Webshots, a photo sharing site that I’ve mentioned in posts before, including one earlier today, has been sold by CNET for $45 million to Ohio-based American Greetings.
The Webshots site has a large user base, a popular site blog, and an enormous archive of photos.
Lots of gifts can already be ordered from the site using the images, such as e-cards, so this acquisition seems like a natural move for American Greetings, who are probably best known for their paper greeting cards.
For years, and quite after it was obvious that the Bush administration was a kind of tinpot revolution of rabid anti-New-Dealers, fascist lawbreakers and choose-up-siders, legions of Bush’s supporters threw around the defamatory remark that anyone pining for the Constitution was somehow a problematic mind suffering from “Bush derangement syndrome.”
The reality, of course, is that many of these maniacs were the ones truly deranged.
One of the benefits of study of America’s history is the discredit of the patriotic naivete that, I am afraid to say, so many of my fellow citizens (and too many these days on the left) seem to have gained from their superficial, clouded view of what this country is really about.
Every one of Bush’s stupid defenders–and by that I mean ones not directly and heavily invested in this collapsing administration, who may be acting rationally by defending him–should take a look at what Joe Nacchio is saying:
‘Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents unsealed in Denver this week.’
All of a sudden all those 9/11 rationalizations that political commentators of all sorts have given for the illegal wiretapping and data mining all fall by the wayside. Time to think of some new excuses, deranged Republicans.
An experimental photo session, a bit of image manipulation on the computer, and I’ve come up with this image that I sort of like. The production on the image was done by me but I couldn’t have done any of that without Jessica’s work on the photo session where we created the original photo.
Pulling out the little contrasts in sameness to create an unexpected pattern, while re-purposing common visuals by smoothing them out, is the best way to describe what I was trying to do with this.
Jessica and I were walking through a dark stretch of Mountain Lake Park and back to the Inner Richmond neighborhood when we saw an amazing purple twilight over the tree line, and Jessica took a great picture of the view.
Located in the Presidio, it’s quite an excellent park–I’ve written about it before and we even made a movie about skateboarding there and a podcast starring its resident birds–and now I’ve noticed that it even has a web site dedicated to it called Friends of Mountain Lake Park.
It looks like Michigan has been told that its anti-youth-drinking policies are unconstitutional. As this article notes, this is an especially acute issue around Michigan State University, where students are regularly harassed and detained like criminals for refusing to submit to illegal intrusions into their privacy.
‘A federal judge in Detroit today struck down as unconstitutional a Michigan law that allows police to force pedestrians under the age of 21 to take a Breathalyzer test without first obtaining a search warrant.
In a 32-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge David M. Lawson struck down the state’s Minor in Possession (MIP) law because it “authorizes police officers to perform a search of minors without a warrant or legal excuse for not obtaining one” in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. The decision does not apply to drivers of a motor vehicle and allows police officers to administer breath tests without warrants in emergencies.
Michigan is among a handful of states nationwide with an MIP law that makes it illegal for young adults and minors who are pedestrians to refuse a Breathalyzer test even though police do not have a search warrant. Those who refuse to take tests in Michigan are guilty of a civil infraction and must pay a $100 fine. In addition, police in some places — including Michigan State University — tell students that if they refuse to submit to a Breathalyzer upon demand that they could spend up to a dozen hours in jail.’
These policies are especially stupid because they punish the relatively harmless act of 19-year-olds walking home drunk after a party. Progress comes slow–it’s not surprising that the federal courts had to get involved to put a stop to these authoritarian “party patrol” police witch-hunts looking to bust people for “Minor in Possession,” the likes of which are unknown even in the college town areas of other nearby Midwestern states like Illinois and Ohio. Read the whole article and see what I’m talking about.
GM’s plan to transfer to the United Auto Workers Union the burden of their benefits tab is a bunch of financial shenanigans, for sure, but it’s more than that. It’s false hope for all the deluded boosters of Detroit and its failing auto industry. A whole bunch of room on GM’s balance sheet is great for the company’s executives–but it won’t fix the American auto industry’s fundamental problems–high costs, bad finances, and the worst management cadre in American industry today.
