Schreiner’s Media Landscape

November 25, 2009

Republican Party Dead- Or in One of Those Belgian Comas?

Filed under: America, dualism, television — Ken Schreiner @ 9:41 am

“Just imagine. You hear, see, feel and think but no one can see that. You undergo things. You cannot participate in life.”

- Rom Houben, Belgian not-quite-a-coma guy

The story about the Belgian car accident victim who doctors thought was in a coma but wasn’t got me thinking. They now say he was actually conscious the whole 23 years but was suffering from something called “locked-in syndrome.” It’s a condition in which people are unable to speak or move but can think and reason. Doctors didn’t discover it until advanced technology provided him with the equipment to communicate.

But what would it be like if someone, or a whole lot of people, were “locked-in” but with the opposite problem: they could speak or move but were unable to think or reason?

Don’t know about America’s right-wing wacko legions. But it sure explains Glenn Beck.

November 20, 2009

Fox News, Sarah Palin Running for White House, Replacing Oprah- or Both??

Filed under: America, Bush, Cheney, Obama, media, politics, religion — Ken Schreiner @ 10:08 am

Everyone knows Fox News is a major propaganda organ for America’s neo-fascisti and Sarah Palin an attention-hungry dilettante. The two have teamed up to drench the world in a fresh coat of gooey deception to facilitate Palin’s ascent to whatever-it-is-she’s-trying-to-ascend-to. The White House is ostensibly what FNC has in their sights. But the bigger goal may be FNC launching a Sarah Palin talk show to replace Oprah. It’s sort-of worked with Mike Huckabee. But Palin’s bigger.

Oprah’s says she’s going off the air in 2011. (Yeah, and Brett Favre was really retiring for good this time.) It’s an excellent programming idea (if I do say so myself). Others have already theorized that this is real plan. The problem is Palin can’t hold a candle to the Talk Show Queen. However I can see her hosting a reality show about a failed sportscaster in Alaska attempting to pass herself off as a presidential candidate. Actually, that would make a great situation comedy- if it wasn’t so pathetic.

Fox News’ current campaign features using file video of big crowds to create a “groundswell” of popular support for Palin surrounding her new book. Why Fox News is hitching their wagon to Palin is unclear, though I like the Oprah-replacement idea. It seems there are a lot more right-wing stars out there who actually KNOW WHAT THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT and BELIEVE IT. With Palin it’s all unclear because she’s so fuzzy on facts (as her book proves) and doesn’t appear to have a complete grasp of this whole government thing. She does know TV though. That’s her constituency.

Greater than all of this, it does confirm the continuing motives of America’s right-wing, white, rural, Christian, Republican Party. What do these people have in common?

Reagan. Bush(es). Palin.

They were all ignorant puppets incapable of independent thought and who did the bidding of  the ideological and corporate interests who paid for their elections. Reagan was effective because he was such a good actor. The Bushes were less so because they just weren’t that smart or as good actors. Palin’s a lot more like Reagan than the Bushes. She does as she’s told.

And they expect us to do the same now. If we fall for this same, old, tired, right-wing propaganda trick yet again, we deserve them and her.

November 18, 2009

Playing Blu-Rays on an LG, HD & PC; Overkill But Such a Thrill

Filed under: Children, Internet, Schreiner Productions, media, television, video — Ken Schreiner @ 9:56 am

I’m not a computer expert by any definition other than I own a few. Five to be approximate. I still use them all for one thing or another. When I recently bought a Blu-Ray HD recorder/player for my primary editing PC, I needed it for recording for clients only. But last night, I got the wild urge to see what Blu-Ray looks like on my Viewsonic VP191 PC screen and the Sharp Aquos HD monitor connected to the system.

Maybe it’s because I’m in this business but I noticed a tremendous difference between a regular DVD and the Blu-Ray on the PC, not so much the HD monitor. Of course, you have to sit closer to the screen than you would a 32″ flat panel so you should see more detail (and more junk). But overall, I was impressed.

What I had a problem with was the Cyberlink PowerDVD software. I don’t play a lot of DVDs on my computers so I haven’t used it much though it came loaded upon delivery. When I bought the LG Blu-Ray burner, I got an upgrade to Cyberlink PowerDVD. But when I finally tried to play a Blu-Ray, it required me to download the latest version (I only bought the thing two months ago). After doing that, it then told me my graphics driver was outdated. So I went to NVDIA’s site and downloaded that. Then I got an error message saying that my card, the GTX 8800, was incompatible with Blu-Ray. So I checked on Cyberlink’s site and it said that, in fact, the GTX 8800 was one of the RECOMMENDED graphics cards. Oh, man.

