Tracking All This Is That "Customers"

Over the last two weeks, the number of people coming to this site has quadrupled. The counter tracking system shows most of the new traffic coming from Google Images. This blog must have made the cut somehow, because now the majority of traffic comes from there. There has also been a huge spike of people coming from Google France. . .same deal. . .this site is now being crawled by both Google Images and Google France.

Most of the hits are on the Presidents paintings and the Heroes and Villains series. A large number of hits are on an optical illusion I didn't create (rotating wheels). I reprinted it on the blog, and dozens of people a day come to look at it, and grab it. /jack
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Tempest In A Teapot: "The G.O.P. Is A White Christian Party"

I'm not sure why Republicans are outraged over Dr. Dean's (a/k/a The Democratic Party Chair) statement yesterday on the makeup of the G.O.P.:

"The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people."
"They're a pretty monolithic party."
"They all behave the same and they look the same."
"It's pretty much a white, Christian party."

The G.O.P. may not like to advertise some of these facts, but they are facts. You Elephants can't have it both ways; you can't beat down and disenfranchise people you hope to vote for you. Over the last year, there has been evidence of Republican support among women and minorities slipping even further. Duh.

Click on the title for more info and an audio clip of Dr. Dean's remarks.
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Bush Media Consultant Joins McCain Presidential Election Team

BY G. ROBERT HILLMAN

The Dallas Morning News

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Mark McKinnon, the Austin political consultant who oversaw the advertising for President Bush in the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, has committed to help Sen. John McCain in a second presidential bid.

McKinnon - one of the president's closest friends and confidants and a frequent mountain biking companion - met with the Arizona Republican over lunch this spring in the Senate dining room to discuss his support, said a GOP activist familiar with the meeting.

At this point, McCain, who lost to Bush in a bitter 2000 Republican primary, is in the early but unmistakable stages of laying the groundwork for another campaign. And McKinnon has indicated he would review his options, should Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice or the president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, run in 2008.

Click on the title to link to the complete article.
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New York City: Shangra La?

click to enlarge

It's no longer easy to be murdered in New York City. When I lived there, it still topped the list, just behind Detroit and another hotspot or two.

The city released its 2004 crime index numbers yesterday, and crime is down 4 percent from last year. According to the city, New York ranks 221st out of 240 cities nationwide in the crime index.

Selected Murder Rates

NYC: 7 per 100,000 people
Los Angeles: 13.5 per 100,000 people
Chicago: 14.5 per 100,000 people
Philadelphia: 22.1 per 100,000 people
Detroit: 41.5 per 100,000 people

Seattle: 4.5 per 100,000 people

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Poem: Your Wooden Leg

Run
If you still can.
Drag that wooden leg
Behind you, but keep up,
Jogging after your pipe-dream.

Think bullet-proof,
Shun the ghosts,
And always remember
The way back
And the door out.
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Poem: Weather Report

Life is a raindrop
Sizzling as it skitters
Across the universal griddle.
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Painting: A Grey's Hands

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18,906 Days On Turtle Island:::::::::I Like It Here!!!

I have now lived 18,906 days; on September 5, 2005, I hit 19,000 days.

Things have changed. And nothing has changed. Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush have held the office of POTUS ('though George W. Bush is in the midst of passing through the White House alimentary canal).

The year I was born, Eddie Fisher, Tony Bennet, Les Paul and Mary Ford, Perry Como, Patty Page, and Stan Freberg were on the top of the Hit Parade. From Here To Eternity won the Oscar for Best Picture. Dragnet, The Roy Rogers Show, I Love Lucy and The Milton Berle Show were on television.

Some cool new toys were introduced that year, and they're all still with us: Mr. Potato Head, Pez, plastic army men, Silly Putty, and Legos.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison was published (great book BTW), The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (who died earlier this year) came out, as did Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin, and Secret of The Andes by Ann Nolan Clark.

Bread was fifteen cents a loaf; milk was $0.94 a gallon; a new car cost about $1,800; you could buy a house for under ten thousand; eggs were $0.75 a dozen; gasoline was $0.29 a gallon; and a stamp cost you three cents. These prices sound pretty good, but the minimum wage was $0.75 an hour, and $4,700 a year was a median salary.

