Hasta La Gadget!

Earlier this month, the LG F60 smartphone with LTE capability was announced, and just in case you were wondering, this particular handset will eventually debut over on Verizon as the LG Transpyre. The LG Transpyre is made available to Verizon’s pre-paid customers, where it will normally cost $199.99 without any contract, but for Verizon’s pre-paid customers, they will be able to pick it up for $99.99 a pop.

The LG Transpyre will come with a 4.5” display that features a 480 x 800 resolution, accompanied by a pixel density of 207ppi. Apart from that, it will run on a quad-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 410 processor that is complemented by an Adreno 306 GPU to handle all of the graphical requirements, accompanied by the likes of 1GB RAM, 4GB of internal memory, a microSD memory slot for expansion purposes, a 5MP shooter at the back and a front-facing VGA camera. There is also a removable 2100mAh battery to keep it going, with Android 4.4.2 KitKat as the operating system of choice. Expect the LG Transpyre to take full advantage of Verizon’s 4G LTE connectivity, where it will also be accompanied by LG’s Knock Code.

All in all, the LG Transpyre looks set to be a decent mid-range handset that offers plenty of bang for your hard earned buck.

LG Transpyre To Be Available Via Verizon , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Before the Hillary machine steamrolls towards the Democratic nomination, it isn’t sacrilege to question the sincerity of our 2016 frontrunner. At least one nanosecond of thought should be placed to see if she’s the right choice for president, or… gasp…if someone in another political party could be a better choice. If you think it won’t be Hillary Clinton against the eventual GOP challenger for president in 2016, then you probably don’t know that since 1999, Clinton has raised $328,742,879. That money didn’t help in 2008, but she did become Secretary of State and the hundreds of millions will handily defeat someone like Elizabeth Warren with less momentum, money, and publicity.

That being said, I urge Democrats everywhere to demand honesty of the Clinton campaign. This much needed sincerity doesn’t mean “evolving” on gay marriage when it’s convenient or being outright against decriminalization of marijuana. Marriage equality and marijuana legalization could have progressed far sooner had Hillary Clinton worked towards these causes when they weren’t popular, rather than hoard as much precious political capital as possible, as if it were Frodo’s ring.

It makes little sense to simply assume that Hillary will toe the party line on issues that grass roots organizations like Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and GLAAD have worked on for years to bring to everyone’s attention. Mind you, gay rights groups could have used the support of Hillary Clinton when Karl Rove was pushing the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in 2004; a successful political stunt that catered to the GOP’s anti-gay element and cemented Bush’s eventual victory. Clinton’s voice back then would have been epic, but would have cost votes even within the Democratic Party, so Hillary’s Machiavellian silence worked well enough to make the words on this page seem blasphemous to many readers.

But of course, let’s never bring this up, lest we be accused of having a nefarious “agenda” (the tweet mentioned was a reference to Ralph Nader hating Hillary, not me). Truth be told, if a Democrat has to “evolve” on issues that have always been popular among liberals, then political expediency is the reason, not a set value system. On the topic of domestic spying, The Nation published an article this year titled, On the NSA, Hillary Clinton is Either a Fool or a Liar. So, I’d appreciate an end to any accusation that I have a personal “agenda” against Hillary, especially when one of the most progressive publications on the planet writes that type of headline.

Sorry, even Dick Cheney “evolved” on gay marriage and giving Clinton a free pass on this issue makes us only a tiny bit better than the GOP. Waiting for the public to side with you on cherished values before combating conservatives to defend those values makes one an opportunist, not a liberal icon. Speaking of Dick Cheney, both Hillary Clinton and Cheney share similar views on war and foreign policy, but alas, progressives today have parted ways with the Vietnam protesters of the 60’s.

