Book 11 - Descending The Mounting.... the Final stage of Zen Practice

Link to "Descending the Mountain"




Descending the Mountain is about the path of the Bodhisaatva, the final path down the mountain after enlightenment has been realized. It discusses the return to the world of illusion and troubled men and how to perfect your own life and find meaning. Gianna Giavelli is a Zen teacher and founder of the Vassar Sangha. She brings unique insights and original wisdom in describing the parable of the mountain and why a BodhiSaatva gets stuck on the mountain. Descending the mountain is about overcoming and entering everyday life and the challenges for a Bodhisaatva in the everyday world. Finding your true passions, creations, love, right livelyhood are all topics she takes on with the Zen spirit. The book introduces several Zen masters and their teachings but not in an introductory way. Instead she gathers key insights and weaves a web along and supporting the path she is taking us. It is an original understanding of Zen and how it can be tasked with our life in the everyday post Satori.

Announcing JOONN The Java Object Oriented Neural Network framework

I am working on an open source GPU supported language for real neural network processing.

Called JOONN (June) it will be the first solution focused on neural modeling and large neural cubes.

It is a response to the statistical convolution network appraches which are think layer and matrix based. Not neural modeling based.

One issue is GPU support. I am so utterly frustrated with the crap of JOCL and JCUDA that finding the right library to bridge calls efficiently is difficult. ROCM is an interesting development that bridges all cpu types.

Existing software does not easily allow setting up complex neurons.

The modeling consists of creating a neuron class with

   a connection profile
   a propagation function
   an activation function
   a decay function
   a chaos / edelman function for connectivity and spontaneous link generation

When you reach the wall with nothing existing thats worth a shit after a years investigation, you realize the need to create your own.

If you are a developer who wants to help work on this project shoot me a message or post a comment below. Esp if you are a GPU coder. thanks.
 

Torvalds Tells Us About Linux...

another great vlog... this time Linus Torvalds talks about his office

dr. BJARNE is VLOGGING! AWESOME

Why he created C++

Transsexual Sex and the Brain - Responding to Joe Rogan, Milo Yiianopolis, Ben Shapiro and Gavin McInnis Dumb Ignorance on Transsexual Biology

Recently there have been several really hate based videos by these right commentators which were fiercely anti-transsexual. They were filled with huge ignorance and just stupidity on basic biology. So as a cognitivie scientist who knows the real research, I've written this general response to them as writing one to each video post is getting boring.

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Trans Women and those who trans sex... have biologically female brains. Technically they are not male or female but intersexed. It is a intersexed condition not a mental illness. It is listed in the DSM as "gender dysphoria" so there is a billable condition to ensure that people get required support during transition which is a difficult process. The BSTc brain studies prove it. It is not "people believing they are a woman" etc as Shapiro says. It is also not throwing biology out the window. The biology is a state where the chromosomes and phenotype for the body is Male (in the case of M2F) but the brain is developed FEMALE. We know what the agencies that cause this - primarily not receiving the secondary high testosterone level in utero. Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan understand nothing of this. Because they are fairly dumb people. Shapiro is also incorrect that it is a 40% suicide rate. The study in question is for all LGBT people. And the 40% is for suicide ideation not actual attempt nor success. The rate of depression is also not "astounding" as Shapiro says. So its all just made up bluster. It's all hate speech from a dumb person who knows nothing. The depression is related to lack of support and acceptance, being thrown away by their family, homelessness and struggle. Things all people would get depressed about. It is not caused directly from their brain difference. Post transition, success rates are very high. But not perfect. It's still a struggle. See "Lynn Conway Transsexual Success" for four pages of women who were very successful post transition - http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/TSsuccesses.html You hear a lot of this "they are not real women" from hateful people. They say "Oh they can't have babies so they aren't women. But many women can't have babies. Or they will say "they don't have XX chromosomes so they aren't women. But again, there are many women who also do not have XX chromosomes. There are even AIS women who have XY chromosomes but develop fully and naturally as women. Those are fringe cases they argue. Yes, but all part of the breadth of human experience, which is precisely what they deny to trans women. You cannot be an edge case you must conform to two strict cases of gender. But that is not the case with gender at all. Trans women are also rare, only 1/2,500 present as trans and fewer than that complete transition. This is no more common or rarer than the other edge cases of gender.

When you think hard on what is gender, what is a woman, the reductionists reject brain gender. But it is the brain gender that is most important, which is precisely why you will often hear them say "it is just mental illness". No it isn't. That is their ploy to ignore the scientific evidence and be reductionist yet again. "Only chromosomes matter" they scream, yet we know much more now how the whole DNA, tRNA and epigenetics function in correlation with hormones. Again, small brains only capable of limited views because... well basically because they are stupid.

"There is no scientific evidence to back ... there is a female brain". Also incorrect - there have been many many studies which are scientific, reproduced (see Zhou and Kruijver) clearly show the development of female brain structure in the BSTc. How does Shapiro argue against that? He doesn't he simply says those studies don't exist. What a nutcase! Also it isn't true that 40% commit suicide.

