The Sword Fight in The Princess Bride (1987)

Before we discuss the evidence for currently operational secret aerospace projects, we will briefly digress to a seemingly unrelated topic: the sword fight in cinema.

Although very little can compare to the sheer drama and subtlety inherent in a fight between giant robots, arguably the most important contribution of visual effects filmmaking in history, there have in the past been other conventions to demonstrate conflict and skill between characters.  At one point in the history of filmmaking  the sword fight was a required scene, a platform for good and evil to metaphorically struggle against each other and settle the matter once and for all time which of the two will triumph.

Although fans of fencing and students of fencing argue constantly about what would constitute a decent fencing scene in cinema, and whether any exist at all, there is general agreement that the sword fight in The Princess Bride (1987) between Inigo Montoya and the mysterious "Man in Black" is a cut above (as they say in the fencing world) most of the others in the genre.

If you do not know this sequence, or if you haven't seen it recently, here is a link to a decent version on youtube.       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC6dgtBU6Gs

The scene was choreographed by the late Bob Anderson, Hollywood's most famous sword fight coach, and the uncredited fencing double for Darth Vader in the early Star Wars films.  It features a dialogue between our two characters that, to a student of fencing, is apparently completely hilarious.  But most amazing of all for those knowledgeable about some of the techniques of fighting with swords, although the fight itself is not realistic per se, it does at least actually use genuine fencing technique most of the time.  Inconceivable!

As I mentioned above, the dialog is something of an in joke for those who know the history of fencing.  

Montoya: You are using Bonnetti's Defense against me, ha !

Wesley: I thought it fitting considering the rocky terrain.

Montoya: Naturally you must expect me to attack with Capo Ferro.

Wesley: Naturally. But I find that Thibault cancels out Capo Ferro, don't you ?

Montoya: Unless the enemy has studied his Agrippa... which I have !

Montoya: You are wonderful !

Wesley: Thank you, I have worked hard to become so.

Montoya: I admit it, you are better than I am.

Wesley: Then why are you smiling?

Montoya: Because I know something that you do not know.

Wesley: And what is that?

Montoya: I am not left-handed.

These are not the names of real techniques in fencing, but they are the names of well-known people in the history of fencing: Rocco Bonnetti, Ridolfo Capo Ferro, and so forth. See this link for a full discussion of who these people were.

http://combativecorner.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/fencing-language-in-the-princess-bride/

The Association for Renaissance Martial Arts has a good collection of essays on various topics of classic sword fighting.
http://www.thearma.org/essays.htm

Mysterious Booms Part 1: Intelligence & Funny Noises

[If you wish, you can save some time and just cut to the final post which is concise and skeptical. See
http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2012/09/mysterious-boom-part-4-wisconsin-n.html]

Part 1: Background Information

The point of this series of posts is to bring to your attention some evidence that suggests that one or more very secret, American, advanced technology aircraft or air/space vehicles is/are flying. But before we can discuss this, there are a few things to say about the topic of intelligence and black, or secret, projects, that you should know in order to be able to reasonably process the evidence.

Even before working at the RAND Corporation, I found the worlds of intelligence and special projects to be fascinating. It combines advanced technology, immense resources, and incredibly challenging goals and then makes it even more interesting by adding the sense of mystery and intrigue. Since I am not in that business, I can indulge my interest in the topic without being annoyed by security issues or the pesky realities that most businesses have when you know enough about them.

Although these supposed projects are by their very nature secret, it is the case that there are things that a knowledgeable observer can know about this work, if he or she pays attention. Such open sources include: (a) analysis of the federal budget to determine where and in what quantities intelligence or special projects are funded and thus get some feel for the current scope of activities, (b) review of open access policy discussions which often discuss and argue for one approach or another in the context of strategy, (c) a knowledge of the history of past projects made public as an indicator of the type of thing they might do again in the future, (d) some understanding of the implications of things they do tell the public, (e) reports of sightings of mysterious events by qualified observers, and last but not least, (f) a realization that at the end of the day physics is still physics and we all have to live with gravity and other manifestations of physical reality.

