In notes taken at a Rothko lecture at the Pratt Institute on October 27, 1958, and printed in the catalogue’s notes, the artist allegedly made the following comments:
“The recipe of a work of art – its ingredients – how to make it – the formula.

1. There must be a clear preoccupation with death – intimations of mortality….Tragic art, romantic art, etc., deals with the knowledge of death.

2. Sensuality. Our basis of being concrete about the world. It is a lustful relationship to things that exist.

3. Tension. Either conflict or curbed desire.

4. Irony. This is a modern ingredient – the self effacement and examination by which a man for an instant can go on to something else.

5. Wit and play…for the human element.

6. The ephemeral and chance…for the human element.

7. Hope. 10% to make the tragic concept more endurable.

I measure these ingredients very carefully when I paint a picture. It is always the form that follows these elements and the picture results from the proportions of these elements.

I belong to a generation that was preoccupied with the human figure and I studied it. It was with utmost reluctance that I found that it did not meet my needs. Whoever used it mutilated it. No one could paint the figure was it was and feel that he could produce something that could express the world. I refuse to mutilate and had to find to find another way of expression. I used mythology for a while substituting various creatures who were able to make intense gestures without embarrassment. I began to use morphological forms in order to paint gestures that I could not make people do. But this was unsatisfactory. My current pictures are involved with the scale of human feeling, the human drama, as much of it as I can express.”

For the few customers who do work with equipment that’s secured with biometrics, it is something to consider. If someone with less than honest motives was working at a car dealership that had access to your thumbprint, they would also have your employer’s name and information.

Check out the video.

Update: some interesting links via an old boingboing post:
Gummi bears defeat Fingerprint Sensors

More on the Gummi bears

Making homegrown cyanoacrylate fingerprints

Some dealerships say that thieves are deterred when thumbprints are taken. But since they don’t tell you about about this policy until the last minute, customers must make a very awkward choice: put your thumbprint in a box and feel like a criminal being booked, or say no thank you, and walk out the door knowing they believe you to be a thief, deterred by their clever tactic?

I believe their faith in this is misguided. When you can pick out any glass bottle out of someone’s trash and create a false prosthetic print from it with superglue fumes, how does that protect anyone? If it becomes necessary to use someone else’s thumbprint to steal a car, that’s exactly what thieves will do.

Imagine if every dealer uses this technique. It won’t stop the thieves. They’ll just get more creative.

What if your print was stolen and used to acquire a car? It could work like this: the print is run through the DMV database. Your name comes up – a perfect match, but you’ve never even set foot in that dealership. How can you ever hope to prove your innocence? Better hope you had a good alibi.

A forged thumbprint can be a damning indictment, far worse than a badly forged signature.

You know the drill. Research every feature, pick your color, then, it’s negotiations for purchase price and for trade-in. Everything is done and agreed-apon, and excited, you are ready to hand over the check and collect your new car.

But wait!

You are handed a slip of paper and told to mark your right thumbprint in a box. The paper says clearly that it’s a request, for your protection, and to prevent your identity theft.

When you politely decline, the dealership refuses to sell you the car.

This is precisely what happened to me today when I tried to purchase a new X3 at the South Bay BMW dealer in Torrance, California.

Let me restate: In order to buy a car, with cash, you must authorize the release of your official DMV-recorded thumbprint to the dealership. This is not a law, this is a “dealership policy.” More on that in a minute.

Taken completely by surprise by all this, my husband and I asked many questions about this process. We were told that the data would remain on file at the dealership for seven years. That this policy is in place to protect us. That there are many bad, bad people in the world, who commit fraud, and that by recording everybody’s fingerprints, they would be deterred from committing fraud.

We were unsatisfied with the answers, and we explained that we were not comfortable with this arbitrary demand for biometric data and if this was required, we would not buy the car.

The resident fat cat was phoned, taking our call from his vacation spot in Hawaii. He replied that the collection and storage of biometric data is his policy.

He would not make any exceptions. The sales staff was clearly paralyzed here – they’d spent time making this sale happen too.

“He pays our salary, and that’s his rule,” they said.

“Well, customers pay his salary, and if he keeps treating them like criminals, I can’t imagine he’ll be able to afford many more trips to Hawaii,” I replied.

I might as well have been talking to the carpet.

According to the staff, this is the process at all dealerships owned by the Hitchcock Automotive Resources Company. They’ve had this program in place for over three months, and only other one person has refused to go through with the sale. The implication was clear; policy had singlehandedly stopped a bad guy, right in his tracks.

One criminal, over three months. Hundreds of people hassled. Clearly the deterrent is working. Right?

We walked out of the dealership, but not before learning that none of my personal data which was copied and recorded would be returned to me or destroyed.

It’s going to be kept on file for 7 years. Policy, you see. It goes in the same file where they keep the fingerprints.

So now I’ve lost copies of my driver’s license, credit report (which was also run without my knowledge), and marriage certificate (a copy of which was required in order to process the sale under my new name).

When I looked all this up online, I found… nothing. How is this possible? This is the Internet. Hundreds of people find my website each week from looking for photographs of owl vomit. But somehow this bizarre infraction of personal privacy has gone totally undocumented.

Looking a little bit deeper, I came across SB 504, a bill introduced to the California Senate by San Jose-based Senator Elaine Alquist, on February 18 2005. It was created as an act “to add Section 11713.15 to the Vehicle Code, relating to dealers.”

In one of its earliest incarnations, SB 504 stated:

No dealer issued a license pursuant to this article shall sell
a vehicle without first obtaining the right thumbprint of the
purchaser and a photocopy of his or her valid form of identification.

The bill was ultimately chartered into law, but not before everything related to car dealers was edited out. I’m no legislator, and I won’t pretend to understand this process, but in fact the final chartered version seems not to have anything to do with car dealers at all.

• As introduced
• After everything related to car dealers was edited out (includes strike-through text)
• The chartered bill, now some kind of real estate law.

I resent the implication that I am somehow a less worthy customer, a potential criminal due to my refusal to provide my fingerprints to a private, non-government entity. But what I resent even more is that a private business has been somehow “entreated” to enact a bill that failed to make it through the California legislature in the first place. The bill failed, so who is pressuring these dealers to enact it, regardless of the law?

I asked the dealership if I could keep a copy of the fingerprint form. Here’s the text:

“As you are aware, there is a national problem of identity theft. Southern California formed a multi-jursidictional law enforcement group, the Taskforce for Regional Autotheft Protection (“TRAP”).

Car dealers (especially luxury car dealers) are one of the prime targets for identity and auto theft. For your protection from identity fraud, we are now requesting all of our clients who purchase or lease a vehicle, to provide a thumb print, along with a copy of their current Driver’s License.

We have learned from law enforcement officials that the requirement of a thumb print is deterring criminals who engage in identity theft. Law enforcement officials also recommend that the dealer retrieve a DMV Driver License record to verify all information. This information will be kept confidential.

We appreciate your assistance in helping Southern California and South Bay with this very serious problem.

X________________ X_____________
Customer’s Signature Date

_________________
Print Name

By signin (sic) this form, I authorize (insert dealership name) to run a DMV Driver License record to verify all information.

Please place right thumb print in the square.

_____________________
Witnessed by (signature) Print Name

__________
Date

According to Google, there’s no such thing as the “Taskforce for Regional Autotheft Protection“. At least, not that’s been indexed yet.

Digging around in some of the other California police sites only brings up a few flacky ten year old press releases:

• http://www.ccjcc.info/trap.asp
• http://www.lasd.org/divisions/detective/trap/trap.html

But looking a little further, there’s finally some recent and useful information from the LAPD, which leads to the nonprofit group NICB which is, as far as I can tell, an insurance lobbying group. And did they mention they’re not-for-profit? Because they are. Totally not-for-profit. Their report on how auto theft fraud is orchestrated (PDF) is fascinating reading, especially since it doesn’t ever mention a single thing about this kind of fraud, the kind that can be prevented by recording a thumbprint.

The dealership claimed that the fingerprinting was for my protection. To make sure I’m really who I say I am, and haven’t just stolen someone’s social security number.

But I don’t get it. How does that work? No one’s checking to make sure the fingerprint I leave matches the one on file with the DMV. There’s no forensics expert on staff. And I don’t have data on this but I feel pretty certain that any car thief worth his salt probably already has more than one set of prints on file.

My point: If I had wanted to steal a car today, I could have simply popped my thumbprint down, and driven off with the car. I could do that twenty times at twenty different dealerships, if I were so inclined. This system protects nothing. It’s no deterrent.

And what about the legality of all this? Frankly, it doesn’t sound like such a great situation for the car dealerships. Who’s pushing this? Is it coming from the LAPD? Or is it from NICB, that friendly you know, “not for profit, nope-no-profit here” group? Is someone strong-arming the dealers? Is there some financial incentive, cheaper insurance rates maybe? Maybe the participating dealers are just being good homeland citizens.

Dollar Rent-A-Car tried fingerprinting their customers for a while. They gave up after realizing that it had no effect on fraud or theft. Simply, treating your customers like felons is bad for business.

That’s exactly why I will not purchase a car from South Bay BMW & Mini. There’s no legislation that I know of to regulate how this kind of data must be kept or stored.

And while they were nice enough to give me a copy of the thumbprint letter, nobody could provide me with a clear company privacy statement that outlines exactly how this data will be handled.

I already use my fingerprint to unlock my laptop computer. In five years I may be using it to unlock my front door, or access my medical records. Last month, my personal data was stolen during the big UCLA database break-in. So, if this thumbprint thing is really my last remaining way to prove my identity, well, pardon me for not trusting your sales force with it.

In this kind of situation, your only option is to vote with your feet (and your wallet). Calling around to a few other dealers, I felt like a criminal simply by ASKING whether they intended to fingerprint me as part of their sales process. At the very first dealer I called, the receptionist said “We don’t believe in treating our customers like criminals.”

So maybe there’s still hope.

Maybe.

Day One:

Day Two:

Day Three:

Day Four:

Each speaker talks for only 18 minutes, much less than my usual 3 hour pose.

I’ve been watching the speakers on TV in the “Simulcast Room,” so it’s a challenge to get a strong likeness down quickly. You’re totally dependent on a constantly changing camera angle. Patience is a virtue.

If you would like more details on the speakers, I recommend:
the official TEDblog, or the somewhat less offical list of TEDBloggers.

On Saturday, Graphaids West LA returns with their 40% off sale, all day.

You could also take in the Make Magazine Launch Party, at 5:30PM, or head over to Abbot Kinney to check out the Los Angeles leg of the Worldchanging Tour, Equator Books, 7:30PM.

On Sunday, go check out the Dresden paintings at the Getty.

Or if you want to go upscale and maybe find some high-end holiday gifts, check out the Modern Design Auction and get your Noguchi on.

And definitely check out the bizarre and wonderful design by John Baldessari for LACMA’s Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images.

it happened like this:

on the way into the library, a man and a lady were having a heated conversation.

it was actually kind of one-way, and rather than a conversation, well, it was more like… let’s be honest. this poor guy was getting his balls busted. loudly and publicly. i didn’t really want to stick around, but i heard enough to pick up:

“that is NOT ACCEPTABLE! I don’t CARE!….. WELL you GO UP THERE, NOW! AND LET THEM KNOW THAT YOU’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT!”

*whew* crazy people.

not your problem. not your business. just keep walking.

ahh, the front desk. the calming salve of bureaucracy. fill out form. tender sensitive personal data to be later used for jury duty summons at worst possible time.

receive library card.

wander. aimlessly. just keep walking. don’t stop.

finally, when it feels right, look up.

you are in the section all about painting. beautiful books too big to fit in your bookshelf. coffeetable books, bigger than your coffeetable. dining-room table books. full sized full color portraits by frans hals from 1640. delicately rendered pastels from mary cassatt in the late 1800s. everything you could imagine about carvaggio and durer and basquiat and names you’ll never remember later, don’t even write them down, just make a note, next time you’ll come back and pick a new one.

suddenly, yelling. lots of anger.

what the hell? it’s a library? shut up!

peek around the corner and you recognize the angry man’s tshirt. just moments ago you saw him outside. being read the riot act. and you wondered what transgression could possibly merit the tongue-lashing he got, but, not your business.

lucky day, now you will find out!

the angry man in the tshirt is hollering at a librarian man in glasses.

hollering.
“WELL I RESERVED A ROOM FOR 4PM AND THERE IS SOMEONE USING IT”

polite caution:
“well, yes sir, but if you’re not there within 10 minutes, the library releases the rooms, sir”

rage:
“NO ONE TOLD ME THAT WOULD HAPPEN!! IT DOESN’T SAY THAT WHEN YOU RESERVE THE ROOM!!!!!!”

caution mitigated by excruciating adherence to policy:
“ah, yes, sir, actually it says that on the reverse of the form-”

rage. pedantic rage:
“THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE! I RESERVED A ROOM! AND SOMEONE IS USING IT!”

