Rubbish

 "If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If some one maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you should feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants!"

~Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish (1943)

Yet does not believe it dogmatically

 "The fact is you cannot be intelligent merely by choosing your opinions. The intelligent man is not the man who holds such-and-such views but the man who has sound reasons for what he believes and yet does not believe it dogmatically. And opinions held for sound reasons have less emotional unity than the opinions of dogmatists because reason is non-party, favouring now one side and now another.

That is what people find so unpleasant about it."

- Bertrand Russell, Mortals and Others, Volume Il: American Essays 1931-1935, On Orthodoxies (1933) p. 58. Image: Bertrand Russell, 1935.

Comment

Sounds like Eric Hoffer's description of The True Believer

I Blame The Editors

I blame the editors, I have for many years -- the ones who edit out our failings, our embarrassments, the faltering in the portrayal of our perfection. The result is that we don't want to look.

Looking at the arc of history, we have become (at least in our own minds) individuals without community, relying on our own judgement in a sea of competing narratives. At the same time, we are filling up the world, beguiled by comfort, and rather than venturing off somewhere when we can't stand one another, we have nowhere to go except to bump into one another on the path to cooperation or destruction. 

Shamati 206

 One will never ask about pleasure, "What is the purpose of this pleasure?" If even the smallest thought about its purpose appears in one's mind, it is a sign that this is not true pleasure, since pleasure fills all the empty places, and then of course there is no vacant place in the mind to ask about its purpose. If one does ask about its purpose, it is a sign that the pleasure is incomplete, since it has not filled all he places.

So it is with faith. Faith should fill all the places of knowing. Hence, we should imagine what it would be like if we had knowledge, and to that very extent there should be faith.

One Night Or Two Nights

 Passover (Pesach) is on the 15th night of the month of Nisan, which is the night of a full moon. The Hebrew calendar is lunisolar - months go by the phases of the moon around the Earth and years go by the orbit of the Earth around the Sun.

Nowadays, when everyone knows the time wherever they are on the planet, Pesach could be celebrated on one night everywhere. But in the days when people weren't sure what date it was, priests in Jerusalem would judge the date and send out the official news of the night of the new moon to the provinces, and people outside the capital celebrated two nights to be more sure they celebrated on the correct night.

UK Coal From Japan

 The United Kingdom imports coal products from Japan, specifically coke and semi-coke. In 2023, the UK imported approximately 616,000 metric tons of these materials from Japan, valued at over $250 million . 

Coke and semi-coke are processed forms of coal primarily used in industrial applications like steelmaking and chemical processing. While the UK has significantly reduced its reliance on coal for electricity generation - culminating in the planned closure of its last coal-fired power station in 2024 - it continues to import coal-derived products for industrial purposes. 

Salgado Interview

Question:

What was the biggest problem you had in your life?

Salgado

I had a big problem to come to digital, because all the ways of my life I worked with negatives. In digital for me, I was the first guy to fight against the digital. Till the moment that it became very complicated for me to work with negatives, with the number of x-rays in the airport. Boy, I was with hell. And each time that I crossed an x-ray, that affected a little bit of you. Not a lot, but when you cross a lot of x-rays, your film loses the grain. You look at the structure of the grain of the film, the film becomes nothing.

And more and more, it started to become complicated. The film started to become not more good, because the amount of silver inside the film is much less than they were before. In reality, I was working in a base of a product that had no more investment on it. The investment was being taken out from this product and being put inside another that was digital. And it was necessary for me to split, to change, jump from one choice to the other. And I started to work in digital.

And Canon, I had a contact, someone presented me to the professional department of Canon. And Canon landed me two US-1 Mark III to try. I tried the cameras. I bring my medium format cameras. I was with medium 645 Pentax. I went to the Chanel Coast French side for one week. Two tripods, one tripod, one camera, one tripod. I made exactly the same picture, using about the same lens, because the rapport was not exactly the same, but it was photographed about the same. We developed, we made the tests. We take the digital and we compare the things. The quality was amazing. I said, "Well, I can go."

The problem for me was the grain. All my life long, I had worked with one film, it's the Tri-X. Sometimes I worked with the Max 3200 when I had no light, but this was not a good film. Too grainy, too grey, very complicated film. But always, it's the only one that I had at work in this sensibility. But at 99% I didn't try it. It was necessary to me to have my grain back, because digital was too flat for me. With my team here, and with a small company in France, we work   to get my grain, and introduce inside the digital archive and get exactly the same texture. This guy is working for me, the grain of Tri-X 200SA, 400SA, 800, 1200, in order to have exactly the same texture that I always work with all my life. That was the solution for the problem.

The problem for me was to have my negatives, because I like my prints in silver. The quality of a silver print is very different from the quality of a inkjet. The silver paper gives you something that the other don't give. It was necessary for us to work on a negative. We took about two years to arrive at the quality of a negative that was nice. But when we arrived, we were having a solid quality. Today, my negatives that come from a digital archive are much better than the medium format negatives when I shoot directly with a negative.

Canon has these new cameras. I just made a test now with the 5DS R. It's amazing to have this quantity in a 35mm camera. I tell you, the quantity that I have now from this camera is about the same quality that the photographers had 30 years ago, photographed with an 18cm by 24cm negative. It's fabulous.

When I started Genesis, it was necessary to me to carry a bag with 600 rolls of 220 wide film. That was about 30kg. And to carry with me inside the plane, because if I put this bag down, the X-ray comes with, my film was killed. It was necessary to take my hands, put it in the plane. And it was complicated to fight against the companies to allow me to put this film inside. Because you had to put up, to get a place inside the plane to store it, just for me during the trip. And I had my camera, if I had the camera in medium format, I had a big box that we set down ,the camera. We get a way to transport it there.

And but today, I have the correspondence of 600 rolls of film in 600 grams of digital cards. And the cameras now is light enough that I can carry with me inside the plane. And my life is 10 times more easy for a quality that is much better than I had before. That means we are in a total evolution of the cameras.

The cameras that I will photograph is the 1DX. The US 1DX. Because it's a solid camera, it's a camera that I participate a little bit in the evolution of this camera with Canon. I remember when the camera was in evolution, the people of Canon gave me these cameras. I made all my comments in the camera for the evolution of the camera. And I love very much the camera. The 1DX is fabulous to work with. And it's a very fast camera. The quality of the pixels are very good that allow you to work against the light and give you a lot of details against the light that I did add before with the generation before.

But there is a limit. It's not a very powerful in number of pixels. It's 18 million pixels. And when you do a big enlargement, and I do sometimes big ones, you see the deficit of the camera. And now with the 5D, it's amazing. It's very good.

But the 5D has a problem. It's not a tropicalized camera. I cannot go inside the Amazon Forrest with this camera. When you are working with 100% of humidity, working on the rain 5, 6 days of rain, the material suffers a lot. And in this mode, it started to be a problem. And with the 1DX, the 1DX is a camera that can be done non-stop. I did a lot of work with the 1DX. It's a very recent camera, but I did a lot of trips in Aamazones. Last year, I did a climb in a mountain in Amazones with three 1DX with non-stop rain, very difficult and so forth. Huge amount of humidity. In the end, very cold because we climbed a lot. And not a problem at all. The cameras are real and amazing. Well done, well constructed. And I have a big hope that we can have an evolution of these cameras, more for more pixels on it.

But in between, I work with the 5D where it's possible. I did just the new tests with this 5DRS. And it is real and amazing quality with a 50 million pixel card. It's another difference. The quality that we can have today from this new camera, the 5D RS 50 million pixel, is amazing. You see, this picture is a normal size. And here we enlarged just the center of the image. And that corresponds exactly when we made 1.5 meter by 2 meter long. This image was a 2 meter long. And when you go inside and we see the quality that we can have, it's about the quality of the big negative cameras. That was one, I don't know each, but it was 18 centimeters by 24 centimeters.

You see, before, the calculation of lens was handmade, it was not possible to calculate all the variables that compose all the curves of the movement of a lens. And today with these computers, these mega computers, the quality of this zoom lens is not too different. Or, say, is not different from a fixed lens. I work a lot with the 25mm 1.4, the 35mm, the 50mm 1.2, and the macro 100mm. I work a lot in general with this lens, amazing good lens.

But today, there are two new zooms that I'm working. That is the 24-70, the new 24-70. Because, you see, sometimes there are a lot of pictures in movement. When we are a group of people inside a forest, they are moving. You cannot go beyond 125 speed with people in movement. You have a stabilizer that added so much. In this case, I must come to use the 24-105. That's a good lens, but it's not as good as the 24-70. And I'm using now one 70-300, the new generation of lens, that has an amazing quality. It's not a too big lens. It's much smaller than the 70-200. And it is a very, very good lens. And I have these lenses that are very practical that I use them a lot.

But always, I carry with me my fixed lens. When I have the opportunity, for example, to walk inside to do portraits, where I can really concentrate, I come to the fixed lens. It's the 24, 35, the 50, and the macro. That's it.

Thank You For Holding

 Thank you for holding. We appreciate that your call is important to you. Unfortunately for you it is not important to us. You may think it is but that's because you're living in a world where you are told that the customer is important. We are, however, in business and our business is to make a profit. Everything that does not fulfil that is an obstruction to be removed.

Unless you can actually benefit us and improve our bottom line then you are nothing but a bump on the road. So please continue to hold if you wish. You should know, however, that we have placed several minefields in your way, some of which may feel to you like you're in a constant loop. If you think that you are correct because that is our intent.

Please continue to hold and the next available operator will be with you shortly.

You are number 1,481 in the queue and your expected wait time is twelve hours, at which time we will be closed. You are welcome to phone again tomorrow.

The Latin Name For Hummingbirds

Something I read that led me to look up the Latin name for hummingbirds, I found the following interesting thread.

The Latin name for the hummingbird family is Trochilidae, and it originates from the Greek word _trochilos_, meaning a small bird.  It's highly unlikely if no impossible that the Ancient Greeks used the word specifically for hummingbirds, since hummingbirds are native only to the Americas and wouldn't have been known to the Greeks.

But sunbirds in the Old World resemble hummingbirds. Sunbirds are tiny, nectar-feeding, brightly coloured birds and they are found across Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. Their resemblance to hummingbirds is said to be an example of convergent evolution, where different lineages make similar adaptations, like the hovering flight and appetite for nectar that is shared by sunbirds and hummingbirds. So it's possible the Greeks used trochilos for birds like sunbirds, or maybe even for wrens or other tiny birds.

And then again, maybe they didn't care too much for fine distinctions. Perhaps any small, darting bird was just "a small bird."

But back to the name Trochilidae. Hummingbirds belong to the order Apodiformes, which means "footless"  from the Greek  a -_ (without) and pous - (foot).

There are three families in this order: hummingbirds, tree swifts, and swifts.

Of course, these birds do have feet. It's just that they're just not used for walking. Hummingbirds have four toes: three facing forward and one back. Their feet are tiny (no surprise there) and structured in such a way that they can perch but can't walk or hop. That's why you won't see a hummingbird on the ground.

Tree swifts and swifts differ in their toe arrangements. Tree swifts, like hummingbirds, have one backward-facing toe, allowing them to perch. Swifts, on the other hand, have all four toes facing forward, which suits their near-permanent life in the air.

So who decided that Trochilidae was to be the name for hummingbirds?

Nicholas Aylward Vigors coined the name in 1825. Vigors was a prominent figure in early zoology. He co-founded the Zoological Society of London in 1826, and in 1833 he established the organisation that would become the Royal Entomological Society.

Vigors was also a proponent of the Quinarian system. It was a 19th-century classification approach that grouped all life into fives - five species per genus, five genera per family, and so on in the belief that nature followed a symmetry. As evolutionary biology took hold in the mid-1800s, the Quinarian system was replaced by an evidence-based approach grounded in shared ancestry.

How many early scientists have tried to force species or observations of any kind into boxes because the thought that preceded the observation demanded it?

John Gielgud/Interview with James Grissom/1991

 "The fact of life--the truth of life--I think is that we are engaged in an act of remaining relevant and afloat. I think the world truly looks upon all of us and asks if we are necessary to the uses and functions of life. There are too many people for too little space; too many needs for too few supplies. I do not look idly upon the term 'survival of the fittest.' This is true in life; it is true in the arts. We must always be asking if we are necessary; if we bring anything to the larger arena in which we are asking to work. There are too many people seeking to engage in this great task. What is tragic is what happens to those who come to realize that opportunities will not arrive; challenges will not be met. A horrible sort of calcification sets in; anger arises.

