Reindeer bucks

"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Cash Cow: Inside the Economics of Reindeer Farming"

The population of reindeer is plunging. Demand to rent them at Christmas is surging. But what's an owner to do with them the other 11 months out of the year?

by

Vickie Elmer

December 24th,  2013

The Atlantic

A lot of people assume that reindeer, just like Santa Claus, are make believe. But the antlered stars of Christmas stories such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Santa Claus movie are real animals—that bring in real business. Renting reindeer for an hour for, say, the company Christmas party typically costs several hundreds of dollars; their day rate is several times that.

Some economics are at play: supply is dwindling as demand is growing, especially at this time of year. The number of Canadian reindeer and caribou has plunged 81% in a decade. The global reindeer population has fallen too, as humans encroach on their lands. In the US, some farmers have ceased showing their reindeer in the face of growing regulations and disease management rules.

Yet reindeer rental owners “are as busy as they can possibly be,” says Cindy Murdoch, a board member of the Reindeer Owners and Breeders Association. She’s also the owner of Timberview Farms in Oregon, which—like the original St. Nick—has a fleet of eight reindeer. “We have double, triple bookings to meet needs,” Murdoch says.

The marketing power of antlers

Reindeer are run ragged during the holidays as an attraction to bring in customers, or as a part of a winter festival or special event. Their novelty to adults and children alike helps their marketability. According to data from various reindeer farm websites, a pair of reindeer may rent for $200 to $300 or more an hour; Timberview rents reindeer for a minimum of $1,750 for an eight-hour day.

The main difference between a deer and a reindeer is reindeer have thicker fur and wider hooves that are designed for snow, while deer have thinner legs and dainty hooves. Both male and female reindeer grow antlers, while only male deer get pointed headpieces. Domesticated in northern Europe and Asia about 2,000 years ago, reindeer were almost certainly among the first domestic hoofed animals, according to some experts. But they are not as fast as horses.

Close cousins of caribou, they live in the tundra and start to grow winter coats in October. By December, the older males’ antlers fall off, while the females and calves keep theirs. Some owners specially treat male reindeer to preserve their antlers through Christmas so they’re ready to trot out.

“They’ve got this magical quality—big eyes, soft noses,” says Angie Flint, who says her rural England reindeer business has seen a double-digit increase in revenues; one of hers made an appearance at a holiday party for the prime minister in 2011.

Reindeer often serve as backdrops for holiday cards and photos— and sometimes, as spies for Santa. Murdoch tells boisterous children: “Dasher’s watching you and she’s the one who reports back. So you should be quiet and good so you get on the good list.”

They’re easy animals

Despite being curious, gentle and quite social, reindeer are also fairly sedentary. “They lie around most of the day,” says Murdoch, who has raised them for 13 years.  If  trained early and given proper cues from a herd leader or trainer, reindeer behave more like horses than lions or gazelles.

The best way to avoid a “National Geographic moment” in which the reindeer antlers clash and they fight for dominance, she said,  is to observe which ones mingle well in the fields—and then pair them together in public.

Still, many owners insist the animals stay in enclosed pens when they are taken out to events or as business promotions, since their sharp and pointed antlers can inadvertently prove dangerous. Only the well-trained reindeer can be guided through crowds on a harness or pose for photos at annual events.  Stress-free handling is important, owners say.

Santa came to reindeer farmers’ rescue

Some farmers have found ways to extend their reindeer rentals to other times of year. Crystal Collection Reindeer, a farm that’s been around for 20 years, has had Christmas in July events and brought its animals out to Halloween celebrations.  George Agilar in Alaska leases many of his 18 reindeer to a tourist attraction called Riverboat Discovery for four or five summer months.

“That definitely helps pay the feed bill,” said Aguiar, who also works as a University of Alaska research assistant on animal health and using reindeer as meat.  He used to view doing the “Santa thing” with your reindeer as a sign of selling out. So none of them have Christmas-y names; instead they’re named after friends: Dave, Willie, and Flea, for her small size.

“Now I realize I have to take advantage of those opportunities” to earn money, he said. He’s starting to work on plans for agritourism. In the last year, he even bought a couple of old sleighs and is training one reindeer to pull them.

