another trip to the holistic gardens, and the original gallery has been updated. (Actually it was updated when the original post was made but I didn’t post a link to it… yeah…).
more anoles and bees
remember the glory of God
Until you return, remember the glory of God.
When you see the stranger or person in need,
may you be the hands and feet of Christ,
offering food, drink, and grace
to all you meet
serving in truth the God you profess.
holistic lizard
Spent some time Saturday in the Holistic Gardens on campus. Some excellent flowers, and at least one excellent lizard.
front yard, part 2
second part from the front yard…
front yard, part 1
some pics from the front yard this morning, part 1.
not taking what we want, even though we can.
As I sit here writing this, I’m hungry.
It’s not that I haven’t eaten. Earlier today I discovered my tortilla supply to be contaminated with mold and my bread supply to be 2 months old, and as a result of not wanting to walk across the local grocery store parking lot in the rain, I made the decision to drive through a local fast food restaurant for dinner. No problem, right?
It’s not that I don’t have anything to eat. Those of you who know me realize that I am the owner of more snacks than could possibly be consumed by a human being, in spite of the fact I rarely consume snacks. As a result of several semesters of Aggie Mom’s and parents’ visits, I have no shortage of snacks and food that could instantly be marshaled in order to assuage my hunger.
So why haven’t I done anything about it?
Even now, as I glance down beside me to a bag of Chex-Mix (my all time favorite snack food, and indeed a danger to my health, if I’m not careful), I am reminded of the thousands of people who didn’t get the first meal I had tonight, people who don’t have the ability to run into the kitchen and grab a Star Crunch or heat up a piece of pizza.
I’m a person who doesn’t deny myself very often. If I want something, I generally buy it. If I need something, I get it. If I’m thirsty I get a drink, and if I’m hungry I get something to eat. It’s very rare for something I truly need (or in many cases even want on a basic level) to be out of my reach.
I think there is tremendous value in self-denial about small things, if for no other reason than it helps us practice self denial in bigger things, and reminds us that many others aren’t as fortunate as we are.
As we go about our days, my prayer is that we, and specifically I, would remember to not rush instantly to satisfy every desire, but rather would act with moderation in all we do.
What is it that stops you from forgiving others?
What is it that stops you from forgiving others?
Is it the pain of the wrong
burned into your mind and heart swelling up,
causing new pain and hurt?
Is it your pride
stinging from perceived injustice,
not believing people deserve a second chance?
Is it your sense of self righteousness
causing you to somehow believe
some people aren’t good enough to be forgiven?
Whatever the reason,
the words of Jesus are the same:
If someone sins against you,
forgive them.
If they do it again,
forgive them.
As often as you’re wronged,
so often should you forgive.
And when you seem to reach the end of your patience,
remember the mercy and forgiveness
of a God who cancels your debt
time
and time
and time again.
what blessings has God bestowed?
What blessings has God bestowed in your life?
Friends,
family,
ability,
wealth,
knowledge?
Acknowledge your blessings – treasures in life.
Reflect on God’s grace – unmerited favor to you.
Respond to God’s gifts,
earning a valuable increase for the Kingdom
with the investment you’ve been given.
conversation with a rabbi
Rabbi Joshua Martin Siegel works for the United Methodist Churches. The following is a transcript of his appearance on an NPR radio show.
NPR: Rabbi, thanks very much for being with us.
Glad to be here.
NPR: What do you do as the house Rabbi for a bunch of Methodists?
Well, I do teaching, I do some advising, but mainly I’m interested in helping to see how religion in our time can be revised or renewed by a new kind of dialog between Judaism and Christianity. I think the real path to Christian renewal is through the Jewish teachings.
NPR: I don’t mean this in a partisan way, but what is your interest in a renewal of Christianity, why would that interest you?
Because the real struggles are not between religions anymore. The real struggles are with the secularists, who think that all of life is around the here and the now and the experience, and those who say there’s something larger, something more eternal, there’s a deeper dimension to life that’s not limited to the here and the now and the experiential, and that’s under attack, so we have to find new ways to deliver that particular message. I think each religion has their own way of doing it, but I think Judaism has many opportunities to present it in new ways that I think the Christians could use in getting their particular message of renewal and spirituality across. The issue is between secularity and spirituality – not between religions.
NPR: A great many biblical scholars and ordinary readers who have read the Bible and the New Testament see a substantial difference between what is sometimes called the God of the Old Testament – calling down plagues on people, he can be quick to anger – and the God of the New Testament seems, if you please, kindler, gentler.
