The Sharpened Pixel

Marauder!

2010-02-27T10:56:00.000-08:00

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.

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.

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:

and here are some YouTube's:

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.

Back Once Again

2010-01-31T08:21:00.000-08:00

It's 2010! I am living in Manhattan! I am working at Gameloft!

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.

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.

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.

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:

The Sharpened Pixel

2009-11-20T09:08:00.001-08:00

My portfolio website is finally off the ground over at www.sharpenedpixel.com . There will be updates in the next few days. For now take a look and enjoy!

Stay Classy Pat Robertson

2009-11-10T12:46:00.000-08:00

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/pat-robertson-denounces-islam-not-re

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Stateside and the Titanic

2009-11-09T19:45:00.000-08:00

Well 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.

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.

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.

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.

10/GUI

2009-10-14T06:24:00.000-07:00

Ideas can be a wonderful thing, and part of me hopes this can be a functional idea:

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

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.

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*

In any case, it's 2010 next year. Is it the future yet?

*I think the answer may ulimately look like multitouch breasts, volume, tactility and one for each hand. I am looking right at you Japan.

Reproduction

2009-10-14T00:31:00.000-07:00

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:

How Thinking Goes Wrong
Twenty-five Fallacies That Lead Us
to Believe Weird Things

by Michael Shermer

from his 1997 book "Why People Believe Weird Things"
(used by kind permission of the author; all rights reserved)

In 1994 NBC began airing a New Age program called The Other Side 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 The Other Side, 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. The Other Side 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.

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.

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.

Hume's Maxim

Skeptics owe a lot to the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), whose An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is a classic in skeptical analysis. The work was first published anonymously in London in 1739 as A Treatise of Human Nature. 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 An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature, published in 1740, and then into Philosophical Essays Concerning the Human Understanding, published in 1748. The work still garnered no recognition, so in 1758 he brought out the final version, under the title An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, which today we regard as his greatest philosophical work.

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.

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:

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."

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)

Problems in Scientific Thinking

1. Theory Influences Observations

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 constructs 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.

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 be 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.

2. The Observer Changes the Observed

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.

3. Equipment Constructs Results

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:

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:

(1) No sea-creature is less than two inches long.

(2) All sea-creatures have gills.

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.

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 ipso facto 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)

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.

Problems in Pseudoscientific Thinking

4. Anecdotes Do Not Make a Science

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.

5. Scientific Language Does Not Make a Science

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 is a master of divination?

6. Bold Statements Do Not Make Claims True

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 Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, 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 Bad Science (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.

7. Heresy Does Not Equal Correctness

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 Journal of Historical Review, 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.

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.

8. Burden of Proof

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.

9. Rumors Do Not Equal Reality

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.

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:

The secret ingredient in Dr. Pepper is prune juice.

A woman accidentally killed her poodle by drying it in a microwave oven.

Paul McCartney died and was replaced by a look-alike.

Giant alligators live in the sewers of New York City.

The moon landing was faked and filmed in a Hollywood studio.

George Washington had wooden teeth.

The number of stars inside the "P" on Playboy magazine's cover indicates how many times publisher Hugh Hefner had sex with the centerfold.

A flying saucer crashed in New Mexico and the bodies of the extraterrestrials are being kept by the Air Force in a secret warehouse.

How many have you heard … and believed? None of them are true.

10. Unexplained Is Not Inexplicable

Many people are overconfident enough to think that if they 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.

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.

11. Failures Are Rationalized

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.

12. After-the-Fact Reasoning

Also known as "post hoc, ergo propter hoc," 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.

13. Coincidence

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.

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.

14. Representativeness

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.

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.

Logical Problems in Thinking

15. Emotive Words and False Analogies

Emotive words are used to provoke emotion and sometimes to obscure rationality. They can be positive emotive words -- motherhood, America, integrity, honesty. Or they can be negative -- rape, cancer, evil, communist. 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.

16. Ad Ignorantiam

This is an appeal to ignorance of lack of knowledge and is related to the burden of proof and unexplained is not inexplicable 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.

17. Ad Hominem and Tu Quoque

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 ad hominem 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 tu quoque. If someone accuses you of cheating on your taxes, the answer "Well, so do you" is no proof one way or the other.

18. Hasty Generalization

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.

19. Overreliance on Authorities

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.

In other words, who 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.

20. Either-Or

Also known as the fallacy of negation or the false dilemma, 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.

21. Circular Reasoning

Also known as the fallacy of redundancy, begging the question, or tautology, this is when the conclusion or claim is merely a restatement of one of the premises. Christian apologetics is filled with tautologies: 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. In other words, God is because God is. Science also has its share of redundancies: What is gravity? The tendency for objects to be attracted to one another: Why are objects attracted to one another? Gravity. 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.

22. Reductio ad Absurdum and the Slippery Slope

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: 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. 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.

Psychological Problems in Thinking

23. Effort Inadequacies and the Need for Certainty, Control, and Simplicity

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.

Scientific and critical thinking does not come naturally. It takes training, experience, and effort, as Alfred Mander explained in his Logic for the Millions: "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.

24. Problem-Solving Inadequacies

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:

A. Immediately form a hypothesis and look only for examples to confirm it.

B. Do not seek evidence to disprove the hypothesis.

C. Are very slow to change the hypothesis even when it is obviously wrong.

D. If the information is too complex, adopt overly-simple hypotheses or strategies for solutions.

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)

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.

25. Ideological Immunity, or the Planck Problem

In day-to-day life, as in science, we all resist fundamental paradigm change. Social scientist Jay Stuart Snelson calls this resistance an ideological immune system: "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 Planck Problem, 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).

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).

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.

Spinoza's Dictum

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."

Peace and Prizes

2009-10-10T06:09:00.000-07:00

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.

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.

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.

So if you are tired of Obama let me recommend a sure cure for anything that ails you.

It's called Miami Shark, and I think it might be the finest game I have played this year. Follow the link. Sharks eat boats, helicopter, airplanes and anything else you can find. It's pure genius, enjoy.

Back in Action

2009-10-09T23:14:00.000-07:00

Still 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.

Just got word that my first PS2/PSP game for the Indian Market is gold. Good news indeed.

Tons of stuff happenin' here's the breakdown of what's cool:

3D: Silo/zBrush/Cinema4D.

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.

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 everything 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.

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?

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.

Next post: Art, I promise

Wordpress and navigation!

2009-09-04T11:49:00.000-07:00

Aye caramba!

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 set

Elbow Grease

2009-09-01T19:21:00.000-07:00

Bits 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 so 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 sharpenedpixel.com Anyways, if I can get some feedback, it would be appreciated,

-Josh

New Horizons!

2009-08-31T19:33:00.000-07:00

Thought I would post up again,

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...

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.

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.

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.

Need to update more...

2009-08-26T20:25:00.000-07:00

This may be my last post before moving over to Wordpress... SharpenedPixel.com is on it's way...

For now Quick and Dirty Updates:

worth staring at:

Paul Pepera : This is what it means to truly nail Hard Surface Modeling, freaking awesome.

Cholesky showed me this: Paul Lasaine. Dropping science the way Gallileo dropped the orange (Get well MCA.)

Been spending too much time in After Effects of late, so the gorilla has been really great to follow, especially on Vimeo. Also thanks to Crayola for eternally screwing me up on Gray vs. Grey... DAMMIT.

Other Rambling...
Intuos 4 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.

Here is some Art, just 30 minute doodles to get into a groove on the Intuous:

So I'll be getting some better things together shortly, much more to follow soon.

Bill Maher

2009-07-31T20:02:00.001-07:00

Wait, 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.

'Birthers' must be stopped

No matter how dumb, the people who are questioning whether Obama was born in the U.S. could eventually cause real problems.

By Bill Maher
July 31, 2009

Never underestimate the ability of a tiny fringe group of losers to ruin everything.

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.

Also, when Obama was sworn in as president, he forgot to give his answer in the form of a question.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

And we all know how well that worked out.

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."

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.

And Lou, you're their new king.

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.

Bulletproof: I wish my industry was...

2009-07-30T16:47:00.000-07:00

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.

Here's the links:

Nintendo's Troubles

Sony's Issues, with color commentary by Sony Realist Bill Harris.

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 PSP-3000 IS fully compatible with Sony's future online plans, and there have definitely been some green patches in every market with strong new releases.

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:

Blog Update

2009-07-28T00:13:00.000-07:00

Well 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.

Anyways, big updates should be hitting in the few weeks (wrapping up a PS2 game for India)...

-Josh

Oh Beta!

2009-07-11T04:49:00.000-07:00

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?

So here is what's up lately in no particular order:

FACT: PSP-3000 is pretty sweet. I got a black DS back in 2007 and even with some truly delightful 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.

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.

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.

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.

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. :)

TTFN

Old Ken

2009-05-14T05:27:00.000-07:00

A small corollary to my previous post. Oh yeah this blog is kind of about Art:

Ken from Street Fighter in his 50's.

A Tale Of Three Fours, Part 1

2009-05-09T15:28:00.000-07:00

During 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:

Street Fighter IV- Shoulder Rigging of the Gods -

The year was 1991, the place, anywhere you could Jam an arcade cabinet. The Game was Street Fighter II.

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.

With some of the greatest graphics of it's time and ground breaking gameplay Street Fighter II became a definitive 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

SF3:TS is the vehicle of perhaps what I think is the greatest moment in the history of competetive gaming:

Parrying is awesome. But that is GODLY

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 caliente 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.

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.

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.

Next Week:
Grand Theft Auto IV - A Damn Big Urban Wasteland -

zBrush

2009-04-04T19:39:00.000-07:00

When 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 educational versions of software.

I bought the educational edition of Max back in 1998 and was basically kind of angry 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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

It was called zBrush.

And for most of this decade I have been able to get a grip on it.

In 2003 I started using zBrush. Sort of.

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.

In 2007, Pixologic released zBrush 3.0. Once again I tried but I just didn't have the tenacity to really learn it.

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.

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.

So I have gotten serious. I can afford ZBrush, so I forked over my $600 and now I have it.

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.

I only have one grudge I carry into all of this.

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.

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.

Cheers to zBrush.

Less Art More Rant

2009-02-20T22:26:00.000-08:00

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:

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:

13.84 TRILLION Seconds ago the closest human ancestor walking the earth was Homo heidelbergensis.
13.84 TRILLION Minutes ago the earth was nearing the end of Oligocene Epoch, the second major age of Mammals on the earth
13.84 TRILLION Hours ago the Eath did not support life in any form.
13.84 TRILLION Days ago predates the big bang and the start of the universe.

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.

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.
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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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:

Each Month We Lost $450 Billion Dollars or
$15 Billion Dollars every Day which means it took the U.S. Housing Sector

1 HOUR AND 36 MINUTES TO LOOSE 1 BILLION DOLLARS.
For my friends in India thats 4950 cr.

Justice

2009-02-06T21:49:00.000-08:00

I 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!

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.

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.

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 in service 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.

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.

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.

Maybe once the Republicans realize they don't have any politcal capital to barter with we can finally get some Justice.

Taking A Hard Look

2009-01-14T05:22:00.000-08:00

I 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.

I see Branford Marsalis talk and unfortunately I feel how right he is. There is a crucial difference between acting like you are good, and actually being good enough. Here is to better posts coming down the pike.

More Semi Flat Cityscapes

2009-01-07T18:28:00.001-08:00

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.

Silly Jets!

2009-01-04T16:55:00.000-08:00

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!

2008 to 2009

2009-01-04T08:13:00.000-08:00

Well, I have held out for four days. The dust has settled the day has dawned and 2009 is upon us and I guess I just want to talk to briefly about what I have learned.

Inside people there is a fantastic potential, to love, to care, to nurture, to inspire, to create worthwhile mystery, to teach. In the balance there is just as much capability to create, angst, misery, jealousy, falsehood, apprehension, lies and general misconduct. These are all facets of our being and no one with any virtue worth mentioning is not possessed of some equally disturbing vice.

The whole of history is a just a tale of human relationships, sometimes wearing the masks of states and institutions, sometimes dressed in the garb of prophecy. Small activity to broad waves just patterns of noise and emotion. The whole of human activity can be seen as kind of struggle against natures both internal and external.

So here we are, simple creatures that can only understand the world as concepts and symbols, masks on the more ornate and difficult to understand deeper realities. Each of us bound by a world of proxy scratching the surface on a broader mystery.

A year like 2008 can put even the most disjointed dislocated person back in touch with the harder edges of our real world. Even the people most comforted by status, position and fame felt some of there own inertia and weight, stocks hitting the ground like watermelons thrown to the pavement of a third story window. Those on the ground already are just trying to cover there heads.

It is all too easy to caught in the rigging. To think that you are your job, your income, your relationships, your friendships. It is an easier route to put your faith into institutions, religious, financial, governmental and just hope the autopilot works. It is nice to just shut off, disconnect or unwind. Who doesn't want it easy?

Here's the rub. Easy isn't real, easy isn't even easy! This year I got a big look behind the curtain, and it's just like the Wizard of Oz. What you see on the screen isn't the real deal, and never mind the man behind the curtain.

At the front of everyone of our vaunted institutions is the layer of glamor that we all fall for often too hard. The glitzy appeal of the life we think we want to lead. The slick, comfortable nonsense and the artifice behind it. The great big world that we can see in magazines, movies and TV. The wonderful world we imagine it could be. But you

The reality is the day to day struggle, the hard work of good but fallible people just doing the best we can. The truth is that we all fight the same fights, to get ahead, to help each other out, to do the right thing, to make the most of the time we have.

Even once that the institutions we have built crumble, the things we may have believed in have let us down and we are lost and confused let me offer the small bit of wisdom I have learned.

In the beginning there were people doing the best they could, in the middle there were people taking all they could, and in the end there will be those that have the courage to make things great again. I am optimistic that I am in the latter portion. Somehow no matter what happens I still believe in people and think things are going to be alright. We are still those people that got us to this point. We have lessons to learn but I think things can still get better. I guess that is the change that is coming, I guess that's why I have hope.

As Hunter S. Thompson wrote, " Walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak Arabic, love music and remember that you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriors." Happy 2009, Go Forth and Kick Ass.

Brooklyn at Sunset.

2009-01-01T14:36:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year,

Here's to back to back to back days of Art Posting (and I think I might toss in another tonight as well). Here's the goods:

Far from finished but worth working on. I think I want to break for a while.

I have a horrible tendency to just wear out. The last six month's have been amazing, but some of the most draining of my life. My battery has been steadily recharging over the last couple of weeks, think I am just about ready to enter the fray more dear friends! In the meantime a Small Large World beckons or perhaps a Little Big Planet!

Cliche Clouds

2008-12-31T20:27:00.000-08:00

I've determined that there is only one thing I am not doing enough of. I don't post enough art. I am going to try and fix that. So here is a work in progress. This is a backplate, I am reading On the Road, just thinking about some the things that Neil and Jack might have woken up to out there... I 'll keep working on more foreground stuff tomorrow.

Elephant

2008-12-30T04:20:00.000-08:00

Getting back on the Horse,erm, Elephant! Just wanted to do a rough, semi-expressive, semi-realistic painting. On top of that I had a friend who wanted to see me put together an elephant. This is a SKETCH this isn't like, a real piece, there is form but no real drama, shape but no need to really push form. I guess I just wanted some color and thoughts down, just a pensive idea and some fading light. Also, laziness. I really need to spend more time, but I can't stay in the zone very long at the moment, so I guess I will just have to keep working at staying there longer in the next few weeks while I recharge. Well folks, hope you like it...

6 Months in India

2008-12-05T07:35:00.000-08:00

I guess this is the milestone month. This weekend marks six month's of working for Gameshastra in Hyderabad. I've spent 7 weeks back in the U.S. since this started. I feel more at home in India than I do in the myriad of changing homes Sinead has been bouncing to. I return to the U.S and its like it did after I lived in Washington State and Nevada, like a stranger in a known land, the perpetual tourist.

Well three days until I turn 30 years old. I am entering the decade of fast fading youth and slow slide into an uncomfortable, ill fitting middle age. Oh but the all the things I have to show for it! I guess its fair to say if was looking merely run up the score I am failing, a career in games and no high marks for how I have lived. Not that I am bitter, or at least half as bitter as I will be when I am 40.

I guess now that wine of my youth is turning to the vinegar of middle age I should look for the positive applications of my innate change in characteristics. One, I will make a salad taste better with out risking the friskiness of being tipsy. Two, my cutlery will be cleaner than ever. Three, I finally have an excuse for being worthless at parties, but no excuse for being worthless on a dirty bathroom.

Some days you just want to hear a record a player looping revolution #9 backwards and a pound a bottle of cheap merlot. You want to watch the shadow of the sun paint a dancing slit of yellow light across the room, the only illumination from the sun as peeks through the almost closed shutters. You want to see that thin strip of bleached light redden just as you pass into blackness of the Indian night.

Instead you will be lucky if you don't have to work 10 more hours in the Salt Mine with a cupcake and candle to commemorate your thirtieth round trip on Spaceship Earth. It will pass with all of the pomp and circumstance of a Ken and Barbie wedding as you drift through another day.

I have peered into the cold beating heart of space and time and heard only the flatulent convunlsions of the Space Child called God. What if the powers that created the Universe are infinitely dumber and less interesting than the creation itself? What if we peer deep into the mind of God and find only the abstract wonderings of a child-like dreamer? What if the Universe is so fundamentally retarded that every single Scientist is doomed to go mad when they realize that universe doesn't actually make sense? The bastard contraption has only one rule, it can change the rules so it doesn't fail. Every other piece of nonsense is the part and parcel of the code. Supreme inelegance.

The notches I tick past have a little more relevence these days, like the braids in the noose I will surely hang from, just as everyone else will in time. By most estimates I have lived over 40% of my life. I guess there is no time like the present to make these days count. Surely the braids of the noose will eventually tick along until there is no more rope left to run into. Nothing left my neck and the fleeting moments before the sharp drop and dull shock. One last time to look up and see the sky before the light fades into the final night.

In the meantime I look forward to making the most of the 60% I have left on a messed up, backwards rock spinning away in the backwoods of a forgotten galaxy. A moment in time, unique as a snowflake, and just as meaningless as one more ice crystal in Antarctica.

Really Big Fish

2008-11-25T15:25:00.000-08:00

I have been working in India for almost 6 months now and the focus of Gameshastra is more on smaller games and services for larger ones. This Friday we'll see the fruits of our labor hit the Big Fish Game portal, (not just The Pirate Bay). Without further adieu, Nocturnal: Boston Nightfall.

I was the Art Director/Team Lead for the UI, Mini Games and the Hidden Object Backgrounds. I had to run away screaming from the In Game comics. If the game was named for what takes place there it would have been called Nocturnal: Edwardian Vampire Incest Litigation Suit, or Nocturnal: EVILS.

To the 30 Plus year old housewives that will actually play through this game I hope you enjoy the puzzles and content. To the morbidly curious have at it. To the rest I hope most of the Art is forgivable.

Here is Stuff:

Land of Opportunity

2008-11-05T05:00:00.000-08:00

I awoke early in my 3rd rate motel room in Moab, Utah feeling strangely fine. By most accounts the death star exploded night and the curse of eight years of the worst president ever are over. Here's to seeing the end that chapter, may we collectively have the good sense not repeat it.

The U.S. has elected Barack Obama as it's president.

The U.S. has elected Barack Obama as it's president.

I still almost can't believe it, and I voted for him. It feels like the a weight has been lifted and the shackles of a long and ugly history at least got a little lighter. We might be onto something here. I got a little more bounce in my step today and the rest of the country got something even better:

The capacity to surprise ourselves with how good our good side can be.

