About the Author
I am a 27 year-old dabbler in amateur photography who also spends his time being an amateur political-pundit and professional nerd as life plays itself out in Chicagoland. I originally hail from the Detroit metro area, and I am a part of the Michigan Diaspora – a generation of young people who have fled a state inexorably tied to dying industries, permanently handicapped with largely poor leadership from the state to local level – leadership that is largely inept to the true depth of systemic problems, or just willfully ignorant.
Weather was my first love, followed by politics and “being aware”, followed by technology. I still love all three but I can resoundingly say that the latter is the best path to a livable life. These three loves will generally provide the basis for most of what I write about in this blog, and hopefully they mesh well.
Weather showed up as an interest to me in the early 1990′s, when I strapped a thermometer to a shaded tree trunk, and wrote down the temperature every day between 3 and 4pm. I used to watch The Weather Channel and draw weather maps of my own on countless sheets of loose-leaf - getting a workout from the 96-color Big Box of Crayola Crayons and black pens for the outlines. As a side effect, I also gained knowledge in geography.
I became politically aware in the late 1990′s. Compared to now, those are the glory days – days when the biggest stories around were as mundane as Presidential sex scandals, rocketing stock markets, seemingly far away and quickly operated wars with no flag-draped coffins, and a general sense of optimism about the century to come. Unemployment was also under 4%. Those were some good days. I shrank into a tiny minority after 9/11 who wasn’t interested in blood-lust against every country with a majority-Muslim population. My political views since have remained to the left-of-center, and though I am told I share beliefs with “the hippies”, to my knowledge I own nothing made out of hemp, nor have I participated in a drum circle.
Photography crept into life when I was off to school in 2002 – 2004. I had a digital camera that I broke the screen of the first day I used it, but thankfully it had an old fashioned viewfinder. The interest in taking pictures of things grew out of a growing disinterest in taking pictures of people. Sometimes post-teenage antisocial behavior has its advantages. Starting in 2003, I’ve taken more pictures annually with each passing year, and trying to improve at it. I refuse to call myself professional as I get no money from this, and I only begrudgingly call myself amateur as I see others out there who wear that same label yet produce work that is vastly superior to mine, in my opinion. At any rate, a gallery pulled from my Flickr account is displayed below.
As mentioned, these three loves should guide what I write about here, and hopefully will wind up being useful and a good read to some of you out there in Internet land. I appreciate you stopping by.
jad
Ars Technica
Bonddad Blog
Dr. Jeff Masters | Wunderground
Seeking Alpha