The puns were flowing like wine, or rather, beer, on social media this week when Miller Lite went viral for an ad campaign that blasted its own brand for “sexism.”
“Hold my beer, Budweiser! Miller Lite's new feminist spokeswoman is here to cuss at you and explain why men are evil,”wrote Not the Bee.
“Miller Lite apparently wants the Bud Light boycott treatment too,” said Rogan O’Handley, a Hollywood lawyer turned conservative commentator and supporter of former President Donald Trump. “Newsflash: After a hard day’s work, working-class beer drinkers don’t want to be lectured like they’re in a gender studies class at SUNY-Oswego.”
The ad features Ilana Glazer, a comedian who claimed women were the first brewers in history but were betrayed by corporate America.
"From Mesopotamia to the Middle Ages to colonial America, women were the ones doing the brewing," Glazer said. "Centuries later, how did the industry pay homage to the founding mothers of beer? They put us in bikinis."
To make amends, Miller Lite is buying up vintage ad art featuring women in swimwear, which it will turn into compost to support female brewers. “That good s*** helps farmers grow quality hops,” one woman explains.
Many accused Miller Lite of following the “woke” path of Bud Light, which witnesseda collapse in salesfollowing a March Madness ad campaign featuring transgender influencerDylan Mulvaneythat prompted Anheuser-Buschto issue an apology.
“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” wrote CEO Brendan Whitworth.
What many on social media failed to realize is that Miller Lite’s ad was released before Bud Light’s implosion. It had just received little attention. It’s not clear if Miller Lite’s ad will have the same effect on beer sales as Bud Light’s. Some commentators on Twitter said they appreciated the ad.
“I actually think that Miller Lite got it a lot more right than Bud Lite in how it approached a female demo,”wroteEmily Zanotti of Fox News.
That’s the nature of commercials, of course. They are subjective. What might make one person feel uncomfortable might appeal to someone else.
I’m apparently a Neanderthal who likes the old-school Miller Lite commercials, whether they feature women in bikinis orBob Uecker masqueradingas Rodney Dangerfield at a costume party. I don’t like feeling lectured. That’s just me.
People naturally have different preferences and tastes in commercials, and that’s OK. The thing is, I’m actually Miller Lite’s target demo: a 40-something male beer drinker.
This invites questions. Why are Bud Light and Miller Lite making commercials that alienate their own consumer base? More importantly, why are they wading into controversial matters such as transgenderism,third-wavefeminism, andnonbinary genderat all?
The primary answer is the rise of environmental, social, and corporate governance, a term coined during a 2004 United Nations initiative (“Who Cares Wins”) that grades companies on social performance.
ESG was born from the idea that traditional capitalism needs to be replaced with a more caring, socially conscious capitalism that serves other “stakeholders.” And what started as “guidelines and recommendations”have become explicit standardsset by ESG rating agencies that impose steep costs on publicly traded companies, especially those that don’t comply.
The thing is, companies are not jazzed about having to dance to the tune of a small cabal of central bankers and asset managers. A 2022 CNBC surveyshowedthat while executives support ESG publicly, privately, they harbor serious concerns. Yet not playing ball is not an option.
“If a company has to do disclosures, and it has some executives who are ‘not into ESG,’ it should be thinking about the cost of not becoming more concerned,” Eileen Murray, a former executive of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world,told CNBC.
Miller Lite and Bud Light drinkers have every right to be annoyed by ads they don’t like. But they should understand these publicly traded companies are playing a balancing act on who they risk alienating, their consumers or ESG puppeteers.
I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These 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 many thousands of these slides. 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 from the 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 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 these photos are labeled April 1969. They appear to have all been taken from a mountain road. I don't know where but I would guess somewhere in the Appalachians.
The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here.
Info was not only dedicated to Commodore computers but also produced on them. The Commodore 64 early on and later on, the Amiga. For some reason this issue doesn't have a cover date but it is probably from some time in late 1984 or early 1985. It includes:
Departments
Gallery - Color screen shots and brief descriptions of recent games, including Pole Position, Pitstop II, On-Court Tennis, International Soccer, Gumball, The Castles of Doctor Creep, The Scrolls of Abadon, Gridtrap, Pathwords, Monty Plays Scrabble, Trivia Fever, Murder by the Dozen, and more.
Editor's Page - About Info's special product round-up issues as well as a look at what is going on in other Commodore magazines.
Reader Mail - Reader comments about the Indus GT disk drive and copy protection.
Table of Contents from Issue Number 6 of Info
Reviews
The Word Processor - The King James Bible on disk (8 disk to be exact).
