Women with monkeys as prostitutes - updated

We'll begin with the photograph above (credit here, via BoingBoing 2006):

"...the community of Beloit, Wisconsin came together on the banks of the Rock River to recreate George Seurat’s “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of LaGrande Jatte."

They are performing a tableaux vivant to reproduce the famous pointillist painting shown here:

One difference between the photograph and the painting is that in the photograph, the woman in the foreground does not have a monkey at her feet.  This apparently reflected unavailability of one in Beloit, Wisconsin - or it may have been intentional, since the monkey symbolically represents that the woman may be a prostitute:

Furthermore, the inclusion of symbols, most obviously a monkey on a leash and a woman fishing, is indicative of the painting’s satirical nature. In nineteenth century slang, ‘singesse’ (female monkey in French) meant prostitute. The wordplay of ‘pêche’ (fishing) and ‘péché’ (sin) was a pun often made in French cartoons with reference to prostitution.  Such symbols speak to the ability of “the proletarian woman [to] become superficially bourgeois through prostitution.”  Through this subtle imagery, Seurat adds another dimension to the comparison of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, noting the superficiality and immorality within high class society.

That was all new to me, so I searched the web for pictures of women with monkeys, and after discarding those with Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, Fay Wray, and Jessica Lange, I found this one by Aubrey Beardsley (source):

The Lady and the Monkey. c. 1897

and this one by Picasso:

- both of which presumably incorporate the monkey with woman = prostitute symbolism, as may this this depiction mocking an early American suffragette:

- both found at Infinite Thought, where there are other photos of women with monkeys (linkrot since 2010).

I got started on this topic because of a Reddit thread last month, where the best comment comparing the Beloit photograph and the Seurat painting came from UserNumber42:

"Oddly enough, both were created with very small dots, one just has better resolution than the other."

And finally, since I won't have another chance to blog tableaux vivant again, I'll close with this old but quite remarkable music video by Hold Your Horses:

The art works recreated in the video are listed at Blog of an Art Admirer and History Lover.

Addendum:  Reposted from 2010 to add this example from the 1920s:

Found at La balsa de la Nostromo.  Perhaps some Francophile can translate for us the title and captions.  (Hat tip to an anonymous reader: "Title: "With monkeys being in fashion this winter, we'll leave the antics to them." Caption: "C'mon, hurry up, lady, you're putting me in an awkward position." The text at the bottom is number/pricing info for the magazine issue.)

Reposted from 2014 to add this relevant video I found today at Kottke:

Reposted again to accompany the adjacent post about monkeys, and because I had forgotten about that clever tableau vivant video.

Pondering infinite monkeys

We've all heard the old adage about monkeys at typewriters, sometimes expressed as a million monkeys (as above, via Savage Chickens), or as infinte monkeys, or as a monkey for infinite years.  Recently, Australian mathematicians have reconsidered the Finite Monkeys Theorem, and calculated that "given the expected time until the heat death of the universe, we demonstrate that the widely-accepted conclusion from the Infinite Monkeys Theorem is, in fact, misleading in our finite universe."  Their data as applied to various works of literature -

- is available online at Science Direct.

Sadly, I have lost my favorite cartoon on the subject.  It depicts a monkey turning in his paper to the teacher, who reads "To be, or not to be, that is the glbiftza" and tells the monkey "Sorry, try again."

A tip of the blogging cap to John Farrier at Neatorama for the via.

Monarchs at the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, Michoacan, Mexico

An awesome sight, but the first reports I've seen from Monarch Watch is that the numbers are way down again this year, especially in the sanctuaries in California.

Photo by Jaime Rojo, who was the European Wildlife Photographer of the Year for 2024, via a gallery in The Atlantic.

Wolves as pollinators (therophily)

If one were to ask people which mammals serve as polllinators of plants, most would probably identify bats, but I have to say this report of wolves doing so is a bit of a surprise.  Here's an abbreviated excerpt from a report in the journal Ecology:

Up to 87% of flowering plant species depend on a wide range of animal species for their pollination. Among mammals, nectivorous pollinator species are principally represented by flying species such as bats and, to a smaller extent, by some marsupials, rodents, primates, and small carnivores. It has been pointed out that therophily, pollination by non-flying mammals, may however be more widespread and hold more significance than currently recognized. For example, in Australia, direct experimentation has shown that the brown antechinus (Antechinus stuartii) and the sugar glider (Petaurus breviceps) are important pollinators of native Proteaceae (Banksia spp.). The mammals involved in pollination are typically small- to medium-sized and often arboreal species, whereas nectar-feeding carnivoran mammals are much rarer, with only four species of Carnivora among the 343 mammals identified as potential and known pollinators in a 2015 review. However, examples of carnivore species foraging for nectar, and putatively involved in pollination, continue to be discovered, such as the masked palm civet (Paguma larvata), the Cape genet (Genetta tigrina), and the Cape gray mongoose (Herpestes pulverulenta). Here, we report the visitation to inflorescences of the Ethiopian red hot poker (Kniphofia foliosa) by a large carnivore, the Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis), in the Bale Mountains of southern Ethiopia. Wolves were observed foraging for nectar on K. foliosa flowers, which deposited relatively large amount of pollen on their muzzles, suggesting they could contribute to pollination.

There is good discussion of the subject matter at the source article and in the via at The New York Times. 

A sad statistic

I don't have time or interest in tracking down the source data compiled by Bankrate,  so I don't know how much of this "average debt" is amassed by wealthy cardholders and how much is subject to carryover interest, tho they do note that "44 percent of cardholders carried a balance from month to month in January 2024."  This is an insidious and malicious form of debt.  I'm profoundly saddened to see the levels this high.

