Sometimes...
...Ya jus' gotta go to war in the unnerwear ya got on.
--Dolly
The Cloud Observatory
Monday, February 06, 2012
Observation 38 (New Series)...
...
Monday, February 06, 2012
Everybody’s Jumping On...
CLINT EASTWOOD'S pep talk from the Stuporbowl, especially that the Regime is running to get out front of the bandwagon.
In there, Clint says that after 9/11, we all came together to do what was right.
Well, yeah. For about 30 seconds. Until the traitors and wreckers on the Left just couldn't refrain from carping and caviling and blaming ourselves.
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (0)
| 
...
...
The Cloud Observatory
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Observation 37 (New Series)...
...
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Coverage...
THIS IS A SUBJECT near and dear to my heart -- and my wallet -- because it's essentially what I do in my day job. I don't design book covers, but do make objects of similar purpose in support of a creative field where the content providers have recently won manumission from the corporate middlemen who heretofore ruled the roost. Eerily similar to the book world, as a matter of fact. I don't want to be more explicit about my day job because my employer would rather I not associate my (sometimes toxic) political views with his business. Entirely fair. So you'll just have to imagine.
Sarah A. Hoyt has put up what she has learned about book covers at According to Hoyt and The Mad Genius Club. This turned out to be too long to post in comments, so I bring it here.
I'm assuming you understand at least basic composition and design, and have some kind of tools -- whether a full-on version of Adobe Creative Suite or a cobbled-together collection of the free, cheap, and bundled. Let's step on from there.
Design principles I long ago learned to hew to: Size, frame, focus, readability, color, texture, negative space, and fit and finish.
Size: remember you are essentially designing a postage stamp. Your whole design must convey your intent from a tiny canvas at an impossible distance. Everything in it must serve the purpose with nothing extraneous.
Frame: your design must stand out from the background. Place it in a frame that permits stark contrast across the boundary of the frame. (By frame, I mean the "box" in which your image is contained, nothing more. You should eschew most framing devices for a simple, rectangular crop. God forbid you should attempt to use an actual picture frame. That way lies disaster.)
At the same time, you must select elements and size them in the frame for maximum impact. Ex: you want human figures in your design. You should rarely have more than one, though. And you should crop the figure as tightly as you can and still permit the viewer to identify it. George Lucas once said that, in editing Star Wars, he sought to show objects and actions for the least amount of screen time possible that still permitted the audience to see what was going on. Proper framing should also be dramatic. You want to attract attention to your design. Your chances of doing that with undramatic images are slight. If you have a face, crop it tightly to the features -- eyes, nose, mouth. Do not obscure features with type, but don't hesitate to run type over hair, forehead, ears, or below the neck.
Focus: do not clutter your design. If possible, it should be limited to a single object -- person, thing, or device (logo, badge, etc). Fancy type faces should be avoided at all costs. Unless you are a professional typographer, you're probably better off sticking to the basics -- Helvetica, Univers, Gill Sans, Franklin Gothic in sans-serif, and Times, Palatino, Century, Bodoni, Garamond in serif faces. Do not use light weight faces. Keep the typeset copy simple -- author's name and title will suffice. A tag line is OK, but it should be puncy. For It's Dolly's Birthday, I intend to use a line the doll delivers in the denoument: Sometimes, you have to go to war in the underwear you have on. I believe I am sure I know why and that my reasons are compelling. If I should have doubts down the road, I will cut it.
And, unless you're looking for a ransom note effect, use no more than two typefaces in a single design. Seriously. I'm warning you! This is one even non-pros know, and they will ding you for it! Which brings us to:
Readability: Has mostly to do with contrast. Black on white or white on black is best. When you move away from these, make sure you are maintaining that kind of visibility as far as you can. In selecting colors of type to go over a background or an image, remember that colors closer together than about 60 degrees around a color wheel of the spectrum are hard for the eye to distinguish one from the other in less than ideal circumstances. Yes, when you have a life-size image in front of you and you can turn it one way or another to look at it, you can tell the differences in shadings of color from fuschia to red to orange, but if you need to rely on a color contrast to render a title readable at thumbnail size on a 72 dpi computer display (or even 96 or 120 dpi), why stick your foot in a bucket to boot? Pick colors that contrast with one another. Not only that, but you must also assure contrasting tints as well as hues. You want a minimum absolute gray scale delta of 25%. That is, when you convert your image to grayscale, you should be able to eyedropper both the glyph shape fill and the immediate surround and find at least 25 points different on a 100-point scale (64 on a 256-point scale). And that is chancy. 50% (128 levels) is better, if you can get there.
Also, though I do recommend you use texture and variability, do so with restraint. Do not make your design too "busy". Complexity is all very well. I'm not even saying you should escew it utterly in book cover design. I am, however, urging you to ensure that your dominant elements stand out from one another at the extremes. You can render even the cleanest type unreadable by surrounding it with an image or texture with too much high-contrast detail in it.
Color: You should work color the way pros do. That is, work from a limited palette. Include a color in your design for a reason. Pick colors that work together, either by complement or by contrast. You should also be aware that colors render differently in different media. An image printed offset in CYMK will look markedly different from one viewed on a monitor in RGB and still differently when printed on a modern digital press, such as might be used in print on demand. Most of the time, no one will notice. But every once in awhile, the color gamuts of open-loop devices will surprise even seasoned pros, and results will be the veriest definition of not-pretty.
Unless you have a solid creative vision that demands it, I would strongly advise you avoid large areas of flat, solid color. No colors in nature, and none in well-done art, are precisely the same tone from pixel-to-pixel. Pick your colors for natural variation. Gradients, for example, help break up a large flat area and can add drama and intensity to colors. In the realm of visibility, you should avoid what I call "browns." These I define as colors between about PMS400 and approximately PMS600 in the Pantone system. If you don't know that system, you should watch the CMYK equivalents of whatever colors you pick. If you see values above 10% in more than two colors, beware: you're getting into territory where colors can look dull and muddy. Earth tones. It's not necessary to avoid earth tones, but you should use them advisedly. And be aware that a CMYK spec of 20,85,95,10 is not red, no matter how bright and bloody it looks on the screen. It will come out of the printer as dull and lifeless.
(And, if it does look firey or deep and rich on your monitor, you should do some calibration work or get a new monitor.)
This is all less important if you are designed for an exclusively electronic product. But, if you are working on something that will eventually have to put pigment on paper, pay attention to clean color, and make as many tests as you can to ensure it. Finally, you should work in RGB. Select colors by Pantone number or CMYK spec if you want, but translate them into RGB. There are myriad reasons for this, but here are two: RGB is most likely to get you the colors you see on your screen from your output. And: RGB is a color space, while CMYK is a device-dependent separation spec. If you do not understand the difference (and trust me: many self-designated pros do not), working in CMYK will get you into trouble sooner or later.
Texture: texture is related to color in that it permits variability and takes your design away from the flat and lifeless and toward the natural and professional in appearance. Texture can be achieved in many different ways. Perhaps the simplest is to add an overlay of the Photoshop Clouds filter (or your local equivalent). And, of course, if you have the budget, you can render textures in a myriad of plugins. However, if you are of a more-limited budget, you can find textures all around you. Closeup photos of clay bricks, for example, can yield source images that, with some creative manipulation, can add interest to any design without necessarily revealing the source. A long time ago, before the advent of microcomputers in the graph arts, textures were more graphic and rarer in actual use. As a result, you didn't see much of them. This can actually be a telltale in judging the age of a design. Flat, untextured designs tend to look a little dated these days, whereas dimensioned, textured designs -- even from the elder days -- look fresh and up-to-date.
Just as with type faces, it is possible to have too many textures in a design. I do a lot of logo work in 3D CGI applications and quickly learned to use no more than two textures of any type -- no more than two stone textures, no more than two metals, two plastics, etc. No matter how you build your design, textures are one area where I'd urge more restraint rather than less. For one reason, textures can be a detriment to readability. Multiple textures can multiply the problem.
