Why can’t we get some of the people in these downtrodden countries to like us instead of hating us?

—  President Dwight Eisenhower, March 1953 National Security Council Meeting

US : True Democracy :: Velveeta : Cheese

July 15, 2011

 

Did I Say Overlords?  I Meant Protectors.

Lightning Strikes

When Lightning Strikes

Just Sucking Funds

JSF: Just Sucking Funds

Down to Earth

Past the Point of No Return

  1. The F-35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), is the US Department of Defense’s (DOD) most costly and ambitious aircraft acquisition, seeking to develop and field 3 aircraft variants for Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and 8 international partners, all at the same time.  The JSF requires a long-term commitment to debt.  Indeed, the current estimated investment is $382 billion.  To stay in the business of producing the 2,457 aircraft ordered over the next 20 years, total development funding needed is $56.4 billion to complete in 2018, a 26% increase in cost and a 5-year slip in schedule.  The average unit price has nearly doubled since the beginning and estimated life-cycle costs have increased.  Going forward, the JSF requires unprecedented cash at a time when defense budgets need austerity.  In 2010, the programme didn’t deliver as many aircraft to test as promised — and only released a part of the software capabilities.  After more than 9 years in development and 4 in production, the aircraft design still hasn’t been proved stable, nor are the manufacturing processes mature.  Engineering drawings are still being released to the manufacturing floor and design changes continue at high rates — even more changes are expected as testing accelerates.  Substantial improvements in factory throughput and the global supply chain are desperately needed.  Only about 4% of the plane’s capabilities have been verified by flight tests and/or lab results.  Software is essential for about 80% of the the new function — but that, too, is way behind schedule.
  2. The Senate Armed Services Committee learned that the Pentagon will likely have to spend $1 trillion over the next 50 years to operate and maintain its fleet of F-35s.  But the Air Force’s next-generation long-range bomber may be forced to raid the F-35’s future budgets.  The F-35’s combat radius of only 584 miles leaves planners with few options when contemplating operations over the vast distances in the Asia-Pacific region.  Combat aircraft may need much longer ranges, which would operate from distant bases less vulnerable to missile attack.  Unfortunately, the programme is “too big to kill,” and it is far too late in the day to now consider alternatives.
  3. Canada’s Air Force Captain Brian Bews ejects as his CF-18 fighter jet plummets to the ground during a practice flight for an airshow at the Lethbridge County Airport on 23 July 2010 in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.


(From Comments:) “Humane intervention” is a scam.  The real reason is oil.  All the hype about Darfur?  Guess what?  That is the area of Sudan that has the oil, and the oil companies wanted a change there, so what happened?  South Sudan seceded from Sudan.  Regarding Afghanistan, all the blabber up to 9/11 was about how the Taliban was treating women so badly and had destroyed some important Buddha statues.  But what was going on behind the scenes was bidding on the gas pipeline across Afghanistan to the Persian Gulf.  Just before 9/11, the Taliban government awarded the contract for building the pipeline to an Argentine company instead of the US’s UNOCAL.  When 9/11 happened something like 13 of the hijackers were Saudis and most of the rest were Egyptians.  So, did we invade Saudi Arabia to get rid of the Wahabi sect?  No, we argued that the Taliban were at fault, and invaded Afghanistan.  UNOCAL got their pipeline, and the US got control of it.  Why all the hubbub about Hugo Chavez, when there are penny-ante leaders all over the world that our government could castigate?  Oil.  Why does the US fund the insurgents in Bolivia’s eastern provinces, against their lawfully elected President, pushing them to also secede from Bolivia?  Oil is in them thar hills.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that when we want their oil, we demonise them to justify military action, and support coups (as in the one funded by the CIA that overthrew Chavez for a couple of days), and “popular” secession movements (also funded by the CIA).