World War II had only been over eight years when I was born. It was a contemporary event when I was a kid! One of my friend's Dads was with Patton's 3rd Army (or was it the 5th?) as they raced through Berlin toward Hitler's Bunker. Our dads were all Over There, in Europe, Africa or The Pacific, and our mothers worked in factories (Betty Brummet riveted bombers at Boeing), or joined the service (Betty also enlisted in the Marines).

In 1953, The Depression still cast a long shadow. Our parents lived through it as children.

I am glad to Be Here Now. Of the things gone and things still here, I vote for things here. Now. Where All This Is That.
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Painting: The 28 Men Who Run The World

click to enlarge

The basis of this painting is a drawing I did last week, of 28 faces. I digitized the drawing, touched it up in Paintshop Pro 9.01, and used Harry's Photoshop Filter 3.0 to color it. I corrected the gamma, resized it, and added one of my favorite digital frames--a Mission style frame with inlays. /jack
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Boohoo! The New York Yankees: Overpaid, Underperforming Primadonnas Get Aired Out By George "Pardon Me" Steinbrenner

Now that A-Rod has consulted several therapists and taken enough jitter meds and electroshock, he is playing ball again, after a long draught. However, it's too little, too late:::::::::: Mt. Steinbrenner has erupted.

It's fun to watch when this happens (it was especially fun in the Billy Martin years). Joe Torre is wetting his pants and Brian Cashman walks around in a Xanax haze, mumbling to himself. They've thrown millions at the problem and they're getting drubbed by teams with minuscule payrolls. There is nothing more satisfying than watching The Bronx Bombers collapse--watching Steinbrenner go medieval is the icing on the cake! /jack

By JON KRAWCZYNSKI, AP Sports Writer Sat Jun 4, 4:11 PM ET

MINNEAPOLIS - George Steinbrenner feels his Yankees are letting down New York and hinted changes could be coming unless the team starts winning.

The Yankees owner confirmed his discussion with manager Joe Torre and general manager Brian Cashman and said Saturday it was up to the two of them to solve the problem, ominously adding a "right now" to the end of his remarks.
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Painting: Chancellor Hitler

click to enlarge

North Korea: President Bush Said The Magic Word ("Mister"). Could Peace Be At Hand? If We Really Start Shoveling It On Thick, Will They Disarm?

click to enlarge

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea gave rare praise to President Bush on Friday, welcoming his use of the honorific ``Mr.'' when referring to leader Kim Jong Il and saying the softened tone could lead to its return to nuclear arms talks.

Read the article by clicking on the title of this blog entry. The marionette rendition of Mister Kim Jong Il is from the recent film Team America by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
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A Fractal

click to enlarge

I created this fractal with Fractint 18.2, an integer-based fractal generation program created, like much great freeware is, by a loose collective of people.

In the early 1990s, it would take many many hours to create a fractal.

I worked at hDC in 1991, where we created a fractal generator that was included with our software, as a toy, more or less. Fractals are fascinating...if you want to create your own, click on the title of this article, which will take you a site where you can download Fractint 20.0.
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The Safe Palette For The World Wide Web

click image to enlarge the 216 color safe palette

There was a time when you could only use these colors on a web site--to ensure colors wouldn't dither (where a color is created by mixing dots, crosshatches, etc., of more than one color to create the illusion of another color). In 1996, most computers had 8-bit video cards (e.g, capable of displaying 256 colors).

The Browser-Safe Palette actually uses 216 colors (see swatches above) of the possible 256. The other 40 colors vary on Macs and PCs; not using those colors allows this palette to work cross-platform.

The woman who first identified the safe palette said:

"The browser-safe palette was developed by programmers with no design sense, I assure you. That's because a designer would have never picked these colors. Mostly, the palette contains far less light and dark colors than I wish it did, and is heavy on highly saturated colors and low on muted, tinted or toned colors. "

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Gee Whiz! 2

Click image to enlarge. A road crew in Washington
state collected these jugs of urine. In one year, a
single, small county in the state collected 2,666
jugs.


MSNBC SEATTLE — Roadside litter comes in all shapes and sizes — from dirty diapers to syringes — but there's one category that out-grosses the rest: trucker bombs. Most drivers whiz along the nation's highways largely oblivious to their roadside surroundings. But next time you are out there, take a closer look.

"As soon as you look for it you’ll see it," says Megan Warfield, litter programs coordinator at Washington state's Department of Ecology. "You just see them glistening in the sun. It’s just gross."

They are trucker bombs, plastic jugs full of urine tossed by truckers. . .

Click the title to link to the story on MSNBC.
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