Photography: "Good Vibes at Venice Beach"

"Good Vibes at Venice Beach"  Available at Fine Art America.

A Man Beyond

The great state of Ohio has produced 25 NASA astronauts. Or, as I heard it phrased for most of my childhood: “what is it about this state that makes people want to flee the Earth?” Every day, I pass the John Glenn School of Public Affairs on my way to class at Ohio State University. Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth and an Ohio native, went on to become a memorable senator and public leader. It is a reminder that Ohio is not only home to a large number of astronauts, but to some of the best-known. One of the greatest of these Ohio astronauts, Neil Armstrong, passed away at the end of August. But unlike Glenn, Armstrong chose to live his post-spacefaring days as far from the limelight as possible.

Read more.

Photography: "Salzburg by Night"

Salzburg by night - Canon Rebel with effect added in Photoshop.

Available for purchase.

Curious Silence

The seven minutes of terror were over. Mission Control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena finally had the news: Curiosity had landed as gently as a feather on the surface of Mars, every step of the complex landing process proceeding with unparalleled perfection. Even the weather conditions on the red planet were ideal for the landing. It was a spectacular accomplishment.

This was a huge victory for NASA and JPL, but much of the enthusiasm got lost in the much greater excitement over the Olympics and negativity of the multiple mass murders of recent weeks. A few weeks ago, a panorama of Mars exploded onto the internet, filling the public with awe over the alien yet strangely familiar landscape. President Obama’s lauding of the great accomplishment of this mission was not met with the rapt attention of the American public the way our great space explorations of the past were. The urge to explore is still out there – in all of us – but why is it that Curiosity’s landing was so overshadowed by everything else in the news?

Read more at The Inclusive.

On the Goodness of Humanity

Sometimes this world is like a sucker punch to the stomach.  You can’t help but stand there, immobile and gasping for breath at the sheer senselessness of it.

It has been hard lately to be optimistic. An old friend of mine was just involved in a horrible car accident. Five years ago, another close friend was in a coma when she was hit by a drag racer on the freeway. At least twelve people died last night in a mindless shooting in Colorado.  And in the weeks prior to that, the internet was awash with stories of rape, child molestation, and violence against and harassment of women.  The world is bleeding deep, personal pain, and history tells us this is nothing new. It seems that every time I check my email, go online, or read a paper, something horrific has occurred. When I walk outside, the number of suffering, hungry, and homeless in just my own neighborhood is impossible to deny. Even for those of us fortunate to be healthy and have a roof over our heads and food to eat at night, so many carry around deep pain.  The developed world has an entire set of its own problems: eating disorders, cancer, obesity-related illness, office anxiety. So many suffer in silence.  The pain out there is fathomless.  It’s palpable. It’s tangible.

A girl can only do so much, only be pulled so many directions before it feels hopeless.  There are days that I don’t want to get out of bed. I want to pull the covers up over my head and never speak to another human being again.  Yes, this world can knock the wind out of you.

But it can also take your breath away for other, more beautiful reasons.

Photography: "Rustic"

"Rustic" - the inside of a lodge in a South African game reserve.

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/rustic-casey-berger.html

Casey's Law of Hipsterism

Much research and testing went into creating a definition of hipsterism for future scientific debate.

Definitions:

Let j = "tightness of jeans"

Let c = "time since last haircut"

Let u = number of times the subject has dismissively uttered "I liked it before it was cool"

Let i = "irony of eyewear or t-shirts"

Let R'(t) be the frequency of obscure cultural references over time t

Hipsterism (H) as a function of age (t) is defined as the following:

As you can see, the significance of the utterance “I liked it before it was cool” becomes diminished as the subject ages, and irrelevant after 35, as it is more likely to be a factually accurate statement at that time. The choice of clothing has no relationship to age and is consistent regardless of the subject’s age, but the obscure cultural references compound over time.

I present these findings for peer review, and for the edification of my peers and future students of the science of human behavior.

Read more responses to the question "what is a hipster?" at The Inclusive.