Before the Internet bullies bashed her and judges revoked her title in the scrapbooking Hall of Fame, Kristina Contes basked in a reputation built on making pages dedicated to her designer handbags, her Converse sneakers and the word "dude." She showcased her avant-garde designs on websites like ScrapInStyleTV.com, traveled the country teaching classes, and turned down offers to go to Paris, London and Norway.
"It's kind of like being a rock star," Contes said. "It's not what you think scrapbooking is."
A growing legion of 20-something scrapbookers -- with Contes as their pinup -- discovered one another online and bonded over pages that immortalized Coldplay lyrics and honored the Heineken bottle. . . .
As popularity soared, scrapbooking -- in all its forms -- exploded into a $2.6-billion industry where enthusiasts young and old, conservative and radical, grudgingly put aside differences to compete in national contests, attend global conventions, build blogs, join chat rooms, create online portfolios, and view YouTube and other online instructional videos.
In that world, Contes stood out.
She created textures with vinyl and made patterns by dabbing bubble wrap in paint. She turned playing cards into mini-scrap pages, cut out curse words from cardboard, and laid out distressed fonts and fisheye photos. She started a blog, co-wrote a book and championed the world of scrapbookers -- until it turned on her. . . .
The trouble in the land of foam stickers and glossy glitter glue all started in February, after Contes won a contest sponsored by one of the industry's most popular magazines, Creating Keepsakes. Her winning pages featured photos of her feet and her hairless terrier, Chloe. Her name went into the magazine's Hall of Fame and her work was published in a book of the top 2007 entries.
But Contes -- inadvertently -- had cheated.
Someone else had taken pictures that ended up in her portfolio. When Contes called Creating Keepsakes to request that her friend receive a photo credit, the staff member approved it without realizing she had broken an entry rule: Submissions had to be solely the contestant's work. The book came out in October with both names published -- to the dismay of thousands.
Disgruntled scrapbookers besieged the Creating Keepsakes chat room threatening to cancel subscriptions, boycott and sue. Scrapbooking bloggers called it "Hall of Fame-Gate," naming it the top scrapbooking scandal of 2007. They compared it to the performance-enhancing-drug controversies involving major league baseball player Barry Bonds and Olympic track star Marion Jones. Someone wrote that Contes was as polarizing a figure as Martha Stewart. . . . Mortified and hurt, Contes stopped scrapbooking. . . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
01/15/2008 17:26 ||
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#1
"Hall of FAME-GATE" - I was thinking KODAK-GATE myself.
A Hillsboro family says it was a labor of love that prompted them to drive their dead grandmother halfway across the country in an RV.
Family members said they were advised by a doctor that if their ailing grandmother passed away during the cross country road trip, they should continue on, and that's exactly what they did.
Polly Craft, 79, wanted to return to Oregon to see relatives before she died. . . . So last Monday, the family packed up its motor home and trailer. They expected the road trip from Arkansas to Oregon to take 48 hours, but bad weather and breakdowns slowed their travel.
Halfway home in Laramie, Wyoming, Polly Craft passed away in her sleep. "Rose-bud!"
"Grandma? Did you say something?"
"She's just talking in her sleep."
Family members agreed they should press on. "Grandma always did want to see Idaho."
They drove for another 1,000 miles with the 79-year-old's body resting peacefully in the motor home bed. On Saturday, they finally made it to Oregon, where Polly Craft will be laid to rest. Calling hours will be held at the KOA Kampground on Highway 35.
They said a doctor had told them, based on her condition that if she did die, they should continue to drive to their destination, said Lt. Michael Rouches with the Hillsboro Police Department. She had a personal physician here in Hillsboro and the idea was that the physician would have her medical records and information about her condition." "Not that he'd be able to do anything about it, mind you, but it's the thought that counts."
Posted by: Mike ||
01/15/2008 16:23 ||
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"Family members said they were advised by a doctor that if their ailing grandmother passed away during the cross country road trip, they should continue on, and that's exactly what they did." I very much doubt this happened, more likely it serves as a convenient rationalization. I would stand corrected if a licensed physician is found who admits to giving such advice. Polly could have had something treatable happen to her in Laramie, but 1000 miles later...
A passing cabbie found a 21 year-old couple naked and injured in the road an hour before sunrise. The two people died at the nearest hospital without regaining consciousness. Authorities were at a loss to explain what had happened. There were no witnesses, no trace of clothing, and no wrecked cars or motorcycles.
Investigators eventually found a clue high on the roof of a nearby building: two sets of neatly folded clothes. Safe sex takes on a whole new meaning when you are perched on the edge of a pyramid-shaped metal roof. "It appears as if [they] accidentally fell off the roof," Sgt. Florence McCants said. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
01/15/2008 08:36 ||
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German academics believe they have solved the centuries-old mystery behind the identity of the "Mona Lisa" in Leonardo da Vinci's famous portrait.
Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, has long been seen as the most likely model for the sixteenth-century painting. Dang! I could have sworn it was UBL in hiding. I should have known better because she wasn't wearing a burkha.
But art historians have often wondered whether the smiling woman may actually have been da Vinci's lover, his mother or the artist himself. Could have been all three!
Now some guys who know how to read experts at the Heidelberg University library say dated notes scribbled in the margins of a book by its owner in October 1503 confirm once and for all that Lisa del Giocondo was indeed the model for one of the most famous portraits in the world. I wonder if that's why it's sometimes referred to as "La Giaconda"?... Nah. That couldn't be it.
"All doubts about the identity of the Mona Lisa have been eliminated by a discovery by Dr. Armin Schlechter," a manuscript expert, the library said in a statement on Monday. Woohoo! No more sleepless nights!
Until then, only "scant evidence" from sixteenth-century documents had been available. "This left lots of room for interpretation and there were many different identities put forward," the library said. I still think it was the Duke of Oxford. Careers were built on this! Well, the Donks still need some spin-meisters.
The notes were made by a Florentine city official Agostino Vespucci, an acquaintance of the artist, in a collection of letters by the Roman orator Cicero. The comments compare Leonardo to the ancient Greek artist Apelles and say he was working on three paintings at the time, one of them a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo. No wonder Michelangelo was so prolific - he had three arms!
Art experts, who have already dated the painting to this time, say the Heidelberg discovery is a breakthrough and the earliest mention linking the merchant's wife to the portrait. "There is no reason for any lingering doubts that this is another woman," Leipzig University art historian Frank Zoellner told German radio. "One could even say that books written about all this in the past few years were unnecessary, had we known." Don't worry, you're not the only ones to have made that mistake.
The woman was first linked to the painting in around 1550 by Italian official Giorgio Vasari, the library said, but added there had been doubts about Vasari's reliability and had made the comments five decades after the portrait had been painted. Jack Murtha said it was her too, but his word is even less reliable. Besides, his Altzheimer's was already affecting him pretty badly by the time it was being painted.
The Heidelberg notes were actually discovered over two years ago in the library by Schlechter, a spokeswoman said. Although the findings had been printed in the library's public catalogue they had not been widely publicized and had received little attention until a German broadcaster decided to do some recording at the library, she said. The painting, which hangs in the Louvre in Paris, is also known as "La Gioconda" meaning the happy or joyful woman in Italian, a title which also suggests the woman's married name. Five extra-credit points go to whoever can tell me why it's called "The Mona Lisa".
Posted by: Captain Lewis ||
01/15/2008 11:12 Comments ||
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#4
Yo Leo, how'd your day go ?
'I'm painting this face, and having a hell-of-a time with the mouth.'
Why don't you just work with your brothers in the roofing business ?
* Hostages are an Australian and a Briton
* Earlier claim of tying to mast denied
* Pair 'immersed in freezing sea water'
TWO anti-whaling activists from a protest ship, an Australian and a Briton, are being held hostage aboard a Japanese whaling vessel in an escalation of the whaling wars in the Southern Ocean.
Benjamin Potts, 28, of Sydney, and Giles Lane, 35, from Britain, crew members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vessel Steve Irwin, boarded the Japanese whaling vessel Yushin Maru No 2 about 5pm (AEDT) yesterday to deliver a plea to stop killing whales.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society international director Jonny Vasic said the two men were tied to a radar mast in freezing conditions for up to three hours after their capture, a claim denied by Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), which is running the whale hunt.
The Japanese catcher ship was one of a fleet of five the Steve Irwin had tracked since January 1 but located in the Southern Ocean yesterday, Mr Vasic said.
The men boarded the vessel from a Zodiac boat to hand its captain a letter informing him that the vessel's crew was illegally killing whales in the Southern Whale Sanctuary.
The letter was drafted by Steve Irwin captain Paul Watson after he tried unsuccessfully to hail the Japanese ship for more than an hour, Mr Vasic said.
When they got on board and delivered the letter they were not allowed to leave, Mr Vasic said.
The letter basically stated that they (the Japanese crew) were breaking the international conservation law against whaling in the Antarctic sanctuary.
Mr Vasic said the men were tied to a radar mast for up to three hours in icy conditions before they were taken below.
We have a photo that shows that when they were held they were basically strapped by the arms with zip ties and tied with rope around their chests, and then they were held there for several hours in the cold, and then about two-and-a-half to three hours after that they were taken below, he said.
