The Young and The Oblivious
Posted on April 8, 2022 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

Illustration of The Young and the Oblivious by Craig H Collins
So my spouse and I are walking back to the parking garage after a dinner out this week, and we encounter two young women standing in the middle of the sidewalk, chatting.  Although we approach to within a couple of feet, neither of the women sees fit to move.  I say, “Excuse us!” which does get their attention — but they respond not by stepping to one side so that we may pass, but by huddling a bit closer to each other in the middle of the sidewalk.  This forces my spouse to pass them to their left while I go to the right.

Is it just me, or is oblivious the new pandemic?  It certainly seems to be infectious.

Last weekend, while we were at a Hampton Inn in Ohio, I went to the breakfast area to make some toast to take to our room.  A young man stood in front of the empty toaster, dutifully spreading cream cheese on his toasted bagel.  I opened the bread keeper (right next to the toaster), tong-extracted a slice of whole wheat, and then stood a few socially-distanced feet away.  The guy didn’t move, or even look up.  I waited another respectful 10-15 seconds.  Scrape, scrape, scrape went the plastic knife.  I finally circled around the counter, dropped my slice in the toaster slot, and reached around the toaster to push the lever down.  This, at last, served to elicit an “oh sorry” from the guy — but he still didn’t step away from the toaster until every smidgen* of his cream cheese had been spread.

I suppose I could have said “Excuse me!” in this situation as well, but why did I need to? Where are other people’s awareness skills?  Are they no longer obligated to use them?

A few days before that, I was driving through a shopping/residential area on my way out of our neighborhood.  As I approached the four-way stop, I had to pull up behind two cars whose drivers were having a window-to-window conversation, blocking both of the lanes.  I sat there about a minute patiently waiting for them to finish.  I didn’t tap my horn, but I was just about to.

I understand that car-to-car convos are the norm in some neighborhoods, and impatience with such is not welcome there.  But this isn’t one of those neighborhoods.  What may be street culture elsewhere was simple obliviousness here.

I am almost always looking around for someone I may be inconveniencing, as if points are awarded for Most Considerate Citizen.  And whenever we are at a bar, my spouse keeps an eye on the empty barstools, ready to offer to switch seats to accommodate a larger party.

Are we throwbacks?  I’m beginning to think so.

I am undecided whether rampant obliviousness is a product of phone-app absorption or the natural result of the internet’s distance and anonymity seeping into our everyday lives.  Probably much of both.  Either way, I keep waiting, waiting, for the other guy to look up, see me, and think of something other than the continued pursuit of his own agenda.

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* What exactly would you call the last bit of cream cheese in a packet, besides smidgen?  Morsel implies something crumbled or piecewise, as does speck.  Pinch and dash are for powders or granules, and drop is for liquids.  Ounce is a relatively large quantity for cream cheese, and dab sounds too soft and buttery.   Whatever word we choose should convey the notion that it takes forever for oblivious people to spread it.
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Bad Architectural Photoshop
Posted on March 20, 2022 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

This is another in an occasional series of posts about bad design, a longstanding source of disgruntlement for me.*  In past editions, I’ve covered bad software interfaces, bad signs, bad fonts and bad hurricane forecast maps.  This time, I’m going to briefly touch upon a topic of particular interest to me, since many of my posts (including my most recent one) revolve around it — I am talking about photoshop mashups and, in particular, the lighting of subjects and objects in those images.

There are countless examples of bad photoshop on the internet, most of which are easily spotted with a casual glance.  Whenever you see an image that seems “off” or unnatural or too-good-to-be-true, it means that someone at the photoshop desk has not done their job.  It is probably because they were in a rush (if I feel generous about it) or because they don’t have the training (if I feel otherwise).  The typical reason that things just don’t look right is inconsistent and unrealistic lighting, something that takes time to get right.**

I am going to pick apart just one image here.  What set me off about this particular one is who created the image — an architectural firm in upstate New York.  (I am not spelling out its name, but here you go.)  Now, you would think that architects would only hire the best graphic designers they could find, as they have their professional reputations to protect.  But you would be wrong (and not for the first time, if I may gently remind you).

Anyway, this firm “partnered” with New York State’s parks department to develop some renderings of a proposed riverside park in downtown Rochester.  Here is the drawing that caught my critical eye:

The Democrat & Chronicle caption says the rendering shows a “possible river-level view” of the falls area, but this would be “possible” only if our planet orbited three or more suns.  (That planet would instead be Triskelion; see Star Trek Episode 46.)  If I may explain…

We have one sun, and it is basically “infinitely” far away.  As a result, when the sun is out and you look around at the shadows it casts, you will find all shadows point in the same direction.  Sadly, this is clearly not the case in the architect’s rendering of this scene.

