It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning. -Bill Watterson, comic strip artist of Calvin & Hobbes]
Do we intentionally hold politicians to lower standards of behavior? Do we sympathize with them for the difficulties of their position?
After Pearl Harbor, were no friendly airfields close enough to Japan for the United States to launch a retaliation, so a daring plan was devised. Sixteen B-25s were modified so that they could take off from the deck of an aircraft carrier. This had never before been tried -- sending such big, heavy bombers from a carrier. 16 five-man crews, under the command of Lt. Col. James Doolittle took off from such a distance from the Tokyo target that they would have no fuel for the return and would have to ditch in China. They bombed Tokyo and then flew as far as they could. Four planes crash-landed; 11 more crews bailed out, and three of the Raiders died. Eight more were captured; three were executed. Another died of starvation in a Japanese prison camp.
Of the 80 Raiders, 62 survived the war.
Of those, only one Raider remain: David Thatcher.
A Bordeaux mental experiment: your 25-year-old daughter brings home her new fiancé. The fiancé tells you that he was once in the midst of sniper fire and had to scurry to escape. You then discover that it’s a lie. How do you feel about your daughter’s future happiness?
“Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China’s Silk Road” is a new exhibition at The Getty. The Getty has meticulously reproduced some ancient Chinese artistic cave sites. The caves themselves are at Mogao (or Peerless), some 15 miles from the ancient military garrison and trading center of Dunhuang. Of the surviving 735 grottoes, 492 date from the fourth to 14th centuries, decorated with 2,000 sculptures and almost 500,000 square feet of wall paintings. These are the main attraction, open to visitors on a rotating basis. They offer an unparalleled compendium of Chinese art history—a taste of which the Getty gives us with replicas of three stylistically distinct caves. From dense, predominantly red compositions in Cave 275 (the original is fifth century) we move to the vibrant, airy Cave 285 described above, and end surrounded by the graceful elegance of High Tang in Cave 320 (original eighth century).
In 1900, a Taoist monk discovered a walled-in chamber filled with more than 50,000 manuscripts, silk paintings, banners, ritual objects, embroideries, sketches and art supplies, all from the seventh to eleventh centuries. Not understanding their value, the monk sold the bulk of this “Library” to savvy foreign explorers. The curators at The Getty have gathered some 40 items from collections in the United Kingdom and France in a remarkably succinct display, mostly of manuscripts and paintings that illustrate how cosmopolitan and wealthy Dunhuang was in its heyday and how talented its artists.
One thing missing in the hand-wringing, anxiety and outrage over the bombing atrocities--the U.N.. One would think that that this would be a perfect place for the U.N. to define itself and attack the sources of this behavior. But, no. It is not even discussed.
More than 100 Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging Greenpeace to end its opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It will be interesting to see if the administration swings to support this scientific consensus.
More than 100 Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging Greenpeace to end its opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It will be interesting to see if the administration swings to support this scientific consensus.
As of November 2014 there were 5,253 known comets. The word "comet" comes from a Greek word that translates as 'wearing long hair.' When comets pass into the inner Solar System where they are closer to the heat of the Sun, the volatile materials in the comet vaporize so that they stream out, along with some dust, creating an atmosphere around the nucleus called the coma. Whereas the dust tail generally follows the comet's path, the ion tail points away from the Sun. Ludwig Biermann proposed that the Sun emits particles that 'push' on the comet tail, making it point this way. In a metaphorical sense, the 'solar wind' 'blew' the ion tail there. Meteorites found on Earth give us some clues by conveying some of their actual material to our home turf. ... Using ... sparse clues, scientists have concluded that the nucleus consists of water ice, dust, pebble-like rocks, and frozen gases including carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, and ammonia. ... One further fascinating compositional feature of a comet is that it contains organic compounds, such as methanol, hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, ethanol, and ethane, as well as long-chain hydrocarbons and amino acids, the precursors of life. Meteorites on Earth have even been found to contain components of DNA and RNA that presumably came from either asteroids or comets. (Lisa Randall)
Golden oldie:
I am eager to clarify our words concerning these homicidal people. There should never be an "attack," it should be an "atrocity." And we need some judgmental substitute for "fighter" and "jihad;" maybe "gangster" and "turf war." But certainly not "Non-state violent actors." Strangely, I have never heard "xenophobic" applied to the most xenophobic group around, the religious militant fundamentalists.
"Xenophobic gangsters continued their turf war with an atrocity in Istanbul." It has a nice ring to it
The government wants to decrease access to guns. But couldn't people just go and buy guns illegally from the Fast and Furious people? Oh, wait, that's the government. Boy, this is confusing.
I dislike this Snowden guy but he says very illuminating things. In an interview with the BBC’s ‘Panorama’ which aired in Britain last week, Edward Snowden spoke in detail about the spying capabilities of the UK intelligence agency GCHQ. He disclosed that government spies can legally hack into any citizen’s phone to listen in to what’s happening in the room, view files, messages and photos, pinpoint exactly where a person is (to a much more sophisticated level than a normal GPS system), and monitor a person’s every move and every conversation, even when the phone is turned off.
One wonders if, of all the goofy ideas that have popped up in the last years, the idea that unhappiness and discomfort are intolerable states in a free society is the goofiest.
In 1925 Hemingway went to Spain on a trip where he saw the teenaged matador sensation Cayetano Ordonez, The Sun Also Rises' Pedro Romero.
"Romero never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line. The others twisted themselves like cork-screws, their elbows raised, and leaned against the flanks of the bull after his horns had passed, to give a fake look of danger. Afterward, all that was faked turned bad and gave an unpleasant feeling. Romero's bull-fighting gave real emotion, because he kept the absolute purity of line in his movements and always quietly and calmly let his horns pass him close each time. He did not have to emphasize their closeness.... Romero had the old thing, the holding of his purity of line through the maximum of exposure, while he dominated the bull by making him realize he was unattainable, while he prepared him for the killing."
And so the "grace under pressure" ideal was born, providing a measure for the mess which the other characters seemed unable to prevent in their lives, and for all that Hemingway would live and write.
The world’s largest refugee camp is not in Greece or Turkey; it’s at Dadaab, in eastern Kenya, where five neighboring sites provide shelter for over 300,000 people, mainly Somalis.
The historian Sternhell made the case that fascism was a late product of the counter-Enlightenment. Like the British historian Jonathan Israel, Sternhell has a radical concept of the Enlightenment. In his eyes even the rather moderate David Hume was a proto-fascist, because of his scepticism about the rationalist claims of certain Enlightenment thinkers. But the originality of Sternhell’s thesis rests on his perception that fascism, and anti-Semitism, can be revolutionary as well as reactionary. A new book by the Italian historian Michele Battini pushes this further. With the collapse of the ancien régime, the onset in the nineteenth century of a self-regulating market economy and the rise of a newly empowered urban bourgeoisie, various groups felt victimized. In Catholic countries, the Church and aristocracy were deeply resentful of losing their traditional privileges. The guilds and corporations, which no longer had a role to play in the capitalist economy, were equally bitter. And the peasant class, no longer protected by traditional patronage, felt excluded in the new economy that privileged liberal urban elites, such as bankers, financiers and businessmen.
The winners in the new society of secular republicanism and economic liberalism, in France at least, were often the very people who had been disadvantaged before. They included Protestants, of course; but behind the Protestants, in the view of anti-Revolutionaries, stood the power-hungry Jews. Old theological attacks on usury were redirected at Jewish bankers and financiers. (from Ian Buruma's TLS review)
So the Jews became targets because they were now an integrated part of society and not separate and isolated.
During Saddam’s first day of being elected president of Iraq, during his speech he pulled out a list and started reading out names.
The winners in the new society of secular republicanism and economic liberalism, in France at least, were often the very people who had been disadvantaged before. They included Protestants, of course; but behind the Protestants, in the view of anti-Revolutionaries, stood the power-hungry Jews. Old theological attacks on usury were redirected at Jewish bankers and financiers. (from Ian Buruma's TLS review)
So the Jews became targets because they were now an integrated part of society and not separate and isolated.
During Saddam’s first day of being elected president of Iraq, during his speech he pulled out a list and started reading out names.
The names he was reading were the names of all the people in the Iraqi government who spoke ill of him while he was running for president. One by one these people's names were called out (live on tv, this was after all his first act as president) and they stood up. Probably about 200 people. Then he had all the other members of government whose names he didn't call - stand up and shoot the other 200 people in the head. (I read this on Quora. Is it possibly true?)
Sepia: noun: 1. A reddish brown color. 2. A brown pigment originally made from the cuttlefish ink. 3. A drawing made with this pigment. 4. A monochrome photograph in this color.
adjective: Of a reddish-brown color. ety: From Latin sepia (cuttlefish), from Greek sepia (cuttlefish). Earliest documented use: 1569. usage: “I know it sounds strange to invoke the sepia-toned suffering of the 1930s when we’re talking about an economy that has only 5.1 percent unemployment.” Matt O’Brien; Brexit’ and the Far Right’s Rise in UK and Elsewhere; The Washington Post; Jun 1, 2016.
Sepia: noun: 1. A reddish brown color. 2. A brown pigment originally made from the cuttlefish ink. 3. A drawing made with this pigment. 4. A monochrome photograph in this color.
adjective: Of a reddish-brown color. ety: From Latin sepia (cuttlefish), from Greek sepia (cuttlefish). Earliest documented use: 1569. usage: “I know it sounds strange to invoke the sepia-toned suffering of the 1930s when we’re talking about an economy that has only 5.1 percent unemployment.” Matt O’Brien; Brexit’ and the Far Right’s Rise in UK and Elsewhere; The Washington Post; Jun 1, 2016.
"...equality does not mean an equal amount but equal opportunity... Do not make the mistake of identifying equality in liberty with the forced equality of the convict camp. True anarchist equality implies freedom, not quantity. It does not mean that every one must eat, drink, or wear the same things, do the same work, or live in the same manner. Far from it: the very reverse in fact... Individual needs and tastes differ, as appetites differ. It is equal opportunity to satisfy them that constitutes true equality... Far from levelling, such equality opens the door for the greatest possible variety of activity and development. For human character is diverse." ---Alexander Berkman, the anarchist
AAAaaaaaannnnnnnnnddddddd.......a picture of a reproduction:
ENLARGE
Cave 285, a full-size copy of which is on display in the Getty exhibition. Photo: Courtesy Dunhuang Academy
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