 Sex-reassigned transsexual persons of both genders had approximately a three times higher risk of all-cause mortality than controls, also after adjustment for covariates. Table 2 separately lists the outcomes depending on when sex reassignment was performed: during the period 1973-1988 or 1989–2003. Even though the overall mortality was increased across both time periods, it did not reach statistical significance for the period 1989–2003. The Kaplan-Meier curve (Figure 1) suggests that survival of transsexual persons started to diverge from that of matched controls after about 10 years of follow-up. 

The study shows that more recent outcomes, in the past ten years, due to better surgical outcomes, better acceptance and support, there is barely any statistical difference in death by suicide. Only in the longer term out to 20 years do we see the increased suicide rate, and that may indicate that things have improved dramatically. We won't know for sure until another ten years of study and followup where we can see if the 20 year rate improves. However it is a mis-conclusion to state that the suicide rate is much higher, and while Shapire says 40x higher this study in looking at all the data finds the rate to be 27 times higher, not 40. So even if the rate is higher Shapiro is wrong in his quote. (2.7 vs. 0.1 are the published numbers). Again, considering the changing landscape for those who trans sex, this actual mortality by suicide number appears to have normalized to within range of the non-trans sexed population. It is enough to discredit McGuiness and Shapiro's statements. In short they are looking at old data. One thing to mention is the technology surgically for gender affirmation surgery including facial reconstruction began to improve dramatically around 2000 and this has helped with passing, sensation, and also societal changes in acceptance and family acceptance have improved. One reason for higher suicide rates studies have found family rejection to be a major factor, so the cause of the suicide is not that being transsexual is a mental illness but instead due to the normal response to a psychotraumatic event such as being thrown away by family. Similar increased rates are found in the general GLBT community among those who were disowned by family. Improving outcomes, acceptance, and general knowledge have improved the suicide rate to levels which are on parity with the general population for those up to 10 years out according to the study. [citation: Dhejne C, Lichtenstein P, Boman M, Johansson ALV, Långström N, Landén M (2011) Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden. PLoS ONE 6(2): e16885. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016885 ]

Sex is NOT determined by the chromosomes as Shapiro states. He is constantly making a reductionist argument that the Y chromosome presence in cells is the be-all and end-all to determining gender. This is not true at all. Chromosomes are blueprints for development, but there is also epigenetics and activation and the trans case is precisely one where the necessary hormone trigger did not activate the chromome. By constantly stating "Y chromosomes in every cell of hte body.. except sperm" Dipshit Shapiro is just missing the entire way biology works. It is an ignorant position. When a person does not fully sexualize to what appears to be their birth phenotype, and developes a female brain because they did not receive their second wave of testosterone in utero, then clearly it is not simply a question of chromosomes. The pre-natal development of the fetus will occur to completion in terms of gender when the chromosomes are activated with the appropriate sex hormone. This period of neo-natal development is very important. It requires both the chromosomes and the testosterone levels, in two periods. If this does not occur, then someone is born intersexed. This state can only be corrected through physical adaptation to the brain. The brain cannot change again, it is fixed in gender at birth. Neither Shapiro nor Rogan know any of this, I would call them caveman dipshits, ignorant savages, or just generally dumb but... it's more helpful to direct you to read the BSTc studies yourself - http://sindromebenjamin.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/brainsex.pdf (Zhou's groundbreaking work) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/10843193/ (Kruijver's follow in work confirming it!) there is also work more recently done on the INAH brain area http://openmindedhealth.com/2012/01/transsexual-brain-studies/ (a good summary of recent research on sex and brain) And here is another summary article on the sex and brain research with regard to trans women. http://tinyurl.com/ydybczae

A swedish study found 95% of those who transitioned to have successful outcomes
https://www.skane.se/Upload/Webbplatser/USIL/Dokument/Sjukhusbibliotek/Johansson,%20Annika.pdf

And there is also the Murad and the Ainsworth studies which found:
"Male-to-female and FM individuals had the same psychological functioning level as measured by the Symptom Checklist inventory (SCL-90), which was also similar to the psychological functioning level of the normal population and better than that of untreated individuals with GID....

The mental health quality of life of trans women without surgical intervention was significantly lower compared to the general population, while those transwomen who received FFS, GRS, or both had mental health quality of life scores not significantly different from the general female population."

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2265.2009.03625.x/abstract;jsessionid=B762F82F4564FB01651D68B07C5AEEAB.f01t04?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20461468

