One Day My Autostereo Will Come

Autostereo is the odd term for being able to see stereo without glasses. It may sound like the sound system for your car, but its not.  Lenticular images are an example of one form of autostereo.

I first became aware of how practical autostereo was at Ken Perlin's lab in 2000. There I learned the following things as we wrangled the demo for his autostereo paper to SIGGRAPH that year, some of them are technical and some are "industrial".    The point of this is that the technical issues are dwarfed by the industrial issues.

Is this the future of autostereo?

Here are two obvious technical issues followed by two, much harder issues involving commerce.

1. Most autostereo does not pay attention to where the observer is, and has just built into it a number of views that are visible from different angles. Alternatively, you can track where the user's head is in 3D and regenerate the two views that are necessary for that observer in that location which is what we were doing. But then you discover that most head and eye tracking algorithms are 2D not 3D. So reliable 3D head tracking became one of the hardest parts of the problem.

2. But if you are doing more than a store window display, then you will need to be able to generate 3D images from whatever the user sees, whether that be text, the OS window system, or some exciting 3D database of a giant robot. That requires good integration into a high performance (or a suitable performance) graphics device. This of course is very possible today, even on a handheld device (up to a point).

3. But then you discover that there are in fact very few manufacturers of the displays that go into devices. In fact, there are, or were, exactly 1 manufacturer left of CRTs and 4 manufacturers of LCDs and all the people who sell displays buy from these 5 manufacturers. And you discover that they can not just whip out 5 or 50 of something special, that is hideously expensive. And building a new factory is not less than billions of dollars, many billions.

4. On top of that you discover that the primary industrial uses of stereo in industry, are actually quite pleased with the quality and price of their LCD goggles. So that undercuts any productization you might consider that does not go to the consumer.

The point is that everytime you see a press release of a new cool technology or display, you should realize that almost exactly zero of these will reach the consumer. That is a little negative, but it has to do with the costs and risks of ramping up to the scale that would make it worthwhile in that very competitive market.

So we take all announcements of new technology displays, say with 6 phosphors instead of 3, or new autostereo with the grim realization that the probability that any of these becoming available at prices that anyone but the DOD can afford is nearly zero.

On that positive note, HP has announced what seems like a very cool way to autostereo on a handheld. It was just published in Nature.

You can read about it here.

https://socialreader.com/me/channels/78427/content/Sp2UM?_p=article_related[3]

A Wikipedia article on general autostereo is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereoscopy

The citation at Nature is at:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v495/n7441/full/nature11972.html

A multi-directional backlight for a wide-angle, glasses-free three-dimensional display

David Fattal,
Zhen Peng,
Tho Tran,
Sonny Vo,
Marco Fiorentino,
Jim Brug
Raymond G. Beausoleil

Multiview three-dimensional (3D) displays can project the correct perspectives of a 3D image in many spatial directions simultaneously1, 2, 3, 4. They provide a 3D stereoscopic experience to many viewers at the same time with full motion parallax and do not require special glasses or eye tracking. None of the leading multiview 3D solutions is particularly well suited to mobile devices (watches, mobile phones or tablets), which require the combination of a thin, portable form factor, a high spatial resolution and a wide full-parallax view zone (for short viewing distance from potentially steep angles). Here we introduce a multi-directional diffractive backlight technology that permits the rendering of high-resolution, full-parallax 3D images in a very wide view zone (up to 180 degrees in principle) at an observation distance of up to a metre. The key to our design is a guided-wave illumination technique based on light-emitting diodes that produces wide-angle multiview images in colour from a thin planar transparent lightguide. Pixels associated with different views or colours are spatially multiplexed and can be independently addressed and modulated at video rate using an external shutter plane. To illustrate the capabilities of this technology, we use simple ink masks or a high-resolution commercial liquid-crystal display unit to demonstrate passive and active (30 frames per second) modulation of a 64-view backlight, producing 3D images with a spatial resolution of 88 pixels per inch and full-motion parallax in an unprecedented view zone of 90 degrees. We also present several transparent hand-held prototypes showing animated sequences of up to six different 200-view images at a resolution of 127 pixels per inch.

Father Yod at The Source Restaurant

There are, or were, two important vegetarian restaurants in Los Angeles. One was The Source on Sunset Blvd and the other was The Inn of the 7th Ray in Topanga Canyon. The Inn of the 7th Ray will be a topic of a later post.

