Tag: art

I do/do not understand

You know that Bill Cosby story about making a wood shop item with one leg too long, so one trims that leg, and THREE legs are too long? That was me.

A bit ago, Chris wrote What should I expect others to know and understand? It was based, initially, on a comment she made on Facebook, though her article took its own direction, as articles often do. She also mentioned a piece, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, from the CIA.

“How can you not know that?” How often have you said those words, either out loud, or silently, in your mind? How often have others said that about you?

The struggle is that we have developed a wide range of opinions about what one OUGHT to know.

I know the Speaker of the House’s skin color (orange) but not Snooki’s real name; she’s on some apparently popular show called Jersey Shore. Depending on who you’re asking, X or Y is IMPORTANT to know, and Y or X, not so much.

I had a colleague who used to infuriate me. Ask her for advice, and, almost inevitably, she’d say, “Oh, that’s EASY.” Well, it was obviously NOT easy for me, which why I was asking; at the same time, she diminished her own gift.

It would be immodest, but probably true, to suggest that I happen to know a boatload of factoid type of stuff – though not about astronomy, botany, or cars, e.g. Conversely, I’ve always been lousy about physical stuff.

You know those two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional objects? There would be tests asking which one of the four objects is like the original. Of course, the examples would be turned on their axes. I simply could not “see” it easily at all. Some people look at architects’ drawings or floor plans and can visualize what the finished structure will look like; they are just lines on paper to me.

There were these exams called the Iowa tests that I took in sixth grade. I did really well in math and reading and the like. But on a 100 scale, I got a 13 in mechanical aptitude. You should have seen – or better still, NOT seen – the stuff I made in shop. You know that Bill Cosby story about making a woodshop item with one leg too long, so one trims that leg, and THREE legs are too long? That was me. Honestly, I blew up more ceramic items in the kiln than the rest of the class combined.

One learns to compensate, though. Accepting that one just can’t be good at everything helps a LOT.

Although, I will always remember this: I was in 7th-grade art, and I did some pieces. My father visited the classroom, and he expressed surprise (shock) that I received a grade as high as a B in the marking period. The teacher responded that I had done as well as I could, which was certainly true.

(I will have come back to this. Didn’t go where I was thinking it would, at all…)

K is for Kiss

Here are some songs about kissing, all of which charted on the US pop charts.

 

Some couples have “our song” or “our place.” My wife and I seem to have “our drawing.” It is, of course, “The Kiss” by Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918). My wife has a book about it, we have it on a mug, and at some level, it is an idealized version of us.

Klimt, according to Wikipedia, painted it “between 1907 and 1908, the highpoint of his ‘Golden Period’, when he painted a number of works in a similar gilded style. A perfect square, the canvas depicts a couple embracing, their bodies entwined in elaborate robes decorated in a style influenced by both linear constructs of the contemporary Art Nouveau style and the organic forms of the earlier Arts and Crafts movement. The work is composed of conventional oil paint with applied layers of gold leaf, an aspect that gives it its strikingly modern, yet evocative appearance…”

“Klimt was 45 when he painted The Kiss, still living with his mother and two unmarried sisters,” yet reportedly had, let’s say, an active romantic life. There was a 2006 film called Klimt, starring John Malkovich, which I did not see, but it did not review well.

The artist was honored with a Google doodle in honor of the 150th anniversary of his birth earlier this year. Check out iklimt.com or klimtgallery.org for more information about Gustav Klimt.
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Here are some songs about kissing, all of which charted on the US pop charts. I didn’t bother with Kiss by Prince, because his people are always taking down YouTube videos.

Kiss on My List – Hall & Oates (1980)
Kiss You All Over – Exile (1978)
Kisses Sweeter than Wine – Jimmie Rodgers (1957)
Kiss An Angel Good Morning – Charley Pride (1972)

What are your favorite songs about kissing?