For example, during the cold war, we read how important "verification" was to the SALT treaties. This meant that both sides needed the ability to independently verify what was built, what was flying, what infrastructure existed, and so forth as it related to nuclear weapons and their delivery. From that, and from various other discussions and activities, one could conclude that it was likely that a variety of special technology reconnaisance aircraft and satellites were being built and used with some success. There were a variety of indications that something was happening, but it was the shooting down of a Lockheed U2 with pilot Gary Powers in 1960 that first brought that particular vehicle into the public eye. In 1964, LBJ revealed the successor to the U2, the SR-71 Blackbird, probably well in advance of when it should have been revealed. It was in the 1980s that we first started hearing much of significance about the satellites that had been built, although many knew that there were operating something up there.

Some other things to keep in mind is that these projects are, generally, unbelievably expensive and that means that they can only do a few of them at a time because of budget and other kinds of resource constraints.   And that they have an incentive to let people believe that some projects exist so that opposition intelligence organizations can waste their time learning about them, so one may hear rumors about many projects only a few of which actually exist.  It is the nature of black projects that they are very expensive,  but however expensive it may be to develop and demonstrate a technology, or use it once or twice in an intelligence role, it is far more expensive and difficult to keep secret a project that is deployed in any quantity. It can be done, it has been done, but it doesn't happen very often (the F117A and the B2 are the only two recent examples I know of).

Thus, even if something cool is built, and tested, and maybe even rumored about or sighted, that does not necessarily mean that they are using that technology. They may have just tested the idea and then decided to wait or do something else.

But for a very few technologies and projects, an operational role is approved and the technologies are put into limited production and, in the case of aerospace platforms at least, generally have an operational unit of some sort that is built around them. And as these highly secret vehicles are flown on a regular or semi-regular basis, that is when it is much more likely that information will start getting around.

The best place to learn something about the recent history of aerospace related "black" projects is the Mystery Aircraft page of the Federation of American Scientists, a pro-arms control group. The page has not been updated in many years, but it is still the best resource that I know of which intelligently assembles the evidence available, and then does a little informed speculation, about these projects. I believe that all the information in these pages is well worth reading or at least glancing at as background information.  A specific conclusion of the budget analysis in the Aurora section of these pages, is that the overall size and changes in the budget support the idea that something was put into limited operational use.  

http://www.fas.org/irp/mystery/index.html

(continued in Part 2)

Commentary on Ageism by Louis L'Amour (1908-1988)

I first became aware of the problem of ageism when reading an interview with the great American author and philosopher, Louis L'Amour, in an airline magazine.

Sometime in the late 70s, flying on Pacific Southwest Airlines, an airline which is now sadly out of business, I read an interview with Mr. L'Amour  whose work I had seen in hundreds of grocery stores and whom I had never read, and he advised:

Never tell your age. There is too much ageism in America.

Although I was in my early 20s, I somehow knew that I was hearing the voice of experience, and that I should take his advice.

Louis L'Amour at his typewriter in Los Angeles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_L'Amour

http://www.louislamour.com/aboutlouis/biography.htm

revised 8/7/2016

Archaeology of the Cold War: Contingency Speech if Apollo 11 Had Failed

It was announced that Neil Armstrong (1930 - 2012) has passed away.  This is something of a shock to me, as I had no idea that this was in any way expected, or that he was 82 years old.  He seemed to me to be much younger, perhaps 75.

Apparently William Safire was a speech writer for the Nixon Administration, and as a contingency he wrote a speech for President Nixon in case the Apollo 11 mission failed catastrophically and both Armstrong and Aldrin had died.

Fortunately, it never had to be used.  But it seems appropriate to resurrect this document now that Neil has passed away.

One policy note: it is pretty clear that one purpose of this speech was to try to forestall the necessity to spend the money and risk new lives to retrieve the bodies.  That would certainly be expensive and, almost certainly at least as great a risk as what they had just taken and which had not worked out.  Although understandable from their point of view it is unlikely to have worked.  Americans have a tradition of bringing the bodies back home, it is deep in our culture, and the moon would have become a reproach to all of us that we had left our friends there had we not retrieved the bodies.

The following draft speech was written by "Bill" Safire, later known as William, on July 18, 1969, in other words, two days before the landing.

Defamation, Employment Contracts and the Case of "El Naschie vs Nature Publishing"

How lucky we are today to have our first legal judgment on Global Wahrman !

In this case, we have the case of El Naschie vs Nature Publishing regarding an article published in Nature which El Naschie claims/claimed was defamation.