Mr Lane is an engineer aboard the Steve Irwin and Mr Potts is a cook.
Mr Vasic said Sea Shepherd had contacted the British High Commission in Australia and the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
We're hoping that the Federal Government and the British Government will step up and do the right thing, which is demand the release of their citizens, Mr Vasic said.
The Japanese ship was still moving and the Steve Irwin was in pursuit, Mr Vasic said.
An AFP spokeswoman said a Sea Shepherd spokesman reported the incident about 6pm (AEDT) and it was evaluating the situation.
There was no evidence at this stage that the pair had been tied to a radar mast on board that vessel, she said.
ICR director-general Minoru Morimoto said the men had not been tied up and were taken to a secure room.
Any accusations that we have tied them up or assaulted them are completely untrue, Mr Morimoto said.
It is illegal to board another country's vessels on the high seas. As a result, at this stage, they are being held in custody while decisions are made on their future.
The two boarded the Yushin Maru No 2 after they made attempts to entangle the screw (propeller) of the vessel using ropes and throwing bottles of acid onto the decks.
The incident occurred just inside the Australian Antarctic Sanctuary near the intersection of the coordinates 60 degrees south and 77 degrees east, a week's sail southwest of the Australian coast, Mr Vasic said.
A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith said the Federal Government was investigating the report (of the incident) as a matter of urgency.
Further statements would follow this morning, he said.
The encounter came after the Australian Federal Court today outlawed whaling in Australian Antarctic waters in a ruling the government said it would not try to enforce.
For Janet Devers, a 63-year old pensioner who still runs the fruit and veg stall on an East London market started by her mother at the height of the Blitz in 1940, Christmas 2007 was the most frightening she can ever remember.
On Friday, Janet will step into the dock of a courtroom to face 13 criminal charges - putting her at the centre of one of the most shameful farces of recent British politics. She has become Britain's latest "Metric Martyr" - under EU directives compelling Britain to use only the metric system of weights and measures. She faces financial ruin for breaking that same law which, in 2002, created the original "Martyrs" - the five traders who were found guilty of the crime of selling goods in pounds and ounces.
Since the Metric Martyrs' case aroused massive publicity, around 40,000 market traders all over the country have continued to sell in pounds and ounces without further prosecutions.
But on September 13 last year, trading standards officials from Hackney Council, supported by two police officers, arrived at Janet's Ridley Road market stall to confiscate two sets of imperial, non-metric scales.
She should have told them that she was Muslim and that weights and measures are proscribed in the Qur'an. You could look it up. Would have stopped them cold.
Initially, when the metric-only rule came into force in 2000, Janet complied. She went back to her old scales only when her mainly Afro-Caribbean customers protested that they found grams and kilograms baffling.
What makes Janet's plight even more bizarre is that only two days before Hackney's officials seized her scales under EU law, a senior EU Commissioner claimed in Brussels that no such law existed.
Of course it doesn't. That's why they charged her. And Oceana has always been at war with Asia. Did you hear the chocolate ration is being increased next week?
On September 11, Brussels announced it had abandoned its 26-year old battle to make Britain an exclusively metric country. The reason for banner headlines such as "EU Backs Down On Metrication" and "Victory For The Metric Martyrs" was a statement by Gunther Verheugen, a vice-president of the European Commission, that the EU had changed its mind over one of its flagship policies.
Commissioner Verheugen wished to point out that it was never Brussels' intention that it should be a criminal offence for the British to sell in pounds and ounces. We could continue drinking our beer in pints and marking our signposts in miles for as long as we wished. Mr Verheugen went further. Astonishingly, he insisted that the claim that it was an offence to sell in non-metric measures was merely an invention of Britain's "tabloid press", which had "repeatedly and erroneously" printed stories about "people having to buy their food from markets in kilograms rather than pounds".
"No, no, certainly not! There are 16 grams to the kilogram, didn't you know that?"
Equally startling, in November one of Mr Verheugen's senior aides stated, in a letter to the British Weights and Measures Association, that "the use of pre-2000 weighing instruments in imperial-only units" had always been legal in EU law. "The Directive does not prohibit the use of such instruments."
"Show me it does. You can't, can you, huh, huh?"
So what is going on? Why, this week, will Janet Devers appear in court, charged, under EU law, with offences which the EU itself assures us never existed?
This baffling story goes back to the time in 2000 when the EU's compulsory metrication policy exploded into a national cause celebre, after it became illegal to sell any goods in Britain in non-metric weights and measures. When Sunderland market trader Steve Thoburn became the first person in Britain to be charged with the new crime of selling a pound of bananas, and four more traders were prosecuted soon after, they were scornfully dubbed, by a senior trading standards official, "the Metric Martyrs".
Who wanted them shot, of course. Danged law got in the way then but it won't this time, by gum!
Although the Martyrs took their case to the Court of Appeal - backed by more than £70,000 contributed by readers of the Daily Mail, and thanks to the skillful campaigning of Mr Thoburn's friend and fellow Sunderland market trader Neil Herron - they finally lost.
However, their cause had won such support that no other prosecutions followed - and Brussels was left uncomfortably aware that in Britain the case had done the image of the EU much harm. This was one reason why, last September, Commissioner Verheugen was keen to show that the EU had softened its line.
But something else which lay behind its U-turn was that, for more than a year, some of the biggest industrial firms on both sides of the Atlantic had been lobbying Brussels to withdraw another highly damaging provision of its metrication policy which was about to do them serious damage.
Still due to come into force in January 2010 is what was intended to be the final step in making Europe totally metric - a law making it illegal for any business not just to sell goods in non-metric measures but to make any reference to them. After the ban on imperial measures came in seven years ago, businesses were still allowed to assist their customers by providing translations from kilograms into pounds. But at the end of next year even this will be forbidden. To mention non-metric measures in any context whatsoever will become illegal. It will even become a criminal offence for McDonald's to sell a "quarterpounder".
Make way for the demikilogram burger!"
These big companies explained to Mr Verheugen that for thousands of firms in the EU and the non-metric U.S., this final step in the drive to total metrication would create havoc. It would it cost U.S. firms billions of dollars to eliminate any mention of non-metric measures from sales literature or packaging on any goods they exported to Europe. Even more absurdly it would ban European firms from referring to pounds or inches when selling to customers in America.
On this, the EU finally saw sense. But in announcing his U-turn on one aspect of metrication (although the law is still on the EU and UK statute books), Verheugen went out of his way to make those further claims about how it had never been an offence to sell in non-metric measures in the first place (so absurd was his suggestion that this had all been invented by the "tabloid press" that this particular claim has been removed from the Commission website).
But all this raises a question mark over Hackney Council's decision to charge Janet Devers with an offence which Verheugen maintains never existed. Just before Christmas, she was served with a 67-page document, setting out 13 charges, such as weighing her goods on the scales seized by the officials, and ordering her to appear at Thames Magistrates' Court on Friday.
67 pages? Metric or English pages?
Most alarming of all for Janet is a warning that, if she loses the case, she will face massive costs. Just for the work officials have done so far, the bill is nearly £2,000 - the time of two trading standards officials alone is costed at £68 an hour, a rate equating to £141,000 a year each. But this might seem like peanuts when the costs of Hackney's lawyers are added to the bill. All this, plus the possibility of fines up to £5,000 on each charge, is what Janet faces this week.
When her ordeal began, she and her brother Colin Hunt - one of the original five Martyrs, who runs a stall in the same Hackney market - turned to the Metric Martyrs Defence Fund, so helpful before but which has now run out of money.
Council officials will argue that they are only doing their duty by enforcing the law as it stands. In a sense they are right. Despite Mr Verheugen's huffing and puffing, the laws under which Janet faces prosecution are still on the statute books.
So they weren't off the books after all.
But the fact remains that the UK regulations were only nodded through Parliament under the European Communities Act, to implement a directive which Verheugen insists was never intended to make the use of Mrs Devers's scales illegal.
This is such an absurd anomaly that it would be an affront to justice if her case was not presented with all the force that it deserves.
Opinion polls have consistently shown that more than 90 per cent of the British people are opposed to making it a criminal offence to sell goods in the measures most understand and prefer. In that sense, Mrs Devers will be standing in the dock on Friday on behalf of all of us.
#3
Quantitative Nationalism vs. [pan]Continentalism???
"An invention of the British Tabloid press" - so, is the point here that the Brit Judiciary System follows the sensational medias before they follow Brit laws or even Parliamentary legislation for same.
D *** NG IT, EVEN IN "PIRATES" THE OUTLAW CREW OF THE BLACK PEARL WANTED TO SHOOT CAPT. JACK SPARROW FOR USING THE FRENCH WORD "PARLAY/
PARLEY"!
#5
The author Jerry Pournelle, among others, calls this "Anarcho-Tyranny." No-go places in the UK where the Queen's law doesn't apply and, elsewhere, harassment of decent citizens to remind them they are under the thumb of the authorities so they keep their mouths shut and their heads down in submission.
Coming soon to a country near you.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
German academics believe they have solved the centuries-old mystery behind the identity of the "Mona Lisa" in Leonardo da Vinci's famous portrait. 
