I've tried reading e-books for several years now. The big problem has been the big computer. It doesn't go to where I like to read books, which is just about anywhere that I find myself. The Kindle seems to fit the bill, reading various reviews. It's the bill part that doesn't fit my wallet. $360 to $489, depending on size, is out of my league. But wait! There is a poor man's Kindle.
No, Dell isn't making a Kindle competitor.
It's my 9" Dell Mini. My gosh, the text is rotated 90 degrees! How is this done?
"Among e-readers, the Kindle attracts the most attention due to its connection to Amazon for content and its easy-on-the-eyes E-Ink screen. But if you're already packing an XP-based netbook in a purse or briefcase, you can get much of the same functionality without carrying another device. [...]
"Now wouldn't it be great if you could thumb through the pages vertically instead of scanning a squat, horizontal screen? You can. If your netbook has the Intel GMA Driver for Mobile Control Panel (most do), click the Display Settings tab, check Enable Rotation, and click the 270° radio button. Click Apply. Depending on your system, you might be able to press Ctrl-Alt-Right Arrow or Ctrl-Alt-Up Arrow to toggle between the normal and rotated orientations.
"If your machine doesn't have that video control panel or your key commands aren't working correctly -- mine didn't on an Acer Aspire One -- download EeeRotate. This free tool lets you easily toggle between the portrait and landscape orientations, using the same key commands noted above."
The program is for Acer netbooks but it works fine on my Dell Mini. Cost (if you already have a netbook): $0. This will work on larger laptops but is ideal for the tiny netbooks.
Where to get cheap E-books? Get thee to Project Gutenberg which has thousands of free books whose copyrights have expired. They are available in several formats. The book I'm reading, The Count of Monte Cristo, is in HTML so I read it in my browser. I go full screen to have only the text displayed. In Opera, my browser, you can change the size of the display from 20% to 1000%. I bumped up to size to 120% which works best for me. The Dell Mini is easy to carry around to any room I want and I can now read an e-book where ever and when ever I want.
This is the best movie you can't see. Well, you can't see it if you only see your movies in movie theaters. This is an independent animation of the Ramayana, along with a bit of autobiography. Nina Paley spent 5 years doing this on her home computer. Disney should be envious. You can't see it because of copyright restrictions on songs Annette Hanshaw sang in the 1930s in a case of copyright protection gone wrong. But you can see it online and you can buy a DVD from Nina. I highly recommend it. So does Roger Ebert.
"It hardly ever happens this way. I get a DVD in the mail. I'm told it's an animated film directed by "a girl from Urbana." That's my home town. It is titled "Sita Sings the Blues." I know nothing about it, and the plot description on IMDb is not exactly a barn-burner: An animated version of the epic Indian tale of Ramayana set to the 1920's jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw. Uh, huh. I carefully file it with other movies I will watch when they introduce the 8-day week.
"I get an e-mail from Betsy, my old pal who worked with me on The News-Gazette. "Did you see the film by the mayor's daughter?" This intrigues me. The daughter is named Nina Paley. I do a Google run and discover that Hiram Paley was mayor from 1973-1977. I am relieved. This means the "girl" probably didn't make the film as a high school class project. In fact, by my rapid mathematical calculations, she may have been conceived in City Hall. I used to cover City Hall. Worse things have happened there.
"By this point, I'm hooked. I can't stop now. I put on the DVD and start watching. I am enchanted. I am swept away. I am smiling from one end of the film to the other. It is astonishingly original. It brings together four entirely separate elements and combines them into a great whimsical chord. You might think my attention would flag while watching An animated version of the epic Indian tale of Ramayana set to the 1920's jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw. Quite the opposite. It quickens. I obtain Nina Paley's e-mail address and invite the film to my film festival in April 2009 at the University of Illinois, which by perfect synchronicity is in our home town.
"To get any film made is a miracle. To conceive of a film like this is a greater miracle. How did Paley's mind work? She begins with the story of Ramayana, which is known to every school child in India but not to me. It tells the story of a brave, noble woman who was made to suffer because of the perfidy of a spineless husband and his mother. This is a story known to every school child in America. They learn it at their mother's knee. Paley depicts the story with exuberant drawings in bright colors. It is about a prince named Rama who treated Sita shamefully, although she loved him and was faithful to him.
