The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

YouTube Video of Teabaggers Having A Rally On Astroturf
|| 9/16/2009 || 6:43 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

[Watch on YouTube]

Last Friday, on the evening before the Taxpayer March On Washington, a large group of teabaggers, patriots, small-government conservatives, and libertarians staged a rally at CityCenterDC, the site of the old Washington, DC Convention center. Little did they know they were standing on Astroturf.

Astroturfing is a word that describes political, advertising, or public relations campaigns which seek to create the impression of being spontaneous “grassroots” behavior. Being that the Taxpayer March on Washington was promoted heavily by Fox News and other conversation media organizations, it was far from being a grassroots mobilization. So when I realized the demonstrators were actually standing on astroturf, I decided to make this short video to highlight the irony of the spectacle.

Three Photographs of Cara Ober’s exhibit “Love Letters” at Civilian Art Projects
|| 9/13/2009 || 9:26 am || + Render A Comment || ||

After I went to Friday’s Opening Rally of the Taxpayers March on DC at CityCenterDC, I rode my bike to the gallery opening at Civilian Art Projects.

From the Civilian Art Projects website:

Love Letters is Baltimore-based artist Cara Ober’s first solo exhibition with Civilian Art Projects. Ober layers drawing, painting, and printmaking into mixed media works that examine and reinterpret sentimental imagery. Intricate and funny, Love Letters explores the relationship of the artist to image, word, and personal meaning found in the exploration of secret fantasy and expressive interlude.

The exhibition will be up until October 17th, 2009.

View the two other photographs I took:

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Photographs of the Taxpayers March on Washington [PART THREE]
|| 9/12/2009 || 11:42 pm || 2 Comments Rendered || ||

Photograph of a sign that says: HUGO CHAVEZ OBAMA - I do not want socialism. Tell the Truth! --- Save the baby seals

Probably my favorite sign of the entire demonstration.
SAVE THE BABY SEALS!!

Like Part Two, this portion of photographs from today’s Taxpayers March on Washington focuses on some of the random signs I found.

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Photographs of the Taxpayers March on Washington [PART TWO]
|| || 10:44 pm || 3 Comments Rendered || ||

Photograph of a woman holding a sign that says: “No thanks, I already have a Messiah” and shows a modified Obama logo with a crescent moon to imply Barack Obama is a muslim.

In this portion of photographs from today’s Taxpayers March on Washington I am focusing on some of the random signs I found.

Photograph of a sign showing George Washinton saying WTF? with the caption: George addresses today’s Congress

View the rest:

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Photographs of the Taxpayers March on Washington [PART ONE]
|| || 8:57 pm || 2 Comments Rendered || ||

A sign that says Bury Obamacare with Ted Kennedy covered in horse poop

This morning I got up early to attend the Taxpayers March on Washington. Being that I’ve attended nearly every major demonstration in Washington, DC over the last ten years, I was really curious about how this demonstration would go off. How many people would there be? What would be the demographics of those present? Would people bring guns? Are these people as crazy and brainwashed as they’ve come to appear on television? Instead of relying on YouTube videos and hearsay, I wanted to see for myself who consider themselves modern day patriots.

Before I left my house I turned on the TV to see if there was any coverage of the demonstration on the major cable television news channels. Sure enough, CNN was showing that an estimated 80,000 were present. I also opened up the Washington Post and was rather startled that they had an article on the front page about the march. Where was the same kind of coverage before the Iraq war started when there were hundreds of thousands of Americans marching? After reading the article, and questioning Washington Post’s motives, I put on my FREE DC hat, charged up my camera, and rode my bike down to Pennsylvania ave to take it all in.

Below is my first batch of photographs from the day.

Photo of a woman wearing a t-shirt that says: I Want My Gun.
My question is, why do you need a gun at a peaceful demonstration?

