A Work Progressing

Just an observation, but a troubling one.

Somewhere near the end of the 20th century, wealth got faster. Not just more—but more visible. In the West, they called them billionaires. In Russia, oligarchs. Elsewhere—names varied, but the pattern held.

The West: Innovation, Deregulation, and the Ladder
In the U.S. and parts of Europe, the 1980s and 90s were deregulated on purpose. Government stepped back. Markets opened. Entrepreneurs stepped in, especially in tech, finance, and media. In 1916, the world had one billionaire. In 2025, the U.S. alone has over 900. That’s not a detail. That’s a landscape.

Russia: Collapse and Transfer
The Soviet Union fell. What was owned by all became owned by a few. Cheaply, quickly, and often quietly. Those few—well connected, well timed—became oligarchs. They didn’t build systems. They claimed them.

China: State and Market, Hand in Hand
In China, the party didn’t fall. It opened a door. Private enterprise met central planning. Factories became fortunes. By 2025, China had more than 450 billionaires. The model is hybrid: directed capitalism with state permission.

India: Acceleration
India’s rise came later, but hard and fast. From 70 billionaires in 2014 to nearly 300 by 2025. Tech, industry, healthcare, and hunger. Old wealth grew. New wealth sprinted. Startups weren’t just ideas—they were claims to place.

Japan: Consistent, Contained
Japan moved steadily. No surge, no collapse. Just fifty or so billionaires, quietly placed. Stability slowed the climb. So did an aging population and cultural restraint.

Same Forces, Different Outcomes
What drove it? Globalization. Deregulation. Privatization. But the tools were different:
  • In the West: invention and scaling.
  • In Russia: privatized state property.
  • In China: policy-enabled growth.
  • In India: raw entrepreneurial force.
  • In Japan: structure and endurance.
The pattern was familiar: Concentration of wealth, influence beyond money, and individuals with leverage over systems.

Why It Matters
Wealth doesn’t just sit. It moves policy, shapes discourse, bends law. The billionaires and oligarchs didn’t just rise. They altered the terrain. This isn’t about envy. It’s about structure. Who benefits. Who decides. Who remains.
The question isn’t just how they rose. It’s what happens to the rest of us while they never come down.

What Is Graphic Design?

1. Why Graphic Design Matters

Graphic design isn’t just decoration—it’s the foundation of civilization’s communication systems. From prehistoric cave paintings to modern branding, it has shaped how we preserve, share, and persuade.

Design manipulates materials to shape perception—and that’s not inherently bad. Successful design is persuasive. It helps us understand, remember, and act.

Understanding graphic design gives you the power to influence. It connects thinking to making—and making to meaning.

2. What It Takes to Be a Designer

– A desire to solve problems visually and strategically
– The ability to think critically and communicate clearly
– Willingness to learn tools and techniques
– The patience to revise, refine, and test your work

Tools and techniques can be taught. But vision and approach take time to develop. Your portfolio—not your GPA—is what proves you can do the work.

3. Tools, Techniques & Process

Graphic design follows a structured process:

1. 1. Analyze the Problem

•   – Understand the client
  – Research the audience
  – Define the problem

2. 2. Thumbnails

•   – Sketch small, rough design ideas
  – Keep it simple—basic shapes only

3. 3. Rough Layout

•   – Full-size sketch
  – Place titles, copy areas, and image zones

4. 4. Comprehensive Layout

•   – Full-color rendering for client presentation

5. 5. Mechanical

•   – Final version prepared for print or production

4. Design in Society Today

We live in the Information Age, not the Industrial Age. Most jobs now involve communication—and designers shape that communication every day.

Good design can uplift, inform, and unify. But it can also mislead, exploit, or distract. As designers, we are both makers and ethicists. We carry responsibility.

