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Current Issues  /  Fashion  /  News & Comment
Don’t Put Legal Gripes On Facebook
March 13, 2017

charles i. letbetter - don't put legal problems on FacebookWhat you say on social media can be used against you

 

 

The Short Story

Even the president of the United States has to play by certain rules when using social media. What we put on Facebook and Twitter can be used against us and, in some cases, prevent us from seeking legitimate legal action. While it’s natural to be angry when one has been legally wrong, Facebook is the last place one should go to vent if one wants to maintain a legal case against the person who did you wrong.

Legal Disclaimer:

I am not an attorney and nothing that follows is intended to be viewed as legal advice. If you feel you have been wronged or are a victim of fraud, you should consult your District Attorney or your personal lawyer.

The Background Info

Even though Facebook and other social media tools are over ten years old now, we’re still trying to figure out how to conduct ourselves without getting into trouble. There are things you can say, things you can’t say, things you can’t share, and pictures you can’t post. Keeping up with what you can and cannot do is rather difficult and at times runs quite contrary to what we want to do.

You’re not alone, though. Even the 45th president of the United States seems to be having difficulty figuring it all out. Last week, two Congressmen from the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to the White House counsel warning that the president could be violating the Presidential Records Act if he deletes a post from Twitter. The President frequently deletes tweets, especially when they have spelling errors. However, the Presidential Records Act requires that everything the president says or writes while in office must be preserved. This law was passed in 1978 largely as a result of the Nixon Watergate affair. Not many people knew about the predecessor to the Internet back then. This situation couldn’t have been foreseen and there’s no allowance for it.

There have been some other interesting ways in which a post on social media has come back to bite someone. For example, back in 2013, a Hawaii man was arrested after posting a video on Facebook that appeared to show him drinking a bottle of beer and then driving. While no one stopped him at the time, he was caught by surprise when police showed up at his door after he posted the video and arrested him for driving while drinking an alcoholic beverage and driving without a license. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Posts on social media have caught robbers, thieves and resulted in more than one arrest for rape on college campuses.

Rarely do we stop to think that the frustrated rant we make online can actually be used against us. Worse, we don’t realize how our words on Facebook can affect legal action in which we might be involved. When a federal Judge in Washington stayed the president’s initial travel ban he said statements by the president on social media factored into his decision against the White House.

Oops isn’t quite a big enough word to cover serious gaffes being made.

Where This Hits Home

Over the weekend, a 2016 story was re-circulated regarding a class action lawsuit against New York modeling agencies. The charges were that the agencies named “have systematically taken advantage of the models they claim to represent by unlawfully diverting millions of dollars in value from the models to themselves.” This suit is a re-submission of a suit first filed in 2012 that floundered because the plaintiffs didn’t pay sufficient attention to details and have their evidence prepared when it was needed. The second suit appears to be suffering from similar issues.

This isn’t the first time allegations have been made against modeling agencies. All kinds of serious allegations. in 2015, UK agencies Storm Model Management, Premier Model Management and Models 1 were charged with price fixing. Then, just this past September, IMG, Next and Elite were fined in Paris for the exact same thing.

Matters with models are serious business. Just the past season, fashion house Balenciaga came under severe criticism and eventually fired its casting directors amidst charges of racism and cruelty.

Against this background, Facebook pages began overflowing this weekend against yet another Midwestern modeling agency. The charges are familiar: Models not being paid on time, or at all. Underage models being exposed to inappropriately sexual situations. Models being sent to live in “flop houses” rather than hotels while on assignment. Models exposed to drug use and paraphernalia. Money charged to clients for models’ appearance diverted back into the agency rather than paying the models. Pretty serious stuff, and much of it legally challengeable.

However, any chance at legal action actually taking place and having the desired effect began to crumble by Sunday evening as the excess of related claims, from one aspiring model after another, piled onto Facebook, causing the situation to mount with claims of wrong-doing while failing to produce any actual evidence. This is a problem.

What we fail to realize is that when one posts information, especially accusations, on social media such as Facebook, it carries the exact same legal status as if it had been published by the local newspaper. Charges of libel apply if one deliberately makes a statement with the intention of doing harm to another person and/or their business. Even though we think that no one else sees what is posted on our “personal” accounts, the fact is that all social media posts are subject to subpoena and can be used as evidence.

Dangers here vary. One runs the risk of perjuring themselves if the testimony they give in court differs from accounts given on social media. Testimony can be thrown out if it differs from what was previously published on Facebook. Entire lawsuits can be found to be without merit of the judge determines the charges are nothing more than Facebook ranting. The agency may be able to claim damages for statements resulting in the loss of business.

We’ve seen this situation before. In 2007, a number of models brought a class-action suit against an Indianapolis-based model agency, claiming that they had not bee paid for services rendered. They won the civil suit. However, they saw very little of the money owed them. After making an initial payment through the court, the agency’s owner fled the state and has not returned.

What should be done instead? Again, I am not an attorney and this should not be construed as legal advice. The course of action that seems to stand a chance of being most effective, however, is to assemble and take to the District Attorney sufficient evidence as to warrant filing fraud charges against the agency and its owner(s) rather than filing a civil suit. Why?

We continue to see these situations with modeling agencies gone bad because there’s very little to stop them. There’s no oversight. There are no governing standards. If an agency gets caught doing wrong in one state, they pack up, change names, and start back up in another. However, fraud charges filed by the District Attorney brings with it the chance of actual jail time in addition to fines, and the possibility of a criminal record. If the alleged fraud took place across multiple states, there is the possibility for felony charges that could hinder a person from engaging in similar activities anywhere else.

What’s important, though, is that the accusations be presented in court, through the District Attorney, and not on Facebook. Putting such information on Facebook makes the charges all the more difficult to prosecute, especially if it is not hard, factual evidence assembled that back up the claims. District Attorneys need firm dates, places, and times. Receipts for anything resembling payment, and invoices or some other document that confirms how much was owed. Every accusation must be backed up with verifiable facts. Not a note from someone’s mother. Not a Facebook post swearing that it’s true. If there are not verifiable facts, there is no case.

Conclusion

Social media is a great place to talk with friends, share pictures and videos, and keep up with your community. It is not the place to discuss legal matters that have yet to be adjudicated in court. Bad modeling agencies are not stopped by a group of disgruntled models dropping out. If you feel you are the victim of a crime, consult the District Attorney for your county or your personal lawyer. Venting on Facebook might make one feel good for a few moments, but it does not stop people from doing bad things.

Not everything belongs on Facebook or Twitter. Intelligent people understand the value of restraint. Please, be intelligent.

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Current Issues  /  Fashion  /  News & Comment
Dress Like A Woman
February 4, 2017
charles i. letbetter - dress like a woman

More misogyny from the White House

 

charles i. letbetter - dress like a woman

The Short Version

#DressLikeAWoman started trending overnight as word of an unofficial White House dress code that is more strict for women than men began to circulate. Women have been posting pictures of themselves in various styles to emphasize that there is no wrong way for a woman to dress.

Wait, Haven’t We Been Here Before?

Yes, yes we have. We’ve covered the topic of what is appropriate for women to wear no fewer than three times in just the past year:

  1. Ciara & The Double Standard was posted almost exactly a year ago after a number of closed-minded people made too big a deal over the evening gown Ciara wore while singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl.
  2. Modesty Doesn’t Become You got a lot of attention nine months ago when Kat ultimately left a job because someone didn’t like the way she dresses.
  3. Appropriate Fashion Is Whatever You Want was our post last September in response to France attempting to dictate what women wear on the beach.

So yeah, we’ve covered this general topic before. The fact that we have reason to discuss it again is rather disturbing.

What’s The Big Deal This Time?

This time around, the issue is an apparent double-standard in the unofficial White House dress code. We have to say “unofficial” because, officially, the White House doesn’t actually have a dress code. However, as presidents inevitably come and go, each one sets a different tone for how people dress.

For example, Jimmy Carter wore blue jeans in the oval office, something that really upset a lot of people at the time. So much so, that when Ronald Reagan became president he immediately reversed the trend and even required male reporters to wear ties inside the White House. President Clinton was, again, more relaxed, and, again, President Bush made things a bit more formal. Most recently, President Obama was known to not wear a jacket in the Oval Office and aides often came to meetings wearing t-shirts and jeans. So, it’s not the least bit surprising that as we return to largely Republican leadership fashion preferences run a more formal direction.

What got everyone up in arms, though, was an article from former Politico writer Mike Allen in his new newsletter Axios. Citing an anonymous source (which we consider questionable at all times), Mr. Allen wrote:

Trump likes the women who work for him “to dress like women,” says a source who worked on Trump’s campaign. “Even if you’re in jeans, you need to look neat and orderly.” We hear that women who worked in Trump’s campaign field office—folks who spend more time knocking on doors than attending glitzy events—felt pressure to wear dresses to impress Trump.”

That was all it took for women everywhere, especially those who already dislike the president and his policies, to take offense and start asking, “How is a woman supposed to dress?” then answering the question themselves with pictures.

While the article has no actual authoritative quote from the president or anyone on his staff, such a dress code requirement from this White House isn’t unbelievable. After all, this is the same man who, while on the campaign trail, rated women on a scale of 1 to 10 and insulting women who criticized him in any way. His misogynistic tendencies are already well known and well documented.

By questioning the White House dress code, however, we are at the same time questioning all dress codes where more emphasis is placed on how women dress over men’s styling. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence among businesses, especially those in more traditional industries such as banking and finance. The president is far from being the only one with antiquated ideas of how a woman should dress.

Does that give the White House a pass, though? Absolutely not. If anything, the White House should be the one setting an example of inclusion and self-definition.

Oh, wait, this White House doesn’t understand those words, does it?

In the end, this is an issue the entire business community needs to address, not just the White House. That we cannot depend on the White House to show any leadership on the matter is just sad.

Really sad.

Answering The Question

Thousands of women have already posted their pictures on twitter with the hashtag, #DressLikeAWoman. Here are some of our favoriates so far:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whatever a woman chooses to wear is dressing like a woman. Any questions?

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Current Issues  /  News & Comment
Gag Orders
January 25, 2017
charles i. letbetter - gag order

White House tactics straight from the communist handbook

charles i. letbetter - gag order

The Short Version

White House tactics, from choosing who gets a seat in the Press Room to gag orders for various government agencies, not only attempts to circumvent the first amendment but employs tactics suspiciously like those used in communist countries in an effort to control information. The White House wants the press to drink the president’s kool-aid or shut up. Dissent from within federal agencies is not allowed.

Looking At The Whole Picture

There are a lot of little parts to this issue, not all of which have received a great deal of play on social media. So, let’s see if we can piece everything together a little bit.

The whole kerfluffle with the press started the week before the inauguration, as rumors spread that the White House Press Corp might be removed from the White House. Given that the press has had a permanent place there since Teddy Roosevelt’s administration, that information didn’t set very well and reporters seemed to be taking out their suspicion on White House spokesman Sean Spicer, who doesn’t take criticism or pointed questions very well. As a result, the then-president-elect went on Fox News and said:

“So we said we’re going to move it to a larger room in a nearby area, but not the same area, and the press went crazy. So I said, ‘Let’s not move it.’ But some people in the press will not be able to get in because there’s just too many. We’ll make sure you get a seat, but there’s too many people for this small room.”

There’s one significant problem with that statement. The president doesn’t choose who has access to the White House briefing room. That is the responsibility of the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA).

The president of the WHCA said over the weekend that the press room “is open to all journalists who seek access now” and that the WHCA will be ” standing up for the rights of a free press to report vigorously on the new administration.”

Consider that the first round of shots fired.

The whole concept of reporters having access to people and the ability for information to be released through various sources isn’t something the new president seems to like, however. He wants to control the entire message to make sure no dissenting opinions are released to the public. This is the same strategy we see employed by communist countries such as China, where state media is strictly under the control of Beijing and dissent is a one-way ticket to prison, or worse.

Then, more shit hit the fan yesterday as the president signed orders effectively gagging various federal agencies. The first one to catch popular attention on social media was against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Washington Post reported that, “Employees of the scientific research arm at the Agriculture Department were ordered Monday to cease publication of “outward facing” documents and news releases, raising concerns that the Trump administration was seeking to influence distribution of their findings.”

That article hit social media and was immediately shared nearly 25,000 times on Facebook alone. Such an overwhelming amount of attention managed to wake up someone over at the Department of Agriculture, which immediately went into damage control mode. The USDA then released a new memo stating:

“This internal email was released without Departmental direction, and prior to Departmental guidance being issued. ARS will be providing updated direction to its staff.  … ARS values and is committed to maintaining the free flow of information between our scientists and the American public.” (via Reuters)

Problem solved, right? It was all just a misunderstanding.

Uhm, no.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), you know, the folks who make sure our air isn’t as unbreathable as Beijing’s, is not only under a full media blackout, but is prohibited from awarding any new contracts or grants that had already been approved. How bad is this clampdown? So bad that the agency can’t even order janitorial supplies because they’re provided by an outside contractor.

According to the Associated Press, Doug Ericksen, the communications director for the president’s transition team at EPA, said he expects the communications ban to be lifted by the end of this week.

“We’re just trying to get a handle on everything and make sure what goes out reflects the priorities of the new administration,” Ericksen said.

No, that doesn’t sound like communist-styled control at all, does it? Yeah, we’re totally being sarcastic with that question.

Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said in regard to the EPA blackout: “This decision could have damaging implications for communities across New York state and the country, from delaying testing for lead in schools to restricting efforts to keep drinking water clean to holding up much-needed funding to revitalize toxic brownfield sites.”

Oh, by the way, the levels of lead in the water in Flint, Michigan are just now below federal limits. The EPA probably had something to do with that.

Employees at the Department of  Health and Human Services (HHS) received gag orders similar to those given the USDA. All the agencies affected have something to do with environmental concerns, including effects on natural resources and human health. Given that the 45th president denies the scientific evidence for climate change, the appearance is that the new administration is attempting to stamp out any information that might foster dissent with the president’s grossly uninformed position.

Not everyone is necessarily acquiescing to the White House’s demands. In the face of the gag orders, someone at the Badland’s National Park took to Twitter with some strong environmental facts. The tweets have since been removed, but we managed to snag a screenshot while they were still there.

charles i. letbetter - gag orders

We don’t expect to see too much of this type of defiance from federal agencies in the future. While the new administration does not yet have secretaries approved for every department, the general fear is that all information, including social media, will have to undergo strict adherence to the administration’s guidelines before it is released.

As I said on Facebook yesterday, conservatives spent the eight years of the Obama administration fearing a socialism that never happened. With these new gag orders and crackdowns on the press, the new administration has brought us communism in less than a week.

If you’ve not yet contacted your members of Congress, we suggest you do so now. Silencing media, in any way, shape or form, is not making America great.

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Hashtag Philosophy  /  Just For Fun
#OddThingsToBragAbout
January 21, 2017
charles i. letbetter - #oddthingstobragabout

Our pride goes before many falls

 

charles i. letbetter - #oddthingstobragabout

The Short Version

We’ve not done much of anything with a humorous bent to it in a while, and we’ve certainly not played any hashtag games in a couple of months. So, when I saw #OddThingsToBragAbout trending on Twitter this morning, I decided this would be a good time to jump back on that bandwagon. After all, if you’ve been out in public much at all, you’ve likely heard someone bragging about some very odd things. We can’t seem to help ourselves. We might as well laugh.

What We Found

Pulling some favorites from Twitter:

A Few Of Our Own

Of course, the whole purpose of a hashtag game is participating. I’ve overheard some people brag a lot recently. Here are a few we’ll be adding to the list:

  • Letting the dog kick you out of bed more than once.
  • Having more prescription painkillers than your mother.
  • Figuring out how to vote in two different states (didn’t say who they voted for).
  • Voting the party line even when you know it hurts your constituents.
  • Raising people’s mortgage rates.
  • Taking away insurance for poor people.
  • Whining about other people doing the same thing you’ve been doing.
  • Ridiculing people who actually care about something other than themselves.
  • Thinking your entitled ass can relate to people working three jobs.
  • Your religion “winning” anything. Religion is not a competition.

I could probably sit here and think of more if I really wanted to put that much effort into it, but this is supposed to be a game, a fun past time, not work. I wonder what you would come up with? If you think of anything, add it to the hashtag on twitter and then tag me: @charlesletbette. Let’s have some fun for a change.

