Impulse

There’s a guy stand­ing out­side the cof­fee shop I’m typ­ing away in.  He’s can­vass­ing our very blue neigh­bor­hood, rais­ing money for Democratic can­di­dates in bat­tle­ground dis­tricts through­out the coun­try.  I know it’s legal and that every­one seems seems to be doing it nowa­days (moveon.org and the DSCC are con­stantly at it) but I don’t like it.  I don’t think it’s my place to put my thumb on the scales of another district.

Here’s an exam­ple:  Across the lake from me, Darcy Burner is run­ning for US Congress from Washington’s 8th dis­trict.  I really like Darcy.  Instead of just talk­ing the talk about pulling troops out of Iraq, Darcy went and talked to a retired gen­eral who had over­seen troops in Iraq to get his opin­ion, and that of other experts.  She put this all in an analy­sis paper she pub­lished on the web.  That’s ballsy, thought­ful, and proac­tive — all good traits I’d like to see more in Congress.  But I won’t donate to her cam­paign.  I don’t live in her dis­trict (I live in WA-7th), and I don’t know if she rep­re­sents the 8th district’s thoughts and values.

I pointed this out to the can­vasser.  He thought it didn’t mat­ter: in DC, they make deci­sions on a national level, and not deci­sions spe­cific to a par­tic­u­lar dis­trict.  That’s true — they make national deci­sions by rep­re­sent­ing the val­ues of local dis­tricts.  Each rep­re­sen­ta­tive applies their local val­ues to national prob­lems.  It’s the diver­sity of opin­ions that makes a plu­ral­ity work.  It’s what makes the wis­dom of crowds work. 

Once upon a time, there was a very opin­ion­ated man named Sir Francis Gaulton.  Sir Francis believed that crowds just mul­ti­plied the igno­rance of its indi­vid­u­als, thus pro­duc­ing hor­ri­bly bad deci­sions.  One day he was at a fair and stum­bled upon a con­test to guess the weight of an ox.  Sir Francis thought that these unin­formed peo­ple couldn’t pos­si­bly guess accu­rately.  The guesses ranged across the spec­trum and a few were close enough to award prizes.  After the con­test, he took all the guesses and did some math: he found that the median of all the answers was fright­en­ingly close to true answer.  Since then, count­less class­rooms of stu­dents have guessed the num­ber of beans in a jar and, despite class clowns and earnest over-achievers, the median is always incred­i­bly accu­rate.  The diver­sity of opin­ions makes this work.

So, back in D.C., if you actu­ally want Congress to work well, you want a broad array of opin­ions.  You get many opin­ions by mak­ing sure that rep­re­sen­ta­tives actu­ally rep­re­sent their home dis­tricts.  Anything that gets in the way of that rep­re­sen­ta­tion — lob­by­ists, Party dogma, and yes, out­side cam­paign donors — gets in the way of demo­c­ra­tic decision-making work­ing at its best.  I really don’t see any dif­fer­ence between my donat­ing to a cam­paign out­side my dis­trict, and big oil pour­ing money into campaigns. 

(Special thanks to the always fab­u­lous RadioLab for the ox-weighing anec­dote above.  Listen closely to the episode, and you’ll make out Oliver Sacks in the back­ground doing all the voices.  There’s noth­ing quite like hear­ing one of our most cel­e­brated con­tem­po­rary sci­en­tists doing goofy voices).

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I’m con­vinced that I run on choco­late chip cook­ies.  In the last two weeks, there have been a num­ber of times when I felt unpro­duc­tive, slow, moody, ill.  Each of those times that I then had a choco­late chip cookie, I soon became happy, pro­duc­tive, and lov­ing life. 

Proof pos­i­tive that cook­ies make Robs go.  If I donated blood, it’d prob­a­bly be 65% cacao.

(And yes, ear­lier today, I did the cal­cu­la­tion of how many cook­ies I would have if I were paid in cook­ies instead of dol­lars (mar­ket resources report that the cookie is up vs the dol­lar and euro in late trad­ing today)).   (photo by wen­day )

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It’s always enter­tain­ing to watch as an adult car­toons that I’d seen as a kid.  It can be very dis­ap­point­ing (which is why I’ll never re-watch the clas­sic Speed Racer car­toons).  Sometimes, though, it’s fas­ci­nat­ing: see­ing all the lit­tle jokes and sub­text that no child can deci­pher.  Chicken Little just blew me away.  Sure, it’s the story of Chicken Little, but the polit­i­cal over­tones are huge.  Watch it and think about pol­i­tics over the last 10 years, or the recent eco­nomic cri­sis (or any recent cri­sis).  It’s a good exam­ple of how we retell sto­ries to teach our­selves, and how to make a clear polit­i­cal point using cre­ative media.  (Thanks to 4HWW for remind­ing me of the cartoon).

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The Race Across America took a detour to the UK the last few weeks as I headed off to Cambridge.  A very nice city Cambridge is; I’d hap­pily spend more time there.  The place pos­i­tively reeks of knowl­edge & learn­ing.  Great ancient build­ings (giv­ing it a Harry Potter atmos­phere), twisty roads, good curry, and I got to work with very cool people.

In the mean­time, though, I’m back in Seattle where a lit­tle work on the titles for the movie, and a lot of read­ing await me. 

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Well, I didn’t quite hit my 8/31/08 dead­line, but I’m close.  I’ve fin­ished the first pass of color cor­rec­tion (dur­ing which I learned so much about the sub­tlety of that art — I’ll blog later about it), and have fin­ished mix­ing the first act of the movie. 

Audio mix­ing is turn­ing out to be much slower work (1 hour of work for 1 minute of movie), not only because the process is just plain slower, but because I can only do it for 1 – 1.5 hour chunks of time.  Just like dur­ing a con­cert, my ears get fatigued and it’s hard to hear the full spec­trum of audio.  So, I alter­nate: 1 hour mix­ing, 1 hour quiet. 

Today, I decided to be a lit­tle less of a per­fec­tion­ist, so I sus­pect I’ll be able to go much, much faster now.  It’s not like I’m try­ing to make a sur­round sound, the­atri­cal mix; just some­thing good enough for your TV.

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I just spent 2.5 hours color bal­anc­ing 6.25 min­utes of my movie.  At this rate, I only have 27 more hours to go — and then I get to do the audio.  Wheee!  Looks a whole lot bet­ter, though.

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Speaking of new works of art, my friend Amanda Koster is com­ing out with her first book next month.  By day, Amanda is a full-time assign­ment pho­tog­ra­pher. She ded­i­cates the rest of her time to social doc­u­men­tary (and cook­ing fab­u­lous meals). This book, made up of her pho­tographs and per­sonal jour­nal entries, describes how every­one use their cre­ative tal­ents to change the world. 

I love Amanda’s work — in fact, I have at least 7 of her pho­tos hang­ing in my house right now — more than any other pho­tog­ra­pher (includ­ing me!). 

Amanda’s book is avail­able for pre­sale at her publisher’s web site.  She’s also hav­ing a lec­ture & sign­ing on September 18.  Those who buy a ticket get a free book (or, if you pre­fer, you get a free ticket for buy­ing the book).  Either way, go here right now to buy one or the other.  I’ve already got my order in.

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I hereby declare pic­ture for my first doc­u­men­tary film, LOCKED!  Sure, it took 2 years, 1 month, and 28 days to com­plete the story edit, but hey, who’s count­ing, right?  It got done and that’s all that mat­ters.  Now on to the tech­ni­cal dot­ting of the i’s and cross­ing the t’s: mas­ter­ing the audio tracks, com­plet­ing the titles and bottom-thirds (“bot­tom thirds” are the text & graph­ics that pop up at the bot­tom of your screen, used ridicu­lously often in news pro­grams), color bal­anc­ing and visual pol­ish, and music. 

For the end cred­its, I’m plan­ning on using some music writ­ten by my friend John Pilafidis, to which this film and the race in the film, are ded­i­cated.  The song’s intro is a lit­tle long, but I’ve got John’s mas­ter files.  Always wanted to learn how to edit music…

I want to thank all of my friends who gave me feed­back through the edit­ing process.  Your feed­back made this a much, much bet­ter film.  Thanks Amanda, Karen, Becky, Linda, Mike, Will, Susan, Helen, Bernie, Laurie, Tom, Marisa, Mark, and Harvey. 

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I’m bounc­ing off the walls with excite­ment!  I’ve just showed my last cut of the RAAM movie to 5 peo­ple and they all loved it.  Those who’d seen it before thought it was sur­pris­ingly bet­ter than pre­vi­ous cuts.  (One said, “this is a com­pletely dif­fer­ent movie”)  I’ve just a few minor tweaks based on feed­back, and I’ll be set for Picture Lock by the end of the day tomor­row.  That puts me solidly on a path to FINISHING THIS MOVIE by the end of the month.  I’m very proud of how it’s turn­ing out.  It’s much bet­ter than I expected.

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After work­ing on this project for over two years, it’s time to call this thing done.  At the end of this month, I will declare this movie — in what­ever state it’s in — done.  That means I’m shoot­ing for pic­ture lock this Sunday.  (Picture lock is when I’ve stopped edit­ing the sequence of edits, and moved on to things like sound mas­ter­ing, titles, and color bal­ance).  I’ve made some major edits based on test screen­ings and watch­ing the raw footage over again (incred­i­bly valu­able).  Benjamin Zander’s descrip­tion of musi­cal phras­ing, and the struc­ture of Samuel Barber’s Adaggio for Strings have also pro­vided great inspi­ra­tion.  Look for more news in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, try what I did this week­end: unplug the inter­net.  I think I gained at least 3 hours per day doing that.  Hmmm… Probably need to do it right now…

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