Bearcat Scanner - A review of the Compuscan 2100.
Comal 2.01 - An implementation of the Comal programming language for the Commodore 64.
Features
Is There a Hard Drive in Your Future? - A look at hard drives, how they work, and what they are good for.
Let Your Fingers do the Walking - A guide to telecomputing, including some ARPANET history, they types of commercial services available, and the things that you can do on them.
Introduction to Assembly Language - Learn to program using assembly language on your Commodore 64.
Whither CP/M? - Commodore promised a CP/M cartridge for the Commodore 64 when it was released but took a long time to deliver. By the time it was released (along with the Commodore 128 with its CP/M mode), CP/M was really pretty much dead as an OS as far as any new development was concerned.
PC World was one of the most popular PC magazines published in the U.S. It always felt a bis generic to me but it's still great for nostalgia. This issue goes back to 1991, a year when the 486 was bleeding edge and IBM was still a big name in the PC World.
Previews
IBM PS/2 Model 95 XP
IBM's Visionary New XPs - A look at IBM's latest 486 based PS/2 models with features including upgradeable 25 and 33 MHz CPUs, optional 256K cache, and up to 32MB of RAM. The Model 90 desktop features room for five drives and has three available 32-bit Micro Channel slots. The Model 95 tower has room for up to seven drives and six available Micro Channel slots. However, the prices range from $12,495 to $17,745 which seems pretty insane, even for then.
Easy Persuasion - A look at Aldus Persuasion 2.0 for Windows. This was presentation software that would have competed with software like PowerPoint.
Reviews
Easy Fonts for Great-Looking Documents - A look at seven scalable font generators, including Adobe Type Manager 1.0, FaceLift 1.0, Fontware, SoftType 1.01, SuperPrint 1.0, and Type Director 2.0.
Buying Smart: Font Shopping Tips - What to look for when shopping for font software.
Exercising Your Font Options - Resident fonts vs. font cartridges; price vs. performance.
Table of Contents from the January 1991 issue of PC World
Features
Tax Relief for the Rest of Us - A guide to the various software available to do your 1990 tax return, including AM Tax, Andrew Tobias' TaxCut, J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax 1991, MacInTax for Windows, Personal Tax Filer, Personal Tax Preparer for 1990, Swiftax, and Sylvia Porter's Rapid Tax.
Own a Home Business? The IRS is Watching - Why you may want to continue using an accountant for your business taxes.
In a Hurry for That Refund Check? - Use electronic filing to get your refund check faster. This option only became available the previous year.
Do-It-Yorself Taxes - A guide to finding the right tax software for your needs.
Rating the Returns - A comparision of the same return with TurboTax 8.0, TaxCut, and an accountant.
News
Top of the News - Colorstar and Toshiba introduce new laptops with the novelty of 256 color active matrix screens. The Colorstar features a 20 MHz 386 while the Toshiba T3200SXC features a 20 MHz 386SX. New VGA chipsets announced. Lotus buys Samna. Borland releases Forms Processor, Turbo Pascal and SideKick II for Windows. Multimedia PCs on the way. The Multimedia standard includes a minimum of a Windows capable 286 with 2MB of RAM, VGA graphics, 30 MB hard drive, sound card and CD-ROM.
Industry Outlook - IBM launches XGA as successor to VGA; growth of desktop publishing slows; mail order sales increase (I bought my first "PC" in 1993 via mail order direct from Gateway 2000); and more.
Product Outlook - Next releases NextStation featuring a 25-MHz 68040 CPU, 8 MB RAM, MegaPixel (1120 x 820) display, 2.8MB floppy, and 105 MB hard drive for $5000 and the higher end NextCube for $13,990O. Other new products include new versions of TurboTax, TaxCut, and MacIntax, Wyse Decision 486/33E, Express Publisher 2.0, IBM PS/1 Printer, Co/Session 5.0, Turbo Pascal 6.0, PacificPage PE 4.9, SatisFAXtion, Quicken 4.0, CompuAdd 333 and 333T, AST Premium II 386SX/20, and more.
Table of Contents from the January 1991 issue of PC World (continued)
How To
OPerating System and Environments - Windows 3.0: Load applications automatically, quick program switching, replacing File Manager with Norton Commander, and more. Desqview: Easy word processor to E-Mail transfers.
Word Processing - Wordperfect: deleting consecutive words, doing OR searches, hiding and searching for comments and more. Microsoft Word: parallel columns, extra wide docments and more. Wordstar: quick printing.
