Will Life of Pi Bring Audience Credibility Back to Computer Graphics?

I have noticed for many years now, that the audience has started to associate computer graphics with bad visual effects. Time after time I read on the Internet that such and such a movie had stupid computer graphics in it, and that the movie was the worse for it.

I find such comments to be distressing for many reasons, not the least of which is that there is some truth to the criticism. There seems to be something about visual effects and computer graphics which can cause a producer, or director, or studio to lose their minds. Who needs an original plot point or clever idea when you can just blow up another city? Also, ever mindful of the bottom line, they are eager to reduce costs by eliminating inessential elements, like the writer.

Another cause of this association between bad movies and computer graphics is the relentless publicity machine which grinds out a behind-the-scenes documentary for every film on the glamourous and rewarding world of computer animation. Of course, those of us in this field who have experienced this firsthand are pleased to be in the public eye after so many years huddled around a glowing screen in a dark room, that is only natural, but ultimately the film is not about the bold new technology but about the story, and the people, and what it means to us, the audience. The visual effects is no more important than the soundtrack, in fact the visual effects are usually less important than the soundtrack, yet you do not see a billion documentaries celebrating the composer and the sound effects artists, etc.  You only see a few such documentaries, which I think is more appropriate.

There is a saying in the world of visual effects that "good effects will not save a bad movie". It turns out that this is not entirely true, there are a few exceptions to this but onlly a few. And it turns out that really bad effects can damage a good movie, see for example the movie Them (1954) which will be the subject of another post.

But when you have a director who gets it, and knows how to use the medium, and has a story to tell, then you may end up with something that makes everyone look good and achieves the promise that motivated many of us to be in this field, and to help invent it.

Such a film is Life of Pi (2012) although I admit I have not seen this film (I like to wait a few years, like 20, to let it age and improve). All the reviews are fabulous, and they all talk about the excellent CGI that delivered the main character.

So, congratulations to everyone at Rhythm & Hues for delivering a project that may single handedly redeem computer graphics in the eyes of the audience.

Now Kitty, promise to be nice to Mr. Fish.  

But lest I appear too positive and upbeat here, and thus be out of character, let me remind you what the future holds. First, R&H will be inundated with scripts that are completly original and never been done before and involve a large animal (lion, tiger or bear) in a small space (lifeboat, spaceship, cabin in the woods) and a young person (boy, girl or indeterminate) in a desperate journey or adventure.

And not all of these will be directed by Ang Lee.

Will the sequel be called "Life of 2 Pi"?

Rhythm & Hues:

www.rhythm.com

Life of Pi at Imdb:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454876/

Transcendence in Visual Effects: Expressing the Inexpressible in Shaolin Soccer (2001)

As we have previously discussed, visual effects can be used for purposes beyond mere reality, but can be used to express an emotion, or the inner life of a protagonist, or in this case the experience of attaining spiritual enlightenment.

When seen in this light, most visual effects are revealed to be the empty shells that they are: communicating nothing of value, the mere posturing of one giant robot to another, of another wall that explodes, a car that crashes or the actions of a zombie going through the motions of being a human but empty of genuine human thought or emotion. It is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.

But when the purpose and talent of the filmmaker uses visual effects for a higher, more noble purpose, then visual effects can add tremendous value to a film.

In this example, from Steven Chow's Shaolin Soccer (2001), visual effects is used to show the triumphant return to enlightenment of the former and debased monks, who through the discipline of soccer and the humiliation of being defeated through the deceit and immorality of the practice team, achieve enlightenment on the soccer field. Thus the fire that appears behind them when they open their eyes, is the fire that is experienced by the soul when it attains this spiritual state. And the practice of playing soccer is a metaphor for how the secret techniques of the monks of Shaolin can lead to a better and more actualized life in the so-called real world.

The sequence is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFTP4Xj9Q-s

It is not clear which school of Buddhism is being presented, it may be an esoteric form of practice. But I have no doubt that the practice exists or should exist as the seriousness of purpose of the filmmakers comes through in every frame of their film.

A better use of the technique of a modified "bullet time" does not exist and many doubt it could exist, so perfect is its use here.

The Wikipedia page:

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

The IMDB page:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286112/

Miracles from Molecules

(This post is in progress).

