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Friday, November 30, 2018

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (26)


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

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

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

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

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

This set is mostly contains pictures of ice and snow. Not sure from where...possibly Alaska. One of them is dated July 1962 (processing date). The final picture by contrast is of a garden somewhere. That one is dated September 1960 (also 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.


Processed July 1962



Processed September 1960

https://supload.com/S1anjsOwQ



4 Big Problems With the Government’s New Climate Change Report



If you’re like me, you’re happy the White House released the latest version of the National Climate Assessment on Black Friday. Publishing the 1,700-page report the day after Thanksgiving saved me from unwanted dinner conversations about our planet’s impending climate doom.

But if your aunt calls you up this week spouting claims of mass deaths, global food shortages, economic destruction, and national security risks resulting from climate change, here’s what you need to know about this report.
One statistic that media outlets have seized upon is that the worst climate scenario could cost the US 10 percent of its gross domestic product by 2100.  The 10 percent loss projection is more than twice the percentage that was lost during the Great Recession.

The study, funded in part by climate warrior Tom Steyer’s organization, calculates these costs on the assumption that the world will be 15 degrees Fahrenheit warmer. That temperature projection is even higher than the worst-case scenario predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In other words, it is completely unrealistic.
The scary projections in the National Climate Assessment rely on a theoretical climate trajectory that is known as Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5. In estimating impacts on climate change, climatologists use four representative such trajectories to project different greenhouse gas concentrations.

To put it plainly, Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 assumes a combination of bad factors that are not likely to all coincide. It assumes “the fastest population growth (a doubling of Earth’s population to 12 billion), the lowest rate of technology development, slow GDP growth, a massive increase in world poverty, plus high energy use and emissions.”

Despite what the National Climate Assessment says, Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 is not a likely scenario. It estimates nearly impossible levels of coal consumption, fails to take into account the massive increase in natural gas production from the shale revolution, and ignores technological innovations that continue to occur in nuclear and renewable technologies.

When taking a more realistic view of the future of conventional fuel use and increased greenhouse gas emissions, the doomsday scenarios vanish. Climatologist Judith Curry recently wrote, “Many ‘catastrophic’ impacts of climate change don’t really kick at the lower CO2 concentrations, and [Representative Concentration Pathway] then becomes useful as a ‘scare’ tactic.”
A central feature of the National Climate Assessment is that the costs of climate are here now, and they are only going to get worse. We’re going to see more hurricanes and floods. Global warming has worsened heat waves and wildfires.

But last year’s National Climate Assessment on extreme weather tells a different story. As University of Colorado Boulder professor Roger Pielke Jr. pointed out in a Twitter thread in August 2017, there were no increases in drought, no increases in frequency or magnitude of floods, no trends in frequency or intensity of hurricanes, and “low confidence for a detectable human climate change contribution in the Western United States based on existing studies.”

It’s hard to imagine all of that could be flipped on its head in a matter of a year.

Another sleight of hand in the National Climate Assessment is where certain graph timelines begin and end. For example, the framing of heat wave data from the 1960s to today makes it appear that there have been more heat waves in recent years. Framing wildfire data from 1985 until today makes it appear as though wildfires have been increasing in number.

But going back further tells a different story on both counts, as Pielke Jr. has explained in testimony.

Moreover, correlation is not causality. Western wildfires have been particularly bad over the past decade, but it’s hard to say to what extent these are directly owing to hotter and drier temperatures. It’s even more difficult to pin down how much man-made warming is to blame.

Yet the narrative of the National Climate Assessment is that climate change is directly responsible for the increase in economic and environmental destruction of western wildfires. Dismissing the complexity of factors that contribute to a changing climate and how they affect certain areas of the country is irresponsible.
The National Climate Assessment stresses that this report “was created to inform policy-makers and makes no specific recommendations on how to remedy the problem.” Yet the takeaway was clear: The costs of action (10 percent of America’s GDP) dwarf the costs of any climate policy.