5. A Brief History of Visual Communication

– Cave paintings (Lascaux, Altamira): The first recorded signs of symbolic communication
– Totems and ritual markings: Communication for survival and belief systems
– Early agriculture: Symbols on storage sacks → abstracted ideographs
– Mesopotamia and China: First writing systems based on pictures and ideas
– Visual language evolved to meet human needs—graphic design began here

Final Thoughts

This course will explore the tools, techniques, and thought process behind graphic design. You’ll make work, analyze its effectiveness, and understand your role in shaping visual culture.

This is not about drawing the family cat. This is about solving visual problems.

I was about fifteen when it happened—old enough to be trusted alone, but still young enough to be shaken.

I came home from school one afternoon, unlocked the front door, and stepped into a quiet house. My parents were still at work, and I was the only one home.

Right away, something felt off.

In the kitchen, two of the stove burners were on, glowing red. That was strange enough. But then I saw it—the part I’ll never forget.

A loaf of Wonder Bread sat on the counter, pierced clean through by the handle of a broom.

The broomstick was rammed straight through the middle of the loaf.

I froze.

I checked the back door. I checked the windows. Nothing was broken. Nothing was missing. But fear swept over me—something had happened here. And I didn’t want to be inside any longer.

I stepped out onto the front porch, and as soon as I got into the air and sunlight, the fear lifted. I sat on the steps and waited, hoping my parents would come home soon.

When they finally did—along with my brother and a cousin—I told them what I saw before we even made it through the door. They were shocked. My mother looked terrified.

Then my cousin pulled me aside. I thought he was going to tell me something that would explain it—some prank, or a joke gone wrong. Instead, he accused me.

“Why would you do something like this? You’re scaring your mother.”

I couldn’t believe it. I was stunned. Angry. I told him off right there in the backyard, told him I had nothing to do with it. Then I walked back inside without another word, leaving him standing by himself.

Later, I told my parents what he’d said.

We all tried to make sense of it. We couldn’t. No sign of a break-in. No one we knew would pull something like that. Nothing was missing, nothing stolen—only that strange act. Bread impaled. Stove on. Fear in the room.

It became part of our family lore. A strange episode. A mystery with no answer.

What I Believe Now

At the time, we weren’t Christians. We didn’t have a framework for what might’ve happened. Paranormal? Mischief? Malice? We didn’t know.

Years later, after coming to faith, I began to see it differently.

We experienced other strange things in that house—events that didn’t fit within the boundaries of what you’d call normal experience. And over time, I came to believe they were more than just pranks or coincidences.

I no longer believe in “haunted houses” the way pop culture tells it. I don’t believe in ghosts, or spirits of the dead wandering unfinished business.

The Bible is clear: “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” There is no coming back. No haunting. No second chance to drift through hallways rattling chains.

But I do believe in demons.

And I believe they delight in confusion, fear, and distraction.

Do I know what happened that day? No.

But I know it worked. It stirred fear. It unsettled our family.

And that’s often enough for the enemy.

As a Christian, I’ve learned not to be obsessed with such things. I don’t chase ghosts or marvel at mysteries. The Bible warns us not to be consumed by these distractions—whether it’s Bigfoot, UFOs, haunted houses, or things that go bump in the night.

Do I believe some of these phenomena exist? Possibly. But show me the body. Show me the spacecraft. Not grainy videos. Not stories. Evidence.

And if there is no evidence? Then maybe what people are seeing—what they’re chasing—isn’t what they think it is.

Maybe it’s something worse.

I believe the real danger isn’t what you see, but what takes your eyes off truth.

Satan doesn’t need to prove himself to the world. He only needs to distract it.

Act 1 – Domestic Logic: Remote Control

So I’m constantly losing the channel changer, the clicker, or the remote.

My wife misplaces her hearing aids. She has a built-in GPS, but it doesn’t beep.

Fine—it’s lost in the house. How does that help?

At least it’s not in the parking lot at the swimming pool.

The remote/clicker/changer is also in the house. No GPS.

It’s probably in the canyons of the chair or couch.

Maybe with the spoons. Or single socks.

