Ken's Blog

Many years ago I happened to be coming home from a long evening of computer graphics production work. I was crossing Park Ave near 34th St at around 3am when I saw, to my surprise, that people had picnic tables set up, as though they were waiting for a show to start.

So I stuck around to see what would happen. After about ten minutes there came a parade of elephants, slowly making their way across town.

I realized that the circus must be in town, and that the elephants, who had probably come off a boat at the East River, were heading to Madison Square Garden. That is not a sight you would ever see today.

They were traveling in size order, from largest to smallest, each elephant’s trunk holding onto the tail of the elephant in front of them. At the very end of the procession was the cutest little baby elephant.

After about ten minutes the entire herd had crossed Park Avenue, and the show was over. Everyone started to pack up and fold their picnic tables, and we all headed home.

The parade was now a memory.

I ran into a person I had been hoping for months to meet, but didn’t think I would be able to.

It was as though fate at decided to step in and say “Okay, he’s waited long enough, give him a break.”

I am not exactly sure how all of that works. But thanks fate! 🙂

Usually when I give a talk, something goes wrong. The nature of what goes wrong can very widely.

Sometimes I forget to include something. Other times I try to do live coding and I just screw it up.

Then there are the times when I realize, only after I am in front of a live audience, that there is something wrong in the content of my talk itself. Of course by then it is too late to do anything about it.

The good thing about something going wrong during a talk is that it gives me work to do. As soon as the talk ends, I realize that there is something I need to fix, and I get right down to work proceeding to fix it.

Today I gave a talk at the ACM/SIGGRAPH conference, and nothing went wrong. It all went just great, in every way, from start to finish.

So now I have no idea what I’m supposed to work on next.

I am about to watch the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater. It is something I only get to do once a year, and it is one of my favorite things.

You should always do things that make you happy. 🙂

Today’s first day of the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference coincided with the World Cup final. I saw an attendee wearing a world cup shirt.

Trying to think of something relevant to day about the games, I said “No matter who wins today, the winner will be a Spanish speaking country.”

With a look of complete distain he replied “If it’s Argentina, then they will barely be speaking Spanish.” I realized in that moment which team he was rooting for.

Later in the day I saw the same man again. He looked very happy, and I and congratulated him. He said “I hope nobody minds that I missed a few sessions today.”

“I don’t think anyone will mind,” I said sympathetically. “After all, there are priorities.”

Some online commenters have been objecting to the casting decisions in the newest film adaptation of The Odyssey. I guess, like our current Supreme Court, they are originalists.

So I am sure they were just as horrified at the various Hollywood film adaptations of Romeo and Juliet. William Shakespeare was very clear about casting for that play.

As originalists, I am sure those online commenters would be as appalled as the playwright to see Juliet being played by a woman.

I imagine most people were confused by the president’s address last night. It was weird, disjointed, and filled with false statements and vitriol. In fact, it was, on the face of it, the furthest thing from a “presidential address” that one could imagine.

But if you dig beneath all of that, the underlying message was clear. I will try to summarize what he was really trying to say:

“Look folks, I’m an 80 year old man. My physical health is fading, and as you can plainly tell, so are my mental faculties. I wouldn’t survive in prison, any more than my buddy you-know-who would have.

“So I’m asking you, begging you really. Please drop this whole ‘free and fair elections’ nonsense. I need to stay in power as long as I can — ideally until I kick the bucket. The alternative is simply unthinkable.”

The man is clearly at wits end, and asking for our pity. Doesn’t that just tug at your heart strings?

In two days I will be flying to L.A. for the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference. I pointed out to someone that a nice thing about L.A. is that you can get really great Mexican food.

They responded by saying “What’s the big deal? I can make perfectly good Mexican food at home.”

I was about to reply “Yes, but in L.A. you can get Mexican food that’s all made by real Mexicans.”

But then I realized something. Right here in New York City you can get French, Korean, Japanese, Ukrainian, Chinese, Middle Eastern or Italian food that’s all made by real Mexicans.

I was having a conversation this week with some colleagues that touched on topics related to A.I. At some point we discussed where A.I. might end up going from here, as the technology continues to advance.

One thought was that A.I. will become ever better at predicting the future. In addition to being a way to query the existing state of human knowledge, A.I. might eventually become capable of looking forward to accurately predict future states of human knowledge.

As that happens, I imagine that we might collectively adopt the concept of a “predictive event horizon”. In any given year, A.I. will be able to look a certain distance into the future.

As time goes on, that event horizon will become gradually longer.

Eventually we will no longer need to make plans. We can just ask our A.I., and it will tell us what we are going to do.

I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

Today I made a terrible mistake. I read the news. Every day brings yet another screw-up by our so-called administration.

I know it’s tempting just to make fun of these idiots. But this particular combination of stupidity, incompetence and just plain old fashioned meanness is kind of overwhelming.

The sheer lack of competent governance is causing a lot of needless suffering to many innocent people, both in the United States and around the world. Until the U.S. once again regains something like competent political leadership, the suffering will continue.

I guess the hope is that the sheer awfulness of this sh*t show will lead people to vote these bozos out of power. Assuming, of course, that we will actually still have free and fair elections.