Archive - Mar 2005

Got the camera working. I finished some work first of course. I am really happy with this site I have just designed and will post a link to it when it goes live ... soon.

Spent most of the day with Andrea - climbing, food, seeing the place she'll soon be moving into. Good stuff - it was a really fun night. Now I'm a bit tuckered out. Seems to be happening alot lately. I seriously plan on getting back to my political base and commenting on the state of the world ... with a focus on local stuff. But in the meantime, I'm pretending to be a real photographer and trying to get my photos out.

I have finally finished scanning the photos! Now I am slowly posting them.

It's Tuesday and that's soccer talk night! A fierce competition tonight which reminded me what my one true love in this life is. Playing soccer. I don't know if I've ever had a better (sustained) high than being on the pitch and playing well with a fun team. Kim came out tonight so I had to play extra hard - I generally do better with an audience.

What a game! 1-0. 1-1. 2-1. 2-2. 3-2. 4-2. 4-3. 4-4. Half time. More of the same for the second half. Their keeper played impressively, stopping several of my blistering shots (I poured the heat on tonight) but couldn't stop a quick shot I poked through his legs.

The guys on the team are really coming together - I put an incredibly tough pass though a couple of defenders to Jeff, who perfectly anticipated it, closing out the remaining defender and slammed it home. I felt damn good out there - so good I cannot begin to explain it here. Different world.

At any rate, we tied the game 7-7 with a goal as the clock stroked 0.7 seconds remaining. It doesn't get much better than that - a proper ending for such a tight match.

In other news, I got my camera tonight. However, I'm struggling on a last minute web site gig and it pays so I gotta focus on that. Haven't even turned it on yet. Regarding climbing photos, I got a few photos left to scan, then I need to upload them, so I'm hoping to get somewhere on that tomorrow. We'll see how the paying work goes though.

I don't think I have said anything here yet, but big congrats to Klink and Chanda who will be getting married in Oct. I assume he has been too busy lately trying to find some other competent photographer to shoot the wedding to post on my blog. His absence certainly cannot be explained by my lack of interesting content. Sorry for that. Thanks for reading =)

I have 2 rolls left to scan. Then I just have to upload everything, add captions, and poof. As of this second, I have over 250 photos scanned in. I'm not sure what to do here - it is far too many to leave up indefinitely (hosting costs $, folks), but I figure the 8 of us from the trip and a few select others might actually want to see them all, so I'll put them all up at first. Then after some period of time, I'll delete the ones I find less pleasing.

Red River Gorge climbing photos...

As I was reading the current Playboy this morning, I was struck by a thought. It was from South Park the movie - in the beginning when a TV news anchor says, "In other news, it has been 6 weeks since Saddam Hussein has been killed by a pack of wild boars, and the world is still glad to be rid of him." Forgeting for a second, the needless suffering of Iraqis (and American troops) in Iraq due to the horribly mismanaged occupation, I am damn glad that Qusay and Uday (Saddam's offspring) are pushing up daisies while Saddam chills in jail. The article detailed the daily habits of Uday and it was quite sickening.

I later went on to read an article in Time (I think) about the state of state censorship. Groups like the Parent's Television Council (who I've discussed in the past) are pushing for more government control of TV in order to protect the children. I could return to George Carlin's opinions on the children but I think I have used his seven words enough on this blog for the month (yeah, I got a quota). So let me just say this ... parents need parent their children. They don't need to legislate their TV viewing habits to all children, and they certainly don't need to tell me what TV to watch.

If you don't like what is on TV, don't watch. If you are worried that your kids will be injured or stunted by hearing what other kids are saying at the playground due to their viewing habits then you are going to be raising a rather sheltered child who is doomed to fail in life after a painful rebellion from your control.

There are not a lot of things that really anger me anymore - but the thought of the FCC telling Jon Stewart what he can and cannot say on cable really upsets me. Yeah, there are bills under consideration which would take cable TV (and satellite radio) and put it under FCC control. Brilliant.

The latest conservative initiative cloking itself with words like "Bill of Rights" has made its way to Minnesota. Republican legislators: Sen. Bachman (from anti-gay maeasures fame) and Rep. Vandeveer have brought this social abomination to St. Paul.

Let me add my latest mantra... "The absence of a conservative agenda does not denote a liberal agenda"
The Minnesota Daily on Friday had a couple of nice opinion pieces on the subject. Academic Freedom Matters by U Prof Alan Lifson and Challenging one’s beliefs and values is an integral part of modern higher education by Prof Michelle Mason
Lifson stated the obvious about having conservative profs. when he was in school.

When I was an undergraduate student years ago, I took a political science seminar co-taught by conservative commentator George Will. Will expressed his strong opinions, and in doing so, challenged us to defend our positions and think critically beyond our world views. This is the essence of democracy and academic learning.

Hey...I remember those profs. Mmmmm smells like an education.

here is also a response to Mason's letter

Okay, so when I went on this trip, I figured that I would take a lot of photos to learn from and that in general, I would end up with a bunch of mediocre photos which people would compliment me on (because that is what people do to even mediocre photographers).

After tonight I am thrilled to say that I have several photos that I am excited about and I have surpassed my expected number of what I consider a quality shot. As I predicted to Adam - most of these are photos of Raphael climbing. Beyond being a good climber, the man is attractive and his hair holds a lot of detail.

Here are two photos I particularly like - I hope to have the whole series of this climb up before midweek.

Raph climbing in Red River Gorge on Inhibitor.

I just uploaded a few more photos of our recent Red River Gorge climbing trip to my gallery site. I am 3/4 through them now - I haven't uploaded very many but I hope they will all be online by next week.

