Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Ball's Eye View

 Posted by Picasa

Playing

Is it a waterfall? Posted by Picasa

Painted by Camera


interesting that one can turn a photograph into a painting by simply sharpening the image... Posted by Picasa

Unusual Point of View










Metal shapes from the playground. Posted by Picasa

Self Potrait


I just wanted to show what happens when I start playing with a photo-editting program. I never know when to stop. A more original version is located below. Posted by Picasa

Self protrait with a telephoto lense. This is shot from about 30m and editted að little bit with Picasa2. Posted by Picasa

Justification and Art

After some 15 years of construction, the natural sciences building at the University of Iceland was opened 2 years ago.  We moved in and instantly saw that the building was not designed for usage but for appearance.  There are 5 room that are suitable for lectures (although 2 will only accommodate about 25 students).  There is also one room filled by a massive discussion table that the architect will not allow us to replace with something we can use.  There are 6 exterior doors in the building.  Three are kept locked for security reasons, apparently, and we were this past Spring allowed to apply for key cards to be able to use them.  One is an emergency exit but seems to be always locked.  The other two are the main entrances and they are located on each end of the 200m long building. These doors blow open whenever the wind is strong enough to bend grass...which happens weekly.  So, half the time, there is only one entryway into the building that is not locked.  Good design!  When the school agreed to the drawings there was no computer lab in the drawings.  There was no library, for that matter.  Now there are several hundred students going to school there daily as well as all the professors and a handful of building staff.  For all of these people there are fewer than 70 places to sit in the building outside of lecture halls, the improvised library (which was stuck in a little corner of the building above the cafeteria), and the laboratories.  The majority of the building is wasted space opening from the first floor up to above the third floor.  The balconies bounce when someone walks passed.  The slanted curving glass wall/ceiling cost more than all of the books in the building.  Continuing education students are crammed into corners struggling for the space they need to accomplish their studies.
But the building is considered cool to look at by a majority of those in control.  That is, those who don’t use the building.  From the first time I got in there my impression has been that the building would make a pretty good art gallery or museum.  Or maybe an office building.  That impression was proven yesterday when i walked in and saw that an art exhibit is being installed there.  The following are some pictures of some of the pieces and some of my comments about them.  
The show is going up so that Halldór Ásgrímsson can stand around and have his picture taken while he and his oafish followers and suck-ups are seen “patronizing the arts” as though they give a Tinker’s cuss about creativity or cultural development. One thing’s for sure, I won’t show up there for that scene.  I had thought that by moving to Iceland I was moving away from a nation who votes for leaders based on popularity contests instead of actual thought and consideration of the issues.  The last elections proved me very wrong.  But Iceland is still not controlled by unjustifiable fear the way the US is, so we still come out on top even if our politics are based on the same brainless mudslinging!

These two run-of-the-mill life-sized figures are actualy pretty accurate illustrations of the students as they walk into the building and wonder why anyone would hire the architect who was devoid of practical thinking enough to draw such a disaster as the building is. They walk in and are struck instantly by the thought, is this really the school?!

But I'm sure that the so-called elite of Iceland (the Prime Minister and his cronies) who come to the opening of this exhibit of the ordinary will have no trouble trying to sound educated as they walk in and drag up words like: unique, powerful, stark emptiness, bold, tension and many other copy and paste art critique words to describe the low-talent "art" and the building itsself. Posted by Picasa

This one is remeniscent of a strobila. For those of you with no background in marine invertebrate biology (aumingja þú!) a strobila is a form of jellyfish larva that fastens itself to the bottom and then reproduces several juvenile jellyfish by transverse fission. For a beautiful depiction of this, you can watch the "Blue Planet" series by David Attenborough. I know it's 16 hours or something, but it's definitely worth it.
I actually like this sculpture.

This piece of community college Sculpture 101 drivel is very similar to the building in which it sits: it's a little bit interesting at first until you spend a little bit of time looking at it and see that it's the result of absolutely no creative thinking. They probably call this Balance or Suspense or somehing. This would have been a little bit interesting about 20 years ago before a thousand other people had done pretty much the same thing. Ho hum!

My favorite of the show. The green in the heads is a sheet of glass that runs from front to back allowing light to be led through just like a fiber optics cable. Posted by Picasa

Yup, slightly interesting. Posted by Picasa

Detail of the painting below... Posted by Picasa

I've decided I like this painting. Does it look like a big piece of camouflage cloth? Yes. But the colors work well together and the texture is pretty cool: blobs of paint were allowed to dry lying flat so each of the dark green and yellow-green blobs is wrinkly in the same way. Above is a detail of the blobs (I began this post before I thought of posting the other so you're going to have to just deal with the fact that they're out of order!)

The largest piece that had been set up by yesterday (the show opens tomorrow). This one is about 10' long and 8' tall. It's plain matte black metal like the other three metals above. I think the size of this one makes it work, but I've seen so many sculptures that are similar in some way to this one that I can't help but think that it's getting a bit tiresome.

Sunday, May 28, 2006

No Thought

Three strong women sit in my living room.  One is my wife and the other two are her friends.  The three of them ran for seats on he Board of Selectmen.  Elections for these positions were held in all counties in Iceland yesterday.  The result here was that the other party achieved its goal.  That goal, of course, being that their smear campaign against two people in our party caused many people to vote against the party to which we (my wife and I) belong.  We had a lot more supporters than the vote showed.  I don’t mean that there was cheating going on or anything.  But the truth is (or at least seems to me) that most people who voted for the other party (E-List) did so out of a personal dislike of the current chairman of the Board of Selectmen or the current mayor.  The mayor had announced long before the election that she’d be quitting after the election.  The other target for the mud-slinging of the other side was dropped from 1st to 4th seat on the board.  
Now that you know a little bit about what happened can you help me understand how it happened?  I know for a fact that our town has been one of the fastest growing towns in the country for at least 5 years.  I know that not only have thousands of square meters of town space recently been zoned for an expansion of the industrial area of town but plans are underway for the addition of the third new neighborhood to go up since I moved here three and a half years ago.  Included in that neighborhood will be a second school and playschool.  Since we moved here the school has been doubled in size.  Just before we came the playschool was doubled in size.  There are now three brand new apartment buildings and two motels in own.  The gym and swimming pool are among the best in the area and last year a new addition was put on as a social center for kids where dances and such are held.  So, what I cannot understand is why so many people saw fit to vote against two people who’s time in control of the town was ending and thereby toss out, also all the people who worked with them and had some experience and understanding.  This election was steered by personal grudges and not by sound politician decisions.  I cannot understand that kind of thinking.
I never had any dealings with the town government and therefore had no grudge. I made up my mind about the party by getting to know what they had done and what they were planning.  That, to me, is the way one should decided who should be running the show in the town where one lives.  Choosing simply based upon a personality clash is just childish and I think the majority who voted against my party should be ashamed of themselves for not thinking at all about the future of our town.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Snæfellsnes


Boy I really do enjoy the ease with which one can change a photograph in a computer. Just by making a few quick adjustments in Picasa I changed this from a mediocre, overexposed sunset photograph into a much more eye-pleasing shot that feels a lot more alive. This would have taken hours in a darkroom! Posted by Picasa

Funny Face


The Boy sometimes decides it's more fun to play than eat his fish! Little stinker. Posted by Picasa

Good Upbringing


I don't see why anyone would ever have an excuse to say that my children do not have good table manners! Heh heh, it's a good thing the dear girl does not look at my bog or she might pour bleach in my crayfish tank for posting this photo. Posted by Picasa