If GM declares bankruptcy, as they should, their assets can be liquidated and sold and that could be used toward compensation for bond holders, and the rest of the needed benefits could be picked up by the normal government agencies. But instead, GM is allowed to fail on its feet, which is being sold as a way to help retirees get benefits. But as usual in corporate communications, the more important reasons for doing something are left out–in this case, the shareholders of GM (largely investment firms) ensure value for their stock holdings, at least for now.
Management at the major auto companies has been very poor for a long time, and something like bankruptcy would probably be a therapeutic shock for GM to get rid of all those old-school managers (rather than the UAW workers that always get blamed and demonized by the media) whose decisions deserve the lion’s share of blame for the company’s problems. Looking for quick profit, these managers have turned GM into a bank with a health care division and an auto subsidiary. They backed one bad or mediocre new car idea after another, from the Oldsmobile Aurora to the Hummer H3. They decided in the 1990s to build their entire companies around heavy, inefficient, dangerous trucks instead of consumer vehicles. Now with the higher price of oil cars like Toyota’s Prius are big sellers, and though trucks remain popular GM extends enormous credit to buyers because they have become so expensive.
Aside from that, the management of the American auto industry are a truly flat-footed, narrow-minded, dim-witted group. This is an archetypal 20th century industry–they really haven’t changed, especially in the executive suite–and I wonder if anyone wants to try to convince me that the future of the car industry isn’t centered in Aichi, Japan.
The idea that some turnaround could happen in America’s car industry due to a shuffling around of debts is laughable. Put aside the failure yet again of our supposedly “free market” economy to function properly–or our failure to let it function–and just look at the state of Michigan.
When I was there at Michigan State in the late 1990s, the minor league baseball team in Lansing was called the Lansing Lugnuts and they played at Oldsmobile Park. After I was there for a few years the Oldsmobile division was completely shut down by GM. The collapse of the auto industry has turned a once-proud state into a place with declining income levels, slow growth and high unemployment. And that’s everywhere–go to the worst places, like the neighborhoods along the highway in the west of Detroit with its gray rows of abandoned, decrepit old houses that line sad old boulevards with only their width to testify to their former grandeur, while the streets sit strangely quiet with few cars and shell-shocked homeless people roll shopping carts over the ashes of the auto empire.
And by the way, even this deal with the UAW involving the setup of “Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association,” or VEBA, is a temporary fix. As the Economist magazine admits, despite its typical attempt to sell the deal because it benefits the company’s executives:
‘But there is also a potential downside, as the UAW has learnt to its cost. Two earlier VEBAs, set up at Detroit Diesel and Caterpillar, have gone bust.’
This industry is not coming back. Put a fork in it instead of more money.
Dan and I want to get a dog. They’re lovable, fun, enjoy the outdoors just like us. But until we can get a real one, let’s see what virtual ones we can find. I like this little black one from RockYou. Pretty cute, and he won’t eat my shoes!
Podcast 11 (remix) is now out–you can check it out on the pacificpelican.us podcast blog, or if you want to watch it quickly you can view the Flash video version at Webshots.
This is the second podcast shot entirely with my cell phone camera–the first was number seven. For earlier podcasts I had occasionally thrown in soundless video from my old Kodak EasyShare alongside my Samsung camera-phone video, and for podcast 6 at Yellowstone Jessica and I took a bit of the video with a borrowed point-and-shoot Canon Pro.
But one device was the anchor for the early podcasts. Essential video footage for most of them was taken with a Casio Exilim which really shined taking videos as well as photos, took quality sound recordings, and was both small and portable. Recently that camera, which we had used for a year and a half as our main video and still camera, broke and we needed a replacement.
As I mention on podcast 10, the new camera is a very cool Panasonic Lumix that has 10x optical zoom and lots of powerful features. As you can see from podcast number 10, which was the first podcast to use that camera, it also takes very good video.
However the Lumix takes QuickTime video that can be played on my desktop and even uploaded to my podcast server (as in number 10 which is just one uncut movie)–but I can’t edit and remix it with the software tools I currently have. So two more podcasts have been shot and produced but await mixing. For now here are the synopses: In podcast 8, Jessica and I visit Yosemite for our anniversary. In podcast 9, a car rams into the back of a bus that I am riding in the front of and I video the aftermath.