I’ve heard the phrase, “You’d vote for Rand Paul just because of war?” enough times to make me question my faith in humanity. Read Why We Lost if you think perpetual wars are good for America. It’s almost as if nobody cares that the president just sent over 3,000 soldiers back to Iraq, even after close to 7,000 have died in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and close to one million Americans were injured in both wars. For today’s liberals, the 2016 vote for president is unfortunately tied to many social issues that Hillary Clinton once opposed or stayed silent on; issues that can’t be addressed unilaterally by a president.

Or, we act upon fears promoted by a media that lumps good candidates alongside extremists within their party, which is why voting for Rand Paul is heretical to most Democrats. For a quick civics lesson, only Congress, state legislatures, courts and public opinion polls move legislation and social issues, not unilateral decisions by the man or woman in the White House. Yes, President Obama rightfully acted on immigration, but he had a public mandate to do so and the political will was evident in recent years. There’s no public mandate, or widespread agreement among most Americans that the EPA should be abolished, or that civil rights laws be rolled back, or any other irrational fear linked to voting for Rand over Hillary.

Rand over Hillary? I must be a gullible, naïve, fool. Perhaps, but at least I took a stand on the issue of Ferguson, even though I have zero influence in the political arena. I wrote about the issue of killing unarmed black men and claiming self-defense, what would have taken place had Trayvon, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown been white, and the economics behind Ferguson. No, I didn’t wait 19 days to make a statement, I raised my tiny, little voice when it mattered. Had Clinton raised her $328,742,879 voice during the Ferguson protests, the world would have noticed.

The fact is that only one of the candidates for president in 2016 (not Hillary, Jeb, or anyone else) visited Ferguson and discussed the issues of race and militarized police. It should have been Hillary Clinton, but it was Rand Paul who visited Ferguson, and his actions speak louder than any assumption that Clinton is automatically a better choice on civil rights. Before the indignant Twitter barrages and emails to this lowly writer, please ask yourself why Hillary Clinton has not once visited Ferguson, or why it took 19 days for her to make her first statement?

Regarding Clinton’s later than expected commentary on Ferguson, Marc Lamont Hill stated, “Hillary Clinton’s statement reflects careful triangulation and calculation driven by political interest rather than genuine feeling.” Doesn’t this sentiment warrant further discussion? The Morehouse College professor and CNN commentator also stated another important point, which was, “Hillary Clinton offers a statement on Michael Brown and Ferguson. 19 days later…Next she’ll offer her thoughts on Rodney King and Vietnam.”

In addition, Al Sharpton made the following assessment of Hillary Clinton’s initial silence on Ferguson, in the following MSNBC article titled Hillary Clinton finally speaks out on Ferguson:

Clinton has come under fire from civil rights leaders and others for remaining silent on Ferguson. “Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, don’t get laryngitis on this issue,” the Rev. Al Sharpton, who hosts an msnbc show in addition to leading the National Action Network, said at a rally. Despite the calls, a Clinton spokesperson declined several requests for comment from msnbc, and Clinton herself dodged reporters’ questions on Ferguson at a book signing last weekend.

Therefore, I think it’s fair to ask if Hillary is taking the same approach she initially took on gay marriage with the issues surrounding Ferguson.

So you’d vote for Rand Paul, a Republican who doesn’t share our values on civil rights, simply because the Clinton campaign is hypocritical, or slow to act because of political reasons?

Well, yes, specifically because I think actions speak louder than a weird interview about his libertarian views on business. Rand Paul’s words and actions on the subject of militarized police and Michael Brown’s shooting speak volumes. In a Time op-ed titled We Must Demilitarize the Police, Sen. Paul writes about the dangers of a highly armed police force, and how this frightening reality affected Ferguson:

If I had been told to get out of the street as a teenager, there would have been a distinct possibility that I might have smarted off. But, I wouldn’t have expected to be shot…

When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury–national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture–we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands…

Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.

Is there serious contender for president in 2016 speaking about “racial disparities in our criminal justice system” or the sentiment that many African-Americans feel pertaining to being targeted by police? These are poignant words and they speak to me. They speak to my concept of justice and where this country is going, and I don’t care if they were written by a Republican.

