Until the good and rational and reasonable among them stop being so thin-skinned, and start seeing that a helluva lot of us above the Mason Dixon Line are just as American and just as right as they’ll ever be, the hateful denial that anything is wrong with a region where citizens and civic leaders alike feel justified in forcing their own proudly uninformed anger on the rest of us will persist.

As a Northerner, half of whose family are Southerners, I can say that this feeling is palpable even among said family members. There's a put-on politeness, with anger and ridicule of us, especially Californians.

Val and I spent a few weeks touring the South in our Airstream a couple years ago, and we were generally treated respectfully, so it's not all bad, of course. The only people who tried to make hay of our being Californians were Texans who we met in Louisiana. Even in a relatively short few minutes in conversation with them, they managed to remind us that Texas still has the right to secession and that Californians basically suck "present company excepted, I'm sure." Assholes.

Anyway, it's obvious that all Southerners can't be lumped with the idiots that we see on TV all the time, but it does seem that the article's assertion that the "good and rational and reasonable" have to start reigning in the radical members of their society, or relations are going to continue to get worse in this country.

Firstly, that's a great pic of a beautiful car.

As to the automated rev matching: It's interesting that it does that when precisely when I wouldn't want it to, namely in "Sport Plus" mode. That's the raciest mode, and if I'm in that mode, I'm most likely to be in the mood to heel-and-toe on my own. I'd probably like it best when I'm driving day-to-day in shoes that aren't suited to the heel-and-toe maneuvering, but still need to hit a downshift smoothly.

Not that I need worry; I'm not in the market for a new 911. (Oh, how I would love to be, though.)

The worst part of this isn't the continued business-ese that it's written in, it's that now we have to endure another week of 5by5 podcasts talking about Twitter instead of something interesting.

X Developer Platform

Use the X API with an all-new Developer Console and consumption-based billing. No fixed monthly costs, no monthly caps.

dev.twitter.com

Now that's more like it! That's nearly a 50mm equivalent in 35mm terms. Fast primes are what we've been asking for, so I've got my fingers crossed.

For Photokina: new Nikon 1 18.5mm f/1.8 mirrorless lens - Nikon Rumors

In addition to the D600, for Photokina 2012 Nikon will announce also a new Nikkor 1 18.5mm f/1.8 mirrorless lens (50mm equivalent). The lens will have one aspherical element. I believe the new lens will look like the pictured Nikon 1 concept prime lens that was on display at the PDN show in New York last [...]

nikonrumors.com

Great story.

(via Daring Fireball.)

Google should be worried. Steve Jobs’ thermonuclear promise is coming.

Wow. That's a hell of an assertion.

Good read. This is the part that stood out to me, and it's a certainly part of the reason I'm waiting for now to upgrade:

We’re obviously in the middle of two awkward transitions: toward all-Retina screens, and toward all-SSD storage. The difficult computer choices that many power users will struggle with will probably be much easier in 2–3 years, when even the most die-hard desktop users can probably get a MacBook Something with a priced-within-reach 2 TBSSD and an external 27” Retina Display for desktop use.

I'm not going to wait another 2-3 years, but I think the next revision is probably going to be the right time.

With Photokina coming up, the leaks and rumors are coming out all the time. This one looks great. I'm really glad to see that Fuji's iterating very quickly on this premise and each iteration brings something new to the table.

I'm still sitting on the sidelines with my Nikon 1 until either Nikon 1 gets better lenses, the Fuji fixes its issues around AF, or Micro Four-Thirds gets a camera that wows me a bit more in general. The Olympus OM-D is close, and if I didn't have the Nikon 1, that's the way I'd go, but the OM-D isn't quite enough to get me to jump just yet.

Fujifilm X-E1 mirrorless camera appears in leaked pictures

Pictures of a new mirrorless camera from Fujifilm have been posted on Japanese website “Digicam Info,” revealing a retro-style device with interchangeable lenses.

www.theverge.com

Totally neat. I'd loved to have gone just for the Airstream angle, but getting the opportunity to shoot in an empty old-fashioned amusement park would be sweet icing on that cake.

Alumafandango and Lakeside Amusement Park

Here's what we did today so far: (1) This morning we went on a tour of the Timeless Travel Trailers shop. (Cool.) Then (2) we came back to the Airstream and grabbed the camera gear and wa...

www.riveted-blog.com

Interesting.

Also, solving complaints about waiting at baggage carousels by moving them farther from the gates is a solution that only the generally customer-hostile airline industry could come up with.

Opinion | Why Waiting Is Torture (Published 2012)

We’ll never eliminate lines altogether, but a better understanding of the psychology of waiting can help make those inevitable delays a touch more bearable.

www.nytimes.com

I'm so there.