Monday, June 21, 2010

“Emanuel Casts Barton Apology as GOP Philosophy” plus 3 more

“Emanuel Casts Barton Apology as GOP Philosophy” plus 3 more

Emanuel Casts Barton Apology as GOP Philosophy

Posted: 20 Jun 2010 11:35 AM PDT

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel seized on a recent apology from Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas) to BP on Sunday, calling it an indication of Republicans' "governing philosophy."

"That's not a political gaffe, those are prepared remarks. That is a philosophy. That is an approach. They see the aggrieved party here as BP," Emanuel said on ABC's "This Week," later adding: "Elections are about choices. There's a difference in our philosophies."

But Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) fought the allegation, saying he thought that Barton made a "dumb statement."

"The Congressman only spoke for himself," Shelby said. "That is not mainstream Republican policy."

Barton apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayworth on Thursday for President Barack Obama's pressure on the oil giant to put $20 billion in an escrow account to fund the claims of those affected by BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Within a few hours, Barton recanted his apology for what he had called a $20 billion "shakedown."

On Sunday, Emanuel linked Barton's comment with the recent assertion by Rand Paul, the Republican nominee in the Senate race in Kentucky, that the government's treatment of BP is "un-American." Such comments, he said, show that Republicans favor the input of big companies over other stakeholders.

"In case you forgot what Republican governance is like, Joe Barton just reminded you," Emanuel said.

Republican leaders have distanced themselves from Barton's comments, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) dismissed criticism of Republican candidates such as Paul and Sharron Angle, the GOP nominee challenging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada.

"The Democrats, of course, will be desperately trying to tear down and demonize our candidates because they're in deep trouble," he said on "Fox News Sunday." "America would like to do a midcourse correction."

On "This Week," Emanuel was also asked about allegations that the White House offered jobs to Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) and Colorado Democrat Andrew Romanoff to persuade them to drop primary challenges to Sens. Arlen Specter and Michael Bennet. But Emanuel was mostly tight-lipped.

The White House counsel and two attorneys who served under former President George W. Bush have reported that nothing illegal happened, he added.

"There's nothing more that needs to be added to that," Emanuel said.

Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

For Interior Designers, D.I.Y. Philosophy Extends to Web Magazine

Posted: 20 Jun 2010 11:08 PM PDT

NEW YORK -- Die-hard do-it-yourself interior designers spend hours flipping through glossy magazines, carefully tearing out pages showing a pillow or paint color they like and filing them away for future inspiration. What do they do if their favorite print magazine folds?

Michelle Adams, 27, a former market assistant at Domino, and Patrick Cline, 34, a photographer and photo retoucher, were talking about that in May 2009 after Condé Nast closed Domino, its sprightly home magazine. Over dinner at Chili's, they mourned the loss of the magazine and other design magazines, like Blueprint and House & Garden, and joked that they should start their own.

"People were missing all the magazines that had folded, and it was really disappointing that no one came along" with replacements, said Ms. Adams, who is also a textile designer.

They created Lonny, an online shelter magazine, which put its first issue up in October and immediately caught the attention of design circles as well as advertisers and print publishers.

Lonny looks and acts like a print magazine, not a Web site or a blog. It has pages to turn, a table of contents and full-page ads. But it offers Web-only benefits like zoomable, clickable images, so readers can inspect a lamp displayed in a photograph of someone's living room and then click to buy it.

Many readers still like to lounge on the couch and flip through glossy pages with big stylish photos, but as mainstays like Domino and Gourmet disappear, readers are forced to look elsewhere. The Web sites of magazines like Lucky, Bon Appétit and Architectural Digest, however, are either underdeveloped or visually different from their print counterparts.

Lonny's readership is still small -- since October, 600,000 people have read it. But the interest that the low-cost magazine has generated among publishers and advertisers has implications for other image-rich print publications covering fashion, travel and food. This is especially true with the promise of new devices like the iPad that make online reading an experience more like reading in print.

On Monday, Lonny, which is based in New York, will announce that it has raised an undisclosed sum from Kristoffer Mack, an investment banker and investor in young Internet companies, and J. Christopher Burch, a venture capitalist and a founder of the fashion label Tory Burch.

"The shelter design industry is incredibly discombobulated," Mr. Mack said. "There's a ton of money and it's completely unprofitable, so it seemed to be a perfect place to find highly disruptive technologies."

Lonny is published every other month using Issuu, a Web platform where, for $19 a month, anyone can upload a PDF and instantly create an online magazine that looks like a print one.

"A Web site is continuous and constantly changing, whereas a digital publication has a start and finish, a unique purpose for that one goal," said Astrid Sandoval, chief commercial officer for Issuu. "We want to recreate the best of the print reading experience, where people might spend three full focused hours on that, and enhance it with the digital world."

For the first issue, Ms. Adams and Mr. Cline roped designers and magazine editors they had met in the industry into letting them photograph their homes. They spent $1,000 of their own money and borrowed Ms. Adams's parents' car to drive to shoots. They bartered for free photo-processing and equipment in exchange for ads.