"Of course there is a lot more to it than that, involving a monkey army, a lustful king who occasionally grows 10 heads, synchronized birds, a chorus line of gurus, and a tap-dancing moon. It coils around and around, as Indian epic tales are known to do. Even the Indians can't always figure them out. In addition to her characters talking, Paley adds another level of dialogue: Three voice-over modern Indians, ad-libbing as they try to get the story straight. Was Sita wearing jewelry or not? How long was she a prisoner in exile? How did the rescue monkey come into the picture? These voices are as funny as an SNL skit, and the Indian accent gives them charm: "What a challenge, these stories!" "
"I hereby give Sita Sings the Blues to you. Like all culture, it belongs to you already, but I am making it explicit with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Please distribute, copy, share, archive, and show Sita Sings the Blues. From the shared culture it came, and back into the shared culture it goes.
"You don't need my permission to copy, share, publish, archive, show, sell, broadcast, or remix Sita Sings the Blues. Conventional wisdom urges me to demand payment for every use of the film, but then how would people without money get to see it? How widely would the film be disseminated if it were limited by permission and fees? Control offers a false sense of security. The only real security I have is trusting you, trusting culture, and trusting freedom."
The best bet is to order a DVD through the website and watch it on a High Def TV. Beautiful!! Let's hope the copyright restrictions are taken care of (= lots of money) and it can be released so that we can see it on the big screen.
"In looking back on growing up, I always remember 1957 and 1958 at "the two good years," They were the only years my working class redneck family ever caught a real break in their working lives, and that break came because of organized labor. After working as a farm hand, driving a hicktown taxi part ti me, and a dozen catch as catch can jobs, my father found himself owning a used semi-truck and hauling produce for a Teamster unionized trucking company called Blue Goose.
"Daddy was making more money than he'd ever made in his life, about $4,000 a year. The median national household income at the time was $5,000, mostly thanks to America's unions. After years of moving from one rented dump to another, we bought a modest home, ($8,000) and felt like we might at last be getting some traction in achieving the so-called “American Dream.” Yup, Daddy was doing pretty good for a backwoods boy who'd quit school in the sixth or seventh grade -- he was never sure, which gives some idea how seriously the farm boy took his attendance at the one-room school we both attended in our lifetimes.
"This was the golden age of both trucking and of unions. Thirty-five percent of American labor, 17 million working folks, were union members, and it was during this period the American middle class was created. The American middle class has never been as big as advertised, but if it means the middle third income-wise, then we actually had one at the time. But whatever it means, one third of working folks, the people who busted their asses day in and day out making the nation function, were living better than they ever had. Or at least had the opportunity to do so. [...]
"If a few pricks and gangsters have occasionally seized power over the dignity of labor, countless more calculating, bloodless and malevolent pricks -- the capitalist elites -- have always held most of the card -- which is why in 1886 railroad and financial baron Jay Gould could sneer, "I can always hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." And why a speaker at the U.S. Business Conference Board in 1974 could arrogantly declare, "One man, one vote has undermined the power of business in all capitalist countries since World War II." And why that same year Business Week magazine said, "It will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow -- the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more. Nothing in modern economic history compares with the selling job that must now be done to make people accept this new reality."
"The new reality is here, and has been since 1973, the last year American workers made a wage gain in real dollars. Hell, it's been here so long we accept it as part of America's cultural furniture. Only about 12% of American workers are unionized and even with a supposedly union friendly Democratic Congress, unions are still fighting to exist (although government employees are unionized at 36%, because the Empire allows some leeway for its commissars ). In fact, things are worse than ever. Employers can now force employees to attend anti-union presentations during the workday, at captive audience meetings in which union supporters are forbidden to speak under threat of insubordination. Back in 1978 when I was working to organize the local newspaper, the management was not even allowed to speak to the workers on the matter until after the union vote results were in."
I've been listening to Katzenjammer's album " Le Pop". Wonderful stuff! Here are a couple more videos. One promoting "Le Pop" and the another an interview. The other music videos are here.
"A few moments ago, author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation and one of DC's best Iran experts Barbara Slavin wrote to me through Facebook and said: steve, iran ceased being an islamic republic a week ago. now it's just another military dictatorship.
"She is right. And given that collapse of legitimacy and the mystique of the Islamic Revolution, Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and those who organized the head-crackers to assault Iran's citizens will probably have a fragile grasp on their lives from here on out."
