Take a look at the following image:
What you see is the word “wives” that appears in a typewriter font. You will notice that part of the letter “e” overlaps the letter “s” that follows it. Now birthers seeing overlap like this call it “kerning.” Kerning is the intentional adjustment of horizontal spacing for aesthetic purposes. Obviously, there is nothing aesthetic in this example. This is not kerning. But the substantive point is that birthers say that such letter spacing, however called, as in this example is impossible to achieve on a mechanical typewriter.
Now I promise you that the image above is one of these two things:
- A normal sample of typewritten text prior to the year I graduated from college, 1972, scanned and presented as it came from the scanning program.
- Something that I cooked up using some mechanical and/or digital process.
Answer: 1. This is real typewritten text. The sample comes from file page 6 (printed page 5) of the Allen FOIA file on Barack Obama Sr.
I invite any birther forensic analyst, or anyone else, to analyze the sample using any tools at their disposal, and to give their well-supported conclusions as to which it is, and if it is the second option, to speculate on how I made it.
I urge contestants to think outside the box. After all analyses are received, I will reveal the true answer. A strict on-topic rule is in force for this article.
Update:
A commenter here pointed out that my original example didn’t show a genuine overlap, although it did rather look like it did. Clearly I need to find/make something much more obvious. Because of what I had to do to make this come out right, the eventual revelation will not be spectacular. Still I hope to fool some of the birthers some of the time.
So I have either located an authentic typewriter sample in the last few minutes that shows massive overtyping of letters or I have used some mechanical and/or digital means to cook one up. Which is it?
Comments are back open.
For extra credit: same questions this image:
Answer: 2. This image is a scan of an actual typewritten word; however, the typewriter carriage was manually adjusted to create the overlap and vertical shift.
And for double extra credit: same questions this image:
Answer: 2. This image is wholly created by digital means. A typewriter font called “Mom’s Typewriter” was used. Each letter was place manually and a blur operator done on the result.
And for triple extra credit: same question this image:
Answer: 2. This image is wholly created by digital means. A typewriter font called “My Underwood” was used. Each letter was place manually.
OK, this is the last one:
Answer: 1. This is real typewritten text. The sample comes from file page 6 (printed page 5) of the Allen FOIA file on Barack Obama Sr. It comes from the same page as the first question above.
Learn more:
- Crummy typewriter fonts free for download
As usual, instead of address the allegations you simply attack the messenger. Classic Alinsky tactic.
And back on the subject of “kerning”, since you so rudely bump me from the discussion last night and deleted many of my more substantive posts. You are correct that “kerning” in a uniform and traditional sense does not exist on the PDF. I believe you called it “spacing anamolies”. I agree that the WH PDF was NOT created on a word processor. That is a straw man, but I’m sure you knew that when you set about to attacking it. Having said that, there ARE many instances of letters invading their neighbors horizontal spacing…which is not possible on a type writer, with a couple exceptions. Those exceptions are both hardware problems or misalignments and the WH PDF doesn’t show the signs that either are the case. So where does that leave us? It’s not typed and it wasn’t done on a word processor. The most logical explanation is that at least some of the letters were copied and pasted from other source documents. They simply put a few letters to close to its neighbor.
I can show you MANY BC’s from the same time period that DO NOT exhibit this behavior. What’s more, I can show you that this attribute exists on the WH PDF, the AP photo and the Guthrie photo. The mess of a PDF is designed to distract from this fact, IMHO.
How about you create a thread reserved for you, me and John Woodman…wherein we debate the technical aspects of optimization as it relates to the layering and oddities in the WH PDF…as well as the anomalies that exist in all 3 versions?
Do you have the intellectual honesty to allow that to happen on your blog?
Garrett, are you for real or just a comedian? The “Alinsky tactic” was especially good; a nice parody of knuckle-dragging brain-damaged Birfoons who use Saul Alinsky as an all-purpose non-specific boogey-man. Priceless!
And that thing about typewriters not varying in horizontal spacing… Just like the childish, perfect ignorance you’d expect from Birfoons, who wouldn’t know that quick typing on old manual machines can give both vertical AND horizontal spacing variances! That one had me in stitches!
Really, the most hilarious part is your use of the pompous, arrogant tone taken by dipsticks with a tiny amount of actual knowledge, and a steaming pantload of gullibility, addressing Birfer debunkers who are twice as smart, and who are capable of objective critical thinking. That would be sad if it just weren’t so damn funny!
You may have taken the joke too far when you pretended to be so stupid, so devoid of the power of reason, that you actually think the low-res ‘faked’ .pdf could have been used to produce the much higher-resolution paper copies. I mean… NOBODY who could turn their computer on could be such a total and utter imbecile!
You should have spiced it up by claiming it’s a “known fact” that President Obama’s father was actually Bigfoot, and Emilia Earhart was the mid-wife. But keep trying… Maybe some day you can write for The Onion!
You used the word “kerning.” Kerning is a process in mechanical typesetting and word processing/desktop publishing. By using such a word you yourself very specifically inserted word processing into the discussion.
You are partially right, as usual. Kerning is a process in mechanical typesetting and word processing…but the process itself refers specifically to the adjustment of space between two characters. The fact that typesetting and word processing are the methods for creating text in normal circumstances is the reason the term is related to those fields. If cut and paste text creation were a common thing, it could also rightly refer to the space between two individual letter pairs, even if not proportionally used throughout the entire font or document.
Now, you say that you didn’t mean what you said, but rather you meant something different. We can discuss your new topic, but my responding specifically and precisely to what you said is not a straw man.
As I just demonstrated, I said exactly what I meant…you just interpreted based on your understanding of the common usage. Still, even debating semantics is obviously a diversionary tactic from discussing the issue at hand…pathetic.
Wiki explains it well – “Kerning is the adjustment of the space between individual letter forms vs. tracking which is the uniform adjustment of spacing applied over a range of characters.[”
Also “The related term kern denotes a part of a type letter that overhangs the edge of the type block.”
So any instance of a letter that overhangs the edge of a type block, as is the case in several portions of Obama’s BC, can rightly be called “kerning”.
In practical use the bars can be hit together or too quickly resulting in a jam. The jam pushes the type bar to one side or another; it’s surprising how much force that can be required to clear a jam.
That is rich. I’ve seen you peddling this one before. Please demonstrate.
As a result a particular letter may appear to the left or the right of its normal position consistently in the case of a bent key,
There is no consistency in the “kerned” pairs. Try again.
When someone says this is impossible, they are simply speaking without expertise.
When someone uses the title doctor to make themselves appear as an expert, you should be cautious in trusting anything they say.
Well if debating semantics is a diversion, they why did you make a very long semantic argument to which I am replying?
However, you inserted a comment on kerning attached to an article on another topic. That’s a thread hijack. I think you have pretty much disqualified yourself from participating here, what with lies, insults, arguments about arguments, incitement, semantic arguments and now thread hijacking. You have passed the troll test.
However, I have made a special article where we can finish this particular discussion:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2012/03/to-kern-or-not-to-kern-that-is-the-question/
You may make comments on that article only and on that topic only and once that’s over, go away. Your first comment might be a detailed argument in support of your claim: “There is no consistency in the ‘kerned’ pairs. Try again.” You made the claim; you defend it.
Simple refutation of your claim.
There is no overlap on the image. It only looks that way based on the size of the picture. Everyone click the image and zoom in your browser to 500%. You can clearly see that ‘v’ does NOT invade on the ‘e’s space. I can provide a better screenshot for those interested…with a delineating line proving my point.
I can also provide at least 5 or 6 examples of actual horizontal intrusion on Obama’s BC….PDF, AP or Guthrie.
The way you waste time is funny.
You forgot the speed of the typists.
I am going to move all of this thread hijack to the new thread.
OMG–Bill Mayer! He was the voice of Drake University track for three seasons. It’s an honor sir.
I’ve sent Dr. C images proving there is no kerning in his example. There are around 13 instances on Obama’s BC. I sent a sample image of that as well. Let’s see if he let’s his bias keep him from displaying the truth.
Please post the images to this thread.
I will concede that the original example doesn’t show genuine overlap. The replacement image does. Sorry for this technical interruption. I now return you to your normal program in progress. That original image, which does show significant horizontal shift, does have a special significance, which I will reveal along with the solution to the new puzzle.
That is a good example. Although that is clearly a physical issue with the typewriter (ie. bent bar on ‘s’ key or something similar). How about posting more of the text it came from so we can analyze if there are consistent signs of problems with the same letters. There aren’t on the Obama doc.
How many instances did you find on Susan Nordyke’s BC?
How many do you find in the following essay (which appears to be typed with the same make of typewriter that President Obama’s BC was typed with)?…
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lDHkH919w48/TavRb0BbjaI/AAAAAAAAA9k/tVqkSuW8698/s1600/POW2.jpg
So let me posit this question. I agree that typewriters are, like all machines, capable of malfunction. The question then becomes, if we are discussing the possiblity of copying and pasting letters manually, how then do you decipher between innocent mechanical issues and minor spacing mistakes from C&P manipulation?
How many individual distinct pairs of letters would have to show spacing abnormalities once and only once within the whole document for you to find it odd?
How many instances did you find on Susan Nordyke’s BC?
The Nordyke BC is very low quality so it’s hard to tell overall. However, the ‘ap’ from Kapiolani IS overlapped in O’s BC, but not on the Nordyke’s. I would assume they were the same type of typewriter…if not the exact same typewriter.
As for other, more clear, HI BC’s from the time…I’ve looked over a few and one most there is absolutely none. On one there was one instance…which looked like a mechanical issue as does Dr. C’s new image. Again, Obama’s has 13…when do you start to wonder folks?
Do you guys trust the results from the Rathergate case? Newcomber (sp?) says the O BC is suspect because of this very issue.
How many do you find in the following essay
I just started looking, but so far I’m not seeing any. Care to point out the culprits for me?
Doc, thank you for fighting the good fight on behalf of kerning!
So typical that a birther is on hand to abuse the hell out of kerning on a page dedicated to preserving the concept!
*sigh*
Say, Garrett, in Doc’s “wives” image, how many kerned letter pairs are there? Please don’t say 1. Or employ any other language or convention to express the concept of a singularity. You probably will, anyway.