“I want the reindeer to tow me on skis,” he said, noting that it’s taking quite a lot of training to perfect. It’s called skijor and in Finland, Norway and other countries, skijoring is an amateur or competitive winter sport. (In some places, horses or dogs are used instead of reindeer.)  Some tourist destinations in Norway now offer this to guests.

Celluloid vs digital...it's economics

"Oscars: Cinematography nominees discuss film versus digital"

Janusz Kaminski shot 'War Horse' on film; Jeff Cronenweth used digital for 'Dragon Tattoo.' As technology changes, cinematographers adjust to new realities.

by

Mark Olsen

February 19th, 2012

Los Angeles Times

This year's Oscar nominees for cinematography present a particularly varied cross-section of contemporary filmmaking at a time when the very infrastructure of how movies are made and seen is in transition. Consider: 35-millimeter film prints are being phased out in favor of digital projection. Consumer still cameras can be used to shoot high-definition digital video. Video on demand is becoming a popular viewing option. Even the venerable Eastman Kodak, which produces the film stock on which many movies are made, recently filed for bankruptcy protection.

The Scandinavian-modern "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" was shot with digital cameras; the World War I-set"War Horse" was shot on film."Hugo" was shot in digital 3-D to portray 1931 Paris, while"The Artist" was shot on color film, then transferred to black-and-white to evoke the end of the silent film era in Hollywood."The Tree of Life" used footage shot both on film and digital and integrates nature photography into its storytelling. (That three-on-film, two-on-digital split is likely an approximation of Hollywood production overall, though changes are evolving rapidly.)

As this moment of transition challenges distributors, exhibitors and even audiences, cinematographers are on the front lines of those responding to the changes. Many of them recognize just what a unique window this particular time presents.

"I think this is a wonderful time for a cinematographer," said Emmanuel Lubezki, who shot "The Tree of Life" and is a four-time previous nominee. "You can have 65-millimeter, 35, 16 and so on, and then you have all the range of incredible digital cameras that are not like film but allow you to create wonderful images."

The only vocal anti-digitalist among this year's nominees is Janusz Kaminski, nominated for Steven Spielberg's "War Horse." The Polish-born Kaminski won Oscars for Spielberg's"Schindler's List" and"Saving Private Ryan," and though he recently shot in digital for the first time while working on a commercial, he decried digital as a harbinger of "the death of the cinematographer." "Generally speaking, I don't have respect for digital media just yet," he added.

His concern is that the cinematographer is no longer allowed to fully control the image as other technicians become a larger part of the process and that digital monitors create a laissez-faire attitude on-set toward image-making. "If you see the image on the digital screen I think people become lazy, they get satisfied with just seeing the image, they're not going for visual panache, not getting the story through metaphors," he said. "With film there is still mystery."

In the finale of "War Horse," a soldier returns home. Shooting outdoors in rural England against a vibrant setting sun with heavy use of filters to create an otherworldly glow that envelopes everyone in the scene, Kaminski suspected that audiences would likely assume the effect was achieved in post-production.

The nominated films have a distinct perspective into the past and cinema itself. "Hugo" deals directly with film preservation in its story line involving the silent filmmaker Georges Méliès. "The Artist" also invokes film history. "Dragon Tattoo" and "Tree of Life" both deal with memories and the ties of the past, while "War Horse" purposefully captures the spirit of classical filmmaking.

"It's a very intriguing group of nominees," said Stephen Pizzello, executive editor of American Cinematographer magazine. "These particular filmmakers all show how cinematic thinking can be extended with the help of modern tools, whether that means digital cameras, camera-movement systems such as the Technocrane or Steadicam, or postproduction techniques. The shaping of a solid movie still demands good 'movie thinking,' especially in terms of how new technologies are applied to the creative process."

For the look of "The Artist," a black-and-white, essentially dialogue-free film, French cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman referred to "the souvenir," the feeling of watching an old movie more than specifically wanting to directly make a film in an old style. Schiffman shot on color film stock that was timed to black-and-white in post-production because he found that he could get a broader range of gray tones in the image than if he shot on black-and-white stock (a not uncommon technique). He shot at 22 frames-per-second rather than the current standard 24 to lightly evoke the sense of watching older films.