"The Iranian police commander, in green uniform, walked up Komak Hospital Alley with arms raised and his small unit at his side. “I swear to God,” he shouted at the protesters facing him, “I have children, I have a wife, I don’t want to beat people. Please go home.”
"A man at my side threw a rock at him. The commander, unflinching, continued to plead. There were chants of “Join us! Join us!” The unit retreated toward Revolution Street, where vast crowds eddied back and forth confronted by baton-wielding Basij militia and black-clad riot police officers on motorbikes.
"Dark smoke billowed over this vast city in the late afternoon. Motorbikes were set on fire, sending bursts of bright flame skyward. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, had used his Friday sermon to declare high noon in Tehran, warning of “bloodshed and chaos” if protests over a disputed election persisted.
"He got both on Saturday — and saw the hitherto sacrosanct authority of his office challenged as never before since the 1979 revolution birthed the Islamic Republic and conceived for it a leadership post standing at the very flank of the Prophet. A multitude of Iranians took their fight through a holy breach on Saturday from which there appears to be scant turning back.
"Khamenei has taken a radical risk. He has factionalized himself, so losing the arbiter’s lofty garb, by aligning himself with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against both Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a founding father of the revolution.
"He has taunted millions of Iranians by praising their unprecedented participation in an election many now view as a ballot-box putsch. He has ridiculed the notion that an official inquiry into the vote might yield a different result. He has tried pathos and he has tried pounding his lectern. In short, he has lost his aura."
"But there is another corruption that Ahmadinejad represents – he embraces it enthusiastically – that makes millions more despise him. That is the corruption of being the nation’s moral scold and enforcer of propriety, through his militia known as the basiji. These are mostly teenagers recruited outside of the big cities, and given billy clubs and a uniform and then set loose in the cities, at universities, and anywhere else young people gather. There they monitor behavior, looking for anti-Islamic activities such as fraternization between the sexes, improper clothing or hair styles, disrespectful talk about the clergy or government, possession or use of drugs, or homosexual tendencies. They issue citations, beat people, send them to prison to be tortured, and some of their victims are hanged by the government in public using industrial cranes that slowly lift the victim high into the air.
"Of all the forces of repression in Iranian society, the basiji stand out as peculiarly insidious and loathed, their only counterpart elsewhere being the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. For thirty years Iranians have lived with a repression that is ever-present, and in an ironical way inimical to the interests of Shi’ite Islam. Teenagers who might otherwise be devout in their religious beliefs and practices associate personal repression with Islam, so that over time the connection between religion and the people has dissipated. The more people turn away from Islam, the more frantic the Islamic Republic becomes to enforce its vision of an Islamic society, under the rule of the clergy.
"Since the 1979 Revolution, Iranians have become more worldly, not less. Satellite dishes are everywhere, and the internet is the mode of choice for many young Iranians when they wish to communicate not only to others in Iran, but elsewhere in the world. Business and commerce also have thrived using modern technology, and the clerical overlords cannot afford to shut down completely these tools, at least not for long. There are therefore vast segments of Iranian society that understand the modern world (not just the West, but China, Japan and elsewhere), and want to be part of it.
"This is indeed a volatile mix: a society of young people (most of the population is under 30) who have known nothing but personal repression all their lives; new means of communication within society that the government can censor but not completely control; a desire by many Iranians to join the rest of the world in a more open society where talk and travel are unlimited; a falling away of respect for religion and especially the ayatollahs and imams who run Iran; and a national election that features a candidate for reform (in the limited government-approved sense) vs. Ahmadinejad as the candidate for authoritarian and repressive rule.
"It is obvious that Ahmadinejad and Ali Khameni anticipated trouble after the election announcement, because there had been “student protests” before that the regime had to put down. But they misread the depth of social distress that exists in Iran. They interpreted the election as a fight between the established order and Hashemi Rafsanjani, and they badly overplayed their hand by not even bothering to count the votes, giving Ahmadinejad a ridiculously large electoral mandate, and then calling out the government forces of repression to deal with any unrest that might result. In that respect, like us, they didn’t see this revolution coming."
I've been wanting to do some macro photography. A couple of days ago I did some tests.
