Category: Bob Small

DVD Rot Is One More Worry

By Bob Small

Until a few days ago, we had never worried about “DVD rot”.

Now we are hearing about it .

Though DVDs ”should last 30 to 100 years” Warner Brother DVD’s made between 2006-8 which requires DVD owners to “check inner ring codes for the suspect plant”.

Another point is that whyile Warner Bros says it will replace certain DVDs damaged some of the affected titles are no longer in print.

Thus your Humphrey Bogart DVD might be replaced by Scooby Doo.

Lastly, and we’ll just quote it here, there’s a tendency where DVD’s and other optical discs to oxidise underneath the reflective layer, causing the adhesive to de-bond and often resulting in a “milky” spot on the readable surface. “

Wait. There’s more! Over 600 Blu-ray Titles No Longer Work! Even Criterion, the “gold standard of DVD media, has had problems with some of it’s classics, including Citizen Kane. If you can’t trust Criterion for Citizen Kane,or Paris, Texas, well then you probably can’t trust anyone.

The next question to emerge is, “should we still buy DVD’s?”.

Why DVD Series Are Still Worth Buying in 2025 attempts to answer that question. Their reasons inclue

• No dependency on internet connections.
• Better picture and sound quality.
• Special features”
• Support for the physical media market”.

It seems that streaming is overtaking DVD’s, but there is a sizable, albeit older, minority still buying.

Unmentioned is a tendency among many of us to avoid monthly costs and sharing information online.

See also 5 Reasons Why DVDs & Blu-Ray Are Still Essential In The …

VCR’s also exist, even though they’re no longer making new players, many used players are on sale.

Places such as Good Will and Salvation Army, that sells DVDs also have VCR tapes, and for a fairly cheap price.

Snow Wrong

By Bob Small

One explanation for why the Disney Studio made the live action remake the way they did is that they believed Biden/Harris would win a second term. However that result turned out to also be a fairy tale.

(Rachel Zegler) is a pro-Palestinian spokeswoman whereas the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot) served in the IDF, and is vocally Pro-Israel. One imagines discussions on the set might have been very lively.

By trying to “empower” Snow White it unempowers the Prince. If you’re waiting for “Someday My Prince will come, spoiler alert it doesn’t)

And there’s more. Or rather less.

Not only are the Dwarfs removed from the title “– Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was the title in 1937 — it has been “de-dwarfed”, taking away work from dwarf actors such as Peter Dinkage, among others.

One of the best comparisons of this “artistic malfeasance” is this review which calls it “about as sensible as remaking “Singing in the Rain” as a cartoon.

Trigger warnings have been issued in the UK, saying that “a woman is deliberately poisoned” and “a girl is surrounded by ominous trees”.

Oh, the horror!

In an essay on the 2019 live-action version of Alladin, Aisha Harris wrote in The New York Times that “shoe-horned progressive messages only brings more attention to the inherent crassness of Disney’s current exercise in money-grabbing nostalgia”

Discussing this film, the concept of “endless splitting hairs over the authenticity (italics mine) of a fairy tale”.

See also:

Snow White review – Disney’s exhaustingly awful reboot

Snow White (IMDB reviews)

Detrans Awareness Day 2025

By Bob Small

Scott has left Vermont to return to Philadelphia. Maybe we do need a Pennsylvania Border Patrol.

Scott informed me that March 12 was Detrans Awareness Day. If you missed this, as did most of us, you can see it here: Detrans Awareness Day – LIVE from Capitol Hill

This 4th Detrans Awareness Day is sponsored by Genspect. Relatively new to the culture wars, this group was founded in June of 2021 by “gender-critical” psychotherapist Stella O’Malley.

Genspect works with Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM)

Both have been designated as “anti-LGBTQ hate groups b the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Check their list to see which one you might be long too.

Their enemy group is primarily World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)

At the conference, “one Detransition activist, Soren Aldaro”

urged legislation that would mandate insurance providers to cover “detransition treatment”.

Much as transition treatment has some coverage.

There was much criticism of the New York Times coverage of the event which Times described as being “anti-trans” as in this article by Katie Baker

Suffice it to say, the above is a situation that should rarely happen, if at all.

One next-to-last opinion Genspect and the illusion of good intent – Arsha’s Substack where the Blogger speaks to his father “To have these difficult conversations coming from a source of love and concern”

Not, we should add, from a wellspring of hate and condemnation.