Schiffman had previously worked with writer-director Michel Hazanavicius and star Jean Dujardin on two '60s-era spy spoofs. The method used to research and prepare those films was similar to the one used to create "The Artist," paying respect to older films without feeling trapped by them.

"We see a lot of movies, we talk a lot, we try to see the codes," Schiffman explained of the playful creativity behind their working methods, "the cutting, the lighting, the framing, the acting, and then we get all that in our minds and as soon as we start to really shoot we say, let's forget about it. We know how it should look and how they should act, let's find our own way to tell the story."

In shooting "Hugo" for director Martin Scorsese, cinematographer Robert Richardson — winner of Oscars for "The Aviator" and "JFK" — worked for the first time both with a digital camera and in 3-D. To re-create the films of Méliès in a breathtaking sequence within "Hugo," Richardson at first tried locking two old-fashioned hand-cranked cameras together, but found the only way to get the desired effect was with current cutting-edge digital systems. Throughout shooting, Richardson found himself particularly taken with how 3-D, often thought of as a tool simply for spectacular action, could be used to vividly express and bring forward emotion and the actor's performance.

"It's akin to entering into a new relationship. You don't know the boundaries," Richardson said in a professorial air of working with new formats. "It's vastly more technical than an emotional entrance, but what you find as you tap into the technical you become more accustomed to it. 3-D is in many ways the bastard child, we don't want to look at it as if it can be an art form. And I think it can be seen as something vastly superior emotionally."

Jeff Cronenweth stepped onto the set of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" on just a few days notice, answering the call of his frequent collaborator, director David Fincher, to replace Swedish cinematographer Fredrik Bäckar a few weeks into the shoot. Cronenweth, who received an Oscar nomination last year for his work on Fincher's "The Social Network," was able to get up to speed quickly by seeing all the previously shot footage online before arriving on location in Sweden.

Cronenweth, son of cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, with whom he has worked on many projects, also worked on seven films with Swedish cameraman Sven Nykvist. Once in Sweden to shoot "Dragon Tattoo," Cronenweth immediately recognized the soft light conditions that Nykvist had always spoken of. In particular, he found shooting the film's star, Rooney Mara, in extremely low light levels remarkable as her pale skin popped out of the darkness, an effect heightened by shooting in digital.

"I think that choice is going to go away as film gets harder to get, harder to deal with, more expensive," Cronenweth said. "And don't get me wrong, I'm a huge supporter of film and I wish it would never go away. I wish I could shoot everything on film and then project it digital and have the most control and the best of both worlds."

Lubezki, the charming, Mexican-born cinematographer of "The Tree of Life," described how director Terrence Malick wanted to be as free as possible while shooting his powerful evocation of family, at once startlingly specific and mystically universal. Usually shooting with only available light, using hand-held cameras and at times allowing the camera to continue to run as scenes take shape are all frequent descriptions of digital productions, but Lubezki still found film the better option overall than digital.

"In a movie like Terry's it would have been catastrophic," Lubezki said of shooting only with digital. "We were trying to hold information in the highlights in the brightest clouds close to the sun and in the dark shadows of a dress in the foreground. Digital cannot do that. It will be able to, probably in a couple of years, but it cannot do it right now."

Forces outside aesthetic considerations of cinematographers likely will make the main decision for them sometime in the next handful of years. Even the issue of digital preservation and migration — having to do in part with the speed at which technologies now become obsolete — has become part of the conversation as the transition is underway.

"It's going to be less of a debate," Cronenweth added. "In all fairness, we're at the infancy stage of digital cinema."


In praise of celluloid

Celluloid film stock...an art characteristic in itself

A giant may be dying...Eastman Kodak Company

"Eastman Kodak fights for its future"

by

Matthew Daneman

December 11th, 2011

USA TODAY

This is not the "Kodak moment" expected of a longtime technology giant.

After losing money 12 of the last 15 quarters, Eastman Kodak is struggling to avoid bankruptcy protection.

Its stock is worth less than a dollar. Its employees are worried about jobs. Retirees fear losing their benefits. And suppliers worry about getting paid.

Yet despite the drumbeat of negative news, CEO Antonio Perez and his management team insist that Kodak (EK) will survive.

