PicoBlog

Hi, I am Charlie Borland and welcome to my All About Photography newsletter. I have been a pro photographer for over 40 years and have a lot to share with you. Please join the photo adventure by subscribing to this reader-supported newsletter. The Southwestern US is a popular destination for landscape photographers. The sandstone cliffs and canyons, native ruins, historic locations, and amazing sunsets are some of what draw photographers there.

Ælfgif-who? provides short biographies of early medieval English women. Click on the podcast player if you’d like to hear this newsletter read aloud in my appealing Yorkshire accent. Ælfgifu of Northampton married Cnut during his father Swein’s conquest of England, which began in 1013. She was part of a prominent but rebellious Mercian family, the daughter of the Ealdorman of Northumbria Ælfhelm and his wife Wulfrune. Ælfhelm had been murdered, apparently by King Æthelred, in 1006, and by 1013 the family was under suspicion again for supporting the Danish invaders, and many more of them were killed for going against the king.

Oh how mistaken other philosophers are! I was especially struck by this poll result in the just-dropped Bourget and Chalmers study of professional philosophers' opinions: Teletransporter (new matter) Survival 35.2% Death 40.1% Accept an alternative view 1.8% The question is too unclear to answer 4.8% There is no fact of the matter 7.5% Agnostic/undecided 10.1% Other 0.6% Unpacking the terse formulation: In the standard teletransporter scenario (made prominent in philosophy by Derek Parfit), a person walks into a machine that scans their body molecule-for-molecule, destroying it in the process.

A housekeeping note: After today’s essay, I will be beginning the transition to paid subscriptions. If you’ve already pledged, thank you! I think that when I make the switch, you’ll be charged automatically? [Edit: Or maybe not? If you’ve pledged, you should check and see if you have to manually affirm a full subscription.] Otherwise, you can subscribe, or not, at your leisure. And I will definitely still have an occasional free-to-everyone post every so often.

Days after the catastrophic eruption of Mount St. Helens, Cliff Smith heard a remarkable story he’d never forget. Smith was working for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, pitching vending machine companies on carrying their cigarettes. Smith was riding shotgun with a “routeman,” restocking vending machines with Camels, when he started talking about his close call with the eruption. The man’s name was Richard “Dick” Lasher. On the morning of May 18, 1980, Lasher, who was also a freelance photographer, headed towards Mount St.

Behold the delightfully noir etchings of the artist Martin Lewis. Originally from Australia, after an early adulthood spent doing everything from mining and logging to being a sailor, in 1900 Lewis moved to San Francisco, where he worked as an illustrator before producing his first etching in 1915. After time spent in Japan studying printmaking, he returned to the US and moved to New York, producing his best-known urban scenes in the 1920s and 30s.

I’ve been a Kansas City Chiefs fan for quite a long time. When I was a child, my Dad watched a lot of football. I can’t remember who his favorite team was, but I liked the team that carried my state’s name - even if I wasn’t fully invested in their performance or understood what it meant to be a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs. Over time, I would learn.

Defenders of recently ousted Harvard University President Claudine Gay charge that outcries over the plagiarism in her dissertation and scholarly publications are merely a cover. Gay’s critics, the argument goes, actually objected to her support for DEI, her bumbling response to questions about antisemitism at Harvard, and her very race. Had she been white, more artful in addressing antisemitism, and more moderate in her views about DEI, she would still have her job today.

I’ve been a fan of Frasier since it was on the air, but it’s only recently that I’ve felt the urge to watch it again. I’m not sure exactly what drew me to this series in particular, but I suppose it stems from two things: one, the fact that a good friend of mine has mentioned it quite a lot of recently and two, my desire to watch an old-fashioned sitcom, one that doesn’t try to do something new or imaginative with the genre but instead just dishes up what you want.