They constantly push false studies of SUICIDE IDEATION or studies which go back thirty or forty years to indicate what is the state today with outcomes. New studies which look at the last decade as surgicial and therapy techniques have improved find something completely different.
studies done more recently on more recent data finds BOTH OVERWHELMING IMPROVEMENT with transition vs. not transitioning, and 93% of the studies in the review find that the suicide ideation rate post transition DOES NOT DIFFER FROM THE GENERAL POPULATION. 52 studies that found that gender transition improves the well-being of transgender people. Only 4 studies that contain mixed or null findings on the effect of gender transition https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-well-being-of-transgender-people/ Specifically studies like the Colizzi, Costa, Todarello (2014) state - "Psychiatric distress and functional impairment were present in a significantly higher percentage of patients before starting the hormonal treatment than after 12 months (50% vs. 17% for anxiety; 42% vs. 23% for depression; 24% vs. 11% for psychological symptoms; 23% vs. 10% for functional impairment). The results revealed that the majority of transsexual patients have no psychiatric comorbidity, suggesting that transsexualism is not necessarily associated with severe comorbid psychiatric findings." Or we can look at the F2M Colton Meier study from 2011 which states "Results of the study indicate that female-to-male transsexuals who receive testosterone have lower levels of depression, anxiety, and stress, and higher levels of social support and health related quality of life." Or we can look at the Cuypere study which found massive suicides in transsexuls. That was a joke. The study found, and I quote "... No difference in psychological functioning (SCL-90) was observed between the study group and a normal population" - Cuypere, G. D., Elaut, E., Heylens, G., Maele, G. V., Selvaggi, G., et al. (2006). Long-term follow-up: Psychosocial outcome of Belgian transsexuals after sex reassignment surgery. Sexologies, 15(2), 126-133. Or the Gomez Gil study - "symptoms of anxiety and depression were present in a significantly higher percentage of untreated patients than in treated patients (61% vs. 33% and 31% vs. 8% respectively). " So TREATMENT WORKS! - Gomez-Gil, E., Zubiaurre-Elorz, L., Esteva, I., Guillamon, A., Godas, T., Cruz Almaraz, M., Halperin, I., Salamero, M. (2012). Hormone-treated transsexuals report less social distress, anxiety and depression. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 37(5), 662-670.

Finally I wanted to state that these trans births tend to increase when society is under stress. And having abilities from both sexes often allows these individuals to exceed what non-trans people can do, in invention, communication, and thought. I refer to them not as a lesser creature, but as primes, those having superior brains and abilities. And it may be a mechanism to assist society when it is having trouble, a feedback mechanism to try to repair things. In many cultures they are called "two spirits" and these people are respected and revered. It is only in our hateful western culture that there is such despoilment and hate of these special people. Not only are trans women probably more gifted and smarter than you Mr. Shapiro, they also have the empathy and compassion you clearly lack in your stone cold heart.

One has to ask just exactly WHO Mr. Shapiro is arguing with? Because women who trans sex and have completed transition simply want to get on their lives and be successful. Few are preachy "You MUST respect My GEnder" activists. It is telling that Shapiro states that his wife is a "real woman" clearly this comes from the endless irrational fear of "being gay" and sleeping with a "man". But it's quite dangerous for a woman who has trans sexed not to disclose their gender path and early on in the relationship. Instead, the bigger problem, and one I rail against constantly, is the usurption of the term "transgender" to be "incluse of those who trans sex" and this is the true danger because it lumps in the wack jobs and fetishists with those who are in a medical process (or completed a medical process). Much of what these commentators are railing against are the scary failures who do NOT trans sex but glom onto the term of transgender and demand rights for that. This is a big danger. They are OUTSIDE of the medical process and are destroying the rights of recognition that women who trans sex have fought for with their lives. Another issue is the standard for women who trans sex to men. first of all, there is no adequate surgical solution for them and it is quite expensive often over $100,000. The surgeries are much more in the experimental stages. Metidioplasty doesn't achieve a successful functioning penis and phalloplasty does not achieve nerve sensation. An even bigger issue is the requirement to be "recognized" by state and federal agencies. For M2F people, they are required to remove their gonads and often complete genital surgery to be recognized. But for F2M, often it's enough to just remove breasts. They should be required to have a complete gonad removal, their uterus removed, and their vagina sealed and reformed with at least metiodoplasty. This double standard again promotes the freak market as we see stories of "men" having babies. Shapiro if he knew the real issues facing those who trans sex would focus on these real issues.

Crowder gets the brain studies totally wrong when he says that they only show brain change after hormone therapy. Absolutely not, each study made sure to include a few subjects who were pre-HRT treatment. This is a very important issue and it comes in on the question of choice. Is it really a choice or a mental condition IF they have been born different. Shapiro pouts and says "they don't get their brain tested". Well that is quite expensive but the new techniques are close to being available. It's just a matter of time. In the meantime, we have to trust the results of studies done through vivisection and the newer studies done on living subjects. These all show overwhelming a difference that is measurable in the trans community. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it Mr. Crowder.

When Shapiro says "It's a pronoun designed for biology" and to suggest otherwise is ignorant, well the issue is a trans woman IS a biological woman (at minimum in the brain and possibly elsewhere in the body. Many times these are not apparent, but I have heard several stories of people who had their surgery and the doctors report discovering vestigial female internal organs. If you accept that this is a intersexed condition, and that brain gender is the dominant aspect that determines the gender you can be successful in not genital gender (as the John Money studies prove) then Ben Shapiros "specificy in language is required" is being a dipshit because he fails to grasp the notion of success and best treatment. As to should we call such individuals "women" or "men" well isn't that a bit silly? Call them Primes they are probably a lot smarter than you are as their brains are cross linked both vertically and longitudinally. Ben speaks as he does out of extreme homophobia and incapable of grasping the total human condition. For the record, I am a scientist with graduate and undergraduate degrees in brain science from ivy league institutions.

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Why f2 or f2.8 is the sweet spot for photography

When you shoot a portrait, you might think hey I paid a lot for this f1.4 super duper lens. I'm going to take my portraits at f1.4 !!!

Uhm no.

You have to remember that you want a slice of reality to be in focus from about a foot in front of your models eyes, and a foot or two behind. Standing 6-10 feet away, this will nearly always mean f2.8.  If you are closer, then f2. If you are at great distance, like 20 yards, then f3.5 or even f4 is what you want.

