Core: noun, the most important part of a thing, the essence; from the Latin cor, meaning heart. |
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Volume 1.18 | Front Page | June 10, 2002 |
The Views Featured Webpages |
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Climate
Changing, U.S. Says in Report (06/03/02) new White
House defends U-turn on global warming (06/04/02) new Bush
burned by climate report (06/08/02) new Dont
tell Dubya (06/09/02) new C.I.A.
Was Tracking Hijacker Months Earlier Than It Had Said (06/03/02) new Face
to Face With a Terrorist: Government Worker Recalls Mohamed Atta Seeking
Funds Before Sept. 11 (06/06/02) new The
Other Shoe: Obsessing over Sept. 11 distracts us from preventing the next
attack. (06/07/02) new Wartime
Distractions (06/04/02) new A
Few Very Good Men: Priest Recruiter Bill Parent Is Looking for Those Who
Have Seen the Light (06/09/02) new Celibate
and Loving It: For Many Priests, True Happiness Lies in The Joining of
Self and Church (06/06/02) new The
Body of Christ and the spring meeting of the U.S. Catholic bishops
(06/09/02) new The
Bishops and the Vatican (06/10/02) new Tearful
FBI Agent Apologizes To Sept. 11 Families and Victims (05/30/02) FBI
admits bureau missed clues of Sept. 11 attacks (05/30/02) Stop
frisking crippled nuns (06/01/02) Liberal
Reality Check (05/31/02) In
the mind of a would-be suicide bomber (05/30/02) Shin
Bet, IDF nab reluctant female suicide bombers (05/30/02) My
fellow Muslims, we must fight anti-Semitism (05/26/02) The
Elderly Man and the Sea? Test Sanitizes Literary Texts (05/02/02) Political
Diversity Lacking in Many UNC-CH Departments (May 2002) The
unhyphenating of America: Census finds fewer citing European roots
(05/31/02) UN
Misses the Forest for the Trees (05/22/02) Weakland
apologizes for his sinfulness (05/31/02) Text:
Weaklands apology (05/31/02) Occasionally, some links are moved from this section into the Featured Webpages Trove. |
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Classic articles that are, or should be, famous (new at top) | |
The
End of History? (Summer 1989) An
Explosion of Green (Apr. 1995) The
Doomslayer (Feb. 1997) A brilliant parody: Transgressing
the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
(Spring/Summer 1996) Networks
Need a Reality Check: A firsthand account of liberal bias at CBS News.
(02/13/1996) There
is No Time, There Will Be Time (11/18/1998) |
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The Views Featured Websites, Series, and Multi-Part Articles |
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Arts
& Letters Daily Business
Daily Review Catholic
Dossier Catholic
News Service Catholic
Telecommunications Catholic
World Report City
Journal CNSNews Corante First
Things Foundation
for Individual Rights in Education FrontPage
Magazine The
Hoover Digest: Research and Opinion on Public Policy Jim
Romeneskos MediaNews JunkScience Luciannes
News Forum NewsMax Notable
Quotables Archive @ Media Research Center RealClear
Politics Reason
Online Reuters SciTech
Daily Review Statistical
Assessment Service (STATS) Tech
Central Station United
Press International Opinion
Journal The
Wilson Quarterly WorldNetDaily ZENIT
News Agency |
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Reference, etc. | |
American
Heritage Dictionary @ Bartleby.com Columbia
Encyclopedia @ Bartleby.com The
U.S. Constitution Online Founders
Library The
Cambridge History of English and American Literature @ Bartleby.com Catholic
Encyclopedia IntraText
Digital Library The
1911 Edition Encyclopedia Britannica The
Internet Archive | |
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Collections, etc. | |
Special Wayback Collections at The Internet Archive: The
September 11 Web Archive US
Election 2000 Web
Pioneers: The Early Years A chronicle of high-level USA government actions in September 2001, at two websites: Ten
Days in September (WP) Response
to Terror (Austin American Stateman) News coverage of September 11 and the aftermath: Fighting
Terrorism: America Retaliates (BG) Attack
on America (Guardian Unlimited) Miscellaneous Collections: Catholic
Poets @ ELCore.Net Verse
@ Bartleby.com HTI
American Verse Project Newman
Reader What
We Think of America (Granta) Hot
Issues: Persecution (Christianity Today) Gay
Activism in Schools (Teachers in Focus) Skepticism
Toward The Skeptical Environmentalist (Scientific
American) Document
Archive in English (ZENIT) Archives:
Fallout of September 11 (ZENIT) STATS
Spotlight (Statistical Assessment Service) Legacy
