Microwave Tower out in the desert near Maupin. Its actually for sale too! I just know I could somehow incorporate this as my future secret lair when I eventually take over the world.Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Microwave Tower
Microwave Tower out in the desert near Maupin. Its actually for sale too! I just know I could somehow incorporate this as my future secret lair when I eventually take over the world.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
I guess they like 'em bigger in Maupin....
Taken at a market in Maupin, the womens is on the right. Why is it bigger? I will not even begin to speculate.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Bend Harley Davidson Billboard
Camera phone image of billboard I saw while doing a sales call today. Either (A) Pranksters got to the billboard or (B) Somebody at the dealership has a strange sense of humor or (C) theres some really, really freaky stuff going down at the dealership. Pretty funny in any case.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Parabolic
Another object I've stumbled across recently. I originally thought about removing the lines via photoshop, but for some reason, I kind of grew to like 'em.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
John Deere Motor Grader
Image taken from one of the new housing developments in town. This was taken with 3 separate images taken two steps apart and then processed together using imagenomics Photomatix Pro software.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Hixon Bridge Black and White Redo
Ah, this is better. I used a gradient map combined with a channel mixer to make this a high contrast black and white that is also a lot brighter and easier to see. A much improved image I think.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Hixson Bridge at Shevlin Park, Bend
I can't decide which image I like better, the color or the black and white. What do you think?
Monday, September 10, 2007
My 9/11 thoughts.
It all started out in horror. That day 6 years ago today. The day the world changed. There had been warning signs, the bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. There was also the 1997 interview with Peter Arnett in which Osama Bin Laden stated that Americans were targets. Two months before the attacks, George Tenet, the director of the CIA, was warning National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice about an impeding attack. Still, we weren't ready.
Why am I writing about these facts? Well, because you need some background information. Today is the 6th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States, and yet, somehow through the years, those attacks have become associated with the war in Iraq. A war different than the one we are waging against the Taleban in Afghanistan. Iraq is a pre-emptive war, an unjustified war. A war wholly unrelated to the events of 9/11.
Folks, lets stop the bullshit right now. If you don't already know this, then let me spell it out for you. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Indeed, Iraq being the secular society that it was, Saddam Hussein had much to fear from Al Qaeda. In fact, after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Osama bin laden went to the Saudi defense minister and offered to protect Saudi Arabia and fight against the Iraqi army. Suffice it to say, he was rebuffed, as the minister did not see "faith" as adequate protection against possible chemical weapons use by Iraq.
So, Al Qaeda was already our enemy prior to 9/11, this was common knowledge. People seem to forget that he was Iraqs enemy too. So why did we go to war with Iraq in 2003?
Well, we were told they had chemical weapons, hell we even know they used them during the an-Anfal campaign of the 1980's, so it was a pretty safe bet that they still had them. So what was pre-war Iraq going to do with any chemical weapons it may have still had? Launch a pre-emptive attack on the United States? Sorry, Saddam had no intercontinental ballistic missles, so that was unlikely. Perhaps attack our ally, Israel? Nope, he was an evil bastard, but not suicidal, its an open secret that Israel has nuclear weapons and the will to use them. Saddam wouldn't have dared attack Israel unless he wanted downtown Baghdad to transform into a sheet of glass.
So what happens to his chemical weapons? Well, due to his fear of Islamic Fundamentalists, he wouldn't sell any weapons to them, that would be like handing a gun over to a madman who has told you beforehand he wants to shoot you. And he won't use them on any other countries due to his militarily weak position. So he would save them in his arsenal and use them on his own people. A terrible and horrific thing to be sure, but not a threat to the United States of America. In fact in 2006 Senator Rick Santorum referred to WMD's as being 'found', well after a little investigative journalism by the Washington Post, it turned out those WMDs were 500 degraded and forgotton shells buried near the Iran and Iraq border that were left overs from the Iran-Iraq war. It had been later confirmed that these weapons were not the suspected weapons of mass destruction that were the basis for our invasion into Iraq.
So why did we invade Iraq in 2003? Well there could be many reasons. On Sept. 27th 2002, President George Bush referred to Saddam as "the guy who tried to kill my dad". Okay, thats a pretty good reason to hate a guy, but not a valid pretext to invade a sovereign nation. In his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush claimed that the United States could not wait until the threat from Iraq became imminent. Huh? Everybody with half a brain knew that Iraq posed no threat to us, only to its neighbors. In fact according to journalist Sidney Blumenthal, the head of the C.I.A., George Tenent, was telling the administration that there was no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. What nobody knew at the time though, was that war was a foregone conclusion. In fact according to the Downing Street Memo "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
So we have a 'policy' of pre-emptive war against Iraq, and the administration was dedicated to fabricating stories in support of it. Lying, in effect, to the American people and its Congress, and to the rest of the world.