Apparently El Naschie, if I read this correctly, started his own academic journal, and then set himself up to review his own papers,  which he had submitted to his journal.   It certainly makes sense to me that one would like one's own papers, don't you agree?    This is a peer-reviewed journal and by definition the author of a paper is his own peer.  This principle was definitively established by von Strindberg and Broadway  in their 1948 paper in Transactions on Publishing entitled "On Self-Peering".   [Editors note: this is Michael's idea of a joke, he is being sarcastic, just in case you didn't notice.] So what is the problem?    It just seems like a very efficient way to get a lot of papers published.   Anyway, these picky academics: always complaining about something. Nature published an essay about the situation and was quite clear and opinionated about the ethics of starting a "peer-reviewed journal", then personally writing most of the articles, and acting as his own peer-reviewer for those articles before publication.  As a result,  El Naschie sued Nature for defamation.

Defamation has been on my mind recently because of various contracts for employment that I have reviewed and which have "strong", or at least strongly-worded,  anti-defamation clauses.  Defamation, though, is a legal term that has a meaning slightly different from its use in the vernacular.  To the courts, "defamation" refers to the act of saying something about somebody that hurts their reputation, as you would expect.  But to be defamation, these statements also need to be  (a) not true and (b) intended to cause harm.   If the nasty thing you say about someone or some thing turns out to be true then it isn't defamation by definition.

It is also not defamation when you express your opinion as opposed to asserting something as being a statement of fact.   So for example, if I say that "such-and-such company has, in my opinion, a ridiculous employment contract that will cause them trouble in the long run because I think it will discourage people from working with them", that is not defamation.  That is just me expressing my opinion, as I am legally entitled to do.

If however I say that "so-and-so is wanted for felony assault in the State of NY and is a well-known pederast who got booted out of his home town because of his sexual proclivities," and if  that was not true, then that would almost certainly be defamation.

Why do these employment contracts have such odd and apparently unnecessary anti-defamation clauses?  I am told by my Oxford / Harvard Business School friend that it is to scare immature 23 year olds and keep them from spraying their self-righteous phlegm all over some social media web page when they get pissed off about something the company has done (e.g. for laying them off or something).   Such clauses should be unnecessary of course because defamation is illegal.   Contracts do not need to contain clauses that say "the employee promises not to have kinky sex with underage women," because sleeping with underage women is illegal in this country, whether kinky or not.  It even has its own well-defined term in the vernacular, jailbait, which is really a wonderful word when you think about it.   (And what a good example of a Germanic languages' process of creating a new word by concatenating existing words together.)    Thus no such clause is necessary in any contract, and if it were, it might be covered by a boilerplate that might say something such as "all parties agree to obey the law".  I mean really, that seems like an unnecessary thing to say, but I guess it might be worth reminding people of that general guideline in the fast-paced world of internet startups.

Now that I think about it, isn't there some large software company in Redmond, Wa. that routinely used to violate anti-trust law ?   Maybe we should have a clause in the contracts of corporate executives requiring them to obey the law in the execution of their duties.   Its just a thought.

Anyway, this case is full of juicy charges and counter-charges, nasty emails from mysterious people, and a lot of biped mammals acting very immaturely, if you ask me.   I think it is worth a look.

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2012/1809.html

Here is the first page of the judgment.

"Cinemagraphs" Animation & Photography

Clever use of gifs to do animation with photography.  These are not mine, I borrowed them from the web page below.

See web page on the process:
http://www.beautifullife.info/art-works/amazing-cinemagraphs-byjamie-beck-and-kevin-burg/

Archaeology of the Cold War: The CIA Report on the 1953 Coup in Iran

I propose that if we had a top ten of most controversial CIA cold war "activities", the coup in Iran that put the Shah in power would be on that list.   Everyone knows that we put the Shah in power, right ?

Well, maybe.

Maybe we did, or maybe things are a little more complicated than that.  At the very least, we (i.e. the USA & the CIA) could be accused of serious meddling, actually quite a bit worse than that. But maybe not exactly guilty of putting the Shah in power, or so it might seem.

Submitted for your consideration is a 200-page CIA historical report, more or less an after-action report, of the planned coup in Iran and what transpired.   The first thing you will notice, when you read it, is that the CIA coup failed.  What, you say ?  How could that be ?   Although I could tell you the story here, and very well may in a future version of this post, for now I am suggesting that you read the report yourself.  There is some value in watching the CIA's plans fail, see them work to get their people out of the country, and watch their confusion as things evolved beyond what they had planned.

