Nintendo Power (January 1996)

Nintendo Power (January 1996)

While the Super Nintendo was still Nintendo's number one system in 1996, the Nintendo 64 was introduced that year. The January 1996 issue of Nintendo Power includes: Full Coverage

• Earthworm Jim 2
• Revolution X
• Doom Troopers
• Scooby Doo
• PGA Tournament '96
• Jack Bros.
• Tetris Blast
• Frank Thomas Baseball

Take 2 Review

• The Getaway

Special Features

• Nintendo 64 Debuts

Epic Center

• Breath of Fire 2
• Epic Strategies
• Epic News

Every Issue

• Player's Pulse
• Power Charts
• Classified
• Counselors' Corner
• Arena
• Now Playing
• Pak Watch
• Player's Poll Contest
• Next Issue

...and more!

The Myth That the US Leads the World in Mass Shootings

If you asked me this morning which nation has the most mass shootings in the world, I would have said, with perhaps a flicker of hesitation, the United States.

This is a tad embarrassing to admit because I’m pretty familiar with shooting statistics, having written several articles on gun violence and the Second Amendment. Below is a basic overview of gun violence in America. While gun homicides have been steadily declining for decades in the US, mass shootings have indeed been trending upward.

This fact alone probably would not have led me to believe that the US leads the world in mass shootings, however. An assist goes to the US media and politicians.

The Dominant Narrative

"Let's be clear,” President Obama said in 2015 after a shooting in North Carolina. “At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries."

Sen. Harry Reid echoed this sentiment. "The United States is the only advanced country where this kind of mass violence occurs.”

Media headlines have left little doubt that the US leads the world in mass shootings. In fact, according to CNN, it isn’t even close.

The comments and data seem to conclusively say that the US leads the world in mass shootings and the violence is unique, a product of “America’s gun culture.”

It’s a slam dunk case except for one thing: it’s not true.

The Root of the Myth

Statistics on global mass shooting incidents from 2009 to 2015 compiled by economist John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center show that the US trails many other advanced nations in mass shooting frequency and death rate.

As Investor’s Business Daily noted on these findings, “Yes, the U.S. rate is still high, and nothing to be proud of. But it's not the highest in the developed world. Not by a long shot.”

If this is true, how did the narrative that the US leads the world in mass shootings become the conventional wisdom? The myth, it turns out, stems from University of Alabama associate professor Adam Lankford.

Lankford’s name pops up in a montage of media reports which cite his research as evidence that America leads the world in mass shootings. The violence, Lankford said, stems from the high rate of gun ownership in America.

“The difference between us and other countries, [which] explains why we have more of these attackers, was the firearm ownership rate,” Lankford said. “In other words: firearms per capita. We have almost double the firearm ownership rate of any other country.”

Lankford’s findings show that there were 90 mass public shooters in America since 1966, the most in the world, which had a total of 202. But Lott, using Lankford’s definition of a mass shooting—“four or more people killed”—found more than 3,000 such shootings, John Stossel recently reported.

When findings do not mesh, scholars, in pursuit of truth, generally compare notes, data, and methodology to find out how they reached their conclusions. After all, who is to say Lankford doesn’t have it right and Lott is wrong? There’s just one problem: Lankford isn’t talking.

Lankford refuses to explain his data to anyone—to Stossel, to Lott, to the Washington Post, and apparently anyone else who comes asking, including this writer. (I emailed Lankford inquiring about his research. He declined to discuss his methodology, but said he would be publishing more information about mass shooting data in the future.)

“That’s academic malpractice,” Lott tells Stossel.

Indeed it is. Yet, it doesn’t explain how one professor’s research was so rapidly disseminated that its erroneous claim quickly became the conventional wisdom in a country with 330 million people.

Truth versus Narrative

For that, we must look to the era of narrative-driven journalism and the politicization of society, both of which subjugate truth to ideology and politics. Media and politicians latched onto Lankford’s findings in droves because his findings were convenient, not because they were true.

