An Inquisitive Tree Swallow

This is a shot I captured at O'Sullivan's Island in Derby CT.

Exif: Nikon D7100, Tokina 400mm 5.6, f/8, 1/800s, ISO 400

 ƒ/8.0

403.2 mm

 1/800

 400

A Teenage Girl And Her Patriarchy Fighting Dress

Look, I'm all for hypocrisy shaming, and I'm not about to call this girl a whore-I don't her...but, here's what I do know. Not a single piece of real journalism has been done by all the "credible" news outlets that picked up this story after it went viral from her sister's blog Wine and Marble. A blog that deal a lot with fighting sexism and "Christian Patriarchy"...this is the entire basis of the narrative given...no one called anyone involved...any of the fathers (at least in any of the stories I saw)

But, the real irony is that without the patriarchy this story would never have gone viral...would anyone have paid any attention if men didn't find this photo attractive? No, they wouldn't have...but, I guess the patriarchy is bad when it gets you thrown out of your prom, but good when it gives you a giant soapbox to fight a nonexistent enemy.

Romans 13 and Libertarians...Again

Since it came up in posts on both Norman Horn's and Bob Murphy's blogs recently, I thought I'd add some of my latest thoughts on the subject.

Of, course this subject is going to keep popping up in Christian libertarian circles...I say let it. After all, it is not anarchists who need be defensive, when it's the conservatives view that seems to imply that the Nuremberg Defense is legitimate...because that is what they are saying when they continue to insist that any demand of any organization that calls itself a government must be obeyed. I mean, by what authority can we condemn the Nazi soldiers who put Jews in gas chambers, if they were "to be subject to the governing authorities" in the way conservatives are using that verse?

The other thing is, why are we not still under the Roman Empire's form of government? I mean, Paul wrote this passage of Scripture when the Roman Empire was the "governing authority", so he must have been saying that, that was the only form of government that would ever exist...right?

Of course that is a comically ridiculous argument. But, that is the kind of nonsense conservatives spew when they use Romans 13 to defend the current form of government we have. And, the added irony is that, though few of them would say that we have worse system than ancient Rome, the US and it's supposedly Judeo-Christian founding would have never come about without the founders being in rebellion against Britain.

This Makes Me Like You Less, Ricky

Unlike many Christians, I don't have strong feelings about Ricky Gervais-I actually think he and his band of new atheist cohorts are right when they toss-off the notion that offended people are automatically victims.

And, so he does this little spot with the cute little girl, playing all "I just a humble guy with a cute little girl reading things that hurt my feelings."

Let me tell why that's bullshit. When she asks him, "...what does all this mean?" His answer is very telling.

"It means I'm doing something right."

There you have it. That is such a smug answer.

No,  Ricky. It means no such thing. When fedora wearing asshats prattle on about how being offended doesn't make you right, they forget that being offensive doesn't make you right, either. Any common internet troll can offend people. And that's what you are, a troll. Nothing more and nothing less. And, as a troll, I mean that with all due respect.

Bonus Info: Improv Drum Solo #4 (1st Two Camera Shoot)

Pretty much all the drum an audio stuff is very similar to what it was in this previous post about my Toxicity drum cover: Toxicity Drum Cover Bonus Info

What was different with this shoot was the camera setup. This was my first attempt at a multi-camera shoot. I used my two Nikon DSLRs: a D3100 with the kit 18-55mm lens, and a D7100 with the 50mm f/1.8 G. If you can't tell which shot is which the front view is the D3100, and the side view is the D7100. Looking at the final product I should have probably used the D7100 for the front view, so I could use the better lens on the weaker camera. The obvious difference in video quality between the two shots is somewhat distracting...at least to me anyway. lol

I didn't use any time code to sync everything, I just went around the room hitting record on everything, then lined up all the tracks and edited the video together in Sony Vegas.

On Minimum Wage and Contempt for Ordinary Things

Americans sure do have interesting ways of using the word "ordinary." For example, one might hear a conversation that goes something like this: "Look at how ordinary young Johnny is, surely he will go far in life." Just let that sentence sink-in for a few seconds...

Now, I would never argue that ordinary men cannot achieve great things, they can and they have. What I am arguing is that in this particular scenario, Johnny is not ordinary. What they mean is that Johnny is socially awesome, well-adjusted, and popular, therefore he will likely live "The American Dream"...

Now, "The American Dream" is a perfectly fine destination to aspire to, but don't call it ordinary. There is nothing ordinary about it. It says it right there in its name...we used to use the word dream to make the distinction between ordinary,waking-life, and the unmistakably un-ordinary life of our fantasies.

So, what does this have to do with minimum wage? To answer this question let me define Ordinary Man: a man whose features fall within the sphere of what features are common to all men. In light of this, let's take from the scenario from above: it is not common to all men to be socially awesome, well-adjusted, and popular, therefore those aspects of Johnny are not ordinary. Yet, they are nearly essential characteristics one must posses to achieve The American Dream. Consequently, any characteristic of the ordinary man that gets in the way of achieving the American Dream, must now be labeled a syndrome or a disorder.

