Noteworthy entries.

An Odd Email, and the Evolving Web

I recently received the following email from someone at aol.com to one of my regular legitimate email addresses:

Subject: What are these? These look like dodge cars in the shape of colorful onions. What is Buckminster and Chihuly Do Rounds?
Hmm. I get quite a few engineered phishing emails. But this one was not quite of the mold. I decided to google the phrase, and it led me to the Neighborhood Stabilization Team for the City of St. Louis home page that looks like this: NabStabChihuly Ah Ha! I thought. So I replied:
I had to Google the phrase to remember what you are asking about. The site rotates several images, so you may need to hit refresh a few times to get back to mine: Neighborhood Stabilization Team The caption made more sense with the full image that they showed back when I submitted my pic to the city. This is the pond in front of the geodesic dome of the Climatron (which showed the dome above and its reflection below the strip that they still have on display). So the title refers to the round dome designed by Buckminster Fuller and the round glass onions designed by Dale Chihuly, with a weak medical pun about "doing rounds" or seeing what there is to see. But the city website designer eventually chopped the aspect ratio of the banner image from 4:3 to 9:16 to 3:17, removing most of the image, but keeping the now enigmatic title.
Here's the original: P1020234 So what happened is that I submitted a few pix to a photo contest in 2007, and one of my shots was used as a web page banner. But as the needs changed, so did the image, until the final view little resembles the intent nor aspect of the original. And the caption that has been propagated is more absurd than intended.

Continue ReadingAn Odd Email, and the Evolving Web

Elizabeth Warren tells the OCC and the Fed that their job is not to hide evidence of lawbreaking

Senator Elizabeth Warren educates Daniel P. Stipano, Deputy Chief Counsel, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Richard Ashton, Deputy General Counsel, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. They look surprised that they should actually be looking out to help out victims of the banks and not helping the banks to hide evidence of law-breaking by those banks that conducted illegal foreclosures. Thank goodness we have Senator Warren on the job.

Continue ReadingElizabeth Warren tells the OCC and the Fed that their job is not to hide evidence of lawbreaking