Read a Banned Book
Every year, in the last week of September, the American Library Association sponsors "Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read". The freedom to read is on many people's minds these days.
We just finished listening to the end of the Biden / Palin debate. I still think Palin is a dolt and dangerous believer in creationism who should never be in a position to set public policy, but my point is not to critique the debate. But listening to the debate and thinking about Banned Books Week I am reminded that Governor Palin, when she was first elected mayor of Wasilla, asked how she should go about removing a book from their library.
Yes, I realize that it was a "hypothetical" question and that she never demanded the removal of any books. I couldn't care less. She asked how she, as Mayor, could go about removing a book from a public library. I think that's unforgivable.
It's unforgivable because it reveals 1) a lack of understanding of the law; and 2) no understanding of the US Constitution and bounds on government censorship. That the book she had in mind was reportedly "Daddy's Roommate" I also find unsettling, but in this instance I am more outraged that Palin would consider banning a book than I am about her homophobic attitudes, even though it's an invidious choice.
The ALA maintains list of "Frequently Challenged Books", and the lists are always interesting. Not surprisingly, the books that people most wish to ban frequently are the best at reflecting the diversity and most creative thought of society. Ideas have a history of being threatening.
Here's their list of the "10 Most Challenged Books of 2007". I'm a bit disappointed that I've only read three of these titles, but that's a great motivation to read more. Let's read a book that someone wanted to ban!
1. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group
2. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence
3. Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes
Reasons: Sexually Explicit and Offensive Language
4. The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman
Reasons: Religious Viewpoint
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Reasons: Racism
6. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language,
7. TTYL, by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
8. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
Reasons: Sexually Explicit
9. It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris
Reasons: Sex Education, Sexually Explicit
10. The Perks of Being A Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
P.S. Moments later I read a reference to this article on censorship by Philip Pullman: "The censor's dark materials", The Guardian [UK], 29 September 2008.
Beard of the Week LI: Promoter & Defender of Equality
This week's beard belongs to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (born: 1945), the president of Brazil. Lula was first elected in October 2002; he was re-elected in October 2006, extending his term until 2011. Upon the first news of his first election, the Sydney [Australia] Morning Herald lead with this news:
Sao Paulo: Leftist former union chief Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been elected Brazil's president by a landslide, in an historic vote that gave Latin America's biggest country its first working class leader.
["Lula elected president of Brazil", Sydney Morning Herald, 28 October 2002.]
I like that really, really liberal phrase "leftist former union chief"!
I've read some news reports that tell me there are interesting things about Lula's administration to talk about, but there is only one aspect that brought him to our attention here at Beard of the Week–aside from his handsome beard, of course–and that's the strong stand he's been taking lately in favor of gay and lesbian equality in his country, positions that are national, perhaps, but still seen around the world.
In June of this year, Lula denounced homophobia as a "perverse disease" ("Brazil's President Denounces Homophobia", Joe.My.God, 10 June 2008). The occasion was his landmark opening of a conference on LGBT rights in Brazil. This report of the event is interesting for the biases the writer reveals:
BRASILIA, Brazil, June 9, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – June 5 was a landmark day for the international homosexual movement. For the first time in history, the president of a nation officially launched a conference with the sole purpose of promoting and defending the homosexual agenda.
Brazilian President Luiz Lula had the First National Conference of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transvestites and Transsexuals (GLBT), inaugurated by presidential decree, and called for "a time of reparation" in Brazil.
[…]
After calling for a universal embrace of the homosexual movement, the president affirmed that "homophobia" is perhaps "the most perverse disease impregnated in the human head."[Julio Severo, "Brazilian President: Opposition to Homosexuality is a 'Perverse Disease'", LifeSiteNews.com, 9 June 2008.]
That would be enough for President Lula to win the "Promoter and Defender of the Homosexual Agenda" Award, but there's more.
More recently, in an interview on TV Brazil that he gave on 17 September 2008, Lula spoke in favor of civil unions for gays and lesbians in Brazil:
"There are men living with men, women living with women, and many times they live a balanced and even extraordinary life," stated the president. "The one thing that really bothers me is the fact the the politicians who are against civil unions never refuse a gay vote, and the state (which denies gays of civil unions) does not refuse taxes paid by homosexuals. Why is that? The only thing that matters is that these individuals are Brazilian citizens, and respect the Constitution. The rest is up to them, and I am in favor of civil unions," he added.
["Brazilian President In Favor Of Civil Unions", Made in Brazil, 18 September 2008.]
When reporting on this story ("Brazil's President backs same-sex unions", 19 September 2008), PinkNews noted this interesting fact: "Homosexuality has been legal in Brazil since 1823 and civil unions are allowed in some areas."
PFLAG (Parents, Friends, and Families of Lesbians and Gays) had this to say about Lula's call for LGBT equality:
It's wonderful to see progress on all fronts, and in other nations. Imagine if we here in the States had a president who was willing to proclaim their support for LGBT equality. Perhaps one day it will happen.
["President of Brazil Steps Up for LGBT Rights", PFLAG National Blog, 18 September 2008.]
I agree except that I'd prefer to say that one day it will happen.
———-
* [source; original caption:] "CAMP DAVID, MARYLAND – MARCH 31: BrazilIan President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaks during press conference with U.S. President George W. Bush March 31, 2007 at Camp David, Maryland. Bush and Lula are meeting to discuss world trade and global promotion of ethanol use. (Photo by Ron Sachs-Pool/Getty Images)"
In: All, Beard of the Week, Faaabulosity
Seeing Halfway to the Beginning of Time
Once again Physics News Update delivered what I thought was a really cool story. It concerns an incredibly bright gamma-ray burst from an incredibly distant object–more distant than anything ever seen before: 7,000,000,000 light years away!
The object exploding was an old star that had used up all its fuel, the end of the sequence in which hydrogen is fused into helium, helium is fused into carbon and oxygen, later products fuse into ever heavier elements until the end of the line is reached with lead as a final product in that sequence. When the fusion sequence ends, there is no outward pressure to balance gravity and the star collapses. Its outer shell is blown off, the core can be compressed to a black hole, and the violence can create shock waves of outward expanding gases (that are dispersing those heavy elements around the universe) that interact explosively with each other and give off exceedingly brilliant bursts of electromagnetic radiation — the gamma-ray bursts. For a fantastic description of these last moments in the life of a supernova, you might like to read my posting "A Star Explodes in Slow Motion".
So brilliant was the end of this start that, as mentioned below, it would have been visible to the naked eye in full sunlight, had you been looking. Fortunately for science, the satellite known as Swift did see it, and had time to let other observers now. And how interesting to remember that this explosion happened 7 billion years ago.
———-
FURTHEST SEEABLE THING.
For the first time in history you could have looked half way back to the origin of the universe with your naked eye. On the night of March 19, 2008 a telescope mounted in space observed a flash from a gamma ray burst, an extremely explosive celestial object, which set several records.
First, if you'd been looking in that direction you would have been able to see, with your own unaided eyes, something at a distance further–seven billion light years–than anything a human being has ever seen in history. Second, since looking out into space is equivalent to looking back in time (it takes the light from distant objects many years to reach the Earth), you would have been witnessing the earliest thing ever seeable by the naked eye.
A new report describes observations made of the explosion by an orbiting telescope called Swift and by some of ground-based telescopes that got in on the action once they were notified by Swift. Swift has three onboard detectors which look not at ordinary visible light but at much more energetic light in the form of x rays and gamma rays. One feature of Swift's mission is that as soon as it sees something interesting it alerts controllers on the ground so that other telescopes can be turned in that direction. In this way the explosive outburst, whose official name is GRB 080319B, could be tracked by telescopes sensitive to other kinds of light, such as infrared and even radio waves.
The March 19 event is an example of a gamma ray burst. This comes about when certain heavy old stars have used up all their internal fuel. When a star has no more fuel, the force of gravity causes it to contract. If this process is violent enough, the star can blow apart as a supernova. In some special cases, what is left behind is a black hole, and outward going shock waves which, when they criss-cross, can create a brilliant flash of light. For a short time this light is more powerful than that coming from an entire galaxy of stars. The cone of energy flying away from the explosion can be quite narrow, so to be observed from far away, as this object was, it had to be aligned just right to be seen by Swift.
This gamma burst was not the furthest ever observed with a telescope, but it was the brightest in terms of the energy released. So bright, in fact, that it could have been seen unaided in areas of North and South America the night of March 19, if only for about 40 seconds. The splash of light arriving at Swift's place in orbit that two of Swift's three detectors were temporarily blinded. Fortunately several telescopes quickly maneuvered into position and could study the stellar explosion as it unfolded. By then the gamma rays, the most energetic part of the light blast, would have died down.
But other types of light continued to issue from the scene. According to Swift scientist Judith Racusin, an astronomer at Penn State, this has become the best-observed gamma ray burst, and the observations have already changed the way we think about bursts work. When you look out at the night sky about 3000 stars are visible. Everything you can see at night is either a planet in our home solar system or one of those stars, all of which are located in our home galaxy, the Milky Way.
The furthest thing you can normally see with the naked eye, and with some difficulty, is the Andromeda Galaxy, about 2.5 million light years away. Only about once a century is a supernova visible from any further galaxy. And by now it's been 400 years since we've seen one of those. That makes GRB 080319B all the more impressive. It breaks the record of most distant seeable-with-the-naked-eye thing by a factor of a thousand.
Located in the Bootes Constellation, the gamma burst is at a distance of 7 billion light years, which means that it took light seven billion years to come from the blast to Earth. That means that a person seeing the visible portion of the blast would have been looking halfway back toward the time of the big bang, when, according to modern cosmology, the universe began. When the blast occurred the sun hadn't even appeared yet, much less the Earth, much less the human species. (The results appeared [in] Nature magazine, 11 September 2008.)
[Phillip F. Schewe, James Dawson, and Jason S. Bardi, "Physics News Update — The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Research News", American Institute of Physics, issue #873, 25 September 2008.]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science
California Forests Slipping as CO2 Storage Tanks
The following news arrived in my email recently as a "Physics News Update" item. I thought it interesting enough to share.
CALIFORNIA TREES NOT KEEPING UP WITH CO2.
Forests aren't absorbing as much carbon dioxide as in the past, and fire suppression might be to blame. Fire suppression in forest encourages the growth of smaller trees and, as a result, significantly reduces a forest's overall ability to store carbon, according to a new study by scientists at the University of California at Irvine. The researchers, studying forests in California, found that while the number of trees per acre increased in the sixty year period between 1930 and 1990, carbon storage actually declined about 26 percent. This change in the nature of the forests, with greater numbers of smaller trees at the expense of large trees, seems to have been caused by the assiduous suppression of fires by human intervention, the researchers said. Using detailed records, the scientists, compare forests as they were in the 1930s with forests in the 1990s and found that the "stem density" of the forests had increased, which would seem to enhance a forest's ability to store carbon. In fact, the smaller-tree factor outweighs the denser-forest factor because large trees retain a disproportionate amount of carbon, the researchers concluded.
Climate change, or at least the vast increase in carbon dioxide launched into the atmosphere by the combustion of fossil fuels during the industrial era, has focused scientific attention on the ability of plants, especially trees, to take up and store the added CO2. Trees are not the only carbon sinks (the oceans store vast amounts of CO2), but they are often cited as a key indicator in the fight to stabilize the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
This study, published last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, pertains to California only, but Aaron Fellows, one of the study's authors, believes it will apply to other dry conifer (evergreen) forests in the U.S. western region.
[Phillip F. Schewe, James Dawson, and Jason S. Bardi, "Physics New Update : The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Research News", #872, American Institute of Physics, 17 September 2008.]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science
The Doubleday Fart
I am fascinated to learn (via Brainiac, "Fact of the Day", who heard it from the NYTimes, "The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors and Authors" by Al Silverman):
Doubleday, a proudly "middlebrow" company, was founded by Frank N. Doubleday, who suffered from flatulence. As a result, none of the characters in the books he published were allowed to pass wind.
Some of you who are already acquainted with the fact that I am most definitely an old fart, will not be surprised by my interest. I have already, apparently, written what appears to be the definitive "gay fart story", called "Time Out", to be found in its unexpurgated form in the anthology Best Gay Erotica 2004, stories selected by Kirk Read, edited by Richard Labonté (Cleis Press, December 2003). The farts were replaced by sneezes in the story's first publication, although I don't think that instance was due to publisher's flatulence, although I never actually asked.
I am aware of Benjamin Franklin's book on the subject, but perhaps it's time for a more modern study of the topic.
In: All, Curious Stuff, Old Fartdom
On Reading Wood's How Fiction Works
I recently read How Fiction Works, by James Wood (Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, 265 pages). It was a surprisingly rewarding book to have read, so I wanted to tell you about it and quote a few passages.
Like, I suspect, many writers of fiction do, I occasionally succumb to reading yet another book about writing, usually to suffer disappointment and a feeling of having wasted my time. Time and again I find writers on writing who are really taxonomists, intent on making fine distinctions about all the types of third person voice one can conceive, or summarizing ever more slowly the "parts of speech", etc. I sigh and take the books back to the library. I don't want to catalog nails and sandpaper; I want to talk about carpentry
Well, Wood is a master carpenter and he understands what he's talking about and he shares remarkable insights with equally remarkable clarity. He uses short excerpts from various authors and they're actually relevant and interesting, if you can imagine–he uses them to make a point! He analyzes what goes on in fiction in a way that is enlightening and that I can use to understand and improve my own writing, why this or that choice of words in this or that sequence can serve my purpose better or worse.
He does talk about third person writing, most about "free indirect narrative", what we might call "close third person", or narrative that is observed and told through a character's eyes, filtered by their intellect and emotions. There is also a third-person narrative ("omniscient") where the writer is the observer and narrator. The basic tension for the author to resolve is this: is it the writer noticing things or the fictional character noticing things?
