The ugly and the beautiful

By now, I'm sure we've all read the news about the marines urinating on corpses.  I won't delve into this much, as far too much debate about who's right and who's wrong has already taken place.  All I will say is that (and this is something that we all forget so often, no matter how simplistic and cliche it is!) generalizations, by definition, include outliers.  The extent of which these marines are an outlier can be debated all day; many of my friends are in the marines, and they are great people (conversely, I know many Muslim-Americans who are -- wait for not -- not militant!  The ability of some people to acknowledge one group of people while spitting on another is a true exercise in doublethink).

In less partisan news, one of my old hobbies which I hope to resuscitate soon is scenic photography.  All of my pictures I've taken that I feel are worth keeping were on a low-grade digital camera; next month, I will be looking to invest in a DSLR (looking at Canon lately; my friend recommends the EOS 5D Mark II, but it may slight be out of my budget).  Anyway.  Here's a shot of the Southern California taken...I believe when I was around the San Bernardino area?  I was visiting a friend at the time, about seven years ago, so it definitely has been awhile.  Southern California, for all its muggy smog and traffic, can look nice at night: