El Hombre Zanco

Todos estamos de acuerdo que el mundo del cómic  todo puede pasar. Pero aún así, existen personajes que realmente son difíciles de asimilar. La página de Internet Manolith publico una lista de los que, a su juicio, son los personajes más extraños del Cómic. Si bien no podemos discutir que su elección es muy adecuada, ahí hubieran podido caber otros nombre como El Cazador de Barbas – si, existió – o el Hombre Zanco. Y seguramente nuestros lectores recuerdan a más de uno.

[Source: J. Craig Anderson, Arizona Republic] – The Mill Avenue commercial district in downtown Tempe has a history of leading the way for other local downtown areas when it comes to embracing the next business or real-estate trend.  The downside to having such high visibility is that people are more likely to notice when you stumble and fall.  A decade after the high-tech office boom and bust, in which downtown Tempe was a major player, Mill Avenue is facing new economic challenges in the form of stalled development projects and the departure of major retailers, including Borders Books & Music, eclectic home furnishings and art seller Z Gallerie, and Coffee Plantation coffee house.

Much of the negative attention has been focused on Centerpoint, a large office-and-retail complex on the downtown Tempe promenade’s southern end.  But business owners, real-estate brokers, and economic-development officials in the area, north and west of the main campus of Arizona State University, say that recent reports of the district’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.  Though they acknowledged problems such as high rent and the departure of beloved merchants, area leaders said customer traffic was as strong or stronger on Mill Avenue than anywhere else in the Valley.

New projects have risen from the ashes of the old ones, they said, such as a multistage music-and-theater venue called the Mill Avenue District Community Arts Project — MADCAP for short — at the former Harkins Centerpoint multiplex, and a mini-office complex for startups that offers small, inexpensive suites that share centralized meeting and research space.

Harkins moved its theater about 2 miles east, to Vestar Development Co.’s Tempe Marketplace, which opened in 2007.  While it was a major loss, Nancy Hormann, executive director of Downtown Tempe Community Inc., said an upside exists.  “Fun things are happening, almost like silver linings that never would have happened if the bottom hadn’t dropped out of the real-estate market,” said Hormann, whose group represents area merchants.  She said that Harkins was the only Mill Avenue merchant to relocate to “that place.”

Perhaps the most noticeable and talked-about signs of the recession on Mill are the unfinished Centerpoint condominium towers, casting long shadows across the outdoor mall’s concrete and stone walkways.  [Note: To read the full article and online comments, click here.]

MADCAP – Brainy Bird Wild Series Toys

Give medium and large birds a wild good time with our fun and colorful Brainy Bird Wild Series Toys. Wild fun for medium or large birds. Keeps beaks busy and birds intellectually challenged. Safe, non-toxic colors and materials for a variety of play options. Each Wild Series Toy includes a metal quick-link attachment clip. Recommended for medium and large-sized birds. Material: Leather, Wood, Cotton Rope, and Metal Quick-Link Hanging ClipSizes:
*Berserk measures 22 1/2 in
*Bonkers measures 23in
*Madcap measures 16 1/2 in.

MADCAP – Brainy Bird Wild Series Toys Reviews

Its a nice looking bird toy. As with all bird toys, they don’t last long. At least with my birds.

I think this was one of my parrot’s favorite toys. He is down to the last wooden part and it has been the only one he’s played with since I put it in his cage!

So much for sun-kissed bodies…the temperature has dropped back down again to 50 at the high and 30 at the low. Cloudy skies and imminent rain/sleet make for a pensive late spring, reining in the giddiness of long summer days and nights. Everyone is walking around in a bit of a hurt daze with coats back on and scarfs wrapped around necks. There are still a few optimists or perhaps denial-ists who are walking around in better weather wear. I like them even though I do not join them. Still, perhaps this weather is better, less distracting. And, maybe it will kill some mosquitoes.

On a lighter note, here’s a classic residence, assembled from boxcars and other sundries. If this were a shanty town, Madcap Lane would be its ruler!

Madcap Application Suite

Madcap is the brainchild of people who had moved in from diverse sectors of documentation and can be safely labeled as the complete solution for ALL documentation requirements of a company.

