tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51394519055793888512024-02-07T13:30:19.374-08:00The Sharpened PixelJoshua Vaughan, Art Director, Gameshastra, Games, Politics, Art, LifeJVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-89008050810480067932010-02-27T10:56:00.000-08:002010-02-27T11:12:12.522-08:00Marauder!<div>Sometimes a tweet will never convey all that one hope to say. New York is kind of starting to grow on me. It is good here! My little apartment (and aren't they all?) is now almost a home. I have a pan, some food in the fridge, a few gadgets, a new bed, the table, the chair. It's not the Kafka apartment anymore, this is better. Naturally like all things in life after a full reboot and rebuild of my life it is going to take some time to get the rest of the pieces back together. Slowly but surely things are coming back together.<div><br /></div><div>In all things I am feeling a lot better. I have been through a lot; traveled, experienced, loved, lost and lived to tell the tale. I feel like I can finally really connect with people both without losing myself or purpose, but without a lack of empathy. It's not an easy lesson to learn, aparently it takes about 31 years give or take.</div><div><br /></div><div>On a less naval gazing note I have been working on stuff for Gameloft, I have a solemn responsibility to beat a game called N.O.V.A. to a pulp in the graphics department. It's not easy per se, but I do think it's doable! Been listening to a lot of proto electronic stuff and disco. I have put a name and a face to some of my all time favorite music. It was Giorgio Moroder all along! He is just such a crazy looking dude I had to paint a quicky caricature of him:</div></div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj620MdM_xb8jOI0i080yNDzoyMmS9dUnnhGdAX4iUErMVjFsGjLtKYGOrLqhxB2JVdwYvrULgcBsX-EjskiaO6xJqy8J4i4vU0ooXjzXyc-3yjRHAVaZXJSe1URn2Q7B19-v1FzwnS0lw/s1600-h/Moroder.png"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj620MdM_xb8jOI0i080yNDzoyMmS9dUnnhGdAX4iUErMVjFsGjLtKYGOrLqhxB2JVdwYvrULgcBsX-EjskiaO6xJqy8J4i4vU0ooXjzXyc-3yjRHAVaZXJSe1URn2Q7B19-v1FzwnS0lw/s400/Moroder.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443001913600095490" /></a><div><br /></div><div>and here are some YouTube's:</div><div><br /></div><div><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/E817rpX-PoU&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/E817rpX-PoU&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></div><div><br /></div><div><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/AbkEARwZWwE&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/AbkEARwZWwE&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></div><div><br /></div><div>Okay, now if this doesn't make you happy... you are just a dick. Sorry. Anyways, time for BARCADE! Hope everyone has a great weekend.</div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj620MdM_xb8jOI0i080yNDzoyMmS9dUnnhGdAX4iUErMVjFsGjLtKYGOrLqhxB2JVdwYvrULgcBsX-EjskiaO6xJqy8J4i4vU0ooXjzXyc-3yjRHAVaZXJSe1URn2Q7B19-v1FzwnS0lw/s1600-h/Moroder.png"></a><br /><div><br /></div></div>JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-29620116134736809982010-01-31T08:21:00.000-08:002010-01-31T08:35:44.962-08:00Back Once Again<div><br /></div><div>It's 2010! I am living in Manhattan! I am working at Gameloft!<div><br /></div><div>Once again the dice randomizer has rolled it's D20's of fate and there have been a lot changes. I want to thank all of my Bharati's for an amazing year and half in India. I really do care a lot about you guys and don't forget about me. Of course, I did have a while to spend some more time with my Utah buddies, I hope you all know we are friends for life, but ideally that's obvious.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have switched jobs and am working at Gameloft New York. Hopefully in an undisclosed amount of time you will all get to see the fruits of my labors. I can't give any real details but I think this coolest project I have worked on in my career. The guys on my team are great, and I am really liking working in New York, despite the New York State and City tax, which is MURDEROUS. The people here so far are great, my co-workers are awesome and there are some pretty amazing New Yorkers if you know where to look. It's not too surprising what with Bell Curves and all.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the gaming front I am a wholly owned entity of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. It's truly amazing, been really loving my PSP for that few month's and this might be the high point even over Patapon and Loco Roco.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have a pretty crazy year ahead of me know, but I have a lot of optimism about what a year can do. As promised to Naresh here are some sketches:</div><div><br /></div></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQgCsZyDet-9G-i1e1VVyHU8aEx7FkOaJidmEhkkLpnY8LqYp_AzzWHFgbE0mhL7LebHY1SzRvL0kz_ov7tMSNw4IVAbLsj4di7aXCcN3zz7YccRL3_YyZvdhlAxGOeufUu8mZOfdN_2o/s1600-h/PegaDragon.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 279px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQgCsZyDet-9G-i1e1VVyHU8aEx7FkOaJidmEhkkLpnY8LqYp_AzzWHFgbE0mhL7LebHY1SzRvL0kz_ov7tMSNw4IVAbLsj4di7aXCcN3zz7YccRL3_YyZvdhlAxGOeufUu8mZOfdN_2o/s400/PegaDragon.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432943442362482914" /></a><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPhmF9MUP-jhAQXZXVUe8tRkhtou1pTCARzCR48SuVYrn4G9TLgxKVY7wGmkvS3HEAU2pYwcQr7vTx2UUEsA-fb2tY_klpwMkiK364bMpegund3Q8KXGhSEEFUwHDtMddndktE8YHEkoc/s1600-h/Korea+Town.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 285px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPhmF9MUP-jhAQXZXVUe8tRkhtou1pTCARzCR48SuVYrn4G9TLgxKVY7wGmkvS3HEAU2pYwcQr7vTx2UUEsA-fb2tY_klpwMkiK364bMpegund3Q8KXGhSEEFUwHDtMddndktE8YHEkoc/s400/Korea+Town.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432943248755071218" /></a><br /><div><br /></div>JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-79668368337411328522009-11-20T09:08:00.001-08:002009-11-20T09:09:57.497-08:00The Sharpened PixelMy portfolio website is finally off the ground over at <a href="http://www.sharpenedpixel.com/">www.sharpenedpixel.com</a> . There will be updates in the next few days. For now take a look and enjoy!JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-12811600252451742842009-11-10T12:46:00.000-08:002009-11-10T13:02:15.996-08:00Stay Classy Pat Robertsonhttp://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/pat-robertson-denounces-islam-not-re<br /><br />So here's Pat, stirring up shit again. Denouncing Islam which, last time I checked, has over 1 billion adherent's is not going to make the cause of Christianity any stronger. In fact Pat, quite frankly I think you can only make all Christians and it's followers look worse.<br /><br />To denounce Islam is absolutely absurd. As someone who, gasp, has lived an work among people of the Islamic faith, I can tell you honestly, they are just as good, just as crazy, and no less human than any of the rest of us in the west, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, or Athiest.<br /><br />I know a lot of this is happening in light of the Fort Hood shooting. My brother is stationed there. His wife and kids are there, it worries me too. I feel sick for the families affected, the father's being put into early graves and the tragedy of it all.<br /><br />I feel sorry for Nidal Hasan as well. Just one poor bastard stuck in the middle of socio-religious ideologies at war. As surely as we have made Islam into our "hated enemy" they have repaid in kind.<br /><br />Now ask yourselves dear Christians, when shall we learn to learn to turn the other cheek? To give kindness to any that would aid us? To do what is right by people, even if they would harm us? When will stop making the same mistakes, and see these people only as our enemy, instead of humans, no different or worse, simply choosing to walk a different path?JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-15642336158671235662009-11-09T19:45:00.000-08:002009-11-09T19:58:03.798-08:00Stateside and the TitanicWell you few faithful followers, and random fans of alliteration, looks like a big chapter of my life is coming to a close. India is, and will always be, an amazing place, incredible sights, incredible people, but alas, the bell has sounded, and it beacons me back to the place I call home. Cross the world again, cross the great polar north and the light of the infinite day, cross the continents, to the homeland, to the familiar, and finally, across the mountains, once again, home.<br /><br />If you really travel, really let go, you can really take in so much, see so much, expand yourself so much. I can't think of anything worse than for a man to never leave the comforts of the hearth. You don't know who you are really, deep down, until the juxtaposition is almost a part of you too.<br /><br />But there is a danger in that. What if you never really liked who you were to begin with? What if in that mirror of yourself you see only an empty vessel, an object of derision. What if you only see what you were as incomplete, or obsolete? If you smash that image, I think you almost become a phantom. Not what you were, but no longer able to truly be anything else. You become lost, a man without an identity, a soul without a home.<br /><br />I have seen the sunrise on the flip side enough times. Bathed in the water, eaten the food. Lived, loved, learned and taught. I hope the footprints on the foreign shore don't wash away to soon. But if you follow them long enough, you will see the way that points me back, back to my roots, back to my personal insanity, back to my family, back to the cradle of the mountains and the place I call home.JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-8623946521259585622009-10-14T06:24:00.000-07:002009-10-14T06:34:55.741-07:0010/GUIIdeas can be a wonderful thing, and part of me hopes this can be a functional idea:<br /><br /><object width="400" height="220"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6712657&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1"><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6712657&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="220"></embed></object><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/6712657">10/GUI</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1415432">C. Miller</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p><br /><br />I think it's pretty cool, I haven't had a chance to see what Windows 7 actually does with multitouch, like 99.9999% of people I don't have an interface that supports it. It's does seem like 10/GUI has come up with a pretty interesting approach, and left the keyboard there, which is nice.<br /><br />The gear head part of me hope's that in future everything is like Guitar Hero, seprate peripherals for every app. The guy that wants to live in an immaculate uber ergonomic Ikea future dome wants the one true interface, what ever that may be*<br /><br />In any case, it's 2010 next year. Is it the future yet?<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">*I think the answer may ulimately look like multitouch breasts, volume, tactility and one for each hand. I am looking right at you Japan</span>.JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-6806614522394097882009-10-14T00:31:00.000-07:002009-10-14T00:47:59.729-07:00Reproduction<span style="font-family:verdana;">This is taken from the website positiveatheism.com . I wouldn't suggest going there, my aesthetic sensibilities prevent me from sending from friends and even potential strangers to a website set in Comic Sans. This however in all it's 42,000 characters is pure gold. Read on:</span><br /><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">How Thinking Goes Wrong</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Twenty-five Fallacies That Lead Us</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">to Believe Weird Things</span></span><b face="verdana"><br /><br /></b></span> <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >by Michael Shermer<span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /></span> </span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >from his 1997 book "Why People Believe Weird Things"<br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="font-size:85%;">(used by kind permission of the author; all rights reserved)</span><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;">In 1994 NBC began airing a New Age program called <i>The Other Side</i> that explored claims of the paranormal, various mysteries and miracles, and assorted "weird" things. I appeared numerous times as the token skeptic -- the "other side" of <i>The Other Side,</i> if you will. On most talk shows, a "balanced" program is a half-dozen to a dozen believers and one lone skeptic as the voice of reason or opposition. <i>The Other Side</i> was no different, even though the executive producer, many of the program producers, and even the host were skeptical of most of the beliefs they were covering. I did one program on werewolves for which they flew in a fellow from England. He actually looked a little like what you see in werewolf movies -- big bushy sideburns and rather pointy ears -- but when I talked to him, I found that he did not actually remember becoming a werewolf. He recalled the experience under hypnosis. In my opinion, his was a case of false memory, either planted by the hypnotist or fantasized by the man.</span> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Another program was on astrology. The producers brought in a serious, professional astrologer from India who explained how it worked using charts and maps with all the jargon. But, because he was so serious, they ended up featuring a Hollywood astrologer who made all sorts of predictions about the lives of movie stars. He also did some readings for members of the audience. One young lady was told that she was having problems staying in long-term relationships with men. During the break, she told me that she was fourteen years old and was there with her high-school class to see how television programs were produced.