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Current Issues  /  Just For Fun  /  PotD
Complete Randomness For A Saturday Morning
January 14, 2017
charles i. letbetter - Plan for pink 'pussyhats' in Washington after Trump's inauguration

This isn’t really an article

I just am in the mood to write and throw some words together in a form that slightly resembles sentences.

 

charles i. letbetter - Plan for pink 'pussyhats' in Washington after Trump's inauguration

I let myself “sleep in” for this first time in forever this morning. Sort of. I still had to get up and let the dog out and feed him, pay some attention to the cats, refresh the water bowls. Those things have to happen on schedule or there are messes made in direct retaliation. Animals are ruthless that way. Still, I let myself stretch out on the couch and snooze for another 45 minutes. That leaves me now, though, with this need to write without actually having anything that I’m supposed to write.

Stream of consciousness. Or, perhaps more accurately, stream of unconsciousness. I’m awake but there’s a large part of me that doesn’t feel awake. The children, of course, prevent anyone in the house from getting any sleep once they’re up, and they’re always up too fucking early. Always. All of them. Not just ours but every child across the planet. Too damn early. It’s a conspiracy. I blame school. They have to get up so fucking early for school that their little bodies are unable to make adjustments for the weekend. School shouldn’t start before 9. Ever.

Wait, I’m going to need pictures for this, aren’t I? Damn. I already know I don’t have anything that fits. Oh well, that doesn’t seem to bother anyone too much. At least, if it does, they never say anything. Not to me. I’m told there are people talking behind my back. Spineless chickens. There are so many easy ways to contact me, especially through our Facebook page, and rarely does anyone bother to do so. Not to complain.

Old and slow with a sense of humor

 

charles i. letbetter - Plan for pink 'pussyhats' in Washington after Trump's inauguration

I’m old and don’t get around like I once did. A friend from California is in town this weekend and it would have been nice to go out and catch up with her last night, but no, between the threat of ice and the deep desire to commune with my pillow nothing happened. I’d still like to see Sam, hear what adventures she’s had in SoCal, so maybe we’ll be able to work something out. Still, I’m old and one of the hallmarks of age is not just a lessened ability to be mobile, but less desire. Sad, really.

Which is why I just saw Deadpool for the first time yesterday. I sat here and watched it with my 18-year-old son, who, like his brothers, is a comic book nerd. No, I’m not sure how it happened that all three of them are that way. Anyway, we sat here and laughed all the way through the movie. Then, because timing is everything, this morning I come across this interview about the sequel. I am now uncharacteristically excited about a sequel that I probably won’t see until 2019 or so. You would think with all the technology they’d find a way to put these things together a wee bit faster. But then, writing. That still takes as long as it always has.

Even though I’m old and slow, though, hearing the six-year-old Tipster call me a “jack a-s-s” through the door still makes me laugh. Hard. She just did it again. She knows she’s not supposed to say the word ass because we don’t have a donkey so it’s an adult word. She can spell it, though. And she does. This morning, I’m a jack a-s-s because I won’t let her stand in the hallway right in front of her step-brother’s door making noise. “Go back to your room and close your door,” I told her. That makes me a jack a-s-s, in her opinion, and it also makes me laugh. Perhaps I shouldn’t. Perhaps I should be upset. But you know what? I’m not. She’s not actually saying the word. She created a workaround to express herself. I’m good.

Hashtags that are too damn long

 

charles i. letbetter - Plan for pink 'pussyhats' in Washington after Trump's inauguration

#WhatIWouldTellA15YearOldMe is trending. I’m guessing the hashtag was started by a 16-year-old. Twitter only gives you 164 characters to begin with. By the time you add that hashtag you only have 112 characters left with which to give yourself a world of useful advice. That’s not going to be nearly enough room, dude. 15-year-olds need a lot of advice. They won’t listen to it, of course, because they’re 15. They think they know everything already. We all did. We forgot it all by the time we were old enough to actually use that alleged wisdom, though.

 is still too long for a hashtag, though. What’s even more disappointing is all the really lousy advice people were giving themselves. Like, “he’s not really that into you.” REALLY? You have 112 characters to give yourself advice that will make your life better and that is how you’re going to use it? You might want to take another swipe at that, Skippy. Or wait another 15 years.

When I think back to when I was 15 years old, I’m embarrassed. I mean, it’s one thing to not fit in, which I didn’t. Or, at least I didn’t think I did. It’s another problem altogether to feel as though you need to exploit just how different you are, which I did. So, what advice would I really like to give my 15-year-old self if I thought there was a bat’s chance in hell of my listening (I wouldn’t)? Something like this:

  • Stop trying to please your parents so goddam much and find out who you really are.
  • A fair portion of your classmates are gay and too scared to admit it. Support them without outing them.
  • Wear jeans.
  • Stop skipping biology.
  • Don’t let your parents determine who you date. Open your damn mouth and ask the girl out.
  • Go ahead and fucking rebel. Yes, there will be consequences, but you’ll be better in the long run for having done so.

“There is a law about staying up all night”

 

charles i. letbetter - Plan for pink 'pussyhats' in Washington after Trump's inauguration

Those are the most recent words from the angry six-year-old. I have no idea what she’s talking about. To my knowledge, no one stayed up all night. No one wants to stay up all night. Although, there are times it certainly feels like we did. Six-year-olds, much like 15-year-olds, say a lot of things that don’t make sense. I wonder where they get it from? Oh, wait, I may have an answer for that.

Peta has bought shares in Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey (LVMH). Something about crocodiles and handbags.

The Uneasy Truth Behind Amazon’s Hiring Blitz And What Startups Are Doing To Fix It. So, you’re telling me all this job growth may not be a good thing long term?

Senate intelligence panel to probe Russia hacking. That article isn’t nearly as interesting as the headline makes it sound. There’s no intelligence and they’re not actually inserting things into Russians. Dammit.

Plan for pink ‘pussyhats’ in Washington after Trump’s inauguration. Don’t even try to tell me you don’t want to read that article. Politics aside, the thought of 200,000 women wearing pink pussyhats on their head makes me wish I was there to take pictures. These women are marching for a cause but don’t think for a moment they won’t take their pussyhats and party like hell afterward. Feminists really know how to pound some liquor.

C’mon, work with me here. That pun is funny.

I’m glad I’m not an Oscar Meyer wiener

 

charles i. letbetter - Plan for pink 'pussyhats' in Washington after Trump's inauguration

That is what I do not want to be.
For if I were an Oscar Meyer wiener,
There would soon be nothing left of me.

Don’t pretend you didn’t just sing that in your head. Unless you’re like, 15 years old, in which case you’ve no clue what the reference is in the first place. We don’t always end up being what we wanted to be when we were 15. Hell, when I was 15 I didn’t even have a good grasp of what the possibilities actually were. What’s worse, there are more opportunities now than ever and I still don’t think we’re doing enough to help 15-year-olds achieve the broader vision of what they have the potential to do. We’re failing.

But, within the realm of things I’m glad I’m not, an Oscar Meyer wiener isn’t the worst possibility. I wouldn’t want to be any of these things, either:

  • Owner of a fake news site or a fake online magazine. Both are matters of vanity on the part of the people who own them. Both are meant to deceive. Both are trash.
  • Member of the president-elect’s transition team. There’s nothing good about being that close to the Great Orange.
  • Part of the maintenance crew at Trump Tower. Can you imagine the amount of puke they must have to clean up after people meet with the president-elect or his staff?
  • A Washington, D.C. police officer having to work the inauguration crowd next Friday. Feel sorry for those people. They’re not going to have a good day.
  • Stuck on an icy road in Missouri. The second death was just reported. Nothing about the weather down there is good at the moment.

So, we’ve established that life could be worse. That doesn’t mean that it can necessarily be better. Not right now. Not under these circumstances. Not with the $11 I have in my wallet. I already have coffee and chocolate and scotch. I already have a hot fiancé. I already have incredible kids. There may be a lot of things that I want, but that doesn’t mean any of them would make my life any better. Quantity does not determine quality.

Okay, I wouldn’t mind being a Nobel prize winner. That would be cool. Nothing I do really qualifies me for any of their categories, though.

Annnnnnnnd, I’m done writing now. My fingers just said, “stop.” Not audibly, of course. They’re just starting to really, really hurt. Fucking pain. I’d complain but you wouldn’t understand, and if you did it would only be because you’re suffering the same thing and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Well, maybe the president-elect’s thumbs, if that would keep him off Twitter.

I need more coffee, too. And I suppose I should find some pictures to slap on here. I think I know where to look. Totally not related to anything I’ve written, but they’re pictures that are part of a story. You like a story, don’t you? Of course you do. Especially when you get to make up the details for yourself.

 

Have fun with life.

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Current Issues  /  Fashion  /  News & Comment  /  video
5 Things You Should Know: 01.11.2017
January 11, 2017
charles i. letbetter - As gloomy and gusty as today is, we felt like we needed a pick-me-up. Some people would call these outtakes and destroy them. We call them fun and make a mini-gallery. Better look. We might have a picture of you in here. ;) #TuesdayMotivation

04:26:16 01/11/2017

https://youtu.be/WPa5-84svbg

Your sponsorship of 5 Things You Should Know could make a significant difference in the quality of our work. Contact us for details.

Wait, it’s only Wednesday?

 

charles i. letbetter - As gloomy and gusty as today is, we felt like we needed a pick-me-up. Some people would call these outtakes and destroy them. We call them fun and make a mini-gallery. Better look. We might have a picture of you in here. ;) #TuesdayMotivation

Hi there, welcome to Wednesday, January 11. If you’re like me, this week seems to be taking forever. At least we’re past the severe wind and thunderstorms of yesterday. Today should be a lot calmer and afternoon temperatures are going to feel more like April instead of the middle of January. Don’t worry, it doesn’t last long. We’ll see more rain tonight, though not as much as the West coast is getting. Temperatures fall Thursday night and we could be looking at a very slick weekend. Maybe a slow-moving week isn’t a bad thing.

Locally, you’ll just want to largely stay away from the West side of Indianapolis as the Rockville Bridge at 465 is being demolished after being hit by a semi truck yesterday morning. That mess will likely last a month or more. Black Senators testified against Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions yesterday. And a new Pew survey says police officers are more reluctant to make stops and use force. A lot happened in the past 24 hours and not everything you’ve heard is verifiable. Here are the five things you should really know.

 

Taliban Terror In Afghanistan

charles i. letbetter - As gloomy and gusty as today is, we felt like we needed a pick-me-up. Some people would call these outtakes and destroy them. We call them fun and make a mini-gallery. Better look. We might have a picture of you in here. ;) #TuesdayMotivation

The Taliban is taking responsibility for twin bombs in the Afghanistan capital city of Kabul that killed 28 and wounded at least 72, then later a third attack occurred at the guesthouse of the governor of Kandahar, injuring the Ambassador and other diplomats from the United Arab Emirates1. A suicide bomber struck first followed by a car bomb in Kabul. Those two attacks did the majority of the damage with the attack against the Ambassador coming later.

The attacks in Kabul were carried out near a government center where several lawmakers have offices. At least four police officers were among those killed. The Taliban, which is a hyper-right-wing extremist group, once ruled Afghanistan with an iron fist until it was toppled by American forces in 2001. In the fifteen years since, they have been a constant and often deadly source of terror throughout the region as they attempt to wrestle back some form of control.

If all this sounds familiar, it is. This kind of battle in Afghanistan has been going on for decades. The mountainous geography of the country provides plenty of hiding places for small terrorist cells and makes it difficult to directly attack those responsible for giving the orders. While US forces have been in Afghanistan since 2001, Russia had an unsuccessful war against the Taliban prior to that. This is not a group that is easily eliminated through conventional warfare. Expect this to continue until someone finds a solution.

 

 Dylann Roof Gets To Die

charles i. letbetter - As gloomy and gusty as today is, we felt like we needed a pick-me-up. Some people would call these outtakes and destroy them. We call them fun and make a mini-gallery. Better look. We might have a picture of you in here. ;) #TuesdayMotivation

After telling a South Carolina jury that, given the chance, he’d do it again, Dylann Roof was sentenced to death yesterday for the murder of nine black people attending a Bible study at a Charleston church. In doing so, Roof becomes the first person to be ordered executed for a federal hate crime. The jury, deliberated a mere three hours, most of which was procedural, bringing to end a trial in which the accused often acted as his own attorney and refused to offer testimony in his own behalf.

Roof  had specifically selected the  Emanuel AME Church, the South’s oldest black church, with the intention of bringing back segregation or starting a race war. He sat through 45 minutes of the Bible study and waited until the group was praying before opening fire, at times standing over his victims and shooting them a second time to make sure they were dead. His crime didn’t have the effect he wanted, though. If anything, it can be attributed for bringing the Confederate battle flag down from the South Carolina statehouse.

There is some speculation that Roof might have avoided the death penalty had he used mental health records that allegedly show a history of mental illness. However, Roof refused, saying that he didn’t believe in psychology and didn’t want to do anything that might embarrass his family any further. Roof was stoic as the verdict was read with only a few family members showing any sympathy for him.

 

American Made In Canada

charles i. letbetter - As gloomy and gusty as today is, we felt like we needed a pick-me-up. Some people would call these outtakes and destroy them. We call them fun and make a mini-gallery. Better look. We might have a picture of you in here. ;) #TuesdayMotivation

American Apparel finally sold in a bankruptcy auction with Canadian clothing giant Gildan taking on the manufacturing equipment and intellectual property rights of the once-edgy fashion retailer3. However, Gildan did not take on the leases for the manufacturing facilities, nor did it pick up any of the brands’ 110 retail stores. This leaves open a lot of questions as to where the clothes might be made and whether Gildan might close any or all of the current retail outlets.

The hot button issue here, though, is the manufacturing locations more than the retail stores. American Apparel has long touted its “Made In America” label, but Gildan would not promise that all the American manufacturing facilities would remain open. While Gilden currently manufactures thread in South Carolina and Georgia, the only garment they currently make in the US is socks. The greater majority of their 42,000 employees are in low-cost Caribbean and Central American countries.

For their part, Gildan executives say they will consider the feasibility of maintaining current manufacturing facilities as they develop an integration plan over the next several weeks. Be sure, though, everyone in fashion is watching. The president-elect has been bullying manufacturers to make more in the US, but with Gildan being Canadian-owned the orange one’s tweets may not have as much effect.

 

Saying Goodbye To An Old Friend

charles i. letbetter - As gloomy and gusty as today is, we felt like we needed a pick-me-up. Some people would call these outtakes and destroy them. We call them fun and make a mini-gallery. Better look. We might have a picture of you in here. ;) #TuesdayMotivation

As President Obama gave his farewell address in Chicago last night, the last planned speech of his presidency, he did so with his popularity rating 20 points higher than that of the incoming president-elect and the gratitude of a large portion of the nation4. The rhetoric was soaring and emotional, the same sort of speech that got him elected in the first place, full of hope and encouragement with a definite eye toward the future.

While the president touted this success and admitted some failures, the portion of his speech that brought out the tissue was when he spoke of his wife, Michelle, and the journey they have made together the past eight years. Referring to her roots from the often-troublesome South side of Chicago, the president thanked her for taking on a task she didn’t ask for and making it her own, as well as making the White House, “a place that belongs to everybody.5” By the time he finished, I’m pretty sure even the security team was needing tissues.

Speculation has been high as to what the president might do next. He has frequently said that he’s not going away, but as to exactly what role he might take on next is uncertain. Perhaps that is why streaming music provider Spotify posted a job opening yesterday for “President of Playlist.6” The job description includes a requirement of “at least eight years experience running a highly-regarded nation” and a Nobel Peace Prize. There is no word yet as to whether Mr. Obama is considering the position.

 

And finally …

charles i. letbetter - As gloomy and gusty as today is, we felt like we needed a pick-me-up. Some people would call these outtakes and destroy them. We call them fun and make a mini-gallery. Better look. We might have a picture of you in here. ;) #TuesdayMotivation

File this one under “What The Living Fuck Are You Thinking?” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the son of the former Senator and nephew of the late president John F. Kennedy, said yesterday that he has been chosen to review vaccine safety and science. Kennedy said that the president-elect, “has some doubts about the current vaccine policy. He asked me to chair a commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity. I said I would.7”

Immediately, this announcement set off all kinds of bells and whistles within the medical community. The common fear is that such a commission would give credence to a widely and frequently discredited study linking vaccinations to autism. Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University who advises the federal panel that sets U.S. vaccine policy, said the Kennedy news, “raised issues that have been settled securely and completely by good science.”

