A Message From Our Sponsors

I have been trying to maintain a steady stream of posts to this blog, about 20 - 25 a month, but I have slacked off recently.

There are about a half dozen or so typically sarcastic posts that have been written and which are ready to be posted, and I may get around to them eventually.  But the reality is that I thought it was time for me to get a little more serious here and get around to discussing some of the themes that this Blog was started to discuss.   There is enough material here already that it makes sense to refocus and get back on theme.

We have good and bad news on the career front.  The good news is that I have a small, but amusing, project that will take about 1/2 my time for about 6 months.   It is enough so that I can pay my bills without going further in debt and that is terrific.  And it is fun and will no doubt result in my learning a lot.  If nothing else I am already relearning Java which I haven't used in many years, not seriously.  (1)

But at the same time, the bigger issues are all left unresolved and as time passes, these issues become more and more critical.  Not that they were not critical to begin with.

Thanks again to all who have kept in touch with me and to those of you who read this blog.  I appreciate it and I hope you find it entertaining and occasionally informative.

A final special note to my recent sponsors: Dave Coons, Josh Pines, Mike Deering, Nick Palevsky and Ken Perlin.  Without you guys, things would be much, much worse.   I appreciate your help.

__________________________________

1. As an aside, I find that reading a programming language like Java or Python is much easier than writing in it.   I always find that surprising, but I don't know why, its pretty obvious why this should be so.

Espionage, Reality, Smiley's People and Constitutional Law

If Hollywood holds one principle above all others, that principle would probably be "There is nothing in the world more important than making a fast buck and if in order to do that we compromise reality, history, truth, or ethics, even egregiously, then that is what we will do."

It is wrong to think therefore that when Hollywood distorts something that this indicates a lack of integrity or a failure in character or even a criminal misrepresentation of the facts. In fact, it is evidence of the most sincere devotion to the highest principles on which Hollywood was founded.

When it comes to the subgenre of espionage and the Cold War, Hollywood is pathetically out of its league. Off the top of my head, I can not think of a single American film that comes close to describing or portraying American intelligence in anything close to reality, (1) but they always revert to the lowest level of stereotype and vulgar misrepresentation. The latest in this proud tradition of stupidity is Zero Dark Thirty, but we will not dwell on it beyond making the following observation. The filmmakers claim that what they present is real, e.g. the facts. It isn't. Even Argo misrepresents important details of the situation in Iran and that portrayal had diplomatic blowback in the real world.

But thats OK.

One must set realistic expectations in life and expecting Hollywood to act responsibly or knowlegably in this area is clearly not realistic.

But hard as it may be to believe, there are other countries that make films, and one of them is the UK. They are also famously not realistic by the way, but they are perhaps more amusing while they are not realistic. After all, James Bond is a British creation with almost no basis in reality. Another author whose work is apparently a bit closer to reality is the work of David Cornwell, aka John LeCarre, and it is in reference to one of his novels, Smiley's People (1992), that this post is written. The BBC made a six episode teleplay out of it, and someone has put it on Youttube.

You can find the first episode here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dh4tnvx2b8

Is it totally realistic? Probably not. But it does go over in some colorful detail the role of emigres in the Cold War, the time scale of the work (e.g. years and decades), how individuals in the emigre community were used by both sides, the role of blackmail in turning agents, and how certain kinds of operations are done, or perhaps are done. The turning of the Soviet diplomat, Grigoriev is particularly interesting, as is the interview of the psychiatric patient, Tatiana, who may or may not be the daughter of the head of a special directorate of Moscow Center.

The former and current heads of foreign intelligence review a confession of a Soviet Spy

A Russian emigre meets a representative of the Riga Group and General Vladimir

I was surprised at how well this was done.  I have watched it several times since finding it on Youtube.

The story is the third in a series, but pretty much all you need to know of the backstory is (a) that Smiley used to be head of the British Foreign Intelligence, (b) that Karla is the bad guy, and (c) that Smiley's wife, Ann, famously cheated on him. A lot.

For those of you who think, as many American's probably do, that espionage agencies act outside the law and are guilty of the most heinous crimes, I refer you to the following paper I found on the Internet by a Georgetown Professor of Law who wrote a 56 page paper on the legality of certain espionage "deals" as found in Smiley's People in American constitutional law.

Second Guessing the Spymasters with a Judicial Role in Espionage Deals by John Radsan, Wm. Mitchell School of Law, Georgetown University.

http://apps.law.georgetown.edu/state-secrets-archive/resourcedocuments/Radsan_67.pdf

Radsan makes several points in his paper, including first and foremost that the ending of Smiley's People may be the most unrealistic part.   George makes an offer to Karla in writing without any help from the Circus's legal staff.   I thought that was a very funny thing of Radsan to say, in reality, in the CIA at least, there would have been lawyers everywhere.

The bulk of the paper is taken up with the various rulings by our legal system of whether the courts can be used to enforce an agreement between an agency like the CIA and an agent.  The short answer seems to be no, they can not.  The agent either has to trust the agency or they have to get their cash up front as it were.

Among other anecdotes we learn that Pres. Abraham Lincoln personally hired a spy and then failed to pay him.

I am not the least bit surprised.

David Cornwell, aka John LeCarre on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_le_Carr%C3%A9

Smiley's People on Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dh4tnvx2b8

Smiley's People on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083480/

________________________________________

1. Now that I think of it, there is one sequence in Patriot Games (1992) that seems pretty accurate, up to a point, and that is sequence in the basement where they watch a special operation by live satellite.  Accurate?  Maybe not.  But definitely amusing.

Modern Design for the Homeless

In the face of poverty and homelessness caused by our Government's economic and trade policies, (1), an important new market has opened up and designers are scrambling to be a part of it. This is the market created by the new class of homeless: the well-educated and professional members of society who have been disenfranchised by the "new economy". These new homeless may not have a $100 to call their own, but they have a tremendous desire for good design in their otherwise pointless, impoverished and worthless lives.

Although it is not clear who exactly would pay for these, that is a detail that everyone agrees can be worked out later. In the meantime, it is necessary and appropriate to create the designs and show the world that it can be done. That people can be poor and without hope, and still have a measure of elegance in their lives.

Presented here are some concepts in the critical areas of shelter, transportation, shopping, personal hygiene, the work environment, and self-defense in a credit economy.

1. The Portable Hotel Room

The prospective customer of this concept is someone who is taking advantage of available space, whether an abandoned or unused warehouse, factory or other covered area but wishes to feel as though he were living in a hotel. It is a reminiscence of his or her days as a successful executive when he or she flew around the country and stayed at expensive hotel rooms. Thus a tiny amount of personal dignity is preserved.

Portable Hotel Room

http://www.tuvie.com/hotello-portable-hotel-room-for-daskonzept/

2. The Personal Travel and Shoppng Cart

Many have noticed that the homeless seem quite fond of shopping carts for hauling their pathetic valuables, usually rags and trash and rotting food, around. What you may not realize without having tried it, as I have, that the shopping cart is actually quite well suited for this. It is a well-balanced, sturdy, highly mobile device with many separate compartments to hold items big and small, that is easily transportable, and yet can be reduced in size and readily available in the urban and suburban environment. The design of the classic shopping cart is superb with minimalist lines and a retro feel.

But different aesthetics are certainly possible to achieve this mission of transport and storage, and here is a more modern consumer gadget-oriented approach which combines the shopping cart with portable electric transit for short distance travel. Of course the homeless person would need to find an electric outlet to plug it into, but one can invisage public charging stations for the homeless in community areas. Besides, the homeless are going to have other items they will need to charge besides this.

Travel Shopping Cart

http://www.tuvie.com/short-distance-travel-shopping-cart-design-by-flora-zhu/

3. Feminine Personal Hygiene

I don't feel qualified to say much about this innovation except to say that it makes good use of previously used soda bottle to provide a clean and european solution to one part of the homeless personal hygiene problem. Male users of this system may be able to use the soda bottle directly without the appliance.

Portable Bidet

http://www.tuvie.com/hygienna-solo-transforms-a-plastic-water-bottle-to-portable-bidet/

4. The Portable Work Environment

As many people have pointed out, the homeless deserve their misery because they do not pick themselves up by their bootstraps and become successful just like Jerry Ford, or George Bush, or Bill Gates. (2). One way to encourage the homeless to be productive and do work is to give them a portable work area, which is one of the things that this creative design is intended for. Now the poor will have even less excuse for their circumstances.

Portable Desk

http://www.tuvie.com/envol-portable-desk-with-a-substantial-storage-area-by-thibaut-rouganne/

5. Personal Defense in a Credit Economy

The cashless society is a reality for everyone, both rich and poor, and it is important for everyone to carry their credit cards safely. Since the homeless is going to be out on the street and mingling with people of all sorts, not all the same good people as you and me, one could imagine needing a personal defense solution for awkward situations.   Here we have one proposed solution in a nice knife which you can keep with your credit card. And best of all, this design is available today.

Credit Card with Knife

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0001WOKWQ/?tag=tuvie-20

In conclusion, I hope we have demonstrated that being homeless does not mean that one must give up all aesthetics, but that one can have a degree of good design around you no matter what your station in life. We at Global Wahrman wish to encourage this design movement and hope that it is just the beginning, a new dawn, of good design for the disenfranchised.

__________________________________________

Notes

1. Consider: legislation to encourage Globalization, destruction of the trade unions, a legal system designed for the rich, taxes on the middle class but tax breaks for the wealthy, all of these are positive actions taken by our elected representatives which have the result of impoverishing most Americans while enriching the wealthy few.

2. The fact that these three icons of the American Dream all came from fabulously wealthy families is irrelevant.

The Mexican Suitcase

In 1979, the brother of a famous photographer wrote a note about his late brother's work on the occassion of that work being featured in the Venice Bienalle, arguably the world's most famous art show, held every two years in Venice, Italy.

He said

In 1940, before the advance of the German army, my brother gave to one of his friends a suitcase full of documents and negatives. En route to Marseilles, he entrusted the suitcase to a former Spanish Civil War soldier, who was to hide it in the cellar of a Latin-American consulate. The story ends here. The suitcase has never been found despite the searches undertaken. Of course a miracle is possible. Anyone who has information regarding the suitcase should contact me and will be blessed in advance.

Four years earlier, in 1975, a colleague of the photographer wrote the brother and explained that he had taken the negatives out of Paris in advance of the Germans and had entrusted it to a Chilean he had met in the street in Bordeaux who promised to take it to a Latin American consulate. Nothing more was ever heard. It was assumed that the photographs were lost forever and presumably destroyed.

But it turns out that somehow, no one knows how, the suitcase, unopened, ended up in the possession of a the Mexican ambassador to Vichy France in 1941, General Francisco Aguilar Gonzalez. General Gonzalez returned to Mexico with the suitcase in his possession and passed away 30 years later, in 1971, possibly without having ever opened it. The suitcase was in the possessions of a woman who was the aunt of a Mexican documentary filmmaker. He inherited the suitcase, opened it, and reviewed the negatives. He realized that they were of the Spanish Civil War and contacted a professor at Queens College who studied the history of the conflict. The professor realized whose photographs these were, and contacted the brother of the late photographer.

The brother was Cornell Capa, founder of the International Center for Photography, and these were the rumored missing negatives of his brother, Robert Capa, arguably the most famous photographer of war in the history of photography.

But Capa was unable to contact the filmmaker who had found the negative and they were never received. Finally in 2004 a special effort was made to locate the person who had inherited the negatives and in 2007,  at the age of 89, Cornell Capa finally received the contents of the suitcase his brother had packed in Paris when the Germans attacked in 1940.

The 126 rolls of black and white negative are still being scanned and the ICP will hold an exhibition for them when they are prepared.

The guy in the center is a journalist named Ernest Hemingway

We must all be grateful that Capa and his friends had used film, of course. Had they been digital, no doubt they would not have survived. The storage media would have completely disintegrated over 60 years, it would be like trying to read a 1,000 miles of punched paper tape.

The complete story of the history of the Mexican suitcase can be found at the following link, at the International Center of Photography website:  http://museum.icp.org/mexican_suitcase/

Magnum Photos, the famous international photography agency, has a discussion of Capa at

http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL535353

Imaging Resource Article on the Suitcase:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/04/05/famed-photojournalist-robert-capa-and-the-mystery-of-his-mexican-suitcase

Transmongolian Railroad and the Diorama Illusion

Two people have made a 4 minute "travelogue" of their 7,500 mile train trip from Beijing to Moscow using the video capability of one of the DSLRs.    A large part of this journey is on the Trans Siberian Railroad of course.

Few rail lines can compete historically with the Trans Siberian Railroad. (1) It was built starting in 1891 and started from both ends to meet in the middle. Started by the Czars and completed just before the Bolshevik Revolution, the railroad connects Petrograd (St. Petersburg, Leningrad) and Vladisvostok, the longest railroad in existence.   Of course, St Petersburg was the capital of Imperial Russia at the time and Vladivostok was their relatively ice free port on the Pacific Ocean.

You can start to see the diorama effect / illusion in this picture

The Trans Siberian Railroad is famous for opening up Siberia, for the role it played in the Russian Revolution and the Civil War, in World War 1 and World War 2.  If you saw the movie Reds (1981) with Warren Beatty, it features prominently in that.     When Moscow nearly fell to the Germans in the winter of 1941, it was the secret transfer of the armies of Siberia to Moscow in a triumph of logistics that stopped the Germans and threw them back in one of the great battles of history.

With John Reed on the Trans Siberian Railroad 

For those who are considering a trip on the Trans Siberian Railroad, here is a humorous link in something called "Wikitravel":
http://wikitravel.org/en/Trans-Siberian_Railway

A friend of mine who has been on this train says that by the end of trip you realize that train travel is not all that romantic if they do not clean out the latrine cars often enough.

At Chita, one can turn south and connect to a train that goes to Beijing.

Its 4 minutes long, its very interesting, and the music is great.

http://www.factoria.me/transmongolian/

But what I find very interesting is that I keep seeing the so-called diorama illusion when I watch it.  The diorama illusion is the illusion that something that is life size when photographed a certain way looks as though it is a model.   The classic examples of these were Viewmaster photographs of something small.   It has to do with a shallow depth of field.

Here is a Wikipedia page on the topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_faking

In general the digital cameras have a more shallow depth of field because they are using lenses that have smaller focal lengths.  Why it is we associate the shallow depth of field with the illusion of a model I do not know.

An article about the film (use Google Chrome and it will translate it for you):

http://www.quesabesde.com/noticias/video-pekin-moscu-transiberiano-transmongoliano-factoria,1_9637

Wikipedia on the Trans Siberian Railway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway

Reds (1981) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082979/

____________________________________

Notes:

1. Perhaps one of the very few that might compete with the Trans Siberian is the legendary Berlin -Baghdad Railway which played a role in WW1 and is no longer operational.

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

Rudyard Kipling, Language Change and the Case of "Gentlemen-Rankers"

[in progress, I just cant get this right]

This is a post about a particular poem by Rudyard Kipling which is the origin of about 14 very recognizable idioms in the English language, yet is also, on its own, somewhat incomprehensible to a modern reader.

Every once in a while I come across the source of a commonly known idiom or saying in its original form or context, and it is usually an amusing surprise. Maybe I knew it came from that (whatever that is, book, play, short story) and maybe I had just forgotten. But then all of a sudden there it is and it is all the more amusing because it is in situ, in its place.

For example, it turns out that "its Greek to me" is a throw-away line from The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by Wm. Shakespeare in which a fellow conspirator tells Brutus what happened at the Senate that day. Someone was speaking from Greece. What did he say, asked Brutus. I have no idea, said the conspirator, it was Greek to me.

So in a typical Internet binge that covered the usual related topics of philosophy, optics, cosmology and the concept of echelon in military service (e.g. company, regiment, brigade, division, corps, etc), I came across a poem by Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) where about 26% of the 56 lines are immediately recognizable. Not only are they recognizable, but they are used individually, so its not just one turn of phrase out in the real world, its something like 14 of them, each standing on its own. (Note: "standing on its own" is a good example of an idiom in modern use).

Here is a stanza from the poem in question, called "Gentlemen Rankers"

               We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,
                       We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,
               And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.
                       God help us, for we knew the worst too young!
               Our shame is clean repentance for the crime that brought the sentence,
                       Our pride it is to know no spur of pride,
               And the Curse of Reuben holds us till an alien turf enfolds us
                      And we die, and none can tell Them where we died.

I had not realized until now that Rudyard Kipling lived in the 20th century.    He died right before the start of World War 2 in 1936. He was born in Mumbai to British parents in the year our Civil War ended (e.g. 1865). 

And yet the language of his poems seem much more archaic, or at least filled with unrecognizable idiom, then your average late 19th century essay or poem.   For example, Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven was first published in 1845, or 20 years before Kipling was even born, and yet The Raven is very readable today with very few archaic uses that are a problem.   Well, as they say, the US and England are separated by a common language, and apparently this is even more so when you use a lot of idiom and slang.

This fabulous off-center photograph of Kipling is throwing off the symmetry of my blog.  Stop that!

Here is a partial list of such phrases: run his own six horses, and faith he went, he held the ready tin, machinely crammed, sweet to, blowzy, regimental hop, out on the spree (1), cock-a-hoop, Tommy, worsted, blacks your boots, Curse of Reuben, knew the worst, and of course Gentlemen-Rankers, the very title of the poem is incomprehensible, at least to me.

A "Gentleman-Ranker" is a soldier in the British Army who is from the upper classes but finds himself an enlisted soldier (e.g. below his station in life).  This would happen because of misfortune, a mistake, or a flaw in his character.  But in any case, he has the education and manners of a member of the ruling class, but he is living the life of a common soldier.  Hence, a "gentleman" who is a "ranker".

Other idiom in this poem which are still in common use include: something less than kind, black sheep, troop, thrash, down the ladder.

Here are six lines in particular that I found very recognizable but had not realized had come from this poem: "To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned", "Its the home we never write to, and the oaths we never keep", "We have done with Hope and Honor, we are lost to Love and Truth", "We're poor little lambs who've lost our way", "And we die, and none can tell Them where we died", "Damned from here to eternity".

