SnapStock tulee, joutuuko valokuvaaja työttömäksi?


Valokuvaus saattaa ammattina olla uhanalainen laji, sillä amatöörit yrittävät ihan tosissaan vallata markkinat ammattilaisilta. Tämänkin blogin kommenteissa asiaa on sivuttu ja käsitelty muutamia kertoja. Olen pitänyt tämän blogin tarkoituksella erossa näistä asioista, koska haluan, että kaikki voisimme nauttia valokuvaamisesta. Kuvaaminen on minulle kuitenkin myös ammatti ja viime yönä kuulin huolestuttavia asioita Yhdysvalloista.

Puhuin Skypessä hyvän ystäväni ja suuresti arviostamani graafikon kanssa niitä näitä, mutta puhe kääntyi työasioihin ennen pitkää. Niinhän käy aina, kun kaksi yrittäjää keskustelee. Steve kertoi, että häntä oli pyydetty suunnittelemaan uuden nettisivuston ulkoasu ja koska uusi sivusto liittyi valokuvaamiseen, niin Steve oli erityisen innoissaan. Hän on nimittäin ahkera ja jopa ihan kohtalaisen laadukasta kuvaa tuottava harrastelijakuvaaja.

Uusi nettisivusto liittyy uuteen microstock tyyppiseen kuvapankkiin, jonne vain amatöörit voivat toimittaa kuvia. Kuvien pitää olla kuvattu mieluiten puhelinkameralla tai pokkarilla, mutta järjestelmäkameralla kuvattujakin saatetaan hyväksyä, jos ne näyttävät pokkarilla kuvatuilta. Uuden kuvapankin idea on tarjota nimenomaan näppäilykuvia, josta kertoo pankin nimikin: SnapStock.

Steve kertoi, että liikeidea on kuvapankkien keskuudessa ainutlaatuinen. Kuvia todellakin tarjotaan, eli niistä ei tarvitse maksaa mitään. Minä kysyin, että mikä se liikeidea on? Se on mainostajat, vastasi Steve. Sivustolle tulee mainoksia, joiden tuotto jaetaan kuvaajille siinä suhteessa kuin heidän kuviaan on ladattu.

Ladattavien kuvien kylkeen tulee myös aina mainos, jonka kuvan käyttäjä voi erillistä maksua vastaan poistaa. Ikään kuin perinteisten kuvapankkien vesileima, mutta se ei estä kuvan käyttöä. Jokaisesta kuvasta tulee neljä eri versiota, joissa mainos on eri sivulla. Näin kuvan käyttäjä voi valita omaan sisältöönsä ulkoasun kannalta parhaiten sopivan kuvan.

Amerikassa oli kuulemma suoritettu tutkimus, jonka tuloksista käy ilmi, että varsinkin pienet järjestöt, kerhot ja muut vastaavat yhteisöt olisivat valmiita käyttämään mainoksilla varustettuja kuvia omilla nettisivustoillaan, jos kuvien käytöstä ei tarvitse maksaa. Yhdysvalloissa on satojatuhansia pieniä mainitun kaltaisia organiaatioita, joten markkinoita pitäisi olla.

Suomessa ei taida olla markkinoita tuollaiselle, mutta monet ison maailman jutut kuitenkin tulevat tännekin jossain muodossa. Jotain hyvääkin sentään, sillä huhtikuun ensimmäisenä päivänä saattaa kuulla tai lukea ihan älyttömiä juttuja, joden todenperäisyyten pitää suhtautua varauksella.

News---UNC Press & Penn State Civil War Center Team for New Peer Reviewed Journal of Civil War Era

Manuscripts are being solicited for a new, peer-review journal that incorporates a broad view of the Civil War era. Published in collaboration with The University of North Carolina Press and the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at the Pennsylvania State University, The Journal of the Civil War Era will launch its inaugural issue in March 2011.

William Blair, of the Pennsylvania State University, serves as founding editor, and Anthony Kaye, Penn State, and Aaron-Sheehan Dean, University of North Florida, as Associate Editors. The new journal will take advantage of the flowering of research on the many issues raised by the sectional crisis, war, Reconstruction, and memory of the conflict, while bringing fresh understanding to the struggles that defined the period, and by extension, the course of American history in the nineteenth century.

Besides offering fresh perspectives on military, political, and legal history of the era, articles, essays, and reviews will attend to such topics as slavery and antislavery, labor and capitalism, popular culture and intellectual history, expansionism and empire, as well as native American, African American, and women’s history. The editors also intend The Journal of the Civil War Era to be a venue for scholars engaged in race, gender, transnational, and the full range of theoretical perspectives that animate historical practice.

The editors are recruiting an editorial board that reflects the wide range of specialties and theoretical engagements that form the scope of this publication. They include Stephen Berry, University of Georgia; David Blight, Yale University; Peter Carmichael, West Virginia University; Gary Gallagher, University of Virginia; Thavolia Glymph, Duke University; Stephanie McCurry, University of Pennsylvania; Tiya Miles, University of Michigan; Christopher Morris, University of Texas at Arlington; Carol Reardon, the Pennsylvania State University; Seth Rockman, Brown University; and Leslie Schwalm, University of Iowa.

The Journal of the Civil War Era has been adopted by the Society of Civil War Historians, providing a substantial readership base that will provide authors with visibility. With registrations for the Society’s conference this June, members will automatically receive a subscription to the journal beginning with the first volume year.

The editorial home for the journal is at the Richards Civil War Era Center, The Pennsylvania State University, 108 Weaver Building, University Park, Pa. 16802. For subscriptions and advertising, please contact Suzi Waters at The University of North Carolina Press at suzi_waters@unc.edu.

Top Image: Newspaper Sales in Camp

Bottom Image: Burnside Reading

24 mm aukolla f/1.4

Kukaan muu kuvaushetkellä paikalla ollut elävä olento ei antanut kuvauslupaa, joten tässä jälleen poseeraa tuttu malli. Uudella 24 millisellä Nikkorilla täydellä aukolla ISO 4000 herkkyydellä. Tämä objektiivi vaikuttaa voittajalta, mutta olen tosiaankin vasta totutellut, joten eipä hätäillä. Tarkennuksen kanssa pitää olla todella huolellinen, sillä terävyysalue on erittäin lyhyt täydellä aukolla vielä metrin tai parinkin etäisyydellä. Tämän lasin bokeh on kohdallaan, vaikka se ei ehkä näissä kuvissa oikeuksiinsa pääsekään. Jospa huomenna ei sataisi, niin viitsisi ulkonakin kuvata.

Cry Me a River

(Photo borrowed from Cornerstork)

There's a coffee maker (oh, sorry, espresso maker...) in my office with which I'm having a tempestuous relationship. Every morning I make my usual quadruple espresso: two doubles gently mixed with a bit of low-fat milk and cinnamon. It's part of my routine, and makes me very happy, and awake.

The problem is, this particular coffee maker (fine, espresso maker) always has something to complain about. Our strained exchanges of late go something like this:

"Double espresso, please."

Fill water tank.

"Ok, double espresso please."

Fill beans.

"Fine. Make the espresso."

Empty grounds.

"Argh -"

Rinse.

"Why I oughta-"

Warming up...



Eventually, I get my lovely coffee beverage, and I usually only have to do one of these, sometimes two, but it gets irksome. Given, much of this is a constraint of a machine that is connected to neither a large bin of coffee bean, water source nor garbage receptacle. But still.

Here's another example:

Each time the power goes out in my house, I need to reset the time on the microwave I almost never use, but came with the house. Resetting the time on this particular microwave involves entering the time, am/pm and date.

I never seem to remember to look to see what the date is before I try to reset the time, so I inevitably need to go find out in the middle of the process. In spite of this extra needed effort, the date appears to serve no useful purpose whatsoever.

Recently, daylight savings time required setting the clocks ahead ("spring forward! fall back!") and you would think that, since I dutifully tell this microwave the date each and every time I lose power, this information would be used to automatically set the time ahead.

Nope.

When we design interfaces, its important to think about how the interface communicates with the user.

Ideally, the interface should prevent the user from making mistakes in the first place, and not collect any more information that is necessary to complete the task.


Users are task oriented. They just want to do what they want to do. They don't want to learn your interface, nor the clever intricacies of how information is collected or captured.

Use existing conventions, handle issues inline and strive for an interface that is forgiving of its users' idiosyncrasies.

And if you don't need the information, don't ask for it – less data entry will get you increased conversion and happier users. If my microwave isn't going to use the date to do anything useful, I really wish it didn't require it just to reset the time.

If the user does make a mistake, and the mistake can be fixed or mitigated, the interface should do so. 

I just looked up the spelling of "idiosyncrasies" because I was forgetting it was "idio.." not "ideo.." I tried using a browser tool called Ubiquity, but it couldn't find an entry because I wasn't spelling it right. Dictionary.com happily offered the correct spelling as long as I could get close enough.

If the interface absolutely has to complain to the user, be user-friendly about it.

Make the message clear, concise, friendly, and as much as possible try to make it the system's problem, not the users. Is there something – anything? – that the user can do next? If so, make it easy to do so, don't leave the user hanging with an error message and no idea how to fix things or continue.

True, none of these things will probably help with my espresso maker, but hopefully will offer some small suggestions for your next project. And if it's possible to attach your next big idea to it's own conceptual water source and thus save your users a bit of time, effort and frustration, they'll thank you.

Breaking News: The ICC Approves Kenya Investigation

Pre-Trial Chamber II of the ICC has authorized the first investigation by the Prosecution proprio motu (on his own motion) into the post-election violence of 2007-2008 in Kenya portrayed in this video. The decision, made pursuant to article 15(4) of the Rome Statute, responds to the Prosecutor’s "Request for Authorisation of an Investigation Pursuant to Article 15" submitted on November 26, 2009.

Followers of the Court do not need to be reminded that Article 15 was one of the most controversial provisions of the ICC, with some states fearing that the Prosecutor would abuse his proprio motu powers by initiating politically motivated or frivolous investigations. To respond to these concerns, the drafters of the ICC Statute added a procedural hurdle relevant to Article 15 investigations only—the Prosecutor must with supporting material and victims’ representations convince a Pre-Trial Chamber that there is “a reasonable basis to proceed” at a very early stage in the investigation. This is the lowest evidentiary standard provided for in the Statute given the preliminary nature of the proceedings. Para. 27. In exercising this supervisory function, the PTC concluded that it should also consider the admissibility of the case as set forth in Article 53(1)(b) of the Statute.

With respect to the first requirement—that there is a reasonable justification for a belief that a crime falling within the subject matter, temporal, personal, and territorial jurisdiction of the Court has been or is being committed—the PTC found that there was a reasonable basis to believe that crimes against humanity were committed in Kenya. Most interesting in this regard is the PTC’s discussion of the requirement that the attack against a civilian population be pursuant to a State or organizational policy. The PTC noted that the attacks in questions tended to be ethnically-based and politically-motivated. Many attacks were between the key political parties in Kenya, such as the Orange Democratic Movement (which supported Raila Odinga in the 2007 presidential elections) and the Party of National Unity (which supported Mwai Kibaki), or were initiated by the police (left). The PTC noted that while some of the post-election violence was spontaneous or opportunistic,


a number of the attacks were planned, directed or organized by various groups including local leaders, businessmen and politicians associated with the two leading political parties, as well as by members of the police force. Para. 117.
The PTC determined that the crimes against humanity in question constituted murder, rape and other sexual violence, deportation or forcible transfer of the population, and other inhumane acts. In particular, the PTC noted that
  • At least 1,000 people were killed, over 3,000 injured, 900 raped, and 350,000 displaced between December and February 2007-8. Paras. 131, 190.

  • The Nairobi Women’s Hospital alone treated 443 survivors of sexual and gender-based violence during the relevant period.

  • Many of these cases involved gang rapes and aggravated brutality and were conducted in front of members of the victim’s family. Para. 154.

  • Inhumane acts included traumatic circumcisions and genital amputations, amputations, and other non-lethal injuries. Paras. 167-171.

With respect to the second requirement—Articles 17/18 admissibility, which invokes both complementarity and gravity—the PTC concluded that it would focus on potential cases that could be brought against potential defendants implicated in particular crimes within the Court’s jurisdiction and whether the relevant state is conducting national proceedings in relation to those crimes. Paras. 51-52. In finding the situation to be admissible, the PTC considered the following:

The PTC further attempted to pin down the concept of gravity by noting that

it is not the number of victims that matter but rather the existence of some aggravating or qualitative factors attached to the commission of crimes … [such as]
  • the scale of the alleged crimes (including assessment of geographical and temporal intensity);

  • the nature of the unlawful behaviour or of the crimes allegedly committed;

  • the employed means for the execution of the crimes (i.e., the manner of their commission); and

  • the impact of the crimes and the harm caused to victims and their families.

