Piddles The Squirrel Returns

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Against all expectations, Piddles the Squirrel has emerged from the forest to bless us with her presence on the archery range.  With Piddles still with us, how can we lose hope?

Suicide Squad and Behavioral Animation

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Behavioral animation in Suicide Squad.  Go rats, go!  Save the world!

Are Animals Intelligent?

I mentioned to a friend who is a pioneer in the field of simulating various kinds of animal behavior that I was very pleased to find a new book by an ethologist that voiced the opinion that animals had emotions and intelligence. This is of course in contrast to the last 70 plus years of the behaviorists who put animals in little boxes and maintain that animals are merely stimulus-response machines.

My friend let me know in no uncertain terms that I did not have even the slightest right to my opinions, that any behavior by scientists was acceptable, and that the lay person (if that is what I am) did not have the slightest right to criticize any scientist in the field of animal behavior in any way. If a scientist believes that a dog or a horse is merely a machine without feelings then that is what I should accept as any belief I had must necessarily be anecdotal and without the slightest validity.

I want to go on record here and disagree with my friend. Torturing and demeaning animals is not acceptable to me. I understand the need for animal models in certain kinds of medicine (e.g. cancer research) in the absence of an alternative but failing to acknowledge intelligence in animals is not. It is nothing more than an extension of the racism (species-ism?) that was once popular in mainstream science which worked so hard to measure skull shape and size to prove that the non-white “races” were inferior to the Aryan ideal and deserved to be enslaved.

Whether or not animals are human, humans are certainly animals. Our species is part of a continuous spectrum of the evolved animal life on this planet and the failure to acknowledge the intelligence and, yes, even the probable awareness and consciousness of many animals, is sheer arrogance. Yes, I realize this is science, yes I realize that consciousness and intelligence is not at all well defined and has all the pitfalls that this implies. But that is not what we are talking about here. Failing to recognize intelligence, intent, memory and yes even culture in some of our fellow creatures is just bizarre.

The book I am referring to is “Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?” by the well-known ethologist Franz de Waal.

Find it here:

http://www.amazon.com/Are-Smart-Enough-Know-Animals/dp/0393246183

Bees Get Hooked on Nicotine and Fall Over Dead say Scientists

With hive collapse syndrome threatening world civilization by dying before their residents, the bees, can serve their primary economic purpose for mankind, which is to pollinate agricultural crops in our great country, scientists have looked high and low to find the cause and help prevent economic disaster which would of course affect the earnings of the shareholders, a fate all good Americans, whether man or bee, can agree must be avoided. The bees can goddamn well die as far as we are concerned as long as they pollinate beforehand.

Now science has proven that the alleged cause of the threat to the shareholder's earnings is not, as the tree huggers have said without a shred of proof, caused by harmless and helpful pesticides which are only working to improve shareholder value, not damage it.  No the real cause of hive collapse syndrome is not the innocent and beneficial pesticides, but lies within the bees themselves.

This lazy bee can barely stand up she is so drunk on nicotine, nectar and pollen.

In an important new article published in Nature, science has proven that the real cause of hive collapse sysndrome is the bee's moral turpitude and lack of anglo-saxon work ethic. Instead of steadfastly pollinating like they should, they get hooked on nicotine-related substances and abandon their economic purpose and spend all day just lazing around and smoking, or in this case, sipping, nicotine. Its not the pesticides per se that are causing the bees to become slackers and suck nicotine until they fall over dead. It is their own lack of moral willpower.

One more time American industry has been vindicated. The bees need to go to church more often and teach their children the benefits of moderation and hard work and this problem is solved.

An article about this in The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/22/bees-may-become-addicted-to-nicotine-like-pesticides-study-finds

Late Breaking News: BOIDS tests from 1986 Found

Just as I walk out the door to NYC, I read some old email, and find that Tom McMahon has resurrected the long missing Boids tests from Stanley and Stella.

Boids are what we called the early behavioral animation tests by Craig Reynolds.  It was to showcase that technology that we did the film Stanley and Stella.   This is all shot off the screen of a very low res Symbolics window.

I thought these were lost forever.

When I get back from NY, I will add some more pictures.

The test video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96LIKfKcoxk#t=170

Pearls Before Swine or the Potential Downside of Helping Someone Find Work

In future posts we are going to discuss ways that you, the working elite, can help your friends, the unemployed scum, find gainful employment.   But before we do so, we are going to have to discuss the possible downside of helping someone. Is there a possible downside?  Is it true that no good deed goes unpunished?

Mark Twain once told the following "joke":   Q. What is the difference between a starving man and a starving dog?   A. When you feed a starving dog he does not turn around and bite you.

