sarah Palin.)
If, then, he explained, it is to come that on Walgreens property he is not allowed to display his political beliefs (which, by his own admission was just to piss people off), he will fight to remove:
(images pulled via a google images search, exact urls coming)
The most polarizing I am at work is a button I wear that says “Save the Internet.” But what do I know? I’m just a liberal.
As I noted in a previous post, I went nuts when I realized that one of my photos had gone un-attributed for months.
Well, my efforts to rectify the situation proved fruitful. Twitter is probably my favorite tool when it comes to communication, and that’s how the problem was solved.
Does this work for you? http://tr.im/zb92 I put the same notice on my website: http://tr.im/zb9z Let me know! (link)
Followed by:
I completely understand where you are coming from- it’s so easy to get images and forget to give credit, that’s the last thing I’d want to do to another artist! (link link)
So yeah, that works for me. Copyright crisis averted, but maybe I’m not going to have as much luck as next time. Thanks for clearing the whole thing up, Delia, and you’re more than welcome to use those awesome photos in the future, provided a link is given. 
Yes, it’s true. One of my photos was stolen!
When Kari Byron came to Eastern Illinois on September 26, 2007 (not 2006 as the EXIF data implies), I had use of a Canon Rebel XTi from the school. I took this opportunity to use the camera to take lots of photos of the Mythbusters star, and uploaded them to FlickR. All of that set can be found here.
I didn’t think too much of it till I tried (in vein) to get a few of my shots uploaded to Wikipedia’s article about her. I did the same thing for Jim Edgar. At least that one stuck.
Stumbling around the internet as I often do, I came across a website called Current.com and an article by an enthusiastic writer going by the moniker “Delia the Artist.” I was floored to see my photo accompanying the article. But i was even more floored when I quickly hit Ctrl+F to search for where they had attributed my work back to me. They hadn’t.
The article linked back to Delia’s webpage and, sure enough, under Interview Archive was my picture again next to the article. (Scroll down or just search for “Kari”)
/facepalm
So, I comment on the current.com article and @reply her on Twitter (@DeliaTheArtist). Still awaiting a reply, and not wanting my plight to go unnoticed, I also used the contact form on her website.
Delia,
As a photographer, I’m proud of the work I do. I work hard to make my work desirable. But I tend to get really pissed when someone takes my work out of context and presents it as their own.
You’ve done just that with your interview with Kari Byron. I read the interview (http://current.com/items/90091857_interview-with-kari-byron.htm) and actually rather enjoyed it. But, unfortunately, I’m not here to compliment you on the article. The photo you used for your interview is MINE.
I’m more than allowed to defend my own copyright for the photo of Ms. Byron (on FlickR: http://tinyurl.com/laqguo), as it was not a work-for-hire. I uploaded that whole set to FlickR knowing that it would receive lots of views and more than a few comments.
What I didn’t expect to was to have the photo stolen and used on a website without attribution (which is where the Creative Commons license comes in ).
There’s not even an attempt to link the photo (on current.com or your own website) back to my FlickR profile. The photo on your website is hosted on TinyPic.com. Thanks, seriously.
Now, I like to think of myself as a nice guy. But I worked pretty hard to make sure people knew that photo was taken by me. Whenever anyone on FlickR wants to use my photo, they send me a message, and I’m more than happy to oblige, with attribution.
I believe that your intent was not malicious, but I’d like to remedy this as soon as possible.
I wanted to make sure I contacted you in as many ways as possible so my message was not ignored. I’ve commented on the current.com article, @replied you on Twitter and have (now) used the contact form on your website. I don’t want to send a DMCA notice to your host, but that’s the next step I’ll take if I don’t hear from you soon.
Regards,
Mitch Surprenanthttp://www.mitchsurp.com
I’ve also contacted TinyPic about getting it removed from there, so I guess we’ll see. I now know what content creators get so frustrated about when it comes to copyright.
I’d like at the very least attribution in the article and website and acknowledgment of wrongdoing. We’ll see what I get.
Update: Drama averted.