tales of an ordinary girl

For my final photo assignment I have four photos due. Two must be contrived (set up in some way) and two must be observed. I'm not very good at contrived. I always feel.. artificial.

The first two pictures in the set below are contrived and they're not nearly as good. Anyone recognize the hands? The second two are observed, familiar from the Science Fair set, but further edited.

The last picture I liked a lot, but it's not quite as good, so it was cut from the final set. I took it on a busy side road near our apartment. I kept stepping out in traffic as cars cleared the road. I probably made some drivers nervous.



Original Source

I came across a review of Torn By God over at Letters from a broad and thought the book would be interesting. I was not raised a Mormon, but I was raised in a strict religious family and much like Beth, the main character in the story, I didn't know anything outside of that life.

Beth's father becomes convinced that in order to reach heaven with his family he must return to the roots of Mormonism, which includes the practice of polygamy. She watches her parents struggle with the tenants of their faith and their relationship with each other as her mother rejects that belief. Although her father never completely follows through with it, it's enough to tear the family apart, throwing her mother into a deep depression.

Beth and her brother, through the eyes of children, don't understand what's going on. Zoe brings the story out through conversations Beth overhears and her parent's journals.

In the end each family member comes to their own understanding of how to deal with religion in their life, but there isn't a neat answer.

I can relate to Beth because she grew up insulated, accepting her life as normal. And she was a normal child, even if most people outside of her faith would find her beliefs strange. I think all religions are strange to outsiders although most people don't notice it from the inside.

For example, glossolia, or speaking in tongues, is seen by most people as a pretty crazy practice, but growing up it was a normal part of life for me. I only find it odd now because I'm outside of the church.

And just like Beth, I found it difficult to reconcile certain beliefs and actions of the church. For me it was the conflicting ideas in the Bible, the greed of the tele-evangelists, and learning about the world outside the church. For others it's been the pedophilia or other sexual scandals within the church that have been the final straw.

But it's not the sensational that really drives people to doubt their religion. It's the every day small questions.

For a better understanding of Zoe and how the book relates to her life there is an excellent interview at A Motley Vision.

Astronomy
GRB 090423: The Farthest Explosion Yet Measured
An explosion so powerful it was seen clear across the visible universe was recorded in gamma-radiation last week by NASA's orbiting Swift Observatory. Farther than any known galaxy, quasar, or optical supernova, the gamma-ray burst recorded last week was clocked at redshift 8.2, making it the farthest explosion of any type yet detected. Occurring only 630 million years after the Big Bang, GRB 090423 detonated so early that astronomers had no direct evidence that anything explodable even existed back then. The faint infrared afterglow of GRB 090423 was recovered by large ground telescopes within minutes of being discovered. The afterglow is circled in the above picture taken by the large Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii, USA. An exciting possibility is that this gamma-ray burst occurred in one of the very first generation of stars and announced the birth of an early black hole. Surely, GRB 090423 provides unique data from a relatively unexplored epoch in our universe and a distant beacon from which the intervening universe can be studied.

Lyrid Meteor and Milky Way



Framed by Clouds



Games
Bioware: only we can create gay Star Wars characters
Dealing with sexuality and religion in video games has become something of a tender subject, but Bioware seems to be the latest company to fumble in its dealings with the topic. It seems that the terms "gay," "lesbian," and even "homosexual" were stricken from acceptable words in the official Bioware forums, and threads talking about creating gay, lesbian, transgendered or bisexual characters were shut down.

The curt response from community manager Sean Dahlberg is telling. "As I have stated before, these are terms that do not exist in Star Wars. Thread closed." That's apparently all the discussion Bioware was willing to have on the issue.

But Bioware fans know that while the terms may not exist in Star Wars, gay and lesbian characters certainly do. It was a pretty open secret that Juhanni, a woman in Knights of the Old Republic, had a female lover. Juhanni would respond to your character romantically if you were a woman. So Bioware can create lesbian characters, but discussions of gay or lesbian characters are verboten? Classy.