CD book - Gunbuster

STart (Fall 1986)

STart (Fall 1986)

STart was a spin-off of ANTIC that featured the Atari ST. It was published from the Summer of 1986 until the April/May 1991 issue for a total of 42 issues. It was initially published quarterly but was eventually published more frequently. The Fall 1986 issue includes:

Features

• Play Reversi On Your Desktop - A Desk Accessory Tutorial
• The Amazing Mousetrap - Avoid Annoying Menu Drops
• The AI Apprentice - Explore Expert Systems With XLISP
• Seven Word Processors Examined
• Swapping Art with Other computers - IFF Standards For The ST
• Parsers, Rooms, Objects and Trolls - The Adventurer's Tale
• Probing the FDC - All About The Floppy Disk Controller
• FujiBoink! Behind the Bit Planes - Find Out How

Departments

• Procedures - Structured I/O - Complicated C Technique Simplified
• Perspectives - Silicon Soothsaying
• Developer's Notebook - Transportable GEM - IBM to ST

Reviews

• Which C For Me? - START's First C Comparison
• Editorial
• Dialog Box
• Alert Box
• START Chart
• Disk Instructions
• Clipboard
• Authors
• Resources
• Advertising Information

...and more!

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (877-880)

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. These came to me second 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.

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 we found 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. 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. His 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.

These photos are undated and unlabeled but a couple appear to be from a February 22nd, 1958 wedding that I have scanned other dated slides from. The others are likely from roughly the same time period. One looks like a state capitol building and I'm not sure where the Chronology of Thomas Jefferson is from.

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

Economists Slam Biden Stimulus as ‘Economically Unjustified’ Plan That ‘Incentivizes Unemployment’

President Biden has abandoned bipartisan compromise and pushed full-steam-ahead to pass his entire sweeping $1.9 trillion COVID-19 spending package. The president’s proposal includes $1,400 “stimulus” checks for more Americans, $350 billion to bail out state and local governments, a renewal of super-charged unemployment benefits through September, money for vaccine distribution, a federal $15 minimum wage, and much, much more. Democrats in Congress are determined to mark up the bill over the next few weeks and pass it by early March.

But the state of the economy doesn’t support this spending bonanza—not even close. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is projecting a “rapid” resurgence in economic growth and a slower but steady return to pre-pandemic employment levels without any further stimulus. (We’ve already spent an astounding $4 trillion). And top free-market economists interviewed exclusively by FEE all argued that Biden’s drive for more massive stimulus is driven by politics, not sound economics.

Expanding unemployment benefits during a recession has a predictable result: slower employment recovery.

“We absolutely don't need another multi-trillion dollar stimulus,” Texas Tech economics professor Alex Salter said. “We've already spent $4 trillion fighting COVID since last year. Lack of spending isn't our problem. Government should spend more on producing and distributing the vaccine, and otherwise get out of the way.”

Meanwhile, economist Stephen Moore of FreedomWorks argued that government spending can actually be a negative for the economy, because the money has to come from somewhere else. 

“Helicopter money merely redistributes wealth—it does not create it,” he said. “We don't need this extra stimulus.”

Moore, who served as a top economic advisor for former President Trump, compared the Biden effort to similar stimulus bonanzas under the Obama administration, which resulted in the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression.

“We learned from the Obama $830 billion "shovel ready" plan that Keynesian stimulus does not work,” Moore said. “Obama’s own numbers indicate that we ended up with fewer jobs than if we had done nothing at all to ‘stimulate’ the economy.” 

Another prominent free-market economist, Mises Institute Senior Fellow Robert P. Murphy, offered a similar assessment. He called the Biden proposal “economically unjustified” and suggested that “any of its good features could be achieved more directly through other policies.”

The $400 a week unemployment benefit bonus included in the proposed bill incentivizes unemployment because it pays people not to work.

The economists interviewed by FEE took issue with not just the Biden plan’s massive spending levels and sticker price, but also several of its specific proposals such as more “stimulus” checks and the further expansion of ultra-generous unemployment benefits—originally sold as “temporary” last March—that would result in many Americans earning more money by not working, thereby disincentivizing employment.  

“More checks don't make sense,” Salter, the Texas Tech economist, said. “Household balance sheets are strong. Many households saved large portions of the previous checks. Yet another direct payment isn't about economic stability. It's about buying political support.”

For his part, Murphy sympathized with the plight of those crushed by COVID-19 lockdowns but still viewed the checks as a misguided proposal.

“It is understandable that citizens want relief checks to compensate for coercive measures preventing them from earning income, but we shouldn't continue this trend of everyone getting checks from the government,” he said. “Ultimately the public isn't made richer by paying taxes that are then partially handed back to them.”

The economists had particularly harsh words for Biden’s proposed expansion of unemployment benefits way above normal levels. Unemployment payouts have long been shown in economic research to prolong unemployment and increase its baseline level.

“The best thing we can do for long-run economic health is get everything opened back up safely,” 

“Expanding unemployment benefits during a recession has a predictable result: slower employment recovery,” Salter argued. “We should be helping people get back to work—not making it more financially attractive to stay home.” 

“The $400 a week unemployment benefit bonus included in the proposed bill incentivizes unemployment because it pays people not to work,” Moore added. “Passing this bill means risking the loss of more than 5 million jobs if people opt to receive unemployment benefits rather than work.”

In sum, though, the economists all agreed that no amount of spending can “stimulate” an economy that is in some places still locked down, and in many places still at least partially restricted. If people cannot legally go to work or engage in commerce, no amount of money-printing or number of blank checks can bring about prosperity, they agreed.

“The best thing we can do for long-run economic health is get everything opened back up safely,” Salter said. 

Murphy reached a similar conclusion, arguing that “the best way to help the economy is to end political lockdowns, allowing businesses, workers, and  customers to find the optimal mix of protective measures to deal with the threat of COVID-19.”

Of course, Biden’s “stimulus” legislation is really a political wishlist, chock-full of partisan policies like a $15 minimum wage and subsidies for poorly-managed blue states. Yet this isn’t immediately obvious from Biden’s rhetoric or much of the media’s coverage. As a result, the proposal polls well with voters.

With the growing chorus of free-market economists calling out the president’s pretense, hopefully the public will soon realize that there’s little economic justification for Biden’s political spending push.

SIGN UP: Click here to subscribe to Brad Polumbo’s email newsletter for your two-minute daily update on free-market political news and policy analysis.

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Opinion Editor at the Foundation for Economic Education.

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

Economists Slam Biden Stimulus as ‘Economically Unjustified’ Plan That ‘Incentivizes Unemployment’ /a>

ginrei3 - Giant Robo

Official Sega Saturn Magazine (U.K.) (December 1995)

Official Sega Saturn Magazine (U.K.) (December 1995)

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (873-876)

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. These came to me second 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. 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 friend or 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. His 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 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.

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.

The first photo shows a woman with her dog. The others were all taken in a church. All the photos in this set were taken in 1957 and/or 1958.

Processed April 1958
Processed April 1958
September 1957
processed April 1958

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

Hi Octane (Sega Saturn)

Hi Octane (Sega Saturn)

ginrei2 - Giant Robo Gaiden Ginrei

The Bottom Line (Apple II)

The Bottom Line (Apple II)

This particular ad is from the premiere issue of inCider from January 1983. inCider was a magazine dedicated to the Apple II line of computers. Back in the day, there were tons of computer mail order places advertised in computer magazines. I'm more familiar with those specializing in Commodore 64 related items but many of these places sold systems of all types. "The Bottom Line" is not one I recognize but this is a few years before I got my first computer and obviously in this ad thay are pushing Apple II related items.

The price for the Apple compatible Franklin Ace 1000 was $1549. That includes a disk drive and amber monitor. That sounds like a lot (and it was) but it's a bargain compared to the price of real Apple equipment at the time. But who wants an amber monitor? Not much good for games...

It's amazing how much a dot matrix printer cost. The Star Micronics Gemini-10, quite a popular printer at the time, was $419.88 in 1983. That number already sounds expensive but adjusted for inflation, that would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,300 today.