I don't know what the answer to this is, I only know that I have long been aware of this, and I have worked hard to prevent anger from arising in me when I have failed, and I have tried to be helpful to those who find themselves falling away and behind. All of this leads me to say that we are always in the act of discovering who and what we are and if any of it matters. And this examination is a good and necessary thing, and we need to be there for others who are on the same path. There is no easy answer; no solution. It is merely what we must do."

John Gielgud/Interview with James Grissom/1991

Meryl Meisler

 Meryl Meisler

I do not think photography makes me cynical about the world.

I think it makes me more comfortable feeling like I have a place in the world.

RFK on Autism

 Interviewer: If you go back to just 2016, eight years ago, it was one in 54. If you go to 2000, it was one in 150. What was the number when you were a kid, and what do you think is going on?

RFK Well, there's really good data on that. There were many studies in the peer-reviewed literature. Probably the most important study was the biggest epidemiological study in history at that time in Wisconsin. It looked at 900,000 kids. It was published in a high-gravitas journal, peer-reviewed study, and they found the rate to be 0.7 out of 10,000, so less than one in 10,000. The CDC data that we released this week shows one in 31, but it's a state-by-state data, and the worst state is California, which actually has the best collection methodology, so they actually probably reflect what we're seeing nationwide. In California, it's one in every 20 kids and one in every 12.5 boys, and if you look at the minority numbers, which we don't do very well, it's much worse, and the low-functioning autism, in other words, people who have full-blown autism, which is about 25% of the population of that kids with autism, about 25% of them are nonverbal, non-toilet trained. They have all these stereotypical behaviors, head-banging, biting, toe-walking, stimming, and that population is growing higher and higher, so it's becoming a larger percentage, so we're seeing much, much more -- many more cases that are now linked to severe intellectual disability. The media has brought into -- bought into this industry canard, this mythology, that we're just seeing more autism because we're noticing it more. We're better at recognizing it, or there's been changing diagnostic criteria.

There is study after study in the scientific literature going back decades that says that that's not true. In fact, California legislature in 2013 asked the MIND Institute at UC Davis to look exactly at that topic. They said, "Is it real, or are we just noticing it more?" And the MIND Institute came back and said, "Absolutely, this is a real epidemic. This is something we've never seen before." But anybody with common sense, would notice that because the autism -- this epidemic is only happening in our children. It's not happening in people our age. And if it was better recognition, you'd see it in 70-year-old men. And I'll say this, I want to be very careful when I say it, because I've never seen a person with full-blown autism. I've seen many people with Asperger's and, you know, on the spectrum who are my age. I've never seen anybody with full-blown autism. That means nonverbal, non-toilet trained. It's that you don't see these people walking around the mall because they don't exist in our age.

President Trump asked me to find out what's causing it. And I'm approaching that agnostically. I'm looking -- we are looking at everything we're going to do. We're going to be very transparent in how we design the studies. We're going to farm the studies out to 15 premier research groups from all over the country. And we're going to be transparent about our protocols, about the data sets, and then every study will have to be replicated. We're going to look at mold. We're going to look at the age of parents. We're going to look at food and food additives. We're going to look at pesticides and toxic exposures. We're going to look at medicines. We're going to look at vaccines. We're going to look at everything.

I think we'll have some preliminary answers in six months. But it will take us probably a year from then before we can have definitive answers because a lot of these studies will not go out until the end of the summer. 

Mughal, the Persian for 'Mongol'

 The golden age of Mughal art lasted from about 1580 to 1650 and spanned the reigns of three emperors: Akbar, his son Jahangir and grandson Shah Jahan. Artists in the imperial workshops created a radically new and rapidly evolving style reflected in all the arts of the court. 

Akbar's grandfather Babur had invaded the Delhi sultanate in 1526. He was descended from the Central Asian conqueror Amir Timur and Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol empire. The dynasty Babur established became known as 'Mughal, the Persian for 'Mongol'. These Muslim emperors created an atmosphere of religious tolerance to rule a diverse population with Hindus forming the vast majority. The imperial workshops employed Hindu and Muslim artists and craftsmen from across the newly conquered territories. Persian was the cultural language of the multilingual empire, which attracted skilled Iranian painters, calligraphers, architects and many others to the wealthy, cosmopolitan court. 

The exhibition at the V&A traces the creation and evolution of a distinctively Mughal art. From jewelled vessels to richly coloured velvets and the art of the book to architecture, it examines the many techniques and conventions that were constantly absorbed and reimagined.