Spreadsheets - Lotus 1-2-3 and Quattro Pro: quickly unhide columns, speed data entry, fast recalcs and more.
Data Management - Tips for dBASE, Paradox, Q&A, DataEase and more.
Communications - Tips from using CompuServe, Procomm Plus (my favorite telecommuniations software back in the day), Crosstalk XVI, Crosstalk MK.4, and more.
Desktop Publishing - Tips for Ventura Publisher, PageMaker 3.x, and more.
Presentations - Tips for Harvard Graphics.
Draw and Paint Programs - Tips for Corel Draw, Micrografx Designer 3.0, and PC Paintbrush IV Plus.
Utilities - Tips for Norton Utilities, PC Tools Deluxe 6.0 and Magellan.
Departments
Richard Landry - IBM catches up with the competition with their new XP systems.
The Help Screen - Automatically include the document name in the body of WordPerfect 5.1 documents; using shareware; partitioning your hard disk; Weitek vs. Intel math coprocessors; and more.
Network Q&A - Questions answered about Windows 3.0 on a NetWare 286 network.
Consumer Watch - Shopping experiences at Sears, Radio Shack, and via mail order among other places.
Developer's Toolbox - A look at Booter Toolkit, software designed to allow you you create boot disks for your software without needing DOS.
Taking It Home - Protecting yourself from computer theft.
PC World was one of the most popular PC magazines published in the U.S. It always felt a bit generic to me but it's still great for nostalgia. 2006 really wasn't that long ago but computer ears are more like dog years...or even more accelerated. The February 2006 issue of PC World includes:
Cover Story
Special Report: Find It on the Net - A guide to finding what you are looking for on the Internet.
Just Browsing Directories - Various directories that can be found online including Galaxy, McKinley Group's Magellan, NetCenter, Starting Point, Web Voyager, The Whole Internet Catalog, Yellow Page.com, Yahoo and more.
Search Tips - Tips for being specific and accurate with your searches.
Index to the Net: Search Engines - This was pre-Google. The top search engines included Excite NetSearch, InfoSeek, Lycos, Open Text Index, WebCrawler and others.
Table of Contents from of the January 1996 issue of PC World
Windows 95 Tips
95 Essential Tips for Windows 95 - Windows 95 was probably the single biggest change from one release to another that Windows has ever had. Here are some tips for using it.
CD-Recordable Drives
Do-It-Yourself CD-ROMs - At this point in time, CD-R drives had dropped below $1000 and discs were going for $7 each. It would be almost three more years before I had a CD-R drive at which times prices had dropped much further. Drives reviewed in this article include the HP SureStore CD-Writer 4020i ($999), JVC BC-CR1000A-2X ($999), Olympus Deltis CD-R2/ISA ($1389), Optima DisKovery 650 CD-R ($1495), Pinnacle Micro RCD-1000 ($1050), Smart and Friendly CD-R 1002 ($1259), and Sony Spressa 920 ($1699). All are SCSI based.
Top 20 PCs
It's a Buyer's Market - The top 20 PCs as ranked by PC World in different categories. The top Power Desktop is the Micron P133 Millennia ($3499 - 133MHz Pentium, 16MB EDO RAM, 1.6GB hard drive). The top Budget Desktop is the Dell Dimension P75t ($1679 - 75MHz Pentium, 8MB RAM, 540MB hard drive, 4x CD-ROM). The top Power Notebook is the Toshiba Protege 610CT ($4649 - 90MHz Pentium, 8MB EDO RAM, 720MB hard drive). The top Budget Notebook is the Dell Latitude LX 4100D ($2629 - 100MHz 486-DX4, 8MB RAM, 420MB hard drive).
Top 10 Hardware
Top 10 Workgroup Printers - The top printer in this round u is the Lexmark Optra R for $1487. Or if you want color, there i the HP DeskJet 1600CM for $1999.
Top 10 19 to 21-inch Monitors - CRT monitors were the only type of monitors reasonably available in 1996 and 19-21-inch monitors were the largest. The top monitor in this list is the MAG MX21F, a 21-inch CRT for $1800.
Top 10 Graphics Boards - 3D graphics were still in their infancy in 1996. The top card this month was the Diamond Stealth64 which featured the S3 Vision968 chip and 2MB of VRAM for $269.
Top of the News
SmartSuite 96: Back in the Ring Again - Lotus SmartSuite '96 was an alternative to Office '95.
RAM Doublers No Substitute for Real RAM - RAM doublers offered a way to use real-time compression to trick your system into thinking it has more RAM than it does. Products reviewed here include MagnaRAM 2, RAM Doubler, and SoftRAM 95.
Table of Contents from the January 1996 issue of PC World (continued)
New Products
HP OmniBook 5000, ZDS's Z-Note GT - A look at two new Pentium based notebooks.
Lexmark Optra Printers - New color and black & white laser printers from Lexmark.
Proxima Desktop Projector 2400, Sharp XG-E650UB Mark II - Each of these projectors comes in at well over $6000.
Son MDH-10 MiniDisc - I always though the MiniDisc was a neat format. Unfortunately, it was much more expensive than a Zip Drive and other alternatives so it was never successful as a data format.
Network/modem dual-purpose cards - A look at new network/modem combo PCMCIA cards, including the Mariner, CreditCard Ethernet+Modem 28.8, and Megahertz XJEM3288.
PC World @Home
Consumer Watch - Software bundles included with new computers often don't provide much value or even include full retail versions of the software.
HouseWare - A look at "digital crayons", musical software, and more.
Home Office - The only fast alternative to dial-up at the time was ISDN. However, we are still talking about speeds that are only 128kbps and that's only if everything is working perfectly. Often it wasn't. And the price was high.
The regulatory body that oversees broadcasting in Canada has opened a public consultation about potentially banning Fox News from cable TV. Initiated on May 3, the process was prompted by the LGBTQ advocacy group Egale Canada, which asked for the consultation in early April in response to a Tucker Carlson segment that, in their view, “aimed to provoke hatred and violence against 2SLGBTQI communities.”
“This programming is in clear violation of Canadian broadcasting standards and has no place on Canadian broadcasting networks,” wrote Executive Director Helen Kennedy in an open letter. “Egale has experienced firsthand the hate that is generated from a single segment aired on Fox News in Canada. We cannot begin to imagine the broader impacts and potential rise in hate that might result from allowing more content like this to air in Canada.”
“The CRTC maintains a list of international channels cable, satellite and IPTV providers can include in their packages,” the National Postexplains. And the list does change every now and then. “In March 2022,” the Post writes, “the CRTC removed Russia Today and RT France from the list, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Fox News was originally approved for Canadian viewers in 2004 and has been available in Canada ever since.
You Got a License for That?
The specific regulation Egale Canada is accusing Fox News of breaking is section 5(b) of the Television Broadcasting Regulations which prohibits broadcasts of “any abusive comment or abusive pictorial representation that, when taken in context, tends to or is likely to expose an individual or a group or class of individuals to hatred or contempt on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age or mental or physical disability.”
Prohibiting what amounts to hate speech on public television may sound somewhat reasonable, but it opens the door for considerable censorship, as this story illustrates. After all, who gets to define hate speech?
Now, we could quibble about this specific regulation and how it should be interpreted or whether it should even exist, but there’s a much bigger issue to highlight, namely, the issue of broadcasting regulations as such.
For context, radio and television broadcasters in Canada are heavily regulated, much more than most people realize.
For one, foreign ownership of broadcasters is significantly restricted. As University of Ottawa law professor Dr. Michael Geist notes, “The foreign ownership rules generally limit [broadcast] licensees to 20 percent foreign ownership (up to 33 percent for a holding company). This covers all types of broadcasters including television, radio, and broadcast distributors.”
There are also strict rules about the amount of Canadian content—often called CanCon—that broadcasters must feature. The Canadian YouTuber J.J. McCullough draws attention to these requirements in an article for the Washington Post. “It is thanks to the CRTC, for instance, that Canadian radio stations ‘must ensure that at least 35% of the Popular Music they broadcast each week is Canadian content,’” he writes, “and that Canadian television stations must ‘devote not less than 50 per cent of the evening broadcast period to the broadcasting of Canadian programs.’”
As you can imagine, there is a complex list of rules that specify exactly what is required for media to be considered “Canadian Content.” Many of the personnel involved must be Canadians, for instance, and at least 75% of program and post-production expenses must pay for services from Canadians or Canadian companies.
Notably, it was these CanCon requirements that prompted much of the backlash against the recently passed Bill C-11, also known as the Online Streaming Act, which essentially aims at expanding these kinds of requirements to online platforms such as Netflix and YouTube. The legislation, originally called Bill C-10, has become quite contentious in Canada over the past few years because of the new powers it gives the government to regulate online content platforms.