It feels like the values that really built America might be winning again. It was never about creating an imperial hegemony. It's never been about heading over seas to create proxy democracies or all of the other BS that we have been in the name of White Trash.

It's always been about looking past most of the crap that most nations on this planet can't and giving some miserable bastard a shot. Sometimes they hit it out of the park. It's about making the U.S. a little more meritocratic again.

Well it's a pretty great day in America, the tide has turned, and it's going to be all right

Strange Days at the Polls

2008-10-21T02:26:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I had great many errands to run, but foremost in my mind was heading out to the county Registar's office and making sure that I was actually able to vote on the 4th. This is what I saw:

The County offices were packed with people in to Vote Early.

I have been writing, reading and following the electoral process with a lot of zeal for the past 16 months. I was actually watching the Democratic debates when Chris Dodd was still a candidate and when Rudy Guilliani was the presumptive Republican nominee. Even back then I started pegging a lot of interest in Barrack Obama, and by January he was my candidate. I voted for him in the Utah Democratic primary over Hillary. I didn't think he had shot then really, but what a crazy year it's been.

Unfortuneately all has not been well in Avalon for the past year. The sins of the past were starting to haunt the Dow Industrials going back to November of 2007 and since then nothing eased the pain until we hit a total economic freefall this September. Now we are in what is going to be looked at as the biggest slowdown since the Depression, you can just feel it. As bad as it has been watching America turn blue has been beautiful to see. I think collectively we know what has led us to this point, and we know what it takes to bail us out.

My Stepdad calls September 19th "Red Friday". He wants it commemorated as the day card carrying members of the Republican party woke up Socialists. It looks like it might be the day the "Free Market" died. I think the markets should be there to give everyone a slice of the pie, and you know Brother's if I have enough I am going to share them with you. It just feels right to me, I might even want to say it feels "American".

Naturally a group of people in America want to create a strict Socially Conservative state. Liberals aren't the ones tapping phones of Soldiers and Democrats. They aren't ones scared of what happens when Blacks, Latino's and Asians vote. They aren't the ones pounds the pulpits with Dog Whistle politics. They are NOT the ones trying to silence people with the Spectres of Fear. Al-Quada was just as big of a threat under Clinton as it was Bush, but Clinton didn't re-organize the government to fight them. Social Conservatives need to have control, and they think that they must rule on top over the "lesser" people.

Three of the greatest figures in U.S. of the 20th Century, Bobby Kennedy, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were all sensible Social Liberals. Their killers, as much as we know, were carrying the water of extreme Social Conservatism. Our greatest hopes for a united, peaceful multi-cultural America, one that could really live up to the notion of "With Liberty and Justice for All", we're silenced by Hill-Billy's with guns. The only way to silence the surge in common sense was with a gun.

The worm has definitely turned. I went out to register and then found out that I could Vote, so I did. In the short time I was there so did at least several hundred people. People of every description and from every walk of life were in the courthouse exercising their most crucial right in Democracy. Over half of them were under the age of thirty.

Things aren't great in America today. But it feels like the Ghost of Ronald Reagan might have finally left the building. The influence of that son of a bitch that ordered State Troopers to open fire on students in California, that did everything he could to drive a wedge between Americans and their Government might finally be fading. It feels like Morning in America, and the tide is turning. Maybe John, Bobby and Martin didn't die for nothing after all.

Oh Shit My Shit

2008-10-09T19:55:00.000-07:00

A funny thing happened on the U.S. stock market today, the P.E. ratio's of even the most bloated stocks started looking pretty damn attractive. If I had the money I would start buying stocks again. Oh wait, nobody has any money, except Warren Buffet. That's pretty much the same boat everyone is in.
So now it becomes apparent to a lot of people that we aren't just in a recession, we are in a freefall. No one knew where the bottom was going to hit and indeed we still don't. But you know what, we are going to be alright. Even if this goes from a gut wrenching recession to a full blown Depression it will be O.K.
Let me tell you a little story of what happened to a lot of people in my world after Reagan took office. Back in the 80's things seemed a lot stronger, even for a poor kid in Utah. Somehow we left most of those people behind, we abandoned the dignity of basic work and now here we are, we screwed a huge group of people in America, they used to be called the Middle Class.
For the bosses it was a different story. They would have a great factory in the Heart of America making an innovative product that sells in Wal-Marts across the country. They would have a solid infrastructure, amazing workers with mortgages and a load of machines that cost a fortune. One Wal-Mart comes into the shop and says that don't want to work with a Union shop in the U.S. but they love the beds. They ask the boss to move his factory to China. Pennies on the dollar for workers, and you don't have to worry about Health Care, Days off, Pensions or Government Safety Regulations. The offset in worker cost far out-weighs the shipping costs and besides Wal-Mart can help you set everything up. So the boss has a tough decision to make, but it will greatly enrich him. "The U.S. economy is strong, the workers will find another way to make money", he would think.
So the workers who once had Pensions and Healthcare and Vacations and Security do what ever they have to do to keep paying their Mortgages. Things were getting tough for the former workers of the Mattress factory, the service industry just wasn't as good. Their new Jobs at Wal-Mart just didn't pay like the old. They could never make as money in the blue vest selling the matresses that used to be 'Made in America.'
Meanwhile back at the Country Club the boss was living large. Since he started outsourcing he had more money than he what to do with. He had the Mercedes, the Mansion, the Vacation House, the Viking Stoves, the Sub Zero, the Toys, the Healthcare security, everything a person could want, and then some. He still had enough money that the only thing he could do was work to keep his money keeping him wealthy. Some investment's weren't panning out that great though, the dot-com bubble had already poppped and he still had too much money to just let sit there wasting away in bank at 2% interest.
While some the Old Factory crew were toiling away in jobs going nowhere some of the other people were getting smart. The best place to make money in America was in Housing, in California and Florida and New York the price of real estate was rising by as much as 25% a year. The markets were heating up every where. "Everyone has to have a home, and anymore it's the safest investment you can make", they would say. There was just one problem, everyone but the old boss was working for Wal-Mart or the Mortgage company, how were they going to get people that work for Wal-Mart into a home?
Well it turns out that the Conservatives in Washington had been grappling with that same problem for a while. It turns out if you just lower the barriers to entry enough anyone can have a million dollar home. Besides they had to something to help out their constituent's, they were friends with everyone from the Old Factory and the Boss was their biggest supporter. So eventually they decided it would be good to cut away enough regulation that anyone could have a house. It turns out to get a family working at Wal-Mart into a house you can't ask for money, have a high interest rate, or even ask if they were employed steadily.
So the Wal-Mart workers finally got their houses but the banks were having a tough time making their balance sheets work. "At least these home value's are always going up!" Maybe we can sell the value of these debts off to someone and maybe not have things be so risky.
The Boss has been shopping around the market looking for the best place to put his money and what does he find, Real Estate! Housing prices have been rising for years, it's easier to buy a home than ever and if anything goes wrong at least you have the house! Besides the more houses there are the matresses he can ship in from China!
For a while it seemed like everything was going to be O.K. Long after the factory had closed the Boss was richer than ever, the workers had found new jobs and they even had houses and a piece of the pie. The banker, the mortgage broker and even the Conservative politician seemed to be doing just great.
But then a funny thing happened. Some of those workers at the Wal-Mart started having problems, maybe it was an illness, maybe it was their family, maybe it was some accident or bolt out of the blue. But one way or another when the people at Wal-Mart fell they fell hard and they didn't have anything to fall on. The only money they had left was the equity in there house. When they got sick they had to take out reverse mortgages to pay the doctor. When they had family struggles they had no where to turn, everyone they knew was in the same boat.
It wasn't like there weren't tough times at the Old Factory, sometimes they got hurt, sometimes they had emergencies, but they always had a soft place to fall, and it wasn't just a mattress. They had healthcare, and vacation times, and sick pay and they were pretty secure when they had a Union to help them keep it.
The bad times were back and it seemed like a long time ago when things were good. They went to church, they voted Conservative, they even gave their old Boss a big tax cut so that some of his money might trickle down. Somehow none of that seemed to help a bit. Now they were loosing there home, which wasn't even worth what they paid for it, and they didn't know what to do, they had nothing left but a pile of debt, and now there were new laws that didn't even let get rid of that debt in a bankruptcy.
They turned on Fox News at their Son's apartment one night. Sean Hannity was talking about ACORN and giving loans to people that didn't qualify and how it was causing a crisis. They weren't minorities and they used to make a lot of money, they couldn't believe that the people they helped all there lives would turn on them like that. They were sick, they lost their houses, they lost everything. Shamed and with nothing left they just wanted to cry.
So they went to sleep on the mattress they brought with them from the house they bought after Wal-Mart. It was one the last ones that still said 'Made in America'. It was over 10 years old now, stained from moving house, a little neglect, and a lot of tears.
The story of the family who got sick or had something bad happen got told a few too many times. Too many people got kicked out of their houses and there was no one left to buy the ones that were there. The old boulevards next to the derrilect old factory were almost completely vacant now. The mortgage companies couldn't sell the houses.
One morning in November, the Boss returned from his trip to the Tropics to find that most of the money he just stuck into the Bank was gone. It was millions of dollars and he didn't know where any of it was, or how he was going to get it back. In a matter of weeks he lost more money than most people will ever see in there lives. He couldn't understand where it all went, he believed in America, and now he didn't know what to think. He felt a hollow in his stomach and now he just want's to be sick.

