The First Photograph Of A Person?

Daguerrotype by Louis Daguerre 1839 -- Click To Enlarge

People believe that this is the first outdoor photograph taken of a human. Louis Daguerre, one of the early pioneers of photography and photographic technology, shot this "daguerrotype" in 1839. Daguerrotypes[1] were (sometimes) made of people in the studio--if they could remain stock still for minutes), but people never appeared in street scenes of landscapes. Due to the long exposure times required for an image, all moving objects became invisible.

Somehow this guy stood still, or he was posed by Louis Daguerre and held the pose for a few minutes.

[1] According to The Wikipedia "The daguerreotype was a positive-only process allowing no reproduction of the picture. Preparation of the plate prior to image exposure resulted in the formation of a layer of photo-sensitive silver halide, and exposure to a scene or image through a focussing lens formed a latent image. The latent image was made visible, or "developed", by placing the exposed plate over a slightly heated (about 75°C) cup of mercury. The mercury vapour condensed on those places where the exposure light was most intense, in proportion with the areas of highest density in the image. This produced a picture in an amalgam, the mercury vapour attaching itself to the altered silver iodide. Removal of the mercury image by heat validates this chemistry. The developing box was constructed to allow inspection of the image through a yellow glass window while it was being developed.

The next operation was to "fix" the photographic image permanently on the plate by dipping in a solution of hyposulphite of soda – known as "fixer" or "hypo". The image produced by this method is so delicate it will not bear the slightest handling. Practically all daguerreotypes are protected from accidental damage by a glass-fronted case. It was discovered by experiment that treating the plate with heated gold chloride tones and strengthens the image, although it remains quite delicate and requires a well-sealed case to protect against touch as well as oxidation of the fine silver deposits forming the blacks in the image. The best-preserved daguerreotypes dating from the nineteenth century are sealed in robust glass cases evacuated of air and filled with a chemically inert gas, typically nitrogen."

Click to enlarge this daguerrotype of Edgar Allen Poe from 1848.
Does he look completely insane--or what?
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Karl Rove Fired (The Woodshed Isn't Working)?

Click to enlarge -- Karl V. Rove and President George W. Bush Bantered
With Reporters During Happier Times

The White House Bulletin--a subscription newsletter--says that Bush's Brain, a/k/a Karl V. Rove, is on his way out the door. I don't subscribe, so I am taking Think Progress's word for this. You think the Yellow and Blue Dog Democrats are after his scalp? Just look at the Republicans!

-Trent Lott is now back in the GOP Senate leadership with a serious axe to grind. Rove was behind the scenes agitating against Lott as he fought to save his majority leader's post following his foolish remarks about Sen. Strom Thurmond.

- Harriet Miers, trusted Bush aide and failed Supreme Court nominee doesn't much cotton to Rove either. She believes Rove sat on his hands while her nomination languished. Rove's top aide Susan Ralston was recently fired over ethics questions. Many believe this was at Miers behest, and was a signal that Rove should leave as well.

- Republicans on Capitol Hill say that anger runs deep over President Bush's decision to announce the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld one day after the election instead of weeks before, when it might have actually made a difference. Rove was among those who had argued that to announce Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation before Election Day was admitting failure in Iraq.

- Bush cannot possibly achieve bilateral cooperation between the Dems and GOP (and his hoped for redemption and "legacy) with a wild-eyed partisan like Rove in the wings. Just as this election pushes the Dems toward a Blue Dog position, it also drags the GOP (kicking and screaming) toward the middle. McCain may soon begin taking shots at Bush on just about everything. Even the war. After all McCain wants/wanted to go in with even more troops.

- According to today's New York Times, "many Republicans say they blame Mr. Rove for failing to heed warnings that the war was hurting their campaigns, as the president and the vice president continued making the case for it on the stump."



- "Karl's role has not been to serve as a bridge over troubled waters; he has tried to stir the waters as often as possible," Senator Richard J. Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, and new Majority Whip, told the New York Times.



One Rove insider quoted in the White House Bulletin, is of course, quite correct: Karl's been through plenty of tough times and survived. That S.O.B. has slipped the noose so many times now, it's difficult to actually envision him leaving. In some ways, I guess, it doesn't matter. He has already done about all the damage he can do to The Administration. . .and even the country.

I believe the rumor. All we're waiting for now is for a politically decent interval, or "period of mourning" to pass between the firing of Rummy and the firing of Rove. And if things get really interesting. . .the firing of Cheney.
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Jerry Seinfeld Called Them The Close Talkers, Or, The Study Of Proxemics

click Lyndon Johnson close talking to Supreme Court
Justice Abe Fortas to enlarge


Jerry Seinfeld called them “close talkers;” people who just get too close when they speak with you. Or in line somewhere, the guy behind you is way closer than he really needs to be. I had a neighbor in Seattle once who was always seven inches from your face when she talked to you. When someone is this close, you inherently want to pull back, but you can't. In the normal course of things, when someone is this close to me, it's for a kiss.

Earlier this year I mentioned the bathroom rules of engagement for guys and the discomfort you feel when someone takes the urinal stall next to yours--when every other one is available. Is this guy just clueless, or is he a pecker checker, or just looking for some hot man on man bathroom action? It may not be personal space, but I encounter this same space violation while commuting too--the car that insists on driving right next to you when there is plenty of other space, or the tailgater who follows you too closely to either speed you up or to force you to pull over and let them pass. I constantly have find my aural space invaded by the dolts with bluetooth headsets, gabbing merrily away on their cell phones. Being forced to listen to some of these conversations is tantamount to assrape. At the gas station (I almost wrote the 50's equivalent "filling station") the other day, we were all treated to a guy breaking up with his longtime girlfriend via his bluetooth headset. Listening to his litany of complaints, it was tempting to ask him to put it on speaker phone so we could hear her side of the story too!

The New York Times had an article this week, "In Certain Circles, Two Is A Crowd," that focuses on the study of proxemics. "Communications scholars began studying personal space and people’s perception of it decades ago, in a field known as proxemics. But with the population in the United States climbing above 300 million, urban corridors becoming denser and people with wealth searching for new ways to separate themselves from the masses, interest in the issue of personal space — that invisible force field around your body — is intensifying. "

Some interesting facts:

1) Proxemics scientists studying the videogame Second Life found new evidence of their theories. The rules of proxemics are so ingrained that people even impose those rules on their cyber sprite selves while playing games.


Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times - click to enlarge

2) People tend to retreat to corners to distance themselves from strangers. You are not actually distancing yourself, but establishing your personal bubble. People tend to sit apart at an equidistance (see the photo above of three women in Union Square, NYC). They will separate themselves like birds on a telephone wire (see drawing). Think of a table in a public space. The first person will seat themselves at a corner. The next person will sit at the opposite corner (farthest from the first person). The next people seat themselves as far as possible from the first two. Each succeeding person deals with a diminshed space, but attempts to maximize their distance by distributing the remaining space.

3) Personal space is not confined to that invisible bubble around you. . . smells, sounds and stares from outside the bubble can also invade your space. The knucklehead yelling into his bluetooth headset on the train, your cubicle mate spraying Axe on himself, the guy across the way staring at you every time whenever you look up, or the guy dining on lutefisk. . .all of them are guilty!

4) In cities, which are much more crowded, people tend to adapt, and compromise, but they still attempt to follow the rules ox proxemics whenever possible. They may compromise, buy they always revert to The Old Ways when space permits.



5) While we all strive for space, it's almost unconscious. Proxemics scholars can even draw a map of that table I mentioned, and predict the order in which the seats will fill up, or which urinal stalls will be filled, and in what order...

6) “to overcome the intimacy, you have to make sure you don’t make eye contact.” said Dane Archer, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. From my five years riding the subways in New York City, I know this is true. I often wore shades on the train. I would also have my head in a book. Keelin and other women I knew would wear "repellent" hats and bulky coats. People hold 'papers in front of them to read and also to shield themselves from the madding crowd by increasing their bubble.

