Cummins Falls Photos

Yes, this is the last post I'll be making before we go over the fiscal cliff! Exciting, isn't it?

I've been recovering from a nasty case of strep throat followed by tonsillitis, so I wasn't able to get out waterfalling, or doing anything, as much as I would have liked to in Tennessee for this holidays. But the day before falling ill I made it out to Tennessee's newest state park, Cummins Falls State Park, to see the formerly privately owned 75-foot falls and tested out my new wide angle landscape photography lens. Here are some of the spoils I wanted to share with you.

On top of Cummins Falls: the 10-15 foot cascade before the big drop

On the trail

Cummins Falls Overlook. In the summertime that's probably a great swimming hole.

Courtney and her mother Susan taking pictures on top of the limestone of Cummins Falls

Ice on the waterfall

Looking out from the top of the falls

Photos From the 2012 Beach Vacation/For the Victims of the Clackamas Mall Shooting

These North Carolina photos have been a long time coming, I know, and most of my readers have already seen these shots, having been there when I took them. But I would like to share anyway because there are some photos in the group I am particularly proud of, and now that I've fixed my photo problem from earlier I can flaunt my artist's ego a bit.

But these photos are especially pertinent for today because of the recent tragedy that took place yesterday here in Portland. While I have never been to the mall where the shooting took place, apparently it's not far from where I live and Courtney and our roommates go there from time to time. It's times like this when something horrible happens close to home like this when I think of how precious my family is to me and how devastating it would be to lose someone I love in such a gruesome manner. It was emotions like this that inspired me to write "Unraveling" and even though the song is old it's still relevant. So let's enjoy the photos of a group of precious people, listen to the song of mourning, and keep the victims in our minds as we celebrate how lucky we are that our loves ones are safe.

Unraveling

Austin, the newest member of our family!

Little Sophia playing with my brother

Mad Antz: Aunt Marsha and Aunt Jan

The ocean outside the house where we stayed in North Carolina

Nana, the star of the show!

Four generations: Shira holding Sophia, Aunt Marsha, and Nana

Another sunset beach shot

Another adorable shot of Austin

Throwback Photos: Crater Lake for the Perseid Meteor Shower

It seems that the photo experiment in the last post went off with a smash, so now there's nothing holding me back from posting my photos on the blog anymore (for those of you who don't remember, I ran out of space on Blogger to upload new photos, as described here). So I'm going to go back in time to this summer when Courtney, Rebecca, and I all headed down to Crater Lake for a weekend to watch the dazzling Perseid Meteor Shower at its peak.

I'd like to get started by sharing an article, though. Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, is taking what's called a SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge, which asks people to try eating as much (or little) food as someone can get with food stamps. In New Jersey it's $30 a week, or about $4 a day. The idea is to raise awareness about the struggles of the poor who rely on food stamps and demonstrate the argument that food stamps should provide a greater benefit. I don't think I'd have a chance to stick to this challenge, but kudos to Booker for his efforts (remember, this is the guy who rescued a neighbor from a burning house, too). And it only took a couple additional clicks of research to learn that Barbara Lee has also taken the challenge. As if I needed another reason to like her. Sweet!

Anyway, onwards to photos and memories!

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States. It was once a volcano, but the crater filled up with water (hence the name). Geologically speaking, this happened rather recently, only a few thousand years ago. This makes it one of the most pristine and haunting bodies of water I've ever seen.

The soil is also apparently very fertile.

This is called the "Phantom Ship." You can just make out the other end of the shore. Often Crater Lake is clear as can be and you can see everything, but when we visited forest fire season was in high gear. A lot of the sediment was trapped in the crater and made viewing difficult. But when we made it to the shore, we could see under all the haze. The water cleaned up the air just above it and we could see clearly across to the other side. Remarkable.

This is where we swam. Yes, we swam in a volcano. You're allowed to be jealous.