Notice the eccentric punctuation, its not mere love and honor we are done with, no, its Love and Honor that we are talking about.

When researching this I came across the following image of Mickey, Donald and Pluto as the Three Musketeers, but some Internet wit had them labeled as "Gentlemen-Rankers", fallen from the upper classes to a mere soldier, but still showing here a certain spirit and elan.

Gentlemen-rankers of a different period?

Read the entire poem here:

http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_gentlemen.htm

The poem has been adapted as a famous drinking song, and numerous other topics in popular culture. It is practically the anthem of those who are in despair about their lives and position in life.

_____________________________________

References

Rudyard Kipling on Wikipedia

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

Military Rank

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

Marian Reforms of the Roman Army:

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

The Man Who Would Be King (1975) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073341/

Gunga Din (1939) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031398/

____________________________________

Notes:

1. A spree is an archaic term for cattle raid. Its more common usage is someone who is out on a drinking binge, or spree.

2. For those of you not up on the organization of the Roman Army after the Marian reforms of the 2nd century BC, the cohort was a standard unit of the Roman Legion, each legion had ten cohorts, each cohort was about 500 fighting men.

3. From Here to Eternity (1953) which of course we now realize is short for "Damned from here to eternity".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045793/

Linux Enhanced Precision Firearm Experience: Sniper Rifle Goes Open Source

Now open source operating systems, lasers, image processing and firearms are combined into a single consumer product: Tracking Point has a new rifle that integrates various techniques to increase the accuracy of your average sniper / long range rifle user.

What I want to know is whether this will run Ubuntu and whether one will always have to constantly upgrade the OS or "be left behind". I would hate to update the OS on this thing and have a problem, you know what I mean? Ooops, sorry, didnt mean to shoot you!   Ha ha.  Sorry about your dog.

Whats the upgrade system on this distribution?  Yum ?  Apt ?   How do I know if the file system is reliable, is it journaling or using ZFS ?   Has GLUT been ported to this platform?  What kind of boot loader does it use?   Are we talking LILO or GRUB here?   How can I get to the shell?  I wouldnt want to have a sniper rifle for which I could not get to the shell.

Does Open Source Software have a role to play in homeland security and national defense?  I would hope that surveillance cameras, unmanned drones and personal nuclear weapons would all run Linux and presumably Apache.   That should teach a lesson to those liberal do-gooders who thought that Open Source was going to change the world.

Read about it at Ammoland

http://www.ammoland.com/2013/01/trackingpoint-launches-worlds-first-precision-guided-firearms/#axzz2PJzFgmce

Here is the video which describes what they are doing:

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

And of course, each rifle comes with a WIFI hotspot to foster communication between itself and other weapons peripherals.   

Editorial

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/02/a-precision-guided-firearm-powered-by-linux/

The Manufacturer

http://tracking-point.com/

VFX, The World Trade Organization and Actionable Subsidies

[in progress]

[Ok Kids, Global Wahrman will now try to dig into the reality of the subsidies and see what the real numbers are, at least up to a point... so take whatever numbers you read here with a grain of salt...]

In a previous post, I itemized the many factors that have lead to the disaster that is computer animation and visual effects in this country.

See The Train Wreck that is Computer Animation Production: A Postmortem

Some of the issues that have caused this situation are fundamental and are unlikely to change in any significant way. For example, to change the business model of the visual effects facility is a noble goal, and has in a certain sense occurred from time to time, but it is very difficult and usually quite temporary. Nor are we likely to see our government do anything about globalization: our govenment gets off on and profits by impoverishing Americans by sending their work overseas. That isnt going to change.

On the other hand, our government belongs to trade organizations designed to see that such things as subsidies from a government to its local industry do not occur. Of course the reality is that they occur all the time, and as an example of this, see the section below about subsidies in Japan. (1)

For those of you who are not up to date on this, here is a fast review of how the subsidies supposedly works.  If you, the filmmaker spends $1.00 in Canada on making your movie, the Canadian government will write you a check at the beginning of production for $0.60. So if you spend $10,000,000, the government will write you a check for $6,000,000. (3)  And in return you actually have to spend that $10,000,000 on certain things in Canada, and there are some restrictions on these things. But in particular, you can use it to buy visual effects as long as most of the people working on those visual effects are either Canadian citizens, or are residents in Canada eligible to work (easy to arrange), and of course the FX company must be in Canada.

Thats a 60% discount. What producer could resist that? The answer is: none. So they take the work to Canada, which in this case usually means Vancouver. There is a similar deal in England, and the work goes to London. In both cases, Vancouver and London, there is a robust and experienced community of companies and workers who are happy and ready to do the work.

There are a few other wrinkles on this situation. There are special specific case subsidies in New Zealand involving WETA and Peter Jackson. And there are other deals in various parts of the world.

The end result has been for American company after company to be unable to compete and go out of business. From the Orphanage, to Asylum, to Digital Domain, to Rhythm and Hues (2), they have gone out of business and when they did, they cited subsidies as a primary cause.

So what is a subsidy? What exactly defines a subsidy?

According to the World Trade Organization, a subsidy is:

Definition of Subsidy

Unlike the Tokyo Round Subsidies Code, the WTO SCM Agreement contains a definition of the term “subsidy”. The definition contains three basic elements: (i) a financial contribution (ii) by a government or any public body within the territory of a Member (iii) which confers a benefit. All three of these elements must be satisfied in order for a subsidy to exist.

The concept of “financial contribution” was included in the SCM Agreement only after a protracted negotiation. Some Members argued that there could be no subsidy unless there was a charge on the public account. Other Members considered that forms of government intervention that did not involve an expense to the government nevertheless distorted competition and should thus be considered to be subsidies. The SCM Agreement basically adopted the former approach. The Agreement requires a financial contribution and contains a list of the types of measures that represent a financial contribution, e.g., grants, loans, equity infusions, loan guarantees, fiscal incentives, the provision of goods or services, the purchase of goods.

There is a concept known as an "actionable subsidy", and an "actionable subsidy" has what are known as "adverse effects".

Article 5

Adverse Effects

No member should cause, through the use of any subsidy referred to in paragraphs 1 and 2 of Article 1, adverse effects to the interests of other members, i.e.

(a) injury to the domestic industry of another member,
(b) (...)(c) serious prejudice to the industry of another member.

So now we know what is a subsidy, and furthermore what is an actionable subsidy. And I think that the argument could be made that the subsidies that are described above are actionable. So what happens next? Well, next, you have to convince your government that they wish to discuss this matter with the WTO and work through the dispute process. You as an individual, and a trade group or any non-government organization can not do this. Only governments can do this. And all parties must be signatories of the WTO. Well it turns out that Canada, the UK and the USA are signatories of the WTO.

So next, one contacts the State Department. Perhaps. Or perhaps, one contacts one's elected representative, and they contact the State Department. But what if your elected representative is in the pocket of the Studios, and they like the subsidies? That would be sticky, now wouldn't it?

WTO on Subsidies

http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/24-scm.pdf

The dispute process

http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/disp2_e.htm

____________________________________________________

1. The following is from an introduction of an article in Foreign Affairs about subsidies in Japan. The entire essay can be found at the following link (subscription required).

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/69120/herbert-m-bratter/government-subsidies-in-japan

Here is the introduction to the article:

GOVERNMENT subsidies have been a consistent feature of Japanese practice since the country emerged from the feudal system in the eighteen-sixties. Japan's industrial history is singularly unlike that of other countries in that it is not marked by a policy of "laissez faire." Immediately following the restoration of 1867-8, the government set itself the task of industrializing the country, realizing that for this purpose it would have to convert into capitalists and factory workers a nation of knights and retainers. From the first, therefore, the government has exercised a paternal rôle in Japan's economic development. The result has been to make the Japanese people dependent upon the government to a degree unparalleled in other capitalist countries. "Almost any new industry," says a recent writer,[i] "so long as its promoters had some political friends, could secure exemption from taxation, even if no more direct form of subsidy could be obtained."

In starting modern industries it was the government's intention to turn them over to private management and ownership as soon as possible, retaining only a measure of control. In some cases this was done, but not in all. Not only has the government continued to manufacture steel, woolen cloth, and other articles, but it has reserved as state monopolies the trade in salt, tobacco, camphor and ginseng. For the rest, the "westernization" policy has created mammoth corporations, which -- despite their size -- still look to the government for sustenance. Indeed, the list of interests receiving aid in one form or another covers almost the entire field of Japanese economic life. Banking, industry, agriculture, labor, shipping, and shipbuilding, foreign trade, construction, and domestic commerce, all are in receipt of help; hardly any activity of importance or promise is not clamoring for it.

2.  When a production company goes out of business, it is usually due to a number of factors, not just one.  However, in all the cases listed here, foreign subsidies were recognized and publicly stated to be one of the causes, if not a primary cause, of their demise.

3. Its hard to believe that the subsidy is so high, I admit it.  And I have never verified the numbers, but I am trying to now.   It must be less than the reported 60%, that is just too good, I admit it.

The Train Wreck That is Computer Animation Production: A Postmortem

[Updated 4/15/2013]

There are many different issues affecting the health of the visual effects and related computer animation industries in high-end, e.g. motion picture, television and web production. The reason this situation is so complicated has many origins but not least is that it has been building up now for many years, well over a decade and probably closer to two.

So when the train wreck happens, and people are finally willing to take action or potentially change their behavior to improve things, it is not at all easy to figure out how to make changes that will substantially improve the situation. An ounce of prevention might have avoided a pound of cure, or maybe even a ton of cure, but that is water under the damn dam by now.

But what exactly is this train wreck?   What is it exactly?   I think it is the following things.  That a large number of people, Americans and others,  were encouraged to devote a tremendous amount of energy and time and money to become skilled in this area of computer animation, only to discover that there was no reasonable employment for them that would allow them to live a reasonably secure life and support their families.   And that furthermore, having made this bad choice, that it was in fact too late for them to change direction because their career has been, from the point of view of employment, set.   Thus we have thousands and thousands and thousands of people either impoverished or going from bad company to bad company trying to earn a living.   This human misery is the primary part of the train wreck.  Secondarily, that in the process of creating a new industry, computer based visual effects and computer generated films, we not only wiped out several earlier industries, but because of subsidies and globalization we lost our own industries, and that the American computer animation and visual effects industries no longer exist or are on the verge of being completely eliminated.  And third, that in spite of the great technical advances in 3D, that in fact there is very little demand for those skills outside of certain kinds of animation production, and those who specialized in them, and helped create them, are very likely to never work again.

What led to this situation?  Let me count the ways.  But not everything on the list that follows is of equal weight, and not all of them are bad.  Furthermore, some of them are vague.   Had computer animators organized as a labor group from the beginning, would it have made a big difference?  Would it not in fact have hampered the industry and perhaps kept it from coming into existence?   Quite possibly, but on the other hand, the failure to organize and have a plan in place to deal with the project-nature of the business and have a method for benefits to transcend that is a fundamental mistake.

One more thing.   This is not black and white.  You are going to have to think.  Don't assume I am wrong if you disagree, instead find out more about what I am talking about.  Obviously this is from my point of view.

So cut me some slack, people, and pay attention: I am not doing this for me as much as I am doing this for you. I have at best a fatherly attitude towards the situation. I can't force you not to do drugs and drive drunk, but I can sure as hell make sure you know that you are risking your life when you do so. And since I am one of the people who invented the automobile, to continue our analogy, I feel some responsibility to do so.

Each item below could be at least a paragraph, if not an essay.

The situation has its origins in, among other things:

- subsidies from foreign governments to production companies doing work in their country

- combined with production companies that are self-financed through production and therefore have very low reserves and very tight constraints on what they can do at any one time,
- the labor intensive, highly skilled nature of the work, 

- in an industry that has through competition driven the margin to essentially zero such that a production company can do a tremendous amount of work, spend a lot of money, and end up with almost nothing in the bank when they are done,

- with perceived lower cost of labor in some countries combined with the belief that the labor is a commodity, 

- the belief of the customer that the work itself (VFX and animation) is a commodity and is only differentiated by cost ... in other words that the production companies are not very different from each other, (3)

- the improvement in the enabling technologies that make remote collaboration and remote production possible and the willingness on the part of the customers to use remote production (1)

- the glut in labor resulting from extreme exaggeration of the labor market available and the perceived glamour of the market area due to all the media hype and the encouragement of such events as SIGGRAPH (2)

- the contempt for and dismissal of anyone with experience in production

- the failure of both labor and production companies in this country to make allowances for and set up systems to accommodate the project-nature of the work unlike other aspects of the motion picture industry.

- the failure of labor and production companies to use the political tools at their disposal to see that certain advantages in foreign countries, particularly subsidies, are either matched or eliminated.

- the disinclination of the studios to be involved with and finance the costs of production and R&D

- the boom and bust nature of the business which by definition is going to grow and shrink dramatically based on perceived market conditions. This is true, but different, for visual effects and feature animation, e.g. they have their own cycles of boom and bust separate from each other.

- the specificity of the skills involved: people who do not have work are not qualified to do anything else.

None of the above should be the least bit new to anyone.

Each of the above deserves at least a paragraph if not a paper to describe, define and explain what is meant. If you do not think that a point above applies, then you might want to think again or inquire. Because the fact is, they are all part of the enabling situation here that has led to our train wreck.

For example, many people are calling for labor to organize.  On the one hand I am always in favor of labor organizing to present a united front to management.  In this case, I doubt very much if labor organization, possibly even unionization, would have made a huge difference, but it might have made a minor difference in the following way: (a) there might be a system set up to accomodate some of the continuation of benefits for project oriented people and (b) there might have been more in the area of the political process here: particularly involving the US Govt and foreign subsidies.   I doubt very much if unions would have done much to help improve employment in this country in this case, which is probably what most people would desire or expect from a union.

In order to not be perceived as being so negative (although in fact I am), the following has also happened which is not necessarily bad, in fact, they are very good. Even if they may in some sense contribute to this problem in some sort of ironic way:

- a massive increase in the demand at the high end for computer animation because of the great successes brought about by this technology

- a massive increase in the power of the computation, disk, networking, etc, available at any price.

- a much better set of software that is available more or less off the shelf combined with greatly improved techniques

- a set of software that labor can learn on their own or through experience that makes them valuable to a different production company (e.g. you do not have to train everyone from scratch).

- a vastly increased set of skills that can be called upon in a project (e.g. character animation is both a talent and a craft, and good character animators were not really available early on, certainly not in any quantity).

In the next post we will address the first of these as it is so important to the current train wreck: subsidies by foreign nations.  Click here.

Train Wreck at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_wreck

_____________________________________

1. It used to be the case that the studios would not work with visual effects production companies outside the Los Angeles area.

2. ACM SIGGRAPH is a major offender in this area. The various vendors in the industry are also a part of this hype: they encourage people to go into this field and spend their money and time, but turn their back when people can not get jobs.

3. In other words, the studios and film productions believe that the work is all alike, or close enough, so why not go to the lowest-cost provider?

Tippett Studios Disturbance in the Force

[being rewritten, awkward construction]

There has been another event in the long saga of visual effects employment in this country. (1)

This time it involves Phil Tippett and his Tippett Studios which has laid off about 40% of their staff, roughly 50 people. In an article in the Hollywood Reporter, Jules Roman, CEO and President, predicted that the work was going up north to Canada and that they had to get a project by the end of the year or, the implication was, that was the end of Tippett Studios.

See the article here:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/tippett-studios-vfx-house-lays-431762#

For those who do not know Phil, he is a brilliant stop motion animator whose studio made the transition from traditional arts to 3D / Computer Animation.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, when the first Star Wars came out, the film distinguished itself by showing rare enthusiasm in all its shots. A door would open with a bang. A spaceship was clearly an Empire Ship of the Line such as EE Doc Smith would conceive of it. A bad guy looked bad. A throwaway shot that most people remember is when Chewbacca is playing chess with R2D2 and a little chess piece destroys his opponent which was a stop-motion shot by Tippett.

Phil went up to Marin County to help set up the new ILM for Empire Strikes Back and then went off to run his own production company. Starship Troopers was their first big entry into computer animation and they did a spectacular job, imho.

Here is an interview with Phil from about the time he went up to ILM.

http://starwarsinterviews1.blogspot.com/2010/05/phil-tippett-interview-stop-motion.html

At deGraf/Wahrman we worked with Phil on Robocop II which was an odd film but a pleasure to work on. The screenplay was much better than the film itself for some reason.

Anyway, the producer, Jon Davison, had us collaborate with Phil's company on our 3D talking head of the bad guy, a scanned version of actor Tom Noonan. The computer animation was going to be played back a frame at a time on a laserdisk (thats how long ago this was), on a stop motion character that they were animating.   This would be a modern version of the idea of projecting an image inside a miniature, as one might find with King Kong (1933).

It can difficult sometimes for facilities to work with each other because of the traditional competitiveness of the industry and because so many people in this industry are immature. But not in this case. Everyone was great to work with.

For years now, Tippett Studios was one of the few other VFX companies in N. California besides ILM.

It is the nature of companies like this that they must grow and shrink to meet the production work that they have in-house. And they have survived now, even prospered, for many years, perhaps 20. Their excellence at character animation has always been a strong way for them to distinguish themselves and to get the work that was appropriate for their talents.

The point I am trying to make is this. Although it is normal for production companies to grow and shrink with the work, and even normal for production companies to go out of business after a time (they all do, eventually), losing Tippett would be a major loss of a company known for its excellent character animation, and a place of employment for animators.

Not all computer animation companies and vfx companies are the same. They have different styles, different bodies of work, different cultures. Tippett is a stop-motion animation culture in a computer graphics world. I would hate to lose them, and the vfx community would suffer a loss if they went away much bigger than the mere numbers of employed would indicate.

So lets ask the question. What exactly are the politicians in this state and the US Congress thinking while Canadian and UK subsidies and globalization wipe out the vfx community in this country?

My guess is that they don't care how many unemployed there are or whether the industry goes away as long as the Hollywood studios can save a buck.

Phil Tippett on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0864138/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

King Kong (1933) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024216/

_____________________________________

1. Visual Effects now means computer animation or computer graphics, but it did not used to mean that, of course.