Posts Made By: Fred Lusk

Originally Posted by James Lacey

Men of integrity do this every day. I hate to say it, Fred, but that is quite an old-fashioned notion you have there. My millennial generation children, nieces, and nephews would call that an outdated "get off my lawn" line of reasoning.

And many of them slip up because their integrity was not what it should have been.  Guarding your integrity is not "old-fashioned" at all.  It is the smart play.  Put your head in the sand if you must, but I refuse to do so.  Human nature is human nature and it hasn't changed.  Your understanding of it leaves a lot to be desired.

I am an engineer, not a counselor (to twist Bones' phrase around), but over the years I (sometimes with my wife) informally counseled a half dozen friends who compromised their integrity this way.  A late friend who was a family and marriage counselor for about three decades (and a resource for me) told me years ago that one of the most common precursors to an affair was people of the opposite sex working together alone.

BTW, I work with a lot of women, but never alone and never in a closed room.  My dad was a high school teacher for three decades and he never met with a student (male or female) alone or in a closed room, for the same reasons.  In fact, there have been a number of cases over the past few years where male teachers or bosses have been falsely accused by women of sexual harassment or worse because they were alone in a closed room and the only reason the truth came out is because the woman recanted or there were holes in her story.  My attorney friend that I mentioned earlier practices business litigation and handles quite a few sexual harassment type cases.  He said that the percentage of false claims varies from about 10% to 30% depending on (1) the study and (2) the ages of the women.  He has also told me that his clients often are ashamed they were too trusting and too stupid to realize that working alone with a woman in a closed room is a potentially dangerous situation for them.

Originally Posted by James Lacey

Interesting. Now can you get them to do the same analysis on Trump? What do you think their conclusion would be if they are intellectually consistent?

First, it's not my job to get Viva Frei to do anything.  If you want it done, you can ask him yourself.  I should note, however, that Viva Frei is not a Trump fanboy, even though he mostly falls on the conservative side of the aisle.

But, you are still begging the question.  Biden's performance in that interview was poor and it was obvious he is not ready for prime time.

Originally Posted by James Lacey

I am not presuming anything. The point is, if Viva Frei, or your lawyer friend, or just about anyone were to perform a similar analysis on any of Trump's performances and remain intellectually consistent, they would have to arrive at even worse conclusions. You can't honestly be suggesting that Trump is "ready for prime time" are you? Unquestionably after three years of the Trump Twitter train wreck, no one can honestly believe this man is Presidential, can they?

Yet again you are missing the point.  The video I linked had NOTHING to do with Trump.  It was about Biden, and Biden alone.  I don't dispute that large parts of Trump are a trainwreck.  But not all parts, even though I doubt you believe that.

Your post is along the lines of "well my guy may be bad, but yours is worse."  So what, the video had NOTHING to do with Trump and you floated a logical fallacy.

Originally Posted by James Lacey

I similarly concede that Biden is yet another old white guy who is past his prime. However, you don't get to conveniently ignore the fact that Biden will be going head-to-head in the general election in November for the office of POTUS. If the video is saying that Biden is not ready for prime time, then sorry it has everything to do with Trump.

James....

You are repeating the same logical fallacy.  Biden isn't ready for prime time against ANYBODY.  Let me repeat, the video was NOT about Trump.  Your attempt to shift the focus of the video to something it didn't cover is pathetic.

Fred

The first weekend of October, my wife and I visited the Eastern Sierra (Hwy 395 corridor) with a small photo group from our church.  The main purpose of this trip was fall color, but we were about a week too early for the best color.  Also, the Inyo National Forest, where many of the best spots are located, was closed due to smoke from the Creek Fire, which burned nearly 400,000 acres in Fresno and Madera Counties on the west side of the Sierra (unfortunately, one member of our group lost her home in Shaver Lake a couple weeks before the trip).  The secondary purpose of this trip was visiting the Alabama Hills (just outside of Lone Pine) for sunset/moonrise one night and sunrise/moonset the next morning.

Here is an 18-second exposure of Boot Arch (artificially lit) and the night sky to the south.

And here is an annotated version of the same image.

Then, for Thanksgiving, we rented a house in Shaver Lake for the family: my wife and me, our three kids, their spouses, and all six grandkids.  When grandchild #1 was born twelve years ago, we started a tradition to rent a place in Shaver to celebrate years in which we had a grandchild.  We got out of sync because four years ago we had grandkids #4 and #5, schedules the last couple years didn't work out, so this year was for celebrating #5.  We had #6 earlier this year, so in a couple years we will do this again.  (BTW, the Creek Fire burned parts of the town and surrounding developments, but other parts were undamaged.  The water system was back up and running, but the water is not potable yet so we brought bottled water for drinking.)

The skies were clear, cold, and dry, so it was time to do a couple star trails from the balcony off the master bedroom.  Here is a 1h40m star trail (Olympus E-M1 Mk III, 8-mm f/1.8 fisheye @ f/4.0, focused using StarryAF feature, LiveComp blend of 200 x 30s exposures).

The next night I had time for a longer star trail image, this time 4h00m (Olympus E-M1 Mk III, 4-mm Laowa f/2.8 circular fisheye @ f/4.0, manual focus, LiveComp blend of 480 x 30s exposures).  The big bright blob is the Moon peeking over the eave of the rental house.

BTW, even after sitting outside for four hours in low 40s to high 30s temperatures, there was no dew on the lens, the camera, or the tripod.  The air was even too dry for my sinuses.  

The first weekend of October, my wife and I visited the Eastern Sierra (Hwy 395 corridor) with a small photo group from our church.  The main purpose of this trip was fall color, but we were about a week too early for the best color.  Also, the Inyo National Forest, where many of the best spots are located, was closed due to smoke from the Creek Fire, which burned nearly 400,000 acres in Fresno and Madera Counties on the west side of the Sierra (unfortunately, one member of our group lost her home in Shaver Lake a couple weeks before the trip).  The secondary purpose of this trip was visiting the Alabama Hills (just outside of Lone Pine) for sunset/moonrise one night and sunrise/moonset the next morning.  (I already posted an image in the Digital SLR Astrophotography Forum from the first night of this trip.)

But, even before getting to Lone Pine, our little group stopped at Red Rock Canyon State Part for a couple hours.  I had been there several times before, so didn't feel gypped by the short stop, but fully half our group had never stopped there even though everyone had driven past it at least once.

Our first photo stop was at this big red rock wall at the south end of the park on the east side of Hwy 14. I walked up the slope directly behind the bush all the way to the cliff face to get...

...this.

BTW, it wasn't easy to stand still here because the ground was sloped and covered with loose gravel. It's also not smart to stand at the bottom of a potentially crumbly cliff, but I couldn't resist.


BTW2, there hasn't been much activity in the forum section, so I'm going to post quite a few images and see what happens.