Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Setup

It used to be the thing to do to go to the Museum of Natural History the night before the Macy's Parade and watch them set up, which would involve, among other things, a bunch of really large balloons on their backs being inflated.   Now it has been discovered, and it is a tourist thing, and real NYers stay away, I am told.  This happens on 79th and 81st street, between Columbus and CPW.   

This picture would be from the late 1990s. For those who are unaware of the capabilities of various high speed black and white films, I have enclosed a detail from this picture which, if you look carefully, shows good detail inside a utility room inside the building.     I doubt it was handheld, so the camera had probably been stabilized on some available geometry, such as a mailbox or fire hydrant.  

Whenever I think of this event, I remember the first time I saw it, before it was discovered, and an embarrassing celebrity moment that occurred. This would have been in the late 1970s or early 1980s and a few years after Annie Hall (1977) had come out, and the "Annie Hall - look" was an identifiable fashion trend.   Diane Keaton actually dresses that way, one heard, and so Woody Allen just incorporated it into the movie.   So that night, watching the balloons being inflated, I saw across the street a particularly egregious case of someone dressed up to look like Diane Keaton in full Annie Hall regalia. After a while, I figured out it was Diane Keaton and I should stop staring at her.  Its impolite to stare, anyway.

Report On A Very Brief Meeting with the Chair of SIGGRAPH

I had an opportunity to speak to the Chair of ACM SIGGRAPH at the annual conference this year. His name is Jeff Jortner and he works at Sandia Labs (that is his real job that pays the bills).

He very kindly gave some of his time to explain to me a few of his ideas about the future of the SIGGRAPH Annual Conference that seemed very plausible to me.

I asked him if he was aware of the hardship that existed in the computer animation community, the large number of people who were not working, or who had to leave the country in order to work. Or the number of pioneers who were struggling to find work of any type, some of whom were homeless or all but homeless.

I may have caught him by surprise but I got the impression that he (and by analogy, they, as in the committee that runs SIGGRAPH) was not aware of any of this. He was aware of issues involving whether or not CS departments at various universities would continue to hold a slot for a computer graphics professor once the original tenured professor retires, but that was the extent of his or their knowledge or concern, at least to the extent he communicated them to me in that brief and impromptu meeting.

It seems to me that if there is a problem here, if we feel that SIGGRAPH should be doing more (and it is not clear to me that they can do anything, but nevertheless) if we even want them to consider the issues, then we have to do a better job of making the national committee aware of what is going on.

I am a little baffled about how best to do this, but I suppose the first step is to contact the members of the board and either have a dialog with them, or find out who (perhaps a subcommittee) one should have a dialog with.

Dan Weinreb (? - 2012)

I just heard that Dan Weinreb passed away after a long illness.  I was completely unaware of his battle with cancer, which is apparently how he wanted it.

I am completely in shock about this, and I can not imagine that DLW will not be at the other end of an email anymore.

I remember meeting DLW when he and Lee Parks and others came down from Livermore to see one of the Star Wars films, I forget which one. It might have been Empire Strikes Back. He was instrumental in getting me back to Cambridge for the Symbolics R&D open house all those years ago. He was a good friend and listened to my confusion and distress about my current unemployment although he did not know what to advise, except to suggest that I move back to Cambridge.

I remember when I worked at Mass Illusion, that he and Cheryl and their son came down to visit me in Lenox. I think I had run into them by accident in one of the towns in Western Mass. and we recognized each other even though we had not seen each other in more than a decade.

Here is a link to a testimonial about him at a company he helped to found.

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2012/09/07/dan-weinreb-boston-computer-geek-community-figure-dies-of-cancer/

Picture of DLW courtesy of Jack Holloway.

Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness

I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why. It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic - with its vast fossil hunt and its wholesale boring and melting of the ancient ice caps. And I am the more reluctant because my warning may be in vain.

Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness is a classic of American horror. If you haven't read it, it is a short read, you can probably read it in an hour or so. It is online below.

There was some hope about a year ago that Guillermo del Toro would direct a movie of Madness.  But that project has gone away.  Its probably all for the best.

