Have to write up count every vote

might not have the energy to finish this

 Whats the point anyway.

From Liz Cheney

Dear Democratic Party,
I need more from you.
You keep sending emails begging for $15,
while we’re watching fascism consolidate power in real time.
This administration is not simply “a different ideology.”
It is a coordinated, authoritarian machine — with the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, and the executive pen all under its control.
And you?
You’re still asking for decorum and donations. WTF.
That won’t save us.
I don’t want to hear another polite floor speech.
I want strategy.
I want fire.
I want action so bold it shifts the damn news cycle — not fits inside one.
Every time I see something from the DNC, it’s asking me for funds.
Surprise.
Those of us who donate don’t want to keep sending money just to watch you stand frozen as the Constitution goes up in flames — shaking your heads and saying,
“Well, there’s not much we can do. He has the majority.”
I call bullshit.
If you don’t know how to think outside the box…
If you don’t know how to strategize…
If you don’t know how to fight fire with fire…
what the hell are we giving you money for?
Some of us have two or three advanced degrees.
Some of us have military training.
Some of us know what coordinated resistance looks like — and this ain’t it.
Yes, the tours around the country? Nice.
The speeches? Nice.
The clever congressional clapbacks? Nice.
That was great for giving hope.
Now we need action.
You have to stop acting like this is a normal presidency that will just time out in four years.
We’re not even at Day 90, and look at the chaos.
Look at the disappearances.
Look at the erosion of the judiciary, the press, and our rights.
If you do not stop this, we will not make it 1,460 days.
So here’s what I need from you — right now:
⸻
1. Form an independent, civilian-powered investigative coalition.
I’m talking experts. Veterans. Whistleblowers. Journalists. Watchdog orgs.
Deputize the resistance. Build a real-time archive of corruption, overreach, and executive abuse.
Make it public. Make it unshakable.
Let the people drag the rot into the light.
If you can’t hold formal hearings, hold public ones.
If Congress won’t act, let the country act.
This isn’t about optics — it’s about receipts.
Because at some point, these people will be held accountable.
And when that day comes, we’ll need every name, every signature, every illegal order, every act of silence—documented.
You’re not just preserving truth — you’re preparing evidence for prosecution.
The more they vanish people and weaponize data, the more we need truth in the sunlight.
⸻
2. Join the International Criminal Court.
Yes, I said it. Call their bluff.
You cannot control what the other side does.
But you can control your own integrity.
So prove it. Prove that your party is still grounded in law, human rights, and ethical leadership.
Join.
If you’ve got nothing to hide — join.
Show the world who’s hiding bodies, bribes, and buried bank accounts.
Force the GOP to explain why they’d rather protect a war criminal than sign a treaty.
And while you’re at it, publicly invite ICC observers into U.S. borders.
Make this administration explain — on camera — why they’re terrified of international oversight.
⸻
3. Fund state-level resistance infrastructure.
Don’t just send postcards. Send resources.
Channel DNC funds into rapid-response teams, legal defense coalitions, sanctuary networks, and digital security training.
If the federal government is hijacked, build power underneath it.
If the laws become tools of oppression, help people resist them legally, locally, and boldly.
This is not campaign season — this is an authoritarian purge.
Stop campaigning.
Act like this is the end of democracy, because it is.
We WILL REMEMBER the warriors come primaries.
Fighting this regime should be your marketing strategy.
And let’s be clear:
The reason the other side always seems three steps ahead is because they ARE.
They prepared for this.
They infiltrated school boards, courts, local legislatures, and police unions.
They built a machine while you wrote press releases.
We’re reacting — they’ve been executing a plan for years.
It’s time to shift from panic to blueprint.
You should already be working with strategists and military minds on PROJECT 2029 —
a coordinated, long-term plan to rebuild this country when the smoke clears.
You should be publicly laying out:
• The laws and amendments you’ll pass to ensure this never happens again
• The systems you’ll tear down and the safeguards you’ll enshrine
• The plan to hold perpetrators of human atrocities accountable
• The urgent commitment to immediately bring home those sold into slavery in El Salvador
You say you’re the party of the people?
Then show the people the plan.
⸻
4. Use your platform to educate the public on rights and resistance tactics.
If they’re going to strip us of rights and lie about it — arm the people with truth.
Text campaigns. Mass trainings. Downloadable “Know Your Rights” kits. Multilingual legal guides. Encrypted phone trees.
Give people tools, not soundbites.
We don’t need more slogans.
We need survival manuals.
⸻
5. Leverage international media and watchdogs.
Stop hoping U.S. cable news will wake up.
They’re too busy playing both sides of fascism.
Feed the real stories to BBC, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Reuters, Der Spiegel — hell, leak them to anonymous dropboxes if you have to.
Make what’s happening in America a global scandal.
And stop relying on platforms that are actively suppressing truth.
Start leveraging Substack. Use Bluesky.
That’s where the resistance is migrating. That’s where censorship hasn’t caught up.
If the mainstream won’t carry the truth — outflank them.
Get creative. Go underground. Go global.
If our democracy is being dismantled in broad daylight, make sure the whole world sees it — and make sure we’re still able to say it.
⸻
6. Create a digital safe haven for whistleblowers and defectors.
Not everyone inside this regime is loyal.
Some are scared. Some want out.
Build the channels.
Encrypted. Anonymous. Protected.
Make it easy for the cracks in the system to become gaping holes.
And while you’re at it?
Stop ostracizing MAGA defectors.
Everyone makes mistakes — even glaring, critical ones.
We are not the bullies.
We are not the ones filled with hate.
And it is not your job to shame people who finally saw the fire and chose to step out of it.
They will have to deal with that internal struggle — the guilt of putting a very dangerous and callous regime in power.
But they’re already outnumbered. Don’t push them back into the crowd.
We don’t need purity.
We need numbers.
We need people willing to burn their red hats and testify against the machine they helped build.
⸻
7. Study the collapse—and the comeback.
You should be learning from South Korea and how they managed their brief rule under dictatorship.
They didn’t waste time chasing the one man with absolute immunity.
They went after the structure.
The aides. The enforcers. The loyalists. The architects.
They knocked out the foundation one pillar at a time —
until the “strongman” had no one left to stand on.
And his power crumbled beneath him.
You should be independently investigating every author of Project 2025,
every aide who defies court orders,
every communications director repeating lies,
every policy writer enabling cruelty,
every water boy who keeps this engine running.
You can’t stop a regime by asking the king to sit down.
You dismantle the throne he’s standing on — one coward at a time.
⸻
Stop being scared to fight dirty when the other side is fighting to erase the damn Constitution.
They are threatening to disappear AMERICANS.
A M E R I C A N S.
And your biggest move can’t be another strongly worded email.
We don’t want your urgently fundraising subject lines.
We want backbone.
We want action.
We want to know you’ll stand up before we’re all ordered to sit down — permanently.
We are watching.
And I don’t just mean your base.
I mean millions of us who see exactly what’s happening.
I’ve only got 6,000 followers — but the groups I’m in? The networks I touch? Over a quarter million.
Often when I speak, it echoes.
But when we ALL
speak, it ROARS with pressure that will cause change.
We need to be deafening.
You still have a chance to do something historic.
To be remembered for courage, not caution.
To go down as the party that didn’t just watch the fall — but fought the hell back with everything they had.
But the clock is ticking.
And the deportation buses are idling.

