Anonymity and cabbages

click photo to enlarge
A few months after I'd begun this blog I had an email from someone. In the course of comments about photography and the images I was posting he remarked that he found it odd that I was using my real name rather than a nom de plume or "handle". My answer was that I didn't write anything that I wouldn't say publicly, or couldn't defend, nor was I gratuitously abusive, and I wouldn't direct any offensive criticism at an individual. Consequently, I said, I see no need to hide behind a pen name.

In recent years I've come to see anonymity on the internet as a greater problem than I initially thought. There are times when it is clearly useful: whistleblowers and the like would be much less likely to surface without the protection it offers. However, the other side of the coin is the enormous amount of abuse and incitement to hatred that arises because of the ability to make anonymous postings. People will say to strangers on websites things that they would never say face-to-face. In fact, the whole tone of some discussions is at best hectoring, and at worse, venomous; a dialogue of the deaf, that is casually spiteful, sneering and strident. Some websites have little else. Other sites, that feature normally civil discourses often find themselves polluted by crude mischief-makers (trolls) or deranged louts. Would we lose more than we gain by removing the opportunity to be anonymous - if that were possible, which it probably isn't? There are times when I think that maybe we wouldn't.

Today's photograph results from the principle of making the most of what you have. When I cut open my red cabbage I felt there was a close up and a whole head shot in the vegetable, and here's my attempt at the latter. I placed the cabbage on black vinyl for the photograph, then converted to black and white to emphasise the patterns of the unfurled, convoluted leaves. Which brings to mind a variation on the old childhood joke:

Q. What's black and white and red all over?
A. A newspaper?
A. A sun-burned zebra?
A. No, a monochrome photograph of a red cabbage.

Bomm! Boom! Aaagh, that's terrible! After making a joke that bad I wish I was anonymous.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1.3 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Cabbages and neanderthals

click photo to enlarge
It's good news about the neanderthals, don't you think? The University of Bristol's discovery that they used make-up and fashioned jewellery (of sorts) suggests that there may not have been the gulf between them and homo sapiens that has long been thought to have existed. Their lack of brain power and the consequent inability to compete with early modern man are shown to be judgements that need reviewing in the light of these revelations. Then there's the pejorative connotations of "neanderthal" which these artistic accomplishments undermine. Dictionaries will need revising, and people will have to stop throwing the term at anyone who doesn't measure up to their own intellectual standards.

As I was photographing this section of a red cabbage it occurred to me that it isn't only neanderthals who have had a bad press and need to be re-assessed in light of the evidence. So too do cabbages. And turnips. Why, among all the varieties of vegetables, are they used as synonyms for brainless and stupid? What qualities do they possess that makes them a more suitable term of abuse than, say, a parsnip, a leek or an aubergine? They are just as tasty, and every bit as visually appealing. Looking at today's photograph I'm tempted to ask what vegetable is more brain-like than a cabbage? If I cropped this shot to show the top half, and converted it to black and white, you'd be hard pressed to distinguish it from a section through the average human's grey matter: not that I'm suggesting anyone should do what is necessary to make that photographic comparison. But it is a fact that cabbages have every right to feel aggrieved about the way they are misrepresented. So strongly do I feel about this that I'm tempted to found a movement for the support and re-appraisal of these slighted vegetables. I've even got a snappy palindromic set of initials (acronym if you will) for this organisation, ingeniously crafted so that it wouldn't matter if dyslexic cabbages and turnips (and their supporters) wrote it backwards: Trust Against Cruelty To Cabbages And Turnips (TACTCAT) - I think it's a winner.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/2
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0EV
Image Stabilisation: Off