Transcript of a talk given by Dr. Richard Hamming

Since I am stuck out here in the middle of nowhere in this perfect republican hell, I am not in a position to hear talks by interesting people without huge effort. Unless it happens to be on the Internet, of course. Even so, finding something actually rewarding on the Internet instead of merely interesting is hit and miss. So when I come across something I think is valuable there is likely (in this new world) to be a post about it, so I can find it again.

Here is a transciption of a talk given by Dr. Richard Hamming at Bell Core in Murray Hill, NJ in 1986 on the topic of "You and Your Research". A better title might be, "How to do great work" or it might even be, "How I, Richard Hamming, did great work".

Be that as it may be, its a quick read and I found it entertaining and possibly even useful.

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~dsb/Inspiration/hamming.pdf

If you don't know what a Hamming code is, you should, and you can read about it here.

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

The Strange Case of the Bye Bye Birdie (1963) Blue Screen Photography

[This post should be rewritten, there are two different  topics.  The first topic is how digital has increased the volume of visual effects by increasing the range within which the effects can be used, and a second post about what happens when things dont work and a classic example of using the shot anyway.]

[As an addendum to this little note, I want to remind my readers that we are talking about 1963 here, or more likely, 1962.   When I talk about blonde hair and moving cameras and pulling mattes, please recall that there is no tracking technology at the time (that I am aware of) and none of the work that has been done since then to electronically or digitally pull a matte from blonde hair.  I will do a later post on this topic,]

The coming of digital visual effects and the use of computer animation at the expense of the traditional arts may not have eliminated poverty or improved society dramatically, but it has had a notable impact on the filmmaking production process. It has done so in a number of ways, but mostly by greatly increasing the volume of work that can be done with these techniques by lowering the skill level required to execute them. Ironically, using computers has not reduced the cost of these techniques, using computers always increases costs, but it did dramatically increase the volume of shots that could use these techniques and in many cases eased the restrictions with which these techniques had to be used.

When First Secretary Joseph Stalin spoke at SIGGRAPH he said, "Quantity has a quality all its own" referring not to tank production, as some believe, but to volume production of digital visual effects. 

In the bad old days, a film was greatly restricted in its use of special optical technologies and other techniques in their production process. All films would use optical techniques for opening titles, end credits, and fades and dissolves. It used to be that the film editor acted as the visual effects supervisor, in a certain way, for a film, or most films. On top of these seemingly mundane but actually extremely important uses, a few films would make use of exotic technologies such as optical compositing, rear screen projection, and paintings on glass and other such special processes if the story and the studio permitted. A very few films and even fewer filmmakers would make these technologies part of their oeuvre, and then we might have a Hitchcock or a Disney, and films like North by Northwest, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Forbidden Planet or Mary Poppins.

Just wanted to say goodbye !

If you examine these films I suspect you will be surprised by the very small number of visual effects shots that are actually in those films. You may also be surprised by the way the limitations of the art and craft of visual effects informed some of the creative decisions. We will showcase some of these brilliant uses of this technology back in the day when you had to know something to use them successfully and couldn't just do whatever the fuck all you wanted and expect someone to fix it later.

Here are two examples of the kinds of restrictions that I am referring to: (a) the camera should not move during certain kinds of shots, or should move only in a very constrained way, because you are going to have to create other elements and those elements will also have to track with the camera and that will be annoying, difficult and expensive and (b) do not put someone with blonde or red hair in front of a blue screen because it is extremely hard, and often impossible, to pull a good, partial density (e.g. the matte is semi transparent) matte for it using the chemical blue screen process.

But whatever you do, do not put a blonde or red head in front of a blue screen while moving the camera. That would be a really crazy thing to do.

So what happened when someone ignored these guidelines and the shot didn't work?

There are three approaches and only three as far as I know: (1) cut the shot from the movie, (2) spend a lot of money trying to fix it and edit as best you can around it, or (3) use it anyway and pretend you always meant to do that.

It was in reference to this third approach that Georges Danton advised the Assemblee Legislative in 1792 saying "Il nous faut de l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!", which means something like "What we need is audacity, then more audacity, always audacity!"

Consider by way of example of this third approach the fascinating and not completely understood case of the opening of Bye Bye Birdie (1963).

This film is an early 60s repurposing of a Broadway musical that fictionally transforms the real-life draft of Elvis Presley into the US Army into a parable about how one can spin any adversity into a cheap publicity stunt. The film has a number of entertaining songs and a spectacular performance by the 22 year old Ann-Margret as the teenage love interest and ingenue.

The film opens with Ann-Margret in classic 1950s High School drag attacking the camera and belting out the title song with all the energy and enthusiasm you could ask for.  She sings those immortal words:

         Bye bye Birdie! I'm gonna miss you so.
         Bye bye Birdie. Why'd you have to go?
         No more sunshine! Its followed you away.
         I'll cry, Birdie, till you're home to stay!

        I'll miss the way you smile, as always just for me
        And each and every night, I'll write you faithfully!
        Bye bye Birdie, its awful hard to bear,
        Bye bye Birdie! Guess I'll always care!

        Guess I'll always care !
        Guess I'll always care !

(See the sequence on youtube.  You want the first 1:15 seconds only.   The rest is from the end of the movie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t3cBTb3xPc)

It may not be Shakespeare but Ann-Margret is so completely drop dead gorgeous and talented and wonderful and I think the sequence is very entertaining.  I can just imagine the director filled with enthusiasm saying: "Oh I have an idea, while we are doing this shot, how about adding a fan offstage to blow her hair around a little, and lets make sure she turns around facing away from the camera to show her hair off, oh yes, and Ann?  Could you shake your head around a lot so we can see your fabulous hair?  Thanks thats great!"

Just try to pull a matte for this hair, you idiots!

Do you notice something odd about this shot?  Something about the background color?  Its rather blue, don't you think?

The story that is reported is that the director, George Sidney, was so taken by Ann-Margret, who was not at the time a well-known star, that he proposed to the studio that they write a song for her and use it at the front and end of the movie. The studio declined so Sidney paid for the shoot himself, spending a reported 60,000 $US. When the movie opened and Ann-Margret was famous, the studio reimbursed Sidney. The song used the music of another song from the play that was not used in the movie version, with new lyrics written for the purpose of opening and closing the movie. 

The unconfirmed story is that Sidney planned to composite her against more newspaper / news footage of Birdie going into the army so he shot against blue screen.  But, so the story goes,  he gave up the idea of compositing the sequence since it would have been too expensive (and I doubt he would have been very happy with the results).   I have a vision in my mind of the effects people called in to review the scene and looking at it on the movieola and smiling grimly every time Ms. Margret shakes her head at the camera and her hair flies around, thinking to themselves, who is going to tell the director the bad news?

So I am guessing that the director said something like: "Fuck it, no one will be looking at the background anyway, they will be looking at Ann-Margret.   Just cut it in and no one will notice."

And I think that was the right decision. 

As far as I know, this is the only major bluescreen sequence in a movie that just uses the bluescreen photography as is as if they meant to shoot it that way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bye_Bye_Birdie_(film)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056891/

___________
Revised 1-15-2013

SIGGRAPH 2012 Mini Trip Report

[This post will be regularly updated as I think about things to add.   I have put a comment in italics about a test that I saw that I was not supposed to see.  It was by far the best thing I saw at SIGGRAPH].

I always try to get my friends to write trip reports of conferences they attend so that we can all benefit from the experience.   Of course they never do, its too much trouble.

So, to lead by example, here is my micro trip report of SIGGRAPH 2012.

It was a plausible and useful addition to the long line of national SIGGRAPH conferences. It was a worthy addition to the "new SIGGRAPH" I might argue, one that does not demonstrate breakthroughs per se, but does let colleagues talk to each other and does have new ideas and some progress on some fronts if you concentrate on the technical program. The best part of SIGGRAPH was the individual conversations and relationships that occurred, as always. This is also often hit and miss.

The worst part of SIGGRAPH was that, as far as I can tell, there is no economic opportunity there. If you went to SIGGRAPH to get work you were going to be disappointed as there was none there worth speaking of. And none that anyone knew about either. A total zero.

I took the opportunity to try and get to know some people better that I had only seen over the years, particularly Copper Giloth and Jane Veeder. I had an opportunity to talk to the head of something at SIGGRAPH, possibly the national conference, Jeff Jortner.

At the Pioneer's event, I ran into Rodney Stock. Rodney has apparently become fabulously wealthy by creating (with some partners) a device which cuts paper to designs. Something about a partnership with China. I was delighted and thought it was also very funny. He claims that their major customers are in the "Red" states, e.g. he is referring top republican women who cut little paper ornaments for parties, or something.

Technically, the two best parts were the Lytro camera and the MIT work on taking pictures of photons and showing global illumination through a coca cola bottle.

