Sitting Bull talks truth to power

In 1883, Sitting Bull was a guest of honor at the opening ceremonies for the Northern Pacific Railroad. When it was his turn to speak, he said in the Lakota language, ‘I hate all white people. You are thieves and liars. You have taken away our land and made us outcasts.’ A quick-thinking interpreter told the crowd the chief was happy to be there and that he looked forward to peace and prosperity with the white people. Sitting Bull received a standing ovation.

Via Miss Folly.

"Un Chien Andalou"

This brief surrealist film by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí is famous for several scenes...

The idea for the film actually began when Buñuel was working as an assistant director for Jean Epstein in France. Buñuel told Dalí at a restaurant one day about a dream in which a cloud sliced the moon in half "like a razor blade slicing through an eye". Dalí responded that he'd dreamed about a hand crawling with ants. They were fascinated by what the psyche could create, and decided to write a script...

...in the notorious eyeball-slicing scene... Buñuel claimed that he had used a dead calf’s eye. Through intense lighting, Buñuel attempted to make the furred face of the animal appear as human skin.

As a long-time observer of "movie mistakes," I couldn't help noticing that the hand inserted through the door is a left hand with the palm toward the door, and the hand with the ants is a right hand with the palm toward the woman.

"The Battleship Potemkin"

Eisenstein's 1925 silent film is embedded in its entirety above.  If you don't have the requisite hour+ to view this classic, I posted the iconic Odessa Steps scene (and some related clips) last year.

Zheng He's treasure ship

Amateur video filmed in Nanjing in the Ming Dynasty shipyard.  I have seen Zheng He's ship compared to Columbus' flagship in diagrams; this is the first time I have seen the contrast portrayed with models.

Addendum:  I think reader BJN is correct in pointing out that the scales of the two models in the video are not in exact concordance; the idea is correct, but the math is wrong.  Here is a photo of models from another source that may be more accurate:

China and Africa - pay attention to this relationship

From the BBC:

It is not much to look at - a small pitted brass coin with a square hole in the centre - but this relatively innocuous piece of metal is revolutionising our understanding of early East African history, and recasting China's more contemporary role in the region.

A joint team of Kenyan and Chinese archaeologists found the 15th Century Chinese coin in Mambrui - a tiny, nondescript village just north of Malindi on Kenya's north coast.

In barely distinguishable relief, the team leader Professor Qin Dashu from Peking University's archaeology department, read out the inscription: "Yongle Tongbao" - the name of the reign that minted the coin some time between 1403 and 1424.

"These coins were carried only by envoys of the emperor, Chengzu," Prof Qin said. 

The coin was almost certainly brought to East Africa by one of the treasure fleets led by Zheng He (about whom some other time...)

"We're discovering that the Chinese had a very different approach from the Europeans to East Africa," said Herman Kiriama, the lead archaeologist from the National Museums of Kenya.

"Because they came with gifts from the emperor, it shows they saw us as equals. It shows that Kenya was already a dynamic trading power with strong links to the outside world long before the Portuguese arrived," he said.

And that is profoundly influencing the way Kenya is thinking about its current ties to the East. It implies that China has a much older trade relationship with the region than Europe, and that Beijing's very modern drive to open up trade with Africa may in fact be part of a far deeper tradition than anyone suspected.

This stuck a chord with me because it was only yesterday that I bookmarked this story at The Daily Nation about how the Chinese are providing free health care to Africans via a floating hospital.

Medical staff aboard the Chinese Navy hospital ship Peace Ark have been treating an average of 700 patients a day since last Thursday.

The crew, which leaves the port of Mombasa tomorrow, has been doing an average of six operations, 80 physical examinations, 110 dental check-ups, 35 CT scans, 200 DR examinations, 240 ultra sound cases and 170 heart check-ups per day.

The medical team also visited the Ziwani School for the deaf, Tom Mboya School for Cerebral Palsy, the Mji wa Salama Children’s home and did physical examination on 243 children, 30 of whom were taken to the ship for further treatment.

The Peace Ark hospital has 428 medical and support staff. They include neurologists, surgeons, radiologists, dermatologists, biomedical engineers and psychologists.

Other facilities are a rescue helicopter, 32 medical departments including Chinese herbal medicine, 300 hospital beds and a wide range of diagnostic medical equipment.

... the gesture was a clear sign of the long friendship between Kenya and the people of China.  “The relationship has been bolstered by knowledge and cultural exchange through programmes such as the Confucius Institute at the University of Nairobi and transfer of technology, equipment, modern highways, state-of-the art hospitals, and a host of infrastructural edifices scattered all over Kenya...

These two articles reinforce the headline several years ago in the London Evening Standard: "How China's taking over Africa, and why the West should be VERY worried."

In the greatest movement of people the world has ever seen, China is secretly working to turn the entire continent into a new colony.

Reminiscent of the West's imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries - but on a much more dramatic, determined scale - China's rulers believe Africa can become a 'satellite' state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke.

With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way.

Across Africa, the red flag of China is flying. Lucrative deals are being struck to buy its commodities - oil, platinum, gold and minerals. New embassies and air routes are opening up. The continent's new Chinese elite can be seen everywhere, shopping at their own expensive boutiques, driving Mercedes and BMW limousines, sending their children to exclusive private schools.


The pot-holed roads are cluttered with Chinese buses, taking people to markets filled with cheap Chinese goods. More than a thousand miles of new Chinese railroads are crisscrossing the continent, carrying billions of tons of illegally-logged timber, diamonds and gold.

All over this great continent, the Chinese presence is swelling into a flood. Angola has its own 'Chinatown', as do great African cities such as Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.

Exclusive, gated compounds, serving only Chinese food, and where no blacks are allowed, are being built all over the continent. 'African cloths' sold in markets on the continent are now almost always imported, bearing the legend: 'Made in China'.

From Nigeria in the north, to Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Angola in the west, across Chad and Sudan in the east, and south through Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, China has seized a vice-like grip on a continent which officials have decided is crucial to the superpower's long-term survival. 

Much more at the link.

Alcohol consumption correlates with intelligence

The [above] graph shows the association between childhood intelligence (grouped into five “cognitive classes”:  “very dull” – IQ < 75; “dull” – 75 < IQ < 90; “normal” – 90 < IQ < 110; “bright” – 110 < IQ < 125; “very bright” – IQ > 125) and the latent factor for the frequency of alcohol consumption.  The latter variable is constructed from a large number of indicators for the frequency of alcohol consumption throughout adult life and standardized to have a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1.0.  The data come from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) in the United Kingdom.  There is a clear monotonic association between childhood intelligence (measured before the age of 16) and the frequency of alcohol consumption in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.  “Very bright” British children grow up to consume alcohol nearly one full standard deviation more frequently than their “very dull” classmates.

Additional graphs and commentary at Psychology Today, via The Daily Dish.

Clarabell speaks

Clarabell was a mute clown on the Howdy Doody Show.

Clarabell didn't speak until the very end of the final episode. It was only at this moment that Clarabell, still gesturing and using his horn, tells Buffalo Bob that he could actually talk. Amazed, Bob frantically tells Clarabell to prove it as it would be his last chance. The camera slowly moves in close on Clarabell as a drum roll grows louder and then dies out. At this point Clarabell tearfully whispers: "Goodbye, kids."

Embedded above is that final episode, from September 24, 1960.  Found at About Last Night.

The oldest known videotape

1958.  President Eisenhower visits NBC studios.  David Sarnoff pushes a button, and the world goes from black and white to color.

Posted at About Last Night, which has a quite interesting essay about early autochrome technology, via.

After watching this video, I wondered when it was that I first viewed color television.  Our family was an early adopter of B&W television in about 1950, but I don't recall when I first saw a program in color. 

Carrot

I think next year I either need to till my garden a little looser and deeper, or else thin the carrots after the seeds start to sprout.  It's no tragedy; I was growing the carrots as food for Black Swallowtail butterflies - which never found the plants.  Now I have to eat the carrots.

I think I'll leave some in the ground, because I found this today:

Most of the plants you named are true annuals; that is, they last one season and then die even if protected from frost. Carrots, however, are biennials; if you leave the roots in the ground, the tops will flower the following year and produce carrot seed for you (although the second-year carrots themselves will have turned bitter). It’s a fun garden project to leave a few carrots in the ground to go to seed, and the Queen’s Anne’s lace-like flowers are superb attractors of beneficial insects!

Impressive eye of a hover fly

Credit John Hallmen/Barcroft Media, via an album at the Telegraph. 

Comments on students' report cards

“When the workers of the world unite it would be presumptuous of Dewhurst to include himself among their number.”

“Unlike the poor, Graham is seldom with us.”

“The improvement in his handwriting has revealed his inability to spell.”

Found at the Telegraph.

Sunday smörgåsbord

Gotta hurry this morning; need to clean leaves out of the gutters, then a Packers game and a Vikings game...  Fortunately I haven't bookmarked much this week.

Why does a narwhal have such an immense and elaborate tusk?  To impress mates?  Acquire food?  Battle foes?  Fool unicorn believers?  Canadian dental researchers have discovered that the tusk is extensively innervated and is therefore probably utilized to detect gradients of temperature, pressure, and suspended particles in the seawater.  Isn't evolution amazing?

The chief scientist at Israel's Education Ministry has questioned evolution: ""If textbooks state explicitly that human beings' origins are to be found with monkeys, I would want students to pursue and grapple with other opinions."  He has been fired from his job.

The best optical illusion I have seen in months.  I can't embed it; you'll need to view it at the link (where you can fiddle with the parameters if you want to).  Trust me - it's worth viewing.

If you're not already tired of reading/hearing about bedbugs, an article at the Washington Post discusses the problem.  More useful is a brief video which explains how to examine your hotel/motel room for bedbugs.

Talk about ethical conundrums - a Canadian couple has discovered during the first trimester that the fetus is likely to have Downs Syndrome, and they are in favor of abortion; the fetus, however, is being carried by a surrogate mother.

The Image Error Level Analyzer claims to be able to detect Photoshopped and otherwise altered images by looking at the pixels more closely than you can.  Just paste the url for your suspect image and see the result.

TYWKIWDBI has been riding the "ban the disposable plastic bag" bandwagon since the beginning.  Treehugger says the movement is gaining momentum.  It has been so successful that there is now a "save the plastic bag" coalition.

A man used his Dell laptop to protect his head when a tornado demolished his home.  Dell gave him a new computer.

ESPN The Magazine reports on length on a thoroughly unpleasant but important complication of extreme endurance sports - involuntary defecation during competition.

Image: The Lancelot romance, France, 15th century

"Stayin' Alive" + "The Wall"

A mashup of the BeeGees + Pink Floyd, done so well that there were moments when I didn't even notice the segues.

If you love this music, watch this video fullscreen.

Found at Miss Cellania.

Jesse Ventura comments on the Tea Party and Sarah Palin

When asked about the Tea Party, Ventura said, “I’ll put it to you this way about the Tea Party: Anybody that would put Sarah Palin to the top of their list will never get me. She’s a quitter.” When asked if he was not a fan of Palin, because she quit, he answered, “You’re damn right. She quit in the middle of her term. That’s the contract you have with the voters.”

When asked if he thought she was qualified to be president, he said, “Well, I felt she was completely unqualified. I had more qualifications than she did. I had served as a mayor of a town [Brooklyn Park, Minn.] of 60,000 – hers [Wasilla, Alaska] was 10,000. I had served as governor for two years when everybody wanted me to run for president in 2000, and I said I’m not prepared to be the president. I haven’t even completed office as a governor yet. Now, she never completed her office as governor. She didn’t even get two years in hardly! And she quit to get money. Jesus, how do people not see that! She saw greener pastures, said, Screw the people of Alaska, and went on to collect.”

When asked if he would do an episode of show on her, he bluntly stated, “I wouldn’t waste my time.”

The White Horse of Uffington could be a dog

Challenging the traditional description of the Oxfordshire landmark, retired vet Olaf Swarbrick asks whether the "beautiful, stylised" figure might instead be a dog such as a greyhound or wolfhound...

Swarbrick says: "Looking at it again, it seems that it is not a horse at all: the tail and head are wrong for a horse and more suggestive of a dog. It appears more like a large hound at full stretch. I thought it may be a greyhound, but an anthropologist suggests it is a wolfhound, which (assuming it is not a horse) makes more sense."

Addendum: A closer view of the chalk-lined trench, courtesy of reader Doc Rock: