Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Pizza really is a vegetable. Who knew?

I met with the people behind Growums today. A great company with great ideas looking for enthusiastic kids and parents who like the idea of growing what they eat. Plus, they have this great fundraiser for schools and other organizations. Check it out.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Appbabble

If you don't have Vooza, you're Radimparency impaired. That's just common sense.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Romney photo circulating Web just another fake

There's a photograph circulating the Web showing Presidential candidate Mitt Romney lining up his kids on a stage in t-shirts with large letters on them that are supposed to spell ROMNEY, but they're in the wrong order so they spell RMONEY.

People are having a good laugh circulating it around as the all-time worst Freudian slip. Another awkward moment for the clueless Republican candidate. How dumb can you be, to let something like that happen? What an epic fail!

The problem is that this photo is a photoshopped fake that was created by someone at the Democratic Underground Web site, which has been circulating spoof images that contain R-Money for a while now.


Of course, this is not the first time thousands of people shared a fake shot on their social networks believing, and asserting, that it was real. In 2008, I wrote about the same phenomenon when a photo was being circulated of Sarah Palin standing by a backyard pool in a stars and stripes bikini getting ready to fire off a shotgun.

So much for the self-editing, self-policing potential of social media. Sure, I'm writing this now, and it will be circulated among my friends. Fat lot of good that will do when I'm outnumbered a million to one by people who clearly left their bullshit detectors at home, or who may be aware it's a fake and would rather the truth fit their worldview.

As a cartoonist, I love a good spoof as much as anyone, but it should be cleared identified as one. Otherwise we all lose, and miss professional journalism all the more as it becomes increasingly irrelevant.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Mass Media is Dead, What Now?

This is all I've been thinking about over the last few months: how to be the brightest wishing star in a universe where a new galaxy of content is spawned every day. Listen to what Gary Vaynerchuk has to say about it:



Actually, I think a cartoonist's skill set might be a real advantage; creating brief, concise, fearless statements that are saturated with irony and aimed at pushing emotional buttons.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The art of graphic seduction: logo design

In this day and age of $25 clip art and the ubiquitous sweep graphic, it pays to revisit what a logo is and does. This is a short, pretty basic but rather comprehensive piece on the subject.



To see some of my logo designs go here.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Roberson takes artificial intelligence Further.


Further: Beyond the ThresholdFurther: Beyond the Threshold by Chris Roberson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Found this book at a book sale, and it had a cover note from John Scalzi saying he'd been "reading Chris Roberson for years ... Welcome. Enjoy."

Well, I couldn't pass that up. And it turned out to be a great book.

I particularly liked Roberson's concept of the Human Entelechy that exists 12 thousand years in the future. Not only do AI's coexist with humans but so do uplifted apes, lions, killer whales and just about anything else, because sentience can inhabit any form — and for any of them not to be considered "human" would be discriminatory. This provides for some wild speculative fiction with interesting character interactions and fantastical imagery. Very fun reading. All the more so with Roberson's wit.

As the book progresses, it becomes more familiar. The plot and scenarios take on a Star Trek-like quality. Roberson's wit and some edgy villains are the only things that keep it fresh. Still, all in all, I liked it to the end, and agree with Scalzi. I'll read Roberson again; probably for years, and enjoy.


View all my reviews

Monday, July 02, 2012

The Wild West just got a little bit tamer.

California lawsuit changes Facebook's Like button policy and hamstrings the company's Sponsored Story advertising strategy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/technology/to-settle-suit-facebook-alters-policies-for-like-button.html?smid=pl-share