Modems weren't much better. An abysmally slow 300 Baud modem was $239. A more respectable 1200bps would cost you $569. And that was about as fast as you could get at the time.

But for a real demonstration of just how far prices for technology have fallen, take a look at the hard drive prices. A whopping 5 MB would cost you at least $2000. That's more like $5,400 in today's dollars. For some more fun, take a look at the RAM prices...

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (869-872)

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. These came to me second 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. 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 friend or 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. His 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 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.

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.

The first photo in this set shows a young woman. The next three are outdoor photos of a stream, a rainbow and a lake. None are labeled except for the stream which is labeled pretty generically. These were likely taken in the late 1950s or early 1960s.

Stream at Lakeside

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

10 Companies That Advertised During Brady’s First Super Bowl in 2002 (and the Story They Tell)

Super Bowl 55 is now history. In some ways, it was a familiar scene. After 60 minutes of play, Tom Brady once again hoisted the Lombardi Trophy, leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a 31-9 drubbing of the Kansas City Chiefs.

It was Brady’s seventh Super Bowl win and his fifth Super Bowl MVP award. Of course, #12 was wearing a different uniform this time. But that wasn’t the only thing that changed.

According to Twitter, Super Bowl commercials have also changed a lot. There was a lot of grumbling about that, but c'mon—companies are shelling out $5.5 million for just 30 seconds of air time. That’s more than double the $2.2 million companies were paying when Brady won his first Super Bowl in 2002. If you’re paying that much, you can say whatever you want, as far as I’m concerned.

In any event, there was a bigger and better lesson on Super Bowl commercials. As Jon Erlichman, anchor of BNN Bloomberg's morning program “The Open,” observed, Tom Brady’s Super Bowl success has outlasted many titans of corporate America.

Consider some of the names that bought Super Bowl airtime during Brady’s first rodeo in January 2002: AOL, Blockbuster, Radio Shack, Circuit City, CompUSA, Sears, Yahoo, VoiceStream Wireless, and Gateway Computers.

The Titans of Yesterday

Notice a theme? That list features some companies we saw in Captain Marvel, the 2019 hit movie that nailed 90s nostalgia and reminded us how fast the world had changed. Like when Blockbuster Video stores were still a thing.

For those who may not recall, when Brady was winning his first Super Bowl, Blockbuster was approaching its peak. In 2004, it operated 9,094 stores and employed some 84,300 people. The company was pulling in $6 billion in revenue annually and looked invincible. Today, a single Blockbuster store remains open—in the world.

Remember RadioShack? Once upon a time, it seemed as if you could find one of their brick-and-mortar stores in every corner of the USA. Not anymore. In 2015, RadioShack filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, in large part because of those many store locations, which cannibalized revenues.

Sears, one of the historic giants of retail, managed to make it to 2018 before announcing its bankruptcy. Its stores continue to close so fast, it’s hard to tell how many remain in operation. (The best guess is about 60.)

As economist Mark Perry points out, companies on top have a very hard time staying on top.

In 2009, Circuit City announced it was going out of business after 60 years of serving customers. Hotjobs was acquired by Yahoo shortly after Brady beat the Rams in Super Bowl 36, but the company went defunct in 2011.

AOL and Yahoo both still exist, of course, but they were gobbled up by Verizon in 2015 ($4.4 billion) and 2017 ($4.5 billion), respectively—though their parent company indicated in a 2018 SEC filing that both of the communications giants are virtually worthless.

As for CompUSA, VoiceStream Wireless, and Gateway Computers, there’s a good chance you don’t even remember them. But not too long ago, all these companies were on top, buying millions of dollars of airtime in an effort to stay there.

Blockbuster, Netflix, and Schumpeterian Creative Destruction

Some might see the collapse of Blockbuster, Sears and company as a sign of something terribly wrong with our economic system. After all, Blockbuster alone paid rent at tens of thousands of properties and employed tens of thousands of workers. Sears was the largest American retailer (by far) for decades.