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Photographs of Friday’s Opening Rally of the Taxpayers March on DC at CityCenterDC
|| 9/11/2009 || 11:15 am || 2 Comments Rendered || ||

Earlier this evening I noticed one of my friends had posted photos of the Tea Party Rally taking place at City Center DC on Facebook. I was planning on going that part of the city to attend a gallery opening, so I decided to stop by the event and take some photographs of people in the crowd.

Generally speaking, I’ve always felt this Taxpayer March on Washington reeks of astroturf— a term used for fake grassroots. With this weekend’s Taxpayer March on Washington being heavily promoted on Fox News and other conservative media outlets, it cannot be considered grassroots by any means. The concept of a grassroots movement is that it is organic and not promoted from the top down, but organized from the bottom up.

Upon arriving at City Center I was immediately aware that the “patriots” were actually standing on astroturf. I let out a hearty laugh at the irony many of those present were not aware of. Below are some of the photographs I took earlier this evening. In a couple days I hope to have the videos I recorded uploaded to YouTube.

Manipulated photo showing some of the Tea Party Patriors

Manipulated photo showing some of the demonstrators

View the rest:

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Banner at Amsterdam Falafel in Adams Morgan: “Care About Your Citizens / Healthcare For All, Now!”
|| 9/8/2009 || 2:01 am || + Render A Comment || ||

I like it when business owners use their businesses to advance their beliefs. You don’t agree with the owner? You can just take your business elsewhere.

Photograph Of The Daily Render On Two Computer Monitors
|| 9/3/2009 || 7:42 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

Photograph Of This Website On Two Computer Monitors

Photograph of this website on two monitors with a portion of Seattle Quilt in the background

I was over at my friend’s house the other day and noticed that my recent layout redesign allows this website to be viewed on multiple monitors. By removing the old tables that guided the layout of this website and changing to CSS, a change that should have been done years ago, the usage of the float:right property pushes the sidebar to rightmost portion of the browser window. Previously the layout would have kept the sidebar next to the central panel and would have only stretched into the second monitor if and only if there was a wide image in the central panel. Now you can stretch the browser as wide as you want and the space between the sidebar & central panel contains beautiful tessellations of maps previously published on this website.

Anyways, I still plan on making a few more tweaks to the layout, so please pardon any digital dust during this much-needed remodeling phase.

“NO” – Found Cartographic Typography
|| 8/28/2009 || 4:44 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

Photograph of two framed maps spelling out the word NO in my hallway

I have a quite a few framed maps hanging in my house just waiting to be purchased. In fact, I have more framed maps than I have available wall space. Usually before we have a big party I go around the house and rearrange the framed maps so our guests see different maps each time they visit. The other night when I was walking up the stairs I noticed that the two maps that I’ve had up for a months actually spelled something. The N from N Prague and the torus around Georgetown Lenz #2 kind of spell out the word NO. I wonder if guests saw this? Or if it could have been construed as a subliminal message?

Below are the maps as they appeared in their original blog entries:

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Photographs of a Major Laser in the Hallway [Timelapse Laser Painting]
|| 8/23/2009 || 11:15 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

Photographs of a red & green laser in my friend's apartment in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC

Saturday night I was on my way over to a friend’s 1990’s-themed house party and when I got to the house I realized that I had left my bicycle lock at my home. Perturbed, I hopped back on my bicycle, pedaled home as fast as I could, and when I arrived at my house, I received a text message from a different friend asking me to bring over his laser that he’d left at my house the previous night. I weighed my options and decided to bring the laser to my friend’s apartment in Adams Morgan. After I arrived, we decided the best place to shoot the laser in the apartment was down the length of his long hallway. I noticed that there was a tripod in the kitchen, so I decided to get out my small camera and take some photographs of this major laser in the hallway.

The following photographs were taken using my Canon SD750 and the aforementioned tripod and laser using long exposure settings to capture the geometric designs the laser created:

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Nikolas Schiller is a second-class American citizen living in America's last colony, Washington, DC. This blog is my on-line repository of what I have created or found on-line since May of 2004. If you have any questions or comments, please contact: