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Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Acts of Madness of the Persian Emperor

Previously in Herodotus

34. The following also are acts of madness which he did to the other Persians:--To Prexaspes, the man whom he honoured most and who used to bear his messages (his son also was cup-bearer to Cambyses, and this too was no small honour),--to him it is said that he spoke as follows: "Prexaspes, what kind of a man do the Persians esteem me to be, and what speech do they hold concerning me?" and he said: "Master, in all other respects thou art greatly commended, but they say that thou art overmuch given to love of wine." Thus he spoke concerning the Persians; and upon that Cambyses was roused to anger, and answered thus: "It appears then that the Persians say I am given to wine, and that therefore I am beside myself and not in my right mind; and their former speech then was not sincere." For before this time, it seems, when the Persians and Crœsus were sitting with him in council, Cambyses asked what kind of a man they thought he was as compared with his father Cyrus; and they answered that he was better than his father, for he not only possessed all that his father had possessed, but also in addition to this had acquired Egypt and the Sea. Thus the Persians spoke; but Crœsus, who was present and was not satisfied with their judgment, spoke thus to Cambyses: "To me, O son of Cyrus, thou dost not appear to be equal to thy father, for not yet hast thou a son such as he left behind him in you." Hearing this Cambyses was pleased, and commended the judgment of Crœsus.

35. So calling to mind this, he said in anger to Prexaspes: "Learn then now for thyself whether the Persians speak truly, or whether when they say this they are themselves out of their senses: for if I, shooting at thy son there standing before the entrance of the chamber, hit him in the very middle of the heart, the Persians will be proved to be speaking falsely, but if I miss, then thou mayest say that the Persians are speaking the truth and that I am not in my right mind." Having thus said he drew his bow and hit the boy; and when the boy had fallen down, it is said that he ordered them to cut open his body and examine the place where he was hit; and as the arrow was found to be sticking in the heart, he laughed and was delighted, and said to the father of the boy: "Prexaspes, it has now been made evident, as thou seest, that I am not mad, but that it is the Persians who are out of their senses; and now tell me, whom of all men didst thou ever see before this time hit the mark so well in shooting?" Then Prexaspes, seeing that the man was not in his right senses and fearing for himself, said: "Master, I think that not even God himself could have hit the mark so fairly." Thus he did at that time: and at another time he condemned twelve of the Persians, men equal to the best, on a charge of no moment, and buried them alive with the head downwards.

36. When he was doing these things, Crœsus the Lydian judged it right to admonish him in the following words: "O king, do not thou indulge the heat of thy youth and passion in all things, but retain and hold thyself back: it is a good thing to be prudent, and forethought is wise. Thou however are putting to death men who are of thine own people, condemning them on charges of no moment, and thou art putting to death men's sons also. If thou do many such things, beware lest the Persians make revolt from thee. As for me, thy father Cyrus gave me charge, earnestly bidding me to admonish thee, and suggest to thee that which I should find to be good." Thus he counselled him, manifesting goodwill towards him; but Cambyses answered: "Dost /thou/ venture to counsel me, who excellently well didst rule thine own country, and well didst counsel my father, bidding him pass over the river Araxes and go against the Massagetai, when they were willing to pass over into our land, and so didst utterly ruin thyself by ill government of thine own land, and didst utterly ruin Cyrus, who followed thy counsel. However thou shalt not escape punishment now, for know that before this I had very long been desiring to find some occasion against thee." Thus having said he took his bow meaning to shoot him, but Crœsus started up and ran out: and so since he could not shoot him, he gave orders to his attendants to take and slay him. The attendants however, knowing his moods, concealed Crœsus, with the intention that if Cambyses should change his mind and seek to have Crœsus again, they might produce him and receive gifts as the price of saving his life; but if he did not change his mind nor feel desire to have him back, then they might kill him. Not long afterwards Cambyses did in fact desire to have Crœsus again, and the attendants perceiving this reported to him that he was still alive: and Cambyses said that he rejoiced with Crœsus that he was still alive, but that they who had preserved him should not get off free, but he would put them to death: and thus he did.

37. Many such acts of madness did he both to Persians and allies, remaining at Memphis and opening ancient tombs and examining the dead bodies. Likewise also he entered into the temple of Hephaistos and very much derided the image of the god: for the image of Hephaistos very nearly resembles the Phenician /Pataicoi/, which the Phoenicians carry about on the prows of their triremes; and for him who has not seen these, I will indicate its nature,--it is the likeness of a dwarfish man. He entered also into the temple of the Cabeiroi, into which it is not lawful for any one to enter except the priest only, and the images there he even set on fire, after much mockery of them. Now these also are like the images of Hephaistos, and it is said that they are the children of that god.

- Herodotus, Book III

More Information: Egypt, Herodotus's Book.

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Wednesday, 31 March 2010

Tuesday, 30 March 2010

UVing fun

Spent this morning working out the UV mapping. Found some useful links which are now posted in a category called tutorials on my blog link list. I thought id start by trying out some sheets of paper and creating the textures for them. Not looking too bad I think so i mite try the table next. Theres also a link in my tutorials for normal mapping which im going to try out

Monday, 29 March 2010

screen grab

heres the left leg joint weighted. This is a mere visual reference so i can mirror this after ferhan has altered the rigg and also for my technical reference

painting some weights

Sorted out a bit of the weights for the left leg. Ended up opening a previous file with Fuzzy101 before he binded the skeleton to the mesh and lowering down the leg hip joints and this is what I ended up with after painting the left leg weights. looking better so the plan is that ferhan puts the blend shapes on the rigg and then i spend a day painting the weights as i feel it is achievable.

screen grad of sai knife

After todays chat with Dan Ive screen shotted the sai knife that Ive been working on today. Its the finished model and so all thats left to do now is the ninja's sword and sheeth

The finished model

heres the finished brief case modelled and ready for texturing both closed and open images. Enjoy!

Friday, 26 March 2010

nearly there

almost there with the brief case. I think it looks quick slik and i still need to add some more to it but it will be done before the day is out then its just the 2 knifes and sword for mondays deadline

Thursday, 25 March 2010

adding some interior detail

starting to put some detail into the interior of the brief case

Wednesday, 24 March 2010

the detail

so heres how the case is looking from the outside. Im going to have 2 versions of the brief case. When its shut its gonna have nothing inside it as you wont see it so whats the point of the sniper and weapons being there? as it will slow down render time. Im gonna add to this tomorrow but you get an idea of where its going

new brief case layout

Ive moved the items around since the last post as it didnt quite work with where i wanted the handgun to come out. But this is the new layout and obviously not finished yet but im aiming to get it completed by tonight

Tuesday, 23 March 2010

getting the layout of the brief case

Heres how the rifle will appear unassembled. I had to take the nozzle off at the end to make it a seperate piece otherwise the briefcase will be too long and I don't like it. The little square in the corner is where a key pad will be as I want the pistol to slide out of the side of the case. Still need to find somewhere for the throwing knife but its coming. Need to add the lid now and some details and this is sorted for texturing

Friday, 19 March 2010

what ive been upto today

quick playblast of an animation im working on. The timing is still way off and its just a bit more than a block out but it was a bit tricky with the graph editor. Hopefully be done soon. Plus it gave me a break from modelling and some practice

Thursday, 18 March 2010

the rifle

So here it is. The finished piece. Ive noticed sam and dan have had a play around with some renders with the rockwell dude and they look pretty good. Im quite chuffed with this model and i think a few more details and this will be one of the best things ive ever modelled. Im gonna get everythin else done first before I go back to this though.

Friday, 12 March 2010

couch potato

after working on the sniper, i had a quick play with the rockwell dude today and just doing a little test with him changing the channels on the tv. Not finished yet but working on it.

sniper latest

spent today working on getting this bad boy done and im almost there. Its just adding a few more details and it is finito. Personally I quite like it but as i said its just putting some details on it then its ready for texturing

Thursday, 11 March 2010

quick test

spent 20 mins of this afternoon doing a quick pose with the rigg that Dan found. Just to see how the target could look. Pretty fly!

Wednesday, 10 March 2010

update on the sniper

been working on the sniper rifle which seems to have been forgotten about. Gonna get this done before the week is out and finish off the room too. Hopefullly start texturing some of these babies next week

Tuesday, 9 March 2010

update on the progress of the motel room. Added a radiator and step ladders which i thought shows how the target would get there himself usually. The square floating in the air on the top image is the trap door.

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Gold Member Since 2014
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Henan Hongke Heavy Machinery Co., Ltd.

Rotary Dryer, Drying Equipments, Dryer manufacturer / supplier in China, offering Mineral Industries Ilmenite Rotary Drying Equipments, Rotary Dryer for Sand, 2016 Hot Sale Vitrified Microsphere Thermal Insulation Mortar Production Line and so on.

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Bryan Bickell signs 1-day contract to retire with Chicago Blackhawks

CHICAGO — Bryan Bickell has signed a one-day contract so he can retire with the Chicago Blackhawks.

Bickell was selected by Chicago in the second round of the 2004 draft and spent his first nine seasons with the Blackhawks, winning three Stanley Cup championships. He was traded to Carolina in June 2016.

The 31-year-old Bickell was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis last November and played in just 11 games with the Hurricanes. He announced his retirement in April and scored a memorable shootout goal in his final game.

The Blackhawks also placed forward Marian Hossa on long-term injured reserve and signed defenseman Cody Franson to a one-year contract. Forward Alex DeBrincat and defenseman Gustav Forsling were recalled from Rockford of the American Hockey League.

Hossa has been ruled out for the season because of severe side effects from medication to treat a progressive skin disorder. It’s unclear if he will be able to play again.

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Wednesday, October 26, 2011

To Perform Great You Need Confidence, Here's How to Do It: Blog Entry 3 of 5

Blog Entry 3: Commitment to Daily Habits and Routines

"Confidence is a beautiful thing." Chico Resch, former NHL goalie and New Jersey Devils television color commentator

Chico uttered this moments before the Devils landed their third goal behind Los Angeles Kings goalie Jonathan Bernier. LA which had not given up a goal in over three games, and NJ which has been struggling to score goals, was blitzed by the Devils for three goals in the second period. The Devils began to gain confidence after their first goal and began to take over the game. New Jersey scored 3 quick goals but mainly because they were moving their feet and outworking the Kings.

“Confidence is the most important single factor in this game, and no matter how great your talent, there is only one way to obtain it-work.” - Jack Nicklaus, Golf Legend

To be a confident hockey player you need to have an understanding of who you are as a player and person. This is the foundation of confidence. However, you are not going to have total belief in your game unless you do the hard work to become fit. There is no replacing or bypassing the third layer of hockey confidence to get to the top of the pyramid. Hard work, commitment, and discipline cannot be replaced. Players must do the hard work of getting into shape physically and mentally so they can use their talents in highly competitive games. Being fit, strong, fast, and skilled and being able to produce in pressure situations is the greatest source of confidence. Thus, you must put in the work so you can then trust your preparation once it is game day.

To develop confidence in your game you must have the commitment to good daily habits and routines that fuel your training.

“If you train hard, you'll not only be hard, you'll be hard to beat." - Herschel Walker, ex-NFL player

I preach TCB to the players I work with; take care of business! This means do what you need to do to have great energy and focus at practice and games. And, TCB goes for every day, not just the day before the game.

TCB Principle – Take Care of Business!
  1. Commit to daily life and training routines
  2. Get fit and strong
  3. Set achievable, difficult goals every day and go after them (it will build confidence)
  4. Minimize your stress when possible (or deal with it)
To be confident in games you have to live with discipline. Get good grades in school and finish your homework on time (or maybe even ahead of schedule) so you don’t have to stress about it. Eat healthy, get your rest, stay hydrated, stretch, and workout. Set a schedule for your workouts. Get a consistent and sufficient amount of rest. Follow a healthy diet that fuels your body and helps you grow from the workouts. Drink lots of water and avoid soda and caffeine, especially when training and competing.

Getting the most out of yourself also means setting goals that get you outside your comfort zone and push you everyday to get better. Learning a new skill, or doing a learned skill faster with more pressure will enhance your confidence and improve your performances. Stay focused on your goals and work towards them. Don’t forget your goals to be a great hockey player!

Finally, minimize your stress when possible. Take care of school work and avoid “drama” and fights with friends and family by being a good communicator and good person. Making good daily decisions will keep you on the path to your goals to be a great hockey player. Too many talented individuals lost their dream because they drank and drove, experimented with drugs, or just made bad decisions. Stay sharp and keep your eye on the prize – your goals. You will achieve them with hard work and discipline. It is actually the only way you will reach your potential.

(To read more about how Disciplined Preparation Habits Create Consistent Performances go to the Hockey Edge Newsletter archive link on the right column of this blog)

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The information in Holistic at Heart is not a substitute for professional medical advice, examination, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health professional before starting any new treatment or making any changes to existing treatment. Do not delay seeking or disregard medical advice based on information in this blog.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Working Mom

For any of you who are wondering where I've been for the last two months, I've been working in my clinical internship to get my Holistic Health Practitioner diploma. Until last week, I have been working at a senior's living facility every weekday. For the first time since my daughter has been born, I have been a true working mom.

I'm glad that this experience is now over because I don't think being a full-time working mom is for me (or for my daughter for that matter). I'm not saying that being a stay-at-home mom is in any way easy, but at least when I stay at home I don't feel guilty at how little time I am spending with my daughter and I don't have to constantly leave her while she is screaming and crying that she wants me to stay. As a working mom, the moment I got home my daughter wanted all my attention but I still had to cook supper, and on the weekend I had to run around doing various things like groceries and laundry. It seems like even when I was home, I didn't have much time to spend with her.

The internship was perhaps a little worse than some (though not all) jobs. At rush hour, it was a 45 minute drive from home partly in bumper-to-bumper traffic, which added to an already long day. And after Sarah went to bed at night, I had to complete loads of paperwork, research and various assignments before I could go to bed myself. Since my husband has had a particularly busy schedule himself over the last while, we were lucky if the dishes got done twice a week!

On the other hand, staying at home every day puts me into a rut, drains my energy, and deprives me of adult human contact. I personally find it exceedingly difficult to be the sole focus of my daughter's every demand (and she has no small list) every day and all day. The activities she enjoys doing are not usually what I most enjoy, which is sometimes good for me and sometimes exhausting. I know it's all part of being a mother and I am so fortunate to be able to stay home with her but I need something to fill my own cup a little more.

I think my ideal solution is to work one or two days a week. Now I'm not just talking about going to any old job just to scrounge up a little cash and waste some time, but real, fulfilling work where I'm doing something I really enjoy. Two days gets me that time away from home I need to come back refreshed and ready to be fully present with my daughter.

Now if I could just put that plan into action...

How do you feel about being a work/home situation?

Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Video: At the 2016 Elton John Oscar Party

Watch our interviews with Sir Elton john, David Furnish, Melanie Griffith and Charlie Sheen from Elton John’s 2016 Oscar Party.

The 24th annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party hosted by Sir Elton John and David Furnish raised over $6.2 million for the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Among the attendees were Mariah Carey, Hilary Swank, Melanie Griffith, Charlie Sheen, Caitlyn Jenner, Heidi Klum, Vince Vaughn and many other Hollywood celebrities who showed their support to the cause.

Guests arrived at the Academy Awards Viewing Party for cocktails followed by a gala dinner and viewing of the 88th Academy Awards® telecast. For a fourth consecutive year, Chef Gordon Ramsay, British celebrity chef, television personality, restaurateur, and holder of 14 Michelin stars, prepared an exquisite five-course meal for guests.

The dinner was followed by a lively auction conducted by Alexander Gilkes of Paddle8 and featured a Mariah Robertson artwork, a stunning BVLGARI Serpenti 18 kt white gold full pavé diamond necklace, a five-day vacation at Steven Tyler’s Hawaiian retreat, four unique crystal sculptures from the Elton John Music Is Love for Lalique collection, tickets to the exclusive Vanity Fair Oscar Party later that evening, and a surprise auction lot donated by Lady Gaga – the “other halves” of the mismatched patriotic Gucci shoes she wore to sing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl.

Following the auction, Elton John and his band took the stage for a memorable performance of some of his greatest hits, including several numbers from Elton’s new album Wonderful Crazy Night, co-produced by Elton and the legendary T-Bone Burnett with lyrics by Bernie Taupin.

In his remarks, EJAF Founder Elton John thanked his guests for enthusiastically participating in an audience participation feature, which enabled guests to make gifts to the Foundation on the spot using their cell phones.

“By supporting our work, you are standing up against the issues that drive the AIDS epidemic. You are speaking out against racism, helping to end poverty and homelessness, and rejecting homophobia,” said Elton. “You are advocating an end to mass incarceration and supporting universal access to drug rehabilitation and healthcare for all. Fighting AIDS means fighting the things that divide us. Ending AIDS means ending these injustices. By being here tonight, you are saying NO to stigma, NO to the status quo, and YES to a more just and equal society and the end of AIDS.”


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Sunday, October 30, 2011

FHA Targets 'Scratch-And-Dent' Investors In Effort To Unload Discounted Federally Insured Home Loans In Default; Some Have Dubious 'Subprime' Past

Bloomberg reports:

  • [T]he Federal Housing Administration is auctioning thousands of defaulted mortgages at prices marked down by as much as 65 percent. If the pilot works as planned, the government mortgage insurer will cut its losses by avoiding foreclosures while giving borrowers a better chance of remaining in their homes.

  • This pilot program is a potential win-win-win,” Acting FHA Commissioner Carol Galante said in an e-mail.

  • Still, as the program joins other small-scale government housing initiatives, it illustrates the challenges policy makers face as they try to revive the housing market. So far, investors in the loans are scratch-and-dent specialists who buy less-than-perfect debt and try to squeeze a profit out of it.

  • In the long run, they might have little interest in continuing to work to keep troubled borrowers from losing their homes. In some cases, the investors are the same people who originated subprime loans in the run-up to the 2008 credit collapse or later ran afoul of regulators.

  • Borrower advocates say they are troubled by the participation of companies whose principals were subprime lenders or who have drawn scrutiny from regulators in the past. The FHA program “is a way to continue to line the pockets of the predators who created this mortgage crisis,” said Bruce Marks, chief executive officer of the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, a Boston-based non-profit that aids and counsels troubled borrowers.

    Consent Order

  • One of the four firms that have bought notes through the program is Bethesda, Maryland-based MCM Capital LLC. MCM Capital employs Steven Trowern, a former director of Dynamic Capital Mortgage Inc. in Brookline, Massachusetts.

  • According to a 2009 consent order and state officials, Dynamic was found to have falsified loan documents and misled borrowers. Without admitting wrongdoing, Trowern signed an agreement that he wouldn’t own or manage a mortgage company in the state for three years.

For more, see Vulture Investors Buy Discounted FHA Loans.

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Sussex Computer Vision David Young, April 1994

This teach file introduces the use of motion information in computer vision.

Please read the introduction giving general information about the nature of this document.

You need to have read and understood TEACH VISION1. It will be helpful to have looked at VISION2, VISION3 and VISION5.

Before proceeding, execute the following chunk of code to avoid having to load the libraries later.

    uses popvision          ;;; search vision libraries
    uses sunrasterfile      ;;; for reading image files
    uses filesequence       ;;; for reading image sequences
    uses float_byte         ;;; type conversion
    uses float_arrayprocs   ;;; array arithmetic
    uses first_order_flow   ;;; for flow pictures
    uses display_flow       ;;; for flow pictures
    uses horn_schunck       ;;; for optic flow measurements
    uses solve_dilation     ;;; for optic flow interpretation

As usual, the code in this teach file is designed to be run in the order in which it appears.

In stereoscopic vision (see TEACH VISION5), viewing a scene from more than one viewpoint simultaneously provides valuable information about 3-D structure. Moving the camera produces successive changes in viewpoint that can also yield this kind of information, but the changing image produced by movement, either of the camera or of objects in the environment, can also be used to provide direct predictive information useful in the control of action. In addition, motion can help with segmentation of the image into meaningful regions, and we begin with this application in the next section.

In practical computer vision, motion analysis requires the storage and manipulation of image sequences rather than single images. Image sequences can be stored in memory as lists of arrays, vectors of arrays or 3-D arrays, and on disc as single files or as files with sequential numbering. Each image in a sequence is often called a frame, and the time which elapsed between each frame being digitised the frame interval. The inverse of the frame interval, that is, the number of frames per second, is the frame rate. For systems based on the European TV standard, the maximum frame rate is usually 25 frames/second, though lower rates are often employed.

For many real applications such as robot control, the ideal is to process each frame as it arrives (in real time or online), but as this is likely to need specialised hardware, it is common for research purposes to store the images and process them at a lower rate, offline.

Static camera and moving objects: image differencing

A special case of motion analysis is when the camera is actually static with respect to its environment, but other objects are moving. In practice, this is often the case for surveillance applications such as road traffic monitoring. A sequence of images captured under these conditions can be read from disc and displayed with:

    vars fname = popvision_data dir_>< 'shoreham';
    vars images = filesin(sunrasterfile, fname, 2, '.ras', 1, 1, 10);
    0 ->> rci_show_x -> rci_show_y; ;;; start display at top left
    40 ->> rci_show_xshift -> rci_show_yshift;  ;;; spread out images
    vars image;
    1 -> rci_show_scale;
    for image from_repeater images do
        rci_show(image) -> ;
Traffic image Traffic image Traffic image Traffic image Traffic image Traffic image

(Final four images omitted here)

To look at these images, bear in mind that you can put your VED and xterm windows below them by selecting the "back" or "lower" option from the titlebar menu, and bring them back to the front by clicking on the titlebar. For further details of the call to filesin see HELP * FILESEQUENCE. For the use of the from_repeater construct, see HELP * FOR_FORM. Note that although in this and the following examples, the images are read from disc as they are required, it is sometimes more appropriate to store all the images in memory and then manipulate them.

The frame rate for this traffic sequence is about 5 frames/second. The camera was mounted on a tripod on a bridge, so the background is static. If the purpose of the system is to monitor the traffic, the starting point is to separate the vehicles from the background. A good stab at this can be made using image differencing: we form pixel-by-pixel differences between each image and its predecessor, and identify regions where the grey-level changes most between frames.

The following code demonstrates this idea. It forms each difference in turn, and then thresholds the differences so that we can see the places where the grey-level has changed by more than 20 units. In a real system, this threshold would be set dynamically, perhaps by reference to a histogram of the differences.

    vars read_to_float = sunrasterfile
        <> float_byte(% false, false, 0, 255 %);  ;;; see HELP *CLOSURES
    filesin(read_to_float, fname, 2, '.ras', 1, 1, 10) -> images;
    vars diffimage, lastimage;
    vars thresh = 20;            ;;; threshold for display
    images() -> lastimage;       ;;; get first image
    for image from_repeater images do
        float_arraydiff(image, lastimage, lastimage) -> diffimage;
        float_threshold2(1, -thresh, 0, thresh, 1, diffimage, diffimage)
            -> diffimage;   ;;; threshold the differences
        rci_show(diffimage) -> ;
        image -> lastimage;
Binary traffic difference image Binary traffic difference image Binary traffic difference image Binary traffic difference image Binary traffic difference image Binary traffic difference image

(Final three images omitted here)

(If you want to clear some of these images from the screen later, you can click on each one as usual, or get rid of the last 9, say, with

    rci_show_destroy(9);   ;;; remove last 9 pictures

but do not do this till you have read the next paragraph.)

As you can see, one problem with this technique is that the grey level changes both where the vehicle was in the last image and where it is in the current image. Thus there is a kind of double view of each vehicle. One way to tackle this is to take differences from a reference image, which represents the background only of the scene. In general, producing a reference image is quite delicate, because it has to be continuously updated to allow for changes to the illumination as the sun moves and the weather changes, and to incorporate other slow changes, whilst not including any vehicles in the background even if they stop for a time.

An approximate reference image for the scene, obtained simply by averaging a longer sequence of 700 frames, is available, and the following code demonstrates the result of taking differences with the reference image instead of the previous image.

    vars refimage;
    read_to_float(fname <> '_base.ras') -> refimage;
    filesin(read_to_float, fname, 2, '.ras', 1, 1, 10) -> images;
    for image from_repeater images do
        float_arraydiff(image, refimage, image) -> diffimage;
        float_threshold2(1, -thresh, 0, thresh, 1, diffimage, diffimage)
            -> diffimage;   ;;; threshold the differences
        rci_show(diffimage) -> ;
Binary traffic difference image Binary traffic difference image Binary traffic difference image Binary traffic difference image Binary traffic difference image Binary traffic difference image

(Final four images omitted here)

The binary image sequence now looks considerably cleaner, though there is still some noise present. The static car at the bottom of the image, not shown by the successive differences, now appears, and segmentation of the moving vehicles from the background is reasonable. Various techniques could be applied to tidy the results further: isolated pixels could be removed, and morphological operations such as dilation and erosion used to consolidate the regions. Individual vehicles can be isolated to some extent using the kind of clustering approach provided in the *APPBLOBS library.

Further analysis of a traffic sequence such as this can take various directions. One way is to infer the 3-D structure of the road surface from the changes in size of the vehicle "blobs" in the binary images. This geometrical information than then be used to refine the processing of the images. Another important approach is to use knowledge about the way vehicles tend to move to carry out expectation based processing - computation can be focused on those parts of the image where we expect to find a vehicle, and the bottom-up data from the image can be combined with predictions from a 3-D model of the moving vehicles, preferably within some rigorous statistical framework.

There is not room to explore this kind of problem further at this point; instead, we will move on to some other kinds of motion information. You might want to clear the screen of images now with

Time as an extra image dimension

You are used by now to the idea of images as 2-D structures, with x and y coordinates. It is sometimes helpful to think of an image sequence as a 3-D structure, with time, t, as the third dimension. Instead of thinking of an image sequence as a set of separate images, we can view it as occupying a block of space-time, something like this:

        / t              /----------------------------/||||
       /                /----------------------------/|||||
      /                /----------------------------/||||||
     /                /----------------------------/|||||||
    ----------->     ------------------------------||||||||
    |         x      |                            ||||||||-
    |                |                            |||||||/
    |                |                            ||||||/
    |                |                            |||||/
    V y              |                            ||||/
                     |                            |||/
                     |                            ||/
                     |                            |/

Here, the t axis is supposed to be at running away from you at right-angles to the x and y axes.

The division of time into frames is like the division of the spatial dimensions of the image into pixels.

We will explore this idea by using it to look at an image sequence from a moving camera. First, the sequence displayed conventionally:

    0 ->> rci_show_x -> rci_show_y; ;;; start display at top left
    popvision_data dir_>< 'trolleyA' -> fname;
    filesin(sunrasterfile, fname, 3, '.ras', 1, 1, 20) -> images;
    for image from_repeater images do
        rci_show(image) ->
Lab scene distant

(Intervening 18 images omitted here)

Lab scene near

You can see that the camera is gradually approaching the objects on the bench. Each image is a slice through the x-y-t block at a particular value of t.

Now we will look at a slice at a constant value of x, displaying the intensity as a function of y and t. The dots in the figure below show two edges of the slice.

        / t              -------------------.----------||||
       /                -------------------.----------|||||
      /                -------------------.----------||||||
     /                -------------------.----------|||||||
    ----------->     -------------------.----------||||||||
    |         x      |                  .         ||||||||-
    |                |                            |||||||-
    |                |                  ^         ||||||-
    |                |                  |         |||||-
    V y              |                  -- x = 142||||-
                     |                  .         |||-
                     |                  .         ||-
                     |                  .         |-

We arbitrarily choose an x value of 142, through the centre of the monitor screen to the right of the image. There are only 20 frames in the sequence, so to keep the slice a reasonable shape we will compress the y range down to 50 pixels. The code that follows sets up an array to receive the t-y slice, then copies the x = 142 column from each image into the appropriate t column of the slice array, using *arraysample.

    vars ty_slice = newsarray([1 20 1 50]);     ;;;
    filesin(sunrasterfile, fname, 3, '.ras', 1, 1, 20) -> images;
    vars t = 1, x = 142;
    for image from_repeater images do
        arraysample(image, [^x ^x 1 143], ty_slice, [^t ^t 1 50],
            "smooth") -> ;
        t + 1 -> t;

We can inspect the results with

    5 -> rci_show_scale;        ;;; show it larger, as only 20 x 50
    rci_show(ty_slice) -> rc_window;    ;;; we need the window later
Dilating slice

In the image now displayed, the axes are:

                  y |

The clearest features are the bright traces produced by the top and bottom of the monitor, across the middle and bottom of the t-y plot. Notice how the traces diverge as time increases, corresponding to the growth in size of features in the original image sequence. In addition, there is a kink at the central frame, corresponding to slight change in the camera's motion at this point.

In practical computer vision, the use of explicit space-time representations like this is rare at present. However, as in many branches of physics and mathematics, space-time is a valuable conceptual tool, and can help in the development of algorithms.

Dilation and time-to-collision

One very important measurement can be made immediately from the space-time plot. The traces of the top and bottom of the monitor screen diverge at a definite rate. It is possible to calculate from this rate that the camera is likely to crash into the monitor after about another 40 frames of the sequence - and this calculation can be done without knowing anything about the size or distance of the monitor or the speed of the camera. (We do have to assume that the camera will continue its approach without changing speed.) We thus have an estimate of the likely time to collision on the basis of very simple measurements. This "time to contact under constant velocity" is a quantity likely to be highly relevant to controlling a mobile robot.

The calculation is as follows. Towards the end of the sequence, the size of the monitor screen increases by about 0.5 pixels per frame (using the large pixels in the t-y plot). Near the end of the sequence, the size of the monitor image, in the same units, is about 20 pixels. The size divided by the rate of expansion, 20 / 0.5, gives the number of frames left before collision is likely to occur.

(To verify these very approximate measurements, mark a few points on the t-y plot:

    'red' -> rc_window("foreground");   ;;; mark points in red
    rci_drawpoint(13, 26);      ;;; top at start
    rci_drawpoint(13, 43);      ;;; bottom at start
    rci_drawpoint(19, 30);      ;;; top at end
    rci_drawpoint(19, 50);      ;;; bottom at end
Dilating slice with red dots

This shows that from frame 13 to frame 19, the image has grown from about 43-26 = 17 pixels to about 50-30 = 20 pixels. Three pixels growth in 6 frames is 0.5 pixels/frame. For real applications, the measurements would be made more carefully.)

The equation used above can be summarised as:

 time to contact under constant velocity
        (in frame intervals)

                        Size of image of object
                    =  --------------------------
                       Rate of expansion of image

                    =  -------------------------
                       Relative rate of dilation

This relationship has been examined in some detail by psychologists, and it has been proposed as one of the mechanisms by which people and animals might time their actions. Observations, for instance of gannets diving into the sea and of people punching falling balls, have tended to confirm that this ratio (sometimes denoted by the Greek letter tau), might well be used for timing in some circumstances. For details of the experiments and derivations of the relationship, see Bruce & Green (1985), Lee (1980) and Lee & Young (1985). (Full references in TEACH * VISION.)

There is one caveat: the method is only accurate for objects close to the direction of travel, and that are not themselves rotating. These restrictions are true for many situations of interest, but the final section below will indicate how the idea can be generalised.

Estimates of the rate of expansion are not usually made directly from the space-time representation. One of the more successful recent methods has been to track closed contours in the image sequence using a snake or active contour mechanism. The area enclosed by the snake, rather than any single dimension, can be used to give a reliable measure of the expansion rate.

The optic flow field

So far, we have looked at two special cases: the motion of individual objects in view of a fixed camera, and approach directly towards a surface. We need to go beyond these to have a general way to describe image change with time. For this, the central idea is that of the optic flow field.

Here, the term is used to mean the velocities of image features at a given point in time. (This is not strictly correct: the term ought to be used to describe the optic array rather than the image, and can also denote image changes over extended periods of time, but we will stick with the simpler usage.) Optic flow is to motion, roughly, what binocular disparities are to stereo vision - see TEACH VISION5.

Optic flow patterns are characteristic of different kinds of movement. For example, the optic flow field for the approach sequence in the previous section looks schematically like the display generated as follows:

    1 -> rci_show_scale;
    vars bounds = [1 192 1 142];        ;;; same size as previous array
    vars flowproc = first_order_flow(% 120, 50, 0.08, 0, 0, 0 %);
    display_flowproc(flowproc, bounds, 1, 10, false) -> rc_window;
Frontal approach vector field

Each line represents an optic flow vector. The length and direction of the line indicate the speed and direction of motion of an image feature at the position of the dot. (For details of the procedures used here see HELP * FIRST_ORDER_FLOW and * DISPLAY_FLOW. These procedures are only being used as convenient ways of generating the diagrams, and understanding the code above is not important.)

The flow-field displayed is a dilating flow-field with a focus of expansion at the coordinates (120, 50). A focus of expansion is present in flow fields where the camera is moving through a static environment and is not rotating as it moves; it indicates the direction of heading of the camera, that is the point at which collision will occur if the camera keeps moving in a straight line. Note how the flow speed, indicated by the length of the vector lines, increases with distance in the image from the focus of expansion. In fact, the speed divided by this distance is a constant, and is just the (relative) rate of dilation of the image, used above to estimate time-to-collision.

Other situations produce different flow fields. For a camera moving sideways (regarding the direction of view as "straight ahead"), and viewing objects that are all about the same distance away (or a plane at right angles to the line of sight), the flow field is approximately uniform, roughly like that generated by:

    vars flowproc = first_order_flow(% 96, 10000, 0, 0.0005, 0, 0 %);
    display_flowproc(flowproc, bounds, 1, 10, rc_window) -> ;
Panning vector field

This is also close to the flow field generated by a rotation of the camera about the y-axis (a panning motion in cinematography), and in practice it can be difficult to separate out the two kinds of flow without additional information.

For a camera moving forwards over a planar ground surface, the flow field is roughly like this:

    false -> popradians;            ;;; Theta in degrees
    vars flowproc = first_order_flow(% 96, 0, 0.04, 0, 0.02, 90 %);
    display_flowproc(flowproc, bounds, 1, 10, rc_window) -> ;
Oblique approach vector field

where the horizon is at the top of the window, whilst for a camera moving sideways over the ground, for instance a camera looking out of the side of a train, it is like:

    vars flowproc = first_order_flow(% 96, 0, 0, 0.02, 0.02, -45 %);
    display_flowproc(flowproc, bounds, 1, 10, rc_window) -> ;
Oblique sideways view vector field

If there are independently moving objects present (as with the traffic example), or surfaces at differing distances or different orientations, then the flow field will be more complex, with different regions showing different patterns.