This is a Pentax Super-Multi-Coated Macro-Takumar 50/4 on my Panasonic G1. It's a Pentax M42 screw mount lens that I have for my Pentax Spotmatics. With a M42 adapter I can use it on my Panasonic G1. The crop factor on the G1 (smaller sensor that 35mm film) turns it into an effective 100mm lens. The thing that makes a macro lens a macro lens is the ability to move the lens elements further away from the sensor/film. That allows it to focus closer. The picture shows the lens fully extended.
With the G1 and macro lens mounted on a tripod I approached some little flowers on our porch. The are about 1 inch (2.5 cm) accross at the max.
This is with the macro lens fully extended. It is really easy using the old (1970s vintage) macro lens on the digital G1.
But wait! There's more! The macro lens can only extend so far. From there a macro bellows is needed. This moves the whole lens out further. This picture shows the bellows fully extended.
Taken with bellows and macro lens near full extension. The bellows and macro lens are a great combination. There is a whole different world to be seen. I was blown away to see the water droplets. These photos will print 10x13 inches without upressing. More pictures on my Flickr set: Panasonic G1 Macro. The big problem getting these pictures was that every little breeze would set the flowers jumping around. Next I will try this with my studio strobe setup.
"This week marks the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful.
"Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America’s imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze.
"There are meetings being held Monday and Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia, (formerly Sverdlovsk) among Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance. Watch what happens there carefully. The gathering is, in the words of economist Michael Hudson, “the most important meeting of the 21st century so far.”
"It is the first formal step by our major trading partners to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If they succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value, the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket, interest rates will climb and jobs will hemorrhage at a rate that will make the last few months look like boom times. State and federal services will be reduced or shut down for lack of funds. The United States will begin to resemble the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe. Obama, endowed by many with the qualities of a savior, will suddenly look pitiful, inept and weak. And the rage that has kindled a handful of shootings and hate crimes in the past few weeks will engulf vast segments of a disenfranchised and bewildered working and middle class. The people of this class will demand vengeance, radical change, order and moral renewal, which an array of proto-fascists, from the Christian right to the goons who disseminate hate talk on Fox News, will assure the country they will impose."
What is happening in Iran is a military coup. Only the people don't seem to be standing for it. Iran won't be the same after this. Pay close attention.
"It is 1979 in Tehran all over again. From Saturday to Sunday, the deafening sound deep in the night across Tehran's rooftops was a roaring, ubiquitous "Allah-u Akbar" (God is great). Then, in 1979, to hail the Islamic revolution; now, in 2009, to signify what appears to be the hijacking of the Islamic revolution. Then, the revolution was not televised; it was via (Ruhollah Khomeini) radio. Now, it is being broadcast all across the world.
"Let's cut to the chase: what Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi qualified as "this dangerous charade" and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "the sweetness of the election", or better yet, a "divine assessment", has all the non-divine markings of intervention by the Iranian Republican Guards Corps (IRGC). This follows President Mahmud Ahmadinejad officially gaining 64% of the vote in defeating Mousavi in what in the days before Friday's vote had widely been called as a very close race.
"Scores of protesters equating Ahmadinejad with Augusto Pinochet in 1973's Chile might not be that far off the mark. Call it the ultra-right wing, military dictatorship of the mullahtariat.
"This is emerging as a no-holds-barred civil war at the very top of the Islamic Republic. The undisputed elite is now supposed to be embodied by the Ahmadinejad faction, the IRGC, the intelligence apparatus, the Ministry of the Interior, the Basij volunteer militias, and most of all the Supreme Leader himself.
"The elite wants subdued, muzzled, if not destroyed, reformists of all strands: any relatively moderate cleric; the late 1970s clerical/technocratic Revolution Old Guard (which includes Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammad Khatami and Mousavi); "globalized" students; urban, educated women; and the urban intelligentsia.
"Even fighting a cascade of political and economic setbacks, for the past three decades the regime has always been proud of the Islamic Republic's brand of popular democracy, and its alleged legitimacy. Now the revolution enters completely uncharted territory as thousands of people have taken to the streets in protest against the result."
I just discovered this group yesterday. David Byrne invited them to play at Bonnaroo. Four demented women from Norway. I can't stop listening. Fantastic!
Their Amazon page, with a free download of "A Bar in Amsterdam".
The recent elections in Iran have turned out to be a complete fraud. It seems we may be witnessing the beginning of a civil war. This is not good. Not just for Iran, but for the whole region.
