Sunday, July 20, 2025
27th Year Reunion of Hayden Planetarium
Saturday, July 19, 2025
Final Death Blow of the American Republic
A Preferred Guide For Those Who Would Ghost Us
Those of us who are ghosted realize that we have no rights in the matter and that you can ghost us whenever you like for whatever reason you like. But consider....
Thursday, July 17, 2025
Is Soros a Class Traitor by Supporting Mamdani?
I am a little confused although obviously you have some important points to make. Is the problem that some of the rich are supporting a Marxist and are therefore class traitors? As we all know, only rich people can elect their candidates to office, that is the way the system works, so it is a travesty when the rich support someone like this? Or are you saying that your rich friends only think they are supporting a Marxist who wants to expropriate the wealth of the rich and have the workers own the means of production, but they are deceived as this is just a rich kid pretending to support the proletariat who will actually turn away from his stated beliefs when elected like all the others before him? Either way there is a grave problem here.
Friday, July 11, 2025
The Supreme Court Fails to Defend the Constitution
Friday, July 4, 2025
Ken Perlin's Lab at NYU
The first thing I noticed was all the extra space and high ceilings. A lab like this needs to be able to do an instrument grid in the ceiling. I also noticed a real kitchen and several couches to sleep on for exam week or project crunches.
Ken showed me his Augmented Reality (AR) work with the Meta Quest 3. For the moment, we will ignore that Meta / Facebook is run by fascists who helped Trump get elected in 2016 by supporting the Russian disinformation campaign against Hillary Clinton. I have always felt that this was cause enough to go to war with Russia, but not everyone agrees.
The work with Quest 3 was compelling. I never got a headache although I was using one for at least 1/2 hour or possibly longer.
Wednesday, July 2, 2025
Mysterious Lockheed Constellation at JFK
When I arrived at JFK on June 24th and walked out of the terminal, across the way I was greeted by the sight of a Lockheed Constellation in TWA livery before the TWA terminal. What it was doing there I do not know but when I left two days later, June 26th, it was gone. Some people think this is one of the most beautiful airplanes ever designed.
Here is a picture of it in its WW2 USAF C-69 form.
Monday, June 30, 2025
Booking.Com and the Death of Customer Service
Sunday, June 22, 2025
Yeehaw Another War
Saturday, June 14, 2025
Biographical Sketch Written for ACM SIGGRAPH
1. What do you do, and how long have you been doing it?
Its very nice of you to ask. Whatever it is I do now is different from what I did then. The world was a different place and it is hard to explain. No one thought that computer animation would be useful for much. There were some of us who felt compelled to show that it was useful in various diverse ways. Some of these true believers had to sneak around and publish ideas and hope their management never found out. Some of us postponed graduate school or took a cut in pay or otherwise did career damaging things that seem irresponsible in retrospect.
So I did some of those things. I wrote an animation system (primarily a renderer) for a leading production company. That software, to everyone’s surprise, turned out to be the prototype for a system that got used by 500 studios worldwide and won a Science and Technology award from the Motion Picture Academy. Then I helped friends produce a short animated film that featured behavioral animation as a way of supporting my friend Craig Reynolds who was publishing on that topic that year. After that, being unemployed, I got into business with my friend Brad deGraf, starting out in his garage, and that was pretty crazy. We ended up hiring everyone we knew and helped produce a real time character for SIGGRAPH with one of the earliest SGI workstations and then did a bunch of other productions for theme parks and feature films back before CG was used for that.
The point is that whatever my role may have been in those underfinanced exercises in idealism, they didn't pay well nor did they lead to normal employment. It was fun but not very practical. Now, everyone does this stuff and for many years I have been looking for things to do that might be valued in society, like money laundering or destabilizing governments. While I wait to win the lottery, I try to keep busy by making pictures with computers and teaching a class now and then.
2. What was your first job?
My first real job was with the RAND Corporation. They put me on one of those well-meaning social research projects from the 1970s. They paid my way back to school and let me work with some amazing people and gave me access to their facilities.
3. Where did you complete your formal education?
I have degrees from UCLA.
4. How did you first get involved with ACM SIGGRAPH?
Suzy Landa of RAND hosted the Los Angeles chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH in a conference room there. This was perhaps 1976 or 1977. That is where I met Larry Cuba, John Whitney Jr, Gary Demos, Richard Hollander, Art Durinsky, Craig Reynolds, Doug Kay, George Joblove, Bill Kovacs, Jim Blinn, Pat Cole and others. My management at RAND insisted that I attend at least one academic conference per year and so I suggested the national SIGGRAPH Conference.
5. What is your favorite memory of a SIGGRAPH conference?
Most of the national conferences took place for me in a haze of sleep deprivation and fear.
At the conference in 1980 I went to hear a talk by someone named Dr. Ed Catmull on the topic of what he had learned running a CG lab at the New York Institute of Technology. I went up to introduce myself afterwards and he spent about an hour talking to me about what he wanted to do next which was to make feature length, narrative-driven, animated films with computers. At the time, very few people thought that would be possible. Ed and friends went on to found PIXAR.
The technical reception was small enough that you could meet people. Three of the young people there in what might have been 1981 carried a notebook with test pictures. They had just graduated from college. They were Carl Rosendahl, Richard Chuang, and Glenn Entis, the founders of Pacific Data Images.
