Equal
The equal sign has been in the public view this week. It means that two sides of a mathematical arrangement have the same value. This week, with arguments about gay marriage in the public eye, the equal sign has been tarted up in red and pink, and become popular on facebook. It is supposed to represent equality, as in marriage equality. At least it is not a ribbon pinned to a lapel.
On friday evening of red equality week, PG was listening to a podcast, emanating from a site called Useless Information. PG tries to use less information, which is not quite the same thing. This podcast was originally presented in November 2012, and tells the story of an Ohio man who drowns in a boating accident, only to reappear as a Nebraska sportscaster.
At the outset of the podcast, there is a quiz. In this edition, a series of math symbols are the possible answers. The question is, which one was the first to be used. The equal sign won.
Robert Recorde (born c. 1510, Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales—died June 1558, London, England) invented the equal sign. In his book Recorde explains his design of the “Gemowe lines”: “…to avoid the tedious repetition of these words: “is equal to”, I will set (as I do often in work use) a pair of parallels (or Gemowe lines) of one length (thus =), because no two things can be more equal.”
Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Quote Waste
There is a tasteful graphic going around. It features a quote, “Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted.” John Lennon is blamed for this thought. Wikiquotes does not have this quote, at least by Mr. Ono.
An obvious comment is that being wasted is something Mr. Lennon knew. Keith Richards says this is not quite the case. On pages 261-262 of “Life”, Mr. Richards describes how Mr. Lennon would try to keep up on the drug intake, but wound up in the loo, studying the porcelain.
There was a facebook exchange about this quote. “Wikiquotes does not show this quote. I searched using wasted, wasting, and time.” ~ “Luther,the way I look at these quotes is : I like the idea they express, rather than being overly concerned with the veracity of the attribution.”
If the idea is so cool, why do the quotemongers need to attribute them to a famous person? You can find some pastoral image for the background, throw the quote up, and be inspired. Is it an authoritarian impulse to find a wise man to give credit for the cleverness? Can’t it stand on it’s on?
John Lennon spoke about being more popular than Jesus, and caught some flack as a result. Would John really want to be used as justification for someone else’s clever thought? The sense here is that all he wanted to do was play rock and roll. Let someone else be the spokesman for a generation.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Other Things Are Happening
As you may have heard, lawyers are presenting arguments to SCOTUS about same sex marriage. This has gotten a lot of attention. People are talking. Facebook status photographs are being changed to graphic symbols. Preachers are reading the bible.
Not everyone is amused by this lawyer generated hoopla. A blog post came out, 6 Things That Happened While Y’all Were Preoccupied With Gay Marriage. The six things in this post are a corporate written law signed by BHO, two proposed laws in state legislatures, a rapper saying something tacky, people being arrested, and more people becoming homeless. All of these things are serious issues. Ignoring the rapper would seem a painless solution to one problem.
All of these issues are focused on the United States. It is bad enough to obsess about tax regulations that seem to benefit the wealthy. This commentary by BGD does not consider the ninety plus percent of the population that lives outside the lower forty eight. Here are a few of the things happening in the rest of the world. No facebook graphics are available for many of these issues.
1- The United States is conducting a war of choice in Afghanistan. Men, women, and children are being killed. The production of heroin is being protected. Billions of borrowed dollars are being spent in a worthless endeavor. Revenge for 911 has long ago been taken.
2- The United States is sending unmanned aircraft to conduct air slaughter of defenseless populations. These men, women, and children are residents of countries the United States is not at war with. In the case of Pakistan, we are allies. With allies like that, who needs enemies.
3- Oil products are being used without any consideration of the future. Carbon Dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere at a much faster pace than the trees of the planet can process. Oil is being extracted from increasingly more environmentally sensitive areas.
4- The government of Syria is slaughtering it’s own people. Israel takes in zero refugees.
5- Billions of narco dollars flow into criminal hands in Latin America. This money is causing problems.
6- Millions of Jesus Worshipers are about to celebrate Easter. They don’t seem to care about the neighbors, who are sick and tired of hearing about that religion.
The list could go on, ond on, and on. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This was written like H. P. Lovecraft.
C.S. Lewis
There was a facebook link to a feature, Ayn Rand Really, Really Hated C.S. Lewis. It turns out to be verbatim droppings from Ayn Rand’s Marginalia : Her Critical Comments on the Writings of over Twenty Authors. If you are interested in details, there are the links.
Miss Rand has read more C.S. Lewis than PG. There was a copy of a CSL work at a yard sale once, which PG invested a quarter in. He read as far as the appearance of a pig named trufflehunter. Maybe it was a bad day for books, but PG put CSL down, never to make another attempt.
There was a sixth grade english teacher at Ashford Park named Mrs. Ruff. Lots of people talked about how sweet she was, but PG was not impressed. One day, between handing out mimeographed copies of poems to be memorized, Mrs. Ruff started to talk about Narnia. It was a fantastic and amazing story. With a hint of primness, she told the class that Narnia was really about Jesus.
Conversation At Starbucks
This may come as a surprise, but some of the stuff at Chamblee54 is copied from other sources. Some folks come up with things that just cannot be improved. That is why G-d invented copy paste. This story below originated at a site called World Class Stupid. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
I’ve been reading a lot about how supportive parents are to their unconventional kids these days, but I never really believed it. All the stories seemed just a little too good to be true: The dad who overhears his son talking about coming out and writes him a note that says he’ll love him no matter what. The two construction workers on the subway who proudly talk about their gay sons. The mom who walks in on her son having sex with his boyfriend and responds with a lock for his bedroom door and a note saying, “I always knew you were gay and I’m fine with it! Sorry to disturb your blowjob!”
Needless to say, I was totally surprised when I witnessed a scene that makes all of them look like Pat Boone eating cheese. I’d never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Get the Kleenex ready as we fade in on the local Starbucks.
I was drinking a frappuccino and listening to music when two guys in white robes and pointy hoods walked in. Despite the fact they were covered from head to toe in starched white cloth, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt they were really racist, sexist Southerners — the kind of guys who snapped towels at each other in the locker room and called guys “faggot” when they listened to Erasure over and over (even the new record!).
I always ignore people in costume since they usually ask me for candy, but this time I couldn’t help myself. The tape in my Walkman jammed just as Sheryl Crowe was going to tell me what kind of a road a day is like, and I heard Guy #1 say this: “My wife wants me to stop killing squirrels, but I don’t feel right just turning them loose after I’ve cut off their skins.” It piqued my curiosity so I put a blank tape in my Walkman and hit RECORD. Ordinarily I don’t have time to waste on meaningless strangers but I figured my Yelp review could wait.
Guy #2: That don’t sound much like Wilma. She ain’t one to spoil a good hobby.
Guy #1: She wants me to spend more time with our son Ralph, who’s fifteen and plays football.
Guy #2: How is Ralph anyway? Haven’t seen him in awhile.
Guy #1: Oh, he’s good. This year he’s quarterback.
Guy #2: He’ll definitely have the girls hanging around him now.
Guy #1: Yeah if he had any time for them.
Guy #2: Focused on football?
Guy #1: Focused on terpsichory.
Guy #2: You’re shittin’ me!
Guy #1: I kid you not. Last week he told me and Betty that he wanted to join the Bolshoi Ballet.
Guy #2: Holy Jesus on the cross. I don’t see how anybody can tolerate that parade of patriarchal cliché.
Guy #1: Amirite? Amirite? I tell ya, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Guy #2: Well, it don’t surprise me none. He always seemed soft, even ignoring the tutu.
Guy #1: How’s Marvin Jr.?
Guy #2: Last week I caught him en pointe with his boyfriend doing a tour jeté. His sister told me he wants to sign with Martha Graham.
Guy #1: Hoo-wee! Well, we all saw that coming.
Guy #2: You’re the eighth person to tell me that. How’d everybody see it but me?
Guy #1: It was just a feelin’, Elbert. In their class photo he’s the only one pretending to be a tree.
Guy #2: I guess you’re right. But hell, Charlie — Martha Graham? Critics say her Bacchanale achieves a subtle, sublime lyricism but to me it looks like Jackie Chan fighting off locusts.
Guy #1: It definitely eschews the traditional vocabulary of dance.
Guy #2: Shit, Charlie. We both have kids who adore the dance. What do we do now?
Guy #1: We act like normal fathers. We say their tights don’t make their asses look fat and if anybody says their pirouettes are wobbly we jam potatoes into the exhaust pipes of their trucks.
Guy #1: Well, I guess Ralph and Marvin Jr. won’t be getting together like we thought.
Guy #2: I guess not. If they wanna be professional dancers, they’re gonna need significant others who can pay the rent. [LONG PAUSE]
Guy #2: Hey Charlie, you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?
