Fan Service in Space Movies: An Evolving Artform

In his work on Smut, the American poet and philosopher Tom Lehrer once said

    All books can be indecent books

    Though recent books are bolder

    For filth, I'm glad to say, is in

    The mind of the beholder

                  (Lehrer, 1-4)

The sexual exploitation of women in film is a much misunderstood tradition that goes back to the very origins of the filmmaking craft.  What is not normally acknowledged however is the rich variety and subtle nuance of sexist exploitation, from mere "fan service" to plot-motivated actresses in skimpy outfits.  In this post we propose to review some of the details of the myriad forms that cheesy exploitation of women can assume, in particular with reference to movies that take place in what we used to call Outer Space.

One important distinction between the greater and lesser uses of exploitation is whether having scantily clad women (and in a very few cases, men) is whether there is even the most shallow excuse for the exploitation in the story.  Just like in American musical theatre any song is supposed to advance the story, the same should be true for the exploitation of women.  The lowest form of exploitation is that which has no possible reason or justification.

The Japanese term-of-art for the gratuitous insertion of scantily clad women, or men, or aliens, in order to stimulate the viewer is "fan service" which simply provides without reason whatever viewer stimulation the intended audience prefers.

On the higher and more refined part of town, though, one can work elements consisting of women in spandex into the raison d'etre of the film and thus reinforce the important ideas that underlie the film experience.  One film in particular that did this well was Roger Vadim's Barbarella (1968) in which the sexually active lead, a woman ahead of her time, played by Jane Fonda, causes the Orgasmatron-like Excessive machine to expire after a sex marathon with Ms. Fonda thus demonstrating her superior capacity for pleasure.  No cheap exploitation of women here.

And certainly we can say that the casting and costuming of Ms. Jovavitch in Luc Besson's Fifth Element (1997) was motivated by the highest ideals of the motion picture industry.

Milo Jovovitch from the Fifth Element (1997), above, and an unknown actress from Planet of the Vampires (1965).  

The cinema must move on from these brilliant yet analog expressions of cheesy exploitation and find new ways to demean themselves.  Directors and producers struggle to find appropriate and stylistically valid ways to exploit women of both genders in order to increase the appeal and the box office of their creative works.

We are less than a month away from the release of The Martian (2015) and the material released so far seems to give very little opportunity to exploit women.   This has left many scholars and fans of the cinematic arts worried that Ridley Scott may let down the side.

This film has unusual conventions for a space movie.  Most movies set in space will generally make use of a giant robot or a superhero or two, perhaps an alien race of Amazon Women, or other sophisticated plot elements that naturally provide opportunities for the filmmaker in collaboration with their costume designer. 

But things are not so easy in The Martian as the various female leads are supposed to be serious working professionals, and thus diving into the gutter to pander to the adolescent male of all ages requires some sophistication and sophistication has never been known as a motion-picture industry strong point.  If this were a James Bond movie, it would be straightforward to simply introduce one of the female leads in a scuba outfit, but this is space, the final frontier, sans superheroes, or even Uhura, or other Star Trek rebooted characters, so what is a filmmaker to do?

As you can see from several of the recent Star Treks, the role of women in space cinema has come a long way

Not only is the The Martian a hardcore, mostly scientific man-vs-nature adventure film about an astronaut marooned on Mars, but it is a Mars very explicitly without any Martian Princesses lounging around. At first glance its hard to see where exactly the sexist exploitation of women can be derived.

Nevertheless, a few stills from a viral marketing promo about this upcoming film gives us hope. Its subtle, true, but it makes us optimistic for the future.

Good posture, don't you think?

I want to encourage Ridley Scott and his filmmaking team to grasp this opportunity with both hands and supply the fan service for which he is known.  It is small things like this that can cheer up the otherwise pointless and dreary lives of their audience.