</span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;">In my opinion, most believers in miracles, monsters, and mysteries are not hoaxers, flimflam artists, or lunatics. Most are normal people whose normal thinking has gone wrong in some way.… I would like to ... [look] at twenty-five fallacies of thinking that can lead anyone to believe weird things. I have grouped them in four categories, listing specific fallacies and problems in each. But as an affirmation that thinking can go right, I begin with what I call Hume's Maxim and close with what I call Spinoza's Dictum.</span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Hume's Maxim</span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Skeptics owe a lot to the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), whose <i>An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding</i> is a classic in skeptical analysis. The work was first published anonymously in London in 1739 as<i> A Treatise of Human Natur</i>e. In Hume's words, it "fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots." Hume blamed his own writing style and reworked the manuscript into <i>An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature,</i> published in 1740, and then into <i>Philosophical Essays Concerning the Human Understanding,</i> published in 1748. The work still garnered no recognition, so in 1758 he brought out the final version, under the title <i>An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding</i>, which today we regard as his greatest philosophical work.</span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Hume distinguished between "antecedent skepticism," such as René Descartes' method of doubting everything that has no "antecedent" infallible criterion for belief; and "consequent skepticism," the method Hume employed, which recognizes the "consequences" of our fallible senses but corrects them through reason: "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." Better words could not be found for a skeptical motto.</span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Even more important is Hume's foolproof, when-all-else-fails analysis of miraculous claims. For when one is confronted by a true believer whose apparently supernatural or paranormal claim has no immediately apparent natural explanation, Hume provides an argument that he thought so important that he placed his own words in quotes and called them a maxim:</span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), "That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish."</span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;">When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other, and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.([1758] 1952, p. 491)</span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:180%;">Problems in Scientific Thinking</span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:180%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="INFLUENCE"></a></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >1. Theory Influences Observations</span></p> <p face="verdana">About the human quest to understand the physical world, physicist and Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg concluded, "What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning." In quantum mechanics, this notion has been formalized as the "Copenhagen interpretation" of quantum action: "a probability function does not prescribe a certain event but describes a continuum of possible events until a measurement interferes with the isolation of the system and a single event is actualized" (in Weaver 1987, p. 412). The Copenhagen interpretation eliminates the one-to-one correlation between theory and reality. The theory in part <i>constructs</i> the reality. Reality exists independent of the observer, of course, but our perceptions of reality are influenced by the theories framing our examination of it. Thus, philosophers call science theory laden.</p> <p face="verdana">That theory shapes perceptions of reality is true not only for quantum physics but also for all observations of the world. When Columbus arrived in the New World, he had a theory that he was in Asia and proceeded to perceive the New World as such. Cinnamon was a valuable Asian spice, and the first New World shrub that smelled like cinnamon was declared to <i>be</i> it. When he encountered the aromatic gumbo-limbo tree of the West Indies, Columbus concluded it was an Asian species similar to the mastic tree of the Mediterranean. A New World nut was matched with Marco Polo's description of a coconut. Columbus's surgeon even declared, based on some Caribbean roots his men uncovered, that he had found Chinese rhubarb. A theory of Asia produced observations of Asia, even though Columbus was half a world away. Such is the power of theory.</p> <p face="verdana"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="OBSERVER"></a><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >2. The Observer Changes the Observed</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Physicist John Archibald Wheeler "Even to observe so minuscule an object as an electron, [a physicist] must shatter the glass. He must reach in. He must install his chosen measuring equipment.… Moreover, the measurement changes the state of the electron. The universe will never afterward be the same" (in Weaver 1987, p. 427). In other words, the act of studying an event can change it. Social scientists often encounter this phenomenon. Anthropologists know that when they study a tribe, the behavior of the members may be altered by the fact they are being observed by an outsider. Subjects in a psychology experiment may alter their behavior if they know what experimental hypotheses are being tested. This is why psychologists use blind and double-blind controls. Lack of such controls is often found in tests of paranormal powers and is one of the classic ways that thinking goes wrong in the pseudosciences. Science tries to minimize and acknowledge the effects of the observation on the behavior of the observed; pseudoscience does not.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="EQUIPMENT"></a></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >3. Equipment Constructs Results</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">The equipment used in an experiment often determines the results. The size of our telescopes, for example, has shaped and reshaped our theories about the size of the universe. In the twentieth century, Edwin Hubble's 60- and 100-inch telescopes on Mt. Wilson in southern California for the first time provided enough seeing power for astronomers to distinguish individual stars in other galaxies, thus proving that those fuzzy objects called nebulas that we thought were in our own galaxy were actually separate galaxies. In the nineteenth century, craniometry defined intelligence as brain size and instruments were designed that measured it as such; today intelligence is defined by facility with certain developmental tasks and is measured by another instrument, the IQ test. Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington illustrated the problem with this clever analogy:</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematize what it reveals. He arrives at two generalizations:</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">(1) No sea-creature is less than two inches long.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">(2) All sea-creatures have gills.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">In applying this analogy, the catch stands for the body of knowledge which constitutes physical science, and the net for the sensory and intellectual equipment which we use in obtaining it. The casting of the net corresponds to observations.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">An onlooker may object that the first generalization is wrong. "There are plenty of sea-creatures under two inches long, only your net is not adapted to catch them." The ichthyologist dismisses this objection contemptuously. "Anything uncatchable by my net is <i>ipso facto</i> outside the scope of ichthyological knowledge, and is not part of the kingdom of fishes which has been defined as the theme of ichthyological knowledge. In short, what my net can't catch isn't fish." (1958, p. 16)</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Likewise, what my telescope can't see isn't there, and what my test can't measure isn't intelligence. Obviously, galaxies and intelligence exist, but how we measure and understand them is highly influenced by our equipment.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size:180%;">Problems in Pseudoscientific Thinking</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size:180%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="ANECDOTES"></a></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >4. Anecdotes Do Not Make a Science</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Anecdotes -- stories recounted in support of a claim -- do not make a science. Without corroborative evidence from other sources, or physical proof of some sort, ten anecdotes are no better than one, and a hundred anecdotes are no better than ten. Anecdotes are told by fallible human storytellers. Farmer Bob in Puckerbrush, Kansas, may be an honest, church-going, family man not obviously subject to delusions, but we need physical evidence of an alien spacecraft or alien bodies, not just a story about landings and abductions at 3:00 A.M. on a deserted country road. Likewise with many medical claims. Stories about how your Aunt Mary's cancer was cured by watching Marx Brothers movies or taking a liver extract from castrated chickens are meaningless. The cancer might have gone into remission on its own, which some cancers do; or it might have been misdiagnosed; or, or, or.… What we need are controlled experiments, not anecdotes. We need 100 subjects with cancer, all properly diagnosed and matched. Then we need 25 of the subjects to watch Marx Brothers movies, 25 to watch Alfred Hitchcock movies, 25 to watch the news, and 25 to watch nothing. Then we need to deduct the average rate of remission for this type of cancer and then analyze the data for statistically significant differences between the groups. If there are statistically significant differences, we better get confirmation from other scientists who have conducted their own experiments separate from ours before we hold a press conference to announce the cure for cancer.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;">5. Scientific Language Does Not Make a Science</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Dressing up a belief system in the trappings of science by using scientific language and jargon, as in "creation-science," means nothing without evidence, experimental testing, and corroboration. Because science has such a powerful mystique in our society, those who wish to gain respectability but do not have evidence try to do an end run around the missing evidence by looking and sounding "scientific." Here is a classic example from a New Age column in the Santa Monica News: "This planet has been slumbering for eons and with the inception of higher energy frequencies is about to awaken in terms of consciousness and spirituality. Masters of limitation and masters of divination use the same creative force to manifest their realities, however, one moves in a downward spiral and the latter moves in an upward spiral, each increasing the resonant vibration inherent in them." How's that again? I have no idea what this means, but it has the language components of a physics experiment: "higher energy frequencies," "downward and upward spirals," and "resonant vibration." Yet these phrases mean nothing because they have no precise and operational definitions. How do you measure a planet's higher energy frequencies or the resonant vibration of masters of divination? For that matter, what <i>is</i> a master of divination?</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;">6. Bold Statements Do Not Make Claims True</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Something is probably pseudoscientific if enormous claims are made for its power and veracity but supportive evidence is scarce as hen's teeth. L. Ron Hubbard, for example, opens his <i>Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health,</i> with this statement: "The creation of Dianetics is a milestone for man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his invention of the wheel and arch" (in Gardner 1952, p. 263). Sexual energy guru Wilhelm Reich called his theory of Orgonomy "a revolution in biology and psychology comparable to the Copernican Revolution" (in Gardner 1952, p. 259). I have a thick file of papers and letters from obscure authors filled with such outlandish claims (I call it the "Theories of Everything" file). Scientists sometimes make this mistake, too, as we saw at 1:00 P.M., on March 23, 1989, when Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann held a press conference to announce to the world that they had made cold nuclear fusion work. Gary Taubes's excellent book about the cold fusion debacle, appropriately named <i>Bad Science</i> (1993), thoroughly examines the implications of this incident. Maybe fifty years of physics will be proved wrong by one experiment, but don't throw out your furnace until that experiment has been replicated. The moral is that the more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinarily well-tested the evidence must be.