Image cropped from the one at Visual Capitalist.

"Where's Wanda?"

I've just finished watching this eight-part series streaming on Apple TV, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The storyline is quite straightforward: a young woman goes missing and her family are convinced that she was kidnapped by someone nearby, so they start investigating everyone in the neighborhood, in the process uncovering all sorts of odd and illegal behavior.  

I think the series is properly categorized as "black comedy," combining true comedy with dark elements of murder and endangered-animal trafficking.  The cast were all new to me, but presumably well known to continental viewers: "International Emmy Award nominee Heike Makatsch (“Love Actually”), German Comedy Award winner Axel Stein (“The Vault”), multiple award-winning actress Lea Drinda ("The Gryphon”), newcomer Leo Simon, entrepreneur, actress and author Nikeata Thompson (“How to Dad”), presenter and actress Palina Rojinski (“Welcome to Germany”), Kostja Ullmann (“My Blind Date With Life”) and rising star Harriet Herbig-Matten (“Maxton Hall”)."  All of them are excellent in their character portrayals.

Because of my German-as-a-second-language background, I enjoyed leaving the audio set up as the original German with English subtitles.  And I was pleased to note that in the closing moments of the eighth and final episode, just 15 seconds before the end credits started to roll, there was a totally unexpected out-of-the-blue plot twist which undoubtedly foreshadows a second season.  A quick search revealed that a second season has not yet been announced; presumably the creators are waiting to see the response to this first season in order to secure funding, but with a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, I should think a second season is guaranteed.

A modern-day land grab

I own some vacant land in northern Minnesota - not fancy lakeshore, just woods and scrub brush with some wetlands - inherited from my father forty years ago.  I sometimes go up in the summer to hike and clear some trails.  Some years I lease out the property to local deer hunters for the autumn.

And every year I get letters offering to buy the property.  These don't come from local residents, who can find much better land to build on, or from hunters who prefer to lease rather than buy.  The offers come from people in Alabama, Arizona, Montana etc - always with a ridiculous lowball offer.   The senders of these letters harvest public records which show ownership and tax-assessed value, and they try to find owners who are either ignorant or desperate for money.

This year one of the letters, from "Land for Heroes" at a Boston address, was different - it asked me to "join their mission to help U.S. military families needing assistance."  "If we can buy your property for cash, we will donate in your name an additional 10% of the purchase price to one of our chosen charities."  Enclosed with the cover letter was a real estate purchase agreement offering me less than a third of the tax-assessed value (which in turn is typically is less than retail value).

I'm always offended by these letters because I think of the widows and elderly demented owners who will fall victim to the offers, but this year I'm also totally pissed off that the offer is cloaked in the guise of fake patriotism.  I spent 30+ years working in the Veterans Administration, and I view crap like this as being a distant relative to stolen valor.

I'm not calling this a scam per se.  It is presumably a valid offer to pay real cash for real property.  But it's sleazy and I hope these people step on a thousand lego blocks in their bare feet.

The musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause.

Excerpts from an article in The New York Times:

The syndrome refers to a constellation of conditions and symptoms that become more prevalent during perimenopause and beyond, including joint pain, frozen shoulder, a loss of muscle mass and bone density, and worsening osteoarthritis, among other things. Research suggests that more than half of menopausal women may experience musculoskeletal symptoms, some of which are severe enough to be debilitating — yet health care providers often dismiss them as unavoidable parts of aging...

Starting in the menopause transition, women become more sedentary as a result of pain. The less they move, the less they are able to move — and the more frail they become, both in terms of cardiovascular health and in their muscles and bones. This puts them at a greater risk for falls and fractures, and often makes both surgery and recovery more challenging...

While a large body of scientific evidence suggests estrogen helps to keep bones robust and protect against osteoporosis, we don’t yet have the data to say for sure whether, or to what extent, the loss of estrogen is responsible for muscle and joint pain...

Several clinicians told the Times that, anecdotally, patients who start taking hormone therapy for approved conditions such as hot flashes or night sweats also report a decrease in muscle and joint pain and discomfort.

“We know that there are many things for which estrogen started early is beneficial,” Dr. Singer said. But, she added, “we just need to be careful not to jump too far ahead before there’s data there.”

As always there is more at the source link.

New technology for stealing your car

"At about 9 pm a stranger knocked on the door then pulled out this small metal thing and held it up to the door for awhile before seemingly giving up and placing it back in his pocket. He looked nervous which in turn has made both of us very nervous and we cannot for the life of us figure out what he's pointing at the door. Worth noting in the video it's clearly not a phone."

Useful but disjointed discussion at the whatisthisthing subreddit.  I may have blogged about this before but can't find the link right now.  

Just A Car Guy may have better information.

Math puzzle

Explanatory diagram here, and some disjointed discussion here.

Blood-red water in the mountains of Peru

The embedded image is a screencap from a title gif at The New York Times.

For thousands of years, the glaciers were replenished with ice in the winter. But they have shrunk by more than 40 percent since 1968, uncovering rocks that, when exposed to the elements, can trigger chemical reactions that leach toxic metals into the water and turn it acidic...

Deglaciation above Lake Shallap, the headwaters of Shallap River, has exposed more than 380 acres of the Chicama Formation, which is rich in pyrite, an iron sulfide. As meltwater trickles across the rocks, the pyrite transforms into iron hydroxide and sulfuric acid, a corrosive chemical that releases heavy metals from the rock into the meltwater, Dr. Loayza said.

Pure water has a neutral pH of 7; Lake Shallap now has a pH of less than 4, nearly as acidic as vinegar. It also contains lead, manganese, iron and zinc at levels that surpass environmental quality standards...

This process is causing major problems for fish, wildlife, vegetation, and humans living downhill from the drainage.  I wonder if similar events occurred during the centuries of Inca rule of this region.  The image of what appears to be blood cascading down from some mountain sites might have had a profound effect of native theology.

The source link has a long discussion of the situation and lots of photos.

Stem cell transplants for dogs

Excerpts from the transcript of an As It Happens podcast:

A couple in Nova Scotia are desperately seeking a match for their five year old Goldendoodle Lucy, who was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma. Her life expectancy is between six months and a year with standard treatments like chemotherapy. But Stéphanie Gauvin and Tim MacIsaac are saving up for treatment in Washington State, which includes a stem cell transplant and immunotherapy for Lucy. That could cost as much as a hundred thousand dollars. Fortunately, their pet insurance will cover most of it but what they really need now is a stem cell match.

This story was added to the podcast to assist the dog owners in their quest to find a biocompatible stem cell donor.  But I have questions about the appropriateness of the situation.  

I am gobsmacked that pet insurance would pay huge $$ for a stem cell transplant.  I think pet health insurance should pay for immunizations, dental cleanings, blood tests, medications, and minor surgery.  When coverage is extended to something like this, the result inevitably must raise the cost of pet insurance for everyone in the program, perhaps pricing such out of the budget of modest-income owners.  If owners want something like this for life extension on a pet, perhaps a GoFundMe appeal could be set up to supplement the basic health insurance.  Seeking opinions from readers on this.  

Nunavik sled dog slaughter

Excerpts from the transcript of an As It Happens podcast:

Later this month, the Federal Government will apologize for the mass slaughter of Inuit sled dogs in the 1950s and 1960s. More than a thousand dogs were shot and killed by the RCMP, employees of the Hudson's Bay Company and other government officials across Nunavik, the Inuit region of northern Quebec...

PITA AATAMI: We've tried to look into why they decided to start shooting the dogs there was never a clear answer, but there was always questions about safety and that some children had been mauled and killed by sled dogs. But these are not pets, these Eskimos sled dogs, they were used for their livelihood. Some could be very mean. And so at the same time, the stories when I started hearing about these killings, I was starting to ask, why did they shoot your dogs? They couldn't go back to their camps. They couldn't go back to their trap lines. They couldn't do anything anymore. So, then one woman that really caught my attention was a lady from [inaudible], which is next door to [inaudible]. She was talking about that when her husband's dogs were shot. They were living in a shack and they would just stare out the window, looking out the window. Couldn't go hunting any more. Couldn't go get any more wood from the tree line, Couldn't go get their ice, couldn't go out hunting anymore. It's like he lost a part of his life. So she was crying when she told us this, that the pain that people went through. And I had one lady as well from [inaudible] that talked about wanting to, telling the police, please save me one dog. They had nine dogs. And the policeman didn't listen to that lady, even though she said, leave me one dog. We're going to still need dogs. But the policeman didn't listen, shot all the dogs. Their livelihood was taken away. It's like they had to be in the community. Now they couldn't go out, do their hunting. Only a few people at that time could afford snow machines. And the snow machines that they were coming out were not reliable, were not reliable at all. So people still prefer the dogs to the skidoo at that time. And at a skidoo can get lost. But a dog can never get lost, even if they're going through a storm, they always bring them home no matter what. So they knew [inaudible] and that they were our livelihood. That was part of who we are.

The Government of Quebec apologized for the slaughter in 2011 and gave former sled dog owners three million dollars in compensation. Ottawa hasn't offered any compensation until now.

This is all new to me, and I will defer to readers from Canada as to why this program was conducted back then.  The government claim of dangerous dogs sounds phony for such a widespread campaign.  To my cynical mind the slaughter of the dogs carries undertones of ethnic cleansing.

Comments and insights, please.

The world's largest bromeliad

Puya raimondii, also known as the Queen of the Andes (English), titanka and ilakuash (Quechua) or puya de Raimondi (Spanish), is the largest species of bromeliad, its inflorescences reaching up to 15 m (50 ft) in height. It is native to the high Andes of Bolivia and Peru...

The Queen of the Andes habit of semelparity, reproducing once and dying shortly afterwards, has evolved independently in very distantly related organisms. In plants this monocarpic strategy is quite common with annual and biennial plants being short lived examples, but it is a much rarer strategy for long-lived plants. Other species with unbranched rosettes like Puya raimondii have a predisposition to evolve this to use this lifestyle.

New word for me, so here's the wiki on semelparity:

Semelparity and iteroparity are two contrasting reproductive strategies available to living organisms. A species is considered semelparous if it is characterized by a single reproductive episode before death, and iteroparous if it is characterized by multiple reproductive cycles over the course of its lifetime. Iteroparity can be further divided into continuous iteroparity (primates, including humans and chimpanzees) and seasonal iteroparity (birds, dogs, etc.) Some botanists use the parallel terms monocarpy and polycarpy. (See also plietesials.)

In truly semelparous species, death after reproduction is part of an overall strategy that includes putting all available resources into maximizing reproduction, at the expense of future life... This distinction is also related to the difference between annual and perennial plants.

And the unexciting etymology of bromeliad: "one of a group of related plants indigenous to South America and the West Indies, from Modern Latin Bromeliaceæ, family name given by Linnæus, for Olaus Bromel (1639-1705), Swedish botanist."

Duct-taped banana sells for $6.2 million

As reported by Bloomberg:

Arguably the most famous artwork of the past decade has found a new buyer. Comedian, a sculpture by the artist Maurizio Cattelan, consisting of a piece of duct tape and a banana stuck to a wall, has sold for $6.2 million at Sotheby’s in New York after more than six minutes of fierce bidding. The buyer is China-born crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, the auction house confirmed.

In an interview with Bloomberg following the sale, Sun said he was considering paying with the cryptocurrency he founded, Tron (TRX), but failing that with Bitcoin, which hit a record $95,000 at the time of the auction. (The lot was the only one of the night for which Sotheby’s would accept payments in crypto.)

It’s also considered by many in the art world as a legitimate work of fine art. The New York Times’ Jason Farago wrote a lengthy defense of the piece, arguing that the work “is a sculpture, one that continues Mr. Cattelan’s decades-long reliance on suspension to make the obvious seem ridiculous and to deflate and defeat the pretensions of earlier art.” 

The buyer on Wednesday night was purchasing a certificate of authenticity that gave them the right to manifest the piece as an official artwork, though Sotheby’s says they’ll in fact also receive a banana and a roll of duct tape as a sort of starter kit. (The work also comes with a detailed instruction manual for how it should be presented.)...

Sun plans to display the Cattelan in his Hong Kong apartment, but unlike his paintings and sculpture, he adds, “it’s very easy to bring with me—that’s the beauty of it.” Sun says he’s willing to loan the work to “any serious players in the industry who want to borrow our artwork to display it anywhere. If Elon Musk wants it, I’ll let him put it on the spaceship to Mars,” Sun concludes. “The banana goes to Mars.”

Note the purchase is not of the banana per se, but of the concept of a banana duct-taped to a wall.  The Guardian notes this:

The banana on auction was, according to the New York Times, bought earlier that day for just 35 cents from a fruit stand on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. That means the fruit’s value increased 15m times over the space of just a few hours. But then the banana is not what has really been sold here. Instead it’s the idea behind it, which Cattelan once told the the Art Newspaper was a comment on the art market itself...

For his $6.24m – the artwork’s full price after buyers’ fees are added – Sun will receive the banana, a roll of duct tape, instructions on how to install the work – including information on how to replace the banana – and a certificate of authenticity. It’s this latter item that holds the work’s true value. Anybody can duct tape a banana to their wall, after all, but Sun can authentically exhibit such a thing as Cattelan’s conceptual piece of art.

I have conceded before that I am a total philistine when it comes to the art world.  And I fully understand that this is the guy's money and he can do whatever he wants with it, but the money could be applied to so many other things in the real world.  The fact that the super-ultra-rich can cavort like this in public basically making a parody of themselves just fills me with disgust.  The Nonsequitur comic expressed it this way:

And the fact that the buyer is a crypto billionaire immediately brought to mind this old Dilbert:

Pardon the rant (or not, I don't care).  I'm sick and tired of all this billionaire crap.

Close-up nature photos

I'm too busy right now to spend time blogging, but couldn't resist adding these two photos that were shortlisted for the Close-up Photographer of the Year competition.  Above: mites on the face of a Kloss's forest dragon.  Below: a basket star perched on a fan.  Details re both photos (and more photos) at The Atlantic.

Hurricane aftermath in a mountain forest

Posted for my family in Asheville, whose home avoided major damage, but whose community is devastated.

And I'll add this video of a lake covered with debris:

What happens to the ecosystem of a lake in that situation?  One would have to assume that there are no resources available to clean the lake by removing the debris, which will start to decay.  The light and oxygen levels in the water will be inadequate for aerobic life.  The stench will probably be incredible.  Recreation and tourism will be at a standstill for years.

Addendum:  Amazing improvement in the lake since I posted this, thanks to the Army Corps of Engineers.  See the video at the link in the comment by reader Marc B.

Bringing television to remote Amazonian villages

In recent years, solar projects have multiplied in remote communities in several Amazonian countries, mainly with funding from civil society organisations, helping to democratise electricity in off-grid areas of Latin America...

Tapiyawa Waurá’s new hut is still being built so his family has not moved in yet, but solar energy already charges mobile phones and powers appliances. He is in charge of school lunches, and takes a tucunaré fish, or peacock bass, out of a newly installed freezer. “Before, they had to go straight into the fire,” he says. “Now I can leave them here for longer.”

The freezer, mobile phones and spotlights are now among the community’s most used and valued equipment. Though the night sky is no longer as starry with the increase in artificial light, replacing solar panels [for] many generators has brought quiet and taken away the smell of burning fuel, say residents.

The telephone box in one corner of the village no longer works either. Almost everyone holds a mobile phone. This unlimited connection to the internet in a place where, until recently, there was little access and where language and traditional rituals are important, has brought with it some concerns among leaders. Still, they say that there is no turning back.

I can understand the benefits of having electricity available.  I frankly don't know what to think about television.

"What a wonderful world" (David Attenborough)

My rule of thumb: if it's a David Attenborough video, it's worth blogging.

BTW, if you've never used the "fullscreen" button on a YouTube video [lower right corner], now would be a good time to try it...

Here's a background on the lyrics:

"What a Wonderful World" is a song written by Bob Thiele (as "George Douglas") and George David Weiss. It was first recorded by Louis Armstrong and released as a single in 1967...

The song gradually became something of a standard and reached a new level of popularity. In 1978, Armstrong's 1968 recording was featured in the closing scenes of the first series of BBC radio's cult hit, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and was repeated for BBC's 1981 TV series of the same. In 1988, Armstrong's recording was featured in the film Good Morning, Vietnam and was re-released as a single, hitting #32 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart in February 1988. The single charted at number one for the fortnight ending June 27, 1988 on the Australian chart

Via truthdig.

Reposted from 2012 (!) to insert the Louis Armstrong version:

Five minutes worth watching...

... if you have a love or fascination for the natural world.  This video from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute documents the discovery of a new species.  For those in a hurry, a written summary is available at Live Science.

Star-shaped sand ("nature's caltrops")

"These unique grains are actually the pointy husks of millions of tiny protists known as Foraminifera. Hoshizuna-no-hama is found on the north shore of the island of Iriomote, within the greater Yaeyama Islands in Okinawa Prefecture. Star sand beaches can also be found on the neighboring island of Hatoma, as well as the Kaijihama and Aiyaruhama beaches on the island of Taketomi."

And here's the Wikipedia page on caltrops.

(Mis)remembering Laika

Trigger alert: extreme animal cruelty.

All I remember from my schooling was that Laika was the first dog in space.  I didn't know about this part:

"Laika was ultimately chosen not only for her cool temperament under pressure but for her pleasing silhouette. She was selected to orbit Earth in Sputnik 2—a larger and more ambitious satellite than the original Sputnik. As a result, the Western media nicknamed Laika “Muttnik.” Under pressure to ensure this second launch was timed to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution, shortcuts appear to have been taken. Sputnik 2 took off successfully on November 3, 1957, and official Soviet news outlets reported a healthy passenger for the first few days. Decades later, we learned that these were in fact lies. Poor Laika perished about seven hours after liftoff, having endured terrible stress and unbearable temperatures (the latter were due to an issue with the thermal insulation). As a result, this first creature to leave Earth’s orbit, presumably in the history of the planet, circled the globe as a singed corpse for five long months before finally receiving an organic cremation when Sputnik 2 disintegrated while reentering Earth’s atmosphere..."

Remembering (?) Grover Cleveland

Food for thought presented by the TYWKIWDBI-like blog Perfect for Roquefort Cheese:

"US presidential numbering has been a matter of debate since Grover Cleveland served the first non-consecutive terms in 1884 and 1892 becoming the twenty-second and twenty-fourth leader of the United States—Trump being the second. Though not two separate individuals holding high office, the prevailing inclination was to hold then to their oaths and the gap in between, which made for two separate administrations. In 1950, the Congressional Directory (also responsible for minutes and numbering of legislative sessions), renumbered their order, eliciting barely a question since and leaving the matter settled, until now."

Here's a list of all the things I remember about Grover Cleveland:   

Pianists at play

The video above shows eight pianists sharing just two pianos; seven of them are previous winners of the Dublin International Piano Competition.

The one below has twelve pianists playing just one piano.

This performance has held the world record for the most pianists performing simultaneously on one piano."

Reposted from 2013

Rebecca - the White House raccoon

"In 1926, a citizen of Mississippi sent the raccoon to the First Family in time to be cooked for Thanksgiving. Calvin Coolidge instead kept her as a pet.

She was, as befitted the First Raccoon, exquisitely accessorized: she wore an embroidered collar. Clad in her finery, she roamed the White House, playing hide-and-seek. She participated in the Easter egg roll on the White House lawn, a bow tied to her collar. President Coolidge, the press reported, liked to have her in his study, sometimes draped around his neck, stroking her as he worked late into the night. And so she lived a life of luxury until she did a thing many of her fellow Americans have dreamed of but very few have achieved: she bit the president of the United States..."

Embedded photo cropped for size from the original at the Library of Congress blog.

If you want to be a judge for the Booker Prize...

 ... be prepared to do a lot of reading.

"In January, a box of books was delivered to my house, the first of many to arrive, with a steadiness that would at times feel overwhelming. I was about to spend the year as a Booker judge.

All my life I have dreamed of having swathes of time filled with nothing but reading. Yet as I stared at that first tranche of books, my overriding feeling was apprehension. Awarding a prize with the power to transform literary history, as well as the winner’s career, isn’t a task to take lightly. Plus, I’d been warned that each judge would be required to read more than 150 books over seven months..."

I had to do the mental math twice to appreciate how much reading that is.   

I have featured a couple Booker Prize winners in TYWKIWDBI recently (The Blind Assassin, Prophet Song), so I'll try the new one (I'm 82nd on our library wait list for 18 copies, so it will take a while).

"Flying Crooked"

"The butterfly, the cabbage white,

(His honest idiocy of flight)

Will never now, it is too late,

Master the art of flying straight,

Yet has — who knows so well as I? —

A just sense of how not to fly:

He lurches here and here by guess

And God and hope and hopelessness.

Even the aerobatic swift

Has not his flying-crooked gift."

"Flying Crooked," by Robert Graves, is often presented as being a mockery of ineptitude.  The cabbage white does have an erratic zig-zagging flight, but I think modern opinion favors this pattern as enhancing evasion of avian predators.  Photo by me.

A reminder that ancient statuary was often painted

The painting is by Jean-Léon Gérôme - Painting Breathes Life into Sculpture, 1893. 