I miss the cold war, when not everyone was using computers to steal money and distribute pornography, and we thought a new world was coming, a world with freedom and economic security for everyone.  A world where the rich would not oppress the poor, where disease would be defeated, and where everyone could explore their full potential, irregardless of the circumstances that the accidents of their birth allowed.

This is the world that the composers of the post-show of the Disney/Monsanto Adventure Through Inner Space celebrated.  I was listening to this song this morning and I felt compelled to transcribe the lyrics, an artifact from a past that imagined a future very different from our present.

Please watch your step as you leave the vehicle and step on the moving walkway.  

The composers of this song created a perfect statement of the triumph and potential of modern (e.g. 1960's) chemistry and sings the praises of a new hero, the industrial chemist.  The song is called "Miracles from Molecules" and it was composed by the Sherman Brothers (1) for the Walt Disney Company.

      Miracles from molecules are dawning every day
      Discoveries for happiness in a fabulous array!
      A never ending search is on, by men who dare and plan,
      Making modern miracles from molecules for man!

      Every atom is a world, an infinity unfurled,
      A world of inner space without an end!
      A world of mystery, of endless energy,
      With treasures more than man can ever spend!

      Miracles from molecules, around us everywhere,
      There are miracles from molecules, in the earth, the sea, the air!
      Now men with dreams are furthering what nature first began,
      Making modern miracles from molecules for man!

      Making modern miracles from molecules for man! 

The song encapsulates the early 1960's vision of the future and the promise of a world with unlimited energy, and new materials that solve previously unsolvable problems, a world without limitations, amen. This was a  vision of hope when some would despair in a world of poverty, war and the threat of nuclear destruction.  It was for all of us, the worldwide community of Americans of whatever nation, all citizens of this new and synthetic world that was right around the corner.

Of course you had to be 12 years old to believe in such a thing, and a naive 12 years old at that.

But at least it was a vision of a better world, and stated with total sincerity, in a large-scale corporate marketing world exposition sort of way.

Today, do we hear a similar refrain from the promise of nanotechnology?   Perhaps, but they don't have a catchy song yet.

Get on the moving walkway and follow the arrow to your future.

A simulation of the complete attraction with the official soundtrack, is below.  This song is part of the post-show and it starts at approximately at approximately 8 minutes, 20 seconds into this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA3uFkF1A9o

My previous post on the Adventure Through Inner Space is below.

http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-mighty-microscope-recreated.html

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(1) Richard and Robert Sherman composed a tremendous number of songs for the Walt Disney Company, for both films and theme parks.   Not only "Miracles for Molecules", but also the lead song from the Carousel of Progress as well as It's a Small World.  Both of these will be subjects of their own post.  A Wikipedia page for these two is at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Brothers

The Psychological Effects of Flare in Dr. Strangelove (1964)

One of my favorite things in the world is flare. I mean flare like you might find in photography, not "flair", which is also good, but something else. Flare is a lens aberration that comes from light reflecting off elements in a lens. I mean a REAL lens, not the fake lenses that one finds in computer animation or the fake lens flare programs people sell for photoshop. I mean the real flare that comes from real lenses, particularly older lenses, that comes from light being being deflected from where it should be going, to the emulsion or sensor, and instead bounces around inside the lens, willy nilly, going whereever it damn well pleases.

The type of flare I am talking about has several kinds of effects. One kind of effect is on the image (loss of contrast, washing out the blacks, causing halation or a glow around bright objects, etc). But it has another kind of effect as well, a wonderful effect. It has a cognitive effect, or if you prefer a psychological effect. We have learned that when you take a picture in bright sunlight, that the image will be washed out. We have learned that when you take a picture of a bright object, that there will be a distortion of some sort of the picture. We have learned to expect to see halos around lights in night photography. And because we have all learned this, and don't think about it anymore, we can use this to create in an image a different feeling or persuade you to think you see something that is not there.

So, if I am simulating a city at night, or an airplane at night with bright lights on it, then it is a standard approach to create a halo or some other artifact around each of the lights that are supposed to be bright. Back in the days when people did model photography, they would reshoot a scene with only the lights visible, everything else black, in order to get a "light pass" which could then be composited in. Think Bladerunner (1982) or Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). These kinds of effects are all throughout these two films. (The effects facility was the brilliant Entertainment Effects Group in the Marina, now long gone, and the work was supervised by Doug Trumbull and Richard Yuricich, both ASC.)

But there is one sequence of all that is my favorite use of flare. It is all through this sequence, a sequence that I consider one of the best in all of film, and no one ever notices. This is "the bomb run" from Dr. Strangelove which is six minutes long and is the last six minutes before the bomber drops an atomic bomb on a target in the former Soviet Union. It is the sequence where they run through the checklist for the bomb and try to get the bomb bay doors open. Among other things, it has a very young James Earl Jones in the role as bombadier ("Negative function, sir. Bomb bay doors do not open, sir").

Here are some images from this sequence.

There is flare in every one, and a lot more in the sequence itself. It is completely subliminal and I promise you that it is not accidental. I say that with such assurance because before Stanley Kubrick was a director he was a professional photographer in NYC. And no photographer is unaware of flare. Not a chance. This was deliberate and I think it adds to the atmosphere of the world inside the bomber.

What a shame that lens designers work so hard to remove flare from modern lenses. Progress, I guess.

There is an ok copy of the bomb run at the following link. The particular sequence I am referring to is from 3:00 into the clip to the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTo-iFBu14U&feature=related

Zeiss explains their T* anti-reflection coating in this youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtmQgoOZ3cw

An Example of the Genre of the Making of VIsual Effects Films

One of the weird phenomena that surrounds the tremendous "success" of visual effects, is the self-destructive documentary that describes how the effects are done as part of the publicity of the film, no matter how irrelevant the visual effects may be to that film. Whatever movie it may be, it has a documentary about how the visual effects were done. First the premise of the documentary is silly, the visual effects are anything but glamourous yet the documentary will almost always make them seem so.  Second, it is self-destructive because telling everyone how we do the work is like a magician revealing how the trick is done, it takes away the magic. How "special" will "special effects" be if everyone knows about how we do what we do? Third it is often lies, that is often not the way the effects were actually done. So that is good at least, you see we didn't tell everyone how we did the work, although we did tell them how we often do the work, just not that particular shot which was complicated and annoying and who would want to be bored with the actual details? Besides maybe the details of how that particular shot was done would reveal a mistake or maybe that bold new technology that we were using to sell the show didn't actually work all that well, and had to be augmented by animators and technical directors fixing every frame, and how much fun would that be to tell the movie-going audience who doesn't really care about the boring details anyway?

Fourth, anyone who knows the world of visual effects knows that it would be extremely unlikely for one of these documentaries to be in any way humorous, satirical, sarcastic or self-critical. Not in a 100,000,000 years. With a few exceptions, people in visual effects are deadly serious. Tell a joke, go to jail. Use a big word, they think you are making fun of them (seriously). At least in this country.

So it is to the UK that we must turn for the best commentary about visual effects I have seen in any media, and it is in the form of a mock documentary looking back at primitive visual effects as they were done at the end of the 20th century as part of a 2006 BBC show called Time Trumpet.

Did he really say working with actors is like "herding zombies"?  Oh my!

Avoiding annoying and unnecessary spillage of beer on the set.

Notice how they call a green screen stage a "CGI studio". I think it is somewhat funny that computer graphics has become so famous that people think that a standard visual effects technique is or must be "computer graphics". Nevertheless, this is one of the best satires I have seen about visual effects.

The documentary is at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjhBf4vlTw0&list=PLPVUAquAnllvLn_lcO2BSuUoXwguvRtfS&index=1&feature=plpp_video

Information about Time Trumpet is at

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

How To Make Someone's Head Explode

[This will be one of the many posts that include details about famous effects shots that I have picked up over the years.   It is all anecdotal information, believed to be true, but I wasn't there.  When this film was shot, I was in a dark room at Robert Abel & Associates writing their raster graphics system.]

As an exercise, I want you to think for a moment about how you would make someone's head explode.

As it turns out there are many ways to do this (in visual effects, of course, not in real life) and they all work with varying degrees of realism and at various costs.

Many of the films that might want to cause someone's head to explode are also low-budget horror films, those with the least amount of money to execute their vision. So I think we can say that one attribute of a method to make someone's head explode is that it should have a modest price and hopefully contribute a lot of value to the film.

Generally speaking, these are the things we are looking for.

1. That the head that explodes looks as much as possible as the real person's head. 

2. The audience should not notice the switch from the real to the standin.

3. The explosion itself should have character and not be a generic explosion.
4. The exploding head should interact with the set in some suitable way, e.g. brains, skull parts, etc. 

Although there are many ways of doing this kind of shot which could use any number of different techniques (miniatures, prosthetics, all digital, etc), best of all would be that it was "practical" in some way. "Practical" is a visual effects term of art that refers to an effect that you can use on the stage and when it is shot in live action it is in some sense done. There is no more to do. A radio controlled squib that spurts blood in simulation of someone being hit by a bullet is an example of a practical effect.

Arguably the best solution of this cinematic problem was realized by the movie Scanners (1981) as directed by David Cronenberg. The script describes a war between a small number of telepaths who are trying to take over the world and who have the power to read minds and also, with some effort, to cause someone's head to explode. Near the beginning of the film, a security organization gives a demonstration of telepathy to an audience of security professionals and, not realizing that they have been penetrated by a "bad telepath", played by actor Michael Ironside, the "good telepath" and the "bad telepath" struggle.   Evil wins in this case, and our victim telepath explodes.   Or rather, his head explodes.

As you can see, the telepath on the right seems to be reaching for a certain, climactic head position.

The solution was completely practical. A life mask of the good telepath in an expression of great pain was made, as well as a dummy of the rest of the body, dressed in the same suit. The live action of the scene was shot with the good telepath emoting his great unhappiness and reaching the same position and expression of the mask. A second sequence is shot with the camera in the same (or a similar) position, but instead of our actor we have a dummy, whose hands are gripped in an indication of great stress.  The mask on top of the dummy is given appropriate makeup and appliances, such as the eyeglasses, and filled with fresh chicken skin and Technicolor Blood #2. Then a shotgun is placed behind the dummy and pointed to the back of the head, out of sight of the camera, bolted into position, and rigged to be fired remotely. They then start the camera, set off the shotgun, and record the results for a few seconds. I am guessing that they use a high speed camera.

Then the two different takes are edited together such that the cut to the dummy happens a frame or so before the shotgun goes off. Of course they had to find a place to cut where the real actor had reached the head position and facial expression to match the dummy and mask.

The shotgun blows away both the mask and the contents, which then fall heavily, showing both excellent gravity and a sense of "follow through", onto the chest of the dummy. The effect itself makes good use of the animation principles of replacement animation, gravity, anticipation, follow-through and appropriate sound effects to enhance the visuals.

Its a beautiful effect which truly accomplishes what it needed to accomplish, which was to blow someones head off in a way that was dramatic and memorable and yet be very economical.   You could use the same technique today and it would work very well. 

Here is the trailer on Youtube, unfortunately in poor quality. It captures the essence of the scene in context however, if you want to see the blood more clearly there are other examples on Youtube that show that, but this shows the context, which is so important.   Please ignore the stupid music and graphics at the beginning and end of the trailer.  This was 1981 after all, a more primitive time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmJC3ZaXBEc&feature=fvwrel

I have found a much better trailer, this one for British audiences.  Unfortunately, it does not show the head explosion as well, but it is superior in all other ways.   On review, I have decided that this is probably a completely different head explosion from that found in the movie.  I wonder if it wasn't made especially for this trailer.   Some other post will discuss the context of how trailers are made, it is probably different than you expect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6GNs6MthtU&NR=1&feature=fvwp

I have left out a picture of the exploding head, because it is too disgusting, and I am very sensitive to images of former people who have been turned into a bloody mess.   

The IMDB page for Scanners:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081455/

An Attempted Reconstruction of a Deleted Sequence from The Mummy (1932)

The Mummy (1932) is the definitive version of a certain sub-genre of horror film: the fallen priest of the old religion of Ancient Egypt who is cursed yet is reincarnated to act out his revenge and his love in the modern world. It is shot in fabulous black and white, and stars many character actors that are immediately recognizable from other Universal horror films. Boris Karloff saying "I have waited over 3,000 years to read the scroll of Isis" is a peak moment for me in this or any film.

This fall, men will wear fez's and women will wear headgear with fantasy elements.

Apparently there was a sequence which was filmed but deleted in which our Mummy, Imhotep, explains to the romantic interest, the mummy's intended victim, about her past lives through history. This sequence was cut from the film and it is believed that none of the footage survives.

But apparently publicity stills from this sequence do survive, and someone has made an effort to recreate the sequence on Yourtube in a form of "slideshow" set to music.

The person who made this "slideshow" did a very good job, I think. I do not know enough about this situation to be able to judge whether she has this all correct. But it certainly feels plausible, and is worth reviewing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3YOuRyq_08&feature=related

The Museum of Forrest J. Ackerman

[Colleagues have asked, where is a picture of Wendy Wahrman?  When I get a suitable picture of Wendy I will post it]. 

Once upon a time I had met most of the working west coast writers of science fiction, or at least the ones who came to the Westercon, the west coast science fiction convention.  This was no big deal, pretty much anyone who attended Westercon could meet them, they were very approachable.  This included such authors as Harlan Ellison, Larry Niven, Poul Anderson and Jerry Pournelle, just to name a few. Someone I knew about, but had never met, was Forrest J. Ackerman.

"Forry", as he was known, was quite famous in that world. He was a pioneer and contemporary of Robert Heinlein and people of that generation, and had made a living as a writer, an editor, a publisher and a literary agent all in the area of science fiction.   Science fiction is to literature as puppetry is to theatre, it doesn't get much respect.   And it is very difficult to make a living as a writer of fiction no matter what genre the writer works in.   He published none other than "Famous Monsters" magazine.  He probably wrote the first ever story for Vampirella.

This is Vampirella in her pre-sex goddess form.  No kinky leather jumpsuit at this time.

Forrest was also famous in this world of science fiction for his vast collection of all kinds of memorabilia from the worlds of horror, science fiction, and fantasy.  Such items as Bela Lugosi's cape from Dracula, and the mask from Creature from the Black Lagoon. He collected with the passion and obsession of all great collectors and kept everything in a great old mansion in the Hollywood Hills.

To give you an idea of what we are dealing with here, consider this link, which has a scan of a letter from a 14 year old Forry to Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the reply from Mr. Burroughs.     

One day a good friend of mine, a pioneer of the ARPANET who lived in Palo Alto, and a fan of science fiction, asked me to arrange a tour of Forrest's mansion for him.  The idea was that I was a local, and he wasn't, so I should do this.    As it happened, I knew Mr. Ackerman's phone number, because everyone who knew science fiction knew his phone number.  It was (213) MOON FAN.

 So I gathered up my courage and out of the blue one afternoon, I gave him a call.

"Mr. Ackerman," I said, "my name is Michael Wahrman, but you don't know me, but we of course know of you and of your famous collection and a friend and I wanted to know if there was a time when people could come see this collection. Perhaps you might have an open house one day a year or something like that. If you do have a way for people to tour your collection, we would very much like to do so."

I can not begin to write in a way that expresses how Forrest Ackerman used to speak. I want you to imagine in your mind that his lines are being spoken by Boris Karloff in The Mummy (1932).

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then he said "What is your name again?"

"Well, my name is Michael Wahrman, but I am pretty sure you have never heard of me".

"How do you spell that", he asked.

"Well, its spelled W-A-H-R-M-A-N, why do you ask?"

After a pause he said, mysteriously,  "You may come by, whenever you wish."

Well, that's odd, I thought.   But I made an appointment and my friend came to town and we went to this fabulous house somewhere in the Hollywood Hills and we were received by Forrest, shown around, and introduced to his lovely wife, the former Wendy Wahrman.   She greeted me with a fabulous Hungarian or perhaps eastern European accent saying "Ah, Wahrman.   An old family name.  From Hungary".

It is almost certain that Wendy and I were related. Its a very unusual name. Associated with a specific intellectual (jewish) elite of Europe. Only a few black sheep with that name came to this country, most of them were killed in the Holocaust, a few went to Israel, so you do not find many Wahrman's on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

I am looking for a suitable picture for Wendy Wahrman Ackerman, but haven't found one yet.

I will always remember Mr Ackerman, now dead these many years, and his amazing hospitality to a total stranger, and with this fabulous voice, doing a perfect horror movie rendition: "You may come by, whenever you wish".

Wikipedia page for Forrest Ackerman:

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

A link to a first edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula, signed by Forry, Christopher Lee, and many others.
http://turhansbeycompany.tumblr.com/post/33611652054/hotmonsters-panicbeats-forrest-j-ackermans

Remembering Monsanto's Adventure Through Inner Space

[Revised 1/15/2013]

If you grew up on Southern California in the 1960s as I did there is a good chance that you share certain cultural experiences, a baseline as it were, with your fellow Southern California adolescents.

Some of us went surfing, some did not; some obsessed on and drew hot rod cars (e.g. RatFink and Big Daddy Roth) and some did not. Perhaps you went to that famous intersection where you could buy Red Devil or Black Cat fireworks, just about everyone went there.  (1)

But whoever you were, if you lived in Southern California, you went to Disneyland and went on the Adventure Through Inner Space, the Mighty Microscope, and experienced the world inside an ice crystal and the perils of shrinking ourselves to smaller than a molecule.

I always remember that anguished question "Dare I enter the world of the nucleus itself?  No!  I must turn back!  Or I will go on shrinking, forever!"  

The Adventure Through Inner Space was replaced (nothing could replace it, of course, not really) with Star Tours. How could they ? Well, they could. Time marches on, and Tomorrowland is not "1960s land" after all. Even if the 1960s was the highest expression of American Culture, it apparently did not fit in to the new Tomorrowland.

Then several years ago, Disney released a 6 CD boxed-set of audio from the original Disneyland, including the complete soundtrack of Adventure Through Inner Space.  This included what you heard while waiting in line (the preshow) and what you heard while exiting the attraction (the post show).  For the first time, I could hear exactly what was being said.  I sent excerpts to various friends who I knew had grown up in S. Calif to see if they would recognize it and got a reaction from every one.

I thought about doing some computer simulation of this attraction, in schematic form, without too much attempt to recreate it really, but just a bit of an outline.   Then I discovered, to my amazement, that someone out there took the time and energy to do a very detailed 3D simulation of this cultural landmark, attempting to preserve it for future generations.   His name is Steve Wesson and I have a link to his website and to the 3D simulation of the attraction in all its glory at the bottom of this post.

Simulated water molecules in the recreation of the attraction.  The original was projected, and so this is not so far from that.  Are these water molecules (H2O) or do we perhaps have hidden Mickeys?

But the real world interferes even with this selfless and probono work. Someone has posted the 3D simulation of the Mighty Microscope on Youtube where you can enjoy it free of cost, but he did so without asking Wesson, who would like to make some money on his work.  Of course, he doesn't own the intellectual property either, the Walt Disney Company does.  So its a little sticky.

But we won't worry too much about that.   I invite you to review this amazing simulation on Youtube and to visit Steve Wesson's site as well. Possibly you will even send him some money via Paypal or something to reward his extraordinary effort and devotion to the excellence of theme park attractions.

The video on Youtbe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA3uFkF1A9o

The Steve Wesson site:

http://themightymicroscope.com/home.htm

_______________________________________

1. The intersection was somewhere out in the San Fernando Valley, possibly near San Fernando Road itself.   I was very young and being driven by my father so I probably did not even know exactly where it was.

Linked In "Endorsements" Out of the Blue

Well, I don't exactly understand what is going on, but apparently LinkedIn automatically solicits my friends for "endorsements", which I think means that they are willing to say something nice.   I don't really know what to make of it, but it is reassuring given my horrible situation to get these nice emails that says that so-and-so has endorsed me.  It certainly couldn't hurt!

I have thanked most of these friends by email, but I thought I would also publicly say thank you here. Thanks  to Craig Reynolds, Bruce Borden, Maija Beeton, Robert Swanson, Dave Seig, Phil Zucco, Sylvie Rueff, Allan Battino, Jim Tucker and Bill Bishop for your endorsements.  I appreciate it very much.