ANIMAC: A Multiprocessor Architecture for Real-Time Computer Animation

Advances in integrated circuit technology have been largely responsible for the growth of the computer graphics industry. This technology promises additional growth through the remainder of the century. This dissertation addresses how this future technology can be harnessed and used to construct very high performance real-time computer graphics systems. This thesis proposes a new architecture for real-time animation engines. The ANIMAL architecture achieves high performance by utilizing a two-dimensional array of processors that determine visible surfaces in parallel. An array of sixteen processors with only nearest neighbor interprocessor communications can produce real-time shadowed images of scenes containing 100, 000 triangles. The ANIMAL architecture is based upon analysis and simulations of various parallelization techniques. These simulations suggest that the viewing space be spatially subdivided and that each processor produce a visible surface image for several viewing space subvolumes. Simple assignments of viewing space subvolumes to processors are shown to offer high parallel efficiencies. Simulations of parallel algorithms were driven with data derived from real scenes since analysis of scene composition suggested that using simplistic models of scene composition might lead to incorrect results. The ANIMAL architecture required the development of a shadowing algorithm which was tailored to its parallel environment. This algorithm separates shadowing into local and foreign effects. Its implementation allows individual processors to compute shadowing effects for their image regions utilizing only very local information.The design of the ANIMAL processors makes extensive use of new VLSI architectures. A formerly proposed processor per object architecture is used to determine visible surfaces while new processor per object and processor per pixel architectures are used to determine shadowing effects. It is estimated that the ANIMAL architecture can be realized in the early 1990's. Realizing this architecture will require considerable amounts of hardware and capital yet its cost will not be out of line when compared with today's real time computer graphics systems

Beyond the Black Heart: The United States and Human Rights

A review of: The United States and Human Rights: Looking Inward and Outward edited by David P. Forsythe. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. 404pp. In Our Own Best Interest: How Defending Human Rights Benefits Us All by William F. Shultz. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001. 235pp. In the National Interest, 2001: Human Rights Policies for the Bush Administration by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. New York: Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, 2001. 157pp

The End(s) of the State(?)

Last February, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote an op-ed that anticipated Klein’s article, in part. In his view, the Bush administration has been engaged in an effort to “Green-Zone” the United States government by gutting the professional civil service—dubbed as “the enemy” by the American Enterprise Institute—and replacing its ranks with political appointees who have little interest or experience in running a state, but quite a bit of interest in enriching the private sector with public largesse. Klein’s “Disaster Capitalism” takes Krugman’s theme and pumps up the volume ten-fold

The United States and Economic and Social Rights: Past, Present…and Future?

There is probably no other topic in the field of human rights that is more difficult to talk about clearly than economic and social rights. The language surrounding economic and social goods as rights claims is often muddled and confusing, lacks precision, and is difficult to grasp. What does it mean, for example, to have a right to the “highest attainable standard of mental and physical health,” for example? What is “highest”? What about “attainable standard”? What is included in “mental and physical health?” Should health care be free-of-charge? Should the state provide it? Would we have to go court to prove we have a need for this “standard?” How do we determine when there has been a violation of this right? This paper may be freely circulated in electronic or hard copy provided it is not modified in any way, the rights of the author not infringed, and the paper is not quoted or cited without express permission of the author. The editors cannot guarantee a stable URL for any paper posted here, nor will they be responsible for notifying others if the URL is changed or the paper is taken off the site. Electronic copies of this paper may not be posted on any other website without express permission of the author

Iraqi Resettlement: Why Congress Won\u27t Act

After making an excellent case for the plight of Iraqi asylum seekers who have served as valuable allies to the United States in Iraq, Joseph Huff-Hannon’s article suggests that Congress should play a stronger role in developing a resettlement policy to allow Iraqis, who have been on “our side,” to come to the U.S. Given the current political climate on Iraq—and with Congressional Democrats desperate to score some kind of victory in its battle with the Bush White House—what exactly is holding them back

Bad Apples or Bad Policies?

In a scene from the Woody Allen film Hannah and Her Sisters, the haughty and cantankerous character Frederick (Max von Sydow) is telling his girlfriend (Barbara Hershey) how he spent the evening flipping through channels on television. Ever the arrogant social critic, Frederick remarks, You missed a very dull TV show on Auschwitz. More gruesome film clips. And more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions. The reason they can never answer the question: “How could it possibly happen?” is that it’s the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is: “Why doesn\u27t it happen more often?” … Of course, it does

Budgeting in Virginia: Power, Politics, and Policy

In this chapter, we will first sketch out how budget making has evolved from an executive-centered, Democratic dominated process to one in which the executive and the legislature, Democrats and Republicans, share power. Secondly, the makeup of the budget will be analyzed, the major revenue sources and spending programs identified, as well as the trends in those realms. In doing so, we will highlight the constraints and opportunities facing the participants in the budget process. Finally, we will discuss how budgeting during the 1998 session illustrated several institutional and partisan features that had been in place before the session began