OK, now that we've established that most people have some kind of disorder, let's go about the task of making sure all of them can easily have access to-yep, you guessed it-The American Dream!!!!!!!

This is not to say that there are not those who's features fall below the sphere of what is common to all men, people who really do have disorders. But, the danger in treating these and the ordinary man as though they are both equally in need of assistance, is that half of the people, or nearly so, give a place of honor to weakness, and the other half, or nearly so, give a place of contempt to the same.

To observe this, just look at the comment section of any active FB post about the latest minimum wage talk. Both sides have contempt for ordinary things. The former worships weakness and talks of social justice and privilege, the latter worships strength and talks of eugenics and euthanasia. But, they both agree that everyone should have The American Dream. One says he should have it, or else be given it forcibly; the other says he should have it or he should be condemned.


Let's take a closer look at the latter group. They'll make a sound economic argument that if the minimum wage goes up, the price of everything else will do the same...and if he chooses to leave it at that, the irony still remains that this is a tacit admission that the great businessmen he's defending are powerless to whatever law the state wants to make, and also that it is perfectly reasonable for the capitalist's first move to be to raise prices on all of their customers regardless or whether or not they supported a raise to the minimum wage.


Neither of those implications sit well with me. Small business is often said to be the backbone of our economy...and of all the economic cliches bandied about nowadays, this one has the most economic merit. Which is why it pains me when it rolls over to every demand of government at the expense of the customer. Small business is the backbone any economy...it's time it started acting like it.

CT Gun Owners: It's Too Late to Back Down

You've come this far CT gun owners. Let them try to get you to accept an amnesty program. Don't take it. Let them try to muster enough police and military willing to go house to house ten of thousands of times over, to enforce these laws. Let them be the aggressors. If they can find the men willing to do that, then this country is in much worse shape than even I believe it is.

They wont be able to. And they're only other option is to, either get you to accept an amnesty program, or stick their tails between their legs and repeal these laws. We are winning. Take it all the way. Make them back down. It's their only play, as long as you keep fighting. Keep up the good work, you guys are making me proud to be lifelong CT resident.

My Photography

Check out my Flickr for some of my best shots

Bonus Info: Toxicity (SOAD Drum Cover) by Geoff Bosco

http://youtu.be/FT7GS09AFTY

This drum kit is the 2007 PDP MX series kit I bought in 2008. I still think these are the best bang for the buck kits out there. Even with some of the great kits Tama are starting to produce at this price point. I still lean towards the DW sound.

The tom toms have Evans clear G1s on both sides. These are the Level 360 versions. These are nearly a year old, and they, one, still tune up like a breeze and two, as you can hear, still sound great.

The snare, a 13' 5.5" solid maple stave made drum by Spawn, has a coated G1 on top and a clear Remo (Gasp!)  Ambassador on the snare side.

The bass drum has a clear Evans EQ4 on the batter side and a plain black ported Evans on the resonant side.

The video was recorded on my Nikon D7100 in manual mode with the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 (IF) DX. (1080 30p 1/30s iso 400 f/3.5)

I used a four mic setup to record this track into the Reaper DAW. I have a Sennheiser e604 on the snare, an AKG D112 in the bass drum, and a matched pair of Oktava MC012 in the Glyn Johns configuration for overheads.

The drums were mixed pretty simply. I always start by adding highpass filters, even to the bass drum, just to where I want the lowest frequencies to for that particular source to be audible. Just gates comp and eq on the bass and snare, with just a tiny bit of guitar distortion added to the snare to give it some mid range cut. Then I sent a aux input from the snare into a comp on the overheads to duck the sound of the snare in them. That's very typical in metal drum mixing. The overheads are compressed a bit (slow attack/quick release) and just a bit of eq. I sent these track to a drum buss where I compressed a bit more, then into a brickwall limiter, just to cut down the highest peaks 2-3db, and did some final overall eq.

On the master buss I simply repeated what I did on the drum buss, with slightly different parameters of course, and added gain to get the final levels.


I used Sony Vegas to edit the audio and video together. The video itself is one complete unedited take, but there is an edit in the audio. I though about editing the actual video that goes with it the fixed audio, but I kind of liked the way it came out. lol See if you can spot it.

A quick explanation of why CT has a salt shortage

In the days leading up to a big storm people begin to get nervous. They go out to buy things they think they might need. Then they start thinking about how everyone else is thinking the same thing..."well, we better get to the store before all the bread and milk is gone!" And, since everyone knows that the store aren't going to raise prices for things they're going to either buy now or buy four-five days from now, that is exactly what everyone does. And since there is no incentive for retailers to increase stock, they don't...

Well, it took me long enough...

I've been meaning to do this for a while. This will be the hub for all my social media stuff. Check out these links.

http://www.youtube.com/user/kingcherub

https://www.facebook.com/CtNewsWatch

http://www.flickr.com/photos/109434304@N07/

I will also blog from here, not just link to stuff from other places.