December 2012 archive

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Jump

Figured I’d hop onto the cliche bandwagon with this clip. I expect it will be well worn segue music on the cable channels soon if not already.

I was never a Van Halen fan but I remember this tune well. Embarrassing as it is to admit, it was very popular back when I was in high school.

My money is on a grand betrayal before January 1st anyway.

Van Halen, Jump, 1984

Songwriters: DUPRI, JERMAINE/WEBSTER, GREGORY ALLEN/PIERCE, MARVIN R

Vocals: David Lee Roth

Guitar: Eddie Van Halen

Bass: Michael Anthony

Drums: Alex Van Halen

(Words by Van Halen)

To spare your ears I’ve posted the lyrics below-

Viewing Movies: Who Else Besides Me Really Misses the Old Days?

There was a time when moviegoing here in the United States (and probably throughout the world) was considered a real pasttime and a big deal for many people, whether one went to the movies with family, friends, or even solo.  Yet, at the time when that was the case, going solo wasn’t the cool thing to do, so, due to my relative social isolation when I was growing up,  plus the fact that I lived in an idyllic suburban town with no adequate public transportation, plus I didn’t learn to drive and get my driver’s license until around Christmastime 1968, as a high school Senior, plus since I drove one of the family cars (a 1963 Buick Jalopy station wagon), I was limited as to how much I was allowed to use the family car.   I’ll also add that getting a driver’s license, particularly among suburban kids (like myself), was considered a rite of passage, if one gets the drift.  Most of the kids where I went to high school, and certainly in my grade, got their licenses by the summer before they entered their Junior year of high school, but was a year late in getting my driver’s license.  I had sort of a rocky start, but I mellowed out, and became a more confident driver.  

When I finally graduated from high school in late June of 1969, I was pleasantly surprised by a home-made certificate (by my sister, who was still quite ill, but managed to do stuff and go to my graduation, anyway) stating that I was entitled to one little auto.  It turned out that my grandparents were giving me a car.  I tried some cars when I visited  my grandparents (who’re now both deceased), who lived out West, and decided on a Toyota Corona, with a 4-gear & reverse Stick shift car.  It was then that I began to taste freedom, and was able to get around pretty much anywhere.  Having a car represented freedom, independence and responsibility.  It was still a rocky start, but everything mellowed out and fell into place after awhile here, as well.  

On This Day In History December 28

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

December 28 is the 362nd day of the year (363rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are three days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1895, the first commercial movie is screened in Paris.

On this day in 1895, the world’s first commercial movie screening takes place at the Grand Cafe in Paris. The film was made by Louis and Auguste Lumiere, two French brothers who developed a camera-projector called the Cinematographe. The Lumiere brothers unveiled their invention to the public in March 1895 with a brief film showing workers leaving the Lumiere factory. On December 28, the entrepreneurial siblings screened a series of short scenes from everyday French life and charged admission for the first time.

Movie technology has its roots in the early 1830s, when Joseph Plateau of Belgium and Simon Stampfer of Austria simultaneously developed a device called the phenakistoscope, which incorporated a spinning disc with slots through which a series of drawings could be viewed, creating the effect of a single moving image. The phenakistoscope, considered the precursor of modern motion pictures, was followed by decades of advances and in 1890, Thomas Edison and his assistant William Dickson developed the first motion-picture camera, called the Kinetograph. The next year, 1891, Edison invented the Kinetoscope, a machine with a peephole viewer that allowed one person to watch a strip of film as it moved past a light.

In 1894, Antoine Lumiere, the father of Auguste (1862-1954) and Louis (1864-1948), saw a demonstration of Edison’s Kinetoscope. The elder Lumiere was impressed, but reportedly told his sons, who ran a successful photographic plate factory in Lyon, France, that they could come up with something better. Louis Lumiere’s Cinematographe, which was patented in 1895, was a combination movie camera and projector that could display moving images on a screen for an audience. The Cinematographe was also smaller, lighter and used less film than Edison’s technology

The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas (19 October 1862, Besancon, France – 10 April 1954, Lyon) and Louis Jean (5 October 1864, Besancon, France – 6 June 1948, Bandol), were among the earliest filmmakers in history. (Appropriately, “lumière” translates as “light” in English.)