In typical fashion, the president-elect’s transition team attempted to walk back Kennedy’s statement late Wednesday, saying that “no decisions have been made at this time.” However, one has to wonder why the new administration would even allow this issue to come up. The only purpose it serves is to undermine the good faith and credibility of the medical community at a time when health care is already a national concern. This move is not just stupid, it’s careless, which appears to be a hallmark of the new administration.

 

For better or worse, that’s all we have time for today. Be watching for slick spots as you’re out this morning and gear up for the possibility of more thunderstorms tonight. We’ll keep an eye on the news, sort through the unsubstantiated rubbish, and whittle it down to digestible chunks tomorrow. Have a good day.

 

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Sports Are Not Art
January 9, 2017
charles i. letbetter - sports are not art

How can people not tell the difference?

charles i. letbetter - sports are not art

I am not an athlete. One look at me pretty much lets one know that. Not that I didn’t try, though. All through Jr. High I did my best to fit it. I tried ’em all: football, baseball, and basketball.  One coach even let me on the basketball team in eighth grade. I played for the last three minutes of one game where we were already losing by 18 points. Other than that, I did my best to be encouraging from the bench. Because of my experience, however, I have an incredible amount of respect for those whose eye-hand coordination is sufficient to allow them to be successful at a sport or two.

When I got older, I tried my hand at some other sports that weren’t quite as dangerous, such as tennis and racquetball. Uhm, did I say they weren’t dangerous? That would be an error. One of my worst sprains ever came from diving across a racquetball court and missing the damn ball. It was fantastic exercise, mind you, but I was repeatedly covered in bruises and spraining something, which probably contributes to the arthritis pain I have now.

Sports are wonderful. I can sit and watch football for as long as the chips and beer hold out. I can watch baseball live if there are plenty of hot dogs, and I can sometimes even tolerate an NBA game as long as 1. I didn’t pay for the seats, 2. We start drinking upon arrival, and 3. I don’t have to drive home, ‘cuz I’m not going to be sober by the time we hit the fourth period. I have absolutely no axe to grind with sports in general. I’ve even been out on the golf course and am pretty sure the solution to doing well is taking four or five Xanax before hitting the course. Although, that probably violates some rule about athletics and drugs.

So, given that sports are sports and involve getting all sweaty and worked up and physical in one way or another, I am totally perplexed why entire athletic organizations would get so freaking upset by being told that they’re not arts. What the literal fuck? How can anyone in their right mind even begin to put the arts and sports in the same basket? Why would you even want to try? They are both two very distinct and different things with two dramatically different purposes. Why are we even having this conversation?

Blame Meryl Streep.

 

Here’s What Happened

charles i. letbetter - sports are not art

When I wake up each morning, one of the first things I do is check to see what’s trending on Twitter. I try to prepare for our 5 Things You Should Know article before I go to bed each night, but there’s always the chance something can happen while I’m sleeping. I went to bed Sunday night before the Golden Globes because, 1. we had been up 17 hours already and was exhausted, and 2., find awards shows to generally be a complete waste of time. Monday morning, however, I get up to see that not only is #GoldenGlobes trending, so is #SportsAreNotArt and #MerylStreepForPresident. That was my first clue that something of reasonable significance had taken place.

Sure enough, it didn’t take long to discover that Ms. Streep had pretty much eviscerated the president-elect, who deserves every last bit of the condemnation heaped on him last night. That was a big story in of itself. What was getting just as much attention, at least on Twitter, was when Ms. Streep had said that football and MMA are not art.

Oh. My God. You would have thought that Ms. Streep had plunged a dagger into the very heart of the planet and that we all were about to die. The President of MMA even wrote and posted a huge ass response trying to convince Ms. Streep and the rest of the world that there is something remotely artistic about two people stepping into the ring and proceeding to pummel each other to the point of concussion and, most likely, permanent brain damage. Yeah, some people apparently think that there’s an art to bleeding.

Now, before we go too much further, we should take a look at Ms. Streep’s words in context. So, here’s a larger version of what she actually said:

I was born and raised and educated in the public schools of New Jersey. Viola [Davis] was born in a sharecropper’s cabin in South Carolina, came up in Central Falls, Rhode Island. Sarah Paulson was born in Florida, raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio. Amy Adams was born in Vicenza, Veneto, Italy. And Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates?

And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, raised in — no, in Ireland, I do believe. And she’s here nominated for playing a small-town girl from Virginia. Ryan Gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian. And Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, is here for playing an Indian raised in Tasmania.

So Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. And if we kick ’em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts. They gave me three seconds to say this, so. An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like. And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that — breathtaking, passionate work.

The longer point Ms. Streep would go on to make is how the president-elect continually demonstrates a lack of regard for anyone who is not white and rich and that the press needs to habitually call him out on his nonsense. Like the opinion or not, Ms. Streep has a right to it and since she had the platform to make that opinion heard she had every right to take advantage of that situation.

What she said about football and mixed martial arts not being the arts, however, is correct. They’re not the arts. They never have been and they never can be in their current forms. Moreover, we really don’t want to think of them as art. To put athletics into the art basket would require fundamentally changing their reason for existing. We wouldn’t like most sports if they concentrated on being artistic. We want them to be the physical display of training and skill in a competitive format that they are. We like them that way.

 

So, what’s the difference, really?

charles i. letbetter - sports are not art

The MMA world seems to be much more upset about Ms. Streep’s remarks than is anyone in the NFL. Bellator CEO Scott Coker even took the time to write and tweet a response which says in part:

Please be my guest at the LA Forum on January 21st and you will see that Mixed Martial Arts is truly artistic – which will feature fighters from all over the world competing at a world class level.

Now, in case you’re not a huge MMA fan, which I am not, we looked up the event scheduled for the LA Forum on January 21. The multi-bout card includes the following people beating the living hell out of each other: Tito Ortiz and Chael Sonnen, Georgi Karakhanyan against Emmanuel Sanchez, Paul Daley against Brennan Ward, and Ralek Gracie against Hisaki Kato. The event is broadcast free on the SPIKE cable network. All the young men on the card are big, tough, and athletic. I’m sure they will all give their best in the ring. Those who enjoy watching this type of competition will be thrilled. However, not a damn thing about this event is going to be artistic except, possibly, the singing of the national anthem.

Why? Because sports are not arts. In case you were sleeping during your humanities class, or completely skipped out that semester, the are five basic arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry. Those have existed since the beginning of time and deserve to be respected as such. As society developed, somewhere along about 3,000 BCE, theatre and dance were added to the list. As part of that gradual progression and the development of technology, film was added as an extension of the theatre. Photography, video production/editing, design, sequential art, conceptual art, and printmaking have been added as an extension of painting. Arts related to painting, sculpture, and architecture as generally classified as visual arts while those related to music, dance, and theatre as classified as performing arts.

Now, please, take a close look. Do you see anything in that list that looks like a competitive sport? Granted, dancing is extremely athletic, which probably explains why I suck at that, too. Still, a dance performance isn’t a competition like a sport is. No one keeps score. There’s no audience hoping that the prima ballerina pulls a hamstring so that the understudy can win. Dance is not a sport. Sport is not an art.

While I could spend hours nit-picking all the minute details that hold arts apart from sport, the primary difference is that one is a competitive exhibition whose purpose is to determine a definite winner while the other is a presentation for the visual and visceral pleasures of its audience over that of those creating. Athletes want to win, to beat their competition. Artists want only to please an audience in some form or fashion. There’s no contest. In the case of visual arts such as painting, sculpture, and architecture, there’s not even an end point so long as the works still exist. They can go on and deliver pleasure and expression for centuries provided they are given appropriate care.

To be art the work has to attempt some significance outside itself, either through its impact on society and culture or to the greater art itself. There must be an aesthetic element to the work and contain an element of emotion that varies from artist to artist and work to work. Art requires no participation of anyone outside the artist and yet is fulfilled in its exhibition. If one is an Art History major, one classifies art through both form and function. Art requires a unique creative act whose interpretation is variable by either the performer or the audience, and sometimes both.

I suppose, if one really stretches the definitions, one might claim that some sports figures are artistic in their work, but then we still come back to the fact that sport must, inherently, be competitive. Sport is a contest; there is a constant adversary. The fundamental of success in sports is that one follows the rules for their function within their sport or one is disqualified and penalized. Even in a sport seemingly as benign as golf, one must still exhibit some form of aggression against that stupid little ball if one hopes to ever win. None of those things are appropriate for art.

And none of this explains why anyone would bother to be upset that the two are distinct and separate entities. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone trying to turn art into a sport. Most artists I know would bristle at the very idea. So why would a sport try to portray itself as an art? What is the purpose of such an attempt? Are athletes feeling left out that, despite their million dollar salaries, they’re somehow left out or cheated by being portrayed as artists? If football players want to feel more like real artists, then perhaps they could start by attempting to get by on one-tenth their current salaries; that would still have them being paid more than most artists. I simply cannot imagine why anyone in sports would be offended by Ms. Streep’s comment.

The only thing I can surmise is that the athletes who are upset are simply jealous that there’s an arena from which they are excluded, which is interesting since I’ve known multiple athletes who were also wonderful artists in genres that are actually art. It’s not that the person can’t be an artist, but more that the sport itself isn’t art.

Sports are sport, and they’re a lot of fun and have an important place in our society. The arts are art, and they’re a lot of fun and have an important place in our society. Yet, art and sport as distinct, separate entities occupying different spaces that have no need to overlap. Together, with other fields such as science and math, and philosophy and literature, they make our world a very wonderful place to be. We don’t all need to occupy the same space. Be cool with what you are and let others be what they are and we’ll all get along much better.

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5 Things You Should Know: 01.09.2017
January 9, 2017
charles i. letbetter - 5 Things You Should Know: 01092017

04:42:27 01/09/2017

https://youtu.be/Y1dUZDI66As

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A lot of news, but is it art?

charles i. letbetter - 5 Things You Should Know: 01092017

Welcome to another Monday. Temperatures are still cold out this morning, but by mid-afternoon, we might just make it above freezing for the first time in several days. This is the beginning of a warming trend that will see central Indiana near 60 degrees by Thursday, but with that comes a reasonable chance for rain every day except today. By next weekend it will be cold and wintery again, so enjoy the warmer weather while you can.

The weekend managed to conjure up a fair bit of news for this morning. McDonald’s has sold most of its business in China and Hong Kong to investors who can help them grow. Turkey claims they’ve killed more than 40 ISIS fighters over the weekend, and the Friday’s Ft. Lauderdale shooter is likely facing the death penalty. Yet, it’s an award show that seems to be getting all the chatter this morning. Let’s look at our 5 things you should know and see if we can figure out why.

 

But first, the weather

charles i. letbetter - 5 Things You Should Know: 01092017

We tend to look at the weather in terms of local forecasts and are typically thankful when everything is benign and quiet. A little bit of snow in the wrong place can be a real problem with it hits in the South, such as it did on Friday and Saturday last week. But what you might have missed was a massive winter storm that hit Europe over the weekend, leaving at least 20 dead and closing businesses and services across much of the continent1.

Those of you familiar with European geography know that, like the US, Southern Europe rarely sees a touch of winter. The Greek Islands are a popular winter tourist destination because they tend to stay warm. The same is true for Southern Italy. Yet, both are frozen over today and have a heavy blanket of fresh snow, closing ferries, ports, and schools. Overnight temperatures in Northern Europe reached as low as -22° F, which contributed to many of the deaths. Many of those dying are homeless and immigrant people with insufficient shelter.

At the same time, however, the Western US is getting hit with a storm of its own. Hundreds of homes have been evacuated in Nevada and in Northern California police are rescuing people from cars as the strongest winter storm to hit that region in 10 years pummels them with more water than they can handle2. This is on top of the more than six feet of snow dumped on the Sierra Nevadas in the past week. What you should know is that this is normally a high desert region that sees less than eight inches of rain a year. They’re looking at a very rough start to their week.

 

Death of a diplomat

charles i. letbetter - 5 Things You Should Know: 01092017

People in Iran are mourning the death of Former Iranian president Akbar Rafsanjani who died Sunday at age 823. This is important because Rafsanjani, who was a political moderate, played a large role in the election of Iran’s current president, Hassan Rouhani and was a force within Iran for supporting the current nuclear agreement between that country and the West. Without Rafsanjani, Rouhani faces considerable objections from Iranian hardliners in favor of ditching the agreement and developing Iran’s nuclear program.

Given the rhetoric toward Iran from president-elect Donald Trump, many moderates and Middle Eastern academics feel that Rafsanjani’s death could not have come at a worse time. With political instability on both sides of the nuclear agreement, fears are high that the whole thing might fall apart without Rafsanjani’s voice working to keep both sides calm. Any political misstep on either side now could have catastrophic results.

In a country that has often been isolationist and protective, Rafsanjani was a rare voice of reason who advocated not only stronger ties with the West but closer relations with Iran’s Middle Eastern neighbors. A three-day period of mourning has been declared and the former president’s funeral will be held on Tuesday.

 

Using trucks as weapons

We may soon begin seeing a more diligent inspection of trucks on city streets as, once again, a truck has been used as part of a terror attack, this time in Jerusalem4. At least four Israeli soldiers were killed and 17 people wounded as a Palestinian driver rammed his truck into a crowd at a popular tourist attraction. This is the deadliest single attack in the region which has seen a considerable amount of violence over the past year.

This time, however, the US has a direct role in the causation for the attack. Tensions in the region have been high based on president-elect Trump’s statement that he plans to move the US embassy to Israel to Jerusalem. Palestinians have warned that such a move would have dire consequences, which has many wondering if this was merely a warning of what might be to come should the president-elect follow through on his promise.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is blaming the so-called Islamic State, however, given that organization’s recent use of a truck at a market in Germany that left 12 dead. The truck driver was a Palestinian man from a nearby neighborhood known for being home to other terrorists in the region. Security cameras show the truck barreling through the streets at a high rate of speed toward a group of soldiers, and then backing up rapidly after hitting them. The driver was shot dead by other Israeli soldiers surviving the attack.

 

Ending the program but not the controversy

charles i. letbetter - 5 Things You Should Know: 01092017

Following the death of Tilikum, the orca that killed a trainer at Sea World back in 2010, Sea World San Diego has announced that it is ending its Killer Whale show5. The final presentation featuring trainers interacting with the giant mammals was held yesterday afternoon. Sea World says it plans to redesign the large tanks and open a new orca exhibit in the spring that is more of an educational experience. Visitors will see how orcas eat and interact with each other rather than with a trainer.

Don’t think this is an end to the controversy surrounding the Sea World program, though. Tilikum died at an estimated age of 36. While that might seem old compared to the life of your family pet, orcas in the wild have been known to live well over 200 years, with some estimated to live another century beyond that. The effect of captivity on the giant animals dramatically shortens their lifespan, no matter how well their care might be.

What you should know is that Sea World parks in Orlando and San Antonio will continue their orca shows through 2019. Attendance at all Sea World parks has fallen off since the documentary Blackfish criticized the conditions of the orcas at Sea World, specifically Tilikum, saying that captivity makes the massive mammals more aggressive. Sea World has also announced they are laying off some 320 people across its 12 parks, none of which are likely to affect the orca programs.

 

And finally …

charles i. letbetter - 5 Things You Should Know: 01092017

The first big awards show of the new year, the Golden Globes, was held last night and, as one might expect, the tabloids and entertainment news is full of chatter about who won what6.  Now, before anyone busts a gut, we can tell you that the musical La La Land took the lead with seven awards, which definitely brightens its chances going into the Oscars. Tracee Ellis Ross, took the award for best actress in a TV comedy for “Black-ish,” the first black woman to win in that category since 1992. Emma Stone won for best movie actress in a comedy or musical, and Billy Bob Thornton won for best actor in a TV drama.

What has tongues wagging fiercely this morning is Meryl Streep’s acceptance speech after winning the Cecile B. DeMille award, where she called the president-elect a bully and challenged the press to hold those in power accountable. What is getting the most attention, however, is when she said, “Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. And if we kick ’em all out you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.”

That comment set off a firestorm about athletics not being the arts. MMA supporters especially took exception, given the word “arts” is in the title. Stop and think about it, though. We don’t called anyone a football artist, we call them “players.” We call those who participate in MMA “fighters,” not artists. Just so we’re clear, the Fine Arts always have been, and continue to be painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry extending to dance and drama. Modern modifications include film, photography, and other visial elements, but they do NOT include athletics. Those are sports. Don’t get confused.

