Last week I was asked to put in a proposal for film photoshoot. This was supposed to be a whole day affair with up to 15 models doing “lifestyle” shoots for a product. Groovy.

My initial proposal came in at $2510 plus HST.

The breakdown was as follows:

Basic Shoot cost (up to 8 hours): $700
Film (20 rolls total including processing): $400
Scanning ($0.50/frame): $360
Post Production (estimate 90mins per roll at $35/h): $1050

Today then I was told that the shoot was delayed and that my pricing was “too expensive” and that the budget is $500 (something I didn’t know initially, if I had I wouldn’t even have bothered) and as much as they like my film shooting style, they will have to go with someone who does digital (as it was implied, this HAD to be cheaper, no film, you know) and also can bring a whole pile of lightening equipment.

Wow. I am not sure if I should shake my head or feel insulted.

Let’s look at this from a business perspective. My total time commitment on this shoot would have been at least 38 hours, that is the 8 hours for shooting and the 30 hours for post processing, not counting me going to the location, the cost of equipment etc. You get the idea.

The cost for equipment isn’t any lower shooting digital, if anything because digital equipment is expected to be replaced every two to three years the cost for equipment has to be recovered much quicker, say, within a year. On a $3500 digital camera (with an okay lens) that means for those $500 shoots you need to do an awful lot, and there aren’t any time savings, I already calculated less than 3 minutes per frame in post and considering the shooting environment and the ideas that were presented to me this could be underestimated.

Add to this that the expectation is that whoever will do this gig for $500 will bring along a whole whack of light equipment which is not cheap and will also take a long time to set up. Meaning: most likely much more than eight hours on location(s) (yes, that’s a plural S, the idea was to shoot at several different locations, which also means all the equipment needs to be broken down and transported to a new location, then set up again).

So, whoever will be doing this for $500 will, at the end of the day, have earned nothing beyond a warm and fuzzy feeling. S/He may have paid of a bit of the equipment, but there will be zero profit, zero eating too.

The funny thing is, the guy who asked for the quote produces an actual, physical product. He would not just hand it out to people on the street for free, he wants to make some money. So he calculates his cost, then adds a percentage on top and then sells it for that price. Meanwhile, he expects the photographer to work for some charity money.

This is why I think photography as a line of business is dead, as digital downloads have destroyed (or at least badly injured) the music distribution industry, so has the idea that “digital is cheaper” and “everybody has a camera”. I have heard this a few times before where people put in proposals for wedding shoots only to be told that it was too expensive and that Uncle Herb has a Digital Camera and he’s not that bad, so he’ll do it instead.

If you look at my above list I do have $750 in direct film related cost (film + scanning), but the reality is that if I would shoot digital I would have worked this in via “equipment rental”, because those HDDs, Memory Cards and new digital bodies every few years aren’t free either. It IS a business and if I do it, I do it to make money, not to get a warm and fuzzy feeling about being allowed to work for someone for nothing.

Am I miffed at being not hired? Not really, it isn’t my line of business per-se. I make money somewhere else at a much higher hourly rate, but I am somewhat surprised (okay, not really) that a business person who should know about cost and profit margins, thinks that for $500 someone could do this shoot for him and make money off of it.

Obviously there are always people out there who will try to get something for nothing, but I have the feeling that this is more the rule than the exception these days when it comes to photography, unfortunately.

The funniest thing must have been the Conservative Party’s “float” though. It was one convertible with the party logo on the side, a guy at the wheel and someone else walking on the side, that’s it. The NDP showed up in force and even the Liberals managed to get a group together, but man, that Conservative attempt to appeal to this group of voters was dead before it started. I found it so sad I didn’t even bother taking a photo.

My general feeling with the event yesterday was that they are hurting badly for money, they had signs everywhere asking for donations for the parade as well as telling people it costs half a million dollars to put it on. Side effect of the economy?

As it goes with stories like these the moment it “broke” the slagging started with people on the one side saying “Evil Apple” while others were more relaxed and essentially said: “Apple would never do that”, and a few even thought of this as a good idea.

So what are the odds that Apple would do something like this? From Apple’s perspective this actually makes sense, they are already controlling the iPhone and iPod environment via the app store. Sure, you can jailbreak your iPhone and then use any kind of app on it that you want, even install a completely new OS on it, but for the majority of people what Apple approves is what they will eat.

But iPhones and iPods (and iPads now) are one thing, a Computer is something else, aren’t we all just deeply excited to write our own programs, fiddle with code and have full control over every minute part of the computer? If you say yes you fall probably in the 1% of the population that actually does this. The rest will still be shaking their heads right now.

Still though, people aren’t quite used to the idea that they have to go through their Computer vendor to get software, but if Apple would want to do this, how would they go about it?

Firstly, they have already trained a lot of people to accept the app store as the arbiter of software to find. In turn for many smaller developer it has turned into a successful distribution method, so why not expand it?

Secondly, Apple could open an Appstore for OS X, once it is open they could make it “difficult” for apps that haven’t come from the App store by simply making it annoying. Right now if you download an application from the net and start it up for the first time OS X warns you that this application was downloaded from the Internet on a given date and that OS X isn’t sure you should really run this. Now imagine they would do this everytime you start an app, added with a note that trusted applications can be found in the app store?

Three, once people are used of using the appstore to find their apps instead of the internet, force them to go there. The majority won’t care as they are already used to it anyway and the few geeks that will be pissed off can be ignored.

So what about the public backlash if Apple would be doing this? I predict slim to none. The people who care about open systems are a minority. The average computer user “eats” what he is given, they don’t scour the internet for applications or try to custom build their own. If Apple shows them a big enough carrot in the form of the appstore combined with some nice fear mongering with regard to the dangers of the internet they can get people to buy into it.

Will they do it? Who knows, Steve Jobs maybe. But if you look at the way Apple has been developing it’s products it just seems to make some kind of sense. There was a huge outcry when the iPod came with unexchangable batteries, there was a huge outcry when Apple insisted on only letting applications on the iPhone that came via the appstore and again when they did the battery thing with the new Laptops (me being one of the by the way). Has it hurt Apple? Not in the least, they are selling more devices than they ever have before and they will continue to do so.

The one thing all the Gees and Free Software advocates forget is something very simple: Most people already treat their computers like appliances, if Apple can give them that feeling on the computer while still letting them do what they want they will like it.

For many years, Harris Decima pollster Allan Gregg has asked respondents whether they consider themselves conservatives, liberals or centrists, and he’s also asked them how they vote. In recent years, he told the Manning Centre conference, the number of self-identified conservatives has been growing. But what’s almost more interesting is that the political allegiance of self-identified centrists has shifted, too. In 1997, 41 per cent of centrists voted for the Chrétien Liberals. In 2008, 48 per cent voted for the Harper Conservatives. Two things have happened. As the population ages and is buffeted by polarizing events like the struggle against international terrorism, the centre has shifted rightward. And the Harper Conservatives have pushed the Liberals, sometimes with their hearty co-operation, off-centre.

Gregg found that 89 per cent of respondents, nearly everyone, agrees that “nothing is more important than family.” Sixty-seven per cent agree that “marriage is, by definition, between a man and a woman,” 60 per cent that “abortion is morally wrong.”

This is interesting to me for a few reasons.

Clever.

Human being are well known for their gift of self delusion. Be it that the “love of our life” can do no wrong until they finally can and we realize just how badly mistaken we were. I am pretty sure there are very few people out there in this world who did not fall into this trap.

Or the delusion that we need to do something out of reason X, where said reason is purely made up in our mind to justify our choice.

The list of course could go on and I am sure if you think for ten minutes about your life you will find a handful of examples as well.

While all of this can be emotionally tragic or have tragic realities on a personal level over the last 30 or so years we have witness a much bigger delusion with much more risk to all of us.

Take this headline for example:

Now this reads good, doesn’t it? We’re all better now, and wasn’t it just a hard time this 2008 / early 2009? But now it’s all better according to this headline, even though the subheadline tries to dampen the mood a bit.

But is this really the case? Are we really better off now? The articles has this little nugget in it:

The bank’s economists looked at another measure of debt, the ratio of assets to liabilities. Before the recession, households held from $5.6 to 5.8 worth of assets, for every $1 of debt. Currently, households are holding a record low $5.1 of assets for every $1 of debt.

Ah, now here’s the rub. The problem is that the net worth is wishful thinking only, you know, like the guy or gal you had a crush on high school from afar until they opened their mouth and you realized that they had the voice of a chipmunk. The problem with this whole headline and statement is simple: This isn’t real money.

Let me try to explain.

The way the networth is calculated is: Your Liabilities (e.g. your mortgage) vs. your assets (e.g. your paid off car). Well, that’s how it should be done. The problem is that they do not do this. They actually take the price they think your house will fetch on the market and count it as an asset. So they deduct the perceived house value from your mortgage and give you the difference as an “asset”.

That’s just delusional.

Think about it. They take a value that only exists on paper and has no real world application and make it out to be real so that you can feel better about the hundreds of thousands that you own to the banks. The problem with these house prices is that they aren’t set in stone. Sure, the papers were rife earlier this year and late last year of people getting into a bidding frenzy and paying more money than asked, but this can also go the other way if you suddenly have nobody able to afford / wanting to buy property, it always cuts both ways. Hence why you shouldn’t count your chickens until all the eggs have hatched.

Furthermore, the one thing they do not take into account in this calculation is interest.

When you go and get a mortgage in order to finance the purchase of a property (let’s be clear, getting a mortgage is not buying a house, it is getting a loan) you not only pay the principal (the sum you borrowed) but also the interest on it. In most cases (current artificially low interest rates ignored) this amounts to almost doubling the purchase price over the course of the average loan (of course if you pay it off faster you pay less interest and you’re better off. But people who could do this would not go for a 0/40 or 5/35 mortgage, and even at just 25 years you still pay a hefty sum in interest).