Brown University estimates that the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, together with the counterinsurgency efforts in Pakistan, will cost $4 trillion altogether and leave 225,000 dead, both civilians and soldiers.  The economists, anthropologists, lawyers, humanitarian personnel, and political scientists involved in the project estimated that the cost of caring for the veterans injured in the wars will reach $1 trillion over the next 30 or 40 years.  In estimating the $4 trillion total, they didn’t count the $5.3 billion in reconstruction spending the US promised Afghanistan, or state and local contributions to veteran care, or interest payments on war debt, or the costs of Medicare for veterans when they reach 65.  The Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, has put the federal price tag for the wars at a mere $1.8 trillion through 2021.  The report says that is a gross underestimate (no kidding), predicting that the government has already paid $2.3 — $2.7 trillion.  Perhaps the most sobering conclusion of researchers is that it’s not clear whether the human and economic costs were justified.  (I’d lean more toward saying that it’s clear they weren’t — but how could I know?  I’m not ever told the complete story, am I?)  They recommend the US government be more transparent in disclosing wars’ total costs to taxpayers.  (Stay honest, please.)


Not Doing It Right?

Liquids and Gels _Rule!_

Liquids and Gels Rule!

Leatherman

You Can’t Stab 'Em with a Gun

If the Badge Fits

Wear a Badge, Be a Badger

  • My carry-on goes through the scanner and comes out the other side.  A guard squints at his monitor, shoots me a hostile look.  "What’s this, no plastic baggie?"  He pulls me aside, opens my luggage, asks me to repack the liquids and gels “the right way.”  I do as he wants, hand him the baggie.  To my surprise, he won’t take it.  “No, just put it in your suitcase and go.”  I look at him for a minute.  Having to repack is a punishment?  Fine.  Lesson learned, I unzip the bag and dump the containers back into my toiletries kit.  “No!”  he interjects.  “Leave them in the plastic!”  “But I’m already through the checkpoint.  You already screened them.”  He shrugs.  “They need to stay in the bag.  You should know better.”  The guard is wrong.  We’ve trained the TSA to look for unbagged liquids, rather than explosives.  And they’re doing that.  A search for liquids isn’t a de facto search for the latter.  In one test, TSA screeners are presented with a suitcase containing a mock explosive device with a water bottle nestled next to it.  They ferret out the water, of course, while the bomb goes sailing through.
  • (From Comment 5, 27 April 2001:)  As a federal agent, I’m authorised to fly armed, so on one trip, I was clearing through security and the airport cop had checked my ID and paperwork and approved me to pass through the checkpoint.  But the TSA guy stopped me and said he needed to inspect my carry-on.  I asked why, seeing as how I’d already identified myself as carrying a loaded handgun — what could possibly be in my carry-on that would make me a threat?  Out of hundreds of flights, I’ve never had to be inspected before.  He claimed it was just procedure.  Not wanting to create a hassle for myself, I said fine and let him look through it.  Well, he came up with my Leatherman knife (basically a fancy Swiss Army knife) and said that I couldn’t bring it on the plane because knives are prohibited items.  I looked at him like he was insane and said, “Let me get this straight, you’re letting me carry a loaded handgun onto the plane, but not a pocket knife?  In what conceivable world does that make sense?”  He responded that per FAA rules, I was authorised as a federal agent to carry the gun on board but the rules don’t mention knives except as a general prohibition for everyone.  Not wanting to lose a $30 knife, I asked to see his supervisor, figuring this was some low-level zombie unable to exercise basic common sense.  But no, the supervisor said the same thing!  Via J-Walk Blog.
  • (From Comment 12, 27 April 2011:)  Not to be too condescending about it because I think that really these are a bunch of people who are caught in a bad situation, but the job only requires a GED or a year of experience as a luggage screener or X-ray tech.  These are not law enforcement officers.  They are not adequately trained to assess real threats and deal with them.  Real security would be too expensive so we get security theatre instead.  We have a situation where the people in charge really just want to cover their asses and avoid being blamed for the next bad thing that happens so they make up long lists of rules to cover every conceivable attack.  That way when something inevitably happens, the people in charge can say they were prepared, but Joe on the bottom rung of the ladder didn’t follow the correct procedures — it’s his fault, not ours.  It’s a failure of leadership that started well before 9/11 and is perpetuated by partisanship and fear.


