Cartoons: it doesn't take long

Today's collection of cartoons talks about insidious threats that have or had a potential for proliferation.

Measles.

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Pat Bagley, The Week

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Drug-toting drones.

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Milt Priggee, The Week

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The wealth of the 1%.

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Steve Sack, The Week

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Red-light cameras. (These may be going away due to popular demand.)

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Scott Stantis, The Week

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-- Marge

DIY: Valentine's Day impressions

A friend of mine uses scrapbooking tools and materials to produce Christmas and birthday cards that are real keepers.  So why not one or two for Valentine's Day? 

Scrapbooking was originally only practiced for preserving family history and memorable moments, but has expanded since about 2001 into an industry that supports making cards, invitations, and artwork-- including steampunk and digital. A nice piece of digital scrapbooking was found at ArtFire.

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"Tiny Moments #4," Chili Designz

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There are many websites offering supplies, such as paper, cardstock, stamps, inks, and pretty little doodads, to add to your design. Some are Papersource (mostly offers kits), Amazon (search on 'scrapbooking'), and Michaels. 

You can find a number of design ideas and kits for Valentine's Day at Scrapbook. Here's a sample.

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Sanna Lippert, "Live in the Moment," Scrapbook

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PaperSource has a selection of kits, crafts, stamps, stickers, and card ideas. There is a selection of steampunk stamps available at Pinkflamingo61 on ArtFire.

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 Steampunk wood mounted rubber stamp, pinkflamingo61

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Now, who to send one to?

-- Marge

Art: some 2D animation for inspiration

Asuka Langley Soryu, sampaikini

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There are so many ways to approach animation (a discipline/art form I'm trying to learn), that I find myself turning to works that I like for inspiration. In animation there's not only the artwork, but also storyline, voice, music, camera angles, and--maybe most important--motion and timing.

This one's my odds-on favorite. I love the sketchy, yet fluid style, transitions, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't effects and the song is lovely, too.

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This one has a similar story, but very different style. Again I'm attracted to the wispy effects.

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The backgrounds are really, really good in this film. And the story is fun--it reminds me of questing in an MMORPG.

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This last film is a collection of scenes from a Japanese animated television series called "Neon Genesis Evangelion." In most of the animé/manga films I've seen the artwork is outstanding. If you'd like to get an idea of how dedicated its fans can be, here's a page listing the author's top ten favorite characters. The page will also give you an idea of the wide range in artistic styles. Keep in mind that some animé can be pretty riské by America's prudish standards.

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To play these videos in sequence the playlist is available on YouTube.

-- Marge

Cartoons: well, don't that beat all.

My regard for America and thinking that it's the best country in the world has taken a pretty serious beating in the last five, ten years. And things just seem to get worse.

The aptly-named Patriots cheat at football.

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Rick McKee, The Week

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The Republicans spent millions of dollars to take control Congress and they can't find a presidential candidate who has national appeal.

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Bill Schorr, The Week

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The rich just keep getting richer, and have the Supreme Court's sanction (see Citizen's United) to buy anything American they want.

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Chan Lowe, The Week

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And the British in the form of BP (British Petroleum) are still treating us like the Colonies.

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Walt Handelsman, The Week

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Sorry for the dark, sort of snarky, viewpoint--today's just a don't-that-beat-all day. Maybe it's time to stop watching the news again.

-- Marge

DIY: what do you want your avatar to say

And where can you find one?

While psychologists are trying to figure out what your avatar says about you, I say what do you want your avatar (aka icon) to say. Do you want an image that approximates what you look like? Or one that makes a statement about your interests, philosophy, or general view of the world. Perhaps one with shock value will do nicely. You could decide on an animated one, although they can be quite annoying to some.

Before continuing further, let me say that I'm not talking about the kind of avatar that you drive in a virtual world or MMORPG. What I am talking about today is the icon or small picture that identifies you on a social site or forum.

Here are some examples of avatars seen on social media and found through Google's Image search ("avatars").

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left to right: four icons from findicons, oldtimersguild (Mr.Nubba),
biodegradablegeek, and NinaPaley 

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An article at Mashable--Avatars Everywhere--lists 27 sources for avatars. The list includes virtual worlds like Second Life and IMVU, which seem to me like a lot more work than necessary. Digibody's Caricature Maker is one I tried. See below.

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avatar made at Digibody's Caricature Maker

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There are a number of sites where you can create an avatar online using an uploaded photo. Picasion is one. It's pretty simple: you upload a photo, crop it, then save it to your computer. What I like being able to instantly see what the cropped photo will contain and select the size of the finished product. This site also offers you the opportunity to animate your photos.

