On February 7th, Gov. Corbett will announce his plan for the next state budget.  A week later, on February 14 (Valentine's Day) students & parents from numerous Pennsylvania school districts are holding a rally for public education in the State Capitol. 

The purpose of the rally is to speak out about the devastating effects of last year's cuts to education, and to demand that equitable school funding be a priority in the next state budget.

Will you join students & parents from across Pennsylvania to demand that Governor Corbett make equitable school funding a top priority in the next budget?

Fall Back in Love with Education: Valentine's Day Rally for Public Education February 14, 2012Buses Leave Philly at 9am * Rally at 12pm in the Harrisburg Capitol Rotunda * Buses Return to Philly at 4:30pm West Philadelphia Bus picks up & drops off from 42nd & Chestnut. South Philadelphia Bus picks up & drops off from Broad & Snyder. Buses will also be leaving from Pittsburgh & Reading. You must register online in order to reserve a seat on one of the Philadelphia buses: www.showloveforeducation.eventbrite.com

Rally sponsored by: Philadelphia Student Union, Project Peace (Reading PA), TeenBloc (Pittsburgh PA), Juntos, Campaign for Nonviolent Schools

 Contact megan@phillystudentunion.org for more information.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Acts (PIPA) now on the floor in Congress will cripple journalism, independent creative expression, and life saving services by making it possible to shut down a website for a single link. Passing these bills means sacrificing millions of American's freedom to openly exchange information.

Find out more about SOPA/ PIPA and how you can stop them: http://americancensorship.org/

“We have moved into an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society. We are still called upon to give aid to the beggar who finds himself in misery and agony on life’s highway. But one day, we must ask the question of whether an edifice which produces beggars must not be restructured and refurbished. That is where we are now.” 

- Dr. Martin Luther King, SCLC Retreat, South Carolina, May 1967

Media Mobilizing Project celebrated Martin Luther King Day with a renewed commitment to putting people first. As we look back on MLK’s legacy, we see that his work, and his words, are more relevant than ever.

In Philadelphia, forty percent of public schools are being turned into charters. In Chester, school teachers, bus drivers and cafeteria workers are working for no pay, and the school district is filing a lawsuit against the state for funding to finish the school year. Six Philadelphians, most of them children, have died due to the City's fire station brown out policy and closures. In Scranton, which is also suffering the effects of brown outs, fire fighters have been reduced by a third and three engine companies have been permanently closed.

Across Pennsylvania, 88,000 children have lost Medicaid coverage since August. Come May, no one with $2,000 in savings will be eligible for food stamps. Gas companies’ fracking has left residents’ water supply so contaminated that their wells have exploded. Home foreclosures are constant. Jobs are scarce. And we are asked to believe that these losses and attacks can be blamed on our neighbors and our friends – because they are immigrants or refugees, or because they are workers on strike.

In the face of this, we are telling the untold stories of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, and coming together to fight for our human rights, uniting the many leaders of today.

In 1967, as he took stock of the major wins of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. King looked towards the next step in the struggle for justice. He told his fellow members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), “It is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights … although the Constitution guarantees the right to vote, it does not guarantee the right to an adequate livable income … So we are dealing now with issues that are in the realm of human rights. We are talking about a good, solid, well-paying job. We are talking about a good, sound, sanitary house. We are talking not merely about desegregated education, but we are talking about quality education.”

The struggle for human rights that King called for was alive and well yesterday at three events MMP took part in – the Immigrant Communities Fight for Human Rights march, the Creating Nonviolent Schools and Communities panel and workshops, and the Occupy the Dream labor celebration of Dr. King’s legacy. Each of these events and the groups that took the lead on planning them – the Campaign for Nonviolent Schools, DreamActivist PA, Juntos, MMP, One Love Movement, Occupy Philly Labor Working Group and others –  fought against long-held fissures and historical divisions to bring people and organizations and struggles together across issues, race, language, age, legal status, and sector of the workforce.

“We are all human beings,” said Cesar Marroquin of DreamActivist PA at the Human Rights march. “We all deserve the right to good housing. We all deserve the right to a good education. We all deserve to be able to stay with our families.”Cesar and the dozens of other powerful speakers at these three events yesterday are some of the many Martin Luther Kings of today. Young and old. Parents, grandparents and children of every race and religious background. Documented and undocumented. Members of unions of the employed and the unemployed. Students, teachers, cafeteria workers, bus drivers. Religious leaders, professors, artists. Taxi workers, fire fighters, nurses, sanitation workers, domestic workers, restaurant workers, childcare workers, communications workers, office cleaners.As Azeem Hill from the Philadelphia Student Union and Campaign for Nonviolent Schools said, “Our goal is bigger than nonviolent schools. We want to make schools places of nonviolent power.” Such schools would create leaders able to build a human rights movement for today. In this year in which hometowns and kitchen tables across Pennsylvania will become electoral battlegrounds in the lead-up to November, we know that none of the presidential contenders will be fighting for us. They will continue to defend what Gwen Ivey, President of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Postal Workers Union, described as a “system that puts profit before people.”"They will take everything from you," District Council 33 Union President Pete Matthews said. “And they will smile in your face.” They are fighting for themselves, and we must do the same.We will fight for our lives and our families. We will fight to put people first. We will fight to know and understand each other well enough, to be able to articulate our common vision clearly enough, and to develop the program and policies that, in the words of 1199c Union President Henry Nicholas, “put an end to two different worlds – one for the poor and one for the rich.”  We will not be silent, and we will be heard.

In a year-end list of the most influential voices in the world of business, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has put a well-deserved spotlight on Keystone Research Center Labor Economist Mark Price.

The Post-Gazette recognized Dr. Price as a foremost expert on the Pennsylvania economy in its rundown of the 2011 movers and shakers of the business world. This is just one example of how Keystone's staff is helping to shape the debate over economic policy in Pennsylvania.

Read the full story, The most influential people in business of 2011, online. Below is the profile of Mark Price:

MARK PRICE Economist, Keystone Research Center

Just as people head for the nearest doctor when they are sick, so have we as a nation been turning to economists to explain the problems in our economy.

Unemployment in Pennsylvania, like that in most of the rest of the country, stayed high throughout 2011. And the economist on the front line of that was Mark Price of the Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg, whose specialty is labor economics.

"I get more calls when the economy is really bad and there's uncertainty," said Mr. Price, of Carlisle, who earned his doctorate at the University of Utah.

The forecast for 2012 is that the economy will stay fairly bad, with high unemployment, so Mr. Price's phone should still be ringing.

Unemployment rose above 7 percent in February 2009, according to the state's Department of Labor and Industry, and has not dropped below that level since then.

In December 2007, the official start of the Great Recession, unemployment in Pennsylvania was 4.5 percent, which Mr. Price said he would like to see again.

He said that when unemployment stays high, "it carries with it a lot of risks." Young people have to delay starting their careers, older workers empty their retirement savings. People lose their homes.

In order to help people, he said, government should spend money now, possibly raising revenue through taxes on natural gas extraction. After that, he said, the state can cut spending.

-- Ann Belser

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The region's job market moved another tick in the wrong direction last month, with unemployment for the Pittsburgh area growing to 7.4 percent in July, up one-tenth from June and continuing a slow but steady deterioration.

But Mark Price, an economist with the nonpartisan Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg, cautioned against making too much of the increase in joblessness, noting that the small sampling size limits the significance of even multi-month variations.

"What we can say is that it's not getting any better, though we don't know if it's getting significantly worse," he said

In April, the region's jobless rate was 6.8 percent. The number has grown one- to three-tenths of a point each month since, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry data.

That's better than the statewide unemployment figure of 7.8 percent and significantly better than the 9.1 percent national jobless rate. But it's small solace to those still looking for a steady paycheck, and unsettling for those trying to hang onto the job they've got.

From June to July, each of the seven counties that make up the Pittsburgh metropolitan statistical area saw joblessness grow, with the biggest jump in Fayette County -- already with the region's highest unemployment rate -- from 9.0 to 9.4 percent. Among select local communities, McKeesport had the highest jobless rate at 10.3 percent. Community rates are not seasonally adjusted.

Seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs in the seven-county region grew by 2,900 to 1.14 million, which also is a 1.3 percent gain from July 2010.

The seeming contradiction of unemployment increasing despite a growth in jobs may be the result of how the data are collected, Mr. Price said. The unemployment numbers come from a statewide survey of 3,000 households, he said, while job growth numbers are based on a separate survey of employers' payroll numbers.

"What we can say for sure is that job growth is not occurring quite fast enough to bring the unemployment number down," he said.

Within specific sectors, local goods-producing jobs decreased by 100, with manufacturing the hardest hit. Construction added 600 jobs, marking its fifth consecutive month of job growth.

The number of service-providing jobs locally fell by 10,900 in July, dropping the total number of jobs in that sector to below 1 million.

Government jobs showed the steepest decline, not unusual since it includes seasonal public school job loss, but the 11,900 lost jobs still exceeded the five-year average of 10,300. Next was trade, transportation and utilities, a sector that lost 1,800 positions primarily due to annual summer declines in school bus use.

The largest job increase was in professional and business services, with an additional 1,700 jobs added in July, while the leisure and hospitality sector added 600 jobs.

AlterNet

With all the focus on the drama surrounding the debt ceiling, and the much-too-late focus on the economic pain the final deal's austerity agenda will inflict, items that really matter—jobs, jobs, and jobs--have been all but ignored. 

But a new report by the National Employment Law Project looking at the jobs created since the recession officially ended brings the focus sharply back to jobs, and its findings are frightening: 73 percent of the jobs created since the supposed economic recovery began have been in low-wage fields, where workers make between $7.51 (the national minimum wage) and $13.52 an hour ($15,621 to $28,122 a year for full-time).

In contrast, 60 percent of the layoffs from the Great Recession were in what the report calls midwage occupations, those that make between $28,142 and $42,973 per year.

“But in the weak recovery to date, employment growth has been concentrated in lower-wage occupations, with minimal growth in midwage occupations and net losses in higher-wage occupations,” the report notes.

This report further cements the argument that progressives have been making for a while: that corporations and the wealthy have bounced back in large part on the backs of the working people of the U.S., squeezing more work for less money out of American workers while returning to record profits, salaries and bonuses.

An economy built on low-wage jobs is inherently unstable and bad for everyone, not just the people struggling to feed themselves and their families on $7.51 an hour.

Continuing the Recession

Replacing living-wage jobs with low-wage jobs is an excellent way to continue sluggish economic growth. It's not rocket science: people who make less money have less money to spend, and less spending means less incentive to hire. It's the vicious cycle of recession, and the reason why government spending has been necessary in the past to put people back to work.

And those effects are already visible—consumer spending was down in June and barely grew at all, only 0.1 percent, in the second quarter.

But misguided Washington obsession with deficits is going to lead to cuts that will directly hurt the most vulnerable—and that includes the working poor as well as the unemployed. As Joshua Holland wrote:

“Last year, with the private sector economy continuing to slump, an analysis by Moody's Analytics found that almost one in five dollars in American consumers' wallets came from one government program or another. The public sector has already seen deep cuts, and that trend will only worsen with Washington's relentless focus on deficit reduction.”