Now, some proponents of Bill C-11 point out that the current system is rigged against legacy media and in favor of online content creators, and that Bill C-11 will level the playing field. I agree the current system is unfair in this regard. But the way to fix that is to deregulate legacy media, not to impose the same restrictions they face on new media.
Plain Old Protectionism
Deregulating the broadcasting industry may sound radical, but it’s actually the status quo that should be cause for concern. Though they are rarely labeled as such, the current broadcasting regulations in Canada essentially amount to a form of protectionism. Steven Globerman comments on these regulations in a refreshingly candid 2014 study published by the Fraser Institute.
“One of the longest standing shibboleths of Canadian public policy is that popular culture industries in Canada must be financially supported and protected by government if those industries are to survive,” he writes. “While it is certainly incorrect to characterize all culture policy as protectionist, Canadian content regulations and foreign ownership limitations can be fairly characterized as such.”
The truth that is rarely spoken is that there’s a whole “Canadian Content” industry being propped up by these regulations, and it stands to lose a lot if the quotas and other protections were to disappear.
A group called SOCAN, which lobbies on behalf of Canadian musicians, eagerly boasts about the success of these regulations.
“In 1971, the Government of Canada recognized a problem: Canadian music wasn’t being played on Canadian radio, but foreign artists (mostly American) were. This meant that non-Canadian artists received the vast majority of radio airtime. Money flowed from Canada to support foreign talent rather than our Canadian talent.
Those rules have been enormously successful in ensuring that Canada has its own cultural industry and Canadian voices, creating, sustaining, and building a significant source of monetary, emotional and cultural value. There are few, if any, aspects of Canadian culture that foster as much national pride and value as the success of music made in Canada.
Today, we’re facing a similar but new challenge: Canadian music isn’t sufficiently prominent on internet-based services.”
They go on to advocate for Bill C-10 (the precursor of Bill C-11) to “bring the Broadcasting Act into the digital era” because “it’s imperative to continue to sustain and build Canadian-made music.”
If this reminds you at all of the whole “Made in America” rhetoric, then you understand this issue perfectly. And if the emphasis on “preserving Canadian cultural identity” strikes you as a Baptist cover for a Bootlegger motive, then you’re really paying attention.
Why does this group favor the existing regulations and their expansion with Bill C-11? Because they represent the beneficiaries, the creators of “Canadian Content” who are given a competitive edge against their foreign counterparts with these quotas. An industry that owes much of its existence to a certain set of regulations tends to push pretty hard to keep those regulations. And if they can gain even more quotas in the increasingly dominant new media, all the better.
Toward a Free Market in Broadcasting
Should broadcasting regulations be scrapped then? Absolutely. Not only is broadcaster licensing protectionist, it’s also censorious, because it gives the government the power to control who is allowed to broadcast. The economist and political theorist Murray Rothbard discusses this in his book For a New Liberty.
“Because every station and every broadcaster must always look over its shoulder at the FCC, free expression in broadcasting is a sham. Is it any wonder that television opinion, when it is expressed at all on controversial issues, tends to be blandly in favor of the ‘Establishment’?”
Just imagine if the government tried to create licensing for books or newspapers, Rothbard says. “What we would all consider intolerable and totalitarian for the press and the book publishers is taken for granted in a medium which is now the most popular vehicle for expression and education: radio and television. Yet the principles in both cases are exactly the same.”
So what would a free market in broadcasting look like? Fortunately, we don’t have to guess. It would look like the internet, which the CRTC has thus far not been regulating (hence the push for Bill C-11). In other words, it would look like more choice and by-and-large better content.
Now, some might object to a free market in broadcasting because certain producers of “Canadian Content” would go under as a result. This is probably true, but success in content creation should depend on your ability to win viewers, not on your ability to rig the system in your favor.
Others may object because they believe patriotism and a national identity is important to foster. But it’s not the government’s place to foster culture. If the Chinese government imposed “Chinese Content” requirements for their broadcasters and had state-approved content creators to fill these quotas, wouldn’t that be considered an unwarranted interference with press freedom? Why should it be considered any less egregious when we do it?
Still others may object because of concerns about hate speech, such as with the Fox News case. But hate speech laws already exist in the Criminal Code. Now, whether those laws are themselves legitimate is another matter. For the purposes of this discussion the point is that specific hate speech regulations on broadcasters are at best redundant with existing laws and at worst censorious. In either case they shouldn’t exist.
A final objection that might be raised is that without regulation, Canadians would be allowed to watch foreign propaganda like Russia Today. And it’s true, RT would probably be on cable TV in a free market. But there’s a couple of points to make in response. First, it should be up to consumers to decide what constitutes state propaganda, not bureaucrats. And second, if your concern is genuinely that Canadians might be allowed to watch RT on TV, I would simply point out the irony that you are advocating for government censorship in the name of opposing authoritarianism.
