Obama swats a fly and the internet hates PETA

So it seems like if the president swats a fly the media look to create some kind of storm about it. You can read at the moment on many ‘reputable’ news sources that PETA is throwing a hissy fit about Obama swatting a fly. This, however, is totally incorrect. Just the tiniest bit of searching finds us at The PETA Files (I hate to make the joke but I’m sure there is someone in Peta who is a PETA File…). Here is the article that clearly states

Believe it or not, we’ve actually been contacted by multiple media outlets wanting to know PETA’s official response to the executive insect execution.

In a nutshell, our position is this: He isn’t the Buddha, he’s a human being, and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act.

The media contact PETA, PETA give a generalised statement about human beings and the media twist it to make it look like PETA are saying bad about the President. Then everyone and his sister get hold of it and scream and shout till the cows come home.

Oh well, you decide, just for the record I don’t particularly like PETA and this is one of the only times I’ll ever be on their side!

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I really haven’t managed to do very much over the last week, but I have no now started a Flickr account which I think is better for my art than a deviant art account.

Here are some things I did for WhiteChapel.

I’m sure there are easier ways of doing this, but I don’t have time to look for them at the moment. Need to work out how to take the pictures better and/or get a camera of my own.

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Not much time today either, had to do this quickly on the way home :(

I’m going to be away for just under a week, I’ll do a big post when I get back.

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I didn’t have a lot of time today but I did these on the second stretch of my journey home.

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More sketches from on the bus, this time of people on the bus.

Swoopo – A bid’s just a bet

I bumped in to a site called Swoopo a while ago, and, after lengthy conversations with a friend of mine decided it was not just a complete scam, but one that could not be cheated. I do not entirely believe this, but recently I’ve seen adverts on the London Underground for Swoopo and I’ve really been curious as to how it’s managed to stay up so long.

The basic idea is that you buy the ability to bid on items and each bid, instead of being of an amount you choose, is an increase of 10p or 1p, depending on the type of auction. You pay 50p per bid and then, when you win an item, you pay the winning price. Say for example I’ve bought a load of chances to bid and I’ve been bidding on an iPod, which I win for £20, maybe I’ve used up 200 bids if each one increases the value by 1p. That beans I’ve spent 200 * £0.5 + £20 = £120. Depending on the iPod that could be what you think is a bargain, but then if you think about all the other auctions I may have bid on and lost, say I bid on a tv with 50 bids and didn’t get it, and a car with 200 more bids but didn’t get that either. That’s adding up pretty fast, I’ve now spent a total of £245 and I’ve got an iPod.

So it’s easy to see that it’s a con, you’re going to be throwing your money away like nobodies business. Lets now look at how much these guys must make, and I’m being conservative here. My iPod sold to me for £20, lets say it started at £5 (It is more likely to start at 0). Each bid increase the price by £0.01 and I won it for the £20, so that’s £15 worth of bids each at £0.50. 15/0.01 = 1500 * 0.5 = 750. So on that auction alone they made £750 + £20 (£20 that I won the item for). If that’s not a great way to make money I don’t know what is.

However, Swoopo is in a grey area of law whereby it can be considered gambling, you are buying the right to gamble on the ending price of the item. At which point you are given the opportunity to buy it at that price. If you check the Wikipedia page for Swoopo then you can see the controversy that they are under and the call to have them under the Gambling law in the UK due to it being a Bidding fee scheme.

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Taken from Eliza Gauger’s idea I’ve decided to start uploading at least one sketch per day. I generally do more than one but they’re not very good so I think it’s ok to put up more than one and it’ll encourage me to do more.

I realise they’re not great but it gets me drawing.