As the government shrinks its spending, it's worth noting that workers in low-wage jobs are often dependent on government programs even while they work. Wal-Mart, for instance, has long been criticized for relying on the government to make up the slack between its rock-bottom wages and what it actually takes for a person to survive. In 2004, a study in California found that Wal-Mart employees relied on food stamps, Medi-Cal (the state version of Medicaid) and subsidized housing to the tune of $86 million annually. With an economy made up of low-wage workers and unspecified cuts still to come, those workers will have to cut back on their already bare-bones spending just to continue to survive.

Real economic recovery will require not just job creation, but living-wage jobs that allow working people to spend and stimulate growth. A crisis of demand won't be solved by keeping people poor.

Deficits

The argument that we must reduce deficits has been given a ludicrous amount of coverage and credence among the governing class, punditry, and even the public since the beginning of the Great Recession. Yet it is worth pointing out, if only for a second, that when progressives argued for a debt ceiling deal that would increase “revenues,” that doesn't only mean raising taxes. It also means putting people back to work and raising their real incomes, which in turn raises the amount of taxes they are paying. A person who was making $50,000 a year, was unemployed for two years, and finally takes a job making $30,000 a year is not paying into the system nearly as much as a steadily employed person at $50,000 a year. Multiply that by millions of desperate job-seekers, and, well, the point is obvious.

In other words, as the NELP report's title suggests, what we really have is a “Good Jobs Deficit.”

Inequality

The rise in low-wage jobs is pushing down all wages. Workers desperate for employment are taking jobs for which they're overqualified, or moving into part-time work. Employers are less likely to offer raises and can get away with lower starting salaries because the huge pool of applicants for any job opening makes it easier to find employees who will work for less.

Mark Price, a labor economist with the Keystone Research Center, told me, "The job market right now is a very cruel game of musical chairs where often it's the youngest and least experienced workers that are left without a job when the music stops."

The desperation that drives workers into low-wage work can be seen clearly in one item from the Harper's Index: “Percentage of applicants accepted for employment on McDonald’s National Hiring Day in April: 6.2.”

The fast food giant had announced it was hiring 50,000 workers in one day, for jobs that averaged $8.30 an hour across the country—and saw so many applicants that it only hired 6.2 percent of them.

Price noted, "Increased competition for jobs has clearly dampened wage growth for workers with a job and is most likely also translating into deteriorating working conditions. Employers who can count on long lines of job applicants for even the lowest wage opening are in a strong position to sweat workers, driving up productivity and pocketing that growth as profit rather than having to split some of that growth with workers as higher wages. Even unionized workers are under tremendous pressure in this environment to work longer hours for less pay for employers that are often pocketing record profits."

And even the low-wage jobs are seeing salaries fall. Stephen Greenhouse, the New York Times' labor reporter, wrote of the NELP report:

The report found that real wages had shown “a mild decline” since the recession began, of 0.6 percent. For workers in lower-wage occupations, median wages fell 2.3 percent after inflation — partly because many of the newer workers hired had lower wages than others in that group. For workers in midwage occupations, wages slipped by 0.9 percent, while there was some good news for workers in higher-wage occupations — their wages rose by 0.9 percent.

But wages can't get any lower than minimum, right? Not so fast. Michele Bachmann, presidential candidate and Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, said that Congress should consider eliminating the minimum wage to “stimulate the economy.”

And as working people's wages keep falling, the rich are doing just fine. According to filmmaker Michael Moore's calculations, the 400 richest people in America (the Forbes 400) had greater net worth in 2009 than the bottom 50 percent of the country. That's right, 400 people have more money than half the nation.

Greenhouse noted, “The report gives additional ammunition to those who argue, like David Autor, an economics professor at M.I.T., that there is a distinct hollowing out of the middle.”

The middle class is being relentlessly pushed downward and neither political party seems to have a solution that will actually result in more and better jobs for all.

Why Are Wages So Low?

It's not news that the U.S. has shifted from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy, or that those service jobs tend to not pay as well as manufacturing jobs. The question that's rarely asked is why they pay so badly in the first place.

The case of Wal-Mart is once again helpful. Wal-Mart's low prices demand low wages, not just from its retail employees, but from the workers around the world who manufacture and transport the goods it sells. Because Wal-Mart is the U.S.'s largest retailer, it can demand and expect to receive constant cost reductions from its suppliers--which are often taken out of workers' pay. Meanwhile, because it is also a huge employer, it drives down wages not only because its low pay sets an industry standard, but because it tends to put local businesses out of business.

Heather Boushey, at the time an economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said in 2005:

“In the mid‐twentieth century, the Fordist business model prevailed, which was based on a social contract between workers and employers and an understanding that it is the workers who are, in the end, the customers. Wal‐Mart does not recognize that customers are workers and that a business model based on squeezing wages limits demand for the very products that these workers produce. ...Without enforcement of current laws and regulation to ensure a decent standard of living for workers here and abroad, our entire economy will someday look like Wal‐Mart. ”

Six years later, Boushey's prediction is coming true. Wal-Mart's model of paying its workers less than enough to shop at Wal-Mart has spread throughout our economy.

As Boushey noted, Henry Ford's business model depended upon a middle class, and though he had no less a desire for profits than the Walton family, he accepted that he had to pay middle-class wages. He also was under regular pressure from a thriving labor movement, which kept the pressure on Ford to raise wages to avoid unionization at his factories (he failed). This model can be seen today in stores like Starbucks and Whole Foods, which tout their high wages and good benefits and use them as a lever against union organizing.

The decline of unions is a major factor in the decline of wages. Another new study analyzed the 40 percent growth in wage inequality between 1973 and 2007—which happened to be the same period during which union membership for private sector workers fell from 34 percent to 8 percent.

Josh Harkinson at Mother Jones summarizes their findings:

1) The threat of unionization caused non-unionized employers to raise wages; that threat disappeared along with unions. 2) Unions occupied a bully pulpit; knocking them off left the moral case for equality vulnerable to attack. (What do you mean Viacom's CEO isn't worth $85 million?) 3) Workers lost their Washington lobbyists, and with them, any hope of winning political battles for better wages and benefits.

Unions aren't only for manufacturing jobs, as the recent organizing campaigns at low-price clothing retailer H&M and at Starbucks show. Just because our economy is shifting to a service industry is not on its own a reason for wages to drop.

A 2009 study by the UK-based New Economics Foundation found that many low-wage occupations actually added far more value to the economy than many of the top-paid jobs. Calculating what they called the “Social Return on Investment,” the foundation found that for every dollar paid to a hospital cleaner, you generate about $6 or $7 in social and environmental returns. Bankers, on the other hand, destroy $4 for every dollar they get.

In other words, there's nothing wrong with the low-wage jobs themselves—they're not inherently worse than the factory work that sustained the U.S. for decades, and many of them provide much more value to society than jobs that pay much more.

Increasing the wages of the workers who have taken these low-wage jobs should be a start. But that will require government action, since Wal-Mart and the like are unlikely to suddenly change their business model. An actual living-wage law rather than a bare-bones minimum wage, coupled with serious pressure for the Employee Free Choice Act to ease the formation of unions, could do much to lift all boats, in a way that the “recovery” from the financial crisis never did.

Does the Senate's passage of the STOCK bill suggest the Republicans have lost their obstructionist mojo? Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) seems to think so.

He made the taunt hours before the Senate's overwhelming 96-3 passage of the President Obama-backed STOCK Act Thursday, which aims to crack down on congressional insider trading. He accused GOP lawmakers of inelegantly dragging their feet on STOCK as well as the payroll tax cut in an effort to sink the measures.

"Haven't they learned the lesson?" Schumer told reporters. "Their obstruction, which they did more artfully last year, is now becoming clear to the public. Their idea of blocking bills with no fingerprints on them is gone. Everyone sees loud and clear what they're doing."

Still, for now Schumer's taunt remains exactly that: a taunt. There's good reason for thinking Thursday night's vote may well turn out to be something of an aberration. And there are signs the GOP's already rocky relationship with the White House -- and thus Dems in general -- could actually be about to worsen.

The Susan G. Komen foundation announced that it will reverse its decision to cut funding for Planned Parenthood, apologizing for "recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women's lives."

The statement calls the backlash over the decision to cut the funding "unsettling," and says that the organization will "amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political."

"We will continue to fund existing grants," the statement says, "including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities."

Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood praised the decision in a statement Friday. "In recent weeks, the treasured relationship between the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation and Planned Parenthood has been challenged, and we are now heartened that we can continue to work in partnership toward our shared commitment to breast health for the most underserved women," Richards said. "We are enormously grateful that the Komen Foundation has clarified its grantmaking criteria, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Komen partners, leaders and volunteers."

Here's the full statement from Komen:

The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.

It is our hope and we believe it is time for everyone involved to pause, slow down and reflect on how grants can most effectively and directly be administered without controversies that hurt the cause of women. We urge everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue. We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics - anyone's politics.

Starting this afternoon, we will have calls with our network and key supporters to refocus our attention on our mission and get back to doing our work. We ask for the public's understanding and patience as we gather our Komen affiliates from around the country to determine how to move forward in the best interests of the women and people we serve.

We extend our deepest thanks for the outpouring of support we have received from so many in the past few days and we sincerely hope that these changes will be welcomed by those who have expressed their concern.

ThinkProgress has already found that 2012 GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney’s economic plan would explode the deficit to the tune of more than $6.5 trillion over the next decade, while doing next to nothing to help middle class or low-income Americans. In fact, Romney’s tax cut that is supposedly “focused” on the middle class gives literally no benefit to most middle class households.

The Tax Policy Center released an analysis today showing that, contrary to Romney’s rhetoric, the overwhelming majority of the benefits under the plan would go to the wealthy. In fact, compared to the policy in place today, Romney’s plan would give millionaires a $150,000 tax cut, while raising taxes on many low-income families:

A sizable number of low-income families would see their taxes go up. For instance, about 15 percent of those in the $10,000 to $20,000 income group would get an average tax cut of about $140, but 20 percent would get hit with an average tax increase of $1,000, mostly because Romney would bring back the less generous versions of those refundable credits.

About one-third of those in $40,000 to $50,000 group would get a tax cut that would average about $400, but about one-six would face a tax increase of nearly twice as much.

Almost every millionaire would get a tax cut averaging roughly $150,000. As a group, those making $1 million or more would receive nearly half the benefit of Romney’s tax plan.

Romney plan hits hardest those making less than $40,000, and primarily those households with children, as he would undo President Obama’s expansion of the child tax credit.

And Romney’s proposal only gets more lucrative for those at the very top of the income scale, giving those in the richest 0.1 percent an annual tax cut of nearly half a million dollars. In 2015 alone, the plan would add $600 billion to the deficit.

This flies directly in the face of Romney’s assertion that he isn’t focused on helping the rich. “If I’m going to use precious dollars to reduce taxes, I want to focus on where the people are hurting the most, and that’s the middle class. I’m not worried about rich people,” Romney said in an October debate. If that is the case, why do the ultra-wealthy receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax cuts annually under his plan, while a middle class family could very well see its taxes go up?

An expansive “John Doe” corruption investigation targeting employees and former employees of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has led to its first arrests today, nabbing three people, including two former aides to Walker. The investigation centers around Milwaukee County workers during Walker’s tenure their as executive, and has previously involved an FBI raid on the home of a fourth person, one of Walker’s top aides.

Today, police arrested former county employees Kevin Kavanaugh, who was appointed by Walker, and Tim Russell, who served on Walker’s gubernatorial campaign. The AP reports:

Former county housing director Tim Russell, 48, was charged with two felony and one misdemeanor embezzlement charges, according to the criminal complaint from the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office.