Although it was initially thought that Greek statues were mostly unadorned white marble, by the early 19th century the systematic excavation of ancient Greek sites brought forth a plethora of sculptures with traces of multicolored surfaces. Some of these traces are still visible to the naked eye even today, though in most examples the remaining color has faded or disappeared entirely once the statues were exposed to light and air. In spite of this overwhelming evidence for painted statues, influential art historians such as Johann Joachim Winckelmann so strongly opposed the idea of painted Greek sculpture that proponents of painted statues were dismissed as eccentrics and their views largely dismissed for several centuries. It wasn't until published findings by German archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann in the late 20th century and early 21st century that painted Greek sculptures became an established undeniable fact. Using high intensity lamps, ultraviolet light, special cameras, plaster casts and certain powdered minerals, Brinkmann was able to scientifically prove that the entire Parthenon, including the actual structure as well as the statues, was in fact painted. He furthermore was able to reveal the pigments of the original paint and has created several painted replicas of Greek statues that are currently on tour throughout the world. Also in the collection, are replicas of works from other Greek and Roman sculptures showing that the practice of painting sculpture was wide spread and in fact the normative practice rather than the exception in Greek and Roman culture.

More at the Wikipedia entry.  Image found at Miss Folly, via.

Reposted from 2010 to some text and add two images from BBC Culture:

Even bronze statues would have been much brighter than their dark brown appearance suggests today: bronze acquires a patina over time. What we see as a uniform greenish-brown head would once have been gleaming bright, almost golden. Hair would have been painted dark and the flesh might well have been painted too. The eye sockets of ancient statues are often empty, because the eyes were made separately, and they have been lost over time. There is a magnificent pair of Greek eyes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York [above], made of bronze, marble, quartz and obsidian...

And the Greeks are not the only ones whose statues were painted: the Romans were similarly enthusiastic about brightening up their marble. Paolo Liverani, of the University of Florence, has worked on a project to recreate the statue of Augustus of Prima Porta [below]. The emperor’s statue was discovered in 1863, and showed traces of the paint which once decorated it. A cast of the statue, its polychromy restored (and, in part, imagined), now stands in the Vatican Museum.

And finally this interesting tywk:

Winckelmann was a particular fan of Roman marble copies of Greek bronze statues: the Romans often copied Greek originals in marble. You can tell it is a marble copy of a bronze if a figure is leaning on something: a tree trunk, or a staff, for example. Or perhaps there is a little chunk of marble joining the two legs together.  Marble lacks the tensile strength of bronze, so it requires extra support to keep the figures stable.

Reposted from 2018 to add this excerpt from an essay in Harper's Magazine: 

"In the center of the city, near the Capitoline Hill and the monstrous slab of wedding cake that is the Vittorio Emmanuele II monument, runs the Via delle Botteghe Oscure, a wide and—by Roman standards—relatively undistinguished street, most notable in recent times as the site of the headquarters of the Italian Communist Party. Patrick Modiano stole its name for one of his melancholy novels about Paris and historical amnesia, but this original “street of dark shops” was dark, for at least part of its history, because of smoke and soot. In the eighth and ninth centuries, it was the site of a kiln in which monuments were broken up and burned to make lime for mortar. The thought of workshops running for decade after decade, century after century, grinding up works of art and feeding them into ovens, induces a kind of sublime terror, a feeling of insignificance in the face of the past. So much has vanished, so much labor and human expression has turned to dust."

Michaelangelo's depiction of breast cancer

"The unusual appearance of the left breast of Michelangelo's “Night,” a marble statue of a female figure, has often been mentioned in the literature on Michelangelo's Medici Chapel (Church of San Lorenzo, Florence, Italy). One of us, an oncologist, found three abnormalities associated with locally advanced cancer in the left breast. There is an obvious, large bulge to the breast contour medial to the nipple; a swollen nipple–areola complex; and an area of skin retraction just lateral to the nipple. These features indicate a tumor just medial to the nipple, involving either the nipple itself or the lymphatics just deep to the nipple and causing tethering and retraction of the skin on the opposite side. These findings do not appear in the right breast of “Night” or in “Dawn,” another female figure in the Medici Chapel, or in the many other depictions of women in works by Michelangelo...

Given that Michelangelo depicted a lump in only one breast, he presumably recognized this as an anomaly. Many doctors in his day could probably diagnose this condition in a woman. Historians of breast cancer agree that the disease and its treatment were discussed, often at length, and described as cancer by the most famous medical authorities of antiquity — Hippocrates, Celsus, and Galen — and by several prominent medieval authors, including Avicenna and Rolando da Parma...

Additional discussion at The New England Journal of Medicine

What are these black spots?

The beans are lima beans.  They did not show any discoloration at first, but after boiling, these black areas appeared.  Google and Google Lens were not definitive.  It doesn't look like anthracnose, and the location is similar to the black areas on black-eyed beans, so I assume this is a discoloration of some normal structure, but thought I'd ask the readership here, who seem to know about all sorts of esoterica.

Simone Biles - updated

The one below is a trailer for a Netflix program scheduled to air July 17.  Looks awesome, because she is a very well-spoken young woman.

 

Reposted from six months ago to add the trailer for the second part of the documentary, which I watched last night.  The 4x45 minute parts are now available on Netflix.  This is an absolutely superb presentation of a truly remarkable young woman and her outlook on life; it's not just for "sports people."

"You are what your record says you are"

This morning I heard in an interesting lecture (not currently online) that somewhat famous quote in the title by Bill Parcells, NFL football coach.

It was initially spoken in reference to professional sports.  You think you are an excellent football team, but if your record is 3 wins, 7 losses, then that record shows what you are - a subpar or at best a mediocre team.  You are not excellent unless your actions show that excellence.

