All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
Okay, enough bugs for a while. let’s start with this clematis flower. I just stuck it on a flat background so the depth of field is limited. But still an interesting experiment.
One limitation that I have noticed is that the Affinity Photo software that does the focus stacking is not as capable as the post processing software (Capture One) that I typically use for all my other photos. So cleaning up the results of the photo stack isn’t as satisfactory.
Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.
Benjamin Disraeli
Continuing with my dead insect theme here is a large Eyed Click Beetle – Alaus oculatus who has joined my museum of dead bugs. No anthropomorphizing this insect with a name like Bob. I’ll call him Clicky because he used to click before he became dead. Camera Girl felt sad because he was going to meet his maker. But then I told her he was eating her vegetables. She said everybody’s got to eat but I think it put things in perspective.
As you can tell I’ve been spending time doing some of these macro focus stacking projects. It’s a weird thing and much less fun than just taking photos. But it does allow me to make images that would be impossible otherwise. But it’s fussy and time consuming. I’ll be doing some flower shots soon and I’ll see what else I can think of.
Camera Girl has abandoned me today to learn how to paint pictures. She left my lunch in the microwave. I will have to feed the dogs and push the button on the microwave and talk to myself for several hours. I told her this was a dereliction of her wifely duties. She narrowed one of her eyes and I think she was thinking bad things about me. Luckily I think she lacks psychokinetic powers. Unluckily she makes my food so you never know.
Camera Girl has become a voracious reader of fiction. It’s mostly crime novels but recently she read a book that was recommended by a friend. Based on the quality of that book she picked up another one by the same author. Yesterday she told me that the plot of the book involved a black maternity nurse who gets involved in the death of an infant whose father is a white supremacist. He even has swastika tattoos on his head. Apparently, in the story the hospital is punishing the nurse out of consideration for the influence of the swastika guy. I told Camera Girl I thought this was quite a stretch of the imagination. “How many white supremacists are out there who have the local district attorney prosecuting black nurses? I’m thinking the number is slightly lower than one.”
I tried to browbeat her into abandoning her book but she never drops a book until she finishes it, no matter how bad it is. Well, this prompted me to remind her why I don’t bother to watch most television and movies that have a Leftist slant. She rolled her eyes and nodded. I told her I’ll have to find a Dissident Right author for her to read as penance for the indignity I suffered through knowing she was reading this piffle and she made a disparaging noise that was sort of a guffaw mixed with a cough. Women!
Anyway, I’ll have some stuff up later and we’ll see how the day goes. It looks nice out so I’ll be at play in the Gardens of the Lord. Enjoy your day.
In a recent opinion piece Angelo Codevilla discussed how state enforced nullification of anti-constitutional federal laws and programs could act as the basis for a new federalism that allows conservatives to regain their freedoms without requiring a civil war.
In the article he stresses that it will take very strong leadership from someone to make something like this a reality. Codevilla gives Charles De Gaulle as an example of a leader attempting to restore a nation. And he stresses that the leader has to put the cause above his own personal concerns for glory or gain. He must submerge his personality into the cause. Codevilla wisely refuses to speculate about whether Donald Trump will be that leader. But I’m not that wise and I want to at least discuss what the options will look like and how we’ll know when a leader has arrived.
First off, I want to remind everyone of one thing. Prior to Donald Trump’s appearance on the scene none, and I mean none, of the so-called Republican leaders at the state or federal level did a damn thing about challenging the Left’s narrative about anything. When it came to immigration, they kowtowed to the supposition that illegal immigrants should be made citizens and that unlimited illegal and legal immigration was a necessity and “the right thing to do.” Good old JEB! Bush went so far to say that the crime of illegal immigration was “an act of love.” And so, anyone who objected to it was a heartless monster who hated children and love. It took Donald Trump to know that this con wasn’t actually believed by the American people. And the establishment Republicans continued to denounce his “callous indifference” to criminal aliens all the way to his inauguration and beyond. Eventually some of these NeverTrumpers woke up and realized they had better come up with a new con that included parroting the things that Trump had shown them. But I ask you to think about this bit of history because many of those same people are once again presenting themselves to us as the future saviors of the conservative half of the United States.
Of course, we won’t be seeing JEB! or John Kasich or Carly Fiorina or Chris Christie anymore. They are all done. But expect Nikki Haley and Marco Rubio to be right there explaining how they’re ready to make America Great Again by only making twenty or thirty million illegal immigrants, citizens, at least in their first term anyway. After that I’m sure a billion will seem like the right number. My point here is that the GOP Establishment will never disappear. They will always bounce back with whatever spin they think will allow them to perform their gatekeeping act and prevent anything from interfering with their “opponents” running the country off a cliff.
So, anyone who tells me that what we need is Trumpism without Trump is talking about something that has never been seen before in real life. If anyone wants to assume the mantle either in opposition to Donald Trump’s run in 2024 or in his absence if he decides not to run, I say show me what you’ve got. Prove to me you know what we want and then prove to me that you can and will do it. And that’s a tall order. Even Donald Trump was stymied in his desire to “drain the swamp.” The swamp refused to be drained and he couldn’t change that. If someone has a plan, we’ll need to know what it is and how he proposes to do it. In fact, I’m not sure that a lot of us even think a President of the United States can do it alone. It might take a ` coalition of red state governors with or without a Republican president to make any progress against the combined power of the Deep State and the Globalist Corporate Cabal that currently has us by the throat.
So, anyone who wants to be the new Trump has a lot of explaining to do. I need to know what and how. I want to see some evidence that he actually believes in the things he claims to stand for and I want to know who he plans to fire in the Justice Department and I want to know who will be his Attorney General.
And not to be too critical of how he handled an impossible job, if Donald Trump will be running again in 2024, I want to know what he will do this time to prevent the train wreck that the Justice Department caused for his administration. I’ll want to know what policies he will champion and who in the legislature and who in the governorships he has allied himself with to make these things realities instead of lost causes.
It’s a very long time until 2024. I would say that anyone who waits until then to start causing changes in the direction of this country is not a leader. I like that Ron DeSantis is enacting legislature to protect Floridians from first amendment violations by Silicon Valley and unconstitutional federal laws. I’d love to see him form a coalition with Texas and some of the other red states. What I’d really like is for these measures to be challenged by the feds and then see a state governor and legislation refuse a federal court’s ruling against them. I’d like to see them win a staring contest with Creepy Uncle Joe and win! That’s when I’ll know that here is some leadership on the horizon. Until then it’s just speculation.
Never apologize for showing feeling, my friend. Remember that when you do so, you apologize for truth.
Benjamin Disraeli
Bob’s Back! And I mean that in both ways. Bob the beetle returns and we’re going to get a look at Bob’s back or dorsal side. Last night I showed Camera Girl my photo of Bob and she confirmed that his legs were orangey. But examining Bob in the chiton she revealed to me that his back was green! Now having no visual sensors for green in my eyes this fact, as usual, slightly annoyed me but soldiering on I now give you Bob’s Back!
For today’s experiment in photographing dead bugs here’s a beetle with brightly colored legs.
Part of the craft is arranging the dead bug so that he doesn’t look quite so much like road kill. Also the other part of the deal is first post processing all the input files in terms of exposure and light balance. But right now I’m just adjusting the merged file which is less flexible than the raw input files. But this is as much a learning exercise for me as anything else. So I’m taking some short cuts. The main thing is the merge does create photos with enormously wider areas of sharp focus.
This beetle is less than a half inch in length. I named him Bob.