“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover that materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.

Richard Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons,” The New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997, 31.

Here’s why.

Sample 1

Without HDR

With HDR

This looks pretty good at first blush. A closer look, however, reveals an artifact that while possibly not be a problem when you go to make a 4×6 print or include it in a photo book, is definitely noticeable as a desktop background.

Ridgeline HDR Artifact

Sample 2

Now for another example, this time one definitely out of family album contention (unless you’re the Addams Family):

Without HDR

With HDR

Can you see the difference?  Look closely (but not too closely) at my daughter’s face in the HDR version.  Frightening, eh?  Then look at my son’s left leg.  It’s ghosted.

HDR Distortion

Pretty much all of the HDR shots I took had some artifacts or distortion like you see in these. The first critical lesson: they appear to be motion related, but not necessarily restricted to the motion of your subject. Even the slight motion induced by holding the phone produced funky results in shots of still life.

Sample 3

But the news wasn’t all bad. Here’s a fairly good result (even a close up inspection of the full size pictures doesn’t reveal any issues). As appears typical with HDR, the sky is the feature dramatically improved.

Without HDR

With HDR

Sample 4

I also noticed even in those shots without distortion, the original shots generally had greater saturation than the HDR versions.

Without HDR

With HDR

Sample 5

The second critical lesson I learned is: leave your “Keep Normal Photo” setting set to ON. I didn’t for a handful of them, and as a result, lost an otherwise terrific pose of my kids (click to zoom, and notice the discoloration on my daughter’s right arm).

With HDR (and no backup "Normal Photo")

This survey envisions only a “knowing” that someone is homosexual and doesn’t address the extent to which homosexual acting out will occur and be sanctioned. There’s a big difference between knowing someone is gay and being exposed to that lifestyle. Especially when it concerns my family. Among other scenarios, envisioning a future where obvious homosexuals live next door in base housing is extremely offensive and severely detrimental to my and my family’s morale. We should not be forced to choose between base housing and my children’s moral upbringing. For many enlisted troops, such a choice is not even financially feasible. Space doesn’t allow discussing all the implications of what amounts to this “foot in the door” for the homosexual agenda. I do not object to repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the sense that people should not be discharged for merely identifying themselves as homosexual; however, the standards of good order and discipline that apply today should remain tomorrow.

Had I not already purchased one on the first day of preorders and been tracking its final leg of shipment as the you-know-what storm hit, I’d likely have done that very thing. Alas, the small, sparkling box picturing its long-awaited contents proved too alluring, and I was unable to resist the temptation to open it, to cradle the technological marvel in my hands, to run my fingers over its glassy smooth face and cool, steel frame. Sigh.

Whoa! Snap out of it man!

Er, um, So…with Apple’s “generous” 30-day return policy, and in light of the YouTube blitz by early owners demonstrating its Achilles heel, why am I keeping it?

First, and this is the most important reason, the antenna isn’t an issue for me in practical use. It’s very easy, and not unnatural, to keep my little finger off the dead zone when on a call. When using it for data applications, I find that I rarely hold the phone in a way that makes that fateful contact. There are times, yes, but it’s no big deal to slide my finger or the phone in my palm a quarter of an inch or so. So while I agree this is a terrible and inexcusable weakness that Apple has terribly and inexcusably magnified with their mind-boggling, self-destructive public relations bungling (admittedly reason enough to “punish” Apple by returning it), it doesn’t have an operational impact.

Second, I love the fact that I’m carrying a 5-megapixel still photo, high-definition video, and dual-facing camera with LED flash in my pocket at all times. (That is what the iPhone 4 is all about, isn’t it?) I’d lose that if I were to go back to my 3GS. Not for long, perhaps (a year at most?). But admit it, it’s hard to give up something (this nice) once you have it.

Third, do I need a third reason? Okay, the Retina Display; or more specifically, the couple of dimples I marred it with already (gasp!). This isn’t a serious consideration, though; for if I really wanted to return it, I wouldn’t let a couple dimples stop me. Add to that, though, the fact that my wife upgraded from a painfully sluggish 3G to my 3GS, and we might have a compelling third reason to round out this list.

In the end, I’m sticking with the iPhone 4 because, well, it just works.

1. Connect to iTunes.

And so I went with it. Seven hours later, though, I was still looking at “No Service” and the lovely Retina display alert, “Waiting for activation. This may take some time.” So I inquired of the Twitter masses, and learned of three more approaches to successful activation:

2. Reboot the phone (“Works instantly!”, someone promises). Nope, not for me. [UPDATE: until later; see below]

3. Go to this site: https://www.wireless.att.com/activations/. Again, no go. Curiously, the IMEI number it was showing didn’t match either my 3GS or my 4, and the ICCID number was missing.

