John Naughton’s May 29 column over at The Observer drew my attention to to this Virginia Postrel column for Forbes, which opens:

Something about blogs makes a lot of respectable journalists hyperventilate. News pros seem terribly threatened by online amateurs.

She goes on to defend blogging, particularly against David Shaw whose original piece in the LA Times (which seems to have since been removed) offered such friendly commentary as:

“Many bloggers—not all, perhaps not even most—don’t seem to worry much about being accurate. Or fair. They just want to get their opinions—and their “scoops”—out there as fast as they pop into their brains. One of the great advantages of the Internet, many Web lovers have told me, is that it’s easy to correct an error there. You can do it instantly, as soon as the error is called to your attention, instead of having to wait until the next day’s paper.”

Mr Shaw has apparently set more than a few people. Jack Shafer, for instance, had a few things to say about it over at Slate. Shafer - like Postrel - takes the care to intelligently defend blogging from self-important journalists like Shaw, pointing out many ways in which one could say journalists have less duty to fair and balanced reporting, less requirement of education or proof of skill, and less duty to reportage of fact than he demands of bloggers!

Blogging is a revolution, and it’s not going to disappear. Personally, I find it encouraging when arrogant, self-important journalists feel threatened by blogging. That means it’s working. Flat-earth skeptics like Shaw would do well to stop hating it and start embracing it. After all, bloggers are often in the know on the latest news before any of the major media ever gets word.

Too many journalists have stopped trying, stopped digging for facts, stopped citing sources. Too many journalists seem to have no long-term memory… capable of only reporting the party lines handed down by media moguls, political PR staffers, and corporate spin doctors.

But bloggers don’t get corporate sponsorships. There is no head office to dictate what we must write about and how we must characterize it. We can get information out to others and we don’t have to tack on any silly letters onto our names. And the best part is that ANYONE - even a hack like me - can have a blog.

A recent UPI report commented on a four-day conference held in Chicago by the National Restaurant Association. The focus of the conference? Bigger tables and bigger chairs, for supersized Americans to put their bigger asses into…

But that’s not enough… a BoingBoing user points out the Great John company, which makes supersized toilets for supersized asses.

This is a wonderful example of cropping a boring photo, to find an interesting shot contained within it.

When I shot this, I knew I wanted the Broadway sign, but I couldn’t get a shot from up close without skewing the perspective. With only a 24-70mm zoom lens with me, anything far enough away to be straight would also make the sign too small for a good sized print.

Nevertheless, I took the shot. Always take the shot - you can worry about the rest later.

The scene I captured was mostly cluttered with people and cars and irrelevant elements that confused the composition. However, as I started to crop out those distractions I began to notice the beautiful color patterns in the reflections on the store window. I decided to keep them in, and make the Broadway sign a smaller focal point within this interesting image.

Apparently, loyalty to the kingdom is all that matters under King George II. The Empire has spent almost the entire duration of Bush’s rule analyzing intelligence failures of one sort or another. In the latest episode, two army analysts whose misinformation had a direct influence on the decision to conquer - er, I mean liberate - Iraq have received job performance awards three years in a row.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/27/AR2005052701618.html

I’ve lived in the Tampa area for over ten years now, and have had a serious hobby of photography for much of that time. Since I’ve recently made the decision to move away from this state, however, I started noticing that in my time here I’ve taken surprisingly few photos of the things that make Tampa what it is.

With that in mind, I’m spending my final few months here paying more attention to shooting the things that are native to Tampa — the beaches, the palm trees, the harbors and ports, and so on. Here, I was scouting for a location for a band shoot and as luck would have it, the Port of Tampa was directly behind me. So I grabbed a few shots.

To use a popular business euphomism, the shit hit the proverbial fan in Wal-Mart land. Last week my ears perked up and a smile crossed my face as I learned that Wal-Mart Stores, Inc reported “weaker-than-expected first-quarter profit”, and warned that second quarter results would likely miss the mark as well.