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;">7. Heresy Does Not Equal Correctness</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">They laughed at Copernicus. They laughed at the Wright brothers. Yes, well, they laughed at the Marx brothers. Being laughed at does not mean you are right. Wilhelm Reich compared himself to Peer Gynt, the unconventional genius out of step with society, and misunderstood and ridiculed as a heretic until proven right: "Whatever you have done to me or will do to me in the future, whether you glorify me as a genius or put me in a mental institution, whether you adore me as your savior or hang me as a spy, sooner or later necessity will force you to comprehend that I have discovered the laws of the living" (in Gardner 1952, p. 259). Reprinted in the January-February 1996 issue of the <i>Journal of Historical Review,</i> the organ of Holocaust denial, is a famous quote from the nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, which is quoted often by those on the margins: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident." But "all truth" does not pass through these stages. Lots of true ideas are accepted without ridicule or opposition, violent or otherwise. Einstein's theory of relativity was largely ignored until 1919, when experimental evidence proved him right. He was not ridiculed, and no one violently opposed his ideas. The Schopenhauer quote is just a rationalization, a fancy way for those who are ridiculed or violently opposed to say, "See, I must be right." Not so.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">History is replete with tales of the lone scientist working in spite of his peers and flying in the face of the doctrines of his or her own field of study. Most of them turned out to be wrong and we do not remember their names. For every Galileo shown the instruments of torture for advocating a scientific truth, there are a thousand (or ten thousand) unknowns whose "truths" never pass muster with other scientists. The scientific community cannot be expected to test every fantastic claim that comes along, especially when so many are logically inconsistent. If you want to do science, you have to learn to play the game of science. This involves getting to know the scientists in your field, exchanging data and ideas with colleagues informally, and formally presenting results in conference papers, peer-reviewed journals, books, and the like.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="8"></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;">8. Burden of Proof</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Who has to prove what to whom? The person making the extraordinary claim has the burden of proving to the experts and to the community at large that his or her belief has more validity than the one almost everyone else accepts. You have to lobby for your opinion to be heard. Then you have to marshal experts on your side so you can convince the majority to support your claim over the one that they have always supported. Finally, when you are in the majority, the burden of proof switches to the outsider who wants to challenge you with his or her unusual claim. Evolutionists had the burden of proof for half a century after Darwin, but now the burden of proof is on creationists. It is up to creationists to show why the theory of evolution is wrong and why creationism is right, and it is not up to evolutionists to defend evolution. The burden of proof is on the Holocaust deniers to prove the Holocaust did not happen, not on Holocaust historians to prove that it did. The rationale for this is that mountains of evidence prove that both evolution and the Holocaust are facts. In other words, it is not enough to have evidence. You must convince others of the validity of your evidence. And when you are an outsider this is the price you pay, regardless of whether you are right or wrong.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="RUMORS"></a><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >9. Rumors Do Not Equal Reality</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Rumors begin with "I read somewhere that ... " or "I heard from someone that.…" Before long the rumor becomes reality, as "I know that…" passes from person to person. Rumors may be true, of course, but usually they are not. They do make for great tales, however. There is the "true story" of the escaped maniac with a prosthetic hook who haunts the lover's lanes of America. There is the legend of "The Vanishing Hitchhiker," in which a driver picks up a hitchhiker who vanishes from his car along with his jacket; locals then tell the driver that his hitchhiking woman had died that same day the year before, and eventually he discovers his jacket on her grave. Such stories spread fast and never die.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Caltech historian of science Dan Kevles once told a story he suspected was apocryphal at a dinner party. Two students did not get back from a ski trip in time to take their final exam because the activities of the previous day had extended well into the night. They told their professor that they had gotten a flat tire, so he gave them a makeup final the next day. Placing the students in separate rooms, he asked them just two questions: (1) "For 5 points, what is the chemical formula for water?" (2) "For 95 points, which tire?" Two of the dinner guests had heard a vaguely similar story. The next day I repeated the story to my students and before I got to the punch line, three of them simultaneously blurted out, "Which tire?" Urban legends and persistent rumors are ubiquitous. Here are a few:</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">The secret ingredient in Dr. Pepper is prune juice.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">A woman accidentally killed her poodle by drying it in a microwave oven.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Paul McCartney died and was replaced by a look-alike.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Giant alligators live in the sewers of New York City.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">The moon landing was faked and filmed in a Hollywood studio.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">George Washington had wooden teeth.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">The number of stars inside the "P" on Playboy magazine's cover indicates how many times publisher Hugh Hefner had sex with the centerfold.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">A flying saucer crashed in New Mexico and the bodies of the extraterrestrials are being kept by the Air Force in a secret warehouse.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">How many have you heard … and believed? None of them are true.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="UNEXPLAINED"></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;">10. Unexplained Is Not Inexplicable</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Many people are overconfident enough to think that if <i>they</i> cannot explain something, it must be inexplicable and therefore a true mystery of the paranormal. An amateur archeologist declares that because he cannot figure out how the pyramids were built, they must have been constructed by space aliens. Even those who are more reasonable at least think that if the experts cannot explain something, it must be inexplicable. Feats such as the bending of spoons, firewalking, or mental telepathy are often thought to be of a paranormal or mystical nature because most people cannot explain them. When they are explained, most people respond, "Yes, of course" or "That's obvious once you see it." Firewalking is a case in point. People speculate endlessly about supernatural powers over pain and heat, or mysterious brain chemicals that block the pain and prevent burning. The simple explanation is that the capacity of light and fluffy coals to contain heat is very low, and the conductivity of heat from the light and fluffy coals to your feet is very poor. As long as you don't stand around on the coals, you will not get burned. (Think of a cake in a 450°F oven. The air, the cake, and the pan are all at 450°F, but only the metal pan will burn your hand. It has a high heat capacity and high conductivity, while air and cake are light and fluffy and have a low heat capacity and low conductivity.) This is why magicians do not tell their secrets. Most of their tricks are extremely simple and knowing the secret takes the magic out of the trick.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">There are many genuine unsolved mysteries in the universe and it is okay to say, "We do not yet know but someday perhaps we will." The problem is that most of us find it more comforting to have certainty, even if it is premature, than to live with unsolved or unexplained mysteries.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="RATIONALIZED"></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;">11. Failures Are Rationalized</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">In science, the value of negative findings -- failures -- cannot be overemphasized. Usually they are not wanted, and often they are not published. But most of the time failures are how we get closer to truth. Honest scientists will readily admit their errors, but all scientists are kept in line by the fact that their fellow scientists will publicize any attempt to fudge. Not pseudoscientists. They ignore or rationalize failures, especially when exposed. If they are actually caught cheating -- not a frequent occurrence -- they claim that their powers usually work but not always, so when pressured to perform on television or in a laboratory, they sometimes resort to cheating. If they simply fail to perform, they have ready any number of creative explanations: too many controls in an experiment cause negative results; the powers do not work in the presence of skeptics; the powers do not work in the presence of electrical equipment; the powers come and go, and this is one of those times they went. Finally, they claim that if skeptics cannot explain everything, then there must be something paranormal; they fall back on the unexplained is not inexplicable fallacy.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="POSTHOC"></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;">12. After-the-Fact Reasoning</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Also known as "<i>post hoc, ergo propter hoc,</i>" literally "after this, therefore because of this." At its basest level, it is a form of superstition. The baseball player does not shave and hits two home runs. The gambler wears his lucky shoes because he has won wearing them in the past. More subtly, scientific studies can fall prey to this fallacy. In 1993 a study found that breast-fed children have higher IQ scores. There was much clamor over what ingredient in mother's milk increased intelligence. Mothers who bottle-fed their babies were made to feel guilty. But soon researchers began to wonder whether breast-fed babies are attended to differently. Maybe nursing mothers spend more time with their babies and motherly vigilance was the cause behind the differences in IQ. As Hume taught us, the fact that two events follow each other in sequence does not mean they are connected causally. Correlation does not mean causation.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="COINCIDENCE"></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;">13. Coincidence</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">In the paranormal world, coincidences are often seen as deeply significant. "Synchronicity" is invoked, as if some mysterious force were at work behind the scenes. But I see synchronicity as nothing more than a type of contingency -- a conjuncture of two or more events without apparent design. When the connection is made in a manner that seems impossible according to our intuition of the laws of probability, we have a tendency to think something mysterious is at work.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">But most people have a very poor understanding of the laws of probability. A gambler will win six in a row and then think he is either "on a hot streak" or "due to lose." Two people in a room of thirty people discover that they have the same birthday and conclude that something mysterious is at work. You go to the phone to call your friend Bob. The phone rings and it is Bob. You think, "Wow, what are the chances; This could not have been a mere coincidence. Maybe Bob and I are communicating telepathically." In fact, none of these coincidences are coincidences under the rules of probability. The gambler has predicted both possible outcomes, a fairly safe bet! The probability that two people in a room of thirty people will have the same birthday is 71 percent. And you have forgotten how many times Bob did not call under such circumstances, or someone else called, or Bob called but you were not thinking of him, and so on. As the behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner proved in the laboratory, the human mind seeks relationships between events and often finds them even when they are not present. Slot-machines are based on Skinnerian principles of intermittent reinforcement. The dumb human, like the dumb rat, only needs an occasional payoff to keep pulling the handle. The mind will do the rest.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="REPRESENTATIVENESS"></a><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >14. Representativeness</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">As Aristotle said, "The sum of the coincidences equals certainty." We forget most of the insignificant coincidences and remember the meaningful ones. Our tendency to remember hits and ignore misses is the bread and butter of the psychics, prophets, and soothsayers who make hundreds of predictions each January 1. First they increase the probability of a hit by predicting mostly generalized sure bets like "There will be a major earthquake in southern California" or "I see trouble for the Royal Family." Then, next January, they publish their hits and ignore the misses, and hope no one bothers to keep track.