In 1969, a former US Marine who had been decorated in WW2 and Korea, (1) Jim Baker, started an organic vegetarian restaurant on the Sunset Strip at Sweetzer, called The Source. The Source became a well-known hangout of health conscious people in that part of town and, supposedly, the Hollywood Elite (although I would not know about that). The pure form of the restaurant was when it was run by the religous organization (i.e. sex, and rock and roll commune) started by Baker.

Whoever took this picture clearly needs perspective control or something.

The commune sold the restaurant in 1974 and moved to Hawaii. Unfortunately that means that all the times that I ate there was post golden-age.

Once a Marine, always a Marine

The Source was immortalized in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977). That was back when they still had their dirt parking lot.

All things decay, especially vegetarian restaurants no longer run by the people of the true faith. Various owners ran it into the ground over the next 15 years or so, and I ate there probably in all its phases. When they changed their menu to add meat and completely ignore their traditional vegeburger, that was the end for me.

Allen meets Diane Keaton at a table at the Source on the patio.  Notice the "afro" on the person at the next table. 

Now The Source only exists in our memories and in newsreels of Sunset Blvd from the 1970s.

Someone has made a documentary about the commune and its charismatic leader, Father Yod, aka Jim Baker. Apparently Father Yod was quite a character. Religious leaders generally are either celibate or very much NOT celibate, and Jim was NOT celibate. 13 wives, that we know of as well as lead singer in the religiously inspired rock and roll group.

Some of the albums that they recorded are apparently pretty great.   You can read about them in the links below.

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/father_yods_flower-powered_ego_trips_and_the_utopian_wet_dreams_of_the_sour

An interview with the person who made a documentary on the movement.
http://dangerousminds.net/comments/extraordinary_new_documentary_feature_about_the_source_family

LA Weekly Article on Father Yod
http://www.laweekly.com/2007-08-30/news/father-yod-knew-best/

Wikipedia:

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

Obituary:

http://www.nndb.com/people/816/000086558/

Imdb for Annie Hall:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075686/

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1. I have been unable to find his citation, which doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Here are unconfirmed citations for a James E Baker in WW2 and Korea.

http://www.militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards/recipient.php?recipientid=116278

http://militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards/recipient.php?recipientid=101154

What is the Meaning of Face Stealer?

When I look at an "app" (1) like Face Stealer from Yahoo Japan, I wonder what it is the author's were thinking?  If the author's were alienated teenagers writing a program to prototype looks for a horror film, then the app is a work of genius.

But if the authors thought they were merely doing something cool, or neat, then it is the app itself that is horrifying, as is their lack of awareness of impact of the results.

Faces are more than they appear.   We have a lot of perceptual machinery to perceive and interpret faces, and it is easy to go wrong.  This app supposedly maps another face from an image onto your face in real time.

The Internet is, among other things, a cabinet of perverse curiosities and Face Stealer certainly deserves to be collected.

Consider the following picture from Michelle Starr of Cnet/Australia.

We at Global Wahrman want to congratulate the authors of Face Stealer for creating a truly horrifying piece of software.

The app can be found here:

http://download.cnet.com/Face-Stealer/3000-2192_4-75886222.html

The article from Cnet can be found here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57574999-1/creepiest-app-ever-lets-you-wear-anothers-face/

___________________________________________

1. I wish to be the first to call for the death penalty for whoever came up with this stupid term, the "app". Oh "program" is not good enough for you, program?

Neil deGrasse Tyson and the Importance of Science Education

While we are on the subject of science education, c.f. the post on "Giant Intelligent Vegetable on Mars", I am happy to see that my friend Dr. Tyson is doing his job and speaking out about the importance of science and the importance of funding science and science education.

A recent NY Times article has an interview with Dr. Tyson in which he spins the recent meteor strikes into an impassioned plea for more science funding.

One of the many fringe benefits of working at the Hayden Planetarium many years ago was to be able to work with the many idealists at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), first among them being Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Neil is unlikely to use the word "motherfucker" in public.

To give you one example of this idealism, and because it always makes me laugh, at a meeting about the Digital Galaxy that we were building for visualization, the project leader, Dennis Davison, asked what measures we were taking to insure "the integrity of the data".   We hardly ever talk about the "integrity of the data" when working on Zombie movies or blowing up planets, generally speaking.

