All posts by Steve Stern

I am afraid it has come to this

Americana, Bay Area Walks, California, Evolution, Psychological Musings

I had lunch today with a friend and we finished much more quickly than usual. I had brought my camera because the last time we had lunch there – there being the Fish Market in San Mateo – a mother duck was showing her teenagers how to forage and I was hoping for a repeat. It was gloriously hot  and all the outside tables were full so we ate inside which may be why we were finished so quickly. What ever the reason, we had some time to kill and we sat – sort of sunning ourselves – on a bench overlooking San Mateo’s Seal Slough. On a corner of the Fish Market’s dock, were a cormorant and seagull also sunning themselves.

They seemed to not being paying much attention to each other which makes sense as they operate in totally different eco-niches. After a while, two more cormorants showed up to fish just off the dock. Then they came over to sun themselves – opening their wings – and the seagull got sort of agitated and moved away. But not very far.

About that time a heron came over to the shore near us to hunt.

At one point one of the late to arrive cormorants got two close to the self identified dock owning cormorant and he/she/or it turned and bit his – who knows if she is a he, but I’m going with his – wing. The intruder backed up about six inches and then moved closer by about four inches just to show he wasn’t intimidated.  Watching the five birds was watching five individual animals. It was fascinating and lovely, sitting in the sun, watching the birds live their little to me – big to them – lives.

And then I thought This is just too close to two old men sitting on a park bench. I remarked on that and we both decided we had places to go and people to see.

 

Oil companies are so nice – they are trying to help us save money

Uncategorized

I know that this sounds like bullshit, but I think in a strange, counterintuitive  way, it really is true.

Let me explain but, first, let me repeat a typical rant we are given almost daily. I lifted the following quote a couple of days ago and now I don’t remember where but it doesn’t really make any difference because similar things are everywhere.

In the face of economic trouble, Republicans in Congress keep asking Americans for “shared sacrifice,” all the while continuing to give billions of dollars in subsidies to Big Oil companies. We’re lining Big Oil’s pockets, while Big Oil pays for Congress to vote in their best interest instead of ours. While Congress tells us we need to sacrifice health care, social security and other vital services in 2011 alone Big Oil companies received at least $4 billion in tax breaks, all while reporting record profits. Despite the big five oil companies making record profits this year, Congress keeps saying Big Oil is paying its “fair share.

All this is true; we – we being our government with money they got from us – do give billions in subsidies to oil companies. More than just tax breaks, other things too, like using the Coast Guard to protect their drilling islands, charging us to clean up their daily polluting, and the list could go on for pages. And they do make tons of money, Exxon, for example, has a good start this year with its profit up by almost 70% for the first quarter, making $10,650,000,000 – that is lots of zeros – profit. For the first quarter of year alone. BTW, it paid its CEO about $5, 750,000 for last year so he should expect another good year.

But all these numbers are sort of beside the point, because Exxon is not going to take  a hit on its profits no matter how much better this quarter is and the CEO is not going to take less money next year. If they don’t get their tax break, they are just going to raise the price of gas to get back to where they were. We are going to pay for it in our taxes and the deterioration of our schools and infrastructure or we are going to pay for it at the pump. Either way, we are going to pay it.

My preferrance is that we pay for it at the pump even though I am a big gas user. The only chance we have of making people use less gas – including me – is to have the real cost of gas included in the gas including the cost of the damage that is done by all of us driving. My guess is that it would make gas cost about $10 a gallon at the pump and I wonder if that would actually thin out many drivers.

 

 

 

 

A great, manufactured, picture

Americana, Photography, Psychological Musings, Uncategorized,

First, a disclaimer. When I showed this picture to Michele, she didn’t see the cross made by the banner and Romney. Without the cross, it is just a snapshot and I am even more convinced that the photographer was shooting the cross than Michele is that she wasn’t. Of course neither one of us knows for sure. End disclaimer.

I like this picture so much because it seems so “made” rather than “taken”. I can just see the wheels turning in the photographer’s mind.The photographer is Christina Clusiau and I imagine her first shooting from the side. Then seeing the potential of the banner and moving to the center to get Romney and the banner to line up. Then, maybe, getting lower to get the banner higher.

If this had been film, Christina probably would have already shot some pictures with the body on which this lens was mounted – sure, she probably had another body but that would have the wrong lens on it – so she would have to hoard her shots. But today, and this is why digital is so great, she probably started with her camera having a clean card and she probably had atleast a  hundred pictures left. So she could shoot, maybe adjust the light, shoot again, and wait. When Romney looked up beseechingly, maybe pointing to someone to ask a question, she shot again. Making this picture.

When the light is right and the picture is right, it is easy. An almost opposite picture is one I took of Yosemite last year. We were driving through Yosemite to get to the other side of the Sierras which included driving through the Wawona Tunnel. On the other side is the Tunnel Overlook – a National Landmark because of the view – and it was late in the day. The light was great and all we had to do was get out of the car and point the camera in the general direction of El Capitan. The shot below would have been hard not to get.