FOIA FBI Background Check on Anna Rosenberg

In recent years there has been a variety of issues that involve security background checks and the questions people have about what information is kept on them. But the examples used of government files are not representative because they are usually of people who are very involved in a variety of non-trivial, non-subtle and controversial areas.

A classic example of that in today's news is the FOIA request by Laura Poitras who has been detained by Homeland Security whenever she has entered or left the country and received various “no fly” judgments on attempting to board an aircraft. I am sure that her file is quite interesting and I am also sure that when we see it, it will be the kind of unusual or controversial file that I am referring to above. Why? Because, as Ms. Poitras knows very well, she is under suspicion for and is certainly a collaborator in what is probably the single most damaging and extraordinary intelligence disaster in the history of this country, possibly any country. So of course she is being investigated, and of course the file will contain intelligence information as well as information that is part of various criminal investigations that have not yet completed (and for which charges have not (yet) been filed).

But what does a normal file look like, one that is of a serious and senior professional who has worked for the government, worked for private industry and knows many people, some of whom are or were presidents of the United States, and some of whom were certainly controversial in one way or another, in this case because they were heavily involved in the labor movement of the 1930s.

I happened to come across an online version of the FBI background check file on Anna Rosenberg who was a labor relations consultant before and after WW 2.  She was attacked by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee during the McCarthy period when she was nominated for a government post. She served on a variety of government committees that involved labor relations particularly as it involved the war effort. She worked directly for Pres. Roosevelt at various times.

I think that her FBI file is well worth glancing act to see what is involved, the kinds of questions they asked, the things they noted that caused them concern, etc.

True, this is about a person from another era, a post WW 2 era, but I suspect it has things in common with similar activities today (e.g. extended background checks on people nominated for government service or who require a security clearance). The Internet makes this process easier, but by no means does it do all the work that needs to be done.

So if you are interested in such things, take a fast look at this. It can be found at

https://archive.org/details/foia_Rosenberg_Anna_M.-HQ-1

Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria by Dennis

draft, being rewritten

In a continuing series on "materials to use to procrastinate" we have the work by George Dennis who has written about the Etruscan cities and cemeteries of Etruria, ancient Etrusca, in what we now call Italy.

Its a combination archaeological guide and travel guide and filled with helpful tidbits of where to stay and who to ask to guide you around, referring to people and lodges long dead or out of business a century ago.

This is in the period when Italy was still filled with unlooted tombs, when you could walk into an ancient tomb and still find helmets, spears, urns, vases, and beautiful paintings some of which are sketched and included as part of this narrative.

Anyone interested in the archaeology of the West should read this fabulous travel guide.

The poverty of the people of Italy at the time is also made clear.

I was left with a profound desire to go and visit.  Would a virtual tour of the places cited in this document as they are today be of any interest, I wonder.

Find this document on the internet, a bold new paradigm, here.

A Blog is not a Career and Other Notes

This is a continuation of the ongoing series of what has been learned from writing this blog in the hope that it may be of value to others who are thinking of, or are actively writing, a blog. Previous posts can be found by clicking on the tag admin.

Some of these comments have been made before.  It just means that I still think they are true.

The blog seems to have an audience, or rather audiences, who are interested in some but not all of the various topics I write about.

There is a direct and positive relationship between posts and traffic. There is a direct and positive relationship between the amount of traffic and the effort made on posts, up to a point.

But even trivial posts can be better than no posts at all for generating audience. It seems to be a positive reinforcement phenomenon which is not a surprise.

The metrics generated by www.blogspot.com are sufficient to give direction on what people are reading, and when, and so forth.

The nuisance traffic seems to be less.

The time to write a post does not get less as time goes by. An interesting post still takes time. Yes, on days when I am more focused and know what I want to write I can do so quickly and on days when I am less sure what the topic is or need to switch topics, it can take more time.

The blog is not in and of itself a career.

Like any other long-term project, certain goals and themes get lost and require serious effort to achieve.

In particular, certain themes which are (hopefully) the basis of a book (whatever a book may be these days) need more traction.

Certain themes have made sufficient progress on the blog, but not in real life. In other words, writing much more about a topic would not be as useful as taking other actions to help make those things happen.

The editorial function for the blog (in other words, acting as my own editor) has always been an issue as it is for most blogs. The most obvious way this manifests itself are (a) posts that never see the light of day but which I spend a lot of time on, then choose not to publish and (b) posts that are determined to be too negative and whiny and are, after a few days or weeks, eliminated.