Sizes of avatars differ from site to site--some want none larger that 100px, some want none smaller that 200px. What to do? One of my favorite apps for browsing images and doing some simple editing is FastStone Image Viewer. It's free for personal and educational use, and costs $34.95 for a lifetime, commercial license. This application will resize, change the resolution, and convert an image to a different file format.

A note to the wise: while I was looking at a variety of avatar generators, some wanted me to download an application. Not a good idea unless you know the site.

-- Marge

Martin Luther King: visions of the man

It being Martin Luther King Day, a tribute to the man is in order. Many people have idolized him with their artwork, relatively few really knew him. In the images below I'm attempting to capture moments in his life rendered by artists he or his memory touched.

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cxard, Martin Luther King Jr., DeviantART

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Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, National Park Service

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Here is King when he gave his "I have a dream" speech in August, 1963. To me he looks lonely--a solitary man standing exposed above the crowd.

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Martin Luther King, Jr., I have a dream speech, MSNBC

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Shepard Fairey, Martin Luther King 2004, ObeyGiant

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The Graphic Design & Publishing Center site features a collection of Martin Luther King Jr. artwork you may enjoy.

-- Marge

Cartoons: the race is on

Here are today's cartoons, freshly picked for humor and ironic twist.

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David Fitzsimmons, The Week

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Bob Gorrell, The Week

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Tom Toles, The Week

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Jack Ohman, The Week

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-- Marge

Cartoons: One last word about Charlie Hebdo

Ok, two last words.

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Steve Sack, The Week

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Cameron Cardow, The Week

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-- Marge

Cartoons and cartoonists up in arms...

...and armed with pens.

Following this second attack at the Charlie Hebdo offices, many editorial cartoonists have paid respects to the magazine and freedom of speech, freedom of expression. You can see some of their cartoons on the topic at The Week. In the cartoon below David Fitzsimmons also gives a nod to Ann Telnaes.

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David Fitzsimmons, The Week

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Ann Telnaes is a well-respected cartoonist. Her response to the Hebdo attack is this.

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Ann Telnaes

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In the first attack on Hebdo in November, 2011, the offices were fire-bombed. This was their response to that attack. The text translates to 'Love: stronger than hate'.

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November 8, 2011, issue, Charlie Hebdo

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An article in The Globe and Mail asks What is Charlie Hebdo and why was it a target? and quotes former editor Stéphane Charbonnier:

No one is forced to read us. Charlie Hebdo is sold in stores, we do not post our content on our website. To read us is a voluntary act. We are not imposing it on anyone...

-- Marge

DIY: dodging the TL;DR response

CSG, Writing:the Revision Process (half-tone), SecondaryWriting

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In case you don't know, as I didn't, what 'TL;DR' means, it's 'too long; didn't read'.

There may be an information explosion going on, but much of the information just flows by one's comprehension because it's just not readable.  It's a good idea to approach the topic being presented with clarity and tighten up the language.

The idea is to be terse, but not abrupt. You don't want this said about your latest post to your favorite here's-what-I-have-to-say forum:

"omg you postwench. i can only say one thing in response - tl;dr"

"tl;dr...why dont you give up on your unabridged edition of War and Peace or at least stop posting it here?"

--DisgruntledJoe, Urban Dictionary

Revision is one of the keys to clarity. First step is to get the general idea down, then review it for meaning, then review it again for meaning, all the while condensing the wording when you can. By now the piece's purpose should be clearer and the message more focused. Review it for grammar, then review it for spelling, and, finally, review it once again for clarity and tightness. When the piece begins to look worn from polishing, it's ready to release it to the world. Or toss it--your call.

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Ernest Hemingway, copyblogger

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Writer Ernest Hemingway is known for being terse. Here are his top 4 rules for writing and a fifth thrown in by Brian Clark, author of  "Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips for Writing Well."

1. Use short sentences.

2. Use short first paragraphs.

3. Use vigorous English.

4. Be positive, not negative.

Most important writing tip: 

“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit,” Hemingway confided to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934. “I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”

There's an app, available on Google Play, called Hemingway that analyzes text and "makes your writing bold and clear" (Hemingway Takes the Hemingway Test). However, as it's noted in the test, you can lose clarity, and meaning, by being too terse.

As in all things, the middle way is best.

-- Marge

The czar's new clothes

TomToles, The Week

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This insightful cartoon relating Putin's current standing in world news to Hans Christian Anderson's tale, "The Emporer's New Clothes," suggested to me an opportunity to delve into a number of topics related to Putin and his ambitions, the ambitions of the Russian People, and how children's tales, aka fairy tales, can give us insight into real-world matters.

