gardens and buildings

Image source here.

John Nash's [1752-1825] brief was to outdo Napoleonic Paris.

The sweeping curve of elegant Regent Street, picturesque Regent's Park and the delightful Georgian terraces nearby, the charming colonnade of All Souls, splendid Buckingham Palace - all these were designed by one man, the brilliant architect John Nash. During the Regency this great man transformed London into a much more stylish and attractive city.

More here.

Remembrance Day

Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks

Pot %

Which Europeans are most likely to have tried cannabis?

fraud

A California man who masqueraded as a decorated Marine--complete with Purple Heart, Navy Cross, and Bronze Star medals--had his charade busted after running into an actual Navy commander at their high school reunion.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/1111091medals1.html

grim and gay

In fifty years, when peace outshines
Remembrance of the battle lines,
Adventurous lads will sigh and cast
Proud looks upon the plundered past.
On summer morn or winter's night,
Their hearts will kindle for the fight,
Reading a snatch of soldier-song,
Savage and jaunty, fierce and strong;
And through the angry marching rhymes
Of blind regret and haggard mirth,
They'll envy us the dazzling times
When sacrifice absolved our earth.

Some ancient man with silver locks
Will lift his weary face to say:
'War was a fiend who stopped our clocks
Although we met him grim and gay.'
And then he'll speak of Haig's last drive,
Marvelling that any came alive
Out of the shambles that men built
And smashed, to cleanse the world of guilt.
But the boys, with grin and sidelong glance,
Will think, 'Poor grandad's day is done.'
And dream of lads who fought in France
And lived in time to share the fun.
- Siegfried Sassoon [1886-1967] was treated at the Cassel Hospital for Functional Nervous Disorder or shell-shock.

ego

"Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."
- King James Bible, Proverbs 16:18

customer relationship management

Ford and Model T, 1921

If Henry Ford had listened to his customers he would have built a better horse and buggy.

"dull celebrity businessman"

Mona Lisa Four Times, 1978

Andy Warhol was the first artist of the 20th century to embrace the production line.

humility

Arriving at the Academy Awards, February 25, 2007

"Steve had a great setback in his life when he lost control of Apple in 1985. That experience of loss, that punch in the nose gave him a sense of humility and prepared him better for the battles ahead [he returned to Apple in 1997]."
- Al Gore, who is an Apple Board Member, on Steve Jobs.

Encyclopedia of Life

"Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth..."
- E.O. Wilson

http://www.eol.org

New Delhi

"The air that comes out of the 911 Turbo here is cleaner than the air that goes into it."

- Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear

Sunny side up

Psychology
Feb 26th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Optimism, it seems, is in the genes

FOR some people in this world, the glass always seems to be half-full. For others it is half-empty. But how someone comes to have a sunny disposition in the first place is an interesting question.

It has been known for a long time that optimists see the world selectively, mentally processing positive things while ignoring negative ones, and that this outlook helps determine their health and well-being. In recent years, it has also become clear that carriers of a particular version of a particular gene are at higher risk than others of depression and attempted suicide when they face traumatic events. The gene in question lies in a region of the genome that promotes the activity of a second gene, which encodes a protein called the serotonin transporter. Serotonin is a messenger molecule that carries signals between nerve cells, and it is known to modulate many aspects of human behaviour, although the details are complex and controversial. The transporter protein recycles serotonin back into the cell that produced it, making it available for reuse, but also reducing the amount in the junctions between cells and thus, it is presumed, the strength of the signal.

It has looked increasingly likely, therefore, that genes—particularly those connected with serotonin—have a role to play in shaping a person’s outlook. So Elaine Fox and her colleagues at the University of Essex, in Britain, wondered whether genes play a part in the selective attention to positive or negative material, with consequent effects on outlook.

To find out, they took samples of DNA from about 100 people and then subjected these people to what is known as the dot-probe paradigm test to see how they reacted to different stimuli. In this test participants are briefly shown photographs that may be positive, negative or neutral in tone. They then have to press a keypad to indicate when a dot has appeared on the screen. It has been found by experience that the more distracting an image is, the longer a person takes to respond when the dot appears. That allowed Dr Fox and her team to discover how distracting particular people found particular images.

In a paper just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B they report that, sure enough, gene-related variation caused a bias in attention towards positive and negative material. Some people had two “long” versions of the promoter gene (one inherited from each parent), a combination that reduces the amount of serotonin in the junctions between nerve cells. These individuals were biased towards positive images and away from negative ones. By contrast, those who had either a long and a short version of the gene, or two short versions (and thus, presumably, more serotonin in the junctions), did not have such protective biases. In other words, the optimists really did see the world differently.

Rose-tinted spectacles may be good for one’s health, as these results fit in with wider ideas about how a tendency to look on the bright side of life is part of being resilient to stress. Those with short variants of this gene are expected to have an increased susceptibility to mood disorders following such stress. It is not all good news, though, for optimists. Because these results suggest that a person’s attitude to life is inherited, they serve as a stark warning to all buoyant optimists that trying to cheer the rest of the world up with nothing more than a smile and an effortlessly sunny disposition is doomed to failure.

How to open a bottle of wine without a corkscrew

captured his fellow Germans

August Sander [1876-1964]

Van Gogh

From the Economist:

THE story of Vincent van Gogh’s life is more heartbreaking, and heart-lifting, than the romantic myth that has enshrouded him for decades. It is told, in his own words and works, in the six-volume “Vincent van Gogh: The Letters”. His 819 surviving letters (and the 83 addressed to him) form the core. The first letter was written when Vincent, aged 19, was a trainee at The Hague branch of Goupil & Cie, a firm of international art dealers. Like most of the letters, it was sent to his brother, Theo, then 15. The two remained close. Theo became an art dealer and Vincent’s main source of financial and emotional support.

Van Gogh is irascible, engaging, intelligent, touchy, high-minded, well read, rebellious and pigheaded. When he started dressing like a tramp he claimed it was, in part, to advertise his refusal to join polite, ie, hypocritical society. (Equally, it may have been because polite society was refusing to accept him.) He was often miserable, occasionally love-struck, almost always fiercely committed to something or other and sometimes mad.

Art and literature were his constant companions. He wrote often about what he was reading and seeing. His concern was never a book’s place in the canon or a painting’s in art history. He judged a work on what it communicated, and how. From Antwerp he wrote that the religious paintings of Rubens are “theatrical…But what he can do is paint a queen, a statesman, well analysed, just as they are.” He wrote beautifully about landscapes and peasants. In time, he gave a vivid, perhaps unequalled, account of an artist making art.

He set off at 16, a seemingly conventional young man, to make his way as a dealer first in The Hague and then, via Paris, in London. There, a prickly instability, characteristic of his childhood, re-emerged, perhaps brought on by a rebuff from his landlady’s daughter. He lost the job he had had for seven years. Other failures followed, as a preacher and a teacher.

His religious fanaticism grew. Indeed, the letters offer a rare look at obsession from the inside. His pursuit of a young widow was so unrelenting he would be called a stalker today. But to him, her repetition of “No, nay, never!” was “a piece of ice that I press to my heart to thaw.”

When he was 26 his fixation became art. By then he was a penniless, eccentric loner. This coincides with a year-long break in the correspondence. He had fallen out with Theo following a “discussion” about his future. When the letters resume, Vincent refers to himself as a prisoner, a caged bird. “I know I could be quite a different man!” he writes. “There’s something within me, so what is it!” Two months later he bent himself to the study of drawing and painting as others would bend to the plough. It was as if he had to labour, and metaphorically sweat, before his genius could, or was allowed to, emerge. Five years later, in the spring of 1885, came “The Potato Eaters”. Movingly, triumphantly, van Gogh had broken through.

After two years in Paris, living with Theo (only nine letters; no images), Vincent moved to Arles in 1888. Colour now floods the pages. This was the beginning of the legendary period of prodigious, radiant creativity. Yes, he cut off his ear. He also painted nearly 200 pictures, among them “The Night Café” and “The Yellow House”.

