Thursday, October 27, 2005

Coming and going...




Is there any good way to photograph the White House leak investigation story until somebody gets cuffed? When proceedings are closed to the public, are there any interesting images to be found?

So far, apparently not, but that hasn't stopped Reuters, AFP, AP, etc. from filing buckets of "parking lot" and "early morning driveaway" shots—you take what you can get. Take this slideshow on Yahoo News. It's got about 30 photos each of Patrick Fitzgerald (especially Patrick Fitzgerald walking and holding a coffee cup), Karl Rove (in his car, next to his car...), I. Lewis Libby (crutchin' along, then in his car) and Dick Cheney (making the "Dick Cheney, Eater of Rusty Sheet Metal" face).

One shooter for Reuters tried to improve on this with a little foregrounding (above) as Karl Rove walked through a parking lot—too bad Rove's head got swallowed up by a black Dodge Ram's wheel well.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

One 's' or two?



Scott: does it scare you that my MS Word knows how to spell "Barbara Streisand"?

Kim: ...

Kim: yes

Kim: a lot

Scott: I'm just waiting for the little paper clip guy to appear and say, "It looks like you're writing about Barbara Streisand. Would you like to hear me gush about Funny Girl?"

Kim: hahahaha

Kim: oh man

Kim: that would be so classic

Scott: right

Scott: or "Yentl is my favorite" or whatever

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Flagellate me!

Apparently God does his best work on nasty, crude little things.

According to The New York Times, an expert witness in the Dover, Pa. intelligent-design case testified that:

...the "best and most striking example of design" is the bacterial flagellum, "the outboard motor bacteria use to swim." He projected a drawing of a flagellum depicting what he called a "rotary motor" attached to a "drive shaft" that pushes a propeller, and said it was impossible avoid concluding that the mechanism was "a purposeful arrangement of parts."

So you see, they're intelligent-designed, and they're not even God's favorite, so it's a scientific theory after all!

The argument in this testimony can be as convincing as it is ridiculous. The example is perfect, because a larger, more complex organism would challenge ID with vestigal organs and convoluted bodily processes (and I imagine many other things outside my narrow knowledge of biology)—things that suggest organisms are slowly patched together as they mutate and adapt.

Onward, spirited little vermin!

Monday, October 10, 2005

Just for the sake of it

I'd just like to point out that this is a hoot (from this AP story in the NYT):

India on Sunday offered Pakistan assistance for victims of Saturday's quake, centered near Pakistan's portion of Kashmir. Pakistan on Monday reciprocated with a similar offer for victims in India's portion of Kashmir. Neither offer was likely to be accepted given the rivalry and distrust between the two sides.