The walls of the crater. They keep dropping like this even in the water. Swim out about the length of a pool and you can't even see the bottom anymore, even though the water is crystal clear. It was the smallest and weakest I've ever felt. It was like I was a tiny hovering speck above an abyss, especially since I could see the gigantic rock walls shoot down and down farther than vision. A highly recommended experience!

I didn't get any photos of the meteors themselves - my nighttime super long exposure photography isn't quite up to par yet - but I did get this shot of Watchman Point, where we watched from, as we waited for the sky to blacken. The stars shot across the entire sky throughout the night in all sorts of colors: blue, orange, red, white, and green. Just dazzling! My buddy Kirk took a shot of the shower you can see here.

Upper Latourell Falls

I think I've figured out a way to get some new photos up on this site and get around the sad truth that I'm out of upload space. Here's the test post to see if it works! I finally made it back out to the Columbia River Gorge for the first time in months, which feels like an unbearably long time when my mind is almost entirely occupied by these insufferable law school applications (some of which ask for the site of my blog on my resume, so, hi there University of Washington!). I got to see Upper Latourell Falls for the first time, along with Latourell Falls (my favorite in the Gorge) and the above-pictured Shepherd's Dell Falls. Hopefully, should this photography post work as I hope it does, I should be able to time travel and bring you some of the photos I've been sitting on since summer.

While you're waiting, however, you can always check out my Facebook photo page, which I will start to add more photos to now. Also I have a Flickr account that mostly has only my favorites for those of you who, like me, aren't fond of Facebook, but unlike me can avoid using it.

And I guess I should say something about the election. You know, that election that conservative pundits had so many of us convinced would be a nail-biter? The one Fox News couldn't believe was a blow-out even when the numbers started coming in? Just a good example of how I was right.

Latourell Falls, over 200 feet tall, magnificent in autumn

It doesn't look like it, but that's the trail!

Fall-swept Latourell

Upper Latourell Falls as seen from the trail. That's Courtney and Rebecca looking on in their rain gear.

Beautiful Upper Latourell

The leaves of fall abound!

No, really, they abound!

Upper Latourell Falls as first seen from the trail

Another black and white of Upper Latourell

Shepherd's Dell Falls is a toughie for photographers because the few views are obstructed, and the tall waterfall's twists and turns make it hard for a lens to wrap around. Somehow it's become one of my favorites to photograph. Go figure.

Courtney at the base of Latourell Falls, keeping dry

Shepherd's Dell Falls. I stole this composition from another Portland based photographer, but I like the fall colors here.

This composition is mine alone. Copyright.

Sympathy for the Devil

It seems that quite a few people in power think that the definition of rape is too broad, and the law should offer greater protections for accused rapists. This issue has been gaining popular attention especially after the Todd Akin comments about "legitimate rape" containing egregious factual inaccuracies about women's health that seem to inform a lot of current right-wing policy. Since then, there has been a great deal of right wing statements supporting a stricter view of rape - presumably in order to eventually do away with abortion exceptions in case of rape and/or incest - including one defender of Akin who stated that rape victims are "blessed" with a child (and said the popular phrase of those who don't want to take back their disgusting opinions but instead are expressing their disappointment that they weren't able to trick the public better: that Akin "spoke badly").

Today the Connecticut Supreme Court decided that a woman with severe cerebral palsy was not in fact raped because she did not communicate her refusal of consent. Apparently the demonstrated facts that she "cannot speak and has little body movement" is not enough evidence that she was physically incapable of expressing her refusal. The court indicated in their 4-3 decision that biting or kicking would have been an acceptable form of communication.

Let's set aside the ready-made belief that the victim should have been considered physically incapable, as an unconscious rape victim would be, of communicating her refusal - an argument I agree with. The real issue here is the purpose sexual assault law is supposed to play. The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld a legal understanding of rape that promotes the idea that sex is always consensual unless one party, usually the woman, explicitly declines. This case hinges on that interpretation. If the law instead stated that a sex act could be legally considered rape if it was committed without obtaining consent, then the need for the handicapped to bite or kick would be irrelevant. But with the law as it is, it is the duty of the victim, again, usually the woman, to unequivocally say no to sex - in this case, even if she is incapable of doing so. Men can coerce, force women to give partial consent, bully them into willing sex acts under threat of violence, and if the women do not refuse for fear, confusion, disorientation, uncertainty, or whatever, the man is completely justified under this interpretation of the law.