The best animation that I saw was something I can not talk much about.  Through my friend Josh Pines I met someone who had been at ILM and we talked about a number of things, and it happened to come up that I am a giant fan of "tests", which I think are a misunderstood and underrated art form.   He showed me a test for a project that is now cancelled.  He just happened to have it on his laptop.  I can not say what it was.  It did involve motion capture and human figure animation in a non-realistic usage (e.g. animated characters was the goal, not Benjamin Button reality).  It was about 5 minutes long.  It was done at a production company that no longer exists.   

This test was fantastic.  It was a really, really good job.   Of the four main characters, I completely bought the realization of three of them.  The fourth was problematic, but they knew that, and if the project had been continued it would of course have been worked on.   

I saw one thing at Emerging Technologies that was great.   Unfortunately, I am at a loss of how to describe it.  It basically was an exhibit that showed the influence of vision on the sense of touch.   When I find the references and a picture or two, I will do a post about it.

The trade show was about the right size for me. I did not get a chance to do more than about 1/4 of it. I was particularly fascinated by the presence of ESRI which is a major company in the Geospatial world. They were there with their software CityEngine.

I had essentially no contact with anyone from Autodesk.

Other than the Disney party that had no Disney people at it, there were no parties of note that I was invited to. At that party I ran into a fabulous entrepreneur who I will write up in a later post.

I had lunch with Tom Duff, Keith Goldfarb, and Ken Perlin. I talked to Pat Hanrahan, Jim Kajiya, Glenn Entis, Carl Rosendahl, Maija Beeton, Paul Debevec and Ed Catmull. I ran into Peggy Weil and Perry Hoberman. The 80s party was pleasant and among other people, I ran into Liz Ralston, Jane Stefan, Anne Marie and even Brad deGraf from dWi. Also Kerry Colonna who denied ever meeting his famous Roman relatives.  Also Jeff Kleiser, Allen Battino, Joan Collins and Phillip Bergeron of course.

I had a nice conversation with Greg Turk while trying to get him to his train on time.

I was able to track down Mark Levoy who told me that he was no longer working with the Forma Urbis Romae.

Michael Kass was very generous with his time and tried to generate new ideas for me, in terms of what it is I am supposed to do next.

For the first time in many years, I did not see Nick England or Mary Whitton at SIGGRAPH.

They tell me that Jim Blinn did not attend this year.

I tried to attend the awards thing this year, but found it impossible to sit through.  I did not attend the Keynote speech as it did not seem very relevant or interesting.   It may have been, but there was no way I could guess that from how they presented it.   I did not attend the Electronic Theatre, that event has been dead for over 15 years.

As always, the Job Fair was completely useless for me. I did have a very pleasant encounter with someone who tried to couch me on style and approach.

I ran into Bob Lambert briefly at SIGGRAPH. He looked a little thin to me, and he was tragically dead a few weeks later.

Special thanks to Michael Deering and David Coons who helped sponsor me at SIGGRAPH. Without their help, I could not have attended.

20th Color Imaging Conference Nov 12-16 2012 Doubletree Hotel in LA

The 20th Color Imaging Conference is in LA this year from November 12 - 16 at the Doubletree Hotel in Downtown LA.  In spite of a major dose of Hollywood glamour, it looks very good.

It looks as though they are repeating the Academy Tech Council presentation on color in the history of the motion picture industry.  This is a fabulous presentation (if indeed that is what they are doing) and if you haven't seen it you should.  I plan to write about the original presentation in this blog eventually.

One year, many years ago now, I took a course on color from Dr. Hunt.  It was great, although I am not sure he is teaching it any more.

This is a really great conference, for what it is worth.  It is not inexpensive.

http://www.imaging.org/ist/conferences/cic/CIC20%20Preliminary%20Program.pdf

Fromkin on British Diplomatic History and its Role in Understanding Lawrence of Arabia

From time to time, this blog is going to recommend some book or books on a topic.   The goal is to help my readers be so much better informed on important issues that we face every day: from the Indo European language "problem", to deciphering Linear B, from the name of R.E. Lee's horse:  these are topics which we all need to know well in order to live in our modern world.

The recommended book is basically background for the Israel/Palestinian dispute.  It amazes me how many people I know who have strong opinions on this topic and yet do not know much, if anything, about the history of the region and its people.