It is a slight exaggeration to say that Neil's job is to be public and get kids (and adults, but mostly kids) excited about science.  And he does this really well.  Part of the secret to his success is that he is completely sincere in doing so.  He thinks science IS important, and he thinks science education is very important and he charges out there in public and uses every opportunity to say so.

When the Hayden was being rebuilt and the AMNH was racing towards its end of the fake Millennium deadline, Neil engaged in a dialogue to have the AMNH create a small astrophysics department.  What you may not be aware of is that there have been almost no new astrophysics departments in this country since the great expansion in the science in the 1950s as part of the Cold War and the Space Race.   The AMNH was not jumping up and down about adding more costs  to their overhead, but Neil insisted and he won.  The point is, the AMNH is the only organization in this country (that I am aware of) that has as its mission doing real science and communicating results directly to the American people.  In other words, their mission is not to train more graduate students, Universities do that, and the AMNH has a good relationship with Columbia and many other schools.  The AMNH's job is to do both research and direct science education to the general population.   Hence, if you have a Planetarium, you should also have an Astrophysics department.

Neil has an interesting background, the whole story of which I am not completely clear on.  But I do know that he went to the Bronx High School of Science, scholarship to Princeton, and is a living example of the promise of higher education to create opportunity for minority groups (although I suspect that Neil is something of a ringer in this regard).

Astrophysics is a very tricky field.  It is incredibly elitist and the field as a whole can be quite nasty, and I assure you that Neil's immense popularity wins him no friends in the field of Astrophysics.  But he is on a mission, he is one of the most recognizable people in NYC, and I assure you he is completely sincere.

By the way, Neil is unlikely to use the word "motherfucker" in public, but I thought that the above image of Neil making a point at some public forum was very funny, so I stole it from a post someone did on Facebook.

_______________________________________________

American Museum of Natural History
www.amnh.org

Vast Thinking Vegetable Discovered on Mars! Scientists Attempt to Cover Up Truth!

On Oct 13, 1912, two and a half years after the approach of Halley's Comet to the earth, the Salt Lake Tribune's Sunday Section astounded the world with the announcement of a discovery on Mars of a giant thinking vegetable containing a single enormous eye.   You would think that such a discovery would have been published everywhere, but no, clearly the government in Washington wanted to suppress the truth because not only was the article not published anywhere else, but they even went so far as to issue flat denials.

Why is our government so intent on repressing news of the alien intelligent plant?  Is it perhaps because they want to hide the peaceful intent of the citizens of planet earth but co-opt the innocent plant into plots and intrigues our government has here on earth?

And why has the venal, untrustworthy scientific community not revealed this outrage against knowledge, why have they gone along with this conspiracy to repress the truth?   Perhaps they are not the selfless "searchers for truth" we thought they were.

I have reproduced this stunning article in its entirely as reported on the internet at the web link below.  Please spread the news as far as you can.  I wonder if our evil government isn't planning to spray DDT on this innocent and peace loving citizen of the galaxy?!

Original article is here:

http://zapatopi.net/blog/?post=201202207190.the_mammoth_eye_of_mars

Here is the pathetic response from some toady at the Lick Observatory trying to spread scorn on the article and so suppress the truth.

We must demand a full-disclosure of everything involved with the Giant Intelligent Vegetable from our government at once.  I hope you will join me in this crusade.  I will investigate what is involved in a FOIA request over the next few days.

Predicting the Next Pope: Atlantean Crystal Wisdom Makes Shocking Predictions

[Addendum: now that the Pope has been selected we can see that the Wisdom was correct about items 1 and 4, the jury is out on 2, 3, and 6 and item 5 is a n/a.  So we are 100% so far with more to be seen in the future]

The Roman Catholic Church is picking a new Pope. Whenever this happens, the Western news media loses its mind a little bit as do many other people who, even though they are not Catholic, seem to know all about this and have plenty to say about who the next Pope should be, and why, and what they should do.

I feel it is time that I, as a student of the esoteric knowledge, who has been trusted with Atlantean Crystal Wisdom, reveal to you what I know about picking a new Pope and indeed to peer into the future, misty though it may be to make some predictions. Even now, I feel the cosmic energy forces collect, the gray wall begins to disperse and I see many things....

 The future becomes clear ... 

