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.

Another Booth cartoon for English majors

Reposted from 2022 for the 2024 election result.  Here is the first verse of the famous source:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity. 

                       ----William Butler Yeats

"Ennio" (Morricone)

I'm watched Ennio last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but I'll add a note here to explain that it may not be to everyone's taste.  First of all, it's a documentary rather than a traditional movie, and it's also two-and-a-half hours long.  More importantly, it is not a mashup of hours-worth of his compositions - it's instead an insight into the mind of arguably the most inventive and successful composer of our lifetime.

This man reminds me of the Mozart in Amadeus; the music is there inside his head and he just transcribes it to paper as fast as he can.  Look at this productivity:

With more than 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as more than 100 classical works, Morricone is widely considered one of the most prolific and greatest film composers of all time. He received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, three Grammy Awards, three Golden Globes, six BAFTAs, ten David di Donatello, eleven Nastro d'Argento, two European Film Awards, the Golden Lion Honorary Award, and the Polar Music Prize in 2010.

His filmography includes more than 70 award-winning films, all Sergio Leone's films since A Fistful of Dollars, all Giuseppe Tornatore's films since Cinema Paradiso, Dario Argento's Animal Trilogy, as well as The Battle of Algiers (1968), 1900 (1976), La Cage aux Folles (1978), Le Professionnel (1981), The Thing (1982), The Key (1983) by Tinto Brass and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989). He received Academy Award for Best Original Score nominations for Days of Heaven (1978), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Bugsy (1991), Malèna (2000) and The Hateful Eight (2015), winning for the latter. He won the Academy Honorary Award in 2007. His score to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) is regarded as one of the most recognizable and influential soundtracks in history. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Morricone has the classical education that allows him to decide that a film set in the 1700s needs this kind of music rather than that.  But his signature style began with the incorporation into movie scores of nontraditional music and sounds.  Before him, movie scores were produced by orchestras and were lyric and melodic.  Morricone adapted non-orchestral instruments, animal sounds, and ambient noises into a tapestry of sound.  And it fits into the movie because he is often looking at the soundless scene and creating the music as he watches.

See also Ennio Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold, and In memoriam: Ennio Morricone.

Chappell Roan sings to a new generation

Posted for a family member who went to a Chappell Roan concert wanting to hear "Love Me Anyway," but was satisfied with "Coffee."

Chappell Roan biography.

The mental disconnect of Trump voters

When Cody Heller hears former President Donald Trump denigrate immigrants and promise mass deportation, it infuriates him. His Heller Farms, a fourth-generation family dairy in Jackson County, relies on immigrant labor. Thirty-two of the farm’s 46 employees are from Mexico.

He's hardly alone. A 2023 UW-Madison survey of Wisconsin dairy farmers found that nearly 40% of farms have at least one foreign employee; other studies have estimated that immigrants account for up to 90% of the labor force in the dairy industry.

“Mass deportation would have a dynamic, negative economic impact, to the point where it would destroy the food cycle in our country and literally change our food prices overnight” Heller said. A 2015 Texas A&M poll found that eliminating immigrant labor nationwide would increase retail milk prices by more than 90%.

Still, Heller, who said he does not identify with either political party, voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and said he will again this year.

In that, he's also far from alone — the UW-Madison survey found 59% of dairy farmers identified as conservative, while only 4% identified as liberal. The remaining 38% identified as moderate, progressive or libertarian. Yet, just 15% of respondents opposed creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented farm workers.

With his vote for Trump this year, Heller is betting that Trump's deportation promises are nothing more than "white noise" intended to appeal to his white working-class base.

“He believes that immigrant labor is directly competing for labor with his base, and that is what they like to hear,” Heller said. But that isn’t true in the dairy industry, he noted, where farm jobs are often turned down by domestic workers.

“He can’t do it, nor would he ever do it,” he said of a mass deportation.

It's a sentiment echoed by several farmers who spoke to the Wisconsin State Journal for this story, none of whom had confidence that Trump could actually enact sweeping deportations...

Rosenow said he thinks there is a “tradition” of conservatism among his community that can be difficult to change.

“There’s also a lot of apathy involved,” he said. “If you don’t care, you don’t want to see another political ad, you don’t want to talk politics, then when you go to vote, you just think, ‘well I’ve always voted Republican, so I might as well vote Republican again.’”

TLDR:  Trump says he will do XYZ, but he wouldn't do XYZ if it would hurt me.

Voter intimidation, plain and simple

Via the conservativeterrorism subreddit, where it is noted that no official government correspondence ever has a handwritten address, and this:

The barcode stamp at the top means this can be tracked. Stolen from another user:

Report to your postal inspector - seriously. They don’t f around. It may sound like a joke - it is not. Don’t ever f with mail.

https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/threatening-letters-and-cyberbullying#:~:text=Report%20threatening%20letters,Scam%20Article%2005.28.2024

Report threatening letters Keep any letter that attempts to scare, threaten or extort you in any way, and report it to the Postal Inspection Service by calling 1-877-876-2455.