At various times I have had the pleasure, or misfortune, of helping many, many people find gainful employment.   I think I have been so effective at it for several reasons including (a) the economy was different then, (b) the people I helped were earlier in their career, (c) there were less good people around who knew this kind of stuff (computers and media) back then, and (d) I am good at helping people find work.  But I stand before you today to testify that I have had cause to regret helping people get employment.

I think this is sad.  In all of the cases where this has happened, I had confidence in the individuals involved and wanted to help them get along in life and their career.   What were they thinking when they then turned on the person who helped them?   I believe that there are a variety of answers to this question including insanity, venality, and stupidity.

I also feel that there may be special problems in the field of computer animation and visual effects, particularly since it went 3D and digital in the early 1990s.   Some outside observers have noticed that the field does seem to be particularly made up of ambitious and narcissistic scumbags to an unusual degree.   This is of course rather different from the people who, for the most part, founded this field who both knew what a "zero-sum game" was and did not believe that they were playing one.  I once had an attorney tell me "Michael, we have to get you working with a better class of people ..."

But whatever the reasons may be, a thoughtful individual must ask themselves, what can one do to protect oneself against the behavior of these disloyal scum?  Along those lines, here is a lesson I learned from reading about the so-called Mafia in New York City.  The article was an interview with an anonymous FBI Agent about why the head of the Genovese family in NY, a fellow named Gigante, had not been convicted of a crime.   The FBI agent said that it was because "he had an amazing talent for picking loyal friends".

Gigante aka "Chin" was considered very talented at judging the character of his potential co-workers

So what can I learn from my experiences that I can pass on to you to help make you more successful and avoid some of the irritations and problems that I have caused myself through my own desire to help the downtrodden?

1. Ask yourself how well you know the potential recipient of your beneficence.   If not very well, then be sure to take hostages.  Usually a close family member or two will do.   First born son, favorite pet, that sort of thing.

2. If your management wants you to hire people, or to recommend them to be hired, agree to do so, but only if you have the right to fire them again if they do not work out in your sole judgment. Get this in writing.

3. If you start noticing aberrant or delusional behavior in the recipient of your goodwill, have the right to have them seek professional help, offsite, for several years, in a comfortable "therapy center".  A few years in a disease infected swamp in a country torn by civil strife and revolution would probably help the recipient of our good will build character.

4. Finally, if and when they try and stab you in the back, execute the hostages and have your friend conveniently disappear while you are home at dinner with your family. Be sure to remember the famous rules of thumb for such things: "no weapon, no motive, no body".

I would hope that anyone you helped would be loyal and not be like some of the crazy assholes I have had the misfortune of helping from time to time.  All of this and more leads to the following conclusion: helping someone is a tricky matter, discretion may be the better part of valor.

For more in formation on Vincent "Chin" Gigante, see: his wikipedia page.

Revised 7/2/2013
Revised 4/2/2014

Anomalous Stingray Feeding Behavior and Its Relationship to the VFX Industry

I have been observing the Visual Effects "industry" and the behavior of people in that industry since about 1980. I am constantly amazed by the sense of sharing, the love, the collaboration, the farsightedness, wisdom and sheer intelligence of people in this industry.

Well, actually, no I haven't.

In fact, I have noticed what seems to be the reverse: a thuggish, callous, stupid, fuck-you-I-got-mine sensibility that pervades the industry like the smell of rotting garbage in August. To those from the NY area, who will understand the reference, I tell them that I suspect that people in New Jersey Waste Management industry generally show a much higher level of intelligence, wit and humanity than people in our industry.

Every once in a while I come across intelligent behavior in the animal world that totally recreates for me some sense of what the visual effects industry, or the people within it, are like. For example, in this post, I discuss why the Komodo Dragon might make a good mascot for Visual Effects.

I have just stumbled upon another example of animal behavior that evokes for me the sense of the visual effects industry in some subtle, or even sublime, way.

In the past, I have often wondered if there might also be some relationship between visual effects people and the cartilanginous fish known as "stingrays". The stingray is related to the shark, and many have noted that visual effects people do share behavior with stocks, notably the need to always move forward and the tendency to go into a feeding frenzy whenever blood is sensed.

Who you looking at ?

One behavior that visual effects people seem to share with the stingray is in the area of mating. Here is how Wikipedia describes mating behavior in the stingray:

"When a male is courting a female, he will follow her closely, biting at her pectoral disc. He then places one of his two claspers into her valve."

This so clearly resembles mating behavior in visual effects people, to the extent that they mate, that one has to wonder if there is not a deeper genetic relationship between the two groups of animals.