On the one hand, the author wants to have his or her own words, wants to be the master of a personal style; on the other hand, narrative bends towards its characters and their habits of speech. [p. 29]
This tension is all tied up in what I think of as "voice", the viewpoint, narrative flow, and word choice that is appropriate to whomever is telling the story at any given time, since it can slide around from viewpoint to viewpoint. Getting that voice right is often the key to success for me, since it impinges on plot and narrative and character, and keeping it well located avoids distracting the reader–it maintains the vivid, uninterrupted dream.
So there is a tension basic to stories and novels: Can we reconcile the author's perceptions and language with the character's perception and language? If the author and character are absolutely merged, as in the passage from Wallace above, we get, as it were, "the whole of boredom"–the author's corrupted language just mimics an actually existing corrupted language we all know too well, and are in fact quite desperate to escape. But if author and character get too separated, as in the Updike passage, we feel the cold breath of an alienation over the text, and begin to resent the over-"literary" efforts of the stylist. The Updike is an example of aestheticism (the author gets in the way); the Wallace is an example of anti-aestheticism (the character is all); but both examples are really species of the same aestheticism, which is at bottom the strenuous display of style. [p. 34]
In other chapters he wrote about other useful topics; the ones I noted as most interesting were his discussion of "thisness" in details,* and the idea of "time signatures" in narrative, how the pace of the narrative is determined and the effect it has on the reader.
Advice on details (after comparing the amount of detail endemic to each author):
But [Henry] James is certainly not a Nabokovian writer; his notion of what constitutes a detail is more various, more impalpable, and finally more metaphysical than Nabokov's. James would probably argue that while we should indeed try to be the kind of writer on whom nothing is lost, we have no need to be the kind of writer on whom everything is found. [p. 80]
It's such a rare treat to find an entertaining and useful book about writing fiction.
———-
* "By thisness, I mean any detail that draws abstraction toward itself and seems to kill that abstraction with a puff of palpability, any detail that centers our attention with its concretation." [p.67]
Let's Section-8 'Em
I'm getting the idea that "to section-8" will, at some future time, become a popular political buzz-phrase. Probably not right away, because there's too much hysteria, too much raw emotion, too much manufactured urgency, and too much political pressure. But later, when cooler investigations have had time to do their work and we can look back on an historical incident with some distance and objectivity.
The roots of the phrase will be traced, of course, to the much talked about "section 8" of Treasury Secretary Paulson's proposed "bail-out" legislation:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
[Quoted, among many other places, here.]
Wow. This must be the ultimate, corrupt, mendacious Bush-administration's wildest wet-dream come true. Give one guy $700 billion to buy as much of America's financial institutions as he wants with absolutely no executive, legislative, or judicial oversight whatsoever, and do it with only three months left in his term of office. Woo hoo!
Even better, suggest this little gem at what seems like the peak moment of crisis. A perfect storm of extortion. Give 'em the ol' section-8! They're ready, let's section-8 'em now!!
Unfortunately the tactic that can stave off the section-8 maneuver more effectively than any other is time: time for thought about what's going on. Fortunately, it seems that there's a tiny, tiny little bit of that finally going on.
Excuse my ignorance, please, but has anybody explained yet just how financial ruin for some badly run investment firms is going to turn into a giant financial black hole and suck the entire world in? Or are we to be convinced solely on the basis of lots of formerly wealthy people, who really did know better, running around, waving their arms, and screaming that "the sky is falling"?
I understand, yes, that there's hundreds of billions of dollars that had been invested in these remarkably modern and clever–and remarkably stupid and unregulated–financial "instruments".* But, if we read the prospectus very carefully, weren't all of these "instruments" described as "high-risk" (and "past performance no guarantee of future returns")?
I suppose there is a loophole if it was never specified for whom the "instruments" were risky. Ah, we should have caught that one.
Robert Reich, at his blog ("What Wall Street Should Be Required to Do, to Get A Blank Check From Taxpayers"), has some nice suggestions for how to give help–if help is needed–without merely fulfilling more adolescent dreams about Daddy's buying a new car when the current one accidentally smashes into a tree. They're not bad, even kind of obvious to normal people, i.e., financial non-"experts" (my paraphrasing):
- If American tax-payers buy it, they get equity;
- CEO compensation starts to match performance;
- Financial institutions stop buying politicians;
- Financial institutions will now enjoy regulation; and
- Mortgage terms can be adjusted by judges, not bankers.
Of course, you will have guessed by now that I have my own proposal to offer, one that we might call the "Free-Market Ownership-Society Real Capitalism Bail-Out" plan. In three easy steps it goes like this:
- Give $3,000 to every American making less than $250,000 per year (i.e., McCain's middle class).
- Let those Americans use their stimulus [!] to buy stock (without brokers) in the "troubled" financial institution, at whatever low, low price they can get.
- Let the CEOs of the "troubled" financial institutions do whatever is necessary to convince enough Americans to buy their cheap, cheap stock to recover liquidity. (That's the "free-market" part.)
For short, this can be referred to as the "Section-9 Plan".
