Molecular Animation

A video from the New York Times on Molecular Animation.

NYC Buildings

Some more photographs from my New York City trip. Here are pictures of some buildings around New York City, including this one of the Chelsea Hotel.

Various NYC Buildings

Ethan Law\Cyr Wheel

For something totally different from anything I have posted before, here is Ethan Law performing with a Cyr Wheel.

Picture ot the Day - 11/27/2010

From the Museum of Art and Designs' exhibition The Global Africa Project, Absolut Power (2003), by Hank Willis Thomas, a mashup of the Plan of the British Slave Ship "Brookes" (1789) and the current Absolut Vodka ad campaign. This was my favorite piece in the exhibition.

Pictures of the Day - 2010

Times Square

I spent several hours in Times Square last weekend waiting in line at the ticket booth. I have a post on my music blog about the two shows I went to see, Memphis and Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson. Here is a set of photographs I took while waiting in the ticket line.

Times Square

Bailey White's Thanksgiving Story

I always look forward to Bailey White's Thanksgiving story. She used to do short segments fairly regularly on NPR, but now she just does one longer piece a year that is broadcast on Thanksgiving. You can listen to this year's story here.

A Kind Of Love

Robert Kennedy - 85

I am a couple days late with this, but last Saturday would have been Robert Kennedy's 85th birthday. To mark the date here is video of Kennedy announcing the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., where he recites from memory the quote from Aeschylus that was later inscribed at his grave.

Blue Ridge Harvest

The American Folklife Center—part of the Library of Congress—has posted this PDF version of the book Blue Ridge Harvest: A Region's Folklife in Photographs. Published in 1981, the book contains photographs with essays that cover late 1970's culture and religion in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Blue Ridge Harvest

Madison Square Park & Flatiron Building

Two more sets of photographs from my trip to New York City.

First some monuments and sites around Madison Square Park, including this photograph of Secretary of State William H. Seward, most famous for negotiating the purchase of Alaska. If not for this man, Sarah Palin might be a Russian. Just something to think about.

Madison Square Park

At the southwest corner of Madison Square sits the storied Flatiron Building. Completed in 1902, it is considered one of the first skyscrapers ever constructed. Daniel Burnham and Frederick P. Dinkelberg were the architects.

The Flatiron: The New York Landmark and the Incomparable City That Arose with It, an interesting, well written account of the building's history by Alice Sparberg Alexiou, a descendant of one of the former owners, was published earlier this year.

The Flatiron Building

The High Line

Once an elevated railway bringing trains into the Meatpacking District on the west side of Manhattan, the High Line is now a park that runs through and above the city. The portion that is currently open runs from Gansevoort Street to 20th Street, but it will eventually extend up to 34th Street. It was a bit overcast last Saturday when I took these photographs, so they are a little dull, but you can still see what is there. These are all photographs of or taken from the High Line.

Note: Once the slide show opens, if you click at the top where it says "Show Info" the descriptions should appear with the photographs.

The High Line

Picture ot the Day - 11/21/2010

Just back from two days in New York City. I will do more posts later this week. For now here is a picture of the stacked parking at 20th Street and 10th Avenue.

Pictures of the Day - 2010

Nat Geo's 2010 Photo Contest

The Big Picture at boston.com has a selection of photographs that have been entered into the National Geographic's 2010 Photo Contest.

National Geographic's Photography Contest 2010

WWI From Above

This is a fascinating documentary produced by the BBC, covering WWI with photographs and film taken from the air over Europe during and shortly after the war ended.

In four parts.

Sheila Bair

The most competent person in the federal government:

Mark Twain

A lot has been written about Mark Twain this year, since it is the 100th anniversary of his death. This article, from the Los Angeles Times, has three lists of works by Twain: Essential, Overrated and Overlooked.

My two favorite works by Twain are not on these lists. I have previously posted an animated version of one of them,The Diaries of Adam and Eve. Described by the publisher as:

The Diaries--written near the end of Mark Twain's life and career--are perhaps his wisest, most personal works. The wry humor we expect is matched by a heartbreaking tenderness found nowhere else in his writings. And it was only in Eve that Twain ever wrote from a woman's viewpoint. An afterword details Twain's fascination with Adam and the parallels between his own marriage and Adam and Eve as depicted in the Diaries.

