ancient history

Everyone recognizes the classical white marble statutes of the Greeks and Romans, but most of these statutes were painted. Specialists were able to determine this fact due to trace amounts of paint they found on the statutes and and references to painted statutes in ancient literature and history.
Here are some examples of how we are used to seeing the statutes and how the statutes probably originally appeared.





To see more comparisons, go here.
Source. Source. Source.

----------

Peterhof, officially began in 1710 by Tsar Peter the Great, boasts a 256 acre territory. It also contains 64 fountains which use 8,189 gallons of water per second. The fountains are operated entirely without the aid of machinery and rely solely on gravity.

The joke fountains are particularly interesting. One fountain, called "A bench," appears like a regular bench but soaks those who sit on it. Another, called "Oak let fountain," contains 500 hollow branches and is surrounded by tulips. It also soaks unsuspecting guests.

To see a satellite image of Peterhof, click here.
Source. Source. Source.

----------

Charles Seymour (1662-1748) earned the nickname of "The Proud Duke." He did not allow his children to sit in his presence. He refused to talk to his servants, but used sign language instead. When he traveled, Seymour had the roads cleared. He also had a number of houses built between his town and country house so he did not ave to stay at public inns.

Source. Source. Source (page 28).

----------

Prussian King Frederick William I (1688-1740) was obsessed with his Potsdam Giant Guards. Height was the only criterion for admission, and most of the men were over 7 feet tall.
Frederick was ruthless in his recruitment tactics using bribery, political influence, rewards, force and kidnapping. Every year, a few hundred new recruits were found. At one point, there were 2,000 men in the Guards.
One tall priest was kidnapped in the middle of his sermon. An Austrian diplomat was kidnapped but able to escape. Kirkman from Ireland was kidnapped off the streets at a cost of a thousand pounds.
Frederick also started a genetic engineering program, marrying tall men and tall women together.
When foreign courts caught the hint, tall men became diplomatic tools and gifts to Frederick. Peter the Great, who also admired giants, send Frederick hundreds of Russians all over 6 foot four.
Because height was the only requirement, the men were sometimes mentally retarded. The only case of a man being allowed to leave freely is a Swedish man sent as a gift from Augustus the Strong of Saxony. Despite frequent beatings, the man could not be drilled and was released to die a beggar in Berlin.
Because of the horrible living conditions, many of the men mutinied. About 250 were able to dessert each year, but if they were caught, their ears and nose would be cut off.
The men never fought in battle, but were kept for the amusement of Frederick who would often have them parade and drill for him.
Frederick was 5 foot five inches himself.
After his death, the Guards were disbanded.

Source. Source. Source. Source (p.168).

----------

Thank you once again to I Beati for this award. Am I allowed to give this award to all my readers? I hope so, because that is what I am going to do. My reasoning? My blog is so fabulous that those who read it regularly must be fabulous too. But seriously, thank you for reading my blog. I love researching and writing it, and having readers makes it even better.

Thank you all

I know it has been awhile, but thank you all for being patient with me. I have now biked 500 miles and have legs with bruises, blisters and sunburns to prove it. I just wish I had legs of steel.

• A 5.9 foot (1.8 meter) black-headed python was found inside a 10th floor toilet in a Darwin, Australia apartment. The animal was most likely a runaway pet. Reptile catcher Chris Peberdy said, "When I saw it I was pretty shocked. . . . There is no possible other way it could have got there than through the toilet. I had to give him a wash because he was wet and a bit smelly." Source
• Raymundo Flores, a chef at the Brooklyn restaurant Junior's Restaurant was arrested for stealing lobster tails. He was hiding the tails in his pants and wrapped to his legs with bandages. Source
• Seven young artist from Berlin are living in the Museum of Bat Yam near Tel Aviv with lice in their hair. They are wearing plastic shower caps to prevent spreading the lice to others. Twenty-three year old artist Vincent Grunwald describes it this way: "The idea is that we live in the museum as their guests, and at the same time we are hosting lice on our heads." Some criticize the exhibit and claim it is referencing the Holocaust, but the artists deny this. Source.
• Federal Judge Eduardo Robreno fined HTFC CEO Aaron Wider and his lawyer Joseph R. Ziccardi $29,000 for inappropriate court behavior. Wider used 73 variations of the "F word" in 12 hours. When asked to open a specific file so questions could be asked about it, Wider responded, "I'm taking a break. F-k him. You open up the document. You want me to look at something, you get the document out. Earn your f-ing money, a-hole. Isn't the law wonderful?" Source
• Familiar with Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird? Here are some excerpts from his list on things that used to be weird, but are now too common for him to publish in his column: " an old, widely-advertised phone-sex number is reassigned to a church/charity . . .political candidate dies but still wins the election . . .family thinks he's dead, but he's not and attends his own funeral . . .shoots himself while supposedly demonstrating gun safety . . . gasoline thieves check quantity in tank by using a match or lighter to peer inside . . . local election ends in tie, settled (by law) by coin flip or draw of cards . . .bank robber hails taxi or municipal bus for getaway . . . criminal on the lam goes on national tv talk show and mentions that he's wanted . . .unlabeled urn with loved one's ashes mistakenly stolen or sold at yard sale . . .judges punish young people by forcing them to listen to [classical or polka or etc.] music . . .elderly citizen trying to convince bureaucrat that, contrary to records, he's not really dead . . .elderly motorist makes wrong turn, gets lost for days." Source