In 1889, after a series of crack-ups (in reaction to Theo’s marriage or perhaps just too much absinthe?), he spent a year in the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The work continued to pour out (about 150 paintings). Sunflowers and irises but also “Starry Night”, in which viewer and artist are pulled up over the rooftops, and tumble round and round across the dark sky.

The very last letter reproduced, addressed to Theo but unfinished, was written on July 23rd 1890. He was staying in Auvers-sur-Oise, not far from Paris where Theo lived with his wife and child. The note was found in Vincent’s pocket after he shot himself. He died, aged 37, on July 27th.

Fifteen years were devoted to this publication. The Dutch, English and French editions are the joint project of the Huygens Institute and Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum. Letters and illustrations fill five books; the sixth has commentaries, maps and indexes. It is all accessible, free, at www.vangoghletters.org (the site provides a valuable concordance). There is also a free iPod app, “Yours, Vincent”.

This is not the first attempt to publish the complete letters but it is the best. There were editions in 1914; an expanded version appeared in English in 1958; 20 newly discovered letters were added for the 1990 Dutch centenary edition. Now the letters have been retranslated, comprehensively annotated and there are 20 new items.

But what really sets this edition apart from, and above, all others are the illustrations. Sketches are embedded in many of van Gogh’s letters; the drawings and “scratches” he sometimes tucked into envelopes before posting are reproduced. So are thumbnail illustrations of every work the artist mentions (whether by himself or by others) plus larger reproductions of paintings based on these letter sketches.

The Van Gogh Museum is marking the publication of the letters by rehanging its permanent collection and displaying 100 letters. (“Van Gogh’s Letters: The Artist Speaks” closes on January 3rd.) On January 23rd a different exhibition opens at London’s Royal Academy: “The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and his Letters”. More than 60 paintings and 35 drawings will come from across the world, closely related to the 40 letters that will be shown.

The publication of the six volumes is cause for celebration. To have all the artist’s words together with all those images is like being given a pair of super-special 3D spectacles. The resulting self-portrait has a depth that would not exist were this a collection only of images or only of words. This could be the best autobiography of an artist yet to appear anywhere.

Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. Edited by Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker. Thames and Hudson; 2,500 pages; $600 and £325.

RIP

Chimpanzees mourn the death of their own kind. Article here.

rugged

"Men may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things."
- Zane Grey [1872-1939] was fond of this quotation by Alfred, Lord Tennyson [1809-1892]

Why a high IQ doesn't mean you're smart

"A high IQ is like height in a basketball player," says David Perkins, who studies thinking and reasoning skills at Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "It is very important, all other things being equal. But all other things aren't equal. There's a lot more to being a good basketball player than being tall, and there's a lot more to being a good thinker than having a high IQ."

Article here.

filthy feet

The Madonna of Loreto, 1604-5

"He understood how to live inside the skin of the poor and the pious."

- Schama on Carravagio [1571-1610] who ended up abundi capitali or with a price on his head

limbic brain is shot

"Lack of Delta sleep means hallucinations."

- Dr. Gregory House

patience

"I've been successful because I'm very impatient ... don't underestimate yourself. Just go for it."

- Nobel Laureate James Watson [born 1928], who maintains that he has a non-genius IQ of about 120.

what Adam craved

"You've got that thing that thing that makes the birdies forget to sing."

- Cole Porter's lyrics from the song You've Got That Thing from the 1929 Broadway show "Fifty Million Frenchmen"

spy

Whittaker Chambers sitting at table and speaking before the Committee on Un-American Activities, 1948

"To live is to maneuver."

- Whittaker Chambers [1901-1961]

"Thank God I have done my duty."

J.M.W. Turner's H.M.S. Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805.

Reputed to be Nelson's [1758-1805] final words.

wrist-watch

"Can you get me my watch?"

- An American soldier after having his arm blown off in Vietnam.

brainbow

From MIT:

Scientists can now label nerve cells in a rainbow of colors. This image is of a “Brainbow” mouse, which has been engineered so that different nerve cells glow in dozens of hues; it shows the hippocampus, a brain area that is crucial for memory.

extroverted artwork

info

Source here.

market psychology circa 1929

"Take a rifle aim it at the ocean and hope to hit a fish."

victims of the Holocaust

Database here.