1. The next Pope will either be a Hasidic Rabbi or a Roman Catholic !

Yes I can see him.... he is ... a Catholic!  The next Pope will not be a Radical Nun or Richard Dawkins or a Jain, as interesting as those various religions and religious types may be. He won't even be an Orthodox Jew, although that is a funny thought. Nor will he be a secular businessman or politician or even Brad Pitt called to the cloth in these desperate times. He is going to be a man, within a certain age range, who has spent a great deal of his adult life, if not all of it, working within the Western (e.g. the Roman Catholic) church.

2. The next Pope will be a Serious Man Who Believes Things You Don't !

Oh my God, the Crystal Wisdom predicts that the next Pope will not be a white liberal Protestant who only thinks what we want him to think.   Thats horrible!   Yes, I think it is likely that the next Pope, or for that matter any Pope, is going to say things you don't want him to say. I recommend you lighten up about it, because there is nothing you can do. The fact is that not only is he going to be a Catholic, he is going to be a serious and dedicated Catholic and there are lots and lots of things such people study and worry about and you don't. So go ahead and get upset if the next pope reminds you/us that Europe as a concept came into being as a result of armed warfare with Islam. He is/was 100% correct and it was an interesting thing to say. Whoever the next Pope is, and whatever he does say, it is likely to be outside your experience, unless you have spent many years studying the theology of the modern Roman Catholic Church.

And you thought Black Tie was annoying

3. The next Pope Will Fail to Disavow Pauline Christianity !

Now the Crystal Wisdom is being cruel.   It has revealed the bitter truth.  The next Pope is not going to turn his back on the last 1500 or so years of Pauline Christianity.   He is NOT going to change fundamental doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church in spite of the nice letter you wrote him.   That means no women priests, a rather negative opinion on birth control whatever the faithful may actually do, and at best a pass on homosexuality in the church. The Church  does have major theological issues to deal with here but they will do so in their own damn time and at their pleasure if they do so at all.  So the Crystal Wisdom reveals!

4. The next Pope will have some elements of being an Italian / Vatican insider as well as being a member of the international scene in some sense.

In order to be functional, the next Pope must have experience with the Vatican hierarchy and organization.  Whether he be from Zimbabwe or the suburbs of Rome.   And that means that he will have some history about something you do not like about the church.   Whether it is an opinion you do not like or a position on a scandal you do not like.  The odds are that you will find something you do not like.

5. Whatever Papal Infallibility Means It Probably Doesn't Mean What you Think it Does.

So don't worry about it.

6. The next Pope is NOT the Antichrist.  Trust me.

I know you have weird beliefs about the end of the world, and how Satan will occupy the Vatican and make all children have 666 on their foreheads and shit, but I have looked into the future and I see that the time is not yet. Be patient. The end of the world is coming, just not now. The Crystal Wisdom has revealed who the AntiChrist really is but the time has not come to reveal his Identity.  And no, it isn't President Obama or Hilary Clinton, so calm down.

I know its disappointing, but Obama is not the AntiChrist either.

It is pretty clear that the Pope is one of those "jobs" like the President of the United States for which finding the right person is nearly impossible because no normal human could possibly be up to the challenge, and because it would be difficult to build a consensus of what constituted a good solution anyway.   There are several levels here of both success and failure, from pure inspiration and brilliance to sheer disaster and with merely competent being in the middle and the most likely.  The Pope only has so much power, contrary to what you may read on the Internet, and the organization he nominally heads has a lot of momentum of its own.   

This is all that I am shown, the Atlantean Crystal Wisdom now grows dark.

My Favorite Story About Bill Hanna from Jetsons The Movie (1990)

[updated 3/15/2013 to mention Al Gmuer and Jerry Mills]

Many years ago, our little production company, deGraf/Wahrman, inc (dWi) ended up doing two Hanna-Barbara Projects at once. How it happened is a little complicated, but they were essentially two completely different projects: a motion platform ride for Universal Studios Florida and about 40 or so shots for the first Jetson's Movie directly for Hanna Barbara.

Our client for the latter was Bill Hanna personally, and it was one of the most endearing and positive client relationships we, dWi, or I, personally, have ever had. I have a few anecdotes from that project that is the point of the post, but I think it will be helpful to return to yesteryear and explain what was going on.

At the time, about 1989 or so, computer animation was not used in motion picture or animation production.

You might want to reread the above sentence a few times in order to get what I am trying to tell you, and then add a very important phrase: except for a few brave souls who would every once in a while try computer animation and see if it would work for them.   But when you examine those projects, good or bad, you can see that Hollywood is actually in its way trying to find a way to use this new medium.