"Top Pieces of Evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen
1. It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, did better in cities and is popular in Azerbaijan. Certainly, his rallies there were very well attended. So for an Azeri urban center to go so heavily for Ahmadinejad just makes no sense. In past elections, Azeris voted disproportionately for even minor presidential candidates who hailed from that province."
"Mir Hosain Mousavi was a plausible candidate for the reformists. They were electing people like him with 70 and 80 percent margins just a few years ago. We have not been had by the business families of north Tehran. We've much more likely been had by a hard line constituency of at most 20% of the country, who claim to be the only true heirs of the Iranian revolution, and who control which ballots see the light of day."
"If the reports coming out of Tehran about an electoral coup are sustained, then Iran has entered an entirely new phase of its post-revolution history. One characteristic that has always distinguished Iran from the crude dictators in much of the rest of the Middle East was its respect for the voice of the people, even when that voice was saying things that much of the leadership did not want to hear.
"In 1997, Iran's hard line leadership was stunned by the landslide election of Mohammed Khatami, a reformer who promised to bring rule of law and a more human face to the harsh visage of the Iranian revolution. It took the authorities almost a year to recover their composure and to reassert their control through naked force and cynical manipulation of the constitution and legal system. The authorities did not, however, falsify the election results and even permitted a resounding reelection four years later. Instead, they preferred to prevent the president from implementing his reform program.
"In 2005, when it appeared that no hard line conservative might survive the first round of the presidential election, there were credible reports of ballot manipulation to insure that Mr Ahmadinejad could run (and win) against former president Rafsanjani in the second round. The lesson seemed to be that the authorities might shift the results in a close election but they would not reverse a landslide vote.
"The current election appears to repudiate both of those rules. The authorities were faced with a credible challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who had the potential to challenge the existing power structure on certain key issues. He ran a surprisingly effective campaign, and his "green wave" began to be seen as more than a wave. In fact, many began calling it a Green Revolution. For a regime that has been terrified about the possibility of a "velvet revolution," this may have been too much."
"Last night in London after appearing on Keith Olbermann's show, I got an email from a well-connected Iranian who knows many of the power figures in the Tehran political order asking to meet me. I told him that the only place possible was Paddington on the way to Heathrow -- and there we met.
"He conveyed to me things that were mostly obvious -- Iran is now a tinderbox. The right is tenaciously consolidating its control over the state and refuses to yield. There is a split among the mullahs and significant dismay with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. A gaping hole has been ripped open in Iranian society, exposing the contradictions of the regime and everyone now sees that the democracy that they believed that they had in Iranian form is a "charade."
"But the scariest point he made to me that I had not heard anywhere else is that this "coup by the right wing" has created pressures that cannot be solved or patted down by the normal institutional arrangements Iran has constructed. The Guardian Council and other power nodes of government can't deal with the current crisis and can't deal with the fact that a civil war has now broken out among Iran's revolutionaries.
"My contact predicted serious violence at the highest levels. He said that Ahmadinejad is now genuinely scared of Iranian society and of Mousavi and Rafsanjani. The level of tension between them has gone beyond civil limits -- and my contact said that Ahmadinejad will try to have them imprisoned and killed.
"Likewise, he said, Rafsanjani, Khatami, and Mousavi know this -- and thus are using all of the instruments at their control within Iran's government apparatus to fight back -- but given Khamenei's embrace of Ahmadinejad's actions in the election and victory, there is no recourse but to try and remove Khamenei. Some suggest that Rafsanjani will count votes to see if there is a way to formally dislodge Khamenei -- but this source I met said that all of these political giants have resources at their disposal to "do away with" those that get in the way.
"He predicted that the so-called reformist camp -- who are not exactly humanists in the Western liberal sense -- may try and animate efforts to decapitate the regime and "do away with" Ahmadinejad and even the Supreme Leader himself.
"I am not convinced that this source "knows" these things will definitely happen but am convinced of his credentials and impressed with the seriousness of the discussion we had and his own concern that there may be political killing sprees ahead.
"This is not a vision he advocates -- but one he fears."