“Animals tend to have an aversion to being touched by a strange critter,” said David B. Givens, the director of the Center for Nonverbal Studies in Spokane, Wash. (What a great name! Their mission could be to study everything that doesn't involve talking). I had a friend, Chipper Stone, who spent every Friday "being nonverbal." My wife and favorite sister in law do this once a year--three days of nonverbal living at Breitenbush! I would be expelled, being constitutionally incapable of achieving the state of being nonverbal, and even more, of not hearing the rhythm and music of voices for three whole days!

Some proxemics scholars believe that the iPod "craze" turns city streets and commuter trains into islands of individuality. " The article also talks about how it is easier to be close in low light (another form of the iPod's sensory deprivation). Givens gives the example of a bar in dim light. If the lights were suddenly switched on, people would race to move away from each other...
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Poem:With Or Without The Words

1
If I don't write it down
It's gone like a pickpocket
Easing back into the crowd

2
If I don’t write it down
The world will carry on
Merrily on its own

Unaware of the loss
The world spins revolves and rotates
With or without the words

3
If I don’t write it down
The words race away
Like a hit and run driver

Leaving the scene
Of the crime
As if distance

Cures the unthinkable
If I can't see it
It never happened.

4
The words themselves are
Disassociated and fragmented
Until I gather them

And range and rearrange
The words or new words they suggest
Syllabify and counterbalance

Tinker with rhythms
Remove unnecessary verbiage
And lop off limbs

To save the patient
In a particular place
or an unknown span of time.
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All This Is That Turns Two Years Old Today. . .

. . .and to celebrate, here are some of our banners and posters from the last couple of years. . . /jb



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President Bush: The Election Was A Mandate To Win This War!

According to The Guardian, President George Bush recently told his most trusted aides and advisers that the US and its "coalition" must make one last "big push" to win the war in Iraq. The President's increasingly tenuous hold on reality appears to be at the breaking point.

Instead of commencing troop withdrawals, The President is, in fact, strongly considering adding 20,000 more soldiers to the forces on the ground n Iraq.

President Bush intends to buck the public and congressional backlash against the war. The citizens have voted for change in our policy, and Bush intends to do just that, by cranking up the war effort. It appears that the major drubbing of the Republican Party was the catalyst for the President's new direction. Rather than stand down, and begin withdrawing troops, the Administration believes it needs to get serious about winning this war.

Sources say that The President's intransigence is coloring the work of the Hamilton-Baker commission studying our current war policy.

The commission is still working, and its recommendations are expected to be built around a "victory strategy" architected by Pentagon officials. The panel appears to have been significantly influenced by The Administrations No. 1 hawk, Vice-President Cheney.

Neither The President, nor his top aides would return calls from All This Is That confirming this article. They only appear to be talking with "friendly press."
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Painting: Adam and Eve

Click to enlarge
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Poem: Going Mad Might Be Like A Bad Eight Track Tape Deck

You're not sure hear it:
Faint overtones in the music
Like the static in a skipping signal

From a distant 50,000 watt radio station.
It's subtle at first,
Like music from another room.

Soon it becomes more than an echo.
You hear two songs at once
Like when the azimuth of an 8-track head

Becomes misadjusted
And the audio of adjacent tracks
Bleeds into the current song.

Hearing voices must be like that.
You brush it aside
At first, doubting your own ears.

When it emerges with authority
You no longer know
Which voice is real

And which voice is a doppleganger.
Soon the bleedthrough
Takes precedence

And you no longer differentiate
Between your Jiminy Cricket voice
And the one ordering you

To leave your house
And dice up the first luckless person
To cross your path.
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Poem: Fall Haiku

Fall Haiku

Ask the blowing wind
Which leaf on the locust tree
Will be next to go.
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Painting: Four Takes On The Soon To Be Retiring Secretary of Defense

. . .click the painting to enlarge. . .
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Poem: Changes 19/The Approach

click the painting to enlarge

There will be misfortune
When the eighth month comes.
The earth wobbles on its pivot

And dangles above the lake.
Will she sink
Or will she float?

The leader never falters
On the approach.
Tolerance and protection

Joins the goodness of the people
And everything furthers.
Blame is shucked aside

And the greathearted approach
Is complete.
Good fortune. No blame.

We must be in heaven
Because the ducks on earth
Don't sing like this.
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Alien Lore 91 - Why Do The Greys (and others) Visit Earth?

The Invasion Theory - Early in the UFO years (say after the Arnold/Mr. Rainier sighting in 1947), abductees and contactees claimed the aliens were setting the stage for a massive invasion. It's an attractive theory and one that has been popularized in films, stories, and radio plays (War of the Worlds, Mars Attacks, Starship Troopers, et al). The invasion theory has one fundamental flaw: a civilization that navigates space, and even time, could easily overrun a planet that first took to the skies 103 years ago at Kitty Hawk. If the invasion theory is correct, well, then, it's likely the invasion is already over. Supporters of the invasion theory have begun using the Genetic theory to explain why have not yet been invaded. The aliens, they say, cannot exist here without genetic modification, which has lead to the abductions, mutilations and breeding/hybrid experiments.

The Greys Are Just Intergalactic Sightseers - The aliens arrive here for the same reasons we visit the Galapagos Island, Mexico, or Antartica, climb K2 or Broad Peak, or walk on the moon. The visitors are curious; they find the animals, and plants and, most of all, the antics of the homo sapiens interesting. We are a roadside attraction on the great stellar highway.

Judging from the variety of spaceships reportedly seen by observers, the visitors may hail from several other planets, or from various "countries" on one planet. Perhaps they told each other via some great galactic internet about the bizarre goings on on Earth.

The Greys Visit Because We Have Something They Desperately Need - This theory attempts to account for the reported abductions, cattle mutilations, genital inspections, implants, alleged inseminations, crop circles, and other unexplained, or unexplainable, phenomena. The crop circles could just be interstellar graffiti. The theory on the UFO community is that we're being visited by several races--some benign, some malignant--and they all have an agenda.

Some people posit that the aliens are here to mine organic material in short supply on their planet. The cattle mutilitations are often attributed to the greys lacking some essential fluid or nutrient--and they are forced to sweep the galaxy looking for new supplies.

Another popular theory has the Earth may containing minerals absent from the alien planet. This is partly the basis for the claims of vast underground colonies of aliens (such as the Dulce base). There have also been reports of UFOs and aliens taking samples and cores of our flora and fauna (up to and including ourselves!).

Some UFOlogists have pointed out that extensive mining operations would be easily noticed--for example, if the Aliens were carting away many tons of bauxite omagnesiumum. . .we might notice eventually. Other researchers point out that they may need only small samples to clone or duplicate in their obviously far advanced laboratories.

The Day The Earth Stood Still Theory - One theme that comes back again and again (both from observation, and from tales of abductees) is that the visitors are here to help us mend our evil ways. We may just be an outpost of a civilization that seeded us millenniums ago. They come back to check up on their colony. Remember Klaatu from The Day The Earth Stood Still? He came to warn us of the consequences of our bellicose society. Some abductees claim to have seen images--mental film loops--of the Earth's annihilation through neglect and war. "Contactees" of the 1950's claim to have been shown similar mental 'films' about the consequences of neglecting peace and the earth itself.

One researcher points out that these claims surfaced shortly after the first atomic bombs had been detonated in the 1940s. And many of the most famous sightings have occurred near nuclear installations, (Roswell was the world's first nuclear bomber Air Force Base).

Alien Sex/Genetic Manipulation? - Abduction victims claim that they were subjected to strange experiments including the removal of semen from men and eggs from women. Some women claim that they have been impregnated only to have the fetus removed shortly after conception. Why? One popular theory says that an alien civilization needs to crossbreed with humans to forge a new, stronger of hybrid aliens. Numerous abductees speak of seeing 'human-like' children on board alien craft.

Another theory claims the aliens are cross-breeding in order to live on earth. Their native bodies could not survive on earth due to atmosphere differences and our diseases. . .without some adaptive genetics. (see above, "the invasion theory").
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