Despicable.

It should not be solely the woman's duty to definitively express, sometimes in a unclear, rushed moment, her adamant refusal. Women do not need to take responsibility for the depraved actions of a sexual assaulter. The value system of the Connecticut ruling places all onus of "legitimate" rape on women - only they can determine whether rape has occurred, and the violent and destructive behavior of the assaulter is barely important. This is wrong. The interpretation of the law that informed this ruling lets men have sex without consent and forces women to decide in the moment whether it's a crime. The crime is not a crime because of the actions of the perpetrator but the cries of the victim. It would be as if someone who broke into your house was acquitted because you hadn't told him to leave as he was burglarizing your possessions. Completely despicable. Expressing this style of legal sympathy for rapists, such as the man in today's ruling, is sympathizing with sexism and subjugation of women.

Now Available: May's Confession

Time for a short story announcement. I'm very proud to announce my latest short story, May's Confession, is now available via FictionBrigade! This one's only available via e-book, which makes it considerably cheaper than anything else I might ask you to buy with my writing in it: $3.00. You can find it at the FictionBrigade store here. Enjoy!

Facts Aren't Dead, But They Aren't Relevant Either

I came across this graphic the other day and thought I'd share it:

Now the fun thing about this little equation is looking at the thousands of comments it has on the web of people reporting their answers (The correct answer is 7, by the way). After quickly browsing, I saw the most popular answer to be 1, although 5, 3.5, and 7 were also prevalent.

But I'm not writing this to complain about the education level of the US; in fact, this situation seems much more similar to a headline in The Onion that reads: "Parents Don't Remember Enough Colors To Help With Kindergartener's Homework." Completely understandable. It would seem that there are a lot of people who don't use the order of operations in everyday life, myself included, so it wouldn't be surprising that people would forget.

Except that's not the entire problem. There were comments, written in combative, didactic, lecturing tones, explaining the order of operations and applying to this equation, conclusively asserting the answer to be something other than 7 (usually 5). One such commenter gave showed his work as:

6-1x0+2/2
6-0+2/2
6-0+1
6-1
5

Others, usually those who chose 1 as the answer, entirely ignored or forgot the order of operations, blurting out their left-to-right methodology, as in this example:

Anything x 0 = 0, and 0 + 2 = 2 and 2/2 = 1, so the answer is 1.

So the problem is only partly that many people either don't know or have forgotten how to do simple math equations. But there is another problem here, and I think it offers insight into a phenomenon that took place recently in Tampa Bay.

Paul Ryan earned the nickname "Lyin' Ryan" for his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, a speech with "another level" of dishonesty. A Romney aide once commented that the campaign will not be "dictated by fact checkers," a statement many have taken to mean that the Republican Party intends to say whatever it wants in order to win the election.

So are facts dead? Well, if you read the title of this post you'd know my opinion about that. There is an important NPR article that argues that facts are indeed dead, and in my last post I agreed with the article and discussed how politicians sticking to statements they know to be false and have been publicly exposed as false. I suppose they believe it's more humiliating to be wrong than to lie, that the most importantly quality in a political leader is uncompromising stubbornness, masculinity at its worst. The biggest casualty of this stubbornness is reality.

According to my history research at New York University, a big development towards the dying of facts occurred during the Reagan presidency with regards to state massacres conducted by El Salvador (my historical focus was Central America, after all). The US-supported government, supported essentially because it wasn't communist, had slaughtered entire villages and buried hundreds in rural mass graves, which were found by journalists along with at least one witness. Of course this would disgrace the Reagan presidency since they had supported the Salvadoran regime and intended to continue doing so to fight communism, so they took a strategy that hadn't been used before: they denied the facts. But it wasn't as simple as that. They discredited the journalist who originally brought the story to light, claiming he either had dubious motives for publishing the story or that he didn't understand what he found, and also claiming that the main witness was not reliable. This strategy worked well, and there wasn't a consensus about what really happened in El Salvador until long after Reagan left office, if there even is a consensus or if anyone still cares. And this method of doubting the source of evidence has justified a lot of misinformation.