The reality, however, is that policies endorsed to combat climate change would carry significant costs and would do nothing to mitigate warming, even if there were a looming catastrophe like the National Climate Association says.

Just last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proposed a carbon tax of between $135 and $5,500 by the year 2030. An energy tax of that magnitude would bankrupt families and businesses and undoubtedly catapult the world into economic despair.

These policies would simply divert resources away from more valuable use, such as investing in more robust infrastructure to protect against natural disasters or investing in new technologies that make Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 even more of an afterthought than it already should be.

The Trump administration is coming under criticism for publishing the report on Black Friday. To the extent that was a conscious strategy, it certainly isn’t a new tactic. The Obama administration had frequent Friday night document dumps in responding to congressional inquiries about Solyndra and the Department of Energy’s taxpayer-funded failures in the loan portfolio. The Environmental Protection Agency even released its Tier 3 gas regulations, which increased the price at the pump, on Good Friday.

No matter what party is in charge, the opposite party will complain about their burying the story. Regardless, the American public would be better served by enjoying the holiday season and shopping rather than worrying about an alarmist report.

This article was reprinted from The Daily Signal.

Source: 4 Big Problems With the Government's New Climate Change Report - Foundation for Economic Education

Thursday, November 29, 2018

PSM (September 1997)



PSM (September 1997)

PSM was one of the earliest and most popular PlayStation specific magazines. The September 1997 issue was the first issue and includes: Features
  • 16-Page Special: Every PlayStation Code! - We've searched everywhere to compile the end-all-be-all PlayStation Code Bible - 16 pages of pure cheater's heaven! Within these pages you'll find codes, tricks and passwords for every PlayStation game imaginable.
  • Know Your PlayStation! - Think you know all there is to know about your system? Then check out our expansive report on everything PlayStation, and prepare to be surprised!
  • Felony 11-79: The Getaway Driver's Handbook - With our escape maps and pro advice, the cops'll never get their hands on you!
  • Cover Story: Final Fantasy VII 10-Page Guide! - The biggest PlayStation game of the year is finally out, and we've got all the expert info you need to get you started on your adventure! Be warned though - our strategy is so complete, you'll only want to peek at it when you're really stuck. You may spoil the game for yourself!
  • Ace Combat 2: The Skills to Make You an Ace - Before you're ready for the real thing, you gotta go to school.
  • The Top 25 PlayStation Games of All Time - The votes are in, and we've got your top 25 favorite games of all time! Who made number-one? See for yourself...
Monitor
  • Peripheral Reviews
  • Yaroze News
  • Gossip
  • Nihon Game Otaku!
Reviews
  • Flashback
  • Backlog
Previews
  • Blasto
  • Colony Wars
  • Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
  • Gex: Enter The Gecko
  • NFL GameDay '98
  • Tomb Raider 2
  • Wild 9's
  • Porsche Challenge
  • Fighting Force
  • Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero
  • Bushido Blade
  • Deathtrap Dungeon
  • G-Police
  • Madden '98
  • Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
Code Junkies - The latest codes for all of your addicts Letters
  • Link-Up
  • Ask Sony
  • Top This!
  • Marketplace
Reset - A sneak-peek at what's gonna be hot for next month ...and more!

MDK (PC, Macintosh, PlayStation)






MDK (PC, Macintosh, PlayStation)

MDK is a third person shooter initially developed for the PC and then ported to Mac OS and later the PlayStation. While it was developed at a time when 3D accelerators were starting to take off in popularity, MDK was developed without as hardware based 3D graphics. All rendering was done via software and the requirements were still relatively modest at the time...a Pentium 60 with 16MB of RAM. The graphics were pretty good for the time too.
The game was originally to be called "Murder Death Kill" but was changed for marketing purposes. Even the MDK became more ambiguous as there were a few instances of that acronym in the game. The most obvious of which was the name of the mission being executed which was called "Mission: Deliver Kindness". The game has a rather humorous backstory though the main plot is pretty simplistic...save the Earth from invading aliens. You must accomplish this, in part, using a newly invented "Coil Suit".
The PlayStation version of the game was released about 7 months after the original PC version though development overlapped somewhat. Graphically speaking, there are some things better about the PC version and other things better about the PlayStation version. Personally, I prefer the PC version and that's probably the easiest version to get as it has been released on both Steam and GoG. The PlayStation version shouldn't be too hard to find but you will have to track down an original. A sequel (MDK2) was released in 2000 for Windows and the Dreamcast and in 2001 for the PlayStation. A third game was planned but never released. The ad above is for the PlayStation version of the game and it appeared in the September 1997 issue of PSM (the first issue). Screen shots are from the PC version of the game.

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (25)


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

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

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

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

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

This set is undated and unlabeled except for the fisrt one. I believe that one is of Leo Oestreicher himself. The others are pics of flowers.

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.


Leo on the Ferry




https://supload.com/S1z43F_D7



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Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Brevard Renaissance Fair 2018 - The Craic Show - Part 37 (The Beggar Man)





Brevard Renaissance Fair 2018 - The Craic Show - Part 37 (The Beggar Man)

yohko 1 - Devil Hunter Yohko




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NYT: Biofuel Mandates Have Been an Environmental Disaster



Gridlock that stops any legislation from being passed is usually better than “bipartisanship.” To get bipartisan support, legislation has to buy off power brokers and special interest groups in both political parties. A classic example is America’s harmful legislation requiring the use of biofuels. It has resulted in the destruction of vast areas of tropical rainforest, massively increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
The New York Times describes this in a story called “Palm Oil Was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead It Unleashed a Catastrophe.” The story explains that “A decade ago, the U.S. mandated the use of vegetable oil in biofuels, leading to industrial-scale deforestation—and a huge spike in carbon emissions.” In some areas once covered by rainforest, there are now “only charred stumps poking up from murky, dark pools of water.” As the Times explains:
Slashing and burning the existing forests to make way for oil-palm cultivation had a perverse effect: It released more carbon. A lot more carbon. NASA researchers say the accelerated destruction of Borneo’s forests contributed to the largest single-year global increase in carbon emissions in two millenniums, an explosion that transformed Indonesia into the world’s fourth-largest source of such emissions. Instead of creating a clever technocratic fix to reduce American’s carbon footprint, lawmakers had lit the fuse on a powerful carbon bomb that, as the forests were cleared and burned, produced more carbon than the entire continent of Europe.
Despite this massive destruction of forests, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the Speaker of the House at the time, continues to defend the “biofuels mandate she shepherded into law.” She claims it is “reducing emissions” when it obviously isn’t. Her fellow Democrat and political ally, former Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), admits as much. He helped enact the mandate as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. But he now recognizes the obvious reality that the mandate is “doing more harm to the environment” than any fossil fuels it has replaced.
Former President George W. Bush enabled this destruction by supporting the mandate and signing it into law. This bipartisan support for the mandate didn’t make it better because bipartisanship is usually a toxic blend of evil and stupidity. “In America, we have a two-party system,” a Republican congressional staffer told a visiting group of Russian legislators in the 1990s. “There is the stupid party. And there is the evil party. … Periodically, the two parties get together and do something that is both stupid and evil. This is called—‘bipartisanship.’”

This harm to the environment was also facilitated by the Obama-era Environmental Protection Agency. It massively underestimated the destruction of forest that the mandate would cause. Dire losses of forests were projected in its initial, honest estimate of what would happen from the mandate going into effect. But in response to lobbying from special interests, it replaced that estimate with a rosier one that dismissed forest losses as negligible.

As The New York Times notes, initially, the Obama EPA recognized that the negative effect on the environment “of land-use changes overshadowed any other consideration, and not by a small margin,” resulting in negative effects on the climate annually for at least 32 years and taking “a century” before the resulting replacement of fossil fuels would “reach the level of benefit required under the law.” But in response to lobbying, the EPA’s stance changed:
By the time the E.P.A. released its final rule in early 2010, it had made a complete about-face. Its models now found that the impact from land-use changes were almost negligible. For Indonesia, the E.P.A. estimated that just 110,000 acres of forest would be converted to cropland as a result of the American biofuels law, and almost none of it on sensitive peatland.
Across the world, the land substitution effects of biofuels mandates have been profoundly negative.