This is one of the biggest mistakes I made starting out and one that took the longest time to get into my head.

Remember also that sharpness improves as you step down two or three clicks from maximum. A few rare GOD lenses achieve 95% of best sharpness from the widest aperture. But that's rare.

Take the 50mm 1.2 nikkor.  At 1.2, its barely sharp. But click once to F2 and its nicely sharp. But click once more to 2.8 and its TACK SHARP.  Most lenses that are crappy can't compare until they hit either 5.6 or f8.  Which is what you get with all those zoom lenses shot on Auto. And that's a boring picture.

So I hang on some "zestier" sites which have nude shots by semi pro photogs. And almost always the biggest error is you don't get a blurred out background. They are shooting at f8. It's what their camera has told them is correct. And in a way that camera is right. It's going to get a lot in focus for you, except that's not what you want.

You want to strike that complex medium. You want ALL of your models face and body (esp for NUDES the BODY!) i focus. But to focus the picture on that you have to decide if you want that OR NOT.

IF you are bettina Rheims and shoot in lavish french apartments with 500 year old furniture, you take pictures of your nudes at f8.

But if all you have behind you is a black cloth, Or if you are outside and want the background to fall away into creamy bokey, Then f2.8 is your friend.  If you are REALLY close (and you shouldnt be to take a full body nude but maybe you can't help yourself!) then f4 is what you are after.

Working with Flash makes this even more annoying. Since flash can make any aperture bright enough, your camera will again say "Oh ok f8 it is" and you say Freak You camera, I'm going to manual mode! And then you get the shot.

30 years of this. trust me. Try it.

Lenses, after 35 years of Photography what I love...

Here is my breakdown of the best mf and reasonably priced af lenses. No I am NOT paying 1,500 for a plastic lens made in China without an aperture ring! I should say my criteria is sharp but not mega sharp, beautiful creamy bokey (no soap or swirl!), punchy colors, small not gigantic lens that you can actually lug around of have as 1 of 5 lenses in your bag. I have been a pro portrait and landscape/travel photographer for 35 years.

Why not MEGA SHARP? The lens designs which produce MEGA-SHARP typically lose other qualities I desire. And also, we don't want Mega Sharp portraits. Do people really want all their pores and wrinkles and nose hairs out there for all their glory? NO! So when I say sharp, all these lenses can deliver a tack sharp image. But not Mega sharp. What's the difference? It's hard to say. Just trust me. Modern lenses deliver MEGA sharp more often.

While FlickRiver can help you see what lenses can do, you'll get all the crap shots as well. Check out http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/929565/6178 for six thousand pages of manual focus nikon pictures done mostly by great photographers using great cameras. ultra wide: zenitar 16mm, tokina 11-16mm series 1 (screw drive) the zenitar is the cheaper option. Bokey on tokina can be rubbish you have to watch it. Zenitars push $250 and Tokinas $450. Ouch!

Oddball wides: 10.5mm, 18mm. I just avoid these. Too pricey or too fragile.

16mm: the ais fisheye does amazing on dx or fx for a wide.
20mm: ais nikkor 3.5 (I cant afford it). a TITS lens. These always push $400 bucks. ouch. Useless for DX you need the ultra above. Well I shouldn't say useless. It's a 30mm on a dx. Also the 2.8 ais aint so bad. there is an old P non ai which sometimes comes up cheap. 20mm f4 is just fine.

24mm: ais Nikkor 2.8. This is a GOD lens. period. 'nuff said. a delight. wonderful on DX. Yah the 2,000 buck 1.8 is even better if you like plastic and no aperture ring.

28mm: The 28mm AIS 2.8 (only the AIS) is a great lens. on miranda they do a lot with the 28 ais which has CRC. Get the AIS. But really, its the lens you never reach for if you have the 24 ais because the 24 is much sharper.

35mm: mir 24n a GOD lens (bested ONLY by zeiss which I cant afford). for af, the nikkor 35 f2 af-d but will be flat and boring. The mir will shock you by how good it is. Its big heavy chunk of glass. essentially its a full on Zeiss clone so if you get a good one, its zeiss. How much is the zeiss? I think about $1,500. Yikes! A good Mir is $150-200. I have the standard 35 nikkor 2.8 and its just fine and sharp. the 35mm nikkor 1.4 ais is a big radioactive lens which is pretty good and in the honorable mentions. I will have to get my hands on one but they are pricey. The 35mm f2 ais is also nice, similar to the 2.8

40mm: voightlandar color scopar. An odd focal length. i don't bother. But if you need full frame sharp to corner this is it better than any 50 in that regard. $300. ouch. I think it's too pancake small also.
50MM: nikkor 1.4 ais a TITS lens, Helios 81H 50mm f2 is really great, 50 1.8 af-d for af but will be flat and boring. I have a love hate relationship with the 50 1.2. It has 9 blades and better color and sharper than these at f2 and f2.8. It's the king. But everytime I need money I sell it as its a 800 dollar lens and you don't really need it. when I get rich I will buy it again. I'm using the MIR converted on my 4/3s and loving the piss out of it because it super tiny and great colors. If I wanted to get maximum I'd use the 50 1.2 at f2.8 a TITS lens, or the 50 1.4 at 2.8. The 50 1.8D is a great street shooter lens on a DX or FX. Its fast to fire. But when I review the pics later I'm always like... where's the wow? Instead, I'm shifting to the 35-105 af-d as my af lens for street. More options and quick and sharp. It's just 4 times the size of the 50. So it depends if you want to be light. On my fuji s5 dx camera, the 50 afd is a tight small package. One thing on the 50 1.2. It has focus drift as it steps down. So you computer will set focus at 1.2 (even though its finder screen can only "see" 2.0) and then as it steps down to 5.6 just before the shot using the supposedly linear scale of f-stops, the focus will be a smidge off. Its a weird thing that only probably happens because they are trying to manage the design for a f1.2. So I generally only ever use it at f2 or f2.8. or an art shot at f1.2 when I want razor thing DOF or Coma blobs. The 50 1.8 ais is just fine.

55mm: the 55 2.8 ais. I would use this on product non-moving shots as its tack sharp, possibly the sharpest lens ever. But the focus is soo slow to use its not a great general purpose lens. And if you try to use it for portraits you will find its unflattering but if you are doing high contrast b&w it might work great if you are looking only for detail


58mm: helios 44-m7 helios 44m-6 f2, voightlander 58 1.4. I never use my Helios as it's converted m42 and I just go for a 50 or a 85. But sometimes its fun to play with for the great color and bokeh. But its a big heavy chunk of glass, like a 50 1.2. I like my 50s to be quick and easy and light usually. and its too short for in studio even on dx. I need to use my 44-m6 more, its a zeiss clone and a big chunk of glass just like the MIR 24N is for 35mm. Great popping color. But the nikkor 1.4 also has popping color. so if I have to chose, I think the native nikkor is more desireable. Still its fun to play with this and see what you get esp if color is involved. The 7 is rare, but its the sharpest, the number is the sharpness rating, except the 2, which is an older non-coated design. Some people love the 2 as it renders differently, but I would say try the 6 or 7. When I see pics like this (by the 44m-7) i think more about using it more often.

60mm: I'd try the af-d micro nikkor but I've never used it as I have the 55 ais which is sharper. I never use 60 but if I got the micro to try I might fall in love as its AF and similar to the 55. still its oddball focal length.

85mm: Jupiter 9 (a go to portrait lens for dx). this is a good distance for in studio dx. This is a GOD lens. Bokah creme due to its 15 aperture blades. Do not get the oldest rangefinder version or the non 15 bladed modernish one. It has a slight swirl to its bokey but not as terrible as a Helios 40.

100-105mm: kaleinar (amazing) 100mm 2.8 manual focus. a go to portrait lens for a distance outdoor shots. Nikkor 105 1.8 ais is good but pricey. Both are GOD lenses. The Nikkor DC is out of my price range. The Kaleinar consistently makes amazing model shots when you want a good face and body and creamy bokeh behind. (see the link). The Nikkor 105 has crappier bokeh less color pop and less microcontrast than the kaleinar. The Kaleinar costs 1/5th as much.
135mm: Nikkor 2.8 AIS (a go to portrait lens for fx). On dx, this is going to be crampt for a small studio but it is possible. Another GOD lens. The Nikkor DC is out of my price range
180mm: Nikkor 2.8 ais I never use 180. The AIS is fine, but the VR is probably very useful at this focal length. My DX camera - the fuji s5 - doesn't support VR. And the D800e isn't what I would us a 180mm on. so I don't use this. The 2.8 ED lens is quite coveted by many.
300mm: nikkor 2.8 ais or af-d. For non-fashion portrait at distance, this is a GOD lens if you want to reduce the entire background to mush. If I were being paid more than 10,000 to shoot a model, I'd take some shots with this one. On a tripod. So non - ais doesn't matter that much other than they cust a few thou more.
Note: all of these area available in native Nikon mount or converted except the Helios 44m Macro: Minolta 135mm 2.8. This is a seriously oddball lens which must be converted. the results are worth it. its mf and its macro mode is bizarre what the lens does physically. Built like a voightlander tank lens. gives you the distance for macro. It is like the BORG lens, I've never seen anything quite like it. When you put it into macro, it has a trick new part that unhides which lets you fine focus it. Amazing! and this is the right mm focal for macro, not 55 or 60.

Honorable Mentions: Super Takumar lenses with convertors. Great coatings. Great construction. Pricey. 35mm 1.4 ais - its radioactive bliss but still not as good as the mir. they are hare to find in the used market and a bit pricey. its older design with an asph element means its a center sharp only lens. But its thorium lens gives it an edge over most modern stuff. 105mm 2.5 - a really great lens. It's just that the 1.8 is even greater. The 50mm 1.8 ais is great, just the 50 1.4 is so much better and feels better in the hand.