Full Disclosure; My opinions on Transition, if anyone cares, have evolved to the opinion that transition should only occur when the transitioner has achieved the age of 18 and after a full year of therapy.

Judicial Watch And Who They Watch

By Bob Small

Judicial Watch is a “conservative non-partisan educational foundation” whose motto is “Because no one is above the law”. This group, which we also learnt about at the annual Bill of Rights Banquet, is in the news.

It has over 60 major legal wins since 2001 albeit few against Republican administrations.

One crusade concerns the extraordinarily extreme roadblocks created by authorities against those with whom they disagree.

While few of their fights are in support of traditionally liberal causes a recent one focused on animal rights, namely the controversial killing of the pet squirrel Peanut by New York State.

And they also took on former Vice-President Dick Cheney, which they unfortunately lost.

Judicial Watch has been praised by The New York Times as being “the group has forced the release of government records that would otherwise have been kept from the public.” quote from NY Times as per Wikipedia

All sides recognize Judicial Watch as conservative.

Judicial Watch notes though that corruption is nonpartisan and does not occur in one specific ideology.

A group that watches Judicial Watch is Democracy Docket which takes issue with Judicial Watch  lawsuit to purge thousands of voters in Pennsylvania.

Democracy Docket, by the way, was founded in 2020 by Democratic Party lawyer Marc Elias. Democracy Docket They have the support of Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder

We’ll be curious to see the actions of Judicial Watch over Trump’s current term.

Big Brother Watches Us Everywhere

By Bob Small

Swarthmore College spies on it’s students, even in Crum Woods.

Kya Butterfield ’25 handled one of the observation cameras and was charged with violating the college’s vandalism rule in the Student Code of Conduct.

The initial penalty was $4,800.

Butterfield said, however, it was reduced to $2,400 “out of good faith.”

Swarthmore History Professor Timothy Burke estimated the first camera was installed 15 or 20 years ago.

Citing security concerns, Interim Director of Public Safety Colin Quinn would not disclose the number or location of the security cameras.

By comparison, in 2024 Haverford College reported 85 cameras on campus, up from 45 in 2022.

Swarthmore has re-defined disorderly conduct to include “any other action(s) that result in the unreasonable interference with the learning/working environment or the rights of others.”

Erin Picken sums up his argument by stating “If you only protest against a stubborn institution along the guidelines it has provided, how much change can you really make? 

The urban campus of the University of Pennsylvania, which has 120 officers and is the second-largest police force of any private university in the U.S.

Penn uses 145 pan–tilt–zoom cameras, which are constantly monitored, and more than 1,200 other fixed cameras. 

Student Milo Garcia notes he comes from small-town Mexico and was never attacked there.

“If it hadn’t happened to me in Mexico I wouldn’t think it would happen to me here,” he said.

According to the Campus Safety Publication more than 8 in 10 Campuses use security cameras .

One in four noted that they were upgrading because the video surveillance system doesn’t integrate with other security technologies.

See the article for other statistics.

See also https://billlawrenceonline.com/privacy-concerns-aired-about-swarthmore-security

Walking out of the Swarthmore College Library DVD section, I waved to the cameras.

Big Brother Watches Us Everywhere

Response To A Response

By Bob Small

Liberty4all asked in a comment to this article from Feb. 17 “What does the ratio of Left vs Right cases undertaken by (The Institute for Justice ) look like? And who is funding them now? “

First, taking a deep dive into current cases IJ listed; Cases Bowers v. Oneida County Industrial Development Agency This is an eminent domain case. “Can the government take your property just to hand it over to your business competitor? “ See article for the full explanation.

Then there was the free speech case Free speech or public nuisance? Nazareth resident fights ‘  which can be seen as neither left nor right.

Right ro privacy extends to another case: Pennsylvania Fish Cops

“First, in May 2023, WCO Moon pounded on the Thomas’ front and back doors, roamed around their yard and took pictures of their cabin, dock, and yard—all without a warrant—on the unfounded belief that Tim had been fishing without a license.”