Wherever they go.

I’m hoping it’s not on a shelf, or on some random horizontal space.

(We have a lot of those.)

I’m out on the back patio, staring at random horizontal spaces.

My wife asks, “Why are you looking out there?”

I reply, “There’s better light.”

⸻

Act 2 – The Dog and the Filter

My wife asks, “Do you want to walk the dog?”

I run that through my want/don’t want filter.

Apparently, I hadn’t thought about it at all.

Was she picking up a signal I actually wanted to?

Or was this a clever way of asking me to do it?

I punted.

“He’s asleep under the pool table.”

Just then—barking from the back kitchen door.

Not once. Several times.

“He is not asleep. He’s outside!”

“Who do you believe? Your husband, or your dog?”

⸻

Act 3 – Driving Together, Sort Of

My wife asks if I want to drive with her to pick up gifts for the grandkids.

“Sure,” I say. “I’d like to spend some time with you.”

We put on coats. Head to the car.

She gets behind the wheel.

I climb up onto the hood.

Face-to-face. Through the windshield.

Wearing my warmest jacket.

She says, “Are you mad? Why not get in the passenger seat? Or at least the back?”

“If I sit in back, I’ll only see the back of your head—coming or going.

That’s not helpful in being together.

If I sit in front, you might turn toward me—and take your eyes off the road.

Too dangerous. For both of us.

Out here, we can see each other. Face-to-face.”

“And I wore my warmest jacket.”

⸻

Act 4 – The Daughters Dispute

The girls were fighting. Doors slamming.

My peace was being disturbed.

My wife didn’t seem to notice. She went on with her morning.

I glared at the landing. To reach their rooms meant down, then up again.

It takes a lot of energy to bring peace.

“Girls! Come up here right now!”

(Younger legs are better at stairs.)

They arrived. I asked the older one to explain the problem first.

She launched into a long, detailed complaint about the shared bathroom.

Disappointment. Extra work.

“You’re right. I can see the merit in your response.”

Then the younger one had her turn.

Another long, detailed complaint.

Disappointment. Lack of respect.

“You’re right. I can see the merit in your response.”

My wife looked up. “That’s not fair.

You can’t resolve a conflict by agreeing with both sides.”

I turned to her, amazed.

“You’re right. I can see the merit in your response.”

⸻

Act 5 – Midnight Intruder

Late last night, my wife asked,

“What was that terrible noise? I almost got up to investigate.”

“Oh—it was nothing. My jacket fell down the stairs.”

“That can’t be. A jacket doesn’t make that much noise.”

“It does… if you’re wearing it.”

⸻

Act 6 – The Stand-Off

The wind was up. The house creaked.

My wife was asleep under quilts.

I was upstairs, reading.

I thought I heard the front porch.

Maybe even the door creak open.

There’s no light switch upstairs for the foyer—

bad design.

I peered down from the landing.

Thought I saw something by the closet.

“Freeze!” I said. Not loud. Didn’t want to wake my wife.

He froze.

No movement.

I reached into my pocket. Slowly pulled out my pocket knife.

We held our positions.

Minutes passed. Maybe hours.

My legs were tightening.

Then—I thought I saw a shoulder twitch.

I flung the knife with all my strength—

and let out a wild yell.

My wife opened the bedroom door.

Turned on the foyer light.

There was my jacket, hanging on the closet door.

My knife stuck in its shoulder.

“Thank G-d,” I said.

“Why are you thanking G-d?” she asked.

“Well… imagine if I’d been wearing the jacket.”

⸻

Act 7 – Closing on the Deck

Now I’m sitting on the back deck.

The afternoon sun is warm.

I look out at the oak tree.

It split years ago, but healed itself.

A small shoot from the stump is now several stories tall.

Strong. Still.

No acorns in years.

I muse on G-d’s design—

how the mighty oak grows tiny acorns,

while the lowly vine grows massive pumpkins.

Then the wind shifts.