4. Call 1-866-895-1092 (or 1095). After about a 10 minute wait, I was speaking with a very polite, helpful human being. (Make sure you don’t call from your old iPhone with the same number you’re activating, or you’ll be calling them twice.)

The AT&T rep filled in some key details. For my phone (and quite a few others, apparently), the SIM card ID number (appearing as ICCID in Preferences – General – About) was indeed missing from AT&T’s records. And that incorrect IMEI number? It was a dummy number. So as I sat waiting for that proverbial pot to boil, come to find out the burner wasn’t even on. Glad someone let me know.

Unfortunately, I’m not out of the woods yet. After giving AT&T the IMEI and ICCID numbers and rebooting the phone, the network was still unable to see my phone. The rep told me it was likely due to the large number of manual activations that they’re currently working through, and that I may have to:

5. Wait 24 hours

6. Then call AT&T back to have them delete the stale record and push through a fresh one

Only 16 more hours to go! (Or did the clock restart with my call to AT&T?) Ugh.

UPDATE: Within an hour of working with AT&T, my 3GS SIM was deactivated, and after rebooting the 4, activation was finally complete!

So as I write this, my bright and shiny iPhone 4 has likely just been loaded onto the local UPS delivery truck, on target to meet Apple’s promised delivery date. Sadly, the eager anticipation and excitement that’s not atypical of such arrivals is absent. And unless I naturally hold the phone such that I don’t short circuit the antenna, my local AT&T store is going to have one more iPhone in stock than they were expecting. Bumpers aren’t an acceptable solution. Call me a spoiled Fanboy, but it’s supposed to just work.

But now I hope she forgets him.

His behavior at the AMA was arrogant, callous, disrespectful, dishonorable, disgraceful, tasteless, offensive, embarrassing, despicable…and any number of similar adjectives. Pardon his French (kiss), but what he told his loyal American Idol following was, “F*** you!” And by the looks of it, I guess he’d like to.

Oh sure, the 1% of America that shares his sexual tastes undoubtedly reveled in this shameful performance, because it’s exactly what they represent. Catch a glimpse of any gay parade on the news. Like Adam’s performance, you’ll quickly see it’s about unbridled exhibitionistic lust and in-your-face disdain for societal norms, moral values, and the natural order.

What made this performance arrogant, callous, and disrespectful is that he took this out of the parade, club, or concert venue where it belongs, and thrust it into 14.2 million unsuspecting American households. Thank God mine wasn’t one of them.

And let me be clear. That same behavior between a man and a woman would have been equally offensive. This has nothing to do with who he choses to have sex with and everything with his choosing to force his sex upon me and my family.

What a disappointment Adam Lambert turned out to be. And so quickly! Well, best to get ‘er done now, Adam, before I wasted money on any more of your performances. You lost, buddy. This loyal fan is outa here.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of the author, but those of the filmmaker, as understood by the author.

The Viewing

Yes, I’m conservative, and yes, I of my own volition went to see Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story (taking notes with a muted, fully-dimmed iPhone, for those who are curious about such details.) If you haven’t seen it, go see it. You’ve nothing to fear. Or do you? Now, I realize Michael has his own passions, his own “agenda,” if you will. Reasonably, then, he makes his case with his own spin (who doesn’t?). I can tell you it was far from “fair and balanced” in the sense that there were no voices speaking on behalf of the banking and corporate monoliths that he claims are destroying the American way of life (although one might say it wasn’t for lack of trying as there is a good bit of footage on him showing up on GM and Citibank doorsteps to speak to or place a citizen’s arrest on the CEOs and boards of directors). Only a satirical presentation of their boundless evil, their unapologetically predatory practices, their arrogant disregard for the bottom 95%—the American “peasantry”—make their way into the film. Still, what if Michael is right?

The Victims

The film opens featuring the housing market fiasco, specifically those that were victims of it. Without going into much detail into how the crash happened (although he later makes an effectual mockery of former Goldman Sach’s CEO and former US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s Frankenstonian “derivatives” scheme), Michael spends a good deal of time showing the impact it had on average Americans who I’d say appeared to fall into the lower middle-class and lower-class blue collar income brackets, folks who who were able to make their house payments until ARM rates rose to a point beyond which they were able to bear. Family farms lost. Homes lost. And nowhere to go. The film further highlights the cruel ambivalence through which such losses were executed. The scene: As viewed from the perspective of one particular family from inside their home, a caravan of police approach, calmly surround it, and begin to rap loudly on the doors. The occupants, filming the entire event with their video cam in a form reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, respectfully call the sheriff to let him know they’ll have to force their way in. On cue, and eerily akin to the terror of The Strangers, the police begin banging and hammering against the back door, eventually breaking it open, all while this hapless family fearfully awaits inside. Tragic. Later, another such scenario is played out. This time, it’s not terror that is witnessed, but outrage as a community stands up against an eviction. Then you begin to see bewilderment and sympathy in the eyes of the eviction agent and the police as they realize they have become pawns in the hands of unfeeling national banks that care not for people, but only for the bottom line.

