Month: September 2010

The Koch family, America’s biggest financial backers of the Tea Party, would not be the billionaires they are today were it not for the godless empire of the USSR.

 

The Tea Party movement’s dirty little secret is that its chief financial backers owe their family fortune to the granddaddy of all their hatred: Stalin’s godless empire of the USSR. The secretive oil billionaires of the Koch family, the main supporters of the right-wing groups that orchestrated the Tea Party movement, would not have the means to bankroll their favorite causes had it not been for the pile of money the family made working for the Bolsheviks in the late 1920s and early 1930s, building refineries, training Communist engineers and laying down the foundation of Soviet oil infrastructure.

Also, don’t miss Exposing The Rightwing PR Machine: Is CNBC’s Rick Santelli Sucking Koch? halfway down the page.

Had an assignment to do three moodboards for my “Interactive” Web Design class using Photoshop. Basically using a collage technique utilizing images & elements ripped off from the web. Due to a seemingly unending series of obstacles, I only had a few days to complete what was supposed to be a three week assignment. I’m a few days late, so my grade is already docked, and I did a bit of a rush job on a lot of this, so I’m not expecting much in the grade department. The assignments were 1.) fun & youthful (my idea of what youth actually like varies considerably from what my instructor thinks, so I convened an impromptu “focus group” for this one); 2.) corporate & traditional: I was bored to tears after viewing about a couple dozen of various corporate sites. There’s usually a header with the corporate logo, followed by a row of links, followed by a rectangular panel of banal “on the job” photos (probably lifted from some “no-royalty” stock image site) done using flash (and which could have been done just as easily using jQuery, and consequently using much less in the way of system resources), then about four or five bolded bullet points containing links– then yet another row of links and (as I see it) an unneccessary copyright notice which pretty much constituted the footer of the page. Gimme a break!

Lastly, there was the obligatory “cutting edge” site– not a lot of which is to be found on the web anymore. Most artists there days (it seems) are using WordPress for their sites, so they can easily update their sites to advertise showings and events. I decided to jump on the next (de)generation of teen romance: namely, the Great American Zombie Romance Trilogy. But, natch, being entirely too bored with the subject of the turbulant emotional life of teenagers, I jumped right to the chase, creating a parody of a Twilight movie advertising site:

 

Latest attempt to create “art” using Photoshop filters. This one mimicking Georges Seurat’s Pointillism technique.

We’ve seen electronic cigarettes before, but not one that charges via USB.

 

It’s no surprise that this handy device shows up on Thanko’s website, since they’re guys who usually satisfy our cravings for wonky USB gadgets. The USB version of the electronic cigarette provides inhaled doses of vaporized nicotine, so smokers can puff away without all the harmful effects to second hand smokers. The kit comes with 11 filter butts and an atomizer. You can pick yours up for about $33. But beware, you might still look pretty goofy standing in public sucking on a plastic cigarette. [Thanko via Newslaunches]

Can’t make this shizzle up…

 

Outsourced Call Centers Return, To U.S. Homes

by Carolyn Beeler, National Public Radio
August 25, 2010

Maureen Quigley-Hogan is the next generation of call center worker. Wearing pink slippers and sitting at her desk in her home office in Virginia, she takes a call from a woman in New Jersey who has a question about her credit card bill.

Quigley-Hogan was unemployed for 10 years because she couldn’t hold down a traditional job, she says. She has rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia, a disease that causes severe fatigue.

“It was hard to get to a job,” Quigley-Hogan says. “The idea of going through a regular schedule of getting up and getting ready for work, I would be exhausted.”

She worked in customer service for more than 20 years, so two years ago, she was thrilled to land this job where she can work from home.

Rethinking Overseas Outsourcing

For years, Americans have had their phone calls about credit card bills and broken cell phones handled by people in the Philippines or India. But American firms are starting to bring call centers back to the U.S. — and this time around, they are hiring more people to work in their own homes.

Ten years ago, it made a lot of sense to outsource these jobs overseas. But that’s changing. Increasingly, companies that want to outsource their customer service jobs are happy with these domestic arrangements.

High inflation and double-digit annual raises in some sectors are pushing up the cost of labor in India. At the same time wages in the U.S. are falling and companies are rethinking the trade-offs associated with outsourcing.

Full story at NPR

I’m not sure whether it’s really a good thing when these kinds of pieces seems (or actually DO) write themselves.

and be sure not to miss:

Apu explains why he is leaving Springfield to return to his home to India

India, once considered as the preferred destination by many US companies to get their jobs done might not be a considered a hotspot by them anymore, courtesy various protectionist moves in the US like pressurising local firms to stop outsourcing of jobs overseas, ending tax breaks for firms that sent jobs abroad, encouraging local hiring etc…

 

 

What luck. Possibly the first “Greek House” photograph I ever took, and it turns out to be the one that headlined the student paper during Rush Week. (I’m still having problems getting the hang of my camera at this point)

 

Also sort of segues into my little thematic juxtaposition of Fraternities with “Party Time City.”

But let’s let the students themselves tell their own little sordid story: …

Sorority in good standing after completing probation

Sigma Kappa was officially reinstated by Chico State as a recognized student organization on Feb. 2, after a suspension in spring 2009.

On Feb. 18, 2009, then 18-year-old Bethany Dixon was hospitalized for alcohol poisoning, according to a Feb. 26, 2009, article in The Orion. Dixon had been attending a Sigma Kappa event prior to drinking at a house across from the Bell Memorial Union.

On March 11, 2009, a letter was sent to Sigma Kappa’s Chico chapter withdrawing university recognition, said Rick Rees, director of the student activities office. Other stipulations included the release of all new members recruited during spring 2009 and removing the letters from the chapter house. The university worked closely with the sorority’s national headquarters to review the situation and decide what measures to take, he said.

The sorority’s headquarters placed the Chico chapter on probation in March 2009 as well, said Jordan Duffie Bentlage, director of collegiate services for Sigma Kappa, in an e-mail interview. The headquarters did not suspend the chapter.

In January 2010, the chapter requested to become a recognized student organization, she said. Sigma Kappa was reinstated because they had completed all the conditions the university and their headquarters had required of them, said Connie Huyck, adviser and coordinator for Greek life. This means that they are now a chapter in good standing with Sigma Kappa, a fully recognized student organization with Chico State and a voting member of the Panhellenic Council.

The chapter had to do training, educational programs, reorganization within the chapter and a recommitment to the sorority’s values, Huyck said. Sigma Kappa was also not allowed to recruit new members through the formal Panhellenic process in spring and fall 2009, she said. All organizations have problems, Rees said. “If you have an organization that doesn’t have any problems, somebody’s fooling themselves,” he said. “They recognized that this was an opportunity, not just a punishment, for this group to try to make itself better.”

Rudro Roy can be reached at [email protected]

and don’t dare miss…

Porno stains Greek image

I’m starting another photo album— don’t know quite what to name it yet. The first two are different shots of the same subject. No images were harmed by Photoshop in the posting of this album (so far…). I’d like people to check in to let me know which they like better, because I’m going to take one of them down.

 

Gratuitous screenshots of various speed-dial images.

 

All original images are available under the “Photos” tab (somewhere), or in one of my Opera Group albums listed down the page on the right.

And like everything else on this site, all images are licensed under Creative Commons.