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">We must always remember the larger context in which a seemingly unusual event occurs, and we must always analyze unusual events for their representativeness of their class of phenomena. In the case of the "Bermuda Triangle," an area of the Atlantic Ocean where ships and planes "mysteriously" disappear, there is the assumption that something strange or alien is at work. But we must consider how representative such events are in that area. Far more shipping lanes run through the Bermuda Triangle than its surrounding areas, so accidents and mishaps and disappearances are more likely to happen in the area. As it turns out, the accident rate is actually lower in the Bermuda Triangle than in surrounding areas. Perhaps this area should be called the "Non-Bermuda Triangle." (See Kusche 1975 for a full explanation of this solved mystery.) Similarly, in investigating haunted houses, we must have a baseline measurement of noises, creaks, and other events before we can say that an occurrence is unusual (and therefore mysterious). I used to hear rapping sounds in the walls of my house. Ghosts? Nope. Bad plumbing. I occasionally hear scratching sounds in my basement. Poltergeists? Nope. Rats. One would be well-advised to first thoroughly understand the probable worldly explanation before turning to other-worldly ones.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="15"></a><span style="font-size:180%;">Logical Problems in Thinking</span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="EMOTIVE"></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;">15. Emotive Words and False Analogies</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Emotive words are used to provoke emotion and sometimes to obscure rationality. They can be positive emotive words -- <i>motherhood, America, integrity, honesty</i>. Or they can be negative -- <i>rape, cancer, evil, communist</i>. Likewise, metaphors and analogies can cloud thinking with emotion or steer us onto a side path. A pundit talks about inflation as "the cancer of society" or industry "raping the environment." In his 1992 Democratic nomination speech, Al Gore constructed an elaborate analogy between the story of his sick son and America as a sick country. Just as his son, hovering on the brink of death, was nursed back to health by his father and family, America, hovering on the brink of death after twelve years of Reagan and Bush, was to be nurtured back to health under the new administration. Like anecdotes, analogies and metaphors do not constitute proof. They are merely tools of rhetoric.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="ADIGNORANTIAM"></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;">16. <i>Ad Ignorantiam</i></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">This is an appeal to ignorance of lack of knowledge and is related to the <i>burden of proof</i> and <i>unexplained is not inexplicable</i> fallacies, where someone argues that if you cannot disprove a claim it must be true. For example, if you cannot prove that there isn't any psychic power, then there must be. The absurdity of this argument comes into focus if one argues that if you cannot prove that Santa Claus does not exist, then he must exist. You can argue the opposite in a similar manner. If you cannot prove Santa Claus exists, then he must not exist. In science, belief should come from positive evidence in support of a claim, not lack of evidence for or against a claim.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="ADHOMINEM"></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;">17. <i>Ad Hominem</i> and <i>Tu Quoque</i></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Literally "to the man" and "you also," these fallacies redirect the focus from thinking about the idea to thinking about the person holding the idea. The goal of an <i>ad hominem</i> attack is to discredit the claimant in hopes that it will discredit the claim. Calling someone an atheist, a communist, a child abuser, or a neo-Nazi does not in any way disprove that person's statement. It might be helpful to know whether someone is of a particular religion or holds a particular ideology, in case this has in some way biased the research, but refuting claims must be done directly, not indirectly. If Holocaust deniers, for example, are neo-Nazis or anti-Semites, this would certainly guide their choice of which historical events to emphasize or ignore. But if they are making the claim, for example, that Hitler did not have a master plan for the extermination of European Jewry, the response "Oh, he is saying that because he is a neo-Nazi" does not refute the argument. Whether Hitler had a master plan or not is a question that can be settled historically. Similarly for <i>tu quoque</i>. If someone accuses you of cheating on your taxes, the answer "Well, so do you" is no proof one way or the other.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="HASTY"></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;">18. Hasty Generalization</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">In logic, the hasty generalization is a form of improper induction. In life, it is called prejudice. In either case, conclusions are drawn before the facts warrant it. Perhaps because our brains evolved to be constantly on the lookout for connections between events and causes, this fallacy is one of the most common of all. A couple of bad teachers mean a bad school. A few bad cars mean that brand of automobile is unreliable. A handful of members of a group are used to judge the entire group. In science, we must carefully gather as much information as possible before announcing our conclusions.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="OVERRELIANCI"></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;">19. Overreliance on Authorities</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">We tend to rely heavily on authorities in our culture, especially if the authority is considered to be highly intelligent. The IQ score has acquired nearly mystical proportions in the last half century, but I have noticed that belief in the paranormal is not uncommon among Mensa members (the high-IQ club for those in the top 2 percent of the population); some even argue that their "Psi-Q" is also superior. Magician James Randi is fond of lampooning authorities with Ph.D.s -- once they are granted the degree, he says, they find it almost impossible to say two things: "I don't know" and "I was wrong." Authorities, by virtue of their expertise in a field, may have a better chance of being right in that field, but correctness is certainly not guaranteed, and their expertise does not necessarily qualify them to draw conclusions in other areas.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">In other words, <i>who</i> is making the claim makes a difference. If it is a Nobel laureate, we take note because he or she has been right in a big way before. If it is a discredited scam artist, we give a loud guffaw because he or she has been wrong in a big way before. While expertise is useful for separating the wheat from the chaff, it is dangerous in that we might either (1) accept a wrong idea just because it was supported by someone we respect (false positive) or (2) reject a right idea just because it was supported by someone we disrespect (false negative). How do you avoid such errors? Examine the evidence.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="EITHEROR"></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;">20. Either-Or</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Also known as the <i>fallacy of negation</i> or the <i>false dilemma,</i> this is the tendency to dichotomize the world so that if you discredit one position, the observer is forced to accept the other. This is a favorite tactic of creationists, who claim that life either was divinely created or evolved. Then they spend the majority of their time discrediting the theory of evolution so that they can argue that since evolution is wrong, creationism must be right. But it is not enough to point out weaknesses in a theory. If your theory is indeed superior, it must explain both the "normal" data explained by the old theory and the "anomalous" data not explained by the old theory. A new theory needs evidence in favor of it, not just against the opposition.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="CIRCULAR"></a><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >21. Circular Reasoning</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Also known as the <i>fallacy of redundancy, begging the question,</i> or <i>tautology</i>, this is when the conclusion or claim is merely a restatement of one of the premises. Christian apologetics is filled with tautologies: <i>Is there a God? Yes. How do you know? Because the Bible says so. How do you know the Bible is correct? Because it was inspired by God.</i> In other words, God is because God is. Science also has its share of redundancies: <i>What is gravity? The tendency for objects to be attracted to one another: Why are objects attracted to one another? Gravity</i>. In other words, gravity is because gravity is. (In fact, some of Newton's contemporaries rejected his theory of gravity as being an unscientific throwback to medieval occult thinking.) Obviously, a tautological operational definition can still be useful. Yet, difficult as it is, we must try to construct operational definitions that can be tested, falsified, and refuted.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="REDUCTIO"></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;">22. <i>Reductio ad Absurdum</i> and the Slippery Slope</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Reductio ad absurdum is the refutation of an argument by carrying the argument to its logical end and so reducing it to an absurd conclusion. Surely, if an argument's consequences are absurd, it must be false. This is not necessarily so, though sometimes pushing an argument to its limits is a useful exercise in critical thinking; often this is a way to discover whether a claim has validity, especially if an experiment testing the actual reduction can be run. Similarly, the slippery slope fallacy involves constructing a scenario in which one thing leads ultimately to an end so extreme that the first step should never be taken. For example: <i>Eating Ben & Jerry's ice cream will cause you to put on weight. Putting on weight will make you overweight. Soon you will weigh 350 pounds and die of heart disease. Eating Ben & Jerry's ice cream leads to death. Don't even try it</i>. Certainly eating a scoop of Ben & Jerry's ice cream may contribute to obesity, which could possibly, in very rare cases, cause death. But the consequence does not necessarily follow from the premise.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="23"></a><span style="font-size:2px;">Psychological Problems in Thinking</span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="INADEQUACIES"></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;">23. Effort Inadequacies and the Need for Certainty, Control, and Simplicity</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Most of us, most of the time, want certainty, want to control our environment, and want nice, neat simple explanations. All this may have some evolutionary basis, but in a multifarious society with complex problems, these characteristics can radically oversimplify reality and interfere with critical thinking and problem solving. For example, I believe that paranormal beliefs and pseudoscientific claims flourish in market economies in part because of the uncertainty of the marketplace. According to James Randi, after communism collapsed in Russia there was a significant increase in such belief. Not only are the people now freer to try to swindle each other with scams and rackets but many truly believe they have discovered something concrete and significant about the nature of the world. Capitalism is a lot less stable a social structure than communism. Such uncertainties lead the mind to look for explanations for the vagaries and contingencies of the market (and life in general), and the mind often takes a turn toward the supernatural and paranormal.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Scientific and critical thinking does not come naturally. It takes training, experience, and effort, as Alfred Mander explained in his <i>Logic for the Millions</i>: "Thinking is skilled work. It is not true that we are naturally endowed with the ability to think clearly and logically -- without learning how, or without practicing. People with untrained minds should no more expect to think clearly and logically than people who have never learned and never practiced can expect to find themselves good carpenters, golfers, bridge players, or pianists" (1947, p. vii). We must always work to suppress our need to be absolutely certain and in total control and our tendency to seek the simple and effortless solution to a problem. Now and then the solutions may be simple, but usually they are not.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="PROBLEMSOLV"></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;">24. Problem-Solving Inadequacies</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">All critical and scientific thinking is, in a fashion, problem solving. There are numerous psychological disruptions that cause inadequacies in problem solving. Psychologist Barry Singer has demonstrated that when given the task of selecting the right answer to a problem after being told whether particular guesses are right or wrong, people:</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">A. Immediately form a hypothesis and look only for examples to confirm it.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">B. Do not seek evidence to disprove the hypothesis.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">C. Are very slow to change the hypothesis even when it is obviously wrong.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">D. If the information is too complex, adopt overly-simple hypotheses or strategies for solutions.</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">E. If there is no solution, if the problem is a trick and "right" and "wrong" is given at random, form hypotheses about coincidental relationships they observed. Causality is always found. (Singer and Abell 1981, p. 18)</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">If this is the case with humans in general, then we all must make the effort to overcome these inadequacies in solving the problems of science and of life.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" name="IMMUNITY"></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;">25. Ideological Immunity, or the Planck Problem</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">In day-to-day life, as in science, we all resist fundamental paradigm change. Social scientist Jay Stuart Snelson calls this resistance an <i>ideological immune system</i>: "educated, intelligent, and successful adults rarely change their most fundamental presuppositions" (1993, p. 54). According to Snelson, the more knowledge individuals have accumulated, and the more well-founded their theories have become (and remember, we all tend to look for and remember confirmatory evidence, not counterevidence), the greater the confidence in their ideologies. The consequence of this, however, is that we build up an "immunity" against new ideas that do not corroborate previous ones. Historians of science call this the <i>Planck Problem,</i> after physicist Max Planck, who made this observation on what must happen for innovation to occur in science: "An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning" (1936, p. 97).</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Psychologist David Perkins conducted an interesting correlational study in which he found a strong positive correlation between intelligence (measured by a standard IQ test) and the ability to give reasons for taking a point of view and defending that position; he also found a strong negative correlation between intelligence and the ability to consider other alternatives. That is, the higher the IQ, the greater the potential for ideological immunity. Ideological immunity is built into the scientific enterprise, where it functions as a filter against potentially overwhelming novelty. As historian of science I. B. Cohen explained, "New and revolutionary systems of science tend to be resisted rather than welcomed with open arms, because every successful scientist has a vested intellectual, social, and even financial interest in maintaining the status quo. If every revolutionary new idea were welcomed with open arms, utter chaos would be the result" (1985, p. 35).</p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">In the end, history rewards those who are "right" (at least provisionally). Change does occur. In astronomy, the Ptolemaic geocentric universe was slowly displaced by Copernicus's heliocentric system. In geology, George Cuvier's catastrophism was gradually wedged out by the more soundly supported uniformitarianism of James Hutton and Charles Lyell. In biology, Darwin's evolution theory superseded creationist belief in the immutability of species. In Earth history, Alfred Wegener's idea of continental drift took nearly a half century to overcome the received dogma of fixed and stable continents. Ideological immunity can be overcome in science and in daily life, but it takes time and corroboration.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Spinoza's Dictum</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;">Skeptics have the very human tendency to relish debunking what we already believe to be nonsense. It is fun to recognize other people's fallacious reasoning, but that's not the whole point. As skeptics and critical thinkers, we must move beyond our emotional responses because by understanding how others have gone wrong and how science is subject to social control and cultural influences, we can improve our understanding of how the world works. It is for this reason that it is so important for us to understand the history of both science and pseudoscience. If we see the larger picture of how these movements evolve and figure out how their thinking went wrong, we won't make the same mistakes. The seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza said it best: "I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them."</p>JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-79584884001637860092009-10-10T06:09:00.000-07:002009-10-12T07:38:40.842-07:00Peace and Prizes<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS1v_3stWQI7dt0woPZbc-hcpCCdbGow1AzTAS-0FDIpZ16PO7G9RmWURJ38As3Bc-_esmCC6jUnajH82E9-MZLMnKxPlFYuvxgaa6gyR_vCVeLwDCYpucGFCn1C5r38p9xbfY2fOxKe4/s1600-h/Roboma.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 398px; height: 362px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS1v_3stWQI7dt0woPZbc-hcpCCdbGow1AzTAS-0FDIpZ16PO7G9RmWURJ38As3Bc-_esmCC6jUnajH82E9-MZLMnKxPlFYuvxgaa6gyR_vCVeLwDCYpucGFCn1C5r38p9xbfY2fOxKe4/s400/Roboma.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5390981046034439106" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Okay, now I have sung the praises of Obama before, but now it's getting a bit absurd. If he showed up I am sure he could be the first man to win Miss Universe, despite being a man, not single, and middle aged. I used to the think the Yankee's were absurd. I used to think Cael Sanderson's collegiate wrestling record absurd. But alas, all records were made to be broken. All hail the leader of the free world.<br /><br />I am now absolutely convinced that Earth is Obama's Barsoom. I am sure he went to sleep one day in cave, just lonely Civil War veteran and then somehow woke up on a strange new world, though not uncommon on his own world, and in the strange new gravity of Washington he seemed to have strange new powers. He is now exploiting his unique comparative advantage by winning every accolade a man can gain under the sun. Pretty soon Dos Equis' "World's Most Interesting Man" is going to realize he now in second place.<br /><br />I can't say I fully comprehend what is going on anymore, but hey it's damn fun to watch. I think everytime Obama get's an Award a KKK member has an aneuyrsm. Guess we'll know for sure when David Duke spontaneously combusts. Here's to hoping.<br /><br />So if you are tired of Obama let me recommend a sure cure for anything that ails you.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiutrj8qTaiRJ7iEzEcpLAyW_x-gYVtuUht_VlD0gmuc1b3e9-02P7fOEYlFu80J-V8UbvhZKZHreLkeJG4OJDfqlZn-9XRzqdfiHNn_Ki4uDtE_02C5IRxks1MpCPjSWZt_FY0ucSqN_k/s1600-h/Miami+Shark.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 256px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiutrj8qTaiRJ7iEzEcpLAyW_x-gYVtuUht_VlD0gmuc1b3e9-02P7fOEYlFu80J-V8UbvhZKZHreLkeJG4OJDfqlZn-9XRzqdfiHNn_Ki4uDtE_02C5IRxks1MpCPjSWZt_FY0ucSqN_k/s400/Miami+Shark.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5390984964331425010" border="0" /></a><br /><br />It's called Miami Shark, and I think it might be the finest game I have played this year. Follow <a href="http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/513760">the link</a>. Sharks eat boats, helicopter, airplanes and anything else you can find. It's pure genius, enjoy.JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-8219229973812001652009-10-09T23:14:00.000-07:002009-10-09T23:39:55.165-07:00Back in ActionStill need to get everything solved on my wordpress/website version. Not doing great at the moment, but it should be up in a few weeks. For now I am going to start posting a lot of stuff up over the next few days.<br /><br />Just got word that my first PS2/PSP game for the Indian Market is gold. Good news indeed.<br /><br />Tons of stuff happenin' here's the breakdown of what's cool:<br /><br />3D: Silo/zBrush/Cinema4D.<br /><br />Been spending time with a bunch of wildly different apps. Maya/Photoshop is still my Excalibur and Aegis, but I am starting to actually like modeling in Silo more, when it's time worry about cuts, edge loops and just make a fricken model it's so nice. Now I might have to dig into Modo because they do seem fairly similar, with the obvious exception of just how much more robust Modo. That said, I like the focus of Silo, I like that it knows what it's good at, it doesn't think it's an animation tool, it's not a renderer. You show up, you model, and it works great, DONE.<br /><br />Now zBrush is still a bit of a mindfuck for me. It does everything, differently. zBrush is what happens when you turn the established paradigm on it's ear and what you left with is really something uncanny. Mudbox is what happens when you take that alien technology and try and adapt back to <span style="font-style: italic;">everything</span> else. zBrush was clearly stolen from aliens. zBrush the modeling package is amazing, and I am kind of holding back waiting for 4.0 before I really dig in and start using it for finished work. But for now I understand Z-Spheres and a lot of the guts of so much better, I am getting used to sub objects and all of the other zaniness contained inside. I think once you have a Maya/Max/XSI/Mirai/Modo/Silo/Blender/Wings/etc./etc. background you expect your topology to stay nice and to work around it. ZBrush just kind of says, hey don't like it, more poly's you reto later, which can be pretty cool. Plus they have this new decimation feature which only further cements my feeling about the program. It took the team of scientists at Roswell New Mexico 50 years to figure out what they found in the desert. It's here. It's zBrush.<br /><br />And in all of my other noodling, I started digging into Cinema. While most 3D apps were migrating from 100k work stations to increasingly powerful 2k Windows boxes and Distributed Linux render farms, the Mac just kept falling farther and farther behind. Despite some comparitively well executed and well supported apps in the 90's Electric Image and others it just seemed like things kind of fell behind. Cinema started it's life as a Ray Tracer for the Amiga. Each successive iteration though seemed to unleash something new, well executed and interesting. Now I am looking R11 and thinking to myself, why don't more apps work like this?<br /><br />So let me break it down for you. Cinema I can safely say has one of the sexiest render and material systems I have seen. Yes you can probably still do more with Maya and Mental, but I am willing to wager that without half as much time and brain exploding you can just get better results with Cinema. I have been bouncing some models back and forth between Cinema and Maya and Cinema feels much faster, it's feel much more no-nonsense when it comes to results and in terms of AA and Color and lighting effects they just seem to feel nicer. I now know why there is all the commotion coming from the Motion-Graphics kids about this app. It's the dog's bullocks when it comes to rendering sexy output on the quick.<br /><br />Next post: Art, I promiseJVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-86552321430353454522009-09-04T11:49:00.000-07:002009-09-04T11:52:42.303-07:00Wordpress and navigation!Aye caramba!<br /><br /> I am in day 4 of my redesign and reskin of wordpress for blog.sharpenedpixel.com. 4 days... I am pretty blown away by my inability to fully grep this, but hey, I guess you aren't going to learn PHP over night? I feel as if I am making some real progress, got my XAMPP environment setup, found a really good and properly done(except for the whitespace) CSS file to use as a starting point, and I think I am getting closer to understanding this whole mess. Now if I just had a more firm grasp of how to include/change various elements in the PHP and style/position with the CSS file I will be setJVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-2372900258778540542009-09-01T19:21:00.000-07:002009-09-01T21:01:14.792-07:00Elbow GreaseBits and pieces of the mothership are really coming together now. I have the mainpage up, some big ideas and what I hope is a pretty cool framework for pushing things forward a bit more at sharpenedpixel.com. At the present I have decended into CSS/PHP hell, which isn't really <span style="font-style: italic;">so</span> bad, just a hell of a lot of stuff to iron out. So right now in my anthology of over-ambitiousness I have a long list of things that I need to throw in/together. For now it's just about plowing through on the wordpress reconversion of the blog. As far as the current look goes I will probably change it in 6 months or when time allows, but for now I am content to just plod along with Film Noir meets Modern Typeography for the style, it's kind of a fun fusion. Take a look at <a href="http://sharpenedpixel.com">sharpenedpixel.com</a> Anyways, if I can get some feedback, it would be appreciated,<br /><br />-JoshJVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-88173909117064204542009-08-31T19:33:00.000-07:002009-08-31T19:59:33.787-07:00New Horizons!Thought I would post up again,<br /><br />I am getting ready to migrate my art (I make art?) over to a proper site... www.sharpenedpixel.com. It's still VERY work in progress and all, but I think it will be cool. I need a much more proper place to host my work, point to my tweets, post up other peoples tutorials, and just in general have an online presence. I have a few ideas of things I would like to a little more of...<br /><br />1) I think I am ready to bring the insane world of Professor Zero to life, I pulled it out of my butt back in 2006 for 24 hour comics but it might be fun to actually work that out a little more. I figure a weekly strip there might be damn fun. Let's see what happens.<br /><br />2) Actually start hosting up a lot of the crap I have done over the years, might be fun to smash it together and recontextualize it, we'll see how that goes.<br /><br />3) The REALLY big one, I have been fortunate enough to have made some really amazing friends through the years, friends who are largely anonymous, despite all of there hard work. I think I am going to get them together and see if I can't make this a multiperson forum with some fairly regular posts by some talented folks. As I inevitably meet more people I will hopefully get to grow my Pantheon a bit, we'll just have to see how well it works out.JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-83391237204645525392009-08-26T20:25:00.000-07:002009-08-26T21:04:07.988-07:00Need to update more...This may be my last post before moving over to Wordpress... SharpenedPixel.com is on it's way...