Kevin Kavanaugh, Walker’s appointee to the Milwaukee County Veteran Service Commission, was charged with one felony embezzlement charge of taking more than $10,000 from a business and four felony counts of fraudulent writings by a corporate officer.

Russell and Kavanaugh each face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of the most serious felony embezzlement charge.

A third person, who worked for six months for the state Department of Public Instruction, was charged with two counts of felony child enticement in a case the county prosecutor said was discovered while investigating the others.

Walker has been charged with no wrongdoing and there’s no evidence suggesting that he has personally been a target of the secret probe, now a year and half old.

At town hall event in Northfield, New Hampshire today, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum reiterated his call for abolishing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and floated the idea of shipping its judges off to Guam.

Santorum said the court is overly liberal and imposing a “reign of terror of California judges” on other Western states, but acknowledged that outright abolition of the court wouldn’t be exactly constitutional, as judges are guaranteed lifetime appointments. So, Santorum suggested, perhaps jokingly, “maybe we can create a court that puts them in Guam or something like that and keep their life appointments” and be safely quarantined. Watch it:

Santorum also channeled Rick Perry a bit, joking he harbors more nefarious intentions for the current Ninth Circuit judges: “I have some ideas that I won’t share publicly.”

When rival GOP candidate Newt Gingrich also proposed abolishing the Ninth Circuit, former George W. Bush Attorneys General Michael Mukasey and Alberto Gonzales called the plan “ridiculous,” “irresponsible,” and “troubling.” Indeed, as ThinkProgress’ Ian Millhiser has explained, abolishing a federal court because the president doesn’t agree with their rulings is a dangerous breakdown of the separation of powers.

It’s been a big week for calling out corporate tax dodgers.

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama called for an economy where “everyone plays by the same set of rules” and where companies can’t avoid taxes by shifting profits overseas. He acknowledged what we’ve been saying for a long time which is that special interests have long played by a different set of rules than the rest of us – ones they’ve helped create, I might add.

That same night, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren went on the Daily Show and called out 30 corporations that a recent Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group (PennPIRG) and Citizens for Tax Justice study found paid more to lobby Congress than they did in federal income taxes between 2008 and 2010. When Warren told this to John Stewart on the Daily Show, it made the usually unflappable comedian’s jaw drop.

The special treatment that special interests have won over the years is on full display when it comes to our tax code. While small businesses and ordinary taxpayers pay taxes on the income they earn, companies like GE and Wells Fargo have so deftly manipulated the tax code that they paid no taxes on billions of dollars in profits between 2008 and 2010. In fact, they actually got tax rebates from Uncle Sam on tax day. While it may sound criminal, it’s all perfectly legal.

Most taxpayers can’t employ hoards of tax lawyers to manipulate the tax system or hire an army of lobbyists to craft the tax code in their favor. Warren put it best during her Daily Show interview: “Washington now works for those who can hire an army of lobbyists and an army of lawyers.” The “Dirty Thirty” companies identified by PennPIRG and CTJ all told spent nearly half a billion dollars lobbying Congress on tax policy and other issues over the three year period of the study. “They hire those people to make [the tax code] onerous so they can worm their way through,” as Stewart rightly asserted.

read more

Yesterday’s move by the School Reform Commission to hire a “Chief Recovery Officer” signals a potentially troubling path around both mission and process for the School District as it struggles to keep afloat amid fiscal chaos.

Local 1201 union president George Richezza, whose 2700 members have all received layoff notices, said what’s on many people’s minds: “What I see here is a dismantling of the public school system."

To be sure, no one can deny the District’s devastating financial situation. A $715 million deficit. $61 million to close by June. A projected $300+ million deficit to close in FY2013.

On top of all that was yesterday’s very important story that the city and school district had lost a state court appeal around property taxes that could result in $45 million less in tax revenue for the schools.

The current leadership of the SRC needs to take swift fiscal action. No one denies that. The fact that schools, school personnel, and classrooms have made and will need to continue to make compromises is also a given.

But here’s where the SRC leadership needs to act with caution.

read more

I have been sitting on this, trying to write a response, but, Larry Platt did eventually respond to my email about Stu Bykofsky's sex-tourism column. While trying to write out a response to the email, the days rolled by, and I was busy being obnoxious with Rick Santorum. Leaving this hanging is unfair to Platt, so, I am going to just publish his response in full, with only minimial comment.

On the whole, I find the response-- while nice- dismissive and unresponsive to the real concerns the column raised.

First, again, my email to Platt:

Larry:

I (sincerely) apologize for asking this while the Daily News is taking the hit of the Bill Conlin morass, and, I find it encouraging that the paper is now also actively investigating Conlin and pursuing the story. But, I am writing mainly to follow up to Helen Gym's op-ed from this morning about Stu Bykofsky's column from last week.

While the timing might make this more painful for the paper, it seems that questions about the Bykofsky column are even more important this week than they were when the column ran. I am going to write something for our little blog, piggybacking on Helen's piece, but, I would like to ask the Daily News a few questions first (with the understanding that I will publish these in full on our blog). If there is someone more appropriate to ask, please forward this on to them.

The questions:

First, given the paper's experience over the last few days, would the Bykofsky column run if it were submitted today? If not, will the Daily News issue any statement about the efficacy of that column actually running? Obviously, running the piece by Helen is an important step, and shows some willingness to deal with this issue, but, this is not the same as the paper itself responding.

Second, Stu's column dances around whether he did or did not have sex with a Thai prostitute. In the submission process of this column, was Stu directly asked this by an editor? If this conversation did occur, was the column changed as a result of this discussion?

Third, will the Daily News issue corrections for the column? Obviously, the paper cannot run a 'correction' for the racist views of its columnist. But, the column did simply have factual errors. For example, Stu's assertion that 'there are no pimps in Thailand' is false, and refuted by any number of reports from Human Rights Watch, the United Nations and others which document that many prostitutes in Thailand are children, and in conditions resembling slavery (or, simply, slavery). It goes without saying that these children are not in slavery without someone... keeping them enslaved. Similarly, "each woman is an independent contractor" is false, for many of the same reasons, and this too could be easily refuted. If these corrections have been issued, and I missed them, please let me know.

Finally, and more fundamentally for the Daily News, is any view whatsoever appropriate for publication by its columnists? Stu's column danced around whether he did, or did not, in fact have sex with a Thai prostitute, and then referred to Asian women with bizarrely outmoded racial stereotypes. Is there any limit to what the Daily News would not publish along these lines? For example, would the Daily News run an entire column discussing how cheap Jews are?

Thanks in advance for your consideration. It goes without saying, but, one reason this kind of piece angers so many of us is that we greatly value the role of an active, vibrant local paper, generally, and of an institution like the Daily News generally specifically. So, when it publishes something this offensive and destructive, it sets off all kinds of alarms. As I said, I will put any answers in writing in full, and can wait until tomorrow if that is helpful.

Best,

Dan

He then responds:

Hey Dan,

Sorry I haven’t gotten back to you sooner — still digging out from the Conlin mess.

I take it your deadline has by now passed, but let me just respond to a couple of general points and you can do with this what you will.

First, there is no connection between Stu’s first-person observations about something he witnessed in Thailand and the Conlin tragedy. To suggest such a connection is to demean the victims who have come forward with their stories of Bill’s horrible misdeeds.

Second, I think in the aftermath of Stu’s column, both in our paper and on philly.com, there has been some really valuable back and forth. In particular, there have been, as you point out, some important reporting addendums offered by readers that would have strengthened the column. (For example, placing Stu’s slice-of-life observations in the larger context of the human trafficking issue and quoting from UN reports before zeroing in on what he witnessed would have preemptively addressed many of the concerns now being raised.)

That said, I don’t think the evidence exists on the page for some of the conclusions being drawn from the column. He doesn’t promote the sex tourist trade, for example. Instead, as a number of philly.com commenters pointed out, he has penned a column about a “sad first impression he’s gotten about what life is like for one part of the Thai population.” Certainly, this expression of sadness may not square with the moral outrage you or I might have responded with, in which case I invite you to answer upsetting speech with more speech and write a letter that I’d be happy to publish. (As we’ve done a few times in the past week). As for “corrections,” I have yet to see any factual assertions requiring correction, though I’m happy to look at specifics. (As to the two you suggest, they are not, in fact, assertions made in the piece: Stu never posits that there “are no pimps in Thailand” or that prostitutes in Thailand are independent contractors. The paragraph in question actually refers only to the women — not children — who work in bars). So far, what I’ve heard from people wouldn’t qualify as corrections so much as additional information that would have provided a context for Stu’s slice of life peek at this world.

Finally, let me say that the days when publishing occurs solely upon publication are (thankfully) over. This piece — with its ongoing discourse — strikes me as an ultimately healthy, if occasionally messy, exercise. Our pages, and philly.com, will happily continue being a forum for readers to express their reactions and, yes, for columnists to sometimes piss off said readers. My old friend Nat Hentoff once wrote a great book called “Free Speech For Me, But Not For Thee” and it touched on the all-too-human instinct to want to silence those who offend us, rather than engage the argument. I invite you, and your readers, to engage.

Best, LP

OK, so, I expected this for the most part. Let me just say one thing that I think is really, really, really ridiculous about the last paragraph-the 'all dialogue is good dialougue' canard. Basically, Platt absolves the paper absolves itself of any responsibility whatesover, because there is back and forth. In other words, we can say whatever crazy, destructive, criminal crap we want, because we allow people to respond... I just don't buy it.

Anyway, there it is. I will write some more about it- but, please give your thoughts below.

read more

This is a sandbox to develop things for http://drupal.org/project/reply

Future home of the implementation of http://code.google.com/p/dynatree/ to create tree menus.

http://drupal.org/project/jstreehttp://drupal.org/project/dhtml_menu

This API module allow developers to build an entity type which is attached to strong behaviors.

Adds a payment method to Drupal Commerce to accept credit card payments through the Emporiki Bank (Greek bank) API via XML (not redirection).

Provides options to select the live or the test Emporiki Bank environment and also to have money authorized only or authorized and captured.

Works with euros, dollars and pounds. If there is need for more currencies, please contact me sending me the currency code and I'll add them.

This project is maintained and sponsored by netstudio, a Drupal E-Commerce solutions company in Athens, Greece.

Unlike Bot Commit, this module does not react to repository changes. It is a lookup tool in the fashion of the Bot Project URL lookup.

This project provides an integration between GitHub and the Bot module. More specifically it makes GitHub a Bot Project provider by utilizing the patch in #969294: Make issue-tracking integration extensible (for Redmine), following the example of Bot project Redmine.

This module currently has support for Commits and Branches. Additional Github-related tricks may be added later.

It depends on the php-github-api library, which for now must be copied into the module directory.

A commit request might look like:  Grayside: ~0a6fc5129b, %master or  Grayside: ~bot_github:0a6fc5129b

And produce:  GitHubBot: Commit "Issue #1042: Create an Awesome GitHub Bot integration." by Grayside, http://github.com/Grayside/fakeproject/0a6fc5129b (47 IRC men$  GitHubBot: Branch "master" last updated on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:03:31 -0800, https://github.com/Grayside/fakeproject/tree/master (2 IRC mentions)

The most basic function of a content management system is the ability to create a page. However, this fundamental activity of website building is often an unexpected hassle for new Drupal users. Yeah, I'm talking about the lack of a built-in rich text editor.