Is “authentic typewriter” your answer? Or do you think I simulated a mechanical problem with a real typewriter.
I mean if you can’t tell, then how do you decide? Well you could ask someone who knows the answer, me in the case of this image, and the STATE OF HAWAII in the case of Obama’s birth certificate.
I would caution you, however, not to rely on the 13-examples on a page argument because if this argument is wrong, then there will be lots of other pages with lots of examples on them too.
The Rathergate case is problematic. You see, after that document was examined, a consensus that it was fake was quickly reached, and a complete explanation of how it was made was presented. In the case of the Obama certificate consensus is limited to the birthers, and no coherent story of how it was made has been agreed upon by those who claim it is a fake. I certainly disliked George Bush, but I had no problem agreeing that the CBS document was a fake.
And how many of the 13 appear on a page that is being copied out of a book, which is therefore bent, and distorting the image as a whole?
Is “authentic typewriter” your answer? Or do you think I simulated a mechanical problem with a real typewriter.
I didn’t guess one way or the other as it isn’t relevant to Obama’s BC. I simply explained how it COULD happen under normal circumstances. The fact that you could have simulated it only helps my argument. Of course manual manipulation is always an option. But feel free to provide an answer to your “puzzle” for anyone else who might actually be interested….hint…I’m not.
I mean if you can’t tell, then how do you decide?
I asked you basically the same question, only mine was first and therefore original. Given that someone copying and pasting could put the letters too close AND given that a typewriter can have mechanical problems…how do you go about determining. The answer is context. Show us more context from the text where your example was taken.
I would caution you, however, not to rely on the 13-examples on a page argument because if this argument is wrong, then there will be lots of other pages with lots of examples on them too.
Then provide another 60s era BC that has 13 instances. To be fair, we’ll only require 6. A document with many pages and hundreds of words is hardly comparable to a BC with a total of a few sentences….apples to oranges.
The Rathergate case is problematic. You see, after that document was examined, a consensus that it was fake was quickly reached, and a complete explanation of how it was made was presented. In the case of the Obama certificate consensus is limited to the birthers,
I believe there were a grand total of 6 to 8 experts consulted for the Rather documents. There are many more who have weighed in on the Obama BC…including ex-CIA analysts according to General Paul Vallely. You could equally label the experts in the RatherGate case as ‘national guarders’ and say that only THEY found it suspicious. HIGHLY misleading…you are very good at that.
And how many of the 13 appear on a page that is being copied out of a book, which is therefore bent, and distorting the image as a whole?
See my previous comment about the Nordyke BC..which is also bent…from the same book in fact.
Obviously, you ask where the document came from. If, for example, the State of Hawaii says it came from their files, then you conclude that it was authentic and not manipulation. Besides, manipulation would be better-done on something so important to be released for public scrutiny, don’t you think?
By the way, are you familiar with THIS Hawaiian birth certificate?
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/sample-certificatelivebirth-hi-med2.jpg
How do you know that there is any more text and that I didn’t just make that thing up out of whole cloth?
If there is any more text for any of my three examples, I will make it available once folks commit as to what they are looking at (or say it’s impossible to tell).
Question – “How do you know that there is any more text and that I didn’t just make that thing up out of whole cloth?”
Answer – “Who cares…what is the relevance?”
Better Question – “How do you explain so many spacing anomalies within such a limited set of keystrokes on a 1961 typewriter?” Oh…and that one is relevant.
Just like a birther …. “please do my work for me?”
Google for images of typewritten pages. You could be at this for days. If you are genuinely visually impaired, you have my sympathies.
Overlapping glyphs do not kerning imply.
Kerning is an intentional act.
If the typist/typesetter intentionally adjusted the horizontal spacing between two characters, nearer or farther apart, the pair has been “kerned”.
If not, and the pair of letters are overlapping, or miles apart, it falls in the category of “shi’ite hoppings”.
Alternately, if a line or block of text has been intentionally adjusted in regards to horizontal spacing, it can be colllectively referred to as having been “kerned”.
Birther boobs misuse “kerning” to imply intent. They believe intent implies forgery. Don’t be a boob. Don’t imply what lies beyond proof.
Just like a birther …. “please do my work for me?”
No…the image was presented insinuating that it contained kerning…if not, then it has zero relevance. I’m not going to waste my time searching through paragraphs of text to find one or two examples of what I KNOW CAN happen. The point is there are likely fewer examples on that whole PAGE of text than you will find on the short few sentences of Obama’s BC.
If you are genuinely visually impaired, you have my sympathies.
Nope, I can see the kerning on the Obama doc just fine. I didn’t say I couldn’t see kerning on the other text, simply that there wasn’t in in the portion I had checked and I don’t plan on examining the whole thing. If you have a point to make…make it….and point it out. Otherwise, you are wasting everyone’s time.
Kerning is an intentional act.
Birther boobs misuse “kerning” to imply intent
You do realize you completely contradicted yourself and are making no sense, right?
Overlapping glyphs do not kerning imply.
Wikipedia disagrees – “The related term kern denotes a part of a type letter that overhangs the edge of the type block.”
So any letter that overhangs the edge of a type block can be technically considered to be an isolated incidence of “kerning”. That is just a fact. OF COURSE it mostly refers to uniform adjustments within typefaces and fonts…but copy and paste forgery isn’t the norm now is it?
Hey, you forgot to throw in Trotsky and Eisenstein. I’m looking for consistency, just as you are with mechanical typewriters.
Obama will be re-elected. Better get used to it. And get a real hobby.
Expert in forensic document analysis:
Some one who is a recognized expert in the field. Someone who regularly performs such analyses as a profession. Someone who teaches such analysis at an accredited institution.
Is this a reasonable definition of “expert?”
Now: How many experts you can name that have examined the Obama document? How many have concluded that it is a fake?
The answer to the second question is: none.
One more insult and you’re history.
After a quick scan I counted 6 issues of birther “kerning” on that BC.
And a copy and paste would be LESS likely to have kerning. Ever hear of the align function?
Ouch, I just got attacked.
But what I wanted to say is that the right-wingers have done something remarkable. They have taken a book which was relatively unknown and was very difficult to find and turned it into something talked about and stocked in quantity by bookstores. I just checked Barnes & Noble and they have a copy at the nearest store in Spartanburg, South Carolina, a pocket of liberalism (NOT) in the deep south.
By that BC I mean the one that Doc presented. Which I notice that Garret is completly ignoring.
Now: How many experts you can name that have examined the Obama document? How many have concluded that it is a fake?
Newcomer meets all of your criteria…he said it is highly suspect. Also, this is analysis of a digital document…so it isn’t a traditional forensic document analysis. As such, computer experts DO have relevance here.
One more insult and you’re history.
Stating a fact, in this case that you are effective at obfuscation, is not an insult regardless of how much it offends your sensibilities. Go ahead and boot me…I know you are looking for an excuse to take the easy road and not have to answer to any type of scrutiny regarding your outlandish claims and outright fabrications.
By that BC I mean the one that Doc presented. Which I notice that Garret is completly ignoring.
Haven’t looked at it yet. You say 6 instances…how many letters of text total in the doc? Let’s compare that to 13 on the Obama BC and the number of letters it contains.
I took several sociology courses in college, and both of Alinsky’s books were on the required reading list. I can assure Garrett that “Alinsky” was not used as a dog whistle, at the Jesuit college I graduated from.
I guess nobody wants to guess. I’ll stop after one more image (I’ve been saving this one).
Well I promised to boot you on the next insult, so bye.
I hoped to make a point on the kerning issue, but I guess we’ll to finish that up without you.
By the way, take a quick look at the quote of the day on your way out.
You gave the answer yourself. It was a typewriter. Typewritten documents have spacing “anomalies”. In fact, spacing anomalies are the norm, lack of anomalies would be a real anomaly.
Except that the letter is not overhanging the edge of the type block. The type block is being applied to the paper out of its alignment due to imperfect platen movement.
Yeah – I noticed no response to the “ALAN” birth certificate. That one was obviously from a manual typewriter with some serious deviation from factory settings. Even with a lot of the text redacted, I can see at least a dozen cases where the letters intrude on another letter’s horizontal space.
No, the presentation implied it contained instance of what you insist on referring to as “kerning”. Kerning is an intentional act. Too subtle a distinction for you, or one you’re intentionally overlooking. It’s an image resembling a typewritten page …. glyphs arranged in space. How do you prove the intent, or lack thereof, in how they are placed? Meaning the precise horizontal and vertical spacings? How do you prove there is intent in the variations thereof?
Really, if you are visually impaired, you have my sympathies.
I’ve repeated the point several times, you’re just not getting it.
You can’t see kerning.
You must have been hopeless at dodgeball. No contradiction at all, only accusation.
I am saying that birther are conspiratorial nuts that want to see intentional manipulation in the birth certificate. They misuse the word “kerning” to describe what they see out of ignorance, or to imply the intent they’re looking for. An inability to appreciate that “stuff happens” is, in a specific case, an indication of bias, and if general, a symptom of conspiratorial mindset.
If I was burdened with this affliction, I couldn’t make it through the day, as I am tasked with explaining how stuff …. happened.
I know English can be tricksy, but am I really to believe you’re confusing a noun with a verb? We’re talking about kerning, what it means to kern, divining whether things have been kerned … but not kerns. Clear? You may as well bring ligatures into it and really make a trollish mess of things.
Nope. The existence of a run does not prove someone has been running. Or that anyone has ran the run. It proves that someone built a run. The existence of kerns in type prove intent on the part of the type designer, but does not dictate intent to any typesetter.
No, it really isn’t.
Do you know how text is kerned in the layout process? Really, you haven’t been babbling out of ignorance this whole time, have you?
There’s gotta be dozens. There are at least 7 in block 6c alone.
There’s probably more typed text in that BC than on Obama’s, even with the redactions.
Hilarious!
Name one- Hell, I’ve got twenty KGB agents who swear Romney is an escaped assembly-line robot, and I’ve got jut as much proof to back it up.
