Mokka mit Schlag

Augochlora pura
Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY, 2009-09-20

I first wrote about this almost 20 years ago on the NYMUG BBS, but some otherwise intelligent folks still haven’t gotten the message, and persist in making fools of themselves in public while the pirates laugh their asses off. Software/music/book piracy is not theft. Legally, theft involves specific actions under the law. Distributing unauthorized copies of purchased books/music/software is illegal in most jurisdictions, but it is not now and never has been theft. Anyone who says otherwise (and they are legion) is blowing hot air; and everyone who isn’t in the content business (as well as some of us who are) at least implicitly recognizes this. Trying to convince folks that piracy is theft is as hopeless as trying to convince people the world is flat. The reality is just too obvious for such wrong ideas to take hold. The copyright industry is attempting to preserve a doomed business model by name calling. <sarcasm>Yeah, that’s going to work.</sarcasm>.
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I’ve installed WP Super Cache. It’s supposed to be transparent, but holler if you notice any problems.

Last weekend I saw moths everywhere I went in Staten Island and Brooklyn. This weekend I couldn’t find a single one so we return to William R. Mason Regional Park in California for Hodges#5451.2, Parapediasia torquatella:

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I walked around the lake in Prospect Park today, looking to see if any of the old four banded geese were still around. No such luck. They may have moved on. However I did find a fifth banded goose from the sames series, NA49:

It has been hanging out since at least January of this year.

After some more experimentation with my Tamron 28-300 Di VC, I think I finally understand what this lens is and what to do with it. It is a closeup lens, not a telephoto lens. That is, it takes really good pictures fairly close (within a few meters) and pretty crappy ones far away. For example look at this nice close-up of a juvenile American coot taken at 300mm:

Santee Lakes, San Diego County, 2009-08-23
1/800 s, f/6.3, ISO 400, handheld

It’s pretty good, especially around the body where you can easily make out the individual feathers. In fact, if anything, it’s over-sharp; though that’s probably just a combination of me over-sharpening it in Lightroom and the JPEG conversion. The original full-size photo is even better than this.

Now compare to this shot of a far-away coot taken with the same lens. You’d expect the subject to be smaller, but it’ worse than that: very, very fuzzy and unsharp, even with a much faster shutter speed:
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