I know there are some strong feelings in the Drupal community about this, but let me try to persuade you that whatever the philosophical or technical reasons for not including a default editor, they're hurting adoption of Drupal and needlessly creating a usability issue for those who are evaluating the platform. 

Most of the reasons I have heard for not including a default editor involve respecting user choice. This is a fine sentiment, but let me illustrate the problems it can create when someone is evaluating Drupal.

First, a little context. I've been building websites since 2000. Although I'm a competent coder and have slogged my way through a custom module or two, I've never really enjoyed that aspect of building a site and come more from a design and marketing perspective. I have an MBA, not a degree in computer science, and that's the lens I look through when thinking about websites.

A few years ago, an organization I work for had a site that had grown increasingly difficult to manage so we decided to take a look at content management systems. We were working in a .NET environment and had both DotNetNuke and Umbraco on the list, but we also wanted to consider the "Big 3" PHP platforms - WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.

It fell to me to evaluate these platforms, write up a recommendation and do a brief demo of the top two choices. I started with Joomla because my boss had heard great things about it. I installed it and added a few pages, tweaked some configuration options - you know, took it out for a test drive. I repeated this process one by one until I came to the last platform, Drupal. 

The install seemed to go smoothly...so far, so good. I went to create a page and...hold on a second. I think something went wrong in the install. Where is the text editor? Maybe I need to turn something on?

Ten minutes of clicking through the admin pages.

OK, time for Google.

Oh, I see! You need a module called WYSIWYG. Strange that they don't include that. All of the others did. Well, no big deal. Modules don't seem too hard to install.

WYSIWYG is installed! Now let's create that page!

Uh...no editor. What the hell? Back to Google. 

Looks like I need to add the actual editor. Wow, there are a lot of choices. Also a lot of debate on which one is best. Guess I'll just go with TinyMCE. People seem to like it.

Whew! That was a bit of work but finally I've got an editor in there - let's make a page!

Wait...why can't I add an image? Where is the upload? Oh. I have to install another module.

Check that, two modules - IMCE and IMCE Wysiwyg Bridge.

Are you *!?#ing kidding me? All of this to make a basic page!? 

Before you tell me how stupid it was of me to not do A or B, consider that my experience is not that uncommon. You see, the Drupal community is dominated by developers, really good developers who embrace complexity and who love nothing more than to muck about with code and get their hands dirty. Installing and configuring a few modules is nothing. Actually it's kind of fun, right?

Unfortunately, there are a large number of people involved in building websites who don't feel this way.

There is a common complaint about the quality of Drupal themes and they are often contrasted unfavorably with WordPress themes. Have you ever considered the possibility that Drupal usability may be playing a role? How can this be, you ask?

Web designers are very influential in the CMS decision making process in many firms and certainly among consultants. They generally just want things to work. If a content management system is a hassle for them, they will naturally tend not to recommend it. Instead, they will choose a CMS that will allow them to spend more time working on the parts of their job they love - designing themes, for example.

The marketing department also likes to have a lot of input into the website. After all, in the large majority of cases, the website is a marketing platform. How do you think they feel about a CMS that seems hard to use right out of the gate?

When Drupal 7 was nearing release, I read about all of the usability improvements that were on the way. Finally, I thought, Drupal will get a text editor by default!

Obviously, that didn't happen and it remains a blemish on what are some really great improvements to usability. In fact, had an editor been included by default, I honestly think that Drupal 7 would compare very well to WordPress 3 with regard to usability. 

Now, some folks might mention using an installation profile that includes an editor. That's not really a solution when you think about it. People who are new to Drupal are going to download the default install or perhaps from Acquia (also, very surprisingly, no editor). Installation profiles are generally for people who are already familiar with Drupal and are looking for a time saver. 

An analogy I think is appropriate is with product packaging. Think about Apple and how they package their products and how that affects the buyer's experience with the product. The first 20-30 minutes a person spends with a CMS is very similar. The product speaks to the user. Some may marvel at the flexibilty and power of Drupal. Many others may try to create a simple page and wander off in frustration thinking, "Drupal is too hard."

It doesn't have to be that way.

Obviously, I didn't give up on Drupal during that evaluation process and have since become an ardent supporter. But I've always wondered why - virtually alone among all the CMS platforms - Drupal continues to omit a default text editor.

I would like to appeal to the Drupal community for two things.

First, please support the inclusion of a default text editor in future versions. CK Editor, YUI, TinyMCE - it doesn't really matter. Just pick something. It can always be switched out later. Including an editor by default will go a long way toward making a good first impression with new users.

Second, let me say how much I respect Drupal developers and the amazing CMS they have built. I only ask that you leave a little room at the table for some of the other important stakeholders that may not always feel heard within the community. I'm talking about the designers, the marketers, information architects, copywriters and even executive decision makers who work together to build great websites. There are more of us out here than you may think. And we would like a default editor, please. It will make the job of selling Drupal to new users much easier.

And that's a good thing for everyone, don't you think?

This is the 21st in our series of Drupal Gardens 'What's New' posts, and we think this one is especially worth celebrating. Need to restrict valuable content on your site to only privileged users? Want to crop, rotate or resize uploaded images in your posts? Wish you could click to perform bulk delete or other operations on lists of users, content or media? Long for better control over how comments are displayed on your site? With this release, we've got you covered.

A lot went into making these features simple, but powerful. For content access control, we started with the powerful Taxonomy Access Control module, and worked with maintainer Jess (xjm) to make it easier to assign access permissions with an alternative user interface. In addition, we created the TAC Redirect 403 module that allows custom upsell pages for different categories of restricted content. For cropping, rotating and resizing image media we created the Media: image editing module. For bulk operations we added the Views Bulk Operations module and worked with maintainer Bojan Živanović (bojanz) to simplify the UI. For comment customization, we created the Comment Goodness module. As usual, the patches and modules developed for these features were donated back to drupal.org so the entire community can benefit. We hope you find them useful!

The Drupal Gardens service was updated on Jan. 30th with the following new features and enhancements:

Content editors can use the WYSIWYG editor to rotate, crop, and scale images on the fly. To learn more, see Crop, rotate, and scale embedded images.

Now you can sort comments per content type and customize commenting labels. For a YouTube-like comment experience, you can sort comments by ‘Newer first’ which also moves the comment form to the top of the comment stream. To learn more, see Customizing comments and sorting.

For Basic subscription plans or higher, save time and eliminate repetitive administrative tasks by extending your views with Views Bulk Operations. With this feature you can select multiple items in a view (e.g. content, users, media, etc) and click to bulk delete, bulk publish, and more. To learn more, see Applying bulk actions to view items

For Professional subscription plans or higher, Drupal Gardens provides fine-grained access control to your site’s content using Taxonomy-based access control. With this feature, you can define access control rules describing which users (by role) can view, edit, or delete content. Then you can apply these access control rules to any content you want. Optionally, you can allow some users to see a teaser of the content, but then redirect them to another web page when they try to view the full version of content in order to upsell them or provide information about how they can get access to your premium content. To learn more, see Restricting access to site content.

I knew the moment my laptop didn't wake from sleep mode something was amiss. Having retired to my office safe haven for the evening I just wanted to wrap up a few items, log my time and call it a night - the basic end to any Drupal developer's day. My Macbook, however, had other plans.

It was the quintessential nightmare for those of use who live on our computers, a dream we often visualize as worse-case situations but often do nothing to lessen the pain of actualities: a complete computer crash with limited hope of a reboot. But despite the Macabre vibe usually surrounding such thoughts, it's something that doesn't always have to be the ultimate disaster. 

Before digital cameras, the only way to get a digital image was to take a picture with a film camera, get the film developed, then have the photographic print or slide digitized using a scanner.

Digital cameras eliminate the time needed for developing and scanning. When you own a digital camera, you can skip the darkroom and go strength to the desktop.

Before we take a closer look at digital photography, let’s pause and take a look back at photography’s roots.

The term photography has been around for little more than 160 years. The word is derived from the Greek words photos (light) and graphein (to draw) and was first coined by scientist Sir John Herschel in 1839. Two scientific processes, one optical and the other chemical, combined to make photography possible. Interestingly, both processes existed for hundreds of years before photography was invented.

The equipment that became the foundation of modern photography was nothing like today’s cameras. The forerunners of today’s cameras were created from darkened rooms. Light came in through a small hole in the room’s window shade or wall, causing an upside-down image of what was outside to appear on the opposite wall. This device was called a camera obscura, which means “dark room” in Latin.

This is how a Camera Obscura works

The concept of the camera obscura has been around for thousands of years. It is believed that the great Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), knew the principle behind the camera obscura, as did the Arabian scholar, Hassan bin Hassan, who in the tenth century described in his manuscripts what can be considered a camera obscura.

Later, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) wrote about the uses of a camera obscura and depicted one in a drawing dated 1519. During the same period, a Venetian named Daniel Barbaro recommended that the camera obscura be used as an aid to drawing and perspective. And in 1558, Giovanni Battista Della Porta wrote a book called Natural Magic that told of the camera obscura being utilized as a tool by draftsmen and illustrators. From that time onwards, it is thought that many artists employed the camera obscura, including Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) and British artists Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), first president of the Royal Academy of Art in London, and Paul Sandby (1725-1809), a founding member of the Royal academy.

As time went by, the camera obscura grew similar in size. Made from a wooden box, it had a lens attached at one end and a mirror at the other. The mirror was positioned at a 45-degree angle, with a glass plate above it. By placing a piece of thin paper over the glass, an individual could trace the image projected there.

The Camera Obscura below is in the collection of historical apparatus of the National University of Ireland in Galway. It was used for sketching; the tracing paper was placed on the missing glass inside the folding hood, and a 45° mirror inside the box reflected the image onto the paper.

In the seventeenth century, Robert Boyle, a chemist and founder of the Royal Society, reported that silver chloride turned dark under exposure, but he mistakenly believed that it was exposure to air-rather than exposure to light-that caused this to happen.

During the 1700s and 1800s, several peoples were experimenting with photosensitive materials. One of these, a German physicist named Johann Heinrich Schulze, discovered in 1727 that light could be used to change substances. He experimented with silver, nitric acid and chalk, and found that bright sunlight turned the mixture to black. Although his discovery, in conjunction with the camera obscura, provided the basic technology for photography, it was not until the nineteenth century that photography came into being.

In the early 1800s, Frenchman Joseph Niepce discovered that exposing bitumen, an asphalt-like substance, to light caused it to harden. He coated metal plates with bitumen, and then exposed them to light inside a camera obscura. After an exposure of eight hours, the plate was washed and dipped in acid, which etched the exposed metal. The last step was to coat the plate with ink and strike it on paper, producing a print of the original image. Niepce named this process heliography. Niepce is regarded as having produced the first permanent photographic image.

View from the Window at Le Gras (La cour du domaine du Gras) was the first successful permanent photograph, created by Nicéphore Niépce (born Joseph Niépce) in 1826 at Saint-Loup-de-Varennes.

At about the same time that Niepce developed heliography, another Frenchman, Louis Daguerre, a successful commercial artist, was experimenting with the same process. Niepce and Daguerre formed a partnership in 1829, but Niepce died a few years later. Daguerre continued to exposing the silver to iodine fumes, creating a silver-iodide salt that made the plate photosensitive. He put the plate in the camera obscura and exposed it to light. The silver-iodide darkened, but eventually the entire image turned black.

