A Most Ancient Spiral Galaxy

The "grand-design" spiral galaxy described as "the most ancient spiral galaxy...ever discovered" shouldn't exist because "Current wisdom holds that such 'grand-design' spiral galaxies simply didn’t exist at such an early time in the history of the universe," according to this website.

And commenting on the structure of this galaxy, UCLA astrophysicist Alice Shapley opines:

The vast majority of old galaxies look like train wrecks...Our first thought was, why is this one so different, and so beautiful?

And University of Toronto's David Law, who authored the study, comments:

The fact that this galaxy exists is astounding. Current wisdom holds that such ‘grand-design' spiral galaxies simply didn't exist at such an early time in the history of the universe.

At the View From the Right, the sentiments are different. Lawrence Auster writes:

What a dumb, vulgar thing to say [that vast majority of old galaxies look like train wrecks] about objects ten billion years old, a hundred thousand light-years across, and each containing hundreds of billions or even tens of trillions of stars. No scientist in 1950 or 1970 would have said it...

Far too often, scientists, like their fellow elites in contemporary liberated society who believe in nothing higher or truer than the disordered human self, seem to have no sense of appropriateness, no inherent respect for anything, for the isness of anything. They must drag everything down to the commonest level and make it appear to be as messy and meaningless as we ourselves—even objects that are infinitely vaster and older than anything we can conceive, and that express an order of which (notwithstanding scientific theories which claim to explain far more than than they really do explain) we have no idea.

I think that people, modern, liberal people (which is the majority of the West now) have no principles with which to guide their observations of the world around them.

The Good, the True and the Beautiful are no longer those solid principles with which we tried to understand the world around us. These principles were formed partly through religion (specifically Christianity) and partly through our cultural history and traditions. Society was thus constantly informed how to differentiate between good and evil, beautiful and the less beautiful, the true and the untruthful.

Now, since we have cast aside these traditions, and since religion is just something one harks back to on Christmas or a christening, we no longer have that to guide our understanding of the world.

So, the tremendous beauty, complexity, and mystery of the universe is smeared with the ugly words of a modern "scientist." Beauty, rather than bring things up to its level, is now dragged down to the putrid messes of the ugly. And this is just how modern people would have it, since bringing things down to the "equal" level of ugliness is much easier than bringing it up to the difficult hierarchical requirements of beauty.

If scientist are not in awe of what they're discovering, how can they enjoy their work? Why bother to spend hours, days and even years looking through a metal funnel if they are not impressed by what they see? Otherwise, they may as well spend their days looking at the crumbs on their desks, which is how the likes of David Law really do see their work, and hence their crass and crude comments on these celestial bodies.

I should add that pre-modern scientists had a much better sense of the mysterious, and were much more humble than their post-modern inheritors. As I've mentioned before, it was God who got discarded so that David Law and Alice Shapley can say (and believe) these things. Things are now measured in terms of man's limitations, rather than God's infinity.

Since my interest is beauty, I think what is going on is an elimination of beauty in our modern understanding of the world, which also leads to the elimination of the good and the true. I wrote here about beauty:

Ugliness rules. In clothing, in films, in art and even in our "representatives" of beauty. I don't think it is a lack of knowledge about beauty. We've developed standards and often unanimous agreement about what constitutes the beautiful. So I'm not going to into the beauty-hater's argument that beauty is relative; beauty can be objectively measured. What's going on is that people are hating beauty. It is a form of envy. If I cannot be beautiful, then why is she beautiful? It is like wealth, or intelligence, or a sense of entitlement to live anywhere one pleases. Spread the wealth, accept I.Q.ers of 91 into Harvard, let everyone from every corner of the world come into the prosperous West. Or youth. Why cannot I be as young (and attractive) as any fifteen-year-old, at my ripe old age of seventy? Such are the mantra of the equal-opportunity narcissists.

So, in order to fit in with their lowered standards, beauty magazines are (actually they have been, for decades now) publicizing ugliness in their fashion shoots, their models, and even with the "celebrities" and film actors they promote. There was a time when actresses like Elizabeth Taylor, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly and many more appeared in immaculate clothing, looking ethereally beautiful, at any age. And we admired them.

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A Glint of Evil

I made this collage of portraits of Sally Ride, the lesbian astronaut who recently died. More on Ride at the View From the Right, via The Thinking Housewife.

Photos:

1. Even as a high school eighteen-year-old (top black and white photo) Ride has a distinct lack of femininity. The later years of high school is when girls have achieved some understanding of their femininity, and often are not shy or reticent about showing it (some showing too much). But, Ride in her late teens, opts for a little girl's pony tails with ribbons for her hair. Her wide smile and assertive jut of the chin give her a masculine demeanor. Teen-age girls, however much they play jock-like sports, still find a way to look feminine.

2. Monitoring control panels in the space shuttle Challenger. Even as a young woman, there is the set jaws and unsmiling eyes of someone who is not willing to be feminine.

3. Standing with a masculine swagger in her astronaut's suit.

4. She is there in the middle with another fellow-lesbian, tennis player Billie Jean King. They looked up adoringly at the statuesque Gloria Steinem, the anti-female feminist, who made their lesbian "lifestyle" much easier.

5. With the endorser of same-sex marriage. Notice her masculine chin, and, well, masculine smile. Her hands also look unusually large, and it must be quite a handshake she's giving Obama, who looks a little overwhelmed. Here is a larger photo showing her expression better.

