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Saturday, September 15, 2018

Visual Arts

Visual Arts


What is art? Art is a very debated concept. Some people are quite confused, maybe even offended by what is believed to be art. For example, a lot of art is controversial. Visual art comes in many forms. From photography, fantasy and graphic art, to painting, sculpting, drawing, animation and so on. The images above and below exhibit some of these artistic phenomenons, such as famous 1930s cartoon character Betty Boop, fashion and style, comic book illustrations, outdoor displays, artistic tools and a road sign.

Interestingly, the school zone sign represents a quasi universal way of depicting a human being for representative purposes. Popularity of this genre of portrayals, called stick figures, may be evidenced from animation instruments such as templates within Xtranormal, Goanimate, Pivot, and of course, Stykz.

Art cannot always be seen. Image: Megan Jorgensen (Elena).

Similar to other professions, ‘designer’ may refer to a variety of specializations: fashion, graphic, web, interior, IxD and so on. IxD stands for interaction design. From prehistoric cave painting to computer graphics, drawings changed much. Still, fascination with the visual art is paralleled in the saying: ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’.

The celebrated anime and/or manga style is achieved through various techniques. In addition to watercolors, pencil, graphite, charcoal, crayons, ink, pastels and oil paint may be used to complete such and other drawings, among other materials. In the digital era, software (products by Corel, Autodesk, Serif and other publishers) contribute to computer generated imagery (CGI) and computer-aided design (CAD). Finally, an unfinished or rough drawing is called a sketch. Sketching is yet another form of producing artistic pictorials

Survivor

Survivor

By Suzanne Jones


We were absolutely forbidden to go near the pool, which had to come very deep beneath the rush of water, blue green in its depth. The water was very cold coming out of the pipe, but as it fanned out onto the sand before running inn a little stream to the sea, it was pleasantly cool at the edges, though it smelled like musty straw.

I wonder now at the courage or carelessness of the women, because in the sea there were jellyfish, some of which were very poisonous, and sea snakes which were deadly.

I saw one once, dead and hanging over the compound fence. I thought it was a piece of cable, and I leaped up to grab it. Its body was warm from the sun, and the fingers of my hand left their imprint on it in little curves. It was Cutter who sneered at my screams.

When we were first in camp, the children my age and older had swum out to a raft, anchored in deep water. I swam out to it, but struggled and struggled to lift myself up onto it, scraping my legs in the process. I finally heaved myself up on the canvas-covered boards, and the others, legs flashing white, went diving off the other side, leaving me alone, panting there.

“There’s a ladder on the other side, stupid!”

I’m sure that was Cutter’s high, thin voice.

Survivors. Photo by Elena.

After a few minutes of being all alone on the dark blue sea, my eyes stinging from the salt in the water, I too dived in and swam back to the shore that lay like a clean white ribbon between the water and the jumble of brownish sand and camp buildings that trembled in the distance.

At first the sores were small and mostly unnoticed. They multiplied and became worse, but still I said nothing. I hated doctors so much I think because of all the shots we had to have to come to this place: typhoid, typhus, malaria, cholera, diphtheria, small pox – some of the names I remember. Scores of shots, two a day, with both arms swollen and sore from the day before.

The doctor, the only doctor theere, was named Black and later was judged too incompetent even to tend the Americans in Ras Tanura, and drank himself to death eventually in Abqaiq.

The treatment he prescribed for fungus infection consisted of scraping off the scabs which now covered my legs from ankle to thigh, painting the open sores with Marthiolate, and wrapping them in heavy gauze bandages. Every week.

Week after week.

Mother would pull me screaming into the clinic, and I would sit in the whirlpool bath to soak the bandages off and butt any nurse foolish enough to come near me.

Week after week.

I will say this for Dr. Black. There are no scars on my legs.

My condition, however, served to remove us from the community of active children at a time when I needed to establish myself in my rivalry with Cutter. Because I had to stay indoors, I became friends instead with Nora, whose mother kept heer inside because of the fairness of her skin. Nora, with whom no one was friends.

We played quietly together in the dark house, blinds drawn against the heat. Played very quietly because Nora’s father worked the graveyard shift and slept during the day. After a while we made too much noise, and I was asked not to come back.

Fortunately, my mother had either grown too bored to resist or had become less fearfull of my being on my own, because when I could bend my legs again, I could go down to the beach alone, not to swim, not to go into the sea, but to walk on the hard, wet sand where it was easiest to walk, and shoot the jellyfish with arrows from the bow I had made myslef. I only shoot the ones with a dark bluish-purple spot within like a feathery seed, which I considered poisonous, I would then sling them back into the sea.

