Pure Greed

I was contacted recently by someone claiming to be a sales manager for “WRSP Events” asking to use this photo:
White River State Park at Dawn

On 12 Feb 13, 3.53PM EST WRSP Events said:

*Please do note, I did mention you are more than welcome to watermark this image. That would be free publicity for you.

Otherwise, do send me information on how much you would charge for a download of this image (un-watermarked)

My reply:

Watermarks do not pay my mortgage.
Watermarks do not pay for my groceries.
Watermarks do not pay my medical bills.
Watermarks do not pay for my van payments.
Watermarks do not pay for Christmas presents for my grandchildren.
Watermarks do not pay for my 40 years of experience.
Watermarks do not pay for my camera gear.

Exposure? I have over 1 million views on my Flickr account. I’ve sold many photos to reputable businesses. I don’t need free publicity.

For a business as big as yours, asking for free photography is simply stupid and greedy. Don’t think I or anyone else with access to Google doesn’t know Live Nation is Ticketmaster? I can download your 10K and see over a billion dollars in revenues for over 3 years running!

And yet you seem to think you are entitled to poach on working photographer’s output for free. Do you have any idea how insulting that is? How greedy? How tone-deaf?

I’ll be posting this letter and my response on my blog and on Facebook. I’d prefer any further interactions be in public.

-End Quote-

WRSP Events is part of Live Nation. Which owns Ticketmaster. Which has revenues of over a billion dollars a year. Greedy? It’s absolutely astounding!

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The New Gettysburg Address

What would the Gettysburg Address be like, if given in 2011, and to the same level of honesty that Lincoln was used to?

“One Score and ten years ago Ronald Reagan transformed on this continent a new Order, conceived in Privilege and dedicated to the proposition that all real men are created wealthy. Now we are engaged in a great class struggle, testing whether that Order or any Order so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that Order might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, poor and lower-class who struggled here have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the privileged rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored peons we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this Order under God shall have a new birth of riches, and that government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy shall not perish from the earth.”

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Christians (and others, too) are delusional.

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Funny, if true. Oh wait, it is?

A public union employee, a tea party activist, and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle of it.
The CEO takes 11 cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, ‘Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie.’

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Pure greed.

I wrote the following email to HarperCollins today:

Let me start out by saying that I am one of those unusual people who actually PURCHASES books for my, my children’s, and grandchildren’s pleasure and education.

I will no longer be purchasing any HarperCollins imprints until such time that you publicly renounce your odious and greedy policy of ‘expiring’ e-books. This is an obvious and blatant money-grab, and our libraries are strained enough as it is. I see it as unbelievably arrogant and self-serving at the expense of those with lesser power.

Sincerely,

Philip Jern

I read, and influence others to do so. I encourage you to write or otherwise contact HarperCollins and express your disdain for their policy of causing e-books to ‘expire’ after 26 checkouts.

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Small things amuse me.

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How to boot a Steam Locomotive

or, How to Hostle without really tiring.

NOTE: I originally wrote this in 1990, and posted it on USENET in rec.railroads shortly thereafter. Fast-forward 20 years and it appeared on the MAKE magazine blog, proving that the Internet is forever, it seems. The San Diego Railroad Museum has hosted a version for many years, as well.

It’s 3:30 in the morning, as my alarm goes off. Ouch. Today, it’s my turn to get old 153 up to speed for Sunday operations. I drag myself out of bed, bleary-eyed, and shower quickly. An hour later, the gravel in the parking lot crunches beneath my tires as I drive up to the gate of the museum.
ex-FEC 153

I take my coffee and rolls with me as I open the trainshed, and flick on the lights. There, three feet away, are the cylinders of the 153, a 1922 product of the American Locomotive Company. The sight never fails to astonish me. One hundred and eighty-four tons of people-magnet, as my friend Al is fond of describing her. I walk down the left side of the locomotive, admiring her Brobdingnagian proportions inside the building, and climb up the gangway into the cab. Time to get to work. Continue reading

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Just how much more evidence do you need?

I urge everyone to read this post over at Boing Boing. This person’s ignorant attacks and racist panderings are a cancer on the body politic.

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This is important

If you are reading this, this is why you aren’t doing so well. Republicans and the rich are screwing you… Are you feeling loved yet?

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Groped by the TSA

In my continuing effort to be labeled a “Domestic Extremist” by the TSA, here’s another cute video:

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