When discussing whether government surveillance and data mining pose a threat to privacy, many people respond that they have nothing to hide.  This argument permeates the popular discourse about privacy and security issues.  In Britain, for example, the government has installed millions of public surveillance cameras in cities and towns watched by officials via closed-circuit television.  In a campaign slogan for the programme, the government declares: “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.”  In the US, one anonymous individual from the Department of Justice comments: “If [government officials] need to read my e-mails…  so be it.  I’ve nothing to hide.  Do you?”  One blogger proclaims: “So I don’t mind people wanting to find out things about me, I’ve got nothing to hide!  Which is why I support President Bush’s efforts to find terrorists by monitoring our phone calls!”  Variations include:

  • Do I care if the FBI monitors my phone calls?  I have nothing to hide.  Neither does 99.99% of the population.  If the wiretapping stops one of these September 11 incidents, thousands of lives are saved.
  • Like I said, I have nothing to hide.  The majority of the American people have nothing to hide.  And those that have something to hide should be found out and get what they have coming to them.

The argument is not only of recent vintage.  For example, one of the characters in Henry James’s 1888 novel, The Reverberator, muses: “[I]f these people had done bad things they ought to be ashamed of themselves and he couldn’t pity them, and if they hadn’t done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people knowing.”  I asked the readers of my blog, Concurring Opinions, whether there are good responses to the nothing-to-hide argument.  I received a torrent of comments to my post: “My response is 'So do you have curtains?’ or 'Can I see your credit card bills for the past year?’”  “My response to the 'If you have nothing to hide…’ argument is simply, 'I don’t need to justify my position.  You need to justify yours.  Come back with a warrant.’”  “If you have nothing to hide, then you don’t have a life.”  Solove, Daniel J, “'I’ve Got Nothing to Hide’ and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy”, San Diego Law Review, Vol 44, 2007; GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 289.  Available here.

Einstein’s theory of relativity – the combination of his general and special relativity theories – dictates that all photons must move at the speed of light.  A photon is the carrier of electromagnetic radiation of all wavelengths, including gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet light, visible light, infrared light, microwaves, and radio waves.  This theory has stood the test of time over the last century, with no challengers.  Until now.  The Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescope sited at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma in the Canary Islands has found that gamma radiation emitted from a distant galaxy arrived at Earth 4 minutes after lower-energy photons, despite apparently being emitted at the same time.  If this information is correct – a repeat performance will be needed to confirm such a finding – then the findings are in direct contradiction to Einstein’s theory of relativity.  A galaxy more than 300 million light years from earth has a “blazer” – a very compact and highly variable energy source associated with a supermassive black hole at its centre.  Part of the blazer includes a relativistic jet – an extremely powerful jet of plasma – that shoots out, amongst other things, gamma rays.  Low and high-energy emissions appeared to have been emitted at the same time.  After travelling through space for some 300 million years, the high-energy emissions were 4 minutes late.


Can the Future Be Designed?

Jacque Fresco

Jacque Fresco

No Purchase for the Wind

Nothing for the Wind to Catch

Planned Perfect City

Planned Perfect City

The complete 1½-hour-long movie, Future by Design (2006) shares the life and far-reaching vision of Jacque Fresco, considered by many to be a modern day Da Vinci.  Peer to Einstein and Buckminster Fuller, Jacque is a self-taught futurist who describes himself most often as “generalist” or multi-disciplinarian — a student of several inter-related fields.  He is a prolific inventor, having spent his entire life (he is now 90) conceiving of and devising inventions on various scales which entail the use of innovative technology.  As a futurist, he is not only a conceptualist and a theoretician, but also an engineer and designer.  The movie depicts him as articulate, inventive, and original.  If you don’t have the time or inclination to watch the video, visit the website of the Venus Project (located in Venus, Florida) for a quicker overview.


I could find nothing about this picture.  Hungry children somewhere on Earth hoping for food.  There have been, are, and will always be some and they’re painful to see.

“Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness.  We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness.  We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues.  We read for the pleasure of thinking another person’s thoughts.  Every waking moment and even in our dreams we struggle to direct the flow of sensation, emotion, and cognition toward states of consciousness that we value.  Drugs are another means toward this end.  Some are illegal; some are stigmatised; some are dangerous — though, perversely, these sets only partially intersect.  There are drugs of extraordinary power and utility, like psilocybin (the active compound in “magic mushrooms”) and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), which pose no apparent risk of addiction and are physically well-tolerated, and yet one can still be sent to prison for their use, while drugs like tobacco and alcohol have ruined countless lives but are enjoyed ad libitum in almost every society.  One of the great responsibilities we have as a society is to educate ourselves and the next generation about which substances are worth ingesting, and for what purpose, and which are not.  A problem is that we refer to all biologically active compounds by a single term — “drugs” — and this makes it nearly impossible to have an intelligent discussion about the psychological, medical, ethical, and legal issues surrounding their use.  The poverty of our language has been only slightly eased by the introduction of terms like “psychedelics” to differentiate certain visionary compounds, which can produce extraordinary states of ecstasy and insight, from “narcotics” and other classic agents of stupefaction and abuse.”  — Sam Harris, Drugs and the Meaning of Life


Public Sculpture, Silly Subject

La Machine

La Machine

High Rise Greenhouse

Inordinately Expensive High-Rise Greenhouse

Benefitting from a Sunny Day

Soaking Up the Sun

La Machine, a French production company based in Nantes France (famous for La Princesse, a 50-foot mechanical spider) has now made a steampunk flying greenhouse.  Is it temporary?  I’d guess “yes”.  But if photos are found forever after of it on the internet, does that make it somewhat more permanent?  I don’t see how.  A photograph of Abraham Lincoln doesn’t make him more alive.


In 2005, Weta Workshop was commissioned by Wellington City Council to design and manufacture a public art sculpture as a tribute to the New Zealand Screen Production Industry.  Four designs were short-listed; the winning entry was manufactured in Weta Workshop over 2005.  The finished sculpture was installed on the corner of Courtenay Place and Cambridge Terrace, in the heart of Wellington’s entertainment district, November, 2005 and formally unveiled by the Mayor of Wellington.  The tribute is a film camera on a tripod that appears to be composed from a collection of recycled mechanical parts including a video game console, a toasted sandwich maker, a radio, and railway sleepers.  The camera is made from an engine block and a hairdryer serves as the viewfinder.  Weta Workshop founder Richard Taylor says it symbolises the ingenuity and unbounded imagination that the NZ screen industry thrives on.  “We wanted to pay tribute to their 'number 8 wire attitude’ and their ability to create using whatever is at hand.”  Shown is the sculpture’s nameplate.

Some kindly soul(s) have even knitted legwarmers for the tripod (it IS winter, here after all, and Kiwis love their home-grown moviemakers).


Wellington Has a Pet Tripod

Tripod on Alert

Tripod on Alert

On His Break, Tripod Got High

On His Break, Tripod Got High

Three-Legged Grasshopper

Three-Legged Grasshopper
Tired Tripod Needs a Break

Tired Tripod Needs a Break

Tripod Is Drooping Again

Tripod Is Drooping Again

Keeping Watch So You'll Keep Watching

Keeping Watch So You’ll Keep Watching

Weta Workshop is (of course) the company that made all the props, costumes, weapons, et cetera for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.  The upper middle shot of the tripod was a (smaller) tripod shot itself; it has a bit of 3-exposure HDR applied — as little as was feasible to bring out the Weta tripod detail (tough to balance two competing priorities).  An amazing example of Wellington street art, it somewhat resembles a giant 3-legged grasshopper.  It stands across from the Embassy Theatre, where Lord of the Rings had its world premier.  The tripod is sturdy, engaging and approachable.  And, this tripod is a fitting tribute to the filmmakers of Wellywood.


Traditionally, big studio movies never miss their release dates.  This is different from the videogame industry, where high-profile AAA titles, under pressure to raise the bar technologically as well as artistically, can be granted extra months or even years if the publisher feels it’s worth it.  Game makers have long admired Big Filmmaking’s ability to meet schedules no matter what.  But with the shift to digital, film post-production is acquiring the atmosphere of a game studio at crunch time:

  • A movie demands you’ve-never-seen-this-before visual effects both for marketing and story;
  • Ambitious plans and a short schedule leave little margin for error;
  • Inevitable schedule problems trigger urgent meetings among studio execs, vendors and filmmakers to get the project back on track;
  • “911″ emergency calls go out to almost any vfx shop in the world that can take on some last-minute work;
  • Everyone runs a harrowing race to deadline despite all the extra help.

Collapse, rest, repeat.

Myths about Introverts: Introverts aren’t shy — they just don’t talk unless they have something to say.  They hate small talk.  Shyness has nothing to do with being an introvert — they just need a reason to interact.  Introverts often don’t see a need to beat around the bush with social pleasantries.  They want everyone to just be real and honest.  Unfortunately, this is not acceptable in most settings.  Introverts like to avoid the complications involved in public activities.  They take in data and experiences very quickly, then they’re ready to go home, recharge, and process it all.  In fact, recharging is absolutely crucial.  Introverts are comfortable with their own thoughts and they think a lot. They like to have problems to work on, puzzles to solve, but they like to share their experiences and discoveries with ONE PERSON at a time.  They are individualists who don’t follow the crowd; they primarily look inward, paying close attention to their own thoughts and emotions.  If too much talking and noise is going on, they sometimes shut down.  One study (Silverman, 1986) showed that the percentage of introverts in a group increases with IQ.  No more than 25% of people are introverts.


Zaha Hadid Architects

Glasgow Riverside Museum of Transport (2010)

Glasgow Riverside Museum of Transport

Abu Dhabi Performing Arts Centre (concept)

Abu Dhabi Performing Arts Centre

Zaragoza (Spain) Bridge Pavilion (2008)

Zaragoza (Spain) Bridge Pavilion
JS Bach Chamber Music Hall

Bach Chamber Music Hall, Manchester UK (2009)

Chicago’s Burnham Plan Centennial

Chicago’s Burnham Plan Centennial (2009)

Hotel Puerta America, Madrid, Spain

Hotel Puerta America, Madrid, Spain (2005)

Zaha Hadid Architects has some stunning ideas and some excellent proposals — but the verbiage on each page about the structures is virtually content free.  For example, “Collaborations with artists, designers, engineers and clients that lead their industries have advanced the practice’s diversity and knowledge, whilst the implementation of state-of-the-art technologies have aided the realization of fluid, dynamic and therefore complex architectural structures.”  I picked out a few projects I like (there are also quite a few I don’t).  The upper centre photo is “proposed to house 5 theatres – music hall, concert hall, opera house, drama theatre and 'flexible’ theatre with a combined seating capacity of 6,300.  The Centre may also house an Academy of Performing Arts.”  Wellington may not need this, but I would love it if they had something this distinctive on their waterfront.  (But maybe that would make them copying Sydney in a way?)  Upper right is an interactive exhibition area focusing on water sustainability, integrating a pedestrian bridge; it performed as the gateway for the Zaragoza Expo 2008.  There are better pictures of this that I could have chosen, but, while it foreshortens it, this one seems to give a good overall perspective.

The bottom 3 are some of their somewhat smaller projects: a chamber music hall, a small pavilion, and a single floor hotel interior.  The music hall is located at the Manchester Art Gallery.  Specially designed to house Bach solo performances, a single continuous ribbon of fabric swirls around itself, creating layered spaces.  Okay.  Whatever.  The installation is designed to be transportable and re-installed in other similar venues.  A recyclable music hall?  Cool.  The pavilion in the centre is also a temporary structure, built to house a multimedia installation.  It is an intricate bent-aluminium structure, with each element shaped and welded in order to create the curvilinear form.  Outer and inner fabric skins are wrapped tightly around the metal frame; these also serve as a screen for video.  The pavilion was designed and built to maximise recycling and re-use of materials after its role is done or it can be re-installed at other sites.  Regarding the hotel: on this floor are 28 rooms, 2 suites, and common areas.  The walls and furniture are all one continuous surface or skin. Every element – walls, bedroom door with LED signs, sliding door to the bathroom, the bathtub and vanity unit, bed, shelves, chair and cantilevered bench by the window (which doubles as a table) – is included in a single curved sweep.  (I hope everything is unbreakable, cleanable, and hard to scratch.)
 

Urban Nebula, London Design Festival

Urban Nebula, London Design Festival

Celeste Necklace & Cuff

Celeste Necklace & Cuff

WMF Cutlery, Geislingen, Germany

WMF Cutlery, Geislingen, Germany

These last 3 items are also by Zaha Hadid — however, they aren’t items I would generally think to approach an architect for: outdoor seating, a necklace, and cutlery.

