Using Google’s new Ngram viewer to plot the popularity of the Renaissance artists: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello.
Overview 1450-2008
Overview of the 20th Century 1990-2008
What surprised me is the immense popularity of Raphael for most of the past five hundred years, which only really declined a century ago between 1900 and 1920. Michelangelo get a spike in popularity in the late 1950s for some reason, whereas Leonardo is enjoys a steady-state of interest.
Having been interested in Leonardo for twenty years, I would have thought there would have been more spikiness to his line: the discovery of his lost Madrid Codices seems to have caused a spike in popularity and publishing in the 1970s, mirrored by the past decade’s spike due to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.
Of course, if I turn off the smoothing, the graph immediately gets a lot spikier. Here is the overview for the past five hundred years:
‘Leonardo da Vinci’ plotted over 1500-2008
Leonardo clearly enjoyed the majority of his fame in the 18th Century
And here is the 20th Century:
‘Leonardo da Vinci’ 1900-2008
Which shows that despite my intuition, Da Vinci’s popularity declined between 1960 and 1980, and there was no real spike in the past ten years.
I stopped using Firefox last year, when I began using Chrome (through the development version Chromium) in September 2009. As it underwent rapid development versions on the Mac, I updated frequently and I began to taking periodic version snapshots until January of this year, shortly before Chrome went official for Mac.
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto’s Graduate Geography and Planning Student Society and The Tendency Group present:
Talking Stats 1: Artists
Date: Wednesday, November 17, 2010 Time: 7pm Place: Music Room, Hart House, Universityof Toronto, 7 Hart House Circle
14 accomplished art workers sit before you and disclose every single terrifying detail of their economic life: what they make, what they spend, where they spend it, what they’ve saved, what they own, what they owe and what they anticipate inheriting. No detail will be spared. Then we’ll crunch some of the stats, throw around a few distributions, some pie charts and then we’ll talk.
Featuring the fully disclosed economies of:
Bill Burns, Timothy Comeau, Siya Chen, Heather Haynes, Sheila Heti, Amy Lam, John McCurley, Srimoyee Mitra, Amish Morrell, Daniel Nimmo, Darren O’Donnell, Ngozi Paul, Camille Turner and Carl Wilson.
There’s a lot of discussion about the purpose and value of art. Does it make the world a better place? Does it improve the economy? Is a good social investment? Is it a good economic investment? What is the value of artistic production for cities? Can art do anything more than make the city more attractive to tourists? Can artists improve the qualities of neighborhoods?
These are all great questions. None of which we plan to answer.
Lost in this cacophony are the naked economic facts of the life of the art worker. What exactly does it mean to your bank account to be an artist? Is the starving artist stereotype an accurate one? Who is really funding the arts?
Those are the questions we will begin to answer.
Talking Stats 1: Artists
The Music Room at Hart House, University of Toronto
7 Hart House Circle, Toronto
The Tendency Group is a flexible research-based collaboration directed by Darren O’Donnell, with Eva Verity, Marney Isaac and Yi Luong. For more information: darren@tendency.ca
things don’t just happen, they tend to happen
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
Hart House, University of Toronto
7 Hart House Circle
Toronto, ON M5S 3H3
CANADA
When I first read this I thought it was a nice way of pointing out the dangers of an aristocracy – the exact thing the 18th Century Enlightenment thinkers made their reputation attacking. At that time, the awfulness of society was seen in part to be the result of the establishment being ill-educated and having been merely born into their positions of power.
I read this as saying:
The best argument exemplifying of an elitist-aristocracy is ‘you shouldn’t have to know something in order to be in charge of it’
or perhaps
By their example, “in favour of this” they show the limitations of thinking that people shouldn’t need to know something in order to run it.
But then again, is it a defence of elitism? His Goldsbie actually saying:
“The best argument for an elitist society is the example of those people who think they can run things without knowing anything about it. We should have an educated elite who know what they are doing.”
It’s hard to imagine, given these parameters, a country from which Sierra would accept an award. And, with this in mind, even harder not to conclude that Spain virtually volunteered itself to go like a lamb to the slaughter. Conflating notions of artistic gesture and political protest, Sierra’s work has pretty much been sending Spain this same rejection letter since, like, 1999, in so many words. The artist has paid Chechen refugees minimum wage to remain hidden inside cardboard boxes in a gallery for long stretches (2000), Iraqi immigrants to stand docile while he sprays them with insulation foam (2004), prostitutes [whom he paid in heroin] for the privilege of publicly tattooing their backs (2000), and African immigrants to dye their hair blonde (2001). Sierra uses money to buy people and subject them to degradation and abuse at so low a price that the audience is forced to wonder if endemic government failure hasn’t flat-out subsidized the transaction, let alone created the conditions for its occurrence. Taking a page from the terrorist strategy book, Sierra makes a gratuitous show of ethical violence in order to mirror and expose its proliferation in what we might call “society.” And the show goes on because of, as Sierra says in his letter, “the freedom… art has given me… which I am not willing to resign.”
Why are conceptual artists painting again?
Because they think it’s a good idea.
November 1, 6:00 – 8:00
George Ignatieff Theatre
Trinity College, University of Toronto
15 Devonshire Place (between Bloor and Hoskin)
Admission is free
Presented in conjunction with Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980
September 10 to November 28, 2010
University of Toronto Galleries
Berlin-based critic Jan Verwoert has been examining the developments of art after Conceptualism. Held in conjunction with the exhibition Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980, his lecture is concerned with the way in which the basic conditions of art practice have changed and what words and models might be used to open up the potentials at the heart of the developments in art after Conceptualism.
As he writes: “The dominant models no longer satisfy. It makes no sense to melodramatically invoke the “end of painting” (or any other medium-specific practice for that part) when the continuous emergence of fascinating work obviously proves apocalyptic endgame scenarios wrong. Yet, to pretend it were possible to go back to business as usual seems equally impossible because the radical expansion of artistic possibilities through the landslide changes of the 1960s leave medium-specific practices in the odd position of being one among many modes of artistic articulation, with no preset justification. How can we describe then what medium-specific practices like painting or sculpture can do today?
Likewise, it seems that we can still not quite convincingly describe to ourselves what Conceptual Art can be: An art of pure ideas? As if “pure” idea art were ever possible let alone desirable! An art of smart strategic moves and puns? We have advertising agencies for that. The social and political dimension of Conceptualism has been discussed, but often only in apodictic terms, not acknowledging the humour, the wit, the existential, emotional or erotic aspects, as well as the iconophile, not just iconoclast motives, that have always also been at play in the dialectics and politics of life-long conceptual practices.
Unfortunately, a certain understanding of conceptualism has had incredibly stifling effects on how people approach their practice, namely the idea that to have a concept in art means to know exactly why you do what you do – before you ever even do it. This assumption has effectively increased the pressure on artists to occupy the genius-like position of a strategist who would clearly know the rules of how to do the right thing, the legitimate thing. How could we invent a language that would describe the potentials of contemporary practice, acknowledge a sense of crisis and doubt, yet break the spell of the senseless paranoia over legitimation – and instead help to transform critical art practice into a truly gay science based on a shared sense of appreciation and irreverence?”
Jan Verwoert teaches art at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, works as a contributing editor to frieze magazine and writes for different publications. His book Bas Jan Ader – In Search of the Miraculous was published by Afterall/MIT Press in 2006. The collection of his essays Tell Me What You Want What You Really Really Want has just been published by Sternberg Press/Piet Zwart Institute.
The lecture is presented in advance of the international conference Traffic: Conceptualism in Canada. Organized by the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, the conference is held in conjunction with the exhibition Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965 – 1980 which is on view at the University of Toronto Galleries until November 28.
Registration opens November 1, 2010.
The exhibition and conference are made possible through the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Hal Jackman Foundation.
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
Hart House, University of Toronto
7 Hart House Circle
Toronto, ON M5S 3H3
CANADA
The new cookies are fine, even though not as good as old standby. So is the bread. You’ll only have one more lot to send this year, that is if you want to.
Last week was much cooler again and there hasn’t been any more swimming since I wrote you. We are also mowing lawn here, though I don’t have to mow as much as I would if I were home.
I’m sorry to hear the old car is acting up, though apparently this wasn’t anything serious. When my license renewal blank comes I wish you would send it here (or if it doesn’t come, send the old stub and I’ll get a blank.) I can fill it out an have the license sent home again.
This week we took all day trip in Farm Management. We went through Geneva and saw the Agricultural Experiment Station, then north to Lake Ontario, stopping to see three farms on the way. It was the first time I had seen the lake and it is quite like the bay at home. Of course, you can’t see the other side, and it is not as blue as the bay.
Two of the farms are in the fruit belt along the lake, and are little more than big orchards. The cherries were in blossom and the apples were just ready to come out. The trees there don’t seem to be much hurt by the winter cold.
This weekend several hundred high school boys who expect to come to Cornell soon were up to visit the place. It is a new thing this year, called Cornell Day, and seemed to go off pretty well. Two boys stayed here in the house and seemed to enjoy themselves.
Did you see any of the dust cloud the papers were talking about over New York? It must have missed us. It is pretty dry even here, though.
Friday night George and I walked down to see George Arliss in “The House of Rothschild.” It was one the best I have seen him in.
Saturday night there was an electrical exhibition in the Electrical Engineering College. They had artificial lightning, power line connections and generators, teletype, telegraph, telephone, radio, and a lot of other exhibits, all very interesting. They advertised it by a loudspeaker hung out the window. You could hear it easily a quarter of a mile away, but it was very distinct also. There was also a track meet Saturday, in which we beat Penn. very easily, so that it wasn’t very interesting.
It’s warmer now – maybe there will be swimming this afternoon.
I’m not sure if this is a problem of social myopia (birds of a feather flocking together) but it seems I both keep hearing & reading that people want to vote for Joe Pantalone but feel that’s it’s a wasted vote. (I myself expressed as much in my last blog posting a week ago). Thus, everyone who’d like to vote for him is now of the mind to vote strategically. I write this because I’m now under the impression that maybe there’s a silent majority of people out there who favor him but who are being frightened into voting for his rivals.
It doesn’t help that the Globe and Mail “guardedly” endorses Smitherman while only mentioning Pantalone once in it’s 800word endorsement. The context is notable:
Mr. Fords […] is an instinctual person, lacking in analysis, and his plans have gaps and inconsistencies. His propensity to impetuous words and deeds could be embarrassing and possibly harmful to Toronto. Nonetheless, the surge in support for a man with these characteristics, in a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city, amounts to an extraordinary indictment of the status quo. It is a phenomenon that all Toronto’s politicians must take seriously; Mr. Smitherman has already repositioned himself, shifting on the ideological spectrum from where he probably would like to be. Where Mr. Ford is unrealistic, Mr. Smitherman is vague. The risk in supporting Mr. Ford is what he might do as mayor, the risk in supporting Mr. Smitherman is what he might not do. The latter of the two has failed to articulate a vision or a strategy of his own, and he could easily end up as a second David Miller – what Joe Pantalone, the third candidate, openly promises to be.
