News / Current Events

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Hit the jump for more...

I spent Saturday afternoon assembling a Malm 3 drawer chest from IKEA. I bought it around New Year's when IKEA cut the price in half for a one day special. It took me longer than expected to put it together, but I am pleased with the results. For a 3 drawer chest, it is quite roomy and I like the metal drawer slides. Now, I have to rearrange some stuff in my bedroom to make space for it.

What can you do to help the cause? If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

When I was younger, and never too shy for a good political argument, I would often end a dialog by acknowledging that although I don't agree, at least we both vote. It seemed a rather tidy and polite way of ending a laborious and circuitous banter.

Not anymore.

If I don't agree with someone, I'm even more polite than I have ever been!

But now I'll quickly go to alternative dialog "B". That's the one where I get real bitter about the whole process and government. In fact I'm so turned off by the whole establishment, that I want you to be too.

While I still vote, and as early and as often as possible, I make a half decent effort to disenfranchise the opposition.

This is great advice for the nascent Tea Party movement. You can accomplish better results if you identify an intractable nature in conversation, and discourage him or her from voting at all.

But you got to find out early on if you can reach these people with your limited government ideology.

Just trying to help. . . .

Two items of Summer Glau news here Hit the jump for more...

Robert Rodriguez introduces us to a couple of minutes of the new Predators movie. It's not much just yet, but what it shows does look good. Hit the jump for more...

Rube Waddell: Butler’s Outrageous Southpaw
By Eric D. Duchess

A biographical sketch of the eccentric left-handed pitcher from Prospect who is the only Butler County baseball player in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

This book received the Freedom Foundation Award in 1997.

The Allegheny College Art Galleries’ “The Art of Persuasion,” an exhibition exploring attempts to sway public opinion through visual culture closes next week on March 16.  The exhibition, part of Allegheny’s Year of Social Change, features the college’s permanent collection of World War I and World War II posters, serigraphs from Puerto Rico’s Division of Community Education, photographs from the Farm Security Administration, and contemporary work by illustrator and political cartoonist Ward Sutton.

Gallery goers are greeted as the enter the show with one of the most iconic propaganda posters, Fred Strothman’s “Beat Back the Hun” from 1918. Publicity campaigns for the Treasury Department's Liberty Loan bonds produced some of the war's most compelling - and gruesome - posters. The Liberty Bond posters were inflammatory, but highly effective.  Many posters promoted German hatred, such as this one, showing a blood-thirsty Hun looking over war-torn Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean to America. The bayonet drips blood and the “Hun's” face is grey, dead, inhuman.

There’s a large cognitive jump from the Liberty Bond posters to the Serigraphs from Puerto Rico’s Division of Community Education. The origins of the Division of Community Education (DIVEDCO) are closely tied to Puerto Rico’s complicated relationship with the United States. DIVEDCO had strong connections to President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Its early organizers — Edwin Rosskam, Jack Delano and Irene Delano — all had experience in the Farm Security Administration. While sharing the form of New Deal projects, however, the work and substance of DIVEDCO reflected the particularities of Puerto Rico and broader trends within Latin American art and politics.

Huracan (1958) by Jose Manuel Figueroa appeals to the woodcut WPA style.  It’s a poster promoting a PSA style film about hurricane awareness. More importantly, its design shows the progression of the persuasive poster form as it begins drawing on the popular aesthetics of movie posters. A personal favorite was 5 cuentos de miedo by Lorenzo Homar (1955) promoting a booklet about the benefits of using science rather than superstition – here woodcut style figures are paired with a vibrant red background.

By 1965, that style had been replaced by posters that use more of David Klein’s TWA travel posters – bright flat colors and blocky figures and architecture. It’s a more abstract vision of progress much different from the classical figures that start the show.

One of the themes of the show is the power of the graphic images, not only in the posters themselves, but also in the media they advertise. Carlos Osorio’s Juan sin Seso – advertises a film depicting the story of a rural man’s confusion and loss of critical thinking abilities caused by modern advertising. Here in the poster, an advertising collage shows through the light robin egg blue of the poster’s background suggesting an ever present hum of consumerism existing just beneath the surface of consciousness, diverting and distorting. And yet there’s a meta argument here as well, as the posters and photos and comic included in the exhibit are using the same technique but for the “right” reasons.

The exhibit also includes FSA photos ranging from the abstract photos of Jack Delores model airplanes decorating Chicago’s Union Station ceiling

to more iconic ones like Walker Evans’ portrait of Bud Fields’ family in Hale County Alabama and washstand with oil lamp both featured in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men:

The FSA selection also includes four Dorthea Lange images including selections that highlight Lange’s skill at using cropping to bring out ironic realities of American Life such as “Next Time, Try the Train, Relax” 

Finally, ending the exhibit are World War II propaganda posters include the still shocking, “This Happens Every Three Minutes Stay on the Job and Get it Over ”  depicting a dead GI where he fell, Thompson submachine gun just out of the reach of his hands, clothes splattered with blood, face hidden by the angle of his fall, but his rough hands and torn fingernails still visible; his ammunition and pack flung about him. How unlike our own wartime reality with the dissonant dichotomy of embedded reports and soldiers connected home though the internet umbilical cord, and the still recent controversy over the depiction of flag draped coffins.

