The Curmudgeonly Professor

Deep Thoughts from the Curmudgeonly Professor for April 29 2012

The Curmudgeonly Professor is not particularly known for having deep thoughts, or perhaps any thoughts at all, but this Sunday morning seems to be a fruitful time to share:

• April is about over boys and girls, which means 25% of the year 2012 is shot, kaput, down the drain.  And what do we have to show for it?  Have we cleaned out the garage? Have we dumped the rotten celery out of the fridge?  Have we lost 25% of the weight we promised to lose this year?  Have we stopped wasting our time watching Matlock?  Have we gone for our mammogram, colonoscopy, skin cancer checkup, or whatever?  So what have we been doing?
• For my own progress report, I am happy to report that my ideas are in phase I of a XII step self improvement program.  Phase I is the incubation and contemplative stage.  For instance, I left the vacuum cleaner in my den for about 10 days so it would serve as a reminder that I needed to vacuum the floors.  That (an indefinite antecedent, I know) is what I mean by the incubation stage.  Our do lists and reminders become an integral part of the scenery, of the woodwork, so we can peacefully and shamelessly ignore them.
• For a crossword answer the other day, my wife informed me that the answer was "econ", the abbreviation for economics.  She informed me that she would have thought that someone with a Ph.D. and three other degrees in economics might have known that.  Again, an indefinite antecedent.  That what?  She continues to remind me in case I forget.
• I can report that I have added several thousand photos to my hard drive, so I can enlighten my blog readers into the next century with what I have already taken.  You can set the posting schedule on auto pilot by date, so never fear about lack of posts after I am gone.
• The Utah Jazz are about to take on the fearsome San Antonio Spurs.  No matter they are 100 point underdogs.  Just getting here was a monumental accomplishment with the Jazz Kiddie Korps and a terrific coaching staff, training staff, and others who brought the Jazz this far along.  Actually, an inspiration.
• For Church, I watched the Mormon Tabernacle Choir this morning while warming up leftovers for breakfast, except for the organ solo, which I don't understand.  I will have to see how religious I am in terms of how well the Jazz are doing or not doing to see if I am feeling well enough to go to regular church at 1:00 p.m.  I know I can record it, but I don't have an iPhone so I can check on the game during Church like countless others are likely to be doing.

The Jazz tipoff awaits, so any further deep thoughts must be held in abeyance.  Maybe some time in the next year I will share some of them (indefinite antecedent) with my readers.  Have a nice day.  And, whatever you do, do not cheer for the LA Lakers.

Triple Dusty Pink Roses for Sunday Morning April 29 2012

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Daily Diary for April 27 2012

Using my powers of analytical reasoning and my store of trivial knowledge, here is a dustup of the events of the day, this Thursday April 27 2012:

• The Utah Jazz make the playoffs.  They may get beat in the first round by San Antonio, but no matter, they overachieved and made it this far while enduring injuries to key players and playing with a bunch of 21-and-under kids of enormous talent and tremendous character. This accomplishment is a tribute to everyone in the vast empire of the Utah Jazz, including countless unsung heroes.  At least we'll have four more games to watch, and maybe more.
• The Republicans appear to dislike President Obama and the Democrats, but I have studiously avoided listening to any more of their clever complaints, having reached the point of diminishing marginal utility at listening to the same blather day after day.
• Similarly, the Democrats appear to find the Republicans annoying.  I guess that is why we have the two-party system, so that each party can be chronically annoyed and irritated by the other. Otherwise, we would have a one party system in which everyone would agree with everyone else.  Wouldn't that be boring?
• The Progressive Insurance lady now appears in more and more ads, print and TV, that leave me gasping for air.  Again, the point of diminishing marginal utility.  Enough is enough.
• The Thursday New York Times crossword puzzle was a doozy, but I managed to finish it at 3:30 this morning and felt extremely proud of myself.  For some reason, the evil people who do the Times' puzzles seem to ratchet the difficulty of the puzzles from first grade level on Mondays to complete obscurity by Thursday.
• After 22 episodes of the wonderfully entertaining Foyle's War, we have graduated to Planet Earth.
• The sun is shining once more in St. George UT after several days of complete overcast, wonderful for taking photos.
• I now have another 1,000 + photos to edit.  Maybe I should stop taking photos?
• I have not found any comics or horoscopes worth quoting for several days now.

After giving the matter some deep thought, I have exhausted the important events in my life on this Thursday morning.  I hope your day is exciting, productive, stimulating, newsworthy, worthwhile, and that you tackle one chore you have been putting off for months for at least 5 minutes before you give up on it.  The Curmudgeonly Professor is full of good advice which he never takes himself.