To drive this particular point home, Michael turns to the privately-run juvenile detention facility in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, where kids are shown to be mercilessly jailed without so much as a look in the eye from the judge for acts that can’t be atypical of teenagers and are hardly criminal, such as throwing a steak across the room during dinner. The clincher, of course, is that this judge was making significant money on every detained child, kickbacks from the privately-owned facility, and he was content to ruin the lives of these teens and families so he could sunbathe offshore in his motor yacht while collecting 10%. In another illustration of corporate greed, the focus becomes airline pilots, who’s incomes are so low that some have to rely on food stamps to eat, making less than bread company factory workers. Apparently it’s these folks’ love for flying that keeps them in the air, despite the low wages. The punch line: the airlines know this and thus there’s no need to provide a financial incentive to keep their employees. The Buffalo, New York crash earlier this year? Caused by pilots chatting about their careers instead of paying attention to the road. Conclusion: if the corporations weren’t so damn greedy, those fifty people would be alive today.

Which brings us to dead peasant insurance. As it turns out, many corporations have found out that their employees are worth more dead than alive, and so take out insurance policies on them without their knowledge, the corporation of course being the beneficiary. We are shown real people who have fallen victim to this disgusting practice, spouses left with enormous medical debt, while the companies make millions and do nothing to lend a hand. It’s a common practice, apparently, so much so that big corporate names you know very well are doing it (perhaps there’s a price on your head?), and there’s a whole investment industry built around it.

The Villains

These illustrations, among others, made up roughly half the film. The other half was spent on the government’s role in all this. Or perhaps I should say, the corporation’s role in government. Moore makes a point through archived footage of Ronald Reagan making his early money off of B movies and commercials for corporations peddling their wares, that his ascension to the presidency was actually a well-orchestrated corporate takeover of America. This theme is punctuated with footage of Reagan being told to hurry it along by former Merrill Lynch CEO and then US Treasury Secretary Donald Regan as he stood next to the speech-giving Reagan. It was Reagan’s “placement” as president that gave rise to tax cuts for the rich and deregulation (the hole in the dam that precipitated the crash of 2008), going from a nation where in the good ol’ days the top 1% of wealthiest Americans paid 90% in income taxes to where they pay merely 40%, the “peasants” of course making up the difference. Michael also points out that Citigroup strategizes based on the recognized and sought-after notion of “plutonomy,” wherein, “With huge chunks of national income and wealth increasingly concentrated in a tiny percentage of households at the top, national spending, profits and economic growth are disproportionately dependent on the fortunes of that same group” (source).

We are introduced to the Friends of Angelo, those charmed members of Congress who received special terms on Countrywide loans, Senator Chris Dodd himself being benefactor to over $1,000,000 in such. And then we’re reminded that it was Henry Paulson (the Goldman Sachs guy?) and Timothy Geithner (president of the Federal Reserve) who were at the helm of the doomsday financial sector failure that had President Bush grimly warning the American people that bailout action was necessary to the survival of civilization as we know it. What’s more, we’re made privy to the bailout proposal Paulson submitted to Congress, in particular, the point wherein he stated that the bailout action “may not be reviewed by any court of law.” And even though the American people resoundingly rejected the first bailout attempt, via the delivery mechanism of the Democrats, Paulson and his cronies masterfully got one through anyway. At one point (among many), Moore had the audience chuckling when he had one expert matter-of-factly explaining that Tim Geithner is a failure at everything he does, and that this is precisely the reason he’s had the myriad financial posts he’s had: he’s willing to take the heat for the taking the bold steps necessary to ensure the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Through this and several other illustrations, Moore makes the point that the Treasury  Department is actually a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs, and that the bailout farce was quite literally a financial coup d’état. Wall Street is now in charge.

Michael Moore’s conclusion, and the recurrent theme of the movie, is that Capitalism is evil, and it cannot be regulated. Capitalism is sin, as supported by the testimony of several priests and bishops. Capitalism is about taking advantage of people. About fostering a mechanism by which those savvy enough can get away with anything. About using the carrot of the American Dream to lead the masses along by their noses, delusioned in their belief that if they just work hard enough, they too could be rich. And so while the top 1% continue to collect more of the nation’s wealth unto themselves, “the people be damned,” the masses continue to put up with it. But Moore warns of and encourages an awakening, a revolution, one he claims the financial sector is scared to death of. For they know that while they have all the wealth, they also know they only have 1% of the vote. And Michael, for one, is not putting up with it: “I refuse to live in a country like this, and I’m not leaving.”

