Jon Snoddy in New York City

One of the reasons I started with photography again after many years was because I noticed I seemed to have a large number of interesting friends, and that pictures of them as time went by would be entertaining.

Perhaps one of the inspirations for this was that famous black photographer of Harlem clubs, whose name I have forgotten, who took photographs of the people who came to play at clubs he hung out at and who eventually ended up with a photographic record of the history of jazz and blues in this country.

This is Jon Snoddy visiting me in New York City.  I think we are at a cafe on Columbus Ave in the Upper West Side.  I forget if he was working for Walt Disney Imagineering at the time or if this was during one of his entrepreneurial activities, perhaps Gameworks.

Jon is now back at Imagineering and has the misfortune of being rather senior in the Imagineering R&D organization.   We all make mistakes.

Hannes Leopoldseder of the Prix Ars Electronica

Hannes was the founder of Prix Ars Electronica as I understand it and one of the people who ran it along with my friends Christina Schoepf, Gerfried Stocker and others.

The Prix Ars Electronica was and probably still is one of the leading and most prestigious prizes in the electronic arts.   There will be many more pictures from my 3 or so visits to Linz on this website.

One of his jobs was to work with the various investors in industry in Linz, Austria, as well as the civic leaders in order to develop the contributions necessary to run the prize.   Here is at work during one of the jury periods of the Prix at some very pleasant Linz restaurant.

Hannes is the one in the middle.

Prix Ars Electronica
http://www.aec.at/prix/en

Carly Archibeque Reflective

Carly Archibeque at some social event.   Formerly married to a good friend of mine, and now very distant, perhaps to create a clean beginning after their divorce.  Carly was extraordinarily courteous to me when she worked at the Academy in Rich Miller's office and I lived in New York.  I suspect that was just her being professional and courteous to everyone but still it was very nice and very appreciated.  It made me feel as though I had a friend "inside", as it were.

Judson Rosebush on the Hudson

Judson Rosebush is a pioneer of computer animation who was partner in one of the earliest computer animation production companies, Digital Effects in New York City.   In this picture, shot available light, he is navigating his boat on the Hudson river and we are passing close to the Intrepid aircraft carrier.

At one point, about a decade ago, Judson ran an office out of Carnegie hall that was doing dozens of interactive media CD-ROMs for various publishers.   I was very impressed as well with Judson's research into the history of the Manhattan project in Manhattan as well as visiting the site of the Trinity test.  He is the only person I know who has in his possession a piece of Trinitite.

I need to track him down and see how he is doing.

Head of a Griffin at the Metropolitan

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is this head of a Griffin sitting in a case.  I believe that they give an approximate date but very little other information.  What was its provenance.  Where on earth did this come from?  A tomb?  Was it designed to be mounted on a staff?  

I had an opportunity in New York City to hear a lecture by Adrienne Mayor, an art historian from Princeton at the time, about her theory of the origin of the Griffin.   First mentioned by Herodotus who said that the story was spread by nomads and traders on the silk road, Ms Mayor observed that on one portion of the silk road one finds large fields of fossils exposed to the air.  One of the most common would look like the skeleton of a very large, four footed beast with the head of a bird.

Griffin on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffin

Adrienne Mayor on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrienne_Mayor

The Mystery of Tom Bombadil and Symbolics

When Craig Reynolds sent me a link to Tom Bombadil's Facebook Page I did not at first realize why he asked about this person.

Tom Bombadil is of course an enigmatic character from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series who is the only one in all middle earth who is not affected by the One Ring and seems to be indifferent to the power of Sauron in some way.

Then I looked more closely at this Tom Bombadil and saw the Symbolics 3600 component boards. The 3600 was one of the original Lisp Machines that came from the MIT AI Lab and was commercialized by two different companies, Symbolics, Inc and LMI, Inc.

Look closely at the top of the picture

Only a member of the inner elite would have access to one of these or understand its significance.

Therefore we can ask, who is Tom Bombadil?

So I sent an email to Tom and asked him about himself and what was up.   He replied immediately from Germany.

Its nice to know that we had a positive impact on someone.   Those were back in those naive and idealistic days when we thought that inventing computing and computer animation was going to help the world, not merely provide more opportunities to steal and support corrupt governments.

Tom Bombadil on Wikipedia

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

ACM SIGGRAPH & The Mixed Blessing of a Single World View

fifth draft

Some must toil in the slave pits of the rich and some must serve on elite committees that stand above the fray, perfect, immutable, and untouched.  But those who serve in those vile yet glamourous positions in industry can not also serve the committees that rule because they do not adhere to the One World View.  It is only this world view that permits the consensus that allows the elite to rise above the unpleasantness that is the world of computer animation.