silence.
…

“ARE THERE OTHER ROOMS? YOU HAVE TO GIVE ME ANOTHER ROOM!”

reserved customer service:
“ahh, i’m sorry sir, there are no rooms, please follow me, maybe i can find you a space…”

the scene fades out as the man in glasses guides enraged tshirt man away from the research section. maybe in my life i never have seen such a clear example of the ripple effect.

cruelty begets cruelty. and that was a special kind of cruelty, that i saw today.

it wasn’t originated from the man in the tshirt. i don’t even think it originated from the mean ball-busting lady outside the library. i mean, for god’s sake. it’s a public room at the library. is this worth causing someone else their dignity? really? was it worth setting in motion a series of events to make people feel bad?

in a way it was worth it.

it’s all about how you react to a situation.

so today i gained understanding of something important, something no one else could ever explain to me.

epidemologists don’t study the vectors of cruelty, but i saw one today first hand.

it goes both ways. though. last week a random stranger bought drinks for mike and me, just because we struck up a silly conversation in line at the coffeebean on the promenade. just because we couldn’t stop laughing about nothing. because laughing about nothing is pretty much our base state. it was fun.

and the next day i was leaving my drawing class, after a great session with one of my favorite models, and when i realized she was behind me in the parking garage, i told the attendant i was paying for the car behind me, too.

it’s a little thing. it’s inconsequential. except, just like the cruelty of the crazy mean library tshirt man, it’s not. you don’t do it because you expect reciprocity. you do it because that’s the kind of person you choose to be.

maybe you believe in good things and you want to put more fun into the world whenever you can. or maybe you’re a jerk who yells at librarians.

either way, the next time someone gets in your face and starts reading you the riot act, instead of hitting them right back where it hurts, remember that they deal with other people too. many people are kind, but then some of them yell at librarians. the really terrible ones are poisonous enough to make weaker people feel so bad they only get back their self respect by abusing other people.

isn’t it so much easier just to buy a stranger a coffee?

you don’t want to applications. You
better at solving software
, and how to exploit
in between sips of a martini.

random text from internet spammers is the new stichomancy.

seriously. how did they know?

When it comes to studying ancient birds, it’s often necessary to make a few assumptions and hope that future evidence will support your theories. Sometimes taking that leap can jumpstart what is “known” and help people see what is actually there. It’s awfully easy to overlook important, obvious, and often totally banal evidence that’s lying in the dirt when you’re required to, well, stand on the shoulders of so many giants.

Birds have been around for longer than we can really even fathom, and sometimes it takes a creative leap to look around the existing wisdom and suggest something new. The back and forth chatter between the Arboreal and Thecodontal theorists have probably done more to harm progress in this field than anything; when you’re busy defending a theory in a hot and public argument, you’re hardly open and receptive to new evidence.

I particularly enjoyed this suggestion of the importance of hindlimbs in flight evolution, from a PhD student at the University of Calgary. It’s creative and a bit daring, and it’s getting press, too. Good work.

That said, and while I have yet to read the full paper, the thesis still doesn’t ring quite right to me. Anything has aerodynamic properties, if you throw enough wind at it. And there’s a kind of economy of form common to all living things; volume: surface area ratios must exist within certain tolerances, and the presence of skin over muscle and tissue tends to follow a pretty specific set of curves. And I’d love to hear more scientists discussing that economy of form; observing it where it is alive in the ancient species of today. You cannot watch a flightless cormorant without the realization that you are looking through an open window, one that opens on hundreds of thousands of years into the past.

It’s easy to toss rocks at the longstanding work of many devoted and educated scholars, and I certainly don’t want to do that. But I do believe the viability of existing theories would be greatly enhanced through closer observation of extant, living and breathing birds.

The abstract is here.

Mike wrote a nice story about Time Warner Cable’s customer service. We got stuck not being able to leave our house, waiting for a guaranteed on-time cable guy that never came, for over five hours, and with no running water (happy little plumbing incident, there). I’m not bitter. Hey, it wasn’t MY closet that got flooded.

Anyway. The thing TWC doesn’t tell you is that what’s right on time is their billing department. Not the installation, not the customer service – just the bill. That comes right out of your credit card, right away!

But at least we know where all those crappy AOL reps went after they got fired.

Hope they’re good with refunds…