Chamblee54

The other day there was a post here on the dotty subject of Dorothy Parker quotes. The departed dipsomaniac would seem to be a quote magnet.
One quote, that appears to be genuine, is about another quote magnet, Oscar Wilde. “A Pig’s-Eye View of Literature: Oscar Wilde If with the literate I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it.” (First printed in Life, (2 June 1927) p. 13 When you can give a source for a quote, the chances of it’s legitimacy go up tremendously.)
The original plan for this post was to do a wikiquotes search of the quotes in this post. This concept very quickly turned out to be too much work. The first paragraph of the original post has a clue.
PG first heard of Dorothy Parker in tenth grade. His friend, Bob Gibson, cut the poem Resume out of the literature text book, and carried it in his wallet. Mrs. Parker had been dead for two years at the time, with the ashes resting in her attorney’s filing cabinet. … there was another comment : Re “The Cardinal’s Mistress” by Benito Mussolini, Dorothy Parker wrote one of my favorite bon mots: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
In the post the other day, it was discovered that the poem about W.R. Hearst was written by someone else. Which brings us to “The Cardinal”s Mistress”. Yes, that was written by Hitler’s BFF, Benito Mussolini. When he wasn’t making the trains run on time, he wrote a sappy novel. And the comment by Miss Parker is great. But did she really say it?
A blogspot facility called Heavens to Mergatroyd has the text from a New Yorker review of TCM. It is a delightful read. However, the landmark quote is not there. The spell check suggestion for mergatroyd is derogatory.
Wikiquotes calls the comment “misattributed”. “Quoted in The Algonquin Wits (1968) edited by Robert E. Drennan, and Try and Stop Me. As noted at Snopes, Drennan’s source seems to be a Parker review which does not seem to contain this quote. If Parker wrote this statement anywhere the primary source seems to have gone missing.”
Try and Stop Me is a newspaper column by Bennett Cerf. The link is to The Dispatch, Lexington N.C., October 12, 1962. Next to the column is The Dispatch Religious Activities, Directory of Churches. The pastor of First Baptist is David Hoke Coon, Jr.
While preparing this commentary, an effort was made to find the text for “Resume”. It is a bona fide quote, first printed in New York World August 16, 1925. While looking for the text, Google suggested a search for “resume dorothy parker analysis.” One result was sponsored by a politician, Michelle Nunn. Another had this to say. “We know that we’re being a bit obvious here. But check it out: almost every single line in this poem offers an idea for a different way to die. When it comes to wordplay, Parker’s not messi…” Maybe she meant to say messy.
Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.

The other day this blog published a feature, Jury. There was a collection of photographs, taken at the Brookhaven Bolt 5k, May 18, 2013. The pictures have a look. This post is about how to get that look. If you see something that you already know, then skim past that part.
Image a is the original. It is reduced to 720 pixels wide. This is the size of the columns, and the width that pictures are processed to at Chamblee54. The original is 3264×2448. The camera is a Nikon COOLPIX L26, It was taken at 8:15 am. This is towards the start of the race. All the participants are running at this point. After a few minutes, you start to have people walking, some with strollers.
The actions taken to get this look use basic functions of GIMP. Most of these tools have keyboard shortcuts at Chamblee54, which is a great convenience. The keyboard shortcut, used in the original version of the program, will be used here, to tell you how to get to these tools.
Image b is the cropped original. The section to be used is cropped to the golden rectangle, or 161:100. This section is reduced to 720×447. Open the Rectangle (R) tool. In the options menu, go to Fixed. Enter 161:100. Check the box next to the word Fixed. Draw a rectangle around the section that you want to select. Open Crop to Selection (alt+I, C). To reduce the selection (from roughly 1200×750), hit Scale Image, (alt+I, S). In the Width field, enter 720. Click on Scale (alt+S.) Hit 1 to bring the image to 100%. You might have to increase the size of the window to see the entire image. You do this by placing the mouse on the corner of the window, and dragging the corner away from the window.
Image c is the first step in the formula. You apply a Gaussian Blur (alt+R, B, G). In the Horizontal field, enter 22. Click OK.
Image d is the key to getting this look. Open Fade Gaussian Blur(alt+E, F). Click on the triangle next to Mode, and a menu will drop down. Choose Darken only. Click Fade (alt+F.) This is a good look already, and you might want to call this complete. For the purposes of today’s demonstration, we will work on this image a bit more.
The next two steps involve the levels. This is basically the lightness and darkness. Image e is the picture after you use the Levels tool (alt+C, L). Go to where it says All Channels, and hit Auto. Click OK.
Image f involves the use of the Curves tool. This tool allows you to make part of the picture lighter, and part of it darker. Open Curves (alt+C, C). The picture below image f shows the Curves tool. The image on the left is the Curves tool when you open it. The image on the right is the Curves tool as it was adjusted for this image. The left side of the slanted line controls the dark parts of the image, and the right side controls the light parts. In this image, the dark parts were made lighter, and the light parts were made an equal amount darker. Click OK.
Image g is where the colors are saturated. Open Hue-Saturation(alt+C, S). In the Adjust Selected Color section, (leave it on Master), slide Saturation to the right as far as you need to. Saturating the colors will sometimes turn white people’s skin into an unappealing red shade. To offset this, go to the field beside the Hue slider, and enter 6. Click OK.
Image h is the final version of this picture. Open Color Balance (alt+C, B). For this image, in Select Range to Adjust, choose Shadows. In the Adjust Color Levels, under Cyan-Red enter 10, under Magenta-Green 0, and Yellow-Blue -20. Click OK. Open Save As (ctrl+shift+S), give it a name, click OK. You are finished.

