how now brownpau
(Mantis Shrimp, uploaded by brownpau.)
My brother took this with a Canon Powershot A70 on our diving trip to Verde Island in December 2004. It’s a mantis shrimp, or a stomatopod. Here’s what stomatopods look like in their larval stage. More just-uploaded photos of Christmas 2004 to New Year 2005: JFK-DXB-MNL, Christmas in Manila 2004, Virra Mall (pre-renovation), Verde Island, and Verde Island Diving.
Okay, okay, LOST fans, here are some notes on recent episodes, since I haven’t written about it for a while. Some spoilers follow, so those of you who haven’t been watching the second season should stop reading right here.
The Hunting Party
Jack, you didn’t ask “Zeke” enough questions. That’s all. Oh, and Kate messed up, thus driving Jack to Ana Lucia and Kate to Sawyer. Smooth plot move to reshuffle island romances. See Pompatus of Lost 2.11.
Fire + Water
Mister Eko got the concept of baptism wrong, especially with regard to Jesus and John the Baptist. Eko claims, “It is said that when John the Baptist baptized Jesus the skies opened up and a dove flew down from the sky. This told John something, that he had cleansed this man of all his sins, that he had freed him.”
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, MISTAH EKO, WRONG. Jesus, being God Incarnate, was not in need of John’s baptism of repentance, as he had no sins for which to repent. Indeed, when Christ came to John for baptism, John said “I should be baptized by you,” to which Christ responded, “Let it be done that all righteousness may be fulfilled.” And when he was baptized, the heavens opened up, a dove descended on him, and a voice spoke, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” These were but some minor details which Mr. Eko seems to have missed. (I’ll write more on why a sinless Messiah would submit to baptism in some other non-Lost post.)
I guess Eko gets a pass for not actually being a real priest with an actual seminary education. Still, you’d think that someone who knows Scripture well enough that he can give you the story of King Josiah and tell you that Aaron was Moses’ brother, would know something as basic as the details of the Baptism of Jesus. Maybe his knowledge of the Bible is like Alex de Large’s in A Clockwork Orange: he preferred the Old Testament since it had more action and violence and naughty bits. Oh yes, brother.
More on Eko and Baptism from Just Another Pretty Farce, TenNapel, and Thinklings.
You’ll want to read Pompatus of Lost 2.12.
I loved the visual execution of Charlie’s visions, by the way. The scene with Claire and his mother as haloed saints was priceless.
Locke seemed totally out of line hitting Charlie like that, since Locke himself — and others — have also been subject to island-induced visions and impulses which drove them to irrational behavior in the past. Sawyer’s right; it seems to be more about man-versus-man competition for Claire’s bedside favor than it is about protecting the group. And that’s why I cheered for Charlie at the end of The Long Con, speaking of which…
The Long Con
This was great — and I normally hate Sawyer. (Which is exactly his intention according to Kate’s psychoanalysis, right?) The Jack-Locke-Control-Freak conflict was due for a wrench in the works, and we’re seeing a shift in the way Locke is portrayed — more antagonistic, losing the air of benevolent mystery which used to be his trademark, becoming more manipulatively secretive. We also distinctly see the island’s chance-and-karma effect in operation: Sun earlier attempted to poison Jin, thus downing Michael, and now the Sawyer-Charlie Con Team becomes her unwitting venue for cosmic retribution. 2.13: Sawyeriana.
One of Them
Yeah, yeah, hieroglyphics on the timer. Maybe “Crooked-Stick Flame Bird Crutch” is Island Egyptian for “-1”? But more importantly, wow, isn’t it so obvious that guy is an Other? He’s named for a fictional character (Henry Gale was Dorothy’s uncle in The Wizard of Oz, which also featured ballooning), he uses the past tense to describe his wealth, he claims to have been on the island for four months and didn’t hear the plane crash, he can’t remember how deep he buried his late wife, he doesn’t inspire guilt in Iraqi torturers, and he dresses in that loose Banana Republic Island Khaki Casual fashion which Ethan and Goodwin carried so well. He’s sooo an Other.
