For the past seven years I have been engaged in a large scale rephotography project. Specifically, I have been traveling across the country rephotographing more than 100 scenes contained in George R. Stewart’s 1953 book U.S. 40. The book was a landmark in the field of landscape studies and it portrays everyday life along the highway that runs from Atlantic City to San Francisco. My goal is to visually measure the changes in the American landscape over the past 60 years. If I can find an agreeable publisher I hope to have this work published in the next year or two.

I’ve been taking roadside photographs for 30 years, but since 9/11, it has become increasingly more challenging to do so uninterrupted. Most of the scenes I am shooting are unremarkable, everyday scenes – and not your typical tourist Kodak moment spots. I always park my car far off the highway and set up my gear as to not impede traffic, sight lines or safety of traffic. I even wear an official looking bright green safety vest. Yet, I’ve been stopped in all 14 U.S. 40 states by law enforcement officers who are puzzled by my photographic activities. Sometimes the officers are pleasant and cooperative. Sometimes they are not. Of all the states, Kansas seems to be the worst. On at least three occasions I’ve been told that it looks like I am engaged in “terrorist activities” while taking pictures of corn fields, grain elevators and other backroad scenes. In 2003, near Wamengo, Kansas, one eager officer was bound and determined to cite me for something. I was in a roadside park and had taken pictures of some railroad tracks leading to a nearby town. The officer said that sounded suspicious. I showed him the 1953 book with the original photograph, explained my project and even offered up my ID. But he wouldn’t let me go and he kept asking me question after question. Finally, I said I had to get back to taking pictures. The officer then questioned the authenticity of my license plates. Here in Ohio, vanity plates are printed on a computer and they do not have embossed letters. He had never seen anything like that before. He was sure my plates were fake. I showed him my car’s registration and explained how Ohio vanity plates are indeed non-embossed. He didn’t buy it and asked his dispatcher to verify my claim. Fifteen minutes passed and the dispatcher was unable to confirm that buckeye plates are flat. Eventually, the officer got tired and he told me I was free to go, but not before advising me against taking pictures in the area again. I ignored his warning and as soon as he left I went back to the highway and snapped away. Last year I returned to the same spot and snapped pictures from the same location. A police car came by and asked if I was OK, I just waved and said everything was fine. His car pulled over about 200 feet to the east and then drove away after 30 seconds or so.

Makes me wonder just what they're up to in the sunflower state!

This is a fascinating story but I am wondering how does one know what fossilized shit looks like? To me it would just look like a clump of mud - especially after 14,000 years.

Ooops, gotta go. I need to clean up some canine coprolites in my backyard.

Sweet! I know it's not her but I thought the "hostess" was cupcake goddess Amy Sedaris. BTW, can she share where she obtained her cupcake bra?

With enough imagination almost anything can look obscene. Just look at the highway system of the Dallas-Fort Worth area...

Someone better alert Hemlock Stones and his trust sidekick Dr. Flotsam! FST fans will certainly enjoy this news story.

Check out http://www.affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/giant_rat_of_sumatra_small1.jpg

Oh, I suppose I'll catch some flack from the Nielsen-can-do-no-wrong groupies out there, but here goes. I used to work in the usability industry for one of NNG's competitors. I never bought Neilsen's arguments and considered his approach to be incredibly antiquated. Here is a review of Neilsen's Designing Web Usability that I wrote for LibraryThing:

Jakob Nielsen is the computer industry’s declared “king of usability.” To that I say The King Has No Clothes! If you are a text-centric person, you will really love the Spartan and bare-bones approach philosophized by Dr. Nielsen. However, if you consider yourself someone who is graphically oriented (probably the vast majority of today’s contemporary computer users), you will find this book a complete waste of time and a major disappointment. In a nutshell, Dr. Nielsen eschews anything graphical and advocates systems designs that are Luddite in nature. His design philosophy is antiquated and completely out of touch with today’s systems. Reading this book I am reminded of the classic Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert and Wally are having lunch with a bitter veteran software developer. “When I started programming,” quips the old school veteran, “we didn’t have any of these sissy icons and windows. All we had were zeros and ones – and sometimes we didn’t even have ones. I once wrote an entire database program using zeros.” I am also filled with the sense that perhaps Nielsen may have flunked Crayola 101 in kindergarten and has been on an anti-graphical rant ever since. If you loved the old days of command line DOS operating systems, blue screens and commands requiring acrobatic keyboard maneuvers (e.g., tap your feet and blink twice while simultaneously pressing CTRL-Left Shift-ALT-F7), by all means grab this book. If you enjoy graphical user interfaces, then you’d better pass on this book.

Well, that said, he must be doing something right. NNG is going strong and my old consulting company folded.