The men in the background look on with pathetic expressions, thoroughly approving of the occasion, but also as though they've been whipped into that approval. The older man is Craig Barrett. From Wikipedia:

Craig R. Barrett (born August 29, 1939) is an American business executive who served as the chairman of the board of the Intel Corporation until May 2009. He became CEO of Intel in 1998, a position he held for seven years. After retiring from Intel, Barrett joined the faculty at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona.

Below are photos of Craig Barrett, looking much more serious giving a speech at the World Economic Forum in 2009 (left), and in an enlarged version of the above photo, at Sally Ride's launch of the science program "Educate to Innovate" at the White House, also in 2009. (I have to add here that Barrett is wearing the same tie to both occasions - i.e. he is are not at the same event.)


6. A much later official portrait (from what I can find out, it is her official portrait at the California Hall of Fame, where she was inducted in 2006). It is an odd, androgynous face, with unsmiling eyes.

Finally, Ride's "partner" Tam O'Shaughnessy. The photo below is the only one available on the web. O'Shaughnessy looks even more insidious than Ride. With her squinted eyes and elongated face, she looks like a ferret. At least her and Ride, California natives, never "married."


Here's a profile on O'Shaughnessy:

Like Ride, O'Shaughnessy was interested in science from a very young age, and "one of her favorite childhood memories is of watching tadpoles in a creek gradually sprout legs, go green and turn into frogs," according to her bio on the Sally Ride Science website.

After moving on from tadpoles to high school, O'Shaughnessy attended Georgia State University, where she earned bachelor's and master's degrees in biology. She went on to teach college biology, then went on to earn a doctorate degree in school psychology from the University of California, Riverside, after her interest in the psychology of learning was piqued by her experience as a professor.

O'Shaugnessy has gone on to do many things in her career, writing nine childrens' science books, as well as helping her partner "found Sally Ride Science because of her long-standing commitment to science education and her recognition of the importance of supporting girls' interests in science," according to the foundation's website.

Quite a career trajectory, from a masters degree and college teaching career in biology to a PhD in psychology to writing children's science books, such are the elite women of academia.

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Picasso's Fraud

Pablo Picasso
Figures au Bord de la Mer, 1931

On loan to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto
for the exhibit: Picasso: masterpieces from the
Musée National Picasso, Paris

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Tom Wolfe understood the high level farce of Picasso, as he writes in The Painted Word:

...a few fashionable people discovered their own uses of [Modern Art]. It was after the First World War the modern and modernistic came into the language as exciting adjectives...By 1920, in le monde*, to be fashionable was to be modern, and Modern Art the new spirit of the avant-garde were perfectly suited for that vogue.

Picasso was a case in point. Picasso did not begin to become Picasso, in the art world or in the press, until he was pushing forty and painted the scenery for Diaghilev's Russian ballet in London in 1918. Diaghilev & Co. were a tremendous succès de scandale in fashionable London. The wild dervishing of Nijinsky, the lurid costumes - it was all too deliciously modern for words. The Modernistic settings by Picasso, André Derain, and (later on) Matisse, were all part of the excitement, and le monde loved it. "Art," in Osbert Lancaster's phrase, "came once more to roost among the duchesses."

Picasso, who had once lived in the legendary unlit attic and painted at night with a brush in one hand and a candlestick in the other - Picasso now stayed at the Savoy, had lots of clothes made on Bond Street nearby, went to all the best parties (and parties were never better), was set up with highly publicized shows of his paintings, and became a social lion - which he remained, Tales of the Aging Recluse notwithstanding, until he was in his seventies. [pp 27-30]

I'm still trying to find researched articles (or books) on the artists that influenced Picasso (or that Picasso copied from, to use a more accurate activity). My recent tour through the Picasso exhibit at the AGO was of some help, but few of the commentaries by the paintings indicated his actual (artistic) influences. I wrote about it in my blog in 2008 thus:

Anyone who has studied Picasso will realize the fraud that he is, just as Tom Wolfe writes. Every step of Picasso's, which was so radically different from his previous steps (from his blue period, to his "cubism" to name the more famous ones), was a copy of other more serious artists in his milieu. An art critic who doesn't recognize this is being dishonest, to say the least.

I got these ideas from somewhere. I studied art books, paintings and gallery pieces over a number of years to have reached this conclusion. I remember telling my film teacher, Bruce Elder, that I thought Jackson Pollock was a fraud, throwing paint on paper. Granted, he had a good aim, but so do I being a former goal shooter for my netball (English version of girls' basketball) team. And that Picasso was a bigger fraud than Pollock because his fraud was not even his own physical effort, like Pollock's was. Picasso copied the movements and artists around him (some with considerably more talent and innovative abilities like Braque) and made a ton of money by "redefining" his art every now and then to his gullible, rich patrons, who loved this modern idea of "progress" in art. Professor Elder eyed me with suspicion after that, and rightly so. I ended up critiquing his work too [here and here].

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*...the social sphere described so well by Balzac, the milieu of those who find it important to be in fashion, the orbit of those aristocrats, wealthy bourgeois, publishers, writers, journalists, impresarios, performers, who wish to be "where things happen," the glamorous but small world of that creation of the nineteenth-century metropolis, tout le monde, Everybody, as in "Everybody says"...the smart set, in a phrase..."smart," with its overtones of cultivation as well as cynicism [p 16].

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Radical Multi-Culti Chic

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I found Tom Wolfe's The Painted Wall at a second hand bookstore for $4.95 (compared to the $12 advertized in the websites of most retail book stores). None of the books salesmen, whether at Chapters, Coles or the second hand store, knew about the book. And I couldn't find (or the salesmen couldn't find) the lone copy that was listed in the big store databases.

"No-one reads Tom Wolfe anymore," I said disdainfully.

"He wrote a couple of fiction books," said one book expert, not to be outwitted.

"He's best known as a scathing critic of culture. Forget his fiction," I said.

I usually take my books to a favorite reading spot, somewhere where I can have a cup of coffee. This time, I went to a restaurant, which although it has loud music, is muffled by the very high ceilings. The nice waitress gave me a large seat, and took my order.

Well, I was right across from a couple which looked like it was in its early twenties. I should have read the signs. The girl was an attractive, well-groomed Chinese/Korean/Asian, and the guy was an unattractive white guy, who was overweight, badly groomed, and dressed sloppily in dirty sweats and baggy jeans. Yet another from my survey: "White unattractive guys with cute Asian girls." The girl was facing me while the guy had his back to me (and he never turned around once in my direction, even through the "interaction" that followed).

I should add that the Asian cuteness is over-rated, and I think white girls are by far the more beautiful, if we are to make a hierarchy of looks, with blacks coming second.


I have this theory that it is the Asian girls who run after the white guys, using their wiles in many ways, from their long permed hair (no Asian girl has naturally curly or wavy hair, and every Asian girl has long hair), their short-shorts that is the style-du-jour for the summer months (as I count short-short wearers, Asian girls far outnumber anyone else, at least here in Toronto), their ready smiles, and all-round more feminine ways. But, as I have noted, this "femininity" takes a back seat to a more belligerent temperament as the white male/Asian female relationship solidifies, i.e. the man is trapped.

Since Asians females aggressively shove in my face their alien, inter-racial couplings, i.e., muscling aside the traditional same-race relationships (Asian females are now more commonly with black males as well), I have no qualms about staring at such couples from where I am in the subway, at a cafe, or just standing at the sidewalk.

And I did so at this couple, although I was staring at the girl directly, and glancing at the back of the guy. The effect was interesting. The girl put on a terrified, trapped look on her face, and kept aggressively and cloyingly demanding the man's attention, from linking her arms with his, to rubbing his hands, to shaking her permed wavy hair back and forth. I didn't stop staring. I decided that they have a few choices in order to "deal" with my behavior. The guy can come and confront me, like a true "man," then we can have a real mano a mano; he can call the wait staff, then I can call the manager and tell them I've done absolutely nothing wrong; they can continue as they are; they can stop; or they can leave.

They chose mid-way between stopping and continuing, egged on by the Asian girl. She smiled, she scowled, she frowned, and finally, when the the dry seriousness of it hit her, she put on a terrified look.

Then, I just smiled, picked up my book and read my few chapters. All the waiters/waitresses were nice to me. One took so long to take my order (it was a busy afternoon) that I caught him rushing by and he served me with his profuse apologies. Another forgot my bill, so I asked him to bring it, for which he profusely apologized. Another sent me to the wrong exit, for which he profusely apologized, and set me to the right directions. I wasn't some loony, and the wait staff was on my side (I made sure of that). I left with a chorus of their goodbyes, and my demure smile from behind my shoulder.

The hand-clinging couple, with the petrified Asian girl, continued with its pathetic public display of I-don't-know-what, knowing (at least the girl) that someone doesn't find it cute.

I should add that I don't really find anything wrong with public displays of affection between couples. I think, though, they should be discreet and as private as possible. Or, lovers should be on the romantic bridges of Paris, with a beautiful sunset as the backdrop to a silhouette of the many lovely buildings around the Seine, which would make them romantic and demonstrative and not not lewd and clingy.

But there is something creepy about seeing public demonstrations of terrified affection between a white guy and an Asian female.

Still, a bar/restaurant in a mall doesn't capture any romance for anyone, and in fact it is simply a place to have a decent meal, to have some conversation (if the music allows), and to leave.

I read some funny sections from my small book, had my quick snack, paid my bill and tip, and left. The "couple" stayed with its footsies and carb-filled dinner.

I am waiting for the wrath of white women who will some day have their multi-culti glaze removed from their eyes, as they realize that their men have been stolen away from them, and by the Asian "friend" who was around all the time.

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Back to Earth

Above are the incredible shots of the Space Shuttle Enterprise flying over New York City last Friday April 27. It was mounted on NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft at Dulles International Airport for its final flight, landing at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at around 11:20 am.

But on the way, [the shuttle] thrilled thousands of spectators by flying at low-attitude above some of Manhattan's most iconic landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and One World Trade Center, as it followed the Hudson River to the Tappan Zee Bridge and back.

The above quote is from the Daily Mail, which has more photographs of the spectacular event.

The dramatic clouds over New York fit the grandeur of the shuttle. And one great lady raises her arm in greeting to a great American enterprise, which is paying its respects to a great American city.

On a sour note, President Obama's funding cuts for NASA:

leaves NASA funded at its lowest level in four years, forcing the space agency to juggle priorities and "devastating planetary science," said Bill Nye, CEO of space exploration group The Planetary Society.[From Foxnews.com]

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Multi-Culti Homosexuals and Lesbians

Here is an image, via View From the Right (from The Thinking Housewife, under the title "Portrait of a Family") which shows a black/white lesbian couple, with an Asian homosexual sperm donor, and the Asian-looking offspring.

