The 2011 Air & Water Show

Shooting at the Air & Water Show is like target practice for a photographer like me. I alternate between shooting into the sky and trying to shoot people. I’m not very impressed with any of my people shots. They were just so so this year.

Even the above shot is really not that great. It could be crisper. The jets are incredibly fast, so catching them can be difficult.

The below is probably my favorite of the beach scenes that I took. I doctored it a little. Otherwise, I don’t have a lot of shots that I like in which people are looking at camera.

You can click to enlarge.

 

Donald Trump releases video about his souped up 757, says “Fuck you, average Americans!”

Donald Trump sent you a Happy Birthday card … to him … it’s a short video showing you his personal jet equipped with gold plated seat belt buckles, a theater room with better-than-Hollywood sound and a bedroom that makes yours resemble the dog shit you stepped in last night that’s still on the bottom of your shoe.

You can rest assured that when you’re fretting over paying your $35 energy bill, he’s laughing at the top of his lungs when one of his over-paid assistants is paying for fuel to power his airplane.

For other celebs who say, “Fuck you, America!” check here.

Via Cynical C

One minor plus for president birth certificate

@EliLake tweeted: “Worth noting. President Birth Certificate has done what Reagan and W could not: end Gadhafi’s reign and kill bin Laden.”

Via JMG with more here.

 

Giving advice to Abe Lincoln

A photo of a workbook answer from a elementary looking book says, “Imagine that you lived at the same time as Abraham Lincoln. What would you say to him or ask him? 

The answer that this young person wrote is: “I’d tell him not to go to a play ever.” 

Via 

 

Update on C.S. Lewis post

Yesterday, the guy who updated his Facebook with a C.S. Lewis quote that I wrote about here responded to me saying: “I take it you’re not a believer. Why?”

I wrote publicly that I was not a believer, saying:

Why? There are many answers to your question that range from sarcastic to serious. I don’t find Facebook to be the place to share one’s stand on belief or non. I responded to your quote above, because I don’t agree this is the forum for sharing belief and because I think highly of your perception. Perhaps I thought a challenge would have been better approached.

Then I sent him a personal note. I explained to him that I didn’t appreciate his religious post on FB, and that C.S. Lewis connects lunacy to disbelief.

Of course the quote doesn’t say there’s a connection. It’s an interpretative reading. If you compare two things that don’t relate, there’s a tendency for the reader’s mind to make a connection whether it’s intended or not. In this case, C.S. Lewis included a comparison to lunatics next to a concept that god is so great that nothing can diminish that idea.

He wrote me back to tell me that I misunderstand C.S. Lewis.

And he’s the one who calls himself an English teacher and employs the double negative in written conversation.

Then he recommended John Lennox as a better alternative than C.S. Lewis.

Man, some people set their bars low.

I politely walked away from the conversation and called a stalemate, as I don’t think C.S. Lewis or John Lennox amount to a small hill of beans.

Watch Parkour video, learn something new, drink Red Bull

Yes, yes, yes. This is a Red Bull commercial. I’d rather watch this commercial than any 30-second TV spot. At least there is some sort of educational value to it.

It’s a video of Ryan Doyle doing great parkour, but the photography is even better.

Did you know that pigeons in Turkey do back flips? Did you know that it’s so hot that people sleep outside?

Turkey is a mélange of religions and culture.

Now I really want to go there.

Via The Daily What

The Ruach Yahweh will do what on me?

The above is a promo video for Master Tommy Bates, a super duper evangelical pentecostal preacher from Kentucky.

Tina wouldn’t watch the video, because it pisses her off.

If you can make it to the part where Bates is standing over a little girl who is “speaking in tongues” and he says, “You can’t get kids to fake,” you’re bold.

Apparently, he’s never spent one second with any children who are living in their imaginations 95% of the time.

The very next kid is an African American boy who he stereotypes before puppeteering his head back and forth when he says, “You ain’t never goin’ to prison-nah! You ain’t never going to be the entertainment in a club-bah!”

Even if you don’t agree with Richard Dawkins view that teaching kids about hell is child abuse, you have to agree that this qualifies. This kind of stuff is just awful.

Via JMG