Jeff Rivers

Hi. My name is Jeff Rivers. I'm an information developer and photographer. This is a mirror of my website www.jeffrivers.com and a place where I share other interesting Tumblr posts.

Democracy at work

I did something today that I don’t do as often as I should: I called and wrote my elected officials.

Senator Feinstein:

Thank you for your service to our country and your home state – of which I am a resident and a registered voter. I’m writing today to express my concerns about a specific government activity that you support and are apparently in a position to affect in your role as Chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee.

The personal privacy invasions of our citizens and the assumptions of guilt by our government and elected officials has to stop. Clearly, it has already gone too far.

I oppose NSA telephone/e-mail surveillance without a warrant as it violates the 4th Amendment of the United States Constitution, regardless of it’s “legality” under the myriad of Orwellian activities covered by the Patriot Act.

If you’re interested in protecting America – as you’ve been quoted as saying in defense of these activities – I encourage you to focus your efforts in first protecting the freedoms guaranteed to all Americans. However, you cannot support these freedoms AND the activities being carried out by the NSA as they are directly opposed. I ask you to reconsider your current stance on this issue and make your choice wisely.

If you continue to support such violations of my individual liberties, you will not have my vote going forward and I will actively support the strongest opposition candidate in an effort to prevent your re-election.

Respectfully,

Jeff Rivers
Vallejo, CA

Freedom of (and from) religion

Nothing gets me going quite like someone who comes to my home, on my time, uninvited, and tries to force their religious beliefs on me. Imagine how offensive it would be if I (an atheist) went door-to-door trying to convince religious people that their beliefs were bullshit. It’s easy to imagine a religious person being upset by that. And I would never deign to do such a thing.

What these people don’t realize is that religious freedom flows in both directions. I guess I’m fortunate that my home has a door with a lock on it. If it didn’t, I wonder where the attempts at indoctrination would end.

Anyway, they never get they convert they seek, but their concept of the Devil is likely to be reinforced for all of their efforts.

Christmas with my daughter

Tree decorating

It’s been years since I’ve cared much about Christmas. It’s always a nice opportunity to get together with friends and family, but over time I’ve tuned out all the trappings of the holiday. Observing my two year old daughter and seeing Christmas 2012 through her eyes has been a very different experience. She decorated her first Christmas tree this past weekend and we’re paying our first visit to Santa this coming weekend. Her excitement is contagious. It’ll be years before she gives me a gift for Christmas – and that’s fine – what she’s giving me already is plenty to be grateful for.

World Series fever

Giants

World Series fever has taken over the Bay Area – and our house along with it.

Having grown up in Massachusetts, my baseball allegiances lie with the Red Sox. But, I lived in the Bay Area from 2001-2003, and during that time I adopted the Giants as my favorite NL team. It’s nice to see them doing so well and all the local excitement that goes along with it, especially in light of the horrible season the Red Sox have had.

(Photo geek info: 50mm f1.8 at f11 for 1/100 sec. Vivitar 285HV straight above and angled down. Retouched a bit in Lightroom to make the hat stand out against the dark background.)

Surf fishing

Surf fishing

Whitehorse Beach, Plymouth, MA. Four second exposure to blur the tide.

Week in review: August 10, 2012

The big news around here this week was the Chevron refinery fire, which happened only a few miles from where I live and had us sheltering-in-place for about six hours. The fire sent hundreds to the hospital and gas prices over $4/gallon on the west coast. After initially saying that air quality was unaffected by the fire (which is another way of saying that air quality sucks in general, isn’t it?), air quality officials are now saying the air was toxic. So far, Chevron’s reaction to the fire has been ridiculed by local residents. I took this video of the fire about 45 minutes after it started:

Last week, I mentioned it was nice to see the New York Times giving Oakland a little love. This week, they take a long, hard look at Oakland’s past, present, and future. (Spoiler alert: The “last refuge for radical America” is going away. Is this a good thing?)

A few months ago, I turned on Google’s two-factor authentication. After reading Mat Honan’s experiences of getting hacked last week and his follow-up story for Wired, I’m glad I did. My primary concern at the time was to make my email more secure, but I didn’t consider how my Gmail account could open doors to other services and even my devices. If you’re a Gmail user, I recommend you turn on two-factor authentication. Lifehacker has all the backstory on Mat’s hacking and information on how to enable two-factor authentication.

This photo of the Curiosity’s heat shield falling to the surface of Mars is a preview of what’s to come. Let’s hope images like this Mars panorama start coming in soon.

Codeacademy now offers a course in Python. Study up, then go build the next YouTube or Reddit. And here are five other sites that will teach you Python, if you’re so inclined.

“If they think I’m going to surrender, it’s not going to happen”, says Sheriff Joe Arpaio in his Rolling Stone feature. What Sheriff Joe doesn’t realize is that his opponents don’t want him to surrender. They want him to go to jail.

My least favorite part of the Olympics are the networks’ features designed to stir our emotions. Not that I’ve got a heart of stone, I just think they’re a distraction from the drama playing out in front of us. If you just watch what’s happening, you see that it’s right there and a hundred times better than anything scripted. Case in point…

Pine Cone

Pine Cone

Pine Cone on Flickr

Our neighbor has huge pine trees (Jeffrey pines, best I can tell) growing in his yard. The branches hang over into our yard. Occasionally, a massive pine cone shows up beneath the tree. This one is about half the size of a pineapple.

Week in review: August 3, 2012

What would the night sky look like if other planets orbited Earth at the same distance as the Moon:

Scale from Brad Goodspeed on Vimeo.

Fox News will go to great lengths to dispute President Obama’s claim that business owners didn’t build the infrastructure that allowed their businesses to thrive. And they really nailed him this time.

I like margaritas, but they’re admittedly a little girly. Here are some manlier options. Or, just wash your girly drink with one of these steak sandwiches and no one will ever question your manhood.

Slate put together a set of cool interactive graphics showing how top Olympic competitors over the years would perform head-to-head.

I thought this photo project that recreates atom bomb test detonations was cool.

It’s nice to see the New York Times giving Oakland a little love.

This 50 megapixel, 23 photograph panorama of New York during last week’s storm looks like something out of a movie.

It sounds like it’s hard not to be a helicopter parent these days. After reading that article, I’ve added Teach Your Children Well to my reading list.

On the subject of reading lists: Here are 15 Malcolm Gladwell wannabes. If you like Gladwell’s books, you might want to give some of these authors a try.

How hot has it been in New York city? Check out this footage of the Statue of Liberty:

Melting Statue of Liberty from Vincent Ullmann on Vimeo.

The Milky Way over Monument Valley. Visiting Monument Valley was one from my Arizona bucket list that I never got around to.