Wings & Wheel at Sikorsky Airport 2011 3D Photos
July 20, 2011
On May 22 I attended the 2011 Wings & Wheels at Sikorsky Airport in Stratford, CT. The weather was not nearly as cooperative in years past and so I got fewer shots this time around. Here’s the best of it in anaglyph 3D. . .
Click on any image for large size light box style slideshow
Comic Book Economics: 3 Hours of Entertainment for $120. Is This Sustainable?
July 18, 2011
I’m a long time comic book fan, going back to the early 1960s. I agree with the late Harvey Pekar’s view that comics are words and pictures and, despite the medium’s fixation in America with long underwear super heros, there’s no inherent limitation in how good either the pictures or words can be.
Recently I went to a local comics shop and bought a first issue of Deadman and the Flying Graysons, part of the Flashpoint story arc.
In order to read the entire Flashpoint storyline DC Comics requires the purchase of 37 comic books (with 18 pages of content each) at $2.99. With sales tax where I live this comes to a whopping $117.66!
New York based artist Alex Katz once referenced a survey that claimed people at fine arts museum spent an average of 7 seconds looking at a painting. “I try to give them their 7 seconds worth,” he said. His works, like most painters, took weeks of effort to complete, and more often far longer than that.
The 18 pages of Flashpoint #1 took less than 5 minutes to read; a bit more perhaps if you linger over the art.
That works out to 3 hours and 5 minutes of reading time for close to $120.
By comparison, in 1965 an issue of Green Lantern had 21 full pages and 3 three-quarter pages of story and art. An issue sold for 12 cents. (Phun Phact: According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that 12 cents would be 86 cents today).
What else is competing for your entertainment dollars in today’s recession?
The popular video game Call of Duty: Black Ops retails for $60, provides a much more immersive experience and gamers can play this for dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of hours. The current box office blockbuster Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 runs 2 hours and 10 minutes, the ticket price locally is $11.50 and it’s in 3D to boot!
Back to the saddle-stitched four color process product. Obviously, you can develop a far more complicated storyline given 666 pages rather than the 23 and 1/4 of the 1960s. And the production values of today’s comics are without question much improved in two areas: the quality of paper used and the complexity and subtlety of the coloring.
The basic art of penciling and inking may be better, in general, according to your taste. Although during their run on Green Lantern 46 years ago the combination of Gil Kane’s pencils and Sid Greene’s inks is the equal to anyone working today, in my opinion.
Certainly in most cases anatomy drawing has suffered as several generations of comic book artists have learned their figure drawing skills not from life but from aping the exaggerations of earlier comic book artists. For example, Gil Kane’s women are realistically sexy without the need for breasts larger than their heads.
My conclusion is that the current business model for selling ‘floppies’ or individual issues of comic books is unsustainable. As a fan I hope there is a way for the form to reinvent itself before it sucumbs to market pressures and the competition from other media.
Perhaps the move will be to digital distribution on tablet devices like the iPad, the current trend for the magazine industry in general. Will this mean the end of the ‘brick and mortar’ comic book specialty shop as it has for the bookseller Borders? Tune in next time: same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel. . .
Hypoallergenic Dogs: “No Such Thing” says Recent Study
July 17, 2011
First, the caveats: as everyone should know by now, science does not consist of a single study. This one, by the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, found no scientific evidence that allegedly “hypoallergenic” dogs produce fewer allergens than other breeds.
The study sampled 173 homes with 60 different breeds of dogs, including 11 breeds considered hypoallergenic: Beddington Terrier, Bichon Frise, Chinese Crested, Irish Water Spaniel, Kerry Blue Terrier, Maltese, Poodle, Portuguese Water Dog, Schnauzer, Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier, and Xoloitzcuintli.
What are people allergic to? It’s not the fur or hair that accumulates throughout the house, it’s the dander, or dried flakes of your dog’s skin. Specifically, the allergen is a protein, found in both canine saliva and urine, that sticks to these dander flakes. That’s what causes the stuffy-runny nose-achy-sneezing-coughing reaction in humans.
One of the theories is that dogs who shed less or have hair that must be cut produce less dander, hence the current popularity of the cross-breed Labradoodle. The takeaway is that you may be able to reduce the effect somewhat, there are no dogs that are 100% allergen-free.
For more information, read this post on The Week’s site: “The ‘myth’ of hypoallergenic dogs.”
The Evolution of Web Design by KISSmetrics
July 17, 2011
KISSmetrics, an online marketing and customer acquisition blog, has a great infographic about the history and development of web design. There’s also a lot of solid content on their site that’s informed by the use of similar excellent infographics.
Well worthing checking out if you’d like to understand things like say, the most effective day and time to post on Facebook or how often you should Tweet.
Click on image for larger size.
Shoplifting Literature: The 5 Most Stolen Books by Publishers Weekly
July 17, 2011
Here’s an example of a link I just had to click on: Publishers Weekly’s list of the five most stolen books. In fact, except for two specific books on their list, the headline should read the five most stolen authors. The two books that make the top five are On the Road by Jack Kerouac and The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. The other three are really categories of books: anything by William S. Burroughs, Charles Bukowski and Martin Amis.
Honorable mentions went to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, anything by Don DeLillo, The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, the works of Raymond Chandler and (obviously, redundantly) Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman.
Is there something about outsider or outlaw status that unites this list? But then what is Paul Auster doing on it? Author of the post Gabe Habash offers this analysis:
If there is one sociological conclusion we can draw from this list, it’s that the “type” of booklifter is likely young and male, and there’s probably a link between the draw of the content of these top books and the actual act of theft. In other words, someone who wants to commit a reckless act is most interested in reading about reckless acts.
Canine Cuisine in China – “Fragrant Meat” CAUTION: Graphic Images
July 7, 2011
OK, this is something that I have a very hard time dealing with. Last month, June 2011, there was a week-long food festival in Yulin, China for which over 15,000 dogs were slaughtered, sauteed and served.
I’m a dog person and, of course, I have an extreme emotional reaction to seeing dogs consumed as food.
As an omnivore, however, who just finished a dinner that included Baby Back Ribs it feels hypocritical to pass judgement. Intellectually, I find it hard to condemn. In our culture we see dogs as companions, not livestock. Dogs live in our homes with us, cattle do not. If you do any research at all into current “factory farming” techniques the treatment of pigs, cattle and chicken will likely turn your stomach.
Even if you’re a vegetarian dog owner, I think you will ultimately have to admit that the selection of what animals to eat is a cultural, not an ethical issue. For another point of view on this issue, you need to read the work of Peter Singer. He makes a very strong case that all meat consumption world-wide should be abolished.
Some research has shown that pigs have an intelligence that is almost the same as dogs, though they are not as trainable. When speaking about the emotional lives of animals, is it conceivable to you that pigs don’t experience fear as they approach the slaughter house? Yet very few of us think of this when we consume crunchy, delicious bacon.
I also believe there’s something here that relates to compassion fatigue. The image of one starving child is heart-wrecnching. The news that 40 people have been killed by a suicide bomber in the Middle East is just another depressing statistic. I think this is just part of how we are hard-wired, neurally.
Is it necessary to eat dog as a source of protein? Probably not. I’ve read that the world produces enough food globally to feed the planet, the problem is with distribution (and over consumption in the developed world).
Let me be perfectly clear: I’m against eating dogs for food. But I don’t think those who do are less evolved morally, or somehow deficient in compassion. Let me know your opinions/conclusions in the comments section.
– Canine images (top and bottom) from the UK’s Daily Mail.
“Among the Truthers” by Jonathan Kay
July 5, 2011
Canadian journalist Jonathan Kay has produced an excellent, if somewhat controversial, look at the rise of conspiracy theory believers in America, Among the Truthers: A Journey through America’s Growing Conspiracist Underground.
If you know someone who believes in any fringe doctrine, this is the book for you. Not because it delves deeply into debunking any particular conspiracy, but because it takes the overview, a sort of high altitude mapping of this territory and allows you to see how and why these ideas develop, and take hold.
Just like television was once touted as a medium to bring high culture and elevated debate into all the homes of the nation, the Internet was also given a lot of great advance press, using almost the same hopeful praise from 60 years ago that greeted the rise of a nation-wide forest of TV antennas.
But just like the multiplicity of cable channels on your television, the vast content of the web makes room for all sorts of disinformation and lies. And since the cost of a professional looking website is within the means of almost everyone with a computer, it can be almost impossible to distinguish between a site whose content is vetted and well-researched and one that is the product of a single author’s delusions.
Into this fragmentation of the country’s media diet all manner of strange beasts stalk.
Just as we now have to be our own health care advocates, we now have to be our own curators of reliable content, if we wish to remain grounded in reality.
I would give Kay’s book my highest recommendation, even though I quibble with some of those he puts on the fringe, like author Naomi Klein and historian Howard Zinn. Another wonderful part of Kay’s book are the compelling quotations that begin each chapter. Below are samples of two that I especially liked:
“The conspiracy community regularly seizes on one slip of the tongue, mis-understanding, or slight discrepancy to defeat 20 pieces of solid evidence; accepts one witness of theirs, even if he or she is a provable nut, as being far more credible that 10 normal witnesses on the other side; treats rumors, even questions, as the equivalent of proof; leaps from the most miniscule of discoveries to the grandest of conclusions; and insists, as the late lawyer Louis Nizer once observed, that the failure to explain everything perfectly negates all that is explained.”
–Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
“Nothing you learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life, save only this: That if you work hard and diligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot. And that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole purpose of education.”
–Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister of Britain 1957-1963, quoting his classics tutor at Oxford
Lytro – Light Field Capture Camera: Adjustable Focus, After the Fact
June 23, 2011
Now here’s something that certainly sounds too good to be true: imagine a camera where you don’t ever have to worry about focusing.
Snap your picture and, after being digitally processed with some astonishing new software, have an image that you can click on to change the focus! That’s the promise of the new Lytro Light Field Capture Camera. Seriously, you’ve got to play with some of these pictures in their image gallery.
If I understand it and I’m not sure I do, the concept is that light is traveling from the scene you want to capture in all directions. In a normal photograph all this light is collapsed (or focused) on one plane and exposure and focus are set – unchangeable, irrevocably – at that instant.
Somehow – and here comes the tricky, proprietary, secret formula for Coca-Cola part – the folks at Lytro are able to capture all the wavelengths of light in one file. They do this by substituting software for many of the components of a traditional digital or film camera and in combination with a new type of light field sensor. This sensor is capable of recording the vector direction of all the rays of light in a given scene simultaneously. If that doesn’t clear it up, I’m sure the following illustrations will answer none of the questions you may have.
There’s an awful lot of information that isn’t on the Lytro site right now, like pricing, availability and specs (such as image resolution) on the new cameras. Also, whether or not these new picture files can be viewed on any digital device across all platforms. Still, this does sound interesting.
Will it be a short-lived gimmick or a new era in photography? A toy or a tool? Threat or Menace? Who can say. Me, I thought the development of the Foveon sensor was going to change digital photography forever. But we’ll be watching this one. . .
Tilt-Shift Video – “The Sandpit” by Sam O’Hare
June 23, 2011
Photography fads – driven by technology – come at us with bewildering speed, have their moment in the sun, then quickly become passé. Remember when High Dynamic Range photography was all the rage? It’s similar to trends in advertising and user interface design, I think. They all have a very high churn rate. Still, let’s enjoy them while we can.
Tilt-shift photography has now moved into the video space, as the following link at Asylum.co.uk attests. My favorite of these is embedded below, The Sandpit by Sam O’Hare, a five and a half minute survey of a day in the life of New York City, in miniature. It consists of over 35,000 still images! O’Hare explains the process here.
Tilt-shift video made its mainstream debut in David Fincher’s The Social Network in the Henley Royal Regatta sequence. Fincher explains what he was after here.
“OK to Die” – James Arthur Ray Convicted of 3 Counts of Negligent Homicide in “Sweat Lodge” Deaths
June 22, 2011
The New York Times reports here that a jury took less than ten hours to convict James Arthur Ray of three counts of negligent homicide in the Sedona, Arizona “Sweat Lodge” deaths in October 2009. I’ve written about Ray before here, here and here.
In a recording that took place during the ceremony/workshop Ray explained, “The true spiritual warrior has conquered death and therefore has no fear or enemies in this lifetime or the next, because the greatest fear you’ll ever experience is the fear of what? Death. You will have to get a point to where you surrender and it’s OK to die.”
I’d bet he wishes he hadn’t put it that way now.
A generation or so ago Ph.D.’s and acid proselytizers Tim Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzger told their followers that a necessary part of the trip was Ego Death (in The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead). Wasted as they generally were, even this trio knew they were speaking metaphorically.
“I got a message on acid that you should destroy your ego and I did, you know. I was reading that stupid book of Leary’s Psychedelic Book of the Dead (sic) and all that shit. We were going through a whole game that everyone went through and I destroyed myself . . . I destroyed my ego and I didn’t believe I could do anything.”
– John Lennon
There were movements that began in the 1960s that did, in fact, help make the world a better place; health foods and environmentalism being two easy examples to cite. But the sloppy spirituality of the acid prophets brought drug mysticism into the mainstream, and the wreckage from that irrationality continues to this day. “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream” may make a great song lyric, but it isn’t exactly a paen to critical thinking.
It’s hard to imagine James Arthur Ray (and many other New Age self-help gurus) existing today without seeing Tim Leary as a kind of precedent. Just as it is hard to imagine Henry Ford using reiki.
We’d all be better off today if we’d followed Bob Dylan’s advice from his first Top 40 hit: “Don’t follow leaders, Watch your parking meters.”
_____________________________________________________________________________
Fun Phact: Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues owes a great deal to Chuck Berry’s Too Much Monkey Business.