Month: August 2021

Testing the Minolta 200mm f\4 Macro and Sony 135mm f\1.8 A-Mount Lenses with Sony LA-EA5 Adapter on  Sony A7R IV Camera – Part 1 – The Eagle Has Landed

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O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

 

So the box with the camera and the adapter arrived.  I’m charging up the battery and figuring out what shots I’ll try today.  It’s cloudy day but there should be more than enough light for most outdoor work.  This should be fun.

 

Here are the camera and the adapter (Sony A7R IV Camera, Sony LA-EA5 Adapter)

 

 

Here is the Minolta 200mm f\4 Macro and Sony 135mm f\1.8 A-Mount Lens on the adapter and camera

 

 

And here is the Sony 135mm f\1.8 A-Mount Lens on the adapter and camera

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Freedom or The Hive – Anarchy or Society – Are there Any Ways to Get the Best of Both Worlds?

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Are our only two choices to be either a drone in the global hive that our tech masters are quickly creating or a Hobbesian natural man whose life will be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short?”  The Founding Fathers tried to thread that needle by building a state that guaranteed certain “inalienable rights.”  As we have lived to see, these guarantees have been abrogated by the elitist class that runs our government and all the corporations that control the livelihoods and material resources that we depend on for existence.

But what we shouldn’t forget is that those things existed for a very long time in this country.  There is nothing theoretical about living free in a law-based society.  What has changed is the thinking of the elites who control so many levers of power.  They have over time decided that they are the rightful rulers of this country and by extension all of Western civilization and that they have a better understanding of what we should be allowed to be.

They’re not interested in inalienable rights.  After all they don’t believe in God so they can’t believe that there are rights given to us by God.  Without God we are all just animals that happen to exist here on this spinning rock somewhere in the meaningless depths of a universe that increasingly seems to make no sense.  So, if they find that they have control of us then in their minds they are gods and we have little to say about it.

Thomas Jefferson said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”  And I think he was right.  Human social arrangements cannot be made static.  They change over time as the customs and character of the people change too.  We are not the British colonists.  This is not the world that they lived in.  But we are human beings.  We have very similar minds and bodies to theirs.  Our world is very different but people living together, men and women still want and need the same things.  We want to enjoy life and we want to keep what we work for and we want our families to enjoy these same things after us.

So, what it comes down to is this.  We’ve let the people in charge take back the things that were agreed to be ours.  We’ve been cheated.  But if we want to get them back, we’re going to have to do more than complain.  So, the choices available to us are:

  • Fold
  • Flee
  • Fight

Those are the choices.  Fold means give in.  Join the hive and become a drone.  It’s not much of a life but at least you don’t have to do much thinking.  They’ll find a small cell for you to inhabit until the winter comes and they push you out of the nest into the snow.

Flee means leave.  Find a better place either in a red state that has maintained some independence from the hive.  Florida looks promising.  Maybe Idaho.  Or maybe find a foreign land that will take you in and hasn’t been absorbed by the hive.  Are there good places in the world?  Yes.  Will they take us.  Maybe not.  But it’s worth exploring.

Fight means taking the country back.  How that can be done is anyone’s guess.  The oligarchs have control of power that is virtually infinite.  The resources of the federal government.  The reserve currency of the whole world with an almost limitless ability to print money.  The largest and most potent military that has ever been.  Even thermonuclear weapons if the reason for using them ever appeared.   They have almost complete compliance from every corporation and entity with any power, from the media outlets to the universities to the manufacturers and commercial giants.  And finally, the information resources of the Silicon Valley billionaires.  They know so much about us that they think they can predict our every action.

The idea of fighting all that seems like a bad joke.  But by the same token we have at least eighty million living human beings on our side.  If a constituency that large can be organized it will have resources and capabilities that could accomplish a lot.  Even in the complete absence of violence or even protest a force that large could change things very significantly.  But what we currently lack is organization, leadership and a plan.  And of those three things what is most lacking is leadership.  Someone strong and smart has to step forward and take control of organizing.  Who knows, the decision might be that what we need to do is flee.  Maybe we can organize a program to allow us to emigrate together to some place that we could call our own.  Perhaps several of the red states could become our reservation.  But we’ll need to get organized to accomplish any of this.

And getting back to the original thesis of this post, it is possible to live in a free society.  But it’s not possible to keep it if you’re not willing to defend it.

Not All Politics is Local but Local Politics Has Become Crucial

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Thomas P. “TIP” O’Neill was the Democrat Speaker of the House during Ronald Reagan’s administration and he was an old time Boston Irish machine politician.  He made the famous but not very meaningful statement that, “All politics is local.”  What I think he meant was, “To a politician who wants to be re-elected all political issues better be considered from the local point of view.”

Well, I’m not going to give a lecture on elective politics.  What I wanted to write about is the way I’ve been thinking about local issues.  I think too many people despair of the local political scene without even doing the minimum of due diligence about the actual nature of the political setup.  And when I say local, I’m talking about your town or county.  I live in New England, the land of the woke.  But my town votes Republican.  That alone should tell me that there is some hope of getting involved in something meaningful.  The town government is heavily involved in education, taxes, services and many other things that have a direct effect on people’s lives.  But let’s say your town is hopelessly left leaning.  It’s still in your interest to find out who runs what and how they effect your life.  For instance, suppose you find out that there’s a seat open on the school board.  If you or one of your friends managed to get on the board just that change might be enough to minimize the damage that comes from all of the CRT nonsense that’s going on.  The information you learn might be enough to rally like-minded parents, even socially liberal parents who still would resent their children being propagandized.  Something like that is already occurring in blue-state Virginia.  Often people are a lot less likely to experiment with their kids lives than they are with other people’s lives.

And getting involved with town politics and policies may impact other things going on around you.  Many small towns are voluntarily building and zoning low-income housing.  Knowing that this is going on isn’t something automatic.  And likewise letting your neighbors know about something like that can have a huge impact on stopping it.  After all, the effect something like that has on housing value is very real.  After it’s too late isn’t the time to find out that you’ve lost half the value in your home.

Other important town business is also worth knowing about.  Things like who is being considered as police chief or whether the town is thinking of spending a lot of money on a library or an art center.  These things have a big impact on taxes and town budget constraints.

So, there are several reasons why getting involved in local politics is smart and also effective in making your local community better.  But even if you find out that you are completely outnumbered by raging woke leftists, at least the effort will provide you with that fact and the assurance that here is no hope for a normal life should spur you to get the hell out of the hellhole you inhabit and move to a place where you won’t be surrounded by pod people.  After all contact with pod people for extended periods will turn you into a zombie too.  At least that’s what I learned from watching several versions of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

Poor Wittle Gavin Newsom Says Big Bad Recall is “Unfair”

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This guy sounds like a big baby..  The big bad Republicans want to take away my toy!

“California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the recall effort against him is unfair and that its impacts will be felt “across the country.””…

“”My sense is, trying to be as objective as someone who is the target of this recall as I possibly can be, I think it will be quite pronounced for many, many years,” he said in response to what he thinks the consequences of a successful recall will be. “I think it will be felt all across the country. I think people haven’t really thought that through. … I don’t think the national Democratic Party is asking themselves that question.””…

“He added that the recall process against him has been weaponized by people with opposing political views.”…

“”I think the opportunity for the Republican Party with the midterm elections coming up, in [Minority Leader] Kevin McCarthy’s backyard, in [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi’s state, in [Vice President] Kamala Harris’ home state, with California and the values we profess and practice that would be judged in a different light if this was a successful recall — I think it would have profound consequences nationwide,” the governor said.”…

“Newsom named immigration, climate change, health care and the coronavirus pandemic as issues that would be impacted by a recall.”

This clown deserves everything he gets.  How will the United States get along without him?  Well, I guess we’ll just have to muddle along, somehow.  Of course since he’ll be unemployed maybe we can hire him to cut the grass and clean up after the dogs.  Maybe he could be trained to do those things, maybe.

What’s the Definition of a Movie Star?

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I’m sure there are movie critics who have their own takes on this question.  I’ve never thought much about who the “real” movie stars were because what I was interested in was which were the good movies.  But recently I’ve been watching some old movies that were not in the top 100 movies of all time.  In fact, some of them were pretty bad.  The plots were hackneyed and the scripts were poorly written and some of the actors and actresses were pretty awful.

You might ask why I would do this.  It’s a combination of things.  Firstly, they were on Turner Classic Movies and I get that channel on my cable television subscription.  But the other reason is that I’ve just seen the good movies so often I need a break.  Even a great movie can be worn out by too frequent viewing.  So, I’ve been watching some stinkers.

I recorded a couple of movies with William Powell that I’d never heard of.  One was called “Lawyer Man” that also starred Joan Blondell.  It’s an early film from 1932 and the plot includes all kinds of stereotypical plot elements, dialog and characters that fairly scream “B” movie.  I wouldn’t recommend this movie highly although it was amusing because of the leads.

But what was obvious to me was that William Powell was a movie star.  And what that means is that regardless of the role or movie William Powell is in, he’s William Powell.  Whether he’s a lawyer or a private detective or a doctor or a stockbroker or a down on his luck everyman, he’s, unmistakably, the same person.  The persona that Powell had created is what the producers and directors wanted from him in all his films.  In one film he might be a hobo, in another a rich nobleman but in both cases, these were just the vicissitudes of life and they didn’t change his character.

This differs from a real actor like Lawrence Olivier.  When he plays Henry V, he’s a gallant hero.  When he plays Richard III, he’s a heartless monster.  And when he’s Hamlet he’s a lost soul.  Olivier becomes what the part requires.  But when we’re looking to spend an hour with a witty, pleasant, intelligent man we’d rather have William Powell.  He’ll work his way through the plot and whenever he’s on the screen we’ll be pleased.  The character William Powell plays is the man you’d wish was sitting next to you on a long train ride.  He’ll have stories to tell and probably has a deck of cards in his coat pocket and when his wife or girlfriend shows up, she’ll be a smart cute funny dame.  And if an armed robber shows up in the railway car Powell will manage to knock him out and tie him up with no apparent effort.

The movie stars I can think of were all of the sort that produced a character.  Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant always played the same part with slight differences to align with the plot and character details.  But they almost never were cast against type.  Of course, these were the pictures they made once they had reached star status.  As journeymen they had to take whatever roles they were given.  You can see this transition in someone like Humphrey Bogart.  When he started out, he had to play a lot of vicious gangsters and there was very little nuance in these roles.  But once he had done the Maltese Falcon, he was allowed to find his “type.”  He became the tough guy with a brain.  And at that point audiences knew what to expect from Bogey.

As I said, I generally am looking for a movie with a good plot and decent acting.  But there is something to be said for trying to match a movie to a mood.  If I need to relax and enjoy a reuben sandwich and a cold drink I’ll probably want a Western with John Wayne or Gary Cooper.  And If I need my spirits lifted, I’ll watch a Jimmy Stewart film or a W.C. Fields farce.  But if I’m ever homesick for the New York City that used to exist, I’ll look for a William Powell movie.  And maybe it never really existed but with William Powell to walk you through it will feel like home.  At least to me.