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Member since 2017-07-15T03:50:57Z. Last seen 2025-06-14T19:39:11Z.
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《老子》第五章說：「天地不仁，以萬物為芻狗；聖人不仁，以百姓為芻狗。」其中「不仁」的意思，常常引起誤會，古人多以「任自然」理解（見王弼、河上公注），現在有人以為是「殘酷不仁」，錢鍾書則解為「麻木」，以上說法，我全不認同。《老子》第六十七章說：「天將救之，以慈衛之。」如果老子筆下的「天」，果真「麻木」、「殘酷」、「任自然」，那麼「天將救之」當作何解？我認為，《老子》那幾句的最佳注腳，是莊子《齊物論》所謂「大仁不仁……仁常而不成」。古今注《老子》之士，甚少從修辭角度解讀「天地不仁」，其實當時有種句型，「大X不Y」，如《齊物論》所謂「夫大道不稱，大辯不言，大仁不仁，大廉不嗛，大勇不忮」，而老子所謂「不仁」，即簡化了的「大仁不仁」。「大X不Y」這句法有變奏，「不」可用「無」或其他帶否定性的字替代，如《老子》第四十一章引《建言》「大白若辱……大方無隅……大音希聲，大象無形」。所謂「大」，即推而盡之，如孟子對齊宣王：「王請無好小勇……王請大之。」但何以「大」到盡頭就是「不」呢？其實「大仁」否定的並非「仁」，而是「小仁」。要闡釋大仁小仁的分別，最好借用《國語》驪姬的話：「為仁與為國不同：為仁者，愛親之謂仁；為國者，利國之謂仁。故長民者無親，眾以為親。」小仁，利己所愛，親疏有別；大仁，以眾為親，一視同仁。有大仁之心的執政者，非但不偏私，也不求仁名。當老子寫「聖人不仁」時，我懷疑他是以同代人子產為典範。子產在鄭國執政初期，為了鄭的長遠利益，施行了不合民心的政策，暴得「不仁」惡名；到三年後，鄭人才明白子產賢能，孔子後來也評道：「人謂子產不仁，吾不信也。」可見大仁有時確似不仁，因為常人理解的仁，從來都是小仁。
十五年前經典電影《未來報告》（Minority Report）可說是人類科技發展的水晶球，戲中不少情節如電腦觸控屏幕、移動即時新聞裝置、臉部辨識等後來都陸續變成現實，前兩者已發展為十分成熟的智能手機和平板電腦，成為人類不可或缺的「電子器官」；臉部辨識技術近年也邁步飛奔，蘋果新機iPhone X新增的Face ID功能正是代表作。然而，臉部辨識技術是把雙面刃，一方面可大幅提高身份認證的準確性，方便日常生活；惟另一方面卻可能令私隱蕩然無存，甚至淪為極權國家的監控或騙徒犯罪工具。
蘋果早前宣布破天荒在新手機引入臉部辨識功能，由設於手機上方的紅外線、測繪點投射器等部件組成的原深感鏡頭（TrueDepth Camera System），可掃描出獨一無二的3D輪廓臉形。
3D輪廓認證快而準
由於有立體多點認證，照片固然騙不到系統，就算是高仿真的1:1面具，也逃不過法眼，皆因在推出之前，蘋果已透過新開發的神經引擎（Neural Engine）無數次教導Face ID識別「假機主」，連雙胞胎亦不能冒充過關。
為防機主妝容有變，新機認不出主人，蘋果在訓練系統時加入了留鬍子、戴眼鏡、化妝、肥胖等變數；而在紅外線感測下，手機在黑暗中也能看清機主容貌，蘋果官網聲言：「朋友認不出你，Face ID卻一眼認得。」
Face ID必須在機主眼睛看着手機時才能開鎖，亦即是說就算有人偷偷把手機對着機主，又或待其睡着時掃描其臉部嘗試開機，都不會得逞。蘋果揚言臉部辨識的破解機會是100萬分之一，遠較指紋辨識（Touch ID ）的5萬分之一安全，除可用來代替密碼允許下載App Store程式和使用Apple Pay外，分析預期，相關技術將來可應用於登機以至酒店入住認證，集準確、安全、快捷於一身。
大數據助抽出罪犯
臉部辨識技術另一個更廣泛的用途是加強保安，尤其結合大數據分析後，能快速在公眾場所識別可疑人物，就像《未來報告》中湯告魯斯逃亡時，不斷被閉露電視認出及追蹤。英國卡迪夫千禧球場今夏率先採用臉部辨識科技協助打擊滋事球迷，2020年東京奧運舉行期間亦將引入相關系統，提升反恐效率。