You actually believe this? (But you don’t believe the official records-holders in Hawaii spanning two administrations) When you meet a guy in a bar and he tells you he is really a secret agent on a dangerous mission, do you gasp ‘wow!” and buy him beer all night? How many scams are you the victim of every month? (Besides birtherism)…
Sorry for the OT Doc C, but I couldn’t let this idiocy pass….
I have proof Orly Taitz is a KGB agent:
http://newyorkleftist.blogspot.com/2010/02/blog-post.html
Out of appreciation of your efforts, I’ll have a go. But perhaps from knowing too much, it will sound shifty. Like Socrates, I know enough to know that I know nothing.
Granting that you had your choice of scanner settings (color depth and resolution), they could all be scans of vintage typewriting. You uploaded them over a short period, but neither that nor the file properties, definitively proves you haven’t been slow stockpiling these over time. You could have lifted them out of images found online. They could be digital creations of your own.
Ironically, if you did create them digitally, you did kern them. If a typewriter was used, you may or may not have indulged in kerning. If an inkstamp, then you kerned them.
Without any context to go on … no other images known to be of/from the same sources …. no way to assure these came from you … and not knowing what tools, hardware, software (especially software!) you have at your disposal … one can only guess based on assumptions about you, what would have been easiest, most relevant … and most fun.
I’ll say they were all typewritten (#2 possibly an inkstamp … or a “degraded type” style typeface), and then scanned in various ways. Resolution was either lowered, or you have scanner w/o shame. They could also be all completely digital, but, varying the shade of letters and within letters themselves, as well as the positioning, would have been more work … unless a font designed to mimic mechanical imperfection was used. Cleverly, you chose a word with only 5 letters, all unique.
Given this little information, hazarding a guess is a fool’s errand. But I don’t mind. Would a birther realize that more information about and context for the LFBC is available than what is offered about the “5 wives” here? Not Garrett!
“wives” is one of the word they used to torture people in typing class. *shudder*
How many do you see in Edith Coates Birth Certificate?
Check out edith coates’ BC.
http://nativeborncitizen.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/edith_front.jpg
I counted 11. And it has the ukelelee signiture of horror
Mechanical typewriters can go wrong, producing spacing anomalies. I know, I was probably the last student at my university to do all his first-year essays on a manual typewriter. Those things experience wear, they go wrong. I wish I still had those first-year essays, there were some very interesting anomalies in some of the later ones relating to the carriage going wrong and suddenly shooting to the end of the line.
Now kerning proper would be evidence of forgery using a computer. Odd spacing anomalies are something else; if the document is a forgery, we would be looking at the most idiotic forger in the world, and yet with millions behind him. This is to me one of the most fascinating elements of conspiracy theorists; they simultaneously claim that there is a sophisticated cover-up in place and that the people perpetrating it are making weird and inexplicable mistakes that mean any fool can detect their treachery. It all seems very strange logic to me.
If (and I do not think so for a moment) Obama produced a fake birth certificate, then it is in his interest to make it look as authentic as possible. A really good fake would be best produced by actually using a vintage typewriter (not at all hard to do), and then using the resulting text on a digital copy of a certificate. It’s not rocket science. The idea that he instead had someone produce a poor digital image is something I find hard to believe. It smacks of poor adventure fiction rather than the real world.
Was this post actually a test on our ability to not feed the troll? We may have done better than usual this time.
By the way, my “original” kerning example was from Jerome Corsi’s PhD dissertation.
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Given.png
Excellent. That one word shows exactly the characteristics the Birfoons have been claiming “can’t” be made with a typewriter: horizontal spacing variance, moreover VARIED and CLUMSY VARIANCE, which kerning doesn’t do, AND vertical misalignment.
Cool exercise, Doc.
Oh, that reminds me. Garrett did send his “PDF printout” via email. Here’s a link to it:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Garrett_PDFPrint.jpg
I don’t know what he did. Whatever it was, the penciled notations disappeared.
LOL! The date 1972 had a double-meaning? I forgot you noted sharing that date with Mr. Corsi. I expected a poke in the birther eye, it was a good one. 😀
That is definitely not a printout of the WH PDF. Much alteration. No shadow on the left, and that’s just for starters. The contrast / color depth has been manipulated (wiping out all light detail), and background replaced. Probably a manipulation of the AP image, I did something similar, but this isn’t from me!
Do you have the intellect to fathom, comprehend, understand at all the debunking done on every claim against birthers? I would guess no.
Hardly. That would be the MO of every birther site I’ve been on, however.
I don’t doubt that this may have been sourced from the WH PDF. It looks like the black text was taken out in layers and pasted on a clean background made from a copy of a Simpson basketweave green security sheet. It has all the problems though that I mentioned earlier. The resolution of the text is low, and there are many cases where holes in the text of letters are completely filled in the headers like “Age of Father”. That wasn’t seen in the Guthrie closeup photo. Almost all the text is a uniform shade of black, when the Guthrie photo showed variations in strike pressure and inking. There are still variations in the color of the two AUG -9 1961 stamps, when the wider shot Guthrie photo showed uniform color in the stamp ink. I guess one claim is that the WH could have printed something on real Simpson security paper, but the hard part would be alignment. The green background of the WH PDF aligns perfectly with the pictures that Guthrie took. The lines on the Guthrie closeup are uniform (although some have jaggies from resizing) while Garrett’s example looks like it went through a low-res scanner or FAX machine.
I think this probably started with the WH PDF, but it’s a joke to claim that this shows more detail than those photos taken by Guthrie. If this is what Garrett thinks is convincing in any way, then I’d say it’s a total failure.
However, I will say that my kid’s BCs from three separate vital records offices look like low-res scans from database files (which they are) – which looks a lot like FAX machine output. However, I believe Obama’s was made via a high-res scan that’s pretty much the same resolution as a high-quality photocopy.
I swear to God, this crap about “kerning shows a forgery” inevitably makes me think of those idiotic ghost hunter shows where the guy points at a light socket and says “electromagnetic readings mean ghosts!”
You are very observant.
It’s true. And Hoover Dam has a HUGE ghost problem. ; )
Here is why a typerwriter can not kern:
http://www.explainthatstuff.com/typewriter.html
Look down the page at the twp photos showing the keyboard and the hammers,.
Note that the Y is all contained within the limits of the hammer, and can not imprint into the letter before it.
The hammers are guided into place with the guides and can not move to one side or the other. Now the carriage can be worn and let the carriage not stop at the right place, but the Y is always contained in the space of the hammer width.
But the hammer width may be misplaced on the paper by the carriage problems.
So, kerning, per se, can not be done on a typewriter.
Another good discussion of this is at:
http://www.aclearvoice.org/archives/2004/09/killian_memos_a.php
And this comment is from 2004 referencing the Bush stuff.
It’s good to mention the type bar guides; however, there is some play in the guides too. (I just checked a typewriter to be sure). The fact of the matter is that in real typing samples there is a lot of variation in horizontal spacing, whether this is carriage defects, timing issues, or wear on type bars or guides.
the look at the hammers themselves will show that the type face itself can not exceed the boundarys of the hammer , ergo, then type can not type over or close to the type face of the previous key unless the carriage stops are worn.
It would be difficult for a hammer to be struck fast enough to prevent the carriage from moving to the stop, unless the carriage spring had been weaken enough to slow the acceleration of the carriage to the stop before the hammer entered the guides, and the type face hit the paper.
Another thing that might be evident, in the case of weak spring, is that the type would show a slight blurring to the left
as the carriage moved under the type face and the hammer until it reachs the stop.
then it would be difficult to get repeat overlapses, such as shown on the y’s on the document.
So what is your conclusion as to why letters appear to overlap in the White House birth certificate image?
Without seeing an original certified copy it would be hard to be accurate.
there are tyying variation and a significant curl of the base of the y under the following letter which , if I am right about the hammers , does not seem possible with a manual typewriter, It does seem to show some registry problems with the carriage, and who know what the capablilities of the typist was.
The Coats BC , though, seems to be a perfect example of the way a competent typist would fill out the form, with the starting letter of a word directly under the title of the entry listing. Although even on that form there were strange variations that would, perhaps, happen with an old typewriter and heavily used ribbon.
But even that BC has the curly Y under the preceding letter.
A misaligned Y hammer could cause that curling under the letter if the hammer was twisted or bent slightly.
The other problems are no so easily gotten rid of.
Some of the joined letters are done by backspace at the same time you hit the key
Now the next problem you have , is that you don’t know if an electric typewriter was use to fill in the document , originally, as it is just possible that IBM could have been used with the ball and that would make a difference and could be the reason as the ball could do that type of Y.
Now, let us assume that sometime in the last 20 years Hawaii went to digital , and had all of these birth certificates on microfilm, and old copies in paper.
Now to fill out COLB’s they had to look at the microfilm and type to information into the COLB’s which , of course , would be done with electric typewriters at first, and then onto hard drives later, and printed out as needed.
Which would mean that any BC that was not a photocopy was done on an electric typewriter which would allow the Y’ s to curl ounder the previous letter, and that solves all of the kerning dispute.
You’re suggesting they recreated birth certificates? I don’t think so, boss.
The first typewriter with a ball, to my knowledge, was the Selectric, which went on the market in late July, 1961.
Speaking of, here’s a sweet vintage computing shot with a great technical write-up, featuring a Selectric in use as a “printer”. My first Atari printer was essentially the same, a typewriter without a keyboard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Michael_Holley_Computer_1978_NWCN.jpg
Ack! Sorry, TraderJack, I just now got your drift. You were referring to filing out “short forms” from the information recorded on the originals from the archives.
Apologies.
Yes, I guess that is easily overlooked, but I really think that might indeed be the solution for all of this stuff.
But, the process does seem to allow for alteration, and error, if that was the system.
Which is why Cal and Tex went to photocopies
Priceless!
It is fairly easy to make fun of everyone of this matter!
One, You do not know when the BC info was transferred to the COLB and you do not know the method of transfer, and the machines or electornic devices that were used.
that means you have no idea of whether or not you can determine whether or not kerning was used, capable of being used, or if straight electronics were use.
Cease and desist claiming other people are wrong when you have no way of knowing what was done in the production of the materials.
