New Quaker Notebook

I think this is amazing, but don't try it if you don't have broadband. It's a YouTube clip of a new technique for modeling textured 3D faces from a single image:

The German authors at the Max-Planck-Institut für biologische Kybernetik, Volker Blanz and Thomas Vetter, tell how it's done in "A Morphable Model for the Synthesis of 3D Faces" [PDF], their conference paper at the SIGGRAPH Conference 1999. (That would be the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques).

Perpetual Membership

Brethren,

Have you ever thought of purchasing a Perpetual Membership? A Perpetual Membership not only benefits you as a member of the Masonic Fraternity, but it also assists the particular lodges financially every year.

The cost to purchase a Perpetual Membership is 20 times your annual dues or $1,000.00. This can be purchased all at once or on the Installment Plan. If you decide to go with the Installment Plan all you pay up front is $200.00 and you decide how you want to pay the remainder (monthly, quarterly, semiannually, annually, etc.). You must however maintain current dues status while on the Installment Plan.

If you have any questions regarding the Perpetual Membership Program, give me a call.

Secretary

It's Iraqnam

I thought Sen Jim Webb's response to the State of the Union address last night struck all of its targets, especially on the need to replace an escalated US military presence for diplomacy in the Middle East. His speech was elegant, balanced, sincere, and really one of the best I've witnessed. The task now is for Congress to get its act together and halt the debacle in Iraq.

We seem to be running out of time for doing this. On Saturday, a group of Iraqis dressed in American army uniforms passed easily through three checkpoints at a secure government compound in Karbala, a Baghdad suburb, and then killed five US soldiers, exchanged gunfire for about 20 minutes, and then got back in their SUV and drove back out.¹ It seems similar to the attack in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in December 2004, when a Saudi medical student dressed in an Iraqi army uniform walked into a US mess hall and blew himself up, killing 22 soldiers in the Stryker Brigade from Fort Lewis.²

Robert Freeman, writing in yesterday's Common Dreams, sees the new attack as clear evidence that the Bushevik's troop-escalation plan in Iraq is actually a "ruse, a guise for something else." He says:

The "surge" plan has always been a fraud. If, as president Bush has claimed, loss in Iraq would be "catastrophic for the U.S." does 21,000 troops begin to rise to the level of the purported threat? Before the war began, General Eric Shinseki told Donald Rumsfeld it would take 500,000 to 600,000 troops to secure the country. There are now 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and the bedlam vastly exceeds what it was going in. Can raising the troop level to 161,000 now possibly make any difference? It is patently a sham.³

The reason for the proposed escalation is likely to remain hidden from us, if only because this administration continues to operate in the shadows and is incapable of speaking the truth. Freeman's comparison to our very similar predicament in Vietnam is instructive and sadly worth pondering.

1. "Karbala attackers posed as US military officials," AP/CNN, January 23, 2007.
2. "Report: Mess-hall bomber was Saudi student," AP/MSNBC, January 3, 2005.
3. Robert Freeman: "Bush's Iraq 'Surge': The Fraud Exposed," Common Dreams News Center, January 23, 2007.

Keep on Keeping on

I am now teaching philosophy at Edward Waters College, a historically black college affiliated with the AME Church, in Jacksonville, Florida. The move from SUNY Delhi last week still has me behind in journaling and blogging. There is much to say and do.

The escalation of US forces has already started in Iraq and our Congressional representatives need to stop grooming themselves and start smashing down the sinister wall of deception the Busheviks have built in support of the Cheney-Bush imperial presidency.

It's good to see that United for Peace and Justice, with support from hundreds of other organizations, is putting together a massive anti-war rally in Washington, DC, on Saturday, January 27. With enough Americans, the rally could get close to the protest numbers at the coordinated day of protests across the world against the imminent invasion of Iraq on February 15, 2003. The protest rally in Rome on that day was the largest in history.

3D from 2D

Perpetual Membership

It's Iraqnam

Keep on Keeping on