A White Rose I Would Have Missed if I Hadn't Gone Back to the Same Rose Bush Yesterday

A Trio of Pink Dusty Roses: Why We Return to the Same Rose Bush We Already Have Taken a Whole Bunch of Photos (of)

I've learned that it's a huge mistake to assume that, just because I have already taken dozens of photos of a particular rose bush or flower yesterday and the day before, that it will be a waste of time to take more photos of it today.  Big mistake.  Flowers, including rose bushes, change hour by hour.  The colors shift, the light changes, new flowers and roses are in different stages of budding, blooming, and fading.  You find a different angle to shoot from.  You take photos at a different time of day, finding the sweet spot of light at dawn or at dusk or going out on a totally overcast day.  But then you find the sun can be your friend also, as you shoot against the sun and watch the translucent petals shine.  You can never take enough photos of the same rose! You can delete instantly, but what you are looking for are those few photos that will knock your socks off after you download them on your computer and you sit in wonder at the beauties of nature and the incredible gift of digital photography.

A Trio of Pink Mexican Primrose

The Importance of Taking Photos

I am continually amazed at both the numbers of people who are taking countless photos in the digital age, and at the numbers of people who don't bother to take a photograph at all.  I read the other day that camera photos are now responsible for about half of all photos taken, and the relative importance of such photos is dramatically increasing.  Camera photos are fine for Facebook, sharing, and posting in various places.  Some of them now have, I think, up to 6 mp, which is dense enough to do some things with.

However, if you want to get serious about taking photos of lasting value that you can enlarge, print, and keep as part of your heritage, you need a decent camera.  You can get a camera with 10-14 mp that fits in your pocket for a few hundred dollars now. Of course, you don't need that much horsepower unless you plan to blow them up to giant size, but make sure you have enough mp to accomplish what you want to do with your photos.  Just check the reviews for various cameras on Amazon.com or other photography review blogs before you buy one.  Ask others what they use and how they like their cameras.  The main virtue of a pocket camera is that you can slip it in your pocket or your purse and be ready to take a shot of anything, any where, any time without missing important events in your lives.  Even if you have a more expensive camera, taking along a pocket camera is a useful thing to do.  My Canon 7D with telephoto is a monster and weighs a bunch, and I'm always worried about tripping and breaking a few $$$$$ worth of lenses and camera equipment.  Some of the best pictures I ever took in my life were taken with a $1.98 Baby Brownie in the mid-1940s when I was 13 or 14.  I strongly recommend that you get a real camera, even though you might be having a lot of fun with a camera phone.  Your photos will not remain forever available on Facebook and you need a more permanent and flexible option for taking care of your photos.

The moral to my story here is that if you are a laggard and a procrastinator about taking pictures, you and your descendants will be forever sorry that you aren't recording the events of daily life in a form that will enrich not only your own lives as the years go by, but the lives of all those who care about you and your family.  So put "buy camera" on your do list if you don't have one, and put "take pictures" on your do list if you have one but have been too lazy to use the one you have.

Here is one of the first photos I ever took, one of my little brother Steve, more than 60 years ago, and it still remains one of the best ones I ever have taken and remains one of my favorites.  So don't get carried away and overspend on cameras if you are new to picture taking.  Just buy a decent inexpensive one and first learn how to use it.

"The Little Flower that Lasts an Hour": The White Cactus Plants that Bloomed Yesterday Were Gone Today

The little flow'r that lasts an hour,

Every year we marvel at the pristine, translucent white cactus blossoms that last only a few hours. More of my neighbors are getting starts for this cactus and waiting with excitement for the magic day of seeing them bloom for a few hours.  With digital photography, we can cheat Mother Nature and see them forever.  I've quoted the hymn "In Hymns of Praise" before:  

The little flow'r that lasts an hour,

the sparrow in its fall,

They too shall share His tender care,

He made and loves them all.

Here, truly, is one of God's wondrous creations, made for us to enjoy, and to contemplate the transience of life.

If I Hadn't Taken My Camera When We Went to Get the Mail, I'd Never Have Taken this Photo of a Pink Rose

With the blooming of the roses, iris, cactus, and countless other early summer flowers, we have an abundance of riches.  After waiting for months and months, here are the gems we have been waiting for to photograph.  I thought I wouldn't take my camera with me when we went to get the mail at 6:30 tonight, but dragged it along at the last minute.  I was rewarded with another 80 photos, after deleting the really bad ones.  I've taken over a thousand photos this past week.  If I posted 3 a day, it would take 333 days to exhaust them all.  Truly, digital photography makes us all rich.

Palm Tree Against a White Cloud St. George UT April 27 2012

Dusty Pink Rose and Rosebuds

White Rose on May 26 2012

Tiny Pink Shrubbery Blossoms

Pink-tinged Rose

The Fall of New Orleans - NYTimes.com

New Orleans was the jewel of the Confederacy. In addition to being the South’s largest city, it boasted considerable industry that produced ironclads, munitions and uniforms, among other items. More important, it controlled access to the Mississippi River from the Gulf of Mexico.

via opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

Time for your history lesson