The goal of the editorial is to make the blog more useful, productive and readable in the long run. In the short run, that means eliminating some posts that are honest but digressive.

It is the long term issues of traction on major themes, and the discipline of self-editorial, that seem to be the most important right now.

The Search for Nazi Gold and Computer Animation

On the occasion of a very disappointing Siggraph for those of us struggling to make a living with computer animation and failing, as so many do, several colleagues have suggested the idea that searching for Nazi gold could be a viable career alternative.

Of course, they are responding to the recent events in Europe where two different stories about Nazi gold have been in the press. In one case, a young woman found a mysterious ingot of gold at the bottom of a shallow lake in the German alps with its identifying marks scratched off. And in the other, two people in Poland claim to know the location of a train that was allegedly hidden by the Nazis in a labyrinth of railroad tunnels at the end of World War 2.

At first glance, this activity might seem a promising way to make a living, at least in comparison with the disaster of computer animation, but I think when we review all the facts it will become clear that there are other potential career paths, like art fraud or laundering money, which have a better chance of being successful.

Its hard for Americans to relate to the European concept of treasure hoards littered around the countryside, left behind by invading hordes as it were, hoards from the hordes, whether  Roman hordes, Anglo Saxon hordes, Crusaders acting like hordes, Moors, Normans, Danish, Vikings and what-have-you raping and pillaging and stealing everything they can get their hands on, only to melt it all down and bury it for safe keeping, there to be found by a nerdy but sincere metal detection wielding citizen who has been searching relentlessly every weekend for the last 30 years.  The facts are that some people do this in Europe (search every weekend) and every once in a while they really do find something. (1) 

Aside from these more official discoveries, there are also signs that other, less formal, activities are taking place behind the scenes with good results. An annoying number of previously unknown fine art objects regularly show up on the antiquities market having been plundered from an ancient grave by some scumbag who has been tempted by an evil antiquities broker. Some of these dastardly folks only pretend to plunder graves, they dishonestly forge ancient art items and shamelessly sucker some corrupt collector or curator into buying them in a variation of the famous adage “you can not cheat an honest curator”.

But as romantic as these more ancient hoards are, the real action is in caches of art and gold left behind by everyone's favorite, the National Socialists in the period roughly 1944-1945. As thieves and murderers, the National Socialists of the last world war were in a class all to themselves. First they would roll the Wehrmacht in, then they would roll the gold out of national treasurys, the art out of the museums, and the Jews into the camps stealing everything they ever had along the way. When you melt down a million gold dentures, it just looks like gold bars to those helpful Swiss bankers who are always happy to launder money for the criminal du jour. Some things never change.

But do we really think that there is a lot more to find out there? The problem is that it is very hard to tell. Officially, we know of lots of things that are still missing. But who is to say that some of this missing gold was found but no formal press release issued? Who is to say which famous trainloads of decadent art were hidden in an abandoned mine instead of being destroyed by aerial bombardment on its way there? What 100 tons of gold were processed by the Swiss, what disappeared into the Tsar's vault in Moscow, what treasure from Troy now lies in the basement beneath the Hermitage waiting a year, a century, a millinnia before it sees the light of day?

Keep in mind also, that while the average computer animator knows hardship and rough working conditions, he or she has rarely dealt with abandoned mines, networks of crumbling railroad tunnels filled with unexploded munitions, or deposits at the bottom of very deep, very cold lakes. Yes a computer animator knows how to endure hardship only to be disappointed. But for every hoard found by a metal detection practitioner, how many others work for decades for a handful of copper?

The odds are as likely that you will write a screenplay that gets made into a successful movie. Or that you will be recognized for your talent and invited to direct a film. One seems about as likely as the other, being successful in the motion picture industry or finding a cache of Nazi gold. If you have to go through the trouble of changing your career, I recommend finding something with more likelihood of success.

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1. The most famous recent example of this is the fabulous story of Maj (ret) Tony Clunn of the British Army, MBE, who discovered the location of the famous battle of Teutoberger Wald in Germany.  See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Clunn

dWi Logo Courtesy of Jane Stephan and Greg Ercolano

Greg took this picture of the dWi logo that was on the black film bag that Jane kept the remainders of her fabulous film cartridge give aways.   I will at some point take pictures of the cartridge and film strip and post them here.   Until then, here is the logo.  Thanks Greg.  Thanks Jane.