It Won't Be Easy to Fix the Collapse into Fascism (1 of 3)

This is part 1 of 3 parts.

As a former Democrat, I admit to being surprised and maybe annoyed at how badly our party has done.  Failure like that does not happen by accident, you have to work at it and be talented at failing.  This talent comes in a variety of forms one of which is a consistent unwillingness to take a stand on principle.  That is not the point of this blog post, which has a different purpose, except to say that I see no reason to think that the Democratic party, as it is formally defined in this country, has a prayer of being able to fix this many dimensional disaster.  They had plenty of opportunity to serve their country and make changes to head off this situation and they chose one stupid reason after another not to do so.  From Merrick Garland and Jack Smith's failure to competently prosecute the rapist pig to Chuck Schumer's choice to surrender the budget, we had literally hundreds of proofs that the Democratic party is not up to this fight.

Furthermore, I have no reason to think that the American people want democracy enough to fight for it either.  I have seen example after example that shows that many Americans are stupid or venal or both.  In fact it seems to be impossible to explain to the Trump supporter that it is not the policies of their rapist pig president we object to, although we do, it is the fact that they still support this asshole after all this.  Trump will go away, but we will still have the Trump supporter and  other idiots to deal with.  I dont think that is going to work out so well and it is one reason why I am sure that this collapse into fascism will only get worse.  America, as an experiment in government, has utterly failed and it is pathetic that so many people do not realize it.

The following is an incomplete list of things that have to happen to rebuild this country to a democracy.  I do not think the list is complete, which is too bad, it is long enough.  The problem I see is that I doubt that pretty much any of this doable, but I think they are all required.  Every last one, not necessarily in this order.  And in many cases there are probably "other solutions" that have the same effect as what I am proposing below.  Maybe.

Furthermore, having been on top of these issues for 25 years and being more correct about what was going on than just about any politician I know of and certainly better at this than anyone I know, I am going to modestly and humbly suggest that I am more qualified than any of these wankers to suggest what has to be done.  That wont happen, and I certainly wont get any respect, and this really is a waste of my time to even bother to write some of this up, but here we go anyway.  

Part 2 and Part 3 will be here when they are written.

Khronos Notes 8/28/2025

 

I am unclear about what is going on with Khronos especially as it affects OpenXR and WebGL and the various browsers.  

1. Khronos appears to have 23 active standards including OpenXR and WebGL

2. Each of these standards has a working group.  Most groups are 4 people or less.  All of the members of the group are affiliated with a company that is a member.  However these groups are tiny and probably do not represent the "real" working or advisory groups, which are not listed on their web site.  There are no individuals listed.

3. There are 4 levels of membership for companies and 1 for academia.  Costs per year vary from $90,000, $22,000, $9,000 to $4,000 plus.  Academic membership is $1,000 per year.  There is no way for an individual to join.  NYU is not a member nor is UC, CMU, MIT or Stanford.

4. As all members of the working groups are by definition employed by a member company, I do not know what it means for them to be a "volunteer".  

5. I know that the working group for OpenGL was much larger than anything mentioned here, on the order of maybe 30-50 members so obviously there is something I do not understand here.

6. Meta is a contributing member, but I am told is not a supporter of OpenXR.

7. It is not clear whether WebGL is a volunteer or a supported activity at each of the various browser companies.  Given the potential for performance and stability issues it seems difficult to believe that it would be a pure open source, volunteer activity but maybe it is.  WebGL is essentially a repurposing of OpenGL ES 2.0 and 3.0 so maybe there are robust implementations that can be trivially incorporated.

8. It is not possible for an individual to be a member of Khronos.  It is possible that they can be invited onto a working group (or other advisory group).

To be updated.

Jeff Kleiser & Coco Conn at Hotel Figueroa

At the Hotel Figueroa, at some SIGGRAPH, date unknown.

This photograph may already be on the blog, but if so, I am not sure where.

Civilization VII Notes

Rarely do I spend so much time with a game cursing it every step of the way.  Whatever may be going through the heads of the developers of Civilization VII, I dont much care for their choices.  This is not a review of the game, look elsewhere for that.  This is just a list of things I find annoying.  Your mileage may differ.

I do not know if the issues I discuss here are to be considered bugs or features.  

1. It is not clear what the differences are between different versions of this game.  Civilization V vs Civilization VI vs ... why a new version?  What have they learned?  It isnt clear.

2. The cartography is dreadful although colorful.  It is impossible to get a simplified version that shows you an overview, for example.  It is awkward to get to the different versions that do exist.  There ought to be a simple way to cycle through the options.  There ought to be a way to pull back much farther to get a better feel for the comprehensive view.

3. It is tedious and difficult to figure out where your air assets are. 

4. It is tedious to move your air assets from airfield to airfield.

5. Very little thought has been given to organization and scalability of the armed forces.  There are army, navy & air commanders that are supposed to provide some sort of higher level organization but I didn't find them very useful.

6. The issue of where one can found a city is badly documented.

7. The cultural issues between civilizations are shallow.

8. It is very difficult to evaluate who is winning and why.

9. It does not seem to be possible to advance the game without going through endless random details.

10. It does not seem rational how the units move on the board.

11. So I take it all the way through, and without warning, even though I crushed my enemies, I am told I am defeated.  And this after I forebear from nuking everybody.  What a piece of shit this game is. Obviously you dont need much talent to be a major league game designer.

"War Hero"

 
I think we can all wish that we had peace and that we were not going to "study war no more" but if I were you I would not hold my breathe waiting for that.  In the meantime, given that Mr. Bone Spur tells us that he is a war hero, we can ask ourselves if this moron and traitor actually knows what a war hero is.  I doubt it.  For those of you who may not have given it much thought, I can recommend the citations of the Congressional Medal of Honor (CMOH) as a way of making this abstract concept somewhat real.  

There are several rules about getting a CMOH and they include: (a) there have to be living witnesses of the event, (b) whatever the candidate did has to be beyond doing their job bravely and competently, (c) the commanding officer has to recommend you, (d) one of the congressmen from wherever our candidate hero is from has to sponsor it and (e) congress has to vote for it.  The CMOH is not without controversy in its 164 year history, but its track record is pretty good.

So, for example, you do not get a CMOH for merely advancing against the enemy while being shot at.  Everyone is expected to do that.  However, you might get a CMOH if, while your unit is under fire, you single handedly take out an enemy machine gun nest while the rest of your platoon is (sensibly) sheltered for cover and praying.  And then, having eliminated the machine gun in single combat if you do it two more times before they kill you, then you *might* get a CMOH, posthumously.

Or to choose another example, if you are known to be a complete screwup until your first combat mission whereupon the bomber you are on is set upon by waves of enemy fighters, the fuel tank explodes, 5 of your crewmates are hit by enemy fire and are bleeding out on the floor of the bomber, and then, suddenly, demonstrating behavior no one would have believed you were capable of,  you spring into action, alternate between putting out the fire in the center of the airplane, shooting at enemy fighters and driving them away, tending to the wounded to stop the bleeding, getting at least three of them into parachutes and out a hole in the fuselage to hopefully save their lives because the plane you are on is certainly going to explode and/or crash and kill everyone at any moment.  And somehow the bomber survives and you land.  And then when the brass comes to give you your medal for improbably saving the day, no one can find you because you are in the kitchen peeling potatoes as punishment for some other screwup for which you are well known. If you do that you might get a CMOH and plausibly be considered a "war hero".

Trust me, whatever DJT, the rapist and felon may be, he is certainly not a "war hero"  

A Parlor Game

Prediction is hard, especially about the future.  It seems obvious to me that the American System has failed and will not be recreated in its flawed but occasionally just form anytime soon.  I doubt that even 10 percent of the American people understand that it is over, the system failed, and they live in a right wing authoritarian country, arguably fascist and a dictatorship.  However this is an opportunity to show off skills.  There are many other shoes to drop.  I invite my friends to suggest some of those shoes which will be obvious to some people only in retrospect.  You should assume that the courts are corrupt at the highest level, that the press is useless and complicit, and that most politicians dont really care, at most pay lip service.  Much of what is easy to predict is not so much an obvious bad thing that has happened, but merely that it is made more public.  For example, it is obvious that the secret police is attacking and deporting people who are legal to be here, but how many of those people are raped in prison and/or murdered.  So one prediction is that this is eventually made public, and that some people voice dismay and outrage, but in fact nothing happens to change the situation.  It will be 50+ years before we know how many people we murdered, if we ever do. I see this as just obvious, the American Republic has murdered innocent people on a regular basis over the decades, although I think it ebbs and flows.  There are a dozen such trivial examples.  Another example is that a pillar of right wing strength will be grotesque gerrymandering to disenfranchise voters.  It is easy to predict that of course the supreme court will take a stand and support this gerrymandering for one stupid pretend reason or another.  The friend who suggests the most of these that have not previously been noted will win an exciting $25 gift certificate from Amazon.

27th Year Reunion of Hayden Planetarium

It was kindof a reunion of some of the Digital Galaxy Protect from 1998.  Although many people were not there, Carter Emmart, Dennis Davidson and myself were there and I had a completely fabulous time. Loretta Skeddle may have been in the audience somewhere and Benjy Bernhardt was in Italy.