I resent the idea that I need to fear either rival, and that I should vote for Smitherman for any reason not of my choosing. I resent the media casting this (and thus skewing the pole results) as a two-person race. I resent the blackmail that a vote for Pantalone is an indirect vote for someone who is “potentially embarrassing and harmful”.
I’m going to vote for Pantalone. If Ford wins, at least we’ll have a shake-up of the status quo. If Smitherman wins, well, at least he’s not Ford. If Pantalone wins, well, at least we might finally get bike lanes and continued marginal improvements in TTC outpaced by increased fares.
For those not in Toronto: In the latest Toronto mayoralty-election news, Rocco Rossi dropped out last night, October 13th, leaving it (as the papers would have it) a contest between Rob Ford and George Smitherman. Rob Ford is considered to be an oaf, and George Smitherman was once deputy-premier of the province. Neglected from this assessment is the presence of Joe Pantalone, who quipped in a recent debate, to Smitherman, “the mayoralty is not a consolation prize for failing to become premier”
Officially, there are 40 people running for Mayor with two officially withdrawn. With the exception of the above named, the remaining 35 are considered unserious novelty candidates. Joe Pantalone has been deputy mayor under departing David Miller, and is running on his legacy.
My Facebook feed is representatives of his fan base: numerous calls stating Toronto needs pants and the like. Pants pants pants. Along with William Gibson’s latest novel, ‘tis the season for pants.
Pantalone has become the traditional NDP third party candidate who won’t and can’t win. He’s polling (Oct 13 Globe & Mail) at 11%, which is traditional NDP territory. He’ll drain votes away from the anti-Ford Smitherman and Ford will be Mayor.
However, according to the same poll, Smitherman is up 1% against Ford at 31% to 30%. Pantalone supporters – this is a given – would never vote for Ford, thus if their vote went to Smitherman, he’d win by a hefty margin: 42% against 30%.
Needless to say, our democracy is a sham, sense these numbers don’t even cross over 50%.
It’s interesting how this vote is being framed by the media as a contest between Smitherman and Ford, continually neglecting Pantalone. By keeping that narrative alive, the illusion of a contest between S&F can be maintained. The media is itself a type of conservative, conserving the narratives it has on hand; their familiarity with Smitherman as an Ontario cabinet minister means he is given favorable attention despite his admitted past-addiction to “party drugs” (coke?) and his inept handling of the eHealth portfolio, in which $1,000,000,000 dollars went missing.
I’ve only voted Conservative once in my life, during my first Federal election in 1993. At that time, I was naive enough to vote C merely because I liked the fact that we had a female Prime Minister in Kim Campbell. She famously lost to Jean Chretien, and Chretien went on to govern for ten years. In those interim elections, I began to vote for the NDP, a trend which continued right up to the last election.
Given that I have never voted for the party or candidate who ends up winning, I’m considering using this juju against Rob Ford by voting for him. My vote for Ford would thus be an anti-Ford vote.
If I voted my conscience and for the candidate who mostly represents my views, I’d join my Facebook peers and vote for Joe Pantalone, thus guaranteeing he won’t win.
I don’t usually do the tourist pose, but in this case I indulged. Partially because before seeing this at the Met at the end of June, I’d been watching David Starkey’s Henry: Mind of a Tyrant on TVO (which is available on iTunes). Seeing the armour made the history and the man (especially his kingly size) tangible.>
Alberta’s culture minister says:
“I sit here as a government representative for film and television in the province of Alberta and I look at what we produce and if we’re honest with ourselves, why do I produce so much shit? Why do I fund so much crap?,”
and this is a response:
“I was at a loss when I heard the statement – a complete loss and quite surprised and quite taken aback for every producer and content maker in Canada, let alone Alberta,” said CBC Television General Manager Kirstine Stewart, who was in the audience. “Nobody can ever question the quality of what we do here in Canada, creatively or otherwise.”
I take issue with the way this was instinctively (that is, without forethought) phrased:
Nobody can ever question the quality of what we do here in Canada, creatively or otherwise.
I think there’s a genuine problem in Canada when culture is subject to such dictatorial sentiments. There is certainly a culture of complicity in place, where we are expected to fall in line or be subject to censorship. I think it’s fair to say that Freedom of Expression within this country has been perverted into a freedom of expression in support of the status quo, and within the ideological confines established by Management.
“I was at a loss …” yes of course you were, because someone says something controversial, and instead of laughing, or simply disagreeing, you have to dig in your heels and make Dear Leader statements.
What we do here in Canada is apparently fucking awesome, as the embedded movie trailers below show:
INTERNATIONAL LECTURE SERIES / Thomas Hirschhorn
May 19, 2010
Call the Harbourfront Centre Box Office at 416.973.4000 to purchase/reserve tickets.
Please note: reserved Members’ tickets will be released for resale if not picked up by the start of the lecture.
The celebrated Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn (born in 1957, Bern) discusses his recent Amsterdam-based project, The Bijlmer Spinoza-Festival (2009). Since the 1980s, the Paris-based former graphic designer has evolved a radical sculpture and installation practice that makes monumental works with humble materials like cardboard and packing tape to engage viewers in conversation about philosophy and global politics. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon, Spain (2006), Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2007), Museo Tamayo, Mexico (2008), and the Gladstone Gallery, New York (2009). Hirschhorn has received the Marcel Duchamp Prize (2001) and the Joseph Beuys Prize (2004).
International Lecture Series Lead Donor
J. P. Bickell Foundation
Cultural Agency Supporter
Consulat Général de France à Toronto
Prices
FREE: Members
$12: Non-Members
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
7:00PM
Studio Theatre
York Quay Centre, 235 Queens Quay West
(Map)
Everything makes sense up until the 1960s. Essentially, artists were craftspeople throughout history. Michelangelo really was only a housepainter, employed to illustrate The Bible. Money made the work more ornate, but the Old Masters were craftsman employed to create images such as portraits and decorated ceilings.
In the 19th Century, industrialization invented oil paint in tubes. Suddenly artists could take trains out to the countryside to paint landscapes on the weekend. (Why they wanted to paint landscapes has to do with the-then-new Romantic sensibilities). Painting outdoors, they became more interested in capturing their impressions of what they saw, rather than spend a lot of time on finishing the work according to the standards of the day.
Claude Monet, Tulip Fields in Holland, 1886
While these artists were doing this, the ‘academic’ artists had moved on from illustrating the Bible and had begun illustrating the Classical mythology of Greece and Rome.
John William Waterhouse, Ulysses and the Sirens, 1891
Because what the academics were doing was boring, the Impressionists gained popularity, due to their example of allowing an artist do to whatever they wanted. So by the time Picasso begins working, he’s all like fuck it, I’ll just draw some crazy shapes and give them eyes and call it a portrait.
Pablo Picasso Tete d’homme, 1912
Picasso distorts art history here, as the galleries get hip to what he’s doing, and realize they can sell his stuff for all sorts of reasons, including the radio-land sense of a new civilisation based on cheap energy, and so Picasso has a chateau-based life of daily doodling which sells for millions. The distortion he creates in the art market means that artists all over the Western world think to themselves, ‘if he can do it, I can do it’. Craftsman working in the 15th-19th Century traditions (late 19th Century academics and contemporary place like the Academy of Realist Art) get marginalized in favour of the gang after Picasso’s easy money and easy lifestyle.
Basically, by the 1920s, artists have full licence to do whatever they want. Picasso can call geometry a portrait, and in New York Duchamp can call a urinal a fountain. By the 1950s, artists are all like, fuck portraiture, use a camera for that, let’s just put colours together. Imagery is boring.
Mark Rothko, Orange and Yellow 1956
Artists are now doing whatever crazy shit they want to do. A bed with paint splashed on it? Fuck it, why not.
Robert Rauschenberg, Bed 1955
By the time we reach the 1960s, there has been a full breakdown of the tradition of craftsmanship.
Also, by this point, the technologies of video & film have begun to appear, so by the 1970s, a first generation of tv babies have arrived and want to make their own tv shows, producing a lot of black & white and unwatchable television. Technology is cheap, and artists are no longer just craftspeople asked to make a statue for a garden or decorate a ceiling, they’re now in the business of ideas. Books, words on walls, videos of Buddhas staring at themselves: an explosion of cleverness and wit. The Picassoesque art market is able to absorb, promote, and sell all this stuff, to both rich people but also to Institutions.
Nam June Paik, TV Buddha 1974
We’ve now had half a century (1960-2010) of crazy-shit art. The aesthetic experience written about by 18th Century philosophers has been replaced by the WTF? impulse. Artists today are not seeking to generate emotions of the sublime or of disinterest, but rather evoking a sense of bewilderment in the viewer is seen as an achievement.
The decline of craftsmanship has been compensated for by the ego of the artist: like Duchamp, Picasso, the unwatchable video artists, the message is, yes, anyone can do this shit, but I did it. In that not all artists are insufferable egotists, a subtext to this strategy is the belief that the variety of human experience should mean that their ideas, presented through gallery or however, may be valuable to someone. The artist offers their work both as a self-promotional vehicle, but also as something that another may find useful. (Quite often, it is most commonly used as a conversation topic).
I could also refer here to Richard Rorty’s definition of genus as the useful obsession by others. Private obsessions we just call crazy, but when an individual’s ‘craziness’ opens new avenues for others, we consider that person brilliant (as in ‘they light the way for others’). The postmodern condition of this half century has been one in which people are free to make up their own truths. While it is a sign of mental health to be aware that not everyone thinks the same, when exploited it can be dangerous (ie truthiness). The crazy-shit art of the contemporary is reflecting the many truths competing for attention, and the multitude and anarchy of art-products and art-production today offers a variety of individual obsessions seeking to be useful by others.
02. Another brief history of art
The Roman portrait bust is representative of the craftsmanship of the era, used for public-relations purposes and to document the individuals of a time and place.
By the end of the Empire, the busts had declined in quality and become stylized.
A ‘barbaric’ millennium follows until the ‘regeneration’ (renaissance is a French word meaning ‘rebirth’) of both ancient art and learning begins to restore both the quality and craftsmanship, so that by the 19th Century, the academics were illustrating both the myths of Rome and Greece, and the daily street scenes of fifteen-hundred years prior.
Sir Lawrence Tadema, Sculptors in Ancient Rome 1877
The United States of America was founded in the late 18th Century as a restored Roman republic.
Horatio Greenough, George Washington as Zeus 1840
By the late 20th Century, The United States represented the completion of the project to restore Rome, and had become an Imperial power. However…
…its art had become stylized, and craftsmanship was in decline. The civilisation was exhausted. Artists were exhibiting glittered cum stains on newspapers.
My questions:
1. Wasn't the G8 made somewhat irrelevant last autumn when it was decided that the G20 would be more important?
2. Why is this our business? Like, a bunch of women in poor countries are going to care about what Canadians say and do. WTF. You'd think paternalistic programs would be something Conservatives avoid. And perhaps this is where they are coming from? I don't know. I do know that getting all upset at their ideology is a predictable distraction to the fact that this story has no substance. Why can't we have a discussion around the thesis: "Poor women are capable of taking care of themselves". If that statement is false, why? And why is it our (G8) problem as opposed to the governments of the countries where these people live?