<br /><br />For now Quick and Dirty Updates:<br /><br />worth staring at:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.peperaart.com/index.html">Paul Pepera</a> : This is what it means to truly nail Hard Surface Modeling, freaking awesome.<br /><br />Cholesky showed me this: <a href="http://paullasaine.blogspot.com/">Paul Lasaine.</a> Dropping science the way Gallileo dropped the orange (Get well MCA.)<br /><br />Been spending too much time in After Effects of late, so the <a href="www.greyscalegorilla.com">gorilla</a> has been really great to follow, especially on Vimeo. Also thanks to Crayola for eternally screwing me up on Gray vs. Grey... DAMMIT.<br /><br />Other Rambling...<br /><a href="http://www.wacom.com/intuos/whats-new.php">Intuos 4 </a>get! It's truly a fantastic input device, looks like I will only be using my mouse for games from now on. I think I would still basically prefer it to a Cintiq. Switched out my dusty old M$ keyboard for a Razer Lycosa. It got a really nice low profile typing action and some sweet rubber keys, it's actually pretty nice and for a "Gamer Keyboard" relatively unpretentious, sorry I don't need a 220-key keyboard, just a numpad for entering Alt+ key combo's for the ©,®,™ or alt+0169, alt+0174 and alt+0154 respectively. Also ümläüts, or if you prefer, diaresis, which sounds like a medical procedure. But if you are really hard up this is always just character map for those.<br /><br />Here is some Art, just 30 minute doodles to get into a groove on the Intuous:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/43805077@N00/3861204378/sizes/l/in/photostream/"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 256px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfdPjJhi3G3EYMsYFIP2_JtGNycbAP_qkdOhn0TBaThHndPw1GOefDYfkKJmJ6G6Bfh5XPFKAVZ1DAKfII_MQwhLprVQ89spdrj97VgEasrFuQuGFFH4q7kESCgDMEzWUKXs8YLn0YLcI/s400/Splotchy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374485371760196098" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/43805077@N00/3861204614/sizes/l/in/photostream/"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ETsqggdjcV4rpRak2rL7cI1eUSmoZAwW2aPOv_uJbF1EKmdHBNt4vZqGyAx3MmtkFaCIdEoaPm1O2UH6xxjGWmLh9WXaqPT7wMviv8iKYuKtZ8GkMGsjPb13j1Lxbxu7p6fg0qlxWbo/s400/AntiTotoro.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374485362800373986" border="0" /></a><br /><br />So I'll be getting some better things together shortly, much more to follow soon.JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-84435659051649468822009-07-31T20:02:00.001-07:002009-07-31T20:07:27.663-07:00Bill MaherWait, this is actually really good, and reprinted in it's entirety because even though the are not mine, I want all of these words on this blog.<br /><br /><div style="font-family: times new roman;" class="orgurl"> <h1>'Birthers' must be stopped</h1> </div> <div style="font-family: times new roman;" id="wrapper_500"> </div> <div class="storysubhead" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 15px ! important; color: rgb(51, 51, 51) ! important; font-family: times new roman;">No matter how dumb, the people who are questioning whether Obama was born in the U.S. could eventually cause real problems.</div> <div class="storybyline" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 15px ! important; color: rgb(153, 153, 153) ! important; font-family: times new roman;">By Bill Maher <br />July 31, 2009 </div> <div style="font-family: times new roman;" id="article_body" class="storybody"> <!-- sphereit start --> <div class="storybody">Never underestimate the ability of a tiny fringe group of losers to ruin everything.<br /><br />For the last couple of weeks, we've all been laughing heartily at the wacky antics of the "birthers" -- the far-right goofballs who claim Barack Obama wasn't really born in Hawaii and therefore the job of president goes to the runner-up, former Miss California Carrie Prejean.</div><br /></div> <div style="font-family: times new roman;" class="storybody"> Also, when Obama was sworn in as president, he forgot to give his answer in the form of a question.<br /><br />And yet, every week, the chorus of conservatives demanding to see his birth certificate grows. It's like they're the Cambridge police, Obama's in his house -- the White House -- and they need to see some ID.<br /><br />And there's nothing anyone can do to convince these folks. You could hand them, in person, the original birth certificate and have a video of Obama emerging from the womb with Don Ho singing in the background ... and they still wouldn't believe it raises the question: Why, in this country, is it always the religious right that won't take anything on faith?<br /></div><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">So far, the reaction from Democrats is to laugh this off, and I understand why. If you seriously believe that President Obama is an African sleeper spy, get out of your chat room and have your house tested for lead.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">But we live in America, and in America, if you don't immediately kill arrant nonsense, no matter how ridiculous, it can grow and thrive and eventually take over, like crab grass or reality shows about fat people.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">This flap might be a deluded right-wing obsession that is a total waste of time, but so was Whitewater, and look where that ended up. A handful of Republican operatives, enraged at Bill Clinton's unprecedented economic growth and budget surpluses, found a woman named Paula Jones, which led to a woman named Monica Lewinsky, which gave me enough material to eventually be able to buy a big house in Bel-Air. Which I'm still conflicted about.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">More recently we had the Swift Boat allegations against John Kerry, in which Kerry was accused of volunteering to serve in Vietnam so he could jump in front of a bullet so he could get a medal and then throw it away to satisfy his urge to insult real Americans. This was so stupid that Kerry refused to even discuss it.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">And we all know how well that worked out.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">And once these stories get out there, they're hard to stamp out because our media do such a lousy job of speaking truth to stupid. Vietnam, Iraq and the Spanish-American War were all sold on lies that were unchallenged or even abetted by the media. Clinton got impeached and Kerry got destroyed in large part because the media didn't have the guts to say, "This is nonsense."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Lou Dobbs has been saying recently that people are asking a lot of questions about the birth certificate. Yes, the same people who want to know where the sun goes at night.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;"> And Lou, you're their new king.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">That's why it's so important that we the few, the proud, the reality-based attack this stuff before it has a chance to fester and spread. This isn't a case of Democrats versus Republicans. It's sentient beings versus the lizard people, and it is to them I offer this deal: I'll show you Obama's birth certificate when you show me Sarah Palin's high school diploma.</span>JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-3624245572199039452009-07-30T16:47:00.000-07:002009-07-30T17:19:15.909-07:00Bulletproof: I wish my industry was...Looks like NOBODY is immune in this economy, and it's hitting everyone in the pants. So across the board we have both Sony AND Nintendo getting hit to the tune of about a 33% drop. So much for the myth of the recession proof industry.<br /><br />Here's the links:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2009/07/30/nintendos-q1-fiscal-results-show-sales-slump/">Nintendo's Troubles</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2009/07/30/playstation-hardware-and-software-sales-decline-in-q1-2009/">Sony's Issues</a>, with color commentary by <a href="http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2009/07/earnings.html">Sony Realist Bill Harris.</a><br /><br />Now to be fair I don't think Q1 releases have been half as strong this year. But we have seen the release of the DSi, the <leo_highlight style="border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 150); background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; cursor: pointer; display: inline; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;" id="leoHighlights_Underline_0" onclick="leoHighlightsHandleClick('leoHighlights_Underline_0')" onmouseover="leoHighlightsHandleMouseOver('leoHighlights_Underline_0')" onmouseout="leoHighlightsHandleMouseOut('leoHighlights_Underline_0')" leohighlights_keywords="psp 3000" leohighlights_url="http%3A//thebrowserhighlighter.com/leonardo/highlights/keywords?keywords%3Dpsp%203000">PSP-3000</leo_highlight> IS fully compatible with Sony's future online plans, and there have definitely been some green patches in every market with <a href="http://www.popcap.com/games/pvz/">strong</a><a href="http://ds.ign.com/objects/849/849436.html"> new</a><a href="http://ps3.ign.com/objects/876/876981.html"> releases.</a><br /><br />I suppose at this point we have a couple of things we can do. Read Paul Krugman wonkish posts until the economy picks up again (by use, decay and obsolescence) or just get all Emo about it and wait until the black mascara washes off. We can watch this while we wait:<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Wtvjy3EiVCM&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Wtvjy3EiVCM&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><span id="leoHighlights_iframe_modal_span_container"><div id="leoHighlights_iframe_modal_div_container" style="border: 1px solid black; position: absolute; visibility: hidden; display: none; width: 394px; height: 40px; z-index: 32768; background-color: white;" 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</script></span>JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-51825770501939906292009-07-28T00:13:00.000-07:002009-07-28T00:16:03.727-07:00Blog UpdateWell I am working like a dog at the moment but I took out about 45 minutes to restyle my blog today after getting active on twitter again. I thinks I got my "cyber presence" sorted out a little bit better, hopefully it looks a little more like a guy who has been working as an Artist for about 8 years put it together now.<br /><br />Anyways, big updates should be hitting in the few weeks (wrapping up a PS2 game for India)...<br /><br />-Josh<br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-13998809820868793372009-07-11T04:49:00.000-07:002009-07-11T05:28:07.008-07:00Oh Beta!How can any regular posting habits penetrate the defenses of your grim visage? How are we to bask in the glow of regular posting, and to wit for others, regular reading! if your pale, grim countenance doth cast your pall over all the landscape of the moments of my life?<br /><br />So here is what's up lately in no particular order:<br /><br />FACT: PSP-3000 is pretty sweet. I got a black DS back in 2007 and even with some truly <span style="font-style: italic;">delightful</span> software: Elite Beat Agents, Zelda's, Mario's, the INSANITY of the Drawn To Life Guys Games (who manage to make my jaw hit the ground about every 18 months or so) it just isn't the system for me. I feel like a pederast every time I try buy a game for it which is to say I can't walk into the DS section of any store without feeling like I am somehow violating an 8 year girls space. Now before I turn up on a watch list let me get back to the point. I am a 30 year old DUDE. Playstation is for US, for better or worse. So as far as I am concerned the candy bar PSP is pretty much the shit. The form factor is great, the analog feels better than PSP-1000's, the screen is delicious, the battery life is favorable and it doesn't lack for sex appeal. I think the PSP Go is going to be a great unit, smaller form factor etc, but there just isn't enough differentiation and I am in India too to fully abandon UMD. The 3000 does feel like the penultimate for this generation, but we'll see so far it's been damn nice. In time I'll probably pick up all the sub games e.g. God of War, Killzone, Resistance, Clank, Daxter.<br /><br />FACT: I've been at work too much. However the bullet points on my resume are starting look a bit nicer every few month's. GOOD things coming down the pipe; shit I know I can't talk about, a nice little Indian market number for PS2 and PSP called Desi Adda and good looking port of Tumble Bugs heading to the Wii Store (the portal that no actually by games from) to go with Rangy Lil on the PC.<br /><br />FACT: I have now lived in India almost half as long as I did Fort Vancouver and Elko. After a while even a wacky situation just seems to take on a life of it's own, I am now used to living (high on the hog) in a third world country. If you ever get down about the plight the worlds (many) poor just tell yourself some people love camping so much they want to do it there whole life. Seriously though, I wish the world had as much humanity as it had humans, we're all a little guilty, but that deficit is probably the most dangerous of all.<br /><br />FACT: Oh shit. You really look at it the world IS in the equivalent of the next great depression. Now, I have been doing my homework, and it's not like even these cycles don't come to an end, but it would be GREAT if the political powers that be would just let the few guys that understand this stuff do there jobs. Stateside it's time to take taxation and regulation back to the 60's and become an industrialized nation when it comes to health care. But enough on that.