So I Googled the problem and found thousands of others had it too. The forums, which were tremendously useful and time-saving as usual (not being sarcastic), said to uninstall all your old graphics drivers, download the new one, delete the old folder, and reboot BEFORE installing the new drivers. Sheesh. So I did that. And sure enough, it worked. I had to remember to use the keyboard for some of the transport controls instead of the mouse. Other than that, it was incredibly easy. I watched “X2: X-Men United.” Wow.

So now, I can play Blu-Rays out of my PC to an HD or the computer screen. Necessary, no. Over-the-top fun, yes. It’s moments like this that I think back to when I was a kid dreaming of being in TV and thinking it will never get better than that. Talk about thinking like a child. I saw Steve Jobs was named CEO of the Decade by Fortune Magazine for “changing our world.” It wasn’t Jobs who changed things. It was all those engineers, designers and dreamers who really made this stuff happen and changed the world.

November 17, 2009

My Name is Ken and I’m a Jerk; Rudeness in America: Epidemic or Time Management Issue?

Filed under: America, dualism, journalism, media, politics — Ken Schreiner @ 9:35 am

Civility is a hot topic these days- if you can shout loud enough to be heard. It’s also getting attention in the corporate media. The NYT’s latest salute to insolence involves the public use of cellphones and other non-human substitutes for face-to-face interaction. Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker also takes on America the Audacious as an epidemic instead of what it really is: America being America. We’ve always been brash, bragging and brusk. It’s how we became great. It’s also why the rest of the world thinks we’re jerks. Because we are.

I admit I’m rude. I offend someone just about every day. And she’s pretty sick of it. Unlike most offensive or socially-inappropriate people, I can’t even blame my parents. They were civil, friendly people- at least, I think they were. I was just a kid. I never saw them at a party, a ball game, or the office. Somehow, when I got older I started talking loudly, instigating arguments, insulting friends and strangers alike, interrupting and apologizing for it only to do it again and again. I blame my siblings. But certainly one factor was more influential than any other in the evolution of my brutish behavior: I was a news reporter.

I know some reporters who were not rude and still successful. But there aren’t many. Then, after years of cultivating and refining my rudeness in the corridors of power and corruption, I used my rudeness to take my career to a new, greater level. I became a newsroom boss. One great thing about being boss is you can be rude with impunity. What you say goes. If someone wants to debate you, tough. You’re the boss. Na, na, na, na, na.

There are many well-meaning souls trying to stop what they perceive as a wave of rudeness (how rude!). The Civility Project sounds like one of those government programs that America’s rudest people- right-wing Fox News viewers- would invade a town meeting to shout down. But I’m sure the Civility Project means well. I mean well too. I just don’t have the patience to get results from myself or others by forming a committee, developing a list of criteria, creating a website, holding a news conference and photo op. Which brings me to my excuse for being rude and perhaps the root cause of America’s crisis of civility:

TIME.

Rudeness can be summed up as simply the fastest way to get what you want. People butt in line because they’re in a hurry. They talk on cell phones in the restaurant because they can’t wait until they see the person on the other end. They’re abrupt with employees and others because as they’re chatting pleasantly, the competition is kicking their civil posteriors. Rudeness in conversation can be explained as getting to your point without engaging in a lot of time-consuming politesse and diplomacy.

This then is my solution to the “rudeness epidemic”: Take more time when engaging in civil discourse or conflict resolution. Next time you encounter someone, take a few minutes to introduce yourself, explain your goals and needs, inquire as to the other person’s goals and needs, find common ground, then take deliberate and quiet action. And if that doesn’t work, take their cell phone and slam it down their throat. Rudeness epidemic, my ass.

November 15, 2009

Punch Home and Landscape Design Suite Makes Designing Your Dream House Fun, Easy

Filed under: Internet, Schreiner Productions, Solar, media — Ken Schreiner @ 6:44 pm

studio-3d-viewAbbie bought me the Punch Home and Landscape Design Suite for Christmas last year. It’s software that lets you create your own dream home, kitchen, workshop or whatever. It’s a little bit difficult to learn the basics but once you’ve got those down, it’s a lost weekend in the making.