 

And that’s all we have time and energy for this morning. Being a Monday, I’m sure there will be a lot happen throughout the day today. We’ll watch it all and we’ll be back in the morning to sift through all the nonsense. Enjoy the warming weather if you can and we’ll back tomorrow.

 

###

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5 Things You Should Know: 12.26.2016
December 26, 2016
charles i. letbetter - 5 Things You Should Know 122616

The year just keeps getting worse

 

charles i. letbetter - 5 Things You Should Know 122616

If you’re reading or watching this, then congratulations, you survived the holidays, which is more than a lot of people can say. We deliberately skipped over all the bad news on Saturday in an attempt to give the weekend a positive spin. It didn’t work, though, did it? The universe just couldn’t go two days without inviting some disaster into our lives.

So here we go, the last week of 2016. We have snow in the Northernmost states, rain across the South and Midwest, with a chance of tornadoes just strong enough to make sure the steps down to your fraidy hole are clear. Bubble wrap your favorite living musician, I have a feeling that fate might try to finish the year strong. From all the disasters, we chose 5 things you should know.

 

We’ve lost our Faith

charles i. letbetter - 5 Things You Should Know 122616

Both the US and the UK is in mourning at news of the death of singer George Michael yesterday. The 53-year-old singer is said to have died quietly at his home in London of heart failure. Michael first came to prominence as half the pop duo Wham! but it was as a solo artist that his career really took off and captured the hearts of millions of people around the world. Tributes started pouring in the moment the word hit the news yesterday afternoon.

There are a number of songs for which George Michael is remembered. Faith, Freedom ’90, I’m never gonna dance again, and the holiday favorite of the broken-hearted, Last Christmas. These are the kind of songs that are likely to dominate many of the memorials we’ll inevitably see popping up all over the Internet today. However, the song that might be most responsible for catapulting him to stardom isn’t on most George Michael playlists: I want your Sex.

Released in 1986, the salacious song was wildly popular but left radio stations and the still=new MTV channel with a conundrum as to whether to play the song. Conservatives were outraged that the word sex had gotten onto an album without any warning. Most stations refused to play the song at all. Those who did, limited it to late-night hours. The singer also courted controversy with the song Outside after an LA police officer outed the singer as gay.

Rest In Peace, George Michael, and thank you for letting us know it’s okay to think about sex. Here’s the video:

 

Russia Loses A Choir

charles i. letbetter - 5 Things You Should Know 122616

Unfortunately, George Michael wasn’t the only loss to the music world yesterday. There was at first a sense of suspicion when news hit the wire yesterday that a Russian plane in route to Syria had gone down in the Black Sea. The suspicion turned to sorrow, though, when it was announced that the group known widely as The Red Army Choir was on that flight, heading to entertain troops at a military base2.

Formally known as the Alexandrov Ensemble, the all-male group was known for their loud if not stirring recordings of Soviet and Russian anthems. However, they group had their lighter side as well and was especially popular for their cover of Daft Punk’s, Lucky during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Sixty-four members of the ensemble, including director Valery Khalilov, were aboard the plane yesterday.  Russian officials this morning are saying that mechanical malfunctions were responsible for the plane going down, dismissing any idea that terrorism might have played a role.

While the full group has 186 members, most of the singers were on the flight. While the group will almost certainly rebuild, the loss for the people of Russia is significant. Here is a video of the group doing its cover of Lucky:

https://youtu.be/BYbtAZjB8QM

 

Carrie Fisher Is Hanging On

charles i. letbetter - 5 Things You Should Know 122616

Fortunately, not all the news was bad yesterday. Star Wars fans around the world took a deep breath and held it when word was released late Saturday that actress Carrie Fisher had suffered a “cardiac episode” while on a flight from London to Los Angeles. We finally release that breath yesterday when Ms. Fisher’s mother, actress Debbie Reynolds, announced that her daughter was in stable condition and resting comfortably3.

While Ms. Fisher is both an accomplished actor and writer, it is her role as Princess Leia in the Star Wars franchise that made her’s a household name. In fact, the actress had been in London promoting her latest book, The Princess Diarist, a memoir depicting her time filming her iconic turn as Princess Leia in the Star Wars film series3. In recent years, Ms. Fisher has not been shy talking about the amount of sex and drug use on the film sets of the 1970s and 80s.

Here’s video of her latest interview just a few weeks ago with The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert:

Fake News Creates An International Incident

charles i. letbetter - 5 Things You Should Know 122616

Fake news has reared its ugly head again and proven that even those in power can sometimes be fooled by an article that appears to know what it’s talking about. Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif found an article on the site AWD News claiming that Israel’s former defense minister threatened to attack Pakistan if they sent troops to Syria. Naturally, that’s the kind of news that doesn’t set well with a defense minister. Asif did as other world leaders are increasingly doing and took to Twitter to register his objection. He reminded Israel that “Pakistan is also a nuclear power.4”

Focus on the key word, “also.” You see, Israel has never actually admitted that they have nuclear capability. Doing so would put any such program under United Nations observation, thus rendering it very much not a secret. Historically, the US has helped keep this not-so-secret secret by blocking attempts within the UN Security Council to demand inspections of the nuclear sites Israel won’t admit that it has.

With that same UN Security Council denouncing Israeli settlements in the West Bank last week, tensions between Israel and much of the world are very high at the moment5. The thinly veiled threat was considered very serious. Israel’s defense ministry tweeted back that the alleged news story was fake, but Pakistan has yet to reply to that tweet.

 

Is Your Makeup Too Heavy?

charles i. letbetter - 5 Things You Should Know 122616

And finally, here’s something you might not think of too terribly often: the amount of lead in the makeup you use. The Food and Drug Administration released new guidelines last week on the amount of lead to be used in cosmetics made in the US6. The non-binding set of guidelines addresses the amount of lead in things such as lipstick, shampoo, eye shadows and body lotions. Generally speaking, most products have a lead content of less than 10 parts per million (ppm). However, there remain a few brands across every category that still have higher lead content.

The renewed concern about lead in products comes as an increasing number of cities are finding high levels of lead in their drinking water due to corroding pipes. Where lead levels in the body may already be higher than normal, lead in other products becomes a more serious issue as the lead builds up within the body and can reach dangerous levels. For people living in places such as Flint, Michigan or St. Joseph, Louisiana, this can be a very serious issue.

Complicating the matter is the fact that not all products list the amount of lead on their label. I talked briefly with Kat about the subject and she confirmed that most makeup artists don’t look at lead content as a point of concern and typically don’t check their products. Again, this new paper is not binding. However, it may indicate a much more carefully managed position by the FDA in the future.

 

That’s all we have time for this morning. We have some personal obligations today that require us to be on the road early, so we don’t have time to put this in video format before we need to leave. We’ll try and do that again tomorrow. Until then, please stay safe. Hear’s hoping this Monday is a good one.

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Advertising  /  Fashion  /  News & Comment  /  video
5 Things You Should Know: 12/18/2016
December 18, 2016
charles i. letbetter - 5 things you need to know for 12-18-16

https://youtu.be/6PRETGoM1I0

Partially frozen, never faked

 

charles i. letbetter - 5 things you need to know for 12-18-16

Welcome! This is Sunday morning, December 18. We’re desperately trying to get a grip on things here as we’re now only one week away from both Christmas and the first day of Hanukkah. The prophet’s birthday is tomorrow for all our Muslim friends. The stores would be packed if the entire Northern United States weren’t under a sheet of ice this morning. We’ll talk more about that in a little bit. What’s important is that everyone stays warm and safe as much as possible. We’ll try to keep you informed with what’s going on.

The president-elect is still making more cabinet and senior advisory appointments, there are conflicting reports coming out of Syria as to whether people in Aleppo are actually able to leave safely, and apparently Saturday Night Live was a real hoot. I wouldn’t know, I was already sound asleep. We have confirmed and verified five things you need to know, though, so let’s take a look at those.

 

One nation, under ice

charles i. letbetter - 5 things you need to know for 12-18-16

We’ve been talking about snow and ice for a few days now, but the weather is very much dominating the news this morning as yet another wave of snow and ice fell across the Northern half of the United States yesterday and early this morning. So far, the storm is being blamed for at least nine deaths yesterday, though that number could increase as investigations are continuing1.

While there were pileups and backed up traffic all the way from Colorado to Maine, the biggest seemed to be along I-95 where reports of anywhere from 55 to 70 cars were involved in a pileup that killed at least two people. Indianapolis police reported over 500 accidents before 8:00 yesterday morning with at least two deaths there as well. The weather has created a mess all across the country that has caused a number of holiday plans to be canceled for this weekend. Exactly how bad this will affect last-minute holiday shopping remains to be seen, but it certainly isn’t good news for retailers who were already struggling to end this year on a positive note.

Don’t think the South got off scot-free, either. From Missouri down through Mississippi there were severe storms and threats of tornadoes yesterday afternoon and throughout the night. While there have not yet been any reports of death, there has been considerable property damage.

Weather like this is enough to dampen even the most stalwart of holiday spirits.

 

A problem with the water

charles i. letbetter - 5 things you need to know for 12-18-16

Everything being cold and wet across the Eastern half of the country reminds us of just how much water has been a factor in news stories this year. Both Detroit and St. Joseph, Louisiana continue to struggle with finding clean drinking water, and this week we added Corpus Christie, Texas to the mix2. In case you missed it, a chemical leak is to blame for a ban on any use of water coming from the public water supply in the city of over 300,000 residents. This is so bad, that officials there say even boiling the water isn’t good enough. Bottled water has been brought in and is being distributed.

What we’re hearing now, according to the Associated Press, is that city officials had three warnings prior to this current catastrophe. In fact, Corpus Christie Mayor Dan McQueen, who just took office this past Tuesday, won his position in part by campaigning against the previous mayor’s inability to handle water problems in the city. Officials are hoping that test studies released later today will determine the exact source of the chemical leak.  An asphalt plant has been the culprit before, but the city also has a problem with aging lead pipes.

Across the country, the deteriorating conditions of public water systems initially installed in the 1940s and 50s are giving way and pose a serious health threat. Unless Congress acts and provides a serious amount of funding to repair these systems, I fear we could see even more water safety issues throughout the next year.

 

On your mark, get set …

charles i. letbetter - 5 things you need to know for 12-18-16

I’ve heard a lot of people say that they feel like running away, whether because of the political climate or financial pressures or just the challenge of trying to survive. A number of people wouldn’t mind strapping on their running shoes and taking off.

Well, if you can hold on a couple of months, you might be able to get those shoes custom fitted. Adidas has startedselling their 3D-printed shoe in limited release3. For now, if you want a pair of the shoes, you have to order them through the Adidas Confirmed app. Then, when your shoes are ready, you have to be able to pick them up at the Adidas flagship store on Fifth Avenue and 46th street in New York City. You’ll also be paying $333 for the privilege of wearing these state-of-the-art sneakers.

This is a huge move for both the footwear and fashion industries. Designers have been working with 3D-printed clothing and materials for a couple of years now, and both Under Armor and New Balance released their 3D shoes earlier this year. Adidas has significantly larger market share, however, and could easily dominate the market if they are able to get 3D shoes into high scale production quickly. Adidas says this is the first step in being able to provide “customized shoes based on an individual’s footprint – including their running style, foot shape, performance needs and personal preferences.”

With custom-fitted shoes, running may be a lot more plausible.

 

An insult is a good thing

charles i. letbetter - 5 things you need to know for 12-18-16

Around the world, magazines and other periodical publications have struggled to remain profitable in an increasingly digital age. Magazine publisher Condé Nast, who owns brands such as Vogue, GQ, and Brides, has certainly seen its share of problems and has even shuttered some publications and moved several to online-only strategies. However, they may have accidentally hit on a new strategy that could save them all.

Earlier this week, Condé Nast magazine Vanity Fair published an absolutely scathing review of the new Trump Grill in New York4. In fact, the headline on the review reads: “Trump Grill Could Be The Worst Restaurant In America.”  Now, I’ve eaten in some really bad restaurants and at least three of them were in New York. So, to say the Trump Grill could be the worst in America is really quite something.

Unsurprisingly, the president-elect didn’t like that review too terribly much. He responded with a tweet, as he tends to do, saying, “Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!”  If the president-elect held any respect among the American people, that could have been a death knell for the magazine. But he doesn’t and it wasn’t.

Vanity Fair told Adweek5 that subscriptions for the magazine were 100 times the amount they typically sell in a day, setting a record for the number of subscriptions sold in a single day for any Condé Nast publication. The review has had more than a million views online and Vanity Fair’s Twitter followers increased by more than 10,000. Not bad for a “dying” magazine.

Of course, what Condé Nast has to figure out now is how to get the president-elect to issue similar insults for all its brands. One of the best marketing concepts for 2017 may be getting a diss from the new president.

 

Is all hope gone

charles i. letbetter - 5 things you need to know for 12-18-16

The effect of Donald Trump’s insult toward VanityFair underscores not only a severe lack of respect for the president-elect, but a general feeling across much of the United States that we are entering a phase of the country’s history where the president acts without regard to the people on a regular basis.

The current First Lady, Michelle Obama, gave voice to that emotion when she taped an interview with Oprah Winfrey for CBS and the Oprah Winfrey Network that airs this week. Here’s a clip from that interview:

Mrs. Obama’s words struck home:

See, now we’re feeling what not having hope feels like, you know? Hope is necessary. It’s a necessary concept. And Barack didn’t just talk about hope because he thought was just a nice slogan to get votes. He and I and so many believe that what else do you have if you don’t have hope? What do you give your kids if you can’t give them hope?”

The clip has been shared widely since its release this week with a large number of people identifying with the emotion that the First Lady describes. As the nation prepares to inaugurate the 45th president of the United States, it does so knowing that his victory occurred only in the Electoral College and is not reflected in the popular vote nor popular sentiment.

Mr. Trump responded Saturday night to the clip, saying, “she made that statement not meaning it the way it came out.” 

 

We’re out of time for this morning. We’ll have more pictures and possibly a long read later today, so be sure to check back or, better yet, subscribe so that you don’t miss anything! Stay warm. Stay safe. We’ll see you tomorrow.

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Hashtag Philosophy  /  Just For Fun
Thanksgiving Survival Guide
November 21, 2016
charles i. letbetter - thanksgiving survival guide

Ready or not, Thanksgiving is here. The relatives are coming. Prepare now!

 

charles i. letbetter - thanksgiving survival guide

We hate to be the bearers of anxiety, but the family holiday season is here. We know how many of you do your best to avoid family all year long, especially extended family. The cousins were great playmates when you were kids, but now they’re annoying, frustrating, and occasionally even infuriating. They ask far too many questions, such as whatever happened to that date you brought with you last Thanksgiving. When they’re not asking prying questions, they’re giving you way too much information about their own lives. Did you really want to know how often one has to change the diapers on a baby with diarrhea? No, of course you didn’t.

Across the country, anxiety over the holidays leads to everything from shortness of breath to heart palpitations to the sudden onset of a very serious flu when you find out Aunt Mildred is bringing her infamous onion casserole. These feelings are so widespread that #SurvivalGuideToThanksgiving is trending with such heavy input that I can’t keep up. Naturally, when I saw that, I shelved other plans I had for today and immediately started assembling some of the best advice I could find. After all, we would hate for anyone to suffer unnecessarily. If you’re going to suffer, make sure everyone else is even more uncomfortable than you are. Maybe that will be enough to keep them all home for the next family gathering sometime in December.

Not that we’re totally cynical, mind you. We’ll toss in some practical suggestions along the way. It’s up to you to determine which are serious, though. For all I know, maybe you should bring your own turkey baster. That’s totally up to you.

 

Suggestions from Twitter

charles i. letbetter - thanksgiving survival guide

There areally are some brilliant minds on Twitter at times and hashtag games such as this is when some of the best show up. I didn’t really want to take the time to sort through all the best, though, so here are some of the first ones that I thought were at least mildly amusing.

A Bit Of Practical Advice

charles i. letbetter - thanksgiving survival guide

Fun and frivolity aside, there are some practical things you probably should do in preparation for spending a day with relatives. We have some suggestions here as well, but we’re saving those for the next section down. Here’s some of the best from what we culled from Twitter.

 

Now For The Good Stuff

charles i. letbetter - thanksgiving survival guide

There are plenty of ideas out there that are worth sharing. We were surprised, however, that we didn’t see some of the more obvious suggestions. Sure, there were multiple takes on drinking as much as possible and leaving in earphones and keeping your mouth full. What we missed were some of the more certain ways to make the holiday memorable and increase your chances of not being invited to the next one. So, here’s what we have to offer.

  1. Arrive early. We’re not kidding. Arrive a couple of hours early. Blame insomnia or a bad clock or maybe even say that since your homeless this year you didn’t really have anywhere else to go. Go early and make sure you don’t stop talking. If you can avoid taking a breath, do so. You don’t want to give anyone a chance to get a word in edge-wise. This way, everyone will be so tired of you by the time dinner is over you can leave immediately and everyone else will be truly thankful.
  2. Offer to help in the kitchen and then “accidentally” drop the dishes you know no one actually wants to eat, such as Cousin Laverne’s caramel-covered asparagus casserole. Laverne might be devastated, but everyone else in the family will thank you.
  3. Do your own play-by-play for the football game you’re listening to on your phone, not the one everyone is watching on television. If they’re truly football fans, they’ll appreciate the extra effort you’re putting into the holiday.
  4. Bring your own paper plate and plastic utensils. Tell everyone you’ve heard that there’s a really bad case of hand-foot-and-mouth disease going around and you’re not taking any chances. Notice how everyone gives you a 10-foot safety barrier the rest of the day.
  5. Fill your pockets with candy and distribute it freely to all your nieces, nephews, and second cousins. Make sure they all get plenty of sugar. Then leave before their parents have a chance to kill you.
  6. Practice binge eating the first to days of the week then fast 24 hours before the meal. This stretches your stomach so that you can eat more on Thanksgiving day and makes sure you’re hungry enough to down an extra helping of gravy.
  7. Remember to make sure that you have plenty of all your medication to get you through the entire weekend. You’re not getting anywhere near a pharmacy this weekend. Besides, there’s no Black Friday sale on Valium.
  8. Get down the scrapbook and brush up on all your cousins’ names, or at least the ones they were using before they went into the witness protection program.
  9. Bring your dog. No, not the tiny cute one that lives in your purse and thinks it’s a dog. Bring the rottweiler or the saint bernard. You know, something that will clear the table of food before anyone human can be poisoned.
  10. Slip a bottle of ipecac into your pocket. You never know when you’ll need to fake the flu—or take evasive action against food poisoning. Either way, it will get you out of having to endure family the rest of the day.
  11. Dress like a turkey and accuse everyone else at the table of cannibalism. Hold the roasted turkey in your arms lovingly and chant, “Foul Lives Matter!”
  12. Pretend you just got a job at Target and have to be at work by 6:00.
  13. Pull out your shotgun and while you’re cleaning it explain to the children in the room exactly how you tracked down that big ol’ turkey and BOOM, blew it’s ever-loving head right off. No one will challenge you for the drumsticks now.
  14. Remind everyone, again, that they did not have jellied cranberry sauce at the original thanksgiving and that the entire holiday is a complete sham unless the family massacres the neighbors the next day.
  15. Pray for peace and then throw hard rolls at Cousin Elmer for not closing his eyes during the prayer.

I could probably come up with more and if you need additional help just let me know and I’m sure we can come up with something to fit your specific situation. Personally, I’m doing the cooking here. I’m not waiting for the tryptophan to kick in with the kids, though. I’m loading the stuffing with sleeping pills. We WILL have a quiet afternoon one way or the other.

Hope this helps. Have a great holiday!!

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Current Issues  /  Hashtag Philosophy  /  PotD
I Want America
November 15, 2016
charle si. letbetter - i want america

#IWantAmerica started as a game but ended up showing our dissatisfaction with the country

 

charles i. letbetter - I want America

We reveal much about ourselves in the way we play games, make comments, and interact with the world. Early yesterday morning, the hashtag #IWantAmerica emerged on Twitter and it was interesting not because of any particularly insightful or witty responses as is often the case, but more for the ways in which the hashtag showed how very dissatisfied with our country and each other we are.  Some tweets were downright mean in their attack on differing points of view. Some, sadly, were unapologetically racists or homophobic.  If there is a reason the hashtag didn’t trend for long it is likely because the hate being expressed was too much for anyone to enjoy reading.

At the same time, though, the hashtag was also taken up in a very different tone by those, primarily students, stuck overseas. For them, the hashtag reflected why they actually miss the US. Their tweets said things like, “I’m running out of my day’s allotment of Internet #IWantAmerica,” and “My card doesn’t work at foreign ATMs. #IWantAmerica.” Sometimes we don’t appreciate the little things until we are deprived of them.

While the game itself quickly dwindled and died, the concept of what I want from America, the kind of nation I expect America to be, stayed with me all day. I am an idealist in that I expect a lot from my country. I expect the collective, corporate body to behave better than I do on my own. I expect the nation to be smarter than any one individual, to have better foresight, to be more thoughtful in its actions. While we, as individuals, might fail through our foolishness, I expect our country to succeed through our combined wisdom. Let me elaborate.

 

#IWantAmerica to keep its promises

charles i. letbetter - i want america

We don’t have a great track record for keeping our promises as Americans. Most notably, we have continually gone back on treaties with made with those who occupied this land before us. The current situation at Standing Rock, where the Dakota Access Pipeline threatens native burial grounds and endangers drinking water, is but the latest example of  a litany of grievances native peoples have against the government. While I’m pleased that the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers that is responsible for the placement of the pipeline is looking for alternatives, I am saddened that it too massive protests to lead them to what should have been an automatic priority when the pipeline was first considered. Then, as native protestors were beaten and mistreated, more promises were broken. #IWantAmerica to start keeping its promises, all of them, to native tribes.

#IWantAmerica to keep its promise to provide for the safety and common welfare of all its citizens, not just the privileged few. While we are concerned at the rise in threats against minorities since the election, those actions are just a reflection of the increasing violence and hate crimes that has been growing across our country for years. Compounding that problem is the fact that, increasingly, hate crimes are being committed with a religious bias.

The First Amendment of the Constitution, that document which allegedly contains our core values, promises the ability for one to worship in any way they please. So how is it that Bible study members at a black church get shot? How is it that mosques and temples have their members threatened and their facilities vandalized? How is it that if we are not judging people by the color of their skin we’re judging them by the belief system they profess? We’re breaking that fundamental promise of the First Amendment and it’s disgusting.

 

#IWantAmerica to respect all people without exception

charles i. letbetter - i want America

Social media justifiably exploded yesterday as word of a West Virginia non-profit director called First Lady Michelle Obama an “ape in heels.”  The severe error in judgment was compounded when the town’s mayor agreed with the statement. The comments do not come as a surprise for anyone of color, though. The undercurrent of racism long present in our country moved to the surface the day Barack Obama took the oath of office as president and has only grown worse over the past eight years. America is, to put it in derogatory terms, a large group of racist jackasses trying desperately to hold on to power they don’t actually have.

#IWantAmerica to get past the racist nonsense. The civil war ended over 150 years ago. There’s no damn good reason to keep flying Confederate battle flags. There’s no reason to continue treating and speaking of people of color, ANY color, as second-class citizens or as some form of animal. We should be ashamed that people of color are afraid to even walk down the street for fear of being harassed. This isn’t the ideal on which the United States was founded. Our continued embracement of racism, through policy, in practice, and in things as simple as Facebook statuses and appointment of chief strategists is beneath us. This is not who we claim to be. This is not who we should be.

There should be no exception in who we accept in this country. America was founded, from the very moment those pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, that those who were not welcome anywhere else in the world could come here and be free. Then, from the moment those pilgrims actually set foot on the soil, we promptly forgot that ideal. #IWantAmerica to be a place for everyone without  exception. There should be no need for classification of race nor of gender nor of marital status nor of sexuality nor of religion. We are all Americans and that should be quite enough, thank you.

 

#IWantAmerica to be intelligent

charles i. letbetter - i want america

There is much I don’t know. My children are smarter than I am but there is still much they don’t know. I have mad respect for the intellect demonstrated by people such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Stephen Hawking but both will admit there is still much they don’t know. There never will be one person who contains the whole of all there is to know. Our potential strength and intellect lie in the combined forces of all our minds, not just a few. To the extent that many of us are not cooperating not only makes us appear stupid but endangers the entire country.  Where we do not embrace wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, we leave ourselves vulnerable to those who do. What we don’t know can hurt us.

Anti-intellectualism has always been present in America and it is high time we drove out that thread rather than letting it take hold. When we deny knowledge, when we believe in mythologies rather than facts, when the truth becomes too inconvenient for our lifestyles, we place ourselves in grave danger. Our policies and our actions should be based upon our combined intellect and understanding of how the world works and is operating. If we see that global temperatures are rising and creating a long-term threat to our very existence should we not look to solve that problem rather than denying it even exists?

We have the ability to do great things, to make millions of lives better, to solve problems that have plagued us for years, but doing so requires a combined intelligence. We can’t make progress if half the country decides to skip science class because it conflicts with the mythologies being preached in a pulpit. Our greatest shortcomings arise from our collective ignorance, our purposeful inability to see past our own selfish existence and the desires that entail. We must stop running from reason and logic

 

#IWantAmerica to be better than it is. I want us to lead not from a position of  military power but one of superior reason and understanding. I want us to lead with compassion, not from the ability to kick someone out at will. I want us to lead from a position of acceptance, not exclusion.

#IWantAmerica to be the best it possibly can be. I think you do, too. Why don’t we work toward that goal?

 

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Hashtag Philosophy  /  Just For Fun
Bad Responses To ‘I Love You’
October 23, 2016
charles i. letbetter - bad responses to I love you

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward. —Kurt Vonnegut

 

charles i. letbetter - bad responses to 'I Love You'

When someone says “I love you” and you don’t exactly feel the same way, how are you supposed to respond?

Saying “I love you” is a traumatic and critical portion of every relationship. I still remember how I felt when Kat and I exchanged that phrase for the first time. It was important because, prior to that point in our lives, we had both questioned whether there even was such a thing as love. When one starts talking about love we invoke a powerful set of emotions that are not always within our ability to control. Good things often happen when people say those words, but our responses are not always predictable.

The hashtag game #BadResponsesToILoveU is trending this morning and I can’t say that I’m too terribly surprised. Almost everyone I know has been on one side or the other of saying “I love you” to someone and not getting the response you were expecting. Silence, of course, is probably the worst of all responses. When the person to whom you just said, “I love you” doesn’t say or do anything, you’re not sure for yourself exactly how to proceed. Do you apologize? Do you explain? Do you blow it off as though nothing happened? Getting a bad response to “I love you” is devastating.

However, when it’s not happening directly to us, bad responses can be hilarious. This is one of the places where the Internet shines because people can think of thousands of ways to be hilariously cruel. So, I thought we’d take some time to be thankful we’re not the one putting the “I love you” out there.

What Twitter Has To Say

I don’t have time to cull through the thousands of tweets this hashtag has generated, but here are a few that I really enjoyed.


There are thousands more, if you are looking for an entertaining way to waste time.

Things We Didn’t Say … Yet

I laughed when I saw this game because, having been on both sides, I really enjoy a good burn of a response. Of course, I’m probably, almost certainly too nice to actually every use these on anyone, but here are a few I have in my back pocket, just in case the need arises.

Why is it I always seem to attract crazy people?

You know, your roommate said the same thing last night.

This wouldn’t have happened had you not had that last shot of tequila

Yeah, this is why I keep considering a life of celibacy

Sigh. Too bad. There’s no cure for addictions like yours. It’s a brain disease.

I’m going to let you down easy: I’d rather be kissed by a cobra

I blame the Republican Party for making you feel that way

Right, you know I volunteered to help colonize Mars, don’t you?

Have you ever considered shock therapy?

Sure, but will you still feel that way when I’m crowned Emperor of the Underworld [strike a pose]?

You know, I’ve been looking for a way to not say that same thing to you.

You stole my M&Ms, didn’t you?

Okay, now try saying the same thing while naked and see if that makes me feel any different

Don’t worry, we all have our little pet annoyances

That’s funny (laughing). For a second there, I thought you said you love me

{Putting finger in one ear and wiggling it) Hold on, my hearing aid isn’t working. I thought you said you love me.

Sorry, I’m fresh out of sperm. I gave your sister the last batch.

And the guys on Gamma 9 tried telling me there’s no intelligent life on this planet

Dammit, that ball gag just keeps falling out of your mouth

I know, I’m having entirely too much fun with this game. And again, I would never actually use these on anyone.

Probably.

Except in the event of an emergency wedding.

 

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Current Issues  /  Photography  /  PotD
Photography Creates Our Vision Of The World
September 21, 2016

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand. —Woodrow Wilson

 

charles i. letbetter - photography creates the vision of the world

As more people simply scan articles rather than read, photographs are more important in creating the vision through which people see the world

I never thought I’d have reason to use this picture. It was taken in 2005 as Indianapolis Police were conducting what I would consider an illegal search of my assistant’s car. The entire stop was illegal, but we were standing downtown, at 2:00 in the morning, across from City Hall, with my camera on a tripod. The officer felt like that was sufficient reason to create a scene. I never had any reason to use the photo, though, because, after 30 minutes, he let us go. Never mind the fact that the conceal carry permit for the gun my assistant was carrying had expired. We were all white. They let us go.

This morning, I was up at 2:00 AM again, this time getting ready for the first fashion show in Milan. As I sit at my computer, this is the first picture I see:

Police are in riot gear because, at 2:00 AM, Charlotte, North Carolina is rioting. Charlotte, Noth Carolina is rioting because police saw fit to murder a man who was sitting in his car, waiting on his daughter’s bus. You may have difficulty remembering the name Keith Lamont Scott, but you will remember this photograph.

Photographs don’t change our vision, they create it

That photograph spurred some type  of response in you just now. All the photographs surrounding this murder as well as that of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, are all you have in establishing your vision of what happened. By the way, we checked and credit for the picture above goes to Adam Rhew at Charlotte magazine. You may not remember Rhew’s name, but you’ll remember his photograph. You may not remember Terrence Crutcher’s name, but you’ll remember that police helicopter photo of him standing in the middle of the road, unarmed and with his hands above his head when he was murdered.

Remember this picture?

charles i. letbetter - photographs create our vision of the world

Regardless of how you feel about the subject itself, it was the photograph, a still taken from live video feed, that created your vision. This is how you see any number of related topics, from the right to protest, to patriotism, to racism, to football, and any other number of topics that one might choose to associate with the image. Had you not seen this picture, or one similar to it (there are multiple different crops floating around), you would have a concept of the issue, but you wouldn’t have a vision in your mind of how that concept looks.

Our vision, how we see the world, is immensely important. There is very little that we actually get to experience up close and in person. With a lot of news, we don’t want to be up close and in person. If photographers were not present, capturing these issues, giving us a vision where we otherwise would have none, our opinions and responses to these situations might likely be very different. Photographs give us eyes, though, and once we’ve seen pictures like this, we can’t un-see them.

Some Prefer To Be Blind

Strangely enough, not everyone likes having such vision thrust upon them; they’d  rather stay blind. When we see pictures like these, we are put in the position of having to create an opinion, take a side, maybe even take a stand. Not everyone is comfortable having to do those things.

Plenty of people prefer that you not have any vision or opinion. The Republican nominee for President became rather upset last week when there was photographic evidence of a supporter punching a woman in the face. The matter was easy enough to deny, sweep under the covers, until video popped up of the assault actually happening. Pictures kept the crime from going away and demanded that the nominee respond. He wasn’t happy and more than once during his campaign he has been disparaging against photographers.

He’s not the only one, though. Around the world, leaders would rather we not take pictures of people starving, living in squalid conditions, existing in sub-par refugee camps, homeless on the street, long lines of unemployed. Politicians prefer the Chamber of Commerce photos that show everything bright, cheery, and perfect for your next visit. They would rather no one see the downside, the number of homicides so far this year, deteriorating road conditions, urban blight, or suburban decay.

Yet, pictures that show what no one likes to see are the photographs that motivate change. With a clear vision, we see what needs to be improved, what and who needs to be replaced, and just maybe how our own attitudes need to change. If photographers are not out there taking those pictures, who knows that there is a problem? Words can only convey so much at their best, and in today’s society, fewer people are actually reading those words. We scan headlines and look at pictures.

Creating A Balanced Vision

Photographers have a lot of power when it comes to creating a vision. We decide where we’re going to be and when we’re going to snap the shutter. If we choose to look away, if we don’t take a picture of a crime being committed, then we are complicit in the very act itself. We have a responsibility to take those shots when we see them.

