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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
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| Saturday, May 17th, 2008 |
clintswan
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12:38a |
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| Friday, May 16th, 2008 | |
wired_news
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11:30p |
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photographie
[ angrybunnyman ]
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10:43p |
Ghoul  30 second exposure at a 22 f to get the ghostly wandering. Then I distorted it in Photoshop along with some color toning to give it the murky hues and high contrast areas. Creepy. |
marys_second
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8:58p |
I'm wiped. Still haven't recovered from the drive home last night. I thought it would be fun to drive up to Hannibal, MO and then across to St Joseph on Highway 36 but I didn't realize that meant about 50 miles of two-lane road behind farmer after farmer with no where to go and no hurry to get there. Quick note to Missouri: I know the site is savemolives which should be read "Save MO Lives" but the voice in my head insists on reading it "Save 'Em Olives" and no amount of scolding will make it stop. For fifty miles I was alternating between "Die! Die! Die! Just get out of my way and Die!" and "Oooh, save 'em olives!" On an unrelated note, I absolutely love the customer I went to see. They were friendly, smart, informed, clever, engaged, open-minded, collaborative --- all kinds of good adjectives. It was so refreshing. |
photographie
[ feelyoufalling ]
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9:55p |
Nature Pictures I have some pictures that I wanted to share with you guys. :) Credit to feelyoufalling if you want to use, please! ( Here You Go! ) Current Mood:  okayCurrent Music: South Park |
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wired_news
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10:15p |
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| Saturday, May 17th, 2008 |
caddyman
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12:23a |
Load of old cobblers... Today I was on a course all day. It was a quick, rough and ready introduction to Microsoft Project Manager. Useful for me in as much as I project manage several things each year, but pointless because with usual departmental efficiency, I still do not have the application on my PC and am not likely to anytime soon. Already the benefits of the course are sliding from my brain and by the time I am in a position to use the software it will have gone completely. Still, I was home a little after 5.15 and had a free lunch, so can't complain. I have just got around to downloading some photos off my phone. I took them on Monday while I was on the train coming back from seeing the family in Shropshire. I wish I'd remembered to take my digital camera, but there we are. A couple of views of The Wrekin.   I always know that I am near my roots when I see The Wrekin standing larger than life looking out across the north Shropshire plain. It makes me feel as though I am at home and safe. For those as don't know it, the hill is not particularly big, but it dominates the area around it - especially to the north. There is an Iron Age hill fort on the top, which the MOD once graced with a radar station. That has long since gone and there is a TV transmitter instead. The Wrekin is a beacon hill, one of those set in readiness for the Spanish Armada that never landed in Elizabethan times. I recall the becon being lit for the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977, and then moments later, seeing another beacon flaring on the Welsh border, miles away as the chain spread across the country. I guess that was where Tolkein got the idea for the beacons of Gondor. There's a few legends about the formation of the Wrekin; my favourite involves a stupid giant, a wily cobbler and a grudge against the citizens of Shrewsbury. Many Shropshire legends involve a supernatural being being pissed off with the citizens of Shrewsbury. More than one involves a wily cobbler. What was it in medieval times about shoes, the town and revenge? |
chrishansenhome
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12:12a |
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| Friday, May 16th, 2008 | |
wired_news
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9:10p |
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romney
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11:28p |
Problem: New Covent Garden Mushroom Risotto does not have enough salt thanks to namby-pamby ideas about health.
Solution: Stir in a can of chopped anchovy fillets.