There is a bit of facebook “wisdom” floating around. This time, most of the the internet skeptics seem to think it is the truth. Lets begin with the message:
A 36 year old female had an accident several weeks ago. It was raining, though not excessively when her car suddenly began to hydro-planeand literally flew through the air. She was not seriously injured but very stunned at the sudden occurrence!When she explained to the Police Officer what had happened, he told her something that every driver should know – NEVER DRIVE IN THE RAIN WITH YOUR CRUISE CONTROL ON. She thought she was being cautious by setting the cruise control and maintaining a safe consistent speed in the rain…. But the Police Officer told her that if the cruise control is on,your car will begin to hydro-plane when the tyres lose contact with the road, and your car will accelerate to a higher rate of speed making you take off like an aeroplane. She told the Officer that was exactly what had occurred. The Officer said this warning should be listed, on the driver’s seat sun-visor – NEVER USE THE CRUISE CONTROL WHEN THE ROAD IS WET OR ICY, Along with the airbag warning. We tell our teenagers to set the cruise control and drive a safe speed – but we don’t tell them to use the cruise control only when the road is dry.
This message makes intuitive sense. Unfortunately, a lot of other bits of internet wisdom sound good at first, but turn out to be frauds. There is no way to confirm the story of the “36 year old female.” When you are repeatedly lied to, your instinct is to not believe what you are told. In this case, if you google the key phrase, you will find abundant confirmation.
Snopes has numerous critics. In this case, the story is confirmed, and a link supplied to the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. “Turn off the cruise control: Wet roads can cause wheels to spin and lose control. The only way to stop wheels from spinning and maintain control is to immediately reduce power. An activated cruise control system applies continuous power, keeping the wheels spinning. By the time you disengage the cruise control it may be too late – you may have already lost control.”
Hoax Slayer says the story is true, but “misleading and overly alarmist.” They say the number one problem here is the slower reaction times with cruise control. People typically move the right foot away from the control pedals when CC is used. If there is an emergency, you will react a split second later. HS has a link to Car Point Australia, which makes this point: “This is the key that makes a nonsense of the email. Modern cars take their speedo reading from the driveshaft or transmission. This means the cruise control bases its responses on the speed of the driven wheels, not the car itself. This is an important distinction and fail safe position. If the driven wheels skid because they lose grip, the spinning wheels will cause the speedo to show a higher reading which will force the cruise control to release the throttle faster than most drivers. Regardless of whether the car itself slows down or speeds up, the cruise control will always reduce the throttle no matter what until the driven wheels slow down back to the pre-set speed. If the wheels continue to slip under this scenario, this will always leave the car traveling more slowly relative to the road, not faster as described in the email. “
Truth or fiction and urban legends agree with snopes that this is a real problem. The only dissenting voice seen so far is museum of hoaxes. They give a link to Australia’s Royal Automobile Association, which doesn’t think it is a problem. ” “Should the car’s tyres break traction with the road, such as in an aquaplane situation, the increase in wheel speed would be sensed and the cruise control system would then reduce the amount of throttle and maintain the set speed. Additionally, cruise control systems are deactivated as soon as the brake is applied. As braking is usually an automatic reaction in most emergency situations, the scenario of cruise control causing an increase in vehicle speed is highly unlikely.” Maybe it is ok in the southern hemisphere, but a problem north of the equator.