ABC Wednesday – Round 11

March Rambling: Accidental Racism, Verb Tenses and Marvel Movie Boycott

The first Atelier Mends iPad app, uJigsawArt©, is here

The Kind Of Intellectual

(From The Bad Chemicals; used by permission)

God is a second-rate fiction writer. “There are true stories, short stories, fabrications, misrepresentations, novels, insurance reports, family sagas, testimonials, memorials, fairy tales, myths and arguments, the point of all being some kind of narrative persuasion. It’s a kind of stubborn, human-nature way of insisting things be seen from my point of view because that particular point of view is more entertaining, or more valid, or funnier or more beneficial.”

“When the news broke that ‘This American Life’ was retracting the episode ‘Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory,’ Ira Glass made an effort to be clear that the show has verification standards, but that they fell short in this instance.”

The sequence of verb tenses: “You get to decide which verb forms to use based on your intentions and your understand of the language from reading, speaking, and hearing it.”

Dangerous Konymania, and that was before the story got really weird
On the other hand, Carl Weathers is not your enemy, plus more fun examples of accidental racism.

The Nazis’ rules for jazz performers.

The Othello rap (via HERE).

From Robert Reich: “America’s problem isn’t a breakdown in private morality. It’s a breakdown in public morality. What Americans do in their bedrooms is their own business. What corporate executives and Wall Street financiers do in boardrooms and executive suites affects all of us.”

Interesting piece on body image.

Albert Wood and the secrets of the funeral reveal

Advance review of the new John Grisham novel about baseball, Calico Joe.

Jim Shooter explains The Cory Doctorow Doctrine and Other Techno-Tectonic Upheavals HERE and HERE and HERE.

The Marvel Super-Heroes cartoon series (1966). And re: those superheroes, Steve Bissette on boycotting Marvel/Disney movies such as The Avengers because of the treatment of Jack Kirby HERE and HERE.

500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art

Military STD Posters, 1918-1945.

Do you want to know a secret? Secrecy News: a favorite source

The first Atelier Mends iPad app, uJigsawArt©, is here and available on the Apple Store for free!

A maker in Scotland has created an elaborate, steampunk-style, hand-cranked corkscrew. Rube Goldberg would be pleased.

Plane 101, verified by Snopes, no less.

Whatever that guy said? Do the other thing! Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation gets the short end of EVERY conversation.

Here is a video of a person in a Darth Vader mask and cape, and a Utilikilt, riding a unicycle, playing Star Wars music on a bagpipe, in Portland, OR, which took you longer to read than the video runs. Plus, Seussical Siths.

In honor of Robert Sherman, who died this month, one of his and his brother Richard’s most famous compositions, It’s a Small World (via HERE). Oh, and some more Sherman Brothers songs.

Eddie discusses how he sells stuff on Craigslist, much of which could be used selling on eBay, e.g.

GOOGLE ALERTS

From Australia: ROGER Green may be a modest man, but for Vicki Doherty and many others in the Clarence Valley, the well-known Grafton musician is a living treasure.

Unemployment numbers down for sixth straight month: “Roger Green is also looking for something more. ‘I’m an ex-felon, it’s been pretty hard for me personally,’ Green said. He has a part-time gig now but wants to find something full-time. This morning, he’s feeling inspired.”

 

X is for X-Ray Vision

X-ray vision is a bit of a misnomer.

 

The X-ray was discovered a little over a century ago. Getting an X-ray is something we take as commonplace at the dentist’s office or at a medical lab, but it was the quite amazing, and accidental, discovery. And it has helped produce some pretty nifty art effects such as The X-Ray Vision of Nick Veasey, from which this image was taken.

But that’s not what I really want to talk about.

I’m more interested in the notion of “X-ray vision”. As the Wikipedia entry explains, it’s a bit of a misnomer: “Although called X-ray vision, this power has little to do with the actual effect of X-rays. Instead, it is usually presented as the ability to selectively see through certain objects as though they are invisible, translucent or not present, in order to see objects or surfaces beyond or deep to the affected object or material.” This is NOT the way actual X-rays work: “The visions seen [in X-ray vision] are generally in full color and three-dimensional. How such an effect might be created via x-rays is unexplained (the x-rays from the viewer’s eyes would need to bounce back to his eyes the same way as normal light reflects off objects and into the viewer’s eyes: x-rays simply pass through an object and continue on their way.”