To extend the philosophy to "real life", if you say you are an "environmentalist," you need to do something in that regard rather than just talk that way and feel that way.  If you consider yourself a "humanitarian," there needs to be something in your record of activities that confirms that philosophy; otherwise your humanitarianism is a subjective rather than on objective reality.

And... if you look at an election outcome and respond that "this is not who we are," you are on the wrong side of the argument that says your record says who you are.  

(this is just a rough draft post.  I've requested John-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness from the library.  Hope to update this post later on.)

Hand-made bangles

Impressive ground speed of a vampire bat

"Unlike most bats, which largely avoid the ground, vampire bats are capable runners, using their folded wings to propel them forward. This helps them stealthily stalk livestock — and occasionally unsuspecting humans.

“They don’t want to flutter down and drop right on the back of a cow,” said Kenneth Welch, a biologist at the University of Toronto Scarborough, who studies vampire bats and other animals with specialized diets. “Instead, they land a few feet away, silently approach the cow’s leg and make a tiny, painless incision with the cow none the wiser.”...

But once the vampire bats took to the treadmill, they flexed their fitness. As the team steadily increased the speed of the treadmill, the bats first walked, then trotted and eventually bounded along as the belt moved at nearly 100 feet per minute. Most of the bats kept moving for the entire 90-minute test period.

The source article at the New York Times focuses on the metabolism of these bats.

Native American views of Europeans

Some excerpts from The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow:

The Mi'kmaq of Nova Scotia:

“For you are always fighting and quarreling among yourselves; we live peaceably. You are envious and are all the time slandering each other; you are thieves and deceivers; you are covetous, and are neither generous nor kind; as for us, if we have a morsel of bread we share it with our neighbour.”

A French friar's view of the Wendat nation:

“They have no lawsuits and take little pains to acquire the goods of this life, for which we Christians torment ourselves so much, and for our excessive and insatiable greed in acquiring them we are justly and with reason reproved by their quiet life and tranquil dispositions... “They reciprocate hospitality and give such assistance to one another that the necessities of all are provided for without there being any indigent beggar in their towns and villages; and they considered it a very bad thing when they heard it said that there were in France a great many of these needy beggars, and thought that this was for lack of charity in us, and blamed us for it severely.”

There is a relevant longread at Novara Media, and this link is also relevant.

"Those Native Americans who had been in France were continually teasing us with the faults and disorders they observed in our towns, as being occasioned by money. There’s no point in trying to remonstrate with them about how useful the distinction of property is for the support of society: they make a joke of anything you say on that account. In short, they neither quarrel nor fight, nor slander one another; they scoff at arts and sciences, and laugh at the difference of ranks which is observed with us. They brand us for slaves, and call us miserable souls, whose life is not worth having, alleging that we degrade ourselves in subjecting ourselves to one man [the king] who possesses all the power, and is bound by no law but his own will." (via)

Kandiarok's view of the European monetary system:

I have spent six years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that’s not inhuman, and I genuinely think this can only be the case, as long as you stick to your distinctions of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’. I affirm that what you call money is the devil of devils; the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils; the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine one can live in the country of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining one could preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigues, trickery, lies, betrayal, insincerity, — of all the world’s worst behaviour. Fathers sell their children, husbands their wives, wives betray their husbands, brothers kill each other, friends are false, and all because of money. In the light of all this, tell me that we Wendat are not right in refusing to touch, or so much as to look at silver? (via)

Re religion:

“Kandiaronk: Come on, my brother. Don’t get up in arms … It’s only natural for Christians to have faith in the holy scriptures, since, from their infancy, they’ve heard so much of them. Still, it is nothing if not reasonable for those born without such prejudice, such as the Wendats, to examine matters more closely. However, having thought long and hard over the course of a decade about what the Jesuits have told us of the life and death of the son of the Great Spirit, any Wendat could give you twenty reasons against the notion. For myself, I’ve always held that, if it were possible that God had lowered his standards sufficiently to come down to earth, he would have done it in full view of everyone, descending in triumph, with pomp and majesty, and most publicly … He would have gone from nation to nation performing mighty miracles, thus giving everyone the same laws. Then we would all have had exactly the same religion, uniformly spread and equally known throughout the four corners of the world, proving to our descendants, from then till ten thousand years into the future, the truth of this religion. Instead, there are five or six hundred religions, each distinct from the other, of which according to you, the religion of the French, alone, is any good, sainted, or true.

And these thoughts are interesting:

"Indigenous peoples of California were not pre-agricultural.  If anything, they were anti-agricultural."

"Mauss thought the idea of cultural 'diffusion' was mostly nonsense... because he felt it was based on a false assumption: that the movement of people, technologies and ideas was somehow unusual... The exact opposite was true, Mauss argued.  People in past [prehistoric] times appear to have travelled a great deal - more than they do today - and it's simply impossible to imagine that anyone back then would have been unaware of the existence of basketry feather pillows, or the wheel if such objects were regularly employed a month or two's journey away..."

Sleep paralysis in testimony during the Salem witchcraft trials

From "The Tryal of Bridget Bishop, Alias Oliver, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer, Held at Salem, June 2, 1692" - 

"Samuel Gray testified that about fourteen years ago he waked on a night and saw the room where he lay full of light and that he then saw plainly a woman between the cradle and the bedside which looked upon him. He rose and it vanished, though he found the doors all fast..."

