I was photographing in the last weeks – please tell me if you think they are good:
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PLAYBOY Magazine has announced that it is cancelling its proposed photo spread “The Girls of the Intifada” that was to feature naked Palestinian lovelies from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The Los Angeles chapter of the B'nai B'rith had denounced the feature, saying that it justified terrorism and hate. The B'nai B'rith was tipped off about the feature by a PLAYBOY insider, who leaked a piece of doggerel that was going to be used to illustrate the photo spread:
We are the girls of the Intifada!
To all Jews we're definitely nada!
We'll yield not an inch of land
But there's one catch –
Only selfless Muslim martyrs
Shall colonize our snatch!
PLAYBOY editor-in-chief Philboyd Studge denied that the venerable magazine, which debuted in 1954 with a nude Marilyn Monroe as its “Sweetheart of the Month,” had any intention of making light of the tense situation in Israel with light-hearted verse.
“The reports that we intended to caption the photos with patently offensive, nay, anti-Semitic poetry are nonsense,” Studge said.
Hugh Hefner, the founder and nominal publisher of PLAYBOY, was unavailable for comment. His daughter, Christie Hefner, the president of Playboy Enterprises, issued a terse statement saying that she supported Studge and was sorry for any aspirations against Israel the feature might have caused. No criticism of Israel was intended.
Studge said that PLAYBOY never intended to entitle a proposed spread of girls from the Middle East as representing the Intifada. He believes that an internal trickster was responsible for the rumors.
“I tell you, it's not even decent doggerel, let alone poetry,” an irritated Studge complained. “The metonymy, is so meretricious…. How could anyone believe it was authentic PLAYBOY doggerel, ferkrissakes!”
Studge had been an editor at the New Yorker, were her oversaw the stories of a stable of writers including John Cheever, E.L. Doctorow and Kurt Vonnegut. He also briefly worked as an editor at Doubleday, where he was exhausted by epic editing sessions of William Safire's BrobdingnagianCivil War-themed historical novel Freedom. His exhaustion drove him back into the magazine biz.
Tapped as the fiction editor at PLAYBOY in the late '80s, Studge eventually was named editor-in-chief in 1999. Hired originally hired to bring “class” to a magazine more synonymous, during the Reagan Era, with ass, Studge has toiled to reclaim the cultural cache PLAYBOY Magazine had enjoyed in the 1960s, which it squandered a decade later, as part of the fallout from the mid-'70s Pubic Wars (not to be confused with the 17th Century “Beaver Wars” Century).
An anonymous source at the Playboy Building in Chicago said that Hugh Hefner's attempts to mediate the dust-up carried little water. The basic thrust of Hefner's attempt at negotiation, an offer to run a countervailing “Girls of the B'nai B'rith” was rejected out of hand as “preposterous.”
“Do you think the defamed want to be further defamed by the defamer,” the source said, characterizing the attitude of the Anti-Defamation League official who handled the imbroglio.
The Playboy Philosophy & The Western World
Liz Smith was the latest to address the controversy. A friend of Hugh Hefner's, she asked his opinion of the Middle Eastern situation during a general discussion of the publisher's own Playboy Philosophy in its sixth decade. It's Hefner's contention that his philosophy changed America, and thus the Western World. As he seeks new markets for PLAYBOY and its offshoots, the online Web Site and its cable programming, he has become a proselytizer for the worldwide benefits of the Playboy Philosophy loosening up the tigher-assed corners of the world.
Smith was careful to avoid any mention of the “Girls of the Intifada” ruckus, but the issue definite was addressed. Hef blamed the problems in the Middle East squarely on religion.
“One of the problems with organized religion is that it has always kept women in a second-class position,” the PLAYBOY publisher said. “They have been viewed as the daughters of Eve.”
Speaking as to how the puritanical Muslim countries have put into effect extraordinary means to control their sexuality of their women, Hefner said that they must realize that, “Sex is the driving force on the planet. We should embrace it, not see it as the enemy.
As for the rift between the Muslims and the Jews, he contends, “We're separated by our myths.”
Did Hef think he was going to heaven or hell when he died, seeing as that for the past 50-odd years, he has lived in his own version of heaven-on-earth.
“I've always felt I was on the side of the angels,” he concluded.
from: Negashs Weblog
First no one was interested in Paul Volcker.
Then Obama got everyone either excited or enraged about the Volcker Rule and he became famous.
Now all people care about is taking a photo with him.
“Don't congratulate me,” he told Sondra Gotlieb from the Vancouver Post.
“I'm just a photo op.”
Ok, so he's humble.
He likes to order a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He enjoys salmon fishing in Canada and a plate of oysters on his birthday.
And sadly, nobody understands him, or wants to hear his ideas about Detriot.
“All they wanted was my picture for the press.”
At least it's kind of hard to take a photo of him. He's really tall – 6'7''.
This one bag pretty much does it all: The Kata 3N1-33 ($145 street) could be the single bag that fits all your needs if you're unsure what bag you want — laptop, camera, video camera – and if you're torn between a backpack or sling bag configuration. Pull out the inserts and you've got a roomy padded bag for schoolbooks or for a day trip. The bright orange interior makes it easy to find things and it's a handsome bag as far as black backpacks go. As a sling it works equally well for right- and left-handed users. Drawbacks are minor: It needs bigger zipper pulls and some thick pro lenses don't comfortably.
Here's how to visualize the Kata 3N1-33: It's a largish backpack, 18 x 13 x 9 inches (HWD), divided two-thirds (cameras on bottom), one-third (stuff on top). Movable padded dividers provide eight slots for lenses, flashes, a video camera, and one camera with a long telephoto lens attached. At the back is a laptop area measuring 17 x 11 x 2 inches, which Kata says holds a 15.4-inch laptop and which actually fits some 17-inch laptops very snugly.