Guy #1: I think I am, Elbert. Not here, though — at my place. I just bought a new Scriabin polonaise and all this cotton dampens the poetry of my arms.
By that point I was holding back a little tear, but then they resumed talking about squirrels. I ran home and transcribed the whole thing and posted it here. I hope it brightens your day like it brightened mine. Maybe some day I’ll post an actual copy of the tape but when I scan it it just looks like a beige stripe.
Swat Squad Saturday
I stand in the cold rain
Medicate the pain
And try to remember
To shout out timber
What the rebellion was all about
Liberty cabbage or sauerkraut
As I think about the loss
Of the loudmouth on the cross
And who did what first
And when and where and worst
I wonder if it really matters anymore
When it all seems like a chore
An abyss
Hit or miss
Thank you Lumdog
Pictures are from The Library of Congress
Ten Questions For Phoblography
The Daily Post is a WordPress facility, dedicated to “The Art and Craft of Blogging.” Recently they had a feature, Ten Questions (plus one!) for Phoblography. I decided to copy the feature, delete the published answers, and supply my own. Someone might be interested in reading this. If nothing else, this is a good excuse write some text to go between a collection of pictures. That is what text does at Chamblee54.
The extra question is about telephones with built in cameras, which PG thinks is a cool idea. When the current stupid phone wears out, a camera enabled phone might be a good idea. For the time being, the 12 button wonder phone works just fine. It was purchased at a yard sale for four dollars, and has been worth every penny. As for phoblography, it sounds like a Vietnamese Soup Magazine.
1. What’s your typical process for developing, creating, and publishing a post? There is no typical process. Text ideas come from everywhere… twitter, facebook, dead tree books, the real world. Often, I will hear something, and start thinking about it, and before long a post is on the way. I also keep a list of what I posted at this time each of the last five years, and have frequent reruns. Some posts just need to be repeated. At other times, a repost is the answer for writer’s tackle.
The pictures usually have nothing to do with the text. There are three groups of pictures. There are color photographs that I take, and edit. There are historic pictures from The Library of Congress, and “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. I am usually working on editing pictures from one of these groups, and often the most recently edited pictures are chosen for the post.
So I write the text, and include links for the sources and quotes. The first draft is written in a separate wordpad document. The text is marked up with HTML. I like to use colored fonts, typically alternating shades of green for each paragraph. The pictures are selected, and moved into a folder for that date. A new post is started, and given a title. The pictures, and text, are moved into the window. The post is saved, and a preview is opened in a separate window. The text is reviewed for typos, misspelled words, and what are known as widows. A widow is a single word, in a line by itself, at the end of a paragraph. These are ugly, and can almost always be corrected. Often there is a useless phrase in the last sentence, which can be painlessly deleted. The writing is usually improved.
When the post is up to the standards of Chamblee54, it is published. The code is copied, and pasted into the word document. The link is posted on facebook, and anywhere else that is appropriate.
2. What does your blogging setup look like? What do you need to be comfortable publishing? The setup is an old desktop, on top of a butcher block table. The computer is a storebought desktop. The desk is in front of a window, overlooking the street. There is a mirror behind the monitor, so I can see the TV set on the other side of the room. I usually have a beverage, usually coffee, tea, or water. Sometimes there is background music playing. If I am writing text, the music needs to be instrumental, with no vocals.
3. Do you do much processing to your photos? Are there photo tools, apps, or software you’d recommend? I edit the hell out of pictures. I use a program called GIMP. Even if I use a self taken picture, without cropping or adjustments, I need to reduce it to 720 pixels wide. This reduces the file size. I started out with a dial up, and learned the value of having small file sizes.
4. What are your top three tips for new/amateur photobloggers? Link to your sources, don’t spill your beverage, have fun.
5. What photo equipment do you use? What would you recommend for someone who’s ready to move on from a cameraphone or a point-and-shoot camera? On the historic pictures, I have a solid internet connection. For my own pictures, I use a Nikon coolpix L24. It was on sale at Walmart.
6. How many photos do you think you take for each photo you decide to feature on the site? What’s your process for trying to capture the “perfect” shot? I take as many pictures as the occasion demands. I edit them, and put them away. There is a list of folders to be used, and I go through that list folder by folder. I also repeat good collections of pictures, often when I repeat the post.