中國近年也積極研發臉部辨識，內地稱之為「刷臉」，不單有助追捕通緝犯，更可利用大數據分析恐怖分子的特徵，諸如兩眼之間的距離、皮膚顏色、神情等，建立危險人物資料庫，防範恐襲。內地先後誕生了曠視（Face++）和商湯科技（SenseTime ）等臉部辨識「獨角獸」（估值逾10億美元而尚未上市的初創），可見發展之迅速。
然而，隨着「刷臉」愈來愈精準快捷，不排除北韓等極權國家將來會利用有關技術加強監控和壓迫人民，當作維護政權的工具。另一方面，臉部辨識亦可能令我們的私隱暴露於大氣當中，包括性取向、政治立場和智商高低，使騙徒有機可乘。
恐淪騙徒犯案工具
美國史丹福大學最近研究出「同志雷達」（gaydar），根據3.5萬多名男女約會網站會員照片， 分析當中的「同志」特徵，如男同性戀者額頭較大、鼻子較長和下巴較窄；女同性戀者額頭較窄和下巴較闊，結果發現系統區分「同志」的準確度高達九成。
史丹福心理學家科辛斯基（Michal Kosinski）指出，該技術亦可藉大頭照片認出政治傾向、智力商數、是否有犯罪傾向等人格特質。同理，倘若騙徒透過「刷臉」得悉某些人身家背景豐厚但IQ較低，容易埋手，勢必令行騙成功率急升。
誠然，任何新科技崛起，都難免被用心不良的集團或罪犯利用，如何堵塞漏洞，有賴政府與科技企業攜手合作，畢竟像《未來報告》般邪不能勝正、湯告魯斯最終沉冤得雪的結局，在真實世界中並非必然。無論這場人臉辨識正邪鬥法的結果如何，大贏家幾可肯定是半導體公司，事關人臉辨識需要處理龐大圖像數據和深度分析，晶片股可說食正東風，一籃子半導體交易所買賣基金SMH年初至今大漲兩成半，正是明證。
hclee@hkej.com
雖然有些食物很容易吃膩·但大多數人心中都有一些常吃也吃不膩的食物·就算一輩子吃不膩、起碼是某個人生階段，之所以如此，不只因為熟悉、而是我們喜歡它們的程度絕不亞於在餐廳嚐試的新菜色。
每個人都有自己的「百吃不膩料理清單」。我的包括 辣茄醬義大利麵·燉飯·麵包夾起司和番茄·炸魚薯條·鮪魚燉菜、土司夾蛋和蘑菇。
它們經常出現在我家餐桌上不是因為懶惰或習慣使然、而正因為它們是我永遠的最愛、每次準備的過程我都很投入、而且興味盎然。
道種飲食例行公事的最佳例子不是來自隱蔽的修道院、而是擁有豐富飲食文化的國家裡的各式廚房·諷刺的是·英美美食家對地中海的日常飲食讚不絕。但他們崇拜的婆婆媽媽其實沒有他們想像的那麼有冒險精神。舉例來說、我在奧斯塔的民宿吃到不少絕佳的當地名菜和義大利料理。但主廚告訴我她這輩子從沒做過任何一道外國料理。無獨有偶·我到義大利採親時一定會吃到親戚親手做的幾道料理、都是他們的媽媽教他們做的菜·(那邊老一輩的男人幾乎都不受女性主義的影響·)英國人擔心給客人吃到跟上次一樣的菜色·但在義大利·大家日取期待的往往是主人的拿手菜。
把創新當作飲食的基本美德，只會在飲食傳統薄弱，缺少代代相傳的家常美食的文化中出現（例如：香港）。例行公事不一定就單調無趣·諷刺的是，不斷求新求變反而會·沒有什麼比為了創新而創新的料理更乏味的事了。近幾十年來流行過各種花樣，最後都讓人意興闌珊、例如冰淇淋裡加進了人驚喜的食材·，用錫鍋·牛皮紙袋或碗盤之外的新奇容器裝餐點·.把千層麵之類的料理「解構」·也就是把不同部分攤開來·而不是混在一起。
天天吃同樣的東西或許太單調·但對少數吃飯只為填飽肚子·無法從食物得到樂趣的人來說、聽起來或許像福音。不過維持一點例行公事日正好的·「一迫樣能讓我們更加 感謝簡單的料理、以及把料理傳給我們的人·同時也能避免我們隨著變來變去的飲食風潮起舞、無止盡地追求新奇的口味·
重點不是用例行公事綁住自己·而是慎選你想要的例行公事、清楚知道自己為什麼重複，並藉此讓自己更加充實而自由。
淡化地緣政治和國內政治對市場風險的影響，重在商業周期；2017年的情況亦然。 我們較關注影響經濟增長、企業利潤和央行政策的問題。
愈來愈多國家正處於擴張階段，而且發達和新興市場的經濟數據均在逐步改善。在這種背景下，預料市場將繼續上行，而且速度快於我們早前預測的溫和上漲。
我不認為地緣政治、選舉和政治醜聞 「總是」無足輕重；
我只是認為它們要產生長期市場影響的門檻，遠高於大多數人的認識。雖然「戰區」和其他集中營式國家的人口佔全世界總人口的12%，但是它們在全球股票市場市值、企業利潤、銀行同業債權和投資組合流動中僅佔不到1%。
硬數據證環球持續擴張