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Mountains_of_Madness


Text
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/mountainsofmaddness.htm

Script for Short Version of Dark Star (1974)

I was searching the Internet to find a quote from the intelligent but disobedient bomb in Dark Star (1974), when I came across the entire script.

Dark Star was written by John Carpenter & Dan O'Bannon, and directed by John Carpenter.  It was the first film for both of them I believe.

This is an excellent example of a low-budget film that transcends its origins.   If you have a few minutes, that is all the time it will take to read the script.

 They spent literally $100s of dollars on the visual effects for this movie, and every penny of it is up on the screen.  The "alien" who invades their ship is famously a beachball with plastic feet.

You should definitely think you are reading a script by graduate students at a university in the early 1970s (e.g. the early 70s were the late 60s according to various theories about how this culture by decade phenomena works).

The sequence with the discussion with the bomb can be found at Youtube at the link below.  This is obviously a spoiler for the film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjGRySVyTDk

Script
http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/dark-star_short.html

Imdb
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069945/

Autonomous But Not Debugged: the Case of ED 209 and Bomb 20

This post is about a US Air Force report about future technology which seems to foretell a well-known plot point in science fiction, the autonomous device that has been "insufficiently verified".

At various times, groups within our government attempt to give direction to the research and development that they are doing over the next decade.  This is the sixth version of the USAF report, the first being issued in 1945 and co-authored by Dr. Theodore von Karman and General Hap Arnold.

In the words of the current authors:

"Technology Horizons" is neither a prediction of the future nor a forecast of a set of likely future scenarios. It is a rational assessment of what is credibly achievable from a technical perspective to give the Air Force capabilities that are suited for the strategic, technology, and budget environments of 2010-2030. 

A link to the current version of this report, issued in 2010 is at the bottom of this post.   There are a variety of very interesting things in this report but here are three statements near the beginning which I paraphrase here:

1. The USAF must pursue the use of autonomy (e.g. autonomous devices and systems) in an aggressive manner in all areas of its operations and work, far beyond what is currently being done today.   Autonomous in this case means airplanes and equipment operating without humans aboard or directing their actions.

2. But the science and technology of "verification of this autonomy", in other words, how you know it will do the right thing, is far behind the science and technology of the autonomy itself.

3. And this is even more urgent since there are other countries who are far less picky about verification, and who are much more OK about things occasionally not working.  Not working might mean blowing up the wrong building, or dropping on the wrong person, for example.

Thus, research and progress in the area of "verification of autonomous systems" so you don't blow up the wrong thing/person is the highest priority issue addressed by this report.

Now this is of course very funny as any student of science fiction or movies about the future is well aware.

The field of SF is filled with autonomous systems that go crazy or do the wrong thing with disastrous results.  See for example Colossus: The Forbin Project,  2001: A Space Odyssey, the Terminator series, and literally hundreds of other examples could be cited.

Two of my favorites in this genre include the Ed 209 character from Robocop (1987) and Bomb 20 from Dark Star (1974).   

ED 209 (Enforcement Droid Series 209) is a classic stop-motion model done by Phil Tippet. I am pretty sure that this is stop-motion and not go-motion, although I could be wrong.  And I think that the stop-motion artifacts contribute to the character and animation of Ed.   Ed is a great, if somewhat minor, character, who, in his enthusiasm for law enforcement executes a corporate executive inappropriately.

We have on Youtube two versions of this famous boardroom test sequence.  In the first version, we have the complete demonstration, but with much of the physical make up prosthetics at the end modified to suit those of more delicate sensibilities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9l9wxGFl4k&feature=related

In this version of the famous board room sequence, notice the full use of practical makeup effects to contribute to the story.  This is from the so-called director's cut.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMihmYf4WJI

Then there is the case of Bomb 20 in Dark Star.   Who could ask for a better low budget prop ?  And it has one of the more amusing speeches by a deranged synthetic intelligence in any film, maybe not as great as HAL 2000, who is our Hamlet of deranged synthetic intelligences, but very good nevertheless.