I really don’t go for the perfect shot. The pictures I take are just fodder for the desktop. Often at events, I just shoot, shoot, shoot, and take as much garbage as I do usuable images.
7. Why did you choose WordPress.com for your site? I used blogspot until google wouldn’t let me into my account. I registered with WordPress to make a comment at a blog, and decided to try writing there. I have been very happy with WordPress .
8. Tell us five of your daily reads / favorite photography blogs. The Fishwrapper, Peach Pundit, Bloggingheads, Trifecta, Yo is this racist, and Facebook. Podcasts include 99 percent invisible, backstory, radiolab. I would rather listen to something, while I work on pictures, than read.
9. Which of your posts has had the most influence on your readers, and why? I wrote Shock And Awe Day 2013 on Monday, and it is getting a good response. None of the posts really influences anyone. A few people enjoy them, which is all I have a right to expect.
10. What are your favorite things/locations/people to photograph? Is there something you’d never feature on your blog? I like dogs, graffiti, mannequins, and ethnic diversity. In history, I like group photographs broken into individuals. Public domain is a magic phrase. I would never print the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. G-d is too busy to help me.
Mundane Stories
The group started to tell mundane stories. PG waited his turn. He had ridden his bike up Ashford Road, and saw the wife of an old friend walking. Is your name Diana, with an A, or Diane, with an E? PG was correct on his first guess. It happens that the parents of several friends had died in the last fifteen years, and PG did not hear about it.
Ashford Road is a treasure. It is a residential road, where the trees grow together in the midddle to form a canopy. The original plan for MARTA had been to connect Ashford Road with Ashford Dunwoody with an underpass. The neighborhood association was not amused.
The next person to speak said that he likes to pee sitting down. PG wondered if, truth be told, how many men would say the same thing. The convenience of piss standing is well known, but sometimes things happen when you are seated.
With a flush toilet, it is a moot point. In a composting outhouse, mixing urine with feces has unpleasant results. There are some things you learn from basic living.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is written like Charles Dickens.
Singers Who Wear Wigs
If you go to google, and type in “singers that wear wigs”, the first name to appear is Mary J. Blige. PG does not follow her closely, but went to youtube and found a video. This is probably not her real hair.
Dolly Parton is known for a lot of things, at least two of which are real. The hair is not. If you ask her “How long does it take to do your hair?”, she says “I don’t know, I’m never there”
If anyone is known for enhancing her natural attributes, it would be Cher. Her fondness for plastic surgery is well known, as is the way her head fits in a hairpiece. In this number, Mrs. Bono talks about some of her favorite people.
Grace Slick is basically retired these days. In her hey day, she never appeared in public in her real hair. PG saw her at the Omni once, and was horrified by her wig. (Grace sells her paintings these days. Her white hair is cut short. The wigs are in a museum.)
RuPaul is not really blonde. That is a part of her wardrobe. In this video, she co stars with Martha Wash, in a remake of “It’s Raining Men”. The working title for this video was Piggly Wiggly.
It is a bit of show business wisdom that you put the horses at the end of a parade. Deaundra Peek fills this important role today. Last year it was a remake of “Supermodel”, which has copyright issues. Today, it is a cooking lesson. The last three characters of the Youtube code are M2M.
This is a repost. Pictures are by Chamblee54. As a bonus to our reader(s), we will explore the issue, Does Lady Gaga wear a wig? The answers are a bit contradictory, which is somehow fitting. One page says she does not wear a wig, but does wear extensions in some videos. Another answer is that dying her hair is damaging to the hair, if she went to a salon the paparazzi would see her, so yes, she does wear a wig. If you have too much free time, here is a forum discussion on this subject.
Pie Day
Today is 3-14. It is a monday, and 314 are the first three digits of pi (affectionately known as π ). It is a math thing, the number you multiply a diameter by to get the circumference. When your grammar school math teacher told you about π, she probably used 3.14, or 3 1/7. (PG went to school when Hewlett and Packard were still in the garage.)
You might also have heard the formula for the area of a circle, the racy π r squared . This means that you multiply π by the radius ( half the diameter, a line from the border to the center point), and then multiply the whole contraption by the radius again. The formula has a funny sound to it. Pie are not square, cornbread is square, pie are round. Like Sly Stone says, all the squares go home.
According to wikipedia, π seems to have been known as early as 1900 b.c. The pyramids of Egypt have a π based feature. The Greek letter π is the first letter of the Greek word περίμετρος (perimeter) . This was determined OTP.