The fact that Paul wrote, “I might have smarted off…But, I wouldn’t have expected to be shot” is something Clinton would never have touched, in a million years, with even a one hundred foot pole. This sentence actually touches upon the heart of the Ferguson issue by highlighting how police forces in this day and age aren’t only militarized, but also fast to pull the trigger. All one has to do is read about the tragedy of the latest unarmed man shot by police to realize the severity of this issue. As a result, Paul’s Time article is an enormous distancing from the mainstream GOP view of Ferguson and represents such a wide chasm in sentiment that even Hillary Clinton took 19 days to craft a measured response.

But Paul’s faking it, just to get the black community to vote for him!

Alright, then Hillary Clinton should do the same, instead of expecting 93% of the black vote, emboldening her to remain silent about a topic the entire country was debating. Politicians taking a voting block for granted is dangerous and doesn’t help anyone. Simply expecting Hillary Clinton to defend the interests of African-Americans, when Rand Paul is addressing issues like reforming criminal justice with Sen. Cory Booker and visiting a polarizing spot like Ferguson is something that should be noticed, not simply dismissed as publicity stunts.

Does Paul share my views on immigration? No, but President Obama’s recent order, even though I vehemently support his latest executive action on immigration, is only temporary. Congress will ultimately decide on immigration reform. The separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches is one reason that a Paul presidency doesn’t frighten me the way it might most other liberals who think he’d do this to government programs. I also respect the fact he met with Al Sharpton to discuss crime issues, as highlighted in a recent POLITICO article:

“We talked about his position on dealing with some criminal justice issues that I am concerned about,” Sharpton said in a statement from the National Action Network, where he serves as president.

“We also discussed mandatory sentencing that he and Senator Cory Booker are proposing,” the statement continued. “It was a very candid and courteous conversation.”

It would have been nice if Hillary Clinton also met with Al Sharpton, but she was busy with other matters.

But global warming will kill more people than American military adventures in the Middle East!

True, but Paul stated the following to Bill Maher:

And I’m not against regulation. I think the environment has been cleaned up dramatically through regulations on emissions as well as clean water over the last 40 or 50 years.

Also, the sun isn’t going to send your grandkids into a war against the fifth rebranding of al-Qaeda; that hooded man in 2045 who beheads an American to lure us into our 5th Iraq War. Ending perpetual wars in the Middle East, the war on drugs, domestic spying (before the gleeful accusations, Rand Paul recently voted against a Ted Cruz co-sponsored bill that would have extended the PATRIOT Act until 2017), militarized police, corporate welfare, and reforming criminal justice should be atop anyone’s priority list, but apparently I’m in the minority on this interpretation of progressive politics. Paul isn’t a pacifist, but he’s spoken repeatedly about ending prolonged and unsuccessful American wars in the Middle East. He’s spoken so much about ending such conflicts that he now has to prove he’s not an isolationist to GOP war hawks.

If Hillary Clinton had championed issues that directly correlate to presidential authority, like ending perpetual wars or curtailing domestic spying, I probably wouldn’t be considering Rand Paul in 2016. Then again, had she visited Ferguson, she would have potentially alienated possible swing voters in 2016, so like gay marriage, Clinton has placed calculated strategy above bold stances. If people like Ralph Nader and Bill Maher are open to voting for Rand Paul, it’s not blasphemy to consider a Republican for president. Sen. Paul urging Congress to declare war against ISIS, a move that would force the president to defer to Congress on this matter and force a genuine debate on the issue of war in the Middle East, is another reason to like the Kentucky Senator.

Apple has teamed with select app developers on a fundraising initiative for (RED) and World AIDS day (Dec 1st). For the next two weeks there will be a dedicated a section of the App Store where 25 partnering apps will be available with new or…

We did talk about the K5 sentry robots from Knightscope not too long ago, and it seems that Microsoft, the second most valuable company in the world, intends to enlist the help of the K5 sentry robots to increase the amount of security on their campus. The K5 sentry robots will come equipped with alarms, High Definition sensors, microphones, heat detectors and cameras that will work in tandem with one another, keeping track of human behavior in the vicinity. It is hoped that this will help folks remain honest in a far less threatening environment.