This is the ethos of MAGA-world

"An Ohio sheriff’s lieutenant has apologized – and been merely reprimanded – after authoring social media posts boasting about how he would refuse to assist people who voted for Democrats during Tuesday’s elections and would require proof of a person’s voting choice before providing aid.

John Rodgers, a veteran lieutenant with the Clark county sheriff’s office, reportedly posted on Facebook that he would consider a person’s voting record when responding to calls for service in his jurisdiction, which includes the city of Springfield that has recently been at the center of conservative conspiracy theories, according to the Ohio news outlet WHIO. 

In a series of posts, Rodgers reportedly wrote: “I am sorry. If you support the Democrat Party I will not help you.”

In another post, he reportedly said: “The problem is that I know which of you supports the Democratic Party, and I will not help you survive the end of days.”

And in another, WHIO reported, Rodgers indicated people would need to “provide proof of who you voted for” if they asked him for help."

Text and image from The Guardian.

Ecotourism in Peru

"Approximately 100 small business owners, non-profit leaders and national park directors, most of whom are women, have collaborated to make birding in Central Perú available and affordable to North Americans. They call their group Eco-tourism Perú. Please come to Perú, see bird species and support local business. 

Birding in Perú makes sense. Perú is either #1 or #2 in the world in bird species, and two Andean states, Junín and Pasco, are two of the top five birding regions in Perú. There will be four organized tours between April and October in 2025. It is possible to identify some 600 species on a 15-day trip, of which 35 species are either endemic to the region or seen only in Perú. 

Most of these Peruvian entrepreneurs believe that their country is not well organized to fight climate change. The guide, hotelier or restaurant owner would like to meet you, learn how Flathead Audubon group is organized and share strategies to protect the environment. 

Importantly, these businesses are local, and your money stays in the community. Even your food is grown locally, purchased in a local market and is prepared by the hostess and her staff. Your in-country transportation is overland, meaning a closer look at the countryside and a smaller carbon footprint. 

There is also the affordable in-country cost: approximately $100/person/day for a group of 6-8, $1500/person for a two-week vacation. The costs are substantially less than other tours, in part because they employ NO intermediate travel company. We have found nothing comparable."

The above message was originally directed toward Audubon members, but should have a broader appeal.

Ecotourism Peru homepage, with links about birds, hiking, trekking, cycling, lodging, meals, and transportation.

"L'Etat, c'est moi" - updated

"In 1609, James I lectured the English people on his rights and responsibilities as king. It was his duty to “make and unmake” them, he said. Kings have the “power of raising and casting down, of life and of death; judges over all their subjects, and in all causes.”

Not even the “general laws” of Parliament constrained him. The king stands “above” all human-made law. Indeed, it is his prerogative to “interpret” and to suspend such laws “upon causes only known to him.” He could also create new laws to whatever end he desired. The king, as James declared, is “accountable to none but God only.” He is the law speaking.

To enforce his personal rule of law, James could censor speech, the press, legal treatises, and the theater. He could imprison anyone, at any time, for any reason. And though the common law prohibited torture, James could use the rack, dungeon, and Skevington’s irons to get his way.

James also controlled a vast system of favoritism. Earldoms and knighthoods, positions in the state and church and universities, licenses to collect taxes or live in a particular house: all were his to grant. James could create offices as he saw fit. To win a vote in Parliament, James sometimes simply established new peerages. He minted licenses to do business and bestowed monopolies to manufacture or import cloth, tin, wine, even playing cards.

The quid pro quo was simple. In exchange for any such “patent” of “power or profit,” the beneficiary was to return funds and favors. After all, what the king could grant he could take away. In 1603, James imprisoned Sir Walter Raleigh and stripped him of most of his titles and properties. Some he gave to his own favorite, Robert Carr. Later, James gave many of Carr’s titles to a newer favorite, George Villiers, whom he named Duke of Buckingham.

Thus James sat on his throne, the center of a solar system in which every individual orbited around him, or as satellites of his satellites, a vast Cartesian mechanism propelled by venality and obsequiousness, reaching from the most magnificent of courtiers and intellectuals to the poorest of tenants in the remotest of shires.

Most historians do not believe that Louis XIV ever said, “L’État, c’est moi.” But even if apocryphal, this saying distills the idea of absolute monarchy in the days of James and France’s Sun King. Not that we need look four centuries back to understand how such absolutism works. Hitler, Stalin, Mao—each shaped the perception, thoughts, and truths of an entire people. So too Putin and Xi today.