Question: If no one has an idea how anything was done and, as a result, you don’t want anyone to say the Obama birth certificate is okay and claims that it is a forgery are nonsense then…..well…..how do you know it isn’t okay?
Uh, the COLB is a computer generated document that was constructed on the day it was released by the Department of Health of Hawaii.
But this is a Long Form Birth Certificate which was created in 1961.
True… Your point?..
Is Jack trying to allege that the COLB might contain a clerical error, introduced when information was recorded to a database from paper originals, and that an LFBC was forged or altered later to match the COLB?
I don’t see how this hypotheses advances anything, much less solves anything.
That flies in the face of everything that Vital Records people stand for.
Just for the record, all this stuff about “wives” is not aimed at Romney’s grandfather.
Not true at all, I was referring not to the content or the meaning of the words, but referring to the mechanical methods of discerning “kerning”
if you look at an original birth certificate , or a photocopy of the birthcertificate, you can analyse the mechanics of the typing fonts, etc., because you will be looking at the original typing and the original typists typing habits.
If a birth certificate information is being copied from an original, and the words are being typed onto another document, such as a COLB, then discussion of the typing system , or printing system of that document has no correspondence with the original typing system, and typing.
If after 30 years a typist reviews the oriiginal birth certificate and is putting the correct words into the new document they could, or could not, be using a different system of printing the information into the new document.
Now, it is obvious, at least to unbiased viewers, that anytime you have a clerk or typist reading a document, and putting the read information into the document that there would be a chance, a CHANCE, that a word was improperly transposed during the typing.
If you think clerks and typist do not make errors , then I am afraid you have never observed those people performing their routine duties. It is not precision work, and they do not get paid premium salaries for scut work.
Actually, data conversion is most definitely precision work.
I spent most of my career in doing exactly that: managing conversions from paper based systems to computerized systems, and I assure you there were multiple “arms length” verifications at every stage for even the most trivial data entry tasks, both computerized and manual, to ensure that that data entry was accurate.
Now admittedly I wasn’t working on vital records conversions, but I suspect Doc has. My work involved banking systems, automobile manufacturing systems, government occupation licensing systems, government and corporate accounting systems, human resource management systems, electric utility grid asset systems, and others. Every single one of them required precise and accurate data conversion and data cleansing from manual subsystems, even if the ‘legacy’ system had been computerized before.
keith, you may be indeed right as to some forms of data entry, which has to be accurate
for many forms of computer input, But this, to me, appears to be entry from a microfilm to a paper document in the early days, and , I suppose, prehaps wrongly, that the entry from paper documents to computer input data is not programming data, but simply entries in to a computer based form.
And, supporting my position on this, a reviewer will not spend a lot of time reviewing each and every piece of form filling work produced by the working staff , when the documents are simple to be filed and , perhaps, never seen again.
Remember that these clerks are the bottom rung of the clerical forces in government.and are employed at commensurate salary ranges.
Remember the old saying:”It is good enough for governmental work”
You don’t get you 100 wpm typist in that workforce.
What’s your point?
What would possibly be the point of that? Do you think that the microfilm is the ‘original’ source document? It isn’t.
A microfilm image is essentially a photograph of the ‘original’ paper source document. And the ‘original’ paper source document that was imaged on the microfilm (if the microfilm ever actually existed) is the same ‘original’ paper source document that was photocopied to produce the non-standard Birth Certificate that Obama released last year (the so-called LFBC).
The purpose of the microfilm (if it existed) was so they could produce Birth Certificates by printing images from the microfilm and not have to ‘touch’ the ‘original’ paper source document. But they don’t type the form reading off the microfilm, they print the image from the microfilm. There is no typing involved, no place for data entry / typing errors to intrude.
Microfilm is an imperfect medium however, it doesn’t last forever it gets damaged easily, and it burns in a fire. Computers are much more flexible and future proof. A data entry project would certainly have occurred when the records were computerized.
Such a project would have been a very large project, and quite costly initially. Given the quite onerous legal requirements to ensure accuracy in the States Vital records system, I can guarantee that the data verification procedures would have been extremely detailed.
With out having been there I can just about guarantee that every certificate would have been keyed at least twice, but two different operators, and their output compared. Clearly, no two operators would likely make the same mistake, so any mismatches would then be double checked. If it were me, and the technology was available, I would try to do an OCR comparison too. OCR is much less reliable, and it was pretty primitive when the Hawai’ian process apparently occurred, but it could be analyzed statistically to find things that might need reviewing.
You have a very biased image of government employees. I assure you that when I was working for the City of Tucson, the keypunchers were quite professional, accurate, and fast. Many of them regularly corrected my COBOL programs for me as they were keying, these folks were not dummies.
Typical conservative slur.
folks, get up off you knees and look at the problems for microfilm.
They don’t print off the microfilm, they read the information off the microfilm reader and type it into a new form, or into a computer
what you get form the microfilm, which is 8 mm movie film, black and white is a grainy picture which is difficult to read on the reader.
First , you have old film, usually, which was run through a camera, developed to get positive pictures, and then run though a well used microfilm reader , which projects the image through a lens onto a frosted glass for ease of reading.
As to whether I know government workers, I worked in a government office for 30 years working with real estate forms.And have used mechanical typewriters for 30 years, until IBM came in , which I hated..
Key punchers are a different kettle of fish than microfilm readers.there you are talking about computer work
I “like” it when people use corny jokes as debate points.
What exactly is your point?
Ok, so there could be misspelled words. Or are you saying that because of a poor film they mistook “Momabassa , Kenya” for “Honolulu, Hawaii”?
BTW, did you work for a government office in 1961?
I avoid clichés like the plague.
Microfilm? Where did you get microfilm?
I don’t know about Hawaii, but in three other states where I was involved in vital records modernization projects, they didn’t use microfilm but scanned original paper documents.
By re-scanning they got better quality images.
The process was that a high-end scanner fed the form and the image was presented on a screen next to typing fields. The operator then keyed information into the form. After that process, a second operator would key the same information and the two would be compared. This is key verification. As a general statement, vital records agencies are very much concerned with accuracy.
That said, there could be errors in a computer database. But to say that they would fake an original record to match a typing error is ludicrous.
Which is why the Long Form, which shows the kerning, is so important as it is a photocopy of the original.
What’s your point?
Dr. Conspiracy 1961 birth certificates, filed in books, according to HDOH per site information, for I know not else.
You have trouble scanning a bound book . letter size, without removing the pages.
Removing the pages would not have the down curve , if scanned outside the book.Nodykes negatives appear to have the left down curve also which, to me , would indicate microfiliming of a book and printing the negative from the microfilm
Are not the Nordyke twins birth certificate black with wihite lettering indication the copying of a negative onto paper, A negative can not be anything other than film, unless it has been processed by a computer. Do you agree to that?
Obama’s black lettering indicates, to me, perhaps not to you, that it was not a direct copy of a filmed record,
So, you may respond that there is not indication that Obama was microfilmed, and yet Nordykes, the same month was microfilmed.
No you can not direct copy a microfilm and get black letters.
And , I have never seen , to my knowledge, a microfilm projector which feeds a computer which prints out the stuff on the microfilm.
but , then we run into the, and I do not say that is what happens, but that it is possible , to amend , alter , and change anything that is put into a computer, problems of verification of the contents of a machine processing a document, and further computer processing.
Remembering , of course, that Texas and California apparently had serious problems in the recording to birth certificate and issuance of said certificates
I agree with you that some vital records are much more sensitive to being accurate, but , all the BC certifications do is say that they are accurate copies of what is contained in the records. And HODH actuall provides a verification service to verify for customers that the information of the document is what is in the document.
Hell, Dr. Conspiracy, I am an old man, and have seen a lot of corruption in government, and thing that it is getting worse.
It would be very nice to have the Obama BC situation settled once and for all, but I am afraid that will never occur, because the sides are set in cement!
i would be happy to be shown that my analysis is correct , or in-correct of the microfilming.
“I am an old man, and have seen a lot of corruption in government, and thing that it is getting worse. It would be very nice to have the Obama BC situation settled once and for all, but I am afraid that will never occur, because the sides are set in cement!”
And finally . . . there it is. Birtheristic ridiculitis.
I’m not getting younger either. I don’t care a whit about where some fellow was born. What I would like to see settled before my time comes is “Earth: Flat or Round?”. You’d think someone would have settled it by sailing around the world or orbiting it or by photographing it from the moon or something. Yet the controversy continues. Why?
More to the point, did he work in a Hawaiian government office in 1961? After all not all state governments do things the same way. With that said, it really doesn’t matter what problems Texas and California may have had when it comes to record keeping, since neither of those states is Hawaii. The birther, like all birthers, is confusing the issues in an attempt to create suspicion where there really is none.
This sounds like a Jack Osborne infestation. Long on pessimism and assumption, short on utility.
I don’t know whether the Nordyke certificates are positive copies from microfilm or whether they are negative copies from originals. (See: photostat) I agree, however, that the Obama certificate, for a variety of reasons, is not from microfilm.
My opinion is that the Nordyke certificate is not from microfilm either. I base that on the curved left side that indicates it was copied from a book. It would seem to me that a microfilm copy would either be made BEFORE certificates were placed in books or if afterwards, the books would be disassembled to facilitate photography (if you have ever scanned a book, you know how awkward that is), Based on my limited experience with vital records scanning projects, the books are taken apart for flat scanning and so those copies wouldn’t be curved. The book would not be taken apart for one-up scanning, but it would be for mass scanning. However, that is just an opinion and I could be wrong. In any case, whether or not Hawaii has records on microfilm doesn’t answer the question of whether they used the microfilm to key from when they went paperless in 2001.
If they didn’t put old certificates into an imaging system, and they just keyed them in house, then I would think that the simplest process would be to key directly from the books and not from microfilm. It doesn’t require any special equipment, and so more people could work on the project when they had slack time.
If there were a massive scanning project then one could probably find procurement documents and/or contracts.I looked on the Internet a couple years ago, but didn’t find anything. Most often scanning projects are done by commercial companies that specialize in scanning, for example, refer to the projects in Indiana and Ohio.