(In) 1862 and 1864, and moved to Lyon in 1870, where both attended La Martiniere, the largest technical school in Lyon. Their father, Claude-Antoine Lumière (1840-1911), ran a photographic firm and both brothers worked for him: Louis as a physicist and Auguste as a manager. Louis had made some improvements to the still-photograph process, the most notable being the dry-plate process, which was a major step towards moving images.

It was not until their father retired in 1892 that the brothers began to create moving pictures. They patented a number of significant processes leading up to their film camera – most notably film perforations (originally implemented by Emile Reynaud) as a means of advancing the film through the camera and projector. The cinèmatographe itself was patented on 13 February 1895 and the first footage ever to be recorded using it was recorded on March 19, 1895.

Their first public screening of films at which admission was charged was held on December 28, 1895, at Salon Indien du Grand Cafè in Paris. This history-making presentation featured ten short films, including their first film, Sortie des Usines Lumière a Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory). Each film is 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds.

The True Meaning of Christmas

Shoppers disappoint retailers this holiday season

By DANIEL WAGNER, Associated Press

Wed, Dec 26, 2012

WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. holiday sales so far this year have been the weakest since 2008, when the nation was in a deep recession. That puts pressure on stores that now hope for a post-Christmas burst of spending.



But stores still have some time to make up lost ground. The final week of December accounts for about 15 percent of the month’s sales, said Michael McNamara, vice president for research and analysis at MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse. And the day after Christmas typically is among the biggest shopping days of the year.



In New York, the Macy’s location at Herald Square also was buzzing with shoppers. Ulises Guzman, 30, a social worker, said he held off buying until the final days before Christmas, knowing the deals would get better as stores got desperate. He said he was expecting discounts of at least 50 percent.

He saw a coat he wanted at Banana Republic for $200 in the days before Christmas but decided to hold off on making a purchase; on Wednesday, he got it for $80.



Holiday sales are a crucial indicator of the economy’s strength. November and December account for up to 40 percent of annual revenue for many retailers. If those sales don’t materialize, stores are forced to offer steeper discounts. That’s a boon for shoppers, but it cuts into stores’ profits.

Spending by consumers accounts for 70 percent of overall economic activity, so the eight-week period encompassed by the SpendingPulse data is seen as a critical time not just for retailers but for manufacturers, wholesalers and companies at every other point along the supply chain.



Online sales, typically a bright spot, grew only 8.4 percent from Oct. 28 through Saturday, according to SpendingPulse. That’s a dramatic slowdown from the online sales growth of 15 to 17 percent seen in the prior 18-month period, according to the data service.

The Media Excuses Are Missing What’s Really Behind Weak Retail Sales

Lance Roberts, Street Talk Live, Business Insider

Dec. 27, 2012, 4:57 AM

The excuses for the weakness, however, were just as much off the mark as the original analysts’ estimates.

While these excuses may play well in the media, in reality, the fiscal cliff, end of October storm and the school shooting had very little to do with retail sales on a nationwide basis.  However, what does have much to do with the level of retail sales are incomes.

Not surprisingly when wages and salaries are growing at a slower rate there is a corresponding weakness in the level of retail sales.  The peak in wages and salaries occurred in early 2011 with the subsequent growth rate trending weaker.  This corresponds with the economy which has continued to muddle along at a very anemic pace.



The decline in incomes, which can be seen in the roughly 1.2 million person increase in food stamp participation from June to September, is why retail “holiday” spending is weaker.  With credit limits reduced, incomes stagnant and real costs of living on the rise – it is not surprising that retail sales are far weaker than the NRF’s holiday season predictions.

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Ornament 4

The Bizarro World of Right Wing Politics

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

We Came Armed This TimeThere are some things that the right wingers say and do that make one pause and question their sanity, wondering why they have any credibility at all. The latest round of “you can’t make this stuff up” shenanigans involved the Tea Party group, Freedom Works and its chairman, former House majority leader, Dick Armey. Earlier this month, Armey announced his departure with an $8 million payout. That is where the story gets bizarre, that payout was actually a ransom demand. It seems back in September, just as the election season were heating up, Dick staged an armed coup. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo is scratching his head over the revelation of the incident that occurred over four months ago and is just being reported in the Washington Post now.

