Published on 14 May 2014
My husband, Scott Miller, shot this video with a Canon 60d Camera using a Pixel TW-282/E3 Wireless remote timer set at 20 second intervals. He shot 1600 pictures from 7:00am until 5:00pm and compressed the 10 hours into 3 minutes and 30 seconds. He even took the day off work to help :). The music in this video was found on the free YouTube music library. It is a song called Cruisin’, by Scott Vestal, off of the compilation album, Bluegrass ’95. To use this video in a commercial player or in broadcasts, please email licensing@storyful.com
September 10, 2014
Ohio Amish Barn Raising – May 13th, 2014 in 3 Minutes and 30 seconds
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NATO’s “aim” problem
James Holmes explains why “aim” isn’t good enough for NATO members:
The Naval Diplomat is not from Missouri, America’s Show-Me State. But I’m in a show-me state of mind following last week’s NATO summit in another Newport — Newport, Wales. Lofty words were said. The summit communiqué pledges, for instance, to restore some sanity to defense spending.
NATO long ago fixed the standard for defense spending at 2 percent of GDP. Few meet the standard, but at Newport the NATO-European powers put everyone on notice that they’re really, truly serious about it. The small minority that already comply — Great Britain (for the moment) and Greece, alongside the United States — will “aim to continue to do so.” The majority that don’t vow to arrest further slippage. And they will “aim to increase defense expenditure in real terms as GDP grows,” and “aim to move towards the 2% guideline within a decade,” helping field viable forces.
Aim being the keyword — or, more accurately, the key diplomatic weasel word — in these passages. How many European allies will fulfill their commitment, and how many will avail themselves of the escape clause? Barry Pavel of the Atlantic Council observes charitably that the uptick in budgets is “not going to happen across the entire alliance, but it’s useful for framing incentives for some nations to start to contribute more.” And that tepid prediction comes from someone who’s presumably a NATO enthusiast.
So let me get this straight. NATO-Europe resolutely promises to try … to build up to a level that barely qualifies as peacetime defense spending … over the next decade … if GDPs expand to permit it. Wow. As a matter of alliance management, think about the message the Newport communiqué telegraphs. To us in North America, it indicates that Europe sees itself inhabiting entirely tranquil surroundings, untroubled by anything like, say, Russian aggression against an Eastern European neighbor.
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Katie Nolan – Why boycotting the NFL because of Ray Rice is not the answer
I haven’t watched the latest video of Ray Rice being an embarrassment to humankind, nor do I intend to. I think the NFL has made major errors in how they’ve handled the whole situation, and I don’t think it’s over yet, even with Rice out of football (because Rice is certainly not the only offender … he’s just the one we know the most about right now). Katie Nolan offers her insight into why the NFL still doesn’t understand how seriously they’ve fumbled this issue:
Update: USA Today‘s Christine Brennan reports on why the NFL did not act more strongly to the first video.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said he never saw the elevator video of Ray Rice striking his then-fiancee until Monday morning, but when he did, he found it “sickening,” he told USA TODAY Sports in a telephone interview Tuesday evening.
He also said that Rice and his representatives told him a different story about what happened in the Atlantic City elevator than what he saw on the video. While he would not reveal those details, he called them “ambiguous.”
“There was no ambiguity when you saw that tape (Monday),” he said. “It was sickening. It was appalling. It was clear that it was not consistent with what they presented to us in the hearing and we needed to take the right step which is to indefinitely suspend him.”
Goodell said he and his staff saw the first video in February, the one in which Rice is seen dragging Janay Palmer’s listless body out of the elevator. They “suspected” there was another, and tried to obtain it.
“We asked for it on multiple occasions,” Goodell said. “We asked law enforcement and they were not willing to provide it. I think they were under some legal requirements not to provide it, as I understand it.”
A spokesman for the New Jersey state attorney general addressed on Tuesday the issue of why the video was not released to the NFL.
“It’s grand jury material. It would have been improper — in fact, illegal — for the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office to provide it to an outside/private/non law-enforcement entity,” Paul Loriquet said, according to ABC News.
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Ontario’s bid to impose a Netflix or YouTube tax
Michael Geist reports on the Ontario government’s pitch to the CRTC to impose additional tax burdens on foreign online video services:
As CRTC Chair Jean-Pierre Blais anticipated, the Government of Ontario’s call for regulation of online video services attracted considerable attention, including comments from Canadian Heritage Minister Shelly Glover roundly dismissing the possibility. Glover stated:
“We will not allow any moves to impose new regulations and taxes on internet video that would create a Netflix and Youtube Tax.”
Last night, I received an email from a spokesperson for Ontario Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport Michael Coteau that tried to soften the call for online video regulation. The spokesperson stated:
“The presentation today provided important elements for CRTC consideration as it undertakes its review. The government is not advocating for any CanCon changes, or that any specific regulations be imposed on new media TV, until more evidence is available.”
I asked for clarification on what “more evidence” means. The spokesperson responded that there will be over 100 presentations at the CRTC hearing and that all need to be heard from before moving forward.Yet a review of the Ontario government submission to the CRTC and its prepared remarks yesterday make it clear that the government strongly supported immediate regulatory reforms and that the need for “evidence” is actually a reference to revenue thresholds that would trigger mandatory payments by foreign online video providers.
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Ruining royal reputations – it didn’t start on Fleet Street
In Maclean’s, Patricia Treble reviews a new book by Jonathan Beckman, called How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace Affair:
Three years before revolutionaries toppled Louis XVI and his Austrian-born wife, Marie Antoinette, France was mesmerized with a different tumult. Cardinal Louis de Rohan, scion of one of the nation’s grandest families, was in court, accused of stealing a famously expensive necklace from jewellers who’d created it. He claimed he’d acted at the behest of the queen, who then reneged on paying for the gaudy 2,800-carat piece. The resultant scandal solidified Marie Antoinette’s reputation for unbounded extravagance.
Yet, as Jonathan Beckman, explains in a masterful new account of the diamond necklace affair, nothing is as it appeared. There are fake royals, forged letters and disappearing gems as well as kidnappings, trysts and even a duel involving poisoned pigs. If the tale was fictional, it would be dismissed as an overwrought fantasy, yet in Beckman’s hands, its machinations unfold as an audacious caper that will enthrall readers much as the original events captivated Europe.
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QotD: Smoking and drinking
Apart from all the other arguments, you’re a fool to smoke if you like the taste of drink. It isn’t the cigarette you smoke with your glass of wine or whisky that damages the taste of it it’s all the ones you smoked yesterday and the day before and last week. Your senses are chronically anaesthetized. Really, smokers could afford to consider what they’re certainly missing as well as what they’re in danger of getting.
After much pondering I think I understand a basic reason why a glass of something reviving is so welcome in the early evening. Partly, of course, it’s just that, to revive, to relax, but its also a convenient way of becoming a slightly different person from your daytime self, less methodical, less calculating — however you put it, somebody different, and the prospect of that has helped to make the day tolerable. And, conversely, it’s not having that prospect that makes the day look grim to the poor old ex-boozer, more than missing the alcohol as such.
Changing for dinner used to be another way of switching roles. Coming home from work has a touch of the same effect. Writers haven’t got that advantage — when they finish work they’re at home already. So perhaps they need that glass of gin extra badly. Any excuse is better than none.
Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis, 2008.
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