Lenses People Love I think Suck: The 55mm ais 1.2 comes to mind. Crap shite bokey. Really crap bokey. It was never considered nearly as good as the 50mm 1.2 (which is a Tits lens)

Zeiss: The 35mm f2 and the 85mm 1.4. If you have the dollars get them. But when your lenses start costing multiple thousands of dollars, I'd get too scared of banging them or something if I were shooting outside, and since neither of these is going to be a good portrait lens on the d800, that means they need to be insured. Try my alternatives first, you don't need to spend this much for 1% more wow. If you have three grand sitting around, by all means. Forget the new Batis and Toureg or whatever the fuck they call them. You want the ZF2 lenses. and cheap but great zooms:

The Push Pulls: Using a push pull zoom is an oddball delight. To prevent sliding, put a tiny piece of gaffer tape on the inside part of the lens. It will now hold. These are fun to use but have 16 elements so some people say they crush the light but I say try em they are fun fast and wonderful for AF
50-135 push pull 3.5 (sharper than the 75-150 but I dont like the range as much. If I'm grabbing a zoom I usually want the 150 reach, or the street shooter 35-105 for generally everything) [50-135 sample 2] 75-150 push pull 3.5-5 (this is a great portrait lens! shoot it at 135mm for greatness. not as great as the prime 135) [ 75-150 bokeh sample ]
35-105mm af-d 3.5-4.5 great walkaround street shooter lens. sharp. good color fast autofocus! nice bokey 24-85mm ais and af-d there are many versions of these, the 2.8-4 af-d is quite nice. 70-300mm nikkor. AF (or ed vr version for more money) the af is a cheap way to get 300 reach. I much prefer af-d lenses to af-s. Seriously if you are going to bother with a zoom, why not get one that goes to 300? Note all G lenses are puke garbage EXCEPT the 50mm 1.4 and 85mm 1.8. the 35mm 1.8 is double puke. The 50 1.8D makes boring pictures but its a good basic sharp autofocus lens.

Honorable Mention: The Tokina 50-135mm. Amazing. Its just big and heavy and expensive. On a day I feel strong I'd pull it out and shoot for a bit its going to be SHARPER than any of these zooms. Its amazing. The 18-55 af-p G lens (the new updated one) is a good dx zoom for the dollars. Doesn't work at all on my old s5. sigh. So much for nikon maintaining compatibility in its electronics over the years.

Why No Trinity Lenses?: Why not the 14-24, the 24-70, the 80-200 2.8 (or whatever the third is these days). Too big too heavy too expensive. I offer cheaper options for all these which are just as good or better. Ok the 14-24 is pretty damn fantastic. So is the tamron 15-30? To heavy. It's just not how I like a camera to be. All the zooms I recommend are also fairly big and heavy solid metal beasts. But even they are not as big as these.

Favorite Nikon Cameras:

The Nikon F3:
It's such perfection. Use it with the DA-2 Action finder to freak people out so they go WTF is THAT! COOL! Oh its just my 38 year old camera. Gorgeous HP viewfinder. A good one is $500.

It's like having a 34 Bugatti. You pull it out on sunny spring days and just enjoy it. Is it the fastest? Well the F3 was designed by Porsche hence the red stripe (the FIRST Nikon red stripe!)

One thing that is still the best ever on the F3 is that it has the best film movement system of any camera ever made. ever. silk sex and suger as AP would say. It's also the most swappable part camera Nikon ever made with viewfinders, winders, focusing screens all user swappable. Even the F4 is more limited! You can get a retro "looking down" folder viewfinder for it. On the tiny 35 thats ridiculous. But it's fun. And the DA-2 stands for TWO POUNDS of GLASS finder, and using that is amazingly fun. What else has one? I think they did also make one for the F4 but its so rare.

The Nikon 8008s:
If you are shooting film, I pretty much grab this over the F3. The F3 is now a museum piece. It's loved but not practical. IT adds autofocus screwdrive, spot metering, matrix metering, and a beautiful in the viewfinder meter unlike the hard to see meter in the f3. the F3 is perfection and love. The 8008 is what you drag out to shoot. Its sooo much smaller than these big nikon D cameras. Gorgeous viewfinder. A good one is $150.

The Nikon F4:
Gorgeous camera but I don't currently own it. The 8008s does 90% of what the F4 does, only the F4 has nicer controls. I will have to buy one again when I get rich but I would probably just stare at it and drool. Gorgeous controls, viewfinder, matrix metering on old lenses. A good one is $400. You have to get an imported japanese one to lose the huge ulgy bottom battery thingie.

The Nikon D700:
I don't own it. But I like it. Makes great pictures. But I own instead the much lighter s5 which is dx not full frame and doesnt blow out highlights like a d700 does. A good one is $1200 but a banger goes for as little as $700. When I lift it I just groan. Its heavy. Gets you up to 12MP. But blown highlights, heavy, and crap to soso colors. The BEST use of a d700 is with Nikon manual AIS lenses. Then you get some great results. I think AP did a test where it had BETTER results than a 24MP d750. wouldn't surprise me one bit. They have been struggling to get these new high MP sensors to work right. go to the fredmiranda forum for MF nikkor lenses and you will see a lot of shots of ais on d700 that amaze. (also amazing are the leighton photos on his 50-135 push pull, see zooms above section)

The Fuji S5 Pro:
Effective 8MP seems dated. Highest dynamic range of any camera ever made. Dual large and small sensor in each of its 6 million pixels interpolated to 12mp and equal to about 8mp in a standard sensor. On top of that add Fuji Color. Perfect size. d200 based body. My only complaint is the tiny viewfinder and shit lcd screen on back and double shit menus. A good one is $500 which is a huge amazing miracle bargain so much so I am now looking for a second one. I swapped my shit d7000 crap color camera for it and never looked back. Something went amiss when those cmos sensors came in. they mucked up the color because the pixels got so small they effected the wavelengths! That's why the d700 still trumps a 24MP camera when you compare.

