What About "What-About-Ism"?

 
I have recently been accused of using "what about ism" as a rhetorical device and I am told in no uncertain terms that it is an unacceptable technique.  This blog post will discuss some of the issues as I attempt to understand what my position will be on this matter.  I may have to change my position after this exercise.

There are several types of "what about ism", I propose, and each of these deserves their own discussion.

In the first case, someone argues "what about <blah>" where <blah> is an assertion of some fact that turns out not be true.  Someone might excuse Donald Trump's criminal activities by saying "What about Hillary Clinton?  She had non-consensual sex with children in pizza parlors".  Obviously this did not happen and so this kind of "what about ism" is or should be invalid.

The second case might be called "the false equivalency".  In this case, someone might argue that sure, Donald Trump abused women but "Hillary Clinton once got a traffic ticket for speeding.  What about that?".   It may be that Hillary was once caught speeding, I have no idea, but it is irrelevant.  Again, easy to dismiss.

The third situation is more problematic.  In this case, the case is made that whoever is making the accusations are guilty of the same crimes or worse and has no moral right to make the accusations.  I see this kind of problem every day of the week, and it is a variation of the aphoris "Let those who are without sin throw the first stone".

Finally a variation on the above is less about who has created the worst sin but merely to point out that invariably the accusation is made of "the other".  Here one might say something along the lines of "Maybe it would be best if you led by example".

On Valerio Street, They Wait for a Customer

 
God forbid, LA or Van Nuys would do anything to help the women who hook for a living on a cold night.  Maybe a coffee shop where they can wait in warmth and have their customers vetted for VD and other issues.  No, not in LA, LA doesn't give a fuck.

Pictures courtesy of MidJourney

Notes on "The Mind's Eye"

In 1987 I was the Producer of the pioneering computer animated short “Stanley and Stella in Breaking the Ice.” It was a showcase for storytelling in the fledgling medium of computer animation. It also featured the recently developed “boids” model of flocking/schooling, and demonstrated the capabilities of graphics products from Symbolics, Inc. A 2023 remastered video can be seen here (https://archive.org/details/stanley-and-stella-in-breaking-the-ice-original-symbolics-tapes-restored-remastered-1080p).

Our animation premiered at the Electronic Theater of the SIGGRAPH 1987 conference. (This was the same year as “Red's Dream” from PIXAR whose “Toy Story” would come out eight years later.) Narrative computer animation was in its infancy.

Then in 1990, a modified version of our animation appeared in a collection called “The Mind's Eye: A Computer Animation Odyssey.” I was reminded of this by an upcoming 2024 screening and presentation in San Francisco: The Mind’s Eye with Steven Churchill (https://grayarea.org/event/the-minds-eye-with-steven-churchill-screening/).

I recalled being surprised back in the 1990s finding our animation included in “The Mind's Eye”, re-titled, re-scored, and stripped of its credits. To the best of my knowledge (and of the rest of the production crew, and Symbolics’ management) the producers of Mind’s Eye never sought nor received permission to use our animation in their compilation. Tom McMahon, General Manger of Symbolics Graphics Division at the time, and Executive Producer of the animation said: “This is water long under the bridge, but back then, we were all astonished to see that without permission, someone had taken our work, repackaged it, and then resold it.”

If anyone knows of any evidence that Symbolics granted permission to use “Breaking the Ice” in “The Mind's Eye” I would be quite interested in seeing it.

One of the awards our film received:

Collegiate Reunion Redux

I sincerely hope that this post and related emails do not annoy my fellow alumni.  If it does, well accept my apologies.

If you attended Collegiate in Richmond, VA then this post is for you.  If you didn't please do us both a favor and go away. 

The reunion at Collegiate last September was a complete screwup for me because I arrived in Richmond (for the first time in REDACTED years) with COVID.  This is not good because I really wanted closure on this part of my life that would only come from 1 on 1 interaction with people who I havent seen for REDACTED years.  This bums me out not least because the organizers worked so hard and with such diligence.

So what I want to do is as follows:  1. Get in touch with whoever I can via the bold new internet and have some minimal interaction, 2. Maybe even have a zoom call with one or two of you, 3. Try to get some answers about some mysteries / questions that I have, 4. Find out what happened to a bunch of our instructors, and finally 5. At some point come back to Richmond and see a few of you as available.

For those of you who wonder what took so long, when I came back from Richmond I was (a) sick, (b) about to enter a medical disaster because of my incompetent doctors (c) about to move from Santa Barbara to LA to move in with my girlfriend, and (d) processing what had happened and what I thought about it.  At the same time, not everyone was willing to reply to my (pathetic?) emails.  And I started processing the Torch and discovered that I remembered all the guys, did not recognize most of the girls, and was completely baffled by a time skew between the boys and girls classes, and was shocked to see I recognized all the instructors.