Exhausted and assuming that Lonny would never amount to more than a hobby alongside their day jobs, they went to Paris to vacation and photograph. They woke up from a jetlagged nap to find their in-boxes full of messages from advertisers who wanted to buy ads in the second issue. They hired an ad sales representative, without meeting him in person, the same day.

Ballard Designs, the home furnishings company, was one of the first advertisers to call. It placed an ad similar to those it placed in print magazines, but offered a 15 percent discount for people who clicked on the ad.

"Typically, we have found that online advertising has not been very effective for us, but the click-throughs and the performance of the ad surprised us in the fact that it did quite well," said James Pope, director for business development and retail at Ballard. "Lonny shows you can be online and still be a very designer-oriented, well-designed, graphical piece."

Kate Spade, the handbag and home décor designer; Mitchell Gold, the furniture company; and One Kings Lane, the home décor private sales site, have also advertised in Lonny.

With its low-cost operation, Lonny startles people who have worked in the industry. Ms. Adams styles and edits, and Mr. Cline photographs everything. They hired an assistant who attends shoots, taking her own photos so she can learn the sources for items like sofas or chandeliers and link to them in the magazine.

Lonny added how-to videos and search to its site, so readers can search for all the bedrooms it has featured, for instance, and will let people create online scrapbooks, the digital version of the tear sheet collections hidden in design lovers' closets.

For one of the issues, they shot the upstate New York country home of Eddie Ross, who now runs a design company and was formerly senior style editor of Martha Stewart Living.

A typical shoot for Martha Stewart required seven people and "meetings about Pantone chip colors and meetings about meetings," Mr. Ross said. "It was just crazy, because who lives like this, in a $300,000 room I put together? I'm sorry, but I can't relate to a $40,000 mirrored coffee table."

Lonny displays people's own décor, instead of shipping in items to redecorate homes, as many magazines do. In the case of Mr. Ross's home, that meant including lamps found in a Goodwill store.

The technique infuses the magazine with the accessibility that Domino was known for. "It's not as stiff," Mr. Cline said. "We'll leave lamps on and animals walking through shots." At daylong shoots for print magazines, he used to get four usable photos. At Lonny, he typically gets 27.

No one in the industry is saying that Lonny-type magazines will save publishing. But it does provide an avenue toward electronic reading devices like the iPad. Publications often mimic what came before, said Adam L. Penenberg, a journalism professor at New York University.

But, he said, "you'll know a new narrative form has emerged when you have to consume a particular story on an iPad to truly understand its content, and reading it on any other platform simply wouldn't work."

Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Philosophy Lite: We have power to influence others

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 01:18 PM PDT

  • Originally published June 18, 2010 at midnight, updated June 18, 2010 at midnight

By Raymond Smith

One of the greatest rewards we can have on Earth is to have a part in saving a life or to turn someone's life around.

We often hear stories of someone having saved a person from drowning, pulling someone from a burning building, or challenging a drunk to stop drinking and get his life in order. These are the dramatic cases, but there are other less dramatic cases, such as the schoolteacher who hears from a former student about what a difference that teacher made in the student's life. What a reward Bill Wilson must have felt as he started seeing the results of his Alcoholics Anonymous organization, and before he died, seeing many other "Anonymous" organizations start up, such as Overeaters Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous, just to name a few.

Then there are professional counselors who get people's lives straightened out and marriages saved. There are organizations and clubs that exist to train people to become leaders, such as Toastmasters International. Such organizations motivate people to accomplish greater things in life.

Of course, the greatest life changer is Jesus. He has accounted for more turnarounds of life than any person in history. While some accept His gift of grace rather unemotionally, others come into great visions of what their new found lives can mean and then set out to change their world.

In Luke 8:26, we read of a man who was possessed of demons. When Jesus cured the man of his problem, he wanted to follow his savior, but Jesus told him to go back to town and tell the people of his experience. Verse 39b says, "So the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him."

There are other stories of how Jesus had changed someone's life, but the point I wish to make concerns the rewards Jesus surely felt from His ministry that bore Him up through many difficulties and deprivations. Finally, He was able to endure the cross, knowing His work had changed the lives of thousands of people at that time and uncounted millions up to now. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) stated, "He who has a why can endure any how."

Pastors, evangelists, deacons, Sunday School teachers and lay persons all are bearers of the Good News. Our country was formed by men who had a great vision because of their spiritual life. A life on fire for God can influence hundreds of other lives.

Dwight Moody had such a vision for changing lives, that he made it a point to talk to at least one person every day about God's plan for salvation. Each of us in our own way can spread this gospel or inspire people to higher and nobler things.

One does not have to be a lifeguard, professional counselor, preacher or teacher to make a difference. Each in our own way can inspire the lives of our fellow men and make a difference in their lives.

Raymond Smith is president of the Strong Families of Victoria.


Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

For Interior Designers, D.I.Y. Philosophy Extends to Web Magazine

Posted: 21 Jun 2010 02:28 AM PDT

Michelle Adams, 27, a former market assistant at Domino, and Patrick Cline, 34, a photographer and photo retoucher, were talking about that in May 2009 after Condé Nast closed Domino, its sprightly home magazine. Over dinner at Chili's, they mourned the loss of the magazine and other design magazines, like Blueprint and House & Garden, and joked that they should start their own.

"People were missing all the magazines that had folded, and it was really disappointing that no one came along" with replacements, said Ms. Adams, who is also a textile designer.

They created Lonny, an online shelter magazine, which put its first issue up in October and immediately caught the attention of design circles as well as advertisers and print publishers.

Lonny looks and acts like a print magazine, not a Web site or a blog. It has pages to turn, a table of contents and full-page ads. But it offers Web-only benefits like zoomable, clickable images, so readers can inspect a lamp displayed in a photograph of someone's living room and then click to buy it.

Many readers still like to lounge on the couch and flip through glossy pages with big stylish photos, but as mainstays like Domino and Gourmet disappear, readers are forced to look elsewhere. The Web sites of magazines like Lucky, Bon Appétit and Architectural Digest, however, are either underdeveloped or visually different from their print counterparts.

Lonny's readership is still small — since October, 600,000 people have read it. But the interest that the low-cost magazine has generated among publishers and advertisers has implications for other image-rich print publications covering fashion, travel and food. This is especially true with the promise of new devices like the iPad that make online reading an experience more like reading in print.

On Monday, Lonny, which is based in New York, will announce that it has raised an undisclosed sum from Kristoffer Mack, an investment banker and investor in young Internet companies, and J. Christopher Burch, a venture capitalist and a founder of the fashion label Tory Burch.

"The shelter design industry is incredibly discombobulated," Mr. Mack said. "There's a ton of money and it's completely unprofitable, so it seemed to be a perfect place to find highly disruptive technologies."

Lonny is published every other month using Issuu, a Web platform where, for $19 a month, anyone can upload a PDF and instantly create an online magazine that looks like a print one.

"A Web site is continuous and constantly changing, whereas a digital publication has a start and finish, a unique purpose for that one goal," said Astrid Sandoval, chief commercial officer for Issuu. "We want to recreate the best of the print reading experience, where people might spend three full focused hours on that, and enhance it with the digital world."

For the first issue, Ms. Adams and Mr. Cline roped designers and magazine editors they had met in the industry into letting them photograph their homes. They spent $1,000 of their own money and borrowed Ms. Adams's parents' car to drive to shoots. They bartered for free photo-processing and equipment in exchange for ads.

Exhausted and assuming that Lonny would never amount to more than a hobby alongside their day jobs, they went to Paris to vacation and photograph. They woke up from a jetlagged nap to find their in-boxes full of messages from advertisers who wanted to buy ads in the second issue. They hired an ad sales representative, without meeting him in person, the same day.

Ballard Designs, the home furnishings company, was one of the first advertisers to call. It placed an ad similar to those it placed in print magazines, but offered a 15 percent discount for people who clicked on the ad.

"Typically, we have found that online advertising has not been very effective for us, but the click-throughs and the performance of the ad surprised us in the fact that it did quite well," said James Pope, director for business development and retail at Ballard. "Lonny shows you can be online and still be a very designer-oriented, well-designed, graphical piece."

Kate Spade, the handbag and home décor designer; Mitchell Gold, the furniture company; and One Kings Lane, the home décor private sales site, have also advertised in Lonny.

With its low-cost operation, Lonny startles people who have worked in the industry. Ms. Adams styles and edits, and Mr. Cline photographs everything. They hired an assistant who attends shoots, taking her own photos so she can learn the sources for items like sofas or chandeliers and link to them in the magazine.

Lonny added how-to videos and search to its site, so readers can search for all the bedrooms it has featured, for instance, and will let people create online scrapbooks, the digital version of the tear sheet collections hidden in design lovers' closets.

For one of the issues, they shot the upstate New York country home of Eddie Ross, who now runs a design company and was formerly senior style editor of Martha Stewart Living.

A typical shoot for Martha Stewart required seven people and "meetings about Pantone chip colors and meetings about meetings," Mr. Ross said. "It was just crazy, because who lives like this, in a $300,000 room I put together? I'm sorry, but I can't relate to a $40,000 mirrored coffee table."

Lonny displays people's own décor, instead of shipping in items to redecorate homes, as many magazines do. In the case of Mr. Ross's home, that meant including lamps found in a Goodwill store.

The technique infuses the magazine with the accessibility that Domino was known for. "It's not as stiff," Mr. Cline said. "We'll leave lamps on and animals walking through shots." At daylong shoots for print magazines, he used to get four usable photos. At Lonny, he typically gets 27.

No one in the industry is saying that Lonny-type magazines will save publishing. But it does provide an avenue toward electronic reading devices like the iPad. Publications often mimic what came before, said Adam L. Penenberg, a journalism professor at New York University.

But, he said, "you'll know a new narrative form has emerged when you have to consume a particular story on an iPad to truly understand its content, and reading it on any other platform simply wouldn't work."

Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.
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