<br /><br />FACT: To my Friends and Loved Ones in the States, apologies about the sorry shape of my internet connection and the lack of Skypeing, keep the faith and I love you all, except for Chance Barton, 19 year old kids shouldn't make that kind of money. :)<br /><br />TTFNJVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-17251995822703227882009-05-14T05:27:00.000-07:002009-05-14T05:31:35.945-07:00Old KenA small corollary to my previous post. Oh yeah this blog is kind of about Art:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/43805077@N00/3531042780/sizes/l/"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 312px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOrlT9hTlo53z2uDOGl77GnIwIrzT6qZPjvaKnMo0nRhglKW0x9M7UNc-SjRZQeqp4xD9lqpHejtwEo2b5kVi4FmvDrqf9loVlghEcgGkGNNVNnP3Rr1eP9O7uT8qLVGvJKGqFOOX7jxY/s400/OldKen.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335655946201879154" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Ken from Street Fighter in his 50's.JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-66585336402333533582009-05-09T15:28:00.000-07:002009-05-12T16:43:03.838-07:00A Tale Of Three Fours, Part 1During my last trip to the States I was finally able to get caught on some of the largest game releases of the past year, well that weren't Activision or Nintendo making more money than Tiruphati and the Vatican combined off of Balance Boards and Plastic Guitars. Nope I am talking about Games as intended by our shut-in forebearers. Games meant to resonate deeply in the collective unconciousness of 14-21 year boys. I am talking about the Fours. Here is the first one:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Street Fighter IV- Shoulder Rigging of the Gods -<br /></span><br />The year was 1991, the place, anywhere you could Jam an arcade cabinet. The Game was Street Fighter II.<br /><br />The first Street Fighter was something of an oddity, a truly clunky, awkward, wierd game which was simultaneously difficult to figure out and not very fun to play. Depending on where you put in your quarter you would either play as Ken or Ryu on there quest to fight some wierd dudes all over the world. This game was utter, utter garbage. So naturally in the sucessful wake of Final Fight they determined that the whole problem was that Street Fighter wasn't big enough. It turns out they were right.<br /><br />With some of the greatest graphics of it's time and ground breaking gameplay Street Fighter II became a <span style="font-style: italic;">definitive </span>title. It tooks the reigns of all brawlers before it and truly defined a genre, the one on one fighter like few entries ever had before.<br /><br />I remember my first time playing it. I choose Ryu, I flew to Brazil, I got electrocuted and back flip kicked like there was no tomorrow by Blanka. I was mad as hell, but I was also floored, the game was polished and animated like nothing else at the time. And holy hell those were a lot of buttons. I was still fumbling with the damn C button my Genesis.<br /><br />I would play Street Fighter II Sporadically in the arcades, usually getting beat down by the local arcade heroes. When the "near perfect port" hit the SNES I played the crap out of it with friends. They were usually playing the balls off of Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct while I was blasting away at random non-sense like Rampart. I was oft-schooled.<br /><br />The incarnations of Street Fighting rolled out at a pretty consistent pace with both the Alpha Series and Marvel vs. Capcom filling in with many great entries to the Genre. With each successive alpha I actually played more and more. The fusion of the Final Fight characters into the Street Fighter world to me was just too awesome and one of my favorite things about the Alpha series. It's balls to the wall take on everything from Shell to GUI has inspired a tremendous amount of what I feel constitutes good game design. Interesting, Informative, Incindierary and Fun, it was simulataneously over the top and amazingly literal all at once.<br /><br />Finally in 1998 the cat was out of the bag on Street Fighter 3. The first two iterations of the beast were not right, but you know what they say, the third time is the charm. Street Fighter 3: Third Strike proved to be a hit out of the park. I honestly don't think that there is a single fighting game that I have played more. I played each iteration of the series a little bit more each time and by the time that SF3:TS hit I was a certifiable Street Fighting junkie.<br /><br />SF3:TS is the vehicle of perhaps what I think is the greatest moment in the history of competetive gaming:<br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ri-00IYp9-U&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ri-00IYp9-U&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Parrying is awesome. But that is <span style="font-weight: bold;">GODLY</span><br /><br />So the first 15 years of Street Fighting have been very good to us gamers. Capcom tried it's hand at 3D Street Fighting back in the PlayStation 1 days with the EX series, but suffice to say they didn't work there way into the hearts and the Street Fighting Lexicon the way the 2D entries had, you know, because it wasn't any GOOD.<br /><br />So after an almost decade long hiatus we got Street Fighter IV. It's almost perfect. From a developer perspective they did the smartest thing I think they could have ever done. This won't be readily apparent to users, but underneath the hood is the same 2D engine driving the game. It feels like all of the timing works perfectly like there is no over simulated weirdness, BECAUSE THERE ISN'T.<br /><br />The evolution of the series has left Capcom with a masterpiece of user interaction design, that makes up the guts of the Street Fighter games. So rather than radically disrupt the core of the game they kept it in the old style, it just brings tears to my nostalgia gaming eyes. It also just works wonders.<br /><br />With a lot of the people I work with here in India I keep trying to stress that inside of games their are two worlds, the world of what you interact with and the world of what you see. They are rarely ever the same. For various reasons it is very easy to get confused about games and how they are made. As a long term developer I can assure it has more in common with perception tricks and stage magic than spectactular feats of processing.<br /><br />It is good to see that the designers knew that they shouldn't mess with the underpinnings and left it alone. But on top they put on a coating of modern gloss that is truly breathtaking. The intro movie is a psichedelic work of art, the characters are super ridiculously detailed, their animations are nothing short of awesome, the particle systems are just beautiful and the backgrounds are amazing, the animation in the secondary is much more lush too. Even multiplayer works much better than I would have ever expected.<br /><br />On to the gripes. The End Boss, Seth is more ridiculous than the End Boss of SF3, Gill, which is really saying something, at least Bison felt evil enough. Gouken is in no way as ridiculous as Gouki, which is kind of Sad. Of the new characters Able is basically Alex from SF3, Viper is interesting, but feels like a worse version of Rolento from SFA3, El Fuerte is much more <span style="font-style: italic;">caliente</span> than good (he just runs around everywhere while you punch him, seriously) and finally you have Rufus. Rufus is a bit of a space oddity, on the one hand he is fat bowl of goo, which usually means he is a punching bag in SF vernacular, but they really broke the mold with him. He is actually incredibly fast, versatile and funny to play as. He is kind of like Dan Hibiki on steroids, and whether in Japanese or English he has the funniest voice lines ever in a Street Fighter.<br /><br />On the environs side all of the fight locales are pretty interesting, but, somehow not being as strongly associated with each of the individual characters they don't have the punch of some of the previous games. It is all too possible that SFII will continue to the best roster of the most iconic backdrops. Really outside of that everything is just fanboy hate.<br /><br />I have played through a pretty significant chunk of the game and all can say is wow, what a great entry. Shame they took out parring but still, what an amazing game.<br /><br />Next Week:<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Grand Theft Auto IV - A Damn Big Urban Wasteland -</span>JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-49775291094167968272009-04-04T19:39:00.000-07:002009-04-04T20:15:54.069-07:00zBrushWhen I was first starting out modeling back in the late 90's it was a very different environment. The number of applications around was very small, there was nothing like bittorrent and it could be cripplingly expensive just to get your hands on <span style="font-style: italic;">educational</span> versions of software.<br /><br />I bought the educational edition of Max back in 1998 and was basically kind of <span style="font-style: italic;">angry </span>at the good money I had tossed at there crippleware. After a few month's and with Max being the reigning champion on PC's I then got my grubby mitts on a copy of Max 2. I spent a hell of lot of time with that app. I would have spent it more productively had I known or been able to easily discover the keyboard shortcuts, but it was time well spent.<br /><br />I had already gained a modicum of proficiency in Photoshop and then Max. Eventually I got my hands on Maya and it literally changed my life. I think I would have to say that Maya 3.0 was better for me than my first Girlfriend, somewhere in the stratospheric heights of first bicycles and the first time I saw Akira. I had been learning the hard way for years on Max, by the time Maya rolled around I was able to take the focus concentration and understanding and really apply it in such a more replete way. I have used Maya for almost 9 years, I know how about half of it works pretty well, and it can still do more than most people can imagine.<br /><br />My first version of Maya was "second hand". I had it on good advice that you could still get hired having done most of your work on cracks, it's promotional and not for direct profit. As a rule I think you should buy every piece of software you use, for a lot of reasons. But here is a quote I can attribute to Dylan Jobe, "I buy every piece of software I use, unless it's too expensive."<br /><br />Since the old days I have had wealthy benefactors keeping me in legit copies of Maya and Photoshop. I have purchased Art Rage, and Silo, and few other apps along the way that can help me get things done. They aren't replacements for the first loves, but you know, it's fun and there are some tremendously good things about them.<br /><br />Now with all of the Apps I comfortable with I have very deep understanding of their underlying concepts, optimal workflows and how to just get to an end result with them. There is a comfortable well well groove of an old saddle or the seat of a car that you have owned for a long time. You know what to expect, and you know where to go.<br /><br />Then an app came along that changed that. It was wierd and new, and funky and powerful. It was disruptive and different and fresh. It could do things in ways that no one could have expected, and as such it changed the way the world looked at things.<br /><br />It was called zBrush.<br /><br />And for most of this decade I have been able to get a grip on it.<br /><br />In 2003 I started using zBrush. Sort of.<br /><br />In 2005 I started using zBrush again, 2.0 had been out for a while. But not really, once again I couldn't really deal.<br /><br />In 2007, Pixologic released zBrush 3.0. Once again I tried but I just didn't have the tenacity to really learn it.<br /><br />It's 2009. I don't make resolutions, but it is time to be resolute. It was obvious back in 2005 that I needed to gird up and learn zBrush. But, it was so easy to fall back into a settled groove, to fool around and too forget. It was easy to stay in a comfortable place and not change. It was easy to keep running over the same over ground. It was so simple to rest on my laurels and not keep growing.<br /><br />I don't have the same energy I did when I was learning 3D, but's thats fine. ZBrush is program that is going to take a lot of effort to learn as well as I have learned Maya and Photoshop. But there is a missing piece in my creative life. I am starting to see the vast, crazy and innumerable possiblities of this bizzare and completely different app. I am realizing that what needs to change is my mind. This isn't going to diminish me, but augment me, and who knows I think something really good can come out of it.<br /><br />So I have gotten serious. I can afford ZBrush, so I forked over my $600 and now I have it.<br /><br />I am methodically downloading each plugin, each alpha, each matcap material, each texture. I am going to read through every inch of the Practical Guide in time. I am going to learn how to integrate each thing in turn. I am going to learn this like I know Maya modeling. I am going to post on the forums.<br /><br />I only have one grudge I carry into all of this.<br /><br />I can't stand the "Gears of War" style art. I can't understand why you would want to take some really talented guys and make them produce in essence a Bad Rob Liefeld video game. I am tired of space marines. I am tired of World War II. I am tired of rifles. I am tired of huge swaths of the gaming industry. I want to get to back to fun. I want some bounce. I want some bright colors, green fields, blue mountains, and red sunsets. I want to expresss something very different. I want us to be artists again, chasing wild dreams and crippled by the stultifying sameness of building the ultimate G.I. Joe.<br /><br />I believe in zBrush. I think it can do more than alien cyborgs and old men. I believe that a tired out Games Industry vet might be a good match for pushing things beyond where they are now. I hope that I can learn a lot. I hope that I can make a change, and can't wait to see what I can do with this. Here's dogs, cats, rainbows, sturgeons, unicycles, Dali and the infinite expanse of the human mind. Here is to the canvas that get me there.