  • The outdooe seating forms part of the Size & Matter Exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall.  Urban Nebula is 2.4 metres high, 11 metres long, and 4.6 metres wide and is made of 150 blocks of black polished pre-cast concrete with a total mass of 30 tonnes bolted together to form a perforated wall.  To me, it looks to be both graceful and functional for a pavilion or public space, providing a variety of seating options (but probably not economically).  The name, however, is pretentious.
  • The jewelry is included here only because of the necklace — the cuff isn’t very visible and appears to go between the ring and index fingers, which likely becomes maddening in a short while.  But the necklace is arresting.  No doubt it is outrageously expensive and you’d have to be rail-thin, formally dressed, and prepared to endure mounting inconvenience to carry it off.  But it’s notable.
  • The cutlery is forged from solid stainless steel polished to a mirror finish.  The thickness of the material is extreme in some parts, allowing each item of the set to be ergonomically well-balanced.  This is an example of one of their “objects” that I almost like, but not quite.  I would normally hold the soup spoon in my right hand but that wouldn’t let me drink out of the rounded side, which I believe I would prefer.  And could the fork be used for cutting in either hand?  I don’t think so.  These utensils seem to me to favour form over function — not so good for supposedly utilitarian objects.


Conrad Veidt wears an early version of make-up for his character in The Man Who Laughs (1928).  This later served as the inspiration for The Joker.  The permanent grin was achieved by drawing back the corners of his mouth with hooks attached to the sides of his dentures.  “Paul Leni, who made Waxworks (the cause of my coming to Hollywood), was the director of my picture, The Man Who Laughs, and we were all very happy about it.  It was the Victor Hugo story of the man whose lips were cut away so that he has to go through life forever smiling, all his teeth showing in a horrible grinning grimace.  It took some months to make.  Sometimes I felt The Man Who Laughs never wanted to smile again.”  — Veidt (1934), quoted in American Gothic: Sixty Years of Horror Cinema

When I first saw this family photo, I was impressed by the photographer’s framing.  I’m not so impressed by the family, however.  Too many kids is too many kids.  Currently, there are 8 boys and 10 girls and the clock is still ticking.  Maybe they could get a tv instead?

75% of Americans are God‐fearing Christians; 75% of prisoners are God‐fearing Christians.  10% of Americans are atheists; 0.2% of prisoners are atheists.
— Ricky Gervais


Oh!  The Horror!

What’s This?  Johnny Depp may be an award-winning actor these days, but before he was making quirky collaborations with Tim Burton, he fell victim to Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street.  Brad Pitt’s first theatre appearance was in Cutting Class, in which a murderer is let loose in a high school — and who better to face him than Brad Pitt, star athlete on the basketball team?  And in the ’90s, a young Jennifer Aniston was getting chased by a Leprechaun seeking revenge.


Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez (8 December 1886 – 24 November 1957) was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo (during the years 1929–1939 and then again 1940–1954).  His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Renaissance.  Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted murals in Mexico City, Chapingo, Cuernavaca, San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City.  In 1931, a retrospective exhibition of his works was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  Rivera was an atheist.  His mural Dreams of a Sunday in the Alameda depict Ignacio Ramírez holding a sign which reads, “God does not exist.”  This work caused a furor, but Rivera refused to remove the inscription.  The painting was not shown for 9 years, until Rivera agreed to remove the inscription.  He stated: “To affirm 'God does not exist’, I do not have to hide behind Don Ignacio Ramírez; I am an atheist and I consider religions to be a form of collective neurosis.”  While I don’t admire the artist as a person, I find some of his artwork to border on the profound — I like these.  (Okay, his proportions may not reflect reality, if that bothers you.)

Mexican artist Diego Rivera’s images are iconic.  Assembly workers raise tools in a frozen moment of manufacturing.  Doctors and scientists stand near a child in a nativity scene that pays tribute to medicine.  Secretaries and accountants bow heads, their fingers on typewriters and adding machines.  One panel even shows Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, seeming to watch a collection of unseen workers below him.  The meaning of these images is complex, a view of industry that challenges ideas about its role in society and raises issues of class and politics.  Rivera was already well known as the leader of the Mexican muralist movement when he started this work, and he considered Detroit Industry the most successful piece of his career.  He painted workers of different races – white, black and brown – working side by side.  The nudes in the mural were called pornographic, and one panel was labelled blasphemous by some members of the religious community.  The section depicts a nativity scene where a baby is receiving a vaccination from a doctor and scientists from different countries take the place of the wise men.  A Detroit News editorial called the murals “foolishly vulgar … un-American.”  The writer wanted the murals to be destroyed.  Edsel Ford, patron of the murals, never publicly responded to the outcry.  He only issued a simple statement saying “I admire Rivera’s spirit.  I really believe he was trying to express his idea of the spirit of Detroit.”