不管如何，圖表都顯示了全球經濟擴張範圍持續擴大的有利跡象。在發達【圖1】和新興【圖2】市場中，調查數據不但向好，而且伴隨着「硬數據」的支持，「硬數據」測算的是工業產值、就業、貿易、零售額和消費支出。發達和新興市場均實現了工業和服務業活動的均衡增長。
如果2017年下半年股市上漲能保持上半年的速度，我會感到很驚訝；但我認為沒有理由對已經接近正常水平的投資組合作出重大改動。2018年發達國家的企業盈利增長幅度可能會在經歷今年較大提升之後回落至個位數。鑑於美國聯儲局開始緊縮貨幣政策，即使明年美企盈利增長、市盈率等齊現萎縮，也屬合理。於1999年和2004年，當時聯儲局一如市場預期收緊貨幣政策，市盈率萎縮了大約5%。
1994年，當時聯儲局出乎市場預料地超預期緊縮，市盈率倍數萎縮的幅度更大（約20%）。雖然有些通脹因素正在加劇（如勞動力、住屋和醫療成本），但服務業和一些進口商品的降價卻使核心個人消費開支通脹率僅有1.5%至1.7%。因此，1999年和2004年的情形，比1994年更符合2018年的預測。
在政策方面，美國公司稅的任何改革都會帶來意料之外的積極影響。惟按照去年12月我們的報告，我們認為由於實施上的不確定性，公司稅將會通過基於目的地的現金流徵收。如果不通過廢除進口和利息抵扣提高稅收，企業減稅幅度可能不得不降低。不過，減少5%至7%的公司稅可能會受市場歡迎。減稅受益者的超常漲幅已經回落至美國總統大選前的水平，這反映市場認為稅改幾乎沒有獲得通過的機會。在這麼低的預期下，政府還是可以有所作為的。
部分城市債務負擔驚人
我們每3年一次深入分析美國各州的債務情況，包括債券和養老金/退休人員醫保負債缺口。GASB（Governmental Accounting Standards Board）規則終於改善了後兩項的披露，所以今年我們將主要美國城市也納入這項分析當中。我們仍在研究這些數字，全面報告將在勞工節之後發布。
我們的IPOD比率【註】顯示市政府要想履行未來所有義務需要花在一般責任債務、養老金和退休人員醫保上的金額，佔其稅收的百分比，並假定計劃資金的回報率為6%，而且缺口金額將在30年內分期支付。有些城市每年支付大筆繳費，為其支付義務提前籌資，但有些城市的債務負擔卻相當可怕。作為管理着數百億美元的美國市政債券管理人，這是我們非常非常密切關注的事情。9月份我們將發布更多的相關資訊。
摩根大通私人銀行北亞區投資管理主管
註：「IPOD」包括Interest on bonds、Pension payments、OPEB payments、Defined contribution payments。
You are a victim of branch prediction fail.
What is Branch Prediction?
Consider a railroad junction:
Licensed Image Image by Mecanismo, via Wikimedia Commons. Used under the CC-By-SA 3.0 license.
Now for the sake of argument, suppose this is back in the 1800s - before long distance or radio communication.
You are the operator of a junction and you hear a train coming. You have no idea which way it is supposed to go. You stop the train to ask the driver which direction they want to go. And then you set the switch appropriately.
Trains are heavy and have a lot of inertia. So they take forever to start up and slow down.
Is there a better way? You guess which direction the train will go!