This is an unsettling and ill omen for liberty. As Lawrence Reed has observed, the road to authoritarianism is paved with a “careless, cavalier, and subjective attitude toward truth.” Yet that is precisely what we see with increasing frequency in mass media. (Need I reference the Covington debacle and the Smollet hoax?)

More than a hundred years ago Mark Twain noted, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."

Twain’s quote remains true even in the age of the internet. Lankford’s erroneous research had free rein for two years and was disseminated to tens of millions of viewers and readers before the truth finally got its shoes on.

If you ask most Americans today which country leads the world in mass shootings, I suspect a vast majority would say the US. And there’s always a price for the erosion of truth.

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has appeared in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Washington Times. 

Reach him at jmiltimore@FEE.org.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (201-204)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

There are no labels on any in this set but they all do have the date they were developed stamped on them. These are from 1958, 1959 and 1960. The subject matter is flowers and a park somewhere. In an effort to better avoid duplication (because clearly I do a poor job of keeping track of these things), I've started titling these posts based on slide numbers so this post contains the 201st, 202nd, 203rd and 204th slides I have actually scanned in this series.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

processed October 1958 processed September 1960 processed September 1960 processed September 1959 https://supload.com/ryFubJGLN

Harmony Explosion 2018 (5) – The Music Man

Performance of a piece from The Music Man at the Harmony Explosion 2018 program at the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) in Melbourne, Florida.

View on Daily Motion

View on Bit.Tube

Analog Computing (April 1989)

Analog Computing (April 1989)

Analog computing was one of the two major Atari 8-bit magazines in North America. It was a great magazine for owners of those systems and it had a long life. The April 1989 issue includes: Features

• Krazy Mazes - An exciting two-player game of mazes and chases written entirely in machine langauge.
• Master Memory Map, Part IX - ANALOG's official memory map continues
• Univert - How many decimeters are ther in a cubit? How many leagues in a light year? With Univert you can easily convert from any unit of measurement to another.
• Pixel Averaging on the Atari - This graphics technique will allow you to hide those jagged edges in your computer art masterpieces.

Reviews

• Panak Strikes - This month Steve looks at Gauntlet (Atari) and Richard Petty's Talladega (Cosmi).
• The Converter (No Frills Software)
• Cheat! (Alpha Systems)

Columns

• Database DELPHI
• Game Design Workshop
• ST Notes
• The End User

Departments

• Editorial
• Reader Comment
• 8-bit News
• M/L Editor
• BASIC Editor II

yohko09 - Devil Hunter Yohko

Canada’s Universal Child Care Program Suggests Elizabeth Warren’s Plan Would Be Disastrous for Children

The state does such a stellar job of nurturing and educating children from preschool through high school, we should expand its role from birth onward. That’s the new proposition unveiled this week by US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. On Tuesday, the Democratic presidential candidate outlined a vast federal program of free and subsidized child care for children from birth until school-entry, including creating a network of government child care centers modeled after the federal Head Start early childhood program. Warren states: “Child care is one of those things we've got to do for working parents and we've got to do for our children."

The popular idea that the state should do things for parents, rather than allowing parents to do things for themselves and their own children, illustrates the pervasiveness of the welfare state mentality. What is framed as helping families instead strips them of their individual power and autonomy, making them more reliant on, and influenced by, government programs.

Defying Economic Laws Has Consequences

Warren’s program is to be financed through a “wealth tax” on the most asset-rich American households and reportedly assures that all child care workers will earn wages that are on par with those of local public school teachers. Like other attempts at government price-setting, however, the economic impact of such a program would inevitably be to drive up prices, reduce variety and competition, and lead to more widespread shortages.

The intentions of universal, government-funded child care may be good. Supporting children and families is a worthy ambition. But as Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman warned: “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” We should reject Warren’s proposal both on principle and on consequence.