Throughout this assessment, the PTC cited from the representations of the victims to gauge the gravity of the crimes alleged. Para. 196. The PTC noted the particular brutality of many of the attacks alleged. Paras. 193, 199. In addition, many rape victims contracted HIV and were abandoned by their families and many people lost their homes and possessions. Para. 195. The PTC concluded that the crimes alleged satisfy the elements of scale and noted with approval that the Prosecutor intended to focus on those in high-ranking positions who planned, incited, financed, or otherwise contributed to the organization of violence.

Although the Prosecutor’s request had focused on the immediate post-election period, the decision authorized him to investigate events since June 1, 2005 to the extent they relate to the crimes against humanity committed. Para. 205.

Judge Hans-Peter Kaul (Germany, at right)) dissented from the authorization to commence an investigation on the ground that the acts alleged did not constitute crimes against humanity in that they were not committed as part of an “attack against any civilian population” “pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack.” Para. 4. He emphasized that in his estimation the ICC is not the right forum to investigate the crimes alleged and expressed concern that the majority opinion blurred the demarcation line between domestic crimes, prosecutable in domestic courts, and international crimes, of concern to the entire international community. Paras. 6, 9. Broadening the Court’s jurisdiction in this regard infringes upon state sovereignty, will generate perceptions of arbitrariness when the Court does not tackle all such situations, and risks turning the Court into

a hopelessly overstretched, inefficient international court, with related risks for its standing and credibility. Para. 10.

This ruling comes on the heels of the resignation of Betty Murungi (right) from her position as Co-Chair of the Truth Justice & Reconciliation Commission (she did not relinquish her spot on the Commission), about which we’ve blogged before. Murungi’s protest comes after she and our friend and colleague Ron Slye (the only non-African on the Commission) publicly asked the Chair of the Commission, Bethuel Kiplagat (also right), to step down from the Commission, because he has been named as a potential witness to the murder of former Foreign Affairs Minister Robert Ouko during the Moi regime and because certain questionable property transactions involving him fall within the Commission’s mandate. The ICC did not mention the current stalemate with the TJRC as a ground for its admissibility ruling, but the unwillingness of Kiplagat to step aside so that the Commission can continue its work is consistent with the impression that there are elements within Kenya who would rather see impunity than accountability.

The International Center for Transtional Justice (ICTJ) has a detailed analysis of transitional justice in Kenya here.

News: John Brown Raider's Navy Colt Found By Private Collector; Used in Kansas and at Harpers Ferry, Virginia

Historian Reunites Abolitionist's Gun With Museum, Marylynne Pitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Wednesday, March 31, 2010.

Robin Rombach/Post-GazetteAn 1851 Colt "Navy" revolver once owned by abolitionist Owen Brown.Robert Hassinger bid farewell on Tuesday to an old friend, a revolver whose craftsmanship, hallmarks and engraving led him on a fascinating quest and fed his lifelong passion for American history.

"I like to do research," said the retired insurance investigator, who returned an 1851 Colt "Navy" revolver to the Chicago museum from which it was stolen 62 years ago. Inside the third-floor board room of Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum in Oakland, he donned a pair of white gloves and carefully removed the gleaming revolver from a brown valise.

"There's no pitting, no rust," Mr. Hassinger, 83, said as he showed it to Libby Mahoney, chief curator of the Chicago History Museum, who was visibly impressed by its excellent condition. "I can't really believe that it's resurfaced. You're an extremely honest person," said Kathleen Plourd, the museum's collections director.

At a gun show here in 1991, Mr. Hassinger traded an 1860 Army revolver for the earlier 1851 Colt model because its low serial number piqued his interest. He began researching its history, accumulating information in a neat binder. While paging through Man at Arms magazine in 2001, the North Hills man read an article headlined "John Brown's Colt Navies."

John Brown, a zealous abolitionist, led an ill-conceived raid in 1859 on a U.S. military arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Va. Afterward, he was tried and hanged. Three of his sons also died in the anti-slavery movement. But Brown's third son, Owen, escaped from Harpers Ferry, fleeing to Canada and later returning to the United States. The article reported that Owen Brown's gun, stolen in 1948 from the Chicago History Museum, remained missing and had a serial number of 43156.

Mr. Hassinger knew his Colt revolver bore the initials O.B. on its backstrap. He figured the initials were those of the soldier who used the gun but was never able to match the letters to anyone, even after examining regiment rosters. On the day he got it, Mr. Hassinger showed the O.B. initials to his wife, joking, "This stands for 'Oh, boy, look at the neat gun I got.' " As he matched the serial number to his revolver, he was electrified by the realization that he held Owen Brown's gun in his hand. Now, he faced a dilemma. "I didn't know what to do," he said.

Mr. Hassinger consulted Ronald J. Erhart, a lawyer he knew from the Greater Pittsburgh Civil War Roundtable, who contacted the Chicago History Museum. He got no response. "Maybe they were afraid I was after some money. I wanted some proof that it was stolen," Mr. Hassinger said. "No claim was made to the insurance company because they thought the gun wasn't worth anything."

Mr. Hassinger then consulted Mike Kraus, curator of Soldiers & Sailors. A collector of Civil War artifacts since boyhood, Mr. Kraus believes the revolver is worth between $100,000 and $250,000. Through colleagues, Mr. Kraus reached Ms. Mahoney, Chicago History Museum's chief curator. "She was very interested in talking to me, especially when she heard the phrase, 'Owen Brown's pistol,' " Mr. Kraus recalled.

Ms. Mahoney sent documents showing the Chicago Historical Society accepted the revolver in the 1920s from Frank Logan, a collector of John Brown and Abraham Lincoln memorabilia. The packet included a newspaper account of the gun's theft. That proof satisfied Mr. Hassinger. "I realized that it belonged to them and that it had to go back," he said.

But that didn't make it any easier for him to let go of his crown jewel. "This is what makes me want to get up in the morning. I would love to own this, display it and give talks on it. It's a symbol of the development of this country," Mr. Hassinger said. Collectors, he said, don't really own their artifacts. "We are just custodians of them during our lifetime."

He's sad because Chicago History Museum officials "couldn't guarantee that it would go on display." They also declined to reimburse him for the costs he incurred in acquiring and insuring the gun. "That was never a condition of returning it, [but] why couldn't they just hand me $500 or even $100?" he said.

According to Mr. Hassinger's research, the Army adopted this gun in 1855. The 1st and 2nd U.S. Cavalry were the first regiments to carry it. An image of ships engraved on the gun's cylinder portray a fictional encounter between the Texan and Mexican navies, leading soldiers to call it a "Navy" revolver. Samuel Colt, who invented an innovative revolver, ordered this model to be engraved to honor the Republic of Texas because the first revolver he produced in 1836 was later used by Texas Rangers in fighting Comanches. It was called a "belt pistol" because at that time, soldiers stuck it in their belts.

Mr. Hassinger has a theory on how the revolver wound up in Owen Brown's hands. His father purchased a number of Navy revolvers while living in Lawrence, Kan., from 1856-58. Owen Brown joined his father there, participating in conflicts to prevent that state from becoming a slave state. Kansas joined the Union as a free state in 1861. "The soldier it was issued to may have lost it or may have deserted and sold it," Mr. Hassinger said, adding that the Army rarely recorded which guns were issued to specific soldiers.

Or, in 1856, Owen Brown may have fought with a member of the U.S. Army at a Kansas town called Black Jack, and taken the gun from a soldier there. Black Jack is about 20 miles south of Lawrence, the scene of bloody skirmishes over slavery. The right side of the gun's grip bears the initials of Robert Henry Kirkwood Whiteley, who headed the arsenal on Governor's Island in New York. His stamp meant that the gun had passed inspection and authorized payment for it.

Some time after 1859, Owen Brown returned from Canada to be near his sister, Ruth Brown Thompson, who lived in California. After he died in January 1889, his sister sold weapons that belonged to him and his father to Mr. Logan, who donated the weapons to the Chicago Historical Society. There's a strong market for Civil War memorabilia. "Stolen property remains stolen property," said Mr. Erhart. "He could have sold it to somebody in the black market. He understood that he had a duty to return it to the rightful owner."

Today, Mr. Erhart said, many museums emphasize World War II, and the Civil War's significance is missed by many Americans. "They wouldn't know Owen Brown from Charlie Brown." Mr. Erhart hoped this gun is displayed, for the sake of Mr. Hassinger and history buffs like him. "It may very well never see the light of day again and that hurts him. He has no say in what they do."

Text and Top Image Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 31, 2010.

Second Image Source: Owen Brown

Third Image Source: Owen Brown's Grave in California

Fourth Image: Kennedy Farm, Maryland: location of Brown's Provisional Army encampment immediately before the raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia

Kokeilussa Nikkor 24 mm f/1.4 ja Nikkor 16 - 35 mm f/4


Olen saanut kokeiluun kaksi hiljattain esiteltyä uutta Nikkoria: AFS Nikkor 24 mm f/1.4G ED ja AFS Nikkor 16 - 35 mm f/4G ED VR.

Molemmat ovat kiinnostavia, mutta minulle tärkeämpi noista kahdesta on tuo 24 millinen, joka on Nikonin ensimmäinen näin laajakulmainen valovoimalla f/1.4. Pääsiäisen aikana kuvailen molemmilla ja katsotaan sitten ovatko nämä ennakko-odotustensa arvoisia.

Valiettavasti en vielä ehtinyt kuvata kummallakaan mitään näyttämisen arvoista, mutta yritän saada aikaan edes jotain pikimiten. Sillä välin yksi todella kiinnostava tuotekuva.

Human rights' new DOJ home

Brand-new in D.C.:
The Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section, established within the U.S. Department of Justice yesterday.
HRSP, as it's to be known, is intended to combat human rights violations and to endeavor to bring war criminals to account. Its approval by Congress last week culminated plans 1st announced by U.S. Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer during testimony last October 6 before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law.
This new section within the Criminal Division was formed through the merger of 2 existing DOJ units:
1st, the Domestic Security Section, which since 2002 has concentrated on international human rights violations, offenses brought under the under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act and related statutes, and and complex immigration and border crimes. The section worked alongside federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida in a case about which we've posted: the 1st-ever conviction, secured in 2008 against Boston-born Chuckie Taylor (below) (image credit), son of Liberia's ex-President, under the United States' extraterritorial torture statute.
2d, the Office of Special Investigations, formed in 1979 to investigate and prosecute Nazi-era crimes. In 2004 OSI's mandate was expanded to citizenship revocation proceedings against perpetrators of genocide, official torture, and extrajudicial killing in other contexts. Among its notable cases is that of Ukraine-born John Demjanjuk (bottom) (photo credit), now on trial in Munich after having been stripped of U.S. citizenship and sent to Germany.
Leading HRSP is Teresa L. McHenry. Most recently chief of the Domestic Security Section, McHenry, also has served as head of DOJ's Alien Smuggling Task Force, as a trial attorney in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, and as a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Meanwhile, Eli M. Rosenbaum becomes the Director of Human Rights Enforcement Strategy and Policy. Since 1995, he's led the Office of Special Investigations; before that, he was a corporate litigation associate with Simpson Thacher in Manhattan and general counsel of the World Jewish Congress.
Looking forward to good works from this new section.

On March 31

On this day in ...
... 1954, Violeta Neubauer (right) was born in Postojna in what is now the independent nation-state of Slovenia. She studied sociology at the University of Ljubljana. Neubauer's written nearly a dozen books on gender equality and human rights, and has worked on such issues at the national, regional, and international levels. She is a member of the United Nations' Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.

(Prior March 31 posts are here, here, and here)

Kuvaa suoraan koneelle


Suoraan koneelle kuvaaminen on hyvä idea etenkin studiossa, mutta myös muualla, kun se on mahdollista. Tietokoneen näytöltä kuvan arvioiminen on paljon tarkempaa kuin kameran näytöltä, vaikka kamerassa olisi uusin ja hienoin ruutu. Kuvan terävyys ja sävyt eivät jää arvailujen varaan ja isoa kuvaa voi tarvittaessa tarkastella useampi henkilö samaan aikaan vaivattomasti.

Olen käyttänyt Sofortbild-nimistä ilmaista ohjelmaa koneelle kuvaamiseen ja ohjelma on toiminut hyvin myös Lightroomin kanssa yhdessä. Kahden ohjelman aukaiseminen tuntuu kuitenkin hieman turhalta ja mitä enemmän välivaiheita sitä isommat mahdollisuudet vikatilanteisiin.

Uusin Lightroom 3 Beta 2 versio tukee kuvaamista suoraan tietokoneelle ja tämä on mahtavaa. LR on vasta  beta, mutta omissa kokeiluissani kuvaaminen Nikon D700 kameralla MacBook Pro kannettavalle on toiminut niin kuin pitääkin. Kuva tulee LR:n näytölle nopeammin kuin Sofortbildin kanssa ja koko touhu on yksinkertaisempaa.

Mainittakoon, että kuvat tallentuvat ainoastaan tietokoneelle, vaikka kamerassa olisi muistikortti paikallaan.

Sofortbild on hyvä ohjelma Macille ja suosittelen sitä, jos et käytä Lightroomia. Kannattaa kokeilla uutta LR 3 Beta 2 versiota jo pelkästään tämän uuden ominaisuuden vuoksi.