The fascination with X-ray vision, in “science fiction stories or superhero comics” has embedded itself in the minds of the public so thoroughly that a Google search will glean thousands of examples. Mark Evanier points to x-ray glasses and other mail-order mysteries from the stuff you order from comic book ads and the like, which is lots of fun. But it’s not just a ruse from the olden days. On YouTube, you will find Tiny Filter Gives Cellphone Cameras X-Ray Vision. Well, no. There is another technology at work whereby one can see Kim Kardashian’s underwear, but X-ray vision it is not. Ditto this Little Dot cover.

Of course, the best-known character with X-ray vision is the Man of Steel, as noted in comic books, TV show,s and on film. “Superman can see through walls to see the bad guys beyond, or see-through Lois Lane’s dress to determine the colour of her underwear (in Superman: The Movie, Warner Brothers, 1978).” Superman’s cousin, Supergirl is similarly blessed, or cursed, with this ability, evidently.

I suppose I too have fantasized about having that power and ability far beyond that of mortal man. But I would only use the power for good, not anything inappropriate. Or so I tell myself.

What superhero power would YOU want to have?


ABC Wednesday team

A is for Adam and Eve

What bothers me about the literal Creationists is not that they believe what they believe. It’s that a whole pseudoscience that was created around it.

Big fat caveat upfront; I don’t mean to make light of anyone’s faith, I’m just trying to understand.

Someone I know only online, who I suspect wouldn’t consider herself a particularly religious person, decided to read the Bible. She stopped after Genesis 2. She complained that there were two seemingly contradictory Creation stories. In Genesis 1, the creatures came, then the man and the woman. But in Genesis 2, you get the Adam’s rib version, where the man is seemingly created before the creatures, but definitely before the woman. I say “seemingly”, because the NIV version reads at v. 19 “Now the LORD God HAD formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man…”; the “had” suggests the possibility that the animal had already existed and that the man, hanging out in the garden, simply hadn’t seen them.

The problem, I contended, is that the person was reading the stories as history, as science, not allegory. If you read it as history, and Adam and Eve were in fact the first people, what does it mean in terms of their descendants? Who was Cain’s wife, and who were the people he feared might kill him in Genesis 4? That specific issue confounded me when I was a teenager, and was one of the items that indeed shook my faith at the time.

Once I realized it was not a literal history, it became much easier to understand.


This is why I’m quite puzzled by those who have decided to take Genesis 1 verbatim. The earth and all its creatures, including humans, were formed in six days – possible? Sure, in a “God can do anything” way, but not at all likely. And the order of the creation seems to mesh pretty well with the evolutionary cycle we’ve come to understand, albeit considerably longer. The word “day” may not have meant 24 hours; remember, no one wrote this down at the time, but rather learned it from the oral tradition, transcribing it relatively quite recently, in the last millennium Before the Christian Era. This philosophy, I’ve learned, is called progressive creationism.

What bothers me about the literal Creationists is not that they believe what they believe. It’s that a whole pseudoscience that was created around it, of people walking the earth with the dinosaurs only 4000 years ago, and the planet only 10,000, rather than humans being around for 50,000 to 200,000 years, the dinosaurs having been extinct for 65 million years, and the Earth itself being about 4.6 billion years old. How does this narrative conflict with “some vast eternal plan”, quoting Fiddler on the Roof?

I guess I’m saying that I don’t think science and creation are that much at odds. The shoehorning of a literal six-day earth making – that seems to be a lot more work.

Can someone please explain this to me? Oh, and check out this recent Doonesbury strip, which addresses the issue.

ABC Wednesday team – Round 9

Citation to top piece of artwork.

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