Normally, the sting ray is a loner who travels and feeds by themselves and rarely seeing another of their kind but recently new behavior has been observed in the Cayman Islands. There, tourists have taken to feeding the stingray with prepackaged-for-their-convenience squid packets and the stingray have taken to the idea in a major way. Now instead of being nocturnal and alone, they hang around during the daytime in large crowds waiting to gorge themselves on tasty squid packets. Apparently there is no ethic or value that the stingray is not willing to give up in return for tasty frozen squid.

Consider the following picture of this practice:

You can read more about this here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/stingrays-adjust-their-behavior-in-response-to-feedings-from-tourists/2013/03/18/06358d5c-8125-11e2-b99e-6baf4ebe42df_singlePage.html?tid=obinsite

This reminds me of the feeding frenzy in visual effects and computer animation in the early 90s, with scum newly trained in art schools flocking into the artificial and unsustainable slave pits of the major studios on the West Coast, gorging themselves on tasty and competitive salary packages and leaving chunks and detrius from dead squid floating in little pieces in the water.

The relationship is surely not a coincidence.

The Stingray on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray

Grand Cayman Islands on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayman_Islands

The Komodo Dragon as a Potential Mascot for the Field of Visual Effects

[Revised 12/11/2012]

The purpose of this post is to bring to your attention an example of a truly original behavior in an animal, in this case the Komodo Dragon.

I find animal behavior fascinating, and I have no doubt that animals are intelligent, even though scientists, or some scientists, claim that they are not sure.   I think most dogs are more intelligent than many people I know and they are certainly of a better character.

One reason this topic has come up, is because there has been a low level effort to find a mascot or symbol for the field of visual effects and computer animation in the motion picture industry.  A bulldog might symbolize determination, an eagle might symbolize vision and integrity, a zombie might indicate mindless devotion, and so forth.   After all, doctors have their snake, California has its bear, the Orioles have their bird, maybe we should have a mascot too.

Ideally any mascot chosen for visual effects would communicate something about the field and people in it, and not just be chosen because it is cute. A good mascot / totem might inspire us by their example and help stimulate an espirit de corps that could cut across the various competitive companies and encourage us to achieve excellence.

Recently, I came across an animal with a truly amazing behavior that has been observed in the wild, and I want to suggest it here as a possible candidate for our mascot.

A very cute Komodo Dragon taking a nap on a rock.

The Komodo Dragon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komodo_dragon) is the world's largest lizard. It lives in parts of Indonesia and it is famous for many things. It is famous for having a saliva that is so nasty that one bite and the victim will go away and die of the putrescence that comes from the bacteria in its drool.   The Komodo is famous for eating anything that moves, including its own children. The little Komodo Dragons apparently learn to climb trees to stay out of the way of their parents in case one of them should suddenly decide to want a snack.  

But there is one behavior above all others that distinguishes the Komodo from other animals. In order to understand the significance of this behavior we first have to go over the normal eating behavior of the Komodo.

The adult Komodo Dragon may eat no more than once a month. Its preferred meal is a small pig, goat or deer which it likes to eat whole, live, in its entirety, in one gulp. Basically they inhale dinner, or that is the idea. Then they will sit in the shade and digest for several weeks, up to a month, being careful not to get too hot.  When done digesting, he or she will vomit out the indigestible parts such as the skull and hooves and wipe the disgusting slime off its snout on a rock.

But often a piglet or appropriately sized dinner is not available so the Komodo inhales what it can of the available animal, and can get caught with an unhappy pig or goat in its mouth, half in and half out.  Obviously this won't do, so the Komodo has to figure out how to get the intended dinner all the way in.

How does it do this? Other predators might stun the intended victim with a venom that paralyzes the victim or makes it unconscious. Or it might want to kill the victim first, bite it into chunks, and then eat it a piece at a time.   But this is not what the Komodo Dragon does.  

What the Komodo does is to run at full speed with the pig/goat/deer in its mouth and slams that part of dinner still visible into a tree (or other large object) in order to bash it all the way in.  If dinner is not all the way in after the first bash, it will back up and charge at the tree repeatedly head first, or if you will, goat first, until the goat/pig/deer is completely inside.  

Komodo's have been observed knocking trees down in this way because of their enthusiasm.

What a creative approach!   What enthusiasm and ingenuity it demonstrates!  It reminded me at once of the enthusiasm and determination that a visual effects facility uses to get a project.   And of the same sort of compassion and genuineness with which someone in visual effects works with a co-worker and many, many other aspects of our field.  I still see the resemblance whenever I read about the Komodo Dragon, this one behavior completely recreates for me the sense of the deepest motivations of so many of our peers.

Anyway, I wanted to bring this to your attention in case people felt that this might be an appropriate mascot for visual effects.  

Wikipedia page for the Komodo Dragon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komodo_dragon