"3:46 PM ET -- Major uptick in violence reported. In the last hour, there has been a sharp spike in the number of (unconfirmed) reports about intensified violence:
From ABC's Jim Sciutto: "inside the protests tonight, if you support ahmadinajad, no police, you criticize him, get pepper spray, tear gas, batons... Anti-govt protests have spread to other Iranian cities, incl Rasht... We witnessed police spraying pepper gas into the eyes of peaceful female protesters... Two worlds in Tehran tonight. Support Ahmadinejad, free rein. Oppose him, risk police attacks, tear gas, batons, arrest8 minutes ago from web"
From an emailer Salim: "This is beginning to mirror what I witnessed in the first revolution. When people start taking over military centers. There is report that a basiji center in Northern Tehran around Tajrish has been captured by the protesters. This would potentially mean weapons in hands of protesters. I'll let you know if I heard more." "
"She was in tears like many women on the streets of Iran’s battered capital. “Throw away your pen and paper and come to our aid,” she said, pointing to my notebook. “There is no freedom here.”
"And she was gone, away through the milling crowds near the locked-down Interior Ministry spewing its pick-ups full of black-clad riot police. The “green wave” of Iran’s pre-election euphoria had turned black.
"Down the street outside the ghostly campaign headquarters of the defeated reformist candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, the baton-wielding police came in whining phalanxes, two to a motorbike, scattering people, beating them."
"First the cop screamed abuse at Mir Hossein Mousavi's supporter, a white-shirted youth with a straggling beard and unkempt hair. Then he smashed his baton into the young man's face. Then he kicked him viciously in the testicles. It was the same all the way down to Vali Asr Square. Riot police in black rubber body armour and black helmets and black riot sticks, most on foot but followed by a flying column of security men, all on brand new, bright red Honda motorcycles, tearing into the shrieking youths – hundreds of them, running for their lives. They did not accept the results of Iran's presidential elections. They did not believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won 62.6 per cent of the votes. And they paid the price."
" “I feel like I went to sleep in one country and woke up in another." So said a Western reporter about the riots that have swept Iran following the disputed election for President between Mahmud Ahmadinejad and Mir-Hussein Mousavi. Following weeks of increasingly animated, large demonstrations in favor of Mousavi as a reform candidate, and despite polls just before the voting that showed Mousavi with a lead, Ahmadinejad emerged with a “landslide victory” from the Ministry of Interior’s election commission, which counts the votes and which conveniently reports to Ahmadinejad."
My daughter, Katie, has been trying to run away to Colorado. It hasn't been easy. Actually it's something she has been thinking about for the last year. Her sister Jenny just had her husband, William, move to Afghanistan for a year courtesy of the US Army. Jenny has wanted help with Robyn (10) and Evan (4). Katie was laid off a month ago (a good thing) and finally decided to make the move. She had everything packed up a week ago Saturday ready to load into the U-Haul. She went camping at Baker Lake planning to return Tuesday to load the truck and leave Wednesday morning. An hour and a half after setting up camp she broke her right leg and badly sprained her left ankle.
Sunday she went to the ER and had the leg set, a temporary cast put on, and a recommendation of surgery for the right ankle. To make a long story short, she made it back to the Island Tuesday and I drove her to Everett Bone and Joint on Wednesday where they rereset her leg. She had a spiral fracture of the tibia. They put an inflatable boot cast on and said to have her have it checked in two weeks. It may or may not need surgery. In either case she won't be driving for two months so there was a lot of plan changing going on. In the end the U-Haul was loaded Friday night and her brother Robby volunteered to drive her to Colorado. We took Katie and her son Mike out to a late lunch-early dinner Saturday and dropped them off at Katie's mom's where the loaded U-Haul was waiting. Robby got off work and Katie, Mike, their dog Shorty, were on the road to Colorado by 7:30 with Robby at the wheel. They are now somwhere between Whidbey Island and Fort Carson, Colorado.
Mike and Katie ready to go
Mike and Shorty
We miss them.
update, monday: They left Saturday night around 7:30 and arrived at Jenny's in Colorado Springs at 5am this morning. The truck is unloaded and Robby is flying back tonight. Everyone made it alive.
" "This is the bigger picture," said John Kraintz, with a sweep of his arm, indicating the roughly two dozen remaining tents pitched around him on a muddy, pockmarked field between the city dump and the slow green waters of the American River. Kraintz is a thin man of 57, a former electrician who had lived in Sacramento's parks and riverside lots for seven years. His home had been right here--in Tent City.
