Month: October 2007

Categories
quotes

American Fascism

When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.

Sinclair Lewis [wikipedia.org]
Categories
photography

Beautiful Stinger

IMG_1785
Categories
quotes

The new America

In the Name of God the Flag and Bush Almighty. This is my America, my New Republic…

This is my America. An America with Homeland Security, a Patriot Act. An America with paranoia. An America with hatred and ignorance. An America that wraps itself in its President and its flag. This is my America.

Now when I see the eagle of freedom, I see an eagle of fascism. Now when I see the American flag, I’m afraid for my America. We have become an ugly nation. A nation that has wrapped its eyes so tightly in red, white and blue that it has gone blind. Blinded by nationalism. This is my America. And this is why they hate us, and its not because we love freedom. They hate us because we think like that.

Christopher Morris, TIME Magazine White House photographer, in “A Love of America Turned Ugly [Photo Essay]” [alternet.org] on Alternet
Categories
photography travel

Jakarta, Indonesia, October 2007

IMG_5493

I’ve been to Jakarta three times on business, all three times it was fly in early in the morning, have a meeting and then fly out. This time the meeting was on Friday afternoon so I decided to stay a night and see about some photos.

First off; there is nothing in Jakarta to photograph if you want typical Southeast Asian travel photos. No great ancient temples, no colorful Chinatown (there is a Chinatown but it’s not much different than any other part of town. The closest thing to interesting sites is old Batavia where the Dutch built their capital. Unfortunately for me it seemed to be under renovation —the whole damn city square!

Jakarta is a sprawling stinking polluted mess of a city. Dotted with ‘heroes of the revolution’ type statues and monuments that would not be out of place in Stalin’s Moscow. The constant haze and pollution means getting decent photos of these monument is hard.

I guess there must be little back alleys and hidden places that would be interesting to photograph, places that would be fun or exciting to visit but even the Lonely Planet only devotes two pages of it’s Southeast Asia on a Shoestring book to Jakarta.

It’s just not that interesting. But you can see the rest of the Jakarta, Indonesia, October 2007 photoset on Flickr [flickr.com].

Categories
quotes

Profits

Profit is to be found not just in pleasing dissatisfied customers, but in dissatisfying them in the first place so they will then pay to be pleased.

Robert X. Cringely, “You Can’t Get There From Here: The myth of bandwidth scarcity and can Team Cringely really make it to the Moon?” [pbs.org]

Original link no longer works, shows a page that says PBS does not have the rights to the content any more. So, here is the Wayback Machine snapshot [web.archive.org].