I helped design our bedroom/bathroom project which is now nearing completion and now I’m working on the downstairs area that’s currently my studio and a small, virtually unusable office/storage space. It’s amazing how this software helps you envision the structure, even down to the furniture and plants (it even has solar panels you can insert). And as you can see in the picture it allows you to capture a simulated 3D view of your work. It even provides sun angles, which in this case is frighteningly accurate given how the afternoon sun pours into the real version of this room.

If you’re thinking about renovating your home, yard, deck or office, I highly recommend getting this stuff. Even though it’s a little costly (around $100) it will give you a vision of your dream home like you never thought possible.

Quilts Express Creativity, Strength of American Women

Filed under: America, Utah, media — Ken Schreiner @ 11:37 am

quiltshow3

When we moved to Utah in 2006, we didn’t know that quilting was such a big deal here. But with my wife and my mother being avid and excellent quilters, the culture here turned out to be perfect. Abbie became a member of a well-established quilt group and it wasn’t long before they were giving her the tough assignment of restoring old, worn or unfinished quilts.

Quilt restoration is one of Abbie’s passions and her work was not only appreciated by the other members of the group. It’s been prominently displayed for the past three years at the Deseret Foundation’s quilt show and auction held every November. This year’s is where we shot the pictures on Friday night. One of the pieces seen here was also worked on by my mother back in the Chicago area.

I’ve been to lots of quilt shows all over the country. One thing I’ve learned, besides the endless and surprising

quiltshow11creativity of these artisans, is how quilting has always been and is increasingly these days a form of story-telling and preservation of American history. Quilters, virtually all women, not only use sewing, piecing and other traditional forms of making their masterpieces. They now use photos, scanners, softwares, incredibly expensive

and powerful quilting machines and fantastic new fabrics to tell their stories of family, community, personal struggle or just about anything. Or sometimes, they’re just pretty.

It’s more evidence that technology is that the core of folk art just as much as corporate or fine art. Nothing is taboo, nothing is off-limits and everything is useful. It’s a tribute to the resourcefulness, imagination and tenacity of America’s women who’ve withstood oppression, persecution, physical abuse and exploitation for more than two centuries. Like these life lessons, they turned their experiences into something warm and comforting- not just for themselves and each other but for all of us.

November 13, 2009

Sarah Palin Goes Rogue With the Facts

Filed under: Bush, journalism, media, politics — Ken Schreiner @ 5:40 pm

This type of reporting makes me proud to be a former employee of the Associated Press (my first job in journalism at the Chicago bureau from 1973-74). Check out the contradictions, distortions and all-out lies in Sarah Palin’s new book. Also credited in this story is Beth Fouhy, whose wedding I attended in Washington in 1992. Nice job, Beth! Now all you have to do is persuade America’s right-wing nuts to become interested in the truth.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091113/ap_on_el_pr/us_palin_book_fact_check;_ylt=ApWLKWFmLLdT0Biu_P1hdBt34T0D;_ylu=X3oDMTJ0cmVrdWs2BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkxMTEzL3VzX3BhbGluX2Jvb2tfZmFjdF9jaGVjawRwb3MDNQRzZWMDeW5fYXJ0aWNsZV9zdW1tYXJ5X2xpc3QEc2xrA2ZhY3RjaGVja3BhbA–

Sarah Palin’s Book, Megan Fox’ Careers Blueprints for DIY Celebrity Building

Filed under: America, media, politics, sports, television — Ken Schreiner @ 9:46 am

I’m my own thing. I don’t feel like there’s anyone else like me. – Megan Fox

I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. – Sarah Palin

It’s the first rule of becoming famous. Tell everyone how different you are. Don’t worry: you don’t really HAVE to BE different. Americans don’t even wonder why our leaders and stars are essentially the same person. Well if you do wonder, Sarah Palin’s new book is the latest smoking gun. Not having read it, I can’t comment on it as a work of fiction. But knowing her history, it’s the latest assault on America’s celebrity battlefield where only the most famous survive and people with real talent but no zillion-dollar promotion aparatus die like dogs in obscurity.

From her failed career as a sportscaster in Alaska- providing the latest on dog-sledding, street hockey, and moose-tipping apparently- and her abrupt, self-serving (saving?) departure from her obligations as governor of the same state to cash in on her new fame, it’s plain Palin (anagrams anyone?) wants simply to be famous. Not be president nor even a “rogue.” Just a star. Think Oprah, not Obama.