Watching the companies we once shopped at flounder and fail can be surprising, jarring even. But a closer look shows this cycle is not unusual and is actually the sign of a healthy market economy, not a dysfunctional one. What may seem like pure destruction actually clears the way for economic innovation and renewal. “Creative destruction” is how the economist Joseph Schumpeter (1880-1950) characterized business failure in a free market.

As economist Mark Perry points out, companies on top have a very hard time staying on top. Perry, a scholar at the American Enterprise institute and a professor of economics at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus, compared the 1955 Fortune 500 companies to the 2019 Fortune 500. He found that just 52 were still on the list six decades later.

Schumpeter understood that creative destruction is not a sign of expiration but of life.

“The fact that nearly nine of every 10 Fortune 500 companies in 1955 are gone, merged, reorganized, or contracted demonstrates that there’s been a lot of market disruption, churning, and Schumpeterian creative destruction over the last six decades,” Perry wrote. “It’s reasonable to assume that when the Fortune 500 list is released 60 years from now in 2079, almost all of today’s Fortune 500 companies will no longer exist as currently configured, having been replaced by new companies in new, emerging industries, and for that we should be extremely thankful.”

Perry is right. As he explains, the rise and fall of companies is a positive sign of a dynamic, vibrant, and innovative market economy driven by incentives to better serve consumers. The fact that turnover is increasing in speed because of instantaneous communication and a hyper-competitive global economy is a good thing, not something to be feared.

Take Blockbuster. I have nothing against Blockbuster. I rented lots of movies from them. They had a great selection and their prices were reasonable (usually $1 or $2). But Blockbuster also had problems, not the least of which was a business model built on slapping gobs of late fees on customers. (In fact, $800 million worth annually.)

Customers hate late fees. A big fat late fee was what inspired entrepreneur Reed Hastings to team up with coworker Marc Randolph to launch Netflix, the company that would eventually dethrone Blockbuster.

"I had a big late fee for Apollo 13. It was six weeks late and I owed the video store $40. I had misplaced the cassette. It was all my fault,” Hastings said.

At $40, Hastings could have bought several copies of Apollo 13. Instead, he had little choice but to return his single video and pay the fee. During a workout later, he realized gyms have a better business model.

The simple truth is that the vast majority of companies will never get on top, and the few that do ascend to those heights are unlikely to stay there long.

“You could pay $30 or $40 a month and work out as little or as much as you wanted,” he noted.

Sensing an opportunity, Hastings created Netflix, a subscription-based rental service that allowed users to go online and select the movies they wanted to watch, which would then be mailed to them. Customers could keep movies as long as they wanted, getting new movies once the others were returned. No late fees. Watch as many movies in a month (or as few) as you want, so long as you can get them mailed quickly.

Sounds simple, right? Well, it wasn’t. Netflix ran into all kinds of problems, as Sean Malone points out in this wonderful Out of Frame episode. That’s why Hastings tried to sell Netflix to Blockbuster for $50 million, only to be rebuffed. (Big mistake, Blockbuster. Big mistake.) 

But in the end, Netflix won because it offered customers a superior product. Today we stream content at the click of a button and have more options than we can possibly watch. This did not happen by accident.

And when you think about it: isn’t it for the best? However wistful we feel when we see a Blockbuster store in a retro movie and reminisce about movie night stops at Blockbuster to pick up some microwave popcorn and the latest Keanu flick, most of us wouldn’t bring back the old days (no streaming, lots of late fees, etc), even if we could.

Blockbuster’s fall and Netflix’s rise is an example of the “Schumpeterian creative destruction” Perry alluded to. The destruction of yesterday’s Blockbuster meant the creation of today’s Netflix, Redbox, Disney+, etc.

As long as there is competition in a market economy, some will fall as others rise.

Schumpeter understood that creative destruction is not a sign of expiration but of life. It’s not the sign of a dying economy but a vibrant one that is moving ever forward.

“The essential point to grasp is that in dealing with capitalism we are dealing with an evolutionary process,” Schumpeter wrote in the seminal work Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. “Capitalism, then, is by its nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary.”

The simple truth is that the vast majority of companies will never get on top, and the few that do ascend to those heights are unlikely to stay there very long. Just like NFL quarterbacks.

