Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (601-604)

See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span 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 having some negatives I wanted to scan 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.

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 (or perhaps a close family member) 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 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. 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.

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.

These all to appear to have been processed (according to the date stamped on the slides) in January 1981. I'm guessing they were all taken in 1980. The first three were apparently taken around Christmas (though they could have been taken in January 1981) but the last one appears to have been taken closer to summer time.

processed January 1981
processed January 1981
processed January 1981
processed January 1981

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

Personal Computer Games (August 1984)

Personal Computer Games (August 1984)



Personal Computer Games is a computer gaming magazine published in the U.K. in the 1980s. It covered popular 8-bit platforms like the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum among others. The August 1984 issue includes: Spectrum

• Help! 200,000 men are after you in our Game-of-the-Month
• Check out Sabre Wulf and PCG's exclusive map
• Pages of reviews plus a PCG hit from the Age of the Train
• Q-Burt - Here's a listing that'll really keep you on the hop

Commodore 64

• Encounter - state-of-the-art shoot-out that'll leave you speechless
• Games galore - seven pages of new releases
• Last month's Game-of-the-Month programmer lists his latest game

VIC 20 / Dragon / Oric/Atmos

• The good, the bad, and the ugly - scores of games played, reviewed and rated

• War Games - We look at the best of the battle simulations
• Valhalla Competition - make us laugh and win a free copy of the Game-of-the-Year
• Speech Games - Games with a lot to shout about - but can you hear what they're saying?
• Star Raiders - Jeff Minter pays homage to this Screen Classic on the Atari

Regulars

• Noticeboard - August - is this Games Month of 1984?
• Buzz - New Commodore machines get the thumbs down, plus the latest news, charts, and gossip.
• Byte-Back - Sappy letters, and some hot tips on how to increase your scores.
• Screen Test - Page after page of reviews that really put you in the picture.
• Program Library - Exclusive Commodore 64 hit listing, plus a great Spectrum game.
• Adventure-World - The White Wizard presents a great competition, and nearly gets deep-fried in a nuclear shelter.
• Challenge Chamber - Two top gamesters battle it out, plus latest hi-scores and a loony letter.
• PCG Hotline - Commander Chance picks up the phone. Are you on the other end?
• The Final Conflict - See how your votes have changed the course of history.
• Good Buy - Over 70 games get the PCG seal of approval, plus Jeff Minter goes Star Raiding.
• Entry Forms - Dare the Challenge Chamber, enter the Final Conflict, and try your luck in our competition.

...and more!

Skeleton Warriors (PlayStation, Sega Saturn)

Skeleton Warriors (PlayStation, Sega Saturn)



This game was a rather obscure license and an early release for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. Skeleton Warriors the game is based on a short-lived animated series and toy line. It's a pretty basic side-scrolling platform game but with 3D rendered graphics. As a game based on a license I guess it is okay. Contemporary reviews were mostly positive but I think everyone was still enthralled by the new 32-bit systems so any game that wasn't complete garbage often got positive reviews at this point in time. There are 21 levels and more than 100 types of enemies in addition to the main villain, Baron Dark. This isn't a bad game but there's not much special about it either unless you were just a big fan of Skeleton Warriors. Skeleton Warriors was released for both the Sega Saturn and PlayStation but as far as I know there have been no re-releases and given the nature of licenses, it seem pretty unlikely that there would ever be one. You can probably find an original pretty cheap though if you want it. I haven't compared versions directly but it seems unlikely that differences would be substantial so pick your favorite system. The ad above is from the June 1996 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly and the screen shots are from the PlayStation version of the game.

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Why Cuba’s Infant Mortality Rate Is so Low

Fidel Castro, the dictator who ruled Cuba with an iron fist for almost six decades, has been dead for more than three years now. Unfortunately, his regime didn’t die alongside him. The Caribbean’s largest island is still under the burdensome yoke of communism.

Since Castro took over in 1959, Castroism has been characterized by the brutal repression of political and civil rights, as well as low economic growth. Real GDP growth averaged a meager one percent from 1959 to 2015.

Cuba's "Low" Infant Mortality Rate

Despite the lack of freedom and the poor economic track record, Cuba is often praised for its social achievements in health care and education, some of which rival developed countries. A good example of this is the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), which is defined as the share of children dying before their first birthday. The graph below plots Cuba’s IMR against four developed countries:



Surprisingly, Cuba’s IMR in 2017 was lower than that of both the U.S. and Canada: 4.1 deaths per 1,000 live births as opposed to 5.7 in the United States and 4.5 in Canada.

