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Nearly everything in this piece about feature animation is wrong.

The post Bloomberg Is Concerned About The ‘Glut’ Of Animated Features appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the consequences of David Cameron’s Bloomberg speech, where he set out his plans for a referendum on British membership of the EU. I was rather dubious about such a vote even happening, and even more so about the quality of the debate that would ensue. As much as I was wrong about the former, the latter has been more than borne out by events so far.

The post Britain and the EU: going nowhere fast appeared first on OUPblog.

The new device will use Samsung's Galaxy Tab 4 hardware to better compete against the Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle.

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By Keith Gandal

Want a quick, but apparently reliable measure of how elitist you are?  Go see the 7-hour production of Gatz, in which all 47,000 words of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby are, in the course of the play, enunciated on stage.  (If you dare and can afford to.)  If you love every minute of it and find time flying by, you’re probably, well, an arts snob; if you find your reaction mixed, your mind drifting in and out, and your body just plain giving out, well, you’re likely more of a populist.

Consider the following small, statistically meaningless, but provocative sample of reviews you instantly encounter on the web: the New York Times, Bloomberg, and Theatremania all give the play rave reviews, while the New York Post and the New York Daily News both give it 2½ stars (out of 4 and 5 respectively).  Ben Brantley of the New York Times describes the play as “work of singular imagination and intelligence.” Jeremy Gerard of Bloomberg calls it “remarkable,” “as powerful a piece of stagecraft as you may ever see.”  David Finkle of Theatremania finds the play “mesmerizing” and declares, “the lengthy production goes by in what seems like a blink of an eye.”  Meanwhile, Elisabeth Vincentelli of the New York Post gives it a mixed review, asserting that the director “has come up with an inspired concept” and that Gatz is “great, but [it] also grates.” “There are the deadly boring stretches. Very long ones.”  She concludes: “It’s as maddeningly tedious as it is brilliant. By the end, my mind was as numb as my butt.”  And Joe Dziemianowicz of the New York Daily News recommends the play, but also calls it a “fanny-numbing readathon.”

In other words, this small sample of reviews breaks down across class lines.  Higher-brow papers or websites are raving, and the lower-brow papers have mixed feelings, including uncomfortable feelings in their behinds.

But is this breakdown really surprising?  A 7-hour production at a cost of $140 seems to demand of its audience members that they have a lot of time and money to spare.  This is at the Public by the way, which was presumably once more public than it is now.  In fact, one thing the play Gatz does quite effectively is to restore Fitzgerald’s now very accessible novel to the inaccessibility, along class lines, that it would have had back in the 1920s.

I want to make clear that I haven’t seen the play and, thus, that my perceptions of its length, its cost, and its reviews are not colored by my having sat through it.  I’m actually quite curious to see it – I’m teaching the novel this term at City College, and I’ve written a recent book that devotes the longest chapter to Fitzgerald’s novel.  Well-meaning colleagues and friends have even suggested I take my class to see the play, given that some reviewers are calling it a major theatrical event, but with regular tickets starting at $140, who c

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By Sharon Zukin

Shortly before 8 p.m. on a warm September evening the High Line, Manhattan’s newest public park and the only one located above street level, is crowded.  Men and women, old and young, tourists from overseas and longtime New Yorkers have climbed the winding metal stairs to the former railroad freight line, now a mile-long, landscaped walkway, just to view the sunset over the Hudson River.  There are more people up on the High Line than down on the streets.  They are taking photos, chatting quietly, lounging on wooden benches and strolling between shallow beds of native plants, creating a new passagiata for the post-industrial city.

There’s a lot to like about the High Line.  It’s a gritty fragment of New York’s industrial past that was saved from demolition by feisty activists and wholesome volunteers.  It makes us think about how the city’s architecture was once built for function rather than for style.  It reminds us of what the rough West Side of Manhattan was like before a derelict Nabisco plant, where assembly line bakers manufactured the first branded American cracker, was transformed into the high-class bread shops of Chelsea Market.  And it recalls the days, not so long ago, when the Meatpacking District was a no-go zone for animal carcasses, blood-stained butchers and several kinds of street workers who made their nocturnal rounds, a far cry from the attraction for club kids and fashionistas it has become.

The High Line offers New Yorkers a novel way to indulge in two things that have become a passion since 9/11: spending time out-of-doors and hanging out in public spaces.  Maybe it reflects a hunger for community or maybe it’s a behavioral response to global warming, but this desire to be together in public flouts the ever-present eye of the surveillance cameras and revels in the diversity of strangers.  It’s the same passion that drives apartment dwellers to socialize on their building’s roof and eat lunch in the new “traffic-calming” islands that have been carved out of Broadway’s tumult.

While the number of people who use the city’s public parks has grown enormously in recent years, the High Line attracts a disproportionately huge number of visitors, as many as half a million in the first two months after it opened in 2009.

But this is what it took to “save” it:  A mayor – Michael Bloomberg  – who understands the value of attractive green space to brand the city for tourists and residents alike.  A city planning commissioner, Amanda Burden, who shares the city-branding vision and speaks the language of historic preservation.  A longtime strategy of “adaptive re-use” to find new business uses for old historic structures and an emerging strategy of “self-financing” for public parks, both of which rely on private funding.  Most important, saving the High Line depended on powerful backers in the “creative class” of art, media and fashion who have their own interest in redeveloping the neighborhood—in this case, the power couple of Diane vo

By Edward E. Curtis IV

Like Gettysburg, the National Mall, and other historic sites, Ground Zero is a place whose symbolic importance extends well beyond local zoning disputes and real estate deals. The recent controversy over a proposal to build a Muslim community center two blocks away from the former World Trade Center shows it clearly: the geography of Lower Manhattan has become a sacred ground on which religious and political battles of national importance are being waged.

After New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission gave its approval for the demolition of the building now located on 45-47 Park Place in Lower Manhattan, the Rev. Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice announced that it is suing to stop the project.

Though Robertson’s organization is supposedly dedicated to the “ideal that religious freedom and freedom of speech are inalienable, God-given rights,” it is not primarily concerned with religious rights, at least not the rights of Muslims. It is instead part of a loose coalition of Americans who have identified the presence of Muslims, both at home and abroad, as a primary threat to both the United States and the Judeo-Christian heritage.

Their Muslim-bashing has deep roots in American history. Since the days of Cotton Mather, the New England Puritan minister, many Americans have associated Muslims with religious heresy. In the early 1800s, as the United States waged its first foreign war against the North African Barbary states, politicians, ministers, and authors regularly used themes of oriental despotism, harems, and Islamic violence in political campaigns, novels, and sermons.

Later, when the U.S. failed to quell Muslim revolts during the U.S. occupation of the Philippines in the early twentieth century, U.S. Army Gen. Leonard Wood called for the extermination of all Filipino Muslims since, according to him, they were irretrievably fanatical.

Islamophobia, an odd combination of racism, xenophobia, and religious bias, receded in importance during the 1900s as the specter of communism replaced it as a primary symbol of foreign danger. But with the fall of the Soviet Union, stereotypes about the Islamic “green menace” have once again become a central aspect of our culture.

This time Muslims are fighting back. Their civil rights and religious leaders are challenging this old American prejudice, in part through unprecedented interfaith community activism. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the leader of the group proposing the Muslim community center near Ground Zero, is one of them.

In response to questions about why he wants to build a community center so close to Ground Zero, Rauf has said that he wants the community center to be a source of healing, not division. Rauf also pledged that Park51, as the project is now called, will be a “home for all people who are yearning for understanding and healing, peace, collaboration, and interdependence.”

Rauf has powerful friends–or at least allies. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who choked up defending the right of Muslims to build the community center during a speech in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, argues that “we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves…if we said ‘no’ to a mosque in Lower Manhattan.”

Those who agree with Mayor Bloomberg represent the other major faction struggling for the American soul at Ground Zero. For them, the American soul is imperiled when its founding ideals are cast aside. In this case, the ideal is the first amendment guarantee of the free exercise of religion. “Of all our precious freedoms,” said Bloomberg,

Hello all. Welcome to another post! All is well in the studio, and I'm in the middle of a little breather. Two possible projects are being sorted out, and I am taking advantage of the downtime to really attack my sketchbook. I'm really trying to feel out why and how I draw while trying to let go of any idea I have of what is "good drawing." I'm also sorry to say that I am adopting a "my eyes only" approach to the sketchbook; the idea is that I will only focus on progress and experimentation instead of making pretty pictures for other folks to see. So there may or may not be additional sketchbook updates.

Although it was poorly made, listening to a documentary about Henry Darger (In the Realms of the Unreal) brought to light how a person can make art only for oneself. Until this time, I felt all artists crave attention, and I often joke that "all artists want to be famous" as we really just want people to view our work; we need to be validated! But there is certainly something to be said for a man who spent his whole life writing and illustrating a 15,000 page manuscript that no one saw until he was close to death. It makes me wonder where the assumption that I have to show my art comes from and that keeping it to myself feels selfish. But hey, keeping it to myself should keep it honest, right? I already find myself drawing differently and drawing subjects I wouldn't otherwise. So its off to a good start.

While exploring the sketchbook, I am also trying to really explore other aspects of drawing by looking at as many drawings as I can and trying to figure out WHY it appeals to me, reading and researching how drawing works from both an artist's and a viewer's perspective, and trying to discover how one moves from drawing to another technique such as painting; they really are two different beasts. Defining such things can be very frustrating and there are always artists and images that counteract any definition one hypothesizes. however, I feel doing so and asking myself such questions will make me more honest with myself and my work.

I am also trying to "step out of the box" within my regular assignments as a loose continuation of this exploration. A good example of this approach is a recent illo for John at Bloomberg Markets. I was very happy to be contacted by John from a referral by Kam, the Bloomberg designer I worked with last summer on a great assignment concerning Asian stock market regulators. John was looking for a metaphorical image to represent the mistreatment of retirement pensions by General Motors. We discussed concepts and such, and I provided the following sketches:

John wanted to see a sketch of a "pension" license plate that was beat up and rusty. The plate is a Michigan plate to allude to GM and "motor city."

In the other sketches, I wanted to explore the pensions as dwindling. This sketch of an emptying funds gauge fit the bill, but I think it was too static.

I enjoyed this sketch that worked in both my idea as well as John's license plate request. However, it was decided that the size of the image was going to be small, and certain elements of the sketch would be hard to read. The final art:

Initially, the image was "too clean," and John asked that the license plate be dirtier. Upon revision, we were both quite happy with the finished product.

This image was a little intimidating for me as I do not usually work with textures, and I do not usually aim for a more realistic representation. However, I was adamant that those two elements were key to this image being successful so I basically jumped in feet first to scanning textures and making brushes in photoshop. I had not worked in this manner for years! Replaying the creation of this art in my head, I have to say that exciting nervousness of not knowing where the image and just trusting yourself is going is a lot of fun; I hope to push it into more work.

Thanks for reading! Look for a new post next week!
Enjoy the Day,
Chris

Ammon Shea recently spent a year of his life reading the OED from start to finish. Over the next few months he will be posting weekly blogs about the insights, gems, and thoughts on language that came from this experience. His book, Reading the OED, will be published by Perigee in July. In the post below Ammon, an expert dictionary reader, ponders Mayor Bloomberg’s dislike of the word “maintain”.

Michael Bloomberg does not like to hear the word ‘Maintain’

Earlier today I read a short article in the New York Times about the unfortunate reaction that the mayor of New York City had when a reporter asked a question that began with the four words “Mayor, you maintain that…”

The offending reporter did not get much further in his query, as Michael Bloomberg (the offended mayor) cut him off. The Times quotes the mayor as saying “’Maintain’ is a word I don’t think is appropriate, sir. Next time you have a question, you want to insinuate that I lie, just talk to the press secretary.”

As a native New Yorker, I was delighted when I read this; Mr. Bloomberg does high dudgeon quite well, and it’s always a pleasure to see him vent some spleen at a press conference. Also, it was mystifying to me why he took such umbrage as the use of this word, and now I could occupy the rest of my evening trying to figure out if there are current pejorative meanings of ‘maintain’ of which I am unaware, or if Bloomberg is touched in the head.

Slightly later in the exchange between mayor and reporter, Bloomberg is quoted thusly: “’Maintain’ is a word that has an implication-“, but as he does not finish this sentence it is not clear what this implication is. So I began trolling through dictionaries, to see if I could discover just what made him so testy.

None of the dictionaries that I looked in had any current meanings for ‘maintain’ that seemed to be negative, nor did any describe it as having an implication of any kind. The most recent use of ‘maintain’ used in a negative fashion that I saw was in the OED, sense 1b. (‘With infinitive: to assist, encourage, incite (a person) to do something, esp. something evil; to support or uphold (a person) in doing it’), and the most recent citation that is listed for this is from 1626, so I do not think that this is what twisted the mayor’s knickers.

Sometimes when a word or a meaning is missing from the dictionary it is due to the fact that its usage is too recent to have been included. But I do not think that is the case with ‘maintain’, especially as this particular entry was revised in March of 2008, which in lexicography is about as fresh as it gets.

I suppose that there is always the chance that the reporter enunciated the word in a way that gave it added meaning; perhaps on the second syllable there was that slight elongation and raised tone that can add a layer of implication to the most innocent of words.

Maybe there is a negative connotation to the word ‘maintain’; one of which I am unaware, and the dictionaries do not record. Maybe it’s too slight a shade of innuendo for them to record as a definition.

Or it could also simply be that Mayor Bloomberg does not like to hear the word ‘maintain’, and chose to interrupt this reporter as a way of expressing his displeasure. I think that’s perfectly acceptable – I don’t like it when I hear people use the word ‘defenestrate’. And if I were the mayor of New York I would immediately cut off any reporter that I heard using that word.

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Nobody actually visits blogs anymore. We read them on RSS Readers instead. 

On a panel discussion at Hudson Valley Writers' Center this weekend, a couple different people asked me about RSS feeds and blog subscriptions.

Just in case you need it, I'm going to give you an introduction to RSS feeds and subscription services on this blog.

If you click the orange RSS button on the right hand side of the page (or click this Subscribe link right now), then you read my blog using Google Reader or other blog aggregator. As my network explains: "By clicking on this button (), you will be subscribing to this content for free ... An aggregator is some service ... that receives the content you have requested and displays it in some personalized format. So each time a new entry is published, a copy of that article will be sent automatically, at no cost, to the aggregator that you have chosen. This free subscription is a result of RSS, which stands fro Really Simply Syndication."

If that sounds too complicated, look in the upper right hand corner of this blog, there is a very special option, "Enter e-mail below to subscribe." Sign up today and receive two free writing posts a day, delivered personally by a computer program from me to you. No spam, no distractions, just posts.

Don't waste anymore time clicking on my site. Don't waste anymore time clicking on anybody's blog. Subscribe and let the blog send you posts instead. If your personal blog lacks any of these features, you need to add them--you could be missing out on readers.