And here's a pro tip. Your texture should be large enough that it fills your entire frame. That is to say: Don't Tile. Tiles are strictly bush league and are a dead giveaway that there's an amateur at the controls. Even so-called "seamless" tiles have obvious repetitions that, when spread across large areas, stick out like a lemon in an orange crate.
Negative space: this is one I see even pro designers mis-step on. Back in the '60s, artists had this drive to fill the field of view with images. Type was stretched to fill all areas that weren't images. Images were blown up. Full bleed was the watchword. Nobody used borders at all much any more, it seemed, and when they did, the border threatened to overwhelm the design -- like Mucha on steroids. Readability went out the window in favor of the eye kick. What was missing? Negative space.
There's a rule to be derived from this: if your image bleeds, don't put a border on it. I will be the first to admit I break this one almost daily. But it is something to think about. And the more complex your border, the less you should want to use it with a bleed image.* On the other hand, a clean, white border never hurt anyone. Just sayin's all.
More egregious is the failure to hew to good margins. Margins are defined as negative space around the content of a page.
What is negative space? Well, it's basically nothing. That is, when you take all of the things in a frame that are something and eliminate them, what's left is negative space. Not quite that, because a background with color and/or texture can be negative space, depending on the intended focus of a design. But close. In photographing art mechanicals for prepress in offset lithography, the black areas of the negative -- which would not permit light to hit the plate, thus making an image -- were referred to as negative space in some contexts. In an ideal situation -- the textbook example -- negative space is white and the image is black. This is generally true for text, which is usually printed in black on white paper.
And a margin is a special kind of negative space around the outside of a page of content, or a block of it, although that usage is rare.
It should be noted that what HTML refers to as a margin is not. A margin in print design is what HTML code calls padding. Don't ask me why they got that wrong, but it bugs me, so I point it out here. It's only one of myriad examples where computer folk don't get graphic design.
Margins serve several purposes. First and foremost, they contribute to the readability of blocks of text. You can test this by looking at a badly-designed Web page -- one designed, say, by and for computer folk. The paragraph tag does not in and of itself have a default margin spacing. A margin or padding needs to be added to the tag in order to lay out negative space around a block of text. If the bare tag is used, the paragraph will butt up against the browser window frame -- at least on the left -- making it maddenly difficult to read. A very slight margin of 5 or 10 pixels would pull the text away from the frame decorations in the browser window, eliminating the visual conflict between the two, making the text more readable.
Second, they provided printers a clear area of paper by which a page or a flat (of several pages) could be picked up and handled without touching wet ink. Of course, modern best practices obviate such handling and this purpose is not so urgent any more.
Third, they provide a safety margin in both cutting and folding. Pages are printed several to a sheet of paper. (There are many reasons for this, mostly having to do with efficiency and economy in process. If you're interested, any beginning textbook on the graphic arts can explain it to you. I don't have the time or space.) When several groups of pages are folded down and lain together in a saddle, there are multiple thicknesses of paper between the end of the type and the edge of the paper at the spine of a book. Control over the size of this inner margin (also called a gutter) permits all of the pages to line up so they don't flicker when fanned through like a flip book animation. This is a readability issue. (No. No time to explain. Just trust me.)
In cutting, which is relevant to our task, where folding was not -- quite -- the margin also provides a safety ... margin. When any printed job is printed, it is done on a sheet of paper that is somewhat larger than the finished piece. (There are many reasons for this, the explication of this would turn this into a teal deer (tl; dr.).)
You mean it's not already?
I'm trying to keep it short.