After all, when someone is watching you, you tend to be a whole lot more conscious about what you say and do (and don’t do, too, of course). Apart from that, the K5 sentry robots will arrive standard with GPS, speakers, Wi-Fi and weather sensors. Should they start to figure out if “trouble” is brewing, they will send a signal back to the command post. The command post would then allow the people in the relevant department (security officers, for example) to monitor and respond to the activity accordingly.

Would you feel a whole lot safer with the presence of robot sentries in the future, or would you still want a policeman or security guard to get the job done?

Microsoft Enlists K5 Robots For Security Reasons , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

The use of creative lighting techniques as an integral part of stagecraft has progressed by leaps and bounds since the day when the introduction of a single-lens slide projector was considered a revolutionary step forward in multimedia. I was completely captivated by the San Francisco Opera’s use of projection mapping in two recent productions designed by Jun Kaneko (2012’s staging of The Magic Flute and 2014’s presentation of Madama Butterfly). The following video explores some of the challenges faced by an artist working in a new medium to create enough video for a performance lasting nearly three hours.

In January 2014, Theatre Communications Group published a fascinating article by Mike Lawler entitled Stage Technology Has Changed The Way Theatre Is Made. So Who’s Training The New Makers? In analyzing what lies in store for the integration of projection mapping into live stage productions, Lawler quoted three industry experts as follows:

• “We increasingly experience the world around us in our day-to-day lives through moving and interactive images. I think it is not only familiar to our audiences as a platform for communication, but an essential aspect of modern life for artists to explore and unpack. From a practical standpoint, the reasons we have seen such a rapid increase in new media in the arts in recent years include the affordability and availability of creative tools and a greater general facility with those tools at a younger age.” (Peter Flaherty, who has taught Directing for New Media at the Yale School of Drama and is head of the Video for Performance Department at the California Institute of the Arts).
• “The profound technological change in live performance has been the use of digital code as a sort of universal translator between different technical elements of a show. Tools for the creation of digital content and the pervasiveness and ease of use of these tools have made the manipulation of image, sound, and physical devices much easier and more affordable than before. These capture-and-edit tools are available in native form on most digital devices, so younger artists — many literally born with a laptop in front of them — incorporate moving image and other media into their work as readily as they use it in their daily lives.” (Kevin Cunningham, Executive Artistic Director of New York’s 3-Legged Dog).
• “We can pretty much do anything on a stage these days, but I would argue that we are limited — especially in the theatre — only by our creative imaginations. For the majority of theatre that I come across, the directors don’t seem to understand how to use modern technology to tell the story.” (John Huntington, Professor of Entertainment Technology at New York City College of Technology).

In September 2013, The Creators Project uploaded s short film to YouTube entitled Box. In describing their sensational use of 3D projection mapping, the creative team stated that:

“Box explores the synthesis of real and digital space through projection-mapping on moving surfaces. The short film documents a live performance, captured entirely in camera. It is the culmination of multiple technologies, including large scale robotics, projection mapping, and software engineering. Bot & Dolly produced this work to serve as both an artistic statement and technical demonstration. We believe this methodology has tremendous potential to radically transform theatrical presentations, and define new genres of expression.”

When the national touring company of Motown: The Musical took over San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre, I found myself in awe of the production’s ability to combine archival footage with projection mapping. The basic structure of the show’s large pieces of scenery is similar to what one saw in the 2010 touring company of Dreamgirls — a series of vertical and horizontal bars and panels which can be moved to create a wide variety of configurations. Whereas the panels in the touring Dreamgirls production were filled with programmable LEDs, Motown: The Musical’s scenery relies on projection mapping to such a large extent that, early in the show, I felt like I was watching the first jukebox musical designed for an audience with ADHD.