Result: Yum. |
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wired_news
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8:10p |
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wired_news
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7:52p |
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tim1965
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6:51p |
 The American postmodern artist and sculptor Robert Rauschenberg died two days ago. I'm conflicted about Rauschenberg's art. I don't think it goes anywhere. I look at Jackson Pollock's art, and can see that it's not art but statement. The big break in art traditions came with Impressionism in the 1860s. The Impressionists knew that the great artistic movements of the Renaissance -- Mannerism (Leonardo, Raphael), Baroque (Bernini), Roccoco (Chippendale), Neoclassical (David), Romanticism (Delacroix, JMW Turner, early Goya), Realism -- all had focused on what we now call "classical art." The rules of the art world which then were revolutionary but today are considered tame were all common to these schools of art: Perspective, depth, realism, the use of sources of light, shadow, geometry. Impressionism was the first great leap foward after the Renaissance. Impressionists made great study of the way brush strokes, the mixing of color, and the layering of paint combined to create the great visual effects of the Old Masters like Michelangelo, Rembrandt, da Vinci, Raphael, and others. Advances in the science of optics also led to a revolution in the understanding of how the eye fools the brain into seeing patterns. A series of dots, for example, becomes a line when seen from a distance. The Impressionists sought to mimic what the eye saw in order to more closely arrive at the "truth" of an image or painting. They focused on light at the expense of shadow, and sought to imbue their art with bright color. (The great Renaissance masters, in contrast, had focused heavily on dark expanses of shadow and just a few images rising out of the dark -- a face, a hand, the tuft of a feather in the cap.) Impressionism fractured and broke. The Pointillists refused to stroke, adamantly insisting that only small, tiny dots of color be used to create the impression of form (much as a comic strip does today). The Symbolists kept the technical style of the Impressionists, but worked backward to symbolic imagery rather than realism. Their art is full of dramatic poses, symbolic visions (angels dancing on snow in a graveyard), and more -- almost a new iconography for an agnostic world.  By 1900, the concept of form was being abandoned. The Cubists reduced all form to basic geometric forms. The Fauvists broke from the Pointillists and used broad, almost wild brush strokes, simple lines, and bold colors. The Dadaists reacted to the horror and irrationality of World War I by emphasizing art which was offensive, raw, irrational. Soon, the Surrealists had taken this even further. The Art Nouveau movement went in the opposite direction, emphasizing the smooth, clean curves of modern materials like steel and chrome. They married the modern to the "natural," decorating their works with flowers, blossoms, leaves, vines, and such. The Bauhaus movement rejected the "arts and crafts" of nature, and focused instead on mere line. (The classic "glass and steel box" of the skyscraper is the epitome of the Bauhaus movement.) Art Deco did not quite reject the natural, but heavily stylized it. Art Deco aimed for the soaring, the fantastic, the powerful, the fast. Futurism took this even further. After World War II, the Expressionists attempted to end the divisive war between rationality and irrationality, between the real and unnatural, between the crude and the refined. The Expressionists said that technical style didn't matter; what mattered was getting at the angst and emotion informing the painting. Expressionism was yet another break. Did technique matter??? Artists began to look at painting not as a flat surface, but as sculpture in miniature. There were peaks and valleys, and shadow was literally created by paint. Was the surface of the painting important? Some said no. Mark Rothko and Joan Miro said that the surface should be eliminated, and only flat paint used. Get away from the sculptural elements, and make the surface as flat and even as can be. Rothko, for example, highlighted only the very broadest geometrical forms (squares, rectangles) and the subtlest of color changes.  But others said yes. Go back and look at the way the Renaissance masters made art, they said. It's sculpture, not art. In fact, they said, get away from the idea that art is about images. It's about that sculpture. That's what Jackson Pollock aimed at with his layers and layers of paint. Mounds of paint. Scraped paint. Paint piled high, paint laid low, paint mushed together, paint in distinct layers. Paint as sculpture, not paint as image. Some pushed the boundary in a different direction. Roy Lichtenstein's "comic book" paintings -- with their gigantic cartoon images and obvious color dots -- harkened back to Pointillism...although writ large. Some said that Impressionism's focus on realism was right, but that reality now was composed of things like Campbell's Soup cans, Marilyn Monroe, and "found objects," all of which should be incorporated into art and form the basis of art rather than have art attempt to imitate life. That's what Pop Art did. Rauschenberg was part of the Pop Art movement. Much of his art wasn't painting, per se, but sculpture and paint mixed together. He sculpted using found objects, he painted using found objects, and he did mixed-media works with found objects. But where does this leave us, artistically? Artists have argued incessantly over whether art is rational or irrational, emotional or intellectual, real or unreal. They have deconstructed art to the point where they have focused only on technique, or only on form, or only on color, or only on surface, or only on image. To paraphrase Francis Fukuyama: Is this the end of art? Is everything from here on out just part of a school which we've already seen before? Some would argue that existing media are