Is it a little sad when a star like Tom Brady finally retires or stores like Sears and Blockbuster go under? Sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s not perfectly natural, healthy, and good.

You can bet your last dollar that Brady will eventually be out of an NFL job, replaced by the next crop of young superstar quarterbacks. Just like you can bet that many of those companies who coughed up $5.5 million for 30-seconds airtime Sunday night will soon find themselves in the same situation as RadioShack.

What’s important to remember is that’s okay.

As long as there is competition in a market economy, some will fall as others rise. Everything has a shelf life. Even Tom Brady.

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times. 

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

10 Companies That Advertised During Brady’s First Super Bowl in 2002 (and the Story They Tell)

GSMikami ld03

Edge (October 2003)

Edge (October 2003)

Edge is a multi-format gaming magazine published in the U.K. It has been around since October 1993 and once upon a time it shared some content with Next Generation. If you liked the content of that magazine, you might like this one. The October 2003 issue includes:

Features

• 9/11 is a joke - Edge ponders the questions provoked by games with content based on horrific real-life events.
• Score Wars - Hi-score tables: once upon a time the only way to gain gaming status. And now they're back.
• Edge's Ten Commandments - Ten simple yet obvious rules of game design that we believe should apply to every game ever made.
• Ten Top Tens - The best 100 games of all time. Ever. Part two. But by all means feel free to disagree...
• Perfect 10? - In ten years Edge has only given out its maximum mark four times.But what is an Edge 10/10?

Prescreen

• O.TO.GI 2 (Xbox)
• SWAT: Global Strike Team (PS2, Xbox)
• Chrome (PC)
• Call of Duty (PC)
• Xyanide (Xbox)
• Spider-Man 2 (PS2, Xbox, GC)
• Katmari Damashi (PS2)
• Dragon Quest VIII (PS2)
• Dance UK (PS2)
• True Crimes: Streets of LA (PS2, GC, Xbox)
• Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior (PS2, PC)
• THUG (PS2, Xbox, GC)
• Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike (GC)
• Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (Xbox, PC)
• Prescreen Alphas (various)

Regulars

• Frontend - SCE and its PSP; Bedroom coding; Xbox/Nintendo conferences
• Out There - Justin Timberlake; Maxx Payne (the wrestler); GTA holiday
• RedEye - Viewtiful Joe induces a joypad-throwing fit
• Trigger Happy - Steven Poole lists the ten things games have taught him
• AV Out - Japan should work harder and produce better games
• Biffovision - Mr Biffo turns into careers officer mode
• Subscribe - Money off and free delivery - how can you resists?
• Back issues - Quick, before they sell out
• Retrotest - It's 1978. Edge reviews Space Invaders
• The making of... - Edge. Come on, it is our birthday...
• Reset - E1 put through the rememberiser
• Recruitment - Your chance to work in the games industry
• Inbox - Ten years' worth of your opinions on the world of videogaming
• Next month - Edge visits "the excitement company"

Testscreen

• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Xbox, PC)
• Republic: The Revolution (PC)
• Boktai (GBA)
• R-Type Final (PS2)
• F-Zero GX (GC)
• Freedom Fighters (PS2, Xbox, GC)
• Star Wars: Galaxies - An Empire Divided (PC)
• The Italian Job: LA Heist (PS2, Xbox, GC)
• Group S Challnge (Xbox)
• Downhill Domination (PS2)
• Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour (GC)
• Space Channel 5: Ulala's Cosmic Attack (GBA)
• Winning Eleven 7 (PS2)

...and more!

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (865-868)

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. These came to me second 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. 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 friend or 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. His 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 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.

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.

The first photo in this set appear to show grandparents with their grandson. The second is a shot from the air of a coastline somewhere. The last two are photos of a dog. The last two were processed in November 1961 and all of these are likely from the late 1950s or early 1960s.

processed November 1961
processed November 1961

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

Page 6 (February/March 1983)

Page 6 (February/March 1983)

The Atari 8-bit line wasn't terribly popular in the U.K. (though the Atari ST would be) but it still managed a few dedicated magazines there. Page 6 is one of those. It was published from December 1982 until Autumn 1998 by which time it had been renamed to New Atari User. The February/March 1983 issue includes:

• Editorial
• News
• Letters
• Four In A Row
• Joysticks
• GTIA - Tutorial
• Feature Review - Astro Chase
• Silly Circles
• Play Your Cards
• GTIA Text Window
• Reviews
• Disk Directory
• Tiny Text
• Getting Started
• First Steps
• Club Call

...and more!