ANFSCD: Earth’s Coolest Concept Albums



Yes, it's not user experience design, unless you consider that Pink Floyd's most popular album has provided a unique musical (and often mind-altering) experience for over 35 years. This Wired article asks readers what albums they think could compete with Pink Floyd's trippy masterpiece.

As someone who owns every album Pink Floyd released, I'm also partial to Animals and Wish You Were Here, but Dark Side of the Moon is a masterwork.

But why argue? Can't we all just get along? Don't think of this list as 24 contenders, but rather as a great list of classic concept albums. Some will argue that albums like Pet Sounds were at least as if not more musically influential, but for sheer popularity it's hard to argue with DSoTM's over 700 weeks on the charts and almost instant universal recognition.

Earth’s Coolest Concept Albums, Decided By You | Underwire | Wired.com

Today's guest Bloggers: Christie Edwards & Susan Tiefenbrun

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Christie Edwards (left) and Dr. Susan Tiefenbrun (right) as today's guest bloggers.

► A 2003 recipient of France's Légion d'Honneur, Susan is Professor of Law at San Diego's Thomas Jefferson School of Law, where she also serves as Director of the Center for Global Studies; Director of the Summer Program in Hangzhou, China, conducted jointly with Zhejiang University College of Law; and of the Summer Program in Nice, France, conducted jointly with Hofstra University and the University of North Carolina.
Susan earned her B.S. and M.S. degrees magna cum laude from the University of Wisconsin, her J.D. from New York University School of Law, and her Ph.D. magna cum laude from Columbia University, magna cum laude. After attending law school Susan -- who speaks 10 foreign languages -- practiced international commercial law in paris and New York. She's an expert in eastern European joint venture laws, as well as the laws of the European Union, China, and the former Soviet Union. Before joining the faculty at Thomas Jefferson, she taught at Columbia, Sarah Lawrence, Michigan, and Hofstra. Susan has written frequently on human trafficking; her other interests include international law, corporate law, securities law, international intellectual property, women and international human rights law, and law and literature. Susan is past President of the Law and Humanities Institute and currently the Vice President of its West Coast branch.
Christie earned her J.D. in 2007 from Thomas Jefferson, specializing in international human rights law. She also has a B.A. from The Master's College, where she spent most of her studies abroad in Israel, Switzerland, and interning in Washington, D.C., and is now pursuing her LL.M. degree at American University's Washington College of Law, with specializations in International Human Rights and Gender. Christie is currently working on several research and writing projects concerning human rights issues that affect women in North Africa, and has just been awarded the prestigious Arthur C. Helton Fellowship of the American Society of International Law in order that she may further her research.
Susan and Christie currently are collaborating on a new casebook on women and international human rights law. In their guest post below, they discuss their recent co-authored article, Gendercide and the Cultural Context of Sex Trafficking in China.

Heartfelt welcome!

Gendercide, sex trafficking in China

(Our thanks to IntLawGrrls for this opportunity to guest post on the article that we recently published in the Fordham University International Law Journal)

There is a demographic crisis in China that arguably rises to the level of "gendercide."
Women in China are bought and sold, murdered and made to disappear, in order to comply with a governmental policy that coincides with the cultural phenomenon of male-child preference. Demographers estimate that there are between 50 and 100 million missing women in China. In answer to the resulting scarcity of women, gangs, "specialist households," and "specialist villages" have been working in an organized chain to kidnap and sell women in China.
Several factors work interdependently to cause a serious shortage of women in China. Women are disappearing because of:
► social pressures of male-child preference;
► zealous enforcement of China’s "One-Child Policy" by local government authorities; and
► murderous responses to this policy undertaken by millions of ordinary people in China, who are desperate to have a son.
(credit for Reuters photo of above-right mural extolling One-Child Policy)
The 2000 Chinese census reported that 117 boys were born for every 100 girls, compared to the global average of 105 or 106 boys to every 100 girls. This disparity may be linked to the practice of aborting female fetuses and killing female babies.
This gender imbalance has caused an increase in prostitution and human trafficking in China.
Sex trafficking in China takes many forms:
► purchase of women for brides;
► purchase of a male son; or
► sale of unwanted female children.
Many men, primarily in rural China, desperately seek brides in a country where women are in short supply. These men will resort to purchasing a trafficked woman for marriage. Couples seeking a male child will sell or even murder their girl child in order to make room for the purchase of a trafficked baby boy. Young women and infants are bought and sold like cargo.
Human trafficking in China is a lucrative international business that is expanding due to several factors:
► the aggressive implementation of the One-Child Policy;
► a faulty legal system, and
► the blind adherence to longstanding cultural traditions that devalue women.
In China, Communist Party directives overshadow the legislative and judicial process. The primacy of government policy results in the ineffectiveness of laws that theoretically protect women and female children in China.
In order to reverse the deleterious effects of the One-Child Policy and its commodification of women, the Chinese government must make a commitment to implement laws and policies that can reverse longstanding cultural trends and combat discriminatory traditions against women.
Since 1979, China has instituted economic reform policies that miraculously work in harmony with a Communist political system. Now China needs to perform another miracle: the adoption of cultural reforms that produce gender parity and that stop the marginalization of women in Chinese society. Only then will the lucrative business of trafficking in women be reduced, if not eliminated entirely.

On March 30

On this day in ...
...1856, in France's capital city, the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Crimean War, a 3-years-long conflict about which we've posted. Concluding this pact were "Russia on one side and France, Great Britain, Sardinia-Piedmont, and Turkey on the other." The agreement "guaranteed the independence and territorial integrity of Turkey," provided for reorganization of territory that eventually became Romania, and closed the Black Sea "to all warships," and opened the Danube river "to the shipping of all nations." (map credit)


(Prior March 30 posts are here, here, and here)

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

We as a nation should be humbled that the Haitian people, a people who rose above slavery, a people of great resilience and survival, wish to become part of our community. They want only the basics: education, food and shelter. In return they offer their cultural riches – their resilience, their art, their music, their beloved food and their beautiful laughter. The United States government should grant humanitarian parole to the Haitians in need ....

-- My colleague Holly Cooper (above left), Lecturer in the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall), in an op-ed in London's Guardian, entitled "How the US can help Haiti: Thousands of Haitians lost everything in the earthquake. The US should open its borders and start granting humanitarian parole." Holly's essay deftly invokes the Greek myth of Persephone in recounting her experiences earlier this month in Haiti, where she was part of "a human rights delegation intent on finding individuals for whom we could request humanitarian parole into the US."

Onko näissä kuvissa hirveä bokeh?