Lastly, we have Norfolk, VA Camera Surveince “ In 2023, the city installed over 172 cameras around town. These are not your standard traffic cameras. The cameras are strategically placed to capture everybody’s daily travel. They’re straight-up surveillance cameras, set up to watch people 24/7 as they go about their lives. “

One couple who are donors, Jeremy and Katie Bencken How IJ’s Unique Narrative Counters Government Growth who are small business owners.;

Another long-time donor, the late Dr. John B. Wenders He was affiliated with the Commonwealth Foundation, among other conservative groups.

Brian Schar is a lawyer who says “We who fight for liberty are outnumbered and outspent by the multitudinous interests who depend on the state” His position seems libertarian, rather than simply left or right.

Rather than the Koch Brothers, I found a group called Four Pillars Society Supports IJ’s Future .

Looking through the article, there was again a mix of people,left and right and center. None of them, from my review, were named Koch.

My summation is that the Institute for Justice represents various interests and their theirdonors are a mixed lot who cannot be categorized.

MAHA Begins

By Bob Small

We’ve been supporters of Children’s Health Defense (CHD) since learning about it.

We had become Covid vaccine skeptics and I went so far as to attend the CHD 2023 Conference. It helped that this was in November in Savannah, GA. Any effort to beat back the medical-industrial complex is to be welcomed.

The possibilities of Make America Healthy Again or MAHA were broached by Trump Press Secretary Karoline Levitt after President Trump signed an executive order creating a MAHA commission and directing Bobby Kennedy Jr. “to investigate this chronic crisis plaguing our country and the minds and the bodies of the American people.”

Another possibility is further safety studies of food dyes and other additives.

Of course there are limits to what RFK, Jr. can do. Part of the problem is the multiplicity of Agencies. Tom Scully who worked in the George W. Bush administration a current CMS chart and “there are offices I never heard of when I was there 20 years ago,” .

Another factor is that the HHS Secretary “does make the final decision” on vaccine approvals.

There are some issues that members of the medical community want addressed. Number uno is the ever-rising costs of “maintenance” drugs.

Patients for Affordable Drugs , for instance, wants RFK, Jr. to take on Big Pharma

The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA) wants him to address “the prices set by drug companies and misuse of the patent system that blocks market-based competition for more affordable alternatives like generics and biosimilars,” said JC Scott, president and CEO of PCMA.” However is PCMA also part of the problem?

Locally, some of the fear of change comes from CHOP (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).

“I think it’s a sad day for America’s children. I think it’s a sad day for public health when someone who is a science denialist, conspiracy theorist, and virulent anti-vaccine activist is [leading] the biggest public health agency in the United States,” says Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at CHOP.

See also (Pence) Advocacy group uses Trump’s criticism against RFK 

Blockade Ended Swarthmore Protest

By Bob Small

Swarthmore College is in the news again. The Swarthmore Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) staged a sit-in on Feb 19 (See also the letters)

Their demands were “ that the college drop its disciplinary cases against students for charges related to protests for Palestine and that the college divest from companies tied to Israel.

However this time Swarthmore Public Safety blockaded the building, preventing further protesters along with supplies, etc. This was the opposite of the previous lazes-faire reaction.

Last time, for instance, a number of us took photos. Now they were told not to take photos.

For a report that the SJP is an anti-Israel group.

It should be clarified that the FBI only contacted Swarthmore College after Swarthmore SJP put out a call for others to join them. My protest experience was that if you put out a call for others to join you that, inevitably, you would have some undercover Philly PD, State Troopers, FBI, etc.

The Swarthmore Administration in the person of Val Smith wanted to clarify that the College did not contact the FBI or any other federal law enforcement agency in response to the protest.

Meanwhile, on the Left Coast, Multiple pro-Palestine groups protest suspension of SJP, Graduate SJP on campus It seems the SJP violated UCLA’s Time , Place and Manner rules by protesting in Dickson Plaza and also in front of UC Regent Jay Sures Brentwood home on Feb. 5 and chanting “Jonathan Sures, you will pay, until you see your final day.”

If only the British had said “these are the official days and times for tea-tossing”.

Finally, this story about a Pro-Israel counter-demonstration, under the aegis of Who We Are | Let’s Do Something.

Probably no one on either side listened to each other because both knew, as Bob Dylan sang, that they were demonstrating With God on Our Side.

Unlike Sunday, Oct. 4, 1936, Battle of Cable Street where there were the Fascists versus the Anti-Fascists.

See also On third day of SJP encampment, protests continue …

Blockade Ended Swarthmore Protest