At the same time, however, we have a responsibility to show more than one side of a situation whenever possible. Creating a false vision is reprehensible and does greater harm than if we’d taken no photograph at all. For all the legitimate reasons there are to photograph protests against police, if that’s the only view of law enforcement we provide we fuel anarchy and greater unrest. We have to find the balance, look for the good, and give it at least an opportunity to make a difference.  Pictures of good can be just as powerful as pictures of the bad, but we have to put just as much effort into getting those shots as we do those of unrest.

Our job as photographers is not to be apologists for anyone. Our job is to photograph the truth. All of it. Even the portions we find distasteful, even those elements with which we disagree. We do more than provide a record for future generations. We provide this generation with a vision. The job of the photographer is to make sure that vision is accurate.

And shame on those of us who sit on the sidelines and do nothing.

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Fashion  /  Fashion Review  /  PotD
When The Circus Comes To Town
September 8, 2016
charles i. letbetter - when the circus comes to town

Sometimes I think God wants there to be a circus so we can show there’s another way to respond. —Tony Dungy

 

charles i. letbetter - when the circus comes to town

The circus that is NYFW got off to a chaotic and often confusing start yesterday

We knew that this season of fashion weeks was going to be a bit of a circus. With everyone changing which season they were showing and how they were showing it was inevitable that there would be some confusion and chaos. What we couldn’t know was exactly how that confusion and chaos would take shape and who would end up being the clowns in this circus and who would be the lion tamers. While events don’t officially start until today, yesterday gave us a pretty good preview of what we can expect.

Is This A Fashion Show?

There is a lot of experimentation going on this season. Many people feel that the traditional runway setup just doesn’t connect the way it needs to. As a result, we found ourselves looking at some things that we weren’t quite sure were an improvement. At least with a traditional runway, there’s no question as to what is happening. Models + clothes + runway = fashion show. Taking away the runway doesn’t seem like it would be that big a different to the total equation, but it turns out that maybe we need that element a little more than we thought.

Two examples spring to mind. Rachel Comey presented her 15-year anniversary collection yesterday morning. She wanted to give us a back-to-my-roots kind of feeling, so she staged her show right out on the sidewalk. Not kidding. There was a FedEx van in the background of most the runway shots I saw. Guests were seated in white folding chairs perched between doorways and around scaffolding. This left models just enough room to walk carefully in front of them. The only problem is that Comey’s every-day-woman style left passers-by wondering what was going on. Was this a fashion show or just a rehearsal? It was also difficult to tell where the fashion show left off and normal well-dressed pedestrians began.

Another example would be Misha Nonoo‘s Snapchat-exclusive presentation. The show was presented through Refinery 29’s Snapchat account, which was probably chosen for its high number of followers. However, the pieces of Nonoo’s collection were posted separately and at various times throughout the day. I don’t normally keep Snapchat up and running all day. Every time I looked at a new segment I wondered if I was seeing everything or missing a snap. The drawings on top of the photos were distracting as well.

Poof, The Stream Is Gone

Labels that show before the official start of fashion week have to handle all the elements of that presentation themselves. This includes any live streaming they might wish to attempt. Recent changes in Facebook’s Live option led a couple of yesterday’s designers to give that a try rather than paying for real cameras and stuff. I can be rather sympathetic to some degree. Professional live streaming is incredibly expensive, especially when more than one camera is involved. Being able to eliminate that cost helps keep the budget a little bit lower.

However, it also makes the streaming much less predictable. None of the Facebook streams we were watching started on time. In fact, not all of them ever started. Twice we waited, and waited, and waited over an hour before finally giving up. The one we did see was very poor quality, broadcast from an intern’s phone we’re guessing, and then mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the presentation. Perhaps the phone ran out of battery.

Streaming has never been the most reliable technology. A lot can go wrong under the best of circumstances. Trying to short-cut the process doesn’t seem to generate positive results.

They’re Doing WHAT On Roosevelt Island?

I’m going to have to choose my words carefully here because I have a filter on my browser that blocks any mention of a certain pseudo-celebrity family that I find particularly annoying. Unfortunately, one of the loud-mouthed members of that family fancies himself a designer. He’s not, really. This is where the circus just gets ugly. It’s only the family’s disturbingly close relationship with Vogue’s Anna Wintour that continues to provide them with any major attention. Everyone else stays as far away from the cluster fuck as possible.  Nonetheless, he presented what he is calling Season 4 right smack out in the middle of Roosevelt Island.

Wait, Roosevelt Island? You mean that largely-forgotten strip of land in the middle of the East River? Yep, that Roosevelt Island. The one that was never meant to accommodate too terribly many people because it’s only 800 feet wide and its most broad point. The one that contains a tribute to FDR, for whom the island is named, at the South end. There’s barely room to stage a picnic on Roosevelt Island, let alone a fashion show.

They tried. It sucked. From models having to remove their shoes to walk to guests arriving after the presentation, the whole thing was one giant failure. Again. We keep hoping the so-called designer will stop. No one needs that many different shades of tan.

A Safe Place To Hide

We tend to think of a circus as being a spectacle that no one can miss. However, a circus can also be a good place to hide. While everyone else is watching the clowns, one can go off and do their own thing without anyone else noticing. Or, perhaps disappear without anyone noticing.

When Wednesday’s schedule first came out, Herve Leger by Max Azria was scheduled for that afternoon. Some time Wednesday morning, however, that entry disappeared. We checked both the brand’s Facebook page and their website and there’s no mention of the show’s cancellation. There’s no mention of  the show at all.

This made us curious so we started looking for Azria’s major label: BCBG. Nope, that’s not on the schedule for this season, either. Anywhere. Both are gone. This raises our suspicions a bit. While everyone knows that Max’s wife, Lubov, has done most the creative work the past several seasons, Azria has still kept his hands on the reigns. Could the 67-year-old designer be in ill health, or could all the chaos of this season have forced the labels to take a step back and wait? There are also reports of clothing orders placed on the website being cancelled without explanation.

Perhaps there’s a dark side to this circus.

Grab The Popcorn

No matter what the problems, a circus always manages to be entertaining and this one is no different. We’ve already posted our first review of last night’s Tom Ford presentation on Pattern. There is a lot more to come. Remember, Tommy Hilfiger is staging an actual carnival on Friday night. This may be the craziest circus we’ve ever seen. Grab your popcorn and enjoy the show.

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Fashion  /  Fashion Review  /  PotD
Looking At NYFW From Indiana
September 7, 2016

Indiana has had a great influence on fashion. People here care about style but they’re not too quick to adopt everything New York throws at them.

 

charles i. letbetter - looking at NYFW from Indiana

Designer Marlene Thomas with models Katherine Gulling (left) and Emily Miedema backstage prior to the 2012 IFT event. Her Marlene H Couture collection hits the NYFW runway Thursday at noon.

I was still sitting in front of the computer yesterday morning when something came across my Facebook newsfeed that made me smile. Not a meme nor a picture from the past, it was a status update from designer Marlene Thomas, leaving Fort Wayne for New York. For a brief moment, I almost wished that I was going to New York as well. Watching NYFW from Indiana has some challenges that are often frustrating, especially this season when the spectacle has ramped up a bit. If I don’t stop to think about the chaos and confusion that is hitting Manhattan this morning, I’m tempted to actually miss being there.

Then, I come to my senses. While being at NYFW and the other big four fashion weeks was exciting enough back when I was 30, today it would be exhausting and perhaps even a bit torturous. All the walking. All the security checks. You can take your camera here but you can’t take it there. Where’s my town car? Nevermind, I’ll take the subway. How am I supposed to get across town in 15 minutes? The pastries before that last show aren’t setting well with my stomach.

There are advantages to staying in Indiana and watching NYFW from here. The Internet makes a lot of things possible that we couldn’t have dreamed twenty-five years ago. Still, if you’re going to do this with me, there are some things you really need to know before we start. Pay attention.

Hashtags Are Everything

Want to know what’s really going on and what’s really hot? Watch the hashtags for changing trends. Almost every designer, at least those whose PR teams are on top of things, has their own hashtag for their show. When a hashtag takes off and starts trending we have our first clue that the brand has achieved a level of popularity and is worth watching. That’s not to say that less-popular brands with less-popular hashtags should be dismissed, but the power of the hashtag has become a dominant part of fashion PR.

Sitting here in Indiana, we don’t feel the power of the hashtag quite so much. In fact, there are still a lot of people in Indiana, especially those of us over 40, who don’t really understand the whole hashtag thing and how it works. For those whose minds still think old-school, a hashtag is like a brightly colored marker stuck in the middle of a card catalog. In a mind-numbing sea of excess information, hashtags not only allow us to find specific information faster, but to group information quickly on a given topic by searching for that hashtag. The more people use your hashtag, the more markers are placed in that sea of information.

Business of Fashion even ran an op-ed piece yesterday declaring that fashion has hashtag cults. Calling the obsession with hashtags a cult might be a bit over-the-top, but the basic premise of the article is correct: hashtags are everything in fashion and the only way to keep up-to-the-moment the next four weeks is to follow those hashtags religiously.

Start Your Social Media Engines

I am not sure how we ever surfed the Internet in the days before browsers allowed users to have multiple tabs open. I’m sitting here with 14 of them open now and I haven’t even started pulling up all the social media sites I know I’m going to need to get through the day. In addition to social media, there are a plethora of fashion magazines and blogs that are worth watching this week more than normal. I try to keep them sorted from left to right across my monitor in order of relevance. Sometimes that approach almost works.

Following the schedule on NYFW.com is the logical starting point. Be very much aware, however, that the listing there is incomplete and only contains the presentations showing at official NYFW venues. If you want a more complete listing, you’ll want to take a look at Fashion Week Online. Even that list doesn’t have everything, though, and times are definitely subject to change. For example, Marc Jacobs is still listed as showing at 6:00 PM, which is his traditional timeslot. He’s not. He’s moved his show up to  2:00 PM.  Be careful and double check the designer’s website and/or social media feeds.

Speaking of social media, you need them all. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are must-haves. If you don’t have accounts on all four, get busy. You’ll have to follow your favorite designers on every platform possible. There’s no way to know which designer is going to favor a specific platform. Set alerts for the designers you care about and keep everything open.

The Indiana Connection

Anyone can show in New York who has the money to pull off a show. Each season, I have someone contact me who is all excited about their show in New York. I go to check the official schedule, though, and they’re not present. Sorry, kids, if you’re not on the office NYFW schedule it doesn’t count.

This season is different, though. I was excited when I got the message from Indiana-based designer Marlene Thomas that her Marlene H Couture collection is on the schedule for Thursday at noon. Okay, so that puts her up against Creatures of the Wind which is a favorite of the fashion editors. Still, she’s actually there and she’s in a prime spot on the first day’s schedule! How incredibly awesome is that? Marlene is showing at 404 NYC, conveniently located at 404 10th Ave. The space is fantastic and I’ve no doubt she’ll fill it wonderfully.

In addition to Ms. Thomas’ presence in New York, Indianapolis-based LModelz is sending at least six models (possibly more) to walk in various shows. Of course, models don’t wear signs telling us where they’re from and by the time they get through hair and makeup it can be difficult to tell who’s who. Still, we should be proud that Indiana is so very well represented at NYFW this season!

All The Reviews

Watching all the shows is impossible. Catching all the streams and Instagram feeds is impossible. Even major magazines who can deploy multiple staff members don’t manage to cover everything. That’s why we write reviews. We cull through all the clutter and do our best to cover the shows that matter. For the sixth season, we’ll be posting all our reviews on Pattern at least twice a day, more if I can manage the time. No, it’s not real time, especially when we move away from New York and are trying to cover shows at 2:00 in the morning. We are expecting some incredible shows over the next four weeks and do our best to catch all the important moments.

Let’s be honest, Indiana is never going to be a fashion capital. Fashion doesn’t need nor want any more capitals. Indiana is a strong fashion participant, though, and there are a lot of people here who are eye-ball deep in the stuff. Therefore, it makes sense to give NYFW an Indiana perspective. We’ve made a lot of progress here in the past ten or so years. I think there are probably a half-dozen or so designers who have what it takes to follow Marlene’s lead and jump onto the official schedule. I see more people actually paying attention to what they’re wearing.

Watching NYFW from Indiana isn’t the same as being there in person, but it does have its perks. Grab a cup of coffee and a piece of sugar cream pie and follow along. Oh, and should you happen to want to send over a dozen donuts or so, I won’t complain.

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Current Issues  /  PotD
American-Branded Hate Dominates
September 2, 2016
charles i. letbetter - amerocan-branded hate dominates

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. —Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

charles i. letbetter - American-branded hate dominates

There’s more hate speech from American sources than anyone in the Middle East

Today’s pictures are only there to get your attention. They have nothing to do with the topic.

Okay, that statement’s not completely accurate. We have a picture of an ass. If you are a racist, bigoted, xenophobe who spreads hate, then you are an ass. So, I guess there is a distant relationship to the topic. Sort of.

Nonetheless, it appears that America is number one in yet another area of distinction: spreading hate online, specifically on Twitter. The research done by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism was released yesterday. I had planned to write this article then and was too ill to do so. This much hate makes me sick to my stomach.

We’re not especially surprised by the outcome of the study. At least, we’re not surprised that Americans spew more extremist views than anyone else. We’ve been watching the mountains of filth grow from the moment President Obama was elected to office in 2008. Every neanderthal in the country suddenly felt a need to go online and express their rage, ignorance, and outright stupidity. Half the time the statements don’t even make sense.

The numbers are higher than we expected, though. Much higher. Even that Mid-East terror fountain we refer to as Daesh (because it’s insulting and they really have nothing to do with Islam) doesn’t put as much hate online as do Americans.

Numbers Difficult To Count

Just how proliferate is the extremism we’re talking about?

“White nationalists and Nazis outperformed [Daesh] in average friend and follower counts by a substantial margin. Nazis had a median follower count almost eight times greater than [Daesh] supporters, and a mean count more than 22 times greater.”

Concrete numbers are difficult to come by because Twitter, which the report specifically targets, is constantly doing its best to eliminate accounts known for producing hate speech or content that incites or encourages violence. However, that effort has been very  lopsided. While the social media company has shut down, by its own account, over 360,000 accounts “for threatening or promoting what it defined as terrorist acts,” those efforts have been directed specifically toward Daesh. Nazis and white supremacists, on the other hand, have gotten by with saying just about anything they want.

What’s important to realize is that it’s not just the number of accounts but the number of followers that matter. A group might post a racist statement and be largely ignored if they have a low follower count. But when one has a following the size of the white nationalists and Nazis studied for the report, nothing gets ignored. Instead, the hate gets liked and retweeted over and over, spreading its vile poison around the globe. The final reach by these mostly American-based hate groups is in the millions.

Everyone Gets A Chance To Speak

Remember that point in Plato’s Republic, along about Book VII I believe, where he uses the allegory to describe why Democracy fails? He might as well have been looking right at us when he wrote that passage. For democracy to work, there must be learning, understanding, and reasoning across the board. Everyone must have a base level of intelligence if everyone is going to get a vote. Otherwise, the system fails.

The great promise of the Internet was that it would “level the playing field” by giving everyone a voice. Sure, the big corporations would have the biggest and flashiest websites, but that wouldn’t prevent Joe Redneck over there from creating his own website as well. Freedom of Speech. First Amendment. Rah, rah, rah. We were so convinced this w as a good thing and in many ways it has been. Then, along comes social media like Twitter and its ability to amplify all those millions of voices. Everyone gets 146 characters, no matter who you are. Equal footing for everyone. Sounds great.

And then the hate begins. Small at first, more of an annoyance than anything. But the hate grows. People start following the hate. They start retweeting the hate. Suddenly, extremists groups we thought had all but disappeared are popping up with huge audiences. They play to the fears and the lies and the misinformation of an under-educated and largely ignorant populace. The extremism spreads from Twitter to real life as the number of Klan and Nazi rallies increase. The next thing we know, not only is hate back stronger than ever, but it’s running for President!

Shutting The Barn Door

Ask the good folks at Twitter what they’re doing about the problem of extremist hate speech and they’ll direct you to their terms of service. They try to emphasize the parts that “prohibit promoting terrorism, threatening abuse and hateful conduct such as attacking or threatening a person on the basis of race or ethnicity.” The rules are there. The problem is getting anyone to follow them. Twitter, like Facebook and other companies. relies on users to report inappropriate activity. However, one cannot report activity they don’t see.