of Shame (New Times LA) A
Trust Betrayed: Catholic
Church Abuse Scandal (Yahoo! News) The
Crusades (Catholic Dossier) Pope
Pius XII (Catholic Dossier) The
New Rise of Islam (Catholic World Report) Christianity
and Islam, Terrorism and War (Catholic World Report) The
Cross and the Crescent (Catholic World Report) |
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Other columnists (alphabetical) | |
Diane
Alden Ann
Coulter Bill
Dunn Victor
Davis Hanson
Charles Krauthammer Michael
Kelly Jonah
Goldberg Jonah
Goldberg Nat
Hentoff John
Mallon Steve
Milloy Peggy
Noonan Fred
Reed Mark
Steyn Deb
Weiss
George F. Will |
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Weblogs (alphabetical) | |
The
Blog from
the Core Ad
Orientem Annunciations BrinkLindsey.com CampusNonsense Catholic
and Enjoying It! ChristianityToday.com The
Conservative Underground The
Corner Susanna Cornett keeping an eye on the spins and weirdness of media, crime and everyday life EveTushnet.com Conservatism reborn in twisted sisterhood Fools
Folly The
Goliard Blog Holy
Weblog! Amy Welborn (wife of blogger Michael Dubruiel) Juan
Gatos Bucket o Rants David Nieporent Thoughts, comments, musings on life, politics, current events and the media. Louder
Fenns Whirligig Mallons
Media Watch Media
Minded Minute
Particulars Nota
Bene Orthopraxis OxBlog Relapsed
Catholic Rhetorica:
Commentary and Analysis Sand
in the Gears ScottRubush.com Veritas |
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Series and multi-part articles of news or opinion (new at top) | |
Joe Klein is writing a multi-part report from Europe for The Guardian: new France?
Its like 1970s America (05/28/02) new The
Prince (06/06/02) The Problem of Sexual Molestation by Roman Catholic Clergy: Meeting the Problem in a Comprehensive and Responsible Manner (the 1985 report to American Bishops): First
Part Second
Part Related articles in The New York Times on the last messages to come out of the World Trade Center after the first plane struck: History
Recorded From the Messages of Victims (05/26/02) 102
Minutes: Fighting to Live as the Towers Died (05/26/02) Accounts
From the North Tower (05/26/02) Accounts
From the South Tower (05/26/02) A three-part UPI series by Martin Sieff on how some mainstream media were bamboozled about a massacre that had never happened: Part
One: Documenting the Myth (05/20/02) Analysis:
Why Europeans bought Jenin myth (05/21/02) How
Europes media lost out (05/22/02) A three-part essay How Contemporary American Poets are Denaturing the Poem by Joan Houlihan @ Web Del Sol: On
the Prosing of Poetry I=N=C=O=H=
E=R=E=N=T The
Argument for Silence: Defining the Poet Peter Principle A two-part article on Economists & Ecologists by Arnold Kling @ Tech Central Station: Common
Sense and Sensibility (03/28/02) Lomborgs
Lessons (04/02/02) A two-part article @ Salon, by Andrew OHehir, on J. R. R. Tolkiens Lord of the Rings: The
book of the century (06/04/02) A
curiously very great book (06/05/02) A three-part article on some current thinking on the Koran in The Atlantic: What
is the Koran? Part 1 (Jan. 1999) What
is the Koran? Part 2 (Jan. 1999) What
is the Koran? Part 3 (Jan. 1999) Occasionally, some links are moved from this section into the Featured Webseries Trove. |
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This Views Column |
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Video technology has been advancing at a dizzying pace. Computer-generated (CG) imagery enhances many movies in ways we (some of us, anyway) have come to expect. It also enhances live television broadcasts, including news and sports, in ways to which we have become accustomed assuming we are aware of them. The technologies will continue to advance and will converge, some day, with momentous consequences. Computer-Generated Imagery in the Movies You could swear the Tyrannosaurus rex in Jurassic Park is real. Even close up. When it looks for the children in the car, during the rainstorm, its eyes seem to be the real searching eyes of a real gigantic dinosaur. It snorts, and the people and things in the shot respond as if a real animal has really snorted. It roars, and the actors cover their ears; it chases, and they flee. Or get gobbled up. But, of course, that T. rex is not even there. Well, it wasnt there when the scene was originally filmed. The actors and things in the shot are reacting to simulations, by other persons or things, of what a real dinosaur would have done and of what a special-effects dinosaur will do in the scene as it eventually plays in the finished movie. Industrial Light & Magic Many months, if not years, of work go into making a movie with a lot of complicated CG effects. An interesting and informative article at the HowStuffWorks website lists the different kinds of specialists that are employed at one of the more famous and successful CG special-effects companies, George Lucas Industrial Light & Magic (ILM):
Centropolis FX Another interesting article at the same website, on another CG special-effects company called Centropolis FX, describes some of the high-tech hardware required by the company, and explains why it is all so necessary:
Ever Improving Results The results of the special-effects wizardry get better and better that is, more and more realisitc as time goes by. For instance, some of the scenes in the original Jurassic Park dont strike me as being quite so realistic as similar scenes in the sequels: I am thinking of the scenes with animals running in herds, or even of any scene with a very large number of animals, running or not. In such scenes in the original movie, some of the animals have some faint, almost indescribable quality of looking as if they are not really there of appearing to be the fakes they really are. I hardly notice this at all in the sequels. The technology improves, and the professionals gain in skill with experience, giving us better, more realistic, results. Computer-Generated Imagery on Television For reasons similar to those already discussed, you could swear the English-speaking Stenonychosaurus librarian in ABCs Dinotopia is real, though not all the characters are quite so realistic. But some television broadcasts also present an entirely different mode of CG effect: making the viewer see something in a live broadcast that is not really there. This kind of special effect falls largely, so far, into two categories: (1) advertising and branding, and (2) visual enhancement of sporting events. Advertising and Branding Over the past few years, insertion of digital advertising images into live broadcasts of sporting events has become more and more common. Called virtual ads, they are seen only by the TV viewing audience. Their use is not confined to sports, according to a New York Times article, January 12, 2000:
The First-Down Line Nor is their use in sports confined to advertising. During some professional hockey games in the 1996-1997 time frame, a digitally-enhanced image of the puck was broadcast. Used by Fox TV, it was officially called FoxTrax but was also dubbed The Blue Blob, which gives us some idea of what it must have looked like, at least to its critics. As far as I can tell (not being at all a hockey fan), the practice was controversial among the viewing audience, so it was soon discontinued. Another digital enhancement of the playing field has been much more successful: the first-down line in broadcasts of football games. The first-down yard line can be especially difficult to spot by TV viewers. Enter SporTVision, which has been providing a special-effects service to Fox Sports and ESPN since 1998 that draws a yellow or orange line across the field to mark the first-down line for the TV audience. Think of it as a giant virtual highlighter. HowStuffWorks provides some idea of just how complicated an affair it is to draw with this virtual highlighter:
Eight computers are required to do all that, and four people to run the system:
Ever Improving Results? I cannot say that live-broadcast CG special effects have been improved dramatically over the years, as have the effects in movies. (I cannot say, because I do not know.) Apparently, the first version of FoxTrax was very much in need of improving; as reported in an article at Canadian Online Explore (CANOE), January 15, 1997:
I am sure, though, that a great deal of research, and trial and error, and continuing improvement has gone into in-house test, and beta, and original production versions of live-broadcast effects: how else does anything really get accomplished? Perhaps there have not been any dramatic improvements because the effects themselves have been inherently simpler and more subtle than those desired in movies. Computer-Generated Imagery in the Future The implications of these technological trends have been floating around my mind for quite some time now. A column by Fred Reed, Surveillance in Digital Times was a catalyst:
I have learned since that this technology is employed widely in casinos, to watch for known cheats. And the New York Times reported, May 25, that a trial run of such technology was being undertaken at one point of entry (of the two) to Liberty Island, where the Statue of Liberty is:
Naturally, this has civil libertarians up in arms, so to speak, for reasons I will not get into here. (If you really want some thought-provoking reading on this, have a look at Fred Reeds article Just Because They Arent Out To Get You in conjunction with the one quoted above.) This is what really caught my attention about the high-tech photography used at the Super Bowl in 2001: they can program computers, and machines controlled by computers, to photograph faces, then scan a database looking for matches and they can accomplish this search-and-find almost instantaneously. Wow. Do you see the implications? Consider (1) the lightning speed at which this digital process (scan and search) happens and (2) the digital special-effects capabilities in movies and TV. These technologies will only improve. But they will not only improve: they will converge. The day will come, I thought, when somebody will be able to take real, live imagery (such as a politician giving a speech) and substitute phony, digital imagery so quickly and seamlessly that nobody seeing the broadcast will be able to tell. I suppose that may seem to be a pretty big leap. I never thought it was. But if it was a big leap, a very large step has already been taken towards getting us to where somebody can make it. So reports The Boston Globe, May 15:
What Are the Implications? I might as well tell you outright: I do not know what the implications are. Who could? But I have some observations that might help us to have some idea how to think about these issues. Computing capabilities memory, storage, speed have advanced with astonishing rapidity over the past 15 years. I remember (I think) my first PC: it was an 8 MHz 80286 with 2 megabytes of RAM and a 40 Mbyte hard drive. And Windows 2.0. I remember when I got its replacement: a 66 MHz 80486 with 16 Mbytes of RAM and a 512 Mbyte hard drive. And Windows 3.1. Honestly, it was so much faster than my first machine, it would perform the same operations so much more quickly, I sometimes thought something was wrong: I couldnt see it performing the operations on the monitor, or hear the activity of the disk drive, so I worried that it hadnt done them at all! And that machine would be considered a slow-as-molasses-in-January old dog compared to the 400-MHz machine Im using now. (And I have files on this machine that would not fit on that 512-Mbyte disk!) And this 3-year-old machine is a slow old dog compared to the machines being sold today. And computing capabilities memory, storage, speed will continue to advance with astonishing rapidity. Computers can learn from people. Not as people learn from people student from teacher, child from parent, young from old, anybody from books. No. But programmers can teach computers how to do what what only people could have done before. You want some cash? Forty years ago, you went to the bank and got some from the teller. Today, you can go to a machine and get some from the withdrawal slot: people taught machines how to do what only people had done before. (Of course, computers arent the only machines involved here. But they are all, ultimately, computer controlled.) Computers will, eventually, learn from people to do what people have done in running computer-generated special-effects imagery. And they will do it much, much faster than people have been doing it. Human beings will continue to be... human. We will continue to engage in politics of all kinds: strictly political, religious, racial, ethnic, cultural, etc. And some of us will not scruple for a moment to resort to ruthless strategies and deceptive tactics to advance our goals. When I do say when, not if when the technology exists to make (for instance) Hillary Rodham Clinton look to all the world in a live broadcast as if she is praising Karl Marx and Josef Stalin to the highest heavens, or to make (for another instance) Cubans turn to one another and say Gee, its amazing that Castro is still going so strong for a man of 97 years of age well, somebody, somewhere will be happy to do their best to make it so. Do you doubt that? Unscrupulous persons, no matter their political or other persuasions, will be able to convince thousands, if not millions, if not hundreds of millions of people, simultaneously, that they have seen with their own eyes what in reality never happened at all. And seeing is believing. And it always will be. © ELC 2002 |
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