So take a look at the Dow and realize that every point that drops it is just a variation of this story being told a hundred times.

Anyone who has read my blog should have a pretty good idea of how I am voting. Now you know why.

Throwing Down the Gauntlet

2008-10-02T05:20:00.000-07:00

That's it. I've had it. I had to look at this at this cunt far too many times. House Minority Whip* Eric Cantor, I CHALLENGE YOU TO A MATCH OF NO HOLDS BARRED FISTICUFFS.

The Prize: If I lose I convert to Catholocism, crazy ass Da Vinci Code Catholocism and vote Republican till the end of my days. I will never again forsake De-Regulation, Trickle Down Economics or the Bush Doctine. I will Support the Troops harder than other man in North America, without actually you know, joining a Branch of Military (anal cysts). I will acknowledge that Sarah Palin is like, TOTALLY, so close to Russia she could be Putin's Milf Crush. I will salute BUSH II with the reverence that most nerds only reserve for the 'Empire Strikes Back'. Hell, in my revised Neo-Con Catholocism I will refer to George Herbert Walker Bush, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan as the Father, Son and Holy-Ghost.

In short I will become all makes my skin crawl in America.

If I win you will voluntarilly contract Polio. You will burn all 37 copies of the Fountainhead that you own and you memorize the names the names of at least 25 foreign nations. You will stop crying. You will read Keynes 'General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money' twice. You will vote for substantive increases in Regulation and Oversight in Capital Markets, especially Real Estate. You will be an active participant in wealth redistribution in America to Extreme Minorities (The Gay Midget Phillipino League). You will work tirelessly to create the lowest Gini Index in the history of our Nation. Like the Grinch you will have to watch your heart grow two sizes to large, you snivelling twat.

Sure I am 15 years younger and not addicted to 'Just for Men' haircolor. I don't know your height, reach or fighting style, but I am assuming it entails a lot pretending be hurt, acting like a pussy and then biting people when they turn around. The way you bawled after Nancy Pelosi's speech I don't think that you have even the slightest risidual testosterone in your shriveled scrotum to face me down. It's a shame.

So Eric Cantor next time you are on the West Coast and need to see if you have a shred of manhood left, look me up. I will see you in the Octagon.

* Now that I think about it in Title alone 'Minority Whip' that has to be the most appropriate position a Republican can hold. "Take that you sub prime loan stealin' fence jumping Latino's! No Affirmative Action for you Macawcaw!" he would say.

The End of Free Money

2008-09-29T22:08:00.000-07:00

With all eyes turned to the state of the U.S. economy and the unprecedented drop in stocks on the DJIA I would like to offer two thoughts.

First, we have to realize that most American's were complicit in this unraveling of our economy. We all wanted something for free. It doesn't matter if you were a Democrat or a Republican, the bulk of the worst policy decision's were made back when Clinton was still in office. Sure a lot of the deregulation was spurred on by House Republican's in general and Phill Graham in particular but we have to get past the blame game.

The simple fact is that true fiscal convservativeism bit the dust in 2000. With it went the last shreds of controls of our Capital markets. We were able to maintain the appearance of prosperity for a large portion of the last eight years but know we are seeing just how hollow those gains were.

Now that we have had any economy addicted to free money and fake progress we are just now crashing back to our inevitable economic reality. The fact is that free market systems are winner take all with out regulation. That left an awful lot of Americans faced with ever dimmer prospects for real wealth acquisition. Meanwhile for the 20 years we have allowed a very narrow sliver of people to reap ALL of the benefit's of our economy. I think we are all going to have to take a good hard look at the post-depression policies of Roosevelt and realize that we are going to see a lot of people waking up socialists.

Sorry Sean Hannity. We shouldn't give huge tax breaks to the rich while people who have busted their ass for our nation, fought our wars, taught our children, built our roads have woken up to find they can't actually buy homes, afford health care, or send their children to school.

