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Does Dark-Skinned Equal Blackness?

We have wondered here in the past about the cultural constrictions we press into skin color, and a related and deeper issue is one of darker skin — Black skin in particular — and how it is socially demonized by negative, historical, intellectual and emotional touchstones associated with “Blackness.”

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Nothing New Under the Sun and the Cannibalization of Ideas

Is there such a thing as an original idea? Or have all inspirations already been had? Are all thoughts actually the result of cannibalization?

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Uncommon Touchstones: Yearning for the Seventies

Alright, I confess. I love the Seventies. The post-Vietnam 1970’s formed me as a person and provided an aesthetic sense and a moral core.

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A Mirror of Moments: The Wayback Machine Review

There is nothing quite like facing a year-by-year, moment-to-moment mirror of who you used to be and what you used to stand for and how you chose to release your aesthetic on the world.

The Interet Archive’s Wayback Machine is a living testimony to the mist of your past and with its bony, pointed finger you are shown What Used To Be and how Ye Shall Discovereth The Truth of Who Ye Are and the horrors of where you’ve been.

Okay, maybe I’m being melodramatic, but if you’ve had a website domain for any amount of time you can travel back in living history via the Wayback Machine and see what you did and maybe even wonder what were you thinking.

Some of the archived domain pages on the Wayback Machine don’t load and sometimes text characters and images are unavailable. The archive still creates an amazing snapshot in time.

November 27, 1996

Let’s start our journey back with my Boles.com website as our exemplar while we “stroll through the years” of my design for that site. Since Boles.com is my main site I have always wanted it to be clean and really fast. I never cared about animation or Flash or any other goo-gahs to make a site jump and sparkle.

“Internet Insider” became “GO INSIDE Magazine” and “Boles: The Mag” was also folded into GO INSIDE Mag. I liked the text link for my “Resume” because it took you to a text page while everyone else at that time was posting Resumes-As-Images. You clicked on the metered stamp to send me email.

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Blame it on the Jews: A History of Hating

With the recent explosions of vitriol from Mel Gibson against the Jews in general and with the new insurgency against Israel proper by Hezbollah in particular, one begins to wonder about the how and the why of blaming the world’s troubles on the Jews. I decided to do some quick Google searches on historically paired stereotypical keywords to see what kind of hate against the Jews was being officially published on the internet and the results were hateful but not surprising.

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Sony Handycam HDR-HC3 Review

A year ago a High-Definition (HD) video camera would have cost you $5,000.00 USD; six months ago the same HD camera would have cost you $3,000.00 USD; today, the Sony Handycam HDR-HC3 HD camera costs just over $1,000.00 USD.

Sony HDV image

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Top Ten Reasons I Hate My MacBook Pro

Yesterday we discussed the Top Ten Reasons I Love my MacBook Pro and today, to be fair, we look at the darker side of the MacBook Pro in the definitive Top Ten List of Hates:

1. Heat: The 17-inch MacBook I have runs hot. Because the case is made of metal the heat goes directly from inside the machine to the case and outside right to your hands. I don’t mind the heat so much but, compared to my other Windows laptops made of plastic, I wonder if this burning MacBook metal is a better or worse sensation or if my wondering is merely being sensational.

2. Whine: It seems many MacBook Pros have an annoying high-pitched whine that Apple cannot seem to fix or even make it clear if they think the problem exists or not. I don’t mind the whine so much — many blame it on the new Intel chip in the MacBook Pros and Intel blames Apple and Apple says nothing — because I always have iTunes playing, the TV is on, the radio is turned up and my Vornado fans are blowing full blast. My poor cat, however, refuses to sit on my lap now. The whine hurts his ears and in a quiet room it hurts mine, too. I can’t imagine using this MacBook Pro in a library where quiet is the mandate of the day: I’d be tossed out on my dual-core.

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An Apple Through the Windows: My MacBooks Review

Last week in my article, MacBook Questions from a Windows Heathen, I asked some questions about the new MacBook line of laptops from Apple computing. I have been using Windows computers since the rise of Windows 3.11.

My previous experience with Apple has been limited to the first generation Newton which I loved so much that Apple used a quote of mine in a press conference but without attributing it to me or asking my permission. I had posted on a CompuServe forum explaining why the Newton was “touching the future today.”

I believed in that technology then and the Apple Newton set the stage and started the trend for personalized, portable computing now. I have also used a first generation iPod and I have used iTunes and QuickTime.

I don’t know much about Apple computers so if there are some things in this review you do not understand or that are wrong, please let me know. After using the MacBook for a couple of days, my plan was to make a permanent move away from Windows and become a MacBoy today and forever. I will let you know my decision about moving from Windows to Mac at the conclusion of this article.

One of the great things about the new Intel-powered MacBooks is you can dual boot into Windows and Mac OS X on the same machine so you, in theory anyway, do not have to make a choice of Operating System preference.
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26 Cornelia Street

26 Cornelia Street is an apartment house on a street that is exactly one block long in the heart of Greenwich Village in New York City. 26 Cornelia is on the right side of the image below and the first of the three green canopies marks the front door. You are seeing the entire length of Cornelia Street in this image:

26 Cornelia Street

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Floaters and Flashers

For the past 20 years my floaters and flashers have been making me crazy! They’ve calmed down a bit in the last couple of years but they are still bothersome and my eye doctor says nothing can be done to fix them.

Floaters and flashers are a natural part of getting older though a sudden onset of either could mean retina trouble and you should see your ophthalmologist immediately if you experience floaters and flashers in an unordinary way.

If you are lucky enough to not have a clue what “floaters and flashers” means consider yourself blessed and clear-eyed and get out of my sight!

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