The results of similar universal, government child care programs are dismal. In 2005, economists with the National Bureau of Economic Research, including Michael Baker of the University of Toronto, Jonathan Gruber of MIT, and Kevin Milligan of the University of British Columbia, analyzed the effects of Canada’s government-subsidized, universal child care program. Similar to Warren’s proposed child care plan, the Canadian program is available to all families—not just those who are disadvantaged. The researchers discovered that demand for child care increased significantly under the government plan, as more parents abandoned informal child care arrangements with family and friends in favor of regulated child care programs.

While demand increased, the researchers found that children’s emotional and physical health outcomes declined dramatically with the introduction of government-subsidized, universal child care. Children in the Quebec program experienced increased rates of anxiety and decreased social and motor skills compared to children elsewhere in Canada where this program was not offered. The researchers write:

We uncover striking evidence that children are worse off in a variety of behavioral and health dimensions, ranging from aggression to motor-social skills to illness. Our analysis also suggests that the new childcare program led to more hostile, less consistent parenting, worse parental health, and lower-quality parental relationships.

Last fall, these economists published updated findings on their analysis of Canada’s universal child care program. Their recent research revealed similarly alarming results of government-funded child care, including a long-term negative impact of the program. They assert: “We find that the negative effects on non cognitive outcomes persisted to school ages, and also that cohorts with increased child care access had worse health, lower life satisfaction, and higher crime rates later in life.” This early institutionalization of children may have enduring, undesirable consequences.

While it’s not clear exactly what is causing the negative outcomes of Canada’s universal, government child care program, the research hints at some possibilities. A primary explanation is that the program funneled more children into government-regulated, center-based child care facilities and away from more informal child care arrangements. There was also a drop in parental care, as the opportunity cost of stay-at-home parenthood rose.

Centralizing Child Care Is Not the Solution

Proponents of universal, government child care programs often tout the expansion of allegedly “high-quality” child care options, suggesting that parental care or other unregulated child care arrangements are subpar. But who determines quality? If Canada’s program is any indication, the government’s definition of “high-quality” child care may, in fact, be harming children.

In his recent article on the economic causes of current child care shortages and correspondingly high prices, Jeffrey Tucker explains that the key to affordable, accessible daycare for all is to reduce government regulation of child care programs and providers and allow parents to choose the child care setting that best suits them and their child. Let parent preferences drive the market for child care options, not government interventions that squeeze supply, devalue informal caretaking arrangements, and unnecessarily raise the cost of stay-at-home parenthood.

We should all heed Tucker’s conclusion: “Daycare for all is a great idea. A new government program is the worst possible way to get there.”

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald (@kerry_edu) has a B.A. in Economics from Bowdoin and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard. She lives in Cambridge, Mass. with her husband and four never-been-schooled children. Kerry is the author of the forthcoming book, Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press). Follow her writing at Whole Family Learning.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

yohko009 - Devil Hunter Yohko

Harmony Explosion 2018 (4) – We Go Together

Source: Bit.Tube | Harmony Explosion 2018 (4) - We Go Together

Performance of 'We Go Together' at the Harmony Explosion 2018 program at the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) in Melbourne, Florida.

View on Bit.Tube

View on Daily Motion

JoyStik (April 1983)

JoyStik (April 1983)

JoyStik is one of a number of early 1980s magazines that had the great timing of starting their publication run near the time of the video game crash of that era. As such, they tended not to last very long. The April 1983 issue of JoyStik includes: Neo

• Q*Bert - Here's how to play the qute, qrazy, qube-hopping arcade game.

The Winning Edge

• Tempest - Electrifying top-level Tempest strategies

Innerview

• "Silver Sue" England - Scott Phillips chats with the proprietor of Chicago's late-night hot spot for "serious players."

Features

• Double Your Galaga Firepower - David Small shows you how to use the Galaga doubleship for top scores.
• West Coast Game Manufacturers - Who's who and what's what in the Wild West.
• The Arcades of Seattle - A tour of the Jet City's best game rooms.
• Star Raiders Training Manual - Your mission: conquer the Krylons!
• The Game Design Gamble - Despite creativity and technology, game design is still a crapshoot.
• The Arctic Antics of Pengo - Steve Sanders' super sno-bee smashing strategies.
• Pac-Man: The Last Word - The best of the 9th-key patterns.
• When Video Games Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Play Games - Jim Gorzelany's satirical look at the video game "temperance movement."

Departments

• Letters
• Future Waves - AMOA Expo '82: the arcade beauty pageant.
• The Home Front - Jim Gorzelany rates the new game cartridges.
• Home Video - Danny Goodman pits game systems vs. computers.
• Computer '83 - David and Sandy Small look at computer network space games.
• Cartoon
• Technocracy
• JoyStik Charts

...and more!

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (47)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

The first three slides in this set are from a wedding that took place on February 22nd, 1958 and the last pictures if dated February 21st, 1958 and is of Wind River Canyon, a canyon on the Wind River in Wyoming.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

Sgt. Turner? photographing the wedding, 2/22/58 Reception line at chapel, 2/22/58 Del & Mrs. Potter, Sr., 2/22/58 Wind River Canyon, 2/21/58 https://supload.com/BJQAgWGO7

Ponzi Schemes and Socialism Rely on the Same Economic Snake Oil

Below is an excerpt from George Will’s op-ed in Friday's Washington Post, “It’s common to praise socialism. It’s rarer to define it,” (bold added) that starts with this summary of Marxist/socialist philosophy from Karl Marx: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”

After many subsequent dilutions, today’s watery conceptions of socialism amount to this: Almost everyone will be nice to almost everyone, using money taken from a few. This means having government distribute, according to its conception of equity, the wealth produced by capitalism. This conception is shaped by muscular factions: the elderly, government employees unions, the steel industry, the sugar growers, and so on and on and on. Some wealth is distributed to the poor; most goes to the “neglected” middle class. Some neglect: The political class talks of little else.

Two-thirds of the federal budget (and 14% of gross domestic product) goes to transfer payments, mostly to the non-poor. The U.S. economy’s health-care sector (about 18% of the economy) is larger than the economies of all but three nations and is permeated by government money and mandates. Before the Affordable Care Act was enacted, 40 cents of every health-care dollar was the government’s 40 cents. The sturdy yeomanry who till America’s soil? Last year’s 529-page Agriculture Improvement Act will be administered by the Agriculture Department, which has about one employee for every 20 American farms.

Today’s angrier socialists rail, with specificity and some justification, against today’s “rigged” system of government in the service of the strong. But as the Hoover Institution’s John H. Cochrane (a.k.a. the Grumpy Economist) says, “If the central problem is rent-seeking, abuse of the power of the state, to deliver economic goods to the wealthy and politically powerful, how in the world is more government the answer?”

The “boldness” of today’s explicit and implicit socialists — taxing the “rich” — is a perennial temptation of democracy: inciting the majority to attack an unpopular minority. This is socialism now: From each faction according to its vulnerability, to each faction according to its ability to confiscate.

What a TV Show Can Teach Us About Socialism

I’ve lately been recording and watching episodes of the fascinating CNBC series American Greed. I’ve noticed a common theme in these episodes, and perhaps that theme is one explanation for the eternal fascination with, and perpetual attraction to, the fantasies of “getting something for nothing” and “prosperity for everybody without sacrifice” known as “democratic socialism.” As I wrote in my 1995 article “Why Socialism Failed":

Socialism is the Big Lie of the twentieth century. While it promised prosperity, equality, and security, it delivered poverty, misery, and tyranny. Equality was achieved only in the sense that everyone was equal in his or her misery.

In the same way that a Ponzi scheme or chain letter initially succeeds but eventually collapses, socialism may show early signs of success. But any accomplishments quickly fade as the fundamental deficiencies of central planning emerge. It is the initial illusion of success that gives government intervention its pernicious, seductive appeal. In the long run, socialism has always proven to be a formula for tyranny and misery.