Art of 2007

At the Tate Modern in London, the Shibboleth 2007 ran from October 2007 to April 2008. It was a 548 feet long crack on the floor which addresses "a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world." Source.
It begins as a crack, but deepens and snakes across the floor of the Turbine Hall. At some points, it is four feet across. In the first four weeks of the exhibit, 15 people were injured.
One incident: "We saw the first poor victim, a young woman who went into it with both feet up to just below her knees. She had to be dragged out by her friends. . . .Unbelievably, as we watched to see whether she was OK, an older woman deliberately stepped on it (she later told us, amazingly, that she thought the crack was painted on the floor) lurched forward and landed on the ground. She had a sore wrist to show for it." Source.
Here is a video of people looking at the exhibit and here is a video of the exhibit from beginning to end.
In 2006, the Tate Modern exhibited five corkscrew slides. The biggest slide was 182 feet long with a drop of 88.5 feet. Four legal claims followed.
Also in 2007, Urs Fischer spent ten days and $250,000 to build a 38 by 30 foot and eight feet deep crater in the Gavin Brown Enterprise Gallery. The crater is surrounded by a fourteen-inch ledge. A sign warns, "THE INSTALLATION IS PHYSICALLY DANGEROUS AND INHERENTLY INVOLVES THE RISK OF SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH." The crater is titled You. Source.

These museums are far from average.

The Museum of Bad Art: "[O]ur mission: to bring the worst of art to the widest of audiences."

• The caption for the picture above is: "The flesh tones bring to mind the top shelf liqueurs of a border bistro. With an astonishing emphasis on facial bone structure, the artist flirts with caricature and captures features of Mamma's face which remind us of a Presidential candidate. The upright marionettish pose of the babe hints that the early bond between mother and child is as formal as it is familiar. Good old fashioned parental respect is at the center of this celebration of color and contour."

The Cockroach Hall of Fame Museum in Texas: "A museum of cockroaches that everyone can love."

• The museum has life Madagascar hissing cockroaches and "cockroaches that have been dressed in costumes to portray various themes." Below is Liberoachi.

You may not want to read on if you are squeamish.


The Mutter Museum by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia: "Disturbingly Informative"

• Grover Cleavland's secret tumor
• John Wilkes Booth's thorax
• The "Soap Lady" who died of Yellow fever in the 19th century and whose body has turned into soap.
• The nine-foot colon of a man who only had a bowel movement once a month. A picture can be seen here.
  
• A collection of 2,000 objects that were swallowed and removed without surgery by Dr, Jackson.

The Icelandic Phallological Museum

• "[P]robably the only museum in the world to contain a collection of phallic specimens belonging to all the various types of mammal found in a single country."

The Vrolik Museum in Amsterdam: "over two thousand specimens of humans, mammals, and other vertebrates"

• "Since 1994, 150 specimens of congenital malformations have also been on display."
• congenital malformation: "physical defect present in a baby at birth[.]"
• From what I understand, the babies are in formaldehyde jars.

China

For some context:

• In July 2007, China's population was 1,321,851,888. With a world population of approximately 6.6 billion, one out of every five people on earth lives in China. In 1950, China's population was 563 million, but had grown to one billion in the early 1980s. For a stable population, the national fertility rate must be 2.1; China's is 1.7. China's population is expected to peak in 2030. India has a much faster rate of growth and is expected to surpass China's population in 2040. Source.
• For a live counter of Chinese population, go here.
  