Quite by accident, deguerre found a solution to his dilemma. One day he left an exposed plate in a cabinet where mercury was stored. When he removed the plate, he realized that the developing had ceased and the image had stopped darkening. He named his invention the daguerreotype. When Louis Daguerre showed the first daguerreotypes to the public in the winter of 1838-1839, Parisians were amazed by the amount of detail they contained. Some likened looking through a telescope. Daguerre’s rival for the title of inventor of modern photography, William Henry Fox Tablot, had his detail of a daguerreotype.

At about the same time that Daguerre was developing the daguerreotype, Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot was experimenting with a similar process. However, Talbot used paper instead of metal plates and produced a “negative” image. He then took the paper negative, waxed it to make it translucent, and photographed it to produce a “positive” image. He called the resulting positive-negative process collotype. Talbot is sometimes hailed as the father of modern photography, since the basis of the process he developed is used in photography today, but unquestionably Daguerre, too, was an essential contributor to photography’s development.

Although the originators of modern photography were mostly men, women were also experimenting with the photographic process during the nineteenth century. While William Henry Fox Talbot was developing the positive-negative process, his wife was conducting her own experiments, which she detailed in writing in 1839. And in major American cities, a growing number of women were working with daguerreotypes. In 1850, one periodical declared that in New York there were 71 daguerreotype studios, with about 11 women employed in them.

Women were attracted t photography because in the 19th and early 20th centuries it was one of the few professions deemed acceptable for their participation. There were also many women enjoying photography as a hobby. Camera clubs were formed, and various art salons began to exhibit the work of amateur women photographers.

One notable female photographer was Gertrude Stanton Kasebier (1852-1934). Having studied at Pratt Institute in New York, she originally planned to be a portrait painter. However, she became interested in photography while student and her first solo exhibit took place in 1896 at the Boston Camera Club. Soon after, she opened a portrait photography studio in New York City. Her work became popular and she went on to be a founding member of the Photo-secession group, the Pictorial Photographs of America, and the Women’s Federation of the photographer’s Association of America.

Although histories of photography may focus on the men who pioneered the field, it is good to remember that women, too, played a part in its early days.

Daguerre’s process spread throughout the world, with the first daguerreotypes being made in America in 1839. At first the process of creating an exposure was quite lengthy. Moving objects could not be recorded, and it was difficult to obtain portraits.

Above is the first daguerreotype made by Louis Daguerre himself, claimed to be the first to complete the full process.

Individuals in Europe and the United States began experimenting to improve the optical, chemical and practical aspects of the daguerreotype process to make it more workable for creating portraits. In 1840 Alexander Wolcott opened a “daguerrean parlor” in New York where he created tiny portraits using a camera having a mirror instead of a lens. Wolcott’s daguerrean parlor was the earliest known photography studio.

Josef Petzval and Friedrich Voigtander, both of Vienna, revolutionized the daguerreotype process. Petzwal produced a portrait lens that was about 20 times faster than had been previously used, and Voigtlander reconstructed Daguerre’s wooden box into one that was smaller and easier to transport. At about the same time, Franz Kratochwilz, another Viennese, developed and published a chemical acceleration process that increased the sensitivity of the developing plate. With these valuable improvements, exposure time was reduced to 20 to 40 seconds, and daguerreotyping became a flourishing business, especially in the United States.

In the latter part of the 1800s, American George Eastman advanced the photographic process to such an extent that his influence is still felt today. In 1879 he invented an emulsion-coating machine that enabled the mass production of photographic dry plates, and in 1880 he began to manufacture them. In the early 1880s Eastman began experimenting with emulsion-support bases other than glass. Working with a colleague, he developed a roll film holder, a flexible film, and a machine to produce the film. They layered the film with gelatin emulsions on a paper backing, and then stripped off the backing after development.

By 1885 Eastman American Film, the first transparent film negative was introduced. 3 years later, Kodak was born, and the Kodak Camera was introduced. The camera, which sold for $25, came loaded with 100 exposures on a film roll. Once all of the film had been used up, the camera was sent back to the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Co. in Rochester, New York, for developing. One year later, Kodak #2, the first commercial transparent roll film, was brought to market.

An advertisement of the first model of the Kodak camera from ‘The Photographic Herald and Amateur Sportsman (1988-89)’

The Eastman Dry Plate and Film Co. became the Eastman Company in 1889, and then Eastman Kodak Company of New York in 1892. In 1895 the Pocket Kodak camera was announced, followed in 1900 by the first mass-marketed camera, the Brownie, which sold for $1. And with the Brownie, photography was no longer the province of only a few. With its wide availability and affordable price, the Brownie camera allowed even regular Joes to take up photography. This was the beginning of Americans’ love affair with the snapshot.

Which are better: traditional film (analog) cameras or digital cameras? This issue is hotly debated, and it appears that the definitive answer will remain elusive for some time. Depending on whom you talk to, digital cameras are the be-all and end-all, and everyone who is anyone is rushing out to buy a digicam. But there are diehard traditional photographers who are quick to maintain that the quality of photographs produced by digital cameras cannot match the quality provided by a film camera, at least not at the same price point. In a nutshell, these are some of the specific points being hotly debated:

Now for the flip side:

Not everyone needs, or wants, a digital camera. If you are satisfied with your film camera, you may not want to purchase a digital camera. This is especially true if you do not own a computer and are not planning to purchase one soon or at all. But there are some distinct advantages to digital photography, which you should consider before making your decision. Many folks find that it pays to have both a 35mm SLR camera and a digital camera. Here is why digital photography is so appealing:

Using a digital camera means experimenting cutting-edge photography. About every 3 or 4 weeks, a new model digital camera makes its appearance in the marketplace. And digital cameras’ capabilities are expanding at what seems like the speed of light. In fact, remarkable audio and video machines are being manufactured.

With digital cameras, you don’t need to spend money on film or agonize over what type of film will best meet your needs. And if you are careful with your camera’s storage, you will never again find yourself wanting to take that beautiful sunset but powerless to do so because you just used up your last roll or film.

No more film means no more processing costs. Think of the amount of money you will save over the course of a lifetime on processing alone if you go digital. Although the price of a digital camera might be higher than the price of a comparable 35mm camera, not having to continually invest in film represents big savings.

As soon as you shoot a picture, you can immediately check the image. The immediate gratification of digital photography sure beats the time you used to spend waiting for your film to be developed, or developing it yourself in a darkroom. Also, being able to check your shots while in the field means you can delete “outtakes” as you go along, leaving you with only the best images at the end of the day.

Even with the all of the benefits described above, one of the main reasons a photographer is swayed to purchase a digital camera is for the creative freedom it provides. Buy a digital camera, and your computer acts as your digital darkroom, allowing you to manipulate your images in a variety of ways. For instance, you can eliminate red eye, change the background of a picture, add or subtract images, turn black-and-white image into color, crop or rotate your picture, and undertake hundreds of other modifications-all with the click of a mouse.

With your digital camera and e-mail, you can quickly and easily share your photographs with relatives and friends around the globe. And now many websites allow you to set up albums of your images for others to view at their leisure. Just imagine how pleased Mom, Dad and Aunt Isabel will be when you e-mail them the latest snapshots of your bouncing baby.

If you’re a small business owner, a digital camera can be a lifesaver. For instance, real estate agents can quickly snap a photo of a property and e-mail it to a client or download it to their website. Photographers and journalists can send images to their editors, whether they’re in the next town or halfway around the globe. Antiques dealers who market their goods on auction websites such as eBay can download images and get auctions rolling the very same day. For many professionals working in a variety of businesses, a digital camera can become an indispensable tool.

Even with all the benefits that digital cameras have to offer, these are some drawbacks to digital photography that you also should consider before running out and buying your own digital camera. Depending on how you utilize a camera, the level of skill you possess, and your dexterity with a computer, digital photography can seem heaven-sent or a total turnoff.

To produce a film-like quality photo, a digital camera would need to be filled with so many chips that its price would be astronomical. If you are going to enlarge an image to poster size, you may be better off using an analog camera to take the shot. However, if you plan to use the image for a website or your personal online album, the digital camera will work just fine for you.

Digital cameras are not as sensitive to light as film cameras. Outdoors, you probably won’t run into a problem. But indoors you may find that it is more difficult to get a decent exposure with a digital camera. Even with flash, you may need to add more lighting.

Sometimes a digital camera gets the color wrong. It won’t be drastic mistake, such as red lake or a purple sun, but you might get orange instead of yellow, or purple instead of blue.

Silicon Film technologies, inc. has developed an electronic film cartridge, called (e)film, which allows a 35mm SLR camera to capture digital images. The electronic film cartridge is an insert that fits into the back of a 35mm SLR body. It uses 65 MB of nonvolatile flash memory to capture and store up to twenty-four 36-bit digital images and can be reused thousands of times. With (e)film you can go digital without the expense of purchasing a new camera, plus you can use all of the lenses, flash units, and filters you already own.

The pros know that digital cameras can provide some benefits that analog cameras cannot. Here is just a sampling of how professionals in many fields use digital cameras and digital images to make their jobs easier and improve the work they do:

In the end, it’s your call whether or not a digital camera is right for you. Once you’ve sized up your needs and considered both the pros and cons of going digital, you’ll be able to determine if a digital camera should be part of your future.

Although no one can predict the future, it seems likely that the trend of manufacturing cameras with more pixels will continue. Look for better resolution and higher-quality photographs. Also, camera manufacturers are likely to improve digicams so that the amount of shutter lag is reduced.

The web is constantly evolving. New and creative websites are being created every day, pushing the limitations of HTML in every direction. HTML4 has been around for nearly a decade and now its time to move forward. To give authors more flexibility and interoperability, HTML5 is proposed as the next major revision of HTML.

It works on just about every platform, is compatible with older browsers, and handles errors gracefully. You can create powerful, easy-to-maintain, future-proof web pages. Many common tasks are now simplified, putting more power in your hands.

In this presentation, you’ll find a variety of highly-creative, beautiful and most importantly inspirational designs that are coded in HTML5.

The main purpose here is to stimulate your creativity and to inspire your imagination to create awesome designs because your website represents you and your brand.

You may be interested in the following modern trends related articles as well.

Please feel free to join us and you are always welcome to share your thoughts that our readers may like.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS-feed and follow us on Twitter — for recent updates.

HTML5 is being developed as the next major revision of HTML (HyperText Markup Language), the core markup language of the World Wide Web. HTML5 is the proposed next standard for HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0 and DOM Level 2 HTML. It aims to reduce the need for proprietary plug-in-based rich internet application (RIA) technologies such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, Apache Pivot, and Sun JavaFX.

For those, who don’t know what is HTML5? And what it can do? Then follow the link below for detail introduction.

Throughout history, great artists always found new ways to show their creativity to express themselves and create new trends and techniques to remark their work apart from the rest of the crowd. The Definition of design is more critical in modern terms as now design is a way of communication; and, more specifically, Web design is a well define platform for showcasing your skills. There is no ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ in design. It always defined as ‘Different’.

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While compiling this showcase, it’s always a possibility that we missed some other great HTML5 design resources. Feel free to share it with us.

Have you ever wondered why you seem to be getting hungrier while waiting to place your order at a fast food place or why you eat faster that any human should ingest that poison? Have you ever heard of a “power tie” in business?

