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All Posts All CommentsI love this little animated GIF. I have no idea who made it, but I thank Michelle for sending it to me.
I made it click-to-play so the looping wouldn’t drive people nuts. But it’s so cute, I don’t know who’d be driven nuts by it. I could watch them celebrate over smoothies for hours.
Today: A gripping tale of T-shirt design! Be sure to make a point not to miss today’s LFTI post!
I took place in my first demonstration Saturday, meeting downtown with about 11,999 others to protest the passage of Prop 8 in the recent election. I just now got to reading coverage in the Los Angeles Times, and I can’t believe how Prop 8 supporters have gotten even more hateful. Take this, for instance, reprinted from the Times:
“They can protest all they like, and it doesn’t change the fact that Prop. 8 has passed and the election is now over,” said Frank Schubert, manager for the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign.
There were many religious signs at the protest, most of them being held by people who were obviously religious themselves. “The same Bible was used to justify slavery.” “I was born gay. You were taught religion.” Even some “Mormon Against 8″ signs. There was a lot of humor, as well.
Again, from the Times: “It’s unfortunate that the ‘No on 8′ campaign has devolved into personal attacks and statements of religious bigotry. If they think this is going to help their cause long term, they might want to consider a new strategy.”
It’s unfortunate? Hypocrite! The Yes on 8 campaign was nothing but personal attacks and statements of religious bigotry. Oh, such a twister of words. It’s devious, untrue, and bordering on evil. It’s definitely hate. It makes my skin crawl. Well, when these supporters of segregation end up burning in their hell with those who strung up black people in trees and those kept women from being able to vote, perhaps then they’ll think twice about their treatment of their fellow man.
(Click the pictures to see larger versions. I’ll be putting more pictures of the protest in my gallery soon.) (UPDATE: I did not!)
“When men lose a sense of wonder, there will be disaster.”
—Laozi, 6th Century BC
Space and its vastness, its denizens of rock and ice and gas, its rings and spheres and smudges and wisps, have forever inhabited my mind, creating wonder, taunting, daring me to comprehend the impossible distances, sizes, existences of the universe.
I have not been awed by space much lately, meaning in the last decade or so. I have taken a moment or two here and there to marvel at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field snapshot, or look at the surface of Mars, but the luxury of time to spend imagining space has slipped away from me.
Thanks simultaneously to Sven and VSL, I have discovered The Big Picture, a part of The Boston Globe’s website. Today, VSL sent a link to these pictures of the Sun. In the midst of a mind-numbing, boring work day, the pictures were a great surprise, and I pored over them for some time.
After subscribing to The Big Picture RSS feed, I saw another space-themed photo set, Enceladus Up Close.
This is a false color image of one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, as captured by Cassini. (Click the pictures to see it in a larger size.)
When I was a kid and making up scenarios in my head about space, traveling there, and the adventures to be had, there were no pictures of this clarity. Well, okay, the moon was pretty well photographed, and we had some great shots from the Voyagers and Vikings, sure, but the most detail to be found of anything beyond this limited scope was in movies or paintings or our imaginations. The picture above? Reality! This is a real place. You can imagine actually setting foot onto that surface, exploring those ridges and craters.
In the last 8 years, people’s minds have gotten smaller, and their influence has stunted the imaginations of the world. To me, Enceladus as a creation of a God is such a let-down, a cop-out compared to the magnificent thought that this small world is a product of the universe itself. I think it’s time for me, and for everyone else, to turn out from themselves, shake off the selfishness of recent history, and wake up the boundless, infinite wonders of everything around us, from a micron off our own skins to billions of light years away.
The quote at the top of this post is something I wrote down from a bulletin board at Imagineering one lunch hour maybe 13 years ago, and have carried it in my wallet since. I never guessed it would resonate with me more now than it did then.
Ah, I love shooting! Specifically, I love how creative you have to be when you have no budget when you’re shooting.
Also, I have problems typing “would,” “could,” and “should.”
I wrote the following on September 28 while waiting in the first class lounge for my flight from Sydney to Australia. I never posted it because the lounge WiFi I was so excited about was completely overwhelmed, and I kept getting kicked off. So my waxing wonderful about finally having free WiFi was premature. I forgot I had written it, but I think this is interesting, so I’m going to post it now, over a month later.
* * * * * *
My vacation is nearly over, and I am here in the Air New Zealand lounge waiting to get on my United plane back to L.A. Sadly, the flight is about 2 hours delayed. I imagine that was what the mysterious calls to my iPhone were in the middle of the night that I did not answer, and what certain unretrievable voicemails must be telling me.
Here are some items of (even less important) note so far.
The United people expressed grave concern that I, as a first class passenger, did not receive any calls about the flight being delayed. Explaining that the call was too early for me to bother answering was not worth going into, so I let them be concerned.
They definitely don’t care how heavy my bag is. The scale was flashing “30kg” and “OVER” and the woman gave it no mind.
International lounges still kick the asses of domestic lounges. I have so far enjoyed some cold antipasto nummies, vegetable frittata, chicken korma, cream of tomato soup, and chocolate black-out cake. there is power near most seats, unlike in the U.S. United lounge.
Internet in hotels is simply non-existent in Australia. I had no Internet access at all until we visited an Internet café two nights ago. The Travelodge we stayed at last night charged AU$11 per half-hour of in-room Internet. I did not partake. Many hotels had for-hire Internet stations in their lobbies, which were often busy. Aside from the Apple Store I visited in Sydney, this signal I’m using now is the only other free WiFi access I’ve had.
The Singapore Air A380 is always here. My guess is it never really travels anywhere. They simply tow it around the tarmac to show it off and get people like me all excited that they’re seeing one.
I hope you have been following my progress via Twitter. (http://twitter.com/lekowicz.) Twitter used very little bandwidth, so I could keep within my included 20MB overseas data limit. Thanks, AT&T, for making overseas plans so exorbitantly expensive that my iPhone was 90% crippled.
* * * * * *
Pack to the present. Out of curiosity, I priced my first class ticket for the exact same flights next year. Had I not used miles, I would have paid over $24,000. Well, actually, I would not have paid $24,000, but you get what I mean. Who can drop that kind of cash just for a flight somewhere? Crazy!
Ha ha ha ha! Ha HA ha ha ha! HA ha HA HA HA!
I don’t want to post the illustration at which I’m laughing because it’s copyrighted, but you can go see it here.
This is an intelligent, non-partisan, thoughtful, brief explanation of why conservatism has strayed, and why Obama can be seen as this election’s only attractive candidate.
Below is a link to a series of photos of Barack Obama, from October 2006 to the end of the Democratic convention in Denver. They were taken by Callie Shell, who traveled with him during his campaign.
Looking at the pictures and reading Callie’s words, you can believe, for once, that this politician is a real human being. The picture of Obama cleaning up after himself at the ice cream parlor, as well as the picture of his worn-out shoe soles that he had already had replaced once, make me very, very excited that tomorrow may bring someone to the White House that I can truly support and like.
(Keep clicking on Show More Images to see them all.)
