All posts by Thomas Pindelski

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21st Amendment

Dining, Photographs

In memoriam of quite exceptional stupidity.

For a nation created in the joint beliefs of self determination and freedom of religion and expression, the United States still boasts more loony puritanical cranks per acre than most. Never was this better illustrated than in the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, passed by the drunken louts in Congress in 1919. This stunning piece of idiocy prevailed until repeal by the 21st Amendment passed in 1933.

There were only two groups who approved. The peddlers of illegal hooch who became wealthy overnight. And Hollywood, which made movies about …. the peddlers of illegal hooch. Congress had proved, yet again, that a basic, unarguable principle of economics could not be changed.

All control drives up price.

The poppy farmers in the Golden Triangle and the hemp growers of South America and the California hills bow daily in the direction of a Congress still in denial of this Great Truth. Or maybe those legislators are simply on the payroll? Either way, we continue to support the drug trade and its extraordinary profits by doing for drugs what we did between 1919 and 1933 for booze. Go figure.

Please. No lectures about your kids getting higher than a kite. It’s called ‘parental responsibility’.

There’s a fine brew pub with a nice selection of craft beers not far from the ballpark in San Francisco named, appropriately, The 21st Amendment, and you can get a beer there for a whole lot less than you paid Al Capone back in the day. My waiter knew his stuff too when I asked him which Amendment made the Volstead Act law, right down to the date! Click ‘No’ on their home page and nothing happens! Gotta like that.

Panasonic G1, kit lens @ 14mm, 1/80, f/3.5, ISO 1600.

As the snap shows, they are proud of their brewers here and I confirm that I was enjoying a light New Belgian Mothership wheat beer with my fish and chips when snapping this, purely to steady my hand, you understand,

Google Translate

Photography

For other languages.


Read this journal in English.
Lire ce journal en français.
Leggi questo giornale in lingua italiana.
Lea esta revista en español.
Lesen Sie diese Zeitschrift in deutscher Sprache.
קרא את היומן הזה עברית.
日本でこの雑誌を読んでください。
閱讀這份期刊在中國。

English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese – that should about cover it.

My mail box suggests that some readers of this journal do not read English so, to accommodate them, I have added on-the-fly foreign language translation using Google Translate.

Click a language choice in the right hand drop-down menu and you will see something like the following almost instantly (this illustration is in a language I really care about):

In one of the most beautiful languages known to man.

Granted, the translation may not be the greatest but it suffices at a pinch. I count 57 language choices in addition to English and for the imminent arrival of the day when our new Chinese masters march into free nations’ capitals, I have made bloody well sure you can get Chinese. Of course, I will doubtless be among the first lined up against the brick wall for the poor quality of the translation. Or for actually having an opinion. Or something.

A nation that makes billions of Macs has no words for ‘Lightroom’ or ‘QTVR’ ….

Sorry, no American option. This journal is written, for the most part, in the Queen’s English and residents of certain former colonies will have to make do with that. And if you switch to Chinese, I can confirm that it’s sheer hell trying to get the right choice to revert to English .


* * * * *

An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him.
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him.
One common language I’m afraid we’ll never get,
Oh, why can’t the English learn to

set a good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scots and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely disappears.

In America, they haven’t used it for years!

Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?
Norwegians learn Norwegian,
the Greeks are taught their Greek.
In France every Frenchman knows his language from “A” to “Zed”

The French never care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.

Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning,
The Hebrews learn it backwards,
which is absolutely frightening.
But use proper English and you’re regarded as a freak.

Why can’t the English,
Why can’t the English,
Learn To Speak?

‘My Fair Lady’, lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner (who was an American
though he did go to a proper English school!)

Dictator’s window

Photographs

A hot seller.

There’s a run on these in north Africa right now and sales in the Middle East will shortly take off.

Spotted near South Park in San Francisco and snapped on the Panny G1 with the kit zoom at 38mm FFE. Some modest perspective correction applied in PS to repair converging verticals.

You can find South Park here:

It is a small pocket park in an area of quite exceptional charm in the City by the Bay – despite that nearby window!

Fuji X100 battery

Fuji

Don’t get ripped off.

The rumors about the battery life of the Fuji X100 are all over the place. Some say it’s 200 snaps, others twice that.

I have no idea what to believe but a spare makes sense.

You can buy the real thing at Amazon by searching on ‘Ricoh GXR’ which uses the same battery:

The Ricoh GXR rip-off.

Or get ripped-off a little less by searching on ‘Fuji F30’ which also uses the same one:

The Fuji rip-off.

Finally, best of all, search for ‘NP95 Li-on’ and you get this 1800 mAh variant, which is the same capacity as the one which comes with the X100:

The real thing with a cheap label ….

No prizes for guessing which I ordered. I don’t propose to pay $30 for a label. Guess where all three are made? Yup. Same place as your brand new shiny ‘American’ iPad.

The main risk here is that Fuji has included (no indication of that yet), or will include, a ROM to make their battery the only one that works with the X100 – Panny tried this dirty trick with the G series, only to have that hacked soon after. Many printer manufacturers try that with their overpriced ink cartridges and ROM setting tools abound to stop that little bit of greed. So hardly a concern, especially at the price asked.