The mechanics of cutting are thus: a stack of paper is jogged up by bouncing it on its edges and fanning air into the stack, allowing the sheets to slip past each other into (more-or-less) perfect alignment. This is one of those lost fundamentals, like those German apprentices who used to spend two years just filing metal blanks. Nobody knows how to jog paper any more. The alignment is critical, because of the next step, which is to slice the stack with a razor-sharp knife, (No hyperbole: lots of writers use "razor sharp" when it doesn't quite apply; these knives can cut your finger clean off just sitting there.), driven by several tons of pressure (in excess of 10,000 psi). Even with such a sharp blade, the friction of the knife within the stack can cause "draw" -- which is the sheering motion along the direction of force of the moving blade. This can cause inaccuracies in the cut. In order to hold the paper steady, it is first put into a clamp, which presses down with even more pressure than the knife (5-9,000 kg). This pressure can be "soft" or "hard", depending on the compressability of the stock and the amount of air in the lift. If the pressure is too great for conditions, the stock can "belly", or bulge out of the clamp.
Thus, when the knife cuts through -- straight -- it actually follows a curving path which, when the clamp is released, will result in a concave edge to the stack. And, on the individual page, the distance from the edge of the content to the edge of the paper will vary slightly. The closer the content is to the intended edge -- the tighter the margins -- the more noticeable this effect will be. If the design has not been made with an awareness of these factors, it is quite likely that parts of the content will "bleed" off the edge of the paper -- whether intended or not. (This can be a quite disconcerting sight when encountered in actual production, with many thousands of dollars on the line.) The wider the margins allowed, the less noticeable this effect. Thus the wise designer will allow for these effects in laying out the margins.
Over the centuries, all of these marginal effects have become ingrained in the tastes and habits of the reading public. That is to say there is no absolute reason in natural law that margins should be left, except that work without margins tends to look unfinished or badly-finished, and thus unprofessional. At life-size on a cover, (say... 6" x 9"), you can probably get away with a 1/8" margin, though wider would be advisable. But, when that margin is shrunk down to Amazon-standard thumbnail size, it will look cramped. So you're wise to leave a slightly wider margin (I'd say at least 1/4") at life size, so that, when you shrink your design down, there will still be a visible -- if not measurable -- margin.
Now. Is this to say you should not run type right to the edge of your design? Of course not. It works. It's quite dramatic. It's highly visible. But you should make sure that it looks like you intended it that way, and not that you just ran the type to the edge with no rhyme nor reason for it.
Fit and finish. Just as your prose should have a solid "thunk" to it, like the closing of a door on a new car, so, too should your visual design. Almost any sin can be forgiven if the execution of the whole is clean, clear, and has the right finishing touches. All of the covers Sarah calls out in her post fail on this score, no matter how else. Yes, the typeface selected for Neewa the Wonder Dog is an abomination of inappropriateness, the frame is all wrong, the focus is horrible, but the worst sin is it looks like it was thrown together at random. Even as a rough schematic, it fails miserably. If you're going to set type at random, with no margins and no justification, no centering or alignment, then you should at least try to make it look as though you had a reason for doing otherwise. I've staggered type across a frame a brazilian times. But I always did it to balance other elements, or to draw the eye down a specific path through the design.
In short, you should be aware of everything you put into a design, have a reason for its size, conformation (color, etc), and be certain you can't find a better way.
And, still, somebody will call you out, but at least you will know you have given it your best effort. And one of the joys of indie e-pubbing is, as Sarah points out, you can go back and change things if you're not happy with them. And you can do it without breaking the bank.
Obviously, I cannot core dump all of the lessons learned in a 30-plus-year career that is not over yet. However, I don't mind showing off what I know. So, if you've got questions, ask in comments. If you disagree with my conclusions, say why -- in comments. If you have something to add, pipe up. In comments. Just, please, make your comments substantive.
*("What's bleed?" I hear you say, and can imagine you picturing the colors all running like a watercolor in the rain. But no. It's where the image runs off the edge of your design. It "bleeds" out of the frame. (In actual printing, the image runs past the crop mark for a specified distance -- usually 1/8" -- and the paper cutter actually cuts it off and throws it away.))
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (5)
|
...
...
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Privacy...
JOE HUFFMAN notes a new technological development and rightly anticipates one eventual use of it.
Which, I say, makes it most urgent that a marker be lain down and a line drawn in the sand, NOW, as to the absolute and ironclad nature of the right to privacy.