Which, if any, of those shadows are realistic?  To find out, we first figure out where the sun is supposed to be.  The answer is revealed by another amateur mistake: someone shot the background photo while facing the sun without using a lens hood, causing telltale flares, which the graphic artist could not or did not remove.  I highlighted the flares in Figure 1:

Tracing the lens flares back to their source, we find the sun is at about 35 degrees from the southeast horizon (note: the waterfall faces north) as would be the case on a mid-June day at 9 AM.  Give the artist credit — the shadow of the boy in the center of the drawing is about the right length for that time of day.

But a closer look at the running boy (Detail 2) reveals that his shadow is at the wrong angle.  Because the boy is centrally positioned in the frame, the line of his shadow should point directly toward the sun [A].  But the shadow as drawn points well to the right of the sun.

Things get more confusing when we examine the lighting and shadows on the boy himself.  The light on his face and body is not coming from the sun behind him but from some invisible source [B] above and to his right.

The rest of the drawing has similar lighting issues, which I will now enumerate (Figure 3):

[A] The river banks are sunlit, but this is not possible given the sun’s position in the sky.
[B] The seated man is illuminated by a source in back of him, not by the sun.
[C] A tree casts a shadow on the bench but there is no tree between the bench and sun.
[D] The couple walking with the small girl are illuminated not by the sun but by a source in front of them and to the right.
[E] The shadows cast by that group, by the wheelchair couple, and by the bench, point to some unseen light source above the waterfall.
[F] The couple holding the two small children are illuminated by some source on the right.
[G] The shadows cast by that group have the correct angle but are too long.

I was going to add that the woman with the bicycle at far right is not illuminated at all, but this is probably accurate given that the locale is perpetually-cloudy Rochester, New York.

But this is just a one-off, right?  Other architects certainly aren’t this casual — or are they? Here’s a example (Figure 4) from a project closer to home called, ironically, Artful Way…

[A] The people in purple clothes are translucent.  They must be ghosting us.
[B] Plus, they cast no shadows.  (Further proof of the same.)
[C] The fence casts a much stronger shadow than does the person standing behind it.
[D] This last one is more subtle and doesn’t involve lighting.  The designer presents an oblique view of the deck, together with a very close perspective; as a result, the deck floor appears to slope downward and to the right.  That’s not how people perceive the surfaces that they stand on.  I would have chosen a more straight-on, farther-away point-of-view.

So there you go.  Good thing I’m not on a planning board or nothing would ever get built.

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* The online definition of “disgruntlement” is “a state of sulky dissatisfaction” which to me actually sounds a little romantic.
** Another common photoshop faux pas is “too much fine detail” which competes with “too many lights” for the Emperor Joseph II Award in Graphic Arts.
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Call for Contributions: “Shared Shorthand”
Posted on March 16, 2022 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

I am inviting my treasured subscribers and readers to help co-write a future post here at The 100 Billionth Person.  The subject, as best as I can frame it, will be shared shorthand. Let me explain…

You and your partner/best friend might use a word or phrase whose full meaning only the two of you understand.  Either of you might occasionally mention it in conversation with the other, to quickly convey a certain concept or idea.  The word/phrase likely sprang from a specific shared experience, but has since become your shorthand for a more general idea.

For example, I can name two shared-shorthand terms of ours: “The Ashley Principle” and “The John Sexton Rule.”  (I will explain the meaning of these when I compile the post.)

To clarify, shared shorthand is more than a simple analogy like, “This is just like the time we ran out of gas in Sheakleyville, Pennsylvania.”  Instead, just the word Sheakleyville suffices to refer (for the umpteenth time already) to the consequences of being inattentive to one’s fuel situation while driving late at night in the dead of winter in the middle of nowhere.  But more generally, the word Sheakleyville conveys the lack of foresight at the worst possible time.  At least it does in a certain household.

There should be a better term for this than shared shorthand.  Secret word and codeword sound too conspiratorial, while jargon and lingo refer more to local or in-group language.  It is not metaphor (e.g., “the world is a stage”) and not really metonymy (e.g., using “suit”  to refer to a business executive).  Maybe some English major who subscribes to the blog (you know who you are) can help us all out here.

In any event, I am calling on my readers to share personal examples of shared shorthand.  This will make the post more fun than me just writing about ours.  In your contribution, name the word/phrase, of course, along with some details about its origin and the shared meaning it now has for the two of you.  A few sentences would be fine, but feel free to be as lengthy as the story calls for.

Rather than post your contribution as a comment, I would prefer that you email it to me at the100billionthperson [at] gmail.com.  That way, I can compile and publish all the entries at the same time.  I will use contributors’ first names only.

I’d like to publish this post in the next few weeks, so please don’t delay!  I look forward to hearing/posting your shared shorthand examples and the stories behind them.  Thanks!

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