Wall Street’s answer? Wal-Mart stock lost nearly 4 percent in trading. J.P. Morgan said the company’s second-quarter forecast “is the largest negative revision in recent memory.”

Wal-Mart’s spin - er, I mean public relations - department cites rising fuel costs as the cause for their slump, but I believe there’s far more to it. In fact, as I see it, Wal-Mart has three weaknesses that will spell their decline (I don’t dare anticipate their demise just yet).

Low-Dollar Focus
The first, most obvious weakness is Wal-Mart’s focus on bottom dollar bargains. Product quality has never been a concern for the behemoth — they’ve only every worried about making a product cost less in their store than it does anywhere else.

Wal-Mart’s shirts begin to fall apart after their first run through a washing machine. Their pants feel like wearing a cardboard box. Their shoes are so ugly that no self-respecting person would dare to be seen in them. Their picture frames are ugly, their furniture doesn’t fit together properly, and their bedding is rougher than sandpaper. Ah, but it’s all less expensive than what you’ll find anywhere else.

Naturally this strategy has attracted the penny pinchers, and judging by Wal-Mart’s success that’s no small group. However, the penny pinchers are the group most affected by fluctuations in economy. Rising gas prices, rising healthcare costs, and rising unemployment, for example, have a direct impact on the disposable income of Wal-Mart’s core customers. It is a form of tunnel vision that’s hard to imagine happening in one of the world’s largest corporations.

Reputation
Wal-Mart has made it quite clear over the years that they really don’t care about anyone. They sell crappy products that fall apart. They move their supercenters into small towns and drive out the local businesses. They cheat employees of their overtime, they build their stores on burial grounds, they kick people out of their homes, and they discriminate against women.

There are hundreds of lawsuits being filed against Wal-Mart right now as you read this. There are unions forming, protests forming, and citizens organizing, all in the name of fighting Wal-Mart. Does this sound like a caring, community-friendly organization to you?

Competition
Third, Wal-Mart has always had a monopoly. That is, the current Wal-Mart has always been a monopoly.

Sam Walton cared about his customers. He gave us clean stores. He gave us policies like his promise to open a new register if there were more than three people in a line. Shelves were neatly organized. Sales staff were friendly. It wasn’t such a bad place, really. And then Sam Walton died.

Since Walton died, Wal-Mart has drastically increased the size of their stores, adding auto service and full-service supermarkets within the store. They have reduced employee benefits. They have reduced training. They have even ignored such basic concepts as cleaning, and straightening the products on shelves. All of this in the name of cutting costs.

Meanwhile, Target revenues have continued to rise. While they’re one-twentieth of the size of Wal-Mart, Target is on an excellent pace for continued growth. And they’ve done it with clean stores, curteous and helpful employees, and quality products. Their clothing and home furnishings are fashionable and stylish, and feature designs by Cynthia Rowley and Izaac Mizrahi, rather than bottom-dollar Chinese imports.

Additionally, the approval of the merger between Sears and K-Mart will create a superstore entity large enough to compete with Wal-Mart. Not only will this new Sears and K-Mart combination have a market presence capable of taking people out of Wal-Mart stores, but it will also have a bargaining power capable of negotiating prices on a similar scale. And they’ll have the luxury of starting with Sears’s access to higher quality merchandise.

What Does This Mean For Wal-Mart?
It’s still too early to spell out the end of Wal-Mart, as much as I would love to see that day come. But the playing field is changing fast, maybe faster than Wal-Mart is capable of adjusting.

I have no doubt that the release of episode 3 of the Star Wars prequel trilogy must be the most blogged about topic on the Internet this week. And I’m also not sure that I could possibly be adding to anything that hasn’t been said before, but nevertheless I want to share my own opinion(s) with the world.