Remove the photo inserts, unzip and push aside the top-bottom divider, and you've got a traditional backpack. In this way it's like the LowePro Versapack 200 ($100, see review), a more easily compressible backpack that can be squished down to go in your vacation luggage as an extra bag. But the Versapack 200 has no laptop slot, making it more like the Kata 3N1-30 (details below).
The backpack straps adjust four ways: traditional backpack, backpack with straps crossed in an X in front, left sling, or right sling. As a sling, you can slide the bag from your back under your left or right side to the front, then exchange gear. Flip the dividers 180 degrees and you've got in configured for use by a left-hander, meaning the largest divider space, the one holding the camera and your longest lens, is the one you come to first.
Zippered openings on the sides let you access some gear without opening the main flap, and four snap-lock buckles provide extra security. All this is pretty slick. Other makers have this feature, such as Tamrac with the Aero Speed Pack line; it's a backpack with an opening on one side but not the other.
And most other bags don't have the back sides of the backpack straps finished in red not black. (Photo, right.) It's a minor bit of elegant design. Most backpacks are either black or gray (entirely), or finished in in-your-face ROY G BIV hues.
The Bag Could Use Bigger Zipper Pulls
I found a few aspects of the bag less than optimal. Most of the zippers are just zippers with hard metal or plastic zipper pulls. The top compartment has two fabric zipper pulls but not the four zippers securing the main, camera compartment. Other high end bags add fabric or leather zipper pulls for all main compartments so you gain more leverage, especially if it's cold outside, your fingers are numb from the cold, and you're in a hurry to change lenses.
Big Pro Lenses Barely Fit
As with most other sectioned backpack bags with three divided rows for photo gear, your lenses fit nicely if they're mainstream lenses such as a 35-70mm zoom or 75-300mm f/5.6 zoom. These are the ones you can fit in a compartment with the lens standing upright (see the lenses at the bottom of the left-hand photo above). But it's a different story if you're carrying a lens with a barrel about 3 inches wide (and a reversible lens hood that makes it almost 4 inches wide), such as the 70-200mm f/2.8 lens prized by professionals. That lens hogs the space of the partitions on either side. Sort of like the fat guy in the middle seat on your flight.
The photo above shows that very lens (70-200mm f/2.8) fitting nicely but that's without the lens shade. Trust me: It's tight in real life. You can move the dividers on one side, but then you limit what fits on the far side. Or you could put the lens shades in the top compartment. The real solution would be to swipe an inch from the top compartment, but then the photo compartment would be roomier than needed for 95% of mainstream users. Again, this is not a problem unique to Kata or this Kata bag.
Other Neat Features
Some other things that make the bag useful and may explain what it's selling for $145 not $75:
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There's a handle at the very top that you'll find super-useful for carrying the bag short distances; with other bags, you just pick it up by one of the backpack straps.
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Kata includes a rain cover for lousy weather. You store it inside the bag in its own pouch. Tamrac and Thinktank Photo do that, too, while Lowepro bags build the rain cover into the base, which I prefer because you can't lose it, but that also means you wind up putting the cover away wet sometimes.
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There's no tripod holder for serious photographers but it's available as a $20 accessory.
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There are waist straps preferred by serious backpackers – the same waist straps that get in the way of most everyone else, flop into the aisle when you fly and get tangled in the beverage cart wheels, and snag other luggage when you're unloading the trunk of your car. These slide into a sleeve so if you don't use them, they don't get into the way.
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A luggage cart sleeve makes it easy to hang the Kata 3N1-33 on a larger rolling bag. Anyone who's tried to wrap the backpack straps around a roll-aboard bag knows the bag quickly slides off and tangles in the wheels of the rolling bag.
If your needs call for slightly less photo gear, Kata makes two smaller bags. The 3N1-11 (16 x 9 x 8, $100) holds a camera, a couple lenses, and a small netbook. The midsize 3N1-22 (17 x 9 x 9) holds a camera, 3-4 lenses (or a combination of lenses, flashes, and small video cameras), and a netbook. If you like this kind of bag but don't need to carry a laptop, there are equivalent big-medium-small bags, the Kata 3N1-30, Kata 3N1-20, and Kata 3N1-10. The line is fairly new as of 2010, so if you do an online search, you may not get hits on all the bags. Keep trying.
Get ready playboys, because we will be having Ninel Conde for tonight. Here are some of the photos of the sexy Ninel Conde. She was born on September 29, 1970. As a Mexican actress, model and Latin Grammy Award nominated recording artist, she has been appearing in the following movies such as Rebelde and Fuego En La Sangre. And the news came in that she will be posing in for Playboy. If you are looking for photos in the Ninel Conde Playboy series, check it out right below. Hugh Hefner is offering Ninel Conde $100,000 to pose for Playboy’s next issue. Below is one of the pictures for the Playboy Magazine. You can check out more through the source list after the picture of Ninel Conde below.
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Get ready playboys, because we will be having Ninel Conde for tonight. Here are some of the photos of the sexy Ninel Conde. She was born on September 29, 1970. As a Mexican actress, model and Latin Grammy Award nominated recording artist, she has been appearing in the following movies such as Rebelde and Fuego En La Sangre. And the news came in that she will be posing in for Playboy. If you are looking for photos in the Ninel Conde Playboy series, check it out right below. Hugh Hefner is offering Ninel Conde $100,000 to pose for Playboy’s next issue. Below is one of the pictures for the Playboy Magazine. You can check out more through the source list after the picture of Ninel Conde below.
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