So since this topic is considered to be one of the top threats to world peace, it seems to me that my well-informed readers would be better off to know a little more about the history, and one particular period is especially relevant, and that is the period right around WWI when the Ottoman Empire was collapsing and the League of Nations assigned Great Britain to partition that region between the different competing groups in a way that could be perceived as "fair".   This is the period when, among other things, the Balfour Declaration happened, when Allenby took Jerusalem, when Jordan was created, Syria was created, Lebanon was created, etc.   What you think is the "always been there" configuration of countries in that part of the middle east was created, out of whole cloth, by the British with a little "help", thats sarcasm by the way, of the French and a few other countries.

The book is David Fromkin's book "A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East".

If nothing else, it will make Lawrence of Arabia all the more interesting when you see it again. And while we are on the subject of Lawrence of Arabia, check out the link below to a web site that goes over this movie in infinite detail.

Die!  Die!

The book:

http://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-20th-Anniversary/dp/0805088091

The analyis of the movie:

http://filmladd.com/?LawrenceOfArabia_05

Paperman Breakdown / Disney Project of Some Sort

Tom Brigham found this on youtube.

This is a Disney project called "Paperman".

This is the sort of project I would love to do if I am ever in a position to do a project.  It has, at first glance, some interesting technology and a noble goal, or at least, so it seems, which is to do 3D animation with some of the aesthetics of 2D animation.

3D animation is in many ways a step backwards from 2D.  I was shocked when 3D appeared to wipe out 2D: how unexpected, unfair, and undesirable!

Damn.  Where did I leave my keys?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKl9mpGMCiA&feature=youtu.be

All copyrights in all ways owned by the Walt Disney Company.  I presume they do not mind us publicizing this work, but who knows, we will find out.

Tom Swift and His Amazing Underground Conspiracy Theory

When researching my posts on "Do Mysterious Booms Indicate a Secret Aerospace Project?" for this blog, I started to delve into the beliefs on the Internet regarding secret underground facilities, to broaden the piece beyond its limitation to secret aerospace projects. The origins of many of the recorded mysterious booms are almost certainly underground, not showing the signs of sonic booms, hence the research into subterranean construction. But I recoiled in horror and quickly turned away.

My impression was that the "underground conspiracy" theory people are really nutty. Of course, I must recognize that some of this perceived nuttiness is in the eyes of the beholder. How do we differentiate "wackiness" from "scary nutty"?  I will now compare and contrast a UFO theory with an underground theory by way of example.

Some of the UFO people believe that "the CIA is reverse engineering the alien anti-gravity drive from the spaceship that they recovered at the end of WWII from the Nazi secret laboratory where they had been working on it since the spaceship had crash-landed in the 1930s." This has a certain ring of fabulous imagination to me, for some reason, even if it is a little, just a little, unbelievable.

But many of the "underground" people believe (so I read on their web sites) that "Giant tunnels underneath the USA, from coast to coast, connecting secret and huge underground bases, built by atomic tunnel creation machines that can create a massive tunnel at a rate of 7 miles per day and leave absolutely no residue (the mass displaced is somehow coated onto the side of the tunnel making it perfectly smooth and robust, instantaneously). No radiation, no waste, just instant tunnels. And why is our govenment secretly building these tunnels? Why to destroy civil liberty of course. And they are all in it, all of them, all of those people building these secret tunnels to destroy liberty are keeping this dark secret and those who dare to talk about these tunnels, and the secret bases, and the vast conspiracy are silenced! Except of course those on the internet who talk about it, I guess they are not silenced. But they will be! Just you wait and see! And somehow this is all linked in with the Chemtrails conspiracy and some others that I did not completely follow, something about making us all impotent, I think.

For some reason, I find this much more disturbing than the theory that the CIA is reverse engineering the anti-gravity drive, but maybe it's just me.

Nevertheless, I want to propose to you a theory for where some of these arguably insane belief systems come from. To the best of my knowledge, this theory has not been presented before and so I am out on a limb here as my evidence is circumstantial at best. But maybe someone with more resources, time and credibility can take this idea and develop it sufficiently in the proper venues. If it is perceived to have merit, that is.

It occurred to me that in order to have many of these beliefs, one must be really disconnected from any sort of understanding of physical realities. Gravity is still gravity, even if you have an anti-gravity drive. Matter is still matter, and hot matter has to cool, even if you have a magical tunnel boring machine. Heat, you know, energy, neither created nor destroyed, you know? Just calling something atomic doesn't mean much in this day and age, and hasn't meant something all that special since the 1960s or so. Maybe even the early 1960s at that. Flying saucers from outer space will still make sonic booms in our atmosphere unless they can change their shape during the boom, perhaps, but they will have to do something. They are not exempt because they have a "mysterious" energy source.

Where could these crazy science magic ideas have come from?

Well I do know one potential source. As a child, I had read a series of fake-science adventure stories, where just calling something Atomic did mean that it had magical powers, and where a small number of "brilliant young scientists" could build devices in no time at all that could do amazing things, work the first time, never kill anyone, save the world from the Brungarians (1) and yet everyone could be home in time for dinner. Mom, I have to test the atomic rocketship! Tom, you just be home for dinner, I have been cooking all day! Oh, ok, Mom.

Yes, Tom Swift, Jr.

I read all 33 of these books and even then, 10 years old, I did not think they were plausible. Nothing in our world works the first time, but every one of their amazing inventions did. Never over budget. Never any problems that a good screwdriver and a wrench couldn't fix. And never any lack of money. No US government or local city government to come in and say what are you doing building rockets in your back yard? No problems at all.

So here is my theory. That somehow there are people out there who read Tom Swift Jr but did not realize that this is not the way the world works. They believe that people can actually build the Repelatron Skyway, the Ultrasonic Cycloplane, the G-Force Inverter, the Diving Seacopter, the Atomic Earth Blaster, and yes even the Giant Robot and the Flying Laboratory.

You and I might not be able to, but Tom Swift, Jr could.

And be home in time for his home-cooked, American dinner.   

So maybe these sad, conspiracy theorists are actually just manifesting reflections of a pulp fiction dream, the American inventor who can do anything, for whom no problem is too hard, for whom money is not a limitation, and where the family supports him. All gone wrong of course, and twisted into an evil conspiracy, but a reflection nevertheless of this dream, now long abandoned and never to return.

_____________________________________________________

1. In the Tom Swift world, the bad guys were almost always the "Brungarian", which seems to be some conflation of "Bulgarian" with "Hungarian", both of which were at the time these novels were written behind the Iron Curtain.

Anne McKenney ( - 2009)

[I just got email from Elizabeth/Beth McKenney and she had some corrections for me.]

I just got the word that Anne McKenney passed away several years ago in 2009. I had been out of touch with the McKenney family and just got back in touch and found out.

Anne was like a second mother to me. I was friends with her five children and spent a huge amount of time in their great three-story house in Richmond, Va. Anne's husband, "Speed" McKenney, was friends with my uncle Harry and the two of them famously built the Virginia power grid out to rural areas in the 1950s (I think).  Beth tells me that no one knows where "Speed"'s nickname came from.

The good news is that I am back in touch with the family again and maybe I will somehow figure out how to get enough money to visit them in Richmond, Va.

In the small world category, Anne was the Aunt, I think, of Glorianna Davenport of MIT.  In other words, according to Elizabeth, Glorianna is Anne's niece.  I always have trouble keeping these relationships straight, I admit.

This is a picture of Anne.  Yes, a bit older, but definitely looking like her and with the same smile that I remember.

This makes three friends that I hear have passed away in the last month. I certainly hope that this trend does not continue.

Thank God that this is not going to happen to us and that we are not going to get any older.

[Addendum: A friend heard how distraught I was that I had not visited Anne when she was still with us (because of poverty of course) and he is determined to visit an elderly friend of his, assuming he is still here, we can only hope.  So maybe some good can come from this.  Learn from my mistakes, you who are reading this.]

A Tree Falls in Los Angeles

The following story is mostly true, just slightly abbreviated for impact, so to speak.

A few years ago a person was killed while sitting in his car waiting for a street light to change. I didn't know him, I just read about it online. At the time, Los Angeles was having a particularly bad case of the Santa Ana winds, and things were being ripped apart all over the city, and one of the worst dangers is that an older tree or branch will be torn off and smash into something and that is what happened here. To avoid this sort of thing is the reason that the city and local communities send out units to trim older trees while everyone complains that their favorite tree is being mangled. The city tries to prune the trees before something breaks off in a storm and hurts someone and then they get sued. Obviously they missed one.

The man was sitting in his car waiting for the light to change near the Sepulveda dam, out in the valley, and BANG a tree dropped on him without warning and killed him.

So I told a friend in Los Angeles this story. "A man was waiting at a street light in his car," I said, "and a tree fell on him and killed him."

"Oh my god!", said my friend. "Thats terrible! What kind of car was it?"

Not Even Quatermass Can Avoid the Youtube Copyright Checker!

From time to time, I put some video excerpt up on Youtube usually as supporting evidence in favor or against some point in some discussion I am having with someone. So for example, whenever someone calls me crazy, which really irritates me, I want to point him to the scene from Jon deBont's masterpiece, Speed (1994), in which Keanu Reeves calls Dennis Hopper crazy and Dennis replies "No, Jack.", he says, "Poor people are crazy. I'm eccentric".

