Fantasy and Concept Artists, the Great Boundary Pushers of Our Time

Ignored by their peers, shunned by galleries and museums, yet they have the biggest impact on people's lives.

No, it's not Cubism or any other form of "Modern Art." Those have gained general acceptance in the art world and so haven't actually pushed artistic or emotional boundaries in decades, leaving us to search for new rebels against the artistic, academic, and wealthy elite.

At this point, however, there's really only one thing which the artistic elite deride, art with a purpose. That is illustrations, concept art, animation art, and the art forms based on these.

"Oz the Great and the Powerful" asked many questions about the nature of good
about relationships, and human emotions. A large part of this story came from the art.

Great art doesn't question the nature of art anymore, that's been done over and over and over again, and really the answer won't change the world, or make anyone's life better.

Nor is art a very good medium for philosophy as it can't send complex messages, and most people won't pick up on its message anyway.

There are three things visual art is very good at.

1-Art can help to shape stories, and push stories to deliver more complex and meaningful messages.

2-Art can affect people's mood and emotions. Some art, such as landscapes have been shown to reduce stress, while pictures of cute animals have been shown to improve test scores.

3-Similar to the above two, art can give people moments of inspiration, of wonder. Art can make people's lives a little more beautiful. Some of the greatest art is in clothing, on cups, in things that people use every day, because it's daily life that we must all struggle through.

The Bioshock games questioned social and political reality, as well as science
more effectively than any individual work of art.

So while galleries and museums tend to ignore concept art, speculative realism and surrealism, this is merely evidence that they, like the galleries and museum that ignored the Impressionists, are out of touch.

Video games such as Ultima, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, all made people role play emotional questions. No medium outside of video games has involved people in philosophical questions, or put people emotionally inside others so effectively as video games. And even if they are low pixel images, video games are typically artistically driven.

Emotions matter. They inspire people, but more than this they
Can make life worth living. So emotional art, like that of Disney's
"Tangled" are the ultimate expressions of our humanity.

Ultima IV had players seek to become virtuous, to understand what virtue was.
The artists in the story faced challenges brought on by technology that limited
their wild inclinations. Forcing them to make every pixel count, and to really
think about what they were doing.
(Picture from CRPG Addict)

Follow Wandering Folklorist's board fantasy paintings on Pinterest.
Even the fantasy art in general can push boundaries. More than this it provides momentary inspiration and emotional lifts to help people fight through their lives.

Reducing Bureaucratic Obstacles

Governments have more power to hurt businesses than any other entity, so often times hurting businesses less, by making their system less burdensome, is the most important thing they can do to help the economies grow. Governmental burdens are especially damaging to plans which call for increasing small businesses. This is because while big businesses hire less employees because of regulations, they can usually deal with them. However, many small businesses are ready to start, or better yet expand, to hire more people “but they're stymied by permitting, inspections, fees, tax errors, and other challenges.” Regulations are often “outdated or poorly written or arbitrarily enforced,” and many are just arbitrary and meaningless all together as they don't directly address the concern they're meant to. Some city regulations even prevent such things as rooftop solar energy and greywater recycling; or prevent home businesses because they are so old they don't realize that a web designer can work from home while helping traffic by not commuting to work elsewhere (Brodwin, 2012). One regulation I've seen stymy small businesses was the requirement that all LLC's and other corporations (which include any restaurant with an owner who knows what they’re doing) in Philadelphia hire a lawyer to go with them to community meetings. This law cost many restaurant owners thousands of dollars they could have used for expansion, even though I never saw these lawyers speak at any of meetings I attended, because community members wanted to hear from the restaurant owner, not some freelance lawyer. I also saw an entrepreneur go to the city to find out what kinds of signs they were allowed based on their zoning, but no one could figure this out so they spent days wrangling with bureaucracy, because no one at the city understood its own codes. In other cases the “health department inspector tells the business owner to put the sink in one location; the building department wants the sink moved somewhere else.” It seems that different city agencies demand the business owner to do something different from the other and threaten to fine them if they don't comply (Brodwin, 2012).

Philadelphia's Sustainable Business Network has come up with nine important points for supporting small businesses and while many of these ideas are unique to large cities with inner city problems I still feel they are important to review to get a sense of what cities need to do to improve their business environment. This list includes; a reduction of “the time, cost and confusion of obtaining approvals,” the simplification of tax codes, the ensuring that laws don't
“unnecessarily harm small businesses,” a reformation of business inspections so that these are fair, objective, and offer the right to a timely appeal, and the improvement of the process by which the government and small businesses communicate with each other. So this list doesn't even necessarily call for a decrease in regulations, instead it calls for better methods for determining the value of regulations vs. the cost, as well as a lower costs in time and money to comply with regulations.