All of these statistics come from the May 2008 edition of the National Geographic magazine. Because it is hard to paraphrase statistics, they are all selected quotes.

• 119 baby boys are born for every 100 girls.
  
• The number of unmarried young Men-called bare branches-is predicted to be 30 million by 2020.
• China's one-child policy created a generation of only children numbering 90 million.
• Beijing enforces a one-dog policy that prohibits pets more than 14 inches high.
• China is expected to overtake the U.S. as the world's largest economy in ten years.
• Urban Chinese earn more than three times as much as those in rural areas[.]
• Authorities have added 171 new pop culture references to China's national language registry.
• Percent of the world's umbrellas made in China: 70
• Percent of the world's buttons made in China: 60
• Percent of U.S. shoes made in China: 72
• Percent of U.S. kitchen appliances made in China: 50
• Percent of U.S. artificial Christmas lights made in China: 85
  
• Percent of US toys made in China: 50
• Percent of Chinese goods sent to the U.S. that end up on Wal-Mart's shelves: 9
• Percent of the U.S. toys recalled in the U.S. in 2007[:] 100
• Number of months a Chinese factory worker would need to work to earn the money to earn the cost of a Thomas the Tank Engine train set: 6

More facts gleaned from the articles and paraphrased.

• "Wang" is the family name of 93 million Chinese.
  

• Sheng Qi, a Chinese artist, cut off his own finger in protest of the 1989 events of Tiananmen Square. (Picture above.) Visit his website.
  

Oops. I also forgot to add Minimal Ramblings of an Incoherent Mind :"A little home on the Internet where the quiet voices inside of my head can escape to be shared with the world. The loud voices, on the other hand, are silenced and stuffed into the basement to be punished for all eternity."

"Should I start trying to match my titles to my posts?" or "It is hard to be creative all the time." or "I pressed enter and posted this too early."

In Detroit, plans are made by architect Steven Flum to convert shipping containers into a $1.8 million, 17 unit condominiums. The units will be between 90 to 180 square meters (approximately 262 to 590 square feet) and will range from $100,000 to $190,000. The containers will be stacked four high and will have balconies, patios, windows, doors, plumbing, heating and stairways. Source.

However, using shipping containers for housing is nothing new. This is an Atelier Workshop’s Port-a-Bach. This house can be rolled into place and folded out to accommodate two adults and two children. Source.

Here is Leger Wanaselja Architecture's two bedroom house overlooking San Francisco. The house uses three containers and a glass atrium. Source.

Adam Kalkin, maker of the quick house, designed this nifty shipping container cafe. Source.

"Global Peace Containers" is a non-profit organization interested in using shipping containers to build housing and facilities in poorer countries or for emergency relief. Here is a school they built in Jamaica and a house they built in Atlanta, Georgia. Source. Source.


And be sure to check out the new blogs I linked to. I realized I was neglecting that part of my blog.
Less Than Half a Nickel - Sergent P's 2 cents. A blog that deserves more readers.
Smiling Through it all - "My random blog about life & death, love & heartache, and the struggle to get my life together."
The Thoughts and Sayings Of Baba Doodlius - Learn why sheep are planting hobbit bones in the jungle.

School is Over!!!

Nischal Narayanam completed his bachelors degree at 10 and his master degree at 12. In November 2007, he was "the youngest PhD student and . . . on his way to become the youngest doctorate."
When he was 11, Nischal broke the Guiness Book record and memorized 225 random objects in 12.07 minutes. Nischal was also able to relate each random object to its number.
He recalls practicing, “You need intense concentration for sitting at least three to four hours without looking at external things. But I enjoyed it every time I practised.”
Nischal's teacher, Jayasimha Ravirala, set the 2005 record by memorizing 200 random objects. He says, "There is nothing like good or bad memory, it is just a matter of training to tap its potential."
Nischal has written six math books.
Source.
Source
Source

Musician Giovanni Maria Pala believes there is a hidden musical score in Leonardo de Vinci's Last Supper and has written La Musica Celata (The Hidden Music) describing his find. Here, you can hear the music that emerged from the painting.
Because the apostles were in groups of three, the music is played in 3/4 time. Pala says, ""I marked the pieces of bread on the table and the Apostle's hands as music notes. Then I drew a pentagram over the scene between the tablecloth and Jesus' face. I couldn't believe my ears when I played the music. It sounded really solemn, almost like a requiem."
When Pala drew lines between the notes, the Hebrew sentence, "with Him consecration and glory" appeared.
Source: A video showing an interview and the pictures of the music, pentagram and Hebrew sentence.
Source

Tidbits

• The Eiffel Tower was built in 1889 for the Paris Centennial Exhibition and was planed to be taken down after twenty years despite numerous critics clamoring for immediate removal. In 1907, the French government decided the tower would be permanent, it was too good of a radio antenna to destroy.

• In 1822, Charles Babbage invented a steam-powered mechanical calculator called a difference engine. It was never built, however. Each time he started building his machine, he discovered an upgrade and stopped. He then made hundreds of drawings for a punch-card computer the size of a small train which could add and subtract forty digit numbers in a few seconds. His plans were too advanced, however, and his computer was never made. In 1991, a fully functional difference engine was built from his original plans. The first modern computer was built in 1946.
  

Source: p.138,74
I appreciate your patience with my lack of posts as I wind up my school year. I'm very busy at the moment. Thanks for understanding.

Not for me

While this might not be shocking to some, I find it a bit odd. In Brazil, someone felt the need to get 'tentacle suction-cup implants." Source

vEry intErEsting

Ernest Vincent Wright wrote Gadsby: "A Story of Over 50,000 Words Without Using the Letter "E". Except for his preface and postscript, nowhere in the book is the letter "E" found. Not an easy feat considering that "E" is the most commonly used letter in the English alphabet.
You can judge the outcome with the first and last paragraphs of the novel.

"If youth, throughout all history, had had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world that a child can think; and, possibly, do it practically; you wouldn’t constantly run across folks today who claim that “a child don’t know anything.”A child’s brain starts functioning at birth; and has, amongst its many infant convolutions, thousands of dormant atoms, into which God has put a mystic possibility for noticing an adult’s act, and figuring out its purport."

"A glorious full moon sails across a sky without a cloud. A crisp night air has folks turning up coat collars and kids hopping up and down for warmth. And that giant star, Sirius, winking slyly, knows that soon, now, that light up in His Honor’s room window will go out. Fttt! It is out! So, as Sirius and Luna hold an all-night vigil, I’ll say a soft “Good-night” to all our happy bunch, and to John Gadsby — Youth’s Champion."

Guilt over blog-neglect is a great motivator

• Meet Louis, the 6-foot Octopus. He was given his Mr. Potato Head toy for Christmas, and loves it so much that he "turns aggressive when aquarium staff try to remove it from his tank." Source.
• The Spanish town of Pulpi made a really big salad in September 2007. Dimensions: 20 cooks, over 3 hours prep time, 59 by 15.7 ft container, 14,740 pounds of vegetables. The salad was served free-of-charge in Pulpi's restaurants. Source
• Jody Powell and Kenneth Donnell won tickets to a Hannah Montana concert by keeping one hand on a 12-foot, 400 pound statute of Hannah for 6 days. They received catered meals and were allowed one 12 minute break every 3 hours. There were 20 contestants who participated. Winner-Powell says: "It's like a dream come true." Source

Do you take yourself for better or worse?

Ever get tired of searching for that perfect someone who understands you? Why not stop the search and marry yourself?

• Liu Ye of China married a cutout of himself wearing a bridal dress. (Pictured above.) He says: "There are many reasons for marrying myself, but mainly to express my dissatisfaction with reality. This marriage makes me whole again. . . [I'm not gay, but I am] maybe a bit narcissistic." Source.
• While Dutch artist Jennifer Hoes also married herself, she does not rule out a possible future marriage. She married herself to embrace her own life and believes that the values of an individual's life are the same as in a marriage. In answer to the question we are all wondering: "The wedding night I spent alone and slept like a baby. . . Unfortunately I had no money for a honeymoon, that would have been nice and welcome after the hard work." She argues that her marriage was not a publicity stunt: "I don’t make a distinction between my life and work. . . The wedding, as something of heart and mind, is just as relevant to my work as a cast of my nipples." Source.
• Kevin Nadal of New York is a "Filipino-American gay performance artist" who married himself to protest culture's discrimination against singles, specifically women and gay men. He told his parents that he was having a birthday party. Kevin was very pleased with the wedding: "I got a DVD recorder, a nose-hair trimmer, kitchenware, Martini glasses, and a back massager. . . Oh, and I registered for male pornographic magazines, and got those too. I did well." Source.