"Richard Coman testified, that Eight Years ago, as he lay awake in his Bed, with a light burning in the Room, he was annoyed with the Apparition of this Bishop, and of two more that were strangers to him; who came and oppressed him, so that he could neither stir himself, nor wake any one else: and that he was the Night after molested again in the like manner; the said Bishop taking him by the Throat, and pulling him almost out of the Bed. His Kinsman offered for this cause to lodge with him; and that night, as they were awake discoursing together, this Coman was once more visited by the Guests which had formerly been so troublesome, his Kinsman being at the same time struck speechless, and unable to move hand or foot. He had laid his Sword by him; which those unhappy Spectres, did strive much to wrest from him, only he held too fast for them. He then grew able to call the People of his house; but altho they heard him, yet they had not power to speak or stir, until at last, one of the People crying out, What's the matter! the Spectres all vanished  ."

"John Louder testified, that upon some little controversie with Bishop about her Fowls, going well to bed, he did awake in the Night by Moonlight, and did see clearly the likeness of this Woman grievously oppressing him. In which miserable condition she held him unable to help himself, till near day.  He told Bishop of this; but she utterly denied it, and threatned him very much  ."

From "The Tryal of Susanna Martin at the Court of Oyer and Terminer, Held at Adjournment at Salem, June 29, 1692" 

"Bernard Peache testified, that being in Bed, on a Lords Day Night, he heard a scrabbling at the Window, whereat he then saw Susanna Martin come in, and jump down upon the floor. She took hold of this Deponents Feet, and drawing his body up into an heap, she lay upon him near two hours; in all which time he could neither speak nor stir..."

"Robert Downer testified, that this Prisoner being some years ago prosecuted at Court for a Witch, he then said unto her, He believed she was a Witch. Whereat she being dissatisfied, said, That some she Devil would shortly fetch him away; which words were heard by others, as well as himself; the night following, as he lay in his Bed, there came in at the Window, the likeness of a Cat, which flew upon him, and took fast hold of his Throat, lay on him a considerable while, and almost killed him; at length he remembred what Susanna Martin had threatned the Day before, and with much striving, he cried out, Avoid thou she Devil, In the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Avoid: Whereupon it left him, leaped on the Floor, and flew out at the Window..."

"Jervis Ring testified, that about Seven Years ago, he was oftentimes and grievously oppressed in the Night; but saw not who troubled him; until at last he Lying perfectly Awake, plainly saw Susanna Martin approach him. She came to him, and forcibly bit him by the Finger; so that the Print of the bite is now, so long after, to be seen upon him..."

Excerpts [some spelling modernized] from Cotton Mather on Witchcraft: A first-hand Story of the Salem Witch-Trials; With Discourses on: Why the Devil picked New England for his Work: the Usual Temptations offered to become a Witch: the best Means of discovering Witches: and the best Ways to foil the Temptations of the Evil Powers. [Dorset Press, 1991]

Is my library of music CDs at risk?

Found this commentary I saved back in 2006:

Opinions vary on how to preserve data on digital storage media, such as optical CDs and DVDs. Kurt Gerecke, a physicist and storage expert at IBM Deutschland, has his own view: If you want to avoid having to burn new CDs every few years, use magnetic tapes to store all your pictures, videos and songs for a lifetime.

"Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD," Gerecke says. "There are a few things you can do to extend the life of a burned CD, like keeping the disc in a cool, dark space, but not a whole lot more."

The problem is material degradation. Optical discs commonly used for burning, such as CD-R and CD-RW, have a recording surface consisting of a layer of dye that can be modified by heat to store data. The degradation process can result in the data "shifting" on the surface and thus becoming unreadable to the laser beam.

"Many of the cheap burnable CDs available at discount stores have a life span of around two years," Gerecke says. "Some of the better-quality discs offer a longer life span, of a maximum of five years."

Distinguishing high-quality burnable CDs from low-quality discs is difficult, he says, because few vendors use life span as a selling point. 

-- John Blau, IDG News Service Tue Jan 10, 2006

I burned all my favorite music to CD-RW discs 10-15 years ago.  I seldom play them, and they seem to be ok now, but maybe I should be transferring all that music to other media... ?

Rainbow over the "Dragon's Back"

A stunning image by the Landscape photographer of the year for 2022, featuring the Dragon's Back landforms of the Peak District in the UK.  Photo from a gallery at The Guardian.

This is a sandwich I could make

A chicken and cheese sandwich with various condiments.  From Hungry Planet, via Neatorama.

The DFL is dead

When I was growing up in 1950s Minnesota, the dominant political party was the DFL - the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.  It had been formed in 1944 by a fusion of the national Democratic party and the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party.  It adopted the views of academic liberals, including support of the New Deal progressive reforms, and it took stances against antisemitism and racial discrimination.  From the 1950s to the 1970s, the Minnesota senators in Washington were from the DFL (Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey).  The overall focus was on the working man, especially the farmers.

The graphic I've embedded above, from the Minnesota Star Tribune, illustrates a major change.  Minnesota - like Wisconsin - is still a state of farmers and laborers, but the DFL support now is located in the urban area of Minneapolis-St Paul and the exurban areas there.  (It's the same in Wisconsin, with a "blue dot" in Madison and another in Milwaukee, and the rest of the state pink or red.)

I think the change began about during the era of the Clinton administration, when the national party (and presumably the DFL) began to morph from a farmer/labor focus to a more "modern" approach by embracing the high tech of Silicon Valley and the high finance of investment banking.   I think the common "working man" has been largely ignored.  There are of course dozens of other factors at play.

I'd welcome comments from readers who live in Minnesota and are more in tune with the local vibe.