Why is it so hard to ensure that every vote is counted???

This one blows my mind! I am not living in a 3rd world country. Modern technology handles millions for transactions a day of billions of dollars AROUND THE WORLD!! Why the heck can't we get a voting system that accurately counts everyone's vote and issues a receipt?
Also why do we all have to vote on the same day??? Isn't that just asking for trouble? Lets vote over the course of 2 days at least and NO BLODDY EXIT POLES!!!! Votes are counted during the following week AND ONLY THE FINAL NUMBER IS RELEASED!! GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST DAMN TIME!!

There's nothing wrong with having electronic voting. Just have it set up by a company that does not have a direct stake in the election! NOT BY A COMPANY THAT CAN"T EVEN MAKE AN ATM THAT GIVES OUT THE PROPER AMOUNT EVERY TIME!!! (In 12 years of using them a Diebold ATM is the ONLY one I've ever have mis-dispense money. AND MORE THAN ONCE!!)

We spend BILLIONS of dollars on elections and end up having results that do not justify the effort AT ALL! If I were running a political party and elections were being decided in the thousands of votes then I would be VERY interested in making sure that the process was accurate to better than the 10000s place! Seriously… districts had errors that DOUBLED their votes? That's not funny, that is a system that we should get a FULL REFUND FOR! Why not? Did we actually request a system that was accurate "give or take 10000 votes here and there"?
Some how I doubt it. If the credit card companies screwed up 10000 out of every 1 million transactions due to faulty software and hardware you better bet they would be beating down the door of the vendor with something like a big fat lawsuit!

Anyway, I wondering if anyone else thinks this is egg on the face of democracy? And why were we not in the streets like the Ucrainians demanding accuracy in our election system? Pretty damn important to not ignore this sort of thing!

I don't care what the final margin was in the election. There were a LOT of local elections that were a hell of a lot closer and suffered due to this pathetic system of voting we keep using!

Mr. Bush if you want to have a constitutional amendment to add to your resume then make it the "Accuracy in Elections" Act of 2005. MANDATE that the process is given the attention it deserves! Give yourself one thing that future generations will give you credit for and be proud of this period of american history for.

NO VOTE LEFT BEHIND!

Busy first day...

Well, as I end the first day of my venture into the "blogosphere" I can't help but wonder how this will end up? Will I continue to purge the contents of my mind onto the unsuspecting denizens or will this be added to the long list of unfinished projects? It's interesting to me that a blog is something that is only finished when it is abandoned entirely.

“Damn trigger happy Americans, Since when is Death good?”

Death is good when you have lived for too long.

The definition of "too long" varies greatly between an internal and an external definition.

Some people seek death. Some people run from it for as long as they can. It finds everyone eventually.

I feel badly for those who die in war. Especially those who die in a war that has nothing to do with them.

But I feel worse for those who live every day in fear of torture for years. Those who don't have enough to eat. Who can't speak their mind to their friends about the things that concern them for fear of "disappearing".

War is bad. War is not a good solution for anything. War always does more harm than good. War is inevitable anytime you have someone(s) who rules by fear. Check out history sometime. Will fewer people die in this war than would have died in a civil war? No way to know. Probably, civil wars are always the nastiest.

Is it a good sign that people in Iraq are apparently happy to be out from under the rule of Hussein? Yes, it means that, although we may not have done the best thing, we did not do the worst thing.

This is not the first time the US has acted in a questionable way in regards to the use of power. I'm afraid it will not be the last. But, in truth, any use of power should be questioned. It is by questioning that power that you retain your most basic freedoms.

There is ample evidence already that Saddams government was sponsoring terrorists. I hate that no one in his country was able to stop him. I hate that the UN was unable to apply the pressure needed to force him to be human. I hate that Americans are dying in an effort to correct the problem. But that changes nothing. The troops are there. They are doing their best. Their cause is worthy. Freeing a people from a tyrant is always a worthy cause.

Does the Bush administration have a hidden agenda? The whole world is watching with a magnifying glass. I doubt they could pull it off. Our government has very rarely been that good. Even under substantially better leadership.

There is a message being sent in a way that is unmistakable. Play nice. There are bigger dogs in the yard than you. And if you want to follow a way of life that includes terrorism. You will find that your country does not fit in the modern world.

There are threats to life on this planet that make these petty squabbles irrelevant. We are talking about the continued existence of the race as a whole. Viruses don't give a damn what color your skin is, a comet is just a big bullet and if anything that breeds fast develops a taste for corn or wheat or soy we are screwed. If we work together we MIGHT survive the next hundred years. If we keep practicing intolerance and terror we don't stand a chance.

No the USA is NOT perfect. Not even close. But we honestly TRY to be, I believe. We need the help and guidance of cooler heads. We tend to ignore arbitration and admonishment. We tend to happily accept help and assistance and recommendations. England's Tony Blair figured that out. That's why they are there with us.

We KNOW we're not perfect (despite what you might hear). Reminding us of that will not endear you too us. Tell us HOW to be perfect. Better yet, Show Us! Set a working example to follow. Our entire history and government is an amalgamation of other country's ideas that have been proven to work.

Anyway, that's my long-winded 2p as usual. Congrats if you got this far. Peace to you and yours and may whichever god you pray to bless you.

Because we must

We do because we must
Trudging forward through the dust
And our leaders spend our trust
Like so many unwanted pennies.

Any here could die this day
While back home hearts dismay
Oh this grisly game we play
Will one day claim our souls.

We could ask why we are here
Far from all that we hold dear
Purpose rather far from clear
Still we struggle through the days.

Could our time spent in this place
Bring us closer to true grace
Carving lines on young tan face
Hearts hardening to our future.

Will we ever get back home
Back to sweet and cool green loam
What possesses us to roam
And leave the safety of the hearth.

Why is it the ones who rule
Who weld war as though a tool
Never learn from its red school
And never walk the fields of terror.

Perhaps one day we shall see
What it is we’re meant to be
Souls alive and strong and free
Heads bent to no cruel master

Upon faith our hearts must feed
`Till we’re pardoned from this deed
Though our bodies here may bleed
Our spirits are immortal.

To explain the next several posts...

The following few posts are just an effort by me to consolidate some of the posts I have made in the past to various threads on various boards and were important enough to me that I saved them.

They reflect my feelings at the time of the post. It's out of context so it may be a bit odd. Any that are so obscure as to require context to understand at all I will try to include a bit to explain where they are from.

I hope they make for interesting reading for you all.

Thanks to Ward-o-matic for inspiring me to do this!

I was inspired to reply to his review of The Polar Express and further inspired to Blog myself. This is the post from his blog.

This is a different person from above FYI.
I have always had a keen eye for detail and although I am not a professional artist I have always been fascinated by the details of the body. There is a lesson most 2d artists do early on that involves drawing your hand without looking at the paper while drawing. You only look at the hand. You end up with a very stylized version of the hand and it strongly draws your attention to the details you are noticing on the hand. It also gets you in touch with how a “too perfect” hand looks “not quite right”.

I think part of what is lost in much animation and motion capture is that skin has layers and flaws. The reason animation looks like puppets is that only the outer layer is being rendered. So it looks like the characters are solid (like a puppet). The body is a (mostly solid) skeleton with a layer of muscles and tendons moving over it and then the skin moving over that and all filled with varying viscosities of liquid. Not to mention all these are being subjected to gravity. Usually the skin will distort as it moves over the bones and the muscles and tendons. This actually is why people who have had face- lifts and such look like their expressions are “plastic”. The skin has lost some of its ability to respond to the bones and such moving under it.

The color of the skin also changes subtly as it is stretched, as it is not as deep. It is important to remember that skin is translucent (hold a flash light up and cover it with your hand completely in a dark room to see this.) The color of skin is really the color of light moving down through it’s layers and then being reflected back out again (or passing through it, like in the lobe of your ear with a strong back light). You saw this with the eyes and corrected for it nicely with your redraws but it is still a “rendering” of it. Eyes are DEEP! And have varying levels of clarity to the surface. For example the area around the cornea is mostly transparent with the “color” of the eye actually below the reflective surface. Take a moment to look very closely at someone’s eye to see how it is almost like a gem in it’s depth and reflective qualities (and flaws).

Another thing that is lost is the wrinkles at the edge of the eyes, and the pinch between the eyes. I think the “feel of realism” can be linked especially the part between the eyes. You’ll notice that both Gollum and Mr. Incredible have it and that the others pictures do not.

The result of these details missing is one of the most glaring problems with motion capture that I see. You can only ever get the opaque surface of an object and there is more to it than that that your eye sees even though you might not register that you have seen it.

Anyway those are the parts that struck me the most. It would be interesting to see what else would come up with more detailed examination. I have background in theater lighting and you should see how the skin reacts to different colors of filtered light! Even different actors look different under the same light! Part of theater makeup is just trying to get everyone looking the same.

Great article and as a life long Fan of CG (I went nuts when I saw the old CG tin can commercial the first time and have been hooked since) I would love to see the art push forward!

Shadowgolem@yahoo.com