And that brings me to my second point. This may look like a catastrophe, and we are definitely going to feel the hurt in every level of our society. But there are two things that are going to change in the next 10 years. At first this is going to rip us apart, but a day will come when we wake up and realize what really matters to us. From the C.E.O. of the Exxon to the bum on the street, we are all in this together, and the selfishness, greed and stupidity have to stop. Second we are going to learn that you have to make real progress, it is not enough to have people living from paycheck to paycheck, digging an ever deep ditch. It's time to go back to the way things worked in the 40's, 50's, and 60's and abandon the idea of the Milton Friedman's, the Neo-Consertative Deficit Spending, and even Wall Street now. This is the end of something for nothing and money for free.

Indian Pulp Fiction

2008-09-22T10:55:00.000-07:00

   JULES
                         – Okay now, tell me about the hash?


                                     VINCENT
                         What so you want to know?

                                     JULES
                         Well, hash is legal there, right?

                                     VINCENT
                         Yeah, it's legal, but is ain't a
                         hundred percent legal. I mean you
                         can't walk into a restaurant, roll a
                         joint, and start puffin' away. You're
                         only supposed to smoke in your home
                         or during certain religious festivals.

                                     JULES
                         Those are the Puja's?

                                     VINCENT
                         Yeah, it breaks down like this: it's
                         legal to buy it, it's legal to own
                         it and, if you're the proprietor of
                         large Ganesha statue, it's legal to sell
                       it. It's legal to carry it, which doesn't
                         really matter 'cause – get a load of
                         this – if the cops stop you, you just
                         give them a few hundred rupees and they
                         will act like they have never seen you.

                                     JULES
                         That did it, man – I'm fuckin' goin',
                         that's all there is to it.

                                     VINCENT
                         You'll dig it the most. But you know
                         what the funniest thing about India
                         is?

                                     JULES
                         What?

                                     VINCENT
                         It's the little differences. A lotta
                         the same shit we got here, they got
                         there, but there they're a little
                         different.

                                     JULES
                         Examples?

                                     VINCENT
                         Well, in Hyderabad, you can smoke in
                         the restaurants. And I don't mean
                         in a little cigarette either. They give you
                         a giant hookah, like in an Opium Den. In
                         Bangalore, you can smoke a Hookah at
                         MacDonald's. Also, you know what
                         they call a Quarter Pounder with
                         Cheese in India?

                                     JULES
                         They don't call it a Quarter Pounder
                         with Cheese?

                                     VINCENT
                         No, they don't serve beef
                         in McDonald's there and, AND,
                         they got the metric system there.
                         They wouldn't know what the fuck a
                         Quarter Pounder is.

                                     JULES
                         What'd they call it?

                                     VINCENT
                         Super Chicken with Cheese.

                                     JULES
                              (repeating)
                         Super Chicken with Cheese. What'd they call
                         a Big Mac?

                                     VINCENT
                         Big Mac's a Chicken Maharaja Mac. A
                         Maharaja Mac...

                                     JULES
                         The Maharaja Mac. What do they call a
                         Whopper?

                                     VINCENT
                         I dunno, I didn't go into a Burger
                         King. But you know what they put on
                         french fries in India instead of
                         ketchup?

                                     JULES
                         What?

                                     VINCENT
                         Capsicum Spice!

                                     JULES
                         Goddamn!

                                     VINCENT
                         I seen 'em do it. And I don't mean a
                         little bit on the side of the plate,
                         they fuckin' drown 'em in it.

                                     JULES
                         Uuccch!

Also everyone Stateside is saying 'Burn After Reading' is great. I can't see it for at least a month.

A Letter To My Family

2008-09-20T11:07:00.001-07:00

The Vaughan/Blanchard/Barton/Christensen clan is represents a large spectrum of Political and Religious thought. But sometimes you just have to drop a bomb on them and let them try and argue their way back out. So with no small amount of love or sincerity I sent this email their way. I hope that I can do what to can for my own lot. Right now in America it's looking like the Third Act of Titanic.

Here is an email I sent there way. If you feel like I do retool to your needs and pass it on to your loved ones. Here it goes:

Hey All,

Mom and I were talking about this a few days ago and I though I should send this out to you all. I know I will be preaching to the choir to some of you, but many of the people I care about lean a lot more to right. Nobodies perfect! Rather than just post this up on my blog which only a few people read I thought I would be much better off posting this up here. I really sincerely hope I can change your minds about some things. I know you have a lot of fears and doubts about people especially that closet Muslim Manchurian Candidate, Barrack Obama. I also know it takes a lot of courage to go against the prevailing wisdom of friends, and your religious and business institutions. But we are staring down an economic crisis of unprecedented proportion. The kind that can so fundamentally alter our economic and political landscape we might not have a recognizable America left, if it indeed it can survive. So you tell me if me you think it's a good idea to leave our fate in the hands of the ideologues who have pushed us to the brink. Do you think the Opposition could be any worse than the Cannibals at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue now?

I've been watching our present economic meltdown happen in slow motion since about 2005. I started paying attention those "No Down Payment" infomercials talking about how to buy a home with no money and only finance them on interest only loans. They would advertise how you could own 10 homes paying a fraction of what you do for your current home, rent out the others and as soon as the house appreciate enough you just flip em! Easy Money, make thousands each month. Then I started reading up on interest only loans, a very popular financial tool that had previously reached it's zenith in the bustling years of the Mid 20's. I seem to remember something of a reality check hitting by the 30's.

The sad news is nothing is free or easy. All that ease of purchasing power and lack of fundamentals in the housing sector did was overheat the market , raise the cost of home ownership to prices radically disproportionate to the actual wages of the people living in them and make those that did jump into the market a prime target for bad loans. Wage growth has been negative for almost every year of the Bush administration, horrific when compared with inflation, which means the cost of housing should have decreased. So when markets come back to reality who can pay, no one has savings, no one has a safety net, not even the financial institutions.

So all of that money in housing during the Bush that was made was just a bunch of funny money, paper without real equity. Unreal estate. On top of that we a lot of investors, most of them managing money from Sovereign Wealth funds in other countries and public trusts in America with bills to pay, equity to protect and no real interest in propping up ailing markets. If the government leveraged buyouts don't hold we are looking unparalleled pan-global economic devastation. Even now our abilities to cope with this economically are stressed to the limits. If our bond rating slips the rest of the world may just cut us loose and let us slip into an economic free fall that will be worse than the Great Depression. We can wake up living in a world where China looks like America in the 60's and America looks like China in 1900's.