It just ain’t that way. At the heart of the Torah teachings is a God of love. Now sometimes people don’t see that because sometimes the God of love expresses its love in different ways than may be understood. Secondly, there’s two thousand —
NPR: Excuse me, I have to interrupt… You mean the plagues on Egypt were an expression of love?
Yes. The Pharaoh stood for the power of human beings, or of a human being to dominate the world. Pharaoh was stubborn. Pharaoh had a chance to give in, the first time, without any threats, but he thought he was all powerful, and unfortunately had to be taught a lesson. Yeah, sometimes out of your pain and suffering you can find God. Pain and suffering is real. The power of the redemptive God, as expressed by Jesus, as expressed in the Torah, is the capacity to overcome that kind of difficulty and bring people to a different place where they don’t see the world as divided into sons of light and sons of darkness – that there are evil people and good people. Easter and Passover come together, but they talk about the same thing – freeing yourself from your limitations to become who you’re created to be.
NPR: In this past year of working for the Methodist Church – what’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about Christianity or about Christians?
I’ve learned about how hard it is to be a Christian. They struggle with this image of Jesus and all that he is and all that he was and all that he accomplished, and they’re beset by the secular culture, they’re beset by a lot of things. They’re also beset by this curse of having been all-powerful. You know, they kind of laid over the American landscape like a fog that was everywhere, and they’re so used to being everywhere that they don’t know how to be not everywhere, so they suffer with this new minority status, which is really a whole new ballgame for them, and that’s another way the Jews – who’ve been minorities for a long time – can help. They used to talk about the Christian century. I think this is becoming the Secular Century. But if it’s going to become the Christian century again, it’s going to be a new understanding of, a new presentation of what has historically been called Christianity, which will have a strong element of Jewish teaching associated with it.
NPR: You refer to the fact that Christians and Jews share the aspect of being people of faith in an increasingly secular world. I’m just sitting here thinking… I know Western Europe is increasingly secular according to the numbers, but I guess I had the impression that the rest of the world is not increasingly secular, that it’s on the contrary, more and more members of faith, and that’s sometimes the source obviously of great bitterness.
Well, it could be. I have a little different feeling. The mainstream Protestant religions in the United States and the West are declining, and I think that’s an issue. The Born-Agains sometimes have a kind of absolutism that I think borders on a lack of spirituality. So I think the essence of spirituality is humility – the capacity to truly listen to and respect and love others – you know Jesus said love your enemies and so on. And I think that’s the heart of the issue – who’s at the center? Is it you, or is it something larger than yourself, to which you owe allegiance, and to which you must give deference and try to follow its ways. The religious traditions provide a path, but I think we have to discover new ways, which are really old ways, which allow us to trod that path more effectively, more creatively, but together, rather than each in our own way.
panasonic LX-2 review – new york
This weekend wasn’t the first time I’d taken the LX-2 on a big trip, but it was the first time since I’d gotten it that I convinced myself to take it on a big trip along with my D200. Since it’s a camera that most people are looking at either as an SLR backup or instead of buying an SLR in general, I thought it might be good to give an overall review of the LX-2, as well as comparing/contrasting it with SLR’s. I’m not planning to go through the ergonomics of the camera as such. Ergonomics and user interface is generally not your most important concern, particularly on a point and shoot. As a result, I plan to focus most on actually using the camera, and the pictures you (can) get out of it.
Before I start, let me say that I realize comparing the LX-2 with a D200 is not terribly fair. However, it’s important to keep in mind that most of the comparisons that hold true comparing the LX-2 with the D200 would also hold with the D40/D50, or XTi.
The Good
- Size & Weight – The LX-2 is small and light. For most of my trip I carried it in my coat pocket, which gave me easy access to using it. I also felt a bit more inconspicuous while taking pictures on streets and in subway station. Pulling out an SLR often draws a lot of attention, but snapping away with a point and shoot isn’t really seen as that big of a deal. As a result, you’re not too unwilling to try shots like this one in the middle of a large group of people during rush hour at Times Square:
- Features – I don’t know of any other point and shoot camera that packs this many features into one package. Full manual control, the ability to shoot in RAW, 60 second exposures, Image Stabilization, a decent movie mode, 16:9 native capture – the list goes on. The LX-2 is a very versatile camera that gives you n amazing amount of creative control without forcing you to carry around several pounds of equipment, which allows you to capture more shots than you would otherwise get.
