These are vacation posts, if you can’t tell. Short. Shorter than usual, that is.

I’m trying to learn about photography–i.e. learn what’s actually involved with making my various camera settings produce good photos rather than using Auto all the time, which tends to wash out faces with too-brilliant flashes. It’s perfectly appalling how much light is needed to get a good flashless photo if you’re not deliberately going for a time exposure with a tripod and all. So that even with our technology it’s still amazing how much more efficient the human eye is at its job than the camera.

“I will not say the song is completely autobiographical, but I’m down with that core audience,” he says.

–Weird Al Yankovic on his song “White & Nerdy,” which is “packed with references to Dungeons & Dragons, ping pong, and glee club.”

Dude, when did “glee club” get nerdy? I thought it was only band geeks who got all the grief. Even the drum majors. Ahem.

Or, Is Justice Stevens Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?

Supreme Court overturns D.C.’s handgun ban 5-4.

Rachel Lucas points to a snotty, annoying, and oh yeah, completely off-rocker piece of rhetoric by Justice Stevens:

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority “would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.”

He said such evidence “is nowhere to be found.”

No evidence that the Framers would much rather have limited, and did limit, the actions of our elected officials rather than limit the actions of free, innocent citizens?

Has he ever read the Constitution? I Am Not a Lawyer (as everybody reading here has had plenty of evidence to show), but even I can parse this: Whatever the available tools may be, Justice Stevens, they do not include infringement. That word means exactly what everybody thinks it means, no matter how hard you and others of your ilk try to convince us otherwise. There are only four lights.

Even in our public schools, at least back when I was attending them, which was since D.C.’s gun ban was enacted, thanks, it was made perfectly clear from the moment we started studying the American Revolution that the Framers had every intention of limiting most widely the actions of our officials rather than the rights of citizens. Stevens still sucks.

…by being as rock-solid in her dance routines as she ever was in her figure skating. I’ve never seen a physical performer less liable than she is to slips, trips, or goofs. Fantastic!

I’ve allied myself with the Amazon Empire and put up a widget with my recommendations (updated frequently with good stuff!) and a search box. When you buy Amazon goods through my site, I’ll get a percentage that will help pay for my webhosting, etc. I may look into getting a new theme that will have the widgets on one side and the Recent Comments back up high on the other side, but for now the Amazon widget will stay on top. Go forth! Buy goodies! Thanks.

I cannot speak of it.

Surprise of the night, besides Hillary practically losing Indiana, was Mario’s exit from Dancing with the Stars while Marissa Jaret Winokur, game but still a somewhat awkward dancer, remained. Her sunfire smile and exuberant enthusiasm will carry her through to another week while Mario’s saggy jive, singularly bad amid a very creditable collection of smooth, energetic dances, carried him off.

But a bigger surprise than his exit was the manner thereof: Referring back to a comment of head judge Len Goodman that his youth and niche position him as an excellent role model for young people, Mario declared, “The real brave ones are our young men and women fighting for our country overseas.” Wow. Class, grace, and bravery, considering the Hollywood stage. Good for you, Mario.

Confidential to Mario’s partner, Karina Smirnoff: Stop rolling your eyes. If you want to quit the show, do it. Don’t stay in it and exhibit a snotty attitude. Shame on you. You’re supposed to be a professional.

Sweet. Big-time author echos my points about Rowling and pulls no punches doing it: 1) That Steven Vander Ark isn’t violating her copyright, no, that is for authors like Rowling herself to do in lifting plots and language from other authors; that nobody will refrain from buying Rowling’s Potter encyclopedia even if they already own Vander Ark’s, and 2) That her claim that Dumbledore’s gay would have had a lot more authenticity put into the actual books, except that, gee, she just wouldn’t have made as much gosh-darn money if she’d said it there. Oh and also, she’s only doing this because she craves literary respectability that was denied her by all the Potter sneerers out there:

Rowling has nowhere to go and nothing to do now that the Harry Potter series is over. After all her literary borrowing, she shot her wad and she’s flailing about trying to come up with something to do that means anything.

Moreover, she is desperate for literary respectability. Even though she made more money than the queen or Oprah Winfrey in some years, she had to see her books pushed off the bestseller lists and consigned to a special “children’s book” list. Litterateurs sneer at her work as a kind of subliterature, not really worth discussing.

It makes her insane. The money wasn’t enough. She wants to be treated with respect.

At the same time, she’s also surrounded by people whose primary function is to suck up to her. No doubt some of them were saying to her, “It’s wrong for these other people to be exploiting what you created to make money for themselves.”

She let herself be talked into being outraged over a perfectly normal publishing activity, one that she had actually made use of herself during its web incarnation.

Now she is suing somebody who has devoted years to promoting her work and making no money from his efforts, which actually helped her make some of her bazillions of dollars.

Wow. Read the whole thing, because wow. I think I finally need to go pick up a copy of Ender’s Game right now.

H/t Petitedov, who found it in Ace’s headlines.

“There are to be forty interlocking committees sitting every day and they’ve got a wonderful gadget–I was shown the model last time I was in town–by which the findings of each committee print themselves off in their own little compartment on the Analytical Notice-Board every half hour. Then, that report slides itself into the right position where it’s connected up by little arrows with all the relevant parts of the other reports. A glance at the Board shows you the policy of the whole Institue actually taking shape under your own eyes. There’ll be a staff of at least twenty experts at the top of the building working this Notice Board in a room rather like the Tube control rooms. It’s a marvellous gadget. The different kinds of business all come out in the Board in different coloured lights. It must have cost half a million. They call it a Pragmatometer.”

–C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

All the relevant parts connected to all the other relevant parts by little … links. The major difference, of course, is that the Notice Board was to be run by an Institute whose purpose was to manipulate, gull, lull, and damn the population, while the internet really is the embodiment of the old sixties radical slogan: Power to the people. When anybody net-savvy can link and pipe up their opinion, you really can see the views of vast swaths of people taking shape “under your own eyes.” It’s a marvellous gadget indeed.

Possible tenth-anniversary DVDs of Sports Night.

H/t Daddyman.

Called Castle, created by Andrew Marlowe and directed by Rob Bowman of The X-Files: Fight the Future. Fingers crossed for both a good show and a hit this time.

H/t Whedonesque.com.

Star Destroyers built from scratch. Wow. Link goes to a 48″ model, but be sure to check out the first of two 24-incher as well, not to mention the 2-cm Falcon that goes with it.

H/t J.

This site is visited frequently by somebody from Downingtown, Pennsylvania. I can’t see a place name ending in -town without thinking of this song, “Morningtown Ride,” by The Seekers:

This is one my dad sang when I was a kid, but it didn’t survive into our later repertoire … until I heard my little cousin, three years old, piping it during a camping trip last year. It came back with a vengeance. Doesn’t get much better than a train lullaby … unless maybe it’s a cowboy lullaby.

And speaking of trains, if you didn’t already, check out these beautiful shots of Appalachian railroad scenes. The photographer, Kevin Scanlon, has an exhibition currently running in Grafton, West Virginia.

Via Rick Lee.