We have been having some incredible weather this past week. Sunny skies and warming weather in high 40's. Saturday morning, I got up early before work and took a 7:00 am 1 hour bike ride. Took of my favorite short paths - a 13 mile trip mostly along the Mississippi River which takes me over the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis. A fun route, if a bit chilly at this time of year. It's good to be back on the bike.

I ordered my new digital camera today - a new Nikon D2H from B & H Photo. I should get it by Wednesday. Once I get the durn thing all figured out, I would expect that this blog will turn feature more photos. I hope to start covering more local events / protests and offering commentary.

As I write this, I'm watching CBS' coverage of the elite eight basketball. Some truck commercial just featured 5 guys on a roadtrip while one of them was singing along with a female countryish song about how great it was to be a woman. While hateful conservatives dominate the legislatures, crafting hateful laws and amendments to discriminate against gays and lesbians, this is a refeshing reminder that we are winning what has been called the cultural war. Even as states rush to prohibit gay marriage, more people realize that someone they love is gay (as more people come out of the closet) and realize homosexuality is not something to be feared or hidden. There are still vocal groups that harp about "fixing" homosexuals, but overtime they will be ridiculed for the fools they are.

I briefly attended a demonstration at Planned Parenthood on Good Friday around the issue of ... shocker ... abortion! The local PP clinic is 1 block away from my bookstore, so I have seen it from afar before. This time I ventured up there with my sister to briefly register my support for a future with safe and rare abortions for women. I saw between 100 and 200 folks there who call themselves pro-life because they believe the rights of a fetus trump the rights of the woman carrying it.

The shining juvenile moment came when 2 so-called pro-life women confronted a man carrying a "Thank God for Planned Parenthood" sign. "Don't you mean, 'Thank Satan for Planned Parenthood?'" one woman snidely asked while the other snickered. sigh. Please folks, whatever your opinion on these serious matters, can we dispense with juvenile remarks? Above and beyond the total lack of originality this comment reveals, it left me curious if Planned Parenthood is all part of God's plan. If Jesus dying on the cross was part of God's plan, doesn't that suggest that anything Satan does it part of God's plan? I don't know. It does underscore the point that looking for logic and consistency in religion is pointless. This doesn't make religion pointless or devalue it in any way. Afterall, when I fall asleep alone reading Salem's Lot by Stephen King, scientific rationality seems quite pointless. Believing vampires defy physical laws and are therefore doesn't prevent me from wondering if I'll wake to someone scratching at the window.

I'm slowly trying to get caught up with interesting blog posts I missed over the past 3 weeks. It hasn't been long since I discovered realclimate.org but I have been impressed with it. There is an interesting article on it now discussing world wide glacier shrinkage and what it means. It caught my eye because my friend Lauren was recently talking about it - specifically the prediction that Glacier National Park (in Montana) will likely be glacier-less in 100 years. The article does mention that some areas of the world have expanding glaciers, but they are glaring exceptions to the general rule of world wide glacier shrinkage.

I've been enjoying the slowly warming weather lately. Biked to work yesterday and today. Good to be back in the saddle. After work today, I went on a slow 4 mile run - I wasn't too tired when I finished but I didn't want to push it as I am contemplating a longish bike ride on Friday morning.

I've tried listening to MPR a couple of times this week, but since it seems the only things going on revolve around some vegetative women in Florida and some kid who shot a bunch of people up north, I haven't gotten much news. I suppose I have some opinions on these events, but the depth of uncaring about them prevents me from commenting. This doesn't happen often, enjoy.

I read an interview with Dave Durenberger that seemed like it was going to be interesting, but turned out rather boring. Boreing doesn't seem like the right word, but I'm more interested in watching Pitsnogle lead WVA to a victory over Bobby Knight than semantics. Sorry. If you don't know him, Dave is a lifelong Republican who says modern Bushie-type Republicans have lost the way and don't really believe in representative government. Duh.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed reading the City Pages article about modern overprotective parents. This is a long, but interesting article. If you get bored, skip to the end, the last couple of paragraphs offer a rather interseting story.

Adam and I have often discussed this situation ... kids are not allowed to have any unstructured fun or play time during which they could conceivably be hurt. George Carlin has pointed out that as a society we deprive all children of fun in order to save a few thousand lives. I find it absurd. Wasn't it Leary who suggested, "Life sucks, buy a #@%*ing helmet." Then again, I have no children, and have no plans of raising any anytime soon. I do suppose that if my child were the only one on the playground not wearing a Dungeons & Dragons style breastplate (AC 4) and that child developed a boo boo as a result, I would probably feel pretty bad. Or maybe I would echo the sentiments of Calvin's (the dude that chilled with Hobbes) dad who often noted things that suck build character.

Well, I promised some photos and I'm not one to back down on my word. I have setup a gallery of Adam climbing Maypop, a 5.11 sport route.

No energy for anything other than 2 more photos. Joel and Lauren on Five Finger Discount ... Lauren is the one modeling the brain bucket.

Red Wing rock climbing photos available here.

Interesting design features a possibilty for books and articles online. A new way to look at those footnotes, or dictionary definitions as well.
IF:book - a project for the Institute for the future of the book has a nice take on the use of hyperlinks in online texts. It highlights the recent issue of Atlantic Monthly, which has a David Foster Wallace cover story. Click on the thumbnail to get an idea of what it looks like or go to AM's preview and click on highlighted text.

Imagine Joyce's Ulysses or Finnegans Wake using this technology or certain texts by Faulkner.