Why the love for the S5? Its the perfect size shooter that does everything. It's not too heavy, works with all lenses (except some G lenses and more modern crap which I hate those anyways.) With the grip its a great solid chunk thats not beast heavy but stable for studio and careful outdoor work. For travel just take off the battery grip and you can fit it and 3 lenses in a small bag. It was the wedding shooters choice for a long time.

Downsides? The biggest is it only retains is huge DR up to iso 800. And only shoots decent up to iso 1600. Tell that to a film user and they will be like great whats the problem! But a d500 shoots great up to 32,000 iso. so well...its getting older. If you need 10fps, don't get it.

When I need a bit MORE than what the S5 can deliver....

The Nikon d800E:
Theres magic in the E. Don't get the 810 or the 800. There is some special character of every camera/sensor and the E for me is really film like. And its affordable, you can get a good one for $1400. It's totally a studio cam or very careful in the field cam. It's NOT a travel cam.

And... My new joy... the Micro 4/3rds Panasonic G7:
OK, focus peaking and old manual lenses. I slap the Mir 81 or jupiter 9 on this and its god. great colors. super light camera. I shoot in 16x9 and get 12MP. GREAT! 16x9 is great for posters! So this is a really wonderful camera. Why not get the Fuji XT-2? With battery grip? Well thats over $2000 bucks! And doesn't match this for video! And is heavy! No, the G7 is the camera to get. It's now my go to Travel camera. I will no longer lug the S5 pro off to borneo.

The problem with 4/3s cams is their lenses are absurd priced. So get a mitakon speed convertor. Now when I shoot my 50mm Helios 81N f2, it becomes a 75mm 1.4. Thats a great focal length and aperture, in a size and weight thats impossible! MAGIC!

It's $600 + $125 for the convertor and a good helios is $100. A jupiter 9 is about $200. You are well under $1000 and you have a great system!

Finding what button does what is a pain. Like you up arrow for ISO. you f5 to set + - . I assigned my scene to the little indent hidden button in the top wheel. You spin right to zoom. Yah it takes a few months to learn what is where. A GH5 does that better. But thats another 2000 camera. The GH5 will def be my upgrade path.

Lenses I use with my G7:

This is my standard kit, mostly drawn from my old AIS and Russian lenses. You want to use manual focus with the adapter as you dont get AF through it.

35 MM Mir GOD lens
24 MM nikkor ais 2.8 GOD lens
Jupiter 9 85mm f2 GOD lens
Kaleinar 100mm f2.8 GOD lens

and walk around - Helios 81H 50 mm f2 . Not a god lense. But so much fun as its so light and small and a step Above a series e pancake nikkor 50mm.

The Old Beast - The Pentax 6x7 MLU:
If you are young and strong as sasquatch, this four pound medium format camera, with the 90mm leaf shutter lens, will do amazing things. I am no longer like sasquatch. I sold it for pennies when I was out of food. I really regret ever selling it.

To take a picture with it simply: set the aperture and shutter speed on the camera and meter. Transfer that speed and aperture to the 90mm. Now set a much longer time to the speed on the camera. Cock the lever on the lens. Focus. Swing up the mirror lever. Now push the trigger. Easy right? All the while youve got five pounds in your hands. Newbies with AF cameras simply could not imagine. The alternative is a Fuji 6x9 fixed lens 90mm or a Mamiya 6 or 7 which is three grand. When I get rich, I will get a mamiya 7 II I think. and all 5 lenses for about 10 grand. someday.



OK 35 years. Thats the hardware side of what I've learned. I've tried hundreds and hundreds of lenses and even the very expensive ones. All of this gear is stuff you can LOVE. Not the soul-less plastic Nikon now churns out. Get at it! Oh one more thing. NEVER EVER EVER EVER sell a camera UNLESS it is made in thailand or china and covered in plastic.

Note : Thanks to the Angry Photographer for the Lens Classification System. A TITs lens is a 10 lens perfect in just about every way, exceptional for the breed and top of its class. A GOD lens is a miracle lens that shouldn't even be possible for humans to create. There are only a few of these types of lenses and mostly they are just stumbled onto by accident.

Mudd Chemistry 0 Gia 1

Of all the horrors I endured was suffering chemistry at vassar by Mariana Begeman and that horrible Mudd Chemistry building.

First I was living in the town houses. The walk over to the chemistry building, a modern steel and glass eyesore, was a good four miles and took over half an hour.

Second, we had little choice in our classes those days, and being a req for pre-med I had to take chemistry. So it scheduled me for the 9am class. Now I am not nor have I ever been a morning person. That meant, getting up and dressed at 8am and out the door and a long near run to get over there in time.



Well the design of that building heated up the room fiercely and the sun streamed into our faces. What a dumb design for a classroom.

I went to the first few months of classes and got a perfect 100 on every test.

And too quickly I realized they were not teaching chemistry but some FEMINIST HORROR abound in math with ALL OF THE FUN STRIPPED AWAY

Now I grew up so that by 12 years old I had a home chemistry set with over 200 chemicals, many deadly, and I knew how to make stuff with it. Color changes. Smoke bombs. Thermite.  The basic kid fun stuff.

