A collection of photography and exploration focusing on Upstate South Carolina and beyond.
I’m breaking my rules a bit here. I usually don’t review chain restaurants, but I’ll do a quick mini-review of Cheeseburger in Paradise. Laura and I had both finished reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince this afternoon, and [SPOILER] needed something light and happy to cheer us up. Since it was only 5:30, we figured we could beat the dinner crowds still stuck on the novelty of the place.
Laura and I both read straight through over the weekend, finishing the latest outing of Harry Potter this afternoon. My impression – this has left the realm of children’s books. Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s still great for children to read these books, but they have graduated into the world of full adult literature, with much darker themes and much more elaborate vocabulary. This has been Rowlings strategy throughout the series. The first novel was shorter, much lighter, with limited vocabulary and larger fonts. It was truly a child’s novel. As Harry Potter ages, the books become more mature in writing style.
Since we were already out late for a party, Laura and I decided to brave the crowds for our midnight copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. First, we drove past Barnes & Noble. It was an absolute zoo, with people parking anywhere and everywhere. Following the same path I had taken a couple … Read More “Harry Potter and the Orgy of Consumerism” »
Well, there I am. Right on the front page of the Greenville Cage liner, with a somewhat bewildered look on my face, and a quote from me about County Council continuing to approve building projects that will adversely affect the flooding situation in our neighborhood. One of our neighbors contacted Representative Gloria Haskins, who arranged a meeting with county officials, DOT, and several others. About 30 of us crowd
Don’t adjust your calendars. It is Thursday, July 14, and that is a picture of me standing with a copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, two days before its official release. We had received several copies for our schools.
Don’t worry – I was a good boy and put it back in our vault without peeking. I’ll buy my copy on Saturday with the teaming throngs.
I’ve stumbled across this word at least three times in the last week – once in Umberto Eco’s “The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana”, once in reference to the London bombings, and once in some report on NPR. It’s an interesting word, and now that I’ve heard it several times, and now written about it, I’m sure it will become part of my permanent vocabulary.
Speaking of strange things in churches, the lunatic right wing group, Christian Exodus, made the front page of the Greenville News again. This group is trying to get other ultra-right wingers to move to South Carolina so that it can secede from the Union (again) and form its own Christian Theocracy.
I saw this sign on the way to one of my schools this afternoon. Kind of makes you wonder what goes on at that church.
Since switching over to WordPress, I got my first spam comment. It keyed off the phrase “Fantastic Four” and provided a link to a site where surfers could purchase movies (and probably get their computers locked up with malware.) It was easy enough to delete before it ever saw the light of day, but I worry about how much more of this junk to expect. Back when I had my own home-grown site, spammers couldn’t figure out how to get bots to interact with it, so I was relatively safe. Such is the downside of using an open-source editor.
Is it ever ethical to take a photo of someone without their knowledge? When I was in Philadelphia, some of the best images were of the people. A large city has such diversity, and each individual has a unique story. Pointing a large Nikon at them just seems wrong, even at a distance with zoom lens. Would using a stealth camera be any better? Or perhaps its a matter of intent – photojournalism is OK (think Dorothea Lange’s images during the Depression), security surveillance is distasteful, but seems to have become a necessity in this day and age.