Category Archives: animation
Our first view of what’s coming with the storm…
Elly’s job at Hagerstown Community College is off for two days as HCC has announced closing due to the approach of Sandy.
The rain has already started here this morning and we are soon expecting the wind.
Hope you are all keeping an eye out if you are in the storm track and please take care of yourselves. here’s a chance that we’ll lose power and the blog will be down, but as long as I can I’ll keep it up.
Related articles
- Storm Warning: Morning Update On Hurricane Sandy (northeasternnjwx.wordpress.com)
- Hurricane Sandy Update: Ginger Zee Talks Seriousness Of Storm (923now.cbslocal.com)
- Latest Sandy Information Shows Brunt Of Storm On Monday And Tuesday (philadelphia.cbslocal.com)
NOT SURE HOW MUCH SANDY IS GOING TO EFFECT THE EASTERN PANHANDLE…
But the animations the weather shows are presenting have rainstorms crossing over us… apparently we’re about as far to the west as any of this will reach and I can’t imagine it will be like a nor’easter or a tropical hurricane.
To make sure what’s happening however, I’m hanging out the Weather Forecasting Stone:
I have absolute confidence in the stone’s accuracy. Don’t you wish you had one?
Related articles
- Hurricane Sandy: Likely To Make Landfall On East Coast Monday Afternoon (boston.cbslocal.com)
- Hurricane Sandy Still Holding Strong (philadelphia.cbslocal.com)
Circles or Spirals?
Optical puzzles are the best. So is the moving pattern above spirals or concentric circles?
Where’s the Controversy in Saving Lives?
Women should control their own health care, have access to contraceptives and safe abortions. Here is a nice animation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:
So when the Republicans want to step in and control women’s personal health and contraceptive solutions, show them this.
Summary of last night’s RNC… the closing night… in 100 seconds.
Here’s the third and final convention summary in 100 seconds out out by Talking Points Memo:
 
Back on the blog…but this will be slow.
Saturday, in the early afternoon having returned home after my WSHC show, I had a seizure walking up the basement stairs from the laundry. The next time I knew anything, I was being rolled into an MRI at Jefferson County Hospital.
Everything else, to me, is blank.
It looks like I fell down the stairs, hit the concrete floor and slid over to a wall with a stack of paintings on it.
Fortunately, Elly was just returning home and heard the thud. When she found me she couldn’t wake me up so she called 911. They got me to Jefferson.
I have six broken ribs, a broken shoulder blade and a cracked collar bone… all on the left side.
Any movement on my left side or moving my left arm meant excruciating pain. I screamed a lot. JCH then decided I needed specialty trauma care abd sent me down to Inova Fairfax in Virginia… a place if you were my worst enemy I would NOT send you.
I finally got out last night. Now comes six months of healing and pain reduction.
Related articles
- how i know i’m getting chubby (fumblymusings.wordpress.com)
- The Need for Overlapping Interventions: Just One Won’t Do It (diseasemanagementcareblog.blogspot.com)
- Test Your MR Safety Knowledge with Falck Productions MRI Safety Week Quiz (prweb.com)
- Students test how strong a 4 tesla MRI magnet is (geek.com)
- Jockey suffers broken collar bone after spill at Churchill Downs (wave3.com)
The campaign speeches we don’t hear.
So much has been pointed out lately, through television commentaries and new legislation, about Congressmen and Senators entering office as middle-class individuals and leaving office as millionaires by using secret investment information they learn at work.
What would happen if their reelection campaigns listed the things they had done for their constituents AND said they had earned no unethical investment income and are happy with the income they make on their salaries and, say, speaking engagements?
Don’t expect to hear it. Politicians seek reelection in order to continue making money, either legally or illegally. It doesn’t matter if they are Democrats or Republicans or Independents. It’s all the same.
Frankly, I’d vote for the candidate who promised ton do the job he was elected for and not focus on his retirement wallet. And party wouldn’t matter…much.
Dick Beals dies at 85; voice of Speedy Alka-Seltzer
Richard “Dick” Beals was an American voice actor who performed many voices in his career, spanning the period from the early 1950s into the 21st century. He specialized primarily in doing the voices of young boys. He was well known as Davey in the Davey and Goliath animations.
Perhaps his most recognizable characterization was the voice of the stop-motion animation figure called “Speedy Alka-Seltzer“, featured in TV ads for more than 50 years….
Maurice Sendak dies at 83…
Anyone who has had children in the last few decades knows who Maurice Sendak was. The amazing children’s author and illustrator published the kind of kids books that did so much more than just tell stories… they stimulated the imagination and bonded parents to kids as they read together.
From “Where the Wild Things Are” to “In the Night Kitchen“(controversial in 1973 for illustrations of a naked hero-child), which was my favorite…and I think Buddy’s, too, Sendak was rewarded often… the Caldecott Medal and the National Book Award were just two of his honors.
He was an advisor to The Children’s television Workshop and worked on a number of television adaptations of his books.
As Al Roker said on the Today show this morning:
“A bit of our childhood has passed.”
Visual Illusion (I’ve got nothing better to do tonight until Bones comes on)
Just look at it and watch the center grid move:
So why does it happen?
The Humor of Mitt Romney…
Picked this off the Daily Kos. Listening to Mitt’s actual words over the cartoon is a gas:
Related articles
- Ann Romney: If Mitt Seems Too Stiff – Wait Til We Unzip Him! (crooksandliars.com)
- Morning Joe Hosts Break Down Over Idea Of ‘Unzipping’ Mitt Romney (mediaite.com)
- Mitt Romney Suffers Tragic Humor-Circuit Malfunction [Mitt Romney] (jezebel.com)
- Jon Stewart Surveys the GOP’s Palpable Reluctance Over Romney: VIDEO (towleroad.com)
- Humorous anecdote: Mitt Romney mocked John Kerry for being rich (dailykos.com)
- Oops he’s done it again, Mitt Romney tells ‘humorous’ story of factory closing (lameducks.wordpress.com)
- Romney Tells “Humorous” Story About His Father Shutting Down A Factory In Michigan (alan.com)
Billy Collins: Poems with Animations from the TED Conference.
I think we should be very thankful for the broad range of the TED Conferences, which include science and social engineering with poetry and the other arts.
Here’s former Poet Laureate of the US, Billy Collins, with poems and animations. Enjoy.
We’ve fallen behind this weekend…
The boys we had expected from Shepherd to help us carry out more boxes were kept away by a combination of sports practice and a paper assignment, so the two old people (me and Elly) who need the carrying strength lost another weekend of mass moving.
We’ll do more of the “this ‘n that” level of packing and moving by carload during the week and hope to get our carriers next weekend.
Meanwhile, our kitchen is pretty much set up and operating in the new house:
🙂
Anyway, maybe we’ll be done before the end of April and can get the Town House on the market.
Everything is behind today… I’m walking an uneasy line…
This is how I feel...
I was supposed to be at WSHC at 7:30 this morning to cover for John Case until 9:00 AM, but somehow I missed the alarm and slept too late… and if Ralph Petrie hadn’t called at 8:30 to see where John was I never would have gotten in.
At 7:55 I was on the air and my regular callers (especially Ralph, whose birthday is today… Happy Birthday, Ralph) started ringing in. I held the show an extra half hour to make up for the lateness.
I had a therapist’s appointment a little later… then I got home, fed the dogs and, dammit, fell asleep until 4:00 PM. Now I’m getting a really late start on my house packing and kitchen cleaning, etc.
We’re supposed to be trucking the furniture and boxes to the new house on Saturday and Sunday. We’ll never make it!
And I’ve got to be on with John at 7:30 tomorrow morning.
Take a break…
A wonderful film for a Wednesday Night:
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.
This has been nominated for a short film Academy Award and I think it is surely worth it. Make sure to watch it at full screen.
Have a great time… more fun than watching politicians.
For those of you who are my radio listeners I’ll be on WSHC (89.7 FM) tomorrow morning from 7:30 AM to 9:00 AM substituting for John Case(on the web at http://www.897wshc.org).
I must have missed this over the Holidays…
…but it’s worth playing it now. I need some humor this afternoon.
A salute to Ronald Searle who has died at Age 91…
Nigel Molesworth
As a young teenager I became a regular reader of Ronald Searle‘s wonderful illustrated books about Nigel Molesworth (especially Down With Skool!) and the other British schoolboys at St. Custards and the schoolgirls of St. Trinians who turned up in comic films as well.
From the London Telegraph:
…behind the humorist illustrator was a man of much darker vision who could find sharp things to say about global poverty, paedophilia or the war on terror, and could plumb the depths of an almost Boschian disgust with the cruelties and excesses of his fellow man — as seen for example in a sketch entitled In Fashion, featuring maimed and wailing women walking down a catwalk. In this more Swiftian guise, Searle was credited with influencing many leading artists and illustrators, including Gerald Scarfe .