Now I have to admit that one would be really naive to think that the CIA is going to release a report that is going to criticize themselves, and we are the first to admit that I can only guess when the truth ends and the wishful thinking, or worse, begins.

But since the situation with Iran is certainly on the front pages every day, and since many people in Iran certainly blame us for putting the Shah in power, I think it is worthwhile for concerned Americans to read a little bit about either what happened, or maybe happened, on those days long ago.

(For those who want the executive summary, it goes something like this.  The CIA coup failed.  But things were sufficiently riled up that others took things into their own hands... particularly the army, or that is my interpretation from reading this.  You read it, and tell me what you think).

For those who are upset because it might appear that I am defending the Shah of Iran, that is not the case. The Shah was completely evil!  Evil!  For example, he wanted to educate women! Can you believe that?!  What a scumbag!   No wonder they got rid of him.  (Ok, I am being sarcastic.  I have no particular opinion on the Shah.  I do have an opinion about the current government of Iran, and it is not positive.  But that does not mean that I advocate the USA being involved in regime change, overt or covert, no such opinion is expressed here).

But I digress.  Seriously, check it out.  Remember this is a CIA internal report of some sort, quite possibly deliberately constructed as some sort of disinformation campaign,  and you should assume it is not the entire truth, at the very least.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/

SIGGRAPH 2012 Job Fair and the Kindness of Strangers

Something very funny happened when I worked the SIGGRAPH 2012 job fair.  I got a job.  No! Just kidding.   Not even close, but something very human and nice happened, so that is what this post is about.

I was sighted working the Siggraph 2012 job fair by a variety of people, apparently. That means that various people who know me saw me there and made comments to friends who made comments to friends who maybe made comments to me.   I hear about this weeks after SIGGRAPH, by the way.  Thats all ok with me.

Its even ok with me that I heard many times "that I must have been humiliated" working the Job Fair. I thought that was an interesting comment, and I heard it several times, from different people, so I suppose I was. Humiliated, that is. I mean if they say so. I didnt think I felt humiliated, I thought I was looking for a job.

The background here is that for health reasons I have decided not to try to do anything entrepreneurial (I may have to back off of that decision) because of the stress that a startup and running a company necessarily causes. So it seemed logical to me that I would look for a job. Lots of people have jobs, lots of people have had jobs in the past, and will have jobs in the future. It seems like a logical thing to do.

And since Siggraph has gone though all the trouble to make a job fair, it seemed logical to me that I would take advantage of it. So I stood in line at various booths and talked to various human resource people. And after doing that a few times, a very amusing thing happened.

A very serious, very presentable young man who I did not know, asked me if he could have a word with me. His name was/is Michael Shaneman (name used with permission), and I am pretty sure that we had never met. Sure, I said. He took me aside and said, something like this. " I hope you dont mind, " he began, "but you are doing this all wrong. You can never be negative in front of a recruiter, " he said. "They are paid to weed out anyone who says anything negative or who is eccentric in any way" (I am doing this from memory). "You have to be positive and you have to lead with your ace. " I could tell that he was totally sincere, totally well meaning, and really wanted to help me.

Isn't that nice ? I mean a total stranger ! And he was/is completely sincere, and I think you will agree with me, completely correct. I probably wasnt even aware I was being negative. I probably thought I was being wry, or sarcastic, or even ironic, or something.

Anyway, the point is, it restores my faith in human nature that a total stranger would try to coach me to have a good attitude, and I think he deserves a pat on the back.

Of course, it would be completely misleading to try to convince an employer that I would not be jaded and cynical, and filled with a certain, hmmm, lack of enthusiasm for what computer animation has become, but its hard not to like someone who would help a stranger like that.

So, Michael Shaneman, wherever you are. Thank you very much ! It was probably the only good thing to come out of the so-called Job Fair, and if so, it was a very good thing indeed.

The Lytro at Siggraph 2012 and the "Technical Lytro"

On two different occasions I heard Kurt Akeley describe the Lytro camera which uses lightfields in photography.   Here is an example of a picture he took of me, at different points of focus, and then the original, live, on his web site.

I love this.

The live version is at
https://pictures.lytro.com/kurtakeley/pictures/333415

Here are two stills derived from the "live" version.  Yes, this is me in my "George Smiley" mode.  The other redhead is my friend Scott Elofson.