Bill Hanna and Hanna Barbera was one of those brave souls / companies.

They had after many years managed to get Universal to finance a feature film around the Jetson's property and we were going to be included. I was and am such a fan of the Jetson's I can not tell you how thrilled I was.

It is now necessary to set the way-back-machine, Sherman, to get into the right mood. (3) In 1989, you could not easily use PC's in production like you do now, you had to use much more expensive machines such as Silicon Graphics and Symbolics. We had access to a factory floor of Symbolics Machines in Chatsworth (1), and about a dozen of various types of machines in West Hollywood. If you needed to record to film you had to provide your own film recorder, no motion picture oriented services were available. (4)

This is a good dWi image because it is dark and ambiguous

Above, a very low resoulution screengrab of a smoggy day in the Jetson's neighborhood, and the inspiration for the sequence from Los Angeles

The project was to do about 40 shots that were going to be BG shots with 2D animation on top. In a few cases we would composite George Jetson into his Jetcar while it whizzed past. Animation included a flock of Jetcars in a traffic jam, a hero jet car elevating out of the traffic jam, the Jetson's towers elevating out of the smog, and so forth. Many people worked on that project at dWi, all of them with distinction. I don't want to get the names wrong, so I will provide the names at a later date. (2)

Now for the anecdotes. The first one is minor, the second one will be hard to understand if you have not been in this or a related business.

One day while we were in a story board meeting with Bill Hanna, I got up the courage to ask him why they did not do more Jetsons and Flintstones, telling him honestly what a big fan I was of them. I could not understand how there could only be one season of The Jetsons and the Flintstones, one each.  He just laughed at me, and said, "We loved the Jetsons and Flintstones too.   But we never got the ratings. On the other hand, Scooby Doo is in its 13th season and we are happy to be working".

13 seasons of Scooby Doo but only one of The Jetsons?  No justice, clearly no justice in this world.

So after a rocky start having to do with the other project, the one administered by Universal Studios Florida, the project from hell, we start delivering lots of shots for the movie. And things are going along and, this is so amazing I can't believe it, one day I got a phone call from Bill Hanna.

And he said "Michael, you know those shots you just delivered?" I said, "Yes". "Well, it turns out that they are what it is we asked for, and of course we will pay you for them. But we think we would want some changes, and we wanted to know if you had the time to do some extra shots and if we could perhaps get a discount given that these shots will be very similar to the ones you just did" I was speechless for a few seconds and then either I, or possibly the producer, said "we would love to".

But what you may not appreciate is how unusual this is: He was not trying to get something for free.  He was not trying to blame us (believe me, we were not perfect). He was thanking us for our work, asking us if we had some more time, and wondered if he might have a discount.

It was such a change from the unbelievably evil project and people on the other side of the house that I had to sit down. Wait, a client saying "thank you"?   It does happen, that people say thank you in that business, but it is not all that common.   

We loved working for Hanna Barbera and for Bill.  I am sorry he is gone.

While I am on the subject, I do not remember all our friends at Hanna Barbera by name, but two names in particular stand out beyond Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, and that was Al Gmuer (sp?) and Jerry Mills.  Just wanted you guys to know how helpful I thought you were and what a pleasure it was to work with you.  (I am spacing out on the name of a third person, who I think was the senior Art Director there, but I can do some research and find it).  

William Hanna (1910 - 2001)

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

Jetsons The Movie (1990)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099878/

_______________________________________

1. Because the factory was in Chatsworth, and Chatsworth was where the farms were when I lived in Granada Hills as a kid, I called it the Render Farm. Years later, everyone was calling their render farm a render farm, but I doubt it was because of me. I think this is just a coincidence, I hope.

2. I think the people on the project included Jim Hillin, Phil Zucco, Ken Brain, Jay Sloat, Ken Cope, Michelle Porter, Allen Battino, Craig Newman, of course Brad and myself, and the usual crew of people who helped out on all our projects like Liz Ralston, our office manager and later producer, Anne Marie, Carter and Ladd McPartland. Who am I forgetting?   Did Greg Ercolano and J Walt Adamczyk work on this project?  How about Tom Betts (Did I get his name right, it has been a long time).  Did Steve Segal and Tuck Tucker work on this project?

