The Gimp

Looks like The Gimp has been updated to run on 10.5. For those of you who do not know, The Gimp is a open source free version image editor like photoshop. Only free.

Has a healing brush now!

Corn Detasseling

So the conversation in the bar the other day drifted to the fine art of Corn Detasseling and how much that sucked to do as a kid. So I thought I do some googling this morning about it. "You get up before the sun comes up, meet at the high school and get on the yellow school bus that takes you to the field. You know that your first 10 steps into the corn are going to be anything but pleasant because it's full of dew. You're wet head-to-toe no matter what you're wearing. The corn is tall, you're walking through mud and engaged in repetitive physical exertion for the next 10 hours. In the morning, it's wet and chilly. By 10 a.m., steam is rising from the field. By noon it's darn hot, and by three, it's extremely hot and you're exhausted."

"Detasselers all wear pretty much the same uniform at work. Gloves with rubber grips protect the hands, hats guard against sunburn. And despite the heat, nearly everyone wears a bandana around the neck, a long-sleeved shirt and long pants, all to avoid the detasseler's worst nightmare: corn rash.

"Oh, I have it on my legs, and I don't think it's going away anytime soon," says Robb Stewardson, 20, a junior at Doane College, in Crete, Neb., who is detasseling for the first time this summer. He wore shorts the first few days and is now suffering the irritation caused by leaves of corn brushing against bare skin. "It looks and feels like the worst sunburn you ever had, but it's a rash that's everywhere."

But I guess agra business is making a end to all of these fun time.

"But the tradition of detasseling could be coming to an end. Seed companies are developing ways to make wider use of what's called "male-sterile corn" -- corn whose tassel doesn't produce pollen, thereby eliminating the need for detasselers. It's planted next to a corn variety that is able to pollinate, so cross-pollination can be achieved more efficiently."

I dunno, corn that does not pollenate sounds like a bad bad thing to me.

The next slums?

"For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay." ...

"At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year."

Yowza.

The Music Post

The Sixty One. Highway 61

A road is a road, but sometimes it's more. Sometimes a road sings.

Drive down Highway 61 and you'll find music everywhere you turn.

Muddy Waters rode the 61. So did Bob Dylan, Ike Turner, and B.B. King. Elvis grew up in the housing projects along it.

Highway 61 was the road by which people left to find better opportunities. And by leaving they took their music to the world.

Come join us on thesixtyone.

How does it work? Musicians upload their music for listening, but rather than allowing the Simon Cowells of the world decide which songs go on the homepage, the listeners do. How, you say? If you like a song you've found on thesixtyone, just click the "bump" button to increase its bump count. Doing so will cost you points, but if songs you bump get bumped by others, you can earn more points! Collecting points increases your level and reflects your skill in picking top songs in your favorite genre!

By listening to songs through the lens of the collective community on thesixtyone, you'll always find good new music. We're committed to giving every bit of music on the web the opportunity to find its audience.

-- Sounds like a pretty cool idea.

Also, I recently played drums on a recording of a Tom Petty cover "Listen to her heart" played by Allegra Gellar. Fun stuff!

I have some photos I need to upload soon as I get through the current rush of work. Shot a bar in San Fran called the Gold Dust, I have some out takes from the G Callers shoot and some nature porn shots from Big Sur. Lot's o stuff coming soon. Just a stress ball right now and don't have the time.

Interesting

Last post on Anon, but I found their logo and it's shockingly close to this piece I made about a month ago. Here is the logo: Interesting

Here is my piece I posted on 1-18, which means I most likely did it a month prior because I am slow like that with posting... lol!

mine

Interesting.....

The Passion of ‘Anonymous’

More info from Newsweek. "The Anonymous spokeswoman says the group plans to start a lobbying campaign to have the church stripped of its 501(c)3 tax-exempt status, which was reinstated in 1993. (In 1967, tax authorities revoked its tax-exemption status on the grounds that the organization's auditing scheme operated as Hubbard's personal for-profit venture, and in 1984 the U.S. Tax Court found the organization guilty of "manufacturing and falsifying records to present to the IRS, burglarizing IRS offices and stealing government documents, and subverting government processes for unlawful purposes.")"

Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama.

"I want to give you an example that I think illustrates this fact. As some of you know, during the 2004 U.S. Senate General Election I ran against a gentleman named Alan Keyes. Mr. Keyes is well-versed in the Jerry Falwell-Pat Robertson style of rhetoric that often labels progressives as both immoral and godless. Indeed, Mr. Keyes announced towards the end of the campaign that, "Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama. Christ would not vote for Barack Obama because Barack Obama has behaved in a way that it is inconceivable for Christ to have behaved."

Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama.

Now, I was urged by some of my liberal supporters not to take this statement seriously, to essentially ignore it. To them, Mr. Keyes was an extremist, and his arguments not worth entertaining. And since at the time, I was up 40 points in the polls, it probably wasn't a bad piece of strategic advice.

But what they didn't understand, however, was that I had to take Mr. Keyes seriously, for he claimed to speak for my religion, and my God. He claimed knowledge of certain truths.

Mr. Obama says he's a Christian, he was saying, and yet he supports a lifestyle that the Bible calls an abomination.

Mr. Obama says he's a Christian, but supports the destruction of innocent and sacred life.

And so what would my supporters have me say? How should I respond? Should I say that a literalist reading of the Bible was folly? Should I say that Mr. Keyes, who is a Roman Catholic, should ignore the teachings of the Pope?

Unwilling to go there, I answered with what has come to be the typically liberal response in such debates - namely, I said that we live in a pluralistic society, that I can't impose my own religious views on another, that I was running to be the U.S. Senator of Illinois and not the Minister of Illinois. "

Vid

Amazing speech by Barack Obama

We are Anonymous.

On several occasions, figures within the media have casually dismissed Anonymous as nothing more than a gaggle of restless youth. We remain entirely undeterred by their remarks. Virtually all age groups, creeds and professions are represented within our ranks. Many who are not affiliated with Anonymous have expressed support for our campaign. Their words serve to further underscore the broad demographic base of our initiative. If you remain doubtful of our strength and resolve, we invite you to observe them for yourselves. Actions speak louder than words. In the name of those who have been silenced by the criminal organization that is the Church of Scientology, Anonymous will be heard. Our cause is just. We shall prevail.

We are Anonymous. We have Awoken. We stand as One.

Press release vid

Transcript:

hollywood in the clouds

It sure has been rainy here in LA as of late.

Took this in the morning, quite nice. Froze my feet waiting for the clouds to break like that. At some point soon I am going to have to post all the hollywood sign pics I have as a series. Soon is probably mid summer..... lol!

Busted

"n appeal court in Paris has ruled that a photograph used in a high profile advertising campaign for the French National Tourist Office Federation (FNOTSI) was a deliberate copy of a Getty Images stock photograph." "The photograph used in the FNOTSI campaign had been commissioned specifically by advertising agency Prisme, and was taken by Laurence Frappa. Unlike Sanderson’s image, the blurred background was taken separately and digitally added in later.

“In court, Getty’s lawyers went over the [Frappa] picture bit by bit” Sanderson told EPUK. “That it was made from two separate images indicated that it was obviously constructed to match something. They said it was shot to match a drawing, which they produced in court, which turned out to be identical to my photograph.”

"Getty Images had originally sought €40,000 in damages – five times the cost of the appropriate licence. The final award of damages and costs is believed to be below that amount, but still substantially in excess of what it would have cost the design agency to use Sanderson’s original photograph.

The Getty Images price calculator states that a license to use Ian Sanderson’s image for a two year campaign across print, web and billboards would have cost around €8,000. But according to one source, Frappa charged Prisme just €1750 for the photography, expenses, and licensing."

Hmm... interesting.

Stop the PRO-IP Act

"Not content with the current (and already massive) statutory damages allowed under copyright law, the RIAA is pushing to expand the provision. The issue is compilations, which now are treated as a single work. In the RIAA's perfect world, each copied track would count as a separate act of infringement, meaning that a copying a ten-song CD even one time could end up costing a defendant $1.5 million if done willfully." Good lord, give me a break......