First, we must dispose of the coinage "Unreasonable [FITB with the particular infringment upon rights at hand]." Let us start with the presupposition that there is no reasonable infringement upon individual rights. Period. End of discussion. This may be distilled down to the bumper sticker/sound bite slogan, "You don't get to waive my rights." (Which is essentially what's going on when a government judge rules on the reasonability of an action of agents of the government.) Such rulings are prima facie evidence of bad faith intent.
Summary: How is it reasonable for the state to rule on the reasonability or lack thereof of actions taken under the aegis of a charter of limitations on the actions of the government?
...
Next, we must have a more-expansive and more-rigorously-defended definition of privacy that is absolute and inheres closely to the individual.
I argue that privacy must include such matters as identity, self-ownership, and the right to be left alone and unmolested -- by all actors, but most especially by the state. In aid of these, I make the following assertions -- in no particular order. This list is in no way exhaustive.
The state may not assert an absolute right to know who you are -- or who you represent yourself to be. On the other hand, it may demand that you meet certain standards, and that you must therefor prepare and present upon reasonable demand unrebuttable proof that you have, do, shall, or can meet those standards. For example, the state does not need to know who you are or where you live or anything else about you for you to be able to demonstrate dispositively that you have met the criteria for the granting of a driver's license. In fact, the driver's license need carry no human-readable identification, only admit to a cooperation with an independently-verifiable trust mark that serves as proof of your assertions.
Neither the state nor any private actor may keep or maintain any permanent record of your identity or of any of the earmarks of identity, or of any transactions with you without your explicit, written, independently verifiable permission on a case-by-case basis.
Identity theft must come to be seen as morally equivalent to murder and must be a capital crime in any society wishing to be considered civilized.
Recordings of any nature which may expose an individual's identity may not be promulgated in any medium or in any venue without the explicit, written, independently verifiable permission on a case-by-case basis. Note the promulgation. Any individual may take a photograph of a street scene with people in it, but if he publishes it without permission...
And most certainly the state may not surveil the people for any reason under any pretext whatsoever, as it is a clear violation of the constitutional right to privacy. There is no "in public" exception to any of these rules. If privacy is not absolute, it does not exist.
Many people will argue, no doubt, that these strictures would make it impossible for ordinary commerce to be carried out. Contra that, I offer this example:
You walk into a store. You select your merchandise. The proprietor adds up the bill and informs you of the price, with tax. You pay him in bills and coins. He wraps your purchase according to custom and usage. You walk out. Both parties to the transaction are -- presumably -- happy with it. Neither need know anything more about the other than the bare fact of his existence. More may be volunteered at any step along the way, but it need not be demanded, nor need it be a mandatory prerequisite for the transaction to occur.
I submit to you that all of my criteria as listed above are met in this description. I further submit to you that this description applies to all human interaction, and that any interactions which cannot be carried out within these limits probably encapsulate affronts to liberty.
Certainly, for someone to claim a compelling state interest otherwise ought to raise enough red flags to mark a space shuttle crawler road trip.
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (1)
|
...
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Lamar Smith May Be...
AN HONEST POLITICIAN in that, once he's bought, he stays bought.
But: as Dolly says, sure a broken clock may be right twice a day (depending on the nature of the breakage). But still and all, it is broken*. A bought politician who stays bought may be honest thereby, but still and all, he is bought*.
We often aver that it's impossible for properly-couched statements of rights to come into conflict, that when rights appear to come into conflict, it's usually because somebody is deliberately attempting to abridge one or the other*.
Don't let them.
In the present contretemps over SOPA/PIPA, Congressmen and Senators -- acting as agents of rent-seeking corporate speculators in copyright* -- are attempting to bring intellectual property rights into conflict with the private property rights AND the liberty of individuals.
Yes. Of course, the rights of creators of works of the mind should be -- must be -- defended, most vigorously. And, when meek individuals are robbed of their sustenance and unable thereby to defend themselves against depredations, the state must needs step in and prosecute the predators -- for the sake of civilization.
(Still and all, I would not be unhappy to see IP rights inhere ONLY to individual creators, and NEVER to corporations.)
However, there are other principles in play, here. Such as the principle of jurisprudence that one may not be prosecuted for a crime one has not committed. And the one that the accused is to be considered innocent until proven guilty according to strict standards of evidence. Neither PIPA nor SOPA seems to take these principles into account*.
And yet, in the recent brouhaha, certain individual congresscritters saw fit to ignore these facts and principles, including the aforementioned Lamar Smith, who vowed to soldier on, despite the massive outcry in opposition*.
So, one may find it gratifying that Smith has a primary challenger. And, at first glance, the guy seems like a righteous dude. With sufficient support, he ought to be able to put Smith out to pasture. Do what you can to help.
*Refrain: And there's your problem!
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (0)
|
...
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Obama Apparently Believes...
THAT SCRIPTURE which teaches "If you do not work, you shall not eat" demands we pay higher taxes because (as it says in Genesis) "Am I my brother's keeper?" and we should succor the needy. By being forced to do so at the point of a gun on the part of the state. Rendering unto Caesar that which is God's.
Yeah. Well...
They say the devil quotes scripture, too.
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (0)
|
...
The Cloud Observatory
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Observation 36 (New Series)...
...
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Ann Coulter to America: Bend Over, Grease Up...
ST. ANN IS A LAWYER, so her bowing to precedent is not terribly surprising. That she misses the point of the public revulsion at Romney Care. In citing the reasons why the entire odious and horrific edifice of progressive meddling in medicine cannot be dismantled, she conveniently ignores the fact that it should.
I have to agree with Rush (and, as much as I dislike doing so, Charles Krauthammer) that Romney does not speak Conservative fluently. Or persuasively.
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (2)
|
...
Thursday, February 02, 2012
You Know...
WHAT KONRATH describes here sounds an awful lot to me like a perfect market -- unlimited supply, unlimited demand, perfect pricing signals, no friction.
How long's it gonna take 'til some meddling busybody comes along and fucks it up by trying to "improve" it or obviate supposed "failures" of the model?
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (6)
|
...
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Ground Hog Day Was Yesterday...
SO PUNXATAWNEY PHIL saw his shadow, and we'll have six more weeks of winter.
Which takes us up to...
The first day of Spring.
Funny how that works.
Actually, Dolly, that takes us up to the fifteenth of March. The first day of spring is the 21st -- almost another week later.
Shhh! You'll wreck my snark.
Oo! That'd be bad. The body work alone...
Exactly. So just you shut your face.
Yes. Ma'am!
Gabrielle Francesca "Dolly" East
| Comments (0)
|
...
...
The Cloud Observatory
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Observation 35 (New Series)...
...
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Can’t Resist...
STEALING MYSELF BACK from C.G. Hill...
Aside: If Chas Hill were a movie digital effects artist, would he be CGI Hill?
ANYway...
At Dustbury, C.G. ponders a bit about song hooks, and spins off a tangential notion, that of songs as stories -- in particular one song, Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat."
On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like
Peter Lorre, contemplating a crime.
Writers of prose fiction could learn a lot from Stewart. That one album alone (Stewart's SEVENTH, released way back in 1976) has "Lord Grenville", about smugglers, reminiscent of Disney's "Mooncussers" movies; "On the Border" a romance of arms smuggling and revolution; "Midas Shadow" a poignant portrait of a corporate pirate; "Flying Sorcery", which somehow reminds me of our Brigid...
WIth your photographs of Kitty Hawk and the biplanes on the wall
You were always Amy Johnson from the time that you were small
No school-room kept you grounded
While your thoughts could get away
You were taking off in Tiger Moths
Your wings against the brush-strokes of the day.
But it all occurs to me to wonder... Who would you cast in the Bogie part in the movie you were making of "The Year of the Cat"?
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (1)
|
...
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Some Substantive Numbers...
ON EBOOK PREP. No comment; haven't analyzed. Just noted, to be squirreled away for future reference. At The Passive Voice.
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (0)
|
...
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Whingeing About Change...
SO PUBLISHERS are deprecating tablet computers as a reading platform.
Now, I take second place to nobody when it comes to resisting change, but -- seriously? It's not as though eBooks are going to ruin your business. As Heinlein put it, it's raining soup. Grab you a bucket!
Sheesh!
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (0)
|
...
...
The Cloud Observatory
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Observation 34 (New Series)...
...
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Of Course, It Must Be...
TAX PROF REPORTS that Tax Foundation: Income Inequality Is Lower Now Than It Was Under Clinton.
Of course. It must be Bush's fault. Everything else is.
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (0)
|
...
...
The Cloud Observatory
Monday, January 30, 2012
Observation 33 (New Series)...
...
Monday, January 30, 2012
Trust Me, I Grew Up...
AROUND A LOT -- repeat a LOT -- of Catholic School Girls. Even dated a few -- for varying values of "dated". And I'm here to tell you, they're way ahead of those Occupy homunculi.
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (1)
|
...
...
The Cloud Observatory
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Observation 32 (New Series)...
...
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Chelsea Prompts...
US TO DIG A LITTLE for this one:
From everyone: Pick up the book nearest to you. Turn to page 45. The first sentence there describes your sex life in 2012.--Chelsea Polk, No Subject
Mine:
Had they been caught by the Tibetans or Chinese they would certainly have suffered the fate of all spies.Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Secret Exploration of Tibet, Peter Hopkirk
Well, in't that fraught?
(To be honest, that's not the book closest to me. The book closest to me is: 1) an as-yet unpublished novel I have been 2) asked to beta-read and am therefore bound not to say anything about until it's published 3) an e-Book (on my Kindle) and doesn't have page numbers. So, on several counts, doesn't qualify, I'd say.)
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (2)
|
...
...
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Cleaning the Desk One Day...
YOU COME ACROSS A bolt of uncertain origin, a quarter-inch, hex-headed machine screw. There is no doubt that it is of some importance, or it would have been tossed in the trash, rather than kept in clutter. There's no matching nut or washer(s), and you really have no clue what it's for. If you leave it lying around forever, you may never find out, but it will contribute to clutter, confusion, dirt, and disorganizement from now 'til Kingdom Come. If you put it away someplace where you'll Know Where It Is, you'll forget the location within a month easy, and possibly as soon as a week. If you find the place or thing where it actually belongs, and for the eventual repair of which you're saving it, you'll have no idea whether you have the part, let alone where it is.
Q: What do you do with the bolt?
- A: Mount an all-hands evolution to locate its true and proper location and purpose and effect repairs.
- B: Find an appropriate nut from your collection, thread it on, and put the two of them back where you found the bolt.
- C: Find an appropriate nut -- and washer(s) -- from your collection, slip the washer(s) on, thread the nut on, and put the assembly on your desk to admire from time-to-time.
- D: Put the bolt back where you found it to marinate longer.
- E: Put the bolt in a drawer Where You'll Be Sure to Remember Where It Is.
- F: Pitch the damned thing in the trash and be done with it.
For extra credit, calculate the length of time (T) it will take for you to find the bolt's proper situation after you've done (F).
Full Disclosure Update: I did (E).
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (5)
|
...
Saturday, January 28, 2012
I Have My Doubts About Mr. Newt...
BUT THEY MOSTLY CENTER around how he couches his simpatico with certain features of leftist hobby horses. Frex: I'm not an environmentalist. Not because I want dirty water, dirty air, and poison to eat and drink, but because I have a knee jerk distrust of any movement that calls itself by an "-ism." This is a collectivist shibboleth and I don't trust it. From those things comes nothing but evil. So I prefer to think of myself as being in favor of conservation as a practice -- a habit, if you will -- (and have since before Rachel Carson published the lying Silent Spring), and not as a feature of an "organized " "system" of belief or ideology. In short, I refuse to make my relationship with the earth political. Nor do I accept the anthropogenic global warming conjecture, its heirs, assigns, and successors, world without end.
