Global Wahrman

Its all about one or more of the following issues and I doubt you will be surprised by any of it. I am a little surprised by the intensity and insanity of it all though.

My friends are very happy because their candidate, Hillary Clinton, has probably clinched the nomination for President from the Democratic Party. Between you and me, I never really had much doubt that Hillary would do this. She has always been the frontrunner and seemed likely to me to win the nomination without the use of Superdelegates. And of course if it came to the position of the Superdelegates, I did not think there was much doubt about which way that would go either.

I am happy for my friends. It is a good thing when your candidate wins, generally speaking. I presume my friends are ethical Americans who are voting their beliefs and so forth and so on.

But for a variety of reasons, most of which have very little to do with Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton is not my candidate. Again dont get me wrong, I love Bernie Sanders. I never thought he had much of a chance of winning the nomination, but I am stunned and delighted that he did as well as he did. Its just that I think I also know something about Hillary Clinton and the kind of president she will be.

But now that Hillary has won the nomination (or all but won it, its not really much in doubt) my friends are angry that I do not fall into line and support Hillary.

And boy are they angry. I have received two death threats and lots and lots of insults. Its OK, its helpful to know who actually respects you enough to let you have your beliefs without throwing insults at you. And clearly I do not have many such friends on Facebook, or for that matter anywhere, probably.

I hope that when Hillary Clinton wins the Presidency that she becomes as good a President as my friends believe that she will be. For my part, however, I doubt it. I think she is a competent, process oriented, mainstream Democrat. I doubt she will be any better nor any worse than any other power mad, middle of the road, Washington insider Democrat.

If you do not understand by now that the status quo is not working for millions and millions of Americans, then I am very happy for you. It means that the system is working for you, and that is great, and I am very jealous. You have my congratulations.

If you want to understand why it is not working for others you are going to have to look beyond the surface. You are going to have to ask why there are so many Bernie and Donald supporters, each in their own way. You are going to have to try and figure out how many people are actually unemployed, underemployed, and / or impoverished.

As for me, I find that Facebook is not worth the aggravation. So instead of blocking and unfriending even more people, and the aggravation that involves, I am going to absent myself from Facebook for a few months, possibly until after the election. I am not really sure. If you want to know how I am doing, you will just have to email me or read this blog.

Good luck to all of you and I hope you will keep in touch.

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Three Interview Issues Worthy of Discussion

Three recent “interview worthy” issues were recently brought up by a friend who has the misfortune of managing several hundred researchers of various types at a well-known entertainment company.

The three issues are (a) working with other people, (b) deadlines, (c) recent programming experience.

As always, I take these things personally. But probably these questions have nothing to do with me. I suspect that it has to do with having to deal with self-entitled, prima donna researchers at his international facility combined with possibly a misunderstanding about my recent work.

First, I am probably easier to work with than anyone else I know assuming you actually want to get the job done which is a big assumption. I did time at UCLA in the 1970s, I know what teamwork means and I dont just pay lip service to it. I let people know what they need to know to get a job done, I help them when they get stuck. I explain potential problems and suggest possible solutions to them when appropriate. If anything I have the character flaw of “oversharing”.

There can be a problem when people are insecure and defensive, as they often think I am talking down to them, as I tend to explain things using the English language which has words of more than two syllables. This can be especially problematic with self-identified “producers”. There can also be a problem when people say that they want to go to the moon, but really want to go to the corner. There are other issues as well, but in general working with people is not a problem when we are all people of good faith trying to get the job done.

Second, deadlines were problematical in my youth due to my genuine contempt for arbitrary ones. Over the years, I have learned that organizations rely on arbitrary deadlines in order to manage large projects and get anything done. Thus the problem becomes not whether or not a deadline makes sense but about everything else involved with the process of making a deadline, which is to say such things as scope of work, schedule, approval processes, client management, project strategy, resources allocated, the talents and personalities of the people on the project, technologies in development, training, and most of all whether a system has been put into place, engineered if you will, to be able to make deadlines of this nature without too much blood and mangled bodies.