Measuring optic flow

It is surprisingly difficult to measure optic flow accurately. One approach is to identify individual image features, such as grey-level corners, and track them from frame to frame. It is then necessary to solve something like the stereo correspondence problem; how difficult this is depends on the frame interval. This kind of approach produces a sparse set of flow vectors, as vectors are only defined for definite features. The snake-based method mentioned above is proving a powerful technique for tracking large-scale features, which may also be distorting in particular ways as the movement progresses, and the information implicit in the snake's shape can avoid the need to calculate explicit flow vectors.

There is a different class of methods based on the use of local measurements of the spatial and temporal structure of the image sequence. These attempt to produce a dense set of flow vectors, with a vector defined for every pixel. We will discuss one of the simplest of these approaches, due to Horn & Schunck (1981; see TEACH * VISION).

Measuring optic flow using spatial and temporal gradients

The Horn-Schunck method makes use of the simplest local structure that can give information about motion: the grey-level gradient. This allows extremely simple low-level processing to be used, at the expense, as we shall see, of some extra processing to resolve ambiguities. (TEACH VISION3 describes the spatial grey-level gradient.)

The basic idea is as follows. Suppose that there is a grey-level gradient of 2 units per pixel in some small region of the image. If the gradient direction is along the x-axis, the grey-levels in the region might be:

   | 23 | 25 | 27 | 29 | 31 |
   |----+----+----+----+----|      ----------------->
   | 23 | 25 | 27 | 29 | 31 |      g.l. gradient is
   |----+----+----+----+----|      2 units/pixel in
   | 23 | 25 | 27 | 29 | 31 |      this direction

Now suppose that in the same rows and columns of the image, but in the next frame in sequence, the values are

   | 17 | 19 | 21 | 23 | 25 |      ------------------>
   |----+----+----+----+----|      Image has moved 3
   | 17 | 19 | 21 | 23 | 25 |      pixels this way.
   |----+----+----+----+----|      g.l's at corresponding
   | 17 | 19 | 21 | 23 | 25 |      pixels have decreased by 6

You can see that a motion of 3 pixels to the right accounts for the new values. The change in grey-level at corresponding pixels is 6 units (e.g 27 to 21 in the central pixel). If the spatial grey-level gradient is 2 units per pixel, and we shift the values by 3 pixels, then the total change is 2 x 3 = 6. We can manipulate this to say that

 distance moved per frame

            Change in grey-level at corresponding pixels
         =  --------------------------------------------
                   Spatial grey-level gradient

or in this case 6 (the temporal gradient) divided by 2 (the spatial gradient) gives 3 (the amount of motion). A great advantage of the approach is that it is easy to measure these spatial and temporal gradients, by combining smoothing and differencing operations.

This argument makes a big assumption - the constant intensity assumption - that the change in grey-level is entirely due to motion. In other words, the grey-levels "move along with" the motions of the images of physical features. This is often not true - for instance specular reflections and highlights do not behave in this way, and the illumination can change - but it is a good enough assumption to make a reasonable starting point for estimating the flow.

There is a further problem. In the example above, a motion along the y-axis will not have any effect on the grey levels, because it maps like values onto one another. Thus we only have information about motion along the x-axis in this case, or in general along the grey-level gradient. This component of motion is sometimes called the edge motion; it is at right-angles to the local edge direction.

This effect is a manifestation of what is known as the aperture problem, because it is a result of considering a local region of the image only. If we used information from a larger region, rather than looking through a small window at the image, the extra structure would allow to infer the other component of motion. Horn & Schunck tackled the aperture problem by arguing that adjacent regions of the image should usually have similar motions, because the regions are usually images of adjacent parts of the same physical surface. If a nearby part of the image had a grey-level gradient along the y-axis, then this would constraint the other component of the local flow vector.

This boils down to two requirements:

  1. The flow field should vary smoothly, so each flow vector should be close to the average of its neighbours.
  2. The edge motion should be compatible with the spatial and temporal grey-level gradients, as discussed above.

Horn & Schunck proposed an iterative algorithm which yields flow fields that satisfy these conditions. Although the algorithm was derived using a fairly sophisticated analysis, it amounts in effect to adjusting an estimated flow field to satisfy each of the conditions in turn more closely. On each iteration, the algorithm:

  1. replaces each flow vector with an average of itself and its neighbours; (This is just like smoothing an image using local averaging, except that there are two components and we have to smooth both of them.)
  2. changes the component of each flow vector along the local grey level gradient to make it closer to the ratio of the temporal to spatial grey-level gradients.

This iterative approach to satisfying constraints belongs to the class of algorithms known as relaxation algorithms.

Does this work? We can try it on the last two images from the approach sequence:

    vars image1 = read_to_float(fname <> '019.ras');
    vars image2 = read_to_float(fname <> '020.ras');
    rci_show(image1) -> ;
    rci_show(image2) -> ;
Lab scene penultimate near Lab scene nearest

which can be processed and the flow field on each iteration displayed with

    max(popmemlim, 1e6) -> popmemlim;       ;;; may need more memory
    false -> rc_window;
    vars hs = horn_schunck(image1, image2, 2, 2, 0.005);
    vars u, v;          ;;; will be arrays holding flow vec comps
    repeat 10 times
        hs() -> (u, v);
        display_flow(u, v, 3, 11, rc_window) -> rc_window

Very messy vector field (After 1 iteration)

Fairly noisy dilating vector field (After 10 iterations)

After the first iteration, the flow vectors show pure edge motion, so tend to lie along the x- and y-axes, because the edges in the image tend to be aligned this way. As the iteration proceeds, smoothing moves the vectors round, and we end up with something that resembles, at least a little, the "ideal" dilation flow field demonstrated earlier. Of course, it is much more noisy, and a few of the vectors are entirely incorrect, but the idea is clearly working to some extent.

For more details of the program used here, and another example of it in use, see HELP * HORN_SCHUNCK. You could also try applying it to some frames of the traffic sequence. Note that the program is faster than it seems, as most of the time spent running the example above goes in producing the display.

Many variations on the method of Horn & Schunck have been proposed. One of its chief problems, apart from sensitivity to noise, is that the smoothing step blurs what ought to be sharp jumps in the flow field, at the edges of objects at different depths for instance. This can be addressed by allowing explicit discontinuities in the vector field, and also by using more careful forms of smoothing that take account of the amount of information available to constrain the different components of the vectors. Some related approaches combine vectors round closed contours (e.g. Hildreth, 1984; full reference in TEACH * VISION), so that the problem of propagating the flow into large uniform regions is avoided.

Relatively recently, the gradient-based method has been generalised to filter-based methods. These use local operators with a more complex structure than the simple differencing operators needed to estimate gradients. Such operators yield a richer description of the local grey-level structure in space-time, and the methods are producing promising results.

Interpreting optic flow

We have already mentioned that approach to a surface leads to a flow-field with a simple dilational pattern. If we are willing to assume that the flow-field we have measured has this form, then it is straightforward to estimate the position of the focus of expansion and the rate of dilation. This can be done on our existing flow estimates from the end of the approach sequence with

    vars D, x0, y0;
    solve_dilation(u, v) -> (D, x0, y0); ;;; see HELP * SOLVE_DILATION

and the position of the focus of expansion shown with

    'red' -> rc_window("foreground");
    rc_filledcircle(x0, y0, 3);
Dilating field with dot

or on the original image

    rci_show(image1) -> rc_window;
    'red' -> rc_window("foreground");
    rc_filledcircle(x0, y0, 3);

This indicates where collision will occur if the camera keeps moving with constant velocity, and assuming it is not rotating. In addition, the quantity D is the (relative) rate of dilation, the flow speed at each pixel divided by the distance from the focus of expansion. The inverse of this, as explained above, gives an estimate of the time to collision (measured in frame intervals). Printing this quantity:

    1/D =>
    ** 45.4131

shows a value of about 45 frame intervals to collision - in good agreement with the earlier estimate of 40 frame intervals made from the space-time plot.

In all this, we have treated the objects in view as if they all lie in the same vertical plane in front of the camera. Clearly we need a more general approach. There is a very large literature on this topic, and a wide variety of ways to proceed. Two of the main ones are now outlined, but a detailed analysis or demonstration is beyond the scope of this file.

Structure from global flow patterns

If we assume that the world is rigid and the camera moves through it, and we obtain flow vectors for some features in the image, then it is possible, in principle, to work out how the camera is moving and also the relative depth of the scene features (i.e. points on surfaces in the world) associated with the flow vectors. This is known as solving the structure-from-motion problem, since the depths of objects, together with their image positions, give their full 3-D positions.

The motion of the camera at any instant can be described by a translation velocity and a rotation angular velocity. Each of these requires three numerical variables to describe it. For instance, the components of the motion along the three camera coordinates (see TEACH VISION5) describe the translation, and the rates of rotation about the three axes describe the overall rotation. There are thus 6 motion parameters that need to be found.

In addition, the depth (or distance from the camera) of each scene feature is unknown. Thus if we observe N flow vectors, there are N unknown depths. The total number of unknowns is therefore N + 6.

In fact, optic flow alone can never determine all of the translation parameters. Exactly the same optic flow can be produced by a small, close object moving slowly as by a large, distant object moving fast. There is a speed-scale ambiguity, which means that we can only determine the distances of the scene features relative to the translation speed, and vice versa. That is, we might as well assume the camera speed to be 1 unit per frame, and measure distances in these "units", whose actual size in inches or metres, remains unknown for now. This reduces the number of unknowns to N + 5, since there are only two independent translation parameters now.

Now, for each flow vector, we have two measurements: the x and y components of the vector, each of which depends on the N + 5 unknown parameters as well as position in the image. We therefore have 2N equations, and N + 5 unknowns. This suggests that for 5 or more flow vectors we ought to be able to solve the equations and find the structure and motion.

This turns out to be true in general, though the mathematics of the solution is not trivial. Certain configurations of points in space make the solution impossible, and it turns out that in general the solution is very sensitive to noise. In particular, rotation and sideways translation of the camera get confused in the presence of only very modest amounts of noise.

One way to tackle this sensitivity is to integrate the results of analyses extended over time. We may, for instance, assume that the camera motion is reasonably smooth, and use many frames to build up an accurate estimate of the structure and motion. Alternatively, we may use non-visual information, such as may be available from the drive system of a robot, to provide additional knowledge of camera translation or rotation, simplifying the problem enormously.

Structure from local flow patterns

An alternative way to get information from motion is to assume that the flow in some small region of the image is the result of motion relative to a smooth patch of surface. In this region, we ignore the average flow, but look at the local relative pattern of the flow - the differential flow. This will be a combination of

    vars flowproc = first_order_flow(% 100, 100, 0.1, 0, 0, 0 %);
    display_flowproc(flowproc, [1 200 1 200], 1,20,false) -> rc_window;
Dilating flow field

    vars flowproc = first_order_flow(% 100, 100, 0, 0.1, 0, 0 %);
    display_flowproc(flowproc, [1 200 1 200], 1, 20, rc_window)
        -> rc_window;
Rotating flow field

the first component of shear:

    vars flowproc = first_order_flow(% 100, 100, 0, 0, 0.1, 0 %);
    display_flowproc(flowproc, [1 200 1 200], 1, 20, rc_window)
        -> rc_window;
Shear vert/horiz flow field

and the second component of shear:

    vars flowproc = first_order_flow(% 100, 100, 0, 0, 0.1, 45 %);
    display_flowproc(flowproc, [1 200 1 200], 1, 20, rc_window)
        -> rc_window;
Shear diagonal flow field

It is possible to analyse the local differential flow into these components, and hence to make inferences not only about time-to-collision, but also about the tilt and slant of the surface relative to the camera. Such information may well be as valuable for control of robot motion as a full solution of the structure-from-motion problem.

You should now:

Here are links to:

Copyright University of Sussex 1994. All rights reserved.


text:
Ever lose focus?  It's easy to do, ins't it?

Sometimes when we go into a trial we lose focus.  It is so easy to put our eyes on our circumstances instead of our beautiful, loving LORD.

What are some things that cause us to lose focus?
 _______, _______, _______.  You fill in the blanks.

Psalm 37:1-11 lays out exactly what to do while God handles "them".

  • Do not fret -- Be not envious (God is going to handle "them")
  • Trust -- Do good
  • Delight -- He will
  • Commit
  • He Will
  • Rest -- Wait -- Do not fret
  • Cease  -- Forsake wrath -- Do not fret
  • Wait -- You will inherit
  • God will handle "them"
  • Will inherit -- Will have abundant prosperity

My codes:
pink = do or do not
green = promise

Psalm 37 (New American Standard Bible)

Psalm 37:1-11

1 Do not fret because of evildoers,

Be not envious toward wrongdoers.

2For they will wither quickly like the grass

And fade like the green herb.

3 Trust in the LORD and do good;

Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.

4 Delight yourself in the LORD;

And He will give you the desires of your heart.

5 Commit your way to the LORD,

Trust also in Him, and He will do it.

6He will bring forth your righteousness as the light

And your judgment as the noonday.

7 Rest in the LORD and wait patiently for Him;

Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way,

Because of the man who carries out wicked schemes.

8Cease from anger and forsake wrath;

Do not fret; it leads only to evildoing.

9For evildoers will be cut off,

But those who wait for the LORD, they will inherit the land.

10Yet a little while and the wicked man will be no more;

And you will look carefully for his place and he will not be there.

11But the humble will inherit the land

And will delight themselves in abundant prosperity.

1 comment:

God's Girl said...

I love these verses! Hi... I thought I would stop by to say hello! I am also a pastor's wife. I pray that the Lord would bless you in such a special way this week!

So nice to meet you!

All for Jesus,

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text:
Sunday, December 21, 2008

EJ friend party

EJ had his first friend party this year. He had so much fun. Being the social kid he is, of course he wanted to invite a few more kids than mom had intended, but everything turned out great. We couldn't have asked for the party to go any better. We played Transformer duck, duck, goose. *(bumble bee, bumble bee, optimus prime) we built up our autobot army to battle the decepticons, went for a treasure hunt to find the all spark, had a pinata, and watched a transformer cartoon. The kids had a great time it turned out so good. After the party EJ came down looked around and said, Man I had a wild party. He is too funny.
The kids after the treasure hunt for the allspark

A few of EJ's party guests

The transformer decor

He had a great time even though it turned out to be a bigger party than originally planned! : ) Happy birthday baby. I love you.

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Date submitted: 1 - 3 - 2005

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Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Bunny Paper Pendant

Rabbit Hill Creations said...

Debra, this is awesome!...are these available for purchase???...when?...where?...haveto know!...Toni

Lori said...

your pendant is wonderful!! thanks for sending the bunny swap banner, i posted it this am..can someone let me know how to add a link to the pic??

HopHopJingleBoo said...

hello, the pendant is available on my website..[making alot of Rabbit paper pendants, lately will post in June] thanks for asking!debra

The Polka Dot Pixie said...

Gorgeous!!!!!!!! You are so amazing!

About Me

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Ontonagon, Michigan, United States
Self-taught Artist and Collector of Stuff..grew up a city girl now a Happy Country Grandma! Been married 38 years to a loving Husband,we have the best Daughter & 2 sweet grandchildren..We have 2 fat Cats to keep me company, Rufus B. Wolf & Baby Girl! I have a weakness for vintage Rabbits, old holiday decorations, vintage photos and childrens books, old dolls and stuffed critters, primulas and hostas, old roses, transferware,teapots,old tins, barkcloth and toile,watching movies, staying up late, cozy flannel sheets,perfume.. Coffee or Tea with lots of Real Cream..All types of naughty carbs like pies, cakes and fancy pastries, savory breads.. and now digital scrapping and silver jewelry!


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Saturday, November 22, 2008

New Ways of Thinking: change, a distant dream

Opponents criticize Obama on his nominations, so far, of those who will serve America with him in his cabinet. They say that his choices do not reflect change. That is because they view his choices as Clintonian, and that is not change; but this not the overarching message of change which Barack Obama has been promoting, as demonstrated in his speech, “A More Perfect Union”.

I believe that his leadership skills, his ability to inspire, his wisdom and intelligence will be the impetus that will bring Americans and America to a better place: “… a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.”

Robert F. Kennedy in quoting George Bernard Shaw often said, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.”

A future of things that never were requires change. Change not for the sake of change, not just to make things different, but change that in one way or another alters, modifies, converts, varies, shifts, transforms, and/or transmutes our world to a world of peace, for in peace lays the resolution to our most urgent problems.

Dreaming of things as we would like them to be, and believing that anything can be achieved, is a hoped for expectation that things can be different than they are now. Envisioning things that will make our world a better world, and not looking it as utopian, and therefore remaining stuck in the status quo, but instead engaging the mind and heart by asking, why not? Change is a process; it will be a distant dream, seemingly utopian, but not unreachable, not impossible.

Barack Obama, like the late Robert F. Kennedy, has visions of what America can and should be: a vision of equality for all people. A vision of a compassionate America, and compassion for all Americans from America’s leadership.

Robert F. Kennedy in announcing the death of Martin Luther King Jr. at a rally in Indianapolis Indianan on April 4, 1968 said:

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.”

I believe Barack Obama also shares the vision of John Kennedy as expressed in the commencement address he gave at American University on June 10, 1963:

“I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions -- on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace; no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process -- a way of solving problems.”

The dreams of John and Robert Kennedy are the change Americans must seek. I believe that change in the attitudes we have toward each other and between nations will ultimately lead us to a world of peace. It will bring about the economic, social, and foreign policy changes Americans seek.

Barack Obama has said over and over again, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change … I’m asking you to believe in yours.” And, a quote from the remarks delivered by President-elect Barack Obama, “This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you. Together, we will change this country and we will change the world. Then you and I - together - will change this country and change this world.”

As with Barack Obama, the change that I believe Americans seek requires a belief in ourselves that we as a people can bring about change. To perpetuate a viable evolutionary change we must nurture, educate, and assure every child has love, a feeling of belonging, is safe, and has the physiological needs of food and shelter, for it is our young people who will be the forerunners of the change we seek. Transparent leadership with probity, and leaders who have the ability to inspire and who are of high moral character, is the final ingredient that will bring us to that place for which we all yearn.

In closing a word from T.J. Turner who served nine months in Afghanistan with the 455th Expeditionary Mission Support Group: "I hear lots of talk in our nation about the global war on terror, and my opinions evolve with that debate. However, we seem to miss the root cause. Hell is what causes terrorism. It’s about pure desperation, and feeling like there’s no way of recovering the hope of childhood. I’m not saying that we’ll be able to win this conflict with teddy bears alone, but when I deploy next I’m packing a bag full of them just in case."

Saturday, November 8, 2008

A New Way of Thinking: Veteran’s Day -- “NEVER AGAIN!”

Veteran’s Day is a day America sets aside to honor its veterans. It is a day that we should honor veterans for their dedication and commitment. It is not a day that we should glorify the wars in which they served. Veteran’s Day is as much a metaphor of our past as it should be a metaphor for our future, war “NEVER AGAIN!”

I am proud of our veterans in that they have selfishly served our country, whether that service is voluntary or not, based on a belief propagated by our government and “We the People” that their service was and is necessary to preserve our freedom and our way of life. They acted on our collective behalf. Their courage, loyalty, and devotion are extraordinary.

I am not proud of a government and “We the People” who do not respect life and who will send an American into harms way willy-nilly, in deceit, and wage war of their own design, or who wage war by imbuing Americans with the notion that “If we didn’t have a military we would not have a country!”

On a trip home from a family event, I was making critical remarks regarding a member of our family whose intent was to join the U.S. Army. I was surprised when I received from my son the following unexpected, bombastic, visceral exclamation: “If we didn’t have a military we would not have a country!” It was disappointing because my wife and daughter agreed. It was unnerving because it was unexpected and I did not have a response.

There is no quick counter exclamation, no come-back to make. At least I could not think of any. A thoughtful response would be too long. No one would allow me to complete my thoughts before interrupting, anyway. I felt, though, that I must be able to counter it, if not verbally then at least in writing, if my view was to be considered valid.

The raison d'être for Americans making this response is founded on a patriotic and nationalist mindset, where freedom and democracy have symbiotic threads to the military. These threads have an interrelationship in our culture that influences the way Americans view the military. The purpose of our military is to fight wars to defend America, protect our democracy, our freedom, and to defend our way of life, which is true. However, this perspective is so binding that every military excursion or war is perceived in the light that it is done to protect these values, which has not been true.

This mindset is embedded so deeply that it makes a change in a way of thinking nearly impossible. It impedes on our willingness to proactively and nonviolently negotiate our differences as opposed to using force in an effort to coerce others into thinking the way we do. This is a state of mind which obscures the fact that the reason for past military actions have been based on unsubstantiated and contrived facts, on impure motives, and not because America was under an exigent threat, Iraq being the best example.

This dismissal of reality invokes irrational thoughts and fears. It conjures up a perceived need for a martial response. It conjures up “irrational exuberance”: after 9/11/01 it was ubiquitously apparent with seemingly every home, truck, SUV, and car displaying the Flag. Seemingly, everyone was wearing a flag pendant. It was like they had to prove to other Americans that they were Americans. It was patriotism and nationalism gone wild. It gave birth to “If you’re not with us then your against us”, which was at first meant as a warning to other nations, but it became viciously directed at Americans who were against the war. It will cause Americans to give up their freedoms, and accept limitations in how they participate in their democracy, because of fear.

The perceived indispensable role of the military in our society is a monomaniacal vision subliminally implanted by the time we were toddlers and nurtured throughout life: military uniforms and paraphernalia; toy guns, swords, and other weaponry; inclusion of the military in every parade or civic event, even St. Patrick’s Day; inculcating Boy Scouts with an indoctrination of marching, earning medals and ribbons, and Boy Scout salute, which are all military characteristics; fetish inculcation of a cult of the flag; and even our American Anthem, the Star Spangled Banner, which is a song of patriotism with allegiance more to our militarism than to our nationalism – why not “America the Beautiful,” instead; mythical idolization of war heroes; and, in our zeitgeist, ubiquitous email mantras: “it is the veteran, not the preacher, who has given us freedom of religion” — “it is the veteran, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press” — “it is the veteran, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech” — “it is the veteran, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to assemble” — “it is the veteran, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial” — “it is the veteran , not the politician, who has given us the right to vote.”; and finally, “it is the veteran who salutes the flag.” These insidious, subliminal, inculcated messages have been implanted and reinforced on Americans since the founding of our nation. They have been bequeathed from one generation to the next.

Books that emphasize my view:

The Pentagon “is the biggest, loosest cannon in American history, and no institution has changed this country more,” from “House of War” by James Carroll.

Andrew Bacevich, who by the way lost a son to Iraq, in his book “The American Militarism” “warns of a new and dangerous obsession that has taken hold of so many Americans, conservatives and liberals alike. It is the marriage of militarism to utopian ideology – of unprecedented military power wed to a blind faith in the universality of American values.”

James Bamford in his book “A Pretext for War” details the Bush administration’s misuse of intelligence to sell preemptive war to the American people.

Due to patriotic and nationalistic hubris, proponents of the military and war lead others down the same dangerous path with the view that we fight to save our country, our freedom, our democracy. From the very birth of our nation, Americans have been imbued with a strong sense of patriotism and nationalism that has not served us very well.

This ready-made exclamation, “If we didn’t have a military we would not have a country!” is made with such veracity that it is put forward as if it is axiomatic. Americans who posit these remarks will emphatically opine that they can determine this truth empirically; after all, would we not be speaking Japanese or German if we had not fought World War II? And therefore, “If we didn’t have a military we would not have a country!”

Reasoning based on results, no matter how beneficial the result may be, does not mean the same result could not have been otherwise achieved. A violent military response is reactionary and immediate; it’s not proactive and does not necessarily provide a long-term solution. Peace is a continuum — a process; war immediate with unpredictable results.

The observable winning results, the fact that we are not speaking Japanese or German, and the seemingly social benefit derived as a result of our win in World War II is only an observable fact of today. The fact is that many millions of people suffered on all sides of the conflict, some who never recovered and atrocities that were committed beyond belief by both sides, as a result of World War II. World War II turned out to be a reactionary, defensive war that with foresight, as we evolved into the 20th century, could have been circumvented, and most likely with the same winning results. In the zeitgeist of the first half of the 20th century, maybe this foresight would have been too much to expect; but, in the zeitgeist of the 21st century, we do have the necessary know-how to avoid war, avoiding war is entirely possible.

Americans, in a way, perhaps cannot be blamed for their thoughtless, visceral, spontaneous outburst in support of their position. In a sense, one cannot blame Americans for being proponents of war, even though, of course, they are as responsible for war as much as anyone else. Many Americans tend to believe what the nations leaders tell them without critical examination. Naively they believe that American Presidents are truthful; that an American President would not deliberately lie in order to muster Americans to support a war, and then send American men and women to war who may be maimed for life or may on whose behalf give their life, without good reason. They take the voice of the government and their interlocutors veridically. Older Americans evidentially didn’t learn from the experience of Vietnam; or, for those who did not live through it do not care to learn from that experience. They may be Nixon’s “silent majority”: those who are content with the status quo; those who do not believe strongly enough, or do not care enough to speak out.

From an excerpt of an interview, Why We Fight By Eugene Jarecki & Amy Goodman, exemplifies what I have been writing: Eugene Jarecki, film maker and Director of the film “Why We Fight”: “Because I think Americans right now are preoccupied with thinking this is a one-off, that we've never done this before, that the American public has never found itself deeply in a war, far too in to go back, learning that the reasons we were given up front turn out not to have been what was discussed behind closed doors. And the sad reality is Iraq is not unique in that way. The weapons of mass destruction are as grave an illusion as the Gulf of Tonkin. And we've had a number of wars, all too many, where there's a huge gap between what the public understands and what is truly driving the machine.” “Like myself. The Gulf of Tonkin was the myth on which Johnson's entry into the Vietnam War was based. The idea that our ships had been attacked in the Gulf later turned out not to have been true, but it was very useful illusion for those who wanted to compel us to war.”

The inculcated belief that the military is responsible for preserving our liberty is the result of lies, distortions, obfuscation, demonizations (wartime propaganda that demonizes the enemy) and even the microinequitable as well as the microaffirmative messages (sound-bites; demeanor and countenance when speaking, or how one presents themselves in photo opportunities) by hawks, government, capitalist and other proponents of war. These subliminal messages, some deliberate and some not, that the government and others foster, inculcating a esprit de corps in Americans to support war when otherwise, if the facts were known, there would be opposition and outrage — even anarchy.

These messages are so influencing and affecting, and cause so much exuberance that Americans will mirror in their own rhetoric what has been said without critical review, and even act out on those messages in irrational ways.

Just as we are now experiencing with opposition to the Iraq War, as with our Vietnam experience, Americans, only when we are not showing progress (a euphemism for not winning), will view a war with ambivalence and antipathy. Remember body counts of the Vietnam War? The higher the enemy body counts the more of an indication we were winning.

In the words of James Madison and John Quincy Adams:

“Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies. From these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” “War is the parent of armies.” By James Madison, the principal architect of the U.S. Constitution, 1795

“She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence; she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.... [America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty.” “She [America] well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she [America] would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.” John Quincy Adams, 1821

I believe that Madison and Adams would seriously object to the exclamation: “If we didn’t have a military we would not have a country.” I believe they would have condemnation for our government, and disappointment of how our government has evolved.

Journalist Charles Lewis stated “There are so many theories about what happened in Iraq and why we really went in, but when you look at the history of the United States, almost every president, there is something we don't like somewhere in the world, and we’ve got to dispense military force.”; “This is not about one president or one party. We fight as a nation because we perceive it is in our interest to fight. We then mention words like “freedom” and nice common values that -- who can be against freedom? -- when in fact much more has been going on privately.”

The fact is that Chris Hedges is absolutely correct: “War is a Force That Give Us Meaning.” “We are addicted to the ‘drug of war’,” and therefore militarism, a reason for a muscular foreign policy, a reason for preemptive military action.

As a result of the way our country has evolved, the military and war are essential to our economy. Maybe that is what is meant by “If we didn’t have a military we would not have a country.”

January, 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his final address as President of the United States: “My fellow Americans, this evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen. We have been compelled to create a permanent armament industry of vast proportions. Three-and-a-half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. The total influence, economic, political, even spiritual, is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex [Military-industrial-congressional complex]. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

In the final analysis, “We the People” are the scoundrels of war. All Americans are collectively responsible, for "War is the first resort of scoundrels" (Charles Bernstein, War Stories, first published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Monday, March 31, 2003)

America’s solution to international conflict has been war, not diplomacy, not negotiation, not a willingness to explore nonviolent resolutions.

As long as we are under the impression that “If we didn’t have a military we would not have a country,” as long as Americans believe that diplomacy and negotiation are analogous to appeasement, war will remain the only option remaining. I am sorry to say, in consideration of this mindset, the mantra “NEVER AGAIN!” will not have any meaning in our future. There will always continue to be veterans if we don’t change our way of thinking.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Courage, wisdom in an age of fear

So many of James Carroll's articles speak my mind. Perhaps it's because we are about the same age, lived through the same time. I don't know, but the following article is one of them.

"One of the joys of the current season is to see a fresh generation respond to the promise of Obama without reflexes of worry. Young people have a right to uncomplicated hope, and Obama is himself young enough to nurture it."

"But for many Americans, ghosts haunt the house of politics, a hovering threat for which, until recently, there were no words. That is the background for the shudders felt when last week's presidential debate turned to the ugliness of what this campaign has surfaced. John McCain complained about "unfair" criticisms by Georgia Congressman John Lewis of slurs shouted at some McCain-Palin rallies. Obama replied that he had distanced himself from Lewis's comments. But he explained that Lewis was expressing concern at McCain supporters shouting, as Obama put it, referring to himself as the target, "things like 'Terrorist!' and 'Kill him!' " "

'There it was: Obama himself using the phrase "Kill him!" Obama naming the threat of his own assassination. He went on, "And that your running mate . . . didn't say, 'Hold on a second, that's kind of out of line.' I think Congressman Lewis's point was that we have to be careful how we deal with our supporters." "

"McCain swung into a manic defense of his supporters, displaying tone deafness to the unnerving chord that had been plucked by his own campaign. McCain is of the generation that was traumatized by the murders of 1968, but that year he was undergoing a separate trauma of his own in Hanoi. He is not seized, perhaps, by the visceral dread out of which Lewis was speaking, and which so many recognize. However irrelevant the youthful nihilism of William Ayers, its full horror cannot be grasped without reference to the social breakdown that preceded it.

Obama has shown that he understands the positive and negative legacies of the 1960s, but he is defined by neither. For me, his calm and reasonable demeanor was never more welcome than when he repeated that phrase "Kill him!" Unlike me, Obama is not afraid to put the threat into words, as long as doing so opens into deeper understanding. The threat thus spoken of is defused."

"A Republican mantra has been, 'Who is Barack Obama?' But he has been showing us. His courage runs as deep as his wisdom. For some Americans, he represents, in addition to everything else, the unexpected possibility that we can find release in middle age from what took us hostage when we were young."

James Carroll, The Boston Globe, October 20, 2008

Our Future with Russia

"Presidents who used martial swagger to cloak personal insecurity took America disastrously to war in Asia three times. Psychological animus of the sort that defines McCain has been a feature of this country's most significant foreign policy failures. Obama represents another mode of leadership altogether."

"The financial crisis that continues to roll across the globe, like an endless earthquake, is irrefutable proof that old categories of regional and national dispute - including the East-West divide - no longer apply. What the world needs now is an unprecedented strategic partnership between Moscow and Washington, bridging Europe and Asia, north and south, as the ground of political and economic renewal. McCain, stuck in the past, hasn't a clue of this future. Obama speaks from it."

James Carroll, The Boston Globe, October 27, 2008


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Monday, October 13, 2008

Big Brown Injured at Aqueduct: Racing Career is Over!

NEW YORK (AP)—Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Big Brown’s racing career is over after injuring his right front foot during a workout at Aqueduct on Monday.Trainer Rick Dutrow said the 3-year-old colt, who was preparing for the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Oct. 25, appeared to kick himself while working on the turf course at Aqueduct with stablemate Kip Deville. Big Brown was able to complete the six-furlong work when Dutrow noticed blood coming out of the foot.
“It looks like he grabbed himself in a bad spot,” Dutrow said.
Though the extent of the injury is unknown, Michael Iavarone of IEAH Stables, co-owners of Big Brown, said the horse who captivated the racing world during his Triple Crown bid will not race again.
“It’s in the best interest of the horse to let him recover and move on to his breeding career,” Iavarone said.
It means there will be no showdown in the BC Classic between Big Brown and 4-year-old star Curlin. The race was expected to be Big Brown’s last before retiring to stud at Three Chimneys Farm in Midway, Ky.

“This is devastating. He had a great work this morning, and we were very excited about going to Breeders’ Cup,” Iavarone said. “This is not only devastating to us, but to all of his fans who won’t get to see him run in the Classic.”

In this June 2, 2008 file phot…
AP - Oct 13, 11:22 am EDT
The injury caps a brilliant but somewhat controversial career for Big Brown, who won seven times in eight starts including dominant runs in the Derby and the Preakness.
His bid for the first Triple Crown since 1978 ended during a bizarre Belmont Stakes in which he was eased by jockey Kent Desormeaux at the turn and he trotted across the finish line in last.
The Belmont came after Dutrow admitted he took Big Brown off the anabolic steroid Winstrol, though Dutrow claimed the decision had nothing to do with Big Brown’s poor performance. The horse was also dealing with a painful quarter crack in his left front hoof. That injury is unrelated to the injury he sustained Monday.
Big Brown bounced back from the Belmont with wins in the Haskell Invitational and the Monmouth Stakes and was poised for a shot at Curlin, horse racing’s all-time leading money winner. Not anymore. Dutrow expressed disappointment but said the horse’s health is the highest priority.
“The best case scenario is he lives a real good life,” Dutrow said.

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