Am I getting Smarter?

Am I getting smarter? I don’t think so. In fact, what would even cause me to ask?

I picked up a copy of Scientific American on the flight back to Brisbane this time. I use to be a regular reader and even a subscriber. But it has been quite a few years since I have picked it up.

I once read that Scientific American was written to a level that any educated person could read and comprehend without a background in that scientific area. I guess I found that to be true although it was a pretty hard slog at times.

Anyway, there was an article on detecting photographs that had been altered and another on the ethics of climate change that looked interesting. Lo, and behold, the articles seemed easier to read than what I remembered. Still not on the level of USA Today, but I was reading fewer paragraphs twice.

How could this be? Had I gotten smarter in the last twenty years? Once again, I doubt it. But it does seem better written in some ways. The articles have a “Key Concepts” section out in the sidebar that help guide you a bit. The illustrations are well done. And maybe, they dumbed it down a bit. Anyway, I enjoyed it and maybe I’ll subscribe again.

Here were my favorite articles:

The Cosmic Origins of Time’s Arrow: Discussion of entropy and symmetry of time in the universe

The Ethics of Climate Change: Weighing the value of well being today versus money spent to prevent climate change

Opinion on Sustainable Development: Discourse on policy that favors biofuels and animal feed over grain for starving people

Every once in a while you should read something that might be a bit over your head and a tad more challenging than watching Scrubs on television. One more thing… There was an article in the neurobiology section on the therapeutic value of writing and in particularly blogging. It is thought that it might trigger dopamine release like running or looking at art. Neat, I’ll try to keep blogging.

Thanks to Stuart for my portrait.

View from the Balcony

Here is the view from the balcony this morning down towards South Bank. Just another day in paradise.

Erica Got Married

The big news for the week is that my niece Erica got married. Stuart and I took a LOT of pictures but here is one I particularly liked with Cody and Erica walking down the isle.

Texas Squirrel

I haven't been able to get a photo of a Texas possum yet, but here is a squirrel. The English brought a lot of their native wildlife with them when they went to Australia: foxes, rabbits, and apparently ferrets. They are all unwanted pests now. But no squirrels.

Possums in the Garbage

Maybe it is me, but I just don't see how there can be too many pictures of possums in the garbage. Aren't these three boys handsome as they grab a bite to eat in the Brisbane Botanical Gardens before going out for a night on the town?

Expo 20 Years After

Brisbane used to be a sleepy country town as I think I have reported before. Then they had the World Expo in 1988 that changed everything. Kind of. The South Bank was changed from a light industrial area to a popular tourist spot overnight.

This weekend was the 20th anniversary of the Expo and they had a celebration with fireworks and such. They also had various characters and shows from the period. I am not sure what kind of characters these two represent though...

Frank's Oysters

I've seen Frank selling his oysters down on South Bank a couple of times but I haven't tried them yet. In general, the oysters are good in Australia. I would imagine that Frank has better than most.

Buddha's Birthday

It's Buddha's Birthday again. Here are some pictures of the fireworks celebration from the balcony.

V=10,900

Balancing Rock

This large rock balances near the top of the first Pyramid in Girraween ("place of flowers") National Park in Queensland. The local area, also called the Granite Belt, is full of interesting rocks, outcrops, ridges, and other geological sights. It is still relatively wild and has a lot of native flora and fauna.

The Treasury, Brisbane

This is the old Treasury Building in Brisbane. Guess what it is now? Why a casino of course. Gambling is the only sure way of making money there is outside of printing it. At least for the house...

Barracks Arch, Perth

Last week I visited Perth on the West coast of Australia for the first time. There wasn't much time to see things but I did walk around the central part of the city a bit. This tower used to be an entrance to a barracks that housed guards for the convicts who built some of the original civil buildings in the city. It was still housing guards into the earliest part of the 20th century long after the shipment of convicts had stopped.

Perth is nice but I think I like Brisbane better. Once a Queenslander, always a Queenslander.