In short, the couch thing with Bela Pelosi: FAIL. The JohnKinging of the media (note how quickly that became a transitive verb): EPIC WIN.
And that, I think, is the point. Tired of taking it on the chin from rude, gibbering, little homunculi of the Left, and then being laughed at for wimps when making a measured and proportionate response, We in the Right have long demanded a more muscular response -- a retaliation... a punishing retaliation -- from our soi disant leaders.
Newt seems bent on giving that to us, in word and in deed -- without much regard to what may be drudged up out of his record to smear him with.
And that is why he is liked by the groundlings. And that is why he is like to win in November if he can get past the cock-blocking gatekeepers of the establishment -- St. Ann notwithstanding.
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (4)
|
...
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Quote of the Century—Consensus Edition...
Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.
--Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris
--J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting
--Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University
--Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society
--Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences
--William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton
--Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.
--William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology
--Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT
--James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University
--Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences
--Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne
--Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator
--Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
--Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service
--Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva
From the Wall Street Journal
(And, for the -two of the one-two punch:)
And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.
RTWT.
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (0)
|
...
Saturday, January 28, 2012
But Ya Know...
THE MORE I HEAR folks Left and Right attack Mr.Newt with memes and themes that stink of the parlor pink, the more I am persuaded that my own doubts come from the same place, and I become ever-surer that he MAY be our guy this year.
Almost every attack -- such as the ones mounted in the comments here, at PowerLine, looks to me like, when the facts are actually unspooled back to the origin of the smears -- as Rush puts it -- are actually resumé enhancers, rather than cause for hesitation. David Bonior lodged ethical complaints? Do you remember Bonior's behavior in the run-up to OIF? Resumé enhancer. Elliott Abrams misremembers a speech from 1988 in which Gingrich, in essence, urged the administration to get back to its own roots? Elliott Abrams? Do you know anything about country club blueblood RINOs? Resumé enhancer. George Will doesn't think Newt can win? Come ON. give me a freakin' break. Resumé enhancer.
The louder the liberals get in trying to persuade We in the Right out here in Flyover Country that Newt ain't the one, the better he comes off.
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (0)
|
...
The Cloud Observatory
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Observation 31 (New Series)...
...
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Howabout Wannabe Novelists...
WHO GAVE LOLITA flying lessons and wonder how the hell Nabakov got such a good reputation as a writer? (A survey at Book Riot that asks the wrong question.)
(Hat tip: Passive Guy.)
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (1)
|
...
...
The Cloud Observatory
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Observation 30 (New Series)...
...
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
That’s Not Capitalism...
IT'S NOT -- STRICTLY SPEAKING -- capitalism that happens when people are left to their own devices to make their commercial choices in unmolested freedom. That's free markets.
Capital"ism" is how free markets finance large projects.
And you should be aware of what you're actually saying when you speak of capital"ism".
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (2)
|
...
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Unions Frakk Business Again...
I KEEP PUSHING THIS maybe someday the world will wake up. Like all leftist initiatives, unions start out operating in bad faith. Their sole raison d'etre is the abridgement of the private property rights of business owners. It can only get worse from there.
So, it should come as no surprise to learn that the UAW is attacking the most successful product lines at GM.
Nose? Face. Face? Nose.
No spite there.
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (0)
|
...
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Pissed at Good Reads...
FOR JERKING YOU AROUND on your library?
Making you put in all that work to build the value of their brand, only to have them tell you that YOU have to rescue your books because they got into a pissing match with an 800-ton gorilla?
There appears to be an alternative. Totally unexplored by moi, but ... it's out there.
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (0)
|
...
...
The Cloud Observatory
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Observation 29 (New Series)...
...
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Now ... Isn’t THAT Interesting...
NOTICED IN PASSING in an article on a recent copyright case in the Supreme Court.
Justice Elena Kagan did not take part in the case because she worked on it while serving in the Justice Department.
The case is Golan v. Holder, 10-545.
Is this a precedent on recusal that may apply in another case we're anticipating?
Mark Philip Alger
| Comments (0)
|
...
...
Previously on BabyTrollBlog...