Communist Conspiracy or World Financial Collapse?

This post will attempt to channel certain belief systems from the long - over Cold War in order to explain current events in the world economy.

There is a lot of concern in certain circles that the crash of the Shanghai stock market will not only affect the Western stock markets, but that it signals a recession or depression in mainland China that will also affect the economies of the West.  No one really knows how this one will turn out and every day you read a different story as the stock markets in China and the west continue to evolve.

Back in the good old days of the Cold War, 1960 or so, America and the world-at-large would not have had to worry about the Chinese communist stock market crash.  This is because back in those days the communist Chinese were actually real Marxists and would never, ever have allowed that discredited tool of capitalism, the stock market, to exist as part of their economy.

Communist cadres would have fought to the death to prevent such an abomination from coming into existence.  So how can we explain that this modern communist government has a stock market?  There are only two explanations that seem possible: either they have fallen into sin and abandoned their most cherished beliefs in a shallow attempt to get rich or it is part of a larger plot to destroy the West by emphasizing the contradictions of decadent Western Capitalism.

Furthermore, the Shanghai stock market is not the only anomaly.  We also have the spectacle of the Chinese Communist Party selling their own people as disenfranchised slave labor to western capitalists in order to increase the profits of western corporations and make China the (cheap) manufacturing center of the global economy.

This is is a very odd situation it seems to me.  Karl Marx and Chairman Mao must be spinning in their graves.

And of course the potential collapse of the Chinese market threatens both the larger Chinese economy as well as the world financial markets since we are all part of the global economy whether we want to be or not   But surely the collapse of the Shanghai market could not have been a surprise to the Communist party.  Even the most casual student of capitalist economies of the last two centuries would have shown them that market crashes as a result of speculation and/or panic and the resultant economic depression is what unregulated markets do.   It is their nature.

Our managed press and slave-economists notice nothing and say nothing while the world holds its breathe and waits to see whether the economy is about to take another fall.  .

But in the more entertaining days of the cold war, things would have been different.   Back then, political and economic analysts would look at this implausible communist capitalist behavior and the uncertainty caused by the collapse of their finance market and suspect that we were witnessing some sort of implacable communist conspiracy to destroy western democracy.   I propose that the broad outlines of the perceived plot would be as follows: 

1. First, China would use their slave labor to attract manufacturing to its shores with the intent to utterly destroy manufacturing in target nations, such as the USA and rely on the self-destructive greed of the wealthy industrialists of the west to sacrifice any value or public good in order to increase short term profits.  In so doing, the wealthy industrialists put a huge number of people out of work in America while continuing their efforts to finally destroy any remnant of the labor movement.  Disenfranchised, impoverished and without help from their government who is indifferent to the misery of the poor, these unemployed people will be excellent recruits for future revolutionary movements.

2. The Communist elite then use standard capitalist techniques to stimulate their economy in specific sectors. Economic stimulation, trade barriers, and other policies create an overheated economic boom.  In this way, China becomes the fastest growing economy in the world, at least for a while. The International Communist Conspiracy is almost ready to pull the rug out from under the feet of the Western dupes who suspect nothing.

3.  In an astonishing rejection of fundamental Marxist theory, a Chinese stock market is created.   Stocks are traded, valuation goes through the roof, and investors from all over the world make substantial investments in Chinese ventures and Chinese billionaires make investments in American and other non-Chinese companies. 

4. Now, having made the stupid west dependent on your economy for their profits and integrated their financial markets with your own, you begin to pull the whole thing apart.  First you selectively stop overheating your economy, causing sectors like real estate to begin to implode. 

5. Your stock market collapses and takes the western markets with it.   The world economy collapses.

6. The communist cells created from the people whose lives were destroyed by the greed of the Western capitalists are activated and a revolution occurs in the west which soon becomes part of the international communist government controlled by Beijing.

7. Helpless, and with their traditions of freedom destroyed, you can now implement your evil plan to implement gun control, teach evolution, and force everyone to have socialized health care.

V. I. Lenin said, “The West will sell us the rope we will use to hang them”. And he may yet turn out to be correct.

I have one more thing to say before I drop this line of thought..