GSMikami ld02 cover - Ghost Sweeper Mikami

28 Executive Orders in Just 2 Weeks. What Kind of a ‘Democracy’ is This?

Since taking office two weeks ago, President Joe Biden has signed 28 executive orders (EOs) covering a wide range of policies. His actions are not unprecedented, per se, but he’s on track to surpass one record held by Franklin D. Roosevelt—the record for most EOs signed in the first month in office. FDR had thirty.

Additionally, Biden issued four proclamations, one ceremonial, ten memorandums, and two letters (rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization).

It’s notable that sixteen of the twenty-eight orders are reversals of former President Trump’s own executive actions. Six of them specifically target the immigration policies of the previous administration. Readers may remember controversial decisions over the past four years that placed restrictions on travelers from certain Muslim-majority countries, funded the construction of a border wall through a national emergency declaration, separated families at the border, and expanded immigration enforcement. With the stroke of a pen, Biden reversed course on these initiatives.

Unsurprisingly, a large number of the orders revolve around the coronavirus, as presidents tend to issue more EOs during wartime or other national emergencies. Fifteen of the twenty-eight EOs address things like wearing a mask in public spaces (an order Biden violated his first week in office), accelerating the manufacturing and delivery of vaccines, establishing a pandemic testing board, enhancing data-sharing processes, and developing guidelines for reopening schools.

Other orders focused on economic issues, such as halting the payment of student loans for several more months and extending a nationwide moratorium on evictions. Biden’s actions on the climate created some of the biggest pushback as he cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline and directed agencies to reverse more than a hundred of Trump’s actions on energy. He also turned his attention to matters of equality, allowing transgender Americans to again serve in the military, canceling contracts with private prisons, and addressing workplace discrimination on the basis of sex or gender.

All in all, he’s already made quite an impact on the country’s operations.

The power of the presidency has rapidly expanded in recent decades, and the use of executive orders has grown in direct proportion. Simultaneously, the passage of real, long-lasting legislation has fallen by the wayside, creating an environment where the roles of the executive and the legislature have been reversed.

When our laws are set by the president instead of the legislature there is an impermanence to them on top of an unfairness.

Historically and constitutionally, the presidency was not meant to set policy. After eight years, President George Washington left office with a total of only eight executive orders. Most of his predecessors followed suit with numbers in the single digits or teens. Many of the early EOs involved trivial matters rather than the large-scale policy decisions we often see them aimed at today. The naming of post offices, establishing federal worker holidays, and organizing federal natural disaster responses were more in line with the scope of these directives originally.

But in the twentieth century, use of the executive order exploded with Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, Woodrow Wilson, and even Mr. Limited Government himself, Calvin Coolidge, issuing well over a thousand during their tenures. It is now common to see several hundred under each new executive.

This evolution can at least partly be blamed on Congress’ delinquency in its duties. It is the House and Senate’s job to write and pass laws. But in recent years, Congress stalled as partisanship led to greater gridlock and entrenched opposition between the two major political parties.

Interestingly, the legislature continues to introduce an overwhelming number of items—they’re just not passing them. In 2019, they brought forward 8,820 bills and joint resolutions, but enacted only 105—making Congress largely a performative body rather than a functional one.

Members are told how to vote by their party’s leadership and stripped of any semblance of power if they fail to comply. They are usually not allowed to offer amendments or even really see the bills they are voting on beforehand.

Former Representative Justin Amash opined on this issue extensively, regularly pointing out that rank and file members no longer have the ability to shape legislation as Congress has consolidated control in the hands of leadership.

Due to this, the vast majority of lawmakers now spend their days fundraising, riling up the base, and giving media interviews.

