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A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. “I don’t think the common person is getting it,” she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. “Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.

“We’ve got the message,” she added. “But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.”

Amidst a a $75,000-per-couple Mitt Romney fundraiser attended by guests arriving in “Range Rovers, BMWs, Porsche roadsters and one gleaming cherry red Ferrari,” an anonymous Romney supporter bemoans the lack of support for Romney from “the common person”.

No, this is not from The Onion.

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Online shoppers let slip plenty of information about themselves that could be of use to crafty salesmen. Cookies reveal where else they have been browsing, allowing some guesses about their income bracket, age and sex. Their internet address can often be matched to their physical address: the richer the neighbourhood, the deeper the pockets, it may be assumed. Apple computer-owners are on average better-off than Windows PC users, and firms may offer them pricier options, as Orbitz, a travel website, is doing. Your mouse may also be squeaking on you: click too quickly from home-page to product page to checkout, and the seller can conclude that you have already decided to buy—so why offer you a discount?

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Photography is so much more than gear and software and marketing. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be a photographer. In Timothy Archibald‘s case, photography was a way of connecting with his autistic son, Eli. Archibald says, “People jump to all sorts of desperate measures to feel like they’re doing something— a diet, a new medication, a special doctor…and this helped me feel like I was doing something.…We got to work as equals on something.”

It’s a moving set of images that feel extremely intimate, genuine, and also quite melancholy. As I pored over these images, I kept remembering the words of Steichen: “Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.”

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The Canadian arm of the aircraft engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney closed a six-year U.S. government probe last week by admitting that it helped China produce its first modern attack helicopter, a serious violation of U.S. export laws that drew a multimillion dollar fine.

At the same time it was helping China, the company was separately earning huge fees from contracts with the Pentagon, including some in which it was building weapons meant to ensure that America can maintain decisive military superiority over China’s rising military might.

If you were to do this, you’d be in jail for up to 20 years, per 22 USC § 2778(c).

They are fined $75 million on $12,940 million annual gross revenues.

That’s 3.7%, or relative to the 2010 US median household gross income of $50,046, a fine of $1,885.93.

And, of course, it’s business as usual:

Nothing in the settlement agreement, in which Pratt & Whitney and two related companies, United Technologies and Hamilton Sundstrand agreed to pay a total of $75 million for multiple violations of export rules, directly threatens Pratt’s existing or future government contracting.

Not only are corporations people, it turns out they’re very lucky people.

When LOLcats aren’t enough