_________________________________________

Notes:

1. Tom Lehrer. Smut can be found at
http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/smut.htm

2. Those interested in reading further should check out the Wikipedia page on
Catsuits and Jumpsuits in Popular Media.

3. The Martian(2015) on IMDB  
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/

4. Barbarella (1968) on IMDB  

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062711/

5. Planet of the Vampires (1965) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059792/

Mythopolis

First animated film that I have seen in years that I loved.   A story of very appealing characters drawn from Greek mythology in daily life.

https://vimeo.com/137734846

Enola Gay Smithsonian Exhibit Disaster Part 2

In this post, I review the book that historians wrote about the issues involved in the disaster of the Enola Gay exhibition at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, a disaster that was very public and very embarrassing for the historians involved. You can find this book here.  You can read a synopsis I wrote about some of the issues here.

This post is likely to be only interesting to those of you who are interested in museums, or historiography, or possibly how the history of the cold war is interpreted for the public.  The rest of you should skip this and move on to more entertaining posts.

There are four questions I had in mind when I read this book. The first was whether the accusations that veterans made about the historians during this encounter were in any way validated by this book. The second was whether the historians were disingenuous in how they presented the issues here. The third was about whether the historians gave any serious credence to what people who had been involved in the event told them. And the fourth was whether the historians involved should have realized that they were about to cause a major controversy and whether they took reasonable steps to prevent it.

1. During and after the Enola Gay exhibit controversy, which you had to be deaf not to have heard about at the time it occurred, two accusations were made by the veteran associations about the historians writing the exhibit. The first was that the historians were adamant that they were going to present revisionist conclusions about this event whatever the veterans thought and the second was that the historians involved were incredibly, unbelievably arrogant. After reading this book from the historians point of view, I can tell you that without doubt the historians involved were adamant that they were going to present their revisionist point of view and that furthermore as far as they were concerned that was the only legitimate point of view, period. And the second impression I got, dripping from every page, was exactly how superior the historians thought they were to anyone else involved. Exactly like the veterans said. No misunderstanding there, whatsoever.

2. One of the things I look for in reading arguments from one side or another of a debate, is how well they present issues that I happen to know something about. If, let us say, there are 20 issues discussed and it just so happens that I know very well what is involved in two of them, I look with special interest at those two. It lets me judge to what extent those other 18 issues are presented in good faith. This is especially useful in the situation where one side admits honestly to something that does not help their argument, but they do so anyway in the interests of fairness. This may be a lot to ask, but I do it anyway.

At one point, the argument is made that the B-29 was an uninteresting airplane technically or aeronautically (is that a word?) and in and of itself had no particular justification for being in the Air & Space Museum. They even trot out an Air Force Officer to make that comment and then leave it there in the book as being decided. The B-29 was uninteresting.

This is an astonishing misrepresentation of the facts. It is so outrageous as to call into doubt anything else the authors of the book say. The B-29 was not only an incredible technological achievement, it was an achievement that had to be reached in order for the Army Air Corps to make their argument that they deserved to be a separate service and this is all intertwined with the history of aviation and the theory of strategic bombing. The B-29 was the technology that was going to prove this principle and it was the second most expensive R&D project of the war.  In other words, it was not only technologically interesting, it was of tremendous importance to the history of how we fought the war and how we planned the future of aviation. Without doubt, this plane and the effort to create it, deserves a place in the history of aviation.  The B-29 deserves to be at the Air & Space Museum.

 It makes me wonder just who they thought was going to read this book that they would make such an outrageous misstatement.  But this behavior fits the model that says that the historians of this period live in their own world and believe what they want to believe.  

Years after this disaster, the Smithsonian restored the Enola Gay, presumably over their dead body, and exhibited it at their secondary location outside Washington.  They still have not told the amazing story of the 509th Composite Group to the best of my knowledge.

The second issue is a bit more subtle but without doubt demonstrates bad faith on the part of the historians. At one point, they talk about how much money was spent to restore the Enola Gay with the implication of “there, are you happy now” referring to, in their opinion, the childish wishes of the veterans. What the book fails to tell you, but I happened to know, is that the Enola Gay had been treated like garbage by the Smithsonian, and left to rot and rust for decades in spite of the complaints of the veterans and the Air Force. The reason it cost so much to restore was because the Smithsonian had treated this artifact with contempt. But this was not mentioned.

In other words, the historians who wrote this book were completely ok with misrepresenting the facts to try and win their argument. Lying was not a problem for them. This is a bad way to get credibility, it seems to me.

3. If there is one thing that this book makes clear, the historians involved did not give a fuck what the veterans thought. As far as the historians were concerned, the veterans were unintelligent, ignorant children relative to a brilliant academic historian. They were given no credible voice in the dialog until the veterans and the Air Force forced the issue..

4. Should the historians have realized they were walking into a touchy situation and somehow avoided it? I think that they did know that what they were saying was controversial but they thought they would come out OK for one very good reason. They assumed that everyone understood going in that there was one truth, and only one truth. And that truth is what the historians said it was. Period. There could be no other truth, no other truth had any credibility. The veterans were just children, immature children who did not want to admit, naturally, that they had murdered all those innocent Japanese for no reason. That was the only conclusion, a historian conclusion, and that was that.

So, to ask the question, were the historians involved in this disaster arrogant?

No, not arrogant. Not merely arrogant. Unbelievably arrogant.

The book was a fabulous eye opener for me. It brought doubt on the credibility of the academic field of history and of historians, at least historians of the modern period. In that sense, the book was very successful beyond its goals.   It not only explained the disaster of the Smithsonian Enola Gay exhibit, it lowered the credibility of the field of academic history in general.

Good work, guys.

Enola Gay Smithsonian Exhibit Disaster Part 1

draft being rewritten

I can not imagine why anyone would care what. I think about anything related to the issues discussed in this post, unless they had some interest in the "popular understanding of history by a citizen" or something of that nature.  I recommend you skip this post unless you happen to be specifically interested in the issues discussed here.

I read a book about the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum Enola Gay exhibit, a disaster of monumental scale, a nuclear explosion if you will, in which the veterans, the Air Force, the US Congress compelled the Smithsonian to back off from an exhibit which they were far along in creating.   The book is called "History Wars" and it presents the historians point of view on the subject and the larger issues of the interpretation of history.

I expected the book to be a balanced discussion of the issues that also showed that the situation had spun out of control and that the Smithsonian certainly was not planning to do an exhibit that would have presented the veterans or this country guilty of all sorts of nasty things.   But in fact the book did not do that, the book instead presented the very clear point of view that there was one way to interpret history, it was the historians way, and any other opinion was wrong.

So I wanted to write about this book and the exhibit but to do so I felt I had to explain something about the situation that the book describes and to do that is a Vietnam-like morass of complicated issues.  Issues that do not lend themselves to simple sound bites.

And so this post is the attempt to get a basic synopsis of the issues behind the incident.  I am sorry.  Feel free to ignore it and don't think worse of me because of it.   I don't know whether we should have dropped the bomb on Hiroshima or what would have happened if we had invaded the home islands of Japan, or whether the Japanese would have surrendered immediately anyway, or any of dozens of other fascinating and unanswerable questions.   I know that the dropping of the bomb was not a casual decision and I know what the veterans thought about what the sudden ending of the war meant to them and their lives because they were very clear about that topic both at the time and now.

So forgive me, here is the background, and then there will be post on what my impression of the historian side of the story.

The book discussed here can be found on Amazon.com at  "History Wars" 

To recap, the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum planned an exhibit about the mission on August 6, 1945 to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The centerpiece of that exhibit would be the Enola Gay, the highly modified B-29 that actually dropped the bomb (there were 7 B-29s on that mission that day, but the Enola Gay carried the bomb itself). It might sound straightforward but it was anything but straightforward and here are some of the reasons.

1. The Smithsonian had the Enola Gay for decades but had refused to exhibit it. It was literally left out to rot in the rain and snow getting progressively more decrepit and rusted. Their actions were perceived for what they were, contempt for the history of this country, contempt for the veterans. The Air Force begged for the Smithsonian to give this historic plane to them so that they could restore it and show it in one of their museums, but the Smithsonian refused. The plane stayed in the rain and snow and rotted.  This did not exactly endear the Smithsonian to the Air Force or the veterans.

2. The dropping of the atomic bomb was an unusually specific event that could be said to end one era and begin another. Usually these transitions are more amorphous and take place over years or decades. But because the atomic bomb either was apparently the immediate cause of the end of WW 2 and the beginning of the cold war and the nuclear age, it presented many difficult historical problems that any exhibit either had to address or ignore, but a decision had to be made about them and no decision could be a decision. Realize also that accomplishment of dropping that bomb was the culmination of at least three different important efforts that we, the United States, took during that war.   Most people know of the Manhattan Project, but the creation of the B-29 and the story of the unit that dropped the bomb was no where near as well known.

3. There are very strong differences of opinion about the value of dropping the atomic bomb and its role in ending the war in the Pacific. But there was no doubt in the minds of anyone in the US armed services in the Pacific that it had ended the war and that it had saved their lives by doing so. But many Americans who certainly know we dropped the bomb that day are not as aware of why the veterans thought it had saved their lives.    (3)

4. The people at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum determined that their exhibit about the Enola Gay and the dropping of the bomb was going to be a "balanced exhibit", in their words, that talked about many different points of view about the event.   From the veteran point of view, this meant that they would be portrayed as heartless killers of children who had dropped a bomb for no good reason. . If America had not had to drop the bomb and if it was an immoral act then arguably America could be accused of committing a war crime in doing so and this was obvious to the veterans who were not amused by this.

5. It should be remembered that this was no mere article in a magazine somewhere, this was the premiere United States aviation museum passing judgment on the morality of dropping the bomb on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the event and the end of WW 2.

Before I go further in describing the controversy around the exhibit I want to digress for just a moment on the role of the bomb in causing Japan to surrender and whether Japan knew it was defeated and was planning to surrender anyway.  Both of these issues are fabulously complex and controversial.   Most of all it requires the historian, professional or otherwise, to put themselves into the position of what was known at the time vs what was known later.   And to understand things outside the experience of most normal people (like what is involved in invading the home islands of Japan and what it would mean to delay such an invasion to let things evolve). (2)

6. But drop the bomb we did, and shortly thereafter began a firestorm of controversy about whether the bomb needed to be dropped to end the war. 50 years later, the Smithsonian wrote a draft of the planned exhibit, and that exhibit was leaked both to the Air Force and to various veteran groups. Of course it should have been leaked, it should have been sent for review by those groups. Surely the Smithsonian did not think they could just surprise people with the exhibit and their interpretation of the event?

7. The resultant explosion was everything that could be desired and more so. The veterans went nuclear, so to speak, and called for the Smithsonian's blood. The Smithsonian retaliated by ripping the wings off the Enola Gay and exhibiting it without an exhibition. No interpretation or story at all. It just hangs wingless in the Smithsonian (it has since been moved to the new gallery outside Washington and had its parts restored). The head of the Smithsonian and a few specific historians returned to academia. The veterans got nothing, the historians got nothing, the Smithsonian had completely dropped the ball. 

The Enola Gay without its wings, with one propeller on the wall, and no discussion of what happened

It was an unmitigated disaster for the Smithsonian as they had failed, utterly failed, to represent in any reasonable way the event, the technology, the end of the war, the story of the dropping of the bomb, anything.

A total failure.

But it wasn't over yet.

End of part 1.

_____________________________________________

1. The other two are on the origins and legality of the American Civil War and a post on writing the genre of prediction with special reference to lessons learned from Nostradamus, a very misunderstood writer of fiction.

2. There are many, many controversies. A partial list includes: (a) that we were about one month away from the invasion of Japan and we knew this was going to be very bloody (b) that Japan knew we were very close to invading and had every intention of fighting and had worked with initiative to prepare and had done a very competent job of that given their situation at the time, (c) that the bombing of the Japanese cities had caused vast destruction and misery to all sectors of Japanese society and yet had not apparently destroyed their determination to fight and there is no doubt that situation caused many Americans in leadership positions to wonder what exactly was going to be necessary to cause Japan to surrender, (d) that Japan leadership knew they had lost the war but hoped to negotiate an end to the war that allowed them to keep their empire in Korea and Manchuria, although the extent that this is true is certainly debatable, (e) that the American people wanted this war over now, (f) that the USSR having completed the war in Europe was now moving to assist us in the far east in Manchuria and people were sensitive to the role that Stalin and the USSR would play in the post-war world, and some historians consider it immoral for us to consider this issue in the decision to hurry the end of the war by dropping the bomb, (g) and last but not least, unlike Germany, the Japanese armies were undefeated in the field in China and Korea and did not see a terribly pressing need to surrender all that they had been fighting for. Yes, the home islands were suffering, yes in fact they were all suffering, but from their point of view they were far from defeated.

3. It should be no surprise that the average American does not know their own history on this matter, but it is odd that the historians do not. There are those who claim that this is because historians are ignorant of the fundamental issues that they study and there is quite a bit to support that argument. At the time the bomb was dropped, we were in a terrific struggle with the Japanese and people were dying by the scores every day, both Americans and Japanese. We never had a defense against the suicide attacks on ships. They never had a defense against our incendiary bombing of Japan or the unrestricted submarine war on their merchant shipping.

By far more Japanese were dying than Americans, but that was about to change because we were literally within eight weeks of an invasion of the Japanese home islands that would probably make the invasion of Normandy look peaceful in comparison.  Projected casualties varied wildly depending on who did the predictions. When Truman took office after Roosevelt, probably his single most important issue to address was how to bring the war to a successful conclusion with a minimum of casualties.  What you, the non professional, need to understand is that for an invasion of this scope 8 weeks is almost no time at all, its not even a weekend. You should think of it as 15 minutes before midnight. It means that all the ships, planes, munitions, etc are built and in place, and all the men are trained and in position (not quite, but almost, I exaggerate here a little). It means that the hospital ships are built, and the doctors and nurses trained, and most of the medical supplies are ready to go, or nearly so.

When the bomb was dropped and the war suddenly and unexpectedly ended, there were several million Americans in uniform getting ready to storm the beaches and support that activity. These people to the last person, as far as I can tell from reading mostly secondary sources and a few primary ones, believed that the dropping of the atomic bomb saved their lives because it made it unnecessary to invade the Japanese home islands.   For those who believe that the war was over, and that Japanese knew they had lost, you are invited to learn about the invasion of Okinawa and what that entailed.

But since we did not actually invade Japan, the number of casualties is of course not known, and many people who have studied the issue (but who were not there) have a different opinion of what would have happened had we not dropped the bomb.

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.

________________________________________

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.

Marketing, Mojo and Career Longevity

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An esteemed colleague discussed in an email how, after years of having excellent positions at important companies, that he could no longer seem to get a job, that the “mojo” had gone away. I also experienced something similar, may still be experiencing it, and so I want to discuss my impressions of this phenomenon which is so frustrating and confusing. Although I believe some of this may also apply to my friend, that would be for him to say, this is all from my point of view and based on my experience and impressions.

The argument goes like this. In an earlier and more naive period, some of us who were pioneers in that field were able to achieve results that got us some notoriety and the perception that we were near the top of our field, which we may very well have been in one way or another. This notoriety was communicated to the field through the normal course of attending certain conferences, particularly SIGGRAPH, word of mouth and industry magazines.  Just being asked to participate in a conference was a form of this, and a self fulling prophesy. 

While we thought we were building up long-term credibility, improved by working on fundamental concepts and inventions at an earlier time, it turns out that we were not. Because in America, long-term credibility is only in the eyes of the beholder, and most people of the world do not behold it. What we were benefiting from at the time was a. the benefit of fashion, we were very fashionable, and b. short term credibility as being near the forefront of the field, a field that was very trendy but not with many practical applications.

Because of this trendiness and because practical applications slowly started appearing, there was a massive influx of new people. The new people not only did not know the history, but could not care less. Those who were responsible for awarding projects or hiring people for a while were members of the class of people who were early in the field, but as time passed there were less and less of them and more of the newcomers. Not only were the newer people unaware of the achievements, they classified them as ancient history and not relevant to the modern world. There was no presumption that someone who had done good work in the past would do good work in the future. And there was the belief that things had changed so radically that whatever skills were necessary to do good work today would not be present in those who did good work then.

Furthermore, there is the belief among many people that they do not want experienced and acclaimed people among them, that this will cause competition and quite possibly take away from their glory. And it might, it might take away from their glory since most often people are vainglorious and demand all the glory. I have seen this concern and its results literally hundreds of times.

Finally, for a variety of reasons, our more experienced player may not be in a position to do new work as that would be defined by the field. But our player has a tremendous need to demonstrate new work, as it is only through that new work (generally speaking) that he or she can renew the mandate that has allowed them to achieve what they have so far achieved. Without this renewal, any past accomplishment becomes less and less relevant. But our experienced player may not be able to do new work because of circumstances beyond his or her control, health issues, or not being hired out of envy, or any of a number of reasons. If a consultant, they may not be in a position to get credit for their work, because it is the life of the consultant that, in general, you can not get that credit without upsetting your client.

And here is the key point: in the earlier period our player had benefited from marketing that happened more or less accidentally, by doing good work at the right time or place. The marketing happened for them and on their behalf but not because of any particular actions that they took.  And our player may not in actual fact be necessarily talented at marketing, or even have the slightest interest in it. They were interested in doing good work (which does sound pathetically naive and middle class, does it not?). Marketing is a different thing. A different skill. A field that requires both talent and hard work like any other field. And so our player, who was the beneficiary of marketing that he had not done, gets less and less benefit from past marketing as time goes by and yet new marketing is not forthcoming because he is not providing it, and circumstances do not allow it to happen as it did before, without his input.

The result is that our player goes further out of fashion. And since for the most part people were responding to fashion and not to anything else, certainly not merit or brilliance, something they would be quite unqualified to judge and could care less about, then our player becomes less and less employable and we have the classic downward spiral.

There are several other issues that are contributory to this, self-marketing is not the only factor.  Fashion also applies to technology and for one reason or another our player may be associated with a specific technology, like motion capture or lisp, even if they are incidental.  This is about perception as well as reality. Other companies may perceive that the technology that the player uses or used to use as being old-fashioned, whether or not there is any technical basis for their belief is irrelevant.  This is another reason why the field of computer animation, with its wild turnover in companies, can result in unemployment for those who used those technologies at those companies.  Fashion applies to everything and new companies have different fashions in technology that they use.

The conclusion that I want to leave you with is that long term employability and presence near the top of a field requires not only talent and accomplishment, but marketing and the ability to present oneself as current. Marketing may in fact be more important than talent and accomplishment, but of course it is preferable if all elements are present. Without marketing, for whatever reason, one will go out of fashion and have to face the consequences that result.

There are many nuances here that should be mentioned and I will mention a few.  There are many ways to achieve marketing and many reasons why this may apply more to some people than to others. And none of this may be fair or just. Someone who merely has a job at a well-known company may have all the marketing that they need. Those who are unemployed or freelance generally do not have that benefit. Or if one is not seen as worthy to be included in an effort to create a new standard for some technology, those who are included get a certain level of marketing and those who are excluded do not.  This list of nuances and exceptions goes on and on.  

Again the nuances aside, the thought I want to leave you with is that marketing is important and it is an area that can not be ignored for the long run without dire consequences. As evidence I propose that when you see people near the top of their field for a long time, inevitably it turns out that they are talented at self promotion, sometimes very talented.

Many people come to mind who have this skill, but discretion prevents me from mentioning them here.

A Little Personal Democracy and a Write In Campaign for SIGGRAPH in 2015

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I am now asking Siggraph for the details and deadlines associated with the process of getting write-in votes to be allowed to run for the Executive Committee of Siggraph.

I am certain that I have missed the deadline for the next election, so any signatures that I gather at Siggraph next week will presumably be for the election after this one.

I plan to run on a very specific platform and if I get elected, I will consider that a mandate to research the state of non-academic employment in computer graphics and animation in order to determine, or attempt to determine, how many are employed and where, what the categories of employment are, what the stability and projected future of these positions are, to what extent are these positions overseas, and to what extent unemployment has affected the field. And other issues along the same lines as well. The general idea here is, what should we tell young people if they express a desire to go into this field?  What should we tell them about the likelihood of employment and what terms and conditions come with that employment.  Let me give you two examples: first everyone who comes into this field should understand that it is considered a niche field and no experience in it will qualify you for anything else and second, on the entertainment side of things, people are never hired for more than a project no matter what they are told.

These are very large issues and one person without resources is not likely to get definitive answers to these and related questions. However, I can use the position on the committee to get what information people are willing to share with me and write up whatever I learn.

I also plan to report back to the membership the ideas, concerns, and perceived limitations on the part of members of the committee, many of whom have told me that there is nothing that Siggraph is empowered to do on these issues. Although I may not agree with them, I can certainly admit that they have much more experience than I do at that level of the organization and I can, I think, be of help by reporting to the membership what the concerns are and what people believe. I would hope to do this in a professional and collaborative manner that causes no concerns or offense to anyone to the best I can manage.

I doubt that my efforts would result in any sort of official statement or report from Siggraph on these topics, but maybe we can achieve some lesser goals. At the least I would hope I could convince the EC, or most of the EC, that we can not just encourage people to bet their careers on this field without significant warnings and statements of concern. It should not be all rah rah rah the future is bright, which has been the story from Siggraph to date.

There seem to be a lot of miserable and unemployed people out there. This is guesswork on my part because no official or unofficial statistics exist to the best of my knowledge. Yes there are many people who are gainfully employed and doing good work, but I am also aware of many who are constantly moving from project to project in a way that is disruptive to their lives, and others who are not employed and have not been for a while and wonder what they are going to do. No doubt I have sampling error, how could I not? Yes maybe this is normal, or the “new normal” and that could be the case. But if so, we should make sure people know that.

Whether we like it or not, Siggraph was part of the movement that created this industry segment, the use of computer animation and synthetic imagery in the creation of film and related media, both full length computer animated films and live action films with visual effects. This movement started in large part by idealists who used Siggraph as a venue through the 1980s, when no one believed us, and the 1990s, when they started to believe, into the next century when things exploded. I was a part of this movement and I contributed and I was there, so I know Siggraph helped. But now that the industry is very large, and yet with so much turmoil, and so much unemployment, that it is our responsibility to do what we can to make things better and at the very least make it clear to those who would bet their lives and their careers on the field what the situation is as we understand it.

If you are attending Siggraph next week and you are a member of Siggraph, I hope you will find me and sign my petition so that I can be considered for election to the EC.

You should also feel free to send comments or concerns, hopefully in a postive and cordial manner, by either leaving a comment here or sending me email at the address below. If you do send email, please put something in the subject field about what it is about so I know to read it.

Thank you.

M. Wahrman

michael.wahrman at gmail.com

http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com

On the Occasion of Siggraph 2015

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It is a fundamental tenet of western civilization that one must present oneself with confidence and style. No signs of weakness are permitted as it causes the other biped mammals to see you as a potential meal, or the other bipeds, whose support you need, to ignore you or dismiss you.

There are those I suppose who benefit from being so pathetic that it attracts a certain kind of person who likes doing rescues, but I don't think one wants to count on that as a strategy.

I have become more aware this year that my goals for the future are impractical based on my current status, how I am perceived, the resources that I have, and the competition.

Part of the problem here is that in the past I worked with energy and what is, I hope, talent and skill but was also nearly completely unaware of the odds against me. And these efforts all led to great success and total failure, accomplishment yet contempt from my peers, personal attacks that are quite astounding, and generally everything that one would expect from being poor in America, where talent and accomplishment means nothing, only money matters and certain credentials as one gets by being approved and anointed by those with power.

Why then, would I expect things to be any different in the future, when in fact the odds are only worse then they have ever been? They are worse because in the past I was part of a community, now I am alone. They are worse because in the past I had access to resources, now I have no resources. They are worse because now this is an established field and this implies both more competition, as well as competition with access to both resources and those affiliations that I wish I had but do not.

Not only may fools go where wise people fear to tread, but in fact the earlier success of the fool may not only be a result of their energy, talent and ignorance but also because times were different.

There are deeper problems as well.  A fundamental and well-reasoned concern that major elements on which we base our lives and our society are based on lies, or false premises.  Not all, but many of them. And that our public servants know this and do nothing to correct it either because they feel they can't or because they do not care. I have become convinced that our government does not have our best interests at heart and that they are quite capable of cynically exalting the rich at the expense of the rest of the country. I have looked at some of the evidence, evidence that The Economist says does not exist, but it does exist.  Too many lies, too much hypocrisy, too much swept under the rug, too much misery.

On the other hand, what is the alternative.   Perhaps talent, hard work and experience and maybe a sense of humor about the situation, all of our situations, can make a difference.   I guess I have to try again.

These are the thoughts that occur to me on the occasion of a birthday and the annual trial of Siggraph.