The Victory

His solution? While he doesn’t spend a lot of time on it, in a word: Democracy. In the film he does feature a business that, unlike almost all others, uses true democratic ownership by the workers, wherein management and the line-worker are paid equitably, all employees having equal say in corporate decisions, decisions made in the interest of everyone, not the top few. He champions the Second Bill of Rights presented to the American people by President Franklin Roosevelt in January 1944, which met its unfortunate demise with Roosevelt’s death just over a year later. He spotlights President Obama, representing what was, “in an instant, a farewell to the old America,” as a player the corporations were not a little timid over, not knowing how he was going to receive their financial stranglehold on the US government, not knowing whether he was going to stand up for the peasants. Presumably the timing of the film didn’t allow Moore to expound upon Obama’s effectiveness in this arena, but only to characterize Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney, and George Bush as pawns, participants, and benefactors in the empowering of the elite. And attention-span concerns may have limited his development of the otherwise fleeting mention of state-owned property as an effective means for ensuring the equitable distribution of such.

For those with wee-bit longer attention spans, however, Michael laces his credits with a variety of notable quotations, one of which likely fairly well characterizes the tone of the others. Before I close with it, I again recommend you see the movie for yourself. It’s worth a look.

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

—Thomas Jefferson

That’s all I was going to say about it. But I felt like this was a tweet that needed just a little bit more meat. So consider that one-liner my outline for this article. And I’ll tell you what I mean by it.

President Obama delegates not only an activity, but responsibility for that activity. He lets others do the dirty work while he sits back and says, “It’s not me.” Case in point: the CIA investigation. He says, “We’re gonna look forward, not backward,” but in the next breath says, “but no one’s above the law.” Meaning, I’m not publicly going to look back, but I’m going to let my administration do so on my behalf. And I’m going to let them do so regardless of the consequences to our national security.

He dismisses activity, and thereby endorses it. Case in point: ACORN. Now this is a real treat. Not only was he born out of ACORN, not only does he not condemn their promotion of voter fraud, child prostitution, and sex-trafficking, but he tells us he “hasn’t been following” the undercover video scandal and that “he has more important things to do.” This after Congress had nearly unanimously voted to defund them and the Census Bureau had disassociated themselves. The Justice Department even announced their involvement the very next day! Then he tried to sell us on the notion that he had no idea they were getting a lot of money from the federal government. He hasn’t been following it, eh? Are you kidding me? Good thing he followed the MTV Music Video awards; Kanye is clearly a higher priority.

I also believe he needs to take a stronger stand against race-baiting. He did tell the Sunday morning media blitz interviewers that he didn’t think racism is the primary motivator for the contrariness toward healthcare reform, and he did say on Jay Leno, “I was actually black before the election.” That’s good. But he needs to reign in his bad actors: President Jimmy Carter, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, to name the first three that come to mind. Not doing so to me appears a lot like endorsement. It’s akin to the CIA investigation: I’m going to say one thing, but I’m going to let these folks over here keep saying another.

He dodges details and facts. Case in point: Healthcare costs. He basically says there will be no cost. It’s all going to come from Medicare waste. Healthcare insurance to everyone for free. “Mmm mmm mmm, Barack Hussein Obama!” This has been intensely debated since he made such a suggestion, and this, along with many other expenditure claims, have been refuted by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. And what about those compulsory uninsured premiums? “Oh that’s not a tax!” he tells us. Yeah, let’s not get distracted by nitnoid details or facts; selling the agenda is more important.

He’s in denial over the real threat of rogue agents. Case in point: Iran. He retains a delegation at the U.N. while Immadinnerjacket spews his broken record vitriol, and the next day at the G20 summit sternly warns Iran that they’re “breaking the rules” as concerns their continued pursuit of nuclear weapons. Mahmoud must have been shaking in his boots. Contrast that with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who stated that “all options are on the table.” I know, Ahmadinejad’s not serious; he doesn’t really want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. “Kidding!” So Obama asks Sarkosy, “Why so serious?”

These are but a few illustrations of why I see President Obama’s leadership style as one of weakness. Oh, he’s a strong teleorator. But he delegates his responsibility to those within and without his administration, saying one thing while they say another; dismisses and fails to find time for inconvenient truths involving real fraud, waste, and abuse; dodges the devilish details behind his agenda; and demonstrates a terrible case of denial when it comes to international affairs and terrorism. But hey, why should we care? He’s very charming.