So who thinks we should be paying a half a trillion dollars a year to fight a war in God forsaken Middle Eastern hell hole now? Who thinks we should let the small fraction of people who laughed all the way to their Swiss bank accounts as they rode the Deregulation Train off the cliff, taking most of the American middle class with it, ride off into the sunset with a 200 billion dollar a year tax cut? Who thinks we should provide further tax incentives to companies to move or cut jobs out the America? Who thinks this is just history taking its course and not the ramifications of years of systematically undoing the progress made by during the Clinton Era, hell the Roosevelt Era? Who thinks we can stand idle and just say that all Politicians are the same, and we can't change any of this?

I think our deep cynicism has taken us to brink. I think we have seen time and time again that if you let a bunch of glad handing war profiteering crooks high jack the American Government over a bunch of non-issues you can't expect a responsible, rational, present governance. What we have had in the White House for eight years is, in all fairness, our Founding Fathers worst nightmare made flesh and handed the highest office in the land. He is an indolent, dull-minded, pandering, simpleton wearing the masks of Power with an absolutely certainty that his Providence is mightier than the rule of Law and the well-being of those he Governs. He keeps about him only the sycophantic worshipers of his own cult of personality and those savvy enough to pull his puppet strings. The political machinery that made this monster only wants unleash more of the same.If you want to vote for another deeply disturbing, cynical Political operative and his gang of Lobbyist Adviser's, running a campaign that would have even made him cringe only four years ago you can vote for that guy. It rhymes with McSame.

Our only hope is to elect people that understand the economy, still have an ounce of integrity, and still understand that all of the progress and prosperity begins with helping the Middle Class in America, if it means a few less Yachts in the Harbor for the boys from Skull and Bones. Politics IS institutionalized class warfare and I strongly suggest you look at what team you are on your tax return and start playing your part.* If you need a hint John McCain says you aren't rich unless you are making $5,000,000 a year. Hopefully this is getting a bit clearer everyday.

Disregard this email at your own peril,

-Joshua Scott Vaughan

*If you make enough money not to care about the Middle Class, help us out anyways, you will never want for friends.

Banjara

2008-09-19T23:44:00.001-07:00

I have been living and working in Hyderabad for close to 3 months total this year. Thought I might long overdue to share some of the views and maybe make some art. This blog isn't just about taking the piss out of my friends after all.

I have most of the day off from work so I thought I would make some crappy second rate art. Well here is my speed paint of the view from my balcony here in Hyderabad. From here almost can't see the U.S. Economy collapsing...

When Bad Photoshops Happen To Good People

2008-09-17T20:37:00.000-07:00

For only the second time this year I have missed a wedding of a dear friend. This time it was a whopper, my best friend for over 15 years and a man that the audacity, the tenacity, and sheer strength of will to be my roommate for over 6 of them. That is either insantity or a profile in courage.

So instead of heaping even more massive laudatory praise for a guy is both one the best artist's and programmers I know. Instead of glad handing a guy whose moral turpetude is so potent that if politicians had the power to extract his essencne his cloned progengy would fill all the clone vats in Area 51. Instead of saying that this strange ecclectic, who tears could end our countries addiction to foreign only save for the fact that he nevers cries (until now), ought to have just enjoyed his wedding day. I say that things got missed. The asthetic angels weep on my shoulders for the fashion that was lost. Fret not overlong, I have fixed it in Photoshop

On your fifth wedding anniversary you shall have what's coming to you. And it's only the finest in Beaver Pelt.

Congratulations and all of the best my dear Cholesky!

Why Obama IS Great.

2008-09-16T19:11:00.000-07:00

Now that virtually every single segment of the American Financial sector is bordering on insolvency most the largest corporations are turning to Uncle Sam to bail them out. Honestly what other choice do we have? But here is the issue, once these institutions are bailed out, once yet again prove with disastrous results that while people can be free economies never can be, will this Generation of Americans, long past paying the pensions of most of the Greatest Generation and long since Sold Out by the Me Generation have what it takes to turn this around?

America: A wholly owned Division of China: A Dubai Corporation.

Can we turn this around? Can turn around a process that had it roots in the mind of Amnesiac President's and Corporate Raiders in the Seventies? Can turn back the clock to a basic decency that can allow us to look after one another again? Can we find the strength to challenge those people in our Corporations who feel they have no fundamental responsibility to the people they employ? Can we challenge those in Government who feel no basic need to protect and serve their constituents and the greater constituency of the American People, regardless of race, creed and gender? Can we a make America a benevolent power, not just an imposing Super-Power poised to take the world to brink for the smallest of perceived threats? Can we rise above the din and confusion to be a little bit then we have been, and honor what we ARE about?

There is a guy out there who thinks so, and he gives a lot more back to this country than a great speech, although this is one of them:

..Make no mistake: my opponent is running for four more years of policies that will throw the economy further out of balance. His outrage at Wall Street would be more convincing if he wasn’t offering them more tax cuts. His call for fiscal responsibility would be believable if he wasn’t for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and more of a trillion dollar war in Iraq paid for with deficit spending and borrowing from foreign creditors like China. His newfound support for regulation bears no resemblance to his scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement. John McCain cannot be trusted to reestablish proper oversight of our financial markets for one simple reason: he has shown time and again that he does not believe in it.

What has happened these last eight years is not some historical anomaly, so we know what to expect if we try these policies for another four. When lobbyists run your campaign, the special interests end up gaming the system. When the White House is hostile to any kind of oversight, corporations cut corners and consumers pay the price. When regulators are chosen for their disdain for regulation and we gut their ability to enforce the law, then the interests of the American people are not protected. It’s an ideology that intentionally breeds incompetence in Washington and irresponsibility on Wall Street, and it’s time to turn the page.

Just today, Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book - you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem. But here’s the thing … we know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I’ll provide it, John McCain won’t, and that’s the choice for the American people in this election.

Can we overcome the stupidity and foolishness of our hard right bend in the States?

Yes we can...

Great Balls of Balls!

2008-09-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the single greatest problem with the 3-4 month development cycle of a true casual game is the fact that you don't really get too many shots at do overs. Right now I am getting ready to send my game at Gameshastra into a Beta. That means if you really want to make sure that everything goes in a works right, looks good and really is put together nicely you better nail that on the first shot. Barring that the second. God forbid you need a third.

About three weeks ago I started working on the UI for the game I am working on. Now mind you I couldn't give it my full attention. But things just kind of went along and got implemented and they weren't exactly knocking anyone out. Hell, they were awful, the whole thing was getting to be brazenly inconsistent and I hadn't given it the attention it needed. That is until about six days go. That's when my life went to hell and crunch time began in earnest.

Since then I have been at the office 12 to 14 hours a day for 4 of the last 5 days. This is not because I thought this was a great idea. I know what crunch time does to me (makes me a loopy basket case) but I am really backed into a wall. Nothing to do know scrape together every last drop of gumption and just do the work.