First, the children's tale. A comment on Maria Tatar's writings in Wikipedia notes:

...that "The Emperor's New Clothes" is one of Andersen's best known tales and one that has acquired an iconic status globally as it migrates across various cultures reshaping itself with each retelling in the manner of oral folktales. Scholars have noted that the phrase 'Emperor's new clothes' has become a standard metaphor for anything that smacks of pretentiousness, pomposity, social hypocrisy, collective denial, or hollow ostentatiousness. Historically, the tale established Andersen's reputation as a children's author whose stories actually imparted lessons of value for his juvenile audience, and "romanticized" children by "investing them with the courage to challenge authority and to speak truth to power." With each successive description of the swindlers' wonderful cloth, it becomes more substantial, more palpable, and a thing of imaginative beauty for the reader even though it has no material existence. Its beauty however is obscured at the end of the tale with the obligatory moral message for children. Tatar is left wondering if the real value of the tale is the creation of the wonderful fabric in the reader's imagination or the tale's closing message of speaking truth no matter how humiliating to the recipient.

Condensing Russian history to the major transfers of power within its borders, the Russian people went from being serfs under the czars, to fodder under Stalin, to being spied-on and imprisoned under the Communist regime, then to suddenly being free but nearly destitute when the Berlin Wall fell. Note: this is my simplistic view of Russian History; here's a more detailed timeline.

Skip to the present. Stepping in after Yeltsin's failed attempts at democracy, Putin has progressively edged toward the policies of the totalitarian Soviet Union but offers the Russian people as sense of the pride once felt for Mother Russia and momentary prosperity. Joshua Kucera, a freelance reporter specializing in the former Soviet Union, writes in his article "Decoding Vladimir Putin's Plan:"

Putin for years has advocated for a “multipolar” world order in which the current dominance of the U.S. is replaced by a more equitable balance of power. And many of Russia’s dramatic moves over the past year – the annexation of Crimea and support for rebels in eastern Ukraine, an enthusiastic embrace of China and increasingly anti-Western rhetoric from Putin – could be interpreted as moving toward a multipolar world.

However, with the Russian economy imploding the question for the Russian people becomes world power or survival. And world power becomes the Czar's new clothes.

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The Emperor’s New Clothes, illustration by Cyril Bouda (1956), Smeddum

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-- Marge

Cartoons: the baby in the room

It's a new year with new opportunities to address old problems. What will we do?

I don't think talking about it on Facebook will help, but I could be wrong.

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David Fitzsimmons, The Week

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Putin's bluster is wearing thin with the collapse of the ruble and the new year isn't opening well for him.

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John Deering, The Week

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Meanwhile, just about everyone is blaming Obama.

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Bill Day, The Week

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Lower prices at the gas pump doesn't necessarily mean lower prices at the ticket counter.

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Chan Lowe, The Week

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One plastic bottle or little green army man overboard doesn't matter, does it?

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Jack Ohman, The Week

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-- Marge

DIY: learning how you learn

Slo-Mo Pro Flo, lart-physics

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A tech/salesperson the other day told me his brand was better because of training. Instantly images of sitting in training class, learning how an IP address is constructed and then sitting at my desk and trying to troubleshoot routing for a webpage in the cluster came to mind. In other words training isn't always what it's cracked up to be. On the other hand, you want the tech to know what will break the system before he/she breaks it.

Add to that the fact that everyone learns differently. I tend to break things, then learn by fixing them--not always, but often enough for it to be a pattern. So I avoid situations that are critical. There are a number of sites that talk about the three main learning styles--hearing, seeing, and doing. "How do you learn?" is a nice presentation of these styles.

Learning via the web is just plain wonderful, especially with the amount of information available via YouTube, Wikipedia, online magazines, and other sources (note: be sure to verify that the information there is reliable by cross-checking facts and opinions). But this falls into the 'seeing' category. To really learn a thing you have to do it.

For example, if you want to learn more about electricity, try this to get started:

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If the project above is too simple, try electronics using LEDs.

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And when your latest project fails, remember this.

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-- Marge

When art lost its way

Marcel Duchamp, "Fountain" (1917), Tate

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The art movement called Dada produced some works that challenge the viewer's sensibilities, but for good reason.

Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I. For many participants, the movement was a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests, which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war, and against the cultural and intellectual conformity—in art and more broadly in society—that corresponded to the war. 

Many Dadaists believed that the 'reason' and 'logic' of bourgeois capitalist society had led people into war. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and embrace chaos and irrationality. For example, George Grosz later recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest "against this world of mutual destruction." 

According to Hans Richter Dada was not art: it was "anti-art." Dada represented the opposite of everything which art stood for. Where art was concerned with traditional aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend. (Wikipedia)

The aftermath of World War I presented

drastic political, cultural, and social change across Europe, Asia, Africa, and even in areas outside those that were directly involved. Four empires collapsed due to the war, old countries were abolished, new ones were formed, boundaries were redrawn, international organizations were established, and many new and old ideologies took a firm hold in people's minds.