I sat next to Larry Cuba when his film “Calculated Movements” premiered at the Electronic Theatre.
Trey Stokes, Brad deGraf and I performed the synthetic opera in real time at the Electronic Theatre of 1988.
6. Describe a project that you would like to share with the ACM SIGGRAPH community.
Just want to say hi and thank anyone who helped out who I might have forgotten to thank at the time.
7. If you could have dinner with one living or non-living person, who would it be and why?
I wonder what restaurant and who is picking up the check? Will someone provide a translator to come to dinner with us in the case that our guest does not speak modern English? A few names come to mind as potential candidates. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde, Eric Blair, Evelyn Waugh, Napoleon Bonaparte, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Georges Danton, Maimonides, Hugues de Payens, Malcolm X, the Marquis de Lafayette, Karl Marx, Oleg son of Rurik, Crazy Horse of the Lakota, Richard Henry Lee of the Virginia Continental Congress, Charles Darwin, Dr. John von Neumann, Kandinsky, Man Ray and others. Maybe we should have a dinner party?
8. What is something most people don’t know about you?
I don't think I should talk about that.
9. From which single individual have you learned the most in your life? What did they teach you?
The great American author Louis L’Amour, in an airline magazine, once said that you should never tell your age. There is too much ageism in America.
Willis Ware of the RAND Corporation showed me a 16 mm film shot off the screen by someone named Ivan Sutherland. It was part of his thesis project, I think, about something called Sketchpad.
10. Is there someone in particular who has influenced your decision to work with ACM SIGGRAPH?
My parole officer
11. What can you point to in your career as your proudest moment?
Pride is a sin
V 2 5/7/2025
Monday, June 9, 2025
Cantamus
In examining software for text to song, I came across Cantamus.app. I know very little about it beyond their demo and that they are located in Barcelona. If you get a chance, please listen to their demo, especially from 00:39 forward.
Saturday, May 31, 2025
The Democrats Failed Again
I would have thought that after Schumer failed to hold up the Trump budget that the Democrats would be on their best behavior. I was wrong.
Apparently the Republicans in the House passed their fascist budget by 1 vote. But the Democrats had lost three votes because some old members had refused to retire in time to be replaced but died in office.
OK, this disqualifies them from leadership.
AOC and Booker should form a new party.
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Administrative Note 5/30/2025
As you know, I dont actually know who reads my blog. I am getting bored with all the politics.
Thursday, May 15, 2025
For R&D Using Machine Learning Now is the Time
Monday, May 12, 2025
Walls and Constitutions
Sunday, May 11, 2025
The Good News About US Science
Thursday, May 1, 2025
An Interesting Discussion with a Trump Supporter
Special Thanks to my Fellow Americans
Exactly as predicted, Trump and friends are attempting to destroy American democracy and doing a good job of it. Apparently all that self-serving rot about checks & balances was all "just kidding". In the history of the world, short of a major war, there has rarely been a national decline so precipitous and self-inflicted.
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Let Us Embrace National Decline
Monday, April 28, 2025
Modified Coconut Chip Cookies
Monday, April 21, 2025
The Various Failures of the Democratic Party
Saturday, April 5, 2025
Budgets and the Supreme Court
The appalling effort to destroy American democracy continues at full speed. There are so many outrages it is hard to know where to begin. Lets start with the destruction of various departments in the executive branch.
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
Research in Visual Effects Practice & Technology
Sunday, March 30, 2025
AI and the Judaic Concept of the Soul
I asked the free version of Perplexity's AI if Judaism has the concept of a soul. Here is what it said:
Yes, Judaism has a well-developed concept of the soul, which is central to its understanding of human existence and spirituality. The soul in Jewish thought is multifaceted and has evolved over time, influenced by biblical texts, rabbinic teachings, and mystical traditions.
Key Concepts of the Soul in Judaism:
Terminology and Structure:
The Hebrew terms for the soul include nefesh (associated with physical life), ruach (spirit or emotional life), and neshamah (the higher, divine aspect). In Kabbalistic thought, additional levels are recognized: chayah (life force) and yechidah (essence or unity with God)[1][2][3].
These levels represent a ladder-like connection between the physical and spiritual realms, with the nefesh being closest to the body and the neshamah closest to God[1][3].
Creation and Divine Connection:
The soul is described as originating from God’s breath, as seen in Genesis: “And G d breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7)[3].
According to rabbinic tradition, all souls were created during the six days of Creation and are stored until they are assigned to a body at birth[2][4].
The Relationship Between Body and Soul:
Afterlife and Immortality:
Moral Responsibility:
The soul is seen as responsible for moral discernment and spiritual development. It navigates between inclinations toward good (yetzer tov) and evil (yetzer hara’)[5].
In summary, Judaism’s concept of the soul encompasses its divine origin, multifaceted nature, partnership with the body, moral responsibilities, and its journey beyond physical life. These ideas reflect a blend of biblical teachings, rabbinic interpretations, and mystical insights.
⁂
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3194/jewish/What-Is-a-Soul-Neshamah.htm
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-spirituality-and-the-soul/
https://www.dorsheitzedek.org/divrei-torah/rabbi-toba-spitzer?post_id=934460