I can't get anybody in my family to eat peppers, but these peppers looked so delicious at the store that I felt compelled (or is the correct word impelled?) to buy them.
Nikon 105 mm macro lens, f-stop 36, shutter speed 1/15 sec, iso 100, with tungsten lights.
Close-up photography is a lot harder than I thought it would be. This was the best I could do with this flower after multiple attempts. Clearly, I have a lot of learning to do when it comes to macro shots.
The color seems excessively saturated, but I did not enhance the saturation in Photoshop. In fact, I decreased the magenta saturation by 10%.
Monte
Social Security and Medicare, in spite of what Republicans are saying, have been enormously successful programs. By successful I mean they have kept most elderly Americans out of poverty. Evidently, a lot of people don’t think a developed nation with a democratic government should provide this sort of assistance.
I made this short video after taping Congressman Barney Frank at a Town Hall meeting in New Bedford, Massachusetts on November 10, 2011. At several points in the video I add my own explanatory notes regarding Social Security, Medicare and military spending. The references for these notes with links to online articles are given below:
References (click to go to online article):
I had the opportunity to work with three local musicians preparing for an upcoming Occupy Falmouth event in which they will be performing. It was great fun and they were really tolerant of me setting up cameras, lights and microphones all around them.
I have no musical talent at all so I was just in awe of how these guys, who were together for the first time, were able to play off one another and how each one was able to intuit where the others were going.
In the video you will hear them describe the history of music in protest movements and how they believe music speaks to people in a way that language can't.
Monte
While I was shooting this video of the Occupy Falmouth protesters a man walked past me and commented that I was wasting my time talking to, in his words, these “homeless bums.” Soon after that another man approached me and called me a hippie.
I don’t understand this hostility directed at a group of citizens participating in our democracy. The Occupy Falmouth protesters are not bums, hippies or radicals. They are Americans and they are regular people – just like you.
Monte
My new Nikon D7000 arrived today. There are some differences from my D90. Luckily, there is a brand new video tutorial on the D7000 by Ben Long available at Lynda.com.
The camera also has an HD video feature and it allows for the connection of an external microphone. So far, I have to say I like it.
Monte
[gallery=1]
I'm trying to learn how to use the NextGen photo gallery plugin. These are images from the Occupy Falmouth protests in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
Playing around with light and backgrounds. I like this sort of "studio work" because it's done alone and unhurried. It's easy to get lost in a project and just have fun.
50 mm prime lens, f-16, 1/60, iso 100, off-camera flash placed below subject.
Monte
I spent a few days photographing and talking to the Occupy Together protesters in my town of Falmouth, Massachusetts. I found them to be well informed and articulate in expressing their concerns about contemporary America.
The Falmouth protesters are not camping out on town property like the protesters in New York or Boston. They assemble every afternoon at 5:00 PM and hold up their signs until it's dark, then they go home. The events are peaceful and there appears to be strong support from people driving or walking past the protests. There have not been any clashes with law enforcement and no acts of violence or vandalism.
These protests are not riots. They are a wonderful example of citizens engaging in free speech on the public square, which I believe was the original intent of James Madison and the other authors of the Constitution. Our modern interpretation of free speech has morphed into bribing political leaders with millions of dollars in campaign donations. Any citizen has the power to speak up on the public square about the issues that confront society, but few citizens can afford to bribe their representatives with huge cash donations. Free speech in modern America is not free.
Perhaps our conversations about what the constitution does and does not say should begin with defining free speech. How much better would our country be if corporate executives and Wall Street bankers were limited to standing on the public square holding up signs supporting their right to screw the rest of us instead of paying politicians to do it for them?
Monte
[audio:https://www.monteladner.com/wp-content/audio/michael.mp3]
Michael identified himself to me as a veteran of the U.S. Army from the Vietnam era. Click the button beneath his picture to hear him explain why he is protesting with the Occupy Together movement in my town of Falmouth, Massachusetts (the sound clip is only a few seconds long). Michael, like many Americans, believes we should be spending less money invading other countries and use the money instead to take care of our own citizens.
I think he makes a good point.
Monte
[audio:https://www.monteladner.com/wp-content/audio/brooke.mp3]
Congressman Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, and other right-wing extremists have characterized the participants in the Occupy Together movement as "mobs." This is a picture of Brooke. I interviewed her at a protest in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Click the play button beneath her picture to hear her one-minute explanation for why she is standing with the Occupy Together protesters. Does she seem like the sort of person who would join an angry mob?
