{"id":8088,"date":"2012-04-09T18:20:50","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T23:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=8088"},"modified":"2012-04-09T18:22:11","modified_gmt":"2012-04-09T23:22:11","slug":"sketching-abraham-lincoln","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=8088","title":{"rendered":"Sketching Abraham Lincoln"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The other day, while lecturing to a class, I wanted to use some well known historical figure within a thought experiment.  So in about five seconds I drew something like the following on the blackboard, and then I continued: &#8220;Imagine if Abraham Lincoln&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><center><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/lincoln1.jpg\"><br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n<p>But then I paused for a moment, looked at the picture, and said &#8220;It&#8217;s funny.  if I just took away the hat, it would be Jesus.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The class laughed, but the thought stayed with me.  How <i>little<\/i> do you need to draw in order to  invoke any given famous person?  Perhaps we can rate iconic public figures on a scale &#8212; the simpler the drawing required, the more iconic the figure.<\/p>\n<p>What would be the equivalent visual sketch for Elvis or Marilyn, Groucho or Woody,  Garland or Sinatra, Nixon or Thatcher, Chaplin or Hitchcock, Lennon or McCartney, Freud or Einstein, Hitler or Gandhi?<\/p>\n<p>In some cases we might get it down to very little indeed, such as John Lennon as a pair of glasses.  Perhaps we could apply some sort of information theoretic analysis, in the spirit of Claude Shannon, to rate our historical icons.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder who would come out on top.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The other day, while lecturing to a class, I wanted to use some well known historical figure within a thought experiment. So in about five seconds I drew something like the following on the blackboard, and then I continued: &#8220;Imagine if Abraham Lincoln&#8230;&#8221; But then I paused for a moment, looked at the picture, and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=8088\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Sketching Abraham Lincoln&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8088"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8088"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8094,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8088\/revisions\/8094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}