Cartoons: should I wear a flak jacket tonight?

In our gun-laden American society, it's becoming a fashion must to wear a flak jacket when going to a movie. Does this seem right to you? According to a recent poll, published by PollingReport, Americans are divided about 50-50 on gun control, but 92% support requiring background checks. There are many topics/questions included in this poll; it's well worth taking a look.

Meanwhile, here's how some cartoonists view the recent _____[enter location] movie theater shooting.

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Walt Handelsman, The Week

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Chan Lowe, The Week

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Mike Keefe, The Week

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Randall Enos, The Week

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-- Marge

DIY: the Fool emerges--again

00 the Fool, Rider-Waite Tarot Deck, Wikipedia

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The image of the Fool stepping off a cliff got stuck in my mind again today. In an effort to find out what was brewing there under the surface, I first looked at the fool archetype, then archetypes in general, then Jung's archetypes, specifically. There's a lot of substance in Jung's ideas about archetypes, but little about what they mean to an individual. Putting one's self into a labelled box is somewhat self-defeating.

After accumulating all these lovely references, I began looking for something more associated with life meaning. And found Mark Manson's 7 Strange questions that help you find your life purpose. His strange and oddly beautiful questions are quoted below.

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Jan Matejko, Stańczyk(Jester), Wikipedia

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First, there's the Fool. Wikipedia has an article about the wise fool. Fallen Angel at StOttilien has an article titled Crazy Wisdom – the Archetype of the Fool, the Clown, the Jester and the Trickster. Myths-Dreams-Symbols describes Jung's Trickster Archetype thus

The trickster is a very important archetype in the history of man. He is a god, yet he is not. He is the wise-fool. It is he, through his creations that destroy, points out the flaws in carefully constructed societies of man. He rebels against authority, pokes fun at the overly serious, creates convaluted [sic] schemes - that may or may not work - plays with the Laws of the Universe and is sometimes his own worst enemy. He exists to question, to cause us to question & not accept things blindly. He appears when a way of thinking becomes outmoded needs to be torn down built anew. He is the Destroyer of Worlds at the same time the savior of us all.

Carl Jung "understood archetypes as universal, archaic patterns and images that derive from the collective unconscious and are the psychic counterpart of instinct (Wikipedia)." One interpreter of Jung's ideas on archetypes is Carl Golden at SoulCraft. An interesting view of archetypes is presented in 12 Best Character Archetypes For Film: Part 1.

You can find a varied list of articles on the Finding Meaning page at Huffington Post.

But for real self-help take a look at these 7 strange questions posed by Mark Manson.

1. What’s your favorite flavor of shit sandwich and does it come with an olive?
2. What is true about you today that would make your 8-year-old self cry?
3. What makes you forget to eat and poop?
4. How can you better embarrass yourself?
5. How are you going to save the world?
6. Gun to your head, if you had to leave the house all day, every day, where would you go and what would you do?
7. If you knew you were going to die one year from today, what would you do and how would you want to be remembered?

-- Marge

Are we hard-coded to be creative?

Adaptation of the monolith image, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alphacoders

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A number of anthropologists, but not all, postulate that something occurred 50,000 years ago that caused the appearance of modern human behavior. While this theory may be viewed as a line in the sand soon to be erased by the weight of incoming evidence, it is intriguing to envision man being touched by a higher intelligence, or a sudden convergence, or the monolith TMA-1 (official site at Warner Brothers).

Several articles speak of 50,000 years ago as a turning point for mankind, such as Neanderthals and Humans First Mated 50,000 Years Ago, DNA Reveals. Author Hillary Mayell in When Did "Modern" Behavior Emerge in Humans? quotes paleoanthropologist Richard Klein in this snippet:

No one, it seems, thinks the Neandertals, our closest relatives, were modern. Neandertals evolved in Europe, emerging in full-blown form by 130,000 years ago. By 80,000 years ago populations stretched from Spain to western Asia. However, "fossils show that the African contemporaries of the Neandertals between 130,000 and 50,000 years ago were more modern in anatomy," said Klein.

Note that the experts define a difference between anatomy and behavior. So what is "modern human behavior?" Looking at the Wikipedia article linked above, we can find

Modern human behaviors characteristic of recent humans includes a language, the capacity for abstract thought and the use of symbolism to express cultural creativity. There are two opposing hypotheses regarding the origins of modern behavior. Some scholars argue that humans achieved anatomical modernity first, around 200,000 years ago. Later, around 50,000 years ago, humans then adopted modern behaviors. This hypothesis is based on the record of fossils and biogenic substances from periods before 50,000 years ago and the human artifacts found after 50,000 years ago. Correspondingly, as stated by Paul Mellars, the view distinguishes anatomically modern humans from behaviorally modern humans. [highlights added]

Wikpedia article Behavioral modernity gives a nice list:

burial
fishing
figurative art (cave paintings, petroglyphs, figurines)
systematic use of pigment (such as ochre) and jewelry for decoration or self-ornamentation
Using bone material for tools
Transport of resources long distances
Blade technology
Diversity, standardization, and regionally distinct artifacts
Hearths
Composite tools

This article also gives an interesting comparison between inventing and adopting:

There is also an important distinction to be made between when humans developed the ability to invent, in contrast to developing the ability to adopt, modern human behavior. As a modern analogy, there is no shortage of musicians in the world trying to compose new and original music, but only a handful every year that successfully manage to compose lasting world wide hit songs; yet essentially all of the other aspiring composer musicians can almost trivially learn to play those hit songs once they've heard them (with analogous undertakings in literature, art, science and technology etc.). A dramatic and sudden increase in complexity of human behavior is thus fully plausible even if significantly less than 1% of humanity developed the genetic ability to "invent", provided that the remaining 99% had no significant problems with "adopting" those inventions. There is potentially an evolutionary abyss between inventing and adopting; for instance, Homo erectus and Homo ergaster produced with little advancement essentially the same sharpened stone tools for over a million years, but there is no scientific evidence at hand that could prove that they were incapable of producing composite stone tools, such as spears, if shown how to do so.

Despite the many challenges to survival (H.G.Wells, A Plain History of Life and Mankind,1920), to date we have survived and flourished.

-- Marge

Cartoons: to be decided

Pretty much all of the cartoons available today are about Trump and Hillary. Here's a sampling.

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Drew Sheneman, The Week

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Walt Handelsman, The Week

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John Cole, The Week

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-- Marge

Question: what is the difference between art and craft?

Concept Art, Guild Wars 2

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This may seem to be a trivial question to those of you who are marginally interested in art; but a number of philosophers have pondered it. And with video games and MMOs becoming more visually sophisticated, their environs may be added to the mix. Michelle Gaugy--art gallery owner, author, art consultant--says on Quora:

 I recall that 50 years ago, this was a very clearly defined distinction. Craft was defined as objects that had function, and art was aesthetic objects without function. Period.  But since that time, the American Craft movement has advanced dramatically, and craftspeople have been creating many one-off objects that are clearly aesthetic and clearly evoke emotional responses from people in a huge variety of media.

Note that Michelle mentions uniqueness ("one-off objects") and a piece's ability to "evoke emotional responses. There's a good article on Art and Emotion at Wikipedia.

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Vincent Van Gogh, The Starry Night, Fine Art America

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Philosopher Dennis Dutton addresses the question directly in The Difference Between Art and Craft on his site. There are links to some interesting pieces on the front page, including an article titled Can video games be art? In his article comparing art to craft, Dutton refers to another philosopher, R.G. Collingwood. Stanford Encyclopedia has an extended entry on Collingwood's Aesthetics that is well worth reading.

Tate Gallery hosts the discussion Tate Debate: When is a craft an art?

Of all the information I browsed, this from a site about ancient Egypt (Pharaonic Egypt) seemed to me most interesting. While we talk about uniqueness and evoking emotion, absolute skill may set a person's work apart as well.

Not always in human history was a distinction made between art and craft or were artists considered a breed apart, but Egyptian artisans - like expert workers anywhere and anytime - were certainly aware of their capabilities and their own worth and proud of it.

Chief of the artisans, the draftsman Irtysen says:
I know the secrets of the hieroglyphs, the way to put together feast offerings. All magic I have prepared . Nothing goes by me unnoticed. Because I am an artisan excellent at my craft, who has become the foremost at what he has learned. I know the ratios of fluids, weigh the amount, reckon, remove, insert the tenon into the mortise so every part will be in its place.
I know how to render the posture of a man's statue, the step of a woman's statue, the wing strength of a dozen birds, the bearing of him who strikes a prisoner, the look an eye casts on someone else and also make fearful the face of the sacrificial victim, the arm of him who hits the hippopotamus, the stance of the runner.
I know how to make pigments and incrustations without letting the fire burn them, with the water being able to wash them away.
None will know this but me and my oldest son. The God has ordained that he shall practice because it is into this he has been initiated.
I have seen with mine eyes what has left his hands when he directed the work, in all precious and exalted stones, from silver and gold to ivory and ebony.

A funerary offering of a thousand loaves of bread, beer, fowl, oxen, clothing, all the good and pure things for the blessed Irtysen, true of voice, brought into the world by Idet, true of voice.

--Craftsmen and artists

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NC Wyeth,, Ore Wagon, Fine Art America-Granger

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-- Marge

Science: Gargantua in Interstellar

Gargantua, the black hole, io9

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Interstellar, the film, captured the imagination of many viewers, myself included. One of the main plot elements is Gargantua, a black hole. Since none of us has seen a black hole up close (it's not like you can go for a drive and snap a photo of one), we're at the mercy of illustrators to visualize them for us.

According to io9, Interstellar's director, Christopher Nolan, and science adviser, Kip Thorne, worked closely to depict a black hole as accurately as possible, considering the medium and the audience. The image above is one result of their collaboration. The article at io9, The Truth Behind Interstellar's "Scientifically Accurate" Black Hole, is an interesting read about this topic. Some of the comments are a hoot. Thorne, a Caltech physicist, has written a book on The Science of Interstellar; it's available at Amazon.

There's an infographic on Interstellar at Science.com.

If you had some intellectual trouble with the depiction of space-time at the end, so did I. Here's a timeline chart that might help. To me and Arthur Stanley Eddington time is an arrow, pointing only one way. According to Einstein, relativistic time dilation is allowed.

-- Marge

Cartoons: a fine line

Today's cartoons look at the Iran nuclear deal, the Pluto flyby, U.S. cybersecurity, Operation Jade Helm 15, and Jeb vs. Trump.

For some opinions voiced by regular folks on the Iran nuclear deal, check out these letters to the editor at the New York Times. As for Republicans, their opinions don't change.

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Pat Bagley, The Week

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NASA does some fine work.

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Pat Bagley, The Week

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U.S. cybersecurity may take another hit, this time by some regulations proposed by the Commerce Department. A Coalition for Responsible Cybersecurity has been formed to prevent it. Time for us to speak out--again.

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Steve Breen, The Week

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Jade Helm 15 has generated some wild conspiracy theories. And, BTW, here are some of the U.S. military's opinions about Obama, as expressed by ArmyTimes.

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Steve Sack, The Week

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Here's a little exploration of why the Jeb isn't saying more about Trump's trumped-up charges.

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David Horsey, The Week

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-- Marge

DIY: self-publishing digitally

GraphicNovel, Comicsbeat

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For those who work in digital media--writers, photographers, video producters, musicians, voice actors, artists, animators, musicians, and any combination of these--this is a survey of options available for digital self-publishing. TopTenReviews offers extensive information about the Best Online Book Publishing Companies. Possibly most useful about this TopTenReviews page is the breakdown of factors involved in self-publishing.

But self-publishing isn't limited to books; there are graphic novels, photographic anthologies, videos, music, and games to consider. Since games require extensive user interaction, they're a topic for another day.

