Friday, July 31, 2009

Recession over?

No. Businesses have reduced their costs faster than their falling profits, creating an artificial improvement in PE ratios.

Sell all of your stock now!

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Is the news media stoking racism?

The State Journal-Register published the following story:

Police, CWLP investigating noose hung in water plant workstation

It was immediately implied that the noose was hung in place as a racist statement simply because of the race of the person who found it and the race of the people suspected of placing it.

The newspaper will claim no racist implication other than race was mentioned in the story as a normal method of describing people in the news.

So far the issue of race in this and other instances has only been implied by journalists and not the facts of the case. This report, and so far the news media alone is responsible for stoking and reinforcing racism. Because there are no facts or statements by any people described in this story who directly make racist remarks, we have only to look at reporters and writers who use circumstances to drive the public to make racist inferences.

Race is falsely inferred because the meaning of the noose has been inflated as racist by the media, even though the noose is a generic historical symbol of capital punishment that in reality has wider implications that includes racism as a part of it's utility.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

The final say on "Birthers" and "Believers"

There is a difference between stating that someone believes something, and stating that someone is claiming to believe something.

The former is a deliberately implicit attempt to plant seeds of doubt on the issue, while the latter is a realistic statement because you have to be that person to be accurate in your claim that they believe something.

Anyone in the news media who discusses topics about people who believe something rather than discussing people who claim to believe something are complicit in propaganda.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

MSNBC reporting on the "Birthers"

"Birthers" are people who allegedly believe that Barack Obama is not a U.S. Citizen and therefore should be removed from office.

This question was long-ago answered and the issue closed when President Obama's birth certificate was published on the Internet, yet people persist on bringing up the issue despite the overwhelming evidence.

The trouble is, these people don't really believe Obama is not a citizen, they are simply "Swift-Boating" the weak-minded public.

The news media is playing its role by pandering to the idea that these people actually believe what they are claiming. Personally knowing the capability of those people to convince others they believe something they know is false, I'm not surprised that MSNBC would fall for it so easily.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Photoshop CS2 and the Nikon D60

Yesterday I suddenly couldn't upload pictures. I was using Zazzle.com as a service to make posters and T-Shirts. My browser crashed every time I tried to upload a picture.

Zazzle.com was able to upload pictures using a Java program, but errors made me upload the pictures multiple times until it worked.

Both Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 crashed when I tried to upload the pictures. Then, I tried to open pictures in Photoshop, and Photoshop also crashed.

I sent error reports to Microsoft, but Microsoft replied automatically "No solution at this time."

I finally ran a system restore to fix it. The problem was embedded in my operating system's subroutine for selecting files.

The damage was done either by downloading a utility from Cnet.com that was supposed to convert .NEF files to .TIF files; or installing the consumer program that came with the camera just to convert my pictures. A huge waste of space and time. And that's another example of planned obsolescence.

Why the big hassle?

Adobe no longer support CS2. If you purchase a Nikon D60, Photoshop CS2 will not be able to load the newer .NEF or RAW images. They will need to be converted to .TIF files through another program, and if you know Photoshop (on a Windows platform), you know that it does not like to share memory with anything else, it's selfish and temperamental.

If you want to safe yourself time, space, and not have to work with .TIF files, you will need to shell out the $700 for the Adobe CS4 package.

Real slick, eh?

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Gas prices.

Gas prices gradually crawl up using a saw-tooth pattern that is intended to make the consumers feel a false sense of relief when the price goes down slightly after it spikes. The steep drop in gas prices last December brought the price of gas back down to early 2004 levels. Prices are now back up to Spring 2007 levels after only six months.

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Illinois Workforce Development Center

I don't think the Illinois Workforce Development Center is justified in it's existence and should be shut down to save the state money.