This tactic is more effective now because of all the corroborating right wing "journalistic" sources eager to rush in and support a false claim that benefits their ideology. Now, this is where the math comes back in (you were wondering if I'd forgotten about it, weren't you?). Suppose you see this equation and have never worked with anything like it before:

6-1x0+2/2 = ?

Now there are three methods for solving this equation: the two I mentioned above and the correct one:

6-1x0+2/2
6-0+1
7

Supporters of each answer are giving reasons for their beliefs, and they all seem plausible Left-to-right makes sense because that's how we read, and so does solving using order of operations one at a time instead of in pairs. Some express disbelief at other plausible answers (one answer read, "How do you get 7 from that?!").

The fact is that if you use the order of operations correctly the answer is 7, but if you've never encountered the order of operations before how would you choose what to believe? You might think the correct answer is 1 simply because more people chose it - even though I know 7 to be the answer I still doubted myself for a moment when I saw the sheer number of 1s.

In the meantime, Bill O'Reilly is repeating again and again that the answer is 5 because only a pin-head wouldn't use pemdas in order one at a time, and Sean Hannity says that only mooching welfare queens would get an outlandish number such as 7 from that equation, and Rush Limbaugh insists that only someone with a woman's intelligence would get 1. Each bring on their guest "experts" who they claim to be mathematicians who diagram the answer to be 5 with holographic numbers floating in the air, and Glenn Beck cries at the beauty of the "correct" answer and Ann Coulter scoffs at the idea of sitting down with a believer of 7 and having a conversation about mathematics. Gerardo Rivera blames social problems on people who have a dangerous belief in 7 and Gretchen Carlson laments that if everyone would just see the correctness of the answer 5 then the country would be great again. Karl Rove moans that scaling back on public service and creating huge tax breaks for millionaires is the only way to stop the problems caused by 7-believers and Dick Cheney insists only a non-patriotic 7-believer wouldn't want to take military action in Iran. And now, what was once a fact (that the answer is 7) is now a dangerous political ideology.

And because believing in 7 is a political ideology, anyone supporting a belief in 7 is biased and not to be trusted. Fact-checking organizations, journalists, and Nobel Laureate mathematicians try to call attention to the factual inaccuracy, but since they are seen to be supporting a political agenda and not a fact they are either ignored or actively resisted. Here a fact has been politicized.

If a person is presented with two conflicting and plausible sets of information, how does he choose which to believe? I'll trust even Wikipedia to deliver the answer here: selective perception, the subject of much research showing that when people are offered many different media sources they will gravitate towards sources that correspond closely with their political views.

Now let's say the debate is not about this equation and the number 7 but instead about, say, the effectiveness of gay therapy programs such as Pray Away The Gay, or the existence of climate change, or the harmful results of deregulation and trickle-down economics, or the dangers of fraud in elections, or whether Trayvon Martin was a bad kid and he was mostly responsible for the events that led to his death, or that women can biologically shut down a pregnancy while being raped (Akin was not the first to make this claim, ladies and gentlemen), or that Obama is Muslim and wasn't born in America, and so on.

In each of the above instances, either facts or expert consensus is available, and in each instance the facts have been distorted, ignored, or viewed as opinion rather than fact. So it's not that the facts aren't there. It's that they're being facts isn't very important in determining what a person believes.

To close, we get an understanding of why the Republican Party can be so out of touch. In each of the above instances (and many more) the Republican Party takes the position that is not supported by facts or expert consensus but a hypothetical, even fringe interpretation more or less created out of thin air mixed with political perspective. So the GOP is out of touch because they're acting in a world that doesn't exist, a world where women's bodies' "juices don't flow" during rape, where election fraud is widespread and threatening, where homosexuality can be cured and climate change is a hoax, where cutting government services to almost nothing and granting huge tax breaks to the wealthiest in the country is actually better for all citizens, and so on. The country the GOP wants control over is hypothetical, based on ideologically and religiously based laws of nature that don't apply in reality. And to win power in reality, the party increasingly needs to convince voters of the falseness of the facts governing the real country and drag us all into its twisted fantasy rather than confront the accuracy of truth.

Here's a comic about hypothetical situations. Enjoy much of our government's operating as if we're all living in one.

Explination of Hiaitus

I'm currently trying to figure out a problem I've been having with blogger, namely that I've run out of space to post photos. I don't know how this is surprising to me. Until I find a way to back up the posts I've made I won't be able to delete them to make room for new photography posts, so hang in there while I take a short break.

In the meantime, sink your teeth into this depressing NPR article. I don't know what to do when logic fails, and yet here we go: despite overwhelming factual proof - that's factual proof, not opinion - the Romney campaign continues to stick by their blatant lies about welfare, a strategy that they must assume will be successful.

And they're probably right. According to a study (in another article I somehow failed to post here that brilliantly analyses the effects and causes of Representative Allen West declaring that 80 members of the Democratic Party in Congress were members of the Communist Party, then standing by that ridiculous claim after it had been proven again and again to be false), a fact's accuracy does not have a primary effect on its believability. If one hears a political and factual lie, then hears the correction, he is most likely to believe whichever coincides most with his prior political opinions (specifically the study deals with fabricated information regarding Bush tax cuts).

In short, it doesn't matter if it's a fact or not. Just saying whatever you want about an opponent will make a large portion of your base believe the slander. This insults my intelligence and panders to fear and hatred - once again.

Is it true that the Republican Party's platform now is so outlandish that they have to rely on hearsay (and voter ID laws, another story) to win votes? What will these candidates do once they're in office and have to deal with the reality of a world where facts are important? People, we have to vote in November!

Eagle Creek to Tunnel Falls

People on either side of the man-made tunnel in Tunnel Falls

A few days ago I did the longest hike I'd ever undertaken in the Columbia River Gorge: the 12-mile round trip Eagle Creek trail leading to 120-foot Tunnel Falls. This is one waterfall I didn't expect to be able to see simply because the hike is too long for me to be able to convince someone to go, but Jay, the guitarist from our band One Moment, was willing to take me there and brave the distance. Here's some photo documentation of the all-day escapade!

Eagle Creek at a bridge about 3.7 miles along the trail

Eagle Creek about 5 miles in. The creek is almost always seen from high above, from anywhere between 100 and 150 feet. The telephoto lens came in handy for this shot.

Tunnel Falls, one of the only shots my non-wide-angle lens could get of the whole thing. It both free falls and slides along a slanting cliff, looking almost like a water slide. You can see where the trail continues in the indentation in the rocks on the right.

Tunnel Falls as seen from the trail, flower level.

Tunnel Falls from the base again, one of the only shots form this angle I got without having any mist on my lens.

Just beyond Tunnel Falls is this waterfall, named "Twisty Falls" on Wikipedia and "Unnamed Falls" by Jay, who I trust more on this issue (the source Wikipedia cites admits that "Twisty Falls" is the unoficial name of the waterfall). Whatever its name, this waterfall actually has a second tier below this one of about a hundred feet, which could be seen from a slightly scary part of the trail where there was no clear or safe view for photos.

Above Unnamed Falls. If it had been darker, I could have made a spiral at the base of the cascade. It's a new photo technique I've been working on. Almost there!

On the way back I noticed Tenas Falls from the trail, a double falls from a side creek (also unofficially named). It's 25 feet tall.

The Tenas Falls shots came out wonderfully!

The Eagle Creek trail leads past Punchbowl Falls, a very famous and picturesque 30-footer. I didn't get to the angle that's so well-known, though. I've already seen it from that perspective.