References 

Education - Creating a More Skilled Workforce

Successful urban plans need to focus on helping everyone in the city learn and not just traditional students – “an error commonly made in today’s over emphasized reliance on “creatives” – to take up the possibility of innovating and making new companies that meet unforeseen demands in world markets beyond the city” (Schramm, 2013). Because poverty can only be reduced through high growth businesses, cities need people with the skills that companies need to grow (Schramm, 2013).  Education for specific jobs is important because in many cases the most in demand jobs often didn't exist a few years ago. Further, the biggest challenge facing most high growth businesses, is a lack of workers who have the skills they need. Educational programs have three strategic purposes with regard to economic development:

1-To improve employee productivity so that they can earn more money.

2-To give businesses the skills they need to grow.

3-To attract businesses to your region.



There are five strategies for achieving this:

1-Schools and colleges are likely to be the center of your population’s education, and these are often excellent for prepping people to learn. However, traditional schools often fail to prepare people for jobs, and are even less likely to provide your city with an advantage not found in every other American city, unless you develop a better strategy for dealing with them.

Increasing financial investment in schools rarely has any real impact on how well they run. This is in part because over $9,000 per year is spent on education per student, so it would take a lot of money to increase this by any meaningful amount. Indeed, while Detroit spends $11,000 per student, less than 25% of their students graduate (Lips, Dan; Witkins, Shanea & Fleming, John). The way money is spent and innovative programs, are the only things that have any real impact on education. Of course as a development manager or mayor it may be difficult for you to seriously impact traditional education as political in-fighting between parties, unions, parents, and more, makes getting anything done in schools difficult. Unfortunately, all too often, school heads lose sight of their mission as they fight battles with each other for control and their own interests. To deal with this, there have been some mayors, notably in Boston and Chicago who have taken direct control of the school board, appointing its members rather than having them elected. In their research on the impact of mayoral control over school systems, Wong, Shen, Anagnostopoulos and Rutledge found that this can improve student achievement. Five out of eleven schools taken over by mayors, were making “substantial improvements in narrowing the student achievement gap with their states.” While four more districts showed progress on some measures (Wong  and Shen, 2013). Such results are fairly good, given that schools in many other urban areas are getting worse.  This tactic, however, is simply a means of starting schools down the path toward success, and often these results come at the cost of more money.

San Jose's mayor has developed innovative ways to improve education without taking direct control; by working to become a "Teacher-Friendly City." He did this by providing teachers with up to $40,000 in no-interest loans to help them purchase their first home, in order to attract and retain high quality teachers. He also developed library programs to train child-care providers in better educational techniques. In addition, he developed a number of after school programs, including homework centers with tutoring and computers. Other programs which San Jose has engaged in include, innovation through Charter and alternative schools, building better relationships with the school districts so that the mayor can better support and influence them. While the efficacy of all these programs is not monetized yet, it’s likely that through measurement and continued innovation they will eventually pay off.

Other cities, states and the Federal Government have tried improving education with tutoring scholarships and free tutoring programs. Sadly, there have been accusations that much of this money has been wasted. Still tutoring can be an effective way of improving education, since tutors can be held more accountable for grade improvements than teachers. Finally, Mayor Bloomberg took an interesting stance by suggesting that students skip college to become plumbers. While this angered many, I would point out that there are lots of college students who graduate and end up with lower incomes than plumbers or manufacturing workers, and massive debt. So options should be explored to help students gain high paying jobs that don't require a college degree. After all, if someone fails to get a high paying job out of high school, they can always try college, but once they are through college they have debts to deal with.

2-Skills training
Some of the most successful educational programs teach people the specific skills they need to get a job. Ohio's department of education has 6-9 month vocational training programs which lead to occupational licenses. Typically this program helps people who have already gone through high school or college and have spent years trying to get jobs, helping increase the likelihood that they will get new jobs. Despite this program’s success in increasing employment opportunities, the jobs create below average wages.

For these programs to be effective they must actually work with employers to insure the program trains people for the skills businesses need (Hollenbeck, Kevin and Anderson, William). Georgia's Quick Start Program has proven to be one of the most effective at doing this, while also allowing manufacturers to get cost free training in classrooms, mobile labs, or in their factories. Jackson, the head of Kia's HR in America, said that the officials from Georgia's Quick Start Program met with Kia and gathered information about their manufacturing processes so that they could standardize these into manuals, worksheets and training programs. This allowed Kia's plant in Georgia to start, at near full capacity, so that it was able to grow and expand quickly (Hans, 2013). This program performed so well that Kia's Chairmen called it a “Global Benchmark” (Dobbs, 2013).

Other factories, like Mohawk which makes filament, have used the Quick Start Program in order to help them expand quickly, allowing them to continue to compete internationally. The program has started to get industry recognition with Expansion Management magazine, naming Georgia the best state for providing workforce training (Willis, John). This program succeeds by working very closely with companies who are looking to hire by moving into the region or expanding. Quick Start builds simulated work environments based on facilities in order to allow people to get real work experience so that they can be ready for the real world.