Years later, Dada artists described the movement

as "a phenomenon bursting forth in the midst of the postwar economic and moral crisis, a savior, a monster, which would lay waste to everything in its path... [It was] a systematic work of destruction and demoralization... In the end it became nothing but an act of sacrilege." (Wikipedia)

Perhaps the best known artists active in the Dada movement are Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst. Dadaism resolved into surrealism, which aimed to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality (André Breton)." Often works produced by Dada artists are assigned to surrealism.

More information about Europe after WWI can be found at HowStuffWorks, the history section. And, as a challenge to the usual way of looking at history, here's an article on the cycles of the slower-moving planets, titles "History and the cycles of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto." (Hint: search the page on 'WW1' and '1917'.)

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Max Ernst, "The Elephant Celebes" (1921), Wikipedia

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-- Marge

Cartoons: a new hero for America

Pleasant as Christmas was, it's over and the world moves on. At least the Middle East was/is relatively quiet.

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Rick McKee, The Week

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According to the Center for American Progress, "The Fossil-Fuel Industry Spent Big to Set the Anti-Environment Agenda of the Next Congress."
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Pat Bagley, The Week

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The Hill answers the question: What is the cromnibus? Elizabeth Warren slams Citigroup's influence on it.

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RJ Matson, The Week

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And our new hero is...

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Dana Summers, The Week

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-- Marge

Season's Greeting 2014

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Both the flux of the heavens
And the flux deep within are slow,
Compared to the layered assemblies between--
Amoebae, Cells, humans,
Swirling and mingling to rhythms their own
And shared.

I think I am fixed in place and time,
Caught in a matrix of ebb and flow
Subject to laws prescribed.
But at the edges light dances, time wobbles.
There what is certain gives way to the
Inexplicable.

Some call these uncertainties mysteries
Others say miracles.

--Marge

Note:  Background adapted from a photo by Joe Parks, titled "Milky Way over Crater Lake."

Christmas gone wrong...

Pleated Jeans, Cheezburger

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Here are some humorous stories to remind you that Christmas doesn't have to be, and often isn't, perfect.

Run out of time or incentive to shop for yet another present? Here are some re-gifting confessions and snafus, as reported by AOL users.  This one resonates for me:

Reader Haveanangel says:

"About 20 years ago, my grandfather gave my husband a gift set of English Leather. He didn't like it, never opened it. The following year, [my husband] gave it to my brother-in-law. I have three sisters and for the next few years, that gift set made it's way around the family Christmas circuit. My husband got it back and he said enough was enough. He gave it to his brother. We haven't seen that stuff since."

Some good holiday stories can be found at HamptonRoads. Here's one that isn't about Christmas, but could be:

For Thanksgiving this year [2010], Cathy Jenson of Chesapeake decided to make a chocolate cake from scratch with her children, ages 7 and 9. The arguments left flour and cocoa powder everywhere, and the first attempt at making frosting had to be discarded, but finally the batter was in the pans and the pans were in the oven.

The second frosting attempt went much better, and Jenson said, "Hey, guys, looks like it turned out good this time! What's that smell?"

The 8-inch pans - smaller than the recipe called for - had overflowed. Flames were coming off the bottom of the oven.

The kids dropped to their knees and crawled to the front door, per the instructions from firefighters visiting their classrooms over the years, while Jenson's husband doused the fire. Then she put the cake back in to finish baking.

Done and cooled, the rounds broke apart as they were removed from the pans, but Jenson's mother-in-law held them together while frosting was slathered on.

"The result was a lopsided, crumbly cake with a split on top to rival the San Andreas Fault," Jenson said. "It was delicious!"

Below is the photo that accompanies Stacey Gustafson's blog post about their artificial Christmas tree.

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Stacey Gustafson, "Christmas Tree Taunts Us," Are you kidding me? 

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-- Marge

Cartoons: Just a-huggin' and a-chalkin'

For some reason Hoagy Carmichael's song "Huggin' And Chalkin'" comes to mind when I stand back and look at this week's cartoons. Certainly watching the news has undertones of an exercise in futility. But, there is some good news, as seen in today's last cartoon about a movement called Black Lives Matter.

President Obama is being controversial again, a state that seems to be linked to his simply being. Now it's his move toward normalizing relations with Cuba.

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Steve Sack, The Week

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With what looks like a price war on oil, was it smart to buy a hybrid? My opinion is yes.

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Chip Bok, The Week

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Congress rewards Wall Street yet again.

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David Horsey, The Week

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Republican, Reschmublican--despite their griping about the budget/national debt, Congress doesn't give a fig about either.

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Glenn McCoy, The Week

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There's protesting of "Excessive Force and Police Brutality" going on in the US and UK.

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Mike Keefe, The Week

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-- Marge