Speaking of irony, it’s curious that Canadian politicians love to posture on the world stage about their commitment to freedom. If they actually want to practice freedom and not just pay lip service to it, the complete deregulation of broadcasting would be a great place to start.
This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Clickhereto sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.
Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These 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 many thousands of these slides. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity./p>
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 from the 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. /p>
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//p>
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. /p>
Click 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./p>
The first photo is a continuation of the last set, featuring a band in a parade in Rockford, Illinois, probably in the late 1950s or early 1960s. The next two photos feature a small building that appears to be in the middle of nowhere. The final photo is labeled "Tornado" so presumably the structure in the photo was destroyed by a tornado. I'm not sure what the sign "Junction" in the photo refers to. It's kind of vague for a road sign. There is a village in Illinois called Junction but it is on the opposite end of the state from Rockford. It could just be referring to an upcoming intersection./p>
The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here./p>
Commodore Power/Play was one of Commodore's early official publications. This magazine emphasized home and entertainment usage. In 1983 this meant mostly the VIC-20 and the then still fairly new Commodore 64. The Spring 1983 issue includes:
Table of Contents from the Spring 1983 issue of Commodore Power/Play
Features
New Game Cartridges for the Commodore 64 - The cartridge format for games was really only briefly popular. Pretty soon most games were released on disk, at least in the U.S. Here's a look at some early cartridge games including Jupiter Lander, Radar Ratrace, Speed Math/Bingo Math, Kickman, and Tooth Invaders
I Program with Gortek - A look at Gortek and the Microchips, a programming tutorial developed by Commodore for kids.
Making Friends With SID, Part 2 - Part 2 of an ongoing series on the Commodore 64's SID chip including some examples of how to generate sound and music.
Decwar! - A look at this multiplayer interstellar war game available on CompuServe.
Table of Contents from the Spring 1983 issue of Commodore Power/Play (continued)
Departments
Braindrops - The magazine reaches 100,000 readers plus a look at the changes in this issue.
The VIC Magician - A guide to programming the function keys of the VIC-20.
Butterfield - Learn how to make music on your Commodore 64.
High Scores - High scores for Blue Meanies, Car Chase, Cosmic Cruncher, Draw Poker, Jupiter Lander, Gorf, Midnight Drive, Mole Attack, Omega Race, Pinball Spectacular, Radar Rat Race, Raid on Fort Knox, Sea Wolf, Sky Is Falling, Slither, Super Alien, Super Slither, Super Slot, Super Smash and VIC Avenger.
User Group Spotlight - The story behind the New Mexico Commodore Users Group.
Access: Commodore User Groups - A comprehensive list of Commodore user groups around the world.
Jiffies - Brief looks at new software including two new cassette six packs for the VIC-20. The first includes NumBowl, LCM Machine, Sector Five, Backfire, Ruler Dueler, and Scare City Motel. The second includes VIC Synthesizer, Crawler, Alpha Draw, Super Seekers, Big Bad Wolf, and Treasures of the Bat Cave. Also reviewed are Pinball Spectacular for the VIC-20, The VIC Programmable Character Set & Gamegraphics Editor, and more.
Back cover of the Spring 1983 issue of Commodore Power/Play
I have a friend, a very smart fellow, who early in the pandemic began masking. At the time, masks were not being recommended by health authorities, let alone mandated.
I didn’t think much about his decision. It didn’t affect me. I was what you might call a mask agnostic. Perhaps masks were beneficial, perhaps not.
As the pandemic continued, however, I found myself more and more in the “anti-mask camp.” I didn’t suddenly begrudge my friend or think he was a fool for masking, but I was bothered that personal decisions had become public decisions.
To make matters worse, a kind of mask dogma had taken hold. To publicly question the benefits of masking or point out possible adverse effects was verboten, a crime punishable by social media bans or blacklisting from fact-checkers. (This didn’t stop me from writing about masks—seehere,here, andhere—but I was very, very careful when doing so.)
Like most people, I didn’t know how effective masks were in preventing the spread of Covid. I did have doubts, however, doubts that were supported by an abundance of scientific research and public health experts.
Just as importantly, as a student of economics, I understood that all actions come with tradeoffs. (Some public health expertslearned this lesson the hard way.) What were those tradeoffs? And who could determine if the public health benefit of masks outweighed the adverse consequences?
