Dr. Horrible – there’s a new league of Superheros around!
Wow – that’s just awesome. So, what would your Superhero name be? I’ve already been GalleryMan, but I suppose I would need to come up with something new now. Hmm…
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Emergency, Failure, Government, Politics, Predictions, Society
So, last time I borrowed money from a bank, for a Federally-guaranteed Small Business Loan, it was a bit of a nightmare. They wanted to know everything down to my shoe size, with a fair amount of documentation to support the claim that I wear an 11 wide. And, needless to say, they wanted to know exactly what I was going to do with the $50,000 I wanted to borrow – complete with a detailed business plan, revenue forecasts, et cetera. Given that I wanted to borrow the money, I didn’t find this too onerous; rather it seemed to be a reasonable expectation, if a tad tedious.
But don’t expect that street to run both ways.
Where’d the bailout money go? Shhhh, it’s a secret
WASHINGTON – It’s something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where’s the money going?
But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation’s largest banks say they can’t track exactly how they’re spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.
“We’ve lent some of it. We’ve not lent some of it. We’ve not given any accounting of, ‘Here’s how we’re doing it,'” said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. “We have not disclosed that to the public. We’re declining to.”
The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what’s the plan for the rest?
None of the banks provided specific answers.
Well, no, of course they didn’t. It might lead to somewhat awkward revelations, such as this:
AP study finds $1.6B went to bailed-out bank execs
Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals.
The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages.
Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found.
Your tax dollars at work.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI and dKos.)
Filed under: Art, Ballistics, Book Conservation, Failure, Feedback, General Musings, Guns, Marketing, RKBA, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
One afternoon last week I was delivering a batch of work to a client here in town. Everything went fine, and after we had gone over the work I had done and the charges, the person I was meeting with asked whether I knew anyone in the area from whom they could learn a particular skill.
“Sure. Contact Professor X in the art department at the University. They should be able to help you out – either get you into a workshop or tell you who you can get private lessons from here locally.”
“Wow, thanks.”
“No worries. Tell them I sent you – I used to represent Professor X at my gallery.”
“Gallery?”
“Yeah, I ran an art gallery downtown for 8 years.”
“Huh. I didn’t know that.”
* * * * * * *
I got copied in on a note from Jim K to a magazine editor he is working with for an article about our ballistics project. It was discussing the reaction that people have had to the whole thing, and it reminded me of this passage from a post last year:
Well, from that discussion emerged an idea: conduct the necessary tests ourselves, compile all the data, then make it freely available to all on a dedicated website. Sounds like one of those great ideas which no one will ever get around to doing, because of the time and expense involved, right?
Well, as you know, we did do the whole project, and it has indeed been a pretty phenomenal success. But 18 months ago, it really was just one of those ideas that people would dismiss. That specifically happened to me at my favorite local gun shop, when I told the sales guy I usually chat with about the upcoming project.
“Oh, they did that,” he said, “back in the 30’s. Guy chopped down a rifle, measured the velocity drop-off.”
“But no one has done it with modern handgun calibers,” I said.
He laughed. “Yeah, true. So, when you going to get it all done?
“We’ll probably do it next spring.”
“Yeah, right.” It wasn’t said sarcastically. Well, not completely so.
* * * * * * *
The last few days have been filled with the news of the Madoff debacle, the latest in a long string of examples of poor judgment and questionable ethics in the financial sector, all of which have played a major part in the economic collapse that we are experiencing. This one meant losses of some $50 billion last I heard, though of course there is still a lot of uncertainty about the actual numbers.
It’s weird, but it actually makes me feel somewhat better about the losses I caused my investors with the gallery.
See, for 8 years we struggled to make a go of it. Most of that time I (and my business partner) did without a salary, scrimping and saving to make the most of the capital we had. Still, when the end came I felt really guilty about having cost my friends and family members the thousands of dollars they had invested in the business, because I couldn’t make my dream work out exactly the way I wanted. In spite of their disappointment, I don’t think any of my investors agreed with my sense of guilt – they knew they were taking a risk and that I had done all that was possible to make the business succeed.
But still, I have continued to feel guilty about it. Blame my Catholic upbringing.
Now, that sense of guilt has been blunted a bit. I wasn’t running some Ponzi scheme, violating the law and the trust of my investors. I wasn’t living high on the hog, bilking people of their entire life’s savings. I was doing my level best, and we just failed (financially – the gallery was a success by about any other measure). That’s life. I still have debts to pay, and will be getting to that this next year if my bookbinding business holds steady.
* * * * * * *
In spite of my (mock) complaining about resenting the success of the ballistics project, I c0ntinue to be very pleased with the ongoing (though slowing) spread of my novel. The ‘official’ tally on the website is 12,500 but this last week alone almost another 150 people have downloaded the book. Yeah, I’d still love to see it conventionally published, with a “Bestseller” table at the local bookstore featuring the book – but given the broken nature of the publishing industry at present, that is pretty unlikely.
And I’m looking forward to getting more serious writing done this next year. First, a book on being a care-provider, then the long-delayed prequel to Communion. Something to look forward to.
* * * * * * *
Tomorrow I deliver another 104 volumes to a client, as I mentioned on Monday. I have confidence that the client will be quite pleased with the work, and consider my fee for doing it more than fair.
And as I have worked on these books the last couple of weeks, I have been doing a lot of thinking. Some of that has peeped out here on this blog, but a lot of it has just been simmering. The comment from the client I mentioned in the first section of this post sort of gelled a number of things for me. That client, and the one tomorrow, consider me to be a talented and successful craftsman. And that is a good feeling.
But it is also only one aspect of who I am.
On gun forums around the world people now know me as one of the guys involved in the ballistics project that almost everyone praises.
Over 12 thousand people have downloaded my novel. It’s just a guess how many have actually read it, or how many of those found it interesting, but I do get some positive feedback about it on a regular basis.
My art gallery was something of an institution here in my community for almost a decade. Now there is a used CD store where it used to be.
My Paint the Moon project captivated the imaginations of many around the world – but also gave plenty of fodder to those who wanted a good laugh.
Things change. Most people know you for only one slice of time, from seldom more than one perspective. What does it all add up to?
I dunno. But the common thread for me through it all is passion. Coming up with an idea, evaluating it, then attempting to do it whole-heartedly. Being passionate enough to be willing to risk failure.
I don’t care if people don’t know something about me. But I do hope that what they do know about me reflects my passion about that one thing.
Jim Downey
Sorry – been busy, trying to get a bunch (like, 104) volumes finished up for delivery this Thursday. It’s a nice set of 18th century books, a collection of publications which came out over a period of several decades. All nicely bound with leather spines, marbled paper covers, and small vellum corners. For the most part they’re in fairly good condition, and I’m just doing some stabilization work on them, cleaning and redying the leather, that sort of thing.
Curiously, the vellum corners were all dyed dark blue originally – to compliment the marbled paper, I believe. It’s a small detail which takes a little attention to get right. And as I work on them, I notice the imperfections – the places where the previous binder had made a mistake and missed a spot, or was overly enthusiastic with his brush and got some of the dye on the paper. There is an honesty there, and I feel connected to that unknown bookbinder from centuries past.
This is another reason why I love what I do.
Back to it.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Art, Ballistics, Guns, NPR, Promotion, Science
I’ve written previously about the ballistics research project I’ve been involved with, and how the launch of the site was going really well. We had some 100,000 hits the first week it was up (11/29 – 12/5), and then this past weekend that pace was keeping up, with the usual variation you expect day to day. As I noted on the 3rd, this was really exciting to see, and more hits than my Communion of Dreams site had gotten all year. The associated blog hadn’t been getting much attention, but those things sometimes take time to ramp up.
Well, late yesterday, I knew something was up with the Bbti site, because suddenly the blog traffic had picked up significantly. As I told my cohorts last night:
Surprisingly, had another jump in hits to the blog today. Be interesting to see in the morning whether this is connected to another growth in overall hits to the Bbti site, or whether it is more just a reflection of the blog getting more coverage through search engines.
But either way, there were also more people going from the blog to the Bbti site.
So this morning I came downstairs, got some coffee, fired up the computer, checked mail, and then pulled up yesterday’s stats for the Bbti site.
Huh.
60,000 hits. Actually, 61,970. In one day.
Now, this isn’t a large number by today’s standards, for sites which are well established or get “slashdotted“. But that’s not what happened. We did get a link posted off of Dark Roasted Blend, but that was literally in the middle of a bunch of links, and only accounted for about 2,000 hits (that I can tell – the actual number is probably larger than that, but still . . . ) Rather, the traffic seems to be coming from a wide variety of sources, not all of them gun-related.
And that pace seems to be continuing, based on traffic on the blog today.
To put this in a little perspective, my great ‘claim to fame’ was my Paint the Moon project some 7 years ago. The internet was a smaller place back then, but even taking that into account, the entire project generated something like one million hits to my website – over the course of about 5 months. It took about a month to cross the 10,000 hits mark. I don’t think it ever got 60,000 hits in one single day, not even after being on the Howard Stern show and then the next day on Weekend Edition.
So, we’ll see where this leads. And I suppose I should update my Wikipedia entry.
Wild.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow, Humor, Science, Science Fiction
Particularly for someone with a small kid, this would be brilliant:
A Young Mad Scientist’s First Alphabet Blocks
* * *
Fortunately, we have a solution – a first step, if you will, along the path to mad science proficiency. We are pleased to announce the release of our Young Mad Scientist’s First Alphabet Blocks. These lovely blocks contain many carefully engraved illustrations of the equipment, training, and activities that a budding mad scientist will require, combined with a clever alphabetic introduction to the concept depicted.
More (and images) at the site.
Jim Downey
(Via BoingBoing.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Art, Ballistics, Guns, Predictions, Press, Privacy, Promotion, RKBA, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
I’ve mentioned several times recently the ballistics project I’ve been involved with over the last year or so. Well, last night we migrated the temporary site over to its own domain, and except for a few tweaks it is pretty much done. Sometime probably this weekend I will post a comment promoting the site to a couple of the forums devoted to discussing firearms, and then all bets are off as to what happens next. (I’d ask anyone reading this to not spread the word to such forums just yet – please let me do that when we’re ready.)
For those who are not interested or knowledgeable about firearms, this whole thing may seem a bit silly. Actually, it is a huge project which will significantly add to the information base available to shooting enthusiasts, and as such will likely gain a great deal of attention both online and in the print media devoted to firearms. I’ve cautioned my two cohorts in the project to be prepared for a bit of a whirlwind of interest. I doubt that it will penetrate into the general media the way that my Paint the Moon art project did, but in the gun world it could very well be just as well known.
And the anticipation of that is kinda fun. As private a person as I am by nature, I enjoy doing things which are interesting or innovative enough to gain some level of attention, to povoke people to think about something in a different way or to expand their awareness of what is possible. I think that is a big part of the reason why I blog, and why I wrote Communion of Dreams – to help shape the world. This new project will do that in a very tangible way.
So, we’ll see what happens. Wish us luck with it.
Jim Downey
If you would like a small insight into why I love doing what I do for a living, be sure to check out this delightful feature which was on NPR’s Weekend Edition this morning:
Paging Through History’s Beautiful Science
Listen Now [6 min 13 sec]
What makes something beautiful?
Is it exquisite colors? Elegant form or striking style? Or can something be beautiful simply for the ideas it contains?
The answer to that last question is a resounding “yes,” according Dan Lewis, Dibner senior curator of the History of Science and Technology at the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif. He’s the man responsible for a new exhibition at the library called “Beautiful Science: Ideas That Changed the World.”
* * *
The exhibition focuses on four areas of science: astronomy, natural history, medicine and light. Some of the books featured are Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, the book where Newton codified the laws of motion and gravity; Nicolaus Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus, the description of a solar system which had the sun, not the Earth, at its center; and Petrus Apianus’ Astronomicum Caesarium, a collection of strikingly beautiful, hand-illustrated star charts published in 1540.
And be sure to take a few minutes to listen to the audio link embedded there, where you will hear this comment from Lewis:
That’s probably the question I get asked the most: ‘why aren’t you wearing gloves?’ People will gasp audibly when they see that I am handling this stuff. We found that the lack of sensitivity you suddenly get when you’re wearing gloves is is far worse than anything you might have on your hands. Well, almost anything you might have on your hands. It’s always my premise that rare book librarians and archivists and doctors are the people who wash their hands more than anyone else.
I love it. I get this question/response from people all the time. They assume that I must always wear gloves when working on books – and this is exactly what I tell them. I lose count how many times a day I will wash my hands – it’s just automatic that I do so after this or that operation, or between handling books, and certainly after I have eaten or touched any food. It’s not a compulsion, just a job requirement.
Anyway, check out the story, and be sure to look at the different images/multi-media components, as well. Some great stuff there – the sort of things I get to work on and handle regularly!
11/17 UPDATE: Thanks to Lisa, here’s a link to an article from the NYT recently, on the same topic:
Handle This Book!
Jim Downey
Architects try and envision buildings in many different ways – through drawings, hand built models, via CAAD programs. Belgian photographer Filip Dujardin has taken a somewhat different path:
Filip Dujardin's Speculative Architecture.
Via BLDGBLOG:
Belgian photographer Filip Dujardin makes images of unexpected buildings – that is, he “combines photographs of parts of buildings into new, fictional, architectonic structures,” Mark Magazine explains.
Fascinating stuff. I’ve mentioned before how some architecture can be very iconic, visually representing an alternative reality at a glance. Just think what you could do using these techniques.
Jim Downey
While I am on vacation, I’m having some old posts from my archives queued up for your enjoyment. If you’re interested in following the progress of the tour, a friend of mine has set up a blog and the Choir will be posting pix and text as things go.
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Published in “Legacy Online” October, 2003
The Hunger Artist
the man in the box There was a man hanging in a plexiglass box over the Thames in London when I was there last month. A man who was starving himself.
David Blaine‘s recent spectacle didn’t get a lot of attention here in the States, so you may not have heard about it, though the completion of his 44 day fast was covered by NPR yesterday morning. But it captured the imagination of just about everyone in the UK, and was one of the most common topics of conversation I had with people during our two week vacation. The fact that Blaine is an American probably had something to do with this, but even so, the progress of his fast was covered regularly and extensively by all the news outlets. Reports of the analysis of his urine (done by independent labs, with the strictest security), and what it meant about his medical condition was standard fare in the papers, discussion with leading doctors about the dangers he faced the longer he fasted was a the subject of morning programs on the television. Everyone speculated about whether he was somehow cheating, how long he could last, what it meant.
I don’t know where Blaine got the idea for his fast. But Franz Kafka wrote a short-story titled “A Hunger Artist” which seems to be a template for what Blaine did. In it, the Hunger Artist would perform for 40 days to the increasing interest and agitation of the crowds, his manager selling tickets to those who wished to view the performance. If Blaine didn’t know about this story, he should have.
So, the question is, is it art? It was a performance, certainly, and I suppose that in one sense this means it was art. It was an interesting conceptual piece, a mechanism for grabbing the attention and imagination of an entire nation, so that is a kind of art. (Remember, I considered my “Paint the Moon” project of two years ago to be a piece of conceptual/performance art with the same critieria.) But in one way I don’t want it to be art. Blaine lost almost one-third of his body mass during his fast, and may well have caused permanent damage to his heart and kidneys. Would that then mean that any kind of public mutilation could be considered art? Certainly some people would pay to come and see it. People already have, actually, since this sort of ‘performance’ has already been done in some venues. So, how far do we take this? Blaine (intentionally or not) staged a real version of a Kafka short story. Could someone else stage a real version of that scene in a recent Hannibal Lecter movie where one character dines on the brain of another, while that other person is still alive? How about staging a real version of Salvador Dali’s 1936 painting “Autumnal Cannibalism” in which two figures are eating one another? Would that be art?
Communion Of Dreams 