Americans like Brooke want their government to work for the people - all of the people, not just the really rich people. How is that radical?
Monte
Well, I did what so many failed congressmen have done: I posted a picture of myself on the internet in which I am not wearing a shirt. Hopefully, it is "tasteful." The project was inspired by a portrait assignment for a photography workshop I am taking in Boston.
Harbor in Woods Hole, Massachusetts at dawn September 30, 2011. Yes, I used the very cool and fun software from Nik Software to manipulate the image color and texture.
Monte
Nobody is afraid that not believing in the big bang or evolution will result in an eternity spent burning in hell. Science doesn’t make threats about the consequences of skepticism; in fact, science encourages debate and alternative explanations for a particular set of data. Flip-flopping in response to new information is a good thing in the objective world of science, while clinging to old ideas when new observations clearly demonstrate they are wrong is a dead end. Science offers a route to seeking truth that is not faith-based and is not clouded by fear or hatred of others with different ideas.
I don’t know the answers to questions about the meaning of life or how we got here. This uncertainty about our origins doesn’t scare me, and it doesn’t make me inclined to behave immorally or in a criminal manner. It does, however, motivate me to read about the amazing things scientists are learning regarding the beginning of the universe and the evolution of life. The slowly unfolding scientific story of our origins is complex and exciting and way better than any ancient creation myth written by people who didn’t know that the Earth is a planet orbiting an ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy in a universe with a hundred billion other galaxies, or that a molecule called DNA stores the code for life.
Many thinkers have observed that no matter what God a person believes in, the overwhelming majority of the rest of the people on Earth believe in a different God thereby making everybody an atheist and a heretic. This seems like a good reason to stop fighting about who has a monopoly on truth and to start thinking and communicating about big ideas in an objective, data-driven fashion.
I’ve decided to learn what I can about the universe in which we live. I began with a lecture series from the Teaching Company called Big History, which traces our origins from the big bang all the way through early human civilization. The series contains 48 lectures by Professor David Christian (yes, it is an irony that his name is Christian). It’s terrific. Next on my list is a book by the astrophysicist Eric Chaisson called Epic of Evolution. I’ve only just started, but the book seems to be well written, by which I mean I can understand it. However, to enhance my comprehension of the material I am simultaneously watching additional Teaching Company lectures on Einstein’s theory of relativity, particle physics, quantum physics, dark matter and dark energy, biology and evolution, the brain and behavior and a few others. The process is going to take some time.
I’ll update my progress in this blog.
The ability to learn and think abstractly is what makes us interesting as a species. It is also our best hope of avoiding self-destruction.
Monte
In Ray Bradbury’s prophetic book Fahrenheit 451 Professor Faber remarks to the novel’s protagonist Guy Montag, “Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.”
Written in 1953, Fahrenheit 451 is a story about a future America in which books and reading are illegal. Firemen in this world start fires instead of putting them out. Specifically, firemen respond to anonymous tips about people who may have hidden books in their home. The firemen answer the “alarms” by burning down the houses with books, and sometimes burning the people who read them.
Citizens in Ray Bradbury’s novel get all of their information from television and radio that is broadcast directly into their ears via ear buds called “seashells.”
The television in the world of Fahrenheit 451 is used to inspire patriotic support for endless wars, to sell products, and to keep people “happy and having fun.” People in the book consider the characters in their favorite television programs as their “family” and there is a tighter bond between individuals and their television friends than there is between real people. The television is, of course, the tool for state and corporate propaganda.
The similarities of the role of television in American society imagined by Mr. Bradbury in 1953 and television in the American society of 2011 are just creepy.
The scariest part of Fahrenheit 451 is that it was the citizens, not the government, who created their highly censored world by abandoning reading and spending increasing amounts of time mindlessly watching television. The government in the novel simply took advantage of the public’s willingness to be ignorant.
Does this sound familiar? Can you say “Fox News” or “Koch-brother funded Tea-Party propaganda?”
Edward Bernays is considered the father of the American public relations profession. He lived from 1891 to 1995. He was a nephew of Sigmund Freud and he used his knowledge of crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to create his own style of propaganda to shape public opinion on behalf of his clients. He had an extraordinarily successful career as a public relations guru.
In 1928 Bernays wrote a short book called Propaganda that described his thoughts on public relations. The opening paragraph is two sentences long, and should serve as a wake-up call to everybody who believes they are making up their own minds about important issues.