If you guessed right, it continues on. If you guessed wrong, the captain will stop, back up, and yell at you to flip the switch. Then it can restart down the other path. If you guess right every time, the train will never have to stop. If you guess wrong too often, the train will spend a lot of time stopping, backing up, and restarting.
Consider an if-statement: At the processor level, it is a branch instruction:
image2
You are a processor and you see a branch. You have no idea which way it will go. What do you do? You halt execution and wait until the previous instructions are complete. Then you continue down the correct path.
Modern processors are complicated and have long pipelines. So they take forever to "warm up" and "slow down".
Is there a better way? You guess which direction the branch will go!
If you guessed right, you continue executing. If you guessed wrong, you need to flush the pipeline and roll back to the branch. Then you can restart down the other path. If you guess right every time, the execution will never have to stop. If you guess wrong too often, you spend a lot of time stalling, rolling back, and restarting.
This is branch prediction. I admit it's not the best analogy since the train could just signal the direction with a flag. But in computers, the processor doesn't know which direction a branch will go until the last moment.
So how would you strategically guess to minimize the number of times that the train must back up and go down the other path? You look at the past history! If the train goes left 99% of the time, then you guess left. If it alternates, then you alternate your guesses. If it goes one way every 3 times, you guess the same...
In other words, you try to identify a pattern and follow it. This is more or less how branch predictors work.
Most applications have well-behaved branches. So modern branch predictors will typically achieve >90% hit rates. But when faced with unpredictable branches with no recognizable patterns, branch predictors are virtually useless.
Further reading: "Branch predictor" article on Wikipedia.
As hinted from above, the culprit is this if-statement:
if (data[c] >= 128) sum += data[c]; Notice that the data is evenly distributed between 0 and 255. When the data is sorted, roughly the first half of the iterations will not enter the if-statement. After that, they will all enter the if-statement.
This is very friendly to the branch predictor since the branch consecutively goes the same direction many times. Even a simple saturating counter will correctly predict the branch except for the few iterations after it switches direction.
Quick visualization:
T = branch taken N = branch not taken data[] = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, ... 250, 251, 252, ... branch = N N N N N ... N N T T T ... T T T ... = NNNNNNNNNNNN ... NNNNNNNTTTTTTTTT ... TTTTTTTTTT (easy to predict) However, when the data is completely random, the branch predictor is rendered useless because it can't predict random data. Thus there will probably be around 50% misprediction. (no better than random guessing)
data[] = 226, 185, 125, 158, 198, 144, 217, 79, 202, 118, 14, 150, 177, 182, 133, ... branch = T, T, N, T, T, T, T, N, T, N, N, T, T, T, N ... = TTNTTTTNTNNTTTN ... (completely random - hard to predict) So what can be done?
If the compiler isn't able to optimize the branch into a conditional move, you can try some hacks if you are willing to sacrifice readability for performance.
Replace:
if (data[c] >= 128) sum += data[c]; with:
int t = (data[c] - 128) >> 31; sum += ~t & data[c]; This eliminates the branch and replaces it with some bitwise operations.
(Note that this hack is not strictly equivalent to the original if-statement. But in this case, it's valid for all the input values of data[].)
Benchmarks: Core i7 920 @ 3.5 GHz
C++ - Visual Studio 2010 - x64 Release
// Branch - Random seconds = 11.777 // Branch - Sorted seconds = 2.352 // Branchless - Random seconds = 2.564 // Branchless - Sorted seconds = 2.587 Java - Netbeans 7.1.1 JDK 7 - x64
// Branch - Random seconds = 10.93293813 // Branch - Sorted seconds = 5.643797077 // Branchless - Random seconds = 3.113581453 // Branchless - Sorted seconds = 3.186068823 Observations:
With the Branch: There is a huge difference between the sorted and unsorted data. With the Hack: There is no difference between sorted and unsorted data. In the C++ case, the hack is actually a tad slower than with the branch when the data is sorted. A general rule of thumb is to avoid data-dependent branching in critical loops. (such as in this example)
Update:
GCC 4.6.1 with -O3 or -ftree-vectorize on x64 is able to generate a conditional move. So there is no difference between the sorted and unsorted data - both are fast.
VC++ 2010 is unable to generate conditional moves for this branch even under /Ox.
Intel Compiler 11 does something miraculous. It interchanges the two loops, thereby hoisting the unpredictable branch to the outer loop. So not only is it immune the mispredictions, it is also twice as fast as whatever VC++ and GCC can generate! In other words, ICC took advantage of the test-loop to defeat the benchmark...