We live in a very strange time in American and the world.  I think it is much stranger than we, who are immersed in it every day, realize.  And I cite to you by example the fact that the last major Communist nation in the world should in fact both have a stock exchange and be suffering from the classic instability of an unregulated finance market.  Say what you will, explain it however you care to, but I think it is fair to say that this is a very weird situation.


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For more on the despicable Chinese way of war see the Art of War by that proto-commie, Sun Tsu. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War

Curl Crested Manucode Makes UFO Alien Death Ray Sounds

Cornell has made its library of the recordings of birds from around the world available online. One bird in particular was chosen from its library because it makes sounds like a UFO death ray. How is it possible for the Curl Crested Manucode to know so perfectly what alien space brothers sound like? Clearly this is proof that aliens visited New Guinea in ancient times and invented video game sound effects.

Curl Crested Manucode tells stories of the Alien visitations to its young bird unit.

Listen yourself if you dont believe me.

Sounds of the Curl Crested Manucode

Late Summer Garden Report 2015

The notes below are intended to remind me of lessons learned to date by this years container garden. Others may find it useful as well, its hard to tell.

Everything here is calibrated to what one vegetarian might want to have in a salad several times a week, or as a contribution to salsa and other mexican food, or as a contribution to the usual vegetarian soups, again once or twice a week.

Now in mid August the heat is insane with temperatures reaching well above 100 degrees, and possibly as much as 120 degrees in the nearby desert.

Camera is missing so there are no pictures.

1. We had about 4 functioning runner/pole beans operating all summer. They have done yeoman work, but are just about shot. 6 or 8 functioning plants would have been a better number, although with 4 it has not been too bad.

2. We had about 8 tomato plants, all but one of which did not produce until the last month. Now they are coming along fine, but if I were to do it again, I might focus more on cherry tomatoes, which produce more, more often, and with less problems. 8 plants is about right for one person. Tomatoes were never given proper size containers so no doubt suffer from having cramped root systems. Tomatoes benefitted from a new better trellising system based on PVC pipes.

3. Lettuce was successful in the beginning of summer, but by mid summer was totally destroyed. It can not take the heat. We will try an experiment in fall as it gets cooler.

4. We had about 4 functioning cucumber plants from early to mid summer. This was acceptable but a few more would have been useful. They take a lot of space and could have been better trellised and managed. We had an aphid attack on two of the cucumber plants and that caused me to pretty much terminate the crop at that point.

5. Peas did not function at all this year. Probably it was just too hot.

6. It is not clear whether the problems with lettuce and peas was also due to using last years seeds or if it was just the heat and other mistakes in germination.

7. The experiment of keeping the basil in the shade seems to have helped.

8. On the tomatoes, beans and cucumbers, a relentless diseased leaf and branch removal policy was used. Care was made to try to avoid contamination by infected plant parts and to dispose of them in a way that disease was not spread.

9. We reused potting soil for the beans and lettuce but nothing else.

10. All plants started from seed with hybrid, disease resistant varieties.

11. All plants watered twice a day, sometimes a third time in midday due to heat.

12. Preemptive spraying by copper solution and neem oil seems to have helped. Avoided spraying in mid day.

13. No attempt was made to rescue plants with aphids. Aphids were the kiss of death, any plant so affected was terminated.

14. Will try again with peas and lettuce when it gets cooler.

15. It would have been nice to have some functioning hot pepper plants, in spite of them being somewhat annoying to start.

Impromptu deGraf/Wahrman Reunion 2015

I apologize for being so late in posting this. I am recovering from the shock of SIGGRAPH, my own angst about my career, lack thereof, and the oppressive heat.

Out of the blue, there was an impromptu dWi (deGraf/Wahrman) reunion party at Greg Ercolano's house on the Saturday before Siggraph.

If I get your name wrong, or leave your name out entirely, please send me email so I can correct this.

Attendees included (in no particular order) Greg Ercolano, Anne Marie, Eve Lunt (and her husband, Andrew), Jane Stephan, Sally Syberg, Maija Beeton (and her husband Andre Bustanaby), Jim Hillin, Ken Brain, Jay Sloat, Allen Battino, Joseph Goldston, Larry Malone (and friend), and Kevin Bjorke (and friend).

I arrived rather late in the evening having taken the train from San Diego.