What happened to them?  Where are they now?  Are any still alive?  And where are you, my fellow students?  What city(-ies) do you live in?  What do you look like?  Married?  Children?  Dogs?  Anyone still in prison?  What?  

So far I am in touch with Chuck Rogers, Chris Conlon, Janie Katzenberg Asch, Ed Jones, Bob Siff and Mary Ellen.

The tag below marked Reunion should link you to any other posts about this.

Please contact me at michael.wahrman@gmail.com and let me know.

Thank you,

MW

Moderate reunion success: email has been sent to Charles Strauss, Lewis Little, Paul Sikorovsky, Buzzy Northen and of course Bob Siff, Mary Ellen, Ed Jones and Chris Conlon.  More to follow.  Let there be a non official official reunion in september.

Knight's Templar and my Friend Speer

 Not everyone who is a right wing Trump supporter is a nut, but Steve Speer sure is.  Stay away from him is my advice.

This is an image of the Knight's Templar courtesy of Midjourney.  That was our topic of discussion.

Drone and Child in Graveyard

 
I tried to get Midjourney to create a picture of a drone using facial recognition on a statue of a child in a graveyard.  I spent very little time on it and I did not get what I wanted.  Still for the amount of time I spent it is not too bad, I think.

Ancient Roman Frescoes with MidJourney and AI

Here are some examples of "ancient roman frescoes" as created with Midjourney.  One is of an inscription foretelling doom, two are of sea creatures, and one is of a Cthulu-like creature from space.  I find that one is much better off to tell MidJourney what kind of style or artist's work to use as a template than to let it default to its own banal choices.

Doom is foretold

Roman fish of some sort

Cthulu, where are you?

My Friend as a Seat Filler at the Academy Awards (tm)

So you attended the Academy Awards(tm) ?


"Yes. As a seat filler. There must have been 100 of us. So to keep the seats full for the camera. 4 of us were assigned the front row center seats where Jack Nicholson always sat, and watched the awards for hairstyling and makeup. They moved us around during commercials as members would go out for a drink or restrooms. My last seat was in the third row next to DeNiro and his wife, and Scorcese was right behind. I had to say hi to both. Jodi Foster and Annette Bening were 2 rows in front and Tim Robbins was right behind. Across the aisle were Billie Eilish and Ryan Gosling, who switched to a pink sequined outfit for his I am Ken extravaganza where he led like 80 men in a synchronized dance. What a strange and transient experience."

Picture by Midjourney

No More Comments on a Facebook Group

I made some pithy comment on a facebook group about "Virtual Beings".  And my comment was removed by the administrator who didn't like it.  So I removed myself from that group and the lesson is learned.  No more comments on Facebook groups.  Total waste of my time.

From the Special Counsel

Although the US Government has consistently failed to bring Trump to justice for his crimes, there is evidence that some people or groups are at least trying.  Here the Special Counsel replies to Trump's insistence that he was only doing what Joe Biden and others have done with classified documents: 


[T]here has never been a case in American history in which a former official has engaged in conduct remotely similar to Trump’s. He intentionally took possession of a vast trove of some of the nation’s most sensitive documents—documents so sensitive that they were presented to the President—and stored them in unsecured locations at his heavily trafficked social club. When the National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) initially sought their return (before learning that they contained classified national defense information), Trump delayed, obfuscated, and dissembled. Faced with the possibility of legal action, he ostensibly agreed to comply with NARA’s requests but in fact engaged in additional deception, returning only a fraction of the documents in his possession while claiming that his production was complete. Then, when presented with a grand jury subpoena demanding the return of the remaining documents bearing classification markings, Trump attempted to enlist his own attorney in the corrupt endeavor, suggesting that he falsely tell the FBI and grand jury that Trump did not have any documents, and suggesting that his attorney hide or destroy documents rather than produce them to the government. Failing in his effort to corrupt the attorney, Trump enlisted his trusted body man, codefendant Waltine Nauta, in a scheme to deceive the attorney by moving boxes to conceal his (Trump’s) continued possession of classified documents. As a result, Trump, through his attorney, again returned only a portion of the classified documents in his possession while falsely claiming that his production was complete. The obstructive conduct even persisted from there. In June 2022, knowing that he had arranged for Nauta to move boxes to conceal them from Trump’s attorney, and knowing that the government had subpoenaed the security video footage that would reveal that surreptitious box movement, Trump, now joined by not only Nauta but also codefendant Carlos De Oliveira, attempted to have the information-technology manager at Mar-aLago delete the video footage that would show the movement of boxes.


Let there be no doubt in your mind, if you or I had done even 10 % of the crimes for which Trump is being prosecuted, we would be spending 20 years to life in solitary confinement.