So here we are, in this mess. This swamp of danger and confusion called Iraq. This era thats been created by our government. An era of missed opportunities, deceit and downright criminal greed.
The best and the brightest of our generation are dying over there. Every day dozens of soldiers are killed and wounded. Suffering grievous injuries both physical and mental. Our good soldiers are guarding convoys of empty trucks back and forth across the desert. Getting killed and wounded so KBR can have a better bottom line.
Our government has lied to our soldiers, extended their tours of duty over and over again. Denied them the equipment and supplies they need to protect themselves and do their job.
We Americans. We Taxpayers. We Voters. We all need to hold the current leaders in our government accountable for this fiasco. The hubris, the greed, the decadence of our leaders and the deals they make with independent contractors in the reconstruction of Iraq must be accounted for. They must be held responsible for what they have done and be brought to justice for it. As one nation, as one people, we must, absolutely must call upon our congressional representatives to investigate and prosecute all of those who, through deceit, greed or outright stupidity led our government into this needless, bloody war.
Finally, we must hold ourselves to account. We all bought into what our 'leaders' were telling us. We bought everything they told us without question. George Bush and Dick Cheney used the fear that we all felt from 9/11 against us, so that we wouldn't question their race to war. They desecrated the memory of all those who died on 9/11, and are dying even today, from those events. We were led by our fear, we were fed fear with daily, color-coded 'warnings' about threat levels. We bought into the theory that with enough duct tape, plastic and time, we could hunker down in our houses with no worries. We weren't helped any by national news agencies either. Very few journalists took the time to dig deeper, but those who did tried to warn us, to tell us the truth. But instead, we all sat there, like a bunch of slack jawed idiots, in front of our televisons. Worrying more about who would get kicked off of 'Survivor', or about Britney's meltdown. We did more than ignore the truth, we avoided it. We accused people who raised the right questions 'traitors' and 'cowards'. Well, those people, the ones who asked the hard questions, the ones who sought the truth, those people are heroes in my book. As a whole, we Americans have failed. We failed the memory of the dead of 9/11, we failed in our responsibility for our government, we failed in supporting those who seek the truth and we destroyed our goodwill with the rest of the world.
We can turn the tide, begin asking questions now. Support impeachment of the President of the United States. Demand that charges be brought up against President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney for lying to the American people, and to congress.
We can no longer allow the memory of the victims of 9/11 to be used for this war. It is wrong and it is immoral.
Why am I writing about these facts? Well, because you need some background information. Today is the 6th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States, and yet, somehow through the years, those attacks have become associated with the war in Iraq. A war different than the one we are waging against the Taleban in Afghanistan. Iraq is a pre-emptive war, an unjustified war. A war wholly unrelated to the events of 9/11.
Folks, lets stop the bullshit right now. If you don't already know this, then let me spell it out for you. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Indeed, Iraq being the secular society that it was, Saddam Hussein had much to fear from Al Qaeda. In fact, after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Osama bin laden went to the Saudi defense minister and offered to protect Saudi Arabia and fight against the Iraqi army. Suffice it to say, he was rebuffed, as the minister did not see "faith" as adequate protection against possible chemical weapons use by Iraq.
So, Al Qaeda was already our enemy prior to 9/11, this was common knowledge. People seem to forget that he was Iraqs enemy too. So why did we go to war with Iraq in 2003?
Well, we were told they had chemical weapons, hell we even know they used them during the an-Anfal campaign of the 1980's, so it was a pretty safe bet that they still had them. So what was pre-war Iraq going to do with any chemical weapons it may have still had? Launch a pre-emptive attack on the United States? Sorry, Saddam had no intercontinental ballistic missles, so that was unlikely. Perhaps attack our ally, Israel? Nope, he was an evil bastard, but not suicidal, its an open secret that Israel has nuclear weapons and the will to use them. Saddam wouldn't have dared attack Israel unless he wanted downtown Baghdad to transform into a sheet of glass.