———-
*Don't you love the euphemistic distancing that goes on while talking about bad things that one has done but doesn't care to admit too? Sort of a broken-cookie-jar vernacular, in which many inflated and abstract words get used with lots of passive voice.
In: All, Current Events, Feeling Peevish
Beard of the Week L: Portrait of the Artist
self-portrait copyright © 2008 by Bill Pusztai (source), used with permission.
This week's beard belongs to Bill Pusztai, a photographer and artist living in Toronto. In this photograph he seems to be doing some yoga but, for our purposes, he is displaying his magnificent beard as well as drawing attention to the gorgeous tattoo on his left forearm. The tattoo of the grass is relatively recent (Phleum pratense, or, commonly, "Timothy Grass", he tells us) and documented in this photograph.
Web-two living can be very confusing for older, twentieth-century people like me. Most recently I tripped over Bill at Flickr. I saw some photographs that looked good and had a look I thought I recognized. And his name was familiar to me. I made him a contact, he made me a contact. Then we started the conversation: where do I know you from? We weren't entirely sure but we narrowed it down to one or two of the online forums we both participated in sometime between 1992 and, say, 2004 or so. Not that it particularly mattered.
Bill suggested that I make up a biographical story for his because, he claimed, his real biography was one of Wal*Mart banality.* But I won't because I refuse to believe him. I can't! I must believe that artists, all artists, have fascinating lives filled with romance and adventure. It's my version of a childhood adopted-princess myth: if I can just escape from my own banal existence and become a real artist then I will surely discover a fascinating life filled with romance and adventure. It's what keeps me going, I'm sure. Sorry, Bill–"deliciously scurrilous" would be fun, but I have my own delusion to feed. I know you'll understand.
One thing that is clearly important to Bill is figurative art: creating images of human figures. I like figurative art; I think it's important or, at least, it's something that humans respond to strongly. I respond strongly to Bill's photographs. They seem beautiful and significant to me, and I think that's enough aesthetic analysis for now.
Earlier this year (the second weekend in June) Bill exhibited at the "Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition 2008". He reported on the experience in a blog posting (follow the link to see pictures of his tent), from which I've waited to extract these exceedingly perceptive and useful observations:
- This happened five times: young Asian women, maybe 20-25, looking briefly at some portfolio pieces and marching up to me and demanding why I took pictured of "disgusting hairy men", while their boyfriend/husbands looked mortified and scrutinised the ground or the ceiling. It was so very funny but I couldn't laugh cause they were utterly serious and genuinely indignant. I don't know what to make of it.
- I am so immersed in the gay in my day to day life that I forget a simple fact – arty straight women "get" the body image pictures, without needing to have them explained.
- Duh. I read as "biker" to straight people. (NB: wear more tie-dye and/or love beads? patchouli? pointy wizard hat and robes? yarmulke?)
- Duh. I am exotic to people from teh burbs.
You will of course notice that, apparently, Bill and I are co-sympathetic on the subject of "disgusting hairy men". But mostly I found it very useful to be reminded of my own place in suburban life with this tasty little morsel: "Duh. I am exotic to people from teh burbs." No doubt one reason I write dirty stories about "disgusting hairy men" is to heighten my suburban exoticism, albeit in a largely invisible way, which forces me to talk more about my fiction in refined social settings, of course.
I mentioned last week that I thought I was going to talk about the distinction I do not make between "pornography" and "erotica". Here's the connection.
If you take some time, as I hope you will, to look at some of Bill's work (links below), you will spot the obvious fact that Bill makes portraits of people (I decided to write "people" rather than "subjects" for a reason) by considering the entire person, which is a way of saying that he makes nude portraits. I thought I'd read a statement of his about this someplace but I can't find it now. However, I don't think you'll have any difficulty imagining your own version of his artistic statement in which he finds the human figure, all of it, a beautiful thing and that the entire body of a person has a role in expressing the personality in an interpretive portrait, and so forth.
In my writing I frequently depict sexual encounters between men. For one thing, that's expected in the market I usually publish in. For another, it's a challenge to me to write a good sex scene. For another, it's a challenge to tell a good story regardless of the sex. For another, sex is part of living and I think there's value in writing about it and talking about it without squeamishness or embarrassment. The latter, by the way, only come with practice. I know–I've done public readings.
Sex and sexuality are not well integrated into most people's lives, and I think that's a problem. They are particularly not well integrated in many gay men's lives, and I think that's a big problem that I do my bit to try and address. Nobody knows better than gay men, particularly closeted gay men, what it is to separate one's sexuality from one's everyday life, and the result is not healthy. That's why taking the first step towards reunification–coming out–can seem like such a relief and such an infusion of honesty accompanied by a dispersion of internal conflict.