"Kraintz had relocated to Tent City's outer boroughs. Its downtown, which briefly attracted camera crews from all over the world--a Third World shantytown in the capital of the richest state in the richest country!--was a couple of hundred yards away. Depending on whom you ask, somewhere between 150 and 300 people lived in Tent City between November and April. But by the third week in April, when I visited, most had already packed up. Some had migrated to this spot to avoid police attention. But the cops came, handing out notices announcing, "It is unlawful to camp in the City of Sacramento" and giving people two days to leave. ("This is not camping--we're living!" yelled one of Kraintz's neighbors.) By the end of the week, everyone had left. Tent City, for that moment at least, had disappeared.
"Few people there, though, doubted that it would be back. Tent City is less a single location than a nomadic but constant phenomenon, a shifting blue-tarped shadow to the glass and steel American metropolis. In good times and bad, Tent City comes and goes, forms and scatters and takes shape again. Despite its momentary dispersal in Sacramento, it is still out there--in Seattle, Portland, Reno, Providence, Fresno, even in the sprawling exurbs of southern California in the small city of Ontario. Tent City existed at the height of the real estate boom too, hidden in plain view, an omen for anyone willing to look."
"I am proud to present to you an introspective project I did as a Thomas J. Watson fellow, called “In My Mother’s Footsteps.” I used a large format camera and color film to document what I saw as I retraced my mother’s early life during World War II and the Holocaust. This included her escape from Berlin, Germany to Groningen in Holland, and then her eventual Nazi capture. In all, I traveled through four countries, visited five different concentration camps, and followed the path of the “Death March” of winter 1944."
Mondoweiss keeps becoming better and better at covering Israel/Palestine. Philip Weiss is an American Jew brought up Zionist but has become aware of the reality of Israel/Palestine and is now anti-Zionist. He recently went to Gaza and posted these reports:
"Max Blumenthal writes: On the eve of President Barack Obama’s address to the Muslim world from Cairo, Egypt, I stepped out onto the streets of Jerusalem with my friend Joseph Dana to interview young Israelis and American Jews about their reaction to the speech. We encountered rowdy groups of beer sodden twenty-somethings, many from the United States, and all eager to vent their visceral, even violent hatred of Barack Obama and his policies towards Israel. Usually I offer a brief commentary on my video reports, but this one requires no comment at all. Quite simply, it contains some of the most shocking footage I have ever filmed. Watch it and see if you agree. (Warning: this video contains profanity and material offensive to just about anyone.)"
"The notion that the racist diatribes in my video emerged spontaneously from a beery void is a delusion, but for some, it is a necessary one. It allows them to erect a psychological barrier against acknowledging the painful consequences of prolonged Zionist indoctrination. And it enables them to dismiss the disturbing spectacle of young Jews behaving like fascist soccer hooligans in the heart of the capitol of Israel and the spiritual home of the Jewish people.
"The people in my video were not white trash, nor were they the “extreme right-wing fringe” as some bloggers have called them. They were the college-educated sons and daughters of middle and upper class American Jews from cosmopolitan metropolises and genteel suburbs. Some had come to Israel on vacation, some had made aliyah, and some told me they were planning to move to Israel in the near future. Many were dual citizens of America and Israel. They may have behaved in a moronic way, but they will not grow up to toil in the custodial arts. Many of these kids will move into white-collar jobs and use their influence to advance Israeli initiatives. Programs like Birthright Israel -- a few of those in my video were on Birthright tours -- exist for the exclusive purpose of indoctrinating American Jews into unyielding, unthinking supporters of Israel. Thus the kids in my video represent at least one aspect of the Zionist project’s future base of political sustenance."
"Others have drawn a parallel to Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2006 movie “Borat,” in which a group of inebriated fraternity brothers from the University of South Carolina yuk it up about Jews, blacks and slavery. It wouldn’t be fair to call them representative of American society, the thinking goes, so why should we read anything more into what a handful of boozy Israelis and American Jews in Jerusalem say?
"Well, I have one suggestion why we should: because the man who is Israel’s new foreign minister, and who very nearly became its new prime minister this spring, is an absolute, unqualified bigot. Avigdor Lieberman’s rise (along with Benjamin Netanyahu’s resurgence) is confirmation that the mood in Israel (and among its ardent American supporters) toward the Arab and Muslim worlds has darkened dramatically. His rhetoric is as nakedly racist as George Wallace’s was in America 40 years ago—and he is now Israel’s ambassador to the world.