There has been a lot of discussion over the past few years as to how we create “echo chambers” with our social media accounts. We like, friend, and follow those people and organizations that hold values similar to our own.  When someone repeatedly makes statements that we don’t like, things that we find offensive,  we unfriend or unfollow them. Problem solved, right?

Not exactly. If offensive hate-filled behavior isn’t reported, then it continues whether we see it or not. When everyone following a hate group agrees with that point of view, nothing gets reported. Instead, the hate is shared, re-distributed, turned into a meme and shared again. The very systems that allow us to choose what we see and who we follow end up allowing the hate and the extremism to grow.

Complicating matters even further is the fact that, unlike Daesh, American-branded extremism isn’t cohesively organized and planned. Individuals are as likely to make offensive statements as are known  hate groups. Shutting everyone down becomes difficult.

Finding A Solution

The report states that its data represents only a subset of all the extremists and hate-based groups on the Internet. They are legion.

Where we begin turning the tide against hate is first by filling Twitter and other social media with more love. Support those who fight against injustice. Demand equality for your Muslim neighbor, your Latino neighbor,  your black neighbor. Fill your life, and your friends list, with those who are the targets of hate. Show more kindness and generosity toward those most likely to be the subject of online trolls and bullies.

Then, when you see injustice and hate, put it down. Don’t merely unfriend someone. If what someone is saying threatens another person or group, speak up. Report them. No, you’re not being mean or vindictive. You’re sending a message that hate and extremism are not tolerated.

Hate kills. No one has a right to kill. Stop the hate. Embrace your brother and sister. Spread the love.

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Just For Fun  /  PotD
A Joke And A Groan And Maybe A Smile
August 17, 2016
charles i. letbetter - a joke, a groan, and maybe a smile

If your regime is not strong enough to handle a joke, then you don’t have a regime. —Jon Stewart

 

charles i. letbetter - joke and groan and smile

Telling a joke without making everyone groan is a talent few have but at least we still smile

My late father couldn’t tell a joke well to save him. He was so bad at telling jokes, in fact, that the mention of that characteristic was part of his eulogy. Poppa had a great sense of humor and loved to laugh. He would go to various conventions and meetings and here what he thought was a decent enough joke (it made him chuckle) and would want to re-tell it to his congregation. He failed almost every time.

I’m not sure my brother or I fare much better. I tend to drag everything out into a long story rather than going straight for the punchline. That’s why I’m able to fill this space so completely every morning. I can’t remember the last time I heard my brother tell a joke. I’m sure he does, I’m just never around to hear them. He doesn’t really come off as a big comedian, though.

Telling a joke that doesn’t leave the audience groaning is tough. Many groans are based on puns and our response to puns will always be a groan. Some jokes are just bad. Still, even when a joke fails we’re often left smiling, which is an improvement over not smiling.

Yesterday was #NationalTellAJokeDay which sent everyone to Twitter in an attempt to tell a joke. As in real life, most failed. Miserably. But we’ve taken a few that made us smile, divided them into categories, and leave them for you here in hopes that it might make your day better. We all can use a smile about now, can’t we?

Business

 

School

The Internet

Sex

Okay, a couple more just because the groans make me giggle

Okay, so there’s nothing deep or meaningful about any of these jokes. There’s nothing wrong with letting yourself smile over something silly. After all, it’s only Wednesday. We need a little silly to get us through the rest of the week.

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Current Issues  /  Hashtag Philosophy  /  PotD  /  Social Commentary
The News In 140 Characters
July 30, 2016
charles i. letbetter - the news in 140 characters

It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper. —Jerry Seinfeld

 

charles i. letbetter - the news in 140 characters

Does anyone read the news anymore or do they just look at the tweets and the headlines?

I saw an interesting editorial cartoon yesterday, which, of course, I didn’t have the foresight to actually save so that I could accurately reference this morning. The cartoon lamented the fact that when historians look back at the exchanges of this presidential election, it will be candidates 140-character tweets they’ll examine rather than anything like the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

The comparison is stark. How news and information is delivered has changed not only in terms of media, but the brevity with which news is delivered. Sure, there will be debates during this campaign cycle,  but even those will ultimately be reduced to sound bites of 140 characters or less.The Twitter limit applies not only to the application, but to the reduced size of our attention spans.

Once upon a time, the details of the news and the excellence of reporting and writing were honored. Winning a Pulitzer prize was an exception because of talent and skill. Now, winning a Pulitzer is an exception because someone actually put in more than 300 words worth of effort. Long-form reporting still happens at places such as the New York Times and Washington Post, but then the media departments of both newspapers instantly find ways to reduce thousands of words to a 140-character tease.

Even here, I create a 140-character excerpt that appears in social media links to the article. Hundreds of people view that excerpt, but only a fraction of those read the article. We frequently use nude imagery not because it has anything to do with the article, but because it is a quick way to get attention.

Tweeting The News

Almost every newspaper of any size now has a media department. That staff is responsible for not only creating 140 character descriptions of articles, but managing and measuring the responses they get to those descriptions. Read through the comments on almost any provocatively written tweet or  Facebook post and it becomes evident that many of the most volatile remarks are made by people who never actually read the article; they’re just responding to their interpretation of what the article might say based on the structure of that tweet.

Great tweet writing is a skill and in today’s media it is just as important as headline writing and copy editing. A well-constructed tweet can bring thousands of eyes to a topic, or can leave one totally ignored. Knowing which hashtag to include, the precise verbiage that is easily understood, is not something that was traditionally taught in journalism schools. Rarely does anyone notice when a tweet is done well. Let a newspaper or politician miscommunicate online, though, usually through a poor choice of words, and watch the shit hit the fan.

To illustrate my point, let me share some of the most recent news tweets across a variety of topics. There’s more information behind each tweet, but how many people will actually bother to click through and read the articles? I’m betting not many. Fewer than 10 percent of readers ever click a link, here or anyplace else on the Internet. Let’s see how you do.

Politics

 

 

 

Information

 

 

 

 

Society

 

 

 

Putting Things In Perspective

How many of those articles did you click through to investigate? Any? Consider that a few short years ago those nine stories would have been enough to fill a 30-minute television newscast (sports and weather aside). In print, they would have dominated the A section of any newspaper. Yet, here you have it all in 140 characters and some well edited GIFs.

I’m old, so it is difficult for me to see this shift as anything other than a loss of information and understanding. Reading through a flurry of tweets, we might come away feeling more intelligent and informed, but we don’t actually know enough about any of those stories to speak knowledgeably and authoritatively. Not that such a lack of information ever stops us. We’re quite willing to go ahead and open our mouths anyway, facts be damned.

What probably bothers me most about this change in how we receive information is that without all the details we are more likely to react harshly, sarcastically, and with suspicion. We don’t trust the tweet because we don’t allow ourselves to gain enough information to understand the full story. We lack compassion. We lose the opportunity to learn. We fail to consider different perspectives. We wander around so ignorant that we don’t recognize ignorance.

If you’ve made it this far into today’s article, you likely already understand. Of the few people who started the article, less than five percent finish. Again,that’s not just true here, but for most any online reading.

Perhaps one day the pendulum will swing back the other direction and we’ll appreciate well-written and ardently-reported stories again. This 140-character world doesn’t work for me. We need more information, not less. I suppose that’s every individual’s choice, though, isn’t it?

Sigh. At least there’s a nude picture at the top.

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pop culture  /  PotD
Consider The Source
July 6, 2016
charles i. letbetter - consider the source

Crazy old people are our entire source of polling information. —P. J. O’Rourke

 

charles i. letbetter - consider the source

We have become careless about what information we believe, even when the source is obvious

As long as there has been verbal communication among humans there has been a propensity to exaggerate and distort facts to make oneself look good or persuade others to agree with their opinion. Many mistakes have been made because people chose to believe rumor and conjecture over evidence and reason. This isn’t something we can blame on the Internet. We were already very good at believing stories without regard as to the source of information.

Rumor mills exist in every small community, feeding on the presumption that someone did something wrong or unethical without bothering to check for facts. Such rumor mills were especially strong in the churches we attended while growing up. There was almost always an accusation that some poor soul, who had fallen out of favor with someone else, had been caught “sinning.” Perhaps it was the rumor that the school superintendent had a glass of wine with his meal while attending a conference out of state. Or maybe the idea that Widow Jones had a male friend she would visit over in the next county and sometimes she didn’t come home until the next morning.

Those pushing such rumors were almost always the same few people. As a result, any time such a story made it’s way back to my father, the pastor, he would simply roll his eyes and say, “Consider the source,” and move on. He understood that giving a rumor any attention only helps it to grow.

Welcome To The Internet

One of the great promises of the Internet is its ability to give almost anyone and everyone a chance to make their voice heard. Information is not limited to media or official government sources. When something major happens, there is frequently someone on hand either live tweeting or even live streaming the event. The challenge comes when accounts from official sources differ from pedestrian sources.

A perfect example is the case of last night’s shooting by police of a man in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. If one clicks that link, you can read the account of the incident as reported by the Associated Press, a generally trusted news source. Their story is that a man leaving a convenience store called police after allegedly being threatened with a gun by a man selling CDs. Police arrived, an altercation ensued, and the CD seller was shot.

However, if one looks at all that is on Twitter regarding the incident, including a video that might be disturbing for some, one might come away with a very different opinion.  The video alone is enough to sway opinion dramatically. I fully expect this event to explode as the day grows and more people find out about it. Rumors and conjecture will dominate the story. Figuring out which details are fact and which are fiction becomes difficult in moments like this.

Don’t Believe Everything You Read

We were given that instruction back in high school, were we not? At the point that teachers begin assigning projects that require research, we are warned that not every source is reliable. Again, this happened long before the Internet. Just because information is printed somewhere doesn’t make it reliable. An account of an event from Associated Press, for example, was considered more reliable than one from Time magazine. The tendency of the latter source to editorialize opened the door to rumor and supposition that might not be based on evidence.

Unfortunately, we’re now willing to believe anything that comes in meme form and agrees with our own opinions.  We’re not even bothered that sources aren’t cited. In fact, I’m frequently alarmed that, despite my continued effort to cite sources in all my articles here, rarely does anyone actually click those links and verify the source.  I could be feeding everyone a truckload of bullshit. As long as what I write is consistent with what one normally expects from me, no one questions anything.

How do we know which information is correct and which is a lie? Unfortunately, we can’t always know for certain. However, on major issues, two primary sources have come to bear that are generally more reliable than most. Those are Snopes and Politifact. Between the two, they address the majority of rumors getting the most amount of traffic on the Internet. While they’re not authoritative in getting anything corrected, they at least provide us the ability to check sources. Let’s take a look at some trending topics they’re dealing with today. [Headings are links to source stories.]

Sharpie Marker Giveaway

This is an example of dozens of other retailer giveaway scams, none of which are valid. In this case, the image that pops up in your Facebook newsfeed claims that Sharpie is giving away a set of 24 markers just for liking and sharing their page. The problem is, when one clicks the link, they are not directed to anything owned by Sharpie at all.  Sometimes the links even appear to be random.

While Snopes doesn’t accuse the perpetrators in this case of operating a phishing scam, any time a link takes you somewhere you weren’t expecting to go your information is in danger. Almost nothing is free. Both retailers and manufacturers have found better and more reliable ways of getting your attention. If someone wants to give something away, consider the source. Nonprofits still do occasional giveaways, but major corporations don’t.

Britons Did Not Understand The Brexit Before Voting

Even I fell for this one. With sources such as the Daily Mail and the Washington Post making claims based on their interpretation of Google trend data, it was extremely easy to be taken in. However, it turns out that the headlines were wrong. Journalists who didn’t understand how Google trends work misinterpreted the data. As a result, what the newspapers were printing was inaccurate. Still, assuming that the source was reliable, every other news agency then ran with the same story.

Oops.

Politifact goes to great length in attempting to explain how the mistake in reading the Google trends data could result in less-than-accurate statements. Turns out, that a) the data is a sample, not the whole search set, b) it is impossible to tell if people were making the same searches before the vote, and c) other more detailed and informed questions wouldn’t be included in the survey set.

Marti Hearst, a professor for the University of California at Berkeley’s school of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, said: “Only the most common (and therefore the most ignorant-sounding) search queries will make it to the top”

Think When You Read

We have an obligation when reading to test the validity of any source. Just because someone says something we like doesn’t make it true. Richard Harrison of Pawn Stars is not dead. When we share and perpetuate such false and misleading information, we contribute to the problem. How does anyone know what to believe? If even the Washington Post can be fooled, how do we ever know which source is reliable?

The answer is that we have to examine the evidence ourselves to the extent possible. We’re not always going to get everything correct, but we can minimize the amount of dishonest and misleading information we share. Don’t take anyone at their word. Not even me. Any time you see text in a different color, that’s a link to a source. Chase them. If I’m wrong, let me know.

We are all part of the information system now. We have an obligation to get it right.

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Hashtag Philosophy  /  Just For Fun  /  PotD
#SaySomethingCompletelyHonest
July 5, 2016
charles i. letbetter - #SaySomethingCompetelyHonest

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest. —Isaac Asimov

 

charles i. letbetter - #SaySomethingCompletelyHonest

#SaySomethingCompletelyHonest is trending on Twitter, but can we handle the honestly?

#SaySomethingCompletelyHonest is trending on Twitter this morning. I’m glad it is because I didn’t have a clue what I was going to write about. We’re in a fashion lull, nothing I’ve seen in the photography world inspires me at the moment. Advertising was all centered around the 4th so it seems old now. Besides, we’ve not done a hashtag game in a while, so this really could be a lot of fun.

This particular hashtag is interesting because people seem to be using it as a means of confession. Are we really feeling that guilty or is that just where our minds first go when we’re asked to be honest. After looking at some of the initial entries, I was reminded of the “Midnight Confessions” skits on the Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Some of the “confessions” or “honesty” seem a bit self-serving and trite. But then, the Internet does self-serving and trite so very well we shouldn’t be surprised.

I think there are several ways we can explore #SaySomethingCompletelyHonest. Looking at other’s thoughts is fun, of course. There are some subdivisions I think are worth adding, as well. At the very least, it should be informative and fun.

#SaySomethingCompletelyHonest – The Tweets

Here are a few samples pulled from the top of the pile this morning:

#SaySomethingCompletelyHonest – Confession Time

Those were entertaining enough, but let’s make the game a bit more personal, shall we? I won’t actually tweet these (at least, not yet), but if we’re being completely honest, this is how I feel this morning.

  • I like using hashtag games for morning topics because they don’t require a buttload of research.
  • I’m thirsty, but I’ve not gotten up to get water because I don’t want to risk waking the dog.
  • I try to drink 24 ounces of water before my first cup of coffee. Allegedly, it’s a healthy habit. We’ll see.
  • We totally went lame on the fireworks last night. Everyone was in bed by 9:00 PM.
  • It’s impossible to get any time alone during the summer. These kids are exhausting.

#SaySomethingCompletelyHonest – Reading & Writing

I write, you read; it’s a symbiotic relationship. However, if we’re being completely honest, there are some aspects of this relationship I find frustrating. So, in the spirit of being completely honest, let me share those with you.

  • The average article takes two to three hours to write and edit after all the research is done. When only two people read the article, I feel like I’ve wasted my time.
  • There is a direct correlation between the amount of nudity in the photographs and the number of hits on an article. The lust shows through.
  • I would love to see more people subscribe so that we wouldn’t have to rely  on social media for distribution.
  • Trying to time publishing and sharing on social media is a pain in the ass.
  • When no one shares the link to an article, I take it as a personal failure.

#SaySomethingCompletelyHonest – Philosophy

Issues are a big part of everyone’s lives. Some we try to ignore, others we embrace and some issues even incite passion. If we’re being completely honest, though, the underlying philosophies are what really drive us, or find us guilty of fraud.

  • It’s impossible to be honest about world hunger while shoving a half-pound, double-thick, bacon cheeseburger in your mouth.
  • The closer we come to personal poverty, the more we care about the poor.
  • One cannot convince the willfully ignorant to care about anything that involves education.
  • Without compassion, there are no solutions to social problems.
  • Those who build walls do greater harm to those inside the walls than those on the outside.

#SaySomethingCompletelyHonest – Photography

Photography is where the bulk of my passion lies. While I enjoy all the creative pursuits available to me, photography is where I am at home and where I have the deepest opinions. If we’re being completely honest, there are some things you might need to know:

  • It doesn’t matter what camera you use, nor which lens. What matters is your own creativity and mastery of how to use what is in your hands.
  • More people should risk being a photographer’s model. You’re more photogenic than you think.
  • People who overly criticize photographs of themselves drive me batty. You’re beautiful. Accept it.
  • I seriously want to slap someone when they equate nudity with porn.
  • I miss shooting every day, but I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the editing.

#SaySomethingCompletelyHonest – The Lighter Side

All this honesty gets a little intense after a while, doesn’t it? So, let’s end this with some lighter statements that leave us feeling a bit better about ourselves.

  • The best part of my day is having coffee with Kat every morning.
  • Listening to the dog snore never fails to make me giggle.
  • It’s especially warm and fuzzy when the oldest cat stops you and demands to be loved.
  • Afternoon naps are the key to sanity and long life.
  • There is no such thing as too much love.

There you have it. Everything in this post is completely honest, no holds barred. Can we actually handle this much honesty? Perhaps honesty is easier when we break it down into 140 characters or less. That may well be what makes these hashtag games so popular. I hope you’ve enjoyed this diversion. Perhaps we’ll find something more serious for tomorrow. Or not.

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Friday Follies
April 29, 2016
charles i. letbetter - Firday Follies

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies – it is the first law of nature. —Voltaire

 

charles i. letbetter - Friday Follies

Oh, wait, we forgot to talk about a few things

Oh geeze, it’s Friday already. How did this happen? The lawn needs to be mowed, the house is a mess, the laundry is piled up and I don’t have anything thawed for dinner. I’m so behind on editing I don’t even want to think about it at this point. On top of that, there are no fewer than a dozen topics on my board that we haven’t had a chance to talk about this week. Writing takes up a lot of time and there just hasn’t been enough of that time available.

So, since most everything is somewhat timely, let me see how many of these follies I can reduce and get into one article. You can click the links for full stories in most cases. Or not.

Leica announced a new stripped-down version of its digital camera that sounds exactly like what I need. No LCD screen, no stupid video eating up battery, no wildly high ISOs, none of the stupid filters and shit that all the amateurs think make their cameras cool. This is a real photographer’s camera. One has to know what they’re doing and not rely on presets and the “auto” setting. I like the look and sound of this camera. What I don’t understand, though, is why the damn thing costs over $5,000! With all the nonsense stripped down I would expect a price significantly lower. I  was all ready to put one on my shopping list until I saw the damn price tag.

I’ve always thought that, being a child of the 60s and 70s, we grew up with some of the best music ever written. Now, there seems to be some evidence that as, for the first time ever, older catalog music is outselling new music.  Some are trying to blame this on streaming services while others say that the whole retro vinyl thing is a factor. To an extent, both arguments may have some validity to them. But, the bottom line, and we all know it, is that older music is just better. Only a fool would choose Taylor Swift over the Beatles or Stones, One Direction over AC/DC or Three Dog Night. We had the best music ever, and now even the kids are beginning to recognize that fact.

Durham, NC ad agency McKinney has the perfect response to their home state’s controversial HB2 law: flush it. To make that action more accessible to people, they’ve printed HB2 on toilet paper. The rest should be self-explanatory. The only problem with the concept is they didn’t seem to make any provision for it being widely  accessible. If you write the company, they might send you a roll. You should know what to do with it.

Funniest thing I’ve seen on Twitter all week:

Speaking of funny, if you’ve not followed Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County on Facebook this week, you’ve missed a special collection of real gems. Since Breathed decided to publish his work on Facebook rather than through the creative-squashing syndicate, we’ve seen some delightfully wonderful strips, but this week has taken the hairball (so to speak) as the cartoonist stretched Monday’s World Penguin Day into a full week. Well, almost. Bill the Cat got his dues in today. Still, this week’s strips have been a prime example of why Breathed is a treasured talent.

There, that clears out the most important stuff. Follies are best on Friday, I suppose. That’s the only way the alliteration works. There are still a couple of scraps lying around, but I’ll leave those in case I get desperate over the weekend. The grass on the lawn isn’t getting any shorter with me sitting here. Not that I’m going to cut it. I just need to find someone in the neighborhood who can use an extra $4.37.

Follies. Hehe.

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Hashtag Philosophy  /  pop culture  /  PotD
Odd Thing That Irritates Me
April 23, 2016

One thing above all gives charm to men’s thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me. —Anatole France

 

charles i. letbetter - odd thing that irritates me

#OddThingThatIrritatesMe is trending on Twitter and it irritates me that I have so many items to add to the list

I was not born with my father’s easy-going temperament. My brother was. I’m not sure he’s raised his voice for anything other than a Rangers’ game in the past 30 years. Poppa was gentle, the very definition of being “slow to anger.” I envy that quality and it rather irritates me that I don’t have it.

Me? I got my Grandpa Slover’s short fuse. I seem to have inherited a number of his traits, from walking with my hands behind my back to having a low tolerance for mindless noise. The temper is what gets me in trouble most often, though, and none of my attempts to adjust that over the years have succeeded.

So, when I got up late this morning, I found it somewhat fortuitous that #OddThingThatIrritatesMe would be trending. There is much that irritates me. Given sufficient time, I could probably create a list that would dominate Twitter for the entire week. Sad, isn’t it? Especially compared with some of the rather mild irritants that have been posted by others.  Consider these:

See? Those are mild irritants at best. If anything, I’m irritated that everyone else’s irritants are so pallid. What irritates me is a long list of grievances that have grown from mild annoyances that were not worth mentioning to major issues that make me want to scream. I am irritated that I have such faults.

Nonetheless, I feel compelled to share what irritates me because I know that doing so irritates other people and if I’m going to be irritated then I damn well want company. So, here are just a few of the things that irritate me.

  • Knowing damn good and well that I bought something at the store yesterday but not being able to find it when I need it. This happens far too often and, of course, when I need that particular item is usually when I’m in the middle of cooking and don’t have time to go traipsing around all over the kitchen trying to find where it was misshelved. This is made all the more infuriating knowing that I’m the one who put up the groceries.
  • When it’s still dark out and the cats decide to scare the living shit out of me. Our three cats almost always get up when I do of the morning because they know I’ll turn the light on in the kitchen and that pleases them for some stupid reason. They take advantage of this time when the children are still asleep to chase each other and play, which can be rather cute. But they don’t make a lot of noise as they chase each other up and down the hall. I’ll be sitting here typing away and all of a sudden, WHOOSH! There are three cats running along the back of the couch and under my chair and over the desk and then gone again. Startles me every time.
  • Phones that make noises during the night. If I could, I’d leave my cell phone on silent mode all the time. Doesn’t matter how cute or funny the ringtone is, it irritates the living hell out of me every time one goes off because there’s never any warning and it disrupts my train of thought, or my nap, whichever is happening at the moment. Silent phones mean missed messages, though, so I have to turn it up during the day and too often I forget to turn it back down before I go to bed at night. So, somewhere around two in the morning, I’m jolted awake as my phone all-too-loudly informs me that, “A new message has been received.” Kat has her phone set to just chirp, but that little noise comes off as condescending, flaunting the fact that whatever message just arrived isn’t for me. We need quieter phones.
  • Kids toys that shouldn’t make noise, but do. As I’m typing, the Tipster is awake and attempting to play with the tea set she got for her birthday. Logically, that shouldn’t be a problem unless her tea party turns into a wild Barbie rave. But the ceramic cups and plates clink every time she sets one down, and she’s six, so it’s not like she’s the most graceful being on the planet. So, I’m hearing this constant arhythmic high-pitched clink, clinkety-clink, clink, clink, clink while I’m trying to concentrate on what I’m doing. Good thing spell check is turned on.
  •  Having to stop  what I’m doing to refill my coffee cup and take my medicine. Whether I’m writing or editing pictures, concentration is critical and any interruption is less than appreciated. The problem comes that my brain doesn’t work without coffee and bad things happen if I don’t take my meds. Inevitably, I’ll be deep in thought, fully committed to whatever I’m doing, reach for my coffee cup and …   empty. Now I have to interrupt the flow of my work, walk to the kitchen, fill my coffee cup, return to the desk, find that comfy spot in my chair again, and try to remember exactly what the hell I was doing. Taking medicine is just as bad. I easily lose 10-15 minutes of productivity every time.
  • Writing something really cool with an especially wonderful picture and no one reads it. This happens a lot on the weekend. I spend just as much time on our Saturday and Sunday articles as I do those during the week, but if the weather’s good they aren’t read by more than two or three people. I understand, when it’s pretty and warm and all spring-like, who in their right mind wants to stay indoors and read something irrelevant off the computer? Understanding doesn’t prevent me from being disappointed, though, and it irritates me when I feel like all that work was for nothing.

I could go on and on and on, but we both have better things to do than sit here listening to me gripe about the tiny little irritants that aren’t going to go away. I’m sure you have your list as well. We all do. And that list never seems to get shorter.

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Throwing Shade Over Coffee
April 14, 2016
charles i. letbetter - throwing shade over coffee

I like coffee because it gives me the illusion that I might be awake. —Lewis Black

 

charles i. letbetter - throwing shade over coffee

Either the coffee is right or everything is wrong

Competition is everywhere. We compete for time, we compete for attention, we even compete with ourselves when it comes to matters such as losing weight or going to the gym. We understand competition both from a personal and commercial perspective and we typically don’t think too much of one product throwing a little shade at their competition. We rather expect that. After all, they have to compete for our attention before they can compete for our dollars.

Coffee is a competitive business, to be sure, but at the same time, it is one of the things that unites a lot of people. Meeting over coffee is one of my preferred ways of getting together with people. How people drink their coffee, or whether they drink coffee, tells me a little bit about them.

Where we don’t necessarily expect competition, though, is among dictionaries. Certainly, it has always existed, with each claiming to be either the most precise or the most complete. The dictionary business has changed dramatically, though, as the Internet has developed. People are buying fewer dictionaries than ever before, and major search engines now provide the definition of a word simply by typing it in, so we don’t even need to visit a dictionary’s website. Spell check doesn’t help the dictionary business, either, though that function isn’t always reliable.

I’ve just given you three very different and distinct topics within three paragraphs, loosely tied around the concept of competition. Yet, what brings all these together this morning, and the only reason I’m writing about them in the first place, is the shade one dictionary threw at another over coffee, which thereby highlights just how competitive the word business can be.

The whole thing started when the top-ranking dictionary.com posted this tweet:

Seems a rather appropriate tweet given this is National Library Week, doesn’t it? A gentle hint at how our word choice carries basic emotions. But look carefully at the picture. Do you see the problem? The folks at Merriam-Webster, you know, that more traditional dictionary that folks my age used all through school, caught the error and were quick with a comeback.

Oops! Major shade thrown. By a dictionary.

If ever there were an example of needing to not only double check but triple check one’s work, this is it. Even in the dictionary business,where competition tends to be more elevated and subtle, if one makes an obvious error in public be sure that the competition is going to pounce on the opportunity to take advantage of your mistake, even if it’s one most people probably didn’t even notice the first time around.

And most people didn’t notice. No one had said a thing about the fact that the coffee in the picture didn’t have any visible signs of being creamed until Merriam-Webster brought it to our attention. Most people tend to skim their Twitter feeds anyway and we actually pay attention to less than ten percent of what we see there. Had the competition not been watching, chances are that even if someone caught the error they likely wouldn’t say anything.  After all, who wants to take on people who work for a dictionary? For most mortals, such a challenge could end badly.

The other lesson to be learned here is that pictures have meanings and definitions just as much as words do. One can’t just take a random picture and slap it with a set of words that have no relation, or worse yet, contradict the image. You’ll notice that in the picture we used here the coffee does have cream. Uhm, you did notice that she’s holding coffee, didn’t you? Maybe I’m expecting too much of some, but I’m sure one or two people caught on without having to scroll back up and check. My point is, though, that matching the right picture with the right words can be quite challenging. It took over an hour of wading through the archives before we found a coffee picture that actually had cream in it. Imagine what the challenge would be like for someone who didn’t have such a collection at their fingertips. Finding the right picture can be every bit as challenging, and every bit as important, as finding the right words.

Which brings me to my final point: this is what happens when marketing departments use stock photos rather than buying original imagery. Dictionary.com was slammed because someone in the marketing department, possibly an intern, was instructed to pair a stock image with a literary quote [we’ll just assume that dictionary.com has permission to use the image and didn’t steal it from the Internet]. Business is too competitive to be risking your image with stock photography, especially when the photo doesn’t match the message.

In the end, this isn’t a huge, earth-shattering or career-ending faux pax.  I doubt anyone lost their job and this isn’t the type of thing that is going to sway anyone’s opinion about which online dictionary to use. There are lessons to be learned from the situation, though; lessons we all should remember so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes.

And we all could probably do with another cup of coffee.

 

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Photography  /  PotD
DO NOT EDIT MY PHOTOS!
March 24, 2016
charles i. letbetter - do not edit my photos

Those who want to be serious photographers, you’re really going to have to edit your work. You’re going to have to understand what you’re doing. You’re going to have to not just shoot, shoot, shoot. To stop and look at your work is the most important thing you can do. —Annie Leibovitz

 

charles i. letbetter - do not edit my photos

Editing photos without permission is a problem of the digital age that is only getting worse.

Back when photography was a more analog process involving darkrooms and chemicals, how much editing could be done to a photo was a nightmare. Even things we now consider fairly simple, such as blemish removal, involved actual airbrushing which held the risk of ruining the photograph. Editing could also cost a lot more. When one went to a portrait studio for family photos and the like, one would first be shown unedited proofs and the photographer would then attempt to upsell the editing, such as fixing Jr’s acne problem or little Joey’s fly away hair. Photographers didn’t worry that a customer or client might edit photos for themselves because they didn’t have the tools.

With the advent of digital photography, however, all that changed. Everyone, or so it seems, has access to some form of low-end image editing software. While not everyone knows how to use that software, that hasn’t stopped them from going ahead and adding filters and effects to digital photos. When one decides to edit their own photos, that’s fine. I’ve no objections. Editing your own photos is a great way to learn. When one decides to edit someone else’s photo, though, that’s a whole different issue. In short: don’t do it. Ever. For any reason.

Instagram was not the first but certainly has been the most popular consumer-level program to provide for easy, and horrible, editing directly within the app. For all the advantages that Instagram delivers from an advertising perspective, it has also been responsible for the display of millions of wretched images that should have been deleted. Professional photographers have had to scold more than a few “models” who, when posting their professional pictures, decided to edit them with one of Instagram’s filters. If you are guilty of doing this, you should apologize to your photographer immediately.

The situation is getting worse, however, as technology is making it possible to add digital stickers to photographs. We’ve already seen a rudimentary version pop up on Facebook, but now, it appears Twitter may be about to unleash a whole new can of worms. An article surfaced this week claiming that the social media messaging system is testing a “stickers” feature that not only allows users to add stickers to photos, but allows them to see how other people have edited the same photo. Even worse? Twitter would “suggest photos that you can edit and post to participate in trending conversations and breaking news.”

For professional photographers, this is a potential nightmare. There is no word as to whether there are any copyright protections (probably not) or any recourse for a photographer whose photo is edited without permission. Once again, we are faced with the challenging misconception that once something is posted to social media or published on the Internet that it must be public domain. Nothing could be further from the truth. Copyrights still remain with the photographer, no matter where they are published or how they are used, unless the photographer specifically indicates otherwise. Going around slapping stickers on photographs is a form of editing and therefore, in most cases, illegal!

Photographers have been fighting people who want to edit their photos for years. We don’t like it. When you edit one of our photos, you are not only defacing our creative property, you are insulting our artistic vision. When you edit on of my pictures, you are telling me that I wasted my time, that your opinion is more important than mine, and that you have no regard for my work. Don’t expect me or any other photographer to respond positively to such situations.

Hopefully, to avoid the legal entanglement that would be inevitable, Twitter will limit this feature to public domain photos that pass at least some superficial form of scrutiny before being slapped with stupid stickers. I don’t understand the appeal of such a feature in the first place, but I’m chalking that up to the fact I’m a grumpy old man. I’ll just assume that people who use such a feature also still buy sticker books and hide them from their children. Photographs are not sticker books, though. Putting stickers on photos isn’t editing, it’s defacing and demonstrates a lack of respect for the image.

The fact that Twitter put this information out into the press indicates that, barring some severe backlash, the feature is almost certainly headed for public release within the next few months. If that should happen, when that happens, I hope you will be thoughtful. If you want to deface your own pictures, go right ahead. Deface one of mine, though, and my response will not be friendly.

Do not edit my photos without my express permission. Ever.

 

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