dead. Yes, they say, painting is dead. Sculpture is dead. Film is dead. Instead, "landscape art" (like Christos) is the only medium which is vibrant. "Video art" is the only art which is alive. Some have tried to take art in new, postmodern directions. Jeff Koons, for example, married the Italian gay porn starlet Cicciolina, then divorced her after a bitter and lengthy court battle. To get back at her, he did 10-foot high photo-realistic fiberglass sculptures of himself fucking Cicciolina. The art is postmodern, because it speaks in a parable: His love for her, once real, is now bitterness. But in his bitterness, he depicts the love he once felt. Only, he's using it to get back at her and humiliate her. Postmodernism is about the alienating paradoxes in our world. Jewelry ads in ghettos. White suburban kids imitating black ghetto thug rappers. Rich people slumming. City boys pretending to be rural farmers. Smart people pretending to be idiots. The real imitating the unreal. The religious seeking wealth. Koon's art is definitely paradoxical, and unreal, and therefore postmodern. But isn't that just as much a dead-end as any other "school" of post-Impressionist art? Is art really dead?????? Or maybe art is about vision now. Personal vision. But how can anyone critique that? Perhaps art as a perspective on the world is merely personal now. Perhaps there is no "language" such as realism, impressionism, modernism, abstract, just personal vision. Can that really be true?? Has art's grand experiment -- which extends back to the primitive iconography of the Byzantines, the symbolism of the Zoroastrians and Buddhists, and the idealized realism of the Greeks -- in finding a language to uncover truth or meaning really failed????? It's why I'm so conflicted about Rauschenberg's art. I think it's pleasant enough and somewhat interesting. But isn't it just a dead-end? As fascinating and appealing as it may be to me aesthetically, is it a dead-end artistically????? |
photographie
[ nk_aoede ]
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4:35p |
( full size )
some ugly commercial building in valparaiso, chile.
please excuse the bad stitching :o |
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wired_news
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7:00p |
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wired_news
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6:00p |
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| Saturday, May 17th, 2008 |
photographie
[ yaglis ]
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12:06a |
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| Friday, May 16th, 2008 | |
wired_news
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6:30p |
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wired_news
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6:00p |
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wired_news
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6:00p |
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wired_news
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6:00p |
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wired_news
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5:40p |
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wired_news
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5:30p |
How Clear Channel Will Change Deal-Making http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/291794903/portfolio_0516 http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2008/05/portfolio_0516
News from Portfolio.com
When credit was easy, private equity's multibillion-dollar buyout frenzy was like a great party: The champagne was flowing and no one was too concerned about who was picking up the tab.
After the summer's credit crunch, the party ended. Some deals collapsed. One that may survive is the buyout of the radio-station chain Clear Channel Communications after the private equity buyers and six banks reached a settlement this week over $22 billion in financing.
In the sober light of today, are there lessons for dealmakers from Clear Channel?
Yes, lawyers say.
"We need to look at ways to get the financing lined up and locked in sooner—potentially right away, right after or before the merger agreement," says Marilyn Sonnie, a partner with the New York office of Jones Day, who advised Harman International on its failed buyout with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., which was terminated last August.
In the case of Clear Channel, the financing for the deal was memorialized in a May 2007 commitment letter that left open many terms, heading toward a closing.
By late fall and winter, those open terms, according to Clear Channel and the two private equity firms sponsoring the leveraged buyout, became an opportunity to inject "poisonous terms" to jettison the financing deal. Two lawsuits in New York and Texas followed.
Defending the lawsuits, the six banks, led by Deutsche Bank and Citigroup, were put in the bizarre position of arguing that their standard operating procedure—the use of a commitment letter to memorialize financing—could not be enforced.
The New York case sought to hold the banks to $22 billion in financing—"specific performance" in the legal jargon. In one deliciously schizophrenic line, the banks' motion seeking summary judgment dismissing the claims said: "The commitment letter is a binding preliminary agreement that left open numerous terms to be negotiated over time by the parties." It is Contracts 101 that an agreement with open terms is an illusory contract. Leaving the law aside, taken away from the litigation, the argument has the hint of commercial suicide for its relationships in the marketplace.
The banks were confident that they were going to win the summary judgment motion, but Justice Helen Freedman of the New York State Supreme Court said that the breach of contract claims could go to trial. But her opinion pretty much evenly divided the risks of going to trial between both sides. She described the plaintiffs' evidence that the defendants had threatened to refuse to finance the deal unless they agreed to "poisonous" terms as "not compelling."
The deal lawyers who read her May 7 opinion had one word for it: She wrote a "settlement document." It offset the early wins by Clear Channel in the Texas case, accusing the banks of "tortuous interference" with the merger agreement—a claim with potentially unlimited damages, filed in the state known for the landmark Pennzoil verdict. (Clear Channel even tapped Joe Jamail, who won the $11 billion Pennzoil case in 1985, as its lead counsel. For a peek at Jamail in action, watch this video.)
By Monday, May 12, Freedman's tactic seemed to have worked. Court was adjourned and CNBC's David Faber reported on a deal to settle the litigations. The next day at 2 p.m., the plaintiffs' first witness, John Connaughton, a managing director at Bain, took the stand and offered a rare glimpse into the private equity world, suggesting the banks were off the reservation, especially in changing language known in the industry as "sponsor precedent," lingo for "terms customer" in these deals.
The clean-cut Connaughton, whose youthful appearance does not show the stress of 19 years in private equity at Bain, was a strong witness on direct, and offered plain English translations of the language of private equity to Freeman with ease. (Even though he had not slept in two nights.) Connaughton would have returned to the stand Wednesday morning to testify that the banks had drawn a line in the sand, restricting use of loan proceeds to pay off Clear Channel's preexisting debts.
But that never happened. The $36-per-share deal, down from the original $39.20-per-share deal, signed late Tuesday night requires the banks and the buyers to put cash into an escrow account to fund the deal while Clear Channel seeks shareholder and regulatory approvals.
An escrow fund is probably an unrealistic option for obtaining certainty outside the context of litigation. But other aspects of the amended deal, as memorialized in an Securities and Exchange Commission filing by Clear Channel on Wednesday, could be adopted by other deals, to make sure they in fact close in a timely fashion. For instance, Clear Channel shareholders will get an increased price if the deal closes after the third quarter.
But lawyers predict the protracted battle will alter the way the players approach these deals in the future: "The way the litigation arose and was concluded will have implications regarding the way in which lenders and private equity firms structure the terms of the debt in future transactions and the way in which the parties—sellers, private equity buyers and lenders—will protect themselves from uncertainty until closing," says Michael Hefter, a securities lawyer with the New York office of Orrick.
But Elizabeth Nowicki, a corporate law professor at Tulane Law School, is not so sure how much things will really change. "A target now knows they need to get something more specific from a bank than a commitment letter," she says.
On the other hand, "the banks want no specific performance" from their end. "The question is whether we are going to see any change. I don't know if we are going to end up with documents or deals that are more clear. This case has highlighted that there is so much room for play and ambiguity and litigation."
It has been a long 18 months since the Clear Channel deal was announced, time in which its management and employees have been districted and its stock has inched down. "It's very hard to run a company and focus on making profits when you are in limbo," says Jones Day's Sonnie.
And Nowicki, for one, doesn't even think the saga is yet over.
"This deal may never close," she said.
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wired_news
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4:50a |
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theferrett
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2:03p |
Strangeness You know, I always thought I was odd because I had this off-hand temptation to set up a waterboarding station in the garage, just to see how bad it could be. I'd have someone set me up in it, and see how long I could last - "Not long," would be my assumption - and then if any of my friends were curious, I'd give it a shot on them. And then I'd have a handy tool for political debate! Every time someone said, "No, waterboarding's not torture," people in the neighborhood would say, "Well, why don't we jaunt over to Ferrett's house?" and the fun would begin. I suspect many a conservative might change his stripes after a little session on Ye Olde Garage Waterboarde. But really, I'm just curious to see how much I could endure - but I haven't done it because, well, the danger risk is pretty high, and I'm fairly lazy when it comes to building torture devices in my back yard. I thought I was alone. But today, I found a BDSM aficionado who is going to get waterboarded because she's curious to see whether she can beat the CIA operative failure rate of fourteen seconds, and suddenly I feel a little more normal. Which I probably shouldn't. But hey, that's the Sensate in me. (EDIT: The woman in question is ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) absolute_tash, and she also eats fire. This is just one of many reasons why she is pretty awesome.) |
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