Thursday, October 17, 2013

Distortion in Photos and Governance


I had a very interesting conversation with the photography teacher at work yesterday about using Photoshop to correct lens distortion in digital photos. I'm not a Photoshop user, but it turns out that, as I suspected, distortion is very easily fixed -- almost with the click of a button. I have a few would-be favorite photos that will work wonders on. (The one above is more or less OK). I'd like to play around with it a bit on my lunch hour, but then again, that would cut into my "Dracula" reading time!

Not much else to report here. I walked home from work last night just to get some exercise -- we had a rare period of cool, clear skies. I didn't even bring the camera. The weather has been rainy overall so I've been leaving home without it.

I'm relieved the government shutdown is finally over. Even sensible conservatives recognize it as a harmful stunt by the Republican far-right fringe. Ross Douthat wrote in his New York Times blog that it was "an irresponsible, dysfunctional and deeply pointless act, carried out by a party that on the evidence of the last few weeks shouldn’t be trusted with the management of a banana stand, let alone the House of Representatives." Here in London people seemed awed by the inability of the U.S. government to function. One of our neighbors pointed out that, in theory at least, if Parliament got that gridlocked, the Queen could just send everybody home! See? There are advantages to a monarchy.

(Photo: Kennington Road, South London, Oct. 7.)

5 comments:

Ms. Moon said...

I am likening what happened in Congress as a lynching party where the Tea Party brought all the rope and instead of hanging Obama, managed to hang themselves.
That's my take on it.
And it was disgusting.

Linda Sue said...

Ms. Moon is correct, as usual!Holding a law of the land as ransom , costing 2 billion dollars during the shut down...we need Liz , She would probably not take us back, however!
Amurika, so broken, so arrogant.

The Bug said...

Do we think that people will remember when it comes time to vote for those bozos again? Unfortunately, there is so much gerrymandering that I'm afraid that some of them are safe from the sane voters. Sigh.

ellen abbott said...

they are hardly chastened, let alone defeated. 30% of Americans support them and Ted Cruz alone received 3/4 of a million dollars in his re-election fund in the past three weeks.

Elizabeth said...

I love your storefront photos -- you know, every time I notice one in Los Angeles, I think of YOU.