Le Huffington Post

Recently I came across the website of Le Huffington’s Post French-language edition. Its editorial content is under the control of Anne Sinclair, wife (now separated) of former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. She is paid to identify and publish the most thought-provoking bloggers.

The Huffington Post is chockfull of absorbing essays written by a wide assortment of independent bloggers.
What is most interesting about those stories though is the fact that none of these writers are paid a dime.
They work or free.
We are now seeing the dawn of an insidious and dangerous form of servitude variously called internship, experience or “exposure”.

One of the most successful outfits to benefit from this new form of bondage is Le Huffington Post.
It has fired over 200 editorial staffers to replace them with unpaid bloggers.
These people will spend a great deal of time writing some interesting pieces and Le Huffington Post will publish some of them (and reap the benefits) without paying its authors a dime.
Bloggers go along with this new form of slavery to benefit from what Le Post calls “exposure”. The roundabout way of being “discovered” by the public and being properly compensated.

But it is a kind of “catch-22”. You can write forever and never be discovered, or you can write and be published but without being compensated. Lasting obscurity or recognition without monetary rewards, what is a blogger to do?
Exposure in theory should lead to great paying jobs, but it rarely does.
It is an old ploy that has been used in many fields to take advantage of eager but obscure talents.
And this way of doing business sets a dangerous precedent. “Interns” in many fields are already exploited and unceremoniously dumped at the end of their contract. What’s next? Permanent interns?

Le Post has been sued by many for making enormous profits without compensating anybody for a fair share of its earnings.
The Post is merely saying that it is acting as an aggregator: a wholesale broker of a service, who packages and sells its products to consumers.

It might be so, but when does exposure start paying the rent?
Exposure does not feed its man, and recognition without monetary rewards should not become the new norm.

Anne Sinclair, ma chère, if you want to publish my fabulous stuff, you will have to woo me and compensate me adequately.
And flowers and Champagne would not hurt!

Alain

 

Ivanhoe

Les élections américaines auront lieu dans une quarantaine de jours et certains électeurs se disent encore indécis quand au choix de notre prochain président.
Pour moi c’est clair.
Si vous gagnez plus de $250 000 par an et êtes soucieux de laisser vos chevaux de course à vos enfants, vous votez pour Romney. Si vous gagnez beaucoup moins, vous votez pour Obama.
Voilà. C’est ce qu’on appelle en anglais un « no-brainer », quelque chose de tellement simple que cela ne demande absolument aucun effort mental.

Pour moi, le drame qui se joue en ce moment sur la scène politique américaine me fait penser a Ivanhoé, un des romans favoris de mon enfance.

D’un côté, vous avez les Normands (les Républicains) et de l’autre les Saxons (les Démocrates). Les Normands sont nantis et veulent le demeurer, les Saxons sont pauvres et entendent rogner les privilèges des Normands.

Romney est le Prince Jean, soutenu par ses barons (Brian de Bois-Guilbert, Maurice de Bracy et Reginald Front-de-Bœuf) et Obama est le Chevalier Noir (ayant combattu ces quatre dernières années en Terre Sainte) et soutenu par Ivanhoé, Robin des Bois et ses nombreux compagnons d’infortune.

Les Républicains, faute d’avoir pu s’imposer lors des dernières élections (et bloquant subséquemment toute initiative présidentielle) se sont jurés d’avoir la tête d’Obama.
“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

C’est ce qu’a déclaré toute honte bue Mitch McConnell (Sénateur du Kentucky) le 27 Octobre 2010. Rien a voir avec le bien du pays, rien qu’une hostilité irraisonnée.

Les Républicains vouent une haine viscérale au Président et beaucoup suspectent que cette haine est en grande partie due au teint du Président.

Je n’ai aucune sympathie particulière pour les Noirs, mais quand à choisir entre un milliardaire blanc peu sympathique aux besoins de la classe ouvrière, et un noir soucieux d’un certain nivellement entre les nantis et les démunis, je choisis sans hésitation le candidat le plus foncé.

Tous les messages républicains payés à grands coups de dollars par quelques milliardaires reclus, ne sont destinés qu’à berner les ignorants, les gogos et les patriotes d’opérette.

Et je n’arrive toujours pas comprendre pourquoi certains Américains, pauvres et en chômage quasi-permanent persistent a vouloir mettre dans la Maison Blanche un émule de George Bush, plus préoccupé a sauvegarder les privilèges d’une élite minoritaire que d’améliorer le sort de ses concitoyens.

Serait-ce là encore un des vestiges d’une émancipation noire mal digérée par le coté perdant de la Guerre Civile de 1861?

Alain

 

Sound and sound bars

I love black and white movies. Especially those made during the Studio System era (1925 to about 1950) when studios controlled every aspects of the movie making process. They held sway over scripts, actors, directors, soundtracks, everything but the actors’ most intimate thoughts.

Under the Studio System, actors were groomed from head to toe and taught how to dress, how to walk, how to dance, how to become polished performers. When “talkies” appeared (around 1927), a good voice and a clear diction became indispensable tools of an actor’s panoply.

In those days, directors paid great attention to the quality of the movie soundtrack and the sound man was a very important cog of the filmmaking process. Directors did not hesitate to do multiple takes of a scene if the sound quality was not satisfactory, and many silent era careers floundered due to unpalatable voices or poor diction.

Today paradoxically, with a proliferation of sophisticated recording devices, the sound quality of many movies is noticeably inferior to the soundtracks of the Studio System era. This is partly due to the fact that nowadays, look is more important than sound, and that some actors are not polished enough to deliver their lines properly.
And flat screen television sets tiny loudspeakers tend to exacerbate the audio problem. They are obviously not up to the task of delivering quality sound.

And that’s why (for a while) I decided to use captions to assist in comprehending my boob tube sessions.
But the problem with closed captions is that they often mask crucial shots and they are not always properly synchronized with the actors’ lines.
After putting up with this unsatisfying process, I decided to buy a “sound bar” (a slim device containing multiple speakers) to enhance the sound of my television set.

But as I found out, adding a sound bar to a television set is not an easy task.

Today, a high percentage of television viewers subscribe to cable and have multiple devices connected to their cable box. They have to bypass the remote control that originally came with their television set in favor of the remote control device provided by the cable company.

But when you connect an additional component to your cable box, you need to reprogram your remote control to accommodate the new component, and this procedure can be highly problematic.

Instructions provided with electronic components are often difficult to understand, incomplete or not solely applying to the device that you bought.
And while fiddling with the remote control device, you are always afraid of messing up what you already so painfully trained the beast to do.

That’s why after fruitlessly spending a great deal of time trying to reprogram my cable remote control device, I sent the sound bar back to its makers.

And you might also understand why I have a soft spot for easy on the eye, clear sounding black and white movies that don’t needlessly tax your already challenged hearing.

Bite me if you can!

Alain