You can not imagine how sad I am that I am not able to be involved more with the Hayden.  

Final Death Blow of the American Republic

I consider the new justices nominated by the racist pig to be the final death blow of the American Republic. The only thing that makes sense is to flee the country or live in a fascist society. This society will not recover for a minimum of 25 years and probably more like 50 or more. There will never be term limits. There will only be fascist judges and a few leftovers. That's it. I hope to flee the country if I can put together the visa and the finances which is, as you know, doubtful. So I will probably die in a fascist dictatorship. It's not that the story ends there: there will be other blows; there will be other compromises; and there will be other failures. But this is a good one and a good place to draw the line. Too bad the rapist pig is also a pedophile but then there was evidence of that all along. What a joke this country is. What a dangerous joke and how many people will get hurt? All because Americans wouldn't stand up for their rights and their freedoms. 

The wages of sin are death. 

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....

Ghosting causes us to worry.  Did we say something wrong?  Is my friend in trouble, possibly in bad health? Maybe in the hospital?  Maybe dead?  Are they not getting the messages?  Should we "ping" them again?  Would that be annoying?

Far better would be to notify the individual that you are going to be out of touch.  Say you are working on something important and wont be able to talk much over the next year or two.  Try to let us down gently and warn us that your silence does not imply that you are dead or in trouble.

That would be much more polite and courteous.

Even better is to reply to one out of maybe 3 or 4 emails.  An email that you can easily reply to and which demonstrates good will.  After a while, we will realize that you dont want to talk much and will accept that yet we are still in touch.  The best people I know, those who are far more successful than I, do that and I appreciate the courtesy.

Remember, this is not just about you.  We have made an investment in good faith in time and energy.  We have put up with you, maybe you can put up with us.

Is Soros a Class Traitor by Supporting Mamdani?

My friend Seth Haberman has some important points to make about the alleged Marxist running for mayor of NYC, this Zohran Mamdani character.  My friend points out that rich people have contributed to his campaign but that in fact Mamdani is only pretending.  This is my response on Facebook.

Michael Wahrman

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.

The Supreme Court Fails to Defend the Constitution

And so the Supreme Court fails its moment and its purpose.  They accept the robes and privileges and want to be treated with respect but no one in law school told them that this sometimes requires that they do more than show up and scratch their balls.  The Geheim Staatzpolizie in  unmarked vans attack and round up those who have been cast out but labor in our fields.  The head of a Special Unit has informed the elected mayor of Los Angeles that she should "Just get used to it, honey".  And our Supreme Court acts all innocent and unawares.  

It is said that even the most perverted and depraved of liars and hypocrites can find redemption but I dont believe it.  The Supreme Court had their chance, the issues were not subtle and their duty clear.  But the court failed us.  Worse is to come.  The Supreme Court is letting the rapist - pig and his cult destroy the government and purge the security forces of anyone who does not swear loyalty to der Fuhrer.  Congress has failed to honor its oath and now so has the Supreme Court.

People keep hoping that the situation is not as bad as some of us say.  But it is bad, it is very bad, and if history is a guide, it will get much worse.

Russia has a tradition of elite units disobeying orders and supporting the people.  Americans seem to have the belief that the constitution is some magical force of good and that somehow people and institutions that have already failed are going to "repent" and defend the people.  

I have got bad news for you.  I am going to predict the future.  As it is at the beginning, so it is at the end.  Those who are hypocritical swine and liars will continue to be so, and nothing such as the constitution or their oath matters to them.  We are fucked.  

Ken Perlin's Lab at NYU

On this last trip, a fast visit to Ken Perlin's Future Research Lab (FRL) at NYU. I think of it as his new lab, but he has been there for 9+ years.

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.  

The reality view was perfect, the synthetic imagery was stable.  There were some  issues as you might imagine for a research lab but it was perfectly presentable.  

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.

By USAF 
http://www.edwards.af.mil/gallery/html_pgs/cargo3.htm

Public Domain, 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=230534

Booking.Com and the Death of Customer Service

I had a wonderful trip to NYC at the last minute thanks in large part to my friends at the American Museum of Natural History.  In another post I will talk about all the wonderful parts of the trip but this post is about warning you off of an internet scam called Booking.com.