Studio / Technical Lytro ?

I asked Kurt if he / Lytro were planning to do a studio version of this camera.  He said that he wasn't sure if there was a business model for such a thing.  I said, I was quite sure whether there was a business model for such a thing, the answer is no, absolutely not.  Not a chance.

But actually, I had the terms wrong.  I meant a "technical camera", and the answer would still be no.

A technical camera is one that a professional photographer would use in his/her studio to do product photography among other things and would be capable of significant tilt & shift both front and back.

A few pictures of studio / technical cameras:

Here is a link to a description of a technical camera by Phillip Agee, see
http://philipgee.com/TSC-01.html

So we won't expect a Technical Studio Lytro anytime soon.  But hopefully this first Lytro will be the first in a series of successful and innovative Lytro cameras.    I am dying to get my hands on one.

Lytro themselves can be found at
http://www.lytro.com

The Tony Scott "Showreel" at Robert Abel & Associates

This is a brief anecdote on how I first became aware of the work of Tony Scott.

When I started work at Robert Abel & Associates (RA&A)  in 1980 or so, while still running a laboratory at the Rand Corporation, I used to distract myself by prowling around the three-story studio on Highland and Romaine in the middle of the night.   Working at RA&A was my moonlighting job, I still had a real job during the day.

There were lots of things to see and people to talk to in a visual effects studio that used the traditional arts in the middle of the night back then.  Lots of artists on the third floor, Image G and Tom Barron shooting Pepsi Cola commercials in the stage next door, Rob Legato on Camera 2 shooting Eastern Airline commercials, John Nelson shooting camera, Steve Cooney on E&S1, Doc Baily on E&S 2, John Hughes working with Mary Lambert on a Happy Jacks commercial,  and so forth.

There was of course a room to watch videos and in that room there was a library of various commercial show reels, each of them on 3/4" video tape.   For those of you who were not around in the 1980s, 3/4" Umatic was the semi-professional video format of its day used in education and some documentary film work, but mostly used as a distribution format for professional sample reels and such things.  It was better than 1/2" and most places had at least one 3/4" machine around.

The library had about 50 or so "show reels" from various commercial directors internationally. I think some of them were just there because they were cool, and of course there were various RA&A sample reels of various collections (e.g. car commercials, broadcast openings, motion control), and of various RA&A directors: Clark Anderson, Randy Roberts, Kenny Mirman, etc.   I went through all of them and when I was giving a tour of the studio would usually show one of the RA&A reels of recent work to our visitors.

For those of you who are not aware of the commercial production business, it is very much a director's business, or at least it was and I suspect it still is.  It is amazingly competitive: unbelievably, insanely, ridiculously and pathologically competitive.  Did I mention vicious?  The primary tool of selling for the director was the "show reel" of recent work as distributed to various production companies and advertising agencies.  The show reel is an art form of a certain type: a tool by professionals used by them to sell their services to those who are in the position to hire directors.   I am sure it is filled with nuance and evil beyond imagination, for those who know how to read them, which I do not.

So as you have guessed by now, one of the show reels that was there in that library was the show reel for Tony Scott.    I have no idea why it was there.  I doubt Tony Scott worked with RA&A at least not that I ever heard about, and I am pretty sure I would have heard.  So the reel was just there because it was cool.     This was my introduction to the genre of British commercial directors, and the role of the British in inventing advertising as we know it, or at least as we knew it (it is of course changing again).

See for example the film Absolute Beginners (1986) by Julien Temple or read the famous book published in 1959 by Colin MacInnes on which it was based for an introduction to this history and the scene in England at the time.

The Tony Scott show reel was amazing.

I watched it over and over again.  Commercials are a complex art form, commercial by definition, and I recognize that there is a huge amount of skill and effort that can go into making them.  Such craft is essential, but may not be awe inspiring.  But this reel was very interesting.   It had no visual effects that I recall, no animation, maybe there was a motion controlled camera or two, but I didn't notice them.  It was great because of the style, the editing, the photography and the, pardon my French, filmmaking skill that went into them.

So far I have not found any Tony Scott commercial show reels online, but I suspect that they are there, or they will be there after his recent demise.   So I will update this post when I find one.   It will be interesting to see if it is still as impressive today as it seemed to me then.

[Addendum.  As promised, here is a link to some of the commercial work of Tony Scott, which can be found at Ridley Scott & Associates.  See here]