• Flare – The flagship product of Madcap

• Blaze – Watered down version of Flare, with just print capabilities

• XEdit – Even more scaled down version of Flare; no changes to style is possible

• XEdit Review – Free utility, for users to review Flare documents without having to install Flare

Madcap also has an array of tools for multimedia documentation. The chief product in this category is Mimic, which is similar to Captivate or Robodemo. The voice recording functionality of Mimic is available as a stand alone in the form of Echo. And more, we have Capture, that is an Image capture utility, and stands tall when compared with other similar applications like Snag It and Full Shot. Hats off to Mad Cap, for implementing single sourcing in even screen capture applications. Capture is fully integrated with Flare, so you can call Capture from Flare while editing a graphic, change the Master source file of the graphic, and hurray…it gets updated in the project simultaneously.

Flare supports server based features like Analyzer and Feedback. While Analyzer helps the authors to generate technical / efficiency reports, the unique Feedback feature lets the authors get feedback from their readers. So for all online help, the users will get an option to give their feedback to the topic in question, and may be rate too! So, this is taking the online help to an entirely different level, because it becomes interactive. For localization purposes, Madcap proposes Lingo, that is based on the Software as a Service – SaaS model.

Flare has a novel approach to reviewing documents. Its just a click away, and you can not only send for review from right within the application, you can also control the way the document can be reviewed, i.e. just annotations allowed or full editing rights! I am sure there would be a way to mark topics that have gone for review, as we do not want to edit those topics any further till the time we receive the feedback. But that I have to check. Talking of collaboration, Flare supports up to five users, but beyond that, and sensibly enough it opens the gates for any source control application to manage the Flare projects. So you can map your Flare project in say.. VSS and then Check In and Check out between large teams effortlessly.

Lastly, the element level control that Flare provides is amazing. Each block of information can be shifted seamlessly and conditionalized. So, Flare gives a new dimension to conditional text at element level, although it keeps supporting the simple text level conditions as well as at File level.

Hmm. I’m terrible at this blogging business. I write in a frenzy then stop as I go off and do something else. I’ve been reading up on social media for weeks now trying to figure out how to leverage it for my job but then as my roommate pointed out to me, I’m so constrainted by the restrictions of my job and the hierarchal structure in place that I can’t be free to say whatever I want about my project that would get it noticed. Social media isn’t going to help me with that–my “product” is more of an idea than a physical entity anyway, since it’s a conference I’m trying to sell.

But my roommate suggested that I brand myself instead and try to leverage that. It’s too late to brand myself FOR my project since it’s less than 5 months away and I doubt I get enough readership on this blog to generate that kind of interest. Nevertheless, my branding experiment starts now.

I’m something of an armchair expert in politics say…in foreign policy, having never actually worked in the field of foreign policy. I studied it at university but that wasn’t where my passion was (I just liked learning about it) but that can change, sort of. I might never have direct experience in foreign policy but as I was watching Darfur Now , the young activist whose name escapes me at the moment, said something along the lines of, “You have to learn to be your own expert”.

Sounds like solid advice to me.

This post is a reminder of the 25th anniversary celebration of the miners’ strike, it takes place at Madcap in Wolverton, Milton Keynes from 6.30pm. For full details see our previous post in this event: http://mkcommunists.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/celebrate-the-25th-anniversary-of-the-miners-great-strike-in-wolverton-milton-keynes/

And here’s a video with images from the strike:

Sunday March 15 marks the 25th anniversary of the start of the miners’ Great Strike of 1984-85. There is an evening of celebration organised at the Madcap Performing Arts Centre in Wolverton, Milton Keynes. We encourage all of our readers, supporters and friends to attend what should be a fun and inspiring way of marking such an important episode in the class struggle in Britain. Visit the Madcap website here to find out how to find the venue: http://www.madcap.org.uk/howtoFindUs.html

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Miners Strike 25

Sunday 15th March

Celebrate the spirit of resistance!

Music-Songs-Images

Speaker: Billy Kelly, Lancs N.U.M.

6.30 – 10.30pm

£5.00 Full £2.50 Cons

Tickets from Madcap box office

01908 320179 or Nick on 07506 990713

On the 20th anniversary of the miners’ Great Strike in 2004 the Weekly Worker published a number of articles examining some of the key features of this historic battle of our class:

Strategic confrontation in the making March 11 2004 In the first of a series of articles Ian Donovan examines the background to the miners’ Great Strike

Pickets, ballots and workers’ defence March 18 2004 Ian Donovan continues his series on the miners’ Great Strike of 1984-85 by examining the key tactical and political questions

Solidarity squandered March 25 2004 In the third of his series of articles on the miners’ Great Strike, Ian Donovan examines the support the miners received from other elements of the working class, and the political opportunities to build on this missed

Aftermath of defeat April 1 2004 In the last of his series on the miners’ Great Strike, Ian Donovan looks at its effects in the years that followed

Of course it was political March 18 2004 The miners’ Great Strike marked a crossroads. Its defeat had profound political consequences. Dave Douglass, branch secretary of Hatfield Main National Union of Mineworkers, spoke to the March 14 Communist Forum

Opening the second front March 25 2004 When the dockers walked out on unofficial strike in July 1984, for a time the miners seemed to have victory within their grasp. Alan Stevens, then a union militant in London docks, recalls the decisive moments

Good pictures, wrong conclusions March 11 2004 David Douglass, Doncaster NUM panel picket coordinator and area executive member during the Great Strike, reviews Socialist Worker’s special issue, ‘The miners’ strike 1984-85’

Intransigently brave April 6 2006 Mark Fischer remembers Paul Whetton, a former member of the CPGB and an outstanding rank and file miners’ leader during the Great Strike of 1984-85, who died on March 3

MadCap Software is offering free webinars to the public. The webinars offered focus on software tools and independent-tool-use training and information. Some of the webinars offered are:

• Planning for Content Reuse: Best Practices for Legacy and New Content
• Planning Topic-based Authoring: Working in a Use Case or Scenario-based Environment
• Users: Who are Those People and What do They Want?

These are just a few examples. MadCap has many more! To find a free webinar on your topic of interest, visit the MadCap website:

https://www.madcapsoftware.com/demos/webinars.aspx

So Nomad, Captain America’s trusty sidekick from the 80’s, sure got involved fighting some losers in his time! Before he went up against The Slug who i profiled earlier he faced this Douche Bag named “MADCAP” in Captain America #307 and then again in issue #309. I am not sure if Madcap was supposed to be Marvel’s version of the Joker or what but what i do know is this idiot needed to get his ass kicked to the moon in a very bad way! This guys had probably the lamest costume of the 80’s and carried around a squirt gun that shot out bubbles that would make you go “mad”.

Yes once again we see Nomad who’s a pretty rad guy, i mean in issue #307 he’s jobless, sleeping on Captain America’s couch ’til noon, not cleaning up after himself and getting yelled at by Cap’s then girlfriend Bernie for being a slacker. Might i mention too Cap must’ve been down on his luck financially too cuz his apartment sucks!! Anyway Nomad wisens up and lands a job at the local Brooklyn Grocery store as bagger and beleive me Nomad is on top of his game there too. He even admits he’s pretty into the whole bag boy thing. Probably bacause on his first shift he’s already trying to score with the cashier “Carmela”. Too bad in the middle of his “schtick” some crazy herd of people hurl a rock through the window of the supermarket interupting his shift and forcing him to check out the comotion abandoning his new job and donning the Nomad garb.

That’s when he runs into good ol’ MADCAP whose out on the town squirtin’ cops with his bubble gun. One cop points his gun at him, gets in the way of his “bubbles” and says “Stop or I’ll…SHOOBY DOOBY DOO DA DA DA DA DA..”, he shoots the owner of a costume shop and he says “”No–don’t shoot, I’ll give you any–any–ha ha haa, i feel so ha ha ha–strange! Bock bock bock! Look at me i’m a chicken! A big fat stuffer special!” another street civilian shouts “I’ve got ants in my pants but i like it! i like it!” and finally a woman and her baby singing “Boom ba ba boom ba ba boom dada!”. Mapcap just makes you downright silly and one of his mottos is “Randomness rules!–whee!”.

Well Nomad tries to fight this loser but Madcap is simply unaffected by pain and has his jaw dislocated by a left hook. Then comes the best part-Madcap shoots him with his bubble gun and Nomad goes nuts. Feeling like he can “do anything without a care in the world!” and then continues to make an ass out of himself all through the streets of New York. Apparently Nomad begins to think he is Captain America and loses his damn mind saying “I’ve gone mad! Mad as a hatter! mad as a capper! cap as a madder! does cap matter? no i’m mad! no i’m Cap!” Anyway you get the picture basically he squirts you with a gun that makes you hallucinate and have a totally rad night-which makes me take back all the nasty things i said about him earlier and wonder why everyone wanted to beat on Madcap?