I make the plane reservation with Google who sent me to Booking.com.  I thought nothing of it.  I made my hotel reservation with Priceline.  This worked perfectly.

But when I got to LAX I discovered that booking had put my trip in July and the return trip to Ontario, not LAX.  I dont know how they did this.  I always said June, that was the whole point.  I never said Ontario, why would I want to go there.  So Jetblue, at the gate, puts me the plane I wanted at a very reasonable price on top of what I had paid Booking, of course.

Then started the nightmare of trying to reach booking to see what could be done.  The short version is that you can not reach customer support.  It is obviously deliberate, they just found another sucker, me, stole the money and that was that.

Jetblue was able to recover some of the money and I could fly home at a reduced rate, no thanks to Booking.com or to Google.

Caveat Emptor, I suppose.

Yeehaw Another War

There are people in this world who incorrectly believe that America just loves to go to war and will do so on the slightest pretext and without much thought.  Of course that is not true!  And we can trust Trump, the moron king, to only do what is good for America!

Biographical Sketch Written for ACM SIGGRAPH

Apparently ACM SIGGRAPH keeps a web page of biographies of a sort for those who volunteer.  They provide a list of questions.  Here is what I wrote:

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

Selfies June 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.

cantamus.app

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.

Administrative Note 5/30/2025

As you know, I dont actually know who reads my blog.  I am getting bored with all the politics.

For R&D Using Machine Learning Now is the Time

It turns out that science has its periods of boom and not-boom.  We are in a period of boom for many sciences and industrial processes that are using machine learning.   If you want to be a part of that, you have to act now.

Astronomy is a great example of the boom theory of scientific advancement.  Some Dutch guy invents the telescope and suddenly you have Galileo and others.   Same thing with planetary probes, radio astronomy, and so forth.  When they have new data, they can publish new work.

And now,  AI or as we might call it, machine learning, has opened up a hundred doors, or a thousand doors, all at once.  And everyone is running through those doors and if you dont, well too bad, there is still work to do but it wont be as easy and may not be possible.

Fortune favors the prepared mind, and it also favors those with the resources who are enabled to do the work when the time comes.

This is all obvious, I am just complaining.

Forgive me.

Walls and Constitutions

There is a story that in late antiquity the people of Rome wanted to build new walls in order to protect themselves from the hordes ravaging Italy.  Supposedly their top general tried to dissuade them saying "There is no point building walls if you dont have people who are willing to man them".

In the same vein, it seems to me that there are some similarities here to our current situation in America.  There is no point in having laws if you are not willing to enforce the law.  There is no reason to have a constitution if you can ignore it all you want and there are no consequences.

The Good News About US Science

According to a friend of mine who is a full professor of Computer Science, other countries see the destruction of the NSF and the authoritarian takeover of the US as a once in a lifetime opportunity to improve the science in their countries by attracting scientific talent.  

And why not, only a moron who did not know the history of this country during and since WW2 would try to destroy the NSF and the NIH.  

There are several theories here.  One is that the orange moron really does want to destroy America.  There are some variations on the theory that he just does not know what he is doing and thinks he is smarter than everyone else.  Why is the right so anti-intellectual?

An Interesting Discussion with a Trump Supporter

I enjoyed my conversation at a stoplight with a Trump supporter (30 something, male) in his truck flying a big trump banner.  What I concluded was that as long as people live in a fox news bubble, it will never be possible to change their mind.  

To be clear, I am saying that fixing things like Fox News is required, not optional.  If you cant fix it, fine, but do not expect that it will ever be possible to have democracy in this country again.

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.  

We can be proud of failing better than anyone else.  But we could not have done it without the people who voted that idiot into office. 

The Moron King, Trump and the Republicans, were completely clear that they planned to destroy voting rights, betray our allies, destroy the world order created after WW2,  destroy the economy,  condemn millions of people to death and disease, oppress women, and turn America into a white theocracy.  You would either have to be stupid not to have known this or, alternatively, wanted it because you thought it was neat.

Winning a tiny share of the popular vote is not the same as a mandate and furthermore, even if it was, the President took an oath of office and is expected to obey the law and support the constitution.

America will have been diminished thanks to you wankers.  

Good job!