For the first time since the founding, Americans find themselves debating much this same threat, of unfettered prerogative in the hands of a single man. It was Donald Trump’s success in teaching the Republican Party to scrape and grovel that first raised the specter of an authoritarian presidency. But it was the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision granting Trump immunity from criminal prosecution for most of his official actions as president that put flesh to the fear. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor summed up in her dissent: “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

These are the opening paragraphs of an article in the current issue of Harper's.  The longread continues at the link.  Even if Harris wins the election, the American people need to consider how to put more constraints on the powers of the executive (and the federal government).  I may add a few more excerpts after I watch today's football games, but I don't want to infringe on intellectual propery rights too much.  The embedded image is my own composite created from various found images.

Addendum:  One difficulty in excerpting from longreads is that the excerpt may not fully represent the content of the article in toto.  As I read further yesterday, I noticed the emphasis changing from the power of the executive to the power of the megacorporations:

It is Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple that today enjoy the power to create and destroy, to censor and punish, to “make and unmake” who they will. It is these corporations that—even as we fear consolidation of power in the public state—have erected a private state over us. They who have disrupted almost every economic and political balance in the Republic. They who have amassed the power to shape and determine how we speak to one another and share news and information. Even how we think, dream, and perceive our place in the world.

These are the absolute sovereigns of our age, the masters in the middle of us all...

Most maddening is that so many people who clearly view themselves as liberal champions—ranging from Kagan to former president Barack Obama—remain under the sway of an antidemocratic, pro-monopoly ideology dating to 1981, in the early days of the Reagan presidency. In America today, we face the most wide-ranging set of threats to liberal democracy since the founding. Gravest of all: liberals’ apparent ignorance of our own history. Hence our blindness both to the full nature of the threat posed by Google and its peers—and to the tools at hand to master it...

The issue is not mainly that these corporations surveil you, not mainly that they intrude on your privacy. Not mainly even that they wield great political power.

Rather, it is precisely the issue that came before the court in Moody v. NetChoice: these corporations’ unique capacities to manipulate every person and company that depends on them, individually...

But starting in 2004, coffers full of cash and tradable stock after the company’s IPO, Google’s executives went on a takeover binge. They bought YouTube, Android, DeepMind, ITA Software, Boston Dynamics, Waze, Nest, Looker, and Fitbit, as well as the foundational components of Google Docs, Google Cloud, and Waymo, along with more than two hundred and fifty other companies to date. Of all these purchases, perhaps the smartest was the 2007 deal to acquire DoubleClick, which gave Google direct control over one of the internet’s dominant ad platforms and its networks.

Google executives present their corporation as a great innovator. But their genius has rarely consisted of much more than buying other people’s ideas and assembling them into a vast maze of online corridors designed to enclose as much of our digital lives as possible. ..

Thanks to this spree, one or another of Google’s platforms today stands between you and your parents, between you and your children, and between you and your friends. Between you and your doctor, your druggist, and your therapist. Between you and your mayor and your representative in Congress and your president. You and your co-workers and professors. You and your car, electricity, and airlines. You and your movies and sports. ..

This gives the corporation arbitrary power over almost every small business. Google can steer customers toward, or away from, any particular author, photographer, or musician. Any restaurant, hair salon, bike shop, or plumber...

The Constitution, in this light, is the greatest anti-monopoly document in history, a blueprint for an intricate structure of walls and dikes designed to enable people to prevent any ultimate concentration of power in any one office, corporation, church, clique, or person...

And there's more content to follow.  I have a suspicion that before I reach the end I will detect the odor of musk.

As always, I encourage readers to go to the source article entitled The Antitrust Revolution: Liberal democracy's last stand against Big Tech.  If my previous link was behind a paywall for you, to to this new, archived version.

"The jungle revels in debauched lewdness"

Somewhere earlier this summer I encountered a review of Conquest of the Useless; Reflections on the Making of Fitzcarraldo, a new book by Werner Herzog (Ecco/Harper Collins, 2009). It's a curious book, created apparently by transcribing his notebooks from 30 years ago. It's not what one might expect in a "making of the film" book - it's almost stream-of-consciousness style, with disconnected thoughts and contents of dreams.

What was interesting to me was to discover that Herzog didn't live the life of a pampered director; he was on-site near the headwaters of the Amazon, living in squalor and coping with the incredible incompetence of local workers. Here are some of my jotted notes from the book to give the flavor of the contents:

 12 – At the Indians’ request, we bring chain saws, machetes, and shotguns to the Rio Cenepa, as well as a large canister of poison for arrow tips. They no longer know how to make it themselves. Vivanco says they will pay for a spoonful with a gold nugget.

79 – The family who had given us a pot of hot water crowded around, and we fixed tuna for them and gave them tea; that is how it is done here – food is always shared, Cesar says, which is why there is no word for “thank you” in their language.

