Month: November 2025

The Crisis of Modernity

photog Current Events, photog's Corner

If you’ve been around for seventy years or so you know that the way we live in these United States has been in constant flux for almost your whole life.  But if you think about it didn’t start there.  In fact, when was the last time that life was wholly stable in form and detail?  Well in some backwater areas of the world it’s probably much as it ever was.  But for Europeans you might have to go all the way back to the mid-1200s.  Back before the age of sea exploration.  So, feudalism basically.

And what was going on back then?  I guess most of our ancestors were serfs living and working on the lands controlled by the aristocracy.  So, was that better or worse than today?  Well, I guess modernity has a bunch of advantages over the 1200s.  Today you mostly get to keep your teeth into at least your middle age.  And you actually get to live probably into your seventies.  And your children mostly won’t die at birth.  And you aren’t illiterate and you can call Pizza Hut on your cell phone and have dinner delivered (assuming you have a job, which isn’t that sure anymore).

But I think the question can still be asked, “Are we living in a better world than pre-renaissance Europe?”  If I were to give an opinion, I’d say yes.  But not because of the material progress that we have to show.  But because I think there is the chance that we might be closer to some kind of breakthrough.

And what I mean by a breakthrough is an analysis about what represents human happiness and how to maximize it.  “Okay,” you’ll say, “but what do you mean by human happiness?”  And that is a fair question.  Because human happiness is hard to define.  I don’t mean that we figure out a way to have the larges tnumber of people hooked up to a dilute fentanyl drip all the time.  What I mean is we should figure out what human beings are meant to be doing with their lives.

If I were to guess I’d say the optimal human activity is learning how to interact with other humans in such a way that everyone feels like their getting something out of the deal.  So, let’s say you’re a pretty good carpenter.  Okay maybe life would be optimal if you could get paid a decent wage to make chairs or tables or porch decks.  And maybe someone else would want to be a Walmart shelf stocker.  Sure, he’s not as bright as the carpenter, but he’s hard-working and cooperative and he’s not really interested in owning all the latest “stuff.”  So, the idea is that somehow all this “AI stuff” really does pan out and we figure a way to systematize the whole human race so that we can keep this whole multi-billion human juggling act in the air without needing a war or a revolution or a great depression.  Now that might be something to brag about.

Of course, this is all a pipe dream but if you think about it, that’s what all of the geniuses have been talking about for the last couple of hundred years.  That’s the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution and Mamdani and all the rest of the people who get all stirred up.  Now, we all know that socialism doesn’t work.  But maybe that’s because it’s run by socialists.  What if HAL9000 ran it?

Okay, never mind.  We know how that ends, “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t let you back in the door.  Have a nice day!”

Longhorn Beetle Macro Focus Stack

photog Photo Study, Photography , , , ,

So you take the Sony A7IV camera with the latest firmware update and you attach the Sony 90mm f/2.8 Macro G Lens and set the camera for focus bracketing using the small interval focus change and a hundred exposures with an f/8 aperture and ISO 100 quality and you get 100 files that look this bad:

Then you put the 100 files through a photo editor to get the exposure just right and process them in another piece of software that combines them into a focus stack and get this:

And if you crop that stack photo you’ll find quite a lot of detail:

Admittedly, this isn’t the loveliest insect photo on record but you have to admit it has a lot of detail.

The Middle Way

photog Current Events, Photo Study, photog's Corner, Photography ,

Lately my days have been filled with frustrating road blocks.  Things that should resolve themselves easily instead get bogged down in endless complication and delay.  Because of this I’ve been pretty stressed out.  So today while I was contemplating this it occurred to me that I shouldn’t allow days at a time to go by without any fun.  So, I’ve decided to try and add at least one fun thing into each of my days.

Sounds easy.  But what it means is that I have to first free my mind from the annoying things I’m trying to overcome and instead think up some small diversion that I can do in a short amount of time.  For instance, today I dragged out my camera, the Minolta 200mm f/4 macro lens and a bellows mount and started taking some macro shots of a dead preying mantis that I’ve had sitting on a house plant for a few months.

Now was this a terribly valuable use of my time?  No, not at all.  But it was fun and it got me thinking about what kind of a macro rig I’d like to set up.  The bellows device I was using had a bunch of problems associated with it.  It didn’t attach to my tripod very well and it was not rigid enough to avoid a lot of vibration.  But working around these issues was stimulating and fun.  And it made me think about something other than my problems.  It was a distraction and it lightened my mood brilliantly.

So, for the foreseeable future (meaning, until I get past my problems), I will be trying to add something fun to my days in order to stave off depression.  But in general, maybe I’ve hit on something worth pursuing.  I’ve never been someone who lived a balanced life.  My instincts have always been a sort of all or nothing strategy to most things in life.  Probably this was a matter of necessity caused by an almost pathological laziness that left me always forced into an eleventh hour, hail Mary effort to stave off disaster.

So maybe late in life I’ve discovered a miraculous unheard-of strategy; balance.

Tomorrow is a big family party.  But I think I’ll get up early and try to set up a focus bracket with the 90mm macro lens and some interesting macro subject.  I think I saw a dead spider down in the exercise area.  I think he might make an interesting target.  If not, I’ll find some still life thing; a feather or a coin or something.  And I’ll have some fun.

And that will leave Sunday to do some work.  I need to figure a few things out that have been stalled for a couple of weeks.  And then Monday and Tuesday are unavoidable hell.  I thought Tuesday would actually turn into a horrifying fiasco but blind luck stepped in and turned a horrifying nightmare into a merely tedious exercise in futility.  But just two days later and it will be Thanksgiving and that should be a wonderful way to recover.

Balance.  What did Siddhartha preach?  The Middle Way?