In Boston, an organization called Pine Street Inn, gives homeless people a stipend while they train with manufacturers, allowing these companies to hire and train workers at a lower cost. In 2012 this program helped 250 people find jobs, although it's difficult to say how many of these jobs would not have existed otherwise (Johnston, 2013). Generally, working with companies and giving people real or accurately simulated world experience is the best way for training programs to be effective. Another program which has had some success is Genesys Works, which helps low income youth increase their chances of getting jobs by allowing them to attend an eight-week technical and professional “boot camp,” after which they work as an intern during their senior year to gain professional skills (Tollefson, Jeff). Although most of these students enroll in college after this program, similar programs could be set up to help students get high paying jobs without college, while those who go to college would still have the connections they need to get a job when they've graduated. Finally, it's possible to create online training programs. Industry Week has reported that Rockwell Automation now has training tools including iBooks and mobile applications in order to help people learn how to troubleshoot problems on the factory floor. Though such programs aren't intended to take the place of instruction they can help speed up the learning process (Fehrenbach, Pete).

3-In addition to the entrepreneurship training and support programs already mentioned, there are three more entrepreneur training programs which are available.

High school entrepreneurship programs are popular; however, there is some debate about whether these programs are effective at creating entrepreneurs. Still, some of them are correlated with higher graduation rates and more degrees in sciences, technology, math and engineering. This may be because the children entering these programs are more driven to succeed; however, it also seems likely that being in such a program helps students maintain their drive. Typically, such programs are designed for youth from low income communities and are designed to teach math and literacy in the context of developing a business plan; though I would argue that ignoring the middle class with these programs makes them less effective. It's likely that for high school entrepreneurship programs to be effective they need to teach not only basic business skills but creative thinking, analytical skills, and communication skills within the context of starting a business. To this end, the University of Delaware has a Diamond Challenge which is designed as a business plan contest for teams of high school students, with some educational contest and prize money, which can be used for scholarships or to pursue the businesses the students dream up.

College entrepreneurship classes are common. However, they can be expanded upon with actual incubation, or similar programs, to allow students who are getting degrees in art, programming, and more to try their hand at starting a business, in a semi-safe environment.

Business incubation programs provide early stage businesses with cheap or low cost work spaces, technical support (which can include lawyers, accountants, marketing experts, etc.), training, and sometimes direct financing in the form of investments. These programs can be effective in building nearby industry. Philadelphia, for example, has opened an incubator for food based businesses with a series of commercial kitchens. Coca-Cola partnered with Georgia Tech University to found an incubator which they call Fizzion which allows them to invest in new companies. Turner Broadcasting started an incubator called Media Camp which lasts for three months and supports media businesses. The idea behind these programs is that they can take businesses with a potential for a lot of growth and help them grow faster. Incubators tend to have the highest costs of any support program outside of college and high school, but they can have good success rates.

I like the idea of kitchen incubators because food businesses are easy for many people to think of, but very difficult to start, thanks to the number of regulations in this industry. This means that it's more likely that businesses started in a kitchen incubator wouldn't have started without it, whereas software and web businesses may very well have started on their own. Similarly, any industry which is hindered by a number of regulations, such as toy design and manufacturing, could likely benefit greatly from an incubation program to help them cut through the red tape that slows their industry.


4-The nurturing of startups through venture capital and advice is one of the primary differences between successful locations and non-successful locations according to Moretti. This is one the primary reason Silicon Valley is so successful; as experienced people often give of their time and effort to helping startups simply because they enjoy nurturing others. I knew one restaurant owner who helped two others get their starts, even going as far as helping them to write their business plans. It may be possible to find ways to help build these connections so that new businesses can be mentored and nurtured by experienced professionals.

4-Retaining skilled workers is vital to a city’s success. Philadelphia, for example, has amazing Universities such as Temple, Drexel, and of course The University of Pennsylvania, which has been rated in the top 5 business schools in the world by Forbes, Business Week, US News, and more for years. Yet despite this, the city floundered for much of that time because their skilled workers didn't want to stay. While a lack of jobs is one reason for this, I will point out that in many other places, young college students with smarts were founding their own companies, which rarely happened in Philadelphia. In other words, skilled workers have to want to stay in an area because it's a place they wish to live. Making a place the type of place people want to live and start businesses doesn't have a magic formula, because it's dependent on the character of the skilled workers in your area. Regardless of this, however, another likely reason why so few startups succeeded or remained in Philadelphia, was because Philadelphia was listed in Business Week, Forbes, and similar magazines as one of the worst places to start a business due, in large part, to its regulatory burden and taxes.