You say: “No you can not direct copy a microfilm and get black letters.” However, all of the Corsi dissertation images shown in the article http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2012/03/forensic-document-stuff-part-2typewriters/ are scanned microfilm negatives, converted using a slide scanning device that automatically turns negatives to positives.
What I have observed is that modern certified copies of old Hawaiian certificates are positives, and old certified copies of old certificates are negatives.
If they were scanning the bc into microfilm to perserve the record, they would scan the entire page. Including the material to the left of the demographic information. We can see a hint of the material in the left hand fold of the President’s and the Nordykes.
Also the Nordyke’s had the negative image of the signatures of the registrars. That would be added at the time the image was made to produce the copy for the parents (in the nordyke case 1966) the registrar’s signatures could not be part of the microfilm record.
It is much more likely the Nordyke is a photostatic copy made from a bound book then a copy from a microfilm.
Look again at the Nordyke’s BCs – see the bottom of the page with the registrar signatures and the date of May 5, 1966. That part of the document looks to me like a piece of paper with the signatures and May date was placed on the glass plate of the photostat machine and the bound volume was placed ontop of that. Look at Susan’s BC, just above the “correct copy of the” is a bright white line. Now look at Gretchen’s BC that line is missing. That line is the bottom of the BC form. It is the line that makes up the bottom of box 23 Evidence for Delayed Filing. Apparently, when they placed the bound volume on the sheet of paper it was not quite stright on Susan’s.
Finnaly, look at the left edge of both of the Nordyke BCs, there is evidence of over exposure of the photostatic paper from light seeping in along the curved part of the book. That overexposure mark then continues along the top of the part with the registrar’s signatures. Indicating that light seeped in between the bound book and the registrar signature page.
These look like photostat (early copy machine) that produced a negative image.
Both faulty assumptions. film scanning and film output are old news, as is converting from negative to positive—and vice versa—during scanning. Slide scanners have been standard in photo departments for 20(?) years. I first used one in 1998, and it was old hat. This tech was common in service bureaus long before hitting the consumer market.
Inverting color is a very basic process in the digital world, has its own shortcut in every graphics editor I’ve every used.
Film output is used to create separations from which photogrpahic plates are created in commerical printing. Has been in use for 25+ years. Before that, the film separation were created optically.
The advent of all digital printing started edging film out entirely in the late 90s.
Reality is not limited to your headspace, thus the inherent danger in making assumptions. 😉
They likely weren’t from any microfilm. They were mostly photostats copied over from the original in the bound volume. It was possible to do this twice to make a positive image, but that cost money, took more time, and meant a copy of a copy with lower quality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photostat_machine
Well, again it appears as those who support support always
Yes I worked in state government office in 1961, but not in Hawaii.
The reference to microfilm is that is what was used to simplfy record keeping before computers.
Used to have to go into the big books to get the information needed, and it was hard.
then came microfiche and microfilm, where you would sit in from on the screen and turn the wheel until you document came up on the screen, you would read it , see if it was what you wanted , and then request a copy of it to be made by the recorder’s office.
As to Hawaii, there is a reference that some of the old documents are on about 70 reels of microfilm
further Attorneys request in S v fudy
a.Declaratory Judgment in favor of Plaintiff Duncan Sunahara compelling LorettaFuddy, Director of the Department of Health, State of Hawaii, to provide a certified copy of theoriginal paper hospital generated Certificate of Live Birth of Virginia Sunahara, and a certifiedcopy of any microfilm version of Virginia Sunahara maintained by the Department of Health;
So it would appear that the Attorneys in the court felt that there are microfilms in usage.
in HDOH.
Ok, it is not proof positive is it? Ah, proof positive exist
http://hawaii.gov/dags/rpts/privatization.pdf Look at page 4 of the PDF and the responsie to a question.
For those who may have missed how microfilmed was done in the olden days before computers, . The record book was placed on the microfilm camera table, the book opened and the camera took a picture of the page. the next page was turned and another picture was taken until the film was completely filled.
then the film was developed, indexed, and made available for screening in the microfilm reader.
And , that, dear friends , is how it was done when volumes were needed to be copied and access to the contents , and searching for the contents was made easier for the public.
And , if you are not aware of it , the old books of records were heavy!
No, attorneys typically ask for everything that might possibly exist (they bill by the hour, remember). I have worked with many patent attorneys and they always tried to cover every conceivable use, however unlikely. And the proposal is for the Hawaii state archives, not DOH birth records. I don’t know if birth certificates were ever microfilmed, but I believe the statements were that the paper records exist and the President’s was copied from the paper.
In a more general way, could you summarrze your main point in a sentence or 2, because I have no idea what it is. Thanks
To be precise it deals with the “microfiliming/scanning of passenger card indexes.”
There is nothing in the entire document about birth records.
That makes two of us…..at the very least.
Especially when one side is willing to ignore the facts as evidenced in the documents provided. Instead, some insist on looking for issues where there are none.
That’s sad. But that’s the common birther’s syndrome. Nothing much one can do about.
It seems birthers confuse suspicion, bigotry and hatred with evidence. It’s truly pathetic.
“traderjack: It would be very nice to have the Obama BC situation settled once and for all, but I am afraid that will never occur, because the sides are set in cement!”
TJ, one side (ours) is arguing that the moon is made of rocks. The other (yours) is arguing that it is made of cottage cheese.
Whether or not each side sticks to its argument has no bearing on which is an unassailable fact supported by a metric pantload of evidence, and which is the preposterous ravings of a lunatic fringe cult.
i.e. you.
Well , it seems you do not know what Archives are, so here is the Hawaiian Archives information. Read it and learn
http://hawaii.gov/dags/archives
Storage of Master Microfilms and Microfiche
The State Records Center also contains a secure climate-controlled vault for the storage of master / security copies of state and neighbor island county agency microfilms and microfiche.
still a doubt in your mind?
.
d if you don’t know what microfilm cameras are and how they work , take a look
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=microfilm+cameras&gbv=2&oq=microfilm+cameras&aq=f&aqi=g1g-v7&aql=&gs_l=hp.3..0j0i15l7.2105l7317l0l9407l17l17l0l4l4l0l211l1628l0j12j1l13l0.frgbld.&oi=image_result_group&sa=X
I just went to the website and I did learn something.
“The Vital Statistics Collection includes three types of records; births, marriages and deaths from 1826-1929.”
That’s on this page:
http://archives1.dags.hawaii.gov/gsdl/cgi-bin/library?=p&p=about&c=vitalsta&1=en&w=utf-8
What I learned is that the available archive files don’t have any information that is relevant to Barack Obama’s birth in 1961.
Now….what have you learned?
There is another page which gives more detailed information about the vital records which are in the archives:
There are two sets of indexes to the collection: records from 1832-1910 and 1911-1929.
The Vital Statistics Collection includes:
reports of births, marriages, and deaths
marriage licenses
records of issue of license to marry
license stubs
marriage records books
marriage record stubs
reports of licenses granted
There are a few birth and death records, which are not certificates, but a part of reports made for statistical purposes. Also marriage records before 1896 do not include the bride and groom’s parents.
http://hawaii.gov/dags/archives/about-us/genealogy-research-guide/genealogy-research-vital-statistics/?searchterm=birth%20certificates
So, contrary to traderjack’s assertion, the are no birth certificates on microfilm (or in any other form) in Hawaii’s archives.
Watching Orly and her acolytes, reminds me of La Folle de Chaillot, without any of the delicious irony – just sadness and resignation.
Remember Howard Beale? I want to shout “Get a life!!”
Well….there is only one plausible explanation: The archives were founded in 1905 (and opened to the public in 1906) so it’s obvious that from their very beginning they have been a key component in the giant, worldwide Obama Conspiracy just waiting there, out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, to do their part in placing the great usurper (Should that be capitalized?) in the White House.
Never underestimate these people..
Are you guys that dense?
“photograph, [or] reproduction on film, or electronic form of a government record shall be placed in conveniently accessible files and provisions made for preserving, examining, and using the same. Thereafter, [such] a public officer, after having first received the written approval of the comptroller [described] as provided in section 94-3, may cause such record, paper, or document to be destroyed. The comptroller may require, as a prerequisite to the granting of such approval, that a reproduction or print of such photograph, microphotograph, or reproduction on film, or electronic form of the record be delivered into the custody of the public archives for safekeeping. The comptroller may also require the delivery into the custody of another governmental department or agency or a research library of any such record, paper, or document proposed to be destroyed under the provisions of this section.
You happen to notice, or want to ignore,
this:record be delivered into the custody of the public archives for safekeeping
what on earth do you think the Archives are for?
And here is the information you really don’t want to see;
http://hawaii.gov/dags/archives/front-page”
“A division within the Department of Accounting and General Services, the Hawaii State Archives’ mission is to ensure open government by preserving and making accessible the historic records of state government and to partner with state agencies to manage their active and inactive records.
And if you won’t beleive the State of Hawaii, why do you believe the BC
”
I don’t know about density, but would you care to discuss specific gravity?
And you tell me what gravity is , and I will learn something, and you will become famous for having solved that problem.
If you can not define gravity you should not ask the question! the gravity of that term deserves a grave consideration of the forces applied to nature, for even in the grave, gravity , gravely affects the graven cravens who want to gravitate to the graves.
The attorney’s didn’t know whether there was microfilm or not. Nobody mentioned microfilm until Sheriff Joe said he wanted to look at the microfilm. Since he and the CCP pointedly refused to contact the Hawai’ian Department of Health about anything what-so-ever, he had no reason to believe that microfilm existed or not.
Your ‘reference’ by ‘the attorneys in the court’ came after Arpaio’s comment.
As far as I know, to this day, no one has asked Hawai’i if microfilming of their vital statistics records ever took place, and if so, does it still exist.
I can define gravity, not a problem. But because I’m lazy, I’ll just use the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary for you.
Thanks for playing.
And you guys think the birhters are nuts,
““A division within the Department of Accounting and General Services, the Hawaii State Archives’ mission is to ensure open government by preserving and making accessible the historic records of state government and to partner with state agencies to manage their active and inactive records”
Do you see this:”to partner with state agencies to manage their active and inactive records”
You see this”to manage their active and inactive records”
And, you still claim it is just old stuff that doesn’t count!
And you think the birthers are nuts? Look in the mirror and see if your hard shell qualifies you as a nut
With due respect Dr. Conspiracy, where do they come from?
\
The section your quoting refers to records of government actions (legislation, rule making by departments, etc.). This department is charged with preserving and managing records of what the state government has done. I believe that vital records, given their special nature, have their own rules and requirements for preservation and management.
As an example:
Dept of Accounting and General Services archives:
UPIA requests and answers, rules for handling of vital records, correspondence created from responses and legal challenges, and some very old, pre-1930 birth records and such.
DOH:
Vital records
Again, government records are records of what the government has done. Vital records are not considered “government records” in the same sense.
Show me something that says birth records from 1961 are in the archives rather than DOH. Most people born in 1961 are still alive and might need birth certificates. Show me something that says the 1961 records have been microfilmed and that the paper records have been destroyed. Go ahead. But make it SPECIFIC to birth records.
Thanks
Gravity=sit under an apple tree and wait, Newton. Wear a helmet…
Hate filled, bigoted and delusional with strong confirmation bias is more accurate.
Decades of paranoia, cultural bias, xenophobia and uncontrollable fits of rage does not equal credible evidence of malfeasance.
OK:
«Dis-moi, qui est la plus belle?»
It is the curvature of the fabric of space-time caused by the proximity and quantity of mass in that region.
Thanks for playing.
Please, traderjack, list in bullet points exactly what you are trying to say. I’m quite confused. Please give us the Executive Summary.
Jack will be content to ramble on about nothing. Unless he demonstrates a capacity to participate honestly and constructively, I would ignore it.
IIRC, Hawaii has some type of cut off (75 years) before vital records become open to the public.
And so, if the birthers will just be patient, they will get to see it. Then the 3 surviving birthers in 2036 can sit around the nursing home and reminisce about the day they showed up Dr C with that brilliant post, while they wait for the bingo game to start.
What part of :”to partner with state agencies to manage their active and inactive records” do you disagree with.
Notice “ACTIVE”, do you think that means stuff they are not working on, or stuff they are working on?
And if it is the latter does it mean stuff that is 75 years old only?
Boy, no I can see why there is a dispute between the two sides. Both of them refuse to be he honest about what the facts are that are been discussed.
You refuse to believe that they are micro-filming stuff, even in the evidence that in 2005 they were solicition bids,and the LAWS require that some form of copying be used to store records.
So what collections do the archives contain?
Hmmm
Anything of real relevance to the discussion? Or is this just a fishing expedition without due diligence?
No. You entirely misrepresent the argument here and it shows the critical flaws in your thinking.
All you offer is mere SPECULATION and treat it as “given assumption” and INSISIT that these records *had* to be micro-filmed. You don’t even allow for other reasonable possibilities of record management.
Every one else is simply pointing out to you that no evidence has come forth that backs up your speculation and therefore, you are starting off with a flawed premise. The very citations you give mentioning micro-film don’t specify it for the set of birth records being discussed and no evidence has come forward showing that micro-film was used on them.
What facts? Some spurious references? Come on… Surely you can do better than that. If you are truly interested in the facts, then try to spend some time finding them first and understanding their relevance.
I always like to learn new things. If you have some references about the claim below, I would love to see it. I know that Douglas Vogt cited some stuff in his report, but upon reading it, there wasn’t anything about imaging there.
I know that even before 2005, states were imaging old birth certificates; in fact the company I worked for bid on some of those contracts and actually won one of them. I have actually worked on vital records imaging projects; Douglas Vogt has not. However, I have yet to see the slightest evidence presented that the State of Hawaii has any digital imaging system, nor that any digital imaging was involved in the production of any Hawaiian birth certificate that has been made public.
I’m not saying that it isn’t true or that it never happened. What I am saying is that so far no one has given me a reason to think that it is true or that it ever happened.
As for microfilming that may have happened decades ago, I continue to ask what is the relevance.
As I said, I always like to learn new things. New information on the blog’s topic is exciting. Those INS reports were loads of fun. The BOAC flight schedules were neato. In this case, however, I have to wait for some sources before claims become information.
What part of “support services to state government agencies of the executive branches which are subject to Section 94-3, Hawaii Revised Statutes” don’t you understand? The point of their “Records Management Branch” is to help dispose or destroy or archive records when the agencies run out of storage space.
http://www.hawaii.edu/svpa/apm/recmgmt/att4507hrs943.pdf
Hawaii Revised Statutes 94-3
Comptroller’s Authority Regarding Disposal of Records
HRS 94-3 Disposal of government records generally. Each public
officer, except public officers of the judiciary, having the care and custody
of any government records shall submit to the state comptroller a list of
records for disposal, which shall include the name of the office, department,
or bureau, the subject of the records for disposal and the inclusive dates of
the records. The comptroller shall determine the disposition of the records;
stating whether such records should be retained by the office, department, or
bureau; be transferred to the public archives, the University of Hawaii, the
Hawaiian Historical Society, or other agency; or be destroyed. The
comptroller shall have full power of disposal of all records submitted for
such purpose. The records of all records disposed of, including lists
submitted by the public officers, and the action taken by the comptroller,
shall be kept on proper forms, specified by the comptroller, one copy of
which shall be filed in the office, department or bureau where the records
originated, one copy shall be filed in the office of the attorney general,
and the original shall be filed in the public archives. [L 1949, c 65,
section 1; RL 1955, section 7-8; am L 1957, c 46 sections 1, 2 and c 152,
section 1; am L Sp 1959 2d, c 1, section 12; HRS 94-3; am L 1984, c 258,
section 2]
California and several California county agencies are certainly doing that now with various vital records. My kid’s certified birth certificate copies all look like they were sourced via a clean copy of a FAX machine, with various noise and scanning artifacts.
I remember ordering a copy of my marriage certificate, and specifically asking if my copy could be prepared such that the image wasn’t as tiny as the last copy I got. That one almost required a magnifying glass to read. The office had a technical issue, and said they couldn’t get their system up. Apparently the repair was being done remotely by some out of state contractor. I guess it might be scary to some that some remote personnel might have access to their systems, but I’m not surprised. They also said that if they couldn’t get it up, they could very well just pull out the certificate from microfilm and print it out that way.
I also remember seeing Jon Huntsman Jr’s public available birth certificate from San Mateo County, which actually has two agencies that issue birth certificates – the County Recorder and the Dept of Public Health. The photo on the web seems a lot sharper than the vital records I’ve seen in California, save one copy of my marriage certificate that I’m sure was made directly from the original. Huntsman’s might be from microfilm or perhaps some high quality image taken a while ago. It has no state file number, so I’d think it wasn’t retrieved from the state archive.
Amazing how you refuse to believe the Hawaiian government
http://hawaii.gov/dags/archives/records-management
The Archives Division, Records Management Branch (RMB) helps State executive and legislative agencies to answer record keeping questions, such as:
“How long must these records be kept?”
“My agency is running out of storage space. Where else can we store inactive records?”
“How can records be confidentially destroyed?”
The RMB assists agencies to answer these types of questions and efficiently manage records by:
operating a State Records Center, a facility that stores inactive non-permanent paper records and security copies of microfilms and microfiche,
developing Records Retention and Disposition Schedules that authorize agencies to systematically dispose of non-permanent records and identify records of permanent value, and
helping to develop Records Management Policies and serving as a resource to answer agency questions about record keeping policies, laws and practices.
http://hawaii.gov/dags/archives/records-management/Law%20Regarding%20Government%20Electronic%20Records.pdf
Act 177, Session Laws of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2005 (HB 515), expressly allows the use of government records in electronic format. The Act took effect on July 1, 2005.
Don’t believe that?
Established by statute in 1905, the Archives first opened its doors to the public in 1906. Hawaii State Archives collects, preserves and makes available to the public Hawaii government records of permanent value. These government records date from the monarchy to the current legislative session, and include private collections of individuals and organizations, photographs, maps, artifacts, and library collections specializing in Hawaiian history, culture and Pacific voyages.
What more do you need, anyway?
Dr. Conspiracy, You ask , What is the relevency.
Microfilming and the reading of microfilm can explain the curving of the BC as the items are not removed from the books for microfilming and that will cause the curving of the copies of the bc.
Now if the BC is not curved it may be evindence that the bc was not copied from the micro-film and that process may , and , yes , I say may, allow alteration of the documents during the printing of the bC.
If you are copying from microfilm the copies also have tell-tale information on the film caused by age and usage.
TraderJack – This is in response to all three of your latest posts directly above. You still are failing to grasp the main point we are making. We find all of your info on the agency’s history and practices to be interesting, but of not much use in answering anything in specific.
However, the whole point that has been made in response to you is one that you STILL fail to grasp – you have simply not provided any solid evidence that PROVES that the particular BC records which cover Obama’s birth timeframe are actually stored in this particular microfilm format. All we have been stating is that STILL remains nothing more than a speculative assumption, and one that simply cannot be concluded.
Everything you’ve come up with only tells us that the State Records Center contains certain records in micro-film format. NOTHING you have presented so far explicitly covers the BC records for the period in question.
Therefore, your entire premise remains just as flawed as when you started this line of conversation, as it is all built upon an assumption for which you are merely leaping to unfounded conclusions.
If you find anything that clearly requires microfilm copies to exist for this particular timeframe of BC records, then great. We look forward to hearing that and having a conversation about it when that happens. But until then, you are simply wasting time connecting imaginary dots, where there is no clear direct correlation.
Further, the whole question of what is your point gets to where you are trying to go with all of this….as it is obvious you’ve started with a pre-conceived conclusion and are desperately trying to work backwards to come up with speculative scenarios to force-fit into it.
Personally, I do appreciate that you’ve attempted to answer your perception of relevancy of microfilm to the BC document in your third post, with the whole “curvature” explanation. But obviously, that is only a partial-step answer to the obvious end-goal you are implying – a desperate intent on your part to hope for some excuse to scream “fraud”.
However, that has already been addressed in our responses to you as well – there is simply no realistic scenario for you on the whole “fraud” angle, without diving completely into the very deep end of terminal “the whole government is in on it” conspiracy thinking.
