How to do creative Studio Shots without the studio

At On Location With Rick Lee

H/T the Glenn

Normally I wouldn't post an 'echo-post' of Mr. Reynolds, as that would have all of the effect of spitting during a hurricane in order to increase the humidity. However, Mr. Lee's simple exposition is something of interest to any artist friends who may be reading.

Fun with my paintings, Flickr and fd's Flickr Toys

Making faux Motivational Posters

Decay



Oxidiztion




are you ready to take on the world now?

Once again, I am forced to disagree with The Glenn

He accuses "Big Oil" of paying off Sheryl Crow and other big media types to say nonsensical things to discredit the idea of anthropogenic global warming.

For once, he's gravely mistaken. This is just another psy-op run by the nefarious Karl Rove! Why else would the All Powerful Man Behind The Curtain allow himself to be forced into scurrying from his table by two mere entertainers? Everyone knows that the APMBTC controls all of Washington in his iron grip. This dust-up was a deflection. By running from Crow and David, Rove cleverly hid his diabolical connections to this whole affair.

The White House, Congress, the Oil Industry, and now the Entertainment Industry, what is there left in the world that has not bowed before the abominable scheming of the APMBTC?

David Thompson hits another one out of the park!

The Right Kind of Prejudice, go read it.

If you don't see the logical disconnect in fighting racism by making one's race the key issue then logic is probably not your forte.

An excellent post on Climate History at Done With Mirrors

It lays out the historic pattern of climate change, and makes the excellent argument that real understanding of climate is what's needed, not reactionary political posturing.

I am all for added efficiency. If someone can come up with viable and scalable replacements for our current power sources, that would be great! For instance, the internal combustion engine in the car you drive is essentially a piece of late 19th century technology, with lots of add-ons. Yes, it's built to better standards, which has help a lot, but in essence the motivating power of transportation hasn't changed much since the transition away from steam power.

So yes, I'm all for polluting less. I'm even all for saving the environment! But let's actually do something positive about it, instead of shackling the economy (for no good result) or calling for the third world to stay in perpetual poverty, just to assuage the guilt of rich baby-boomers.

Done With Mirrors' money quote, "It's a common complaint of the secular left that their opponents put dogma above science. But the underlying fallacy of much of the climate-change alarmist rhetoric is that it is the left's equivalent of creationism."

H/T Maggie's Farm

OK, Sheryl Crow's silliness is being commented on all over

Examples, Ms. Malkin and the Glenn (with many wonderful links from them to others.)

But this does raise and interesting question. As has been pointed out by others, pretty much all wood used by the paper industry is grown for that purpose. Now when you grow a tree, it takes carbon out of the atmosphere, and uses it as a building block for its growth. Then paper manufacturers turn the tree into pulp, and then paper, which means that the carbon is now in the paper.

So here's my question. Since engineers and scientists have been looking for ways to sequester carbon from pollution, and paper is - in part- carbon pulled out of the atmosphere by purpose grown pulp-trees, wouldn't that mean that burying waste paper in landfills is a form of carbon sequestration?

Just a question...


Save the world, stop recycling paper and send it to the dump instead!

NO, NO, NO! that would be Glenn Reynolds!

WBZ Channel 4 in Boston just announced that Governor Deval Patrick has signed a bill which (starting emediately) will require private developers to calculate the amount of 'greenhouse gasses' that will be released by their construction projects, and provide offsets.

It's not like Massachusetts hasn't put the screws to business enough...now the construction industries are burdened with another bill. Housing costs will go up. Jobs will be lost. More people and businesses will leave the state.



Yep, the Massachusetts Miracle!

What a bunch of yahoos...

UPDATE It appears from this Globe story that this is about major projects. However, I think there will still be some negative economic effects. Also, if by "large scale projects" they include any multiple dwelling construction (if for example a developer is building 5 or more units at a time, or even 10 or 20), there will still be a negative effect on housing costs. I'm not quite as incensed as I was, but we'll wait and see how this plays out.

The Inimitable LaShawn Barber asks how many books do you own?

Now there is a topic that I could run on with for days. Truth be told, if I could do anything I wanted I would be happiest curling up with a book, morning, noon and night.

I usually have several books running at a time. Currently it's Vitruvius "The Ten Books on Architecture" and Emile Male "Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century", and there are always a dozen or so books on my 'next-to-read' shelf. Photo resource books on cathedral architecture are always at hand as research for my paintings. I'm also currently re-reading (for the ump-teenth time) my college textbook on Italian Renaissance Art.

Other than living a righteous life, there are only two things that a man can do to be like God. The first is to be truly creative. The second is to always seek wisdom and knowledge. God is the beginning and end of creativity, and he has all wisdom and knowledge.

Any man who wants to do good in this life could find no better place to start than to seek after knowledge and wisdom.

Proverbs 4:6-7 Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you. Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, [a] get understanding.

Proverbs 19:8 He who gets wisdom loves his own soul; he who cherishes understanding prospers.

Proverbs 23:23 Buy the truth and do not sell it; get wisdom, discipline and understanding.

(all NIV)

A serious theatre program at Yale? Not so much

When I graduated with my BA from the Northeastern theatre program in the early 80's, Yale's graduate theatre program was considered to be one of the best. We were very proud that out of our little department (20 something graduates, including all of the disciplines - acting, tech, stage management, design and directing) we sent two people on to Yale, one for directing and one for lighting design.

Now there is this. (Via HotAir.)

"In the wake of Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech in which a student killed 32 people, Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg has limited the use of stage weapons in theatrical productions.

"Students involved in this weekend’s production of “Red Noses” said they first learned of the new rules on Thursday morning, the same day the show was slated to open. They were subsequently forced to alter many of the scenes by swapping more realistic-looking stage swords for wooden ones, a change that many students said was neither a necessary nor a useful response to the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

...

" 'Red Noses' director Sarah Holdren ’08 said she first heard about the changes in a phone call from a friend as she arrived at the Off-Broadway Theater on Thursday morning. At the theater, technical director Jim Brewczynski told her about the new regulations. The pair then met with Trachtenberg, who initially wanted no stage weapons to be used in the show, (emphasis added,ed.) Holdren said, though she later agreed to permit the use of obviously fake weapons.

...

"Brandon Berger ’10, who plays a swordsman in the show, said the switch to an obviously fake wooden sword has changed the nature of his part from an 'evil, errant knight to a petulant child.' "

Director Holden's money quote, "Here at Yale, sensitivity and political correctness have become censorship in this time of vital need for serious artistic expression.”

You know that PC has destroyed the serious of the Universities when a member of the Humanities is calling it out.

And I have to disagree with young Mr. Berger, the 'petulant child' is not his stage character, it's Dean Trachtenberg. And as for evil, where does this coddling nannyism lead but to this,...as the erosion of intellectual self-defense goes, so goes the erosion of physical self-defense.

Back from vacation

The whole family went to Lexington KY to celebrate Grandma Yost's 96th birthday. A week on the road, the kids loved it, and Marlene got to meet her Great-grandmother.


great-grandmother and great granddaughter

There are six great-grandsons, ranging from 4 to 18 years old. Marlene is the first girl born into the family on either side in this generation.

the Glenn opines...

...Interestingly, I think that the more Pelosi acts like a wannabe President, the worse it is for Hillary. And I think that Pelosi knows that.

I wonder though, if Pelosi's precocious peregrinations won't be so damaging to the whole Democratic Party that it overcomes any potential intra-party tactical gain the Speaker or her candidate-of-choice may get over Ms. Clinton.

Is it just me, or are both political parties intent on self-immolation?

The Compassion...

...of the religion of peace, or maybe it’s the International Left. This one could be either or both. But compassion is the obvious underlying motivation of someone calling themselves "Crackers_Child Turkish Defacer" who today has hacked the State of Maine page of the website of The Homeschool Magazine. Wonderful compassionate four letter epithets about President Bush, and other pleasantries. I won't link to it, because it's not work safe, and is obviously not what the site is really supposed to be about. Thankfully, The Homeschool Magazine is a website for parents seeking support and information for schooling their kids, and not a site for kids themselves.

Apparently another part of the site was hacked back in February.

Oh yeh, we want to be tolerant, all cultures are morally equivalent, they only want peace, they have very strong family values, they have stronger moral values than the decadent West...how long before these lies get called out for what they are. Both the Left and Radical Islam shout down and intimidate the truly moral and moderate members of their communities, and the rest of us all just smile and nod, grasping desperately a the illusion of peaceful co-existence.

I get pretty hacked off at cowards who think insulting families from the safety of some apartment 10,000 miles away and think that they're part of some "spiritual battle."

Come into my neighborhood and say this kind of garbage to my kids or my neighbor's kids and you'll get your spiritual battle.

Stupid punks!

You're It

It appears that I have been tagged by Assistant Village Idiot with the instructions that I blog five things about myself that I never have before, and potentially tag five others. I may have to take a pass on the second (or at least do a much smaller list) because the majority of the bloggers that I read are much higher in the food chain than I, and as AVI notes, to tag any of them would be highly presumptuous.

So, five things...

1. Every once in a while I Google the names of old college friends. This started several years ago when I tried (successfully after a bit) to get back in touch with my former design professor, who is now an Emmy Award winning designer on the West Coast.

This morning, I think I found two others, both women. One I'm not so sure of, but the other I'm pretty certain, as her name is unusual to begin with, the age is right, and the information shows connections to Boston.

Now what do I do?

As for guys, with the exception of my prof, they've either not gotten written up or otherwise attached to the web, or their names are so common that a web search (without more recent or identifying info on them) is futile. Or more likely, I'm not very good at hunting people on the web....

UPDATE: I don't know why I didn't think of this when I first posted, I recently found my Costume Design professor through Flickr. I also just found my best friend from college (so much for the theory on guys-on-the-internet) and we've emailed each other.

2. I have asthma. When I am stressed it is worse, and can physically make me sick.

I am also a self-stress-monger. Bad combination.

I know, TMI.

3. My wife and I had known each other for almost three years before our first date. She and I had been great buddies, having all sorts of interesting conversations about topics that no one else we knew cared much about, and one day, when I knew that she was down in the dumps, I suggested that we get together for a cup of coffee and just catch up. Through a comedy of errors (worthy of a Shakespearian play) our plans for a morning cup-o-joe morphed into an evening at an art gallery where we were to meet several other couples and then go out for desert. Though they all showed up, we somehow never found each other and so my future wife and I gave up, walked to the Blue Diner (now renamed) on Kneeland St, and had coffee and a desert. We fell in love. Then in three months she moved to D.C. After a bit she came back to Boston, and (being a bit old fashioned) I asked her to "go steady".

The week after that, at church, I went to introduce her to an old friend and completely blanked on her name. (She still ribs me about that.)

I was a bit freaked out that she was ten years younger than I and so I started adding to her age in my head, until I told someone in front of her and she corrected me.

Two years and one day after that botched attempt at a prosaic and platonic cup of coffee we were married.

4. My father was an electrical engineer, and my mother was trained in the arts. Both were bibliophiles, history buffs, and continually seeking new knowledge for themselves. As a result I grew up surrounded by art and history books which I avidly read. My mother loved my creativity and always encouraged it. However, my dad taught me critical thinking and problem solving. When I gave up Physics in college for Theatre Design it took me six months to tell him (and almost another six months before he would really speak to me again). When my family came to the first show for which I designed the set, my freshman physics department advisor and his actress daughter came as well. He congratulated me in front of my dad for making a good choice for going into the Theatre. It still took me a while before I stopped feeling guilty.

Looking back on it, my dad, with all his stories of scratch-made machinery and creative thinking in engineering, was the greatest influence on my becoming an artist.

5. I'm probably smarter than I was when I was twenty. When I was twenty, I wasn't half as smart as I thought I was.

I had the pork chop