<br /><br />Cheers to zBrush.JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-28019027271943218172009-02-20T22:26:00.000-08:002009-02-20T22:33:45.809-08:00Less Art More Rant<rant><span style="font-style: italic;">You might have seen mails talking about the size of billion dollars or talking about how fast the U.S. Government has been printing or spending money. At this point the monetary policy is out the window as the interest rate is 0% and we are trying to avoid deflation. The mail rants about taxation and talks about how big a billion is. I think we are dumb for not making those billions work for us collectively. Thats my beef. I hope the Governement gets a 3 Trillion budget because it can spend it better than private companies. So this was my retort:</span><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><br />No doubt a Billion is a large number. If you earned money at same rate as the median household income (48,000 per anum) it would take 20,833 years to earn that much money. Or you could look at that as the amount of money a community the size of Elko would earn in a year. There was an estimated 111,162,000 households in the U.S. earning that $48000 a year. Now the next number is really staggering, $5,335,776,000,000. That is what the GDP of the U.S. would be if every single household made $48,000 per year. Now here is a really amazing number. 13,840,000,000,000. That IS the GDP of the United States of America. So by our reconing of large numbers:<br /><br />13.84 TRILLION Seconds ago the closest human ancestor walking the earth was <i><b>Homo heidelbergensis.<br /></b></i>13.84<b> </b>TRILLION<b> </b>Minutes ago the earth was nearing the end of Oligocene Epoch, the second major age of Mammals on the earth<br />13.84 TRILLION Hours ago the Eath did not support life in any form.<br />13.84 TRILLION Days ago predates the big bang and the start of the universe.<br /><br />Now since we are talking huge numbers, there is an 8,504,224,000,000 difference in what Americans earning the median household income in America sees (that $48000) vs. our GDP. That means that if every single household in America had the same income it would be $124,503.<br /><br />Now there has always been a large amount of variance in home incomes. In the 60's CEO's of major Corporations could make as much 30 times the national average wage.<br />If the same held true today that mean they would pocket after taxes almost $936,000 annually. That still seems like a lot of money to me. Today the multple is closer to 400-500. In 2005, when Carly Fiorina was outsted from Hewlett Packard she was paid $42,000,000 for successfully reducing HP's share price from 76 to 20 dollars, decreasing market capitalization from 190 billion to a svelte 50 billion.<br /><br />While 5% of the households in America have gotten fat under Bush with the 1.3 Trillion Dollars he gave to them diguised as Tax Cuts, as well as absorbing the entire Positive differential in GDP (that $8.5 Trillion out there). That dramatically increased spending power concentrated into too few hands fueled oil speculation, the rising cost in basic goods, and the housing bubble. The rest of America has struggled along with decreased spending power. This was driving many people to breaking point as the costs of food, fuel and housing skyrocketed during this decade. Rather than give raises to people to afford homes we lowered lending standards, letting people perch precariously over the brink where one illness, one layoff, heck, one missed paycheck could send them over the brink. And surely enough, with decreased medical coverage, massively increased debt, and the loss of countless industries once based in the U.S. (the crucial component in all of America's smart weapons is made in China) we have fallen over the edge.<br /><br />Now here we are perched on largest reduction of GDP seen since the Great Depression, potentially bigger than 20% this year alone (so long 1.3 Trillion dollar tax cut). We have lost 3 Million Jobs in 6 months, and there isn't an end in sight. It looks horrible, but we face two choices, do nothing and through "Use, Obsolence, and Decay" wait for our economy to return in 20 years as every single car, computer, machine and implement in our homes and remaining businesses wears our, breaks or becomes obsolete and has to be replaced. We can keep the federal and state budgets balanced as we shed even essential jobs and services (Maybe Police are optional? Let's see how well that works when we have 25% unemployment and starving people on the streets). We can watch the bottom fall out and see the benefit of no safety net for tens of millions of Americans. If you have been paying attention you have probably already heard the sound of money sucking out of retirement accounts and pensions, maybe even heard the resounding thud of friends and loved ones losing houses, jobs and businesses. Does this fill you with a strange and perverse glee? Do you have some stake in wanting to watch America and American's fail? Or does it leave with a sickened pit in your stomach and hope that we can turn things around, somehow, and get back to what used to be the norm?<br /><br />Fortuneately we are doing the right things. Taxes, especially on those earning more than $200,000 a year will increase. We have to get out of Iraq (where we have spent 700 billion rebuilding a resentful nation). We are going to have to spend $3 Trillion at the government level to have any hope of getting things back to normal in five years. But think of it like this. How much value would there be if you didn't have to save for your kids college tuition and you knew that it was taken care of? How much more profitable would your company be if it didn't have to pay the equivalent of 25 to 50% of your salary on health care? How much more money would you have in your pocket if you didn't have to pay for any necessary medical or dental procedure or any prescription drug? How much better off would you be if after working for 10 years in the same job you knew that you could take a 6 month sabbatical and not worry about whether or not you had a job to come back to?<br /><br />Now let's stop fretting about this stuff. Spending money on roads, schools, internet access, and healthcare can substantively improve the quality of our life. If we don't like paying a myriad of taxes on every individual item we can switch to a VAT on a durable goods and non-food and non-medicine purchases. Stop busting peoples balls (even politicians) for spending what needs to be spent. Instead of being shocked and awed by how fast the government is spending money now realize it needs to start doing it 3 times faster because 25 years of Privatization and Deregulation have failed.<br /><br />From August of 2007 to June of 2008 home values plummeted from an average cost of 215,000 to 180,00 costing the financial sector $4.5 Trillion Dollars in losses. That means:<br /><br />Each Month We Lost $450 Billion Dollars or<br />$15 Billion Dollars every Day which means it took the U.S. Housing Sector<br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />1 HOUR AND 36 MINUTES TO LOOSE <span style="font-size:6;">1 BILLION DOLLARS</span></span><span style="font-size:6;">.<br /><span style="font-size:85%;">For my friends in India thats 4950 cr.</span><br /></span><br /></rant>JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-78733713598787885502009-02-06T21:49:00.000-08:002009-02-06T22:32:22.288-08:00JusticeI have been noticably absent/silent since the Obama inauguration, plenty of work to do, very little I could actually post. I'll try and get some more art up later, this weekend after Art Class it's off to tirupati Temple near Chennai. Should be interesting, I'll post up some pictures shortly!<br /><br />Back to the U.S. concerns, given the incredible tumult at the end of the Bush I knew Obama was in for a trial by fire. The shear wrongheadedness of the Bush Administration is going to leave American's and the world digging out of a very large, very deep hole for a very long time. Looking at the slopes of employment, investment, the works I think we are in for a complete shake up in the next few years. At a time we need to pull together most the Republicans are at there most batshit insane and we are coming off the death throes of the worst Presidency in the History of the Republic, BAR NONE.<br /><br />It's a struggle but I am really looking for the bottom of this, and few rays of sunshine to penetrate these clouds. But I think there is a crucial lesson to be learned. Bush era policies are completely bankrupt. New job creation in the U.S. has fallen to NIL over an 8 period, almost every job created during the last few years of the Bush Administration has been wiped out in a matter of months. Think about that, for eight years despite increases in U.S. GDP and Productivity collectively we have nothing to show for it. While China, Brazil and India are rapidly becoming world powers and Japan and the E.U. work to solidify there position we haven't even been treading water.<br /><br />Fundamentally we are at a breaking point, our capitalistic system has been a natural funnel for channelling wealth from the poorest and most in need, to the wealthiest and least likely to appreciate another average mans yearly income. Our Government held this natural system in check from the 30's to the 80's to the chagrin of the fiscally elite with Progressive Taxation and the empowerment to put the Capitalists of the country to work <i>in service</i> to the Nation. Kennedy stirred the nation with speeches of asking not what the Country could do for you and in General we obliged. It worked for everyone.<br /><br />The Neo Cons changed all of that and with it changed the age and poisoned the well of faith in our Country and it's ability to do what is right for most of it's people. Now we have Wall Street Bankers paying out billions in bonuses on the backs of the bruised, beaten taxpayers. Meanwhile in the Senate, their Republican Cronies are fighting for permanent Tax Cuts and demolishing the worth of the Stimulus package with more worthless tax handouts. I for one, am finding this state of affairs sickening.<br /><br />First of all, Obama has a MANDATE, the Democrats need to get shit done and they need to write off the Republicans as an irretreviable obstactle to the progress we so desperately need to make. They need to start playing hardball while they can and inform the constituents of their States, many of whom are finding it tougher everyday to keep food on the table, that the Republicans think it is better to do NOTHING. That they find it acceptable to let poor people who had jobs only month's ago starve, even as they get fat in the midst of catastrophe. The Democrats need to resurrect the spirit of Tip O'Neil and give the Senate Republicans the curb stomping they so richly deserve.<br /><br />Maybe once the Republicans realize they don't have any politcal capital to barter with we can finally get some Justice.JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-60130093692983532052009-01-14T05:22:00.000-08:002009-01-14T05:27:39.871-08:00Taking A Hard LookI am not as good of an artist as I should or even could be. I have not been working hard enough. There is only one way to get there, and it isn't easy.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5rz2jRHA9fo&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5rz2jRHA9fo&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />I see Branford Marsalis talk and unfortunately I feel how right he is. There is a crucial difference between <i>acting</i> like you are good, and <b>actually</b> being good enough. Here is to better posts coming down the pike.JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-50840376797238496672009-01-07T18:28:00.001-08:002009-01-07T18:30:57.505-08:00More Semi Flat Cityscapes<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/43805077@N00/3178743390/"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 360px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUOfTOh8nPcEUuep71IToafsRHYO4gDRLMIfmdhyphenhyphenhJbbQ1w6nDMj9NVPgAHCzPH3HJt3gm1NfNXkKPDNq4yc5jpzotRDvtfo9mN3gNczxaaezv8U1VOb_wjdHikgx95R0PWTeF8marjSY/s400/Boston+Skyline+Drawing.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5288744267338921762" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Did this for a hidden object game, the style wasn't exactly what was desired for the comics, but I think I like the results more than what went in. Oh well. Enjoy the picture, it was a few hours of work in Photoshop with some Boston reference.JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139451905579388851.post-9184721349424705722009-01-04T16:55:00.000-08:002009-01-04T17:11:38.639-08:00Silly Jets!Starring at Concept Ships to much. The point of distinction of course, there stuff is awesome, this is, um present and accounted for. Whatever, NOT drawing isn't going to make any better. So um, here's a Jet, and yes at heart, I am about 8 Years old. Anyways here is pictures of Jets SSSSSHHHHHHRRRRROOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/43805077@N00/3168994638"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 257px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiAWTYXPOl2hZpPlodNW5Xpx8U0LYUZ-mBvpxjlO3T4KCFstxdutFcqRlZVcyhUvZWsqUOKDarR6WHKngDkhX2Iq5ZOuI5sKTF8g-tGSRBdzgPxHIzAvYmE9AcQSKJFKTM8ytMcKTMfu0/s400/SpaceFight34+copy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287610411403947538" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/43805077@N00/3169016966/sizes/l/"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 257px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMTSUqEEGQPN8MJlLsJwWCrfsAu-s0eqjyA14ExQFN-9SaFe_7N5Rm8VYSO7VSwNh30tWxwSc2D3omjK9KAHrs_7QKy_4yCh48h2-YCFIxG31hFJDKT9ZlAJyt4wh1sXMZDaCGOcqpWIo/s400/SpaceFighterLines+copy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287610421581033426" border="0" /></a>JVaughanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10721663787503328710noreply@blogger.com1