My other favorite is The War Pray, written by Twain during the furor of the Philippine-American War. It was not published until years after his death, because as Twain himself said, "I don't think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth".

He is an animated version of the Pray, which is actually more of a polemic, than a work of fiction. The animation in this version is adequate, by I much prefer John Groth's illustrations that are included in the print edition.

In two parts.

Le Grand Voyage

A post to mark the end of the Hajj. From the guardian.co.uk, a set of photographs. Following that is the trailer for Le Grand Voyage, a movie I saw several years ago. In the film a young man and his father set out to drive from the south of France to Mecca for the Hajj. Over the 3,000 mile trip their relationship transforms.

The annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca

The Rochefoucauld Grail

If you have an extra £2m, you might want to bid on the Rochefoucauld Grail. Three of the original four volumes of this 14th century illuminated manuscript of the King Arthur story are going up for sale at Sotheby's. More information at this article from guardian.co.uk, and the set of illustrations linked to below, including this image of Joseph of Arimathea delivering the Holy Grail to Britain.

King Arthur manuscript up for sale

Fair Game

I saw Fair Game yesterday. This is the film about Valarie Plame and Joe Wilson, and the Bush administration's attempt to ruin both of them after Wilson exposed the fact that Iraq had not tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Africa.

Normally I tried to avoid films about current events, but because Sean Penn is such a good actor I went to see this one. Sean Penn was great as usual. Naomi Watts also did a very good job portraying Plame as here career in the CIA is ruined, and her marriage almost breaks up. The film centers a lot on how the incident affected their personal lives, so it was not focused just on the larger issues of the incident.

One of the problems I have with current events films is that often times some of the characters are made rather cartoonish. In this case Karl Rove and Scooter Libby are already so cartoonish in real life, that the film could not really portray them any worse than they actually are.

Here is the trailer:

Follow Up - Litany & Adams

Follow up to my previous post on the poem "Litany", NPR has a segment on the meeting of Samuel Chelpka and Billy Collins.

Follow up to my previous post on the recently discover photographs that may or may not have been taken by Ansel Adams, the New York Times has a new article: Ansel Adams or Not? More Twists

Picture ot the Day -11/13/11

Scarlett Place condo building at 250 South President Street, Baltimore, MD.
Architect: Meyers & D'Aleo, Inc.

Built at the Inner Harbor on the site of the former Scarlett Seed Factory. One of the most prominent works of postmodern architecture in downtown Baltimore. This is not really one of my favorite buildings, but from this angle, in this light it is not too bad.

The Shot Tower appears in the background on the left.

Pictures of the Day - 2010

Charter for Compassion

On the one year anniversary of the establishment of the Charter for Compassion, here is Karen Armstrong's lecture that started the whole thing.

Tinkers

I just finished reading Tinkers by Paul Harding. This book won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I have to say that this year my taste, and the taste of the Pulitzer judges diverge quite a bit.

If you are into tediously long sentences, this is the book for you. It may be that my attention span is too short, but all too often I found myself thinking where the hell did this sentence start, and is it ever going to end.

The plot involves a dying man, and the story of his father and grandfather. George Crosby, the dying man, fixes old mechanical clocks, which acts as a metaphor for much that goes on in the book. His father and grandfather have both been forced, by circumstances, to abandon their families. Their stories are interwoven with scenes from Crosby's death bed.

You can rightfully argue that the writing is accomplished. Here is an impressive passage:

Eighty-four hours before he died, George thought, Because they are like tiles loose in a frame, with just enough space so they can all keep moving around, even if it's only a few at a time and in one place, so that it doesn't seem like they are moving, but the empty space between them, and that empty space is the space that is missing, the last several pieces of colored glass, and when those pieces are in place, that will be the final picture the final arrangement. But those pieces, smooth and glossy and lacquered, are the dark tablets of my death, in gray and black, and bleached, drained, and until they are in place, everything else will keep on shifting. And so this end in confusion, where when things stop I never get to know it, and this moving is that space, is that what is yet to be, which is for others to see filled wherever it may finally be in the frame when the last pieces are fitted and the others stop, and there will be the stopped pattern, the final array, but not even that, because that final finitude will itself be a bit of scrolling, a pearlescent clump of tiles, which will generally stay together but move about within another whole and be mingled with in endless ways of other people's memories, so that I will remain a set of impressions porous and open to combination with all of the other vitreous squares floating about in whoever else's frames, because there is always the space left in reserve for the rest of their own time, and to my great-grandchildren, with more space than tiles, I will be no more than the smoky arrangement of a set of rumors, and to their great-grandchildren I will be no more than a tint of some obscure color, and to their great grandchildren nothing they ever know about, and so what army of strangers and ghosts has shaped and colored me until back to Adam, until back to when ribs were blown from molten sand into the glass bits that took up the light of this world because they were made from this world, even though the fleeting tenants of those bits of colored glass have vacated them before they have had even the remotest understanding of what it is to inhabit them, and if they-if we are fortunate (yes, I am lucky, lucky), and if we are fortunate, have fleeting instants when we are satisfied that the mystery is ours to ponder, if never to solve, or even just rife personal mysteries, never mind those outside-are there even mysteries outside? a puzzle itself-but anyway, personal mysteries, like where is my father, why can't I stop all the moving and look out over the vast arrangements and find by the contours and colors and qualities of light where my father is, not to solve anything but just simply even to see it again one last time, before what, before it ends, before it stops. But it doesn't stop; it simply ends. It is a final pattern scattered without so much as a pause at the end, at the end of what, at the end of this. - Kindle Loc. 520-38

I might admire the person who could write this, but it makes me dizzy to read.

After finishing the book, I went and looked at the comments on Amazon. It seems I am not the only person who noticed the striking similarity to the writing of Marilynne Robinson. Robinson's books Gilead and Home also deal with old men reconsidering their lives, and all three books have a pensive and reflective tone about them.

Robinson teaches at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, where Harding has recently studied, so the influence appears to have been rather direct. They say that "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", but that does not mean that it always works out. Robinson is one of my favorite writers. In my opinion, her writing is far more lucid than Harding's.

I think Tinkers could have made one, two or three good short stories, but for me in it's current form it did not work.

At the risk of sounding as cranky as H.L. Mencken, I will add one more point. What exactly is the problem with quotation marks? This is not the first book that I have read recent where the author disposed of quotes to mark dialogue. Maybe the lack of quotes is supposed to give the work a more stream of consciousness feel, but I for one find it annoying to have to constantly try to figure out if I am reading dialogue or description. This problem is made worse in this book, when it is difficult to remember where what you are currently reading actually started.

Picture ot the Day -11/10/11

"Man Helping Man" - A sculpture by Harold Kimmelman, in front of Heart House, 2400 N Street NW, Washington DC, 20037

Pictures of the Day - 2010

Underwater Photography

From guardian.co.uk, a collection of the year's best underwater photography, chosen by the judges of two major competitions - Our World Under Water and the fourth annual Deep International Underwater competition.

The world's best underwater photographs 2010

JFK Elected President

Today is the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's election to the Presidency. Here is his statement on Nov. 9 1960 acknowledging the election.

The Bride of Frankenstein Poster

On Friday, this 1935 movie poster for The Bride of Frankenstein, by an unknown artist, goes up for auction. It is expected to sell for over $700,000, setting a new record price for a movie poster. The link below goes to an article from The Independent, covering this poster plus the top ten most expensive movie posters sold to date.

Coming soon! A film poster to break all records!

Lucy Kellaway on Apple

One of my favorite commentators is Lucy Kellaway from the Financial Times. She is describe on the web site: "the FT's management columnist, pokes fun at management fads and jargon, and celebrates the ups and downs of office life." Here are two of her recent podcast that deal with Apple.

Words to describe the glory of Apple

Time to spit out more praise for Apple

Movie News

Two interesting bits of movie news this week.

The following voice casting has been attached to Aardman Animation's next film Arthur Christmas: James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent, Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton. Due out for the 2011 Holidays.

Leonardo Dicarpio may star as the mass murder in the the film adaptation of Erik Larson's novel The Devil in the White City. Seems the film still has a long way to go before it goes to production though, and no word on who will play Daniel Burnham. It will take some work to distill this book into a movie. The story revolves around the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. I am interested to see this recreated on film.

A few post card images from the fair, where the souvenir picture post card made it's debut.

The Book of the Dead

The link below goes to a video on the British Museum's new exhibit that contains the longest know Book of the Dead. It has great images of the various spells needed to reach paradise.

A rare view of Egyptian Book of the Dead