Curious people asking questions about equipment

"Allen, begging is not an honorable thing to do. Read any religious scriptures, and nowhere is there a mention of taking up begging. These people are too lazy to get up and work for a living. "

 

Vic, how predictable of you. BTW - you didnt answer my question about what community you come from? Sikh, Rajput, what?

 

As for the scriptures, they simply prove here as everywhere else their complete irrelevance to real life. It doesn't surprise me that you see the down and out as people to be swept away - preferably violently. You are, after all, an Indian ex-pat.

For instance, Vic, if you'd like to severely beat or kill this dishonourable child, I can tell you where she lives - offlist, of course, we wouldn't want a stampede of righteous avengers to downtown Bombay.<div></div>

Appleby, I can understand your sentiments. People like you haven't got used to the fact that Britannia doesn't rule the waves any more, that the US is far and away the country that Britain craves to be. Therefore, to assuage your disappointment you worship at the altar of underachievement, despite the wonderful educational opportunities available in Southern England. And, you denigrate those who your countrymen exploited for years, and who seek to better themselves, by hurling epithets in their direction, and forming absurd conclusions about them.

 

On top of that, you use a US$6,000 camera setup (M6 + 35 Lux Asph + 24 Asph) to take pictures of people who live on less than $1 a day, (giving them nothing but the glimpse of your superior self), then go back to your fancy hotel room, have a nice hot bath, put your feet up, launch smoke rings with your cigar while swirling a snifter of brandy, and contemplate the dinner menu, wondering whether to have the foie gras or the beluga, the merlot or the cab. At the dinner table you discuss the nuances of Salgado and Winogrand, secretly wishing that one day you could reach their stature. Then you post pictures of the homeless on the web and pontificate to those who work hard for a living, smirking at their incomprehensible industriousness. When you had an expensive Leica setup (no Elmars for Robbie!) you thought it was the ultimate, but now you choose to mock the same people and the photo site, and try to sell them the cameras. Ah, the joys of a Port and Stilton lifestyle. As Gilbert and Sullivan sang, "There will always be an England!"

Vic: "Read any religious scriptures, and nowhere is there a mention of taking up begging."

That's not true: Begging is an important practice in different directions of Buddhism.

Roland, You are right about Buddhism, I stand corrected. I don't know much about Buddhism, but I assume these people doing the begging are not dishonorable people, unlike the other types of beggars. A major difference IMHO.

Vic - you've got me dead to rights there! I really am an uncaring bastard. Oh well...

That's a pretty funny cariacture there, Vic. But I would have figured ol' Xinbad for a pipe man. It gives such a scholarly air.

Funny you should say that, Preston - I'm starting to smoke a pipe because cigars are a bit too expensive for me at the moment, even the relatively cheap Italian ones I've been smoking over the last year. Anyway, we stray from the burning issue of why Hans is so damn fanciable with his giant lens...

With a 4x5 speed graphic on a tripod; I was lifting up the front standard; with a wide angle lens; shooting a building. A fellow asked me "what movie are you shooting?"<BR><BR>With a M3 and a 105mm Nikkor; several people asked me last week "Is it a digital camera?." ....One kid asked me "where is the view screen?"<BR><BR>At an airport last year; the TSA agents asked "where is the flash"; when I had my Leica M3. <BR><BR>The TSA agents were really weirded out by a Gossen Luna Pro; they asked "what is it used for?"<BR><BR>When hand held GPS's came out years back; I had alot of people ask "where is your camera?" They thought the Garmin was a light meter!

One idiot neighbor back in the 1960's would turn his porch lights; yard lightl; when I brought out my 6" reflector; to do hand guided/clock driven time exposures; using my Exaktas piggybacked on my telescope. He thought his lights<h3> "would HELP me SEE the STARS better"</h3><BR><BR>Letting him view M57; saturn; jupiter with his yard lights on helped me educate a masters in teaching that his lights ruined my astro viewing....He was a science teacher...

Xinbad, I'm just surprised we haven't yet heard from the redoubtable Albert Knapp, MD, who was formerly the authority on matters pertaining, but not restricted, to urchins, scatterlings, beggars, riffraff, touts, cretins, and rogues.

Xinbad, I'm glad you have a sense of humour! Don't forget to wear your cravat while using the pipe, a la Sherlock Holmes. And a smoking jacket is de riguer of course, with ethe monogrammed slippers. Ah, the high taste developed by the English, you simply cannot top it.

 

Speaking of the high price of tobacco products, a lot of people in the US get their smokes from a Swiss site www.yesmoke.ch The prices are around US$1.50 a pack (shipped), versus US$8.50 in New York. They also sell cigars, so you might want to compare their prices.

 

When in college in England, any self-respecting wanker rolled their own in Rizla paper. Somehow, the women smoked Dunhills.