Of course, there is a lot that is horribly wrong with this, as both writers have shown.

What struck me about this "portrait" is the expressions of the three adults.

The black woman looks uncomfortable, as though she's listening to, and following, some command which she does not want to obey, but has no choice in the matter. Why? Can't she delve into some inner morality of hers, dig out those sermons and Bible quotes that she surely must know, and act accordingly? Why are people having such a hard time following moral codes? I think the modern Church, society, culture, civilization, have failed such people, who have only pop culture and T.V. shows to turn to, and which makes them susceptible to aggressively immoral beliefs which they cannot tackle with their deficient systems. Of course, an obvious question would be why she couldn't find a black man, a black husband, to make a normal family with. I think black women have beaten down (or spoilt - just the other side of the coin) black men so much that even a few good black men are hard to find. Instead of being bitter, and turning lesbian, this is the time to rebuild that culture, not to destroy it further.

The white, butch-looking woman looks strangely satisfied with this menage she's acquired. She has no qualms about her "situation." Her protective hand over the Asian man shows she will be there to defend it all. She stands tall and proud, guarding her "family."

The Asian man looks shell-shocked but happy. He is the center of attention, along with the baby which he's "fathered." It is ironic that this lesbian couple would put a man as their focal point (in this picture, at least). But, he's not really a man, being a deviant homosexual. He seems less certain than the butch woman, but a little more stubborn (in his thoughts and ideas) than the black woman. The women have conceded to him holding the baby (because he's the "father," because he'll have to give it up soon anyway?). It makes sense aesthetically (photographers have a tendency to think in those terms), since it looks more (just) like him.

There was a time when we would run away, no, cast out, such freaks from our societies. Now, they get to pose for national newspapers.

And the baby's name is significant. For one, it is the name of a slave girl in a Turkish Sultan's harem in Mozart's unfinished opera of the same name. Here is a synopsis of the opera:

In Turkey, the Sultan Soliman has European slaves in his seraglio (Das Serail, the alternative title); two of them, Zaide and Gomatz, are in love, but the complication is that Soliman also has his eye on Zaide. The lovers ask their overseer Allazim (who is also a slave) to help them escape, and he eventually agrees to provide a boat for them. In Act 2 the runaways are brought back to face the Sultan's wrath. Allazim is also put in chains, but he tells Soliman that he once saved his life: as the commander of a Venetian ship he rescued Soliman from pirates, but he himself was taken into slavery. Allazim is pardoned immediately, but the Sultan is deaf to his plea for the escapees. And that is where it ends! However, an ending is provided on the recording I have (Orfeo 1983): Allazim inspires Soliman to show compassion, and the Sultan releases them, saying, "not only Europe, but also Asia can produce virtuous souls".

But I doubt that this mother has any love for Western culture, and least of all for a classical Western composer like Mozart. And would she even know about this relatively unknown opera? She'd rather give the baby a foreign-sounding, exotic name, burdening it with one more oddity it has to grow up with: A name which she believes has no real resemblance to the British culture it was born into. But at the rate things are going there, such "oriental" sounding names will be the norm, and "families" like this are making sure it will happen sooner than later.

But did Mozart get it wrong? Is the name for a female or a male? Searching on the web, I found several sources that translate Zaide as a Yiddish grandfather. Here is one:

Zayde/zaide (n.)
Grandfather: My zayde taught me how to throw a baseball.

But there are others which translate the name as Jewish for male or female elder. Other sources give the name Arabic origins (surplus, to grow), so it could be both male or female in Arabic also. Mozart's Zaide, which one would assume is a Turkish slave, is actually a European slave according to various write-ups of the opera, and this must be a euphemism for a European Jew in Mozart's era. So much for naming a baby.

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Young, beautiful, white boy: Tall, handsome, young man

Jonathan Knight (1789–1864)
Artist unidentified
Connecticut
c. 1797
Oil on paperboard, mounted on Masonite
34 x 24 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Ralph Esmerian, 2005.8.1

I recently sent the following email to a correspondent, with the subject line: "Young, beautiful, white boy." It was just before the Norwegian murderer went on his rampage on the Utoye island summer camp.

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Dear______,

I hope you don't mind me asking your opinion on this. It bothers me a lot, and I have even talked to the family concerned about it.

I live in what used to be a Victorian neighborhood, in the center of Toronto (I live in an apartment high rise, and I am glad to say it is the only one in the neighborhood). Many of the houses are being renovated, in the anticipation that the real estate value of those homes will climb up and more wealthy residents will move in to take advantage of this historically attractive location. So far, many of the houses have been converted into several sections, allowing up to four tenants (some families) to live in each house.

The neighborhood is not the greatest, but I moved here as a student at the nearby Ryerson University some ten years ago, and it is close to the downtown, to the university's facilities, has nice trees and these nice homes, etc. so I haven't moved. It is also close to some other historic landmarks like the Allan Garden Conservatory, which became one of my textile pieces a couple of years ago.

There are a few marks against the neighborhood. One is a homeless shelter on the next street over. The residents are often harmless, but some are schizophrenics (there was a time when Toronto reduced its mental health facilities, so many are left wondering the streets), and others are alcoholics, so they are potentially dangerous. Also, I suspect that there are many refugees who are given temporary asylum there while their papers are processed. I see many able-bodied West Indians (I think Jamaicans) around. These are the real dangerous ones.

