My Thoughts

Philosophical Consciousness To describe the phenomenon of life and existence is to recognize the quintessential pertinence of consciousness.  Successful, sensible elucidations thereof escape the greatest philosophical minds to this day.  However, the meditative contemplation of such is sure to yield insights and bring about great novelty of thought; these effects characterize the entire field of that which we call Philosophy.   The Nature of Consciousness -- as Philosophy's 21st century problem -- is guaranteed to garner plenty of debate and academic study for years, even decades, to come.  So to be attempting to answer our question(s) of consciousness is to be at the forefront of contemporary philosophy.  So I believe I should urge you to ask yourself just what your mind is.  And what about awareness -- of self and of circumstance?  The How and the What can really get to you. Pondering these intellectual issues leads, inevitably, to a certai...

Capitalism : Anti-Intellectualism & The Collective Aesthetic It was the ingenious socioeconomic philosopher -- Karl Marx -- who repeatedly posited that workforces enabling Capitalism in the State become “alienated” as an effect of job monotony and wholly unrewarding labor.  Indeed, one only need consider the popular employers these days -- and the nature of their often unscrupulous business practices -- to realize the truth of this line of Marxist thought.  As the employee becomes increasingly detached from their eight hour work day and its significance ( f. ex: societal importance and personal fulfillment), their personality and behavioral preferences suffer.  They change.   The inevitable disaffection manifests itself through negative attitudes, nihilism, changes in behavior, and the implicit acceptance of willful ignorance.  This is a degradation of personal value systems, belief systems, and -- yes -- overall quality of personhood insofar a...

High Dynamic Range digital photography has only been around for a couple years.  It entails shooting multiple exposures -- 1 to 3 increasingly overexposed, and 1 to 3 increasingly underexposed.  And you take a shot at regular exposure, of course.   Photoshop merges the images in to one, with the result being great detail in the highlights (which are usually bleached and washed-out), and great detail in the shadows (which are usually just blackness).  That's why the extra shots are taken -- to capture all the details in all the areas of the frame.  It is an awesome new technology, and as one might suspect, the output is a massive file (anywhere from 60 to 100MB).  Photoshop encodes it first, then you generally pick a high quality format with which to re-save (reformat) your creation -- usually TIFF -- in order to disseminate it.