What this means though is that you are probably in negative equity, meaning you actually lost money on that “investment”.

And yet, if you talk to your bank they will continue to tell you that you are actually building equity on your house, they will look at your credit rating and tell you that you are actually doing well etc. It is smoke and mirrors, not to outright say you are delusional and the bank is doing it’s best to keep you that way.

Here’s another example from a message board:

Who cares if prices come down 20% when they already went up 30%?

Someone who can do a bit of math?

Say, you have $100 and magically they become 30% more (== $130), then drop by 20% (130 x 0.8) you are left with $104 or just a 4% increase (which will be eaten up by associated costs like closing costs, interests paid, repairs, taxes etc.).

Meanwhile, presume you only started out with $70, they then increased in value again by 30%, you now have $91, now it loses it’s value by 20% and you’re left with $72.8, or again 4% in “profit”.

The reason I point this out is because it exemplifies the utter lack people seem to have when it comes to finances and money and just how delusional we as a society have become.

The reason why this is all not so good for all of us is simple and answered in the CBC article from above as well:

TD said liabilities increased four percentage points faster than income last year and interest payments remain high, despite low interest rates.

You may want to chew on that for a bit and come to your own conclusion what this means for Canadian networth.

And by the way, this isn’t the only place where things like this are happening, it seems to be a global phenomenon and not only limited to the world of finances and real estate. Remember the whole “We’re going to use Ethanol in order to remove ourselves from the need of oil”? Yeah, similar scam, they conveniently forgot to mention that most of the corn is grown using fossil fuels, that the refinery / distillery is run on fossil fuel etc. But in the end it made people feel good at the pump, because it was ethanol, plant based, renewable and so much less CO2, fill her up.

Welcome to the age of global delusion, anybody want to guess how the crash landing will look like?

There is something magical about the sunsets on English Bay…..

Before there was digital, there was another way of getting instant gratification in photography: Polaroid.

The company has gone now to the dogs a few years ago, but there are a handful of people who are trying to resurrect at least part of the company, the Impossible Project. They have apparently at least partially succeeded and have announced a press conference on March 22nd 2010. Good for them.

For me the “return” (I put this in quotes as I am not really returning to instant photography, never really did it a lot, though my parents had a Polaroid 660) started last week when I was given an old Polaroid Land 103 camera.

I initially ran into some problems, no not getting film wasn’t the Problem, Fuji still makes it, rather that it needed a new battery and that wasn’t that easy to get, as in, only online.

But no fear and borrowing a soldering iron from a Friend, I managed to “adapt” a more modern battery to it and started snapping.

Walking around with a camera like the Land is… interesting. I am used to people staring, sure, not when I shoot with my Canon EOS 1v, it looks like any modern Canon dSLR, but be it with my Yashica D or my Zeiss Ikon 532/16 (yeah, you can tell that Zeiss had mostly engineers), though occasionally even my Contax G1 gets me roped into discussions, not to mention my Kiev-4. But I am digressing. But the really cool thing for me about the Land was how quickly you see the result and how good it looks.

Focus, frame, shoot, pull first tab, pull second tab, wait 90 seconds. Separate the print from the backing and wait a few moments for it to dry –> Done.

And it looks good too. Most people associate this kind of washout look with Polaroids:

But this was actually done on the iPhone with Camerabag, so not real at all.

The other advantage is: You get a real version of the print, not a small tiny image on a tinier screen that may or may not look later like you think it does. No, what you see is truly what you get.

Is it cheap? Not really, each frame cost me around $2 if I buy the film local, but if more people would shoot instant the cost would obviously go down. How did we ever let it (almost) die?

I have been a bit “shy” shooting people in the past, mainly because I found it intrusive, though I have gotten a bit better lately.

The challenge, for me, lies doing this without being noticed, there is a “voyeuristic” aspect to it. The photo above is an attempt in this, I am not too happy with it out of a few reasons:

1. It’s not in Focus.
2. It’s too grainy for what I shot.

The first one stems from me trying to use a rangefinder, set to two metre distance and an aperture of f/8 in order to get the shot. I clearly should have set the focus a bit further out and thus have her fully in focus.

There is also some bluriness due to me walking as well and a rather low shutter speed of 1/125th. This I should change as well, rather a wider open aperture and shorter focussing distance.

The second “issue” stems from the development. It came from a test roll I shot on a new film and developed in a way, as I later found out, that wasn’t quite suitable, because of the development in the jobo drum system it turned overly contrasty.

Ah well, live and learn

Otto Dix: Invalids

Well, not quite, those who went to war and fought in it are remembered.

Cities all over the country will have parades where soldiers march in lockstep with music and you can admire more than one “cool toy” (incidentally yesterday they released a new game: Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2 which has lots of cool toys as well, but I will write about that at a different time).

Proponents of Remembrance Day are quick to point out that they don’t really (no really) support war, just that they are thankful for those who sacrificed themselves “for the country”.