Sentimentality

Most of the time, sentimentality does not take hold of my actions.   I was wondering today if this is one trait that is connected to gender.   So, I put the question to you, the reader.   A woman I know still has a poster that she had hanging in her bedroom as a little girl.   When I say a poster, this is one of those very cute drawn pictures that is specifically for very small children.  You know, the fat little kid in the middle is surrounded by little smiling mice with clothes on and butterflies.  This is not the kind of poster that an adult wants to hang on the wall.  So, she keeps it.   It’s rolled up in the closet.  She’s not really keeping it in the hopes that another child is in the future.  She keeps it out of sentimentality.   Now, don’t get me wrong; I see nothing wrong with her keeping this poster.  I’m not being critical here.  I’m merely observing something with which I cannot identify.  What I mean is that keeping something from my childhood simply because it was once precious to me seems like nostalgia.  I cannot understand why one would hold on to something like that.  It could very well be that I became cold or jaded as I grew.  It could be that I’ve had such emotional trouble dealing with the contrast between reality and my concept of what reality should be that I’ve always taken steps to remove my emotions from experience.  When I really think about it, I hardly even remember my childhood, never mind toys I had or wall decorations.  
This is probably a flaw in me and not something by which to judge others.  I understand that she wants the poster but I cannot understand why.  I have seen this in other women.  But I don’t recall seeing this sort of behavior in a man.  So, I wonder if men experience thoughts of the past differently or if the difference is just in my head.  
I’ve so often heard about people’s skeletons in the closet and I can’t imagine how terrible something would have to be that I could not deal with it and put it in the past.  I guess that I do that with the good stuff, too.  But my experience of my own past is more centered around things I have done than things that I have owned.  I talk often about my trips to Costa Rica and Japan and other places that have somehow had an effect on my development into the man I am.  I think about my friends across the oceans of the world sometimes and sometimes I think of specific events involving them.  Mostly, when I think of people, though, my desire for their company does not come from anything that has happened in years gone by but the desire to experience an unknown future event with them.  
I have my photo albums and my digital photographs and as I flip them I see immediately that I do not know how to take pictures of people because I’ve never done so.  I remember when I got my 35mm (I’d say my first 35mm camera, but it’s the only one I’ve ever owned) and I started getting into photographing things I saw.  I would take pictures of anything except people, buildings and telephone/electric wires.  I have missed a lot of stunning landscapes because of my refusal to take pictures of man-made objects that were not ruins in some form.  I think that this is part of my way of remembering experiences.  I remember the setting and the feeling of being there.  Even now, I don’t get all excited about photographing cities and buildings.  But I’ve started photographing people.  I can thank my family for that, mostly.  I actually enjoy taking pictures of my boy and my wife.  My step-daughter is a different story, though.  There again, my aversion to unnaturalness gets in the way.  I want to get photographs of her when she does not know I have the camera.  I don’t like posed pictures and she does her best to pose for the camera.  I’m not talking about making funny faces or doing something.  I mean that she puts on this mouth-only smile that screams out that someone is taking a picture.  That is the only instance of this smile.  I think she is a very beautiful girl and taking pictures of her would be a real joy if she didn’t pose.  However, I shall have to get used to that (hey, first usage of the word ‘shall’ on this blog-I must be listening too much to the BBC!) because she really believes that she looks better not being herself.  One of my favorite human subjects is my nephew Björn Hermann.  He has such a well-proportioned and beautiful face.  He is also very expressive and one feels as though he wears his thoughts on the outside.  He’s also still completely natural-not posing in any way.  He’s not camera shy as I was and many other kids are.
But how in God’s name did I digress so far from my point about sentimentality?!  Oh yeah, I’ve never taken pictures of people not because the mean nothing to me, but because the experiences I had with them are, for the most part, unphotographable if one wishes to capture the real essence of the moment.  I cannot imagine what makes someone sentimental about an inanimate object from their past for which they have no other use than storage somewhere.  Even with things I can only think of keeping them in the hope that I will use them again.  In the most basic form, one could say that I think of people the same way.  I know that people change through time and maybe that’s why I know that it’s pointless to dwell in the past.  Things will never be exactly the same way they were years ago.  Everything changes, inside my head and out, as time marches on.  That’s not a complaint but rather a simple fact.  I accept the change and welcome it, even, in most cases.  The unsurity of the future is exciting and encouraging; why would I want to hold on to the past?  

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Red-necked Phalarope

On Saturday I was looking for a bird called a red-necked phalarope.  I was walking a transect in a marsh in the south of the country.  I was supposed to count every bird within 50 m on either side of the line I was walking.  At the same time I was babysitting two babies.  One was my 5 year old son.  The other was a 26 year old Frenchman.  It’s amazing that he made it through an entire semester of ornithology-in which a large portion of the emphasis of the class was laid on identification of species-without learning a single damn bird!  But I digress from the point of this missive to my adoring public.  The point is that during that walk, the bird I was most hoping to see (the red-necked phalarope) didn’t show its face.  However, today when I drove into Keflavík to buy some paint and fish food I happened to bring along my binoculars.  I was fortunate I did because in the little pond across from the Bonus grocery store I found a flock of these beautiful tiny birds.  In all I counted 32 but later when I was driving home, I saw that more had arrived in the interum. Before today I had only seen 3 of these cute little critters.  I guess it paid off to be prepared.

Monday, May 22, 2006

Here Kitty Kitty


Mjási is so cute sometimes. He's your typical cat. He sleeps a lot and shows up when he wants something. I don't really like cats. But they sure are cute. Posted by Picasa

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Pictures

I posted the pictures from my ornithology trips on my travel blog.

The Best One Won!