Let Us Embrace National Decline

The failure of democracy and speedy national decline of the American republic is a useful and perhaps necessary counter to the astonishing hubris and self congratulatory nature of our various elites.  It could not have happened without the arrogance and stupidity of so many people here from the rather blatant self-interest and treason of the Republicans to the weakness of the Democrats and their unwillingness to stand on principle to the obvious corruption of the judiciary (looking at you Justice Cannon, Alito & Roberts).

On the bright side, we should applaud the tremendous and world historical rate of decline of a formerly great country now destroyed.  Lets embrace our failure and look forward to the day when we can benefit from the tourists coming to witness the ruins.  Americans will rise to this challenge and be sure to greet these onlookers with souvenirs made in China.

Modified Coconut Chip Cookies

The following recipe is only approximate.  

Preheat oven to 350F

Mix 3/4 cup granulated sugar, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 3 tbsp plain yogurt, 1/2 stick unsalted butter (melted), 2 tsp vanilla extract, 1 tsp salt, 2 or 3 tbsp coconut oil, 1 cup flour, 3 cups or so coconut (unsweetened preferred), 3/4 cup white baking chocolate chips.    Add a few tbsps of hot water as needed.  Mix well. NB: no baking soda or powder.

Spoon out to baking pan.

Cook 18 minutes or so, or in the case where there are two levels of pans, 9 minutes and then switch the pans.

The Various Failures of the Democratic Party

Part 1 of 3.  Find parts 2 and 3 here, when they are written.

When you have a complete collapse of democracy there is plenty of blame to go around.  But I believe that second only to Trump the Pig, pride of place should go to my party, the Democrats.  Gotta love them, but I dont know any group of people more craven, more self-serving, more self-entitled or more self-deceived as the Democratic Party elites.  Weak and indecisive.  As the singing cowboy, Will Rogers, said: "I belong to no organized political party.  I am a Democrat".

In the last 25 years or so, I have watched the Democratic Party studiously work to fail.  Failure of this nature does not just happen; it takes sincere effort and a desire for excellence.   A willingness to work to the point of pain to demonstrate contempt for their constituency.  Instead of working to educate us, perhaps to show why something was necessary, the Democrat Party ignored its people.  And they kicked the can down the road rather than make a stand on principle.

In contrast, the Republican Party who may be despicable, seem to deliver for their constituency. From "her emails" to Benghazi, to Fox News, to defunding the government, to treason, the Republicans always deliver solid red meat.

This is not hindsight on my part.  I have been waving my arms like a maniac since November 2000 when I went to Washington to protest the Supreme Court coup d'etat. 

First there are the policy failures, and second there are specific events where the Democratic Party demonstrated lack of backbone.

On policy, they did not articulate a strong position on immigration.  They abandoned the center of the country to the ravages of a globalized, hollowed out America.  They did not take a strong stand on law enforcement or, for that matter, civil rights.  Always involved in political correctness beyond what most Americans care about.  And of course Biden failed to address inflation and the party lamely said that it did not exist.  

Then there are the specific issues or events where they failed to respond to fight and to lead. In no particular order. 

The Democrats failed to oppose the ridiculous Supreme Court decision that stole the election from Al Gore who was clearly winning.   They failed to get Merrick Garland onto the Supreme Court.  They failed to prosecute anyone in Wall Street for their malfeasance which led to the 2008 economic collapse. The Democratic party elites attempted to sabotage Sanders and give the nomination to Hilary. They exterminated the political career of Al Franken for no good reason.   Justice Ginzburg should have resigned during the Obama administration.  This was a mistake no Republican would make.  Kavanaugh and Gorsuch and Barrett should never have been permitted on the court. Garland, Smith and the DOJ failed to properly prosecute Trump. The Supreme Court immunity decision was an abomination. This list could be twice as long.  The Democratic party did nothing.

There are some exceptions to this of course.  There are some good Democrats.  AOC and Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders (I love Bernie!) but all too few and they are generally muffled by the Democratic elites.  Technically Bernie is not even a Democrat.

Whatever happens over the next few years or decades as we try to defeat our fascist dictator and his party, and restore democracy to this country, however that happens, one thing seems to be clear.  The Dems will not be a help and have nothing to contribute.  I am sure they will try to take credit later.