However, when considering how well the use of projection mapping enhanced the production (and could be fully integrated with the music), the technological triumphs of the design team became more exciting for me than the show itself. My perspective on this phenomenon is, of course, colored by several personal factors which I should explain.

• I grew up listening to a steady diet of opera, classical music, and Broadway show tunes (unlike many of my contemporaries, my hero back in elementary school was Johann Sebastian Bach). Because I lived without a television for nearly 25 years, my musical tastes were not shaped by popular variety shows, television specials, or MTV. Nor was I constantly listening to the latest hits by Motown’s artists on the radio.

The result is that, unlike many people in the audience during the show’s opening night in San Francisco, songs made famous by such groups as The Temptations, Martha and the Vandellas, The Supremes, and The Jackson 5 were not the musical totems that dotted my cultural landscape. Nor was I emotionally invested in hit songs by such popular solo artists as Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, and Michael Jackson.

As a result, it’s hard for me to ignore comparisons between 1981’s Dreamgirls and 2013’s Motown: The Musical (both of which follow the career paths of a similar set of artists).

• While Dreamgirls follows the adventures of Deena Jones and the Dreams, it’s no secret that the show’s story was modeled on the real-life experiences of Diana Ross and the Supremes.
• Whereas the narrative for Dreamgirls is shaped and driven by the personal passions of its women, the narrative for Motown: The Musical (whose book was written by Berry Gordy) is essentially driven by a relentlessly entrepreneurial style shaped by a dominant and manipulative masculine personality.

Clifton Oliver and Allison Semmes as Berry Gordy and Diana Ross
in a scene from Motown: The Musical (Photo by: Joan Marcus)

• While Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen created musical numbers for Dreamgirls that were specifically written to advance the show’s plot, the score for Motown: The Musical offers a rapid parade of nearly 60 hit songs produced by Berry Gordy that might just as well have been entitled “All My [Musical] Children.”
• Although Dreamgirls found its strength in focusing on the personal relationships between its female leads, Motown: The Musical attempts to balance Berry Gordy’s personal and professional successes against the background of the civil rights movement during the turbulent 1960s.
• Whereas the villainous elements in Dreamgirls revolved around the influence of payola in the music industry and a series of personal and professional betrayals, the villainous elements in Motown: The Musical have a lot more to do with corporations outbidding Berry Gordy for the talent he nurtured and the late 20th-century power shift in the music industry from Detroit to Los Angeles.

While Motown: The Musical never fails to entertain, it often has the mechanical feel of an industrial show determined to subdue the audience with the strength of its product. Powerfully directed by Charles Randolph-White, Motown: The Musical benefits immensely from the work of co-choreographers Patricia Wilcox and Warren Adams. Special kudos go to its superb design team: David Korins (scenic design), Esosa (costume design), Natasha Katz (lighting design), Peter Hylenski (sound design), and Daniel Brodie (projection design).

The Jackson 5 performing during Motown: The Musical
(Photo by: BrodieGraphics)

Although the national touring company’s cast includes such talented men as Clifton Olver (Berry Gordy), Nicholas Christopher (Smokey Robinson), Jarran Muse (Marvin Gaye), and Reed L. Shannon as a young Michael Jackson — with Allison Semmes delivering a nicely-layered characterization of Diana Ross — the voice that made me spring to attention belonged to Martina Sykes, whose full-throated portrayal of Mary Wells raised the roof of the Orpheum Theatre.

A photo showing the projection mapping used in Motown: The Musical
(Photo by: BrodieGraphics)

As a musical sampling of the sounds that emerged from Motown, one can’t do better than starting with “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Bye Bye Baby,” “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” and moving on through the catalog to “I’ll Be There,” “What’s Going On,” and “You Are The Sunshine of My Life.” Unfortunately, many songs are performed in a severely abridged format. Nevertheless, one can’t help but come away from this show in awe of the dancing, singing, and incredibly high energy levels of its ensemble. Here’s the trailer:

To read more of George Heymont go to My Cultural Landscape