If you give the Intel Compiler the branchless code, it just out-right vectorizes it... and is just as fast as with the branch (with the loop interchange).
This goes to show that even mature modern compilers can vary wildly in their ability to optimize code...
In an era where art is shared and streamed for free, Patreon offers new hope for turning content creation into a career. Illustrators, comedians, game makers, and musicians use Patreon to let fans pay a monthly subscription fee for special access to their work. In exchange, Patreon takes only a tiny 5% cut.
With 50,000 creators and 1 million subscribers on board paying an average of $12 per month for early and exclusive looks at their content, Patreon is on track to pay out $150 million in 2017. That means Patreon will only earn about $7.5 million this year despite doubling in size.
But investors are betting that if enough artists sign on and bring their fans, Patreon could grow into a pillar of the new creator economy. TechCrunch has learned that Patreon has closed a big Series C round of funding, three sources confirm. Two say it values the startup at around $450 million and that Index Ventures participated in the round but didn’t lead it. Patreon declined to comment for this story.
The cash should give Patreon the muscle needed to compete with other big platforms that help creators monetize, including YouTube and Facebook’s new Watch tab of original video. While those two have massive user bases and teams to court artists, they only pay out 55% of the ad revenue earned off a creator’s content. With some more marketing to boost awareness that Patreon pays out 95%, and that direct payments from fans deliver many orders of magnitude more revenue that ad views, Patreon could gain ground.
To Fund The Creative Class
Musician and videographer Jack Conte had struggled to earn enough from his work, and found one-off project crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter didn’t provide the steady capital artists need to focus on creativity. So in 2013 he co-founded Patreon, “whose mission it is to fund the creative class” he told me in June. “Advertising? It doesn’t pay enough. Consumer payments has to be come a bigger portion of the financial mechanics that support art.”
Patreon had raised $47.1 million to date up through its January 2016 $30 million Series B led by Thrive Capital and joined by Index that also participated in the Series A. But this big infusion of new capital could boost the confidence of creators in the platform. If they know Patreon isn’t going to run out of money any time soon, they may be more enthusiastic about building a subscriber base for the long-run on the platform.
Deeper pockets could also allow Patreon to build out its suite of bonus tools for creators, some of which it could charge extra for. “There’s going to be new opportunities to build revenue streams into the product” Conte has promised me. He suggested that could include selling event tickets or merchandise, or better helping creators understand and communicate with fans. That could grow Patreon’s take beyond the 5% rake it takes that seems paltry compared to what platforms like iTunes or Spotify earn.
Illustrator WLOP offers 4K-sized version of their art with no watermarks to Patreon subscribers
To its advantage, Patreon is relatively lenient about what types of content are monetized on its platform. Erotic drawings, adult games, and marijuana-related news and entertainment are all attracting subscribers on Patreon. Much of this isn’t even allowed on Facebook or YouTube, or can’t be monetized with ads following YouTube’s Adpocalypse crack down after the PewDiePie scandal or the new rules Facebook published this week.
Political commentators Chapo Trap House earn over $18,000 a month on Patreon
Though this is a double-edged sword. Patreon has seen some right-wing political pundits raise money through hate speech. It kicked off several, leading to the creation of its alt-right clone Hatreon. More funding will bring more scrutiny, and Patreon will have the tough job of walking the free-speech-without-filth tightrope in codifying what exactly is allowed and enforcing those rules.
So far, Patreon hasn’t been too focused on helping people discover new creators to fund. That’s a massive opportunity for it to grow its revenue and assist artists. But it would also produce challenges. How much should Patreon promote already-popular creators who might have better conversion rates even if it makes the site into a bit of an echo chamber? Making editorial decisions about who to spotlight could also leave Patreon vulnerable if any of those creators end up offending people.
It’s all worth the risk, though, as a mission and as a business. Content distribution is moving online. Creators beyond video-makers and Indiegogo inventors want a steady paycheck. Ad platforms are proving to be restrictive, stingy, and just don’t bring in enough cash. Automation threatens old professions. The Internet is able to connect niche artists with niche audiences. And with all the new ways to forge bonds with your favorite creators, consumers are increasingly willing to pay for enhanced access to the personalities they love.
Patreon sits at the center of all these trends. Not every artist has to be starving.