3. This is of course a reference to Sherman and Peabody from Jay Ward.

4. The more I think about this, the more I realize that this could not be true.  It is true that excellent scanning and recording was not easily available the way it is today, as a commodity service.  But probably had we wanted we would have found someone who provided a film recording service on a CELCO or DICOMED or other device.   Nevertheless, we felt we had to do it ourselves.

What is Meant When It Is Said "Hollywood Needs Artists"

Many years ago in New York, a dear friend of mine who was head of NY SIGGRAPH called me up and announced "<Unnamed Studio> needs artists! <Unnamed Studio> needs artists!".

I laughed at her endearing naivete.

"Yes," I said, "Sure, absolutely, <Unnamed Studio> needs artists. No doubt. But what you mean by the word 'artist' and what they mean are completely different."

"Huh?" she said, completely baffled by my cynical response.

"When you say 'artist', you mean something along the lines of 'a person with a strong personal vision and an even stronger ego who works for years or decades to establish a unique or at least a personal style associated with their name, exhibits generally through galleries, establishes themselves within certain very specific contemporary art communities and strives within the very narrow bounds of whatever we currently call Contemporary Art, for grants, recognition and to become collectable. They cultivate their Art in America mentions, and other even more important critical venues whose name I do not even know."

"But when <Unnamed Studio> says they need 'artists', they mean something along the lines of 'a person who has been highly trained with certain specific technical skills associated with the visual arts who are able to use those specific skills under the direction of a hierarchy of other management and in peaceful coexistence with their fellow biped mammals, doing that exact same task, at a certain level of productivity in order to achieve on time and on schedule a very complicated entertainment-related consumer product. They are not expected nor are they likely to contribute any personal vision to the project, that vision is provided at another level and their input is generally not desired or tolerated. They will have no ownership of the project either creative or financial beyond very limited contracturally specified rights, generally of using material for a demo reel. They are the classic disenfranchised labor described by Marx and Engels and, when the project is over, the providers of capital expect them to attend a wrap party and go away.'"

The term "artist" is one of those terms, like "freedom" or "happy", that is layered with meaning that is culturally determined.  Not every culture, or industry, redefines all terms but when they do redefine a term, they do so with complete sincerity and, generally speaking, do so while being completely unaware that they are doing so.  It is important for a visitor or observer from outside to realize this and be sensitive to the issues.  So therefore, be aware, in the entertainment industry, the role of the artist is to manufacture consumer products in order to maximize shareholder value.

Also be aware that the term "artist" is often used as an insult, meaning self indulgent and difficult, as in "he/she is a real artist, if you know what I mean".

Art In America
http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/

revised 1/2/2015

The Aesthetics of Earthquakes in Southern California

Well we finally had a decent earthquake after a long time. Not that great, but a 4.7 which is just ok. About 60 miles away. Pffft.  One good shock.  Is that it, I thought?  That's all you got?  Definitely not enough.

I may as well tell you that I have been very disappointed by the earthquakes I have experienced in S. California since I came back from the East Coast. Let me be blunt guys, its for your own good.  S. California is less than the East Coast in almost any measure one can use, its crummy weather, its crummy non-transit system.   Its failure to deal with civic planning.  The only thing it has going for it imho is earthquakes and a few other things like surfer girls and beachside Mexican restaurants.

Before I left for NY and Aspen in 1994 or so, I could count on a solid interesting earthquake every few months. One that would rattle the house, rattle the windows, annoy the dogs and set off the happy chirping of car alarms up and down Lookout Mountain. It was the car alarms and the barking that convinced the observer that the earthquakes were real and not just the result of a happy dream.

But since I have returned that old earthquake magic seems to be gone.  Dried up. Every once in a while  a dreary little rumble is felt, occasionally a shock to the house, more your imagination than anything substantial.

What happened?

No one knows. No one asks, No one cares.  Its like the rest of Los Angeles.  Dreary devolved robots, joyless, idealess, soulless.  Going through the motions.  Hoping that nothing will shatter the fragile illusion of normality that they clutch to their bosom so tightly.  That nothing will happen to make them fall into the abyss like so many of their friends, screaming soundlessly into the night, and then gone forever.

What constitutes a good earthquake? 

1. The earthquake should have structure, periods of intensity, periods of quietness. It shouldn't just be on and off.  One boom equals boring.  No, there should perhaps be a solid and dramatic initial shock to get your attention, then perhaps an anticipatory pause, then a good solid series of shakes building in amplitude to the point where you wonder if you should get out of bed to stand underneath a door jam. Then a pause again, and a few more shakes as a finale. Many variations on this theme are possible, this is not a hard and fast prescription. The general principle is that a good quake will reveal a structure and not just be one blow.

2. The earthquake should have solid aftershocks. After the main quake, in a minute or two, or five, or an hour, there should be another good earthquake or two. More than one if possible. Maybe not as ambitious and complicated as the first one, these could indeed be just one shock without structure, but an aftershock or two.  (1)

3. The house should demonstrate harmonics and vibrations. You should hear windows rattle, doors creak, and see or hear other examples of wave interactions.

4. The neighborhood should come alive with noise. Dogs barking, car alarms going, wind chimes chiming, radio announcers announcing.

MCA/Universal's Masterpiece starring Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner

5. Going beyond "good" to "excellent", an excellent earthquake should be violent.  It should wake you up and make you think.  It should make you wonder if this is it, if this is when you die, or someone you know dies, your existence forever extinguished.   An excellent earthquake makes you think about your own mortality.

6. After "good" and "excellent" of course is "Apocalyptic".    The "Wrath of God" Earthquake.  The one like the one you saw in disaster movies, but without the happy ending and Charlton Heston.   The earthquake that announces the "Last Days".  The one that demands your complete attention.  The one that does more than shake up your day.  The one that lasts a minute or two or five, is off the Richter scale, and leaves Los Angeles flattened, an even 1.5 or so feet of crushed plaster, with an oil derrick or two sticking out of the ruins and millions of BMWs, Mercedes, Lexus and Acura's alarms demanding attention but getting none until they finally run their battery down and one by one go silent.

Miles and miles of cars protruding above the crushed plaster, silent, motionless.

They stand silent forever, monuments to the shallow greed and the shallow graves of their former owners.

Soon, maybe, soon.

[Of course we do not really wish for the Apocalyptic earthquake to happen anytime soon, at least not until all the people we care about have sold their property in LA and moved out, especially the surfers and people who run beachside Mexican Restaurants. ]

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LA Times Article on Today's Earthquake:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/03/more-than-100-small-aftershocks-follow-47-quake.html

Information on 4.7 Earthquake

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci15296281#summary

Information on All Recent Earthquakes

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/

Earthquake (1974) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071455/

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1. The managed news media in S. California tells me that there were over 100 aftershakes after the one this morning.  Well, maybe.  But if so, I did not feel a *single* one.

Modern Historically Correct Computer Phonetic Alphabet

v 0.1 Beta  3/10/2013

[in progress]

Tired of being told words over the phone that you can not spell correctly and have the person on the other end fail to enunciate what they mean and too lazy to use an approved phonetic alphabet for voice communication?  Then consider the following new, rationalized, technology appropriate phonetic alphabet.  The words suggested below are intended to be highly redundant and recognizable words that are unmistakable for any other word on the list, and either have some value in a computer historical sense, or allow the speaker to get out some of their frustration using good Anglo Saxon idiom.

Each comma separated phrase is as good as another, there is no particular expressed priority between the terms. In other words, Burroughs is as good as Burnout.

A -- Alpha, Alphabet, Analog, ASCII, ARPANET

B -- Burroughs, Burnout

C -- Collossus, Channel, Cantaloupe, COBOL

D -- DEC, Dogshit, Data General, Digital Equipment Corporation

E -- Echo, Enigma, EBCDIC

F -- Fuck, Fuckit, Fucking

G -- Geheimschreiber

H -- Hacker, Honeywell, Hollerith

I -- Idiot, IBM

J -- Jerk

K -- Kernel

L -- Lemonade, Lichtenstein

M -- Moron, MIT

N -- Negative, Nebula

O -- Ohbaby, Orion

P -- PDP, Penis, Process, Punched Card

Q -- Quasi, Quack

R -- Ramo, Rancid, Rogue

S -- Stupid, Spacewar

T -- Turing, Teletype, Tron

U -- Ubetcha, User

V -- von Neumann, vector

W -- Woolridge, Whirlwind, Washedup

X -- Xray, Xanadu

Y -- Yessir, Yes Maam

Z -- Zebra, Zork

Examples

Bolt := Burnout Ohbaby Lemonade Teletype
Scumbag := Stupid Cantaloupe Ubetcha Moron Burnout Alphabet Geheimschreiber

References

Category of Phonetic Alphabets on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Phonetic_alphabets

Nato Phonetic Alphabet:

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