Kodachrome taken away...

An end of a photography era.... Kodachrome immortalized in the Paul Simon song--

"... Mama don't take my Kodachrome away!"

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Eastman Kodak Co. (EK) will discontinue its iconic Kodachrome color film this year due to tumbling sales as photographers embrace newer Kodak films or digital imaging technology.

Kodak introduced the amateur color film in 1935 and it became the first commercially successful color film.



But sales are just a fraction of 1% of the company's still-picture film revenue. The company doesn't break out such figures, but the segment in which Kodak's film sales are recorded had first- quarter revenue of $503 million.

That 31% drop from a year earlier highlights the woes the company has been undergoing. The company thought that when it completed a wrenching multi-year transition to having a digital focus at the end of 2007 that its restructuring was behind it. But a continued sales slump has resulted in more retrenchment - Kodak in January announced plans to cut another 3,500 to 4,500 jobs, as much as 18% of its work force, this year.

Kodak estimates that current supplies of the film will last until early this fall.

The last rolls of the film will be donated to George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, N.Y., which houses the world's largest collection of cameras and related artifacts. In addition, Steve McCurry - known for a 1985 photo of a young Afghan girl peering from the cover of National Geographic magazine - will shoot one of those last rolls and the images will be donated to Eastman House.

The Kodachrome output stoppage is another sign of the company's transition - by 2004, the company that marketed its first snapshot camera in 1888 had stopped making film cameras.

Kodak shares closed Friday at $2.85 and were inactive premarket. The stock is down 57% this year.

DeVore's geurilla campaign...

... for U.S. Senator from California is having some fun at his opponent's expense, Mrs., er... Senator Boxer:

David Letterman "Apologizes"... Not

Here's the LINK to the article. Below is his second explanation. You be the judge.


“All right, here – I’ve been thinking about this situation with Governor Palin and her family now for about a week – it was a week ago tonight, and maybe you know about it, maybe you don’t know about it. But there was a joke that I told, and I thought I was telling it about the older daughter being at Yankee Stadium. And it was kind of a coarse joke. There’s no getting around it, but I never thought it was anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure in fact that she is of legal age, 18. Yeah. But the joke really, in and of itself, can’t be defended. The next day, people are outraged. They’re angry at me because they said, ‘How could you make a lousy joke like that about the 14-year-old girl who was at the ball game?’ And I had, honestly, no idea that the 14-year-old girl, I had no idea that anybody was at the ball game except the governor and I was told at the time she was there with Rudy Giuliani … and I really should have made the joke about Rudy …” (audience applauds) “But I didn’t, and now people are getting angry and they’re saying, ‘Well, how can you say something like that about a 14-year-old girl, and does that make you feel good to make those horrible jokes about a kid who’s completely innocent, minding her own business,’ and, turns out, she was at the ball game. I had no idea she was there. So she’s now at the ball game, and people think that I made the joke about her. And, but still, I’m wondering, ‘Well, what can I do to help people understand that I would never make a joke like this?’ I’ve never made jokes like this as long as we’ve been on the air, 30 long years, and you can’t really be doing jokes like that. And I understand, of course, why people are upset. I would be upset myself.

“And then I was watching the Jim Lehrer ‘Newshour’ – this commentator, the columnist Mark Shields, was talking about how I had made this indefensible joke about the 14-year-old girl, and I thought, ‘Oh, boy, now I’m beginning to understand what the problem is here. It’s the perception rather than the intent.’ It doesn’t make any difference what my intent was, it’s the perception. And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it’s not a very good joke. And I’m certainly – ” (audience applause) “– thank you. Well, my responsibility – I take full blame for that. I told a bad joke. I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It’s not your fault that it was misunderstood, it’s my fault. That it was misunderstood.” (audience applauds) “Thank you. So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I’m sorry about it and I’ll try to do better in the future. Thank you very much.” (audience applause).


To me, this is just Letterman essentially saying, "My intent was OK (I was joking about Bristol), but because it was a flawed, poorly constructed (kind of coarse?) joke people heard it as aimed at Willow. My bad for the misunderstanding." He starts to go in the direction of what was objectionable when he says that the "joke, in and of itself, can't be defended." But after that he is off into a longer rationalization that at the core this was a Bristol - Willow confusion thing. This is not much more than a wordy explanation that repeats what he said in his first attempt to put out the fire. He does offer a direct apology of sorts to the Palin's and their two daughters. But unfortunately that is completely undercut by his obfuscation of what was offensive (the problem as he says), which was NOT to whom the joke was directed nor the perception of it, but the actual vile nature and content of the so-called joke... period, end of discussion!

