Don’t get me wrong… there is nothing wrong with being independent! Gather all the facts… consider the pros and cons… then make a thoughtful decision. That makes LOTS of sense! Hell, I am a flaming liberal, and I do my best to do that. But the situation today presents us with a set of facts that just don’t need a whole lot of consideration.

The Newsvine Photographers group has a header on the group front page featuring photos by group members. The header photos are changed from time to time and are dependent on NVP member submissions for their content. So ALL group members are encouraged to submit some of their favorite photos to be included in the header.

Mal saw Proud American's suggestion to create a coffee table book of photos by Newsvine Photographer group members. Well as it happens, Mal is working on making just such a book of his own photos. Mal's book is only about 1/4 completed so far, but Mal still thought it would be fun to share.

The following slide show has screen shots of some of the pages. In order to see it well it would be best to view it in full screen mode. To do this first start the slideshow by clicking on it. Then click the full screen button in the lower right corner of the slide show window. Also you can pause the slideshow by clicking the pause button in the lower left corner of the window... then you can view each pair of pages at your own pace.

The Newsvine Photographers are wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas with the new group header. For this header we have images contributed by etva, Dubbya R, hollykl, rottlady, Soovivers, and me, Mal. We also want to encourage other group members to participate in the Header Challenge by submitting images for any of the future headers.

The photos for each participant in the Christmas header are shown below.

Maybe Newsvine, and the Internet in general, is supposed to be entertainment, just some distraction from the many very real issues we face individually and societally.

Mal packs up his travois and heads out to take some photos at Mount Rainier.

Recently Physicist-Retired published a seed about climate change in the small Himalayan country of Bhutan.  It is an excellent seed, so I suggest you read it, and PR is a wealth of information on the topic if your looking for that.  But... before you start ranting about whether or not there is or isn't any climate change, I want you to know that this article is NOT about climate change!!!  So if you want to talk about that please do it on PR's seed or some other place where that is the topic.

The reason I mentioned PR's article is that author of the original article said this...

The note around the dog's neck:

Today, August 21st, is my third Viniversary... and as a way of celebrating the occasion I am going to republish a rewritten version of the very first article I wrote for the Vine. Before I do that I want to say a few things about my experiences on the Vine.

Many of you have seen my articles about Old Dog Haven, a sanctuary for old dogs that nobody seems to want to adopt, or my article about Sarge, the dog who taught me how sweet old dogs can be.  For about three years I have been donating to Old Dog Haven and occasionally helping out as a volunteer.  Enclosed in the thank you note ODH sent me for my last donation was a poem that very eloquently explains why the folks who run ODH do what they do.  This poem expresses my sentiments too...

foto-friday / NEWSVINE PHOTOGRAPHERS

Sniff... sniff... sniff...

This article is one of several articles about using HTML in a Newsvine article. If HTML is new to you, you may want to read some of the other articles, especially the introduction.

The new Newsvine article editor provides many features that make it very easy to format an article.  No knowledge of HTML is required to make use of those features, and for most articles those features are likely to be all that you will need.  But there are a few things that can only be done if you know a little bit about HTML.  So in this article, and a few others to follow, I will try to give you the basics of HTML and point out some of the more useful things you can do with it in a Newsvine article.

Finally!!! A President who is making changes I can believe in!!! He definitely has the right idea with this Mandatory Abortion Bill. I mean this is all so amazingly simple. We have a few too many folks in this country, and if there were just a few less of us that would solve so many problems. There are lots of things we can do to "thin things out"... so to speak... and most of them offer us huge cost savings to boot. Personally, I think Obama should look at mandatory sterilization... but I'm not going there right now...

It has been a pretty rainy winter around these parts... I know, the Northwest has a reputation for being rainy... Well, this year it is living up to its reputation... In the past the winters haven't seemed so bad to me, but this year I am so sick of rain I could scr... uh... HOWL!!!

Last month I got a shot of the moon one day off of full... This morning I was lucky enough to get it again... This time it was very close to perfectly full AND at perigee... Woo Hoo... The clouds cooperated... well sort of... I couldn't get it at its closest point to the horizon... but close enough.  If the clouds are agreeable this evening, I will give it another try.  Here is what I got...

In the fall of 2003 we went trekking to Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal. This was a wonderful adventure and provided many photographic opportunities. Near the end of of that trek we came upon an old woman and asked her if we could take her photo. She obliged by picking some marigolds from her garden to present to us as a gift. As she was preparing to give them to us I took the photo shown shown on the right. There are several others that make a wonderful series which you will see in a slide show at the end of this article. First... I thought I would use this photo to illustrate some things that can be done to bring emphasis to a special area within an image.

I have been hankering to try some macro photography again... I haven't done any since I got my first digital camera in 1996... So I dug around in my camera gear bag and found my extension tube.  It took a lot of fiddling around to figure out that when the extension tube is on the camera I have to do every thing in 100% manual mode... manual aperture, manual shutter speed, and manual focus. These were all taken with my Nikkor 28-70 zoom (the 15 year old lens that came with my 1996 Kodak DCS 420... which was actually a Nikon N90 with a huge digital back).  ALL ISO 200, f22, speeds ranging from 1/2 to 1/4 second.

I took these in Siena Italy in October of 2009 with a Lumix point and shoot... I like them because they are sort of Yin and Yang and because each have both high-key and low-key in a single image...

Justice Alito offered the single dissenting opinion in the SCOTUS Westboro Baptist Church Decision.  Here are a couple of things he said…

Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case.

In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims like petitioner.

I agree whole heartedly with the spirit of Justice Alito’s opinion… which is not usually the case for me with his opinions.  However, even though I agree with the spirit of his opinion, I must also say I agree with the ruling of the court, which is contrary to his opinion.  This case is a microcosm of a great dilemma we face in America.