We didn’t have much time for those questions in 2020, in large part because few people wanted to consider them. The public health bureaucracy certainly didn’t. It had its plan, and it wasn’t interested in exploring science that might undermine their directives. Three years later, however, research has emerged that helps answer these questions.
A study published earlier this month in Frontiers in Public Health conducted a systematic review of more than 2,000 studies on the adverse effects of masking, finding “significant effects in both medical surgical and N95 masks.”
As one might expect, covering the breathing orifices of humans for long periods of time carries health consequences, among them decreased oxygen saturation and increases in heart rate, blood pressure, blood-CO2 levels, and skin temperature, as well as dizziness, speech impediments, headaches, and dyspnea (labored breathing).
Study authors said it was imperative that these findings are considered in future public health policies.
“Face mask side-effects must be assessed (risk-benefit) against the available evidence of their effectiveness against viral transmissions,” the authors concluded. “In the absence of strong empirical evidence of effectiveness, mask wearing should not be mandated let alone enforced by law.”
We now know some of the negative consequences of masking (and mask mandates). But what about their effectiveness in reducing the spread of Covid?
As it happens, a massive study conducted in the UK, which examined one of London’s largest hospitals for 10 months during the highly contagious Omicron variant, sheds new light on this question.
Though the full research has yet to be published (it will be presented at the 2023 European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases in April,officials say) study authors make it clear that the hospital’s masking requirement made “no discernible difference.”
“Our study found no evidence that mandatory masking of staff impacts the rate of hospital SARS-CoV-2 infection with the Omicron variant,” said lead author Dr. Ben Patterson of St. George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, London.
“The bottom line is that lifting the hospital mask mandate did not lead to a measurable increase in hospital-acquired COVID infections,” Jeanne Noble, associate professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, toldHealthline, adding that the research was more robust than previous observational trials.
In other words, the two most recent studies on masking suggest masks were terribly ineffective in reducing the spread of Covid, but came with clear health harms. Yet countries across the world and states across the US were mandating their use for months if not years.
How does something like this happen? Economics holds a clue.
In his 1974 Nobel Prize speech, F.A. Hayek talked about the dangers of acting with “the pretense of knowledge.” In some ways, this knowledge was worse than no knowledge at all, because it stood to lead government officials and experts to believe they possessed sufficient knowledge to engineer society successfully.
As manyhave noted, history has shown that Hayek was right to be worried. And for decades historians and economists have highlighted Hayek’s warning about this “fatal conceit” rooted in the pretense of knowledge, stressing the importance of demonstrating “to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
Fewer, however, have noted a separate paragraph from Hayek’s speech, in which he notes what drives public officials to act with insufficient knowledge.
“The conflict between what in its present mood the public expects science to achieve in satisfaction of popular hopes and what is really in its power is a serious matter because, even if the true scientists should all recognize the limitations of what they can do in the field of human affairs, so long as the public expects more there will always be some who will pretend, and perhaps honestly believe, that they can do more to meet popular demands than is really in their power.”
This paragraph perfectly describes the phenomenon witnessed during the pandemic.
Public officials clearly did not have enough knowledge to make rational decisions for hundreds of millions of Americans. But they had to pretend they did (and perhaps some actually believed they did, as Hayek suggests) because that was the popular demand. Influential conservatives and progressives both largely bought into the fiction that public health officials could rationally plan society—through mask mandates, lockdowns, and social distancing—to protect humans from the coronavirus.
The pandemic was not just a failure of science. It was also clear evidence that government, freed from its constitutional and rational limitations, has grown far too large, as have our expectations of it.
I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These 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 many thousands of these slides. 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 from the 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 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 the results of a fishing trip. The next three photos are a little more interesting, at least to me. They feature a band in some kind of parade. While they aren't labeled or dated, some of the things in the photos give away where they were taken. In the second photo you can see a sign for "Rockford Lumber". Also, the band uniforms feature the lettering "R Jr H" seen clearly on the uniform of the individual in the third photo. I'm guessing this is for "Rockford Jr. High School". But the best clue turned out to be "Scott's Wyman St. Bakery" featured in the final photo. At first, searches kept coming up with a Jamaican Bakery. But then I found the following obituary of all things (from https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2011/12/18/obituaries/):
SCOTT, Marie G. 94, of Tampa, formerly of Rockford, IL passed away Dec. 16, 2011. She and her husband owned Scott's Wyman Street Bakery for 25 years. They retired to Arizona, then Plano, TX and finally Tampa. She was preceded in death by her loving husband of 64 years, Wilson "Bill" Scott and her sons, Donald and John Scott; her brothers Al and Jim Bunger and her sister Dolly Templeman. Survivors include her daughter Connie Pruitt and her husband Arley E. Johnson of Tampa; her son, Terry Scott and his wife Jenny of Plano, TX; grandchildren Colleen, Rhonda, Andrea, Brady, and Tiffany and great-grandchildren Brandon, Elliott, Parker, Matthew, Rebecca, and Jessica. Private graveside services will be held at a later date in Illinois. Donations may be made in Marie's memory to Suncoast Hospice, Brookside. Please sign the online guestbook at www.blountcurrywest.com
So it's pretty clear the last three photos were taken in Rockford, Illinois. I'm not entirely sure of the time frame but I'm guessing the late 1950s or early 1960s.