From Propaganda by Edward Bernays:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
In America today one of our two major political parties is ideologically opposed to thinking – and proud of it; I’m talking about Republicans. Consider Rick Perry’s recent address to a crowd of university students in which he openly bragged about what a poor student he was at Texas A&M. His message to students and the public is clear: Idiots make good presidents. That would be funny except that so many Americans agree with the argument that we need more stupid people in charge.
Reading, critical thinking and civil discussions about ideas that are unpolluted by “fair and balanced” disinformation is essential to the survival of a free society.
Our democracy is threatened more by our willingness to be uninformed than it is by terrorists or other perceived enemies of freedom. In America today people who read books and value education are labeled as “liberal elites” determined to turn the country into a socialist state. Anything that a “liberal elite” talks about is, according to radical right-wing pundits and their corporate sponsors, a conspiratorial hoax designed to undermine our society.
This labeling process makes the task of spinning corporate propaganda remarkably easy. If a liberal believes in something it must be bad, regardless of the facts. For example, the fossil fuel industry has worked very hard to label climate science as a product of the liberal elite establishment. Millions of Americans actually believe that there has been a decades-long conspiracy among thousands of scientists from all over the world to create a global warming hoax purely for the purpose of securing a few million dollars in research grant money. The people who believe this nonsense don’t seem to think that hundreds of billions of dollars in annual profits might be a motivating factor for a handful of oil industry executives to create their own hoax and distort the science behind anthropogenic climate change for their own gain.
In his biography of Benjamin Franklin (Benjamin Franklin: An American Life), Walter Isaacson recounts a story reported by a man named James McHenry about a remark made by Benjamin Franklin to a woman who asked about the outcome of the Constitutional Convention. The legend has it that a woman approached Dr. Franklin and asked him: “What type of government have you delegates given us?” Benjamin Franklin, according to Mr. McHenry, replied: “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”
We are bombarded by propaganda from special interest groups and corporations coming to us through our televisions, radios, the internet and even our telephones. Our government is corrupted to its core by corporate money. But reliable information on important issues is still available, we just have to make the effort to find it.
What would America be if citizens took it upon themselves to read and be informed and to have meaningful debates inspired by verifiable facts about the big issues we face? What would America be if we insisted that our leaders be smart, educated, sincere public servants and not simply good-looking morons who graduated at the bottom of their class and are willing to say anything for money and fame? I think we’d be a free society of enlightened people living fulfilling lives, and that would be terrific – if we could keep it.
Monte Ladner
I love playing around with simple things on my camera. This is an example of "shallow depth of field." Using a Nikon 50 mm prime lens at an f-stop of 1.4 I was able to get the front figurine in sharp focus while leaving the back figurine blurred. The back figurine is only five inches behind the front one. Simple, but cool.
Does it bother you that the news media is not so much about news as it is about profit-motivated entertainment? I'm not talking about the ideological radical right-wing attacks on the "liberal media." I'm talking about news being turned into a business, and in the process ceasing to be news and becoming all about propaganda and entertainment.
Fear and anger motivate people to do things, including watching more scary stuff on television. We are bombarded nearly nonstop with messages of fear and anger by programs claiming to be objectively reporting the news. It seems obvious that reporting the news is at the bottom of their priority list. Think about how political sex scandals dominate the news cycle for days at a time as if nothing else is happening in the world.
So it is with natural disasters like hurricanes. Is it really informative to watch news reporters struggling to keep their balance while standing in flood waters and leaning into hurricane force winds? Are we watching in the hopes of seeing one of these idiots get hammered by flying debris? Is the television news organization sending its reporters into these conditions precisely because they know the public will watch - hoping to witness something horrible on live TV?
Anyway, these thoughts were on my mind when I coerced my family into making this short video spoofing the news media. The video does, briefly, show our experience with hurricane Irene.
I've been thinking about the discussions going on in the news these days about the economy. The number 1 billion gets tossed around in a manner that strikes me as way too casual. I think there is a good chance that a lot of people don't really understand how big 1 billion is - a 1 with 9 zeros like this: 1,000,000,000.
Today I visited one of my favorite websites, SamHarris.org, and read Sam's latest blog post entitled "How Rich is Too Rich?" The number 1 billion came up and I was inspired to write Sam a response, which I am going to post here on my blog as well since I'm sure it won't get posted on Sam's blog.
Sam,
In your article on wealth and taxes you gave some examples of how much money the richest Americans have, but you compared them to another group of fabulously wealthy people. Given that many (most) Americans have poor math skills it might be more instructive to describe how much a billion is relative to a number the average American can understand.