Bokeh, mikä ihme sana se oikein on? Minä en pysty pokkana sanomaan sitä ääneen, mutta nykyään varsinkin nuoret kuvaajat käyttävät sitä sujuvan asiantuntevasti. Kuulin sanan ensimmäisen kerran muutama vuosi sitten ja olen selvinnyt suurimman osan kuvaajan urastani autuaan tietämättömänä koko sanasta.

Tiedän kyllä mitä se tarkoittaa ja miltä se näyttää kuvissa, mutta välillä tuntuu, että tämä bokeh on saavuttanut elämää suuremman merkityksen valokuvauksessa.

Edellisen juttuni kommenteissa kerrotaan kuinka surkea objektiivi Canon EF 35 mm f/2 on, mutta olen eri mieltä. Vahvasti eri mieltä. Kyllä, se on muovinen, mutta ei sen muovisempi kuin suurin osa tämän päivän objektiiveista. Se on myös edullinen, joten muovisuuden voi sietää. Tarkennusmoottori ja -mekanismi ovat vanhanaikaikaisia, mutta toimivia, koska objektiivissa on pienet liikkuvat massat.

Kuvien kannalta tärkein asia, eli optinen suorituskyky on erittäin hyvä. Jo täydellä aukolla kuva on terävä ja kontrastikas. Terävyysalue on kupera, joten kuvan reunat eivät välttämättä ole terävyysalueella, jos kuvataan esim. seinää täydellä aukolla. Kuvan äärimmäiset nurkat eivät terävöidy kunnolla edes himmennettynä, mutta tämä on melko pieni haitta, eikä näy kuin täyden kennon kameroissa.

Yllä olevat kaksi kuvaa ovat täydellä aukolla kuvattuja, eikä kuvien epäterävä alue ole mielestäni ollenkaan hirveän näköinen. Joillakin objektiiveilla bokeh voisi olla kauniimpi, mutta tämä ei ole hirveä tai kamala, vaan oikein nätti.

Alla olevissa esimerkeissä näkyy terävyys täydellä aukolla. Osasuurennos on täysikokoinen osa kuvasta. Kaikki kuvat on kuvattu Canon 5D kameralla ja tellennettu jpg-kuviksi Lightroomin oletusterävöityksellä. Pikkukennoisella kuvista rajautuisi reunoilta iso osa pois.

Tässä on vain neljä esimerkkikuvaa, jotka eivät tietenkään kerro objektiivista kokonaisvaltaisesti, mutta jos näiden kuvien perusteella joku sanoo tätä objektiivia surkeaksi ja sen bokehia ( vai taipuuko se bokehta? ) kamalaksi, niin en ymmärrä mitä tämä sanoja objektiivilta haluaa.

Go On! Human Rights Council review

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest) From our colleague John P. Cerone, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for International Law and Policy at New England Law School in Boston (also the home institution of IntLawGrrls' own Dina Francesca Haynes), comes news of a conference entitled Reviewing the UN Human Rights Council: Looking backward and moving forward, to be held on Friday, April 9, at the W Boston, 110 Stuart Street.
Here's the invite:
Join experts from around the globe in a discussion of the history, efficacy, and future of the UN’s Human Rights Council. Participants will critically examine the work of the council with a view toward generating recommendations for the upcoming General Assembly review of the council. The diverse range of experts includes prominent representatives from the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations, the U.S. Department of State, diplomatic representatives from other council member states, civil society, and the academy.
The day will begin with an address by Kyung-Wha Kang (left), U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights; featured at a special luncheon will be these ambassadors: Juan José Gómez Camacho, Mexico's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva; Eileen Donahoe (right), U.S. Representative to the Human Rights Council; Mohammed Loulichki, Morocco's Permanent Representative to the United Nations; and Ali Treki, President of the 64th Session of the U.N. General Assembly.
Joining John -- who's Special Advisor to the U.S. Delegation to the Human Rights Council -- as panelists will be:
Christina Cerna, Principal Human Rights Specialist, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
Juliette De Rivero, Human Rights Watch
Kate Gorove, Office of the Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State
► Professor Hurst Hannum, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
Andrew Hudson, Human Rights First
Melanie Khanna, Legal Adviser, U.S. Mission to the U.N. and Other International Organizations
Andrew Loewenstein, a Partner at Foley Hoag and Chair of the Committee on Public International Law and Human Rights of the Boston Bar Association
Craig Mokhiber, Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights
Suzanne Nossel, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs
Ted Piccone, Brookings Institution
Bertram Ramcharan, former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights ad interim
Yvonne Terlingen, Amnesty International
Details and registration here.

On March 29

On this day in ...
... 1919, the Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on Enforcement of Penalties, chaired by U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing (below left) and including 14 other men from 10 countries, presented its Report to the Preliminary Peace Conference convened at the end of World War I, as we've posted here, here, and here. (photo credit) Nearly 80 years later, in Prosecutor v. Delalić (1998), ¶¶ 336-37, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia discussed a key aspect of this report:
[I]t is often suggested that the roots of the modern doctrine of command responsibility may be found in the Hague Conventions of 1907. It was not until the end of the First World War, however, that the notion of individual criminal responsibility for failure to take the necessary measures to prevent or to repress breaches of the laws of armed conflict was given explicit expression in an international context. In its report presented to the Preliminary Peace Conference in 1919, the International Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on Enforcement of Penalties recommended that a tribunal be established for the prosecution of, inter alia, all those who, "ordered, or with knowledge thereof and with power to intervene, abstained from preventing or taking measures to prevent, putting an end to or repressing violations of the laws or customs of war."
Such a tribunal was never realised, however, and it was only in the aftermath of the Second World War that the doctrine of command responsibility for failure to act received its first judicial recognition in an international context.


(Prior March 29 posts are here, here, and here)

Canon 550D, vielä muutama sana

Tämä pieni yhteenveto on hieman myöhässä, mutta parempi myöhään kuin ei ollenkaan. Minulla kävi Canonin kanssa hieman hassusti, sillä en ehtinyt kokeilla videota kuin ihan pienen muutaman sekunnin pätkän ajan. Olin nimittäin suunnitellut videokuvausta, mutta eräällä asiakkaallani olikin valokuvaustoiveita samaan aikaan ja seuraavan päivänä Canon pitikin jo palauttaa.

Videokuvaus tulee vastaan yhä enemmän myös omien asiakkaideni taholta ja tulevaisuudessa paneudun kameroiden video-ominaisuuksiin entistä paremmin.

