[rescue] Blades in the dark

[George Adkins]

On Thursday 22 November 2001 03:56 pm, you wrote:
> George Adkins wrote:
> > it's the (as usual) uneducated American Consumer who decided that the
> > purpose of flash photography was to allow them to take pictures in the
> > dark without turning the damn lights on.
>
> IIRC the "very uneducated" Mr. Edgerton took his pictures in the dark using
> only flash. Not to nitpick but you also should capitalize the "uneducated"
> in "uneducated American Consumer" since you seem to be wanting to use the
> whole thing as a proper noun phrase. :-)
Actually I was using 'American Consumer' as the proper noun, but if you like, 
I will in the future alter my usage to 'uneducated American consumer'.  As to 
the use of flash photography in the dark,  I'm not saying that it doesn't 
work, or that it cannot produce results using the proper equipment.  I am 
saying that the built-in flash to be found in todays modern cheap-ass camera 
is not the proper equipment to take such pictures, and that the average 
'uneducated American consumer' couldn't produce good results even if they 
_did_ have the proper equipment.

> > it's that whole "I don't want to learn anything, I just want it to work
> > when I push the button" thing all over again.
>
> If you are lamenting the demise of the fully manual SLR, I wholeheartedly
> agree. 

To the degree that they have disappeared, yes I am. (I am the proud owner of 
2 K1000's which I use regularly...)

More than that however, I am lamenting the consumer attitude which diminishes 
the talented and the motivated people in the world.  This idea that everyone 
should somehow be able to do anything for themselves, and that all the people 
who worked hard to learn specialized skills are now somehow redundant and 
should re-train to be ordinary, or starve to death.

Who needs professional photographers, we have digital photography now!
Who needs network engineers, we have Windows XP!
soon it will be: Who needs Doctors? I can buy antibiotics over the counter...

My employer hired me to head a department and build a database, now that the 
database has been built, I'm being told that they want to re-negotiate me to 
a lower rate of pay because "Youre not doing so much of the really technical 
stuff now...".  

Sure...  Tech economy is in the crapper, nobody's hiring, hey, let's cut his 
salary...  It's not like ge's going to go anywhere...