'Nother Link Fiesta

• You stay classy, Fred Phelps.

• Due to an administrative error, probably mine, I was one day late with my credit card payment to Bank of America last month (previous post on how BoA screws its customers and gets away with it here). Result: on my most recent statement, my interest rate took the express elevator from 7.99% to 19.99%. BoA did nothing to draw attention to that outsized hike; I was lucky I discovered it when I scrutinized the statement, which I don't always do. In fairness, the customer service rep I talked to quickly agreed to give me my old rate back. But after I hung up, the bad taste lingered, and I decided I'm done with these gotcha-games-playing douches. Want my business? Earn it, with a good product, fair policies, and superior service — the way companies like American Express and USAA have consistently done for decades, in my experience. So today, I paid off my $9K Bank of America bill; and tomorrow, I'll be closing the account. Thanks for the memories, guys. OK, not for the memories. For the blog posts you inspired, then, and for the reminder that in a free market, people have options — and that it can be a joy to exercise them.

• Just last month, it emerged that a toll road company offered every member of the Indiana state legislature a special no-charge pass. Now it turns out that public officials in Maryland and Virginia are being given the same perk, and gladly accepting it.

• The topic of drugs can be inflammatory. But marijuana? It lessens the inflammatory. It's in-inflammatory, if you get my drift. Whoa — let me clear my head with a tub of cookie dough. Here's what I mean.

• See, this is why you need Head & Shoulders anti-dandruff shampoo. Buckets and buckets of it.

M. had scratched through her skull during the night — and all the way into her brain.

A penny-dreadful short story by a young Edgar Allen Poe? A long-lost Dario Argento script? Clive Barker on crack? No — Atul Gawande writing in the current issue of the New Yorker. And apparently, it's non-fiction.

• Just because he's paranoid doesn't mean Bruce Schneier shouldn't be taken seriously.

• Exactly how badly does food have to taste to be unconstitutional?

• Two months ago, while visiting London, I spent about an hour practicing panning shots of moving traffic. My skills thus sharpened, I was off to the Mille Miglia in Italy just weeks later, a fabulous old-race-car rally that I photographed on assignment for Road & Track.

Here's one of the London photos (for illustrative purposes only, not because I think it deserves a Pulitzer):

Now I find I could have been detained for questioning; England's finest have begun clamping down on omniboligists, otherwise known as bus photographers.

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Couple of my Mille Miglia pan shots:

More photos here.

Comments

[RangerGordon]

Beautiful panning shots. Your technique seems to achieve a weirdly beautiful, miniaturizing tilt-shift effect. Is that intentional?

I was reminded of a quote--"It takes a very steady hand!"--from a TV commercial that ran in the late '70s/early '80s for "Operation, the wacky doctor's game!"

[Rogier]

Thanks Gordon. I think I know what you mean with miniaturizing, and I have on occasion deliberately added that effect to some aerial shots I took. Photoshop tutorial and some cool examples here: http://recedinghairline.co.uk/tutorials/fakemodel/

But the panning shots are all natural, for the most part, other than some added vignetting. The miniaturizing effect mentioned above is achieved primarily by selectively applying simulated blur, and panning photos have plenty of NATURAL blur -- that's the nature of the beast, obviously. So your brain might be confusing the two.

To answer your question, no, it's not intentional, it's probably just another one of my shortcomings (in reverse Gates-speak, "it's a bug, not a feature"). But I'm glad you like those photos. I do too.

[Phelps]

Again, for the record, no relation.

[varro]

I got the same "change in terms" interest rate hike on my BofA Amex card - 9.99% to 24.99%.

After the trained monkey refused to budge, I shredded the card on the phone in front of him, and will send BofA a certified letter rejecting the terms - I don't trust them to keep their word or accept a regular letter.