As my readers know I have been puzzled by the failure on the part of SIGGRAPH to acknowledge certain issues and to make efforts to help their constituency.  It is as if those problems did not exist or that somehow SIGGRAPH was just completely unaware of them.   (1)

And so, since for years I have wondered who runs SIGGRAPH and how it is managed at the national level, it seemed logical that I educate myself as to the processes and people involved.  I have been an attending member of this community since 1980 and of ACM since 1976 and know many of the people in the field, so it seemed to me that it should be straightforward to figure this out.

I think I now understand most of what I set out to know and which I will describe to you below.  It is mostly benign, it is certainly well-intentioned.

The national organization of our community is not secret, but it is elite, and as always with these things they have a sense of who is "of the body of Christ" and who is not by their very nature eligible to be a member.

If one is persistent you will discover that one of the all day meetings of the Executive Committee (EC) of SIGGRAPH is open to the general membership.  This meeting is generally right before or after the national conference. What is odd is that they do not seem to tell anyone about this which is a little inexplicable but probably not intentionally evil.  I have attended SIGGRAPH since 1980 and this is the first I have ever heard of it.   Nevertheless, the minutes of these meetings are published online at a link I provide below.  Also, the annual report by the president is also published online, as well as various policies and bylaws and these altogether  bring a lot of clarity as to what the people who run SIGGRAPH think and worry about.  I am going to presume that like so many other organizations, the picture that is presented is by no means complete, but it is enough for now.

Paul Debevic, formerly of the EC, was also helpful in publishing on Facebook a picture of the EC at work.  I found this picture very entertaining and enlightening.   I don't have a copy of it, but I am emailing Paul for one and I will add it when it arrives.

It seems to me that these people are conscientious and have the well-being of SIGGRAPH at heart.   If I think that they are not aware of a variety of problems and that they have helped contribute to a disaster on the ground, they will not agree with me.  They have a very specific world view, which I will call for want of a better term, an "Educators Point of View", and are probably not aware of the issues that exist in the various production communities even as they glorify and celebrate those industries at their conference.

And that I think is the heart of the problem.  In building a culture and a group of people who can work by consensus, several important communities that are involved in SIGGRAPH are not represented on the EC.  I doubt that this is because of any evil desire to disenfranchise these groups so much as it is a desire to keep the committee centered and effective.  Be that as it may be, the result is that the EC, in my humble opinion, does not acknowledge or address many issues of great importance, at least of importance to some of us.

My first attempt to be nominated for the EC was very politely considered and declined.   Once nominated, one must then stand for election and must receive a certain number of votes from the general membership in order to be on the Executive Committee. Comparing myself to the current members of the committee,  I think I am completely qualified to be nominated and that my position statement would offer the voting membership a candidate with a clearly different point of view and that this would be well-received.

My choices now are to try again to be nominated, or run a write-in campaign to be nominated outside the normal nomination process.   I hesitate to do the latter because its a lot of work, although I think I would get the required signatures if I organized for it.  Perhaps I will do so next SIGGRAPH if I am still interested.

Because I am frankly discouraged.   I have been informed by a long term colleague and esteemed volunteer of SIGGRAPH as well as an alumni of the EC, that the judgment was made long ago that I was ineligible for participation in SIGGRAPH at some level.

I do not know what this means.  I do not understand it at all.  This has left me very troubled and I had hoped to clear this up somewhat at SIGGRAPH but unfortunately I can not attend SIGGRAPH this year because of resource conflicts.  Maybe it can be cleared up remotely.

I will write another post that clearly describes point by point the changes that SIGGRAPH should make, or at least discuss.   This will basically be a summary and restatement after reconsideration of other posts already written in light of what I have learned since then.  For example, I believe SIGGRAPH should stop glorifying the entertainment industry which they do constantly.   They should make a point of showing the dark side if they must also glorify this industry, so that people who are influenced in their career by SIGGRAPH can see other points of view.

Now that I understand, at least to some extent, how the EC works and who is on it, I understand their failure to act on these issues or even to discuss them.   That is what having a homogeneous world view is all about.  They see what they want to see and everything is beautiful.

I know someone is reading my "Issues" post from 2012 because my web site statistics went crazy there for a few days, and then settled down to its normal pace.  About 1,500 people seemed to read it on those three days, or maybe one person 1,500 times.  Although I do not know who those people are or what they think, I submit that this is evidence that some of what I write about must be of interest to people who attend SIGGRAPH, or why else would they be reading it?

I want to help, but I do not want to force myself and my ideas on people.  Its a lot of trouble, it has very little upside for me, and besides, how many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one, but the lightbulb has to sincerely want to change.