Before I go any further, let me give a spoiler warning now. I’m not going to pussyfoot around the topics I saw on the screen. Some may be spoilers, some may seem irrelevant. Either way, if you haven’t seen the film yet and you want to be surprised you might be better off by stopping here and redirecting your attention to another web site.

Okay, so I saw the film on opening weekend, which means I was relatively early but not among the costume-wearing crowd. I have seen each of the other five in theater so I guess you could say I’m a big Star Wars fan, and it stands to reason that I had high hopes for this film. After all, this was supposed to bridge the gap.

Episode three was the perfect opportunity to fill in all those details that true Star Wars fans know, and that everyone else is lost on. If not here, there would never be another opportunity to put on screen some timeline events like:

• the Millenium Falcon making the Kessel Run
• Han Solo saving Chewbacca’s life
• Han Solo dumping the shipment he was smuggling for Jabba
• Boba Fett’s involvement in the Han Solo-Jabba The Hut story
• Lando Calrissian’s place in the story
• why Yoda chose Dagobah and what’s in that cave
• the origin of the name “Ben” Kenobi
• how Leia came to be a Princess

Indeed, what better place for all of these elements? Except that they weren’t there. None.

Now to be fair, there were a number things that were explained, such as: the end of the Republic and birth of the Empire; how the Emperor got to look so disgusting and evil; how Anakin became Darth Vader and why he’s more machine than man; why Luke and Leia didn’t know each other and why Vader didn’t know either of them; C3P0’s lack of memory and R2D2’s claims of belonging to Obi-Wan; and why Yoda and Obi-Wan were in hiding. Those details are appreciated, but if they weren’t there, you wouldn’t have a movie at all. It needed more.

As it is, I feel like I’m watching a cartoon for two hours. I would have said “video game”, but I honestly feel like modern video games have better graphics. All of the magic Lucas created for Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi has been tragically missing from the prequel trilogy and that was never more evident than in the dark final chapter here.

For twenty years, I’ve reminisced fondly about the haunting choir of male voices in their almost Gregorian chant as Luke Skywalker beats relentlessly upon Darth Vader in their final duel. I’ve loved the dramatic genious of the heavy shadows on Lukes face as he hid beneath the catwalk while Vader searched for him. I’ve appreciated the use of mixed lighting from the original trilogy where warm lights came from interior and cool lights were used from exterior locations to create a realistic mixed lighting feeling as characters walked in front of the windows on their ships.

But these things were all missing in Revenge of the Sith. Instead of a dark, foreboding chorus when Obi-Wan fought Vader, we were blasted with trumpet staccatos and fanfares. With all the overuse of rendered scenery and green-screens, mixed lighting was apparently not an option. And the thing I continue to hate about digitally rendered video is the excessive shadow detail that just doesn’t look dramatic — too much visual information reduces the impact of a scene.

Then there’s the acting. Hayden Christensen irritated me in Clones but while he’s still annoying, he actually seems to have improved a bit for this film. His counterpart, Natalie Portman, wasn’t too bad in Episode One but I can’t help feeling that her talents have declined over the course of these three movies. Ian McDiarmid was excellent as the Emperor in Empire and Jedi, and good as the Senator/Chancellor in the prequel trilogy, but his acting in Sith was spotty — superb as the Chancellor in the beginning, but lousy in the scene where Mace Windu comes to kill him as well as in the battle with Yoda.

Over the course of these three movies, the acting talent has been sparse. Samuel Jackson is a great actor whose on-screen presence is just too brief in each case to be appreciated. Jimmy Smits is just as talented and had even less screen time. Liam Neeson has possibly had the best Star Wars screen presence since Harrison Ford, and was rewarded by having his character killed off.

Thus, the only true bright spot has been Ewan McGregor. With each episode of the trilogy, McGregor has grown more and more indistinguishable from Sir Alec Guiness. His accent seems to echo that of the old Obi-Wan. And his mannerisms are a perfect reenactment of Guiness. If Han Solo carried the original trilogy, Obi-Wan carried the recent trilogy.