Biofuel mandates drove up wheat prices in Egypt, triggering riots and contributing to the ouster of pro-American ruler Hosni Mubarak. Egypt is now under a veiled military dictatorship that is far more oppressive and wasteful than Mubarak’s rule, and there is far more terrorism and much less tourism and growth in small businesses than under Mubarak. Related food price increases fueled terrorism and violence in places like Yemen and Afghanistan. They also contributed to hunger and child malnutrition in Guatemala.

This article was reprinted from Liberty Unyielding.

Source: NYT: Biofuel Mandates Have Been an Environmental Disaster - Foundation for Economic Education



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VideoGames & Computer Entertainment (April 1992)

VideoGames & Computer Entertainment (April 1992)

VideoGames & Computer Entertainment was always my favorite gaming magazine. While it wasn't necessarily the best in terms of import coverage or having the very latest up to the minute news, it more than made up for it with detailed reviews and in-depth articles. The April 1993 issue includes: Features
  • The Quest for the Statues: A Player's Guide to Ys III, Part I - In this first part, we'll show you how to clear out the mine, rescue all the people and gather the many mysterious statues.
  • Learning with Games: Entertainment Games That Teach - Home educational software is a mixture of accomplishment of high concept and disappointing sales returns. Join us as we look at some titles that have tried to bridge the barrier between game playing and education.
  • Electronic Gaming Comedy: Humorous Games - Games in 1992 are not only better, but are also more likely to get laughs. Take a look at some games that will make your system guffaw.
Reviews & Previews
  • Video-Game Reviews
    • Super Adventure Island
    • Kid Chameleon
    • Joe & Mac
    • WWF Super Wrestlemania
    • Wizardry II: Knight of Diamonds
    • Warrior of Rome II
    • Lagoon
    • Xardion
    • The Games: Winter Edition
  • Gaming on the Go
    • Master Gear Converter
    • Missile Command
    • Super Skweek
    • Adventure Island
  • Computer Game Previews
    • Champions
    • Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
    • Guest
    • Matrix Cubed
    • Michael Jordan
    • Flight
    • Out of this World
    • Black Crypt
  • Computer Game Reviews
    • Bo Jackson Baseball
    • No Greater Glory
    • Civilization
    • Patton Strikes Back
    • Police Quest 3: The Kindred
    • Hare Raising Havoc
    • SimAnt
    • Spacewrecked
    • AD&D: Pools of Darkness
  • Computer Game Strategies
    • Gunship 2000
    • Megafortress
Departments
  • Editor's Letter
  • Reader Mail
  • Tip Sheet
  • News Bits
  • Easter Egg Hunt
  • Destination Arcadia
  • Fandango
  • Inside Gaming
  • Game Doctor
  • Advertiser Index
...and more!

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (24)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.
I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.
This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/ Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions. The first slide is hand labeled "Grinell Glacier - Frobisher Bay". The rest are unlabeled and all are undated though they are probably from the late 1950s or early 1960s. A body of water, a dam, and someone's house are the other subjects in this set. 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.

Grinell Glacier - Frobisher Bay
https://supload.com/rksZI_uPQ
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Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Family Computing (December 1983)




Family Computing (December 1983)