The day after Labor Day, just as campaign season was entering its final frenzy, FreedomWorks, the Washington-based tea party organization, went into free fall.

Richard K. Armey, the group’s chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news.

The coup lasted all of six days. By Sept. 10, Armey was gone – with a promise of $8 million – and the five ousted employees were back. The force behind their return was Richard J. Stephenson, a reclusive Illinois millionaire who has exerted increasing control over one of Washington’s most influential conservative grass-roots organizations. [..]

The partnership came to a crashing end when Armey marched into FreedomWorks’s office Sept. 4 with his wife, Susan, executive assistant Jean Campbell and the unidentified man with the gun at his waist – who promptly escorted Kibbe and Brandon out of the building.

“This was two weeks after there had been a shooting at the Family Research Council,” said one junior staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. “So when a man with a gun who didn’t identify himself to me or other people on staff, and a woman I’d never seen before said there was an announcement, my first gut was, ‘Is FreedomWorks in danger?’ It was bizarre.'”

I always thought the name “Dick Armey” was weirdly appropriate for a gun loving Republican from Texas. It fits

Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos

Our regular featured content-

And this featured article-

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Write more and often.  This is an Open Thread.

The Stars Hollow Gazette

Health and Fitness News

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Spiced Wok Popped Popcorn

This week’s recipes come in response to requests from readers for ideas for snacks to have around the house during the end-of-the-year holidays: something to replace the candy bowls and cookies that are usually there and easy to nosh on. Commercial snacks that are healthy (or healthier – read the labels closely) are available including vegetable chips and pita crisps, seaweed snacks, nuts, dried fruit and trail mix. But some of these have a lot of salt and they can be pricy.

~Martha Rose Shulman~

Spiced Wok-Popped Popcorn

A wok is the perfect pan for making popcorn.

Not-Too-Sweet Wok-Popped Coconut Kettle Corn

A moderately sweet version, because no holiday is complete without the sweet.

Granola

Right after baking, this seems more like a snack than breakfast.

Spiced Roasted Almonds

A little extra spice on these almonds helps minimize the urge to mindlessly snack.

Marinated Olives

Olives seasoned with herbs, garlic and lemon peel make for a delicious snack.

Back to the Phones

Habds Off Social SecurityBack to the grind. President Barack Obama cut his Christmas holiday in Hawaii short, returning to Washington to try to cut a deal to avoid the mythical” fiscal cliff.” While there was much cheering from the president’s most avid supporters over the reports of his tough talk last week during negotiations with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), there is still a major concern that Social Security cuts are still on the table by tying cost of living increases it to the chained CPI. It is not just Republican and the president we can’t trust on this, it’s also Democrats. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sees no problem with chained CPI. While there was no mention of Social Security in Speaker Boehner’s failed “Plan-B,” there is no indication from Pres. Obama that it won’t be offered again as a carrot to entice the Republicans to accept a tax increase on the top two tax brackets.

Until we hear it from Pres. Obama’s lips that it isn’t, Social Security is still a bargaining chip in the manufactured debt/deficit crisis. So it is back to the phone. Flood the White House and the Congressional phone lines with calls demanding that they keep their hands off Social Security.

White House

202-456-1111

Your senators

Your House member.

No cuts to Social Security.

Gaius Publius @ Americablog offers this helpful digest-

What are we protecting?

We’re protecting three social insurance programs. These are:

    ■ Social Security

    ■ Medicare

    ■ Medicaid

What are we protecting them from? Anything that:

    ■ Reduces benefits

    ■ Turns the program from insurance to welfare (which only the “deserving” have access to)

How are these programs being threatened?

As near as I can tell, these are the threats. Note to foxes – this is the hands-off list. Each of these seven items is a benefit cut:

Social Security

    1. Raising the retirement age

    2. Chained CPI instead of current COLA

    3. Means-testing benefits

Medicare

    4. Raising the eligibility age

    5. Increasing Part B premiums

    6. Increasing “cost-sharing”

Medicaid

    7. Shifting costs to the states by any means, such as “federal blended rate,” etc.

Keep it up everyday, jam the lines until the President and Congress get the message:

No cuts to Social Security.

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