Month: January 2010

Haiti six days later

I find these still photos from Haiti more interesting, more emotional and more harrowing than the TV images because they can be studied and thought about — in other words, for me, it’s not as mindless as some TV reporter telling me what I’m seeing, what I should think.

Haiti remains a place of profound need, anguish, desperation and danger, with a few glimmers of hope and slowly growing capabilities to receive and distribute the international aid now flowing in. Sporadic looting, sometimes violent, was met with force by security oficials and ordinary citizens, resulting in a number of further deaths and injuries. The tenuous security situation has led to at least one temporary evacuation of a medical facility, to protect the care-givers. Despite the long time since the earthquake, at least five people were pulled from the rubble alive this weekend, including a young girl trapped inside a supermarket who was fortunately surrounded by food, and survived on fruit snacks. (38 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

Non-Believers Giving Aid

1. 100% of your donation will be go to these charities: not even the PayPal fees will be deducted from your donation, since Richard will personally donate a sum to cover the cost of these (capped at $10,000). This means that more of your money will reach the people in need.

2. When donating via Non-Believers Giving Aid, you are helping to counter the scandalous myth that only the religious care about their fellow-humans.

It goes without saying that your donations will only be passed on to aid organizations that do not have religious affiliations. In the case of Haiti, the two organizations we have chosen are:

     • Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans Frontières)

     • International Red Cross

You may stipulate using the dropdown menu which of these two organizations you want your donation to go to; otherwise, it will be divided equally between them.

Non-Believers Giving Aid

Best lines of the past 304 years, so far

  • The use of money is all the advantage there is in having money.
  • He is not well-bred, that cannot bear ill-breeding in others.
  • You may talk too much on the best of subjects.
  • A good conscience is a continual Christmas.
  • All would live long, but none would be old.
  • One today is worth two tomorrows.
  • Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
  • Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
  • Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
  • Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
  • Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.
  • Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.
  • I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.
  • If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.
  • I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.

All the above from Benjamin Franklin, born in Boston on this date in 1706.

Best Pierce line of the day

“I will moderate my commentary on the Drudge ‘n Grudge book written by his pal and the execrable Mark Halperin, who is to political journalism what E. coli is to steakhouses. The sourcing is laughable. The anecdotes petty, where they are not trivial, and indecent, where they are not petty and trivial. It exists, apparently, to dish dirt about the Clinton and Edwards marriages, thereby providing Andrea Mitchell with her quadrennial orgasm.”

Charles Pierce

He continues. I don’t think he likes the book.

Martin Luther King Jr.

… was born 81 years ago today.

Many may question some of King’s choices and perhaps even some of his motives, but no one can question his unparalleled leadership in a great cause, or his abilities with both the spoken and written word.

There are 10 federal holidays, but only four of them are dedicated to one man: one for Jesus, one for the man given credit for discovering our continent, one for the military and political founder George Washington, and one for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
December 10, 1964
Library of Congress

The History of Cinema Aspect Ratios

The original aspect ratio utilized by the motion picture industry was 4:3 and according to historical accounts, was decided in the late 19th century by Thomas Edison while he was working with one of his chief assistants, William L.K. Dickson. As the story goes, Dickson was working with a new 70MM celluloid-based film stock supplied by photographic entrepreneur George Eastman. Because the 70MM format was considered unnecessarily wasteful by Edison, he asked Dickson to cut it down into smaller strips. When Dickson asked Edison what shape he wanted imaged on these strips, Edison replied, “about like this” and held his fingers apart in the shape of a rectangle with approximately a 4:3 aspect ratio. Over the years there has been quite a bit of conjecture about what Edison had in mind when he dictated this shape. Theories vary from from Euclid’s famous Greek “Golden Section”, a shape of approximately 1.6 to 1, to a shape that simply saved money by cutting the existing 70MM Eastman film stock in half. Whatever the true story may be, Edison’s 4:3 aspect ratio was officially adopted in 1917 by the Society Of Motion Picture Engineers as their first engineering standard, and the film industry used it almost exclusively for the next 35 years.

From CinemaSource, “Understanding Aspect Ratios”

4:3, which the motion picture industry called 1.33:1, was adopted by television beginning in the 1930s.

To compete with TV, movies began experimenting with widescreen aspects in the 1950s — 1.67, 1.85, 2.20, 2.39 (1.85 and 2.39 are the ratios currently used in theaters).

Today’s TVs and computer monitors however, are none of these. HDTV and newer monitors are 1.77 (16:9). A rectangle with that aspect ratio nicely accommodates any of the various motion picture formats (old and new), subject to some letter boxing.

Donate

Donate through Wyclef Jean’s foundation, Yele Haiti. Text “Yele” to 501501 and $5 will be charged to your phone bill and given to relief projects through the organization.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie reportedly gave $1 million to Doctors Without Borders.

Today

… is the 58th anniversary of Today. The morning show premiered with Dave Garroway, Jim Fleming and Jack Lescoulie on this date in 1952. When it began it was broadcast for three hours, but shown for two only. The overlap allowed the program to be seen live from 7-to-9 in both the Eastern and Central time zones. (The Eastern saw the first and second hour, the Central the second and third.)

The Tonight Show began on NBC on September 27, 1954. Both programs were created by Sylvester L. “Pat” Weaver Jr., father of Sigourney (actually Susan Alexandra Weaver).

226 years ago today

The Continental Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris on January 14, 1784, officially establishing the United States as in independent and sovereign nation. The Continental Congress approved preliminary articles of peace on April 15, 1783. The treaty, signed in Paris on September 3, 1783, required Congress to return the ratified document to England within six months.

Although scheduled to convene at the Maryland State House in November, as late as January 12 only seven of the thirteen states had legal representatives at the ratifying convention. Operating under the weak Articles of Confederation, Congress lacked power to enforce attendance at the convention. With the journey to England requiring approximately two months, time was running short.

Delegates continued to trickle in. Connecticut representatives presented their credentials to Congress on January 13, leaving the convention one delegate shy of the quorum. Richard Beresford of South Carolina left his sickbed in Philadelphia for Annapolis, and, after his arrival, the vote was taken.

The Treaty of Paris granted the United States territory as far west as the Mississippi River, but reserved Canada to Great Britain. Fisheries in Newfoundland remained available to Americans and navigation of the Mississippi River was open to both parties.

Today in History: Library of Congress