I thought that the obsession with the anorexically thin models was an american phenomena. I always just assumed it was part of the obsession with "the other" as America is pretty fat. While reading the Chinese news at xinhuanet.com again today, I came across this article about the "New Silk Road" beauties' swimsuit show Apparently, models from 40 countries come to a park in Hangzhou to participate in the pagent. They are prison camp skinny.



Apparently, starvation is an international symbol of beauty, at least for 40 countries. Wow how the times have changed. It really hits at the fact the human beings have moved so far away from the "natural" condition. Historically, being not-so-skinny was a sign of properity and beauty as it showed you had money, health, etc. Imagine how not-pretty an anorexically thin woman would seem if you were moving out west in a wagon train caravan and had to cross the salt flats, ford rivers, and traverse mountain ranges.

[size=m]Links[/size]
(e:sqb) added a link from a forum on the Central Terminal Project Site. It seems to be bringing a lot of traffic in. If anyone else uses any other local sites and has the opportunity to add links back to their journal, I encourage it. To find the internet address of a particular journal entry simply click on the little earth icon at the bottom of the journal. Once you click, a window will pop up with the direct web address to the entry.

[size=m]Beach[/size]
Last night we headed out to Tom's Beach house for a giant party. We saw a bunch of people I never expected to see and brought a bunch of peeps with us. It ended up being one of those hot summer nights, complete with skinny-dipping in the lake nights. (e:mike) actually got sick from swimming based motionsickness. (e:southernyankee) actually started to learn how to swim. I can't imagine not being able to swim, I guess I always took it for granted. Thanks mom for sending me to swimming lessons all of those very cold Buffalo summer mornings.

Roy from media studies was there with his wife. Apparently, his son works for for Tom's pet store [inlink]paul,1856[/inlink]. The new professor, Ste(v/ph)en from Media Studies, was also there. We hung out with him most of the night - he seems like a really nice guy. He lived through (e:matthew)'s tiraid on the plight of the Native American's in America. On the way home I thought the border Nazis would give us trouble at the border. Especially, because ste(v/ph)en was from Britain. At first they started hasling us, but as soon as we said where we came from they sent us right on through.

I actually tried to play tennis for a while. Not as in "by the rules" but as in "ran and chased after balls." It was kind of fun and made me think that I should possibly get more excercise. I felt bad for (e:rachel) because she is actually good at tennis and the rest of us sucked. We hit the ball back and forth a maximum of five times.

In regards to [inlink]paul,1868[/inlink] and [inlink]paul,1869[/inlink]

Unnammed person,
I am not mad at you, I just wanted credit for my part. I think you should credit everyone in the project. That is what collaboration is about, right? What is the advantage to not crediting everyone? It would only be one extra line.

Paul

UPDATE: I think we finally agreed on this.

---

I am putting this here for future reference to myself and all collanoration participants. Rememeber to credit each other.

So I have been working collaboratively with some people on a project at school [search]josephine[/search] . I have to say that I am quite leary about the whole collaborative environment since Trebors Network and Collaborations conference, but I thought I would give it a whirl. Today someone I worked with posted their website to our school listserv. My friend wrote to tell me that they saw my models on the web without my name anywhere, as reference.



The background was all my models with no credit on it. I assume it was just an oversight, but in the mean time, lots of people viewed the page assuming that the work was not mine. Don't get me wrong, the person who posted them did a huge portion of the project and is by no means a slacker or stealer but I would never post their portion of the porject (code/storyboard) to my website and add no reference to them. In fact on my web site for the project , the only link to work I didn't create mentions the makers of the storyboard right on the link.

In regards to this [inlink]paul,1868[/inlink]

Hi Paul,
Thanks for expressing your worries about a copyright violation because of me using your rendered model image as a background image in one of my pages in my personal site.

I think I will rather prefer to change the image or credit everybody in the project at the same time.

You are right that image is modelled and rendered by you. But you didn't conveided it on your own. The project is Josephine's, You did the modelling based on my storyboards which I discussed with Josephine, Trupti the AI, Dave the VR whole toolset, Prof Shspiro Sneps and etc. This is a chain of collaborators, and one is not independent from the other in this project's context. I explicitly express my role in the project, I say that I am doing the storyboard (put the actual image there), and build scenes in YG and write/extend code for agent navigation. Belive it or not, to be honest, I thought that this is clear enough. So that people don't get the idea that I did any modeling. I also explicitly stated the kind of programming I do there so that people should not think that I do more than that in such a complex programming intensive project.

Besides, I made videos of people walking in the environment with a footage shot by Dave. This videos were only possible by everybody's contribution, but I did them anyway. I will put a grab from them instead of your image.

The reason I didn't put every name about the project is because I am linking to the very site which tells all of the details about it in a proper way.

I wouldn't worry about you using my code as a background image on your site because it is not entirely mine. You have to credit everybody involved with that or non. I guess people belive that "looking" at images is enough to claim a copyright, than perhaps the use of code/text as a visual/image.

I have a lot of issues to say about copyright and identity, and what belongs to whom, or who you are (like should one need to credit mom and dad, or the monkeys in the evolution chain, if there is any, which made your existense possible for claiming a right to that image) anyway but this is a different discussion for a different interest.

Anyway, I don't see this as a big problem and except your argument no matter I agree or not. And I am sorry if I dissapointed you, as I like you as a friend.
So the image will go or replaced, but I got also warnings about sending this kind of a stupid e-maisl to the list even though this was totally a mistake. People thought that I want them to visit my site. I realized that this is a huge list, and I don't want to take people's time again. If you don't mind, I prefer to give a written explanation to the people whom went to my site and reported this act as a violation. But if your really really really really really want to me write to this list, anyway, I should think a solution for that.

I hope you understand, and got my points. Again sorry for the inconvenience,and I apology if I made you feel dissapointed.

The image will be gone, or replaced, 1 min. after I send this e-mail.

Unnammed person