As has been repeatedly pointed out to you, when THE official agency in charge of creating, keeping, maintaining and vouching for these records publically and repeatedly BACKS it, that really is the END OF STORY to that entire line of questioning. If they issue it and vouch for it, it simply cannot be “fraud”. Whatever they issue and back IS the official document of record.
If an image of that record is publically shown and they go out of their way to link to that specific image on their own official website as reference, then that clearly answers the question that they are telling you that what you see online is what they issued and are backing. There simply is NO sane or rational argument to still pursue down that path at that point…
So the whole fraud claim angle is really DOA at that point and in all is off the table. Which means Kenya birth speculation is a dead-end as well.
Which leaves you with arguments of the meaning of NBC…which the courts have been consistently and increasingly clear on as well. So that door has pretty much closed for you as well.
All you Birthers have left is really crazy claims of time-travel and reptilian overlords and other extreme fantasy fiction like that…
It really is past time for you to face reality. You’re only real legal means of removing this President you cannot accept is via the ballot box in November. I realize that your chances there are dicey as well. But at least that is a valid reality-based method of how leadership actually changes hands in this country and how each of us citizenry get to participate in the process.
The thing with elections is that none of us are entitled to get the results that we want. Sometimes the majority makes the same choice as us, other times they do not. That is simply how the real world works and how it always has, since the Constitution and that process was first put in place. You don’t have to like it, but there is nothing you can do about it. Wasting time on coming up with crazy imaginary scenarios to cover for your personal emotional tantrums doesn’t solve anything. It only wastes your time and makes you come across as unstable to others.
Look at the bright side – elections happen every four years and Presidents only get to run for reelection once. So no matter what, you get a new and different President by late January of 2017. …And sadly no, I can not guarantee that the option you want for that will be what the majority picks either. But hey, that’s just how life really works. You can learn to act like a responsible adult and come to grips with it or remain terminally unhappy and stuck in an unrealistic and powerless tantrum mode for the rest of your life. The choice is yours.
“Amazing how you refuse to believe the Hawaiian government”
Holy crap on a cracker. That poor irony meter never stood a chance.
At such moments, I go with my irony surf board.
> a facility that stores inactive non-permanent paper records and security copies of microfilms and microfiche
Which doesn’t mean it stores the same document both on paper and on microfilm.
Nor that it stores certain documents in microfilm at all.
“This box contains stores apples and oranges.” Does that mean every apple is also stored as an orange?
> if the BC is not curved it may be evindence that the bc was not copied from the micro-film
Huh? Since there is no way of knowing if the source document was curved for any reason , there is no possible conclusion that microfilming it would’ve created curvature, nor that copying the microfilm would’ve created curvature, or that it couldn’t have.
Your conclusion would only be valid if curvature COULD ONLY and WOULD NECESSARILY have occurred at the “microfilming” or the “copying of the microfilm” stage.
Since that is bogus, your argument falls flat. No surprise, of course.
Intrade has Obama at 59.7%. Cory Booker will follow. What’s that you say? Booker wasn’t born in the States? He was born in the District? So was Al Gore.
Booker has the Jewish vote locked up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Booker
Better get used to it.
Obama leads GOP in three key states, poll says – A new poll shows President Obama leading Republican rivals Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in three state that are crucial to any presidential election: Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio.
Read on:
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2012/03/obama-leads-gop-in-three-key-states-poll-says/1
I’ll spin it: Gov. Romney is almost even with President Obama before the campaign has even really begun!
Does anyone care who wins the election? You think it will mke a difference for you?
Last election it was all Hope and Change, and we will end the wars, close gitmo, lower te taxes on middle class, cut the deficit, and all of that stuff, and
PEOPLE ACTUALLY BELIEVED THAT STUFF
and the same thing is going on now, we will cut gas price , provide care for everyone, make sure everyone gets a PHD in something, eliminate the death penalty,cut the military spending and use the saving for the people.
Yeah, remember the savings from the IRAQ war ending and how that was going to make
a big boost to the economy.
If you can;t believe what the politicans say, and you believe what people say because they spout your beliefs. be prepared.
Student loans to go to 6% in July, another savings from the Government of Obama, and friend.
Vote for whom you like, and be prepared to be disappointed again.
the only hope is if the government changes and the republicans get in and the birth certificate problems will be exposed or laid to rest.
Happy Dreams for the future.
And to be on topic, my laptop doesn’t kern very well as I read what I type.
*rolls eyes* Do you want some more cheeze with your irrelevant whine?
Of course most people who vote do *care* about who wins an election. If they didn’t have a preference, they probably wouldn’t be casting a vote one way or the other. *duh*. What a meaningless argument.
The rest of your silly screed has ZERO to do with the topics of this blog and is nothing but a useless tantrum.
Tell me any president that has been able to deliver on everything they campaigned for or even attempted to accomplish when they get in office… Sorry, in the real world, things are never that easy or smooth. It never turns out that way and if you go into an election with unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved, then you are bound to be disappointed and you only have your own unrealistic and simplistic notions to blame. Sorry, no unicorns for you!
Also, any realistic person also can grasp that the dynamics of the real world change over time and various factors come into play that always influence and change what a President can focus on or accomplish vs. what he talked about wanting to do in theory. Welcome to reality. Someone at your extremely advanced age should have figured that out long before now.
No one has taken away or threatened your right to vote and cast your ballot for whatever choice you want. So, you have no real complaint, except childishly pouting because the majority of the nation made a different choice than you.
Nor do you have any right to deny me or anyone else our right to vote and chose as we please, no matter how much you disagree or dislike our choices.
Your obsessive bias is so evident in all of your tantrums. If you can’t see past your tears long enough to keep your focus on the topic at hand, then I suggest you go elsewhere. There are plenty of political blogs where you can whine and cry about your ideological-based criticisms to your heart’s content. That is NOT the focus of this blog.
That is a gift from the Republican-controlled House.
You are 95 according to what you have said here, so what’s it to you?
Heck, nothing is relevant to me personally, as I am set , retired, and need nothing except my pills to get along in live.
One of the best examples of kerning is in Atlas Shrugs july 2008 where the flip between two BC and show how the letters vary in width.
I know you might not like that posting but it does have some interesting stuff on the subject of this thread.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/07/atlas-exclusive.html
it is quite a ways down the page so skip all that stuff you don’t want to read and read the stuff about kerning.
Are you really 95? Do you have a birth certificate to show that?
Is looking at someone else’s birth certificate the best use of the short amount of time you have left on this Earth?
Reading Geller? Oh, Jack, say it ain’t so. I did get a laugh out of the footnote:
Doesn’t Obama, the Great One, have to sign it, and the Democratic Senate approve it.
Hmmm, seems as though the controllers of the action lies in the hands of the Democrats, or do you think the Republicans can force the President to sign it, after the Senate approves it.
I have never said I was 95, my brother dies lately and he was 95, so I don’t know where you picked that up.
heck , you read this site , don’t you?
Well, Old Man, it was 2008 wasn’t it? You did look at the kerning example didn’t you.
What did you think of that example!
*shrug*
Once again, you simply show the disease of your own biased lense of the world, instead of dealing with mere reality.
NEWSFLASH – Student loans had been at 6.8% and are currently only HALF of that. Legislation was passed in the past few years to CUT that temporarily to make it EASIER for students in a difficult economy. They will only merely return to where they had been, if congress doesn’t extend them.
So no, no “evil Obama” action here. Sorry. Instead, you are typically twisting where congress & he gave a temporary economic benefit to students (i.e. a good thing) and treating it as the opposite of what it actually was.
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120130/BIZ01/201300324
So just how old are you and have you always been this cranky… or does terminal bitterness just kick in at a certain age?
Pam Geller is an irrational hate monger and extreme bigot. If her site is your type of fare, that tells us a lot about you…
OK, so you’re 92, whatever. Or, you are a 13 year old posting from your parent’s basement. Show me a birth certificate. A pdf will be fine, with or without layers, no difference. Birthers are really big on other people’s birth certificates, but when the time comes to show their own, nada.
If you really are old and choose to waste your last moments on Earth birthin, then you are a Fool.
Pamela Geller: “[Anders] Breivik was targeting the future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives, including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole… all done without the consent of the Norwegians.” “Note the faces which are more MIddle Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian.”
(http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/08/pamela-gellers-racist-comments-oslo-victims-werent-pure-norwegians-just-middle-eastern-or-mixed/_)
Birther bigots have a truly vile, racist role model in Pamela Geller.
Geller’s organization, Stop Islamization of America, has been designated an extremist hate group by the Anti-Defamation League.
http://www.adl.org/main_Extremism/sioa.htm
You said you’ve been retired 30 years. From that disclosure, it was reasonable to assume you are in the ballpark of 95 years of age.
And that ballpark has probably been condemned for being built on a cracked foundation.
Little. Can’t believe someone put all that effort into puffery, considering it takes so little to distract the willing.
His latest claim (to my knowledge) was 89. His photos, which have not been presented here, bear that out.
Oh, I may be a fool , but not so big a fool as to believe what one side or the other side says about anything,
And, I only claim to be what I am, never what I am not, as others may, or may not , do to make themselves seem important
I am not important, don’t want to be important, just want to live my life the way I want to live my life, the rest of you can continue to play games to make you feel good. Have at it.
Ah, another person who can assume things , do arithmetic and come up with bad resutls.
Not everyone retires at 65, some can retire at 60,55, 50, and so forth.
I guess your assumption was in error, Ok , I forgive you!
next you will want to see my DD 214 as it contains a lot of information, however, I am too old to play if you will show my yours i will show you mine!
Childish when young, strange when otld, disturbing when suggested on boards.
“I guess your assumption was in error . . . ”
After the horrific explosion, there was just a dark, oily cloud lingering over the irony meter testing facility.
Indeed.
So, how old were you when you retired?
Go and live. Don’t waste your declining years posting trash…
It’s a reasonable assumption… As to bad results, I have noticed that you have suffered slightly from that as well.
Fair enough
Funny how you are so quick to accuse… But you are playing games yourself as well, does it make you feel good?
In other words, you lack the ability to discern between what is real and what is fantasy.