With no false modesty, I will tell you that I am one of the best persons I know to help conceptualize and engineer such a deadline-making system as well as being excellent at managing a process to completion. I can also tell you that, particularly in the entertainment industry, there are people who do anything in their power to prevent and sabotage such a system from being put in place or working. At that point, it is up to senior management to step in and discipline the producer who is damaging the organization or discipline the prima donna who uses chaos and insubordination for their own purposes of self-aggrandizement.

I have often been involved with projects whose goals were so lofty, and the resources and time allowed so limited, that compromises are required to make anything happen at all. This kind of situation, which often feels like the story of my life, requires everyone to work together. Decisions have to be made, directions have to be set, people have to be honest. This is why we get paid.

Third, the issue of recent programming experience has more to do with structural economic issues and confusion about what the talent for technical work is. Back when there were far fewer technical people available, I was recognized as one of the best on the West Coast. Now that there are so many good technical people in the various fields, I feel, modestly, that I am one of the best technical people on the West Coast. But this can be difficult to communicate to many people today because they are confused about what they want.

Do they want someone who knows the technology inside and out, and can be creative with that technology or do they want someone who knows what -1 means in a stupid software package that they are using on a project because someone thought it was trendy and they might more often get laid? Do they want someone who can design software and has taste, or do they want a moron who is easy to control and knows how to type. Decide what you want.

And then, if you are still concerned, talk to my references, who are near the top of their fields, and see what they say.

I hope this has helped.

Are Animals Intelligent?

I mentioned to a friend who is a pioneer in the field of simulating various kinds of animal behavior that I was very pleased to find a new book by an ethologist that voiced the opinion that animals had emotions and intelligence. This is of course in contrast to the last 70 plus years of the behaviorists who put animals in little boxes and maintain that animals are merely stimulus-response machines.

My friend let me know in no uncertain terms that I did not have even the slightest right to my opinions, that any behavior by scientists was acceptable, and that the lay person (if that is what I am) did not have the slightest right to criticize any scientist in the field of animal behavior in any way. If a scientist believes that a dog or a horse is merely a machine without feelings then that is what I should accept as any belief I had must necessarily be anecdotal and without the slightest validity.

I want to go on record here and disagree with my friend. Torturing and demeaning animals is not acceptable to me. I understand the need for animal models in certain kinds of medicine (e.g. cancer research) in the absence of an alternative but failing to acknowledge intelligence in animals is not. It is nothing more than an extension of the racism (species-ism?) that was once popular in mainstream science which worked so hard to measure skull shape and size to prove that the non-white “races” were inferior to the Aryan ideal and deserved to be enslaved.

Whether or not animals are human, humans are certainly animals. Our species is part of a continuous spectrum of the evolved animal life on this planet and the failure to acknowledge the intelligence and, yes, even the probable awareness and consciousness of many animals, is sheer arrogance. Yes, I realize this is science, yes I realize that consciousness and intelligence is not at all well defined and has all the pitfalls that this implies. But that is not what we are talking about here. Failing to recognize intelligence, intent, memory and yes even culture in some of our fellow creatures is just bizarre.

The book I am referring to is “Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?” by the well-known ethologist Franz de Waal.

Find it here:

http://www.amazon.com/Are-Smart-Enough-Know-Animals/dp/0393246183

Sunday, June 5, 2016

Is Captain America Gay or Just From Another Time?

[I wrote this post in complete innocence, not realizing that the gender preference of Captain America was a real issue heating up social media from here to Russia and beyond. Apparently there is some discussion about whether Captain America and Bucky Barnes (aka The Winter Soldier) might not have a thing for each other.]

In America, it is very important to know about the sex lives of our celebrities both on the screen and off. Who does what to whom and how many times is central to our feelings about ourselves, who we are, and who we want to be. Some might think that childish, but I prefer to think that it is merely adolescent, and most adolescents have a healthy interest in sex, don't you agree?