The good news is I hit a style I can live with. I am drawing all of the Layer Style and Page Design mastery skills that Matt Petersen and Ben Savage could osmose into me during my years at EA. What I wouldn't give to have those guys around right now! It'd be done up in about 2 days!

Somehow I just hope I don't look at this work in two month's and hate it. There is nothing worse than grinding yourself down to the fallow nothingness of spent being only to find your labors for naught. It's not even that I worry if other people think it's O.K. It matters to me.

Well I am going to eat some food, read the internets and soon dream a quiet dream and imagine myself as comfy as any of my lazy dogs. I return home in a month and hopefully I can point to this post when I am knocking back a cold one and not working myself into an early on some storied Friday in October in Utah. The cold wind will chill my beer and I can sleep in the warmth of my bed surrounded by the things that love me back, it will be a refreshing change of pace.

Also, Holy Shit, I have a ton of people commenting on my stuff. Shout outs to Cholesky, Jason and Xavi. If anyone happens to stumble upon this hit up Cholesky's Lab, the bastard has sealed his fate in the eyes of God and Government and the Family. He is wed. I promise to update with like some honest to god art next time. In about a month I will have some mmm... mmm... good drops!

The Running Man

2008-09-09T08:42:00.000-07:00

Just feeling like posting some art:

RNC Politics

2008-09-08T18:08:00.000-07:00

I read all of Sarah Palin's speech. It was easier than listening to her speak it. I read all of John McCain's. The Daily Show beat me to the punch. It's George Bush's 2000 acceptence polished up for the Reformed Maverick. In eight years they haven't managed to do any of things they talked about, even when they had a stranglehold on national politics. I don't think that they will do any of it with another four years, which is probably for the best.

In short the Bard would say it was,"Full of Sound and Fury, in the End, signifying Nothing." No new ideas, no new path, no new mission, no new vision. A perverse rendition of democratic politics from the seventies without any real vision of how to accomplish it.

For the Ron Paul republican's I really hope you can find a way to get your voice heard above the din. At least you have something meaningful to say in all of this. It's seems that for a lot of Republicans who really do have somehthing valueable to offer to the public it will take a while for you guys to pick up steam. Even William F. Buckly, one the smartest voices on the right and leading propents of a small effecient Government said "the GOP needs to forget about trying to govern for a while, and should go out into the desert and find itself." I couldn't agree more.

A Signature, With Apologies

2008-09-06T08:09:00.000-07:00

The usual rules in commercial art generally dictate that 1) All things be equal you will probably steal 2) Just because you lifted it doesn't mean you shouldn't at least synthesize it! 3) There is nothing more tasteless than obvious brazen theft.

And with that all sincere apologies to Saul Bass. If you must steal at least pick someone good. In this case I think I am choosing someone who you make a case for as being the best.

At least it's not just Helvetica...

Larry the Arab

2008-09-06T05:53:00.000-07:00

Since the film was restored in the late 90's, Lawrence of Arabia has been my "It" film on the AFI top 10. Sure Citizen Cane is great film with a tremendous vision and narrative, but I almost think that what it really shows is that movie critics were actually comic book geeks first. Casablanca is a gem of a film, but it's just not BIG enough, it feels like a great play. The Godfather is a masterwork, but as someone who grew in a largely disjointed family in Utah, there is only so much about this I that film I can get. I still haven't seen Gone With The Wind! It's kind of sad but it's on my to do list! But down there at number #5 is David Lean's masterpiece. The story and the photography are the best ever. Any serious film student should memorize every shot. I just don't think a film of this caliber will be made again for quite some time. It's just perfect.

Because of my opinion of this film I just haven't even attempted fan art*. What was the use? For now I am abondoning the cult of the genious and throwing this out there any ways. Here is T.E. Lawrence:

With links to flickr for those that want to see a larger version!

*Hell I don't even know if you could call it that... Uh, historical fan fiction illustration perhaps?.

In Response

2008-09-03T19:06:00.000-07:00

Over at Cholesky's Lab Ev has pictures of invisible horses for his Fiancee Robyn. I just thought I would carry it over to the logical conclusion. I think there is much more fun to be had with this.

Frederick would proud.

Postuno!

2008-09-02T22:22:00.000-07:00

Crypto Psychology my old blog that was read by, oh, no one, is now dead. I think I just need to put a better art/life focused blog together. I do lead a life that is at least of passing interest in synopsis form. Besides, this blog has a better name.

For those keeping score I am a seven year veteran of the games industry, having worked as an artist on several projects over the years. I have my third party employee merit badge, my failed start-up merit badge, my successful sell-out merit badge, and my years in the corporate grind merit badge. Now I am going for my Successful International Start-Up with Benefit's! merit badge.

At the present I am working for an 18 month old company based in Hyderabad, India and El Segundo California called Gameshastra. I was hired on in May of 2008 to be the art director for a group of about 35 artists (and growing) who work here in Banjarra hills. While can't be overly specific about all of the details I can say that this is a very interesting company to work for and it's been a really big eye opener to work at this level. I am still at the point where I am a bridge between the world of the boardroom and the working floor. It's an interesting dance but at least I like the beat.

But that's all kinds of secondary. I am on here to post up some art, wax inflammatory on the state of religion and politics, and generally do what I can to stir the pot without getting too overheated! Hopefully those in my circle of family and friends will care to read it. I will try not to bore everyone too much, and I will try to post frequently. But for now a story!

Today is Ganesha Chaturthi in India. I attended the puja(ritual) for it this morning. Good times as the elephant god walks the earth! For the ceremony everyone gathers near a little tent made to house a Figure of Ganesha. In the "auspicious" time for your ceremony (which coincides nicely with when a Brahman priest can fit you in) you have people gather and make offerings of food, spices and flowers to the Lord Ganesha. You get a fat bindu and get to shout if you love Elephant Dieties. The priest has a really long, loud chant to recite and should his wife call and need him to remember to pick up stuff at the market he will pick up his cell phone mid chant with a loud, "HALLO!" Oh, modern India, the phones are always on!

Here's pictures:

Ganesh prior to being anointed

Me after the Puja

And Ganesha afterwards

And the last thing of minor significance, Google Chrome is out. It's new, it's speedy and it has a really nice comic by Scott McCloud.

UPDATION! And Wired and everyone else under the Sun and there dog is all over it. Also if you don't want Google knowing all of your stuff, as if you can stop that, you can do this:

For those that have learned to stop worrying about Skynet and love the Bomb: use Google Reader. I share a ton of crap on there and soon as there is a widget for it I would love for it to end up on this here blog too...