semicircular.net

Apparently, however, basic human respect does not apply to Facebook-MSN-SMS-Bebo-Twitter-Twitface socialising. When my son gets bored chatting on MSN, he doesn't take time to say goodbye properly as most decent people would -- he just types "BRB" for "Be Right Back", then walks off and never comes back, and for the rest of the day there are sad little messages popping up on the computer screen going, "You back yet?" and "Wassup?" and "Hey??????" When my brother-in-law has had enough playing his online war game, he doesn't wait till he's completed his mission before he logs out -- he just walks out on his online teammates and lets them get massacred by Nazi-Zombies with flame-throwers while he makes himself a cup of tea and watches RocKwiz.

-- Danny Katz, Good Weekend magazine December 18-20, 2009

What, then, is so wrong with the camera? Nothing, thought Ruskin initially... Yet Ruskin's enthusiasm diminished as he observed the devilish problem that photography created for the majority of its practitioners. Rather than using photography as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used it as an alternative, playing less attention to the world than they had done previously from a faith that photography automatically assured them posession of it.

-- Alain de Botton, summarising John Ruskin's view of photography.

MODIS (or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer)

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