市場觀望美國明日公布的通脹數據，以尋找聯儲局下次加息的時機，投資轉趨審慎，美股經過昨日創收市新高後，今日回吐，結束兩連升，目前窄幅上落。
截至本港時間晚上約11時06分，道指報22127點，升8點或0.04%；標普500指數報2496點，升不足1點；納指報6452點，跌1點或0.03%。
本周初至今，全球都出現了風險資產受到追捧的局面，因為市場發現颶風伊爾瑪造成的損失低於原本預期，加上北韓周末並未發射導彈，令緊張局勢有所緩解。不過，分析指出，即使挑釁行為有所減少、敵對立場弱化，但目前市場上仍然存在很多潛在的地緣政治風險，這些情況將使股市上漲趨勢受到限制；再者，北韓仍蔑視聯合國就最近核試驗對該國施加的最新制裁，揚言要加倍努力反擊其所稱的美國侵略威脅。
另外，投資者亦將焦點轉移到明日發布的通脹數據上，因為預期數據會影響美國聯邦儲備理事會(FED)下次加息的時機，亦關注聯儲局縮表的時間。
個股方面，昨日公布新款手機的蘋果繼續受到關注，這家科技行業巨頭昨日推出了新的旗艦產品iPhone X及其他一些新產品，但由於iPhone X在11月後才會交付，蘋果股價現跌逾1%。Western Digital(WD)股價跌逾5%，此前該公司宣布已喪失與東芝集團(Toshiba Corp)的協議。
值得留意的是，今年下半年，美股會遇到很多不利因素，其中投資者將賭注押在美國總統特朗普的稅改上，而稅改充其量可能是發生在2018年的事情。如果稅改失敗，則無法獲得財政推力，投資者或擔憂2019年會出現經濟衰退。
油價上揚，紐約原油期貨現時每桶報48.69美元，升0.46美元或0.95%；倫敦布蘭特期油報54.55美元，升0.28美元或0.52%。
歐洲股市個別發展，英國富時100指數報7392點，跌7點或0.11%；德國DAX指數報12546點，升21點或0.17%；法國CAC 40指數報5219點，升10點或0.20%；意大利富時MIB指數報22267點，升34點或0.16%。
全球「果粉」翹首以待的蘋果新手機發布會於美國時間周二舉行，今年是iPhone面世10周年，據悉將推出3款手機，其中兩款為iPhone 7和iPhone 7 Plus的升級版，以及萬眾矚目的「紀念版」高端款式iPhone X。
股價隨後曾急升20%
執筆之時，筆者尚未知曉iPhone新機的情況，但普遍分析員預期今次將會是繼2014年iPhone 6推出後最大的突破，並將會爆發換機的「超級周期」。摩根大通的數據顯示，截至今年9月，iPhone用戶平均手機持有時間基本上將達「6.4季」，創4年以來的新高。
由於過去3年iPhone的規格都沒有較大的改變，故是次發布會如果沒有出現反高潮令「果粉」失望的話，相信新機將會掀起如iPhone 6的搶購熱潮。回顧當年，新機發布會公布後兩個月，蘋果股價就有逾一成的升幅【圖】，若以當年發布會為基準，
蘋果股價於隨後兩個月大幅跑贏納指9.5%。佔蘋果銷售收入逾半的iPhone
今次會能否令其股價複製上次的強勢，投資者可以拭目以待。
信報投資研究部
25 kposehn 9 hrs 3
Legendary children’s book author Sandra Boynton takes tea with some of her whimsical characters. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Boynton's first book, “Hippos Go Berserk!” (Jesse Dittmar/for The Washington Post) Sandra Boynton lives on a farm in rural Connecticut. She works out of a converted barn, surrounded by pigs in overalls, frogs wearing cowboy hats, a clutch of bemused chickens and a few skeptical sock puppets.
Standing there, you get the feeling that at any moment they might all come alive and break into a high-stepping song-and-dance. Which they probably will. Because this is Boynton’s world, and in Boynton’s world, animals do whatever she wants. And what she wants them to do, mostly, is make her smile.
It’s nice that along the way the charming creatures have sold tens of millions of children’s books and hundreds of millions of greeting cards, recorded six albums, nabbed a Grammy nomination and co-starred in a music video with B.B. King. They’re not slackers, these furry and feathered friends. They always do their job — they make Boynton smile. And then they go out into the world and do the same for untold multitudes of kids.
Sandra Boynton hangs back at the farm. There’s always another critter to conjure into life. Almost every waking moment she is working, bringing more lightness, more laughter into her world. And, thank goodness, into ours.
