














 |
FEBRUARY
27, 2017 IS
IT IMPORTANT? MAKE IT BOLD!
Speaking
now as a 70-year-old, I must admit that as we get older it's harder
to read the fine print.
In
my opinion, some fonts are too small on the TV graphics that my
colleagues and I are asked to prepare.
Here's
an example from Turkish television. If you were watching but
not on an HD screen, could you decipher the line under telefon
interviewee Ertugrul Saglam's name? It identifies him as
"Bursaspor Teknik D." or manager (Direktörü) of
the soccer team Bursaspor. |
 |
When
fellow septuagenarian Warren Beatty took the stage last night to
present the Oscar for Best Picture, PricewaterhouseCoopers mistakenly
gave him the wrong envelope a duplicate of Emma Stone's
envelope for Best Actress in La La Land. He opened it
(left) and stared at the card, baffled. He looked to see
whether there was another card inside. Faye Dunaway looked at
it, saw the movie's name, and proclaimed La La Land to be the
Best Picture winner. Wrong. It was Moonlight.

Why
had no one noticed that Beatty had the wrong envelope? I say
it's because, in an attempt to be elegant, it was labeled with too
small a font inside a tasteful rectangle (center). These
glamorous people in their gowns and tuxedos aren't wearing their
reading glasses! I suggest the letters should be as big as
possible (right).
UPDATE
STAGE MANAGER CONCURS Steve
Pond posted
for TheWrap two days later:
Gary
Natoli, the veteran Oscars stage manager who was in the midst of the
chaos on Sunday night when La La Land was mistakenly
announced as Best Picture, told TheWrap on Wednesday that the two PwC
accountants entrusted with the envelopes froze when
things went wrong.
Im
sure theyre very lovely people, but they just didnt have
the disposition for this, Natoli said. You need somebody
whos going to be confident and unafraid. ... And there
was the new design of the envelope, which we had complained about to
the Academy a week earlier.
In
fact, he added, the stage crews complaints had led to a change
in the inserts that went inside the envelopes, which originally had
print that was far too small. But they couldnt do anything
about the envelopes themselves, on which the name of the category was
not nearly as legible as it had been in previous years.
I
had to look closely to see the category names, he said.
All they were thinking about was design, not function.
And
Benjamin Bannister describes
how the cards inside the envelopes still needed further improvements
to their typography.
FEBRUARY
26, 2007
COLETTE
DAIUTE
Many
of us seem destined for one career until we graduate from college
and then head off in a completely different direction. I earned
a degree in physics and then went into television production.
Here's
another example from my younger days.
"One
Hundred Men and a Girl" was the intriguing name of the marching
band at Syracuse University. It described the organization from
1947, when the first Orange Girl wore a spangled costume while
twirling her baton to the music, until 1966, when females were also
allowed to play instruments.
The
band has been co-ed ever since, but it's still fronted by an Orange Girl.
During
college football's centennial season in 1969, I was a Syracuse grad
student. I attended a few football games, including a memorable
loss to Penn State. But while
the band was on the field, we males in the Archbold Stadium stands
kept our eyes on the shapely young lady, of course.
The
Orange Girl that year was Colette Daiute (below), a Spanish major
from Paramus, New Jersey. |
 |

Above:
from the Daily Orange.
Below:
from a current website.
 |
|
I
recall one time when a photographer found an excuse to ask her a
question, presumably about which end of the field the band was headed
for next. And at one game, the
girl with the long brown hair was among the finalists for homecoming queen.
Colette
was interviewed by the Daily
Orange
for a November 1969 article about a local mayoral election. I
found that issue recently, colorized the striking photo (at left),
and decided to do a little additional research.
It
turns out that Miss Daiute had been Miss
Teenage America of 1966 winning the title over Miss
Teenage Memphis, Cybill Shepherd. She modeled for an ad in Teen
Magazine and made an appearance on the Patty
Duke Show.
But
she was much more than a beauty queen and baton twirler. After
graduating from Syracuse in 1970, she earned a doctorate in education
at Columbia. She was a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate
School of Education from 1983 to 1994, when she became a professor of
psychology at The Graduate Center of The City University of New
York. Along the way, she married Mr. Wright (first name Patrick).
At
CUNY, her research "focuses on social development, in
particular to create new theory and research methods for gaining
youth perspectives about their relationships and the role of
institutions (including education and health care) in their
lives," according to the university. "Dr. Daiute has
recently completed a large study on children's understandings of
social conflict in the context of a violence prevention program,
culminating in numerous publications written with student research
assistants." Her most recent book is International
Perspectives on Youth Conflict and Development
(Oxford University Press, 2006). |
A
snippet of her work, from a 2000 chapter on writing and
communication technologies:
Students
who maintain unreflective and uncritical views of technology may not
realize that although learning word processing skills can ultimately
be useful for getting a job, using word processing to express their
own views and to connect with other like-minded youth in an organized
manner is a way to become active members of society.
You
can't stereotype a book by its cover.
FEBRUARY
24, 2017 NOTHING
BUT
So
with time running out, I launched a desperation shot from 40 feet away.
And
what happened?
Well,
my aim was pretty good. My shot hit the bottom of the net.
You
hit the bottom of the net.
Thats
right.
Nothing
but net! Way to go, buddy! Swish!
More
like twip, actually.
So
your team won, right?
Not
exactly. I hit the outside of the bottom of the net. |

 |
FEBRUARY
23, 2007
REMEMBER
THIS?
 |
I
found this old photo in a 1963 edition of my hometown newspaper, the Richwood
Gazette. It's an aerial view of the main intersection in
that Ohio village, looking east-northeast. Franklin Street,
running from left to right, is crossed by Ottawa Street.
Do
any of you long-time Richwood residents remember the little white
cube-shaped building with the black roof in the center of the
photo? It was the police station. |

 |
Like
the control tower at an airport, it was elevated so that an officer
could look out windows on all four sides and see what was going on
for several blocks on both Ottawa and Franklin. If necessary,
he could scamper downstairs and hop into his patrol car, parked right there.
Greg
Ballinger found another photo, undated, looking north.
I
recall that the police department's phone number (2422) was painted
in black on that white wall. As a boy in the 1950s, I thought
it was uncomfortably close to our home phone number (2244), but we
never seemed to get any emergency calls by mistake. |
FEBRUARY
22, 2007
WHAT
THE CONSTITUTION SAYS
I
take the Constitution of the United States literally. I'm
stubborn that way.
The
13th Amendment states, Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,
except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been
duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.
When
the government compels me against my will to serve on a jury, is
that not involuntary servitude?
When,
in times past, the government drafted young people to serve in the
military, was that not involuntary servitude?
I
suppose there must be a loophole somewhere.
And
then there's Article 8, which gives Congress the sole power to
declare war. Congress has not exercised that power since
1941. Yet we have been involved in numerous conflicts since
then, and our present President [George W. Bush] has declared that we
are at war against terrorism.
Other
Presidents have "declared war," but in a metaphorical
sense, as in the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs. These
"wars" were large-scale efforts to diminish particular
evils. Everyone realized that they would never achieve total
victory. We can't eradicate all drugs, and the poor will always
be with us. We can only try to make the poor less poor and
drugs less pervasive.
Properly
understood, the War on Terror is in this category. As long as
one disgruntled person knows how to make a bomb, terrorist tactics
will be a possibility. We can only try to make terrorism less likely.
However,
our present President has implied that the War on Terror is a real
war, a conflict against an identifiable foe who can be forced to
surrender. He admits that winning the War on Terror may take
many years, but in the meantime he is a wartime president, authorized
to restrict civil liberties in his role as Commander in Chief.
His supporters have impugned the patriotism of anyone who would
question the President's actions in time of war. They imply
that this Presidential immunity from criticism ought to continue for
the duration. But the duration of this "war" could be centuries.
I'm
stubborn enough to maintain that we are not at war unless Congress
formally declares it.
FEBRUARY
20, 2017 MEETING
MY PARENTS
Wilbur
Wright, a native of Dayton, Ohio, said in 1910: If I
were giving a young man advice as to how he might succeed in life, I
would say to him, pick out a good father and mother, and begin life
in Ohio.
 |
Exactly
seventy years ago, I followed his recommendation!
In
celebration of my birthday, today has been declared a national
holiday Thomas Buckingham Thomas Day.
|
 |
For
more baby pictures, see this months 100 Moons article.
It has my footprints all over it. |
 |
FEBRUARY
19, 2007
DREAMING
OF STUDIOS
At
idle times, my mind sometimes shelves the problems of the day and
instead proposes solutions to old problems. The old matters no
longer matter, but they still haunt me in dreams.
One
day about 30 years ago, we were taping the weekly About Washington
in our cable TV studio. For the second half of the half hour, Jerry
Polen was interviewing a woman who had brought her young
child to sit on her lap. The boy was restless, and as the
interview progressed, she struggled to keep him in place.
Finally the kid slipped off her lap and toddled off to explore the
studio. He saw a microphone cord attached to his mother.
He followed the cord to the wall and unplugged it. That was
it. I had to come out of the control room, stop the taping, and
plug the mic back in. (I think I frightened the child, and he
spent the rest of the session on his mother's lap, sucking his
thumb.) I told Jerry we'd have to start over again from the
previous commercial break, so he'd have to redo the interview from
the beginning. "Can't we pick it up in the middle and make
an edit?" he asked. I had to tell him no, that our
videotape equipment wasn't capable of making edits with any kind of precision.
Last
night, as I once again rehashed this incident in my dreams, I
realized that it could be handled differently nowadays. In my
dreams, I still have to type up the program logs, and we're still
taping About Washington every week, in the traditional black
and white, but now we have up-to-date recorders digital,
probably with edit capabilities.
And
then I dreamed of other improvements. How about adding a
studio audience? The cable studio isn't big enough, so maybe
we'll go on location to a small auditorium at the local college.
Our multi-camera switching gear, problematic in 1977, can no longer
leave the studio. But now that we can edit, we can simply
record each camera separately and then cut the shots together
afterwards. (I've seen some musical performances
on YouTube that obviously were recorded by a stationary camcorder on
a wide shot, with closeups from a handheld camera inserted into the
proper places later.) Maybe when About Washington goes
on location, we can supplement our usual two cameras (one on Jerry
and one on his guest) with a stationary "master shot" of
the entire stage. That's assuming that we can find three
cameras and three recorders. Let's see, we'll want to pick a
fixed time and day of the week for the taping so the audience would
know when to show up . . . .
Several
years ago I dreamed that my job was to direct another program from
this same studio. I must have been thinking of 1970, when my
boss recruited regionally famous Sally Flowers to
host a morning show and assigned me to direct.
In
this dream, the boss had worked a deal with David Letterman to stop
by and tape a weekly hour, because our studio was on his way
home. (Each weekend, Letterman apparently went back home again
to Indiana!) Paul Shaffer came, too. Not the whole band,
of course; just Paul and a keyboard. We didn't exactly know
what Dave was going to do in our little studio, but my boss was sure
that he'd figure something out. Dave, however, was irritable
and did not seem happy to be there.
FEBRUARY
16, 2017 THE
MESSIANIC METAPHOR
In
the first half of my article Fleshing
Out Jesus,
the apostle Paul (right) told about his visions of Christ
Jesus, a supernatural being who visited earth briefly before
returning to heaven.
Now
in the second half, the evangelist Mark suggests making Pauls
ideas more accessible by inventing an allegory about Jesus
Christ, an actual person who preached on earth.
Click
here for the second half. |
 |
FEBRUARY
13, 2007
CHECKLIST
Remove
wallet from pocket.
Remove
driver's license from wallet, place in boarding pass folder.
Place
wallet in external compartment of carry-on bag.
Move
cell phone from pocket to external compartment.
Move
keys from pocket to external compartment.
Move
change purse from pocket to external compartment.
Remove
watch from wrist, place in external compartment.
Wait
in line for security check.
Show
boarding pass and driver's license to official.
Remove
laptop from carry-on bag, place in tub.
Remove
small bag of liquids and gels from carry-on bag, place in tub.
Remove
coat, place in tub.
Remove
zippered sweater, place in tub.
Remove
hat, place in tub.
Remove
belt, place in tub.
Remove
left shoe, place in tub.
Remove
right shoe, place in tub.
Put
tubs and carry-on bag on conveyor belt.
Walk
through magnetometer.
Show
boarding pass to official.
Remove
zippered sweater from tub, put it on.
Remove
coat from tub, put it on.
Remove
hat from tub, put it on.
Return
liquids and gels from tub to carry-on bag.
Return
laptop from tub to carry-on bag.
Pick
up belt, left shoe, right shoe, and carry-on bag.
Proceed
to seating area.
Put
on belt.
Put
on left shoe.
Put
on right shoe.
Return
keys from external compartment of carry-on to pocket.
Return
cell phone from external compartment to pocket.
Return
change purse from external compartment to pocket.
Return
watch from external compartment to wrist.
Remove
wallet from external compartment.
Return
driver's license from boarding pass folder to wallet.
Return
wallet to pocket.
Check
to make sure you have everything.
Have
a good flight.
FEBRUARY
12, 2017 MUSIC
CITY NEWS
Everyone
knows one of my fellow TV graphics operators as Linda
P. I first worked beside her on an auto race around 1990,
when she was one of the few who were proficient on a machine called
the Delta.
Here
are two recent photos shes posted online.
The
second one was taken in her hometown of Nashville. Shes
watching her Nashville Predators hockey team and hoping to be named
the Preds Fan of the Game. |
 |
 |
Some
hockey fans down there in Tennessee come to the arena
although they're still not really into the sport. At a game a
year ago, Linda P tweeted:
|
Duo
next to me has not stopped talking about everything BUT hockey since
start of game. And it's two guys!
Topics:
calories in a Big Mac; when I was a 1st baseman; Iowa; Human
Resources; speech club...
Chittychittychatchat
finally talks hockey: "The Preds are so far ahead, we're
putting the bench guys in. Other team is playing starters." |
Obviously,
the guys had not yet grasped such obscure concepts as line
changes. But they eventually got bored.
|
Chittychittychatchat
finally left the Preds game! Now we need an Arvidsson hatty to
salvage my night! |
A
Viktor Arvidsson hat trick suddenly did seem possible. He had
come into the game with only three goals in his NHL career,
but already that night hed scored two. Alas, the third
eluded him.
Three
nights later, Linda P returned to Bridgestone Arena when Nashville
hosted Washington and their star, the six-time NHL goal-scoring champion. |
 |
 |
Lady
in Preds jersey next to me asks, "What's that name? Ove-Chicken?"
Still
better than the chatting guys from Saturday's game. #notmuch |
Tracey
Moody, another Nashville cutup, tweeted on a different subject six
months ago. She asked, Does anybody else get such a jolt
of excitement when you begin making coffee that you don't even feel
like you need coffee anymore?
Yes,
replied Scott Evans. I push that magic little button on
my Keurig and all is good in the world. Jacques Lasseau
added, Compared to that, the actual drinking of the brew is a
letdown. And Shawn Pollock reported, The other day,
I was at work with the 2:00 doldrums, desperately needing a cup of
coffee. Made the cup, perked right up, never drank a sip.
Tracey
(below) also sometimes perks herself up with a can of whipped
cream. Happy Darwin Day! |
 |

 |
FEBRUARY
8, 2017 GATES
Peter
Kalis is a Rhodes scholar who holds degrees from Oxford and the Yale
Law School.
Since
1997, he has headed the Pittsburgh-based corporation known as K&L
Gates. But he'll be stepping down as Chairman and Global
Managing Partner at the end of this month.
So
what does K&L Gates do? |
It
seems like they ought to market their products to farmers.
Their competition, of course, would be J&R Fences.
However,
it turns out that K stands for Kirkpatrick. L stands for
Lockhart. And Gates refers to Bill Gates father.
The
whole thing is a law firm that employs more than 1,800 attorneys
worldwide. Therefore never send to know who let the lambs out. |
 |
FEBRUARY
4, 2017 BIOANTHROPOLOGY
QUESTION
 |
All
right, students, here is a photograph of two adult male hominids,
placed side by side. The specimen on the left is identified as
A. quinn, and the one with the large forehead is D. rickles.
Notice
the marked anatomical differences between the two skulls. In
particular, when we measure the vertical distance between the eyebrow
ridge and the base of the upper jaw, one measurement is half again as
large as the other. So what do you think? Could these two
individuals possibly belong to the same species? |
I
saw the above image
3½ years ago and wrote the paragraphs alongside it, but I never
found the occasion to post them here. However, now theres
a recent scientific article
raising the possibility that human faces differ so much because
were hybrids, with some Neandertal DNA in our genomes.
An initial round of interbreeding followed by hybrid
offspring mating among themselves and with members of parent species
can result in animals with a far greater array of physical
traits than observed in either original species, including the
sizes and shapes of skulls.
FEBRUARY
1, 2017 MOVE
IT! MOVE IT!
Ive
always viewed TV programs with an eye to the technical minutia.
How might the crew have done things better?
For
those of you who cant watch Real Time on HBO, or
dont watch because its too liberal for your taste, I can
report that Bill Maher has returned for his 15th season with a new set.
Seen
here under construction at CBS Television City in Los Angeles, the
layout looks great, but I think maybe they tried too hard.
I
watched the first episode on January 20. Bill opened standing
in front of a backdrop B.
Behind
it, on the far end of a movable platform P, was concealed a
huge anchor desk big enough for five people. |
 |
After
his monologue, Bill moved to a pair of chairs I stage right,
where he conducted a sit-down interview. Meanwhile, off camera,
three guests took their seats at the desk. (Later in the show a
fourth guest G walked on, tried to climb up onto the platform,
and almost tripped on that big first step.)
When
the interview was over and the applause began, Bill said
Lets meet our panel, and we did. Eventually.
We
saw a wide shot. The bottom of the backdrop slowly pivoted up
toward us like a garage door. Beneath it, the platform bearing
the desk began to creep downstage into the lights, in order to
relocate the talking heads closer to the studio audience
an improvement over the arrangement in previous seasons.
Bill
took his seat at the desk. He and his guests killed time with
jokes about being on a Disneyland ride. The interstitial music
continued. The audience tried to keep applauding. We cut
to a closeup of our host while the platform was still in motion.
Finally it lurched to a halt and he could introduce the panel.
I timed the whole transition at 27 seconds.
Obviously,
a half-minute scene change is much too long. For the second
episode a week later, the backdrop had been removed. During
Bills monologue, we could see the empty desk waiting behind
him, with a decorative globe slowly revolving above it.
Youve
got to be careful with revolving globes. Im ancient
enough to remember seeing another one on a show that aired from 1955
to 1958 on NBC-TV: Wide Wide World. One of Pat
Weavers innovations, this was a remarkable technological feat
for the new medium. A 90-minute documentary on Sunday
afternoons, it originated live from remote locations
scattered all across North America. Dave Garroway
anchored. Ive heard that the audio engineers in his
studio spent hours trying to track down what seemed to be a squeaking
mouse until they realized the culprit was their signature globe,
slowly turning in the background.
Anyway,
back to Real Time. Now that theres no need to
lift a backdrop out of the way, the desk can start moving forward
immediately at the end of the interview. Bill hops aboard and
takes his seat, and the introductions can start after only 19 seconds.
Unfortunately,
theres still a minor problem: the shiny floor. On
the second episode, Bill almost lost his balance twice. He
remarked to his guests, This new set is going to kill
somebody. Its very slippery. |


 |
 |
Another
studio show I watched recently preceded the AFC championship
game. Here too there was a giant desk.
Every
time CBS cut to the wide shot showing all five men at the desk, the
camera was already in motion: trucking right to
left, then left to right. Apparently the camera was mounted on
a jib arm that was being waved back and forth throughout the program. |
Why
would they annoy us like that? Well, the five men remain in
more or less the same position on our TV screen while the background
moves one direction and the logos on the front of the desk move the
other. Our mind separates the men from the other parts of the
scene, thus creating an illusion of depth.
Many
other shows and movies use similar camera moves (but more subtly) to
make the scene come alive in three dimensions. Its much
easier than requiring the audience to wear those 3-D glasses.
|
|
And
then the game started. Normally Tom Brady on TV looks like
Photo 1. But at kickoff, a light misty rain combined with smoke
from fireworks to render the first play foggy, as seen in Photo 2.
I
can easily manipulate the picture on my computer, crushing the
blacks and cranking the gain to obtain Photo
3. Ive often wondered why the video operators in the TV
truck dont do likewise. After all, during day games they
readjust cameras all the time as the action moves between sunlight
and shadow. Youd think theyd want to match the
cameras high in the stands to the cameras closer to the action, which
achieve more contrast because they dont have to shoot through
as many yards of murky atmosphere.
I
can think of several reasons this didnt happen.
They couldnt experiment before the game to find the
optimal fog settings, because the smoke appeared suddenly and
dissipated almost as quickly. As you can see, the two shots of
Brady were separated by only 72 seconds on the game clock.
The fogginess was an honest representation of what the fans
high in the stands were seeing. And a casual viewer might
think my tweaked Photo 3 looks prettier, but it has flaws like
posterization and graininess. Notice the players thigh in
the background. Television professionals try to avoid such flaws. |
|