Thursday, February 26, 2009
Picture Du Jour...
This is a pretty special photo.
The Moon - the darker shaded area is the sunlight reflected off of the Earth.
To the right of the Moon are Mercury, Jupiter, and Mars.
Taken in Australia-
Click on the photo for the larger version.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
How Much Does The Stimulus Weigh?
Each bill of United States Currency weighs one gram.
Let’s say we had a pile of one dollar bills….787 billion of them- same as the Stimulus Package.
Let’s say we had a pile of one dollar bills….787 billion of them- same as the Stimulus Package.
How much would that cash weigh?
86,759 TONS
That’s more than an Iowa class battleship!!!
Or put another way, according to Senator Lamar Alexander, if you spent a million dollars a week, starting the day Jesus Christ was born, you would still have money left over.
And you could spend it on a new calculator because the old one just died of shock.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Picture Du Jour....
This is a real photo from a Border's bookstore in Dallas. In the children's section. Never to early to start the indoctrination.....
Monday, February 09, 2009
Brief Focus on Art
Let's take an interlude from the Porkopulous Disaster since it is so depressing and do a little art appreciation......
One of my favorite artists is John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)
He was born in Florence, to American parents and traveled extensively throughout Europe. His parents never settled back in America, not stepping foot in the States himself until right before his 21st birthday to retain his citizenship. He was schooled as a French artist, heavily influenced by the Impressionist movement, the Spanish Master Velazquez, the Dutch Master Frans Hals, and his teacher Carolus-Duran .
Portait of Miss Eliza Wedgewood, 1905
To describe Sargent is to say that he painted. It was his life and yet he had a deep appreciation for music and all art forms and went out of his way to promote other artists -- for this selflessness he was greatly loved. Extremely bright, extremely gifted, an intense hard worker, he was the last great generalist. It is hard to put a label on him for he could master so many different painting styles. He was an Impressionist, a Classical Portraitist, a Landscape Artist, a Water Colorist, a Muralist of public art, and even started sculpting at the last of his life. He was all of these things and yet he was none of them in total.
Madame X (1884). Considered by Sargent to be one of his best. Created such a scandal, he left Paris and moved to London. When Madame X was shown at the Salon of 1884 it became instantly a salacious painting and a scandal in French society as a result of its sexual suggestiveness of her pose and the pail pasty color of her skin.
He is often passed by, not studied, or dismissed because he was never a radical artist or trend-setter. He always worked within the wide, rich textured pallet of known and established styles. Yet his brilliance was in fusing these elements together and for this he has never fully gotten credit.
His output was prodigious. Working dawn til dusk in some cases -- even on vacations, and sometimes seven days a week. Between 1877 (when his work really started taking off) and 1925, he did over 900 oils and more than 2,000 watercolors along with countless charcoal sketch-portraits and endless pencil drawings.
Street in Venice (1882)
He painted two United States presidents, the aristocracy of Europe, the new and emerging tycoons and barons of business -- Rockefeller, Sears, Vanderbilt; and he painted gypsies, tramps, and street children with the same gusto and passion. He hiked through the Rocky Mountains with a canvas tent under pouring rain to paint the beauty of waterfalls, and painted near the front lines during World War I to capture the horrors of war. He painted the back alleys of Venice, sleeping gondoliers, fishing boats and the dusty side streets of Spain. He painted opulent interiors and vacant Moorish Ruins. He painted the artists of his time -- performers, poets, dancers, musicians, and writers -- Robert Louis Stevenson, and Henry James. He painted the great generals of the Great War, and the Bedouin nomads in their camps. He painted grand allegorical murals, and his friends as they slept.
By the River (1885) (Femme en Barque)
One of my favorite artists is John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)
He was born in Florence, to American parents and traveled extensively throughout Europe. His parents never settled back in America, not stepping foot in the States himself until right before his 21st birthday to retain his citizenship. He was schooled as a French artist, heavily influenced by the Impressionist movement, the Spanish Master Velazquez, the Dutch Master Frans Hals, and his teacher Carolus-Duran .
Portait of Miss Eliza Wedgewood, 1905To describe Sargent is to say that he painted. It was his life and yet he had a deep appreciation for music and all art forms and went out of his way to promote other artists -- for this selflessness he was greatly loved. Extremely bright, extremely gifted, an intense hard worker, he was the last great generalist. It is hard to put a label on him for he could master so many different painting styles. He was an Impressionist, a Classical Portraitist, a Landscape Artist, a Water Colorist, a Muralist of public art, and even started sculpting at the last of his life. He was all of these things and yet he was none of them in total.
Madame X (1884). Considered by Sargent to be one of his best. Created such a scandal, he left Paris and moved to London. When Madame X was shown at the Salon of 1884 it became instantly a salacious painting and a scandal in French society as a result of its sexual suggestiveness of her pose and the pail pasty color of her skin.He is often passed by, not studied, or dismissed because he was never a radical artist or trend-setter. He always worked within the wide, rich textured pallet of known and established styles. Yet his brilliance was in fusing these elements together and for this he has never fully gotten credit.
His output was prodigious. Working dawn til dusk in some cases -- even on vacations, and sometimes seven days a week. Between 1877 (when his work really started taking off) and 1925, he did over 900 oils and more than 2,000 watercolors along with countless charcoal sketch-portraits and endless pencil drawings.
Street in Venice (1882)He painted two United States presidents, the aristocracy of Europe, the new and emerging tycoons and barons of business -- Rockefeller, Sears, Vanderbilt; and he painted gypsies, tramps, and street children with the same gusto and passion. He hiked through the Rocky Mountains with a canvas tent under pouring rain to paint the beauty of waterfalls, and painted near the front lines during World War I to capture the horrors of war. He painted the back alleys of Venice, sleeping gondoliers, fishing boats and the dusty side streets of Spain. He painted opulent interiors and vacant Moorish Ruins. He painted the artists of his time -- performers, poets, dancers, musicians, and writers -- Robert Louis Stevenson, and Henry James. He painted the great generals of the Great War, and the Bedouin nomads in their camps. He painted grand allegorical murals, and his friends as they slept.
By the River (1885) (Femme en Barque)Friday, February 06, 2009
Quote Du Jour...
"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened."
- Norman Thomas, U.S. Socialist Party presidential candidate 1940, 1944 and 1948
In the name of 'stimulus', that day is fast approching. Now, here comes the 'fairness doctrine' at the same time. I wonder if the 'fairness doctrine' will apply to NPR and the Obama news networks....
- Norman Thomas, U.S. Socialist Party presidential candidate 1940, 1944 and 1948
In the name of 'stimulus', that day is fast approching. Now, here comes the 'fairness doctrine' at the same time. I wonder if the 'fairness doctrine' will apply to NPR and the Obama news networks....