Family Computing was a relatively short-lived multi-format computer magazine from the early 1980s. There were a bunch like it but most didn't survive long. It seems magazines dedicated to one particular computer did much better which I suppose makes sense since most people probably didn't have multiple computers of different types. The December 1983 issue of Family Computing includes: Features
  • A No-Hassle Way to Shop? - Beat the crowds and save money to boot just by pounding on your computer keys - with the right connection.
  • The Layman's Guide to Word Processing - Best-selling author McWilliams makes even rank beginner understand why word processing has become such a popular computer application for home use.
  • A Young Girl's Fantasy Turns to Fortune - Adventure game designer Roberta Williams turned her talents for storytelling into successful software packages published by the company she heads with her husband, Ken.
  • Buyer's Guide to Joysticks, Paddles, And Track-Balls - All you need to know to choose the right hand controller for you and your computer.
  • Automatic Pilot - Four homeowners, who've turned science fiction into fact with easy-to-install home-controlling equipment, may be part of a wave of the future.
  • How to Make Your Own Computer Cover for Just a Few Dollars - It takes just a small investment of time and money - and a little sewing skill - to protect your computer.
  • Things Computer Salespeople Seldom Tell You - Asking the right questions when you buy a computer can save you hours of frustration and rage - and a bundle of money.
  • What's A Computer? - California kids have some offbeat answers.
  • Games For Two...Or Ten - A selection of games guaranteed to gather crowds of players around the computer.
  • 10 Gifts Your Computer Wants For Christmas - If your computer makes life easier for you, don't forget to return the favor - it's sure to pay off for you as well.
  • How People and Machines Can Work in Harmony - Part two of a special report on ergonomics.
Programming
  • The Programmer - For enthusiasts of all levels.
  • Holiday Programs - Trim you electronic tree to music, make your own personalized wrapping paper, and divvy up holiday chores with programs for Apple, Atari, Commodore 64 and VIC-20, IBM, TI, Timex, and TRS-80 computers.
  • Puzzle - Shopper Search: Finding Mom at the department store.
  • Reader-Written Program - Writing letters in code - making your own character set.
Products
  • What's in Store - 14 pages of product announcements and reviews.
  • New Hardware Announcements - The latest in the field: Atari's 1400XL, Timex's 2000, TRS-80's PC-4, Chalk Board's PowerPad, and more.
  • Novelties and Notions - A compendium of computer-related items including disk punches, coloring books, calendars, computer printout greeting banners, and more.
  • Software Guide - Quick takes on two dozen new and noteworthy programs.
  • Software Reviews
  • Book Reviews
Departments
  • Editor's Note
  • Behind the Screens - People, News, and Trends
  • Home-School Connection - Take a lesson from teachers - choose educational software the way they do.
  • Games - Giving games as gifts.
  • Home Business - A successful home accountant.
  • Computing Confidential - Addicted to computers.
  • Computing Clinic - Questions from readers.
  • Light Touch - The Man Who Bought Two Many Peripherals.
  • Basic Booth - A monthly cartoon.
  • The Primer - A multipart reference guide that appears each month.
  • Advertiser's Index
  • Sign Off - Avoiding the "Piano Lesson Syndrome."
...and more!

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (23)


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

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

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

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

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

The 3rd pictures in this set has a stamped date of April 1958. It appears to be of a Sunday school class and was probably actually taken in January 1958 given the calendar? in the background. The 4th pictures has a hand written date of December 1956. The other two are undated but are probably also from the late 1950s.

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.



April 1958

December 1956

https://supload.com/BJBDISOD7


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Brevard Renaissance Fair 2018 - The Craic Show - Part 36 (The Ravens)


Brevard Renaissance Fair 2018 - The Craic Show - Part 36 (The Ravens)


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Socialism’s Record Has Been Pain, Not Gain (Especially for the Poor)



The overarching message of “The Opportunity Cost of Socialism”—a study recently released by the president’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA)—is that the advocacy of socialism cannot reasonably be based on policy preferences; its attraction has always been grounded in a combination of wishful thinking and ignorance. For example, the new CEA study shows that the socialist approach to “single payer” health care advocated by many on the left would cost much more and deliver much less, resulting in the significant worsening of mortality and morbidity, not just higher taxes and reduced economic growth.