- “Leica” lens – I put Leica in quotes because, like Sony with their “Zeiss” lenses, there’s probably more to the story than just the name. While the LX-2 is at least rebadged and sold as a real Leica with the red dot, if I were having to base my decision to buy an M8 or not based only on the LX-2, I would save my $5000. That said, the LX-2’s lens is very sharp, relatively contrasty, and very capable. It is honestly *at times* capable of rivaling my Nikon 17-55, though it does have one severe shortcoming, to be discussed later. At the end of the day though, you can still get beautiful, saturated results like this without too much work:
- Build Quality – The LX-2 doesn’t feel like a cheap, plasticy camera. It has a fair amount of metal in it, and you don’t feel like you’re going to break it by breathing around it. As previously mentioned, the fact that it’s basically a Leica without the red dot speaks highly to its construction.
The Not so Good
- Speed (the ISO kind) – Due to the nature of the LX-2’s sensor, noise is a serious problem. As a result, it is not advised to ever shoot much above 400 if you are planning on printing your picture, and it is certainly advisable to shoot at 100 whenever possible. If shooting at 100 is not possible, it’s often advisable to make it possible. The following are two pictures which somewhat illustrate my point. The subject is not really important, but each shows a 1:1 crop off an LX-2 image taken at the same time, of the same subject. The first image was taken at ISO 100, and the second at ISO 800. While the first image is blurred due to hand-holding at over 1/2 a second, you can still see an extreme amount of difference in the noise levels of the two images:
Clearly, the LX-2 suffers both from chromatic and luminance noise in spades anytime the ISO increases.
- Noise (not the loud kind) – Even when shooting at ISO 100, the LX-2’s sensor still suffers from noise problems. Below are two images taken from the same spot, but slightly different perspectives. The first image is from the LX-2, and the second is from the D200. Both are 1:1 crops.
Now on first glance these two cropped photos appear to have similar amounts of noise – which would be good if they had both been taken at 100, but unfortunately the LX-2 was on ISO 100 while the D200 was on ISO 400. Additionally, not only does the LX-2 image have approximately the same amount of noise as the D200’s photo @ISO 400, the D200 noise pattern is smaller and more film-like than that of the LX-2, leading to a more pleasant image overall.
The combined message of these two points is simple – the LX-2 will have more noise and require you to shoot at a slower shutter speed. If you have a tripod or a well lit room or are shooting outdoors, this may not matter to you, but if you are an average point and shoot user who is just looking to take pictures of the dog and kids, this could cause you fits. Often you can compensate for some of this, but it is just a reality of the camera, and one that must be dealt with.
- Chromatic Aberration – Using Starfish’s filtering technique to spot problem areas for chromatic aberration is extremely instructive in this case. The following pictures represent almost the worst case for CA, but none the less shows the scope of the problem on the LX-2’s lens. The first is the normal image, unfiltered, followed by the filtered image, CA amplified by ~6dB (2 stops).
Obviously in this case, the CA is extremely well defined and easily detectable in the original image as well. CA can lead to lack of sharpness and definition in your pictures, and in general is just something you’d prefer not to deal with.
- Filesize – The LX-2’s raw files take up 20MB each. The LX-2’s JPG’s take up 2-3 MB each. There is no option to turn the JPG off if you’re shooting RAW. The result of all of this is that you need extremely large memory cards in order to use the LX-2 for any length of time. The RAW files can be compressed to DNG’s after bringing them onto the computer, but it’s none the less a severe pain to not have an option to compress in native format.
The Wishlist
Not that any Panasonic/Leica engineers are out there reading this right now, but if they were, I do have a wishlist of things I’d like to see in an LX-3:
- A Less Noisy Sensor – The LX-2 is fantastic, but it would be much more so were it paired with a capable sensor. The Fuji F30, for instance, gives usable results up to 3200. Why can’t the LX-2?
- Faster write times / Smaller file sizes – This one is almost free. Reducing the filesize reduces write times and makes the memory go that much further. There’s no reason not to do it, and it would help shooting out significantly.
- Slightly better movie mode – The LX-2 does… well, ok. But 720p @30fps would be very nice. As would slightly better quality on the compression algorithms.
And… That’s about it.
The Verdict
The LX-2 is a very good camera for what it is, but a very bad camera for what it is not. It’s not good for shooting indoors (in general), shooting action (in general) or shooting in low light (in general). It is, however, capable of stunning results that will rival an SLR, and if your primary goal is artistic photography, it is certainly an investment worth making.