That's why I don't like to help maintain a distinction between "erotica" — good dirty stories or pictures — and "pornography" — bad dirty stories or pictures. I think it's a false distinction with, ultimately, unhealthy consequences.
Likewise, I've seen plenty of Flickr groups (say) that insist their group only contain "tasteful" nudity. I think you can guess already how quickly I avoid their company–they've still got some serious issues to work out as far as I'm concerned and I'd prefer to put my energies elsewhere.
I'm presuming by say this, but I expect that Bill would never describe his nude portraits as exhibiting "tasteful" nudity because it's a ridiculous distinction. Bill's portraits are often nude portraits and they show us the entire person–we are all people with bodies.
Are they erotic? It's really another pointless distinction. We are sexual beings and virtually everyone we meet is, however briefly, evaluated someplace in our brain as a potential sex partner. I am not behaving as a fully integrated human if I look at one of Bill's portraits of "disgusting hairy men" and do not evaluate what I see in a sexual way in addition to an aesthetic way and all the other ways I can respond to a visual image.
Personally, I don't like to help people maintain the fiction that they can separate their sexuality so cleanly from the "real them" (in the manner, perhaps, of Log-Cabin Republicans), nor help them maintain a false dichotomy between "good" ways of talking about sex and sexuality and "bad" ways of talking about sex and sexuality.
In similar manner Bill makes portraits of his people that often incorporate their entire body, but their attitude to me says that nobody here, photographer or subject, is snickering, or nudge-nudging, or winking about some distinction between "erotica" and "tasteful nudity".
It's refreshing and it aligns with my own perspective on the subject. It also takes away one of the impediments in the making of great art.
I do hope you'll spend some time looking at Bill's photographs. He groups his Flickr photostream into three collections of sets: men, women, and botanicals. Indeed, that covers lots of his interests, but the set of sets includes other topics, too. (One of my favorite sets is "Nothing Rhymes with Orange", a collection of portraits of red-headed men–my favorite flavor. You might also enjoy Bill's set of self portraits, from which the above photograph is taken.
His professional website with services offered and a portfolio is Radiant Page. He also shares many of his photographs and some writing at his LiveJournal: bitterlawngnome.
———-
*Here's all the autobiography I could find: "I was born in 1965 in Hamilton Ontario and presently live and work in Toronto, with frequent trips to Hamilton and occasional forays to the US."
In: All, Beard of the Week, Faaabulosity, Music & Art
Black Holes and Physicists' Jokes
A couple of weeks ago, when the world did not end by getting sucked into a black hole newly created by the just-energized Large Hadron Collider (at CERN), it seemed that journalists were casting their lines very widely to find any related story about physicists and CERN and human- or hadron-interest that they could write to cash in on the high-tech apocalyptic anxieties. Case in point: a piece in the Wall Street Journal (referenced below) about a group of scientists at CERN taking part in an experimental workshop program in improvised comedy. The reported justification is that it might help them with their lateral thinking about such allegedly abstruse topics as the Higgs boson. Myself, I think they're just a little stir crazy from being underground all the time.
But, the piece did report on a few jokes that, it says, physicists tell. To be honest, I hadn't heard them before. (Well, to be really honest, I'd heard them a day or two before at a rehearsal, told by another cast member who evidently reads the Wall Street Journal.) However, I haven't moved in physics circles for several years now.
One of the reported jokes: A neutron walks into a bar and asks how much the drinks are. The bartender says: "For you, no charge."
That's pretty funny, sure. But they saved the real knee-slapper for the end of the article:
And consider the following one-liner, delivered in the CERN cafeteria by Mr. [Stephen] Goldfarb[, a physicist working at CERN]: "Two protons walk into a black hole." That's the joke.
[Alexander Alter, "Two Protons Walk Into a Black Hole, And Other Jokes Physicists Tell", Wall Street Journal, 4 September 2008.]
I am not kidding when I say that this one still makes me laugh every time, although I think it would be slightly funnier this way:
Two photons walk into a black hole….
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Laughing Matters
How's that Deregulation Working Out for You?
I've been thinking recently about deregulation, the great "free-market" panacea that has been so strongly touted in recent decades. You do remember how deregulation is always always said first and foremost to benefit the American public–more competition, more choice, cheaper prices, something along those lines is always uttered as hands wave about dismissively. Frankly, I still don't know why people pay any attention to economists; honestly, you give a Nobel prize in some discipline and everyone takes that to mean that the discipline is a science.
The interesting thing about deregulation has been the outcome: economic failure and business ruin for the corporations involved. Let's think back on, say, airline deregulation, telecomm deregulation, energy deregulation, and now financial deregulation. I can't say that I recall ever hearing about the business strength and economic stability of any of these markets after they were deregulated. Nor, by the way, has their service or cost for the average American improved.