So here is my question: Where are the days that remember the Firefighters, Police Officers, Paramedics etc.? Why don’t we have ambulances parade down the street with orchestras playing?

Oh, I am sure somewhere in the calendar someone put a “Paramedics Day” in there, but that will have as much resonance with the average person as “SysAdmin Day”. None.

Regardless on how people want to spin it, Remembrance Day is not about “honoring those who served” it is a marketing show that tells people that when we go to war it is for a just cause, and don’t you forget it, oh, and sign up here please.

Oh really?

Let’s take a quick stroll down history lane and see where Canada got involved and if it really was such a noble cause:

World War I:

Otto Dix Painting

As modern lore has it (there was even a movie about it last year), World War I was where Canada “was made”. I say modern lore here on purpose because having looked through some older newspapers / textbooks the interpretation that Canada was “made at Vimy Ridge” seems to be a rather new interpretation that is less than a decade old.

Let’s face it: as much as the modern Stereotype is that Austria-Hungary and the German Empire were the culprits in WWI the reality was not quite that black and white. But of course if you want to justify to have gone to war it must be “we are good, they are bad”, mix in some bravery and “birthplace of the nation” and you have created yourself a tale worthy of the Ring Cycle.

There are ample stories of people on both sides brokering a seize fire over the Winter Holidays and even exchanging gifts, so if the soldiers in the trenches could have a “good time” with the “evil enemy” then what exactly is left of the claimed nobility of WWI? Nothing.

People died on both sides, usually a horrible death, gassed, shot, crushed by tanks or torn to shreds by explosions or succumbing to infections due to trench foot and other ailments that were part of the daily “life” in the trenches on both sides.

World War II

Otto Dix: Flanders

Ah yes, in the Western World this is being billed as the fight of Good vs. Evil. Anybody who has read anything beyond the overall war (Nazi Germany Evil, Western Allies Good, and oh my God the Holocaust), would quickly realize that this was, once again, far from Black & White. WWII was about global politics, not about “defeating the evil Nazi Germany” or “saving the Jews”.

Two examples to illustrate this

A couple of people tried to flee Nazi Germany, they charter a ship, the SS St. Louis, it set sail from Hamburg to initially go to Cuba where the refugee’s wanted to wait until they could enter the United States.

When the St. Louis arrived in Cuba they were refused entry, so the ship turned north, trying to land in New York, again being refused entry the ship tried Halifax, where the Canadian Government refused entry for the ship and it’s refugees.

The situation in the end got so bad that the captain decided to run the ship aground and force the Canadian Government to take in the Refugees.

You can read the entire story of the St. Louis here.

The second example is about the Allies decision to not bomb the rail lines that were moving prisoners into concentration and death camps. The Resistance and their own intelligence network had made the Allied High Command aware of what was going on, they knew what the trains were being used for, but the decision was made that it wasn’t of “strategic importance” to prevent more people moved to slaughter.

You can read more about this here.

Lastly, there is of course the question as to what really lay behind WWII, much like WWI the answers aren’t as black and white, but I leave it up to you, if you are interested, to read through the historic documents of the time and come to your own conclusion.

But so much is pretty clear: It wasn’t about the death camps, the jews, the political opponents or the mentally disabled. It was, much like WWI, about who got to rule the world.

Korea

In that context Canada soldiered on and went into Korea, this was somewhat a bit different that it was a “UN Mission”, either way the war was as bloody and as useless as the other two engagements. It was once again not about “good vs. evil” but about “us vs. them” and them happened to be the Soviets and their man in Pyongyan.

After intense fighting the country ended up split in two parts, up to this day I might add, with a guy in power who got drunk on having stubbed the US and the West in the nose.

After Korea, Canada seemed to have smarted up a bit, under Pearson Canada came up with the role of “Peacekeeping” and for close to 40 years dedicated it’s military predominantly to that role. Just how “noble” even peacekeeping can be could be seen in the early nineties in Rwanda, where politics, not “nobility” or “humanity” won out.

I think the US ambassador to the UN made the most striking statement about the failure in Rwanda: “We have isolated reports of Genocide”, that was of course long after it had swept across the country. The cynicism and disregard for human life that the UN was supposed to protect is pretty staggering.

The reason why the US especially was trying so hard not to use the G word for so long was because the moment the UN recognizes a genocide the Security Council has to act. Not just by writing a stern note to the country that commits the genocide but by actively intervening. You know, the “noble war” thing. Of course this was shortly after the Somali mission that went tits up and the US didn’t want to get involved. So they avoided the issue for as long as they could, meanwhile hundreds of thousands were butchered in “isolated cases of genocide”.

And then there is Afghanistan. Canada (and Germany for the first time since WWII) are heavily involved on foreign soil. This isn’t a peacekeeping mission, this isn’t about “making things better”. Anybody who knows a little bit about the history of Afghanistan could have told you that the intervention would pretty much end up the way it did. Yet many countries, under the shock of 9/11, decided to commit troops to a cause that once again was sold to the populace as “noble” and “necessary”.

