Some day, I might blog about DDT, ...

... and in the meantime, here's my del.icio.us list of articles you can start reading now:

http://del.icio.us/pterandon/ddt/1

Quote on 3D CG humans

"... The idea of doing him as a human **in 3D** wasn't really appealling either. That's a really difficult thing to do and it usually doesn't turn out really well. "

Brian Roberts, animator, "The Story of St. Patrick" segment on The World of Autotainment, Big Idea Studios.

Can you tell what's happening? Does this image work-- can you tell what the big red blur is in the background-- or do I need to fix the composition and modelling in the back? (Hint: it's supposed to be a bunch of threatening red robots.) Email me or leave a comment.
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Sorry Everybody II
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Sorry Everybody
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The Truth "versus" Love Project

I have been a fan of the writings of Francis Schaeffer, who was an apologist for straightforward relevation of truth in scripture. "God spoke truthfully but not exhaustively," is a quote that quickly comes to mind.

I'm also a big fan of the rock star Bono, who has also been involved in various humanitarian campaigns. Occasionally, he's come up with wonderfully inflammatory quotes about how nonbelievers will view the church if it were seen as indifferent to the great causes of human suffering on the planet.

At the same time, it has been said that Schaeffer's work led the groundwork for the formation of the Moral Majority or Christian Coalition. A voting guide for the CC about a decade ago explicitly advocated the denial of visas to refugees with AIDS; Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have similarly had a reputation of not being the most humanitarian-minded of individuals. Pat's twice called for a nuclear strike against the U.S. State Department.

Likewise, Bono's web site has information which gives a religious context to the campaign. One such "sermon" really has no religious content in it, certainly no mention of grace or Jesus, and the action called for was a letter to politicians.

I for one believe the world would be a better place-- that the actual God out there would be happier-- if more Christians had the resolute theological grounding of Schaeffer with the humanitarian outlook of Bono. Biblical orthodoxy with human compassion, a respect for revealed truth and fraternal love-- hence I've started the Truth "versus" Love Project. A Homiletics Award or sermon-writing contest for seminary students of my own denomination, the ELCA.

See the following link for an announcement page.
http://www.geocities.com/pterandon//truthvslove.html

I've been working on increasing the "attractiveness" of the two figures. Compare how nice they look even compared to the animation I submitted a few weeks ago, at: ( http://irtc.org/anims/2004-10-15/view.html ). The one on the left I had been keeping around as a joke-- when I first shared it I believe I heard jokes about a lunch lady. After fixing the eyes and lips, I "accidentally" gave it an African skin color and BAM! it looked beautiful to me, with the contrast of the blue eyes. I had been intending to make the one on the right a person of color, but I think I'm sold on the one on the left. The right one's hair was taken from a sample file by Anto Matkovic which was included with jPatch.  

A portrait of the latest version of my leading man character. Think I got the lighting just right on this one.
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Image: Finally, a Leading Lady...

This took a lot of work, especially to get the lipstick algorithm to work. She is modelled in part after a virtual composite of German beauty pageant winners.

Now if I were ever to have a little romance in one of my stories, the audience will no longer be asking, "Why is he dating a mutant gorilla?" or, "Isn't the lunch lady a bit older than him?" Not searching for a pinup, just trying to make something that wasn't inherently comedic.
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No, we're actually in favor of torture.

Michelle Malkin writes in a recent column where she lists a number of things that bother her:

2. The American Civil Liberties Union. The organization maintains dangerously absolutist positions against the use of torture to gather intelligence from al-Qaida terrorists, against the designation of enemy combatants apprehended on either foreign or American soil and against common-sense profiling in wartime.

"Dangerously absolutist position against the use of torture?"

I remember during the 1998 race for the Florida seat in the U.S. Senate, then candidate Connie Mack opposed a treaty against torture. He said that he believed democracy was the only key to protecting human rights. Connie mack was also a staunch defender of Low Intensity Conflict in Latin America, wars launched in the name of freedom and democracy (and BTW wars where "our side" had a long list of charges of human rights charge against them.) I remember one Amnesty International report that accused the Nicaraguan contras of "routine torture and summary execution of captives." (When the same phraseology was used by A.I. against Saddam, they were proudly repeated by Dan Quayle in defense of the Gulf War-- but I'm getting ahead of myself). My cynical side in 1988 was tempted to conclude that Connie Mack was actually pro-torture. But I repented of my disparagement of my brother-- no one's that terrible.

Then came the Rodney King beating. The Abner Loiuma anal rape, the anal rape at Abu Ghraib. In the defense of all these actions, there were seemed to be a vein of popular conservatism that thought these were good things, or were "more outraged at the outrage" than the thing itself.

Can someone help me out here? Is there a vein in the tradition of the church that allows for the abuse of prisoners if it can be tied to some security objective? Email me at my address-- it's the nine-letter word in the userid of this blog account at gmail.com.

There's a logical problem here. The old adage goes, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." I can imagine that the Soviet Union faced security threats as grave as does the West now. Surely Saddam did, with Kurdish and Iranian operatives threatening their security. If we rationalize torture in our time of crisis, we've just written a theology that gives Saddam and Stalin a Get out of Hell Free card.