There are things that excite the human senses. Aromatherapy and the sense of smell bring about mood and emotional change. Taste, touch and audible sensations bring about the same changes, so it’s no surprise that visuals also bring about emotional changes in humans. Color is light and light is energy. Scientists have found that actual physiological changes take place in human beings when they are exposed to certain colors. Colors can stimulate, excite, depress, tranquilize, increase appetite and create a feeling of warmth or coolness. This is known as Chromodynamics.

In 1666, English scientist, Sir Isaac Newton, discovered that when pure white light passes through a prism it separates into all of the visible colors. Newton also found that each color is made up of a single wavelength and cannot be separated any further into other colors. Color has the power to suggest mood and emotion and, used the correct way, you can move people to become excited, fearful, playful, relaxed and powerful.

The big fast food giants have similar colors for their brands, which stimulate and excite. Oddly enough, Whataburger, a smaller chain, uses muted colors for a friendly retro feel. Coke also uses the power of a warm red, giving the feel of a lazy summer day. Which website entices you the most?

Our personal and cultural associations affect our experience of color. Colors are seen as warm or cool mainly because of long-held (and often cross-cultural) associations. Yellow, orange and red are associated with the heat of sun and fire; green, blue and violet with the coolness of leaves, sea and the sky. Warm colors seem closer to the viewer than cool colors, but vivid cool colors can overwhelm light and subtle warm colors. Using warm colors for foreground and cool colors for background enhances the perception of depth and suggests peace and tranquility. Warm colors in the foreground and cool colors in the background can suggest a sense of foreboding.

Look at this photo of the five U.S. Presidents. Which one commands more respect from the colors they wear? Don’t go by their records as Commanders-in-Chief or you’ll say, “none!”

Several ancient cultures, including the Egyptians and Chinese, practiced chromotherapy, or using colors to heal. Chromotherapy is sometimes referred to as light therapy or colorology and is still used today as a holistic or alternative treatment.

Red was used to stimulate the body and mind and to increase circulation.

Yellow was thought to stimulate the nerves and purify the body.

Orange was used to heal the lungs and to increase energy levels.

Blue was believed to soothe illnesses and treat pain.

Indigo shades were thought to alleviate skin problems.

Although red, yellow and orange are in general considered high-arousal colors and blue, green and most violets are low-arousal hues, the brilliance, darkness and lightness of a color can alter the psychological message. While a light blue-green appears to be tranquil, wet and cool, a brilliant turquoise, often associated with a tropical ocean setting, will pop more to the viewer’s eye. The psychological association of a color is often more meaningful than the visual experience of the elements themselves.

It’s more than just the emotional factor of the colors you choose. Colors act upon the body as well as the mind. Red has been shown to stimulate the senses and raise the blood pressure, while blue has the opposite effect and calms the mind and body.

The natural palette screams calm, harmony and “green movement.”

People will actually gamble more and make riskier bets when seated under a red light as opposed to a blue light. That’s why cities with gambling institutions use a lot of red neon lights.

How often have you stopped to admire a flowerbed in full bloom? Expert gardeners arrange the flowers according to their color for extra vibrancy. With a little knowledge of good color relationships, you can make colors work better for you in your business graphics and other applications.

A smart use of a limited color palette by the American Express Company. The Inc. website is plain, neutral and boring. The AmEx ad stands out as the most important element on the page. True blue, it inspires confidence and the burst of color makes it hard to look at anything else.

Studies have also shown that certain colors can have an impact on performance. Exposing students to the color red prior to an exam has been shown to have a negative impact on test performance. More recently, researchers discovered that the color red causes people to react with greater speed and force, something that might prove useful during athletic activities.

Black is the color of mystery, authority, power and evil. It is popular in fashion because it supposedly makes people appear thinner. It is also considered stylish and timeless. Black can also be accented with any other color as it is the ultimate neutral color, albeit the most powerful.

White is cleanliness, sterility, innocence and purity. White reflects light and is considered a summer color. White is popular in decorating and in fashion because, as with black but at the opposite end of the spectrum, it is light, neutral, and goes with everything.

Red is the most emotionally-intense color. It is the color of blood, the color of the devil, Mars (the God of war) but also the color of a Valentine Day heart. Red stimulates a faster heartbeat and breathing. Red ties are known as “power ties” and are favored by CEOs and politicians. Red cars, according to police statistics, are popular targets for thieves. In decorating, red is usually used as an accent to draw attention in a room or for a doorway.

The most romantic color, pink, which is a shade of red, is more tranquil and considered feminine. Candy is often pink and it is a color that inspires happiness.

A friendly and inviting candy store’s website makes your mouth water and your teeth hurt just by looking at it. A bright, retro feel brings up happy emotions.

Blue, as the color of a clear sky and a deep ocean, is one of the most popular colors. It causes the opposite reaction as red. Blue causes the body to produce calming, tranquilizing chemicals, so it is often used in bedrooms. Blue can also be cold and depressing. Fashion consultants recommend wearing blue to job interviews because it symbolizes loyalty. People are more productive in blue rooms. Studies allege that weightlifters are able to handle heavier weights in blue gyms.

Green symbolizes nature and the current recycling, save-the-planet movement. It is the easiest color on the eye and is reported to improve vision. It is a calming, refreshing color. People waiting to appear on TV sit in “green rooms” to relax. Hospitals often use green because it relaxes patients. Dark green is masculine, conservative, and implies wealth. It is also a color of luck as in a four-leaf clover.

Yellow is a happy, cheerful color that draws attention, especially when paired with a strong contrasting color. While it is considered an optimistic color, people lose their tempers more often, and babies will cry more, in yellow rooms. It is the most difficult color for the eye to take in, so it can be overpowering if overused. Try looking at a yellow wall of a website for a long period and you will most probably get a splitting headache. It is believed, however, that yellow enhances concentration and that it speeds metabolism.

Purple is the color of royalty and connotes luxury, wealth, and sophistication. It is also feminine and romantic. However, because it is rare in nature, purple can appear artificial and often causes a “vibration” when not used in a proper color palette.

Brown is solid, reliable and is the color of earth. It is abundant in nature but varying shades have very different emotional responses. Light brown implies genuineness while dark brown is similar to wood or leather. Brown can also be sad and wistful. Brown is often considered a “male” color.

In the same way that one color can appear different in different surroundings, two similar colors may appear to be identical under some conditions. Even though the two symbols are actually slightly different tones, the contrasting backgrounds cause our brains to think that they are the same color. This effect is harder to control, but be aware of it because it can affect your graphics in hidden ways.

The feeling you get when looking at bright complementary colors next to each other is a vibrating or pulsing effect. It seems that the colors are pulling away from each other. It’s caused by an effect called “color fatiguing”. When one color strikes a portion of the retina long enough, the optic nerve begins sending confused signals to the brain. This confusion is intensified by the complementary colors.

The BoingBoing logo, a warm red, will have different effects as the color is changed. The heart-pounding yellow is a little too bright (although the contrast is attention grabbing) and the pure violet at the bottom is too dark and vibrates, which will cause the viewer to move off the site more quickly.

Mixing brilliant complementary colors gets attention, but should be used with restraint. The effect is disconcerting and can make your eyes feel like they’ve been shaken around.

If you want to use complementary colors without causing discomfort, you can outline each of the colors with a thin neutral white, gray or black line. The outlines separate the two colors, which help your brain keep them separated.

When two very similar colors touch in an image, both colors appear to wash out and become indistinct. This is because the borders between the colors are difficult to distinguish and your brain blurs the colors together.

Color preference is subjective. If you face a committee of critics of your design, you will receive several different requests for color changes… for completely different colors. People have a connection with certain colors due to their experiences with objects of those colors. A person who has positive experiences with a favorite blue toy as a child will generally like the color blue even later into life.

This works in a negative manner as well. Facing a committee with a line of designs, a marketing person refused to allow a cherry red to be used. It was an integral part of the design as it was part of the client’s branded style guide, so some argued the color was appropriate. After point and counter point was argued to exhaustion, the marketing person admitted her aversion to the color was from a girl who wore that color of lipstick who had tormented her in school. Irrational to others but not to her, as the color made fear and anxiety well up in her. The committee did look past her preference and she constantly complained about the client’s products, not allowing any of them to be placed in her office… although we would hide them in her desk drawers and messenger bag.

By the same token, the red and green colors are ignored by designers suffering even the slightest color blindness as those two colors hold the most common problems in color blind individuals.

Most probably a standard background picked up by the designer of this site, the mix of colors detracts from the site content. Sites with colorful content (art and products) should use neutral colors to frame the color that will be within the images themselves. More often than not, sites are either white or black to allow the focus to be on the colorful content.

If you’re going to trash someone else for bad web design, first make sure your color choices aren’t bloody awful!

Yes… everything about this site, done to show an example of a bad website, is an abomination against mankind. How long can you look at it before losing your lunch?

A strong visual with the all-black background — perhaps a bit too strong for the subject? While Harley-Davidson leans on their black and orange brand colors, and it works well for them, beware of using too strong of a dark palette. It can be striking but also a bit heavy and give the viewer a sense of dread and claustrophobia.

The WORLD WIDE web demands smart choices for a web design. In China, red indicates luck, while in Nigeria and Germany it means the exact opposite. International corporations, at least the smart ones, will study colors and the effect they have on different cultures. Losing an entire population of consumers due to using the wrong color is a huge hit on profit and brand awareness.

What are YOUR personal preferences? Too often a designer will lean on his or her personal likes or dislikes for a color palette and that can ruin a great design with ineffective colors for the end user. We need to put away the convention of personal choices when designing for the demographics of the consumer and that can be difficult.

A friend of mine was the creative director for a large corporation that encouraged innovation not only in design but demanded color palettes out of the ordinary. He confided in me that they used candy for their color palettes.

“We scanned a pack of Easter-color M&Ms and then used it for our spring line,” he told me while we sat in his office. “I’ve also used Jujyfruits, Skittles and Sour Patch Kids!”

So, who says that’s a bad way to create a palette? There are color generators and books with color breakdowns for designers to use. One can scan a piece of textile, a photo of a beautiful sunset, an ocean scene or a handful of dirt, sand or a piece of wood and create a palette of colors that will blow away viewers. Just be mindful of the colors used as you would the placement of elements. In design, everything, all elements, type, color and images are drawn together to elicit a response from the viewer/consumer. They all must work in harmony, just like the colors in nature.

After arresting more than 20 journalists in New York City, and threatening press in various other ways, the New York City Police Department has admitted that it has reprimanded only two of its officers for their actions.

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UPDATE: Today marks the beginning of a local media monopoly in Tucson, Ariz. Exploiting loopholes in the Federal Communications Commission’s ownership rules, Raycom Media has taken control of three local stations: KMSB, KOLD and KTTU. The stations are now co-branded as “Tucson News Now” and they operate out of the same studio (about 40 employees lighter than before).

read more

Last November Free Press released On the Chopping Block: State Budget Battles and the Future of Public Media, an inventory of dramatic state-level funding cuts to public broadcasting. Our report, co-authored by Josh Stearns and Mike Soha, documents how state support for public broadcasting has plunged since the economy took a nosedive in 2008. What’s more, the report notes that politics — not financial considerations — have driven much of this budget cutting.

read more

Dear Hollywood,

You don’t need us to tell you that your position on anti-"piracy" laws has been unpopular recently. Last month’s historic protests, with millions of Americans registering their opposition, have made that point pretty clear. Instead, we’re writing today to tell you that the Internet can be great for creators and their community, but your own leadership refuses to recognize and take advantage of its promise. It seems they’d rather spend your membership dues on lawyers, lobbyists and astroturf than innovation. We suspect many of you are realizing this, especially when you see how successful new business models can be.