"We have fulfilled and remain committed to fulfilling all our obligations," Perez reiterated in a conference call with Wall Street analysts last month.

How far the mighty have fallen in less than a quarter of a century.

The year 1988 was a good one for Eastman Kodak.

The iconic photo and imaging company's worldwide employment peaked that year at more than 145,000, with workers turning out everything from cameras and motion picture film to floppy disks and pharmaceuticals. Kodak finished the year with a profit of $1.4 billion, roughly $2.5 billion in today's dollars.

It was also perhaps the last unqualified good year for the company and the beginning of the end of its role as an industrial giant. Stiff competition from Fujifilm and then the explosion in digital photography — a technology Kodak researchers invented in 1975 — have left Kodak reeling. Its stock, which averaged $25 five years ago and $5 in 2010, closed down 5 cents Monday at 84 cents. Worldwide employment is now below 19,000. Seeing no turnaround in the near future, credit rating giants Moody's and Fitch have downgraded Kodak's debt further into junk-bond status, signaling a higher risk of default.

"I do think it's often overly simplified" to say that Kodak's troubles are the result of it missing the digital boat, says John Ward, a former director of new product development at Kodak, who left the company in 2005 after more than 20 years and is now a lecturer at Rochester Institute of Technology's Saunders College of Business. "The digital business was not going to be nearly as profitable as the film business in any respect. The film and chemical business was one of the all-time great business models. A lot of the change was going to come whether Kodak aggressively embraced digital business or not."

But it has been a long fall for one of America's most iconic companies

Those were the days

Kodak was founded in 1881 after inventor George Eastman pioneered a means of mass producing dry plates — the precursor to film.

Over time, Kodak grew into a global industrial and commercial giant, with "Kodak moment" becoming synonymous with a treasured memory. The Kodak logo and its little yellow boxes of 35-millimeter camera film were found around the globe.

Kodak's hometown of Rochester, N.Y., became the quintessential proud company town, says Daniel Tessoni, an assistant professor and corporate governance expert at Saunders College, which was founded in large part with donations by Eastman.

"The company was very, very generous to its employees and the community," says Rochester Business Alliance President Sandy Parker. "You had a patriarch, almost, that took care of the community. The senior people at Kodak served on virtually all the key boards in the community."

And when it came to big community projects, Parker says, "If Kodak gave thumbs up, we knew others would follow."

"It wasn't just a big employer," says Rochester Mayor Thomas Richards. "It's the University of Rochester. The Eastman School of Music. The Eastman Theatre. RIT. Those are all part of where Kodak's wealth went. We're lucky. If we were a steel town, like South Buffalo, what you got left with was an empty factory."

While Kodak's decline has exacerbated the evaporation of good-paying manufacturing jobs, highly trained former employees "have started businesses all over town," Richards says. "It's left us with a good legacy."

Narrowing its focus

Today, Kodak is in the midst of the latest in what have been almost constant reorganizations since the 1990s. Perez early this year said 2011 would be a tough year as it scaled back its stagnant digital camera business, focusing just on profitable models and markets, and the company's traditional film business continued to shrivel. The company's turnaround goal focused on four small but rapidly growing product lines it hoped would start to turn the company's sliding fortunes around in 2012: consumer and commercial inkjet printing, packaging printing and workflow software.

Before the recession, Kodak had 11 growth businesses. But with the global economic downturn, "we made some choices" of which to invest in, says Kodak Chief Financial Officer Ann McCorvey. "The four growth initiatives we're moving toward are at that intersection of digital imaging science and material science. We chose to try to grow in a place where we have unique capabilities."

Kodak says it is seeing some success, and expects its desktop inkjet printer business to turn profitable next year.

But 2011 is turning out to be a tougher year than anticipated. For the year, Kodak expects losses of $400 million to $600 million, up from the $200 million to $400 million it previously forecast. And the four product lines it is counting on for its turnaround are now projected to have revenue growth of 25%, not the 30% to 40% the company had hoped for this year.

Collins Ink, a Cincinnati manufacturer of the majority of inks used in Kodak's digital printing presses, ended its supplier agreement with Kodak in October, saying it fears Kodak could go bankrupt soon and leave suppliers with uncollectable bills. (Kodak sued and won a preliminary injunction forcing Collins to continue following the terms of the supplier agreement.)

