Who do you perceive to be "hectoring?"

From the responses to your question, who do you perceive to be huddling in a bed?

My, my, my, such brave philosophical comments about fear...

Indeed it does, not because of concern for the disposition of my gear but because of concerns for my personal safety and freedom. With the drug culture and the young average age of people here in Colorado, many of whom are transient and temporarily down on their luck, one cannot predict when, where, and why you will encounter a drugged out kid needing a fix who will abscond with anything they perceive might bring a few bucks and the mountains where I like to shoot wildlife are crawling with such people.

At 85, in two months, I might falsely appear to be an easy target which might encourage some stupid behavior that I, in the absence of a nearby cop, might have to take drastic steps to deter, which I am equipped to do. I'm a 17.5 year military vet with the necessary skills and resolve so I am not afraid of those people nor afraid to deal with them but I am afraid of the legal and financial consequences of being put in a position of having to deal with them. Like Covid, I'm not afraid of getting it, nor of dying from it, but I am afraid of several months in ICU and the resulting financial ramifications. YMMV

Did they die from the boosters or get t-boned in an intersection? Asking for a friend...

I don't want this guy coming after me because of a beep...

That might depend on whether or not you subscribe to the theories of L. Ron Hubbard.

I'm not a "groupie."

Silent shutter!

I hear you and you have my ear but when women started indicating they wanted in the workforce the jobs they wanted are already presumably filled by a qualified man with a line of men under him who also wouldn't mind being in his place. Profitable companies aren't often going to hire anyone to immediately take the place of someone who is profitably running companies and replace them with females just because a group of females want those jobs. It would be idiocy to think that's ever going to happen no matter how much squeeling takes place. I would wager that it would be likewise if the gender roles were reversed.

Do you know what was actually behind that push to hire black females? It wasn't solely for "affirmative action," as you implied. It was .gov's offering companies tax breaks for each new job created within a company structure. You know when the President announces that so many "jobs were created last quarter, etc.?" Well, the incentive program was to give those tax breaks to companies for creating jobs and hiring a certain class of person to fill it to push an impetus toward a more integrated workforce in response to all the protesting about the makeup of the workforce be females and minorities. Firms got incentives for hiring females first and a double hit for hiring a minority female. Well, in order to get a performance bonus some company CEOs and wiley personnel directories took it to another level unanticipated by .gov. They took many of the less critical full-time positions and broke them into 2, 3, and even 4 part time jobs which eliminated the necessity for and expense of extending benefits like paid vacations, medical coverage, and retirement because the laws made no mandatory provisions for those benefits being extended for part time employes.

So, .gov was happy because of the newly created jobs the Prestdent could point to as he "stuck in his, thumb, pulled out a plum, and said, what a good..." The next move was the most devastating of all - got an even better incentive if they hired a minority female who was on welfare. My youngest son, 15 at the time, applied for a "parttime job" at Pizza Hut, which was owned by Pepsi, and would have been hired but only if I completed an affidavit amounting to a declaration of family poverty. It wasn't about hiring females or minorities or people in poverty, but rather it was about creating jobs for the Prez to boast about, how many tax breaks a company could get to pad the bottom line, and bonuses for Human Services department heads and CEOs and it wrecked our workforce and let the big boys off from extending humane benefits hard won by employer/employee negotiations established beginning just after the "Great Depression" with the breakup of the sweatshops using even children in what amounted to slavery conditions. It certainly wasn't you they were after, scillian. By now, those practices have spread to almost every job in the U.S. and there are more 36 hour a week jobs since up to that level a person is still classified as parttime and gets no benefits until they put in a 40 hour workweek and I will ask the original poster's forgiveness for hijacking the thread even though my posts are indirectly pertinent.

I'm probably not qualified to explain those things but I'll tell you what I think. I think that most of those female voters in nursing homes traditionally do not vote in big numbers which brings the ratio of male/female closer to parity. Combine that with the fact that a lot of females support men candidates, and...

The wealth accumulation by older women occurs as a result of the numbers of men who precede them in death leaving whatever accumulated wealth there is to their wives.

In spite of the imbalance of educational participation in recent years, there are still a lot more educated, successful men in the workplace than there are women so there remains many more men in upper echelon positions. On average, we will need to go many more years before the current crop of more highly educated men work their way through the system and move on to make room for some of the more recent women who have entered into competition for top jobs. It will take time for women to work their way up the ladder to parity in either numbers or income.

That's all I got.

FWIW, there is a popular misconception that women vastly outnumber men in the U.S., which is conditionally true. Curious about that distribution, a few years ago I did a little amateur demographic study of three census periods, by age and sex, both by state and nationally, when it was in the news that women were flocking to Alaska where men outnumbered women by a huge margin, complaining that they "couldn't find a man."

My survey revealed how the distribution actually plays out. Across those three census periods, I found that the ratio of women and men held pretty steady. Up to age 55 men outnumbered women and by age 65 they pulled about even with women having a very, very slight edge. From 65 and above is where the vast majority of the surplus of women live on, especially above 85 where it is almost all women but in diminishing numbers so these last two groups, which ostensibly have not traditionally been a very active part of society, is where the significant edge is in the numbers, both in population and personal wealth where there is a huge lopsided advantage to the female side of the equation. That might begin to explain several social phenomena that occur which are not clearly explained when just looking at the overall balance of numbers, such as why men have continued to dominate in areas of social prominence and power, especially where a vote is involved as in politics. I tried to put my study in the hands of the publications that had been publicizing the "imbalance" but somehow it didn't fit into their agenda for some reason.

It might be that in photography, like many other areas of endeavor in our society, given the perplexities dealing with the grappling for social power centered around the possible allegations of sexual issues, men are progressively shifting away from, or are voluntarily avoiding or disassociating themselves with, certain classes of occupations, or facets thereof, that are likely to lead to a perception that could render them suddenly unable to cover their financial needs, as we are seeing within the medical field where fewer men are willing to engage in specialties involving female patients while the reverse is not perceived to be a problem.

Excellent shot. Something I didn't see mentioned that you night want to look into, using Google and Youtube.com, is referred to as, "peak of the action" in soccer photography, if you aren't already familiar with the term. It can offer you a means of economizing on you exposure triangle settings and still getting your desired results. If you've played the game or previously studied it, you'll be way ahead. If you've done neither, perhaps you will benefit dramatically by taking my suggestion to look into the term. Another thing I would suggest is to visit the sports section here in uhh to pose your questions and engage in pertinent discussions with other soccer shooters and thereby eliminate nuance interjections by people who don't share your interests, who know nothing about the subject, but cannot resist commenting anyway.

And rightfully so - you should not believe it's been TWENTY years my dear tilde because it's only been TEN, at the risk of giving you a "snap to reality" nudge so this early in the morning. It is a pleasure to know you're still "kickin'" and paying attention but I have to admit that I am surprised that someone revived this thread this far out and that it got a response from you.

That was a fun time for some of us simple minded folks like me, during my virginal, and only, foray into the online world of photography. As you say, "bittersweet" by now. The atmosphere we had then has dissipated into thin air. There's rarely anything now to laugh at but the collective ignorance and stupidity of some of us. The "dashing" characters among us are gone, those who knew how to look at themselves with a modicum of humor, like "gizzywhicker," replaced by a group of technophobes who get tangled up in their ego and their own words neither of which is anything that's likely to offer an occasional laugh, except in pity, as they drone on and on ad nauseum in an attempt to display their intellectual superiority as though anyone cares.

See you in another ten years? If so, it'll be a pleasure again. Happy Thanksgiving...