I spent 30 years around and even in charge of people like this in the TV news business. Many of them weren’t interested in serving the public, engaging in a constitutionally and socially crucial communications process. Just to be famous: recognized while they were dining, gazed upon by star-struck grocery shoppers mesmerized by the barrage of beautiful and powerful people from the magazine racks.

Maybe better than Palin’s account of manipulating the star-maker machinery to achieve the fame and cash I’m sure she believes she richly deserves is the story of Megan Fox in the NYT Magazine. Fox has become famous entirely on the basis of spinning some less than memorable performances in a couple of cartoons (Transformers 1 & 2). She has no discernable skill as a actor, model- she probably can’t even cook. What she can do- all carefully designed and deliberately executed- is say and do the things that get an otherwise just-another-pretty-face noticed and attract an intrigued constituency who obviously lacks the intellectual capacity to see through pandering, lying, deception and manipulation. You know, Republicans.

Sadly, there is virtually no difference between people like Palin and Fox (apparently her real name). They are just trying to make a lot of money. Your money. Could be films, politics, talk shows, books, commercials, reality TV. They are a sad commentary on the intelligence of the American people in recognizing real talent and achievement and our descent into a society of sedentary spectators. The fact that Palin and Fox are who they are says more about us than them.

November 12, 2009

Lou Dobbs Resigns: Right-Wing Bottom Feeder Bellies Up

Filed under: America, journalism, media, television — Ken Schreiner @ 8:58 am

Lou Dobbs had a sort of Lenny Bruce quality about him, except he wasn’t funny or interesting. He always talked as if he was the leading misunderstood victim of the societal wrongs he endlessly droned on about: immigration, environmentalists, you know, the usual suspects. The martyr act might’ve been attractive if he was the only one doing it. But Dobbs was just another right-wing whiner- just not nearly as good or effective as Rush, Beck and the Boys of Fox.

The fact he’s leaving CNN is not surprising (he’s done it before). In a sea teeming with Republican carp, he’s a bottom-feeder. He’ll likely end up on Fox like all the others or continue doing his radio show if there’s still a time slot left in America that isn’t taken by Limbaugh, Hannity, et al. But CNN won’t miss him, not like everybody in the world watches CNN anyway. Nor will anyone else. Remember the ratings for the cable news networks are miniscule compared with other programs. And the importance the corporate media attach to time-filling talking heads like Dobbs is mostly celebrity B.S. with no signficance in the American political arena and even less in the irretrievably altered media universe.

November 11, 2009

The New Hot Tub is Here! Simmering Among the Sandstone

Filed under: Salt Lake, Solar, Utah, renewable, water, weather — Ken Schreiner @ 10:02 am

hot-tub-1 Hot tubs are one of those things you never thought you needed but eventually realize you can’t live without. When we moved into our new place three years ago, it had a ten-year-old hot tub that needed lots of work. We poured a lot of money into it and kept it going all this time. But a few weeks ago, we bought a new hot tub that’s smaller, is more energy efficient and looks better. The only problem was that the old one was too big to take out through the yard. So the company and we had to split the cost of a crane to pull the old one out and lower the new one in (pic left). It was a sight to behold as these 1,000-pound-plus bathtubs sailed high above our house. All the time I envisioned one of them breaking loose and smashing through the roof like a Roadrunner cartoon. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.

Unfortunately, when they lowered the new one in, it didn’t fit. It was about six inches too wide. The guys brought out a saws-all and hammer and clipped off enough slate and concrete to squeeze the new one in. The question now is will it ever come out? Hot tubs generally last around 10-15 years. If all goes according to my plan, this one will have to make 50.

Hot tubs are everywhere these days but they’re particularly popular here in the west where there’s lots of cold weather and snow, the nights are cool even in the summer, and you engage in enough outdoor recreation that you feel like you really could use a good soak regularly. As I get older and carry a lot more stuff around the country for work, through airports, factories, trade shows and other seemingly endless venues, the hot tub looms in my mind as a sanctuary: something to look forward to when I get off that plane after being squeezed into a seat for four hours. It’s like a great big beer.

Making the experience even more wonderful is that our hot tub runs on solar power from our 2kWh array and overlooks the Salt Lake Valley, the skyline and city lights twinkling like stars as we simmer our troubles away. There aren’t a lot of things that approach perfection in my opinion. But this is about as close as it gets.

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