Of course if it really would have been about the terrorists who committed 9/11 Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would have been the targets they should have gone after, not a country that mainly existed in name and was essentially a loose collection of tribes that worked together when it furthered their need and who were at each others throat when it didn’t.

And in conclusion

Let’s be clear about one thing. War is not noble. Nobody ever died a noble death. There is no honor or nobility in death, regardless of what generals or politicians are trying to tell you.

Though there IS a need by the people in power and those who run the military to indoctrinate people to think that they are fighting the good fight and that it is a noble undertaking to put yourself in harms way for the “greater good”.

It is all Bullshit. War at times may be a necessity (in defense) but it is never a “noble cause” nor is it something we should admire or hold at high regard.

World politics was always made by old men and paid for in blood by the young. As long as we have had tribes we have sent (mostly) sons into harms way and rationalized it away with a noble cause or a necessity of some kind (if we don’t kill them, they will kill us).

No war ever started because of noble intentions, it started because the other group had something we wanted. Since WWI though we have perfected the ideal of the soldier who puts his or her life at risk to “serve his or her country” and elevated that service to a noble cause.

If people really want to remember those who we have sent into war to kill and be killed we should ask hard questions of those we have tasked administrating our country. We should make sure that we can defend ourselves if need be but do lack the ability to fight and offensive war and even then the military should be the option of “last resort” not the first one that comes to mind when a disagreement arises.

Remember that, next time you are in awe of large military machinery, play a military game, put a fake poppy on your lapel to “show your support” or shout of the top of your lungs that one “needs to support the troops”. The best way to remember the dead and support the troops is by not putting them into a situation where they have to kill or be killed.

Paintings are by Otto Dix.

The whole thing started out when I noticed that Raincoaster had a poppy on her Twitter Avatar. I sent her a (private) direct message on twitter saying (in my mind at least mockingly) that I was surprised she actually did show a poppy.

The reply that came back was essentially: “There are many things you don’t know about me.” Which is fine, I don’t. I continued in a (to me) sarcastic tone and replied:

Shocking, Raincoaster giving in to peer pressure AND promoting Groupthink.

And this is where things took a turn to the utterly bizarre.

If you ever read or talk to / with her you realize very quickly that she is, how shall we call it, sarcastic and outspoken. Things that show up on her radar that she does not approve off she relentlessly mocks.

So imagine my surprise when the next reply was not a private message but a public one, and not only was it a snarky one but she also proceeded to retweet some of my replies (My tweets are private). Next thing I know some of her “friends” decided to kick me in the shins too, that even though they pretty much only knew (and retweeted) her tweets to me. So at best someone got only half the story.

The main accusation around this was that I didn’t bother to ask her as to WHY she was showing it, which is funny, because in the entire two preceding messages there was really no intend to seriously discuss this. In turn I could also say that she never asked what my problem with the poppy might be.

Now clearly, my remark seems to have hit some kind of nerve with her, which is fine; you don’t always know how people react to things you say, and if she would have indicated what she thought about my remark we could have easily cleared it up. Instead though she chose to make me a target for her “friends” and put words and opinions into my mouth that I don’t have (if you want to read my opinion on what I think of Remembrance Day and similar holidays, you can read it here).

The end result for me was a simple one. I ended up closing down the lines of communications this morning after sleeping over it. I removed her from my networks and I blocked her.

No, this is not about me being miffed that she shows a poppy or that she felt hurt or insulted by my remarks, it’s about the simple fact that she decided to take a private matter into the public domain in order to… Well, whatever it was / is that she decided to make out of it.

A few minutes ago, before I started writing this, she decided to kick after me yet once again. It is “funny” how she decided to make a big deal out of it that I am German and thus my opinion doesn’t count and any criticism of Remembrance Day by default should automatically be disregarded. If someone reduces me to my place of birth, how could I ever deal with that? Racism in reverse, but I am sure she’d disagree and would say it’s nothing like that. Let me channel my female here for a second: Whatever.

It is also interesting that her second argument was essentially: “Because you work for a large multinational, you have absolutely no right to criticize anybody in the DTES, many of whom who have served.” I love these kinds of “holier than thou” attitudes, but having been involved with some people in the DTES poverty industryThe Georgia Straight has a piece that echos many of my thoughts on the subject of the military.

One of the favourite “punching bags” for those who criticize the Canadian System is the lack of General Practitioners (GPs) or as you may know them: Family Doctors.

It is true, of course, that they are few and far between, anybody who ever moved and had to find a new one can tell you a story about that, but while the critics like to lay the blame at the feet of the public system, the reality for it is most likely to find somewhere else: Societal Perception.

Back when I first came to Canada the sister of the girl I was dating for a while asked me what I was doing for a living one day. I told her I am involved with Computers (there isn’t really a lot of sense getting more specific with most people). Her answer to that was: “Oh, at least you have a real job, unlike her ex.”

