Category: Uncategorized

She dwelt in Possibility
A fairer House than Prose
More numerous of Windows
Superior for Doors

She sang the tune without the words
And never stopped at all
For hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul

When I am in Manhattan, I don’t measure distance by distance. I measure distance by time. I think to myself, how long would it take to go to this store, or to visit that person, or to travel to that doctor’s appointment?

When I am in a more spread out place, like Kansas City, I asked myself the same question, even though in this case I am driving. How long will it take to get to this store, or to visit that person, or to travel to that doctor’s appointment?

So it is clear that distance, measured in feet or in miles, is not at all what is significant to us. What is significant to us is time. The distance we measure is the distance from morning until evening, and ultimately from the beginning of our lives to the end of our lives.

After all, isn’t that the kind of distance that really matters to us?

There is a mysterious alchemy that occurs when people enjoy entertainment together. When we are part of an audience for a movie or a play or a concert or lecture, we feel a kind of kinship with one another.

This is not true in all group situations. We don’t feel the same sort of kinship when we share a bus ride or a plane trip with strangers. Nor do we feel any particular kinship with our fellow diners in a restaurant, or with the other people we see wandering around in a store or a gallery or museum.

The feeling of kinship only occurs when we are having a synchronous experience together — when we know that everyone around us is simultaneously experiencing the same narrative that we are.

There must be something wired into our collective DNA, some distinct evolutionary advantage, to the formation of this situational emotional connection with strangers.

I just want an A.I. assistant that will create for me the great email reply that I would have written, if I actually had time to write a great email reply.

Is that asking too much?

There is something anticlimactic about the jury verdict affirming that the Trump family business has been guilty of tax fraud and a slew of other financial crimes. I mean, it’s something everybody knew, including Trump supporters.

Maybe especially Trump supporters. The appeal of these billionaire icons is precisely that they are able to get away with stuff that ordinary mortals cannot.

I can see how that sort of misbehavior would inspire hero worship in people who feel powerless in their own lives. In a way, the utter lack of ethics reminds me of that great scene in Casablanca:

Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Captain Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: Oh, thank you very much.

When I teach computer graphics, many of my students are mainly interested in learning how to make things that look cool and pretty. This is understandable.

But I don’t think that teaching how to make pretty things is really what computer graphics is about. It is actually, at core, about conveying visual ideas.

As the great Lance Williams liked to say, computer graphics is “limited only by your imagination.” Having accurate surface reflectance or a high polygon count is nice, but it really isn’t the core of why computer simulated imagery is so amazing.

The truly wonderful and amazing thing about CGI is how you can use it to get across concepts and ideas that would be difficult or impossible to convey any other way. When we see things that make visual sense, which feel as though they should exist — but which do not actually exist in our own world — our minds begin to open up.

And after taking in those new visual possibilities, we might start to expand our ways of thinking. We might become more than we were.

And isn’t that what education is all about?

A beautiful thing about going to the theater is that you and all the people around you are the only people who will ever see this particular performance.

After tonight, this moment will be gone forever. But all of you will have shared it, and you will never lose that.

Today I went through all of the photos that I took with my phone for the last five years. There were a lot of photos.

There are particular photos that are very vivid in my mind, to which I have a strong personal memory or connection. I found myself looking for those photos in particular.

I eventually found them, but only after doing a chronological linear search through all the photos I had taken. This doesn’t seem right to me.

I can imagine, in the future, some way that our photos become automatically tagged because some biometric system detects that we have a strong emotional connection to them. I am sure that any such system would be imperfect at first, and it might take some time for your computer to correctly learn to accurately read your emotional states.

But over time, such systems would continually improve. Eventually, you should have no trouble finding the photos that really matter to you.

And isn’t that what we really want?

One of the things I love about Andor is the richness of its world building. Some of the best examples of this are so small and subtle that they can be hard to catch.

One wonderful detail in particular occurs when the main character goes back to his hotel room at a seaside resort, after having been away for months. He has returned to retrieve a small locked suitcase that is filled with his money and valuables.

When he gets to the room, the suitcase is exactly where he had left it, even though it is clear that many other guests had rented the room in the intervening months. In our world this would be unthinkable. In all that time, either the hotel would have stashed the suitcase away in a lost-and-found, or else somebody would have simply stolen it.

So what is going on? Well for one thing, clearly he knew that the suitcase would still be there, exactly where he had left it.

Which suggests that there are forms of security here that don’t exist in our world. For example, there might be some sort of biometric sensor that would immediately trigger an alarm, should you try to remove from a hotel room something that wasn’t yours.

So nobody would be foolish enough to even try. You would only end up being arrested and handed over to Empire law enforcement, which is something you definitely want to avoid in this particular fictional world.

For the same reason, there is no need for a lost-and-found. The resort owners know that the suitcase is perfectly safe where it is. When its owner is ready, he will come back for it.

The beautiful thing is that none of this is ever explicitly discussed. It is left up to the audience to gradually work out the significance of such seemingly small details.

To me, this is what great science fiction world building is all about.

I love the first day of every month. There is a feeling of wiping the slate clean, and having an opportunity to start again.

All of the things that I didn’t get done during the last month, I could, at least theoretically, accomplish in the next 31 days. Doesn’t mean that I will. But just knowing that I might makes me happy.

And if that doesn’t work out, in another month I will have an entire new year to work with. Hope springs eternal!