PINBACK (to bomb): But you can't explode in the bomb bay.  Its foolish.   You'll kill us all.
        There is no reason for it.
BOMB 20:  I am programmed to detonate in nine minutes.
        Detonation will occur at the programmed time.
PINBACK: You won't consider another course of action, for instance,
        just waiting around a while so we can disarm you?
BOMB 20: No.

Here is one of the scenes with our unverified Bomb 20.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjGRySVyTDk

Clearly these are good examples of autonomous devices who could have benefited from more testing and  verification.

There are other interesting technologies and surprises in the report.  

http://www.af.mil/information/technologyhorizons.asp

Mysterious Booms Part 4: A Boom Is Not Proof of an Operational Aircraft

Part 4: Booms, Yes, But What Do They Mean ?

[This post was edited on 9/3/2012 to make it more concise and more skeptical].

Go to your favorite search engine and type in "mysterious booms", possibly setting the date range to the last year. You will notice that there are quite a few of them, but that three in particular are (a) Wisconsin, (b) Northern California near Pleasant Valley, and (c) Southern California near San Diego.

There are others as well, if you keep looking, you will find them. But these three are the ones that have gotten themselves into the news media.

We are just going to cut to the chase here.

The booms heard near San Diego are observed by semi-expert and expert observers.   Something is flying that is causing those booms.

This is less clear in Pleasant Valley and Wisconsin.  Wisconsin is no where near the coast, so if the booms were caused by a flying vehicle then we would expect the boom to travel across country and this has not been reported that I am aware of.  This means that they are not from a flying vehicle, unless there is some reason that they only go above a certain speed in the Wisconsin area, e.g. they are going into space or back from space.  I think this is very unlikely on the present evidence.

So if there is a secret aircraft flying operationally, in contrast to a test aircraft of exotic technology, then the evidence for it involves sonic booms heard on the coast.  There is such evidence at various times, but the evidence is not overwhelming and could be explained by occasional tests or other airplanes flying fast that for various reasons are not public.

So I am going to have to give an ambiguous answer here to the question of whether a black, presumably reconnaissance airplane is operational.   The evidence supporting it is circumstantial, but not conclusive, and this evidence is, in summary:

1. They do spend money on secret programs which are not identified.
2. They do have a history of building and flying very secret reconnaissance aircraft,
3. There have been sightings of exotic, unidentified aircraft.
4. There have been reports of sonic booms in appropriate places (e.g. not Wisconsin).
5. The last time a new, fast, high flying reconnaissance aircraft was announced was 1964.   Either they have moved entirely to satellites and slower drones, or there is a secret, fast craft of this type.

The evidence is suggestive but not conclusive.   The evidence could be explained by programs to test various technologies combined with the use of various existing airframes for secret purposes.

My guess is that whatever it is, if it is anything at all, it will be "outed" in about 10 years or so from now, or about 20 years after it started flying operationally.  If it exists, it is likely to be revealed for one of the following reasons

1. Disclosure for domestic political advantage
2. An operational mistake that reveals clear evidence of the vehicle
3. A disclosure by a former participant on their own initiative
4. An approved disclosure when it is no longer felt that keeping the device secret serves a legitimate national security purpose.

American Foreign Policy as Presented by Clint Eastwood in the Unforgiven (1992)

Clint Eastwood speaking at the Republican National Convention reminds me of another speech he gave at the end of The Unforgiven, the 1992 film that he directed.  

In this speech, he tells the people of the town how things are going to be. As he does so, there is an American flag behind him.   I felt, watching this scene, that somehow the speech was metaphorically a statement of American foreign policy in various administrations.

The character played by Eastwood, Will Munny, is on his horse, in the rain, after killing a whole lot of people in a gun fight and, dramatically positioned in front of an American flag, he says:

You better bury Ned right. You better not cut up nor otherwise harm no whores. Or I will come back and kill every one of you sons a bitches.

It just seems obvious to me that he is talking about something more, something grander, than just the events in this movie.  

But see for yourself.  Here is the sequence until Youtube takes it down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ-IayJ18EM&feature=plcp

Mysterious Booms Part 3: What Makes a Loud Boom ?

[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 3: What Makes a loud noise that sounds like "BOOM" ?