I have recently watched all 12 (well maybe 14) of the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And to my astonishment, I have come across circumstantial evidence that Steve Rogers, Captain America, may not be the all-American boy so many right-thinking Americans think he is. True, the evidence is circumstantial but I also think it is compelling.

In Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), in one of the brief respites between action sequences, Captain America is in a pickup truck driving in New Jersey with his new partner in crime, the Black Widow, aka Natasha Romanoff aka Scarlet Johannson. Ms. Johannson is wearing her regulation spandex-latex-polyethylene jumpsuit required for femme fatales in comicbook narrative.

They have a discussion about relationships, and I quote:

BW: Allright, I have a question for you. But you do not have to answer.

BW: But if you dont answer it is sortof answering though.

CA: What?

BW: Am I your first kiss since 1945?

CA: That bad, huh.

BW: I didn't say that.

CA: Well it kindof sounds like thats what you said.

BW: No I didnt, I just wondered how much practice you had?

CA: You don't need practice.

BW: Everybody needs practice.

CA: It was not my first kiss since 1945. I am 95, I am not dead.

BW: Nobody special then?

CA: Ha. Believe it or not it is kindof hard to find someone with shared life experience.

BW: Oh that is all right, you just make something up.

CA: What, like you?

BW: Truth is a matter of circumstances, not all things <indecipherable> all the time. Neither am I.

CA: Its a tough way to live.

BW: Its a good way not to die though.

CA: You know, its kindof hard to trust someone when you dont know who that someone really is.

BW: Yeah. Who do you want me to be?

CA: How about a friend?

BW: (laughs)

Is this really believable? You mean that for the first time in the history of the world, not to mention the cinema, we have a reversal of roles where it is the guy telling the gal that they should be friends? As if that is not enough, we have the unmarried, healthy, all-American boy telling Scarlet Johannson to get out of bed (figuratively speaking). True, she might not be the innocent all-American girl that a nice boy like Steve Rogers would want to marry and bring home to mother, if mother had not been dead for 70 or so years, but even so, everyone needs practice.

This gets at the fundamental dialectic so well reviewed in When Harry Met Sally (1989). Is it possible for a heterosexual man and woman to be "friends", that is, without one of them desiring sex? The answer in that movie and in most examples we have from life is an unambiguous "no".

No one, not even Captain America, would push Scarlet Johannson away. Maybe he is very shy? Not a chance, no way. Sorry. Unless, of course... Well you see where this is going. Even Natasha Romanoff would have to wonder what kind of man refuse her generous offer.

Is Captain America gay?

In this case, probably not. What we probably have here is a man who came of age in roughly 1944 being somewhat intimidated by the overt sexuality of the definitely non-chaste, modern Black Widow. An excellent reminder of how hard it is to really understand the past. Things were different then.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1843866/

When Harry Met Sally (1989) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098635/

Sunday, May 29, 2016

Working With Other People

When hiring someone for a project it is so important to be sure that the candidate can work with other people. But in this, as with so many things, the biped mammals can be tricky.

What do people mean by “working with other people”? Does it mean blind compliance? Does it mean good communicator? Does it mean a desire to find a workable compromise? Does it mean maintaining one's equilibrium when someone lies to your face? Does it mean doing it their way to the detriment of the project? Does it mean being able to share credit? Does it mean leaving the psychodrama at home? All of the above? None of the above?

Now I feel as though I have to confess something to you. You see, crazy people can make me act a little, well, upset. Nutty behavior can wear on my nerves a bit. The logical reaction when faced with aberrant behavior on the part of a fellow worker, of course, is to attempt to choke the life out of the miscreant causing all the psychodrama. But it is possible that this logical and helpful response to our co-worker's overt betrayal, or bid for power, or demand for attention and special privilege *could* be misunderstood. Maybe the miscreant will become a better person because you tried to choke him or her to death. We can only hope so. But not everyone understands that my motives are pure.

So what to do? Well under extreme provocation, what we might call 'creative differences' occur and it might be best for someone like myself to extract themselves from the project with as much grace as possible. No need to make the project suffer because I think someone is a loony. Under these extreme circumstances, the project does not need my input. Its a tough decision to make.