We humbly suggest that you stand up and tell them to either embrace the age of the Internet or get out of the way so that new, forward-thinking industry leaders can take their place.

Hollywood’s leadership painted the push for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) as a defense of your jobs — a stance that was cynical at best, as they know the only jobs the bill would save were those of their lawyers. What is worse, by framing a stance against SOPA and PIPA as a betrayal of creators everywhere, they’ve poisoned the debate about the legislation and attempted to mislead you into fighting for bills that won’t put a dent in online infringement but will interfere with the development of ways for creators like you to profit from Internet technologies.

An honest discussion of proposed legislation needs to start with the questions: Is this law necessary? And is it the best solution to the problem? Americans stood up against SOPA and PIPA not because they are “corporate pawns,” as MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd says, but because the answer to both of these questions is a big no.

For one thing, although the studio heads and MPAA leadership claim this legislation is about your jobs, they’re curiously silent about the fact that entertainment spending and revenues are up across the board. In the words of one recent study, the sky isn’t falling — it’s rising. So if you’re concerned about your job, please realize the primary threat does not come from unauthorized downloading. The actor Wil Wheaton suggests that the problem might be closer to home:

I have lost more money to creative accounting, and American workers have lost more jobs to runaway production, than anything associated with what the MPAA calls piracy.

Moreover, as the publisher Tim O’Reilly has explained for a decade now, “obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.”  The Internet is the best tool for publicity and distribution the world has ever known – if you know how to use it.

And though the handful of executives at the top might not have realized that yet, individual creators among you have reached this conclusion and are already profiting from it. At last week’s Sundance festival, even as Dodd and others were lamenting the web’s impact on film, ten percent of the films were financed by pledges through the online fundraising platform Kickstarter. And after film, music projects are Kickstarter’s second largest funding recipients. The music publishing platform Bandcamp now regularly pays out a million dollars to artists each month through sales made on the site. Some of those sales are even made to people who were looking for free content, but were enticed by the friendly purchase process.

Even some label executives, like Craig Davis at EMI, have realized that unauthorized downloading is "a service issue." Or to put it simply, as the musician Jonathan Coulton has written: "Make good stuff, then make it easy for people to buy it. There’s your anti-piracy plan."

The tech community loves creativity, and it wants to support artists, but it’s got a real problem with the people who run Hollywood. As long as it’s worried about Hollywood leadership doing damage to civil liberties and online freedom, the kind of profitable partnerships we know are possible will be difficult to make.

We’ve seen this movie before, and we know how it ends. The right answer to the question that the Internet raised isn't to demonize the tech community and innovators. That strategy failed dramatically against earlier technologies like the VCR, which MPAA President Jack Valenti compared to "the Boston strangler" in a 1982 testimony to Congress. Of course, that innovation opened up the home video market, which is now the source of nearly half of all studio revenue.

SOPA and PIPA were a step in the wrong direction, but it’s not too late to turn this ship around. Please, tell your leaders to support innovation — or get new leaders.

Best of luck, The Internet

Right now, representatives from nine countries including the United States are secretly meeting in a luxury hotel in Beverly Hills to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, a trade agreement with the potential to contain intellectual property provisions that go beyond ACTA. These secret meetings could create over-reaching new rules and standards that will choke off the online speech of individuals, websites, and platforms accused of copyright infringement.

But because the meetings are held behind closed doors and the text has not been released to the public, the citizens who will be affected do not know the details and don’t have a voice.

Click here to join EFF in demanding a Congressional hearing so lawmakers can learn what’s in the TPP and hear from all affected stakeholders, not just the content industry.

Yesterday, EFF International Rights Director Katitza Rogriguez checked in with protestors outside ongoing TPP meetings in Los Angeles. Katitza reported:

The energy at the rally was intoxicating. And the people were right to protest: TPP is one more in a long line of global copyright initiatives that are putting Internet users last. All over the world, people are saying enough is enough.

This week of negotiations in Los Angeles is a crucial moment for the TPP. Please contact your lawmakers today and let them know that we will not be left in the dark. Demand to know what's in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today formally requested the preservation of the data seized when the U.S. government shut down Megaupload.com and related sites, notifying the court and attorneys involved in the case that Megaupload's innocent users deserve a fair process to control and retrieve their lawful material.

"The government knows that Megaupload had many customers who followed the law. Yet it gave those users no notice that their data was at risk and no information about how they might be able to eventually get that data back," said EFF Staff Attorney Julie Samuels. "Our client, and the many other innocent Megaupload users, are entitled to a clear process for obtaining access to their own property, and the first step is to make sure that property is not deleted or damaged until the court can sort this out."

Instead of assisting the innocents caught up in the seizure, the U.S government summarily announced this week that it had finished its examination of Megaupload's servers and announced that the companies that owned those servers – Carpathia and Cogent – were free to delete the contents. The government even stated that deletions could start as soon as February 2, leaving innocent users with very little time to protect themselves. Thankfully, both hosting services have agreed not to destroy users' data for the time being, and it appears that Megaupload is trying in good faith to help users get access. But there is still no clear path for customers to get their content back.

"Megaupload's innocent users are entitled to access their property," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "We hope that everyone involved can work together to comply with the law and ensure basic fairness to the millions of people who have done nothing wrong."

This week, Carpathia Hosting and EFF announced that Carpathia created a website at www.megaretrieval.com so that Megaupload’s lawful customers could contact EFF and provide information about the scope of the issue and the material made unavailable by the seizure.  If you are one of these users, are based in the United States, and are looking for legal help retrieving your data, please email your contact information to megauploadmissing@eff.org.

For the full letter sent to the court:https://www.eff.org/document/letter-court

For more on this case:https://www.eff.org/cases/megaupload-data-seizure

Contacts:

Julie Samuels    Staff Attorney    Electronic Frontier Foundation    julie@eff.org

Cindy Cohn    Legal Director    Electronic Frontier Foundation    cindy@eff.org

by Andrew Leonard.

Grist is proud to present the Change Gang -- profiles of people who are leading change on the ground toward a more sustainable society and a greener planet. Some we've written about before; some are new to our pages. Some you'll have heard of; most you probably won't. Know someone we should add to the Change Gang? Tell us why.

For Ximena Prugue, being "young and naïve" is a strength, not a weakness.

"It makes you that much more powerful," says the 21-year-old. "You don't have all those years of experience deterring you from thinking that you can do something."

To support this thesis, Prugue offers herself up as Exhibit A. Born and raised in Miami, Fla., the daughter of Peruvian immigrants, she had no idea what she was getting herself into when she decided to attempt to alleviate "energy poverty" in rural India by distributing solar-powered flashlights.

She didn't know about the hassles involved in setting up a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, or how Indian customs officers would react to a girl whose luggage was stuffed with $3,000 worth of lights. She didn't know how difficult it would be to fundraise, or make connections with on-the-ground aid workers in India who didn't understand why an American teenager was badgering them. She underestimated the difficulties inherent in simultaneously holding down a part-time job, attending full-time community college, and running her own nonprofit. Perhaps most daunting of all, she knew nothing whatsoever about India.

Before her first visit, she says, "I literally had not even eaten Indian food. I hadn't even seen Slumdog Millionaire."

All she knew, she says, is she wanted to "make a difference."

By the time she was a 19-year-old studying mechanical engineering at a community college in Miami, she already boasted a resume filled with socially meaningful work. In high school, she made a documentary about homeless sex offenders living under a bridge in southern Miami. She also helped raise money to support the construction of tilapia farms in Haiti. But she was looking for a project that would go beyond just fundraising -- something that she could sink her teeth into.

"I've always been into art and design," she recalls, "so I read a lot of design blogs and I stumbled across this article about the world's most affordable solar-powered light."

She proposed to one of her professors that the lights might be useful in Haiti. He told her to do some more research and encouraged her to apply for a grant from the Clinton Global Initiative University, a three-day conference that brings together thousands of young people interested in doing progressive work.

The conference was a life-changing event.

"There were people that were my age who already had their 501(c)(3) status," recalls Prugue. "That had already had gone to all these different places and done amazing things. I was just like, wow, I have absolutely no excuse to say, 'Well, oh well, I'm young. Oh well, I still have school.' There was absolutely no excuse for me to not be doing something."

She ultimately decided that Haiti didn't have a big access-to-cheap-energy problem. Rural India, she determined, was where conditions were worst -- where the lack of electricity was a major obstacle blocking people's escape from deep poverty. She won a grant from the Clinton Global Initiative, built a website, set up Giving the Green Light as a nonprofit, and started emailing. A year and a half later, she was headed to India with her bag of lights. And now she knows exactly what she wants to do with the rest of her life.

"I am studying mechanical engineering," says Prugue, "because I want to be the type of engineer that designs products that you can implement into developing countries to solve all sorts of problems."

Looking back, Prugue doesn't downplay the difficulties she faced.

"It doesn't come easy. It definitely doesn't come easy," she says. "But if you work hard and you are really doing it with genuine good intentions -- you're not doing it because you just want to put it on your resume and get into a good college -- it will come. It will happen. I believe in positive energy, and that that energy will come back to you, and all the karma will work out. And I really hope that other young people try to change the world too, because I feel that that is where the change is going to come from."

Related Links:

Heart to hearth: Darfur Stoves Project’s Andree Sosler makes survival sustainable

Ietef Vita: Rapping the righteousness of wheatgrass juice

Neverending nigiri: Kristofor Lofgren fights for sustainable sushi

by Ask Umbra.

Send your question to Umbra!

Q. Dear Umbra,

Generally speaking, sustainability advocates seem to be a serious crowd. Have you got any jokes or one-liners that can bring some levity to our work? Especially ones related to recycling? Robert D. Jefferson City, Mo.

A. Dearest Robert,

Have you heard the one about the aluminum recycling plant? It smelt.

Have you heard the one about the recycling bin with a sign that said, "Empty water bottles here"? Pretty soon the bin was full of water.

Know why environmentalists are bad at playing poker? They avoid the flush.

Chortle, chortle, chortle. Robert, you have touched upon a serious gap in our cultural lives, and I'm hoping your fellow readers will weigh in with some good jokes to keep our spirits up. To be honest, we at Grist have struggled with this since our founder got the oh-so-brilliant idea to launch an environmental news site infused with humor in 1999. Because it turns out "environmental humor" is not that funny, at least in the form of the classic jokes and one-liners. Please do not tell our auditors.

Others have found this a tricky topic, too. Bill Maher, for instance, once said the environment is "one of the hardest subjects to do in comedy." British comedian Marcus Brigstocke has called climate change "far and away the most difficult comedy subject I've ever dealt with." Some will be eager to blame this on the perceived earnestness of the movement and its members -- but shouldn't that make it all the funnier?

Back to our quest for one-liners. A few chestnuts from stand-up comedians might elicit a titter, depending how free you are with your titters: George Carlin remarked of national-park camping reservations that "when you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong." Robin Williams compared clean coal to "wearing a porous condom -- at least the intention was there." Stephen Wright eschewed cars with his typically profound observation that "everything is within walking distance if you have the time." And Sam Levenson offered this take on overpopulation: "Somewhere on this globe, every 10 seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped."