This seems counterintuitive. How could a poor country like Cuba, whose income per capita is a fraction of those of developed countries, outperform two of the world’s wealthiest nations?

There are a few possibilities, both of which involve health care spending. Are these stellar numbers the result of Cuba spending more than the U.S.?

Not according to the data. As the following chart shows, Cuba’s health care spending per capita is substantially lower than that of the United States.

But higher spending doesn’t ensure better results. According to the Bloomberg Health Care Index, which measures cost efficiency in health care, the U.S. spends four times as much as Singapore in per capita terms, yet life expectancy is four years higher in the Asian country. Therefore it could be that, despite spending less, Cuba achieves better results.

Unfortunately, Cuba’s planned economy is far from what anyone would call efficient. This means that there has to be another explanation.

Data Manipulation

In fact, Cuba’s impressive IMR has a simple explanation: data manipulation.

In a 2015 paper, economist Roberto M. Gonzalez concluded that Cuba’s actual IMR is substantially higher than reported by authorities. In order to understand how Cuban authorities distort IMR data, we need to understand two concepts: early neonatal deaths and late fetal deaths.

The former is defined as the number of children dying during the first week after birth, whereas the latter is calculated as the number of fetal deaths between the 22nd week of gestation and birth. As a result, early neonatal deaths are included in the IMR, but late fetal deaths are not.

For the sample of countries analyzed by Gonzalez, the ratio of late fetal deaths to early neonatal deaths ranges between 1-to-1 and 3-to-1. However, this ratio is surprisingly high in Cuba: the number of late fetal deaths is six times as high as that of early neonatal deaths.

This number suggests that many early neonatal deaths are systematically reported as late fetal deaths in order to artificially reduce the IMR. Gonzalez estimates that Cuba’s true IMR in 2004, the year analyzed in the paper, was between 7.45 and 11.46, substantially higher than the 5.8 reported by Cuban authorities, and far worse than the rates of developed countries.

That Cuba’s dictatorship manipulates self-reported statistics shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, the Castros have been trying for years to prove that, despite the lack of freedom in their country, their regime has built a welfare state where high-quality public services are guaranteed for all citizens.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The only achievement of the 1959 Revolution was to turn Cuba into a huge prison where misery and repression dominate the lives of millions of Cubans that haven’t had the opportunity to flee the country in search of a better life.

Dictatorships have always resorted to data manipulation for political purposes. This isn’t new. What is really disturbing is that Western intellectuals continue to buy the propaganda of the oldest tyranny in the Americas.

This article is republished from Intellectual Takeout.

Luis Pablo de la Horra

Luis Pablo De La Horra holds a Bachelor’s in English and a Master’s in Finance. He writes for FEE, the Institute of Economic Affairs and Speakfreely.today.

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

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (597-600)

See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span 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 having some negatives I wanted to scan 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.

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 (or perhaps a close family member) 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 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. 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.

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.

There are no labels or dates on this set. I believe the first photo is part of a wedding set from which previous photos have been posted which would make it from the 1950s. The second photo appears to be part of a heater and/or air conditioning unit in a basement somewhere. Janitrol is the name on it an apparently they are still around. The third photo is looking out the window of a house on a lake. The final photo is from a beach somewhere and appears to be taken from the air...probably from a helicopter though I suppose there could be a cliff there or something too.

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

Games for Windows (July 2007)

Games for Windows (July 2007)
Games for Windows was the successor to the best computer games ever, Computer Gaming World. While the name changed, the content and contributors remained mostly unchanged which was a good thing. However, the magazine only continued for a short while longer. The July 2007 issue includes: Departments

• Editorial - What happens when we have the new SimCity and StarCraft II in the same issue? Our EIC's head explodes! Literally! It was, like, the grossest thing ever!


• Letters - You love to hate us and we love that you love to hate us, which makes you love us back. That's true love right there. Will you marry us?


• Start - We've got the straight dope on BioShock, Crysis, Warhammer Online, and a first look at SOE's next MMO, The Agency. Plus: How two brothers built a fantasy empire out of ASCII blocks.