Birth control won't be in G8 plan to protect mothers, Tories say
A guy named Joe
Blew his stack
He was an engineer
He had a thing against the IRS
He thought the tax rates were too dear
So he flew his plane into a building
After leaving a note online
Not on Facebook though,
He was not that much of his time
The internetz wrote about it
And called him a right-wing loon
Some said had he been Muslim
There’d be another war soon
But all in all it’s just a tale
Of an engineer, a website and a plane
A fool who set his house on fire
Before he flew off never to be seen again
I just did this diagram in less than 5 minutes using Google Docs. Had I done this in Illustrator, I would have taken a half-hour. I don’t know if that means I suck at Illustrator, or if Google Docs is AMAZING.
Pressed to answer, I would say, no, I’m not that bad at Illustrator – it’s only I would have to create every element in the diagram from scratch.
Google Docs provides a library of readymade elements, which cuts down on the time. Also, the library suggests they anticipate their app to be used to create flow charts such as this one, meaning everything I would need to make such an image was there, increasing efficiency. Props to Google for so thoroughly anticipating user needs.
Secondly, Google’s experience with user interfaces (like SketchUp) meant that intuitive actions like grouping meant that I could put together shapes and move them around without having to explicitly group them, which was a bonus.
So yes, Google Docs is AMAZING, but it helps if one knows what one’s doing to begin with.
(BTW, this diagram illustrates the syncing relationship between Google’s cloud services and an iPhone and MacBook).
It looks like Rush Limbaugh is moving ahead with his threat to leave New York City. He's (finally!) put his tacky Fifth Avenue apartment up for sale. The cost of ridding NYC of Rush once and for all? $13.95 million.
Limbaugh promised that he'd sell his Manhattan apartment last March after the Paterson administration proposed raising taxes on New York residents who make more than $500,000 a year. (That wasn't the first time he'd made the threat. On the eve of the 2008 presidential election, Limbaugh said he was "seriously considering selling it," since "it may now become stupid to own any property there.")
But now he has! The 20th-floor penthouse at 1049 Fifth Avenue, which Limbaugh purchased in 1994 under the name RH Trust (Rush's middle name is Hudson) wasofficially listed two weeks ago for $13.95 million. And although he's described the place on his radio show as "fashionable," it's doubtful that will be the word that comes to mind when you look at the photos below, which show off moldings of "hand painted gold leaf" and his "hand painted ceilings and walls" by "renowned artist" Richard Smith.
"You walk towards your fear, you embrace your fear, you don't try to hedge it. That a part of real living as human being, as a spiritual being is to embrace and encompass your fear, your love and not run away from anything because that's the life experience. And it's in that richness that we find the most beautiful art, the most beautiful music, we find the richness of what the human soul can offer and I see all that richness buried under such bullshit." – Michael C. Ruppert in Collapse (2009)
“Nathan the Wise, beneath an appearance of pleading for religious tolerance, depicts a secret, universal religion shared by a world-wide fraternity, a freemasonry, so to speak, of rational men, regardless of their overt cultural and political loyalties, and among Lessing’s last published works were some dialogues on the true nature of Freemasonry itself. Throughout Europe the last two decades before the French Revolution saw a marked growth in the activities of secret soceities devoted to ideals of equality and fraternity, perhaps in response to the restrictions in absolutist states on any general and public participation in political discussion and descision-making, and in Germany the Masonic movement proved particularly attractive to literary intellectuals. Wieland and Herder were both members of the Weimar lodge, named ‘Amalia’, of which the Prime Minister, von Fritsch, was Grand Master, and in 1780 Goethe also applied for membership. Did he expect to find in Masonry a secret company of noble individuals, a broader world than that of the Weimar court, but an alternative to the public mind from which he had turned away? If so, he was soon disapointed. He passed rapidly through the usual grades to become a Master Mason in 1782 and he joined the order within the order, the Illuminists, in February 1783, but within a few weeks he was writing:
They say you can best get to know a man when he is at play… and I too have found that in the little world of the brethren all is as it is in the great one … I was already saying this in the forecourt, and now I have reached the ark of the covenant I have nothing to add. To the wise all things are wise, to the fool foolish.
These were difficult times for German Masonry, as yet not fifty years old. In 1782 a General Assembly in Wilhelmsbad had failed to resolve the complicated internal quarrels of the movement, which was, in essence, divided between those, notably the Rosicrucians, to whom the mythology and ritual of the movement, and its claim to occult knowledge, were more important, and those, notably the Illuminati, who were more concerned with its ethical universalism and social egalitarianism. Goethe, as usual, was steering a middle course, seeing merits in both currents. But in 1784 the Bavarian government discovered, or believed it had discovered, that at the heart of the Illuminist movement lay a radical republican conspiracy, decreed the death penalty for recruiting to it, and warned other German rulers accordingly. In the campaign that followed, and the effectively obliterated German Masonry for twenty years, the Weimar lodge, which Carl August himself had joined in 1782, was one of the first to close. Goethe felt that his knowledge of human behaviour had been extended by his involvement with Freemasonry, and his experiences had an important effect on his later assessment of the causes of the French Revolution, but their immediate contribution to his literary achievment was slight – some forty-eight stanzas of a projected Rosicrucian epic, The Mysteries. Even these were writen, not for the brethren, but for his minimal public of the years 1784-6: Charlotte von Stein, the Herders, and Knebel. Unlike Wieland, or Countess Bernstorff’s secretary, Bode, or the actor-producer Schroder, Goethe does not at any time after his admission seem to have thought the lodge a uniquely important medium through which to communicate with or assist his fellow men. On the contrary, his Masonic comedy of 1790, The Grand Kophta (Der Gross-Cophta), suggests that his original expectations may have been considerably higher, and his disappointment correspondingly more intense, than his cool and tactful assessment of 1783, writen of course to a fellow Mason, might seem to imply.
