Carl Setzer

At work, part II - The Big Picture - Boston.com A collection of well done photographs featuring workers working. I'm sure it's fine to be impressed and glorify workers, as long as we keep it distinct from Labor. (Thanks, Jenny , for the link) Anyway, this is one of my favorites...but I love books. From Boston.com An employee shelves books in the old books collection area at the Municipal Library of Lyon, France on January 15, 2010. The government of France is currently undertaking a 750 million euro ($1 billion) project to digitize its libraries and museums. (REUTERS/Robert Pratta)

Tulip - Freehand Pen & Ink , originally uploaded by carl.setzer . A quick sketch for my son. He wanted a tulip, and this what I crunched out without any reference.

Story: Vancouver police chief says innocent man beaten by officers did not resist Brief synopsis: a man is beaten by police after a domestic disturbance call. Problem: police were at the wrong place and the man was completely innocent. Initial press statement says the chap was beaten because he resisted arrest. This story retracts that assertion. I’ll leave it to others to ascertain the “wrong-ness” of the police officers’ actions (read the comments in the story if you want to see that discussion). However, I feel a need to look at the way the department managed the press. The initial statement was destructive. Their credibility was significantly damaged. Leadership looks out of control, dumb, inept or unscrupulous. There are folks claiming that the powers-that-be knew full well the falseness and the only reason they’re coming “clean” is that they were caught. I have no insights into the department, so I can’t comment to the veracity of such a claim. However, this sort of error/poor...

Rain flows gently down Pools slowly, circles reach out Damp chill feels like home Odd that this came to me today as we were quite free of rain. Actually, sunny and warm...like spring time warmth. However, I’ve lived in the Seattle area a good portion of my life. I guess this just comes naturally.

So very much done today. A blur, flurry of randomized tasks, along with all the high-priority items. With this, I managed to meet with several local bloggers. Now, though, evening’s finality creeps in. Even with my pleasing productivity, I still agonize about all that’s not done. Silly, perhaps, but that’ me. Hung up on what’s lacking, what I haven’t accomplished. Too easy to forget what’s done, where success lay.

At the Big Blog Meetup , originally uploaded by Hugger Industries . Thanks to Bike Hugger for capturing this shot of the Big Blog meet up in Pioneer Square (Seattle). I do enjoy Zeitgeist coffee! It was a delight to meet Seattle area bloggers, and commiserate about things only newsgeeks/junkies would care about.

100_1895 , originally uploaded by carl.setzer . I am quite pleased with this shot. The macro setting of my little Kodak does some nice work. I could have done a better job with framing it, though. And it's a bit grainy for my liking.

A little while back, I posted a piece about FriendFeed , and one of my friends asked me about how it compared to Posterous . I stumbled upon this poll at Mashable that compares Posterous with Tumblr (note: the poll is from September). I had messed with Tumblr, but didn’t go anywhere with it. I might need to give it another look.    

Gourmet scented pencils , originally uploaded by carl.setzer . Really...I just had to capture this one.

By REBECCA MACKINNON One night in the mid-1990s when I was working as a journalist in Beijing, I went out to dinner with some Chinese friends. I had just finished reading a book called "The File" by the British historian Timothy Garton Ash. It's about what happened in East Berlin after the Berlin Wall came down and everybody could see the files the Stasi had been keeping all those years. People discovered who had been ratting on whom—in some cases neighbors and co-workers, but also lovers, spouses and even children. After I described the book to my Chinese dinner companions—a hip and artsy intellectual crowd—one friend declared: "Some day the same thing will happen in China, then I'll know who my real friends are." The table went silent. China today is very different from Soviet-era Eastern Europe. It's unlikely that its current political system—or its system for blocking foreign Web sites known widely as the "great firewall"—will cr...

It's not often I see a graphic that does a good job communicating something, anything. I spend a lot of time looking at graphics in presentations that either try to communicate too much, or not enough, or nothing at all. This one really is exceptional. Great use of color, white space, image size, etc to tell many components of a story laddering into a larger point. Edward Tufte would be proud. (Graphic from The Global Sociology Blog . For full size, Click Here

Earlier this week I read a rather disturbing story, Michael Finkel ’s “ How I Convinced a Death-Row Murderer Not to Die ”. Now, I dimly remember the story from early in the decade (it happened in Oregon). Interesting, from a sociological point of view. However, for me, the story went into some depth on the murder (the subject, Christian Longo, murdered his whole family). Those sorts of details tend to disturb and haunt me. Gladly, I read the thing in early afternoon, giving myself some time to disconnect. Otherwise, my night’s sleep would’ve been disrupted (as has happened after reading/hearing other such stories). This is why I generally don’t watch the news in the evening, and defiantly late at night. If I’m up in the dark of night for insomnia, I avoid both the news, but also “true crime” shows which are so popular. And I avoid all the “mystery” shows, as well as any of the crime-based dramas. Now, some would say this is due to my liberal, bleeding-heart tendencies, or some such r...