There was no way for the US to “win” in Afghanistan. The military could take, and given the money hold, territory but the US (and it seems the world) was not into Nation Building. Ever since WWII we have been unwilling to put the effort into building a country up after bombing it down. We pick parachute a few people into office and dole out contracts to money grubbers who follow the army around and cross our fingers, not matter how much we have to hold our nose around our new so-called “allies” in this government. This sort of setup has not ever worked… The closest I guess is the odious military dictatorship in South Korea that eventually was booted out by the South Korean people. I understand the argument for containment of communism after WWII and the unwillingness of the American people to commit to nation building, but the way we do it has not worked out. If we are going to be the world cops and topple rotten regimes we need to have a view of what to do after toppling the rotten regime that does not amount to installing another rotten one and proving that our vision of global democracy under Pax Americana is devoid of any concern for the people in these countries. We long ago lost the moral high ground, and it was not for taking out the bad guys but by replacing them with more bad guys.
In 2014 I used the iPhone 5S [wikipedia.org] all year, so nothing new or interesting to say on the hardware side.
In terms of photos; I took a lot of travel photos in 2014 with my mobile. I remember in 2011 I went to Turkey and I used my Canon G12 along side my DSLR. But when I went back in 2014, the iPhone was good enough. In fact I did quite a bit of travel photography in 2014 with the iPhone 5S. In addition to Istanbul [confusion.cc] which was a stopover on a work trip, I managed another side trip to Delhi and Agra [confusion.cc] while in India for work, and book ended the year with a trip to Japan and February: Matsumoto [confusion.cc] and Nagano [confusion.cc] and a trip to my grandparents house in Minnesota with a day-trip over to the Badlands [confusion.cc] in South Dakota . In all cases my Canon DSLR was my main camera but I used the iPhone for snapshots.
OK enough, let’s get to the photos, and lets cover travel first.
In chronological order, we start with Japan in February and this shot of Matsumoto castle in the snow. It was taken early in the morning, we were out before sunrise because it was our last day and it was the only day we got snow.
A few months after holidaying in Japan I went to Israel for work, and managed a stopover in Istanbul. I planned a 12 hour stopover on the way to Israel but got a free 24 hours on the way back too because I missed my connection due to bad weather. On this trip I use a couple of snap on lenses for the iPhone, a macro, fish-eye and zoom. Mostly I played with the fish-eye. The photos were cool but I never really used them again, too much hassle to carry and use. Here is one of the better shots with the fish eye though you can’t see the full fish eye effect in this one but you can see the distortion in the bottom.
And here’s a great shot of the inside of Hagia Sofia (not using the snap on lenses):
My next travel destination in 2014 was India. I took advantage of a two week work trip to go and mark Taj Mahal off the bucket list.
Last travel shot is from the Badlands of South Dakota, taken on a day trip, by car where we drove from my grandparents house in south western Minnesota most of the way across South Dakota to spend a few hours in the badlands before driving back:
On the same trip we stopped in Washington, DC for a few days, to spend some time with my mom and I snapped this photo of plants outside the Natural History Museum. I love the complexity of tihs plant, it’s amazing:
But I didn’t just travel, I also took a few shots around Singapore that I think deserve some love. This one of a staircase at Suntec looking up a the sky:
… and this photo of Tibetan prayer flags taken in Gaylang:
A lot of good photos with the iPhone 5S in 2014. The quality of the camera on the iPhone really showing. The best camera is the one you have with you, right? I think the iPhone 5S is where this really became more than ‘snap a memory for yourself’, you could actually take a good photo, that you would be proud to share.
Today, August 7th 2021, Confusion is 20 years old. While the domain has been registered for a bit longer the oldest blog post is from August 7th [confusion.cc]. That post, and several that follow are protected, you’ll need a password to access them.
As Confusion turns the big two-oh, it has :
954 posts (not counting this one), a little less than 1 post a week, though to be honest the posting frequency was much higher at the beginning, was really low for a while over the past few years and is maybe more stable now days at about 1 a week.
307 comments – never my strong point, last comment was in 2014, no one reads my blog, boo hoo. I predate the rise if micro-blogging and social media. Most people who might interact with me get their updates via social media not the wild west of personal hosted blogs.
I setup Confusion as a way to keep in touch with my college friends as I headed off to Europe to finish my studies and take my own grand tour [wikipedia.org]. In the beginning, the site, and each journal post was hand coded. But that didn’t even last a month before I changed to using LiveJournal [livejournal.com] in late August 2001 (post about it here [confusion.cc]. Using LiveJournal allowed people to comment on posts. There was also a forum in the beginning where we discussed the news and school… but that faded quickly. Comments on posts lasted a little longer but eventually the void stopped screaming back.
I switched from writing on LiveJournal and pulling the posts into Confusion a year later, hosting my own installation of Moveable Type [movabletype.com] from October 2002 (post here [confusion.cc]). Before finally, for now at least, moving to WordPress [wordpress.org] sometime in 2005 (no post about the migration).
There are also 172 broken links, a side effect of being on the web 20 years. Because while the Internet never forgets [confusion.cc], it’s violent seething abyss of change; sites come and go, sites re-organize there content and sites prune old content. Even many links that work actually go to dead ends, the content is gone but the site doesn’t even give a 404, just redirects to the home page, search results or something else. Broken links are the price of longevity on the Internet.
I have blogged through a lot in the past two decades, sometimes saying a lot, and sometimes not much more than a title…
The subsequent march [confusion.cc] to war [confusion.cc]. “America’s forever war” as it’s been called, which is also 20 years old, the news tells me Biden is going to bring to an imminent end to it but we’ve heard that before from others. I won’t hold my breath to see if my blog actually outlives that war.
My adventures [confusion.cc] in Europe, as well as some of my misadventures [confusion.cc] in Europe.
Finding [confusion.cc], and quickly leaving [confusion.cc] my first post-college job, to join one of my pre-Europe adventure co-workers at a startup [confusion.cc] the would lead me to Singapore.
The (second) American invasion in Iraq [confusion], and too many other times to link… I never had as much to say about Afghanistan, it was not the moral controversy that Iraq was. Or maybe, by the time it became a big a moral black hole I was too tired of it, I think most people were, and are. How much to we let bad things happen just because we are too tired or distracted to speak out? Maybe I’m just too old, protests are a young persons game.
Relocation to Singapore [confusion.cc] – interesting aside, I mentioned Singapore in my post on Bush’s march to war linked above, never imagining I would end up here…
I have no plans to stop blogging despite the lack of audience interaction, (or maybe just the lack of audience). The world has moved on but Confusion is still my tiny corner of the Internet and I will continue to fill it with dull personal commentary with a side order of self-importance [zeldman.com].