The pyramid- π function is fairly simple. The total length of the four sides, at the base, will be the same as the height of the pyramid, times two, times π. PG likes to make model pyramids. They are 6″ tall, and the base sides are 9 3/8″. The combination of these four sides is 37 1/2″. If you multiply 6x2x3.14, you get 37.68″ The .18″ is because of a measuring error.
A lady named Eve Astrid Andersson has a page of her website dedicated to π. The only trivia question that PG understood was the first one…1. What is the formal definition of pi? …the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter // 3.14159 // the radius of a unit circle // the surface area of a sphere of diameter 22/7 // a delicious dessert, especially if it contains cherries.
There is the football cheer from M.I.T. ” Cosine, secant, tangent, sine 3.14159 // Integral, radical, u dv, slipstick, slide rule, MIT!”
In 1998 a movie titled π was released. It caused brain damage in 3.14% of those who saw it. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that 1998 = 666 x 3.
π has been calculated to over five million digits. The second part of this feature are a few of those numbers. There are 82 characters in each line. This feature shows π extended to 10,165 digits. This is .02% of five million. The pictures today are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. This is a repost.
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Six Pack Of Post This
It has been two and a half weeks since this blog declared war on passive aggressive facebook graphics. This means most signs that tell you to repost this if you agree. The first six days saw one, two, three, four such posts. In the next eleven days, PG copied six offending signs. The trend shows no sign of slowing down, so there will probably be more of these posts.
There is a synchronicity of sorts in this collection. There is moms against guns, paired with a joke about a hitman. There is a fluffy piece about how people would rate you. Number four was about supporting a small business. This is a cause that gets lip service, until there is a chance to save money at Walmart.
The last two were about cancer.This is where it gets personal. PG lost both parents to cancer. While these graphics may bring hope and happiness to some, they bring pain to Brookhaven. And yes, the opinion at chamblee54 is a valid one. The feelings are just as real here as anywhere. You don’t want to be a buzzkill to the well meaning people, but sometimes you just wish they would shut up and go away.
People love to have influence over others. You are bombarded with messages, about what you should buy, how you should feel, how to be a better person, and what cause to support. It can be a drain on the soul. Some build up walls against the onslaught of messages. Some fight back, and get caught in a spiral of negativity. Others judge their neighbor on opinions, and shun those who do not measure up to a mysterious standard. Sometimes, you wish you had never learned how to read.
When the text was combined with the posters, the words only went as far as the fourth sign. The rest of the space will be filled in with random quotes.
@aurosan Perez Hilton now has a child. Please respect my privacy at this time.
@merseytart I was pro gay parenting. Then I discovered Perez Hilton had spawned
@FakeCommish I would rather be adopted by Hitler than Perez Hilton. Somebody go on a rescue mission.
@laurenpippa Perez Hilton is a dad. I am disgusted. No, not because he’s gay, but because he is a bully.
“Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.” William Safire
Every situation is different. Without the specific circumstances of the event in question, it is tough to make a meaningful comment. Sometimes what you see as a stand based on principle is to someone else a selfish stunt.
He who does not understand your silence will never understand your words. -Elbert Hubbard
Other pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Tax Law
There was a bloggingheads discussion with Bob Wright and Ann Althouse. If you are worried about the visuals, it was a split screen, and they kept their clothes on. At the 12:30 mark, Ms. Althouse discussed a DOMA case that is going before the SCOTUS.
The plaintiff in question is probably Edie Windsor. “On Monday, lawyers filed a petition on behalf of Edith “Edie” Windsor, an 83-year-old lesbian from New York, asking the Supreme Court to review her case, … Windsor sued the government in 2010, after the death of her partner of more than 40 years forced Windsor to pay more than $363,000 in federal estate tax on her partner’s estate. Windsor and Thea Spyer were married in 2007, in Canada, and while New York recognized the marriage, the federal government did not. When Spyer got sick, she chose to leave her entire estate to Windsor. Had Windsor been married to a man, she would not have had to pay any estate tax, according to court documents; therefore, her suit argues, DOMA violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.”
The rest of the discussion was lively. PG listened to the entire thing. Mr. Wright explained why there was a closed coffin when JFK was buried. Somehow, this secular twosome got onto religion. Ms. Althouse said that people believe what they want to believe. The peroxide did not seem to affect her delivery. There were no commercials.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Chamblee54 
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