So what happens to his chemical weapons? Well, due to his fear of Islamic Fundamentalists, he wouldn't sell any weapons to them, that would be like handing a gun over to a madman who has told you beforehand he wants to shoot you. And he won't use them on any other countries due to his militarily weak position. So he would save them in his arsenal and use them on his own people. A terrible and horrific thing to be sure, but not a threat to the United States of America. In fact in 2006 Senator Rick Santorum referred to WMD's as being 'found', well after a little investigative journalism by the Washington Post, it turned out those WMDs were 500 degraded and forgotton shells buried near the Iran and Iraq border that were left overs from the Iran-Iraq war. It had been later confirmed that these weapons were not the suspected weapons of mass destruction that were the basis for our invasion into Iraq.
So why did we invade Iraq in 2003? Well there could be many reasons. On Sept. 27th 2002, President George Bush referred to Saddam as "the guy who tried to kill my dad". Okay, thats a pretty good reason to hate a guy, but not a valid pretext to invade a sovereign nation. In his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush claimed that the United States could not wait until the threat from Iraq became imminent. Huh? Everybody with half a brain knew that Iraq posed no threat to us, only to its neighbors. In fact according to journalist Sidney Blumenthal, the head of the C.I.A., George Tenent, was telling the administration that there was no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. What nobody knew at the time though, was that war was a foregone conclusion. In fact according to the Downing Street Memo "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
So we have a 'policy' of pre-emptive war against Iraq, and the administration was dedicated to fabricating stories in support of it. Lying, in effect, to the American people and its Congress, and to the rest of the world.
So here we are, in this mess. This swamp of danger and confusion called Iraq. This era thats been created by our government. An era of missed opportunities, deceit and downright criminal greed.
The best and the brightest of our generation are dying over there. Every day dozens of soldiers are killed and wounded. Suffering grievous injuries both physical and mental. Our good soldiers are guarding convoys of empty trucks back and forth across the desert. Getting killed and wounded so KBR can have a better bottom line.
Our government has lied to our soldiers, extended their tours of duty over and over again. Denied them the equipment and supplies they need to protect themselves and do their job.
We Americans. We Taxpayers. We Voters. We all need to hold the current leaders in our government accountable for this fiasco. The hubris, the greed, the decadence of our leaders and the deals they make with independent contractors in the reconstruction of Iraq must be accounted for. They must be held responsible for what they have done and be brought to justice for it. As one nation, as one people, we must, absolutely must call upon our congressional representatives to investigate and prosecute all of those who, through deceit, greed or outright stupidity led our government into this needless, bloody war.
Finally, we must hold ourselves to account. We all bought into what our 'leaders' were telling us. We bought everything they told us without question. George Bush and Dick Cheney used the fear that we all felt from 9/11 against us, so that we wouldn't question their race to war. They desecrated the memory of all those who died on 9/11, and are dying even today, from those events. We were led by our fear, we were fed fear with daily, color-coded 'warnings' about threat levels. We bought into the theory that with enough duct tape, plastic and time, we could hunker down in our houses with no worries. We weren't helped any by national news agencies either. Very few journalists took the time to dig deeper, but those who did tried to warn us, to tell us the truth. But instead, we all sat there, like a bunch of slack jawed idiots, in front of our televisons. Worrying more about who would get kicked off of 'Survivor', or about Britney's meltdown. We did more than ignore the truth, we avoided it. We accused people who raised the right questions 'traitors' and 'cowards'. Well, those people, the ones who asked the hard questions, the ones who sought the truth, those people are heroes in my book. As a whole, we Americans have failed. We failed the memory of the dead of 9/11, we failed in our responsibility for our government, we failed in supporting those who seek the truth and we destroyed our goodwill with the rest of the world.
We can turn the tide, begin asking questions now. Support impeachment of the President of the United States. Demand that charges be brought up against President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney for lying to the American people, and to congress.
We can no longer allow the memory of the victims of 9/11 to be used for this war. It is wrong and it is immoral.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Benham Falls
A shot I took a couple of weeks ago on a hike to the falls, we got eaten alive by mosquitos! If you go, bring some repellant.Friday, September 07, 2007
Sheep Rock - John Day Fossil Beds National Monument
This is the view of Sheep Rock from the parking lot of the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. I stopped by there on the way home after doing some work in John Day this afternoon. There is a really, really excellent visitor center there with some really nice and helpful staff. Unfortunately I was only there for a few minutes before they closed for the day, so I did a hurried self guided tour. I definitely plan on coming back with the family for a more relaxed, longer visit to the area.
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