Intrusive Mammals

I Smell Food — Where Is It?

I Smell Food — Where Is It?

I Smell a Cat — Where Is It?

I Smell a Cat — Where Is It?

Give Me a Kiss!

Give Me a Kiss!
Nosey Little Mouse

Nosey Little Mouse

Bessy Is Bossy

Bessy Is Bossy

Gossip Girls

Gossip Girls


This x-ray of a bus was done using a cargo x-ray scanner, the same device used by US border police to scan vehicles.  But the people are really only one person.  Some undertaker loans Nick Veasey cadavers, which he scans numerous times in many different positions.  Veasey works with either skeletons in rubber suits (normally used to train radiologists) or cadavers that have been donated to science.  When a corpse becomes available, he has at most 8 hours to pose and shoot before rigour mortis sets in.  I gather he means to show that personal privacy is a thing of the past these days.  (But any passenger knows that.)  A life-size copy of this was applied to the side of a White Plains, New York bus as a local hospital commissioned the piece to celebrate the opening of its new orthopedic facility.  The medical centre’s PR team had a promotional bus wrapped in this image and it drove around White Plains for nearly 2 months.  Passengers gawped in amazement and sometimes missed the bus.  Consequent complaints meant the artwork was withdrawn.

This is Nick Veasey’s scan of a computer keyboard.  Those are cadaver hands?  Veasey has a lot of animal scans on his site.  Of course, the animals are all dead.  Did he kill them so he could scan them?  He doesn’t say.  The 47-year-old Englishman estimates that over the past decade or so he’s x-rayed more than 4,000 objects.  “I’m interested in how things work, and x-rays show what’s happening under the surface,” he says.  “Plus, they look cool.”  To get his pictures, Veasey uses industrial x-ray machines typically employed in art restoration (to examine oil paintings), electronics manufacturing (to inspect circuit boards), and the military (to check tanks for stress fractures).


Cats in Black and White

Existential Cat

Existential Cat

Cat Stack

Cat Stack

I Had a Pair of Boots Once

I Had a Pair of Boots Once
Anxiety

Anxiety

Drama Queen

Drama Queen

Shy Guy

Shy Guy

It’s not as if you don’t see enough cats on the web already.


This content requires Javascript and Adobe Flash Player.

How cute is this guy?!  One of the cuddliest little mammals on the planet, the slow loris with his enormously engaging eyes and soft fur makes you want to snuggle up with him and keep him as a pet right?  Not!  This sweet and innocent-looking fellow is actually one of the more poisonous animals on the planet due to his ability to create a toxin which he secretes from the brachial (pertaining to an upper limb) glands in his elbows.  The loris licks this venom, mixing it with saliva, them smears it on the kids to protect them.  This venomous mixture can also be delivered by a bite.  If you happen across a slow loris and attempt to give the sweet creature a pet on the head and accidentally piss him off, you might end up in the hospital or much worse (if you go into anaphylactic shock).  (Larger Gif from here.)

A 6-month-old yellow baboon holds a 3-month-old bush baby in the animal orphanage at the Kenya Wildlife Service headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya.  The female baboon, abandoned by its family in Maralal in northen Kenya, is taking care of the bush baby that had also been abandoned by its family.


An Ocean of Penguins!

I wasn’t sure what even was represented in the 3 photos below until I read the photo’s caption — the grey are adult penguins and the brown are this year’s crop of young.  It is interesting to see the patterns of browns — the kids seem to prefer each others’ company.