• Reviews - Against all odds, The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar is actually worth your time and money - and might even pu you away from World of WarCraft. We sound off on this, as well as ArmA: Combat Operations, Spider-Man 3, and the final episode in Sam & Max's first season.


• Extend - Don't you hate those random ninja guild invites and gold-farming spam in MMOs? Columnist Cindy Yans speaks her mind. Also: Tom and Bruce team up to travel the lands of Middle-earth, and the GFW staff chimes in on Blizzard's big StarCraft II announcement.
• Tech - How badly do you need to get your gaming fix to-go? This month, we look at bleeding-edge ultramobile PCs and cell phones. Plus, we review AMD's first DX10 graphics card and Gateway's sweet 24-inch monitor.
• Greenspeak - Let's hear it for career suicide! Jeff bites the hand that feeds with some griping about GFW Live. Yay!

Review

• StarCraft II - It took 'em long enough, but Blizzard finally announced StarCraft II at a massive unveiling ceremony in South Korea - and we were there to scream like girls!

Cover Story

• Cover Story: SimCity: Societies - The next chapter in EA's long-running SimCity franchise is headed in a radical new direction. This month, we take a world-exclusive first look at how developer Tilted Mill plans to renovate the aging series.

...and more!

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Odyssey 2 Adventure – Volume 1, Issue 2 – 1982

Odyssey 2 Adventure – Volume 1, Issue 2 – 1982



While late 1970s and early 1980s gaming memories may conjur up the Atari VCS (A.K.A. the Atari 2600) for most people, there were a number of competitors. The Magnavox Odyssey 2 (squared) was one of those. Though it was a distant 3rd in sales behind the Atari VCS and the Intellivision, it still did quite wel for a while. It even had it's own dedicated megazine. Well, quarterly newsletter anyway. Issue Number 2 of Odyssey 2 Adventure from 1982 includes:

• Meeting of the Minds
• The Future is Now
• Strategies
• The Results Are In
• Confessions
• Coming Up
• Tips

...and more!

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (593-596)

See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span 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 having some negatives I wanted to scan 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.

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 (or perhaps a close family member) 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 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. 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.

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.

All of the photos in this set were taken in the 1960s but other than the processing date they are unlabeled. The first photo is of a little girl playing in the snow, the second appears to be a sea anemone of some sort, the third features a young man and woman and the final photo...I really have no idea what it is. A creepy container in the woods to store dead bodies?

processed January 1966
processed March 1965
processed October 1964
processed September 1962

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

“Let Them Eat Whole Foods”: The Appalling Elitism of Dollar Store Bans

Should city governments dictate where you can shop for food? If your neighbors see a need for a store, and happily patronize it, should outsiders shut down that option?

These are the battle lines of the emerging movement against dollar stores. Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mesquite, Texas, Dekalb County, Georgia, New Orleans, Louisiana, and other municipalities nationwide are trying to limit the number of dollar stores that can serve their population.

The people who actually shop at dollar stores love them. The most frequent customers are seniors on fixed incomes, cash-strapped students, and busy parents. If you don’t have a car or access to public transit, there’s probably one within five miles of your house. If you drive, there’s a dollar store on your way to just about anywhere.

Only Dollar Tree still prices all its goods at $1, but Family Dollar and Dollar General might have 10,000 products for that price, and reasonable deals on $2-$10 goods. It’s a place where almost anyone on any budget can splurge a little on treating themselves.

Sixty-two percent of adults surveyed by brand intelligence firm Morning Consult say Dollar Tree “has a positive effect on my community” (compared to 51 percent for Starbucks and 59 percent for Target).

People who can afford more choices—driving out to a big-box store, buying in bulk, ordering online, patronizing a farmer’s market—simply can’t see the perspective of someone for whom the dollar store is the most practical option.

Relatively wealthy dollar store detractors exhibit the obliviousness of an out-of-touch aristocracy. According to legend, Marie Antoinette, queen of France, when told that her subjects were going hungry for want of bread, responded blithely, “Let them eat cake.”

Now, politicians and middle-class activists seek to ban sources of $1 bread with an unspoken, “Let them eat Whole Foods.”

“Terrible food...and such small portions!”

Opponents of dollar stores often contradict each other or even themselves.

Critics objected when suburban growth sent stores running for whiter, more affluent suburbs. But dollar stores’ explicit attempts to reverse this trend—to set up affordable retail options in poorer, underserved neighborhoods—are somehow also the target of scorn.

You’ll also hear critics claim dollar stores engage in “predatory” behavior by offering prices that are simultaneously too low (undercutting potential competitors) and also too high (as compared to a per-unit cost at the Costco 15 miles away).

Haters complain retail jobs offered by dollar stores are “low quality and low-wage” but also that dollar stores don’t create enough of these low-quality, undesirable jobs. One is reminded of the Woody Allen line complaining about a restaurant’s “terrible food...and such small portions!”

A Tulsa councilwoman begrudgingly confirmed that dollar retailers offer essentials like toothpaste and school supplies, bread and eggs, in areas where supermarkets “have consistently failed.” Why this is condemnable, rather than laudable, she does not explain.

With backward economic thinking, CNN claimed dollar stores “limit poor communities’ access to healthy food,” blaming low-cost retailers for the gaps they try to fill.

Bans on walkable, ultra-affordable stores do nothing to increase the availability of fresh food; they merely stamp out the only existing option.

A Failure to Relate

So if not those surface-level concerns, what’s really driving dollar-store bans? Could it be a simple lack of empathy?

In the neighborhoods and rural areas where dollar retailers are most popular, they offer affordable groceries to those with tight budgets, packed schedules, and limited mobility.

These laws are proposed by people who don’t shop in dollar stores and can’t understand why anyone would want to.

A planner and architect from Baltimore said dollar stores were popping up in poorer neighborhoods, “like a parasite.” Bill Torpy, columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said County Commissioners were right to be “disgusted” as dollar stores moved in (the headline has since been changed to “rightly sees little value in”).



Residents of Chester, Vermont, rejected a proposed dollar store because residents feared “the beginning of the end for Chester’s Vermontiness.” Dollar store skeptics nationwide say they value “community character” and reject the “unsightliness” of dollar store signage.

For people with cars, free time, and disposable income, “just drive two miles to the grocery store” may seem like benign advice. But for people just getting by, it’s dismissive of their real challenges.

If the same work had been done by a food bank—30,000 locations providing ultra-affordable, shelf-stable groceries, concentrated in areas with the most need—would we applaud it?

Perhaps, but only if the signage were subtle and they weren’t close enough that people could walk to them. We wouldn’t want to look like the kind of neighborhood that needs those.

It’s not wrong to care about community character or beautiful streets. But it’s an injustice to care about them so much that you’ll use government power to block (other) people’s access to affordable bread, pencils, and toilet paper. And it adds condescending insult to injury to claim to be doing so “for their own good.”

Laura Williams

Dr. Laura Williams  teaches communication strategy to undergraduates and executives. She is a passionate advocate for critical thinking, individual liberties, and the Oxford Comma.

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

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Hardcore Computist (August 1988)

Hardcore Computist (August 1988)



Hardcore Computist was a technically oriented magazine that mostly covered the Apple II. It was controversial for its emphasis on circumventing the disk-based copy protection of the time. The August 1988 issue includes:

• Editorial
• Bugs
• Most Wanted Softkeys

Features

• Mixing ProDOS with Thexder - Here's how to put Thexder on a disk with ProDOS.
• Infocom Decoder Revisited - Here's how to add semi-automatic decoding to the Infocom Decoder. No more tedious hand decoding.
• Cracking on the IIe - Another look at using the auxiliary memory on the IIe to remove copy protection.
• Might & Magic Revisited - More information on what's where and how to get a little more. Also included, a complete item list with the various equipping/use effects and bonuses.
• Might & Magic Character Editor - Some much needed help for the adventurer in a neat and easy to use format.
• An indepth guide to Ultima IV - A fairly comprehensive look at the excellent adventure.
• Computing for 1-3 year olds
- How to use your computer to teach your child in the formative years.
• The Product Monitor
- Games, Bugs and fixes, and some juicy rumors and propaganda.

Notes

• A better way to print Starter Kit DOCs
• Curing Fatal System Error #0911
• Realtime Situation Control using CDAs
• Chuck Yeager's Advanced Fight Trainer

Softkeys

• A.I.
• BoulderDash
• BoulderDash Construction Set
• DeathSword
• Design Your Own Home: Architecture
• Design Your Own Home: Interior
• Design Your Own Home: Landscape
• Facemaker
• Gauntlet
• Kings Quest II
• Mastery Arithmetic
• Microzine #26
• Muppet Slate v1.0
• PFS: Graph
• Rad Warrior
• Rings of Ziflin
• Seaspeller
• Smart Eyes
• Spell It!
• Wings of Fury

APT's

• Castle Wolfenstein
• Marble Madness IIgs
• Might & Magic
• Ultima IV
• Ultima V

Playing Tips

• Coveted Mirror
• Deathlord
• Might & Magic
• Oo-Topos
• Ultima IV

IBM Notes

• Help Wanted!

...and more!

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (589-592)

See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span 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 having some negatives I wanted to scan 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.

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 (or perhaps a close family member) 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 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. 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.

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.

All of the photos in this set were processed in January 1961 and were probably taken around that time. Otherwise they are not labeled. The first two photos are of a young girl. The Christmas cards on the wall would seem to verify that this was taken near the date stamped on the slides in December 1960 or January 1961. The third photo is a group of people having coffee outside...maybe breakfast. I'm not sure why the one person is wearing what appears to be a motorcycle helmet with face mask. The final photo is of the interior of someone's kitchen.

processed January 1961
processed January 1961
processed January 1961
processed January 1961

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

‘Jack Ryan’ Gets 4 Pinocchios on Venezuela

Despite Venezuela’s track record of seizing the means of production of a multitude of industries⁠, there are still those who have trouble calling Venezuela a socialist state.

The denials are getting more creative. The most recent comes in Jack Ryan, Amazon Prime’s hit show starring John Krasinski as the protagonist from Tom Clancy’s best-selling books.

A Glaring Omission

Venezuela and its suffering take center stage in the plot of season two. Jack Ryan, who in season one was a Ph.D. economist/CIA analyst who stopped ISIS from blowing up Washington, DC, is now a national security policy instructor in Langley, Virginia, home of the CIA’s headquarters. Speaking to a roomful of students, Professor Ryan explains why Venezuelans face suffering of Biblical proportions despite their vast wealth in natural resources (emphasis added).

The fact is that Venezuela is arguably the single greatest resource of oil and minerals on the planet. So, why is this country in the midst of one of the greatest humanitarian crises in modern history? Let's meet President Nicolas Reyes. After rising to power on a wave of nationalist pride, in a mere six years, this guy has crippled the national economy by half. He has raised the poverty rate by almost 400 percent. Luckily for the rest of us, he’s up for reelection.

Did you catch that? The writers of Jack Ryan are unable to say what actually caused the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. As Sean Malone explains in a new Out of Frame episode:

In the real world, Venezuela's problems have one, incredibly predictable root cause... And it's not simply “corruption" or "nationalist pride." We need to be clear about this.

The cause is socialism.

The show’s omission of this basic fact is jarring … but wait. It gets worse. Professor Ryan then goes on to describe Reyes’s political opponent.

This is Gloria Bonalde. Now, Gloria is a history professor turned activist. She’s running against [Reyes] on a social justice platform and on the strength of, in my humble opinion, just not being an *sshole. (laughter)

In Jack Ryan’s Venezuela, it’s those who promise “social justice” who are going to save the people from a humanitarian crisis. This turns history on its head.

Make Venezuela Great Again?

By making the villain of Jack Ryan a nationalist, the writers take a not-so-subtle jab at US President Donald Trump, whose “America First” slogan has been described as nationalism “that betrays America’s values.” (Trump also describes himself as a nationalist.)

Hugo Chávez, however, was not elected on some “Make Venezuela Great Again” platform. Lest we forget, back in the real world, “social equity and justice” were precisely what candidate Hugo Chávez promised the people of Venezuela when he was elected in 1998 with 56.2 percent of the vote.

To be sure, there’s a line between “social justice” and “socialism,” and it’s unclear precisely where Gloria Bonalde, the fictional presidential contender in Jack Ryan, stands (though her story is suspiciously similar to El Commandante’s). In any event, for Hugo Chávez the picture is quite clear. He crossed the line from social justice champion to socialist long ago.

He set out to do precisely that, ordering the state to seize the means of production (sometimes using soldiers to do it) of whatever industries he could: steel, agriculture, shipping, mining, telecommunications, electric power, and more. In doing so, he brought about the misery Venezuelans now endure.

Let’s be clear. Nationalism presents its own dangers. Yet these dangers are muted without state power, specifically nationalism’s common bedfellow: socialism.

The fact that the writers of Jack Ryan cannot bring themselves to even use the word socialism to describe what is textbook socialism is disheartening. But the fact that they make Venezuela’s savior someone cut from the same ideological cloth as Hugo Chávez is a grave deceit.

As Malone points out, the stakes are too high for such dishonesty.

Literally millions of people have had to flee the country to find food and shelter or to avoid becoming another victim of Nicolás Maduro's regime. We need to understand how and why this happened, and Jack Ryan doesn't even try to get it right.

Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, the adage goes. Shows like Jack Ryan are making the job of learning it that much more difficult.

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, and Fox News. 

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

dom cg - Dominion Tank Police

Computer & Video Games (June 1986)

Computer & Video Games (June 1986)
Computer + Video Games was a very long running computer and video game magazine published in the U.K. that was published throughout most of the 1980s. Issue number 56 from June 1986 includes: Features

• Cauldron Competition
• C+VG Top 30 Charts
• Ideas Central's Arcade Special
• Arcade High Scores
• Players Guide to Nemesis
• Licenced to Thrill!
• Ghost 'N' Goblins Preview
• Program Listing: Bouncer (BBC)
• Get Dexter! Map
• Football Crazy
• Rob Hubbard Interview
• Datahits Competition
• East Meets West
• Ideas Central
• Adventure News
• Adventure Helpline
• Adventure Reviews
• Amiga Software
• Letters From America
• Customized Computer Competition
• The Bug Hunters
• The Bat-Map
• Bat-Tips
• Mailbag
• Next Month

News & Reviews

• Reviews This Issue
• Game of the Month: Cauldron II
• C+VG Hits! Quazatron
• Heavy on the Magick
• Karate Combat
• Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
• Green Beret
• Golf
• Alien Highway
• ...and more!


• Adventure - Mikro-Gen look set to cause a stir with Equinox and Stainless Steel. Wild Bill Steeley, boss of Microprose, always causes a stir wherever he goes - and so do his games. We look at some new releases from the flight ace. Plus a sneak look at CRL's new Cyborg!

...and more!

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (585-588)

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.

Mostly pictures of mountains and fields here and one is from the air. I can't tell what the last photos is so I'm just putting it here in case someone else can identify it. None of these are labeled or dated but they are probably from the late 1950s or early 1960s.

processed January 1961

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

Info (September/October 1988)

Info (September/October 1988)



Info (or .info) was a magazine published for Commodore computers. Originally it covered the Commodore 64 but expanded to cover the Commodore 128 and Amiga later on. It was unique in that it was published using Commodore 8-bit and then Amiga computers. The September 1988 issue includes: Features

• Info at Five - A nostalgic look at the first five years of Info.
• Digitizing Made Easy - The "Digitizing Demon", Oran Sands, shares his secrets and sheds some light ("you need lots of it") on this elusive graphics technique.
• The MAC vs. the AMIGA - Bob Lindstrom puts the two powerhouses on the same track for a side by side evaluation. You may be surprised at his conclusions!
• CES Show Report - The biggest show on earth was a feast for gamers in Chicago!

Reviews

• C64
• The Write Stuff
• COMAL Power Driver
• Flexidraw 5.5
• C64/C128
• Brown Boxes
• Super Graphics
• Symbol Master
• C128 Only
• C128 Developers' Kit
• Brainstorm
• Amiga
• Deluxe Help
• Excellence
• ARexx
• WordPerfect Library
• TxEd Plus
• 3-Demon
• Color Commander
• Micron Memory Board
• Mathmation
• Graphics Studio
• Flicker Fixer
• Intellitype
• 3D Spex

Departments

• Editors Page
• Reader Mail
• The Gallery
• Midnite Gazette
• Eye on Education
• News & Views
• Rumor Mill
• New Products
• Leemon at Large
• Copy Corner
• GeoStuff
• Magazine Index
• Best of Public Domain
• User Group Forum
• Real World
• INFO Update

Etc.

• Back Issues
• Unclassifieds
• Advertiser Index

...and more!

KUMIKO

No, Jesus Wasn’t a Socialist

The claim that Jesus Christ was a socialist has become a popular refrain among liberals, even from some whose Christianity is lukewarm at best. But is there any truth in it?

That question cannot be answered without a reliable definition of socialism. A century ago, it was widely regarded as government ownership of the means of production. Jesus never once even hinted at that concept, let alone endorsed it. Yet the definition has changed over time. When the critiques of economists such as Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman demolished any intellectual case for the original form of socialism, and reality proved them to be devastatingly right, socialists shifted to another version: central planning of the economy.

One can scour the New Testament and find nary a word from Jesus that calls for empowering politicians or bureaucrats to allocate resources, pick winners and losers, tell entrepreneurs how to run their businesses, impose minimum wages or maximum prices, compel workers to join unions, or even to raise taxes. When the Pharisees attempted to trick Jesus of Nazareth into endorsing tax evasion, he cleverly allowed others to decide what properly belongs to the State by responding, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s.”

Nonetheless, one of the charges that led to Jesus’s crucifixion was indeed tax evasion.

Changing the Definition

With the reputation of central planners in the dumpster worldwide, socialists have largely moved on to a different emphasis: the welfare state. The socialism of Bernie Sanders and his young ally Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is that of the benevolent, egalitarian nanny state where rich Peter is robbed to pay poor Paul. It’s characterized by lots of “free stuff” from the government—which of course isn’t free at all. It’s quite expensive both in terms of the bureaucratic brokerage fees and the demoralizing dependency it produces among its beneficiaries. Is this what Jesus had in mind?

Hardly. Yes, amid the holidays, it’s especially timely to think about helping the poor. It was, after all, a very important part of Jesus's message. How helping the poor is to be done, however, is mighty important.

Christians are commanded in Scripture to love, to pray, to be kind, to serve, to forgive, to be truthful, to worship the one God, to learn and grow in both spirit and character. All of those things are very personal. They require no politicians, police, bureaucrats, political parties, or programs.

“The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want,” says Jesus in Matthew 26:11 and Mark 14:7. The key words there are you can help and want to help. He didn’t say, “We’re going to make you help whether you like it or not.”

In Luke 12:13-15, Jesus is approached with a redistribution request. “Master, speak to my brother that he divideth the inheritance with me,” a man asks. Jesus replied, “Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?” Then he rebuked the petitioner for his envy.

Christianity is not about passing the buck to the government when it comes to relieving the plight of the poor. Caring for them, which means helping them overcome it, not paying them to stay poor or making them dependent upon the state, has been an essential fact in the life of a true Christian for 2,000 years. Christian charity, being voluntary and heartfelt, is utterly distinct from the compulsory, impersonal mandates of the state.

What Does Scripture Say?

But don’t take my word for it. Consider what the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:7: “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

And in Jesus’s Parable of the Good Samaritan, the traveler is regarded as “good” because he personally helped the stricken man at the roadside with his own time and resources. If, instead, he had urged the helpless chap to wait for a government check to arrive, we would likely know him today as the Good-for-Nothing Samaritan.

Jesus clearly held that compassion is a wholesome value to possess, but I know of no passage in the New Testament that suggests it’s a value he’d impose by force or gunpoint—in other words, by socialist politics.

Socialists are fond of suggesting that Jesus disdained the rich, citing two particular moments: his driving of the money-changers from the Temple and his remark that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. In the first instance, Jesus was angry that God’s house was being misused. Indeed, he never drove a money-changer from a bank or a marketplace. In the second, he was warning that with great wealth, great temptations come, too.

These were admonitions against misplaced priorities, not class warfare messages.

Creating Wealth Is a Virtue—Not Redistributing It

In his Parable of the Talents, Jesus talks about a man who entrusts his wealth to three servants for a time. When the man returns, he learns that one of the servants safeguarded his share by burying it, the second put his share to work and multiplied it, and the third invested his and generated the greatest return of all. Who’s the hero in the parable? The wealth-creating third man. The first one is admonished, and his share is taken and given to the third.

That doesn’t sound very socialist, does it?

Likewise, in Jesus’s Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, the story upholds capitalist virtues, not socialist ones. When some workers complain that others were paid more, the employer rightfully defends the right of voluntary contract, private property, and, in effect, the law of supply and demand.

At Christmas time and throughout the year, Jesus would want each of us to be generous in helping the needy. But if you think he meant for politicians to do it with police power at twice the cost and half the effectiveness of private charity, you’re not reading the same New Testament I am.

This article was reprinted with permission from the Washington Examiner.

Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. Reed is President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Ambassador for Global Liberty at the Foundation for Economic Education. He is also author of Real Heroes: Incredible True Stories of Courage, Character, and Conviction and Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism. Follow on Twitter and Like on Facebook.

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

Super Play (April 1993)

Super Play (April 1993)



Super Play is a magazine that was published in the U.K. and dedicated to the Super Nintendo. The April 1993 issue includes: Super Express

• Preview Special - Join us for a closer look at the hottest new games about to be launched in both America and Japan!
• Books - Jonathan Davies comes over all literary.
• Live From Hell City - Peter Evans explains the sort of music the Japanese like to listen to!
• Anime World - Live action vs anime - why the Japanese prefer to do it on paper.
• Super Play's Hot List - The games we play the most - and which we think you really ought to go out and buy!
• The Golden Bee Awards - The results are in! Find out whether the games you voted for came out tops!
• Datebook - Exclusive to Super Play! Every single game coming out worldwide on the SNES over the next couple of months!
• Chart Throb - The biggest selling games around the world this month.
• Super Play Interview - We have a chat about Street Fighter II, Final Fight II and life in general with Joe Morici of Capcom USA!

Super Player's Guides

• Street Fighter II - The ultimate guide! How to access those combos and more!
• Soul Blazer - A start-to-finish guide to Actraiser's fabulous sequel.
• Super Star Wars - How to win without relying on The Force!

Special Features

• Star Fox: The First Super F/X Game - The word 'revolutionary' shouldn't be used lightly, but it's hard to see how else Starfox could be described. There's no two ways about it - the arrival of the Super F/X chip is the most important event since the launch of the SNES itself, and one look at Starfox's amazing 3D graphics will show you exactly why...


• Manga Scope - Where do they get their ideas from? Walk into any Japanese newsagent and you'll soon see! There are Street Fighter II comics, Ranma 1/2 comics, Dragonball comics, Gundam comics... We reveal the games that are based on comics - and the comics that are based on games.

Import Reviews

• Aliens Vs Predator - Great screen monsters clash on the Super NES!
• Flying Hero - A cute, bright and surprisingly lovable new Japanese blaster.
• Ranma 1/2 Part Two - Cute beat-'em-up action - but does it top the original?
• Harley's Humongous Adventure - Incredible shrinking man...
• Super Batter Up - Like baseball? Then this ain't one to queue for.
• Imperium - It's go giant robots, yes, but it ain't no Cybernator.
• Wordtris - Cross Tetris with Scrabble and you'd get this idea.
• Chester Cheetah - The US equivalent of Colin Curly arrives on SNES.
• Pro Baseball League - Like baseball? This is the best SNES version yet.
• X-Zone - Best Super Scope game yet (for what it's worth).

UK Reviews

• Mario Paint - Draw your own SNES graphics!
• Gods - Bitmap Bros classic arrives improved.
• Super SWIV - A Brit blaster to beat 'em all?
• King Arthur's World - Lemmings 2?
• Test Drive 2 - A PC classic, but does it work on SNES?
• Lethal Weapon - It's all three films rolled into one!
• World Class Rugby - Kick Off revisited.

Regulars

• Mode 7 - Packed to the brim with playing tips, and incorporating Ask Ade, our regular games advice column.
• Superstore - Whatever accessories you're after for your Super Nintendo, from T-shirts to binders, you need look no further than this!
• Gamefreak - You've been asking us so many complicated technical questions that we've had to specially extend Gamefreak this month to cope!
• Play Back - Pages and pages of your letters! Plus the very first examples of your envelope art - and they're great!
• Supermarket - Bargains galore in what are surely the world's finest reader ads!
• What Cart? - Every single Super Nintendo game in the world rated! (And there are loads of them...)
• Subscriptions - Absolutely your last chance to take advantage of ordering a subscription at the old low price. You could save yourself a small fortune!
• Next Month - Our increasingly dubious predictions as to what'll be in the next month's Super Play.
• Cartography - All those tricky technical terms that've been troubling you explained.

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (581-584)

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 are baby pics of the same individual apparently taken at the same time. These were processed in May 1972 and were presumably taken near that time. Whoever this individual is, they would be about 49 years old now.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see higher resolution photos and also 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 May 1972
processed May 1972
processed May 1972
processed May 1972

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.