5-Attracting skilled workers has become a popular economic strategy, however, there has been a lot of debate about whether it's possible to attract such without jobs to attract them. Because while retaining skilled workers only requires that they have nowhere else they want to move to, attracting them requires that they go to the expense of moving.

References 

Everything is Awesome About the New Lego Movie

I worried about "The Lego Movie." The commercials just didn't do it for me.

The storytelling, however, was astounding and impressively so. 

With writers like Dan Hageman, and Kevin Hageman of "Hotel Transylvania" and "Ninjago" as well as the Christopher Miller and Phil Lord of "21 Jump Street" and "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," I  knew I would likely be amused by the movie. But as funny a those movies were they didn't seem to have the substance of "The Lego Movie," which surprised me, a lot.

Of course, it's true that to some extent the film had the same worn out message that Hollywood loves (Discover who you are, don't follow the crowd, you can be special if you believe in yourself... yadda yadda yadda).

Their approach to these messages, however, along with the amusing way they pitch the story were far better than most attempts at delivering them however.

And hey, you have to love, the ability of artists to throw so much emotion, and character archetypes into simple lego forms. 

Duh! San Francisco Has Gentrification Problems

This is not Google's fault, they didn't pass a single law that prevented enough homes from being built. They didn't waste billions on programs to increase property prices. All they did was move into an area where the political elite wanted them.

It might seem odd, government officials, both Democrats and Republican's work very hard to kick poor people out of their houses by socially engineering gentrification. Yet this article is primarily about Democrats because they rule San Francisco with an iron fist.

Government planners tend to see places as more important than people, while politicians of both stripes seem to like to brag about spent, and most especially - increases in property prices as if that was their goal.

The problem is that spending big on infrastructure to increase property prices, efforts to artificially increase home ownership, and zoning laws to prevent new or affordable homes from being built, all (Gasp! Feign shock) increase home prices.

All of this will force the low income people who can't afford to move, to move.

This problem is aggravated by the fact that higher business taxes and more expensive regulations help large companies while hurting small businesses. This is because big businesses can afford people to deal with regulations, but small businesses can't. In other words San Francisco and California's liberal policies hurt small businesses and low income people more than they hurt big businesses.

In order to protect low income people while growing a local economy you must;

Include plans to help businesses which employ ordinary people expand, and include plans to make self employment easier, so that better jobs are created for most people, especially the people already living in a region, who local economic development is supposed to help (such plans must involve making running businesses more affordable),

Develop educational programs that actually help local people find jobs by working with the local industries, not just the industries you want to have,

Reduce zoning and other regulatory burdens to building affordable apartments and houses, similarly laws need to be in place to allow people to build more high income housing so high income people aren't forced to move into smaller apartments,

Never, ever, ever, ever, try to increase property prices. In fact, instead of looking at property prices as a benchmark for economic development you should have the goal of; Increasing people's Median discretionary spending. That is, spending after they've paid taxes, medical bills, housing, and general food requirements, which means that increasing property prices hurts the goal of making low income people better off (duh).

See, the problem low income people have isn't that they don't have fifteen billion dollar trains, it's that they don't have a high enough income, and spending more money than all low income people in a city earn on a train that will only serve fifteen percent of them isn't really going to change that.

But hey, San Francisco's population has asked for government intervention and control time and again, so welcome to the wonderful world of governmental control, and remember that politicians can afford to do all this, because as the people they kicked out of their districts are forced to move to make way for new people, no one is left to be angry at them.

Plus, apparently people aren't capable of realizing that certain government policies are the primary contributor to gentrification problems.

In fact, the saddest thing about San Francisco is that the lesson people will take away from it is that they need to elect more of the same, rather than building a balanced government, or coming up with plans that actually make sense.

Finally Excess Energy From Fusion!?

Okay, Fusion will likely never be cold, because in nature the process requires a lot of energy to get started (the weight of a sun). So in order to simulate the natural process, researchers at the National Ignition Facility have been using hundreds of hot lasers pin pointed at a BB sized bit of hydrogen in order to simulate the heat and pressure of the sun.

And this process has finally started to yield results, in fact, according to Mike Dunne, the NIF Program Direct for Fusion Energy Systems; “This latest result is very important, since it marks the first time that any approach to fusion has generated a greater amount of energy than was initially absorbed by the fuel. In fact, in the most recent experiments of the past few weeks, the fusion energy output was more than double the input."

"This view from the bottom of the chamber shows the target positioner being inserted. Pulses from NIF's high-powered lasers race toward the Target Bay at the speed of light. They arrive at the center of the target chamber within a few trillionths of a second of each other, aligned to the accuracy of the diameter of a human hair." See More Pics here

In order to have a real economic impact, of course, this program will not only need to reduce its costs, it will need to be paired with better battery technologies in cars.