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Site search has been fixed

Photography

Finally!

Google Search for this site has not been working when activated from the ‘Search’ box at the bottom of this page.

I have replaced it with a new search tool named Relevanssi. Scroll to the bottom of this page, enter a search term and you should see results with the first 60 words included, thus:


Search results for ‘Nikon D3x’.

Label drinkers revisited

Photography

Nothing changes.

I wrote about Label Drinkers some 16 years ago.

It’s sort of comforting to report that little has changed, and those purported experts have only grown in number since then.

An amusing article in the Washington Post reminded me of my old column.

It seems that a fraudster selling vinyl records under the MoFi label has been cleaning up selling ‘pure analog’ records for egregious sums when, in fact, the source material for these pressings is digital. Encomiums to this fraudster who lit on some of the most prolific and spendthrift Label Drinkers on the planet.


MoFi fraudster at work.

‘Audiophiles’, you should understand, think nothing of spending fortunes on analog gear – turntables, cartridges, etc. – and will listen to nothing but scratchy old vinyl disks, thewhile preaching to all and sundry that only analog can deliver pure sound. This, of course, is utter rot and not a single blind listening test has them identify good digital from best analog at a statistically meaningful rate. Go ahead, Google away. Not a single set of data exist which indicates they can actually tell the difference unless, that is, their precious vinyl is scratched in which case even I would ace the test.

Now before I point you to the wonderfully funny newspaper hit piece, let me illustrate for you the idiocy of these fools, who truly prove that there is one born every minute. Here are two examples of Audiophile Label Drinkers’ essentials – the ubiquitous turntable and cartridge:


$200k plus and still no sound.

And here’s the article. Enjoy:

And just as a reminder, the camera in your iPhone puts the one in the $10,000 Leica M11 to shame. The $100,000 Tesla is pure garbage, with the worst build quality and reliability of any vehicle. And only a fool buys a Patek Philippe (I sold mine – gulp!) – unreliable garbage with the worst customer repair service imaginable.

Claes Oldenburg

Photographs

Pop Art twit.

Had the cast of Monty Python ventured into public sculpture they would first have to have invented Claes Oldenburg, the Swedish Pop Art icon who just passed away, aged 93.

Oldenburg’s thing was large scale reproductions of everyday things – toothbrushes, shuttlecocks and so on – placed in public spaces, and his work is never less than supremely silly.

But with that silliness there is a certain ineffable joy that things so insanely inane should grace public thoroughfares. One’s first reaction of shock turns, as often as not, to a smile at how this supreme fake ‘artist’ fooled the powers that be and got rich in the process.

Here’s my take on ‘Cupid’s Span’ of 2002, found along San Francisco’s Embarcadero:


Click the image to go to the Smithsonian obituary.
Panasonic G1, kit zoom, taken on May 1, 2011.