Valokuvauskojeena Canon 550D on hintaansa nähden oiva peli. Minulla on taipumus pitää edullisista järjestelmäkameroista, koska hinta - laatusuhde on näissä ainakin harrasteluun yleensä parempi kuin kalliimmissa kameroissa. 550D ei ehkä ole edullinen, koska järjestelmäkameroita saa jopa alle 400 euron, mutta kyllä se mielestäni vähintäänkin kohtuuhintainen on.

Canonissa on teknisessä mielessä erittäin hyvä kuvanlaatu, jonka ei pitäisi jättää moitteille sijaa edes vaativalta käyttäjältä. Kuva on terävä, sävykäs ja ainakin ISO 1600 herkkyyteen asti täysin käyttökelpoinen. Lightroomin uusin 3 Beta 2 versio osaa avata 550D:n raakakuvat, joten pääsin tarkastelemaan muitakin kuin jpg-kuvia.

Canonin käyttöliittymä on nopeakäyttöinen ja kaikki kuvaamisen kannalta tärkeät asiat voi säätää kätevästi. Yksi säätöpyörä ei ole hyvä valotuksen käsisäädössä, mutta muuten sekään ei isommin kuvaamista haittaa.

Pakettina myytävä 18 - 55 mm f/3.5 - 5.6 muoviobjektiivi on surkeata valovoimaa ja muovista rakennetta lukuunottamatta hyvä kakkula. Terävyys on hyvä ja varsinkin hieman himmennettynä tällä zoomilla on mahdollista tehdä hyvännäköistä jälkeä. Jos et omista yhtään objektiivia ennestään, niin tämä peruszoomi kannattaa ostaa rungon kanssa. Pariksi sopii hienosti esim. EF 35 mm f/2, jossa saa hyvälaatuista valovoimaa edullisesti.

Canonissa ei ole monia huonoja puolia, mutta tässä muutamia mieleen jääneitä. Pieni ja pimeä etsin, joka on tyypillinen muillekin vastaavan hintaisille kameroille. Vain yksi säätöpyörä valotukselle. Automaattisen herkkyyden kynnysarvon voi säätää vain täyden aukon välein. Automaattisen herkkyyden valitsema herkkyys näkyy etsimessä vain täyden aukon välein; jos kameran valitsema herkkyys on oikeasti esim. 1250, niin etsin näyttää 1600.

Canonia mielivälle 550D on suositeltava kamera, mutta kokeile ihmeessä kaupassa sopiiko Canon omaan käteesi ja ovatko nappulat oikeilla paikoilla, sillä muitakin hyviä kameroita on samassa hintaluokassa. Kameraa ei koskaan kannata ostaa kokeilematta.

Katso myös edelliset juttuni Canon 550D kamerasta täällä ja täällä.

Tässä vielä linkki erään toisen suomalaisen kuvaajan Canon 550D:llä tekemään videoon. Hyvältä näyttää ainakin minun mielestäni.

Once & future U.S. Attorneys

The surprise in President Barack Obama's nomination for U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California was not that he'd chosen Melinda Haag (left), a litigation partner at San Francisco's Orrick Herrington and former federal prosecutor. Based not only on her sterling profile, but also on my experience working with her as joint defense counsel in a transnational criminal case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, I'm confident that Melinda will prove an excellent leader for an office long in need of excellent leadership.
Nor was it a surprise to read these words in The Chronicle's story on the nomination:
She would become the first woman to hold the job in San Francisco ....
The surprise was how that sentence ended:
... since Annette Adams, who served from 1918 to 1920.
The 1st woman was appointed in 1918? Two years before passage of the 19th Amendment?
This news prompted further inquiry.
According to a contemporaneous New York Times article, "Mrs. Annette Abbott Adams of San Francisco" was appointed an Assistant U.S. Attorney on September 29, 1914. Noting that Adams (below right) thus became "the first woman in the United States to occupy such a position," The Times recounted that U.S. Rep. John E. Raker of California considered the appointment "a recognition of woman suffrage." (Raker, Adams' mentor and the suffragist husband of a suffragist, was referring to the passage of women's suffrage in California in 1911.)
The Times appears not to have reported on Adams' appointment 4 years later as San Francisco's lead federal prosecutor. Happily, though, the website for California's courts and a paper from Stanford's women's legal history project provide biographical details. Here's the story those sources tell:
Born the daughter of a Gold Rush 49er on March 12, 1877, in the Sierra Nevada town of Prattville, Annette Abbott earned a bachelor in law degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1904, but could not find a job in law. So she entered marriage and a teaching career. Both turned out to be brief, though she did serve as 1 of the 1st women school principals in California.
Adams then went back to Berkeley, where in 1912 she was among the 1st women to receive her J.D. and to be admitted to the state bar.
She served as San Francisco's lead U.S. Attorney for 2 years, then moved to Washington, D.C., to serve a stint as Assistant U.S. Attorney General that included work on 5 U.S. Supreme Court cases. Again, she was the 1st woman to hold the position.
She then returned home and practiced law. In 1942, California's governor appointed her the 1st woman Presiding Justice of the Court of Appeal, for the San Francisco-based Third Appellate District. In 1950, by special assignment, she presided over 1 case on the state's highest court, and so became the 1st woman to sit on the Supreme Court of California. She died in 1956, at age 79.
Adams shared her thoughts on the challenges facing women in a 1922 foreword to Who's Who Among Women in California:

Conviction, courage and co-operation should be our watchwords: conviction in the justice of our cause, courage born of that conviction and a growing consciousness of our power, and, above all, co-operation in order that our combined forces may constitute an influence worthy to be reckoned with.


Adams surely is a fitting foremother for Melinda Haag, to whom we offer heartfelt best wishes for a speedy confirmation as San Francisco's U.S. Attorney.

On March 28

On this day in ...
... 1799, Etta Palm d'Aelders died, 56 years after she'd been born in Groningen, a city in the Netherlands. Having lost an infant daughter, and her husband having left her, by the time she was just 25 years old, she moved to France, became a courtesan, spied both for the French and the Dutch, and established her own Paris salon for intellectuals, revolutionaries, and feminists. (book cover credit) She's perhaps best known for Discourse on the Injustice of the Laws in Favor of Men, at the Expense of Women, a speech she gave a year and a half after the storming of the Bastille, on December 30, 1790, at a meeting of the 1st political club to admit women. It included a plea rather modest in that era of French Revolution:

Oh! Gentlemen, if you wish us to be enthusiastic about the happy constitution that gives back men their rights, then begin by being just toward us.

Not long afterward, Palm moved to The Hague. But after French forces invaded the Netherlands, she was arrested and jailed for years. A year after her release, she died from illnesses contracted while in detention.