In that play a young knight expresses the bitterest disilluison when what he has taken to be a brotherhood dedictaed to missionary altruism proves, or seems to prove, to be a cynical deception. What is to become now, he asks, of the unattached idealism of the disapointed friend of humanity? ‘Fortunate he, if it is still possible for him to find a wife or a friend, on whom he can bestow indvidually what was intended for the whole human race.’ These words, almost a prose paraphrase of the last verses of ‘To the Moon’, may be Goethe’s true epitaph on his brief venture into Freemasonry: certainly they tell us something of the nature, as well as the strength, of the emotions with which he turned to Frau von Stein.”
wow having have read so much, am just atricious about the new music industry. I mean people have different opinions and stuff, bt at the end o the day, whats written in the bible is coming to pass. i mean this is really nothin compared to the real deal. Devils on the loose,he knows his time isreally too short. I mean i was a big jay fan, not so much becoz he really said anythng positive in my life through his music, but because he sipmly was cool.he had swag for me then, and when you a big fan, u agree with almost everthiing he does or say to a verge of refusing to even see when things can become harmful. this stuff is so real. for a fact thres good(Jesus) and evil(lucifer). the big part is where do u belong in the picture when Jesus Christ returns? Or when u die? times runnin out man. thanking VC for the cautions(tyhough too,curious about ur religion and beliefs).People gotta wke up. some are too deep asleep. music is a very strong instrument through which human emotion bieng depicted in song and spirit (whether gud/evi) feed too ones soul is passed from,to. so we really really gutta watch what we listen too. music says alot. this guys are lureing everybody to satanic practices without concious alert, to possess peoples soul without u even knowing. However want to ask what VCs real motive behind the website,which am really greatful for, but why do you care? whats it to you if people are mislead?
1903 – The Wright Brothers finally solve the mystery of flight for human beings
Then we learned to fly in formation.
2006 – Twitter is founded.
Between 1903 and 2006 is a century during which apes aspired to become birds, a hybridization that goes back to our mythology.
If we take the name of Twitter literally, we see it has the communication of a flock, announcing their location, status, territory, thoughts, somewhat arbitrarily. Like sparrows in a tree, communicating to the networked host.
In other words, one of the great projects of Western humanity over the past one hundred years was to become birdlike, rather than apelike. For whatever reason.
22 January 2009 – "To the location of this new earthquake weapons test the United States is preparing for these reports further warn the entire Western coastal areas of the Americans are in danger and could ‘very well’ expect to see a catastrophic event within the fortnight."
Because 'a fortnight' isn't common parlance in North America (weez stoopid), I remind you that it means 'forteen nights' or, two weeks.
4 February 2009 – "Northern California Earthquake: Magnitude 6.0 Quake Rattles Coast
Residents of Northern California's Humboldt County were rocked by a magnitude-5.9 earthquake Thursday, but officials said there were no immediate reports of major injury or damage from the second large temblor to hit the area within a month.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported the quake struck at 12:20 p.m. about 35 miles northwest of the community of Petrolia and nearly 50 miles west of Eureka. The shaking was felt within a 150-mile radius, as far north as southern Oregon and as far south as Sonoma County, according to the USGS Web site."
Apple’s secrecy produced another big open secret: they were developing a tablet, and they made it official yesterday. Steve Jobs acknowledged the hype (which one presumes wasn’t supposed to exist at all) when he showed The Wall St Journal quote. However, the resulting massive buildup of hype produced an anticlimactic ‘meh, tell us something we didn’t already know’.
The device will only be available in two months, which in turn means this press conference was little more than a means of stemming the flow of leaks – yes, we’re working on a device, but no, it’s not ready yet, and yes, we’re building on what we’ve already done with the iPhone, but no, it doesn’t use facial recogniation software to control different accounts for family members, nor does it have a tactile interface.
In a sense (and this is written in fairness to the meh) what Steve Jobs did yesterday was travel back in time and present Shakespeare with a Bic rollerball: a rather useful technological achievement, but something that in the future we won’t be too wowed over. We aren’t that wowed over it now, and that is my point.
Because we’ve been exposed to tablets in film and television for over twenty years, part of the excitement prior to the announcement came from the fact that these things were finally real. In fact, the devices in the Star Trek shows between 1987-2005 were called ‘padds’ (an acronym) and I wouldn’t be surprised at all to learn the iPad was named in recognition of this. In Greg Bear’s Queen of Angels series (set between the 2040s and the 2170s) they were called ‘slates’ and ‘pads’ alternatively. They are high tech devices, but they are like 20th Century rollerball pens. They are meant to facilitate our use of our networked high technology, and be so ubiquitous in the future that they are taken for granted.
So when Steve Jobs says this is the best thing he’s ever done, and when Jonathan Ive is on video saying ‘it’s magical’, this is where they’re coming from. The iPad would have lived up to its hype and then some were this the year 2000, but no. The iPhone announcement was a big deal in 2007 because nothing operated like it at the time, and it hinted at where the technology was going. Three years later, they’ve managed to produce extra large versions with a ten hour battery life.
Other companies will also be producing electronic tablets, but one imagines that Apple’s will be superior in ease of use and aesthetics – and these reasons are why the hype was so great. Apple makes beautiful objects. (What most people skipped was that they are now making their own chips, which is a big deal).