Why do they keep doing it? I think the big corporations suffer from the same delusion that Republican voters suffer, that goes like this: "They're all suckers and someone's going to profit–it might as well be me." For one data point I return to my favorite statistic (the citation buried someplace in this blog) that, when asked whether they were in the top 1% of earners, 6% of people responded yes. They're winners! No whiney-liberal defeatism for them!
I suspect that every business in every market that buys a few congress-people to see some deregulation imagines that it is a winner and all their competitors are suckers. They're hoping that some deregulation will confer some business advantage that they can leverage. Be honest: if you were a major CEO would you urge congress to deregulate your industry if you really thought it would bring more competition and make profits harder for you to earn, especially when it affects your personal bottom line: your stock options?
But still it all has to be packaged up for consumption by the consumers, and so we get lots of lip-service about "market forces" and "supply and demand" and "free markets" and "competition" and "shakeouts" and etc. It bears repeating: none of these are "facts" from the "science" of economics, they're all different names for pyramid schemes created by big business and their Republican marionettes.
What's interesting is that the party of big business isn't all that good for business in the end, although it might be good for a few businesses (the winners!). And, despite the marketing aimed at the intellectually impaired of the electorate–not to mention the fear mongering to create the "conservative" moniker, but that's a different story–the "fiscal and financial conservatism" of Republicans aren't good for business or for the economy, and certainly they don't benefit the average American. Here's a comparison showing how the economy never does better when Republicans are in control.
There have been other, related thoughts. I've been wondering whether there was a realignment going on with political parties, so that Democrat-Liberal vs. Republican-Conservative might not be the operable dichotomy, but now I think maybe not. Instead, I think that the two parties still tend to divide the territory into Democrat-Populist vs Republican-Corporate areas. My hypothesis is that what has been changing is that the Republican story that they really are populist, just socially and fiscally conservative and the party of small government, is finally unraveling and revealing itself as mere a propaganda tool used to convince people to vote in the interests of big business and wealthy business owners. If Republicans were honest about which politicians they buy to serve the purposes of sucking wealth out of the public coffers and into the hands of the corporate elite and wealthy capitalists, it might be hard to get the votes.
We liberals are still inclined to think that the malfeasance and government-gutting of the current administration is somehow an aberration, or an accident, or a few bad apples. "How could they not notice how badly their policies are working?" the cry goes up. I keep saying the answer is simple: for Republican goals the current policies are working just fine, it's the goals that need to be seen to understand this.
Republicans, at least as they are currently constituted, are not working for the commonwealth so much as what we might call the commonwealthy, that group of the super-wealthy who control the bulk of the capital and the bulk of the Republicans in this country. Their economic and power situations have improved remarkably during this administration so, for them right now, the "fundamentals of the economy" are indeed strong. Couldn't be better! More money is flowing into their accounts, less is flowing out; it's unfortunate that a few businesses have to fail, but at least they got their share out before the meltdown.
I don't have a catchy summary or stirring conclusion. Too many deluded people still want to vote Republican even in the midst of financial crisis and wars of vanity. Is it an improvement that so many of the Republican voters seem more motivated this election by racism than by their naive belief in the "fiscal responsibility" of their Republican party?
In: All, Current Events, Reflections
Mouthwateringly Beautiful
"Blackcurrant Leaf Sorbet & Blackcurrant Jelly", photograph by Sara Taylor from 100 Great Desserts, by Mandy Wagstaff, p. 66.
Some few years ago I bought a cookbook called In & Out of the Kitchen in Fifteen Minutes or Less, by Anne Willan, photography by Sara Taylor (New York : Rizzoli, 1995, 128 pages). I like the recipes well enough–it has one of my favorites: baked eggs in individual ramekins, cooked in the microwave–but the real reason I have it is because of the photographs by Sara Taylor.
Here is the link to the Amazon page for the book. I do this so that you can admire the cover photograph by Ms. Taylor (go ahead, click on the link to see the larger size!). The style of the photograph is typical of the photographs that show up every six pages or so throughout the book. I find them refreshingly beautiful as illustrations and also inspirational as art works. I was once moved to try recreating a couple of them in watercolor but didn't really succeed.
A few months ago we were shopping for remaindered books at Daedalus Books (they sell mostly remainders and we're lucky to be close to their warehouse in Columbia, MD) when I chanced to leaf through a book called 100 Great Desserts, by Mandy Wagstaff (London : Kyle Cathie Limited, 2004, 176 pages). At first glance I thought the photographic illustrations were pretty, then I decided on beautiful, then I started to notice the style and my excited reaction to it and I just knew that it was the same person who had provided photography for In and Out of the Kitchen, although I didn't remember her name at the time. I bought the book.
I finally remembered to check my intuition and it was accurate: the photography in both books was indeed by one person named Sara Taylor.