If late-night TV is your thing, you will find plenty of lukewarm climate gags in the collected works of Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, and Jimmy Fallon. Here is a compendium of somewhat dated examples. My favorite (and I use the term loosely): "According to a new U.N. report, the global warming outlook is much worse than originally predicted. Which is pretty bad when they originally predicted it would destroy the planet."

If you lean more toward literature, you might like this Mark Twain musing: "Learn to ride a bicycle. You will not regret it if you live." Or how about some Ogden Nash? There's this classic: "I think that I shall never see/A billboard lovely as a tree./Indeed, unless the billboards fall,/I'll never see a tree at all." And the produce-averse "Further Reflections on Parsley": "Parsley/Is gharsely" (yes, that's the entire poem). And "The Purist," which unintentionally offers a wee bit of insight into why scientists have a hard time speaking passionately about climate change:

I give you now Professor Twist, A conscientious scientist ...Camped on a tropic riverside, One day he missed his loving bride. She had, the guide informed him later, Been eaten by an alligator. Professor Twist could not but smile. "You mean," he said, "a crocodile."

I would also point you to The Onion, which offers some of the most incisive environmental humor around. (A couple of classics: Consumer product diversity now exceeds biodiversity and Suburban recycling program now accepting broken and discarded dreams .)

And needless to say, our very own Grist List is an insanely wonderful source of good guffaws, each and every day.

I encourage you to keep your quest alive, with the warning that your average "environmental joke" search on the interweb will give you scintillating results such as this: "Your so hot you must've started all of globle warming." Sic.

Finally, because I care, Robert, I have come up with an Umbra Original: A recycling joke just for you. Are you ready?

"What's the worst way for glass to get around town?  By downcycling."

You may now toss rotten tomatoes in my general direction. Or leave a better joke below in comments.

Yukkily,Umbra

Related Links:

The most bare-chested grocery-bag video you’ll watch today

The Onion warns that global warming could be irreversible within negative five years

Wasting energy = blue balls, apparently

by Lionel Foster.

Forty-four years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot dead while supporting sanitation workers in Memphis, his legacy is indisputable. Because of the way he mobilized the poor and the powerful, state-sponsored racial discrimination, a prominent factor in American life for nearly 200 years, is no more. As a result, it’s now hard to imagine a position of prominence in this country, including the presidency, that an African American could not obtain.

But Dr. King’s work is not complete. Today, we face continued attempts at voter suppression, attacks on collective bargaining rights, income inequality, a racially inflected discussion of illegal immigration, and one of the last great bastions of state-sponsored discrimination: the denial of marriage and other rights on the basis of sexual orientation. If Dr. King were alive today, I believe he would speak out about these issues. I believe, too, that in this era of globalization, he would talk about climate change, the North/South divide, and our moral duty to preserve the natural resources that are fundamental to human wellbeing.

Dr. King would be an environmentalist, but I think he would talk about the natural and man-made worlds in a way that resonates with everyone, especially the poor. Let me explain.

I spent most of my childhood on the eastside of Baltimore, part of a black family living paycheck to paycheck in the shadow of one of the world’s great medical research institutions, Johns Hopkins Hospital. Unfortunately, the health and prosperity of Hopkins rarely spilled over into the surrounding community. On our side of the invisible line, urban decay and drug-related crime defined the landscape. Three out of every ten houses in my neighborhood were vacant.

These two very different communities viewed each other warily. I attended Johns Hopkins University on scholarship as an undergrad, worked part-time as an office assistant in the department of anesthesiology and critical care medicine, and was there when a division chief within the department was robbed and assaulted on his way home. I can’t remember speaking to anyone else in that office who lived within the city limits, let alone near the hospital, and I think that attack reinforced the idea that Hopkins was by necessity a fortress, a place apart.

The fear ran both ways. My grandmother summed up many residents’ concerns about the hospital down the street. “I have friends who go into Hopkins,” she once told me, “but they don’t come out.” There was a lot to this statement. For people with little or no access to healthcare, an acute illness left untreated for years can become chronic and eventually irreversible. Add this to glaring disparities in wealth and cultural barriers, and it becomes plausible for a 70-year-old woman from the segregated South to believe that white men in lab coats might kill her if they had the chance.

After years of trying to solve the problem of the surrounding community, the hospital settled on a solution: They tore much of it down. Hopkins and the City of Baltimore formed a partnership called East Baltimore Development Inc., used eminent domain to relocate my grandmother and hundreds of other families, and cleared 88 acres to make room for a biotechnology park.

What does all this have to do with the environment? In 2006, when a local magazine asked me and a pair of artists to fill two pages of a special issue with anything we wanted, the story of my troubled neighborhood was on my mind. Why was the city so racially divided, we asked, and was there anything we could do about it? Our attempt to answer that question became a small environmental campaign called Black + White = Green. The idea was that even though the most outspoken proponents of environmentalism were white and the victims of environmental degradation were disproportionately black and brown, the environment could give us lots of common ground, especially if we expanded its definition to include the material and non-material factors that shape life everywhere, from untouched mountain tops to the streets of inner cities.

I don’t think any of us had much experience working on environmental issues, so we embarked on this project with no knowledge of people who were already doing what we had in mind in much bigger and better ways. There’s Will Allen, a Milwaukee-based MacArthur Foundation “genius” award winner who’s turning young people into urban farmers; former Obama administration green jobs advisor Van Jones, connecting environmentalism to community development and economic opportunity; and Majora Carter, another MacArthur “genius,” busy greening New York’s South Bronx.

Tactically and philosophically, these are some of the descendants of Dr. King. As if reading from King’s playbook, Jones in particular has made a point of empowering young people; fighting for economic opportunity; using collective action; helping those who might otherwise be written off as powerless turn their hands and feet into assets; and paying close attention to the way America thinks and talks about itself. In his latest project, cslled Rebuild the Dream, Jones is encouraging environmentalists, community activists, and average citizens to demand economic fairness. His timing was perfect. Rebuild the Dream was up and running as the Occupy movement kicked into full gear, and it soon became clear that Jones, the urban environmentalist, already spoke the demonstrators’ language.

Last October, when occupiers were making news daily, I attended a forum in Washington, D.C. A new monument to King had been erected in the National Mall and civil rights veterans gathered to remember King and his work. The speakers repeatedly drew connections between their departed friend’s push for economic equality and the Occupy movement. The parallels were striking.

King spent his last months organizing a Poor People’s Campaign that, just weeks after his death, saw the erection of a settlement in the capital full of people demanding an end to poverty. It’s impact was small. King was killed before the march took off on Mother’s Day 1968, the assassination of Robert Kennedy dampened spirits during the encampment’s third week, and in mid-June the Department of the Interior forced the demonstrators to leave after their permit expired.

Dr. King has now been dead for several more years than he ever spent walking, teaching, and preaching, but lots of people of different colors and backgrounds are still looking for a way forward. Now, as then, progress in some areas is still elusive, but the events of the past year show that thousands are willing to work for change.

Forty-four years after his death, Occupy, people like Van Jones, and the resonance with which King’s voice still reverberates through current events, all suggest that a movement that can unite people who care about patches of soil with those who know how cold and unforgiving a swath of concrete can be, could bring us that much closer to something that looks like justice.

Related Links:

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State Sen. Terry Moulton, facing a recall challenge from Kristen Dexter, must be busy these days -- searching through the thousands of signers on the petitions to look for Mickey Mouse or Adolf Hitler, since he said those were a problem.

This online video suggests he could spend his time more productively -- like worrying about the lack of jobs in his district. 

Walker's campaign released information today that Scott Walker will be meeting with the Milwaukee DA in conjunction with the John Doe investigation.  According to the campaign statement, Walker will be represented by two lawyers. 

2/3/2012 Contact: Tom Evenson (608) 441-1641 Madison, Wis. – The Friends of Scott Walker campaign released the following statement today from Governor Scott Walker regarding the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s ongoing investigation: Over the last 20 months, District Attorney John Chisholm has been conducting an examination of issues in connection with former employees of Milwaukee County. Throughout that time, our campaign has cooperated with requests for information. My cooperation in this matter extends beyond a willingness to supply any and all requested documents. I have already said that I would be happy to sit down with the people looking into these issues and answer any additional questions they may have. To make that point clear, last year, my representatives voluntarily contacted Mr. Chisholm’s office to arrange a time to discuss any outstanding issues. I will be voluntarily meeting with Mr. Chisholm. To assemble additional background information, I hired counsel to insure that I am in the best position possible to continue aiding the inquiry. These attorneys, Mike Steinle and John Gallo, have been reviewing a great deal of material from the past few years, but no public money has been used or will be used for these purposes. While all of us need to let this matter run its course, I will continue to cooperate and provide any appropriate information that is requested.

The proposed gray wolf "hunting" bill being rammed through the Wisconsin legislature by Scott Walker's allies is horribly misguided for a number of reasons, but, first and foremost, let me be clear:  Hunters provide an invaluable public service to the state by providing control of our wildlife population and hunting is the most environmentally-responsible way to put food on the table.  So, I'm not opposed to hunting in general or even wolves particular, just because they're smart, soft and furry, and look and act just like just like my dog.

However, because wolves are almost genetically identical to the dogs we keep as pets, for obvious reasons they have a special place in our hearts.  While we might put our dog down when he or she needs to be put down-- we do it in a way that is quick and humane. Most would demand a similar treatment of wolves.

That is not, however, how the vast majority of wolves would be killed in this bill.  That is because this bill includes provisions allowing trapping without setting any limits on what types of traps can and cannot be used. In fact, the bill specifically requires the DNR to allow so-called cable restraint traps, which are the most popular way to trap wolves and would be, realistically, how most wolves would meet their demise in this bill.

A cable restraint trap works by a wolf getting its head caught in cable loop that tightens as the wolf struggles to get free.  Ideally, a trapper will check the trap every day, but many do not. Meaning that the wolf will often be left to die of starvation or from the elements.

Gray Wolf in Steel Jaw TrapIn addition, the Wisconsin DNR did a study of cable restraint traps on coyotes and foxes, where everything was set-up ideally to ensure that the animal would not suffer.   They found that 30% of coyotes suffered a moderate injury and all of the rest experienced a mild injury from trying to escape from the trap. In addition, they found that the larger coyotes were more likely to be injured in the trap than the smaller foxes, leaving one to reasonably speculate that a wolf that is twice as large a coyote would inflict more injuries on itself as it tries to escape the trap.

In addition, there is nothing in this bill to prevent steel jawed traps, where a wolves are trapped by metal teeth clenching down on their feet.  Such traps are horrifically cruel and are already allowed by the Wisconsin DNR for coyotes-- there is no reason to expect they would treat wolves any different.  Many states have banned the use of these traps on ALL wildlife, while in Wisconsin, we're expanding the use of these barbaric torture devices to more highly evolved, intelligent creatures! 

The law should be written to permit a short hunting season, but with no trapping other than box traps.

In addition, while most in the conservation community agree that some form of wolf management is appropriate, we should tread lightly considering the gray wolf was literally just removed from the endangered species list.  Being removed from the list means that the landowners can legally shoot any wolf that comes on their land, which is sensible. However, if we have an overly broad (and cruel) hunting and trapping season for wolves, Wisconsin's wolf population will be wiped-out and be right back on the list.  And that wouldn't be good for the wolves, Wisonsin's environment, farmers or anyone else.