Long before Tiger Woods was the world’s biggest sports icon, I got a rare chance to go to the World Series of Golf (Now the NEC Invitational) for a week and take pictures. I believe the year was 2000. I didn’t take as many pictures as I would have liked because I was limited to film at the time and honestly, I didn’t have the right equipment or the experience to do it right. But I did capture a couple images that are nice enough to post and remind me that I had a great time. I had an amazing chance to get inside the ropes and take pictures at a major PGA event once in my life which was pretty darn cool. More to come.

A few years ago I was hired to design a book called Hypothetical Erotica. I designed the cover, did all the page design and cranked out some cool, low tech illustrations to illustrate each chapter with a combination of clip art, manipulated photography and computer graphics. Here are a couple selections from the book. More to come….

• More Americans now die from misuse of prescription drugs (anti-depressants, painkillers, and sleeping pills) then from heroin and cocanine. - The Center for Disease Control and Prevention
• Democrats have been outnumbering Republicans at the 2008 primary polling places by a rate of two to one. - Time
• Only 4 U.S. Army soldiers are officially classified as missing or captured in Iraq compared to 2,600 during the Vietnam War.
• A strange new breed of palm tree has been discovered in Madagascar. It flowers every 100 years and then dies a few months later. Botanists say that the discovery is equivalent to finding a new kind of elephant and have given the tree the name “suicide palm”.
• 28% of Americans rate George Bush as one of the best presidents or “better than most”.
• The New York Times recently commissioned a study of the mercury content of sushi sold at 20 random New York City restaurants. It found that in most of them, mercury levels in bluefin tuna were so high that a regular diet of six pieces a week would exceed the levels considered acceptable by the EPA.
• The median price for all homes sold in 2007 fell 1.3% to $218,900, the first annual decline since records have been kept in 1968.
• Out of $97 billion dollars in gift cards purchased in 2007, nearly $8 billion have gone unused.
• For those that are unhappy with the lobbyists and special interest that dominate our government and political system, you better turn your efforts to the politicians because lobbyists are protected in the constitution and you don’t have to look much further than the first amendment for the details (unfortunately). Read more >
• A man in China recently put a chicken (that he thought was dead) into the freezer. Two days later he opened the freezer to find that the chicken was still alive and pecking. He removed the chicken from the bag and the chicken stood up. The man is now keeping the chicken as a pet claiming that the chicken is full of magic.
• A man who jumped off the Empire State Building with a parachute is suing the building’s owners for $12 million dollars, claiming they defamed him. Charges of reckless endangerment have been dismissed against the man because there is no existing law saying you can’t jump off a building with a parachute. (I bet there is now!)
• The FDA has approved cloned animals for food.
• Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from depression, combat trauma, and other problems have been charged with 121 homicides in the U.S.
• As of 2005, Americans have stashed away more than 500 million cell phones in drawers, never to be used again.
• Telecommunications companies are shutting down FBI wiretaps because of the FBI’s chronic failure to pay its phone bills on time. One office owed $66,000 in late payments.
• Since 9/11, the U.S. has spent over $100 million dollars to secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. We’re still not allowed to know where they’re stored since they suspect that the aid is just a ruse to learn the location. Pakistan has at least 50 nuclear warheads and possibly as many as 120 according to U.S. sources. The arsenal is big enough to threaten the planet if the weapons fell into the wrong hands.

Back in the day, I wanted to be a comic book artist. I have a lot of art that I will post here some day but I stumbled over a series of sketches for a comic strip I was planning called “Phoobar”. The main character was Phil Phoobar. The idea of the comic was that Phil was a super hero but he didn’t realize it. He would just pass out from too much dope and then his alter ego would take over. Maybe someday I’ll pursue it again; this time I’ll probably have to come up with some workaround for the “dope” part of the concept since I have 3 kids now.

I shot this man standing against this white wall in downtown Akron. It turned out to be an interesting picuture with the contrasted figure against the white wall and opposite the shadowed, recessed wall to the right.

This is one of my first (and few) attempts at digital art. I just stumbled over this from about 7 years ago and I thought it turned out pretty good. Maybe I should have stuck with it eh?

This image is not distorted, this is an odd shapped building in Akron Ohio and the low perspective that I shot this image from just furthered the illusion of distortion.

By telling you where this guy was located at would spoil the fun of the image so I’ll just leave you to wonder. The guy was HILARIOUS though and I just had to take his picture. Of course he thought that was the greatest thrill ever.

• Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) recently announced a new strategic initiative to develop electricity from renewable energy sources that will be cheaper than electricity produced from coal. The newly created initiative, known as RE<C, will focus initially on advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, enhanced geothermal systems and other potential breakthrough technologies. In 2008, Google expects to spend tens of millions on research and development and related investments in renewable energy. As part of its capital planning process, the company also anticipates investing hundreds of millions of dollars in breakthrough renewable energy projects which generate positive returns.
• The number of people in U.S. prisons has risen eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to taxpayers and society. More than 1.5 million people are now in U.S. state and federal prisons, up from 196,429 in 1970. Another 750,000 people are in local jails. The U.S. incarceration rate is the world’s highest, followed by Russia. In 2003 the average cost per inmate, per year is $25,327. That’s um… $37,990,500,000 a year. The prison population is projected to grow by another 192,000 in five years, at a cost of $27.5 billion to build and operate additional prisons. On top of this cost, In 2003, the President made a commitment to mentoring children of prisoners by calling for grants for faith-based and community organizations to provide mentors to children of prisoners. This three-year initiative will cost taxpayers $150 million. It’s for the kids though, right?
• On a lighter note… THIS is really funny if you think about it. Click here (PICT)
• This week, 16 U.S. intelligence agencies published a report that “in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” Turns out the White House was aware of this shocking assessment for a few months, but reportedly worked to delay its public release.
• In a troubling reversal, the nation’s teen birth rate rose for the first time in 15 years, surprising government health officials and reviving the bitter debate about abstinence-only sex education. Some experts said they have been expecting a jump. They blamed it on increased federal funding for abstinence-only health education that doesn’t teach teens how to use condoms and other contraception. Some key sexually transmitted disease rates have also been rising, including syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.
• In a December issue of The Journal of Theoretical Biology, a group of scientists announce they have solved the riddle of the appendix. The organ, they claim, is in reality a “safe house” for healthful bacteria — the stuff that makes our digestive system function. When our gut is ravaged by diseases like diarrhea and dysentery, the appendix quietly goes to work repopulating the gut with beneficial bacteria.“In essence,” says William Parker, a chemist who co-wrote the paper, “after our system crashes, the appendix reboots it.”
• This July, when Jorgi Wu was laid to rest in central California, she became the first American to be buried in an Ecopod — a 100 percent biodegradable coffin made of recycled paper. The seedpod-shaped coffin is designed to be planted in the ground, dissolve and replenish the earth with its nutrient-rich contents.
• When the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban was asked to build a footbridge over the Gardon River he constructed it from locally available materials and based its geometry on the nearby Pont du Gard, a historic Roman aqueduct. But instead of stones or concrete, Ban used a mixture of cardboard tubes, recycled labels and creative engineering. It can withstand the load of at least 20 people and the 72-foot-long frame was made primarily from 281 cardboard tubes — each four and a half inches in diameter and about three-quarters of an inch thick.
• Nichole Marie Blackwell, 28, posted an ad on Craigslist inviting users to come to the Tacoma, Wash., home of her aunt Laurie Raye and “take what you want. Everything is free. Please help yourself to anything on the property.According to Jim Buckmaster, C.E.O. of Craigslist, the ad was up for less than two hours before users flagged it as false. But that was plenty of time for carloads of Craigslisters to arrive at Raye’s unlocked house, from which Blackwell’s mother had recently been evicted, and haul off pretty much everything, down to the front door and the baseboards and the kitchen sink.
• In October, according to a police report, Paul Zurschmit and Darrin Bolin sneaked onto the football field of Archbishop Hoban High School in Akron, Ohio, and stole several metal bleachers, which they cut into pieces and hauled to a scrap yard 100 miles away in West Virginia, receiving $600 for the aluminum.

This is a summary of a post that I made on photo.net on Sep 13, 2003. The incident was actually followed up with an article in our local Ohio paper which I’ll post here. I thought it was interesting how the conversation on this topic is still continuing. Actually, I was reminded about this because I happened to “stumble upon” a conversation about me again on Stumbleupon.com. It’s just a little concerning to me that normal people can be wandering around in public places minding their own business and then get pulled in for questioning. It’s not a big deal and I understand the reasons for it but we need to walk a careful path as we go forward in the world so we don’t become too paranoid, too limiting on our freedoms and too dependent on our government to decide what’s right and wrong. As someone important once said… “It can only lead to the dark side”. Below is the beginning of the post and my story. For further reading on the subject scroll down below the post to read the countless comments and discussions that have sprung up over the years. You can also read more here.

I’m writing this to alert all of you to be very aware WHERE you are shooting while in the United States! Yesterday I was out doing some street shooting and apparently I wandered a little too close to our Federal Building downtown with my camera and I was immediately ran down by four officers, detained and questioned for over an hour.

I currently live in Akron Ohio. A city of about 200,000 people in the northeast United States. During my lunch hour I went out on a beautiful sunny day excited to do some photography. I wandered down main street shooting various subjects for about a half hour and without finding much I wandered a little further down than I normally go which brought by our federal building. I wandered up in front of the building in the courtyard where they have a sculpture. I took several photos of the sculpture (shooting away from the building) I wandered around looking at a memorial they have there and then continued on my way. I crossed the street via the crosswalk and continued down the other side of the street. I took a picture of a woman in a car, a really old TV set in a window and a view of the construction of our new library being built downtown. Soon after I arrived at this spot I heard someone yelling. Being downtown I ignored it. They kept yelling and eventually I looked back and I saw 3 uniformed officers and one plain clothes man running toward me. I was very surprised that they closed in on me and the man asked me to step back over by the officers and he immediately told me to give him my bag and to put my hands above my head. By this time I was surrounded by men with guns and standing on the sidewalk in public view feeling embarrassed and confused without a really good reason since I was clearly out just enjoying the day and minding my own business.

The officer at this point proceeded to quickly go through my bag and he arrogantly asked me “why I was talking pictures of the Federal building and the businesses across the street?” I immediately realized where I was and why they were on me. I was blown away that it did not even cross my mind where I was on the day after September 11th. The officer asked me for my I.D. and proceeded to ask me a few more questions and then told me that I needed to come with him into the federal building so they could check my identification. I was immediately surprised that this had gone on as long as it had because I had a good explanation for what I was doing, I had proper I.D., I don’t look like a suspicious person, I am clearly born and raised in the United States, I was being more than cooperative AND I was in a public place minding my own business!

So I was interested to see how far this was going to go so I went with him. Mostly because I was curious and because I am a quiet, non-confrontational person. I’m not sure I really had a choice though and soon I found myself in the bowels of the basement in a grungy hole in the wall office surrounded by mold and security guards. At this point he asked me a few more questions, he asked me if there was anything that I needed to tell him before he started a background check and then he left me with an armed guard for about 15 minutes.

Read more….