So maybe instead of asking whether so-and-so can work with other people, it might be more effective to be sure that everyone on the project, even those in charge, can work with other people. You know, treat people with respect, that sort of thing? Remember that none of us are perfect and that all of us can make a mistake. Remember that we all have a role to play, and that role may not be the one we would ideally prefer (e.g. I really want to direct, etc). Let us all remember that this is not a zero sum game and that we were all beginners once. Speaking in basketball terms, the center or forward may make most of the scores but the team wins in large part because of assists.

I would hope that everyone on a project would make an effort to get along and give everyone a certain amount of slack as we move the project forward.

Friday, May 27, 2016

A Dialog About Firearms and Superheroes in Cinema with a British Intellectual

I sent a friend in London a link to the opening of Deadpool (2015) to show off some excellent use of 3D animation in the service of art, or at least superhero movies.

His response was less than ecstatic:

(edited slightly for formatting purposes)

Yeah pretty good i guess...

I'm just so bored with all american productions and their fixation with guns... I mean what is the attraction in watching people firing guns? And in most of the shows it is all unimportant characters that are being shot. The main cast rarely get hit. Its really boring...

I much prefer Scandinavian tv dramas which like British shows rarely have guns because basically we don't really have them... But i currently prefer the Nordic noirs because UK drama is being influenced by US ideas and although they don't have many guns (although they are succumbing to that too) they have picked up the American sentimentality with people hugging at the slightest opportunity - Where is our stiff upper lip anymore? But the Scandi's they have almost no sentimentality so i really like them...

Have you seen the original danish 20 part version of The Killing, or Borgen or The Bridge or Wallander... I really love those shows - in the whole of Borgen there wasn't one gun or one hug - sheer delight! Its like they took away the guns and hugging from madame secretary ;-)

I do not completely understand all his references here (e.g. “madame secretary”) but I do see what his point is. Here is my response:

We must make allowances for cultural diversity. When Paul Verhoeven in the 4th Man (1983) revealed that the nurse at the end was none other than the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of God, he was taking a bold step for a Dutch protestant to acknowledge, in a practically Papist way, the Virgin Mary.

You see where this is going?

So it is with Americans and firearms.

The American cinema and its intellectual elite has moved beyond the giant robot and turned to the comic book superhero as a medium with which to express the totality of our civilization. And yes, there is a certain number of firearms in these movies, but there is also quite a few samurai swords, as well as more European broadsword types.

In the first Thor (2011) you will find very few firearms, but rather a lot of swords, some hand to hand, and most of all Mjolnir, the mighty hammer, "for if he is worthy, let him who wields this hammer have the power of Thor". (see attached picture)

To understand America is to understand the frontier of the old west. In the classic Western, good and evil must contend and settle once and for all which will triumph, and meet at noon for the shootout. What would you have them use instead of firearms?

_____________________________________________________

Notes

The 4^th Man (1983) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086543/

Thor (2011) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0800369/

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Lane Halley and Joseph Goldstone Married

draft

I am happy to report that my friend Joseph Goldstone has, in great secrecy, married his long time companion Lane Halley. Andy Kopra of Berlin officiated as Best Person.

Joseph and I have worked together many times and have been friends since about 1985 or so.

Announcement of marriage in NY Times Society Section

Joseph and Best Person Andy Kopra in NYC rest after shopping

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

The Black Aerospace Project that Was About To Be Disclosed That Wasn't

This is an update on various posts about the possible public release of information about a black aerospace project from over a year ago.

It is a personal pet peeve of mine that we have on the Internet and other venues (e.g. Aviation Leak and Space Mythology) breathless sightings of what may be a black (e.g. very secret) aerospace project, and then dead silence. Nothing.

Well, nothing is a little hard to interpret. So I am going to attempt to interpret “nothing” for my readers, and for what it is worth.

To recap, there were some very interesting sightings reported on www.foxtrotalpha.com. These sightings were of what appeared to be a manned flying wing aircraft which was not the B2. More than one, in fact. The B2 is a very distinctive plane and the observers, who seem to be respectable, knowledgeable and who took reasonable pictures of what they had seen, were of the opinion that it was not a B2. Well, nothing else of that type of airframe that is manned is flying, so that it seemed to be a reasonable conclusion that they had in fact sighted something not only secret, but also in (at least) limited production, as there was more than one of them.

The speculation was that whatever they had seen (and I liked the theory that it was a stealthy tactical reconnaissance aircraft that came from work in the mid-1980s and went into very limited production in the 1990s) was that this aircraft was about to be made public. Hence, they were less careful about bringing the plane back from somewhere (Iraq? Africa?) in broad daylight and so forth.

Ok that was the speculation.

Well, a fair amount of time has passed since those sightings and whatever they may or may not have seen has not been publicly announced which means one of several things. If it was an aircraft in limited production use, then whatever it is still has its uses or in some way has technology that still needs protecting and is not just ready for public release. Or maybe they saw nothing at all so there was nothing to announce. Or maybe they were B2 bombers after all.

Actually, I think they probably did see something but whatever. In a sense this is good news, because if it is in limited production this means it is still of value, which means that the money was well spent, at least to some extent. Alright, thats a bit of a stretch.

One more thing, there are a variety of aerospace forums that discuss these things. I am not a regular reader of them but this is often where more information is found, if you have the patience to read through them and all the tendentious bullshit that accompanies the occasional nugget of interest. You can find them by searching for "black aerospace discussion forum" or words to that effect.

Monday, May 2, 2016

Proof of An Unspeakable and Conscious Evil

I believe that there is an implacable evil in the universe, a conscious evil that exists between life and death and which constructs for each of us a personalized living hell with which it torments each and every one of us.

For some people, this living hell may be an eternity on Facebook. For others it may be an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend or both who has reappeared and wants to renew the relationship. For some it will be that email out of the blue from an old colleague explaining how much he has always hated you and all the things that he or she has done behind your back to damage your career. Each one of us is different, each one of us will be made to suffer. We will all have to face his or her own Room 101 and rot in our own individualized hell. ⁽¹⁾

This conscious evil will wait, it will bide its time, it will prepare, and then when you let your guard down it will strike. I know this because I have gone before, I have faced this evil. It happened like this.

Apparently, and without meaning to, by going into "computer animation" I had become a "starving artist" and so decided to see if I qualified for state assistance. This was with great reluctance because I still had a residual self image of being self-supporting in spite of our modern globalized economy. I have not been very good at bureaucracies in the past, nevertheless I persevered and became qualified for what we used to call “food stamps” but now goes by other names.

It is a good program, by the way, and we should support it. In fact, were I actually an artist who cared about the poor in our society, it would certainly be a good thing to discover just how these sorts of programs work and who is eligible. In this case it is only for those who are truly poor, without income and without savings. But if you are in that category, it will allow you to eat. It wont pay your rent, or keep the power on, but you will eat.

I had not been careful with my paperwork, and I had to go get my Social Security papers and return to the social welfare office and present it. It took a day to get the paperwork, and then I knew it would be most of the day to present the Social Security card and deal with that requirement.

And as I sat, alone, in that dreary office, and waited, penniless, for four hours, this pitiless evil of which I have spoken struck without warning. For there, on the LCD monitors was a “cartoon” to engage the children who waited with me, and there over and over again was a Pixar movie about some cars in the desert.

The Devil's tool ?

Oh cruel fate! Oh despicable evil. To wait until I was down and then force me to watch this movie over and over again while I, a pioneer of computer animation, had been unable to make a living at his craft. To gloat at my (economic) failure, to laugh at my defeat.

Recall that in America, success and failure is judged exclusively by the size of one's bank account.

See, it seemed to be saying, see how worthless you are.

Immediately after this incident, a project started and I no longer qualified for this program. But even so, I know now that this evil is out there, waiting. I believe it waits for you as well. It waits for all of us.

______________________________________________

Notes:

1. "Room 101" is a reference to George Orwell's 1984.