People who could not attend due to being out of town or prior engagements or other responsibilities include Brad, Kerry Colonna, Liz Ralston, Josh Pines, Jim Goodman and Emily, Adrian Iler, Marc Scaparo, Sari Gennis, Lynda Weinman, J Walt, Tom Betts, Don Rhodes (CPA), Wendy Elwell, Anne Adams, Ken Cope, Steve Segal, and Tuck Tucker. Dale Herigstad was in Europe I think. Richard Taylor helped out.  Ladd McPartland had recently passed away. Not all of these people may have received invitations in the last minute rush.

It was clear that I was not the only one suffering from career angst or dislocation. This is unfortunate because everyone there but perhaps myself is a respectable, knowledgeable, hard working citizen. who deserves to be doing fabulously well in our new digital age, but that does not seem to always be the case. I find this fascinating and unexpected. Even if we are not all where we might want to be at this point, I would have expected all of us to be valued in the marketplace.

I was astounded to get extra dWi film cartridges from Jane. Everyone was stunned to see a video that Ercolano had of a walk through of dWi sometime during the HB Attraction Period. Greg Ercolano seems to have acquired a fabulous classic contemporary mid-century house. Alhambra seems to be an interesting, Lauren-Canyon like neighborhood.

Probably it is best that I said nothing much at this event.  But if I had thought about it, I would probably have said something like, "There have been several periods of my life when I have been lucky to work with a group of people who turn out to be extraordinarily talented.   And as time passes it becomes clear how fortunate I was to be able to work with all of you.   I also feel that for a variety of reasons that were not exactly under the control of Brad and myself, we were not always able to provide the working conditions that everyone deserved to have.  It is one of the reasons that I did not want to start another production company, or even another company, as I did not want to repeat the same mistakes and without proper funding, that was the likely result.  Again, I want to say, it has been a privilege to work with all of you."

But I was too tired to even think about this until everyone had left.

I slept in the guest house and could not sleep a wink. Apparently the racoons drop things on the roof every 15 minutes or so with a bang.

Obviously we need to do this again so that more can attend.

I would like to encourage everyone there (and those who were not) to arrange to get together with me in the next year so we can catch up in more detail. It has been too long.

I need to get a copy of the Ercolano video.

Photographs to follow.

Siggraph 2015 Notes

I just missed Joey Ito's Keynote speech.  The MIT Media Lab space at Siggraph, as always, has excellent graphic design.  I guess I would call it that MIT Press look.

It disappoints me that we do not have a message board.  Yes, it was unwieldy and imperfect but it was often of use and now there is nothing to replace it.

Hotel Figueroa is no longer owned by Uno, the entertaining German who had bought it 20 plus years ago. It does not appear as though the Sunday Art Party poolside at the Hotel Figueroa is still in action.

At the dWi reunion party, perhaps half the people were unemployed, it seemed.

Sighted at Siggraph: Joan Collins, Mary Whitton, Michael Naimark, Jimbo Hillin, Joey Ito, Scott Fisher, two volunteers from Va. Commonwealth University, Marty Schindler, Rick Sayre, Ed Catmull, Pat Hanrahan, David Morin, David Naegel, Craig Reynolds, Kevin Bjorke, Ed Kramer, Scott Owen, Tom Duff, Henry Fuchs, Turner Whitted (now at Nvidia), Paul Debevec, Barton Gawboy, Jay Sloat, Kurt Fleisher.

Coons award winner Henry Fuchs.

Art achievement award went to Lillian Schwartz which is great, but I felt that Siggraph should have put more energy into explaining who Lillian is and how she came to be where and what she was.  The thing that Lillian provided was addressed, I felt, to those already in the arts community who knew who she was and what the backstory was.  I think.

A brief moment of cynicism about Siggraph papers from the point of view of two very jaded adults who have worked in the glamourous entertainment industry.   A friend and I were discussing what sort of papers one saw at Siggraph, broken down by category: A. papers about techniques that we have been doing for years, B. papers about good ideas that are implemented in a way that is straightforward and obvious, C. Papers about problems or ideas where the author did not seem to understand that the problem had been solved for years, or did not know something about prior work that is very important.  D. Papers about some idea that was really interesting and unexpected, however it was implemented, E. Papers about an idea that was well known (or a problem that was well known) but was solved in a way that was unexpected or really clever.   Obviously what you want is more of categories D and E.

I had a crisis at home and had to leave Siggraph Monday evening through Tuesday unfortunately when most of the interesting parties were.