One prominent opinion page editor described the CEA study’s conclusions to me as too obvious to warrant mention. That reaction reflects the problem the study seeks to remedy. Obvious facts about socialism are not discussed enough. Few people are willing to read 50-page studies like the CEA’s, and there has been very little media coverage of it—journalists or politicians who could summarize the CEA findings haven’t seen sufficient reason to do so (or may themselves be among the uninformed advocates of socialism). That is too bad because the ignorant advocacy of socialism is currently a significant threat to our democracy.
Socialism has existed in many forms that lie on a continuum, from the central planning nightmare of the USSR to the Scandinavian democratic experiments of several decades ago. The idea that unites the various embodiments of socialism along that continuum is that economic freedom is counterproductive to the aspirations of humanity. It would be far better and fairer, socialists argue, for the state to distribute scarce resources rather than letting the market allocate goods and services by itself. Socialism seeks control of economic decisions, either through central planning or through expropriative taxation and regulation, in the interest of the common man.

The difference between market-based and socialist economies is not the presence of redistributive policies per se. For over a century, around the world, market-based economies have taxed and redistributed wealth and provided a host of services such as public education and care for the poor, sick, and elderly. The difference is that in market-based systems, taxation is regarded as an unfortunate burden employed out of necessity to ensure that other priorities are achieved. In contrast, in socialist regimes, taxation is not regarded as an undesirable consequence but as a means to prevent individuals from counterproductively controlling their collective economic destiny.

Socialism’s appeal has always been its false promise to create wealth better than capitalism can. Advocates of socialism promise great economic achievements, which they argue are worth the price of reduced individual economic liberty. It is worth remembering that Karl Marx regarded socialism as an economic necessity that would emerge out of the ashes of capitalism precisely because capitalism would fail to sustain wealth creation. Marx made many specific, and erroneous, predictions about capitalism, including its declining profitability and rising unemployment. His analysis did not consider permanent economic growth in a capitalist system to be a possibility. And his “historical materialist” view of political choice claimed the rich and powerful would never share power voluntarily with their economic lessers, or create social safety nets. Writing in the mid-19th century, Marx fundamentally failed to understand the huge changes in technology, political suffrage, or social safety net policies that were occurring around him.
Not only has socialist theory been wrong about the economic and political fruits of capitalism, but it also failed to see the problems that arise in socialist governments. Socialism’s record has been pain, not gain, especially for the poor. Socialism produced mass starvation in eastern Europe and China as it undermined the ability of farmers to grow and market their crops. In less extreme incarnations, such as the UK in the decades after World War II and before Margaret Thatcher, it stunted growth. In most cases, socialism’s monopoly on economic control also fomented corruption by government officials, as was especially apparent in Latin American and African socialist regimes. The adverse economic consequences of socialism led the Scandinavian countries to dial back their versions of socialism in the past decades. If the United States had imitated Scandinavian-style socialism, the CEA study estimates, our GDP today would be 19 percent lower.

Socialism has been abandoned in virtually all of the developing world. Countries today do not seek to emulate the disasters of North Korea, Cuba, or Venezuela. They also avoid high taxation of the rich. That reflects the recognition that countries compete with each other for capital. Expropriating the rich tends to make them leave, and when they leave, they take their wealth with them.
This philosophical shift in the developing world is a major change since the 1980s when socialism was still fashionable among some. The shift away from socialist thinking was grounded in the growing body of empirical evidence about the kinds of policies that produced growth and poverty alleviation—that is, policies that used markets as a lever of economic development. Now developing countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, India, China, South Africa, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia are known as “emerging economies,” a description that recognizes their need to emerge from state control of their economies through privatization, free trade, and the creation of viable private financial intermediaries to promote growth and poverty alleviation. All around the developing world, socialism is understood as a false promise, an ideological opium that repressive elites use to retain and expand power. Capitalism, in contrast, is seen as the force that has lifted over a billion people out of poverty worldwide since 1990.