The area has also been taken over by Native American groups. One house is a job counselling center, and another is some kind of drop in center for drug and alcohol abusers.

There is a daycare center around the corner. I asked a nice-looking woman, who turned out to be Nigerian, how expensive the place is. She answered that she's there because it is subsidized.

There is a "women's" shelter down the street, which is a place where women "abused" by their husbands can go.

So, many clever minority groups have taken up this small area to open facilities for marginalized groups (funded by government monies). Some, as I said earlier, are potentially erratic and dangerous.

So, I'm not sure if this little street will ever catch on as an ideal place for the downtown minded. Cabbagetown, the area where there are superb Victorian houses, is about fifteen minutes from here, and will surely continue to be the prime attraction.

The family across the street from my building has done a great job of renovating its home. There is a lovely garden. The house is a pretty duplex, with what looks like a Chinese family living above, which seems very friendly with this family.

Their son is a rambunctious little boy (a toddler), with blond hair and blue eyes, who tears around the small garden when he gets out to play (which is about twice a day).

A few weeks ago, I went to the father while he was in the garden and told him to be careful, that such a lovely boy with such a loud voice, playing outside, is likely to attract attention. That although the neighborhood looks pretty and quiet, there are many things which might make it potentially dangerous. I asked the boy his name (he was curious and watching) and he said "_______" almost immediately. I wasn't testing him, but I later realized that he was too friendly, but that is probably normal for boys his age.

I felt sorry for the father. I couldn't offer him any solutions, but could only point out the dangers. I notice now that the little boy is playing less frequently outside, and there is always someone with him. Most of the time, though, it is the Chinese woman from upstairs. I don't understand this. This goes back to my original concern (observation) that this family doesn't really seem to be thinking about the boy, but about their "needs": to have a nice house, to have a ready baby sitter (I'm not sure if they pay the Chinese woman, but they must since she's almost always with him now). I don't run into the mother on the street, so I assume she stays home. Both the parents are overweight, the mother close to obese. The little kid so far is about average, although I'm noticing that he's growing both up and sideways these days.

As an aside, why leave the kid with this Chinese woman? I am getting more and more suspicious of the "Asian" immigrants these days. Why is she spending all this time with the boy? Even the financial pay-off cannot be that much. I know that Asians are always trying to know and learn as much about Canadian life and culture as they can (I used to teach ESL - English as a Second Language - exclusively to Chinese), and that their un-voiced goal is to find ways to compete against Canadians - whites - in jobs, homes, school admittance (they would literally memorize SAT and GRE handbooks) etc. And the women, I am sorry to say, are getting adept at catching the wayward white male, and there are many of them these days, and I'm sure these women study them (perhaps their mothers also coach them) and their behaviors, to make this easier (slam dunk, more like).

This family reminds me of the post you had about the family which moved into a dangerous neigborhood because they wanted to live in a house that they could afford. And your observation that living in a good neighborhood, perhaps in a modest apartment, would have suited them better until they could afford (or find) the nice house they so desire.

But, in the end, it is selfishness, which I think is at the core of such people, whom I will label as liberals (they cannot be anything else).

They come to a rough neighborhood not because they are going to improve it, but because they can find cheap housing.

They befriend the foreigner upstairs (the Chinese woman has a distinct Chinese accent) perhaps because they do like her, but also she seems a ready hand with house-keeping demands.

They grow flowers and tend their garden, in an attempt to make a small oasis of prettiness for themselves, although I do admit that the street generally looks pretty, but they are the only ones who have bothered with landscaping their front yard. This would be hard to do in many of the typical Toronto townhouses (which go cheaper) which have no garden areas, or in apartments even if it has a balcony.

They have a nice porch in front of their house. But there isn't much to look out to, and neighbors around here are not friendly, so there is no-one to talk to (unless, it is me :) ).

And so on.

Am I over-reacting? Is there anything positive that this family can do? Is the little boy doomed: Will he end up marrying the daughter of his Chinese neighbors? Will he ever learn to get suspicious of foreigners, and foreign and dangerous things of all kinds, when his talents - he is clearly energetic and talented - lead him to important positions in his country, and he becomes an easy target?

Part of my sadness is that this couple is using this little boy as an experiment - at multiculturalism, at living in their "house" regardless of dangers, etc. For all the adults in that house, he seems awfully neglected to me.

I cannot pinpoint the main question or point I want to ask you or make, but I am getting very cynical these days as to how our adults (leaders, parents, teachers, etc.) are running our homes, cities and countries. It looks like we've let something out of the bag, and it is slowly and methodically intent on wreaking havoc.

I hope this wasn't too dismal a scenario. I always think the first step out of a problem is to recognize the problem.

Thanks,

Kidist

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Celestial Paintings

AE Aurigae

Menkhib

Zeta Ophiuchi

I found a brief report on runaway stars at Drudge, which linked to the story at the Daily Mail's online Science and Technology section.

The Mail referred me to NASA's website, which has a whole series of these magnificent images. The three above especially caught my attention.

I usually link to the Mail's website to skim through its often unabashed and frank "reports" on the latest runaway stars (Britney, Lindsay, Kim, et al.). But these are the true stars.

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Why Japan?

In my previous post Unleashing the Demons, I wrote that modern technology is allowing us to see unroll, like those giant, glutinous waves, what's going on in Japan. I wrote:

We are seeing a lot of things we are not meant to see in our brave new modern world. We have unleashed many demons. Perhaps it is God's script; that He wants us to see these things. I have been ominous before about the state of our world's affairs. I remain so.