Behold...Art?

Behold the Itallian artist Piero Manzoni. His art includes:

• In 1961, he signed people to make them works of art. He also issued them varying colored stamps. A red stamp certified that the person was a full work of art. A yellow stamp certified that one of their body parts was a work of art. And a green stamp certified that the person was only a work of art under a certain condition like sleeping or running.
• In 1960, Manzoni boiled eggs on a table, stamped his thumb print on them, handed them out to the audience and had his entire exhibit eaten in 70 minutes.
  
• But perhaps he is best known for his putting his feces in 90 small tins and labeling them "Aritst's Shit." With 30 grams each, he sold them for the current price of gold. In 2002, one of the tins sold for over $40,000 to the Tate Gallery. Because they were "naturally preserved," around 45 of them have since exploded.
• You can even visit his website.
  

And once again, a BIG thank you to Rusin Roundup for this award and I would like to pass it on to Less than Half a Nickel because she let me know that I was not the only one with no clue what "meme" means.

um... OK

Maybe I'm not a da Vinci, but I don't think this is art.

• Hoon Lee staged an art show in Omaha, Nebraska where he licked yellow icing off a 2,500 square-foot floor. He wanted "people to look at the icing and feel a certain way."
  
• Cang Xin staged "Lick the World" in Sydney. He licked anything visitors brought to him and claimed to use his tongue to improve world spirituality.
• Source

art and background music

Do you have some time to spend gazing in adoration while listening to ethereal music? At this website, you can view The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci in 16 billion pixels and clearly see sections of the masterpiece as little as one millimetre square. If it strikes your fancy, you can also view Vita Di Cristo by Gaudenzio Ferrari or La Gloria Di Sant'ignazio.

Magnifying glass

Althea Crome Merback of Indiana is into extreme knitting. This means that she knits on a 1:12 scale. However, in the above picture, she used a 1:144 scale. That means that in each inch, there are 80 stitches. In her own words: "I love to knit and man, do I love a challenge." See more minuscule masterpieces on her blog.

The room above is only about 8 by 18 by 14 inches. Donated by Mrs. James Ward Thorne to the Chicago Art Museum, its scale is one inch to a foot. Visit the Chicago Art Museum's picture gallery of other amazing miniature rooms here.

Wow!

Paul Smith (1921-2007) had severe cerebral palsy but created fantastic pieces of art on his typewriter. For each key, he had to use his left hand to steady his right hand. Using only the symbols:

@ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _

he created hundreds of pieces of art, often giving them away. The pictures above, like all of his art, was created entirely by him on his typewriter.

To learn more about Paul, visit http://www.paulsmithfoundation.org/index.html

To see more of his amazing artwork, see http://www.paulsmithfoundation.org/main_gallery.html

To catch a video of him working, look at http://www.paulsmithfoundation.org/videos/incredible_sunday_clip_01.mov

free trade?

In a "conceptual art" project, Kristian von Hornsleth offered to give Ugandan villagers free goats, sheep and pigs if they adopted his name. His exibition in Copenhagen, "We Want to Help You, but We Want to Own You," has pictures of 108 villagers holding ID cards with his name. Before the project was stopped in October 2006, 270 villagers had changed their names.

George Sabadu Hornsleth commented: "Africans adopting European names for gifts - that's nothing new. We've been doing that since colonial times. Why do you think I'm called George?"

From his press release, the artist comments: "“Basically I believe in free trade. You sell something to me, and I buy something from you. In this case the Africans are fond of the animals that I offer them – and I am happy to be able to give them a beautiful name and to make some art. The result is that both parts are happy. Nothing else matters."

For pictures of the villagers: http://www.hornsleth.com/template/t03.php?menuId=52.

For an article: http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=609&id=1715632006

I will never understand some art

• Samuel Beckett wrote the 35 second play Breath. The one page script decribes a debris filled stage filled with faint light, then stronger light, then faint light again. Also included is a faint human cry, a human breath and another faint human cry. Rather unsuprisingly, Petherbridge, who brought the play to London, descibes the audience's reaction as "respectful silence" or "uncontrollable mirth." http://samuel-beckett.net/Londoners_gasp.htm


• Marcel Duchamp created the piece Fountain by signing a urinal "R. Mutt." In 2004, it was voted the 20th century's most influential artwork. >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_%28Duchamp%29