Curious I asked her what it was that he did and the answer was: “Car Mechanic”.

Now the ex was an asshole out of a variety of reasons, but I don’t think his job choice counts as one of those bad things about him. But what it did show me is that most people have very little to no respect for “manual labour”.

So what does this have to do with the GP shortage?

GPs aren’t really specialists, what they do is, in general, perceived as “low level medical work” not as glamorous as say a Neuro Surgeon etc. The fallout of this is that when most students go into medicine they try to specialize, find a niche that has a certain “cache” as such lots and lots of would be doctors end up in a field that requires a lot of specialized knowledge but nobody with a broad enough base to act as “first contact”.

The drought of family doctors I think can be directly attributed to the way society sees them compared to all these specialists out there. People want to have recognition and if you go to University for a few years and indebt yourself with student loans you want something to show for it.

Think about it, when would you be more impressed, when someone told you they are a Neuro Surgeon or if they tell you they are a Family Doctor (in a small community in northern Canada)? Exactly.

So, next time someone tells you what they are doing, think about what it REALLY is that they do for you and society and maybe adjust your perception of what “low level” is. Simply put: If you cannot do it yourself, maybe you should show some respect to what the person is doing. If you could do it but don’t want to and rather pay someone else, stop looking down.

People here do not interact with people on a “casual” level. Meaning, when you meet someone you toss them in one of four bins:

1. Not likey
2. Like, but only as a friend.
3. Want to fuck
4. Want to date

These bins are the end of it really, there does not seem to be any moving between the bins (well, with the exception of #3, once that is satisfied it may move to #4 or #1).

What makes Vancouver so “special” about this is that most people here seem to make these decisions “snap”, meaning within ten minutes of meeting the other person. “Instant Gratification” is the name of the (dating) game in this town.

I have been through this a few times now and observed it with others as well, if it wouldn’t be so sad it would be rather comical.

That’s the funny thing. Maybe I am “old fashioned” but I doubt you can figure out which bin ones belong in (in 99% of the cases) within ten minutes. Despite what most online dating profiles in this town seem to indicate, most people are quite a bit more complex than to be figured out that quickly.

I also, fondly I might add, remember that I pissed some guy who showed up in a German forum with his Doctor Title proudly attached to his username. I dressed him down as it struck me as “show offish” and didn’t quite fit in the online world of CompuServe (and a little while later NewsGroups).

This, kids, was before the Internet Browser came along. It was an age where you were using command line tools to even navigate through CompuServe. Later on they came out with a Windows client that made things a bit easier, but I mostly used the command line edition as it was more flexible… Yeah, even back then, before I met Linux I was more interested in typing my way around the networks than clicking on buttons.

The end of CompuServe is somewhat bitter sweet to me. I left CompuServe after AOL bought them out, things changed, and not for the better. It ranks in there with the FIDO network for me, another thing I used heavily in the late 1980s early 1990s to “find my way around”. I guess most people who will end up reading this will have no idea what FIDO or even a BBS was, but back then, it was THE thing. You wanted warez? You got access through friends to a BBS, you wanted to send emails, you got something that was connected to FIDO.

My local FIDO note was part of the MausNet (Link in German) network in Germany, more precisely, Stuttgart II. I actually knew the SysOp who ran it literally out of his parents basement and we ended up playing Magic and a few other things. he also drove an old Mercedes with a Star Trek Sticker on it (“My other vehicle is a Starship”).

I just notice they still have a website up: maus.net.

It’s odd really, I haven’t used CompuServe or a BBS in a long long time, and yet, I look back at this and I just realize how much fun these were. We “abused” the German ISDN protocol, as we had figured out that via the data channel (the one that transmits the caller ID and other connection info) we were able to keep data flowing without having to pay for the connection. In Germany you had to pay by “unit”. Before they privatized the telephone business and turned it into the Telekom there was a “day rate” and an “evening rate”, but the data channel wasn’t part of that, so I was able to keep a connection (albeit at only 5K/s) open 24/7 without getting dinged… Good times I’d say

It was also before the masses started discovering the Internet, the tone was different…

In the mid nineties I switched over to a local ISP, back then the Internet in Germany was still mostly run by the Universities. The cool thing about this was that there were only a dozen or so peering points in the German Internet and I ended up knowing every single admin of these notes. If something didn’t route right I was able to talk to them and get the problem fixed. No crap of calling up a clueless tech support person, I was able to go straight to the source (literally).

I also knew the senior SysAdmin at the University Stuttgart who was also (at that time) the “owner” of the Stuttgart peering point, I was several times in the server room “touching” the Internet….

Yeah, I admit I miss the times. As fucked up as CompuServe became after the takeover by AOL (and AOLs invasion of NewsGroups, I remember that one too), the Internet was still mostly left to a few people….

Am I a snob for thinking back those times? Yeah, probably. There are many good things that a broader acceptance of the Internet has brought, the problem is, in my estimate, we don’t use it.