And with $2.5 billion in pension and post-retirement liabilities, Kodak has tens of thousands of retirees who are worried about the future of their health care coverage. Kodak already is in the midst of a 10-year plan that eliminates coverage for retirees' spouses and shifts more costs onto retirees. Given Kodak's finances, further cuts seem likely, says Bob Volpe, president of EKRA, a Rochester-based Kodak retiree group. "It's a matter of when," he says.

Kodak's management and latest turnaround strategy have come under some fire. Calling the turnaround direction a failure, New Jersey investment management firm Investment Partners Asset Management wrote some of the biggest Kodak shareholders, urging them to push Kodak to add business-turnaround experts to its board or managerial ranks or sell itself to a company that could better commercialize its assets.

However, argues, RIT's Tessoni, "There's no indications I can point to that management did not attempt to find additional innovative products. But it just never worked."

Putting its assets to work

Kodak's headway in pushing its growth initiatives has been overshadowed by the ongoing drop in other businesses, says James Kelleher, an analyst at Argus Research.

To bridge the gap until those businesses grow, Kodak has been aggressively selling whatever it can.

This year, it has unloaded such assets as its image-sensor business, its silver business and its microfilm business. It has been marketing its sprawling 900-acre Eastman Business Park manufacturing campus to prospective outside tenants as an industrial park.

But its biggest potential sale is yet to come. Kodak is shopping 1,100 digital imaging patents, which some analysts have said could carry a price tag of as much as $3 billion. Kodak said last month it may borrow as much as $500 million while it seeks a buyer for those patents.

Kodak also is in an intellectual property fight before the International Trade Commission with Apple and with BlackBerry maker Research In Motion over digital imaging patents. A ruling in Kodak's favor could mean as much as $1 billion for the company, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky. An ITC hearing in that case is scheduled for Dec. 30.

Today, the company's biggest risk is that it gets broken up when it in fact has sizable potential, says Mark Kaufman, an analyst with Rafferty Capital.


KODACHROME film...died in Parsons, Kansas

KODACHROME--gone

Shuttle's legacy

I still don't think there is a balance between accomplishments and investment.

"Space shuttle's science brought payoffs to Earth"

by

Seth Borenstein

July 18th. 2011

Associated Press

Science from the space shuttle helped open Earth's eyes to the cosmos and sister planets. It created perhaps the most detailed topographical map of Earth. And it even is helping doctors understand, and sometimes fix, what's happening in our aging and ailing bodies.

If you need help getting out of a crashed car, or if you're a soldier maneuvering around an active land mine field, space shuttle-derived technology may have saved your life.

And thanks to the space shuttle, we have healthier baby formula and cooling socks to wear in hot weather.

Most Americans wrongly credit the Apollo moon program with creating Earthly "spinoffs" of new technology that it never did: sticky Velcro, non-sticky Teflon and orange-powdered Tang — all things used by NASA but not invented there.

Yet the space shuttle program often doesn't get recognized for its science and technology, NASA says. And shuttle-based science will come to an end when Atlantis — carrying mouse stem cell and vaccine experiments — comes home on Thursday.

Of course spending nearly $200 billion on any advanced technology will pay off in various unplanned ways. And one scientist, a prominent critic of manned spaceflight, says NASA's claimed benefits are more hype than hope.

Bob Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, debunker of science myths and author of the book "Voodoo Science," said much of NASA's claims of science and earthly technological benefits is advertising hokum that helps companies sell items as being developed in space.

"If you trace them, there's nothing there," Park said. "Teflon, Tang, nothing was invented in space. Space used it."

Park points to a decades-old NASA spinoff report as supporting his skepticism.

But scientists who have worked with and for the space agency say research during the 10 years the shuttle was developed and the 30 years it has flown has paid off.

"There's been a good deal of science learned on the shuttle," said MIT astronautics and health technology professor Laurence Young, who has sent experiments on seven shuttle flights, mostly on how weightlessness affects the body.