"I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that the basic attitudes and instincts that the ignorant, drunk racists in the video express are products of the same culture—in Israel and among its American backers—that has given rise to Lieberman, a culture that de-humanizes Arabs and Muslims and vilifies anyone (especially a black American with a Muslim middle name) who would dare challenge the dominant “Israel good/Arabs bad” narrative. Their parents’ and grandparents’ generations mask the rawness of these attitudes with sterile-sounding terms like “demographic problem” and “security fence,” but beneath it all is the same basic de-humanization that these kids are expressing. I suspect this video is a symptom of that culture."
"The Israeli government has repeatedly announced plans to forge ahead with plans to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank in direct opposition to President Barack Obama’s demand for an absolute settlement freeze. On May 27, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leveled strong criticism at Israeli policy, telling reporters that President Barack Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements - not some settlements, not outposts, not 'natural growth' exceptions.” Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev responded by declaring that “normal life” in the settlements would continue, using a phrase that is code for continued construction.
"With neither side exhibiting willingness to back down, the stage is set for a contentious clash between Israel and the U.S. over settlement policy. At the center of the maelstrom is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the hawkish Likud Party, who has highlighted his unique understanding of the United States – he is MIT educated and speaks flawless English. Supporters of the settlement movement are an integral part of his governing coalition. How Netanyahu navigates between his far-right constituency and increasingly insistent demands from Obama will not only determine the fate of his government, but also the fate of Israel’s “special relationship” with Washington.
"A gathering of the settlement movement’s leading figures in Jerusalem on May 22, documented in this exclusive Mondoweiss report, revealed the unprecedented influence of the settlers on Israeli policy. The event, a ceremony for the presentation of the Moskowitz Foundation Prize for Zionism, was organized and bankrolled by one of Netanyahu’s closest confidants and backers, the American casino tycoon Irving Moskowitz. For over a decade, Moskowitz has funneled millions in profits from his California-based Hawaiian Gardens casino, where he has been sued for exploiting undocumented workers, into settlement construction projects in the West Bank, including Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. He has also funded several neoconservative think tanks including a research center named after Netanyahu’s brother, Yonatan, who was killed while leading the Entebbe rescue raid in 1976. Moskowitz and Netanyahu have remained close since he established the center."
I've been resurrecting my Mamiya Press kit. I had stopped using it because of shutter problems with my lenses. I'm starting to get my lenses fixed.
One of the things that also got me back to the big Mamiya was that it can shoot Polaroid pack film full frame. Polaroid has ceased production but Fujifilm still makes peel apart pack film. Not only that but reports were that the color was better. The picture above is my Universal with a Polaroid back. My first pack is a pack of ISO 100 color film.
I'm really liking how it renders color. More at my Flickr set: Fujifilm instant film. I'm almost done with the pack of color film. Next I have two black and white packs of ISO 100 and ISO 3000 film. I was asked what for? Here was my answer:
What for? That's a very good question. I'm not totally sure yet. Part of it is that I like the small instant film print. I finally bought an SX-70 to play with about a year ago. Just before they ceased production of the 600 film. I liked it but no more film. I didn't think of the pack film because I had used the Polaroid film several years ago for lighting tests but I never really liked its color. Only recently did I realize that Fuji pack film was still in production and that it seemed to do color better. I'm very happy with the way the Fuji instant pack film renders color. It has it's own look. Shooting small instant film prints is something I want to explore. They are little jewels.
Having said that, I also want to explore enlarging them with a scanner. There is a limitation there because of the paper resolution but I'm sure it can be enlarged some. I need to do some testing on that.
But wait! There is more!
The first lens I had fixed is my 50mm/f6.3. It is a 21mm equivalent with a 6x9 back. I'm also trying out some Kodak Extar 100. It is a very new, very fine grain color negative film. More pictures of the camera at my Flickr set: My Mamiya Press kit.
Recent
books and movies that I've read or seen and recommend. The links go to
the blog post. Titles with a * are
available at Sno-Isle Libraries. Check them out!
seems to fit the bill, reading various reviews. It's the bill part that doesn't fit my wallet. $360 to $489, depending on size, is out of my league. But wait! There is a poor man's Kindle.
