Tell Me Lies

From Craig Silverman's Regret the Error blog:

A photographer whose work appeared in the New York Times Magazine has been accused of digitally manipulating his images. Edgar Martins produced a photo essay entitled "Ruins of the Second Gilded Age." It showed abandoned buildings/construction projects and was featured in the magazine and on the Times website. After commenters on MetaFilter raised questions about the authenticity of the images, the magazine pulled the slideshow from the website ...

The slideshow page in question gives this explanation:

Editors' Note: July 8, 2009

A picture essay in The Times Magazine on Sunday and an expanded slide show on NYTimes.com entitled "Ruins of the Second Gilded Age" showed large housing construction projects across the United States that came to a halt, often half-finished, when the housing market collapsed. The introduction said that the photographer, a freelancer based in Bedford, England, "creates his images with long exposures but without digital manipulation."

A reader, however, discovered on close examination that one of the pictures was digitally altered, apparently for aesthetic reasons. Editors later confronted the photographer and determined that most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show. Had the editors known that the photographs had been digitally manipulated, they would not have published the picture essay, which has been removed from NYTimes.com.

The truth is that the images from the photo essay are still available on NYTimes.com. One of the links in the original Metafilter post reporting the manupulations gives the URL format: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/06/30/magazine/05gilded.1.jpg. Simply change the final number to view each of the images. I don't know how many images were included in the original essay, but I used this method to view images numbered 1 through 11. Image 2 is the one that first raised suspicions of digital manipulation.

The images were all still available as of just before 11 p.m. Eastern time on 7/17/09, 9 days after the Editors' Note shown/linked above that claimed the images had been removed. Clearly only the navigation was removed, not the images themselves.

Who's Gonna Drive You

A state trooper in Boston gave out a $100 ticket to a couple that was driving in the emergency lane. The catch? They were doing so to get around rush-hour traffic because the woman was in active labor:

Jennifer Davis was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Nov. 18, her contractions just 3 minutes apart. Her husband, John, was trying to appear calm for his wife's sake, driving in the breakdown lane of Route 2. They pulled up behind a state trooper to ask whether they could continue using the lane to reach the next exit, near Alewife Station.

Not only did the trooper say no, he gave them a $100 citation for driving in the breakdown lane, made them wait for their citation while he finished writing someone else's ticket, and even seemed to ask for proof of pregnancy, Jennifer Davis said.

"He said, 'What's under your jacket?' I said, 'My belly,' " Davis said. "He waited and gestured with his head like, 'OK, let's see it.' He waited for me to unzip my jacket. I mean, it was so clear that I was pregnant."

Now, I have to say, while the demand to see her belly was uncalled for, I can't really find the trooper completely at fault. The article notes that he offered twice to call an ambulance, which any informed healthcare consumer knows is the fastest way to get medical attention 99.9% of the time, but the couple declined. He also used an option where the citation was mailed to them instead of done on the spot, which saved time. And they still made it to the hospital with plenty of time to spare, the birth coming about 5 hours later.

As a PR exercise, this wasn't the best way to handle things. He should have just told them to move on but stay out of the emergency lane. Yes, two previous troopers had given them the OK to use the lane (carefully) when traffic backed up, but that's still a very dangerous thing, especially with a woman in labor. The couple were also stupid to refuse an ambulance, which would've gotten them to the hospital much faster.

Bet the ticket is thrown out, though.

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