Shortly after moving to Iceland, I became aware of yet another in the long list of popular things that are beyond my comprehension.  In this case it is a song competition.  Those of you who live in Europe or have lived in Europe know exactly what I’m talking about.  But for the few Americans in my readership, I’ll give you a little description of the competition.  It’s called the Eurovision Song Competition-Euovision for short.  Until recently, as I understand it, the competition was centered on two types of songs.  One type of song is the brainless happiness regularly played under a montage of driving and laughing sequences in a movie aimed at 13 year old girls.  The other kind of music is cheesy romance songs with a sweetness factor somewhere between Peeps smothered in saccharine and velvet “paintings” of kittens glazed with honey.  For decades, it seems, these two classifications of what can only loosely be referred to as music didn’t suffer invasion of anything with innovation or talent.  When I first saw the competition I stared in wonder that any sane, thinking person could actually like this crap.  The more I talked to people the more I became convinced that rather than voting for the best music, people of Europe were voting for the best of what was on offer.  I put forward the suggestion that if anyone with any actual talent ever entered the competition they would win it in a cinch.  I was, of course, talking about music that was written by an adult for adults and not by a cookie-cutter for the stupid masses.  
     My taste in music has always been criticized for being one the edge of what’s acceptable.  I was starting to feel that maybe that opinion had been proven right.  But earlier this Spring a band called Lordi from Finland released their song for the song competition.  It sounds very much like a song by Alice Cooper (though I don’t remember what that song was called) and the band wears costumes reminiscent of what the members of G.W.A.R. were sporting back in the eighties.  Their sound is heavy metal with a growling low-pitched lead voice and all the typical guitar chords.  Anyway, when I saw the video for the first time, I said to the person sitting next to me, “Finally a song that shows some balls!”  I knew right away that this was a test of whether I was right about my musical opinion.  
     Then the Icelandic song was released and while I don’t think Silvia Night (as she calls herself) is terribly funny, I thought it was great that SOMEONE was willing to come forward with a song that made fun of the cheese of the competition.  I thought she might have a shot.  Then she made all sorts of insulting remarks about people all over Europe and didn’t even make it into the competition.  Her song was booed and she lost her composure and ended up giving a terrible performance (according to my daughter-I was out walking on the beach on Snæfellsnes during the preliminary competition.  
     Anyway, last night the people of Europe proved that the music I think is fun is the music they like, too.  Lordi and the song “Hard Rock Hallelujah” won by a landslide.  The song in second place was 50 points below them.  It seems that the garbage music of the competition just paled by comparison to someone with a little bit of creativity.  Even my 12 year old daughter looked at me during the voting and said, “All the other music is the same, how can anyone remember which song was which?”  This is what I had been wondering since the first time I saw the competition.  
     You can see the video for the Lordi song here.  It’s real theatrical metal and I know some would say that it won merely for the cheese factor, but I like it.  And here is the Icelandic contribution from Silvía Nótt.

     Sometime soon I’ll be posting lots of pictures from the birding trips I’ve been going on for the last five days.  I’ll put them on the travel blog, though because there will be a lot of them, but I will post a notification here because I know some of you are dying with anticipation.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Mostly a Biologist

Now I'm done with my exams. I'm now just waiting for the silly ceremony in order to be allowed to call myself a biologist. So, in celebration of this major event in my life, I went ot a great party yesterday with a bunch of great people. While I was there, the others present were Halla, Hrönn, Ragna, Vigdís (I think-I'd just met her), Óskar who is called Sindri, Marinó who is called Máárius (or Mario), Guðmundur who is called Gummi, Sæmi who's real name is most likely Sæmundur (I don't really know what his real name is), Ævar, and Guðjón (though not the Guðjón who is my son-or the inspiration for my son's name). We talked, laughed, played hacky sack, cooked and ate. It reminded me of most of the parties I've thrown. Just a small group of good friends having a great time together. I had to drive home and therefore had nothing to drink, but that did not get in the way of me enjoying the party thoroughly. I should have brought my camera, but oh well...Also to celebrate this ending of this chapter of my life, I decided to raid my step-father's web site for a couple of pictures of me taken in the summer of 1986-when I was 13 (my birthday's in September). These are quality photos taken of me at the height of my interest in fashion.