The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here.
If there is a single magazine that most people have the most nostalgia over, it is probably Nintendo Power. I was never really that big into Nintendo Power because, even though I had both an NES and Super NES during their peak (as opposed to the Genesis or other systems), I was always curious what was out there for other systems. Also, I didn't exactly consider Nintendo Power to be impartial. Nevertheless, it was always a great resource for Nintendo owners. The March 1992 issue includes:
NES
The Empire Strikes Back - While most licensed games are pretty crappy, Star Wars has done pretty well on average and The Empire Strikes Back was a solid platform game on the NES...especially if you were a Star Wars fan. This guide will help you through it.
Terminator 2 - A guide to this multi-staged platform game based on the movie of the same name. Another licensed game that isn't as bad as most.
Nightshade - A guide to an adventure game I'm not very familiar with. My biggest complaint with game like this was that they tended to be not long enough and lacked much in the way of replayability. Probably a good rental.
Game Boy
Mega Man II - A guide to the second Mega Man game for the Game Boy. A great game if you liked Mega Man and the Game Boy (Mega Man was ok but I was never fond of Blur Boy).
Tiny Toon Adventures - A guide to this game based on the excellent cartoon of the same name.
Super NES
Lemmings - An excellent game on the SNES (and other platforms). Though it could definitely be frustrating at times.
Joe & Mac - A pretty good platform game with a caveman theme and humor.
Table of Contents from the March 1992 issue of Nintendo Power
Tips from the Pros
Classified Information - Tips, tricks and passwords for Rockin' Kats (NES), Captain Planet (NES), Spud's Adventure (Game Boy), ActRaiser (Super NES), Super Tennis (Super NES), Super Mario World (Super NES), Sim City (Super NES), and Mystical Ninja (Super NES).
Counselors' Corner - Questions answered about Lagoon, Drakkhen, Dragon Warrior III, and Metroid II.
The Info Zone
Celebrity Player Profile - An interview with Corin Nemec, star of Parker Lewis Can't Lose.
Next Issue - Games featured in the next issue include The Addams Family, Captain America and the Avengers, Star Trek, and WWF Super Wrestlemania.
Video Updates
Now Playing - Opinions on some of the latest releases, including Blazebusters, The Empire Strikes Back, Godzilla 2, Super Square Deal, High Stakes, Terminator 2, Wizardry II, Pop Up, Pyramids of Ra, Star Trek, and more.
Pak Watch - Previews of recently released and upcoming games including WWF Super Wrestlemania, The Addams Family, The Duel: Test Drive 2, and Gargoyle's Quest.
Comis
Zelda - For those that like Zelda and their comics based on games.
Super Mario Bros. - Ditto the above but replace Zelda with Super Mario Bros.
Player's Forum
Player's Pulse - Readers answer the question, "What do you want?".
Nester Awards - The best games as ranked by Nintendo Power in various categories. Winners include Battletoads (NES), Battletoads (Game Boy), Actraiser (Super NES), Adventures of Lolo 3 (NES), Caesar's Palace (Game Boy), Final Fantasy Adventure (Game Boy), PilotWings (Super NES), Final Fantasy II (Super NES), Castlevania II (Game Boy), and more.
Power Players - High scores and accomplishments for ActRaiser, Battletoads, Battle Unit Zeoth, Castlevania II, Drakkhen, Dr. Mario, Duck Tales, Faria, Final Fantasy II, Final Fight, The Immortal, Klax, The Little Mermaid, The Adventures of Lolo III, Ninja Gaiden III, Princess Tomato in The Salad Kingdom, Super Mario World, Tetris, The Uninvited, and U.N. Squadron.
Back cover of the March 1992 issue of Nintendo Power