As I walked there, Setta often appeared. Setta was my age, had dark hair cut short, a withered arm, and wore a T-shirt wit blue and white bands on it. She had been my best friend in Texas, where we lived next door to each other. There we were together every day, walked to kindergarten together, played in the dust beneath the huge chinaberry tree on the alley at the very edge of her backyard. The chinaberry tree was the largest tree I had ever seen at the time, too large even to climb up into. Beneath it, sunk in smooth gray stones, was the pond in which we sought the goldfish, where I waded in my father’s old cowboy boots, which came above my knees. But they let in the water anyway, cold at my toes, wetting my socks.

(Ellery Queen, Mystery Magazine, September 1993)

Friday, September 14, 2018

Credit

Credit


If one wanted to simplify accounting to one equation, it would be: A = E + L, where A stands for assets, E for shareholders’ equity and L for liabilities. Liabilities are money that one owes, or outstanding debt and loans. One example of a liability is a mortgage. While the real estate market has been greatly affected by the subprime mortgage crisis, buying houses, condominiums and other residential properties remains an attractive alternative to renting, for those who can afford it.

So how does it work? Homes and condos can be purchased directly from the owner, but people usually go through a real estate agent. Similarly, a mortgage may be obtained directly from a bank or other financial institution, or through the intermediary of a mortgage broker (some believe it may result in lower interest rates). Usually, there is a down payment, a percentage of the total cost of the property, and the rest is covered by a mortgage, a loan from the bank. As a general rule, banks will only lend money to those with steady jobs, adequate income given the funds to be borrowed, and a good credit history.

Nonetheless, having good credit may result in borrowing too much. For example, someone with an excellent credit rating may be offered credit limits well beyond what they initially planned to spend, maxing out their credit cards or overdraft accounts, and ending up with large debts. Then, unpaid debt could lead to financial woes, such as bad credit and problems with collector agencies.

Alternatively, very small commercial loans are gaining popularity in the developing world, allowing entrepreneurs to start small businesses. The practice is known as microfinance. Clearly, capital and investment are an integral part of most businesses, since a good idea and luck alone are seldom enough without financing, investing and a sustainable cash flow.

Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay. (Charles Dickens). Illustration : Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Face Value

Face Value

By Jo Bannister (excerpt)


I fell off the sailboard and, despite Jamie’s efforts to extricate me, became trapped under the sail and nearly drowned. For pony trekking, I was mounted on something distantly related to Red Rum which ran away with me halfway down a rocky gorge and dumped me on my head at the bottom. The hang-gliding instructor was a drunk. After three days I’d shaved death more closely, and in more different ways, than Baron Munchausen.

“I don’t know about this place,” I confused to Jamie when we were alone. “They don’t seem very safety conscious”.

He smiled tolerantly. “The best riders fall off sometimes. And nobody ever learned to windsurf without getting wet.”

“And the hang-gliding expert with the straw to his inside pocket?”

“Not the highest standard of professionalism,” he admitted, “We’ give the hang gliding a miss in future.” His face brightened. “We’re scuba diving tomorrow.”

My heart sank. It seemed to me that the scope of disaster was greater three fathoms beneath the Aegean than anywhere we’d yet been. The tanks might be empty. The air hoses might leak. We could be given irregular regulators, or weight belts that would take us plummeting to the bottom. The instructor might sucomb to an attack of nitrogen narcosis and lead us merrily deeper and deeper until returning to the surface would precipitate a fatal attack of the bends.

Sity sightseeing. Photo by Elena.

Jamie chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’ve been diving since I was knee-high to an octopus. Ill look after you.”

That evening we ran out of toothpaste. I thought Jamie might have packed some more and called after him but he was already en route to the bar. There wasn’t any toothpaste in his sponge-bag so I looked in his suitcase.

What I found there drove all thoughts of dental hygiene from my mind. It was a letter: a letter from a woman, on palest mauve notepaper scented just perceptibly with lilacs.

Did I read it? Of course I read it. And take that censorious little frown off your face – you’d have read it too.

Halfway through, my anger susiding, I realized I’d make a mistake. It was wholly innocuous, a letter any man could receive with a clear conscience, though it was affectionate, even loving, full of shared intimacies and private jokes. It was from his mother. She had news of his dog and his sister, in that order. She’d had the paintings off the wall to redecorate the library, and now she couldn’t remember what went where. She hoped he’d write and say if the Aegean was as lovely as she remembered; she hadn’t been back since his father died.

It was a nice letter. I thought I’d like Jamie’s mother. But I thought it was odd that she didn’t mention me, not even in that cool tone mothers use when their children are engaged in activities than which they are old enough to know better. He might have been in the Greek Islands on his own.

