A pet peeve: F**K

Americana, Current Affairs

A couple of weeks ago, linguist Geoff Nunberg talked about pet peeves on Fresh Air. He was advocating that a pet peeve is only a pet peeve if it is particular to the peeved. It is not a pet peeve if everybody, or most people – at least – have it. For example not liking people who poison dogs is not a pet peeve.

The other day, I ran across one of my biggest pet peeves. A quote in Time magazine in which in the quote they had f**k. WTF? Why? I think they should either say fuck or @#%&. If they consider themselves a magazine that children, too young to read the word fuck, read; then they should not put it in, they should either put in @#%& or put in an innocuous word like gosh. But everybody but those small children know that f**k means fuck, so who are they kidding – why not just put in fuck.

The New Yorker puts in fuck when it is in a quote and, even occasionally, when it is deemed appropriate by the author. They seem to feel they are dealing with a mature reader. (As an aside, one of my favorite bits in the New Yorker was Anthony Lane’s  in which he says: Also, while we’re here, what’s with (Yoda’s) screwy syntax? Deepest mind in the galaxy, apparently, and you still express yourself like a day-tripper with a dog-eared phrase book. “I hope right you are.” Break me a fucking give.end aside.)

But Time magazine, among others, just want to be cute and, I guess, not offend anybody but adults.

 

Quantity is quality

Photography

There is a story in Art
And Fear that goes:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he
was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of
the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work
they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would
bring
in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group:
fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those
being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one
pot—albeit a perfect one—to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of
highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for
quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning
out piles of work—and learning from their mistakes—the “quality” group
had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to
show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

I first heard this story in a photography class given by the authors of  Art and Fear, Ted Orland and David Bayles and it seems to go against everything I have heard about Art Photography. Art Photography, almost by definition, is shot with a big camera on a tripod – think the great Ansel Adams. (double click for full impact)

Ansel 

The upside is that these pictures can be blown up to huge sizes – like 30×40 inches; the problem is – using a big camera, even a 4×5 (inch negative) – the photographer gets very few pictures. That means the learning curve is pretty flat. With digital cameras, after the initial investment, the pictures are almost free. The photographer can take lots of pictures and, if the photographer is interested, the learning curve can be much steeper.

As the following photos from The Big Picture ( Boston.com), at a place and time like the Olympics, where there are lots of photographers shooting digital and paying attention, the results can be pronominal. If you are at all interested in photography, check it out. (Again, they get bigger if you double click.)

Luge

Skaters

Fall of Rome, ctd.

Uncategorized

Large_Iraq_US_Troops

Tom Ricks has an editorial in the New York Times – herein after called NYT – on why we should stay in Iraq

As a longtime critic of the American invasion of Iraq, I am not happy
about advocating a continued military presence there. Yet, to echo the
counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen, just because you invade a
country stupidly doesn’t mean you should leave it stupidly.

I like Ricks – alot – and read his blog on a fairly regular basis and I will readily admit that he know more about Iraq than I ever will but I think he is dead wrong. We should get out and let the chips fall where they might. It just seems to me that staying in Iraq because the Iraqis can not govern themselves smacks of the old time White Man's Burden. It is just plain chauvinistic.

Imagine how we would feel if Britain had used the Civil War as a reason to occupy the United States. About 625,000 soldiers were killed in the Civil War and an estimated additional 325,000 civilians in the lead up to the Civil War and the aftermath. That is probably more than have been killed in Iraq since 2003 and the US then and Iraq now are about comparable populations.Every pole I have seen – which I'll grant is not very many – says that the Iraqis want us gone.

But, more importantly to me, is that our being in Iraq is hurting us. Us as in the United States. We are spending money we don't have to be there.It seems to me that every country that has tried to do what we are trying to do – fight endless wars – destroys itself.

The cows are back

Americana, San Mateo County

Behind Stanford in the area known as The Dish, every winter, somebody brings in cows to graze. I have read in the local paper that the last people to graze their cows said It is impossible to make money
grazing. and quit – or, atleast threatened to quit. But, the cows are back. Usually, there are only trees, parallel cow trails along the steep hills and impossibly green grass. 

Cows are back

Cows are back-2

 But once again, there are seemingly very happy cows.

Cows are back-3