The fascinating common theme I’ve observed in episodes of American Greed is the ubiquitous fallibility of even well-educated and financially-successful people for the financial Ponzi schemes of serial con artists. In episode after episode of American Greed, there are countless examples of Americans with life savings of $1 million or more who have fallen prey to the seductive, financial Ponzi schemes promoted by skilled investment con artists and who then lose their entire life savings. As I wrote in 1995:

The temptress of socialism is constantly luring us with the offer: “give up a little of your freedom and I will give you a little more security.” As the experience of this century has demonstrated, the bargain is tempting but never pays off. We end up losing both our freedom and our security.

Likewise, the seductive temptress of “financial get rich quick schemes” is constantly luring gullible Americans, even those with substantial life savings in the millions of dollars that characterize somebody who has worked hard and been financially successful, with the offer from the financial con artists profiled on American Greed: “Give me your millions of dollars in life savings, and I will generate higher-than-market returns for you and make your rich.” As the experiences of thousands of victims of Ponzi schemes so clearly demonstrate, the bargain of abnormally high returns and guaranteed easy riches is tempting, but it never pays off in the long run. Investors eventually lose all of their money, and their financial security evaporates.

Socialism Is a Scam

Like the con artists profiled on American Greed (now mostly incarcerated) the “democratic socialists” of today, like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and AOC, are trying to sell you “the economic snake oil of socialism” that is as worthless and bankrupt in the long run as the numerous Ponzi schemes being profiled regularly on American Greed that leave investors penniless.

The greedy attraction to “get rich quick schemes” featured regularly on American Greed helps explain the eternal temptation of socialism that is gaining popularity today despite the mountain of evidence that Ponzi schemes always fail in the long run, which equals the mountain of evidence that socialism fails in the long run. The temptation of both Ponzi schemes and socialism are based on two seductive factors common to both fantasies: a) the initial success of both Ponzi schemes (early investors temporarily get high returns in the beginning of the financial con job/flim-flam) and socialism (Venezuela seemed economically successful in the beginning of its socialist con job), and b) the attraction of both myths of getting something for nothing, i.e., they are both “get rich quick schemes,” or “get rich at the expense of somebody else schemes.”

So if thousands of financially successful Americans with lifetimes of work experience and millions of dollars in savings fall for financial Ponzi schemes so regularly on the American Greed TV series, is it any wonder that millions of millennials with limited life experience and limited financial savings are now falling for the economic snake oil and economic Ponzi scheme known as “democratic socialism” being peddled today by AOC, Warren, and Sanders?

This article was reprinted with permission from the American Enterprise Institute.

Mark J. Perry

Mark J. Perry is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

yohko8 - Devil Hunter Yohko

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (45)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

All of these pictures had the processing date stamped on them and are from 1966-1968. The second picture which had a hard to read name written on it had additional date verification because it appears to have been taken in an office and there is a calendar in the background. While a bit blurry, April 1967 can be made out at the top.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

September 1967 Larry Laffron? - April 1967 April 1966 June 1968 https://supload.com/Hyl6BlG_X

Harmony Explosion 2018 (3) – May I Never Love Again

Source: Bit.Tube | Harmony Explosion 2018 (3) - May I Never Love Again

Performance of 'May I Never Love Again' at the Harmony Explosion 2018 program at the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) in Melbourne, Florida.

View on Bit.Tube

View on Daily Motion

Yohko 8 - Devil Hunter Yohko

RUN: The Commodore 64 128 User’s Guide (September 1989)

RUN: The Commodore 64 128 User’s Guide (September 1989)

RUN magazine was my favorite Commodore 64 magazine. By 1989 the Commodore 64 was certainly in decline but RUN was still going strong and would continue for a few more years. Advertising pages had declined significantly but all the content was still there. The September 1989 issue includes: Features

• geoFolks - Meet some members of the GEOS clan whose creative applications can inspire GEOS users everywhere.


• Berkeley and its geoPlans - What can GEOS users expect for their Commodore computers in the future?


• geoSlides - You'll find that viewing Doodle! and Koala files from within GEOS is easy with this C-64 and C-128 program.