That “dramatic look back at the Invaders of World War 2″ shown on the cover below is only ONE damn panel in the whole comic book! LAME!

So…I’ve been back at work for exactly 5.5 hours now. I spent the holidays eating and writing (which I finished yay!) and generally not thinking about politics or human rights. Yes, I spent an entire week without thinking about these things, which is what I wanted to do!

But now I’m back at work and having a hard time getting my brain back on the right track and….I of course being alone in the office, gets the first crazy phone call. Thank God it is still 2008–if I got the first nutty call for 2009, I would freak out.

This woman calls and harangues me, not talks with me but harangues me, for 25 minutes straight on how the Government is violating these people’s human rights and there is no one who can help them.

She doesn’t let me get in a word edgewise except for the times I interrupt or talk over her.

She doesn’t believe me when I say that there are resources to help people (although to be honest, I wasn’t giving her any good indications that there were…like I said, brain not functioning. I couldn’t remember anyone working in that field she was talking about)

She’s outraged that Canada’s human rights violations are so blatant internally and we are not at all enlightened like the Europeans and their complicated human rights commissions that deal with these things, both monetarily and on an advocacy level.

She refuses to answer my inquiries as to the nature of her complaint so I can better help her. She just rants on and on AND ON about human rights violations from how Rwandans and Sudanese people are working “security offices”  (I don’t think she meant mall security…) without ever being screened and “They could be genoicidaires! They could be murderers!” to the point where I had to ask her, “How did they manage to get into the country?”

“Well their countries don’t screen for these things!’

Me, confused. “Well ours do.”

“No they don’t! These people just get into the country and they are put in these positions of highly sensitive documents and…”

“Wait…excuse me? Are you saying that Canadian Citizenship and Immigration don’t screen candidates to whom they issue visas for? That’s completely contrary to my experience…”

“No, I got it straight from the horse’s mouth but these people don’t speak English and they are not screened and they are in positions of sensitive information.”

Me finally exasperated beyond belief. “Ma’am, I would have to ask for some evidence of that before I can accept it on face value. What you are describing is not merely a human rights violation but a gross civil and legal violation that would probably require lawyers. Our organization and myself are not in a position to deal with this…accusation.”

“Well…”

Then she went on to say, over and over again, that human rights violations only occur between the government and the individual. I kept refuting this argument. She said, “Well if my neighbour strikes me and I call the police and they don’t do anything about it, then I can sue the police but I cannot sue my neighbor for violating my human rights because that’s not what he did! He hit me.”

Me, now completely confused and very frustrated, “Ma’m, with all due respect, that makes no sense. Being hit by someone is assault and is a crime. It is also a form of human rights violations because you have a right not to be hit and he doesn’t have a right to do violence against you. How is that not a human rights violation?”

“No, you don’t understand. The neighbor would be wrong, yes but the police would have violated my rights for not taking my complaint serious.”

“Uh…well, yes you’re right that the police are at fault and you would have cause to try to sue them for damages but that’s a very overt and obvious human rights violation. Your neighbour hitting you still contitutes as a human rights violation in the form of a criminal act.”

We argued about this for like 10 minutes before she finally cut me off and said, “Well it has been a very informative discussion and you certainly seem more informed than others I have spoken to all day but you are still wrong.”

Me now totally exasperated. “Well ma’am, I think that your definition of human rights and mine are different so I would have to disagree.”

Note: At the beginning of the conversation, the moment she started ranting, I asked for a definition.

Her. “Well, go look it up on the internet, on those websites. I am absolutely certain that I am 1000% correct.”

Me. “Okay. Bye.”

I hung up.

It took me about 5 minutes to realize why she thought she was right. It’s because the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms apply only to governments. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are the Canadian version of the “Bill of Rights” they have down in America that enumerate all the rights and freedoms that citizens have and that governments cannot be violated exception very exceptional circumstances, war times being one of them.

Given that context, the entire conversation suddenly makes more sense. However, the actual cases and complaints she was making over the phone glosses over the fact that human rights violations occur, basically anytime your rights are violated. Some are criminal, some are psychological and some are just plain unfair but whatever the reason, that still constitutes as a violation. A broad definition to be sure but a wrong has been done to you when it should not have been so you ought to be able to get some kind of recompense for it.

Anyway. My brain is mush and I’m not really working anyway, as this post indicates, but man…why do I always get these calls?