Plutinos, Twotinos, Cubewanos

Posted on Thursday, 2005 November 24 by Anton

John Baez gives (among other things) a handy summary of transneptunian objects.

Posted in astronomy | Leave a comment

how do you tell racism from diversity?

Posted on Thursday, 2005 November 24 by Anton

I’m watching a collection of Tom and Jerry cartoons, made by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna, who were later known for the much cruder animation of The Flintstones.

I’m puzzled by the opening disclaimer in which Whoopi Goldberg explains that while the ethnic stereotypes that appear in some early cartoons are wicked it would be wrong to falsify history by cutting them out. The sin, apparently, is that Tom’s owner, a woman of color known as Mammy Two Shoes (though her name is never mentioned in the toons, nor is her face shown), speaks in nonstandard grammar; she has no other stereotyped qualities that I can detect.

Whoopi makes the same disclaimer in a Looney Tunes collection, and there it makes more sense; I’ve had occasion to cringe at some early ones, though I have not seen such moments in this collection (yet).

Posted in cartoons, cinema | 1 Comment

possibly not one of my brightest ideas ever

Posted on Wednesday, 2005 November 23 by Anton

If my new printer’s resolution is 1200 dots/inch, then a sheet of gringo-standard letter paper with half-inch margins can take an image of 9000 by 12000 pixels. As a test, therefore, I rendered one of my most complex Povray images at that size. It took 182 hours.

Now if I can find a program that will open an image that big . . . .

Posted in me!me!me!, neep-neep | Leave a comment

a catalog of what ain’t

Posted on Tuesday, 2005 November 22 by Anton

Whatever it is (or isn’t), someone has made a list of it.

Here’s one that interests me a bit: once upon a time I started a (mental) list of persons ineligible who have portrayed a President of the United States, such as Peter Sellers (as Muffley) and Anthony Hopkins (as Nixon). (Found from a related page cited by the muted horn.)

Posted in arts | Leave a comment

ITAWT; ITAWA; PUDYE; TTATT; IDEED

Posted on Monday, 2005 November 21 by Anton

When symbol-space is arbitrary, whimsy sometimes happens.

Posted in language, technology | 2 Comments

creepy

Posted on Monday, 2005 November 21 by Anton

Now class, who can tell us why this advertisement (The Economist, Nov.12, p.67) bugs me?

When you meet the men and women who serve America in the military and government, you find the strength and character of this nation. . . .

LOCKHEED MARTIN
We never forget who we’re working for™

Posted in politics | 1 Comment

who’s he think he is, DC?

Posted on Sunday, 2005 November 20 by Anton

Steve Troop has restarted his comicstrip Melonpool from scratch and, very unusually, took down eight years of archived strips (though you can still buy them as books). The event is much discussed at Websnark.

Besides being weighed down by the complexity of the continuity, Troop was concerned that potential readers were driven off by the sheer length of the archives. (Melonpool is probably the longest-running of all webtoons.) This gives me a chuckle. I don’t even try to keep current on the strips I follow; my bookmarks point to some date in the archives. When I want to read the funnies I usually go to the oldest (currently October 2003), mainly so that when reading crossovers I’ll be up to date on both sides. So the depth of the archives generally isn’t an issue for me.

David Willis is incrementally replacing his archives, from the beginning of It’s Walky, with better artwork and tighter scripting. This is probably a good thing. As it was, I found the story rather hard to follow, and was on the verge of giving up on it; one of these days I’ll attempt the four-year backtrack.

Posted in cartoons | 4 Comments