As best I can tell it looks like the median American family income is somewhere around $40,000.00 to $45,000.00 per year. That means that half of Americans earn less than $45,000.00 per year and half earn more. People who earn $250,000.00 per year are easily in the top 2 or 3% of income earners in America, but $250,000.00 is still a number that most people can get their heads around.
If a person or a family earning $45,000.00 per year were to get a raise to $250,000.00 per year this would be a really big deal – more than a fivefold increase in income that would clearly change their lifestyle. If that person continued in the same job making $250,000.00 per year indefinitely it would take them four years to earn $1 million, but it would take them 4000 years to earn a billion dollars! Not many Americans will ever get their hands on a billion dollars.
The people earning average incomes are people that our society absolutely depends upon. They are police officers, firefighters, nurses, teachers, garbage collectors, postmen, construction workers, and other typical jobs that make our communities run smoothly. When these people stop doing their job the impact on the rest of us is immediately noticeable. How quickly would you notice that garbage collectors had stopped picking up the trash in your town?
On the other hand there are hedge fund managers earning between 2 – 5 billion dollars per year (remember, it takes 4000 years to earn 1 billion dollars at $250,000.00 per year). Who would miss any of these hedge fund managers if they disappeared tomorrow? What indispensable service do they provide for our nation? What could they possibly do that makes them 8,000 to 20,000 times more valuable than a medical doctor with ten years of specialized training after college? What do they do that makes them 20,000 to 50,000 times more valuable than a nurse or a school teacher?
Doctors and nurses pay income tax at a rate between 25 - 33%, but hedge fund managers pay income tax at a rate of only 15% because their income is classified as capital gains. If a hedge fund manager earning $2 billion per year were charged a tax rate of 50% that would provide the federal government with a billion dollars per year to use for schools and roads (or, sadly, bombs and bullets). Of course, the poor hedge fund manager would have to figure out how to survive on a paltry $1 billion per year, or to put it another way, slightly less than $3 million per day! It’s easy to see why they would be upset.
Monte Ladner
I just finished reading The Age of American Unreason (Vintage) by Susan Jacoby. Terrific book, but it did make me feel a little bit stupid. In fact, after I finished the book I immediately went to the Teaching Company website and ordered the 84-lecture series on the history of the United States. I’m not joking. The book exposed my inadequate knowledge of American history and shamed me into doing something about it.
My one sentence summary of the main argument in the book is that we, The United States of America, might just be the dumbest country on the planet. This remark is intentionally hyperbolic, but you do have to look hard to find countries in which people are less informed about math, science, and history than we are. Jacoby cites a 2005 finding by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development revealing that “American fifteen-year-olds ranked twenty-fourth out of twenty-nine countries in mathematical literacy.”
The book is filled with discouraging statistics about American ignorance. For example, more than half of our citizens believe in ghosts and a similar percentage reject the theory of evolution. However, the book is more than a catalog of negative data on the American mind. A sentence in her final chapter provides a succinct summation:
“Anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism flourish in a mix that includes addiction to infotainment, every form of superstition and credulity, and an education system that does a poor job of teaching not only basic skills but the logic underlying those skills.”
Right-wingers determined to justify their idiocy will dismiss Ms. Jacoby’s book as just another example of liberal America-bashing, but that would be wrong. Democracy is a full-time job requiring a serious effort to stay informed and educated. This book offers overwhelming evidence that we aren’t doing that.
Intellectual laziness results in citizens who behave as a fearful herd of knuckleheads and who are easily manipulated into voting against their own interests. Voting for a candidate because of his or her position on gay marriage while ignoring his or her record on allowing corporations to pollute our air and water really isn’t a very smart vote. Or do you seriously believe that the issue of gay marriage is more important than having clean air to breathe and clean water to drink?
Ignorance destroys the fabric of democracy and you should consider this reality when you read that presidential candidate Rick Perry is subsidizing low taxes for rich people in Texas by slashing funding for public education.
So, turn off the television, especially if it is tuned to Fox Propaganda. Unplug from your iPod. Stop text messaging about irrelevant nonsense, and stop playing video games. Read a book; it’s better for your brain and our democracy. Start with Susan Jacoby’s book.
Monte
I was born in Texas. I grew up in Texas. I went to college and medical school at the University of Texas. I still feel a twinge of undeserved pride when I say I'm from Texas.
But ...
Are there really people in this country who want another redneck, bible toting, gun slinging governor from Texas to be the next President of the United States?
What part of the last decade have we forgotten?