For now I think podcast 11 has some pretty interesting moments–and it’s a “remix” because I actually re-shot the “interlude” part (i.e. the first mix) and then added footage. One of the sequences is a sort of reference to my movie “The Dog of Geary Boulevard,” and another is taken from unused podcast 7 footage. The rest is totally new–more a sequence of random clips than anything, but feel free to surmise plot lines. Movies sort of write themselves in San Francisco.
Pakistan’s dictator, Pervez Musharraf, is starting to lose his grip on power.
First it was that feisty supreme court that they have over there. Lawyers and professionals from around Pakistan–a country with many educated, liberal people–fought to have their independent-minded chief justice reinstated after Musharraf fired him, and won.
Now everyone wants in on the party, and Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister Musharraf kicked out in 1999 in a coup, is flying back into the country. And Benazir Bhutto, a dynastic former premier, is returning to the political scene there as well–looking for a deal with the dictator as way back to power for herself.
Well, sure, these former leaders may be corrupt like the current president, but freedom is “untidy,” as Donald Rumsfeld once said.
Besides, this kind of disorderly democracy is lot better than Pakistan being run out of Cheney’s office.
How long must we endure the insane propaganda coming from the right-wing war mongers that have been urging on the Iraq occupation since the beginning?
When war hacks Mike O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack came back from a posh military-escorted happy tour in Iraq and declared that (a) they used to be against the war (though not the brutality of war as a geo-political strategy per se, just the tactics) [this was not previously known] and (b) they are now for the continued occupation, the best reaction was actually offered by serving soldiers.
Well no one believes that kind of story anyway, even if were true–just ask the Washington congressman who finds anger at himself from constituents because of his sudden “surge” in support for Bush’s war.
Kenneth Pollack is a longtime propagandist for the war, having written a book about the so-called case for invading Iraq and used fake-liberal outlets like Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo as eager dumping grounds for his swill.
But it’s not just shady Beltway propagandists making the case for more war in Iraq instead of withdrawal. Lots of Republicans have been getting one talking point after another and repeating it about how the situation in Iraq is improving. But that’s just not the case. US military deaths are up over last year, violence continues largely unabated, and core government departments like the Interior Ministry continue to spread terror among the population.
This is not progress. To the extent that things are calmer in a few pockets here and there, it’s because the fighting has lulled for a while. These lulls will happen as the civil war slowly burns itself out over the next decade. This process (or some other chain of events, maybe–who knows?) is not under the control of US forces, who are just side actors and armament suppliers to the various Iraqi factions. Getting in the middle–arming one group of Sunnis (”the tribes”) against another (Salafists, or in the media’s misnomer, “Al-Qaeda”) for example–is really just a matter of arming one gang of thugs against another. And eventually, whichever group of Sunnis we choose to arm is likely to eventually turn those weapons against our own Shia-dominated Iraqi government. Why keep picking factions and giving them weapons? They’re not going to run out of weapons that way, that’s for sure–but then we are talking about an “AK-in-every-home” kind of society.
Iraq is such a quagmire for America that it is hard to truly fathom. The corrupt contractors enriching themselves with shoddy projects; the incompetent grandees like Paul Bremer and David Patraeus who have pretended to rule Iraq; the enormous number of civilian deaths from bombing and from deprivation, well into the hundreds of thousands by now; the broken promises to military men and women about overseas time, equipment and health care; the cynical fiscal pump priming by the administration with excessive spending paired with excessive tax cuts, designed to put the real costs of the war as far into the future and as far out of the public consciousness as possible–everything about this war has been disgusting, and even some of those people willing to show their face at the Republican debate in New Hampshire tonight were cheering Ron Paul for calling out his own party about this disaster.
But many Republicans, and plenty of their servants from other corners, are still cheering the silly nonsense from most of the other candidates on stage about leaving Iraq “with honor” and finding “a way to win, and that’s victory.”
It’s just like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin to appear. They are going to sit there, and they believe their “victory” will appear, and their sincerity will make it happen. These people are not just obedient, or gullible–these people are blanket suckers!