Boynton’s office is in a converted barn on her property. (Photo by Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post)
Boynton started drawing her animals on greeting cards to help pay for college. (Photo by Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post) Perhaps you’re so intimately familiar with Boynton that you can recite her books by heart. Bow to the horse. Bow to the cow. Twirl with the pig if you know how. Or perhaps you’ve never heard of her.
She is both ubiquitous and anonymous. She’s one of the best-selling children’s authors and card designers of all time, yet rarely recognized even in her own small town. This year marks the 40th anniversary of her first kids’ book, and this month she’ll release her latest record, “Hog Wild! A Frenzy of Dance Music,” which includes the Laura Linney/“Weird Al” Yankovich duet the world has been waiting for. But chances are, if you’re not currently driving a minivan with car seats in the back, you might miss it.
Boynton is 64. She wears Converse sneakers, jeans and her feathery blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. Red reading glasses hang around her neck. On a sunny day in July, she pops them on to inspect an image on her computer screen of a dinosaur walking out of his house. Then she adds a vase of red flowers. Because: Why shouldn’t a T. rex have something lovely and civilized?
This is the irreverent whimsy at the heart of Boynton’s world. A world she’s been creating and re-creating for 60 years. As a 4-year-old in Philadelphia, she was hospitalized with encephalitis. She doesn’t remember much except that it was scary, and that Bruce, a slightly older boy in the same ward, always looked out for her, but she knew, somehow, that he wasn’t going to make it.
Somewhere around the same time, she illustrated a short paper book. Here’s the text: “Once there was a funny animal. He had a birthday party. All the animals came. They did not like it, so they left. The end.” Thematically, it’s not that different from the 50-odd books she’s published since.
Her intention then? And now? “I think,” she says, “trying to create safety.”
Boynton grew up Quaker. Her mother was a pointedly funny homemaker, she says, and her father a brilliant English teacher and headmaster of the school she and her three sisters attended. She enrolled at Yale with dreams of becoming a theater director. To help pay for college, she painted the cartoon-style animals she’d been sketching since childhood onto blank gift cards and sold them to specialty shops. Over the next two years she water-colored 60,000 cards by hand.
Just before heading to graduate school in drama in 1976, Boynton swung an invite to a greeting card trade show. Company buyers were interested, but they wanted her to give the characters names and distinct personalities. “They were basically trying to turn me into ‘Peanuts,’ ” she recalls. “I said, ‘That’s not what I’m doing.’ ”
Then she was introduced to the founders of a Chicago upstart called Recycled Paper Greetings. Mike Keiser and Phil Friedmann liked her animals and offered to pay her $50 a design. “I want a royalty,” she remembers saying. “They said, ‘It’s just never done.’ ” But in the end, they agreed.
Keiser recalls that when Boynton signed on, the company was doing about $1 million a year in sales. Within five years their annual revenue topped $100 million, almost all because of Sandra Boynton.
“What a genius,” says Keiser. He remembers walking into a Marshall Fields store and watching customers react to Boynton’s cards. “They’d say, ‘Oh, aren’t these cute. And they’re witty!’ Women would buy clutches of them.”
Her best seller was a twist on the birthday song: “Hippo Birdie Two Ewes.” To Keiser, “it’s probably the best greeting card ever conceived by man.” Er, woman. At any rate, Boynton’s designs made them all multimillionaires.
When Boynton was still at Yale, her mother had nudged her to take note of a classmate who’d won a bronze medal for slalom canoe in the 1972 Olympics. “I said, ‘Mom there are 1,200 people in my class,’ ” Boynton remembers. “And she said, ‘I’m sure he’s more interesting than all of them.’ ”
Boynton’s senior year, she wound up in an acting class with the handsome paddler, and by the end of the first semester, she and Jamie McEwan were in love.
Boynton dropped out of graduate school and devoted herself exclusively to the animals. Publishers passed on a children’s book she’d written, so in 1977, Recycled Paper Greetings published “Hippos Go Berserk!” It sold 50,000 copies and got the publishing world’s attention.
Boynton and McEwan married in 1978 and bought an early 18th-century farmhouse in the Berkshires, where McEwan could continue his training on the Housatonic River. They reconstructed an old barn, giving it his-and-hers offices upstairs and, eventually, a replica 1940s diner — complete with booths, stools and a mint-green refrigerator — where the whole family could hang out.
Here, for the last 35 years, Boynton has shifted attention between her great loves: Jamie, their four children, and those spirited little animals that keep scampering out of her pysche.
Boynton on the grounds of her farm. She has written more than 50 books for children and adults and designed thousands of greeting cards. (Photo by Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post) A cow says Moo. A sheep says Baa. Three singing pigs say “LA LA LA!”
Read through a bunch of lists of “best books for toddlers,” and Sandra Boynton is, well, often not there. She has no Caldecott Medal. She's not frequently mentioned in the same breath as Dr. Seuss or Maurice Sendak, who was one of her professors at Yale.
In Boynton’s books, there’s no overt moral messaging. No arresting avant-garde visuals. (Drawing, she says, “does not come naturally to me.”) There is only joy. Which is perhaps not enough for the critics doling out awards for literary distinction.
But for parents of tiny humans — perpetually on the verge of collapsing into inexplicable tears — joy is everything.
Darcy Boynton, Sandra’s youngest child, reads all the private messages to her mother’s Facebook account. “We hear a lot from parents whose kids have been really sick or who had really tough times as babies and young children and talk about how my mom’s books helped them get through that time,” she says.
In person, Sandra Boynton is warm and funny, with a throaty voice and a soft, easy smile. She’s not an introvert, but those who know her best say she’s somehow been able to hold on to childhood sensibilities that most of us surrender.
So the books, the drawings, the songs — “They’re for me,” she says. “They’re for me as a child. Things I would respond to.”
Wendy Lukehart chooses the children’s books for the D.C. public library system. When she considers the authors whose books she has to replenish again and again, Boynton is at the top of the list. And to Lukehart, Boynton deserves a rank beside Seuss and Sendak.
“I just think she’s brilliant,” she says. “The wonderful thing about her books is that you can use them to develop children’s sense of humor. You’re helping them learn about the unexpected and ambiguity and surprise.”
Boynton's characters have no race, no gender, no age. The animals are Everychild, with black dot eyes and curved mouths that convey every shade of human emotion. Including the difficult ones. “There’s also a wistfulness in it,” Boynton says of her work. “I guess I think things aren’t truly joyful if they don’t have a grounding component.”
In 2015 the New Yorker published a critical review of Boynton’s collective works. The author, Ian Bogost, deemed “But Not the Hippopotamus,” a “board-book masterpiece,” and wrote that Boynton’s book are “rich works that all of us can and should enjoy far longer than the tiny sands that slip between crawling and preschool can measure.” Boynton thought, when she read the piece, that Bogost was kidding. He insists, via email, that he was not.
Boynton aims to create a world “that is simpler and more benevolent” than reality, she says. (Photo by Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post) Boynton isn’t much of an advice giver. But there’s one bit of wisdom she does like to dole out: “You need to know what to say no to.”
She’s said no to an awful lot: licensing agreements, television series, Boynton-themed tchotchkes at grocery-store checkout counters. The few products she has sold have been kept completely under her control.
“It’s all her,” says Suzanne Rafer, her longtime editor at Workman Press. “She’s very serious about her work and pays extreme attention to every detail.”
One idea she said yes to was making music. But after composing her first few songs, she cut out the producer who recruited her and began putting together her own records with Mike Ford, her longtime collaborator. The list of boldface names to appear on her albums is jaw-dropping: Meryl Streep, Alison Krauss, Ryan Adams and Kate Winslet, among others. Some she has connections to — Streep’s kids went to the same high school school as hers — but most she has simply cold-called.
In recent years, Boynton began making videos to accompany the songs. “Jamie used to say that my books support my recording habit,” she admits. And that’s fine with her, because making music and videos is where she feels most at home. She’s directing, just as she set out to do.
Jamie was always her sounding board, “just my best editor and check,” she says. He was also “the greatest person in the world.”
Today the lights in Jamie’s office are dark. He died of cancer in 2014.
Sitting in a booth in the diner, Boynton looks out the window and far away as she talks about Jamie’s illness. “I don’t even go there very much in my head,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
She doesn’t believe in the idea of passing grief. “To me, for a healthy person it never ends,” she says. Her solace comes from their grown kids — all of whom sing on her new album — and her work. For her, the act of creating feels like “a place of not existing — of being in a kind of zone.” She has never not been able to access that zone, she says, and — like a child who just wants to play — always relishes being there.
“I’m obviously creating a world that in certain ways is simpler and more benevolent than it can be,” she says. “Except I think that’s a kind of truth about the world, too. The world is so many things. So to say this is a skewed reality — well, it’s all a skewed reality. Why not skew it in this direction? Why not posit a kind of benevolence? And humor.”