Several online portals offer exciting opportunities. Amazon's CreateSpace (free to signup) can be used to publish books, music, and films. KDP, Amazon's Kindle portal, has categories for book genres, comics, and graphic novels. Selling on Amazon is featured.

Lulu offers full services, including assigning an ISBN number free, Print on Demand (POD), reviewing and marketing. Careful with the ISBN number, though. Unless you specifically buy it yourself, Lulu owns it. Here's Lulu's FAQ on the topic.

With Draft2Digital you self through the website. Formatting and distribution are free; Draft2Digital takes 10% of the retail price when you sell. It looks like their primary focus is books with manuscripts submitted in .doc, .docx, and .rtf formats. Since Draft2Digital takes care of the distribution, they will format your document to fit the buyer/seller's requirements.

File formats are where things get sticky. Each bookseller has different file format requirements. Best to check each and print out their requirements pages. Google Play Books Partner Center is where you can get started for selling through Google. According to Wikipedia,

... As of now, Google accepts EPUB versions 2.0.1 and 3.0. Both text and image-based PDFs are accepted when the EPUB format is not available, with the preference being for PDFs with a text layer.

For reading on e-readers or third-party apps, ebooks can be downloaded in the EPUB ("flowing text") or PDF ("scanned pages") formats. The advantage of EPUB has over PDF is that it allows the book's text to adjust or 'reflow' automatically to different screen sizes. Books of which only a PDF version is available can be difficult to read on smaller screens.

Kindle file formats are proprietary, so it's best to sell through KDP. File formats accepted are listed on the types of formats page.

Publishing to Apple and selling on the iBooks store requires an iTunes account. Here's a FAQ for Authors & Book Publishers.

My experience with reading and viewing purchased media (and I'll admit my experience is limited) is that there's a big difference between owning the actual device and using a reader app. Pick you market carefully and test your product once it's available. A panel in a graphic novel that's rendered too small to be readable and with no option for enlarging it simply doesn't work.


-- Marge

Internet down here

Sent from my phone. :/

Cartoons: so many options, some down the drain

Greece's economic crisis is big news with editorial cartoonists now, followed by Trump's racist comments, and Hillary's manipulations of the truth, whatever it is. Here are the editorial pieces that caught my attention.

Glitch Freezes NYSE Trading for Hours (Wall Street Journal).

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Nate Beeler, The Week

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Confederate flag comes down on South Carolina’s statehouse grounds (The Washington Post).

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Jack Ohman, The Week

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Greek Economy Under Siege, With Fears That the Worst Is Coming (The New York Times). The Huffington Post echoes other reports on ...The Terrible State Of Greece's Austerity Economy...

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Steve Sack, The Week

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Meanwhile, GOP candidate Chris Christie Bypassed Traffic In New Hampshire With Sirens: 'Bridgegate' Gov Doesn't Get Stuck In Traffic Jams (International Business Times).

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Gary Varvel, The Week

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-- Marge

DIY: the frog dies

Quoting Teddy Wayne quoting E.B. White,

Analyzing humor, as E.B. White famously said, is like dissecting a frog; few people are interested and the frog dies of it. Nonetheless, writing humor is a highly logical exercise — fit idea X into form Y for humorous result Z — and can therefore be broken down in ways that more slippery kinds of prose tend to resist. (Dissecting a Frog: How to Write a Humor Piece)

Teddy could have used some quote marks and I could have written a sentence complete with subject and verb. Heads up, Grammar Nazis. If correcting people's grammar mistakes is your thing, you may enjoy contributing to Grammar Guy.

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Grammar Guy, memegenerator.net

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It's good to laugh or even to chuckle a little, even though writing humor is not something that comes naturally to many of us. But we writers can try, even practice. Remember to consider your audience. If the supervisor you're writing that email to doesn't expect humor from you, it may be bye-bye job. Here are two more articles about writing humor: Seven Steps to Better Writing Humor and Humor Writing for People Who Aren’t Funny.

Jeff Wysaski at Pleated-Jeans has a page of Images That Prove Grammar and Punctuation Are Important. I like this one.

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Grammar Meme, Pleated-Jeans

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--Marge

Fluid stone

It's time for me to take a break, so here is some lovely artwork to feast your eyes on.

Adam Schallau: The 2nd Wave of Coyote Buttes North. Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, Arizona

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Adam Schallau, Waves of Stone

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Jody Skowronek: Fluid Stone, 2012

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Jody Skowronek, Fluid Stone, 2012

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Matthew Vogt: Paria River, Utah, 2013

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Matthew Vogt, Paria River, 2013

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Matthew Simmonds: Chapter House

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Matthew Simmonds, Sculptures in Marble and Stone

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Stein A, Rypdal, Hiking The Wave

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Stein A, Rypdal, Hiking The Wave, rypdal.net

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-- Marge

Cartoons: eyes on the Court

Today just standing back and letting the cartoons speak for themselves...

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Pat Bagley, The Week

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Scott Stantis, The Week

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Nate Beeler, The Week

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Drew Sheneman, The Week

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Steve Sack, The Week

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Enjoy the 4th. If sunshine's available, be sure to get some.

-- Marge

DIY: ransomware and how to protect yourself

FBI Ransomware, Trend Micro

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Today my email had a surprise message. Trend Micro, my current antivirus, informed me that I should get an anti-ransomware tool. I thought "Great, another way to separate me from my money." But I still decided to check into it.

Turns out there is ransomware (also a way to separate you from your money) and it's use is growing. Ransomware typically

propagates as a trojan like a conventional computer worm, entering a system through, for example, a downloaded file or a vulnerability in a network service. The program will then run a payload: such as one that will begin to encrypt personal files on the hard drive. More sophisticated ransomware may hybrid-encrypt the victim's plaintext with a random symmetric key and a fixed public key. The malware author is the only party that knows the needed private decryption key. Some ransomware payloads do not use encryption. In these cases, the payload is simply an application designed to restrict interaction with the system, typically by setting the Windows Shell to itself, or even modifying the master boot record and/or partition table (which prevents the operating system from booting at all until it is repaired).(Wikipedia)

One prominent flavor is Cryptolocker which worked differently but still requires payment, usually via Bitcoin or a pre-paid cash voucer and within 3 days. Wikipedia notes that "It was estimated that at least US$3 million was extorted with the malware before the shutdown" in late 2014. More recent versions are CryptoLocker.F, TorrentLocker, and Cryptowall.

More information can be found at Microsoft's Malware Protection Center and Trend Micro's Security News. The site We Live Security gives some very good tips in 11 things you can do to protect against ransomware, including Cryptolocker.

Trend Micro offers a free anti-ransomeware tool for download and instructions for using the tool. And here's more information on how to protect yourself.

About email safety. Never click on a link or attachment unless you're sure who sent it. Look at the sender's address--if it's you (a spoofed address) or someone you've never heard of delete it. If the email looks like it's from your bank or credit card company, but the sender's address doesn't look right, go to company's site (bank or credit card) and look for information on what to do about phishing. Often you will find an email address for forwarding the email to. Let the company deal with the nasty, fraudulent thing. Then be sure to delete the original message.

Never, never, never just click on an attachment that has an *.exe file extension or one that has *.doc or *docx. Detach the document and virus check it before opening. Again, if the sender is unknown, just delete the email first. The only documents I'll open without checking are *.pdf and from a known sender.

On dealing with spam, forget about unsubscribing--you're just letting the spammer know that your email address is live. You can set up filters to keep the spam out. Although I don't filter (except porn and sex-related stuff) because it's fascinating to watch what the most recent hot topics are. It's easy enough to delete the spam after you've reviewed the subject lines.

While I was checking on ransomware, I came across this article at Tom's Hardware (a very useful site)--Report: Security Of U.S. Agencies In Dire State, Employee Logins Widely Leaked.

-- Marge