He's certainly in an ideal position to test a bunch of lenses when new, let them go through their rental cycle—which presumably would subject them to higher than normal levels of wear and tear—then test them again. As I understand it from his various posts on the topic, that's the main purpose of their testing. They aren't doing it just out of curiosity or so they can recommend good lenses; regular testing is a key part of their QC process. It sounds as if they're testing every lens every time it comes back from a rental so they don't send a damaged lens out to a customer. I don't think that's the full test they do when they're evaluating new lenses, but it's enough to spot loss of performance. When lenses fall out of spec, they can usually fix them in house, and the testing lets them prove they're back up to snuff before they get shipped out again.

For what it's worth, "flash in the pan" is not photographic in origin. It's from flintlock musketry. A flash in the pan meant that the powder in the priming pan ignited but failed to set off the main charge. See, for example, Merriam Webster's discussion of the term.

@David Zivic: Nikon, at least, does the opposite: they have a "My Menu" section where you can put the things that you care about. I think it's actually a slightly better solution than your proposal for several reasons: 1) The standard menus are still there, which makes it easier to find the rarely used functions if/when you need them. 2) You can combine things from many different places in the standard menu setup in one place, so there's less going up and down menus than there would be in your system. 3) You can change the order so that they're the way you want them, not the way the original engineers thought they should be.

It seems to me that a lack of art photographs taken with ultratelephoto lenses tells you more about how people classify work as "art" than anything else. There's a huge body of sports photography taken with those lenses that gets automatically ignored because the gatekeepers of art photography aren't interested. It's much the same way that most fiction gets classified as "genre fiction" and ignored by self-styled literary types.

Why on Earth would you want to be a Mormon if you don't believe what Mormons believe? You're treating belief as a binary when it isn't. Religions have lots of teachings, and people don't automatically drop out when they discover they disagree on one point. It makes a lot more sense to try to change the church's doctrine on that one point, especially with a church that has a history of changing its doctrine when it's politically expedient.

Does being first have aesthetic implications? I think it does, at least when a photograph has been copied to the point of being a cliche. It seems to me that a photographic cliche would inevitably fall into the category of scenic rather than landscape because it's an idealized image. In this case, it's an idealized image whose target is another photograph rather than an abstract idea, but it's still about targeting an ideal image. The same would obviously not apply to the original you're copying, unless you're making a copy of a copy.

For me, the classic anti-pastoral example is Robert Adams' The New West. I think this is a good example of how the same photographs can have a different effect on different people. I grew up in the part of Colorado that Adams was documenting at about the time he started his work. To me, his pictures aren't idealized and normative; they're quite specific and documentary. I can recognize the places and the process he was documenting because I was there, too.

I think the microwave over the stove thing depends on both your style of cooking and your equipment. It would probably work OK for me because I rarely need the high setting on my hood, and my range is an induction model that doesn't put out much waste heat. It helps, too, that I'm tall, so it would be at a more convenient height for me. Also, FWIW, smoke detectors should be kept as far from the kitchen as possible so that they don't generate false alarms. You don't really need one in the kitchen because the danger there is when you're actively using it and won't need to be notified. The place you really need smoke detectors- and where they're actually required by code- is in bedrooms, since smoke could kill you while you sleep. What you really need in your kitchen (assuming you use a gas range) is a carbon monoxide detector. As far as design goes, I think storage is really important. You need appropriate storage for things closest to where you're likely to use them. So you should have a cabinet appropriate for pots and pans close to the stove, and storage for food, knives, bowls, and similar preparation ware near your main working counter. Also think about your own special storage needs. Not everyone cooks the same, so now is your chance to make sure you have an appropriate place for your own items that have always been hard to fit. My mother used to bake bread several times a week, so she had a flour drawer. It was lined with steel to keep out vermin and big enough to hold a 50 pound bag, which would have been hard to manage without specialized storage. I've seen a replica 19th Century kitchen that had something similar but in a cabinet above the counter; it even had a sifter built into the bottom so you could sift directly into your container.

I think you're missing one aspect of why police encounters with murderers are considered heroic: they're going out looking for dangerous people so that the rest of us don't have to. I don't think that's enough to justify the attitude that the police deserve gratitude without oversight, but it does make a big difference in how they're perceived.

I would object to the use of "decision" to describe what happened here. The Supreme Court didn't decide anything; they just went along with the so far unanimous decisions of the Circuit Courts. The absolute most anyone can claim they did is to put off making a decision until the Circuit Courts have actually split on the issue.

@wj: My understanding is that the US decided quite early on that the Philipines would be granted independence rather than kept as an American possession. This wasn't a selfless act by any means, though; the US just saw the Philipines as too far away and too unprofitable to be worth keeping. That was very different from Hawaii or Guam, which were seen as strategically vital sites for Pacific naval bases.

I personally like jpeg images as part of my standard workflow. I look through the in-camera jpgs to decide which pictures deserve further attention. I suppose I could change my workflow, but it seems very convenient to me. I assume there is also a demand for in-camera jpeg processing among professionals who want something they can send out quickly. This must be especially true of news photographers, where anything more than the in-camera jpeg raises questions of photographic manipulation. Since news photography is an important market for high-end cameras, that makes a good in-camera jpeg pipeline commercially vital.

Southern Baptists deny we are Protestant. We teach that as a body, we were never part of the Roman Catholic Church: we proudly trace our spiritual and theological heritage in a straight undeviating line directly back to Christ; Wow, that's just completely untethered to reality. If the Southern Baptists trace their theology back directly to Christ, then where were they in, say, the 13th Century? This strikes me as being more of a foam finger "We're Number 1" kind of a claim than a serious theological statement. Getting back to the original question, the easiest way of looking at a lot of the bigger Protestant denominations is to remember that they started as national churches of countries that rejected Catholicism for one reason or another. Lutheranism was the national church in Sweden and a lot of the non-Catholic German states. Presbyterianism was the national church of Scotland, and Anglicanism was the national church of England. That status as national established church was probably more significant in practice than the theological distinctions that supposedly justified the separation.

As long as top quality prints took real time and effort by a master printer, there was an inherent limit in how many copies of a photograph there were likely to be. Now that you can get an unlimited number just by pushing a button, there's no real limit on how many copies of a given photograph a photographer can print. That eliminates the scarcity that tends to drive up prices on so much art.

@thompson: Yeah, I'm familiar with the concept :) Let's just say that for this particular coworker, we did not hold a good bye lunch before they left. Instead, we held a good riddance lunch after they left, which was among the best attended lunches we've held in the nearly 20 years I've been at my job.

Yeah, it depends on context. As long as there is some sort of IRB approval, it'll pass ethical muster. This was definitely on the unethical side. It was not a beautiful, IRB approved, informed consent form kind of donation. I certainly don't remember anything like a consent form. It was more of an ad hoc thing where they'd hit up likely looking coworkers for blood when they needed it. I didn't feel as if I would be fired for saying no, but there was certainly some social pressure to agree. The one other situation where I gave blood to help a coworker was for a grad student who needed to run one more experiment to graduate. Most of the people who donated did so out of a selfish desire to get rid of a disliked coworker rather than an ordinary desire to help, but that was sufficient motivation to get enough volunteers.

@wj: My vein is also easy to find, mostly because of all the scars. I stopped giving at all once my veins started collapsing, but started giving again for patients rather than research a few years later. Now I have a nice scar where the needle always goes. I think it's going to get worse now that I've switched to platelets and can give every 2 weeks instead of every 8. I'll need to lose some weight before my veins are otherwise easy to find.

Oh, it still is. I'm called upon all the time. Easy veins to find. I've been told that it's unethical to ask coworkers for blood because there's an implied pressure to comply. Fortunately, I work in a place with a large blood donor center, so there's generally enough discard blood available for researchers that they don't need to hit people up for donations anymore. The can also get a lot of the specialized cell types they're after by starting with marrow cells and maturing them with specific maturation factors, and those in vitro cells are more desirable for a lot of experiments anyway.

I assume stings in the nose are especially bad because bee venom contains potent allergens, and the nose has a very high concentration of the immune cells involved in allergic response.

The main thing I've done for science (other than ordinary lab work) is donating body fluids. When I was just getting started, there was another group in the lab who needed neutrophils. Since neutrophils have a lifespan of only about a day, they needed fresh blood every time they wanted to do an experiment. Today they would ask for discard blood (i.e. the blood left in transfer lines and the like) from our blood donor center, but back then it was acceptable to hit up coworkers for blood. They coincidentally got their first good results the first time they used my blood and kept going back for it until I literally couldn't donate anymore because my veins would collapse the moment the phlebotomist attached a vacutainer to the line. My most recent donations have been saliva. A different researcher is interested in looking for disease markers in saliva, and I'm a convenient donor to use while developing the techniques. I know which one I prefer to donate.

Weegee would use a fully kitted out 1Dx or D4s, and would take most of his pictures with the matching 24-70. Ansel Adams would be a brand hopper, and would make most of his money teaching Photoshop classes rather than selling photographs.

You don't want to know how the photographer is lost now that the Empire State Building is blocking access to TOP?

I suspect that torture was more about anger than fear. Yes, Americans were afraid of another attack, and our leaders were more afraid than most since they knew they'd take the blame. But we and they were also angry about the death and destruction from the 9/11 attacks and wanted revenge. I don't think it's a coincidence that the biggest supporters of torture were also big believers in capital punishment. They're both about applying the most extreme punishments we can think of as a way of expressing how much we detest the crimes they're meant to punish.

I wonder if it's really as unreasonable as you suggest to tear down houses and rebuild. Most of the homeowners I know (including myself) have a long list of major renovations they've either carried out or are planning on. We remodel our kitchens and bathrooms, upgrade our plumbing and wiring, repair and replace the outside, etc. That work tends to be expensive because it has to take place without damaging the structure of the house or unduly disrupting the occupants' lives. Until it's done, we live with a house that we're dissatisfied with. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that rebuilding from scratch is not much more expensive than a thorough renovation, and it gives a house that's completely new and built to the owner's specifications. Anyway, I don't believe in the whole idea of a house as a way of building wealth, at least on a society-wide scale. A house is not a productive asset, and it does not become more valuable just from sitting there. Far from it; a house requires regular maintenance to avoid falling into disrepair and eventual ruin. The apparent appreciation in a house's value is either from the land it sits on gaining value or an illusion of inflation. The delusion that houses are a great investment that's sure to pay handsome returns is what gave use real estate bubbles, the S&L mess, and the subprime mortgage crisis. The sooner people treat houses primarily as living places the better.

There's a reason big business was willing to accept a 40 hour week; they discovered you got about as much work out of someone in a 40 hour week as in a 60 hour week, but the capital intensive equipment they used was available for more shifts. Long hours can be productive in the short term and can be essential in an emergency, but shorter, regular hours are a better long term plan.