Arizona--Where the Hills Have Eyes


"STOP THE CAR!!!," he shouted. "I saw a tumbleweed!" It was just like in the movies and Our Hero thought that he could definitely NOT let this photo op go to waste! This suggestion was backed up by a brother and sister tired of sitting in an overairconditioned car for the past several hours.
Now that I'm all grown up, I know that there are less comfortable ways to cross a desert than in an air conditioned Lincoln Town Car. but you know how kids are.
 Posted by Picasa

At Mesa Verde


Notice the bold choice of wearing the largest glasses I could find in combination with the freedom of movement allowed by those short-shorts! And, holy crap are those spindly things under my waist legs?! Now, exactly 20 years later, I still haven't found something I like to do with my hair. I went through the 1980's flat top look without much success. I tried the punky look with long hair on top but shaved underneath and beads in a long goatee. I tried letting it grow and fly wherever it felt like flying. Right now, I'm mostly just trying to hide the fact that it's creeping off toward the back of my head! Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Footbag Fetish

Those damned 2nd year students have really ruined me this time.  For the last 6 years or so, I’ve been working very hard at falling out of shape.  What little muscle I had when I was 27 was slowly atrophying away, making room for glorious bags of flabby skin and cellulite.  I noticed the other day that my nipples almost point downward and I look like I’m wearing a baggy sweater that’s tucked in at the waist.  You see, the real reason for this glorious metamorphosis toward being a middle aged man had been kept at bay by an addiction I have. It’s a serious thing that consumes time in huge greasy bites.  There were days when I was in college at Bridgewater when I did nothing but satisfy this addiction, much to the detriment of my grade point average.  I would fall into a zone of concentration and ecstasy that locked out all else and hours would fleet past as so many leaves in a hurricane.  
I am, of course, talking about hacky sack.  One would think that kicking a little leather bean bag would get tiresome after a little while and the lures of personal betterment would dig their claws into my grey matter and command my attention.  But no.  Well, I had gotten over this horrible addiction and moved on with my life.  Of course, I immediately fixated on computer games to waste my time, but hey, that’s what men my age are supposed to do, right?  But these conniving little brats discovered hacky sack and in their usual friendly (and seemingly) harmless way, they invited me out to play.  That was a few days ago.  Now, I’ve fallen off the wagon and I can’t get enough.  I try to read my Ecotoxicology notes and all I see are little footbags bouncing around the page.  My legs won’t stop twitching.  I’m sweaty and feel unclean with this uninvited monkey sitting on my shoulder.  
My dear wife will probably be very grateful to these young adults for getting me back into a presentable shape.  Maybe she’ll stop taking the light bulb out of the socket in the bedroom!  Hmm, on second thought, maybe it’s not so bad that my addiction has been reawakened.  My yearning for just one more attempt at making a successful third hack (that’s when everyone in the circle kicks the damned thing at least once before it hits the ground) might just bring me closer to my beautiful darling wife.  
Now that I think of it this way, I wonder: is it possible that an addiction can be a good thing?  I will just have to see.  School’s almost out for the summer (what am I thinking…I’m graduating!!!).  Then I can take some time to really work myself into a kicking frenzy.
But for now I have to try to rein myself in and study so that I achieve some acceptable grades.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Picnic and Ornithology

Today I went for a picnic at a place that I found a couple of years ago, but for some reason have only returned to once. This is one of the coolest places I know of close to my home and we enjoyed tunafish in the warm sunshine. There were lots of bird ssinging and flying about. There were a few wheatears, and some meadow pippits. You can see photos I took there on my travel blog site and if you want copies, let me know and I’ll send you some by e-mail or I could burn them onto a cd. The weather got in the way of studying today. I don’t have anothr exam until Thursday and felt that taking one day off from reading was not pushing it too much. The ornithology exam went pretty well yesterday. There was one question I couldn’t answer as fully as I would have liked, but hey, even if I had studied that material, would I really have remember next year how many nesting pairs of auks there are here and where their nests are?! No. That’s the kind of question that I don’t like to get on an exam. It just tests to see if you memorized some numbers. It doesn’t test your knowledge of the subject.
But I’m in such a good mood, I’m certainly not going to waste it thinking about tht crapola.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Easter Ice

There was ice on the shores of the pond near the school in Vogar during Easter Break. Posted by Picasa

Crawdaddy is Beautiful


Well, I can't imagine why anyone would think that a crayfish is ugly. I think it's beautiful. I guess it might just be one of those things that forms the chasm that lies between me and the normal man. Crawdaddy is the larger of my two crayfish. Mudbugger is the smaller. Although she is not as big as he is, she is still beautiful. Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Black and White

 
Crawdaddy's exoskeleton in black and white. Posted by Picasa

Monday, May 01, 2006

 
Did Mr. Mjási like meeting this cool looking white dog with different colored eyes? No, he did not. He arched his back and hissed and growled. He was terrifying. Well, as terrifying as a house cat can be. Posted by Picasa