Science wasn't the reason the shuttle was built, said Rice University physicist Neal Lane, who was the head of the National Science Foundation and President Bill Clinton's science adviser. However, the shuttle and the International Space Station — which couldn't be constructed without the shuttle — are unprecedented places for important science. He has great hopes for an antimatter physics experiment shuttle Endeavour delivered to the station in May.

People overlook the increased understanding in human biology that the shuttle and station have provided, Lane said. "We've learned some things about the human body that we had no other way to learn except to operate for some period of time — some extended period of time — in space."

Astronauts lose bone strength, have balance problems and weakened immune systems that in many ways are similar to aging. Studying how to combat bone loss on shuttle astronauts with exercise and other activity may help the Earth-bound, they figure.

Still, the most obvious science the shuttle helped generate is with astronomy. Exhibit 1 is the Hubble Space Telescope, which changed Earth's view of the cosmos and even its understanding of the age of the universe. It was launched with the shuttle, fixed with the shuttle and upgraded four other times by spacewalking shuttle astronauts. Without all that, Earth's view of the rest of the universe would have been fuzzy at best.

Former NASA science chief Alan Stern said the shuttle launched three other major space exploration probes: Galileo, which gave close-up views of Jupiter and its moons; Magellan, which mapped hot chaotic Venus; and Ulysses, which examined the sun's larger influence on the edges of the solar system.

But what's taken for granted even more is how the shuttle improved our view of our home planet with one flight in 2000. The spacecraft carried a set of special radar instruments that mapped most of the world, including previously inaccessible areas such as jungles and mountaintops, with the most precise topographical measurements ever. This is important for military planning and aviation.

"It's a gift that is going to keep on giving. It's going to affect science, environment and national security," said University of Tennessee aviation and flight research professor John Muratore, a former NASA flight director. "And that is a really undervalued mission."

Another overlooked item from the space shuttle is the bioreactor, Muratore said. It originally was designed to grow cells and tissue in space for experiments in zero gravity, but it's used on Earth for all sorts of biomedical research, he said. Bioreactors can grow blood and human tissue in a constantly rotating growth medium that simulates the free fall of zero gravity. Then, scientists can direct tissue growth in predetermined shapes using plastic lattices, much like the way ivy climbs walls. It's still a developing technology so who knows where it will lead, said Dan Lockney, NASA's spinoff technology manager.

Each year, NASA puts out a list of shuttle science spinoffs, which are either purposeful or accidental. NASA scientists were trying to design better space food and they looked to algae. They found an algae nutrient that had only been seen in human breast milk and developed it. It is now in 95 percent of infant formula, Lockney said.

"Millions of babies have been fed (by) NASA; that beats Tang," Lockney said. Another common item is a material designed for shuttle spacesuits that controls temperature, cooling astronauts. Phase change materials from Outlast Technologies Inc. are now in socks, outdoor clothing and even some business suits, he said.

Famed heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey helped develop a tiny new artificial heart pump — a bridge for patients needing transplants — based on fluid flow through the space shuttle main engines, the most complicated engines ever built. A few hundred people have had the device implanted.

NASA helped develop a tool for firefighters that rescues people from crashed cars that is lighter and cheaper than the famed Jaws of Life and which doesn't need an outside power source or hoses. Also, shuttle rocket fuel has been used to develop a device that safely sets off buried land mines.

For MIT's Young, science on the space shuttle is ideal. Astronauts would get so familiar with the experiments they had to perform, that they became experts themselves, sometimes adapting the research and making it better. They often were co-authors of Young's published research papers.

This was "the way we thought science should be done," he said.

Value of a college degree--Jack Hough's perspective

I have discussed this many times and it appears to be a viable issue...an issue involving "true academics" and money [the ratio of cost and benefit]. Smart Money's Jack Hough has written two articles regarding these issues. Since multiple graphics are employed links to the articles are...

The Case Against the College Degree Part I

The Case Against the College Degree Part II



"Academics for all" poll

Academics--not for everyone

Art of essays--T. H. Huxley

Bertrand Russell...critical thinker

College beyond the reach of some?

Higher education--costly

Higher education--not for all

Liberal arts...going?

Liberal education may be dying

More grads?

The disadvantaged

Universities and umbrella majors

"YouTube"...venue for instruction and knowledge?

Thanks to stringer Tim.