SIGGRAPH EC Meeting Minutes

http://www.siggraph.org/about/ec-meeting-minutes

_____________________________________________

1. Issues include encouraging people to go into computer animation in spite of vast unemployment, having keynote speakers who do not know what a computer is, blind endorsement of many of the worst people of the entertainment industry and so forth.   I will write a more concise description of what exactly I would have SIGGRAPH do to bring more balance to the force but until then you can get a very good idea from reading some of the posts on the right side of this blog listed under SIGGRAPH.   And please do not say that SIGGRAPH can not do this or that.  Be serious, ok?  SIGGRAPH can certainly pick keynote speakers who are from our community.   SIGGRAPH can certainly make it clear to young people what the statistics are about employment and have counter programming.   They could certainly have discussion of the state of employment in computer animation in fiction and non-fiction areas.  They can certainly have representation by non-entertainment users of computer graphics.   There is not the slightest prohibition of any of this in their charter. People need to grow up a little about what they can and can not do.

More About Malfeasance in Medical Care in S. California

[On swift wings revenge approaches.   They should tremble in fear to know that I am biding my time until the moment is right, then I will strike!]

As many of you know, I have a chronic medical condition that requires that I take certain medication every day.   When I can not get access to that medication a variety of things happen that are unpleasant both for me and for people around me.

Is this situation life threatening?   Well, it is certainly very inconvenient.   The way that this medication is controlled and made available to the citizens of this country means that, unless one is rich, one spends something like 1/4 to 1/2 or more of one's time securing the medication and not always succeeding.  In other words, the system is set up such that it is perfectly likely, in my experience, and even probable that one will regularly go without the medication due to the system set up by the state on several occasions during the year.

That's just tough shit.  We all have our cross to bear, nevertheless it is no fun. Not for me, not for anyone who may be working with me. It generates tremendous psychodrama, angst and general unpleasantness. I would go so far as to say that it may disqualify me from working at a real job since most real jobs have such things as deadlines, travel, and extraordinary stress that is incompatible both with how the medication works and the process of getting it.  The good news is that what I always forget is that when one has a real job, and live in a real city instead of out here in hell, one can build systems that mitigates most of this.  

At a later date I will explain all of the reasons why getting this medication is so complicated.  But one word of advice, unless you have had to do it for a couple of years at least, you do not have a clue how bad it is. You only think you know.   Trust me, it just goes on and on and on.   But in this post I will tell you a story about one little wrinkle in this many volume puddle-of-shit that is procuring this medication.   This particular fuck comes from moving from the NY area to Los Angeles as part of accepting a "job".

One deliberate back door that is supposed to allow for special events in getting this medication is that when something unexpected happens, one is supposed to be able to go to any emergency room, show the doctor your prescription bottle, explain what the current crisis is about (a snowstorm, a hurricane, a last minute affair with someone you have had a crush on all your life, whatever) and walk out with a one-time prescription to tide you over until you get back home and see your real doctor, or find and a new doctor, or whatever.  

This back door worked in NYC. Even more amazing is that it was rarely necessary.  When a doctor there goes out of town, apparently, or takes a vacation, they designate a replacement for the period of time. Not so out here in sunny S. California. Although going to an emergency room is not something you want to do very often for a variety of reasons, it is something that is considered routine back east.  So it would seem.

But when I moved to LA, to my surprise, it did not work. The doctor at Cedars Sinai in West Hollywood told me that they were prohibited by law from giving out such prescriptions. Then later, when I was dealing with a life-threatening illness in my family in San Diego, I went to the ER in the hospital where my relative was in intensive care and they also refused to help me, saying that their hands were tied by the law.   Thus I had to deal with one of the most traumatic periods of my life made much worse by their actions.   Of course, in both cases, I also received a bill for their services.

So I asked my various doctors in California about what I was told. Was there any such law? Not that they knew about. How would I find out for sure?  No one knew.  No one gave a fuck.  Not their problem.

Fast forward to this week. I am in the middle of medication hell the week before SIGGRAPH and so I decided to try one more time and go to an ER to see if they could help me out. They could, and they did. I got a stern lecture, told that they would not do it a second time, and got a prescription for a few days, which will not be enough for me to find another doctor, exactly, but it was helpful and I have been able to solve this problem in time for SIGGRAPH.  So the system did what it was supposed to do.  But that is just the beginning of the good news.

The doctor at this ER confirmed for me that those other doctors were lying to my face. What I was told was a common lie told in ERs he says when they don't want to deal with this kind of medication. You the patient are expected to believe them and go away and die or whatever.  You are garbage in their eyes.   They do not care to help. 

So lets be clear.

Twice now in S. California I went to the ER for help, a help they could have easily provided, and they chose to lie to my face and let me suffer because it was more convenient for them, for some unknown reason.  The lies were to deflect my anger from their harmful actions.  This is not just incompetence, this is malfeasance.   What are my legal remedies?

None.

What is the solution?

Become rich and the problems go away.