Jobs ended his presentation by telling us that the company seeks to exist at the intersection between technology and the liberal arts.
This was a great reminder of the importance of the liberal arts, and the statement came with embedded snarkiness. Businesses like Microsoft, in the words of Jobs, ‘have no taste’. Most businesses, for that matter, put little stock in the value of the arts. Further, most politicians put little value in the arts, and those students who wish to study the liberal arts at a post-secondary level are told they are jeopardizing their future. We have a very arts-unfriendly society, and a resulting population of imaginatively im
poverished citizens. Citizens, in turn, whose imaginations are so blighted that they seem mystified by Apple’s success. They’re all like, ‘Apple, wow, how do they keep coming up with hit products?’ In producing attractive things, Apple has both ignored the academic post-modern attacks on the idea of beauty, and wowed the business world by becoming a fifty-billion dollar company.
While Jobs was introducing the iPad, Margaret Atwood was at the annual Davos conference to accept another award, and planed to deliver a speech, which was cut for time. As introduced by Jane Taber at The Globe and Mail: “Margaret Atwood was poised to tell the world’s business and political elite today that politicians have ‘done their best to finish’ off art.”
I am thankful that Apple’s example exists to counter the tasteless lack of imagination of our ruling elites.
From here, Apple now has to bring us electronic data sheets, as represented in the new series Caprica. The iPad is a twenty-five year old idea for which the technology has finally been developed. The Caprica data sheets appear to be where we go from here.
Last week I uploaded the newest version of my website, and promptly ran into a problem I didn't understand. Had I been able to find this solution through the searches I initiated, I would have saved myself both some time and some undeserved annoyance with my webhost.
My site uses .htaccess redirects to make the url's clean and predictable, as well as transferable from previous versions. In the past, the redirects were done using the following:
That is 'home' is an alias for the full url that follows.
This didn't work with my new host; rather, inputing 'timothycomeau.com/home' rewrote the url as the full url I was trying to hide (http://timothycomeau.com/?page=home). With the help of my host's tech support, I was told that the use of the full url was the problem. Rather, I needed to write my RewriteRules this way:
RewriteRule ^home/$ /?page=home.
When I did this, the url's behaved as I expected and wanted them too.
Vancouver, not known for a place of a lot of snow, was awarded the 2010 Olympics in 2003, probabby for places like Whistler, which are known to be ski resorts. Seven years and global-warming denial later, there’s concern there might not be enough snow. Meanwhile, protesting the Olympics is forbidden, and the Prime Minister shuts down Parliament using them as an excuse.
The Olympics seem to be a diaster in the making. What was supposed to be Canada’s pride will instead be its embrassement. Remember the last Canadian winter olympics, Calgary ’88? The Jamacian bob-sled team? Vancouver seems a little Jamacian bob-sled at this point. The whole thing will be one day summed up with, ‘what were they thinking?’
~
A massive Earthquake destroyed Haiti. That’s not hyperbole. A country has been blank-slated. One thinks of Kobe, and Iran, the Tsunami, other places which suffered devasting earthquakes in recent years. Yet those places had an infrastructure that could absorb the devastation. Haiti, it was well known, was already a sociological diaster before this. The tsunami this earthquake has unleashed is that of North American white guilt. Pat Robertson says something dumb (as usual) and people get all self-righteous about it, which is kind of beside the point considering 100,000 people have died. That number is too large to make sense of.
I’m not sure if Haiti has just become the defining event of the decade (ala a day in September 2001), or just another tradgedy that will be off the radar in six months. It is especially reminiscent of the Tsunami, coming three weeks after its fifth aniversary. For televsisual North America, it’s another go on the tradgedy-o-round, and people for whom budgets are already tight due to the economic situation (brought on by overpaid, ignorant fools) are now expected to donate out of survivor’s guilt.
~
Jay Leno, an overpaid throwback to the 20th Century (television and a car collection?) is given back his late night television show because the only people watching tv are those who were already adult in the late 20th Century. Conan O’Brien, who makes the Internet Generation laugh, is shafted in the process. I just hope this means Conan goes to HBO or something and can start using swears in his humor.
~
Some girl from Los Angeles who’s name means Monday in German had plastic surgery, which is too bad because she was quite attractive. Now she’s just generic. Why do hot girls always seek to erase the very unique qualities that make them hot? That, of course, is a rhetorical question, because we all know the answer is they’re spoiled idiots.
Actually, to answer that rhetoric: I always feel like the answer is better schooling, actually. I imagine a soceity where education means enabling talent and predisposition, teaching the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of human history (that includes things like mathematics, meditation, exercise …). The goal of education should be to stretch the minds and imaginations of children as far as they can be stretched, to borrow the phrasing of someone I read once.
Instead we have a dehumanizing education system which enables and encourages mediocrity. So potentially beautiful people are ruined, their superficiality becoming something they cling to, and develop their identities around their physique instead of growing mentally (and changing thus). Through surgery they change their appearance, thereby supposedly changing their personality. Everyone an Easter Egg, an empty shell, and everyone changing the decoration, every few years.
Jan 13, 2009 — Remember Katrina and Rita? Those hurricanes that prompted a government response which made most of us ashamed to be American? I am certain that the global response to a devastation far worse, as a result of the Port Au Prince quake, will make Bush's Follies look like a well-oiled machine. Not only is the situation on the ground worse; the governments that might send massive aid are financial and economic basket cases. With the death toll already circling 200,000, and almost all critical infrastructure destroyed, the effort needed would have broken most governments before the collapse. It would take a Marshall Plan. So fuggedboudit. The UN can't help much either. No one can. There will be so many stories of courage, heroism, sacrifice and love to arise from this tragedy. At some point I can just see good souls all over the Gulf with private boats trying to do what they can. Take some fresh water and medical supplies in. Maybe pull a few out before anarchy and disease consume everything. It reminds me of a line Jeff Bridges once spoke: "You human beings are at your best when things are worst." — That is exactly what must change in us.
We will see lots of footage of aid flights and stories about how other nations are rushing to assist. But it will not be possible to hide the fact for long that Haiti is becoming — or has become — a mass grave. Haiti is a stark, cold, and unforgiving metaphor for what we all face… all to soon. We need to listen to and acknowledge the suffering of the Haitian people so that someone might acknowledge ours when the time comes. What happens in Haiti needs to be watched cosely and learned from by those with the stomach for it. The journalist in me wants to be there, right in it.
Our message is spreading quickly. Every day I receive maybe 10 to 15 friend requests on Facebook from all over the world from people who have just seen "Collapse". Almost all say something like, "I thought I was the only one who felt this way." — almost all are in their twenties. I spend as much time as I can with many to share a few words and bond across a cyberspace that now hums with a lonely echo. An awakening is taking place. Collapse has been invited to the Berlin International Film Festival and I've heard that it is going to be mentioned in one of the largest U.S. weekly news mags this week. Collapse has announced many new theatrical openings around the country and finally in some foreign cities. The awakening has started before the panic that will come… if not over Haiti then over what's coming this year. The faster we reach people, the less damage will be caused by the panic. It is my prayer that the panic can be averted, even if loss of life cannot. There is still time.
MCR
As Leonardo Maugeri, a senior executive at Italian oil major ENI (E), puts it: “There will be enough oil for at least 100 years.” Many analysts and industry executives have little doubt that there’s plenty of oil in the ground. “Only about 32% of the oil [in reserves] is produced,” says Val Brock, Shell’s head of business development for enhanced oil recovery. Shell estimates 300 billion barrels and maybe more might be squeezed out of existing fields, much of it once thought beyond retrieval. Peter Jackson, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates’ London-based senior director for oil industry activity, has reviewed data from the world’s biggest fields. His conclusion: 60% of their reserves remain available. […] The price spike of 2008 may lead to similar results. Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, an environmental group, notes that the U.S. car fleet shrank by 4 million in 2009, thanks to scrapping and reduced sales. He expects that shrinkage to continue, reducing the U.S. fleet by 25 million cars by 2020. He also sees a cultural change occurring in which more people, especially the young, don’t see owning a car as a necessity. “We are now looking at something new, a shift in the way people think about automobiles,” he says. “That means less oil use.”
U.S. oil consumption dropped by 9% over the last two years. The recession certainly hurt demand, but many analysts think oil use in the West has peaked and will not rebound to previous levels. The Energy Dept. sees the consumption of oil-based fuel in the U.S. flattening out in the coming decades. “Are people going to use energy differently in the next [growth] phase?” asks Goran Trapp, head of global oil trading at Morgan Stanley in London. “If so, the people forecasting [strong] demand increases are going to be surprised.”
// Contrast this with a report by Terry Macalister, from 9 November 2009:
The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying. […] But as far back as 2004 there have been people making similar warnings. Colin Campbell, a former executive with Total of France told a conference: “If the real [oil reserve] figures were to come out there would be panic on the stock markets … in the end that would suit no one.”
I mean, I read the dust-jacket blurb today and understood it instantly, which is kind of bad for a 688 page book. Nevertheless, I feel like it's probably a must-read, and it would be nice if this was what everyone was talking about at the beginning of this decade, rather than all that world-is-flat and we're-all-going-to-die-for-xx-reason shit we've subjected to for the past ten years.
To quote myself, from December 2008, during the first prorogation, with added emphasis today. With The Economist weighing in, (ici et ici) it's clear that our international reputation has begun to be damaged.
There's also a joke which seems apt, considering the circumstances. "Did you hear about the Canadians who won gold medals at the Olympics? They had them bronzed."
The reason the Conservatives are currently dominant despite the weakness of their official numbers is because they don’t give a fuck about anyone’s feelings, and one can hope that this works out to our collective advantage when they draw the knives for Harper’s back. If not, as Adam Radwanski pointed out, we’re in even bigger trouble than we thought, writing: “If Conservatives are not at least seriously discussing the replacement of Stephen Harper before Parliament returns on Jan 26, he truly has succeeded in creating a cult of personality’. The last thing we need is a Maurice Duplessis holding this country back from the wonder of the 21st Century, as that dictator of Quebec did in the 1950s. However once he died the resulting Quiet Revolution rushed the province from the 19th into the 20th Century within a decade, and tried to follow-through by upgrading itself into a nation-state.
If Harper manages to enforce a nightmare of feel-good 20C Reagan-Thatcher bullshit on us while the US resurrects itself from its social catastrophe, and Europe continues to set an example for what a mostly enlightened society could be, the end result will probably be a dramatic national révolution tranquille in twenty years, by which time the rest of the world will be used to thinking of us as just another one of those third world countries of squandered potential ruled by an idiot. The talent of this country will continue to apply for US-work visas to escape the ignorance of this place. Eventually, Canada could come to resemble the southern United States, too ignorant and stupid to understand the hell we exemplify to others.
I'm guessing that johnnyblog is a Conservative operative. A series of comments on Rick Mercer's piece reprinted in the Globe & Mail, which appeared originally on his blog.
This is how the Conservatives operate … try to dominate and set the agenda of the conversation by belittling the opposing view through being the loudest assholes in the room. Out of politeness we keep our mouth shut and let them bluster like fools when we should be telling them to fuck right off, or openly mocking them.