So yes, sorry to hear that CompuServe has gone the way of the Dodo, I had good times there, I had a good time on the internet back then in general, these days? Signal to Noise is clearly in favour of the noise…. Sad.

GM is bankrupt

So it is done. GM, General Motors, the American heart is no more. Today GM filed for bankruptcy, something they should have done nine months ago if not longer.

Depending on who you talk to people have different opinions of why GM failed.

Michael Moore:

It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh — and that wouldn’t start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the “inferior” Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to “improve” the short-term bottom line of the corporation.

New York Times:

In its bankruptcy petition, G.M. said it had $82.3 billion in assets and $172.8 billion in debts. Its largest creditors were the Wilmington Trust Company, representing a group of bondholders holding $22.8 billion in debts, and affiliates of the United Auto Workers union, representing nearly $20.6 billion in employee obligations. In a court affidavit, Fritz Henderson, G.M.’s chief executive, said that bankruptcy and a Treasury-sponsored sale of General Motors’ assets to a so-called “New G.M.” were the automaker’s only option to move forward. Failing that, he said, the company faced liquidation. “There is no other sale, or even other potential purchasers, present or on the horizon,” Mr. Henderson said.

Of course there is the usual scapegoat, the Union. This is not necessary something that was said out loud in the media, though politics as well as the news media never tired to say how much the Union needs to make “concessions”. This all harks back to the “Golden Days” of GM and the Big Three. Of course a bit of envy by the average Joe who spent thousands to get a degree why a guy who had a high school diploma got excellent benefits etc. for putting tyres on cars.

But the reality is probably something rather simple: The North American consumer.

There is no desire by the average consumer to drive a small car when they can get a big one. That is unless they get forced into it by high gas prices. This is where GM failed the most, they sold lots of cars for a long time and management clearly did screw up along the way with horrible cars and a God like attitude thinking it would all be fine.

Everybody is to blame in the fail of GM, but in the end GM is just a reflection of North American society as a whole, the seeking of the quick buck, the idea of entitlement when it comes to ones own possessions all contributed to it.

Maybe the people who considered a failure of GM the failure of (North) American society right. What will be left after it is said and done? The official line is that GM will rise from bankruptcy as a new company and will make cars and come back to glory; as will Chrysler apparently.

But I doubt it. I think the days of GM and Chrysler are done. The reason for a “structured insolvency” is simple: A complete failure would reflect badly on the politicians and the country as a whole. GM, although probably no longer the heart of America it still has an iconic status. I predict that in a year from now what is left of GM and Chrysler will be quietly brushed under the carpet in the hope that nobody will notice.

Oh, and watch the DOW next week, both Citi Group and GM are going to be taken out of the index and will be replaced with Cisco, I expect the DOW will see a rise next week, but don’t be fooled.

I have to wonder if the writer of that headline even for one second wondered about the double meaning? I walked past by at first, then my brain kicked in and I went back and read the thing.

Seriously, no one double checked these flyers???

I don’t know if I am really “like” him in my style, though I think we have similar interests: Life. But am I really that different from all the other “Street Photographers”?

There have been quite a few “horror” stories in the media, not to mention the repeat mention of the “Spanish Flu” of 1918 and the millions of dead and the clear implication that the current outbreak could reach the same proportions.

Now Raul has pointed out an interesting article with regards to Twitter and how it is actually leading to even more panic (not that this surprises me).

If my reading list on Twitter was only restricted to the individuals who had produced the posts above, by now I would be extremely scared and probably feeling a great urge to post a scary Twitter update myself.

[...]

The problem is that while thousands of concerned and misinformed individuals took to Twitter to ventilate their fears, government and its agencies were still painfully missing from the social media space;

[...]

I think it’s only a matter of time before that the next generation of cyber-terrorists – those who are smart about social media, are familiar with modern information flows, and are knowledgeable about human networks – take advantage of the escalating fears over the next epidemic and pollute the networked public sphere with scares that would essentially paralyze the global economy. Often, such tactics would bring much more destruction than the much-feared cyberwar and attacks on physical – rather than human – networks.

The article makes a few good points, but the latter makes the mistake to think that this kind of abuse could be prevented.

Over the years I observed a few trends which Twitter now increases.

First of all there is the “participation” aspect. 9/11 was probably the first live broadcast terrorist event in human history, something that went around the globe in near realtime, with people participating online and at work, giving a play by play. Everybody was part of the event, even if you were thousands of kilometres away.

In the following months this became even more obvious as people repeatedly “felt” for the losses of the family members who had lost someone. Having outright emotional outbursts and depression.

This all comes down to the fact that we want to belong. With human face to face interactions having been greatly reduced by modern technologies and the way we live (from “hiding” in your car on the way to work, to living in large houses that are mostly self contained) people try to find other ways of emotionally connect. Part of this is the “fake” emotional attachments to completely strangers whose stories are broadcast in the news or the Internet.

Secondly, people are easily scared, very few people understand how a pandemic works, what makes things so dangerous and mostly how this could impact them directly. The examples given in the article linked above are symptomatic for this. The media is mentioning pigs (swine) and people but leaves a lot of additional information out that would calm people down. After all, if it doesn’t fit in the two minute blurp on TV or the 30 second read on the news website nobody will bother. Not to mention: “When it bleeds, it leads”.

Thirdly, the limited nature of twitter, as the article points out 140 characters don’t allow you to give a lot of context, though there is a bigger problem. People who are concerned first and foremost want to warn their “friends”, because of the “cred” that comes with having “befriended” someone people tend to be less suspicious of the information being presented and so a “Ponzi Scheme” of misinformation is being kicked off. This is were the amplification factor of Twitter comes into play.

Even people who may be skeptical will most likely think to be better “safe than sorry” and will contribute to the misinformation. After all, a “friend” warned them.

This is one of the downfalls of social media. Where there is a clear authority in the news media (in the past anyway) that you could question, in social media it all depends on the trust you give the person on the other end. The more scared you are though, the higher your bullshit threshold, because if in doubt….

If the media wouldn’t have been as sensationalistic about the outbreak over the weekend, my suspicion is that Twitter itself would be less flooded with these warnings and misinformation. As the media is continues feeding the fears with their talk about pandemics, millions of deaths etc. we have reached a perfect positive feedback loop in misinformation.

As people will “foster” more and more relationships through social media, the always connected, always plugged in and always short, way of life will continue to amplify these kinds of misinformation.

Unless people learn to be less panicky and more determined to get context this Swine Flu was just the beginning.

Dr. Donald Low, the chief microbiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto who played a key role in battling the SARS crisis in 2003, says while there haven’t been any confirmed cases in Canada yet, it could be just a matter of time before they appear.

What irks me about this is the way SARS is presented again. Yes, there was an outbreak, and yes it quickly spread through air travel to other parts of the world, but the mortality rate of the “pandemic” was a joke back then and the world overreacted, not in the least the panic caused by the media.

And now we have the swine flu virus making the rounds, and yes it does seem to be more deadly than “even” SARS, but the only reason people get all worked up about it is because of the fact that it quickly sprang north into the “civilized” world.

Sure, there is a potential that we will face a pandemic in the not too distant future, but the way SARS was reported on (and now the Swine Virus) is doing more damage than good in my opinion.

Travel advisories and informing people is one thing. But getting people to panic (and most people do when they hear about deaths, regardless of the probability of actually dying from an infection) is counter effective. When Toronto declared the SARS emergency ERs and doctors where overrun with concerned people.

Doctor Low sinks even lower (unless he’s being misquoted) when he says:

“What you’re seeing here is the makings of a pandemic,” Low said. “You’re seeing a new virus that we have no natural immunity to. You’re seeing a virus that can cause disease, and in causing disease, can transmit from person to person.

Viruses always appear, this is why every year the flu vaccines need to be updated. Our bodies do have the ability to adapt to these changes as well and considering the amount of people who seem to have been infected and the number of deaths I’d say our immune system still can cope with it.

He then continues on:

“All it needs to complete that equation is the recognition that it’s spreading over a wide geographical area. And I think that’s what we’re hearing this weekend, that it’s actually happening,” he said.

Although he is right, unless it is a very virulent and aggressive strain (read, it transmits over the air, is not at all detected by the immune system and kills within a few hours after infection) this is, although a concern, no reason to panic.

Viruses (and in fact larger things like animals) have travelled with humans ever since we gained mobility. We have brought different species to other continents and used “biological warfare” in North America when we introduced the European Smallpox strain to the original inhabitants of North America.

But since then we have made huge progress, we know what a Virus is, we know what Bacteria are and we have a much better undstanding in how to fight the diseases. The fear mongering in the media right now though makes things worse in the short run, because everybody with a runny nose who was not even close to anybody from Mexico City will now wonder if s/he got infected and run to the doctors.

I really wish the media would be less sensationalistic and more realistic in their reporting, but then: “If it bleeds it leads”.

First of all, I noticed I am much more relaxed after shooting as I don’t have to worry about “reviewing” all the shots I took. But I also realized I am acting more “free” while shooting. As I do not have any direct feedback I am less obsessed about “getting the right shot” right then and there. Instead, I take a bit more time composing the shot and then, a few hours later, I know the outcome of it.

But that is only one of the advantages I noticed, the other advantage is a rather simple one: My choice of getting a new notebook has been greatly reduced. Instead of needing an “online photo lab” with lots of disk space and memory (and a fast processor) I can now chuck this one and only high-usage requirement and buy something smaller and cheaper.

It is quite a difference between having to get a large notebook (e.g. a Macbook Pro) vs. a small netbook (e.g. Asus eeePC). Both price and weight wise.

It’s odd how “getting out of the digital arms race” in just one aspect of my life has such profound effects on the rest of my “workflow”.

Fascinating, isn’t it?