Still Life With Small Miracle

I've got a two-part post tonight.

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Take a snap of something in a "still life" mode. It doesn't have to be a bowl of fruit, mind you (although there's nothing wrong with a bowl of fruit, if that's your thing). But something that you can get contemplative about would be nice. Also, it doesn't move, unless you go and pick it up.

Other than bowls of flowers or fruit, I wasn't quite sure what a still life is. For example, does it have to contain something that's alive but doesn't move? So I checked Wikipedia (there's that word again!):

A still life is a work of art depicting a collection of usually inanimate objects, typically natural -- (flowers, game, sea shells and so on) -- or man-made domestic items -- (drinking glasses, foodstuffs, pipes, books and so on).

Okay, we'll go with that as a working definition, at least of the purpose of this meme. Having just eaten a chicken salad bagel when I came across this, I cleaned up my desk a little and took a bunch of pictures of the empty plate. I did most of them with the camera's "close-up" scene settings, some with the camera propped up somewhere for better focus, some not. Later, because I don't want the pictures to be boring, I messed around with most of them using one of my cheap photo editing programs, PhotoStudio 2000. Here are some of the results:

Still Life with Bambi

Still Life in Orange

Still Life in Crayon

Still Life With Cell Phone

Still Life With Books

Am I supposed to contemplate something in connection with these pictures? Very well, then. I'm thinking I need to get my desk cleaned off. Better photo editing software would be nice, too. And a tripod.

Meanwhile, the edit war about the Wikipedia Disemvoweling article is suddenly over. It was an intense, distracting day, with more accusations and edits and reverts (undoing someone else's edit), and attempts by Julie and others to help with links to cite. In the end, it came down to establishing whether it's factual to say that once people are disemvoweled on a blog or forum, "most" of them can't ever post normally again on that venue. A counter-example was found, and I added that to the article, along with a link to the inventor of disemvoweling saying that if the person behaves well after that, the moderator should "forgive and forget." Meanwhile, there were attempts to take the dispute resolution process to the next level, advocacy.

Then, much to my surprise, Mark accepted my edit, which left most of his text in place as well. It wasn't an ideal version, but I'd take it. Then, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles (yes, I've got Fiddler on the Roof running in my head), somebody with no prior history on the article came in, rewrote it extensively, organized it into more sections, incorporated and summarized citations, and left it looking a heck of a lot better. Mark accepted that version, too! Wow!

Next he complained again about the link he didn't like over on the Barbara Bauer article on Wikipedia, which is a dead link anyway. So I did a rewrite on that one, too. So far, it's holding.

Tomorrow Night: Us and Them, Me and Him, and That Other Them! (Thanks, Julie!)

Karen

P.S. I know I'm three days late on The Jace Letters. I'll make it up to you Tuesday night.


Technorati Tags: Monday Photo Shoot, Still Life, Scalzi, Wikipedia, ethics, Us and Them, Conflict