So when I got to college chemistry I was appalled. It was horrific. Booring as all hell. The math was easy for me, but the boredom was not.

So I never became a doctor becuase of this one horrible class. Half way through I stopped going. I don't know why. I just did. It was my one "F" grade in college. I took the final which I did study for, but I'm sure she flunked me out of spite regardless of how well I did.

Anyways fast forward 30 years and they demolished that horrible building even though it was one of the newest ones on campus which consisted mostly of beautiful buildings as a college should be.

Now all thats left is a festering pit.  I beat you in the end you pig fucker place.

Later I would go on to see how these science classes had been feminized away into textbooks that stressed not the DOING of chemistry not the awe and cool experiments that could be, but boring measuring and formulas and producing nothing of interest. Its an epidemic of horror across the nation.

Well I win in the end you mudy pit. You may have destroyed my life as a successful neurosurgeon. But at least I can look at that mud and think... MUD CHEM, what a apropo name. Good riddance.

Google Tensor and CNN Programming is god aweful, 30 years behind

I had an interesting exchange on a Geoff Hinton video. To which, one person replied "Are you from the future?"

Sadly, the rediscovery of neural networks and the terrible models at stanford, Google's horrific tensor, and the generally terribly mathematical focus of OpenCL and CUDA (even RocM and AMDs instinct initiative) seem to think of NNs as matrix operations.

It's no wonder it seems like I'm from the future. Very frustrating that I will most likely have to write my own programming language to do what we want to do with Noonean Cybernetics.

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I was doing a type of CNN called a Neural Cube in 1986 based on Fukishima's NeoCognitron work. Kunihiko Fukishima did much of the earliest work published in 1975 but his breakthrough was 1980 - http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr08/cos598B/Readings/Fukushima1980.pdf "This network is given a nickname "neocognitron"l, because it is a further extention of the "cognitron", which also is a self-organizing multilayered neural network model proposed by the author before (Fukushima, 1975). Incidentally, the conventional cognitron also had an ability to recognize patterns, but its response was dependent upon the position of the stimulus patterns. That is, the same patterns which were presented at different positions were taken as different patterns by the conventional cognitron. In the neocognitron proposed here, however, the response of the network is little affected by the position of the stimulus patterns." I recommend my students start with that paper. My good friend Gerald Edelman, who sadly passed two years ago, led a huge amount of work on darwinistic CNNs through the 1980s and 1990s. He released Darwin III in 1988. Just to give you a sense of time. Karl Pribram's holonomic theory postulates that perception works like a hologram and that the dendritic processes function to take a "spectral" transformation of the "episodes of perception". This transformed "spectral" information is stored distributed over large numbers of neurons. When the episode is remembered, an inverse transformation occurs that is also a result of dendritic processes. It is the process of transformation that gives us conscious awareness. Pribram says that both time and spectral information are simultaneously stored in the brain. He also draws attention to a limit with which both spectral and time values can be concurrently determined in any measurement and this uncertainty describes a fundamental minimum defined by Gabor in 1946 (the inventor of the hologram) as a quantum of information. Working this into our neural model of perception and recognition is the leap that has occurred in the 30 years we stepped forward from the initial 1980s work. Every last commercial software, topology, tensorflow, all of that is absolute garbage. It's a bunch of junk. It's baby stuff. Useless except for googelian match the picture. CNN work has transitioned to evolving neural cube technology over 30 yrs since this early work. Hinton is a great thinker and I value his abstract thinking most. I wish he would move into theoretical concepts rather then demonstrate his old designs. When I saw his ted talk I was incredulous, dug out my thesis papers from 88 and there it was, the exact same stuff in a Hinton article. Restricted Boltzman machines are like seeing Edison's first prototype for an electric light bulb. Many of us were restrained because the computing power we needed to commercialize the tech in the 1980s was just out of reach. That's one part of what Noonean Cybernetics is helping solve, a 100 Teraflop desktop neural computer. With that there is no need to wait on university supercomputer resources in fact, we did an analysis of UofA's stampede doing neural work vs. one of ours and based on what you could actually reserve - their large array (and even then you had limited access to that much resource!), our computing on the desktop was actually more powerful than that massive system which cost 100 million dollars just to build the rooms and energy interconnects to install it into. Rather than spending 5 million dollars a year just on maintenance, The Noonean computer is just a personal computer. Embeddable low watt systems are still going to be 8 years off. But that is our direction. With holographic plane neural cube designs which have much more about excitation of pathways and dynamic re-organization than static CNNs, based on the work of Fukushima, Pribram, and Edelman, and our own original approach we are able to achieve much better recognition with much shorter training times. Minutes not days. Holographic neural frames train in a few minutes per feature. If you think about it, a hologram is much like Hinton's "capsules" as they are location equivariant. As I said. Take their google computer onto a busy street in NYC and show me where all the triangles are. They have a fundamentally broken approach. the hard stuff today is 3-d spatial awareness mapping, mapping recognition into long term memories, and conscious systems all integrated into language. And a fully unified system which does listening, speech, thought, vision, and interacts as a human would. That is our focus today. Another two decades away but we will have glimpses and early successes by 2025.