Like Juan we are carefully cocooned fom the death directed towards us and sponsored by us. Over 50 years , it seems we are no more savvy, but have an easier time creating our own reality. Sutton’s cartoons at the beginning of the show would be better realized at the end of show – suggesting how we far we have come.  today, we use our time to debate the persuasiveness of campaign designs and the aesthetics of campaign posters.  We are too polite, too sensitive to allow the brute persuasiveness of the early 20th century posters into our sphere.  How would we react to a contemporary posters declaiming “Beat Back the Hajji with Liberty Bonds”? How  uncomfortable have we become with animalistic, tribal nature inside of us and how we itch when it’s prickly nature punctures our created life and values?

The Art of Persuasion,” an exhibition exploring attempts to sway public opinion through visual culture until March 16. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 12:30-5 p.m.; Saturday, 1:30-5 p.m.; and Sunday, 2-4 p.m.

The Art Galleries are wheelchair accessible and located in Doane Hall of Art, east of North Main Street between College and John Streets.

For more information, call (814) 332-4365 or visit www.allegheny.edu/artgalleries.

1. Raises - My supervisor informed me today that I qualify for a percentage increase in my salary versus a one time lump sum payment. I also found out I will receive a one time incentive bonus for my company's performance last year. Direct Deposit tomorrow. Hooray!!!

2. Toyota Recall - My 2010 Pontiac Vibe, which is really a Toyota Matrix, is part of the Toyota recall. There are actually two recalls: the accelerator pedal and the floor mat. The accelerator pedal fix is available now, the floormat fix is not available yet. I have not taken my Vibe to the dealer yet. I have been following this story since it broke. I do not have any faith that the suggested fixes are the real solution. Over 60 consumers reported last week that after the so called fixes were applied, the sudden unintended acceleration problems actually became worse. Apparently, the floor mat fix includes a change to the car's computer software, and this seems to have made things worse. I am mad at Toyota - their actions say cover up. I am mad at NHTSA (sometimes pronounced NITSA) for being Nitwits. I am not sure what to do with my car: drive it, sell it, trade it in, wait for a "real" solution, wait to join a class action lawsuit.

3. BB#7 - You are a great quarterback on the football field. Off the field, you are an IDIOT.

4. Workouts - I can not use snow shoveling as an excuse for not working out. So, this week, I managed two weight lifting sessions.

Just how exactly does one guy keep fighting his way past an army of bad guys? Hit the jump for more...

That Massa is quite zany, and he's the latest example of the problems with commenting on what you read.

The truth is never easy to ascertain. I'm just looking for a good laugh anymore.

The latest Lego crossover, Army Men. Public schools just get crazier and stupider. Who doesn’t like a little fan service? Chicks + camo = Hot! The most awesome game room ever (for a nerd) Girls under glass NSFW The God of Fuck War Terminator #5 How to be a hoarder in 7 easy steps. On Sluts offers quick and easy Ho Side Assistance.

Want to see what happens when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 becomes even more cinematic and movie like? Hit the jump for more...

Iron Man 2 Trailer, featuring more robots, more suits, more S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, more fighting, and much much more awesome! Hit the jump for more

If there is one thing that my TV screen needs, it's more Felicia Day. Hit the jump for more...

Where are all the crazed lay Democrats who were led to hysteria over how Bush strong armed his political opposition?

Did you see this strong armed tactic by the President's right hand man?

I can't be entertained by the politicians anymore, I expect nothing but the worst from them.

The lay people, now they are bad too, but I can laugh aloud at them.

Remember Gogo Yubari, that crazy Japanese chick that gave the bride a run for her money in Kill Bill, who was played by Chiaki Kuriyama? Well, it turns out that in addition to being hot and killing people, she can also sing. Hit the jump for more...

In 1979 nearly 1,000 runnder competed in the annual 10,000 meter race.
Click picture to enlarge.

Screw Hurt Locker and Avatar, there is a bigger problem with the Oscars, and Stan Lee is here to tell you just exactly what that problem is. Hit the jump for more...

I'm sure that it has a political message that I am opposed to, however I can't stop laughing long enough to figure out what it is. Hit the jump for more...

The light bulb is dim I realized. Literally, figuratively, and metaphorically.

Early last summer I went to the local hardware store and came across those new compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL). The marketing was such that it moved me to purchase a sizable quantity and replace some of the incandescent bulbs that were in high use in my house.

It wasn't that hard of a sell, I've always considered myself an early adopter, that guy that buys in early on new consumer tech products. I was being increasingly exposed to the inefficiencies of the old light bulb -- mostly heat, little light for all the energy one consumes -- in print and t.v., and like the perfect mark, I bought into it all. The savings were going to be great!

That is until Day Light Savings Time came to an end and I realized I couldn't see as well with these fancy things. And did you know that if one should break, you need to call the local Haz-Mat Team?

Is it only coincidence that advertising for these new bulbs seems to disappear during winter when the deficiencies of the light is inescapable?

Metaphorically speaking, I hope the filters in your life are allowing the dimming of the whole Al Gore/Environmental/Global Warming bulb to be seen in your home.

I'll talk to you later, I just bought a pack of the old Edison bulbs to replace the replacements. I just may break one on purpose, to see that explosion, while I still can.