I put it back in the envelope. The stationary was crisp and textured, with a discreet little seal stamped on the back of the envelope. I turned it to the light in order to read the impress. Then, very carefully, I put it back where I found it.

(Ellery Queen, Mystery Magazine, September 1993)

Should You Rent or Buy a House

Should You Rent or Buy a House

A formula for the biggest investment decision you’re likely to make


It’s often hard to remember the buying a home is an investment fraught with some of the risk of Wall Street. And much as you might wish to own a place of your own, you might feel a bit better about parting with your down payment if you were convinced that you were making a savvy investment. A quick rule of thumb: You can assume you’re probably better off renting if you do not itemize deductions on your tax returns or if you plan to move in a few years.

Gaylon Greer, professor of real estate at the University of Memphis, has devised a more sophisticated formula by adapting for potential homeowners a calculation used to decide whether to rent or buy. Keep in mind the Greer’s calculation only considers the financial aspects of the decision. Here’s how it works.

Consider the hypothetical predicament of Tracy and Jeff Summers, who are renting an apartment in Chicago for $1,200 a month. They are considering buying a similar-sized home for $200,000 and plan to live in the house for seven years.

Step 1: Figure out the yearly financial cost for each scenario. For renting, that would be the Summer’s annual rent of $14,400. For buying, it would be the after-tax costs of mortgage payments, property taxes, and maintenance.

Greer suggests estimating annual maintenance costs at about 1 percent of the house’s value for a new home and up to 3 or 4 percent for an older house. The local tax assessor can give you property tax rates.

New York, Chinatown, Mulberry street. Photo by Elena.

The Summers estimated spending about $2,000 a year on maintenance and paying $8,000 in property taxes. Their yearly mortgage payments come to approximately $16,000, assuming a $180,000 mortgage at 8,1 percent. However, the total yearly cost a buying is brought down substantially once you factor in the fact that property tax and mortgage payments are mostly tax-deductible. Since the Chicago couple falls into the 39,6 percent income tax bracket, they can roughly estimate that the government pays that percentage of their costs. Therefore their total yearly costs for buying would be $16,000.

Step 2: Figure how much you will recoup when you sell your house. You should expect about 8 to 10 percent of the final value to be consumed by transaction costs, such as brokerage and legal fees. After subtracting their transaction costs, the Summers estimate getting $290,000 for their house after living there for seven years. And they will still owe about $165,000 on their mortgage, so after taxes their net gain will be roughly $90,000.

Step 3: Estimate how much you might make if you had invested your money in something other than a home. You can use tables to give you the value today of a dollar available at various points in the future. These tables are based on a determined percent rate of return on high-grade corporate bonds. These numbers can change – if they do you can use a present value table found in any finance book.

Let’s see an example:

Year 1, cost or benefit $16,000, factor .9259, present value equivalent $14, 814,40.

Year 2, cost or benefit $16,000, factor .8573, present value equivalent $13, 716,80.

Each number corresponds to a year, so for year one, the factor will be .9259. Multiply that number by the annual cost of $16,000 to get a “present value equivalent” for the first year cost of ownership. Continue with similar calculations for each year you plan to live in the house. At the end you will add what you expect to recoup from selling the house and the down payment. You should end up with something like this (parenthesis indicate negative numbers):

Year 6 ($16,000) Factor .6502. Present value equivalent ($10,403,20).

Year 7 (cost) or benefit $90,000. Factor .5835. Present value equivalent $52,515,00.

You should be able to calculate the total, which include down payment to buy and net present value equivalent.

Step 4: Go through the same calculation for renting – minus the down payment and net gain for selling. The lower cost is the best financial option.

The bottom line for the Summers: They should buy the house. Figuring the present value of their money, they will come out ahead by over $20,000 if they purchase the home.

Of course, even if the result favors renting, you might decide to buy the house you saw because it has such a lovely view from the kitchen window. That’s simply a different definition of present value.

It’s Harder the First Time

With lower mortgage rates, first-time homebuyers can afford more expensive houses. The National Association of Realtors’ first-time home buyer index shows the ability of renters who are prime potential first-time buyers to qualify for a mortgage on a starter home. When the index equals 100, the typical first-time buyer can afford the typical starter home under existing financial conditions with a 10 percent down payment. The first-time buyer median income represents the typical income of a renter family with wage earners between the ages of 25 and 44 years. The 1994 first-time buyer index shows that the qualifying income needed for conventional financing covering 90 percent of a $93,000 starter home was $28,699. Yet the median income of prime-time first buyers was $24,998, a difference of $3,701. Even so, a typical first-time buyer could afford a home costing $78,300.