Pit Bulls

A few weeks ago, I encountered some kind of rally or protest outside the KATU television station here in Portland. The crowd held signs like "Punish the DEED, not the BREED" and "Honk if you love Pit Bulls". At first, I just observed from afar, noting one overzealous little kid in the crowd. Then I decided to find out what it was all about. Here's my video interview with one of the demonstrators, Stephanie Collingsworth.

The main issue seems to be breed specific legislation (BSL), the banning of specific breeds of animal based on their perceived threat to public safety. The province of Ontario, Canada has banned Pit Bulls outright. The city of Denver, Colorado also has Pit Bull specific laws on the books. Recent Pit Bull attacks in the area have inspired a move toward BSL in and around Portland.

My personal opinion is that the breed, considering its history as a fighting/attacking animal, definitely requires special care and an attentive owner. Pits were bred to fight, to attack... but they were equally bred to not attack humans. They're bred to serve and adore humans. They're definitely a danger to other animals, though. Does this mean we should ban the breed? No. Maybe we should impose limitations on who can own these potentially dangerous animals? Special licensing? I'm not convinced we need any more laws, maybe just stricter enforcement of the ones we have.

Some related links:

• All American Pit Bulls
  
• Oregon Humane Society - Pit Bulls
  
• Wikipedia entry "Pit Bull"
  
• KATU's "Dangerous Dogs" sneak preview
  

PS: Thanks to Steve Garfield for featuring my "Break Time" video in "Vlog Soup #4".

Jotto

Jotto is a game that combines logic and vocabulary. Each person comes up with a secret five-letter word with no repeat letters. In turn, each player guesses a word and the other player has to tell them how many "jots" there are, how many of the letters in the guessed word match the actual secret word. Here is a video of Corinne and Liz playing Jotto.

Links:

• 'Jotto' entry at Wikipedia
  
• Xtabay Vintage (Liz's store)
  
• American Dream Pizza
  
• Unsharp Mask filter
  

A Walk to Breakfast

Met some friends for breakfast yesterday. I recorded the fifteen-minute walk and condensed it to this four-minute video. In it, you'll see Bug, the cat, some pedestrians, a lot of cars, the Oregonian, Genie's Cafe, Hawthorne St., Division St... and tracking it all is an inset satellite map.

Links:

• Genie's Cafe
  
• Satellite photo of the area
  
• Walk LA With Me (videoblog)
  

Break Time

We can't be everywhere at once. We can't even be anywhere at once. We perceive our visual world as unified simultaneous event, but really our brains are filling in the blanks all the time. This video is an exaggeration of the asynchronous and fragmented world we might see if we disengaged the predictive agents in our brains.

Links:

• Perceiving Motion, Form and Depth
  
• How does peripheral vision work?
  
• David Hockney's "Pearblossom Highway" photographic composite
  
• Video Cubism (unrelated, but interesting)
  
• Composite portraits (some of my other composite art)
  

In One Door and Out the Other

I've just posted my first video Segment for the new IODOTO collaborative video project. This video is what I'm calling a "Segment". Once the project's collected several Segments, collaborators will be able to mix and match those individual chunks of videos, compiling them into longer movies. Each Segment starts and ends with someone going through a doorway, so the videos should be easy to cut together.

We'll see what happens.

In this particular Segment you see me, yes me, walking out of my office, down the hall, adjusting a wall-hanging and exiting the house.