Pink Floyd

Sunday I saw a middle aged bald man in Brisbane with a beer belly wearing a Pink Floyd concert t-shirt that said "Wish you were here" on the back. That is pretty much equivalent to seeing a Deadhead sticker on a cadillac. Thirty years ago that would have been a pretty strange sight. He even looked like he could have been a school teacher - "Teacher! Leave those kids alone!"

This picture has nothing to do with Pink Floyd except that it has some pink and you can see South Bank where I sighted the gentleman with the t-shirt.

Bribie Island

Bribie Island is close to Brisbane and has nice sandy beaches.

Sunset at Noosa

This picture was taken from Noosa Park back towards the town of Noosa. It's a beautiful place with great views and a mix of coast, heath, coastal scrub, and rain forest all coming together.

South Bank 1885

Brisbane has a lot of buildings and houses from the colonial period and I like this one in South Bank that was apparently built in 1885. We walk down to South Bank most Saturday mornings and eat breakfast. My favorite spot is at Stanleys, named after the street, in the middle of the weekly market. This building is across the way and I took the picture as I ate my eggs and toast.

Water Dragon in Profile

I never tire of photographing the water dragons. This was a pretty big one that was on the sidewalk at Roma Street Parklands. He was close to 3 feet long and let me sit down beside him and take his picture with the lens only a couple of feet away. Click on him to enlarge so that you can see the detail better. I am not sure why he is looking at my hand like that but you can see him salivating. This is a low resolution picture made for web viewing. The high resolution one

is even better.

V = 10,753

Great Egret with Fish

There were lots of birds in Tasmania and I took quite a few pictures of this egret. In this shot he has just caught his dinner. He flew about 10 feet, hardly landed, and then quickly caught the fish with his wings still open.

I think I have labeled most of the pictures correctly but may have missed a few. If you ever find one not identified correctly, be sure and let me know...

Tasmanian Coastline

Tasmania is quite wild in places. We didn't get into the wild places really - pretty much stuck to the trails. There is a very nice local scene, although maybe not quite as nice as New Zealand. Definititely worth a trip though...

There are more scenic pictures and bird pictures in the albums I have posted.

Beware of Falling Rocks

Tasmania is very scenic, but beware of falling rocks.

Less than Truthful

Everbody knows that photographs can be altered such that they don't reflect reality. Actually, no photograph really reflects reality. Think about it - it is a technically limited two dimensional recording of a 3 dimensional reality. I would digress into Heisenberg's Uncertainy Theorem and how nothing can really be recorded accurately but that probably would be over the top. Well, if you insist, you can read about it here.

But back to today's topic. The second photograph is derived from the first - double click each picture and look them over carefully. The original isn't a particularly good rendition of the scene as I saw it to begin with. What interested me at the time were the beautiful clouds and the panorama. I didn't have a conventional lens that would take in all of what I was seeing so I used the fisheye. This fisheye records 180 degrees corner to corner and distorts the heck out of everything by definition so we know right off it isn't going to be an accurate rendition.

The original is pretty poor. In addition to the fact that I had the camera at a tilt, the photo is boring, has no focus point, and the water is ugly. So, to make it more like what I wanted, I ran it through a rectilinear filter to get rid of the fisheye, straightened it, and then played with the colors until I liked the clouds and shoreline. Then I made a copy of the upper half and flipped it to make the mirrored scene on the river. I filtered it some more to make it look more like a reflection and then cropped it to make a panorama.

Actually, my "improvement" looks a bit fake and post card like but it is more interesting than the original. I don't do this sort of thing often but it is kind of fun every once in a while...

Story Bridge from New Farm

There are lots of pretty views along the river. Believe it or not, this is a fairly "straight" shot from the camera in that I haven't altered it much. It was taken just after sunset, with the sun setting about in the middle of the photograph.

St Patrick's Day Parade

This steam engine was at the end of the parade on Saturday.

Maritime Museum

There is a maritime museum just down at the bottom of the hill where the footbridge goes across the river built around an old dry dock. This Lighthouse Ship is stored there and you can see it from the bridge. Like I said, it is just down the hill. One of these days I need to go through it. Can't believe I haven't done it yet...

Batty Boat Tour

Last weekend we took the "Batty Boat Tour" up the Brisbane River to Indooripilly. There is a mud island there where the bats congregate and sleep in the mangrove trees close to the river. They number in the thousands and I took quite a few pictures but most didn't turn out so great because it was near dusk.

Brisbane River Boats

Brisbane is shaped by the river both figuratively and literally and boats have long been a major part of the city. This is Mirimar cruising the Brisbane River at night. The picture was taken from South Bank and I panned the camera to keep the boat sharp, but of course the background is blurred.

I think I have photographed just about all the passenger boats and ferries on the river now and have posted them in an album. I can recognize and name many of them on sight and all have distinguishing characteristics. For example, there are two main classes of City Cats - one class is newer than the other and is a little larger and a bit less angular. If you look carefully at the pictures you should be able to pick them out. Another interesting thing about the City Cats is that they are all given local aboriginal place names.

The ferries are very popular with tourists and a fair number of locals use them as well. I could take the ferry to work and it would shave a few minutes off my commute but of course it isn't that much further for me and I like the walk. Some of the other boats can be rented for parties and many have regularly scheduled cruises serving meals. We need to do that sometime.

V=10,620

Bird of Paradise

Bird of Paradise grow like weeds in Brisbane. I spotted this one along the walkway at the Botanical Gardens in afternoon light against the dark background of some rainforest trees and undergrowth.

Queen Street People

Have you noticed that a lot of my photographs don't have people in them? We went to a photojournalism exhibit sponsored by Nikon over the weekend - I think every photograph had people in it - or at least almost every one. It got me to thinking about my photographs. Maybe half or less have people.

So I am putting this one of a Queen Street magazine shop in. This will get my people count up.

Why don't more of my pictures have people in them? Actually, I spend a fair amount of time finding angles that don't have people or waiting for them to leave. It is only when I find the people really interesting that I might try to capture them.

Now, people can be interesting to you because they are your friends or relations or a famous person or they may be of interest regardless of who they are just because of what they are doing or how they look. Actually, a lot and maybe most, people are interesting if you will get to know them. When we went to the Christmas party last year I was surprised at how good the photographs were I took because everyone was having fun, they were largely unposed, and nobody felt like I was imposing on them even when I asked them to pose.

Anyway, I like birds and scenery too. And they never tire, except maybe the birds, of posing for you. I'll try and capture more interesting people too though.

Masks

I don't know what to write about this week. It has been a long week at work and nothing much to write about that seems really interesting. We went to a nice restaurant the other evening though and on the way back I saw these masks in the display window of a store that rents costumes.

I think I have written about masks a number of times now. Do a search in the little dialog box to the left and you will see. There were the masks in the old town of Kawagoe near Tokyo, David wearing a Hyotoko mask I got for Stuart, and the PNG masks I photographed in Port Moresby. And now these. It is interesting that so many cultures use masks isn't it?

PNG Highlands

I wanted to post a picture to show you just how rough the Highlands in PNG are. I've posted a lot more in an album so you can flip through them if you want. It is truly amazing country. We flew in by fixed wing and then spent about 5 hours in a helicopter.

The rain forest seems endless and is covered by mist and rain a lot of the time. The rivers are large and fast flowing with muddy waters from the erosion. They get more than 10 meters of rain a year. The weather is very pleasant and actually cool due to the altitude.

The terrain has a lot of impact on the people of course. For eons they have been separated by the mountains and rough terrain. Over 800 languages are in active use in PNG and the tribes and groups have unique cultures.

Beaver Falls

This is Beaver Falls and as you can see it is spectacular. And as best I know, nobody else was around to see it except for us. Very remote...