Suppose you get up one day, stretch, maybe drink some coffee and then suddenly hear a loud noise, like a boom, or a crash. Boom! Maybe the room shakes a little bit. You look at the clock, and let us say it is 8:15 in the morning. And you think nothing of it.

But then, just suppose, that the next day you get up, get some coffee, and hear another loud noise, boom ! And you look at the clock, and its 8:10 AM. And you think nothing of it. Now lets say that happens five days in a row, and then never happens again. And when you mention what you heard to a co-worker, they say, yes, I heard that too, and nobody knows what they were. You check around and that turns out to be correct, everyone in your town who was awake at the time, and even a few who were not, heard these booms and felt them. But no one knows what caused it.

It turns out there are a number of things that can cause a loud boom, and maybe shake things up a bit. Here is a short list of the most probable for your consideration: an explosion such as a gas main exploding, an explosion such as a construction crew setting off some dynamite for building demolition or excavation, a collision such as a truck running into a building or an airplane running into the ground, a sonic boom such as made by an airplane, or a sonic boom and possibly also an explosion / collision if a meteor of some substance were to enter the atmosphere somewhere near where you are. Another possibility might be an earthquake. Although many quakes do not make much noise on their own, often there are noises associated with them, and they could easily make a loud boom or crashing sound. This is not a complete list, but it is a reasonable point of departure for our discussion.

But the first thing to know, is that loud noises do not "just happen", they have a cause. And the second thing to know is that other people heard it, so its not your imagination, or something just local that *sounded* loud to you, but was really just near your ear. And the third thing to know is that whatever it was, happened several days in a row at about the same time, so that means it was not an accidental explosion, or an earthquake, or a meteor or a car crash because those do not happen more than once as if on a schedule. And the fourth thing to know is that no one knows what caused them, and that means that the local military base is denying they are involved, and that if these are construction-related explosions, then they are not following the rules for setting off explosions which requires them to get a permit. But all legitimate construction or mining companies do follow the rules in this country (it is a well-enforced regulation everywhere that I am aware of), so it wasn't that.

In fact, there are only a few things that can cause such a loud boom on a schedule and be unknown. The first is that someone is flying something that is really fast and not talking about it. And the second is that someone is setting off explosions in the ground or the air and not talking about it. Both types of things happen, and while they are usually government related, they do not always have to be. But unless you live near the border of Mexico and the drug cartels are building a tunnel and do not mind that everyone within 20 miles can hear them do it, which is unlikely, then it was not that, and that leaves us only two causes.

And those two causes are generally that the government is flying something really fast that it doesn't want to talk about and the other is that the government is digging something and it doesn't want to talk about it. Both things happen as it turns out.

Continued in part 4

Android Notes: Cameras, FTP & Development Environments

A friend and I are goofing around trying to figure out how to write something for the Nexus 7 tablet. I am writing about it not because I have anything all that interesting to say, but because it may be useful to someone else trying to to the same thing.

1. In order to take pictures, you need to download an application, it doesn't come with the tablet. I downloaded the free Modoco applet, and it works fine. Yes, it is awkward to try and take a picture with the camera on the front, you have to angle it in a funny way to see what you are doing. The pictures are just ok, which is all they were ever intended to be.

2. In order to get files on and off the tablet, I downloaded the WellFTP server. It defaults to an ftp port of 2121, which is non-standard, but ok. I am using gftp on Linux and filezilla on the Windows XP, and they can both talk to it simultaneously. All user data on the device seems to be under the DCIM folder. You should set up your wireless router to assign a static IP number to it in order to make things easier to use. This is all under "LAN Setup" in your router's control panel.

3. There is good news and bad news about the Android development. On the one hand it is highly tied into Eclipse, which is one of these deeply disturbed development environments for children, or perhaps development environments for disturbed children. Its a real pain in the ass and frankly, as documented, it doesn't work. But you have to have one of these if you, Google, want to play in the mainstream and have the morons, I mean the developers, develop applications for you. You can spend days figuring out which version will play well together with which version of the android development environment, or you can, YIPPEE, use the command line interface. Just use the command line interface. It is much more productive.

4. In a later post, I will publish a "hello, world" applet. It is pretty ugly, imho.