Friday, September 20, 2024

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

The birth of Venus, 1879 by William Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825-1905)

The birth of Venus, 1879 by William Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825-1905)






























Click to enlarge.

Thursday, September 19, 2024

That fishing trip

From Redneck Haiku Double-Wide Edition by Mary K. Witte.  

Jake's tall tale winner
is a true recounting of
his last fishing trip.

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Venetian Night by Natale Gavagnin (Italian, 1851-1923)

Venetian Night by Natale Gavagnin  (Italian, 1851-1923)































Click to enlarge.

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

New York Restaurant, 1922 by Edward Hopper (American, 1882-1967)

New York Restaurant, 1922 by Edward Hopper (American, 1882-1967)





















Click to enlarge.

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

When I get a little money, I buy [Mike Huemer's] books; if any is left, I buy food and clothes.

There is a new book out, Progressive Myths by the philosopher Michael Huemer.  Look interesting, so I go to investigate.  The blurb is:

Do women really get paid 30% less than men for the same work? Do American police regularly murder unarmed black men just for being black? Is global warming really going to destroy human civilization? This book answers these and other questions about the state of our society. A sober look at the evidence reveals that many factual claims used to support progressive political views are false, exaggerated, or radically misleading. After exposing a series of these myths, the author explains how and why progressive myths have become popular, why they are harmful, and how we can avoid being taken in by political myths.

OK.  Good enough.  But I am really sold it based on the endorsements:

"When I get a little money, I buy [Mike Huemer's] books; if any is left, I buy food and clothes."    –Erasmus

"If only I had listened to Mike Huemer, millions might not have had to die in the 20th century."    –Karl Marx

"This book is terrible. Never listen to Mike Huemer."    –Satan

With endorsements like that, who could say no?

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Data Talks

 

The Moon Journey by John Caple (British, b.1966)

 The Moon Journey by John Caple (British, b.1966)

























Click to enlarge.

Monday, September 16, 2024

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Data Talks

 

Reader, 1922 by Félix Vallotton (French, 1865–1925)

Reader, 1922 by Félix Vallotton (French, 1865–1925)





















Click to enlarge.

Sunday, September 15, 2024

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Siamese cat sitting amongst grasses by Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe (1901-1979, British)

Siamese cat sitting amongst grasses by Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe (1901-1979, British)



















Click to enlarge.

Saturday, September 14, 2024

History

 

An Insight

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Flora, fresco Villa of Ariadne in Stabiae near Pompei, c. 15-45 AD

Flora, fresco Villa of Ariadne in Stabiae near Pompei, c. 15-45 AD






























Click to enlarge.

Homo faber


homo faber
noun
 
ho·​mo fa·​ber ¦hō(ˌ)mōˈfäbə(r), -ˌbe(ə)r; -fābə-
1: the human being as the maker or creator
 
2: in Bergsonism : the human being as engaged in transforming both the self morally and material things —contrasted with homo sapiens
 

Friday, September 13, 2024

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Place Pigalle in Parigi, ca. 1907 by Federico Zandomeneghi (Italian, 1847 - 1917)

Place Pigalle in Parigi, ca. 1907 by Federico Zandomeneghi (Italian, 1847 - 1917)































Click to enlarge.

Thursday, September 12, 2024

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Venus and Cupid, 1570 by Alessandro Allori (Italian, 1535–1607)

Venus and Cupid, 1570 by Alessandro Allori (Italian, 1535–1607)


















Click to enlarge.

Wednesday, September 11, 2024

History

 

An Insight

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

A Priestess of Bacchus, 1890 by John William Godward

A Priestess of Bacchus, 1890 by John William Godward


















Click to enlarge.

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Windmill in the Evening, 1917 by Piet Mondrian

Windmill in the Evening, 1917 by Piet Mondrian






























Click to enlarge.

Monday, September 9, 2024

History

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

An Orange in Three Ways, ca. 1901 by William McCloskey

An Orange in Three Ways, ca. 1901 by William McCloskey



















Click to enlarge.

Sunday, September 8, 2024

History

 

Point No-Point

Finished Point No-Point by David Willis McCullough.  The blurb:

Ziza Todd's new church assignment lands her in Quarryville, an incestuous town full of quirky characters and deep, dark secrets.  While running the church youth program, Ziza is thrust into a murder investigation when one of her model students turns up dead in a meadow and another body is discovered in an old warehouse not long afterward.

Ziza's search for the killer leads her to a bizarre collection of suspects whose only apparent link is the scenic waterfront property that they'd do anything to get their hands on.  

Weirdly anemic in hard to nail down ways.  More than a whiff of an MFA product.  Some light local color and history which is interesting but not enough to really care much.  It seemed a stretch, but there was the promise that this was "the first of many mysteries starring Ziza Todd."

In point of fact, this is the second in the series, and there were no further Ziza Todd mysteries after Point No-Point.  I can see why.

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

19 Townley Rd, Dulwich, 1973 by David Hepher

19 Townley Rd, Dulwich, 1973 by David Hepher






















Click to enlarge.

Saturday, September 7, 2024

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Camberwell Flats by Night, 1983 by David Hepher

Camberwell Flats by Night, 1983 by David Hepher




















Click to enlarge.

Friday, September 6, 2024

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Data Talks

 

View of Hampstead, c. 1935 by Fergus Graham

View of Hampstead, c. 1935 by Fergus Graham



















Click to enlarge.

Thursday, September 5, 2024

The Progressive's Achille's heel - the tendency to adopt the role of the Philosopher King, imposing what they think is best on others despite their disagreement.

From Hot Time in the Old Town The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt by Edward P. Kohn.  Page 66.

The classic example of the progressive's Achille's heel - the tendency to adopt the role of the Philosopher King, imposing what they think is best on others despite their disagreement.  

After the violence among the striking tailors on Sunday, August 2, Theodore Roosevelt toured the precinct houses of the area. Newspapers singled out his Sunday saloon-closing crusade as the reason for the violence. Had the police not been preoccupied rousting Sunday drinkers, a larger police presence among New York’s laboring class might have kept the peace. Roosevelt, however, saw the Sunday closing law as in labor’s best interest.

Years before, Roosevelt had urged labor to make “war on the saloons that yearly swallow so incredibly large a proportion” of workers’ wages. Yet New York labor largely resented Roosevelt’s crusade against the saloons. The previous summer the Commercial Advertiser  had noted that at a meeting of the Central Labor Union, the attitude was, “The workingman wants his beer on Sunday, and what are we here for if not to benefit the workingman?” The American Federation of Labor may have believed that if saloons were “not permitted to adjoin the mansions of the wealthy neither shall they be permitted to intrude upon the wage earners’ precincts.” But trade unionists in New York did not agree and focused much of their resentment on Roosevelt personally. Labor leaders noted that while there had been over 8,000 arrests annually for excise violations under Roosevelt, there were only 104 arrests for violations of the factory law in 1895 and only 21 arrests for violation of the law in 1896. Roosevelt might say he was acting in labor’s best interest, but the slight enforcement of a law prohibiting minors from working more than sixty hours a week, and stopping children under thirteen from working in factories, seemed to show otherwise.

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

The Terrace of the Trafalgar Tavern, Greenwich, London, 1878 by James Tissot

The Terrace of the Trafalgar Tavern, Greenwich, London, 1878 by James Tissot



















Click to enlarge.

Wednesday, September 4, 2024

After only two days of exposure to temperatures like this, the body’s defenses start to break down, and heat prostration strikes.

From Hot Time in the Old Town The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt by Edward P. Kohn.  Page 54.

During heat waves, humidity is one of heat’s deadliest accomplices. When a person’s blood is heated above 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, a body can dissipate the heat in various ways, such as varying the rate of blood circulation, panting, and especially sweating. Sweating cools the body through evaporation, but high humidity retards evaporation, leaving the body unable to cool itself.

As body heat begins to rise, heat-related illnesses and disorders develop. A body’s temperature can rise to 106 degrees in ten or fifteen minutes, but it only takes a rise above 103 degrees to cause hyperthermia, more commonly known as heat stroke. Red, hot, and dry skin, a rapid pulse, throbbing headache, dizziness, nausea, confusion, and unconsciousness are all warning signs. If the body’s temperature is not immediately lowered, namely by placing the victim in a cool bath or shower, permanent disability or death can occur. Even survivors of heatstroke can suffer serious permanent damage, such as loss of independent function and organ failure.

The temperature a body feels when the effects of heat and humidity are combined would later be called the heat index. An 85-degree air temperature with 85 percent humidity will feel like 100 degrees. Small increases in either temperature or humidity will have dramatic effects on the heat index. Only a 5-degree temperature increase will produce a heat index of 118. A 90-degree air temperature with 90 percent humidity will feel like 122 degrees. A temperature of 94 degrees  with 90 percent humidity feels like over 140 degrees. After only two days of exposure to temperatures like this, the body’s defenses start to break down, and heat prostration strikes.

This is what began to occur on Tuesday, as several people in Manhattan and Brooklyn were admitted to hospitals. Although the month began fairly mild, with the official high temperature on Saturday the first of August reaching only 71, temperatures now rose to the high 80s, accompanied by 90 percent humidity.

Based on the official temperatures recorded by the United States Weather Bureau that day, the high temperature for New York City was 87 degrees. With 90 percent humidity this created a heat index of nearly 110 degrees. Yet as would be noted by New Yorkers virtually every day of the heat wave, the official temperatures for the city were recorded high above street level, where a thermometer was free of much of the urban heat island effect and able to catch at least some small amount of breeze. Down on the street, thermometers regularly recorded temperatures ten degrees higher than the official record indicated, while temperatures inside the brick tenements of the Lower East Side easily reached 120 degrees. This would be the general condition for the next ten days.

The elderly are at great risk during heat waves, and they were the first victims in this case. Sixty-five-year-old Annie Kelly fell victim to the heat on the street not far from her home on West Twentieth Street and was taken to New York Hospital. Fifty-nine-year-old Patrick Murray was overcome on the Upper East Side and was taken to Flower Hospital at Sixty-Third Street. Lersen Present, sixty-three, suffered heat stroke downtown on East Broadway.

In addition to the elderly, New York’s many laborers risked serious injury by working and sweating all day in the sun. Even the healthiest could easily fall victim if undertaking strenuous labor  during the heat wave. This was evidenced by an Italian worker named Rolis, who suffered heat stroke and was hospitalized. He was only twenty-two years old.

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Though baffled oft, is ever won.

 From The Giaour by Lord Byron.  Line 123.

For freedom's battle, once begun,
Bequeath'd by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won.

Harvest Mouse, 1949 by Septimus Scott

Harvest Mouse, 1949 by Septimus Scott




























Click to enlarge.

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Keith and Willie

Other than one particular Group, I am not on Facebook all that much but today I had call to try and track someone down.  In doing so, I ended up at the Facebook Group site for my old alma mater, The Anglo-American School in Stockholm Sweden, my educational home from 1970-75.  It is now the International School of Stockholm.

I quickly came across the news of the passing of two old friends from half a century ago.  They had good lives with challenges and passed with many who loved them.  

Since they were part of my life back in the dark pre-internet days, I kept up with both of these fellows by mail and word of mouth among shared friends for a few years after Sweden but then between international relocations and college and life, we lost touch.

When the internet came along 2000-2010, we reconnected and touched base every few years.  One was in Oregon and the other in Utah and though I travelled a great deal, our paths never physically crossed again after Sweden.  As little as there was; a couple of years of friendship in Sweden as boys and very intermittent contact after that, I am deeply saddened by their passing.

They were an important part of my life and I will miss that they are no more.  

John Donne captures it.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were.

Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

Keith died earlier this year, 2024 and Willie died in 2023.  I am diminished.  

I have the memories in which they will always be 12 years old with me.  Shoveling snow, playing ping pong, commuting together on the bus, competing in class, playing sports together, listening to one another's albums.  Visiting one another's homes, going to dances at school, playing cards, slushing through the snow, talking for the five cold blocks from the bus to school, reading each others comics.   

As an empirical rationalist with strong stoical tendencies I am averse to maudlin thinking.  But still. Childhood friends are deep roots to have removed.  

I am out driving, on a chore, soon after becoming aware of their passing, when the Mood Blues's Are You Sitting Comfortably comes up.  How serendipitous.  

Are You Sitting Comfortably
The Moody Blues

Take another sip my love and see what you will see,
A fleet of golden galleons, on a crystal sea.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Let Merlin cast his spell.

Ride along the winds of time and see where we have been,
The glorious age of Camelot, when Guinevere was Queen.
It all unfolds before your eyes
As Merlin casts his spell.

The seven wonders of the world he'll lay before your feet,
In far-off lands, on distant shores, so many friends to meet.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Let Merlin cast his spell.

The Moody Blues were one of my favorite bands and so we listened to my albums just as I listened to the albums of their favorite bands.  We would have all heard this song together in one of our rooms in winter in Stockholm those many decades ago.  

I have especially liked Are You Sitting Comfortably because it evokes the recognition that we create much of our own reality.  In your mind, that fleet of golden galleons, on a crystal sea is real to the extent that you wish it to be.  And in far-off lands, on distant shores, there are still so many friends to meet.  Including some that have gone ahead.

So now Keith and Willie live on in my memory, forever young.  And missed for now.

Double click to enlarge.

Equal enforcement of the law, and equal treatment of all citizens by the government, was a hallmark of Roosevelt’s thought.

From Hot Time in the Old Town The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt by Edward P. Kohn.  Page 45.  Back when Progressives were still adherent to the values and goals of Age of Enlightenment Classical Liberalism.

After more than a year of trying to make the New York City police a serious crime-fighting organization, Theodore Roosevelt could  not have been happy to read such a comical account of his men. Roosevelt had a good relationship with the newspapers, having befriended journalists like Jacob Riis and Lincoln Steffens. And early on, the press had given Roosevelt rave reviews as he made his midnight inspections around the city.

But now even the press had turned against Roosevelt and his police. The fight to close saloons on Sunday, the resulting Republican losses at the polls, and the shabby dispute with Parker on the police commission had soured the fourth estate on “the biggest man in New York,” as one Chicago paper had called him. Roosevelt was dangerously close to leaving the New York police department a laughingstock.

Always aware of the power of the press and public opinion, Roosevelt had made a great effort to explain his actions and motivations. When at the beginning of his Sunday Excise crusade the New York Sun had questioned why Roosevelt would act against public sentiment, Roosevelt had replied with a statement that began, “I do not deal with public sentiment. I deal with the law.” Roosevelt also pointed out that lax enforcement resulted in a system in which saloon keepers bribed policemen or hid behind political influence. For Roosevelt the problem was having a law “which is not strictly enforced, which certain people are allowed to violate with impunity for corrupt reasons, while other offenders who lack their political influence are mercilessly harassed. All our resources will be strained to prevent any such discrimination and to secure the equal punishment of all offenders.”

Equal enforcement of the law, and equal treatment of all citizens by the government, was a hallmark of Roosevelt’s thought. It underlay many of his beliefs about good government, the evils of the spoils system, the need for an American civil service based solely on merit,  and police promotions based on meritorious service rather than political influence.

Years later in 1903, after becoming president, Roosevelt gave a speech at the New York State Fair in Syracuse that described what became known as the “Square Deal.” “We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man,” Roosevelt told the crowd. “We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less. Finally we must keep ever in mind that a republic such as ours can exist only by virtue of the orderly liberty which comes through equal domination of the law over all men alike, and through its administration in such resolute and fearless fashion as shall teach all that no man is above it all and no man below it.” “Orderly liberty which comes through equal domination of the law” might have been Roosevelt’s motto for his time on the police commission and his crusade against Sunday liquor selling.

Roosevelt collided with entrenched interests and his political career nearly foundered in New York as he sought to realize the goals of Rule of Law and Equality Before the Law.  

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Past Power And Glory by John Bryce

Past Power And Glory by John Bryce
































Click to enlarge.

Monday, September 2, 2024

New inventions seemed to turn on their creators with frightening regularity.

From Hot Time in the Old Town The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt by Edward P. Kohn.  Page 3.

In urban and industrial centers like New York by the end of the nineteenth century, human disasters appeared to have largely  replaced natural disasters. Few New Yorkers could remember the massive death tolls that had accompanied the cholera epidemics in the 1830s, ’40s, and ’50s. The Great Fire of 1835, which had destroyed over six hundred buildings, was a distant memory. More recently, the Blizzard of 1888 had killed hundreds of people all along the eastern seaboard, from Maryland to Maine. But no one in New York expected another two-foot snowfall in March anytime soon, while the last cholera epidemic of 1892 appeared to prove that that disease had been defeated for all time.

Modern, scientific, industrial people had evidently conquered the natural disaster. Science and germ theory had certainly ended cholera epidemics, and by the summer of 1896 the city’s Board of Health and Department of Sanitation were together making great progress stamping out dysentery and other infectious diseases. Science had even seemed to overcome weather itself. True, in May a great tornado had twisted its way through St. Louis and East St. Louis. Yet in the end it caused mainly property damage, and only about 250 people died. New York’s own man in the U.S. Weather Bureau, William “Prophet” Dunn, noted that the St. Louis tornado had been “predicted” by E. B. Garriott of the Chicago Bureau, allowing precautions to be taken and countless lives to be saved. The St. Louis “disaster” was so mild, in fact, that it could not even delay the Republican National Convention to be held there the very next month.

Human-made disasters like the New Jersey rail accident now seemed the norm. Recent events had demonstrated iron and steel’s greater capacity to kill and maim on a massive scale than mere water or wind, fire or ice. Indeed, most Americans marked their lives by the still recent Civil War. If anything, that human-made disaster put nature to shame. What hurricane could have killed 600,000 with such  efficiency and cold-bloodedness? What fire could have found fuel for four long years?

Even on a smaller and more local scale new inventions seemed to turn on their creators with frightening regularity. In 1871 the boiler on the Staten Island Ferry exploded, killing 125. In 1876 a fire begun by a kerosene lamp tore through the stage scenery of the Brooklyn Theatre, killing 276. Trains crashed. Ships sank. Dams broke. The above-ground horse-drawn railway trolleys that plied New York streets would regularly clip an unfortunate pedestrian, taking a toe or an entire foot. And as America industrialized, the dangers to the industrial worker increased: Smelters exploded, chains broke, sparks flew, pulleys snapped, and blades slipped.