dspaulding09
Hammer - Day 186
Sadly, it's been a while since my last upload. (Hopefully this caption/story/whatever-you-call-it makes up for some of that.)
Something kind of disturbing happened today. I answered the doorbell and was met by a sixteen-year-old neighbor of mine who asked to use the house phone. He said that his mother had threatened to kill him with a hammer and that he had it all recorded on the iPad he had under his arm. My dad got him some water and we had our neighbor call the police department.
While we waited he told us his side of what happened. He had been talking with his mom about something (he never specified what and we never pressed him) and I guess the situation escalated such that he ended up in a locked bedroom while she tried to beat down the door with a hammer while threatening to kill him. He somehow snuck downstairs, got his shoes on, and ran out of the house.
At first one police officer arrived and we let them have their privacy (my family and I didn't really want to be involved in this beyond alerting the proper authorities). An additional officer then arrived, then followed by a third officer. One squad car took the boy to the police station to keep him safe while the other two cruisers would go up to his house and talk to his mother. As he walked out to the squad car, I overheard the police officer asking the boy why he wasn't in school today (the public high school began the new school year today) and the boy said that he had been suspended.
And that's all I know and that's all I expect I will know about this story.
This story lead me to an interesting thought which served as the inspiration for this shot:
Is a hammer a tool or a weapon?
This question digs a lot deeper than most would think. Does an object’s classification depend on its use or its intention? If classification depends on use, does it depend on intended use or actual use? I’m not trying to play a game of linguistics here, but rather I’m bringing up existentialism.
If I use a medieval war hammer to drive stakes into the ground to build a railroad, it’s still a weapon; it’s just not being used as such. An ordinary household hammer (that was originally designed solely for construction purposes) used to assault someone is a weapon. Is there a point at which that hammer ceases to be a weapon and returns to being a simple tool? If so, is the point determined by a set amount of time, or is the hammer no longer a weapon the next time it’s used as a tool?
It’s cray how complex something as simple as a hammer can be…
Strobist:
SB900 shot thru umbrella camera right @ 1/4 power
Vivitar 285HV zoomed to tele @ 1/4 power shot from stand a few feet behind my head.
Hammer - Day 186
Sadly, it's been a while since my last upload. (Hopefully this caption/story/whatever-you-call-it makes up for some of that.)
Something kind of disturbing happened today. I answered the doorbell and was met by a sixteen-year-old neighbor of mine who asked to use the house phone. He said that his mother had threatened to kill him with a hammer and that he had it all recorded on the iPad he had under his arm. My dad got him some water and we had our neighbor call the police department.
While we waited he told us his side of what happened. He had been talking with his mom about something (he never specified what and we never pressed him) and I guess the situation escalated such that he ended up in a locked bedroom while she tried to beat down the door with a hammer while threatening to kill him. He somehow snuck downstairs, got his shoes on, and ran out of the house.
At first one police officer arrived and we let them have their privacy (my family and I didn't really want to be involved in this beyond alerting the proper authorities). An additional officer then arrived, then followed by a third officer. One squad car took the boy to the police station to keep him safe while the other two cruisers would go up to his house and talk to his mother. As he walked out to the squad car, I overheard the police officer asking the boy why he wasn't in school today (the public high school began the new school year today) and the boy said that he had been suspended.
And that's all I know and that's all I expect I will know about this story.
This story lead me to an interesting thought which served as the inspiration for this shot:
Is a hammer a tool or a weapon?
This question digs a lot deeper than most would think. Does an object’s classification depend on its use or its intention? If classification depends on use, does it depend on intended use or actual use? I’m not trying to play a game of linguistics here, but rather I’m bringing up existentialism.
If I use a medieval war hammer to drive stakes into the ground to build a railroad, it’s still a weapon; it’s just not being used as such. An ordinary household hammer (that was originally designed solely for construction purposes) used to assault someone is a weapon. Is there a point at which that hammer ceases to be a weapon and returns to being a simple tool? If so, is the point determined by a set amount of time, or is the hammer no longer a weapon the next time it’s used as a tool?
It’s cray how complex something as simple as a hammer can be…
Strobist:
SB900 shot thru umbrella camera right @ 1/4 power
Vivitar 285HV zoomed to tele @ 1/4 power shot from stand a few feet behind my head.