Some are unusually candid about the fact that they see their role as a spokesperson rather than a lawmaker.

For this reason, presidents have increasingly sought to push their agenda forward independent of Congress. And to an extent it has worked, as far as pushing agendas, but there have been consequences.

The unilateral actions have stoked tensions and animosity among Americans, as whichever political party is currently in control has the ability to disregard the wishes of the half of the country that lost the latest election. It isn’t supposed to be this way.

Our legislative body was intentionally given the power to set policy for this reason.

It requires hundreds of lawmakers, who represent hundreds of millions of unique individuals across this country, to come together, deliberate, seek compromises, and pass legislation that achieves a broad consensus. That type of action breeds unity and peaceful coexistence.

Instead, we essentially get a single person ruling by decree, pushing quick and unchallenged decisions through without debate and with few checks or balances. This is a system more akin to a rotating autocracy than a democracy, and is, frankly, un-American.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” When a single person can unilaterally dictate the choices and decisions of hundreds of millions of people—half of which may oppose the order— it is even worse than a pure democracy, it’s a recipe for discord, bitterness, and agitation.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

Both sides know this and yet continue to perpetrate the problem. Republicans fumed as former President Barack Obama signed large numbers of executive orders, and Obama shrugged them off, famously quipping “elections have consequences,” and boasting that he can disregard Congressional resistance, because he has “a pen and a phone.” But that attitude came back to haunt the progressives when President Donald Trump was elected and took the same attitude and pen. Many spent years railing against the illegality of Trump’s actions and admonishing him for not using the legislative processes laid out in the Constitution, only to quickly forget that posture when Biden came into power. It’s a hamster wheel of bad ideas and the wheel keeps speeding up with each new president.

Not only do these actions worsen tensions in the US, they also produce unsolid ground. When presidents use these orders to overhaul policies and procedures they can make a significant impact on the daily lives of millions of people. Even worse, though, is the knowledge that the next president may come in and totally erase those actions. This means many Americans are left unable to plan their futures or find stability under the law. One need only examine the plight of the typical undocumented immigrant over the past five years to see proof of this, or consider the workers tasked with finishing the Keystone XL pipeline who suddenly found themselves out of work.

When our laws are set by the president instead of the legislature there is an impermanence to them on top of an unfairness. This is no way to govern.

America was not designed on a whim. Our Founding Fathers crafted our systems to protect the rights of the individual, to guard liberty from government, and to ensure those tasked with power over the people had many checks and balances. It was a brilliant configuration, one designed not to enable government but to restrain it.

It would be silly to think that one person, who it must be mentioned only received 82 million votes in a country with over 330 million individuals, could fairly and justly write the rules for all people. Whether or not we like the orders issued by one president or another, we should all be able to agree this is an unwise way to rule that undermines our very foundations.

In The Federalist Papers No. 51, James Madison laid out his vision and reasoning behind the separation of powers he was proposing under the new constitution.

“Were the executive magistrate, or the judges, not independent of the legislature in this particular, their independence in every other would be merely nominal. But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.”

The founders not only realized the importance of the separation of power, they provided checks and balances that allow departments to rein in other branches when they supersede their authority.

It must be demanded that our lawmakers go back to their desks and do their jobs, which includes exercising their check on the presidency’s powers. It remains unclear why we are currently paying these people hundreds of thousands of dollars per year when they cannot seem to gather in a room and figure out solutions to the numerous problems pressing themselves on our people. Until our citizens rise up and demand better of them, they will continue to enrich themselves on our dimes while failing to do the very job we have sent them to DC to do.

On matters of immigration, energy, equality, and the pandemic, we as a country are in desperate need of solutions. Those solutions shouldn’t always be government-based, and they definitely shouldn’t depend on a seventy-eight year old man with a limited knowledge in any one of these topics. We fought the British to free ourselves from the rule of a monarchy, we must reject it on our own soil today as well.

Hannah Cox

Hannah Cox is a libertarian-conservative writer, commentator, and activist. She's a Newsmax Insider and a Contributor to The Washington Examiner.

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

28 Executive Orders in Just 2 Weeks. What Kind of a ‘Democracy’ is This?