Maybe Dave needs to go on an apology tour like Obama.

[Update] Governor Palin accepts Letterman's apology which is, at this point, the gracious thing to do. She knows it's time to move on.

Original post on his joke... Diddling Dave, Don Imus, And The Media

Follow up after the Letterman's first attempt to quell the growing anger and outrage... Letterman Joke Update: Man or Worm?

Good advice...

for all too many of us... in this SNL skit.

William Shatner SNL skit Get A Life 1986-12-20
Uploaded by efly2020. - Click for more funny videos.

Letterman Joke Update: Man or Worm?

Tonight, Dave Letterman explained his "jokes" about Sarah Palin's daughter...
“We were, as we often do, making jokes about people in the news and we made some jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter [Bristol]… and now they’re upset with me…” Letterman says on tonight’s show. “These are not jokes made about her 14-year-old daughter. I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl…. Am I guilty of poor taste? Yes. Did I suggest that it was okay for her 14-year-old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No.” Saying he hopes he’s “cleared part of this up,” Letterman extended an invitation to Palin to come on the show as a guest.

Pathetic. Way to not man up David. This fails miserably on several levels:

1. His writers got the items for this stand up drive-by hit on Palin's daughter from news accounts. There were no mentions of Bristol, the 18 year old daughter, being with Sarah Palin in New York. So...
2. At worst it was definitely about sliming the 14 year old Willow Palin.
3. At best, Letterman was willing to use Willow as a foil for sliming Bristol... but content to let anyone out there who "didn't get it" think it was about Willow.
4. So making jokes about raping an 18 year old single mother of a new born is OK?
5. On a non-related point, Letterman stopped being funny years ago.
6. As I said, this explanation by Letterman fails miserably, and...

Letterman fails miserably as a human being... more like a worm.

By the way here is the outrage being voiced by NOW and other defenders of women out there in the MSM:

Diddling Dave, Don Imus, And The Media...

Given the DEFCON 1 national fury in 2007, I wonder how Don Imus feels about the "equal" outrage filling the media over Letterman's calling Gov. Palin's underage daughter a "ho!"... and his other guttural flatulence regarding Sarah Palin and her daughter (here and here).

Oh, that's right, diddling Dave didn't use the word "ho" did he... hmmm. When am I going to learn the media's sophisticated rules of etiquette on how to slur, demean, and crap on a teenage girl... and otherwise engage in spewing misogynistic vulgarisms as diddling Dave has?!

And by the way, when will President Obama register his outrage about Letterman as he did regarding Imus shown in the first link above?

- the Management

Obama, Our First "Post-American" President?

I have been mulling over the question of whether Barack Obama is our first "post-American" president. By that I mean he may be the first person to occupy the Oval Office who seems more comfortable as a "world citizen" than as an American; who tends to reflexively see U.S. history mainly in terms of injustices perpetrated by America on various groups or nations rather than mainly a record of freedom and good. Any way, you get the idea. Here are several items that would lend support to that thesis:

1. His compulsive ongoing apology tour of the world, in which he panders to Muslim countries, ignores enemy threats such as Iran and North Korea, casts the U.S. use of the atom bomb to end WWII as an atrocity, equates Guantanamo which holds illegal combatants (as defined by the Geneva Convention) during wartime with the political prisoners of various totalitarian regimes around the world, bows to Saudi King Abdullah, reaches out to our enemies (Chavez, Iran, Hezzbulah, Hamas) while disrespecting longtime allies (Israel, England).

2. His nonchalant violation of the property rights of investors in GM and Chrysler, breaking legal contracts protected under the Constitution, and taking federal government ownership control of those two companies... all of which show a disregard for the rule of law and constitutionalism, the bedrock of our civil society.

3. His longtime close association with mentors (William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright) who, for years, have openly expressed hatred for America.

4. The ease with which he portrays America as a country that "tortures", that "imposes its values" on other countries, is "justly" opposed by our enemies due to our past actions.

Just wondering...