With the wealth of experienced actors surrounding him this time around (unlike the original films) it’s hard to imagine so many uninteresting portrayals. Much of the blame has to be cast at the directing. A director should be demanding of his cast, but it really just felt like Lucas too readily accepted the first take rather than reshooting until it was right.

But his failures as a director don’t stop there. Revenge of the Sith is bloated, just as Menace and Clones were. There are too many irrelevant scenes left in that slow the story. I hate to admit that after all the anticipation and excitement, I almost fell asleep during this movie. That should not happen.

Just like the Matrix and Lord of the Rings sequels, I felt like this movie was nothing but jump cuts from action scene to action scene. Hollywood has become too dependant on action and effects, at the cost of good storytelling.

Ultimately, watching Revenge of the Sith felt like watching someone play with a new toy. It didn’t feel like watching the culmination of a filmmakers dream after a quarter of a century. Lucas started in the middle, and filmed A New Hope first, because it was important to him to give the audience a good story. Conversely, I can’t help feeling like Revenge of the Sith was made just to show off his new computers. It’s a huge disappointment, making it the fitting end to a disappointing trilogy that turned a filmmaking God into just another Hollywood chump.

Presently, this is one of my favorite shots that I’ve ever taken. The irony is that this was the very first shot in a session that lasted almost two hours The models weren’t even ready, but I saw them both in frame and pressed the button, and ended up with a great photo.

While driving to our shooting location to, we passed a large sign with the sign face missing. I saw big, bright bars of white light and immediately became inspired to use it in some way.

We pulled off and the models stood in the driveway of the business with the missing sign as I shot from the ground to get the big bright light behind them. It worked out well.

The best part, however, was that the shoot we were on our way to do was an “escaped mental patient” theme, so both of these models were standing on the side of a major highway in hospital gowns with their asses hanging out while hundreds of cars passed.

I must say that I’m quite fortunate to work with such good sports. These two have never complained about any of the awkward situations I’ve put them in. Thank you Dave and Laurie.

Media Protest
Originally uploaded by randem.

I listen to Democracy Now every day at lunch, and I
recommend it to anyone who reads this. It is one of the few programs remaining that airs legitimate criticism and questioning of our government’s policies and practices. That should scare you… if it doesn’t, wake up!

Giant corporations have taken over most of the media in America, if not the entire world. What remains now are the a small number of corporate entities which are responsible for the bulk of what you hear on the radio, see on the television, and read in the newspaper.

The reason this is a big deal (and you should take it seriously!) is because when a single entity controls so much of the media, they can choose what you will and will not hear, see, and read. No
longer do reporters fight to “get to the bottom” of an issue… now they only fight to be the first to “break” a story.

Why do we know more about the Michael Jackson trial than we know about the situation in Iraq? Why does a pregnant Brittney Spears get more press than the laws being passed every day that take away our freedoms? What’s wrong with us when we care more about the separation of Brad and Jen than the separation of church and state?

Citizens of the United States need to wake up. Every time Bill O’Reily tells his guest to “shut up” and yells at them for being “liberal”, news reporting dies a little death. Every time CNN or MSNBC or Fox News give us sound bites of the real issues in order to make more time for argumentative loudmouths, our country becomes more and more of the evil juggernaut that terrorists hate.

CBS has recently announced the cancellation of its Wednesday edition of 60 Minutes, due to low ratings. This is just another tolling of the death bell for issues-based news. When the news has to compete with Survivor, Fear Factor, and the Michael Jackson trial, it should be winning! What does it say about us that we’re more interested in watching people eat bugs and talk about fondling children than we are in learning about the corrupt men who run our country?

Turn off the mind-numbing drivel and turn on your awareness. Look for Democracy Now or Tavis Smiley on your tv lineup. Find the Pacifica and NPR radio stations in your area and learn something during your drive to and from work. Wake up and do something, before it’s too late.