Whether such poor decision making skills and entrenched confirmation bias blinders are something you’ve always had throughout your life, or are a symptom of mental degradation in advanced age, remains in question.
Yet YOU demand to see endless verification of details on the personal life of a President that you can’t even stand and would never be casting a vote for anyways….
…But somehow, when the lense turns towards yourself and questioning of your own personal records, you cry a different tune.
Oh Birthers, why are you so predisposed to such endless IRONY…
Geller, Orly Taitz, Roy Cohn, Andrew Breitbart. Look what we have produced. What has happened to us?
Ah, there is nothing like the racist perjorative to spur the onslight of the bigots of the world,
if you disagree with someone call them vile , racist, spewing racism all over the internet, and we, posting here , are not guilty of such things, for we are the superiors that belIeve in Obama and the Hope and Change,
Ignoring the fact that the socialists abound on the boards, free stuff for all, Obama Bucks everyone gets and needs and by all meant hate the white people for starving all of the people in the world, as that is what gets the country into a better place where Hope and Change can exist without those vile , racist, who, by the way , are never Black , Hispanic, Chinese, Japanese or anything but vile racist rednecks , Is that not true in your thoughts.
I know, all that free stuff is disgusting:
– Michele Bachmann took $250K in farm subsidies. She tells the IRS she’s a farmer, and tells everyone else she’s a legislator.
– ADM got a 50/gallon tariff on Brazilian ethanol.
– Cattle ranchers do not pay market rates to graze on public land.
– Members of Congress get 100% paid health insurance, not 80/20. When they need medical care, they go to the Bethesda Naval Hospital, courtesy of the taxpayers. Love that government healthcare.
– Our gasoline is cheap because our military protects private oil investments. See Iraq and 1953 Iran.
– The damage heavy trucks cause highways is not fully paid by road use taxes. Governments make up the difference, AKA taxpayers.
– Banks and stock brokers privatize profits, but socialize losses.
No. Not True in my thoughts.
Again, you are having a conversation with no one here, except the invented strawmen bogeymen within your own fevered imagination. You simply rail against a world and memes that don’t really exist the way you picture them. The demons that torment you are mostly made up and of your own creation.
Notice how a sadly confused birther changes an uncomfortable subject to a non-sequitur like socialism. The reference was to the despicable Pamela Geller from the birther’s original reference to her website:
traderjack: One of the best examples of kerning is in Atlas Shrugs july 2008 where the flip between two BC and show how the letters vary in width.
I said, “Birther bigots have a truly vile, racist role model in Pamela Geller.”
Which was also a response to you:
G: Pam Geller is an irrational hate monger and extreme bigot. If her site is your type of fare, that tells us a lot about you…
Geller praised mass murderer Anders Breivik for slaughtering Norwegian children.
Pamela Geller: “[Anders] Breivik was targeting the future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives, including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole… all done without the consent of the Norwegians.” “Note the faces which are more MIddle Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian.”
((http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/08/pamela-gellers-racist-comments-oslo-victims-werent-pure-norwegians-just-middle-eastern-or-mixed/_)
The racist redneck part might just be projection?
And “socialists abound on the boards” is truly ironic from someone who admitted to supporting Michele “give me farm subsidies and pay for my campaign debts” Bachmann.
Yeah, you nailed it.
The constantly inability to stay on topic is just a sign that TJ has not merit to his arguments, just randomly swinging hate. When he loses an argument, he immediately defensively switches to throw out whatever random RWNJ bogeyman trope comes to his mind. It is no different than how a very young child throws an emotional tantrum….just so much more pathetic to see it when someone is way, way old enough to know better. Then again, they say the mind breaks down with advanced age and reverts to certain childish ways…
But the specifics of the peculiar non-sequitors he slings are telling, particularly in light of his odd mixed-list of slurs that he gave earlier. He lives in a tortured world of his own imagination and tossing off simplistic bogeyman terms like “communist” and “socialist” have no more real meaning or connection to anything that is occuring than if he had just simply yelled “poopy-head” several times or “dang kids get off my lawn” and then ran away for awhile…
It is nothing but signs of an irrational tantrum playing itself out…over and over and over again.
Excellent description. I’ve got an elderly neighbor who has began to act just like that. He’ll buttonhole me in the driveway and go on and on about imaginary injustices he’s suffering. Just as I think I’ve talked him out of his angry fandango, he’ll begin repeating the same litany of grievances as if he’s never addressed them before. He’s not interested in resolving anything, he just wants to carp, endlessly, about all the wrongs he’s had to endure.
Is this just old age, or is he suffering from some specific form of mental disintegration? traderjack, you seem to be familiar with the symptoms–any ideas?
Arthur, sorry to say this isn’t confined to the elderly, but is common to the elderly. When a particular subject comes up, they have the exact same things to say about it, no mater how often the subject comes up …. and if the person has an audience that will let them ramble, they will inevitably turn the conversation around to their “favorites” and recite the same old spiel. One of my best friends fits your description to a T …. and used to jump me in the driveway everyday too!
Obsessive thoughts? Speaking w/o thinking just to have something to say? A sign of short-term memory loss? Or of a brain losing the ability to process new information?
I don’t know … thinking of the people I know who exhibit this trait, the commonalities are loneliness, isolation, and idle time. Retired and/or disabled … minds not enjoying enough interaction, not receiving much fresh input.
Yes, your description makes sense in this case. This fellow is retired and a widower who lives alone. I get the feeling that when he goes home, he just sits in his recliner while his brain runs a loop reel of indignations.
Well, my retired father-in-law tells the same old jokes and work stories and stories of his family and his time in the Marines over and over and over again. But I don’t mind it too much, because at least the stuff he’s stuck in repeat mode on are entertaining, engaging and mostly positive. At least he’s not wrapped up and trapped in bitterness and fear.
Ah, it is so much fun to mock the elderly , isn’t it? And you are forgetting that you too will get old and be made fun of, Mock away, youngster, as this old bogey is not suffering from lack of input,
I read constantly , watch the Russian news, the Chinese news, the Japanese news , the Korean News, and the Vietnamese news programs and educational programs
Subscribe to 12 different magazines from Scientific American , to the Civil War magazine, electronic magazines and hot rod magazines. Watch the Senate and House hearings,
one of the benefits of being retired is you get to spend your time doing what you want to do, although I don’t consider working on the home plumbing much fun.
But, if you have ever changed your child’s diapers plumming problems in about the same.
You just have to clean up after the work is done.
But all that is though as being nothing today , unless you subscribe to Hope and Change
Before you ask, plumming is picking up the down and rotten plums off the ground and getting rid of them.
To get back on topic, kerning can not happen with a typewriter in good condition, except an electric typewriter.
And the original birth certificate on file for Obama has kerning on it, which tells you it was altered after the introduction of IBM electrices which happen to be 6 days before he was supposed to have been born, But it could be a later amended BC which was substituted for the original after IBM came out with the electric.
We got electrics in about 1967 and I did not like them.
No, not mocking and not fun at all, Jackie-me-boy (don’t you feel younger already?), as I’m well on my way to cranksterhood. Have been fighting the urge to yell “Get off my lawn!” for a couple years now. It’s important to understand other people, their motivations and influences, and experience is a treasure dearly bought … makes its misuse all the more tragic.
The input that counts is the human kind. You can read all you want, take in all the sights and sounds that you can, and have a genuinely wonderful, solitary life (This is where my own tendencies take me … am an aspiring hermit). But, a dearth of human contact makes it harder and harder to get out of your own head, as you drift farther from society and into your own reality. A person can become overly resistant to, or overly desperate for, human interaction, either of which can lead to self-reinforcing pathologies.
I hope you’re doing well, a needed part of a vibrant community, and in constant contact with family.
It is easy to mock anyone who acts ridiculous and simply invite such responses upon themselves.
At you age, you should have learned long before now how to deal with disappointment in the world.
You should be spending your remaining years not sweating the small stuff or the stuff that is simply beyond your control. What a waste of time to be constantly cranky and bitter. Better to cling to those pleasant memories you’ve hopefully built up over time and spend your energies savoring the wonders, joys and small comforts that we too often overlook on a daily basis. You will find much more peace that way.
But hey, at least you made a cute plumb joke. So, that small sign of humor is a small step of progress and I did enjoy a positive chuckle with that… it was a welcome change of pace.
What you sadly fail to grasp is that no one here is rooting for you to constantly be coming across as a cranky idiot. I’d rather have you display glimmers of your actual humanity than see the shameful embarassment of your pathological bitterness on display, any day.
Are you talking about uneven or proportional spacing? Either way there are several problems with what you are saying.
IBM electric typewriters predate Obama’s birth by decades. The proportional spacing IBM Executive machines – basket with typebars – was introduced iin the early 40’s and became popular after the war.
By your reference to the date it appears you are talking about the IBM Selectric, or ball typewriter, which did not have a proportional spacing option except in a very high end machine that was only used for copy composition.
So just to clarify proportional spacing machines were available before 1961. But iIt’s not likely that the state of Hawaii bought them to fill our birth certififcates.
More likely is that they used machines – electric or manual – with key baskets and type on typebars that have always been prone to erratic or irreglar spacing for any number of reasons from fast typing, poor typing, mechanical adjustments, lubrication, etc.
Okay.
Well, then, somebody should patiently explain to TJ that the LFBC does not show “kerning,” but rather spacing irregularities. This has been proven definitively and exhaustively by John Woodman.
I’ve tried, and several others have as well. Get that man a copy of InDesign or Quark and put him to work a’kernin’. That may be the only cure for schizokernia.
Just a minor nit, but the birth certificate was obviously prepared by a hospital employee on hospital purchased equipment. Not sure what employees Kapiolani would have used back in the 60s to prepare birth certificates, but the hospital where my kid was recently born has their own birth certificate processing office on the maternity floor, as well as a dedicated birth certificate coordinator. She first came to us while we were in the recovery room asking what name we wanted to give, and later came back with the prepared form for us to sign, as well as a note that they would automatically submit an SSN application for our child.
I suppose it would be possible for a hospital to use an electric, but I thought even in the early 60s that manual typewriters were still the norm.