Campaign ad targeting with media quants: Personal and thoughtful or eerily intrusive?

Recently, my husband and I spent a glorious week camping and hiking on a remote mountain, home to 3,000-year-old trees living 10,000 feet above sea level. Oh, and by “remote,” I mean no cell phone or internet coverage for miles and miles in all directions.

The first day was a little weird without the constant stream of online updates and messages tailored just for me (thanks to sophisticated algorithms and media quants), nothing but the sound of rustling leaves, babbling brooks and birds singing merrily overhead. By the second day, much to my surprise, I actually felt liberated, free from the constant tracking, targeting and profiling by a “they” I don't even know.

Every time we use the internet or turn on our smart phones, nearly a hundred data points...

Ignorance of the law is no defense, but should it be?

About 40,000 new state laws went into effect the first of this year throughout the U.S., according to a report from the National Conference of State Legislatures. With a total of about 16 million laws in the United States, I can’t help but wonder how ignorance of the law is not a valid defense in today’s world.

For a nation that prides itself on being the most free country in the known universe, how is it that we have more laws than any other nation on earth? No wonder there is so much hollering for less regulation since we can’t even keep up with the laws we already have.

Sounds like our political representatives could take some tips from the fashion world. You know...

Creativity is crucial, not only for culture, but for our survival

Creativity represents not only beauty and freedom of expression, but innovation, progress, and survival of our very species.

Of all the related species of Homo — Homo floresiensis, habilis, heidelbergensis, denisovans, neanderthalensis, sapiens — only we sapiens remain. The Neanderthals had bigger brains, but they didn’t progress the way we did.

"The Neanderthals devised neither visual art nor personal ornamentation. Oddly, throughout this static history, they had a larger brain than sapiens,” wrote biologist Edward O. Wilson in his book The Social Conquest of Earth. He writes that Neanderthal tools remained essentially unchanged for thousands and thousands of years despite the extreme challenges and opportunities presented in their environments, while sapiens, on the other hand, were highly creative.

The differences between our two species are clear, but scientists don’t know if the lack of Neanderthal creativity is the result of something missing in their DNA or a cultural agreement not to change anything. Maybe their larger brains remembered all too clearly the disasters of taming fire and determining which berries were poison. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe our sapiens brains are given to longer memories.

“A group with members who could read intentions and cooperate among themselves while predicting the actions of competing groups would have an enormous advantage,” Wilson wrote, “... the crossing over of a threshold level of cognitive ability that endowed Homo sapiens with a dramatically high capacity for culture.”

We are an innovative, culturally rich, and complex species. We instinctively understand the importance of creativity when it comes to our very survival. Creativity is necessary for innovation. But in some people living today geneticists have found small traces of Neanderthal DNA. Maybe they’re the ones who don’t understand the importance of the creative spirit. Maybe not. No matter.

Here’s to all the Homo sapiens who recognize, support, and champion the creative and cultural arts in our communities, nation, and around the world.

This post is excerpted from my weekly column in The Daily Sentinel as published in the Sunday, May 13, 2012, edition of the newspaper.

The art pieces I'm putting in the Instructor-Student art show are (finally) framed!

"Seeking" by Krystyn Hartman. Collage-Mixed Media

Exciting event for me! My first framed art pieces! They look so "real" framed! Gayle Gerson, the instructor from the Collage/Mixed Media class I took a few months ago with my mom, suggested we students participate in the upcoming Instructor-Student art show at the Art Center here in Grand Junction.

When she first mentioned it, I thought, "yeah, right." But the more art I create, the more I enjoy it, and thought, why not?

This weekend, I selected three pieces to frame for the show. My husband helped me spray mount and frame them. (He patiently photographed them for me too -- despite the lighting challenges in our living room in late evening.)

Seeing them framed was such a strange feeling! They look real! Here are two of them.

"Recovering" by Krystyn Hartman. Collage-Mixed Media

The opening reception for the Instructor-Student exhibit is Friday, July 6, at the Art Center from 7-9 p.m. (Part of Grand Junction's monthly First Fridays art events.) The exhibit runs through the end of the month. I've never had art in a show before, so I'm a little nervous and intimidated (artist Gayle creates collage masterpieces -- she is amazing), but what the heck?

We have the option of making the pieces in the show for sale or not. I'm going to make mine available for sale, just in case?

I am really enjoying creating art pieces in collage and mixed media. I like adding bits of wood, metal, and wire to them. And I love using the powdered pigments in my pieces.

Oh, and circles. I love starting with circles in my pieces. Of course, that's probably that science-nut connection.

Grand Valley Art Students League is simply amazing!

I joined the Grand Valley Art Student's League a few weeks ago and attended my first "session" Saturday. The "sessions" are held at the Art Center the second Saturday of every month from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Cost is only $40 a year. The league was founded by popular artist Sara Alyn Oakley of the Oakley Gallery and the Artists Colony here in Grand Junction. That's all I knew going in to my first session. Oh, and I was told to just bring my "kit."

So, I packed up my "kit," which is a lightweight Stanley tool box on wheels, and arrived a few minutes early, so I was able to secure an end space at one of the long rows of tables. Artists were setting up easels, putting on...

This is not the 1950s, so can we move on already?

I wasn’t alive in the 1950s, but recent hot news items make a case that we’re either clinging to that decade or drowning in its detritus — no matter how many cute electronic gadgets lie within our reach.

I’m sure it was all fine and good then. Witness all the wholesome American goodness on display in Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet, and Leave it to Beaver. But isn’t it time to move on at least to the next decade already? I’m still looking forward to all that peace and harmony my teenage babysitters crooned about in the 1960s; you know, when peeeeeace will gui-ide the-uh plannet and lo-ove will steer the stars.

Because peace and harmony was the message that seemed to permeate and form my impressionable years, I was pretty convinced...