@RedSky basically the un-simplified message here is that the Fed to expand its balance sheet again, more than it did before because what it did before a) didn't help the job numbers (still no crops), and b) didn't spark inflation (no flooding, either). Until recently, what the Fed's been doing is shrinking its balance sheet, even though the unemployment numbers and long term bond rates indicate they should be doing more, not less.

If you're questioning whether monetary policy has any effect at all on things like unemployment or demand, that's a larger conversation, but one I'm happy to take on.

>> ^dag:
I don't like the black bars. It's something about owning a big screen, you don't want to waste part of it.
I don't like pan and scan though. I usually just do a video zoom, with the aspect ratio unlocked. It stretches people's faces - but you don't see it after a couple of minutes. The mind adjusts.


Holy crap... you're joking aren't you? Please? No... oh noooooo.

I did not peg you as one of the 'I don't like black bars on my tv' set.

That's very, very sad.

How anyone can watch content vertically stretched is just... *shudder*

Even when we had a relatively small tv, and it was 4:3 ratio, and what we were watching on it were VHS, so you don't have much resolution to play with... I STILL much preferred the full aspect ratio.

Now that I have a much larger, widecreen, HD set I adore widescreen. And when the movie is more than 16:9 in ratio (so you still get black bars on top and bottom even on a widescreen set), I care not a jot that some of my screen is black. I care that I'm getting the cinematic frame as the directed intended, no cropping, no *shudder again* stretching, nothing.

If you think you're 'wasting' some of the screen by having black bars, I would argue that you're wasting ALL of it by watching content stretched abnormally. That's worse than pan and scan to my mind, at least then you're seeing some of the image correctly. Stretching it means you're seeing NONE of it correctly at all.

>> ^westy:
I think they are bing over dramatic about it , Its not comparable to cropping a still painting , you can still as a viewer receive a good propotoin of the essence of the film. maby more so than if you had a 15" tv and you tired to watch it in wide screen.
obviously its not as good and is different from the original intended composition of the film but I would argue its not that bad compromise to get a wide screen film onto a tv and looking comparably good.


They're not being overly dramatic at all. It's just the same as cropping a still painting. The frame is composed, it is set out to give a certain amount of story telling and mood setting. You crop out a section of that frame and you destroy the beauty of the shot, the storytelling of the shot, the artistic merit of the shot.


When you're left with a scene where you can't see one of the people in a discussion, or... as I have seen, NEITHER OF THEM (just the bit of scene between them), then that is horrendous.

And the examples they show here more than amply demonstrate the problems inherent in the horrors of pan and scan.

Hopefully though, with widescreen really becoming the norm, this is disappearing from our world of movie issues... no we just need to get rid of the 'stretchers'... oh Dag... how could you?

I thought we were getting over crop circles as a species. I noticed all of them are in Europe... does that mean Google Earth has no crop circles in the states?