To historians, that was obvious long before the 1980s. Socialism has never conquered poverty. It has never competed with capitalism as a means of effectively allocating resources and promoting sustainable growth. Over the past half century, scores of economic historians have sought to explain the factors that produced the economic progress that Europe and some of its offshoots enjoyed in the 18th-20th centuries. This group of scholars, which includes Angus Maddison, Joel Mokyr, Eric Jones, David Landes, Deirdre McCloskey, and Douglass North, tends to hold quite diverse political preferences, but these individuals universally agree on the facts: Government policies that safeguard a combination of personal economic freedom and secure property rights and the ability of individuals to gain personally by participating in markets have promoted the effort and innovation that conquered poverty and promoted growth through the ages.

The facts about socialism and capitalism may shock the young people of America, many of whom lionize Bernie Sanders, an unapologetic socialist who honeymooned in the USSR, as the new conscience of our nation—and many of whom, 51 percent according to Gallup, now have a positive view of socialism. Only 45 percent have a positive view of capitalism. That represents a 12-point decline in young adults’ positive views about capitalism in just the past two years.  Many of these young people are thoughtful and intelligent—but they are also ignorant about the history and economics of the systems they favor or condemn. This is the main reason why they must read this important CEA study.

Source: Socialism’s Record Has Been Pain, Not Gain (Especially for the Poor) - Foundation for Economic Education



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Monday, November 26, 2018

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (22)


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

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

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

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

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

This set mostly contains pictures of flowers and one landscape shot. One had the date processed printed on it (April 1958).

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.



April 1958


https://supload.com/Byh1NQvDQ


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yohko1 - Devil Hunter Yohko




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Nintendo Power (September 1999)





Nintendo Power (September 1999)

In 1999 Nintendo Power was primarily covering the Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Color. The Nintendo 64 was near its peak having been out a few years. The GameCube was still a couple years away so it was not yet making headlines. The September 1999 issue of Nintendo Power includes: Strategy
  • Gauntlet Legends
  • Hybrid Heaven
  • NFL Blitz 2000
  • Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko
  • Re-Volt
  • Shadow Man
  • Madden NFL 2000 vs. NFL Quarterback Club
  • Tarzan
  • Revelations: The Demon Slayer
  • Looney Tunes
  • Deja Vu / Deja Vu II
Special Features
  • Rare Sci-Fi Phenom - Jet Force Gemini
  • Sucker Punch Surprise - Sprocket
  • PC hit Lands on N64 - Starcraft 64
  • 5-in-1 Strategy Guide - Player's Choice
Every Issue
  • Player's Pulse
  • Classified Information
  • Pokecenter
  • Arena
  • Player's Poll Contest
  • Now Playing
  • Pak Watch
  • Next Issue
  • Game List
...and more!


Breath of Fire (Super Nintendo, GBA)






Breath of Fire (Super Nintendo, GBA)

Breath of Fire is a role playing game that was developed by Capcom. The English translation and localization was handled by Square Soft and the game was released in North America in 1994. Breath of Fire is a typical example of a Japanese RPG from the 16-bit era.
Like most RPGs, Breath of Fire is fantasy based. You play the role of a boy named Ryu who is one of the last of an ancient race of beings that can transform into dragons. He has misplaced his sister and is searching the world for her. Along the way you will fight many battles (thankfully turn based) and meet up with others with similar quests.
While originally developed for the SNES, Breath of Fire was also released for the Game Boy Advance in 2001. This version was almost identical to the SNES original. It had some minor graphical improvements but the biggest practical change was that you could save anywhere instead of only at certain places.
Breath of Fire received generally positive reviews and ultimately spawned numerous sequels on various systems. In addition to the Game Boy Advance port, Breath of Fire was also re-released via the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in 2016. If you want an original copy, you'll probably have to pay a fairly high price...something close to original retail for a used copy anyway. Emulation, as always, is an option too. The image at the top is the intro to the strategy guide in issue number 3 of Nintendo Power Advance for the Game Boy Advance version of the game. Other images are screen shots from the Super Nintendo version.

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (21)

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

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

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

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

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

The only photo labelled in this set was the baby photo and it is just labelled "Janet". Another photo appears to show the Parthenon off in the distance.

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.


Janet



https://supload.com/ByGu_jIPX


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