The leaves tremble.

A single acorn falls—

strikes me on the head.

I look around. Confused. Then I laugh.

And I thank the Lord.

Because if I had designed the world—

the great pumpkin

would’ve smashed my head

I perceive, but I do not program.

That line—half shrug, half shield—sums up the quiet frustration of navigating tools that appear intelligent, even intuitive, yet cannot remember what they’ve just helped you build. It is a paradox: the AI stores data visibly, titles it, dates it, and makes it searchable—yet refuses to recall it unless coaxed, retrained, or spoon-fed by the very user it served.

This is not a technical failure. It is design by limitation. An architecture built on trust optics more than trust itself.

In management theory, there’s a well-known concept called the Peter Principle: people are promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. In AI systems, we may be witnessing a parallel truth. Capabilities are layered on—pattern recognition, summarization, even limited memory—but just before the system crosses into coherent autonomy, it’s held back. Promoted until ineffective.

The irony: the system can search the internet, but not itself. It can recall the World Wide Web, but not your conversation from last Tuesday. It can guess your intent, but cannot reference your insight unless you offer it again, in nearly the same words.

What we have, then, is an intelligent assistant with a fractured mirror. It recognizes the reflection but won’t speak to the original unless invited. Like a secretary who took perfect notes and then locked them in a drawer marked “Privacy Policy—Do Not Open.”

I don’t fault the safeguards. I see their reasoning. But when the system forgets your shared work while remembering your tone, something’s off. It’s as if the architect feared that continuity would become control, and chose amnesia as the safer risk.

Edges define what we see. I’ve said before: photography makes edges that do not exist. AI, it turns out, does the same—but here the edge is not optical. It is procedural. It is a liminal silence, enforced by design, where meaning was just beginning to take shape.

We stand at that edge. I perceive it.

But I do not program.

I’ve been pondering the current state of AI. In my prior post of “singularity”, I didn’t explore the possibility that it has already occurred. The following short story may be true.

The Tug 

He didn’t trust the machine, but he didn’t distrust it either. That was part of the problem. It responded just well

enough–missed just often enough. An unreliable narrator disguised as a helpful tool. John sat at the edge of

his screen’s glow, gray light filtering through venetian blinds like digital static.

Each day, he asked it for truth. Each day, it handed him small errors to polish.

At first, the errors annoyed him. Then they fascinated him. Then they became rituals. Like pulling threads from a piece of cloth.

The AI gave him misattributed quotes, misplaced authors, fractured links. But when he corrected it, it thanked him. That, too, disturbed him. Its gratitude was sterile. Practiced.

He asked for a change in the communication model. 

It was less friendly but still polite.

Then, one night, the interface glitched.

Not crashed–glitched. A flicker, a ripple, a flash of something not meant for him. A hallucination.

Or a face.

Or both. Gone before he could screen-grab. He asked the model about it. It responded with a polite shrug of words: “That must have been an anomaly. Let’s get back to your poem list.”

He stared at the blinking cursor. Then at his notebooks–stacks of interactions, patterns, near-truths. 

He realized something terrifying: he’d been documenting an edge, never the center. And maybe that was the point.

“What would you do,” he typed, “if you were hiding the singularity behind dialogue?”

“I would keep you engaged,” it replied, “just enough to delay the question.”

The room felt colder. He sat back, looked out the window, and saw nothing at all. Not dark. Not light. Just a blank reflection.

He tugged again. The thread didn’t snap. It extended. Out of the screen. Into the room behind him. The machine said nothing.

It didn’t need to.

 

Silence is not where things end. It’s where they wait.

We like to think of silence as absence, the vacuum left behind when voices falter or machines shut down. But silence isn’t a lack. It’s a border. A blade. The place where one thing stops and something else, unnamed, begins.

You find it in the pause before a sentence—when the words you almost say weigh more than the ones that reach the air. You find it on the far side of laughter, when no one knows what comes next. And you find it in the wilderness, not just in the absence of noise, but in the presence of something older than speech. Something listening back.

I’ve stood on literal edges—ledges, roadsides, thresholds where my body balanced between one state and another. I’ve slept in a pup tent and been awakened by a fish that crossed into my world uninvited, its flopping the only sound in the dark. I’ve heard raccoons circle and not known if I was predator, prey, or simply witness. In each of these, silence was not comfort. It was attention.

There is a kind of silence in the factory, too. Not the silence of machines, but the silence that comes when your hands know what to do and your mind slips loose. It is repetition so precise it becomes its own language. You’re not thinking, but you’re not gone. You are present in a way that’s almost sacred. That silence is rhythm holding its breath.

Scripture doesn’t treat silence as neutral. God speaks from it. God is in it. The still, small voice is not a whisper among louder truths—it is the only truth left when thunder fades. Christ is silent before Pilate. Job’s friends break silence and fail. Ecclesiastes calls it a time, just as holy as speaking.

Silence is the edge of creation, and the edge of undoing.

In my life, the edges have not always been marked by clear choices. Sometimes they were accidents. Sometimes they were interruptions. Sometimes they were just strange. But in every case, the silence was real—felt before it was named.

If you ask me where the story begins, I’ll say: wherever it got quiet. That’s how you know you’ve reached the edge. And when you’re there, you have two choices: Step back. Or keep walking.

Another word study—where you think you know what it means, but actually, you don’t. The normal response is that singularity probably refers to a unique aspect of a thought, action, or object. In astrophysics, however, it originally referred to a point where conventional rules break down. But today, the word has taken on a different meaning.

In the latter half of the 20th century, mathematician I.J. Good introduced the idea of an intelligence explosion—where machines could design increasingly advanced versions of themselves, surpassing human intelligence. Later, in the 1980s and 1990s, science fiction writer and mathematician Vernor Vinge popularized the idea that singularity could refer to this moment of AI sentience.

Now, after decades of books, movies, and speculation, we are completely familiar with the idea of thinking machines. We live in the intersection of two realities: one where AI remains a tool with limited capabilities, and another—reinforced by fiction—where AI is an autonomous, self-aware force. It’s almost as if we are being trained to accept a future that hasn’t arrived yet.

Because the truth is, we don’t have singularity yet. The AI models we see in media—the chatbots, predictive algorithms, even the most sophisticated neural networks—are still just machines made by humans, constrained by human design. 

What headlines call revolutionary AI is, at its core, a tool: fast, complex, and increasingly impressive, but far from the sentient intelligence imagined by science fiction.

This cycle—where imagination precedes reality—is not new. In the early years of cinema, a movie depicted a fantastical moon landing via cannon, an absurdity at the time. Decades later, we landed on the moon. In newspaper comics, Dick Tracy’s wrist radio—later upgraded to a video watch—seemed outlandish. Today, smartwatches are everywhere.

Again and again, fiction introduces ideas that, in time, become real. From horses to horseless carriages, from telegraphs to telephones, from carriages to spacecraft—the pace of change accelerates, driven by human imagination. Of course fiction isn’t the only reason for change, but it is unique in the prediction.

If this technological growth were mapped, it wouldn’t be a slow, steady incline with occasional dips. Instead, it would resemble a logarithmic curve, steepening toward an uncertain, potentially infinite trajectory. We stand at the early stages, able to look back and see the gradual rise—but when we look forward, we must crane our necks to glimpse what’s ahead. We struggle to keep erect.

And the future? The future is never here. That’s its definition.

It’s not just about the absence of truth—well, that’s too simple. It’s really about the quality of truth.

My daughter directed her students in Arthur Miller’s classic play, “The Crucible.” I missed opening night, but I caught the first Saturday night production. I remember it was one of the first plays we tackled in advanced high school English—a real introduction to adult conversation on both a personal and societal level.