So I use these different scenes to illustrate ideas, or technique, and of course I rarely if ever own the copyright.   I think that I am allowed to do this but it depends on one's interpretation of the FCC Fair Use Guidelines, which are not black and white but are subject to interpretation. I think I am ok in this use for the following reasons:

(a) I am not making money with these excerpts, nor am I trying to make money,

(b) I am not causing the legitimate owner to lose money, nor am I trying to do so,

(c) Only a small part of the original material is being used, e.g. an excerpt not the complete piece,

(d) The purpose of using the material is education or analysis

I actually hope I am helping the real owner get more money, not less, from his film, by exposing people to a teaser from their work.   Thats what I hope.

[I will insert link to good fair use guide when I find one]

But that is not how Youtube sees it, and sometime after I post the excerpt, Youtube detects it and sends me a nasty note of varying severity. I am fascinated by how they detect these pieces among the hundreds of millions of scenes that they are managing, roughly 120,000,000 of them, and about 200,000 new ones a day.

Of course Youtube does not discuss the process they use. But here are a few things that are observed and inferred and submitted here for your consideration:

1. Sometimes its fast, sometimes its slow.

Sometimes I post a clip and before I know it I have an email from Youtube telling me that it is part of someone else's copyrighted material. From that we conclude that Yourtube pays particular attention to newly loaded videos. But sometimes it ignores a video for months and then discovers it. Why is this? It could be because new material is being added to their checking process all the time, and maybe this particular piece is part of something newly added. Or it could be because some pieces are on a "check often" list, and some are on a "check occassionally" list, or it could just be random. Usually however, if it does not discover and complain about a piece within 1-12 hours, then it probably won't complain for at least a few weeks if not longer.

2. Reversing the video does not seem to help.

It is believed among some people that reversing the video (e.g. flipping it horizotally) defeats the checking algorithm. My experience says that this is not true, but admittedly I only tried once, and I reversed the entire piece. Maybe you have to flip various sections of a piece to confuse it, or something.

3. Some believe that the audio is the key.

Some believe that they are really checking the audio, not the video per se. As audio is harder to mess with and still get the meaning across, whereas there are many things one can do to distort the video. I dont know, it seems plausible to me that checking the audio would be part of their bag of techniques.

4. Some pieces they hate much more than others.

Once upon a time, an afterschool special was shown on NBC that had a very funny conspiracy theory about GE (which owned NBC) controlling the news in this country. The piece ("Mediaopoly") was animated, tongue-in-cheek, humorous. It suggested in a non-serious manner that there was a relationship between the news that NBC and the other networks printed/aired and other corporate issues such as nuclear power plants, the B1 bomber, and possibly even the JFK assassination. NBC went through the roof, the piece was never shown again, and they have been suppressing this piece in all media ever since to this day. I have a very bad copy of this piece which was downloaded with great difficulty from the Internet many years ago. I can not get it up on Youtube for longer than about 1/2 second before it is banned in all forms and all countries and a nasty note is in my inbox telling me that if I try that stunt again they will permanently disconnect my Youtube account.

Why you would almost think that there was a conspiracy not to allow this piece to be seen, wouldn't you? Why you could almost believe that they were afraid of something.

5. But mostly they just want to sell advertising.

But there has been a new policy recently on all excerpts except "Mediapoly" which I am delighted with. They send you a note that says that your piece may be copyrighted by someone else, but don't worry, thats ok. Its just that when someone views it, they may also see some ad that is appropriate given that someone else wants to get some benefit from this. I think this is great, I get to show the piece, they get to make some money, everybody is happy.

Not even Dr. Quatermass is safe from Youtube. I had the following excerpt up on my site for months when just yesterday they told me that it was owned by a 3rd party but that I should not worry: the video can stay up and my viewers may see some ads from time to time.   I love this solution.

Here Quatermass and his lovely assistant are reviewing the ancient records involving mysterious and possibly devilish activities at Hobbes Lane.

Dr. Quatermass and his lovely assistant.  We all suspect that they are having an affair.

The excerpt is from "Five Million Years To Earth" (1967) which is a remake of the famous BBC "Quatermass and the Pit" from 1958, starring the esteemed Dr. Quatermass. This is from the remake, the original from BBC, which you can find on Youtube at last, is remarkable and may even be some sort of live television event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwvnCVzNpOQ

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062168/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051305/