• Day-of-the-Week Calendar - Finding a date is quick and easy with this 100-year calendar program. For the C-64 and 128.


• Word Wonder - You must be clever to win at this C-64 and 128 letter-guessing game.


• Shell Shock - Reduce your opponent to scrap metal in this fast-paced C-64 tank duel.


• Quickmat - No more cups of coffee while waiting for your C-64 to format disks. With this utility, you won't even make it to the kitchen.


• Match Games - Adult or child, you'll have a real challenge matching these complex patterns on your C-128.

Departments

• RUNning Ruminations - What would the Commodore environment look like without GEOS?


• Magic - The number-one column of hints and tips for performing Commodore computing wizardry.


• News and New Products - Recent developments and releases in the World of Commodore computing.


• Software Gallery - Reviews of:
• Word Writer 4
• Keith Van Eron's Pro Soccer
• Pharaoh's Revenge
• Time and Magik
• The Honeymooners
• Willow
• Navy Seal
• Demon's Winter
• Hole-in-One Miniature Golf
• Firezone
• BattleTech
• First Over Germany


• Mail RUN - An unusual application for the C-64, more complaints about Commodore, and other input from our readers.


• Games Gallery - Entertain Lady Luck on your C-64.


• Commodore Clinic - Answers to your questions about Commodore computing.


• RUN's Checksum Program - Run it right the first time.


• Coming Attractions; List of Advertisers

...and more!

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (44)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

This batch of photos was processed between 1959 and 1963. There's a variety here including a macro of a flower, a baby picture, a kid on a tricycle and a shot of the forum at Pompeii from May 1959.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

June 1963 June 1963 Forum At Pompei - May 1959 September 1960 https://supload.com/S18uZxfOQ

NYC Fast-Food Workers Stunned Some Are Being Fired after $15 Minimum Wage Hike

When supporters of minimum wage increases argued that entry-level workers were not getting paid enough to support their families, experts warned that forcing employers to increase the wages for unskilled workers would produce unintended consequences. Now that critics of the law were proven right and workers are getting fired, proponents are doubling down.

Critics hoped that minimum wage supporters would finally understand that employers should be able to negotiate wages with workers freely, but those suffering the consequences seem blind to reality.

Will they ever realize that their push for a minimum wage hike is why they are out of a job?

According to a recent New York Times piece, workers who supported and helped to push for the minimum wage increase in New York City are now being fired—and for unfair reasons, they claim.

But how could anyone call these firings unfair when employers are being forced to raise everybody’s wage?

You Can’t Repeal the Laws of Economics

Serving as ground zero for the $15 minimum wage battle, New York City saw its fast-food workers also serve as the subjects in an experiment that completely ignored the laws of economics.

After protests and rallies demanding a higher minimum wage and different proposals regarding scheduling procedures, workers got what they wanted. But now that they are being fired, they are organizing to, once again, ask the city to change the law so they are protected from “unfair” firings.

Hoping the city will apply some job security to their minimum wage positions, workers think this change would finally make things right. After all, all it takes is a law and life will be perfect, right?

But as economists have explained, it takes money to increase the minimum wage.

For a company to offer a higher wage to an employee, it must first be able to afford the hike.

For companies, paying entry-level, unskilled workers the same they would pay a manager or a seasoned employee doesn’t make any sense—not because employers aren’t compassionate but because they would have to pull in more money to afford these high wages.

When governments force them to pay unskilled workers more, they necessarily have to cut costs somewhere to avoid losing money. After all, the goal is staying open and profitable. If the employer is losing money, he or she can’t pay anyone anything.

The way they find to cut costs is to cut the number of employees on payroll. And precisely because labor laws are already so suffocating, employers must use other excuses to fire employees, as “I can’t afford paying you and hundreds of others the minimum wage” is not enough of an excuse.

Of course, workers who fought for the minimum wage increase feel they are being unfairly targeted. But the reality is that what’s missing is some basic understanding of economics, which would help them realize that simply increasing the minimum wage by decree does nothing but limit the labor market, hurting the unskilled and the poor more than any other groups.

Minimum Wage Leaders Are Peddling Unsound Economics

As The New York Times explained, it’s unfortunate that labor unions are often the first to push and mobilize workers for minimum wage pushes.

Union bosses will use bad reasoning and unsound economics to persuade workers to join them, and all because they want more people to join their ranks and pay their union dues. Unfortunately, those who join the union masses are the ones now suffering the backlash. And what’s worse, now that workers are mobilizing once again to push for more job “protections” from lawmakers, we'll see even more unexpected consequences.

In no time, all fast-food joints across New York City will use nothing but self-serving kiosks and robots (yes, robots!). Otherwise, they will all have to shut down completely because they simply won't be able to afford to follow the city’s law.

Now, the laws of economics, on the other hand, those are impossible to go around.

This article was reprinted from the American Institute for Economic Research.

Chloe Anagnos

Chloe Anagnos is a professional writer, digital strategist, and marketer. Although a millennial, she's never accepted a participation trophy.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (43)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

These pictures are undated and unlabeled but are of outdoor scenes including a waterfall in the woods and snowy hills and are probably from the early 1960s.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

https://supload.com/rkrm61G_m

Harmony Explosion 2018 (2) – All I Do is Dream of You

Source: Bit.Tube | Harmony Explosion 2018 (2) - All I Do is Dream of You

https://dai.ly/x72ghte

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (42)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

These pictures are undated and unlabeled but are of outdoor scenes in the mountains in the Pacific Northwest or perhaps Utah and are probably from the early 1960s.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

https://supload.com/rJp2VkMu7

Retro Gamer – Issue Number 50

Retro Gamer – Issue Number 50

Retro Gamer is a magazine published in the U.K. that covers "retro" video and computer games. It has been published for many years and the oldest issues could themselves be considered retro at this point. Even this issue was published more than 11 years ago. Issue number 50 of Retro Gamer includes:

• The Dream Machine - Find out why Sega's most innovative console didn't stop the Japanese giant from crashing out of the hardware race.


• Reader Special: Your Best Gaming Moments - To celebrate our special 50th issue, 50 of our readers share their all-time favorite gaming moments.


• Zombie Nation: The House of the Dead - Sega's popular undead blaster has been terrorizing us for 12 long years. Discover why it's remained so popular.


• Desert Island Disk: Celebrity Special - In a change from our usual feature, Lemmy, Gaz Top and Simon Munnery discuss the game they can't live without.


• The History of...Grand Theft Auto - As the world patiently waits for the imminent arrival of GTA IV, Retro Gamer charts the history of one of videogaming's coolest franchises.


• The Making of... - We've reached 50 issues, which is pretty monumental for such a niche mag. Original editor Martyn Carroll reveals how your favorite magazine came into being.


• The Making Of: Gunstar Heroes - In an excellent new interview, Retro Gamer talks to Treasure about one of its most influential 16-bit blasters.


• The Big Interview: Roger Dean - His striking images have graced some of Psygnosis's most popular games. Roger Dean explains how it all began.


• The Making Of: The Great Giana Sisters - It's seen as one of the C64's best platformers, but Nintendo wasn't a fan. Manfred Trenz explains why.


• News - Help save the wonderful Museum of Computing.
• Letters - Your chance to give a little something back to the mag.
• Collector's Corner - Benjamin Robinson has a magazine collection to die for.
• Back to the Nineties - Richard Burton charts the arrival of the Game Boy.
• Retro Revival - Holy smokes Batman, you're in an 8-bit videogame.
• The Classic Game - Rediscover Howard Scott Warshaw's Yar's Revenge.
• Retro Revival - Which 8-bit version of Elite's Thundercats was the best?
• Perfect Ten - Ten Dreamcast titles to make your life that little bit better.
• The Gallery - A lovely collection of Sega arcade games to drool over.
• Retro Rated - Your latest guide to the very best downloadable classics.
• Classifieds

...and more!