Pattern on the Ground

Pattern on the Ground

Mid-Point

Mid-Point

Rivers of Children

Rivers of Children
Into Every Life a Little Rain Must Fall

Into Every Life a Little Rain Must Fall

Hitching a Ride

Hitching a Ride

Close Excape

Close Escape

Some Birds Have a Hard Life

  • Animals need to keep cool in the summer heat, so 7-year-old Matthew Walker hoses down Billy, an eagle owl, to keep him cool in the hot weather.
  • A crow hitches a ride on a vulture in Soria, Spain in 2009.
  • This is a product of Photoshop, though both the crocodile and the magpie goose are from Darwin, Northern Territory, both photos were taken by the same photographer, and this scenario has no doubt happened many times.


The Eyes of a Cyborg.  (I don’t know why, but this appealed to me.)

REAL hand-to-hand combat.  (I couldn’t find anything about where this sculpture is located.  If anyone knows, please tell me.  Thanks.

In my last posting for 30 June, I had found an odd “lake” in Medicine Hat, Alberta.  It turned out to be a fertiliser plant that produces a large quantity each year of agricultural fertilisers, in the form of anhydrous ammonia and urea.  Apparently, agricultural and urban lawn fertilizers such as are produced in plants like this contribute to the huge algal blooms that appear each year off the mouth of the Mississippi River.  This is responsible for much (all?) of the nitrogen and phosphate “pollution” that depletes oxygen and results in huge “dead” areas in the Gulf.  I will write more about this in the future.  And thank you very much for the information, Andy.


Assertive Birds

Are You Listening to Me?

Are You Listening to Me?

You Can't Really Mean That!

You Can’t Really Mean That!

You Just Keep Your Big Neck out of This!

You Just Keep Your Big Neck out of This!


The end of a rainbow spotlights a solitary car travelling down a remote road in North America.  Since a rainbow is an optical illusion, it doesn’t have an actual endpoint.  Instead, a rainbow’s position continually shifts depending on the viewer’s perspective.

A doctor was on his morning walk when he noticed an old lady sitting in a doorway smoking a cigar.  He walked up to her and said, “I couldn’t help but notice how happy you look!  What is your secret?”
“I smoke 10 cigars a day,” she said.  “Before I go to bed, I smoke a nice big joint.  Apart from that, I drink a whole bottle of Jack Daniels every week, and eat only junk food.  On weekends, I pop pills, have sex, and I don’t exercise at all.”
“That is absolutely amazing!”  marvelled the doctor.  “How old are you?”
“Thirty-six,” she replied.


Endcaps

ALL Sports Commentary

ALL Sports Commentary

Technological Herding

Sheep on a String

Surprised and Delighted

Surprised and Delighted

  • I find the xkcd webcomic to be brilliant at times and almost always at least entertaining.  It is about “romance, sarcasm, math and language.”  Author Randall Munroe says, “I’m a CNU graduate with a degree in physics.  Before starting xkcd, I worked on robots at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia.  As of June 2007, I live in Massachusetts.  In my spare time I climb things, open strange doors, and go to goth clubs dressed as a frat guy so I can stand around and look terribly uncomfortable.  At frat parties I do the same thing, but the other way around.”  Fair enough.
  • Two hundred years ago, bighorn sheep were widespread throughout the western US, Canada, and northern Mexico.  Some estimates placed their population at higher than 2 million.  However, by around 1900, hunting, competition from domesticated sheep, and diseases had decreased the population to only several thousand.  A programme of reintroductions, natural parks, and reduced hunting, together with a decrease in domesticated sheep near the end of World War II, allowed bighorn sheep to make a comeback.  The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources is always busy moving critters around, with the goal of boosting populations.  Helicopters are always one part of the activity, and everyone has seen animals suspended from slings.  But this is 5 ungulates dangling from a cable.  Hobbled and bagged, each animal was clipped one-by-one onto a long cable dangling from a helicopter.  After a maximum of 5 had been safely attached, the chopper pitched and swung into the air with a bunch of wide-eyed sheep swinging from its underside.  These desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsonii) are being moved to Utah’s remote Desolation Canyon.  The transfer took place in January 2009.  The sheep may not be having such a good time, but such sacrifices are sometimes necessary.  One big problem with Utah’s herds is a lung parasite that spreads from hobby herds of sheep.
  • When the Obamas saw the Cosmo Theatre, they were really impressed.  You will be, too.  Come see us at Thaumaturgy Studios!