(Prior March 28 posts are here, here, and here)

Institutionalizing Human Rights

On Tuesday, Temple's International Law Colloquium had the pleasure of hosting Galit Sarfaty (pictured left), Assistant Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Galit presented her paper, Why Culture Matters in International Institutions: The Marginality of Human Rights at the World Bank, which was published in the October 2009 issue of the American Journal of International Law. (If you are an academic, that means that the article is already sitting on your desk somewhere, and it's well worth the effort to dig it out from under that pile of papers and read it!)
Trained as an anthropologist, Galit analyzes the rich and fascinating results of her doctoral research conducting an ethnography of the World Bank. Largely descriptive, the study seeks to answer the question of why the World Bank has failed to adopt a human rights policy or agenda. From interviews with James Wolfensohn to detailed analysis of the Bank's articles of agreement, the article is a riveting read that raises important questions about human rights standards and international organizations. Galit describes the thorny politics of the Bank's Board of Executive Directors, reflecting North/South struggles over the content and application of international human rights law. She suggests that the Bank's failure to adopt a human rights policy despite several attempts is due to the institution's organizational culture and the interpretive frames used by professional groups within the bank to assess new norms. Galit posits that
to bring about internalization, actors must adapt norms to local meanings and existing cultural values and practices -- that is, they must 'vernacularize' norms.
As explained in her presentation, the central take-away from her article is that human rights norms must be adapted to fit within the Bank's organizational culture, which prizes an economic approach above all else. Galit then poses the crucial question -- if we adapt human rights to this cultural context, will the norms become so diffuse that they will no longer have a significant impact? This is but one of many important thoughts provoked by her excellent article, which is well worth a read.

On March 27

On this day in ...
... 1973, Sacheen Littlefeather (right) became an internationally known name, for a time at least, when she appeared at the Academy Awards ceremony in lieu of Marlon Brando, named Best Actor for his performance in The Godfather, and announced "that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award," on account of "the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry" -- at which point some in the audience booed, others clapped -- "and on television in movie re-runs, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee," about which 2 very different accounts may be found here and here. A video clip of Littlefeather's speech is here.

(Prior March 27 posts are here, here, and here)

Grand Army of the Republic Post Re-Opens In Pennsylvania

Restored Veterans Post On Display At Carnegie Free Library, Brad Hundt, Observer-Reporter, Washington, Pennsylvania, March 21, 2010.

The men gathered on the steps outside Carnegie's hilltop library are a wizened bunch.
Gray and white whiskers sprout from creased faces and a few waistlines demonstrate how a metabolism can slow with the accumulation of years. Tentative grins show up on a few faces, but, for the most part, they're a proud, poker-faced lot.

They're all survivors of America's Civil War, a lucky contingent that managed to dodge the minie balls and cannon fire in the War Between the States and lived to tell about it. We see them in a photo taken in 1906 on the steps of the Andrew Carnegie Free Library, marking the dedication of the Captain Thomas Espy Post of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The image looms over the restored Espy Post, which reopened in February. And the rebirth of the room where Civil War veterans would gather to reminisce about their exploits and curate artifacts from the battlefield is just a part of the library's effort to become a must-see stop for Civil War buffs and scholars.

"Civil War enthusiasts are passionate," said Maggie Forbes, the library's executive director. She envisions that tourism generated by the library could even be "a linchpin for the revitalization of Carnegie." To that end, the Duquesne Wind Symphony is teaming with "Ghost Whisperer" star and Pittsburgh native David Conrad for an April 11 performance of Aaron Copland's "A Lincoln Portrait" in the library's music hall. It will be a few days after the 145th anniversary of Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Va., and a few days before the 145th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

It will accompany "Abraham Lincoln: A Man Of His Times, A Man For All Times," an exhibit developed by the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History, which will be at the library starting April 2. Re-enactors and scholars will be visiting April 10.

The library's immersion in all-things Civil War-related is so comprehensive that, a few years ago, it staged "Our American Cousin," the farce that Lincoln was enjoying at Washington, D.C.'s, Ford's Theatre when John Wilkes Booth crept into the president's box.

"It's very unique," said Rea Andrew Redd, the director of Waynesburg University's Eberly Library and the head of a Civil War re-enactment group. "You can have a type of communion with the past there."

Named after an Upper St. Clair merchant who died in a Confederate prison camp, the Espy Post functioned in much the same way that American Legion and VFW posts do today, offering community service and a place to socialize with comrades who endured similar triumphs and trials. When the last veteran who haunted the Espy Post died in 1937, it was basically forgotten.

"They didn't know what they were going to do with it, so they locked it up," said library director Diane Klinefelter. Until the 1980s, the Espy Post was mothballed. Unused desks were shoved in the room. Coal dust covered the dishes that the veterans used at mealtimes. The roof started leaking.

Once library officials realized they had a historical treasure chest on their hands, though, they faced the Herculean task of trying to refurbish it. But "the fact that it had been ignored for 50 years is probably what saved it," Klinefelter pointed out. Otherwise, it could have been dismantled or pilfered by antique-hunters and souvenir-seekers.

A full-blown restoration of the room has always been on the library's drawing board, but a combination of donations and grants in 2008 provided the library the wherewithal to get it done. It now has its own security and heating and cooling systems and glass windows that protect against ultraviolet light. It was also studied by researchers at a Bryn Mawr laboratory to determine exactly what color the walls once were (they settled on pumpkin chiffon).

Among the items it contains are original chairs, weapons from the battlefield like swords and carbines, a uniform or two and leather-bound histories of the war and GAR posts. There's also a spittoon from those days with visible tobacco stains in it. "It was as if they were just in here," Klinefelter said.

CWL: Yes. That's my quote in the seventh paragraph.

Text Source: Observer-Reporter, Washington, Pennsylvania

Images' Source: Carnegie Free Library, Carnegie, PA

Could the iPad make reading easier?

Apple is reportedly purchasing eye-tracking technology that could be used in a future e-reader or iPad that watches where a user's eyes are, allowing the projected text and interface to be modified as the user reads the page. This could not only have ramifications for assisted technologies, but could also be used to augment text as we read it.

Imagine if you were doing a bit of speed reading – skimming first and last sentences, paying attention to key words – and the text helped actually highlight the most important text as you scanned it.

What if supporting resources or rich media could be presented, based on what parts of the text you pay most attention?

For us interaction designers, imagine if it were much easier to obtain eye-tracking data for pages and sites as we designed them!

This kind of technology could add an additional layer of interaction context, significantly enriching the overall reading experience. The potential is pretty exciting; only time will tell where the technology could take us.

Eye-Tracking Tablets and the Promise of Text 2.0 | Epicenter | Wired.com
 
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