Much of Searle’s work was profoundly influenced by his experiences during the war. As he himself often explained, his experience of the “horror, the misery, the blackness” of a Japanese prisoner of war camp had “changed the attitude to all things, including humour”.
Ronald Searle
British illustrator Ronald Searle went to art school in Cambridge and during WWII was working as a draftsman with the Brisits Army and Singapore. His unity was captured by the Japanese and spent 3 and a half years as a prisoner, unltimately ending up as a slave laborer in 1943 on the Burma Railway.
…he rejected what he called the “jolly good chaps” account given in David Lean’s film Bridge on the River Kwai for providing a false picture of camaraderie in the face of adversity. Searle had been sent to work on the railway in 1943 after he and two other inmates had begun producing a magazine to boost the morale of the prisoners. “It upset the extremely conservative mentalities of our own administration — the commanders and the chaplains,” he recalled with some bitterness. “When the time came for the Japanese to say we want groups to be sent up north, the English chose the troublemakers.” For Searle, the bridge remained the place “where I lost all my friends”.
Searle was also known for posters, animations and other illustrations. The opening credit animation for Those 
Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines was Searle’s work.
Related articles
- St Trinian’s cartoonist Ronald Searle has died aged 91 (telegraph.co.uk)
- Ronald Searle was our greatest cartoonist – and he sent me his pens | Martin Rowson (guardian.co.uk)
- Cartoonist Ronald Searle dies at 91 (independent.co.uk)
- Ronald Searle, St Trinian’s creator, dies aged 91 (guardian.co.uk)
- Obituary: Ronald Searle (bbc.co.uk)
- Ronald Searle obituary (guardian.co.uk)
EarthJustice.org says Mistakes find a way of happening…
… and they are talking about Fracking. Let’s look at their little animation… then you can go to their SITE:
Part of our continuing concern with Fracking and the dangerous pollution it brings.
Related articles
- Survey: Is Fracking Affecting Your Community? (fdlaction.firedoglake.com)
- Ban Fracking on 9/13 – Spread the Word! (underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com)
- New groups protest at shale gas (bbc.co.uk)
- Counterpoint on Shale Gas and the Future of Fracking (desmogblog.com)
- Fracking protestors to walk the talk on Women’s Day (edmortimer.wordpress.com)
Muybridge Backgrounds End This Week…
If anyone out there has one they really liked, let me know and I’ll put it up. Drop me a note at btchakir@mac.com titled Muybridge Request.
– Bill
Related articles
- Helios: The Pioneering Photography of Eadweard Muybridge (current.com)
- Animation Muybridge (dogsmeat.wordpress.com)
- Portfolio: Sanna Kannisto (independent.co.uk)
- SFist Tonight: Muybridge in Three Movements, Tracey Morgan, and Project By Project Summer Soiree (sfist.com)
Planet Greed is Doomed
A visitor from Planet We Are All One drops in to visit a citizen of Planet Greed. (By War on Error)
Related articles
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- Greed (commuteroute314.wordpress.com)
- Can ‘man’ ever say enough to his needs and greeds? (jalvayuvihar.wordpress.com)
- On Greed (greedygoddesssue.wordpress.com)
Daydream.
What if some day the Supreme Court didn’t support Corporations over Citizens?
What if some day the Senate and the House put our country first and the lobbyists a distant tenth?
What if some day the health insurance companies offered to teach the government how to run a single payer system at no charge to the country?
What if President Obama got on TV and announced that ALL troops in ALL middle east countries are coming home over the next three months and we were declaring “victory” once and for all?
What if all Billionaires begged the government to tax them at the same rates that Ronald Reagan did?
What if ALL workers, teachers, firemen, police officers, public employees and salespeople were encouraged to join Unions by receiving significant tax perqs?
What if everyone in government believed they were working “in service” to America and not to themselves?
What if campaigns for elections were not allowed to take more than three weeks?
What if daydreaming was somehow connected to reality?
Related articles
- Thomas’s ongoing ethics problem, and Chris Murphy’s potential solution (dailykos.com)
- Stepping Toward Single Payer in the Green Mountain State (hcfama.org)
- Why Daydreamers May Become Visionaries (eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com)
- Another Useless Friday Daydream (goodcomics.comicbookresources.com)
Under The LobsterScope 