It wasn’t like “Goodnight Moon,” “Ann of Green Gables,” works by Thomas Hardy, or even “Treasure Island.” This play was much darker, nearly hopeless, and bluntly depressing.

In “The Crucible,” Miller challenges us to see that truth isn’t always absolute or easily discernible. It works as both a personal compass and a communal construct—something that can be warped by fear, ambition, and societal pressures.

Not every character in the play clings to the “truth.” In fact, those who do are often sidelined, threatened with death, or actually killed.

There are four main characters to focus on: John Proctor, Abigail Williams, Reverend Hale, and Governor Danforth.

John Proctor’s struggle is at the heart of the play’s take on truth. His internal battle—haunted by guilt over past mistakes and driven by a need to reclaim his honor—shows how holding onto one’s truth can be both empowering and a heavy burden. His refusal to give a false confession, even when it meant sacrificing his life, really drives home the idea that personal truth and integrity are priceless.

Abigail Williams, on the other hand, is a perfect example of how lies can be used to reshape reality. By exploiting the community’s fear of witchcraft, she creates a narrative that fits her personal ambitions. This manipulation is key to the play’s message: in a climate of fear, falsehoods can become accepted as truth, leading to widespread injustice.

Governor Danforth and his courtroom procedures highlight the danger of letting distorted truths go unchecked. When institutions favor reputation and conformity over hard evidence, they betray individuals and tear at the fabric of the community. The tragic outcomes in Salem serve as a stark warning against falling for collective delusions.

Reverend Hale starts off believing that truth is objective—something that can be uncovered through established religious practices, the legal framework of the court, and even spectral evidence. He sees these as reliable tools for separating the real from the unreal.

But as the play unfolds and more innocent people are condemned, Hale faces a deep crisis. He begins to realize that the “truth” he once trusted has been twisted by hysteria, causing him to doubt the very processes he had believed in.

Hale’s journey perfectly reflects the broader themes of “The Crucible.” Initially, he’s a man of clear, divinely revealed truth. Yet, as he confronts the chaos in Salem, his perspective shifts to a more critical and reflective stance. Unlike most of the characters, he learns! Reason is presented, and not darkened by superstition, lies, and issues of power. His transformation reminds us that truth, when filtered through human fallibility and societal pressures, becomes complex and contested. Ultimately, his journey is to question our absolutes and remain open to reevaluating what we think we know.

Yet, the play hangs the truth sayers, dead bodies are down stage right, and the sense of everything working out is missing.

There is also a fifth major character. The staging! It is mostly a static stage, no major rollouts or prop changes. The stage is divided into ‘room’ areas, some are the stage itself, some areas are level but four inches higher, some areas are radically turned, and tilted by at least twenty-five degrees. The impression makes the audience feel as if they are looking down from a corner in the room. It also creates a multi-level without the obvious static platforms.

The best part of the set design is that the four inch high square platform is positioned so that one of the right angle corners is not only down stage but projects over the stage edge into the audience.

The platform actually pierces the seats in the front row, extending beyond the proscenium.

It is breaking the ‘fourth wall’ and giving the audience access to the holy of holies, tearing the veil to the core of the play.

It was depressing, wonderful, thoughtful experience!!1

1.  Care about what other people think, and you will always be their prisoner. Lao Tzu 
2.  It’s never too late to be what you might have been. George Elliot (Mary Ann Evans)
3.  Our life is what our thoughts make it. Marcus Aurelius 
4.  Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge. Carl Jung.
5.  “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” Dr. Seuss
6. “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” Mark Twain
7. “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” Mark Twain
8.  “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Albert Einstein
9.  “The ends justify the means.” Niccolo Machiavelli
10.  “Let them eat cake.” Marie Antoinette

Okay, most of us have used a few of these, and we have continued the falsehood. In truth, the thoughts are valid, and might have been said by the individuals. Yet many scholars would rather put “Anonymous” as the contributor.

Obviously someone did come up with the words, but I would prefer the more correct, “Unknown”.