Just a rant about televised game announcers

Why don't the announcers on televised football games shut the hell up? I can watch a game live and enjoy it without any commentary. Where do tv producers get the idea that we have to be talked at throughout a football game? As if any time without talk was wasted?

And the inane things they say. I can't say I would do any better, but I can say I wouldn't do it at all. They say things like (and I quote) "They'll have to make more touchdowns to win the game". Now, when there's been a tough call on the field, it's useful to have that explained and shown from various points of view. That's the sort of thing announcers at live football games do. I don't mind that. I just don't want any more talk than the live announcers make during a game. I don't want to hear about the high school team one of the announcers played on. I don't want to hear meaningless statistics from 3 years back. I don't give a damn about any of the announcer's personal history. I just want them to shut up.

"Going Green" Is Not a Solution

Pollution is rampant everywhere. Condoms float down a stream, remnants of anti-cholesterol medication flood down the Mississippi. Millions of gallons of pollutants kill the life in the lakes. The simple lack of oxygen in the Mississippi results in a "dead zone" in the ocean of hundreds of square miles. Organizations form to fight these and many, many other problems, but they are not addressing the real problem but rather the symptoms of the underlying problem.

The real problem is that there are too many people. Lacking natural limits on our reproduction or population, there is no upper limit to the number of human beings we are capable of breeding and who survive to breed again. In animal populations without sufficient predators (like wild horses) disease is the limiting factor, and comes about when the density of the animal population is sufficiently high to allow rapid passage of viruses or other disease-causing bacteria. Animals inadvertently cause conditions that stop their over-abundance. Except for humans. On some level we know that either we will limit our reproduction or at some point a "swine flu" will appear that will limit things for us. We will fight that, but ultimately there are just too many people.

There will come a point where all of us just breathing out will cause an excess of carbon dioxide. How much methane can we produce ourselves and not be the cause of the problems? How many people can pee antibiotics into the water before everything dies? It's not plastics that are the problem. It's us. We can fight nature a long time, but ultimately we have to limit ourselves or the planet won't survive. The earth may limit us if we don't take the responsibility.

In addition, judging from the papers, many people having children should not be having children. The children are abused and molested and grow up to repeat their parents offenses. When are we going to require WORLD-WIDE training and licensing for parents and compulsory sterilization for those who will not or cannot pass the examination?

Death as a personal compass

My wife feels I think too much about death. She doesn't like to think about it at all.

To be clear, I don't brood about death and dying. I'm generally cheerful and optimistic; I enjoy life while at the same time I recognize that death is inevitable and one of the foundations around which human life is constructed. Woody Allen said that he wasn't afraid of death, he just didn't want to be there when it happened.

I believe that thinking about death is an invaluable way to sort out your values and priorities. The idea of coming to the end of my life full of regrets and lost opportunities should be more frightening than death itself, because it would mean that I had wasted my chances and made the wrong choices. So I look at my awareness of inevitable death as a sort of lodestone, a standard against which I hold up the choices I make and the values I uphold, to help me see what my priorities truly are and should be.

Looking back on what has been important to me is another way of trying not to get trapped in the minutiae of everyday life. Will it have been more important to me to have never missed a day of work or to have gone with my children to the zoo or the movies? Which will I remember during my last moments? Getting the trash out to the curb or talking on the phone to my best friend? Mowing the lawn or reading an interesting book?

I don't mean that we shouldn't take care of the little responsibilities and tasks. We have to get the lawn mowed and the trash out. But we need to be careful not to let such tasks take over our lives. The knowledge of the shortness of time ahead of us can help us keep our priorities straight and remember what is truly important to us. Death makes us realize what is important and what isn't, and for that I'm grateful.

Art photography

Duh.

I feel somewhat slow to have figured out the obvious. In my previous postings re what constitutes a real wall-hanger piece of art from a large postcard, I went off on several side roads while missing the main one.

Beautiful photos of beautiful things are rarely fine art. They're nice, they are interesting to look at for a minute or even less, but how many nice photos of the Grand Canyon or a beautiful rose do you want to look at? With today's cameras, anyone can take them.

But when you look at photos that are obviously genuine art, what gradually becomes clear is that their subject matter is NOT obvious. In fact, the art in them is the skill to make a beautiful picture of a non-beautiful subject. To be able to find the beauty in a piece of junkyard metal piping is art; to take a portrait not of a model but of an ordinary person in a way that touches you is also art. A rainy street and an empty park bench can suddenly become beautiful when seen in the right way. Finding the non-obvious subjects and making them interesting and beautiful in their own way is the secret.

Ahem. The triumphant rediscovery of the obvious. That would be my middle name if the phrase were a little shorter. Anyhow, I'm satisfied with this first step in focusing what I want to do with my camera.