100 – Upon returning to Iquitos, I found the little bookshelf in my cabin encased in a termite mound; I had to peel the few books, the radio, letters, and journals out of the hard coating, and the most recent journal, which was on top, has been devoured, except for the cover, which is covered in plastic.

165 – One time I had grasped hold of a smooth sapling without noticing that a multilane highway of fire ants led up and down it. Then I made the mistake of trying to cut down the tree with my machete to protect those following behind me, but my blow was not strong enough and merely shook the sapling, sending fire ants raining down on me, getting under my shirt and in my hair, and for two days I was climbing the walls.

169 – The helicopter of the Bolivian president, Barrientos, flew into a power line and crashed from a low altitude. He had suitcases full of money with him, presumably from drug deals. The helicopter immediately caught fire, but although people were there and tried to rescue him from the blaze, no one could get close, because the heat made the submachine guns carried by the president and his entourage start firing wildly, and in the hail of bullets no one dared approach.

226 – Across from our headquarters overlooking the Nanay there was a huge explosion in a boiler, fortunately after the work day in the factory there as over. The one night watchman was blown to pieces and sent flying. A smallish bloody piece of him landed with a splat on our porch.

233 – Water is dripping from the roof, but the rain does not refresh anything. The cat has thrown up on the porch. The chickens are standing in the rain getting soaked. My suit is hanging from the rafters of my palm-frond roof, covered with mildew. There is mildew on my shoes and my notebook. you hang up laundry, but it does not dry. My shirts disappear without a trace… this morning a tarantula the size of my fist was sitting in front of me on the table, and for the first time in my life I was only half-afraid.

I've listed this in the category of recommended books, but it does tend to be repetitious and occasionally tedious, so most readers will be satisfied with a quick perusal; probably only film enthusiasts will read it cover-to-cover.

Addendum: Those who like the movie or read the book will also appreciate the movie "Burden of Dreams," the 1981 documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo.

Reposted from 2009 because I kept misremembering Herzog's quote as being about "fecundity" rather than "lewdness." 

Wisconsin butterflies, 2024

An informative and professionally executed presentation.  Kudos to the members of the Southern Wisconsin Butterfly Association for assembling the data, and to Doug Buege for formatting the video.

SWBA homepage, with a list of field trips, info on field guides, camera, places to visit, archives of newsletters, and relevant videos.

Van Gogh torc

I think this is properly termed a torc rather than a necklace.  Clever.

The artist is not identified at the via, where the discussion is about taste (or lack of same).

Reposted from 2018 for the Halloween season.

Bugs Bunny was originally spelled with an apostrophe ("Bugs' Bunny")

In 1938, Warner Brothers writer Ben Hardaway directed a short film featuring a very sneaky rabbit. The cartoon was called Porky’s Hare Hunt, but the bunny that starred in it didn’t have a name. So, the best creative minds in the business got together and dubbed the up-and-coming star “Happy Rabbit.”

Ben Hardaway, whose nickname was Bugs, also directed he next short starring Happy Rabbit. As the animators drew up early image for the film, one of them labeled a sketch of the rabbit “Bugs’ Bunny,” to make it clear that the drawing was part of Hardaway’s project. The label was mistaken for the name of the character, and soon enough, all the animators were calling Happy Rabbit “Bugs Bunny."

From a post at Neatorama about interesting moments in the history of editing, where you will also discover that Catch-22 was originally entitled Catch-18.

Reposted from 2011 because I had already forgotten this.

"The rich are different from you and me"

As reported by Bloomberg:

Airlines are reinvigorating first class as deep-pocketed customers embrace travel again, taking luxury to new heights up in the sky. 

First-class cabins are increasingly resembling mini hotel rooms, with sofas, double beds, televisions, desks, wardrobes, minibars and in some cases, walk-in showers. The more creative, the better. You can even book a chef...

Even with first class fares going for more than 10 times as much as standard economy seats, demand is there - either for bookings with cash or the rare opportunity to use up miles accumulated on credit cards during the pandemic...

A return Sydney-Los Angeles flight in Qantas first class costs almost $18,000, while Frankfurt-Tokyo on Lufthansa is about $15,000. That’s still significantly less that what some ultra-wealthy travelers fork out for private jets, a segment that experienced a boost during the pandemic as people looked to avoid crowds and virus-related restrictions...

Individual cabins currently feature armchairs and a 212-centimeter (83 inches) flat bed with memory foam mattress, as well as cotton throws, a duvet and pillow menu. 

Details and pix at the link.  

Reposted from 2023 to add this.  The video is lengthy but refreshingly devoid of needless chatter (mostly ambient sounds with text subtitles).  You can browse it by clicking the timeline.