I do not know if this is unique to S. California or if other communities have the same problem.

I can not wait to get out of S. California.

The two 'bad' hospitals by the way were Cedars Sinai in West Hollywood and the older Palomar Hospital in Escondido, CA.  The ER that actually helped me was the *new* Palomar Hospital in Escondido and the experience was quite pleasant and efficient, as these things go.

[How then will I get my revenge on these evil scumbags who serve Satan?   I can not reveal this as yet.  But their time is coming and then they will know my wrath and they will be punished!  And all those who protect and enable them, they will be punished as well!]

The Mysterious Readers of the SIGGRAPH "Issues" Essay from 2012

I am ashamed to admit it, but I track my blog's page hits pretty closely.  Generally the numbers of hits is dependent on the recency of a post, and whether the post is serious or not.  The number of readers on any given day is closely related to the amount of effort I have put into it in the last 24-72 hours.

But every once in a while the numbers seem to jump, they double or triple out of nowhere and then return to normal after a few days. And what are they reading?

They are reading one thing: my SIGGRAPH “Issues for Discussion” essay that I wrote two years ago when I was late for SIGGRAPH but I was so frustrated with the whole affair that I felt that I had to do something, so I wrote that essay.

Now, a week or so before SIGGRAPH, the statistics on readership on that essay have gone through the roof. I wonder who is reading this? I wonder what they think? They probably think that I am an impractical lunatic because many of the issues are outside the normal agenda of an academic conference of this type. And I guess that is right. But for us, those of us who helped found the field, SIGGRAPH was always something more than merely another academic conference. In this we may have been deluding ourselves.

The essay was written two years ago. I have a dozen other essays on related topics but they do not get read as much.

I wonder who these people are? Do they like it? Do they hate it?

I have no idea, they are silent.

The essay in question can be found here:

http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2012/08/siggraph-2012-issues-for-discussion.html

Politics and Friendship

So I have a great friend in NY or I used to. We have known each other for decades but just in the last 5 years or so starting talking almost daily. A talented outsider artist, IMHO, we would discuss all sorts of important matters such as the stupidity of modern computer graphics and the failure of that movement, the importance of the Hollow Earth, Lovecraft, the Illuminati's role in modern society, Keats, Blake, Bulwer-Lytton and so forth.

My friend is well known for helping other people who are down. No one can figure out how he supports himself but among other things he is very frugal (but that is not enough). He has had some adversity in life but does not seem to notice. Like all my artist friends who are successful in some sense of that word, he works extremely hard, and is very productive. He has stood by friends in need on several different occasions that I am aware of even when it was not convenient (a test of character, in Southern terminology). Since I am impoverished because of my work and commitment to computer animation he helped me find a place to stay in NYC so that I could visit, which otherwise I could not afford. He spent a billion hours with me when I visited NY and really helped to make that trip great. His daily chats and emails would often cheer me up, and since I am currently ostracized and living in abject poverty, I enjoyed hearing from him. It helped to break the near total isolation.

And he is a die hard Republican.

Loved Romney, thought he would make a great president. Hates Obama more than he would hate Hitler. Benghazi this and Hillary that. Obamacare blah blah blah. Jews controlling the media, how much the Jews are hated, etc. I would hear this stuff daily, more or less, in chats on Google mail and by email. It was occasionally annoying but I enjoyed talking to him, he had high entertainment value. I presumed he was being occasionally sincere but often just provocative.

But he kept assuming he knew what I thought and that I was a typical lefty liberal, whatever that may mean. I kept telling him that he did not know what I thought, really. He did not realize that my third generation elitist Virginian reform Jewish atheist roots and the history of Orthodox and Hasidic rabbis in my family in the Eighteenth century or so, as well as my time at the RAND Corporation left me with somewhat eccentric and non-mainstream beliefs.

So one day, after reading about an hour of rants about Democratic villainy from his point of view I told him .0001 percent of what I believe. Just one time, after hearing this stuff from him literally every other day (if not every day) for years.

I told him what I believed on just one issue just one time.

That the Supreme Court pissed on the constitution in public in November 2000 when they installed their goon, Bush Jr, as president in a classic coup d'etat. That the NY Times was just a right-wing rag when it rolled over and did not even slightly object to this gross injustice thus revealing its true colors. That everything Bush did was therefore illegal. That every decision that the Supreme Court made since that black day needed to be reevaluated in light of this crime to see which of their decisions were legal and which needed to be overturned.

And he never talked to me again.

So what is the moral of our little story? I guess the moral is that you should never tell someone what you believe unless you are perfectly ok with them never talking to you again. It doesn't have to be fair, and it doesn't have to be reciprocal, that is the way it is.   We might also conclude something about how Republicans relate to opinions outside their cult, but we already knew that.