So, I have to ask, why Japan? Biblical disasters, which many people are comparing this to, are preceded by tremendous sin. Even Katrina has been attributed to man's weaknesses by many writers (theologians and non-theologians, priests and laymen alike).

So, this begs the important question which no-one, no pundit or writer, has asked so far: Why Japan?

Screenshot of the latest headlines at Drudge Report

On a related note, a more practical question: Why did Japan build so many nuclear plants on a geography that is so susceptible to earthquakes and tidal waves, which make such plants potentially catastrophic?

Tonight's The Agenda, a current affairs program on Television Ontario (TVO), had on an expert on nuclear energy, Duncan Hawthorne of Bruce Power. Hawthorne said that the plants withstood the earthquake (as they were built to do), but capitulated under the tidal waves. So, in the probability of both a quake and a tidal wave occurring simultaneously, the Japanese plants were unprepared. It is a little worse, though. The chances that a tidal wave would occur after an earthquake of high magnitude are high. An earthquake of high magnitude makes a tidal wave more likely to occur.

This is exactly what happened.

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Detroit's Horrors

J.M.W. Turner, Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino 1840

There is something both majestic and horrific about the images Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre display in their book Detroit in ruins: the photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre. The book chronicles the city's and its buildings' abandonment by its inhabitants. Marchand's and Meffre's buildings stand empty and rotting, as though they were part of a great civilization that was ransacked by invading barbarians. Destroyed hotel ballrooms and school libraries alike acquire a hauntingly grand, decadent presence. The photographs seem to aspire to the ruins paintings Turner loved to paint partly as a dedication to those ancient civilizations that preceded, and nourished, his own. But I don't think Marchand and Meffre have such lofty or grateful intentions.

The Guardian understands this horror, and starts its review of the book with an account of Detroit's abandoned police department:

In December 2001, the old Highland Park police department in Detroit was temporarily disbanded. The building it vacated was abandoned with everything in it: furniture, uniforms, typewriters, crime files and even the countless mug-shots of criminals who had passed through there. Among the debris that photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre found there in 2005 was a scattering of stiff, rotting cardboard files each bearing a woman's name.

In total 11 women had been catalogued by the police, including Debbie Ann Friday, Vicki Truelove, Juanita Hardy, Bertha Jean Mason and Valerie Chalk. Down in the dank basement of the police station, where "human samples" were stored – and had been abandoned along with everything else – the two French photographers also uncovered the name of the man who was linked to all of the women's deaths. Benjamin Atkins was a notorious serial killer. Between 1991 and 1992 he left the bodies of his victims in various empty buildings across the city.

Like the serial killer who destroyed the lives of the 11 women, Detroit's ransackers have done the same to their beautiful city.

Marchand's website for his own photographs displays what resemble fashion photos of models for a style magazine. None of the Detroit images are on view at this site. A few of Marchand's models are bleached blond white girls. As unattractive as all the models are, the Caucasian girls are given the brunt of ugliness, or at least of horror. They look like zombies resuscitated for the photo shoot. Or what the mad witches and ghosts from Shakespeare's plays or the Brontë sisters' novels must look like.

Many of the other models are amorphous "Asian" girl-women, doll-like both in posture and in appearance. Marchand seems obsessed with some hybrid of a Caucasian/Asian female, who is now prominent on fashion runways, as well as on the streets of Toronto. This must be the century of the "Asian look" where even ordinary folk, white or black, and mostly men, are dipping into the Asian DNA. Despite Marchand's attempt at channeling vulnerability, or even as close to beauty as he can get, there is an aura of decadence surrounding these doll-women. Some are placed in compromising poses, alluding to S&M, putting a sinister spin throughout the photographs.

The background image which surrounds the screen for his model photographs looks like one of the ravaged Detroit building interiors. And some of the shots of the models look like they were taken in those very rooms in Detroit, which Marchand seems to have taken over and converted into studios. Perhaps Detroit real estate is at give-away prices. Artists are always looking for that ideal, super-cheap location, with lots of empty space and lots of light. These are not wanting in this Detroit.

Marchand, like all artists, builds around his works to provide some kind of continuation and evolution of his ideas. From decaying, destroyed buildings to Asian hybrid, doll-like fetishistic models, what could he be trying to tell us?

Let us leave his internal monologue to himself. We see what we see. The conclusion I come up with is that Marchand doesn't see much future for America, and his photographs of both buildings and models could be seen as metaphors for the decline of America. Decadence, portrayed through racial ambiguities, sexual immaturity and the destroyed grandeur of truly beautiful buildings, is the future of America, seems to be his message. And all photographers have symbolic ideas behind their works, however much they may deny this.

Even Marchand's architectural photographs have their (invisible) racial component. Perhaps race is everything in America, something which people constantly mention, or circle around, but never confront. Detroit was a prosperous, affluent city, with "the highest median income in America." Now, it has one of the highest levels of of black crime in America, and its white population has abandoned it. From the Council of Conservative Citizens:

1) In 2000, Detroit ranked as the United States’ eleventh most populous city, with 951,270 residents. Metro Detroit, is a six-county area with a population of 4,425,110, making it the nation’s eleventh-largest metropolitan area.

2) The city population dropped from its peak in 1950 with a population of 1,849,568 to 871,121 in 2006. In the 2000 census, 70% of the total Black population in Metro Detroit lived in the City of Detroit.

3) Detroit is usually listed as 82% black. However this is the figure on the 2000 census. The figure is much higher now as the US government estimates that Detroit shrank by a staggering 80,000 people between 2000 and 2006! Today Detroit is probably more like 90% and most of the rest are immigrants.

4) In the 2000s, 70% of the total Black population in Metro Detroit lived in the City of Detroit. Of the 185 cities and townships in Metro Detroit, 115 were over 95% White. Of the more than 240,000 suburban blacks in Metro Detroit, 44% lived in Inkster, Oak Park, Pontiac, and Southfield; 9/10ths of the African-American population in the area consisted of residents of Detroit, Highland Park, Inkster, Pontiac, and Southfield.

Marchand's and Meffre's statement on their joint website has this:

Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes, small pieces of history in suspension.

The state of ruin is essentially a temporary situation that happens at some point, the volatile result of change of era and the fall of empires. This fragility, the time elapsed but even so running fast, lead us to watch them one very last time being dismayed, or admire, making us wondering about the permanence of things.

Photography appeared to us as a modest way to keep a little bit of this ephemeral state.

Despite its simplistic and pompous language (yes, it manages to be both at the same time), Marchand's and Meffre's statement makes it clear, as I had suspected, that their photographs are a false eulogy for America. The American "empire" has not yet fallen, and if so, out of the ashes fallen empires, like the Greek and the Roman, come newer and possibly greater civilizations. That is after all the course of our Western civilization. Turner was lamenting fallen empires and yet was optimistic enough to pass on meanings and symbols of hope from their ruins.

Our two contemporary chroniclers simply throw pessimism, and even nihilism, at us, as though basking in the horror and unwilling to relinquish it. We don't have to accept their message.

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Leonardo's Flying Machine Revisited

The ornithopter, or human-powered flying machine built
by Todd Reichert

One of the first blog posts I wrote was back in October 2005, under Camera Lucida. I filed it under science, although it was about the artist (now we consider him more of an artist than a scientist) Leonardo Da Vinci. It was titled Leonardo's Flying Machine, and describes a contemporary scientist's attempt to rebuild one of Leonardo's flying machines. What this 21st century designer attempted was more glider than a plane.

Todd Reichert, a PhD student for the University of Toronto, has recently managed to build another Leonardo machine. This time, it is a human powered flying machine, and actually flies rather than glides. Reichert sits in the cockpit of the small plane (with expansive wings) and pedals the machine up and into the sky.

You can watch the short video (Reichert managed to stay airborne for 19 seconds) here - just scroll down to the "video".

For some reason, each time I see these scientific reports about flying machines, I think of the movie Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines (Or How I Flew From London To Paris In 25 Hours 11 Minutes), with the playful lyrics (of which I know only the first three lines):

Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines.
They Go Up, Tiddly, Up, Up.
They Go Down, Tiddly, Down, Down.
They Enchant All The Ladies And Steal All The Scenes
With their Up, Tiddly, Up, Up
And They're Down, Tiddly, Down, Down.

Up! Down! Flying Around.
Looping The Loop And Defying The Ground.
They're All, Frightfully Keen
Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines.

They Can Fly Upside Down With Their Feet In The Air.
They Don't Think Of Danger. They Really Don't Care.
Newton Would Think He Had Made A Mistake.
To See Those Young Men And The Chances They Take.

Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines.
They Go Up, Tiddly, Up, Up.
They Go Down, Tiddly, Down, Down.
They Enchant All The Ladies And Steal All The Scenes
With their Up, Tiddly, Up, Up
And Their Down, Tiddly, Down, Down.

Up! Down! Flying Around.
Looping The Loop And Defying The Ground.
They're All, Frightfully Keen

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"The Incredible Shrinking Moon'"

So, whose nibbling at the cheese?

Image downloaded from NASA website article:  
NASA's LRO Reveals 'Incredible Shrinking Moon

Many of my designs incorporate nature, and one specifically the moon (filed under "Landscape"). I spent some time figuring out how to represent a full and crescent moon together, and opted for an imagined "moon shadow." I added a cluster of grass to make it more interesting and to depict a harvest moon, when the moon is at its brightest.

Nasa has an article and images on its website reporting that the moon is shrinking. And here is an interview (with a transcript) at NPR with space scientist Thomas Watters explaining the phenomenon.

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The Monsters

Of Art and Science

Max Ernst, The Fireside Angel, 1937

This past summer, I was in Ottawa at the National Gallery of Canada's summer show "The Making of the New Man", where works from important artists of the turn of the 20th century such as Kandinsky, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali and many others, were exhibited showing their version of "The New Man."

What was intriguing about these visions was that they were almost all of them deformed in some way or other. Max Ernst, in his meticulous paintings, perhaps articulated this best. His "new man" was an amalgam of parts, some imaginatively created by Ernst himself, others he appropriated from animals or other familiar sources. But in the end, his "new man" was a monster.

In an article entitled "Listening to Frankenstein", The Center for Vision and Values' Andrew J. Harvey writes about the monster that Mary Shelley's main character, Victor Frankenstein, creates. This creature was never given a name, but we know him as "Frankenstein."

Harvey describes Victor's mindset as that of the modern scientist, and especially today's research scientist, where the pursuit of pure knowledge without its ethical or moral implications can land us with many Frankensteins.

Since this is an art blog, I will just briefly focus on art. Max Ernst's monsters were also created in the pursuit of pure art, where the artist becomes the creator and uses his inner imagination to design his own unique world. Just as the scientist can use his knowledge to make his world - three-legged chicken, tomatoes from green beans - so can the artist create his own by just using his palette and his imagination.

Modern artists who searched into the depths of their imagination, and who believed that they have it within them to make new and great creations, found either an emptiness, as Rothko realized. Or, they found monsters and inhuman concoctions, just as Max Ernst demonstrated. The idea that artists can create something out of nothing - by simply using their imagination - is a modern phenomenon. Previous generations used nature, the Bible and myths and stories to create their paintings to much better success.

There is no "new man", as the scientist Victor found out. But modern artists are slow to catch on, even though Mary Shelley wrote Victor's experiment as a novel rather than as a scientific document.

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The Star of Bethlehem

A celestial manifestation

Genesis 1:15 He made the stars also.

The star that led the wise men to Jesus' manger has been extensively studied by astrologers (and astronomers) for centuries.

There is a consensus that it did occur, and was part of a natural, celestial, phenomenon.

A lay astrologer, Rick Larson, started his long project of trying to identify the authenticity and nature of this star after his daughter's innocent request that he put up a star on their Christmas decorations. His question: "What was the star?" led him to years of investigative work. You can read the transcript or watch the PBS video here.

Eventually, he concluded that the star was possibly a rare conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, making an extremely bright light.

But Larson doesn't stop there. Nine months earlier, there were some other celestial events which were recorded by St. John, indicating Jesus' conception. At Jesus' death, there was also a lunar eclipse recorded, as described in the crucifixion account.

Nature and the heavens conspired through the centuries to align the stars and the planets at the exact, precise location to indicate the mystery and glory of the birth of Jesus.

Merry Christmas to all!

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Belief in God - Part I

Are Scientists more Religious than Artists?

Was Isaac Newton an occultist? Well, it is documented that he was a type of alchemist.

Alchemy is the precursor to our modern-day chemists, although alchemist’s final goal was to find that ‘philosopher’s stone’. The stone that could turn all base metals into gold; or one that could fend off death. It seems that Newton, like many of his contemporaries, was really interested in how things worked, how metals interacted with each other, how nature arranged things. His alchemy seemed based on curiosity, rather than blasphemy.

As for occultist, Newton had a secret system to try and decode the Bible – but anyone with his curiosity and pattern-finding mind would work on other things besides the material world. He had the propensity to find out how things worked.

And like any human being, he must have at times thought quite a bit of himself. His favorite Latin anagram for his name "Isaacvs Nevtonvs" was "Ieova Sanctvs Vnvs," or "Jehovah's holy one." But everyone indulges in little acts of supremacy at times – to no avail and to no harm.

As for his eccentricities like this one (and others), well there is a saying "Mad dogs and Englishmen"!

Newton’s understanding of the components of light is really related to his alchemical work. He broke down the constituents of light, just like he did his metals, to find the single strands that made up the whole. White light traveling through a prism gives a spectrum of colored lights was one of his major discoveries.

Newton had disagreements with the form of Christianity that was believed in the England of his time. It was his own, perhaps at times misguided, attempt at trying to find the rational in the universe, trying to find God. But, he was a fundamentally religious, and Christian, person. In his quest to understand the nature that God created, he wrote:

"All these things being consider'd, it seems probable to me, that God in the Beginning form'd Matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable Particles, of such Sizes and Figures, and with such other Properties, and in such Proportion to Space, as most conduced to the End for which he form'd them; and that these primitive Particles being Solids, are incomparably harder than any porous Bodies compounded of them; even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary Power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first Creation."

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Leonardo's Flying Machine

Foolproof Design



In a PBS special, engineers were given the formidable task of putting two of Leonardo's blueprints into life – an 80ft crossbow and a glider.

Faithfully following the blueprints, and consulting Leonardo experts where information was scant, the engineers working on the glider produced the most spectacular result. 500 years later, Leonardo's design was infallible. The glider remained airborne for more than 20 seconds.

There was a magical moment when the creaking of the glider’s wooden frames seemed to be speaking from a different time, connecting Leonardo's profound imagination with
It was a wonderful acknowledgement that there is nothing relative about truth.

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Camera Lucida

Chamber of Light

Scratchell's Bay near Freshwater; Isle of Wight.
By JFW Herschel 1831

Camera lucida n. pl. camera lu·ci·das. a) An optical device that projects an image of an object onto a plane surface, especially for tracing. b) Light Chamber [Latin camera, chamber + Latin lucida, feminine of lucidus, light.]

The camera lucida was an optical instrument invented by William Wollaston in 1807 as a drawing device, and a more portable version of the camera obscura. There is no “chamber’ involved in the camera lucida, rather a prism attached on a stand which reflects the desired image onto a piece of paper or some flat surface. This device became a common instrument for artists and scientists, draftsmen and architects, and even for microscopic drawings.

Henry Fox Talbot, was inspired (and frustrated) by it, which led him to invent photography.

This optical device allowed John Herschel, a renowned scientist and also a pioneer in photography, to leave behind a legacy of "Tracings of Light" which he made during his travel expeditions. He was on of the most enthusiastic user of this device.

Netley Abbey; Southampton.
By JWF Herschel 1832,

Camera lucida became Herschel's portable merger of Art and Science, Nature and Knowledge, Truth and Beauty.

The whole world became his to reveal with his chamber of light.

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