Next week: caduceus on a hatch! Spoilers mention that the “DHARMA” in Dharma Initiative could be an acronym. I’m willing to bet that the “H” is for Human and the “R” is for Research.
(Bigspaceship1.com makes you download a PDF on Egyptian Hieroglyphic Uniode Character Sets. Don’t do that. Don’t set a PDF as a root directory index. Setting a PDF as a root directory index is bad.)
(capitol-at-twilight, uploaded by brownpau.)
Walking by the Capitol on my way home after a long day in November of 2004. See full size panorama here.
(Set1294_01, uploaded by brownpau.)
They are not nuclear wessels, but wessels nonetheless. Taken June 2004 with a very fuzzy-lensed Zire 71.
Update: I added this photo to the Flickr Star Trek Group Pool, but the admin removed it. Bunch of humorless Vulcans.
Capital Weather shows one of my Flickr photos from the 12 Feb 2006 snowstorm, Washington Monument Tree Panorama:
Leyte landslides bury village. As many as 3,000 may have been killed. This keeps happening. With large swaths of the island deforested by unchecked logging, populated areas are prone to flash flooding and mudslides caused by loose earth and disrupted watersheds. Every time it happens, the usual things happen, fingers pointed, blame assigned, promises made: “It’s the fault of illegal logging, prosecute loggers, protect our towns,” and then nothing is done — just like in 1991 and 2003.
More from Click Mo Mukha Mo.
Update: Marines now helping in rescue efforts. Article includes a map of the affected area in the context of the Philippines.
From the 20 Feb 2006 Philippine Star editorial:
Guinsaugon, experts say, was a disaster waiting to happen. The slopes surrounding the valley where the village is nestled were denuded decades ago, leaving the soil prone to erosion. The valley tends to trap rain clouds, and Saint Bernard town where Guinsaugon is located is used to receiving an inordinate amount of rainfall. Geologists and environmentalists have been warning about the hazards of living in the area. Now we are seeing the consequences of ignoring those warnings.
Got a heads-up from Wyclif: Bishop N.T. Wright is speaking at the National Cathedral on May 16th. I plan to be there, and so does Wyclif. Any other Wright fans going to be in town? Drop me a line.
I myself can’t really call myself a Wright “fan,” as I’ve only given his work a cursory look, but I admire his impressive command of New Testament Greek, and there are intriguing ideas in the New Perspectives on Paul. Those of you familiar with Wright will enjoy these doodles. (You will also not enjoy two other lecturers, Borg and *gag* Spong, who thankfully will not be there the same day, lest the Cathedral break out in fisticuffs, I suppose.)
Another snowy video uploaded: this one from three years ago, while I was in Baltimore during the President’s Day snowstorm that dumped over two feet of snow on the city in February of 2003. I was living in a little townhouse in Little Italy at the time, and while snowed in, amused myself by building windowsill snowmen and pointing my webcam out the window.
Photos of the aftermath of that snowstorm here. The townhouse I lived in is no longer there, sadly; that block was torn down to make room for a condo building.
(Powder Pattern, uploaded by brownpau.)
Falling bottle of shoe odor powder leaves a mark on my boots. I’m not sure why I felt compelled to take a photo of the bottle dispenser pattern.
All of you searchers asking how long it takes snow to melt, the answer in this case is “As long as it takes Google Video to verify and approve user submissions.” (Update: moved to Flickr.) Yes, most of Sunday’s snow has melted off the roads and sidewalks here in DC, but here’s the snowstorm timelapse I took of the street below my apartment from early Sunday morning to Sunday mid-afternoon:
As you can see, the snow thawed away pretty fast as soon as the precipitation stopped and the sun came out. There’s not a whole lot of snow left in the parts of the city I frequent, except on some grass and other untrod surfaces.