Not all of the photographs are executed with this same vocabulary, but many are and succeed quite nicely. The others still show recognizable characteristics: a very strong graphic sense to the layout and composition, and a taste for highly saturated color palettes. The photograph I reproduced above (by means of a poorly taken photograph of curved page of the book–please forgive me the violence I've done to her perfect image) will give a taste.
This typical composition has a rear panel painted in a strong color (although there are some with muted and subtly shaded earth-tones) with shelves affixed and painted in vibrantly contrasting color. The dish being illustrated is arranged with some accompanying artifact–in this case a second dish being illustrated. The viewpoint is usually–but not invariably–straight on so that only the front edge of the upper shelf is seen.
The photographs with the stark, two-shelf composition put me in mind of, I'm thinking, 17th century Dutch still lives where where game (a rabbit comes to mind) caught in the hunt are strung up on a nail in the wall and painted. Or maybe I'm confusing it with this "A Young Rabbit and Partridge Hung by the Feet" (1751) by Pariesien Jean-Baptiste Oudry. (By the way, here's an interesting blog entry, "Still Life with Dead Animal", that I stumbled over while looking for the dead rabbit that I never found.)
I haven't found out much more about Sara Taylor yet, although I did discover that she won a 1996 James Beard Foundation Book Award for her work in In and Out of the Kitchen.
Now that I know who she is and my attention has been focused, i think I'll have to see more of her work.
In: All, Food Stuff, Music & Art
Tooth & Neck
I'm sure it says something deep and revealing about me that as financial markets crumble about my head I listen to how people talk. Perhaps it's just the result of my long years of aching to be recruited for the grammar police, or perhaps my few years in the crucible of the usenet group "soc.motss", where conversational effervescence was what kept one afloat.
Regardless, because of the current difficulties, my attention was drawn to an episode of This American Life called "The Giant Pool of Money". Host Ira Glass talked to people to try to understand how problems (to use the euphemism for greed and stupidity and folie à milles) with the market in so-called subprime mortgages could have such devastating effects on Wall Street.
To be honest, I listened to the opening of the episode and found too much preamble when what I wanted was analysis, so I switched my attention to the abridged version that was heard on National Public Radio, called "Global Pool of Money Got Too Hungry". The title may be a bit more lurid in its imagery but it also lays out the premise of the plot: in the early years of the current century the "global pool of money" (money looking for investment) suddenly doubled in size to some $70 trillion dollars and it desperately wanted to be invested, so investments had to be found even if they weren't good investments.
It's worth listening to, but not entirely for its analysis, although that was interesting enough. What really snapped my ears to attention was hearing a rather remarkable variant on a clichéd phrase.
If you're listening along, it happened about 8 minutes and 41 seconds into the piece. One Mike Garner, of Silver State Mortgage in Nevada, was talking about how Wall Street kept lowering its standards for mortgage qualification in order to increase the number of mortgages written to feed the investment monster. They were so desperate that they finally worked their way down to the "NINA", or "No Income-No Assets', apparently AKA "the liar's loan". Garner, speaking of his boss, who thought this was financial craziness, said
"He hated those loans… He fought the owners and sales force tooth and neck about these guidelines."
Now, the cliché that most of us would reach for right there would be "tooth and nail" ("nail" as in fingernail, metaphorically "fangs and claws", biting and clawing as a wild animal might). Hearing "tooth and neck" almost gave me whiplash of the ears.
This is a ground-floor opportunity to watch this phrase spread. Google right now reports only 31 instances of "tooth and neck".*
Of those at least a dozen are concerned with pain management or some aspect of dentistry. Several (e.g., here, here, and here) seem to be about the instance uttered by Mr. Garner as documented above, although these bloggers are rather weak on specifics ("I heard some guy say this the other day….") and references.
One interesting instance is technical, from a book called Materials Handling Handbook, by David E. Mulcahy. It seems to be talking about the proper spacing of the sprockets in a carousel mechanism on a slide projector in a section on "Small-Item Horizontal Transport Concepts". (In the same section you'll learn about carousels for baggage, as at airports, or carousels for laundry, as you might see at a dry cleaner's. Fascinating stuff.) Another seems to be about a place in Japan where a tooth and neck bone of a dinosaur was discovered.
A few other instances look like bona fide occurrences, albeit with unusual aspects.
One example is from everyting, a page about "redheads", subsection "sunlight"; make of it what you will:
Greek Mythology held that redheads and vampirism went tooth-and-neck. Perhaps. But perhaps it may have had more to do with our tendency to go scarlet after only brief exposure to the sun. Most redheads don't do well on the beach–look for lots of t-shirts, zinc, and hats.
One is from a blog article called "Your [sic] so gullible – A shortened history on why", but the English orthography throughout the article suggests that the author's mother tongue is something other than English and that his use of "tooth and neck" might not be so interesting. Yet another example seems to be from a piece of Harry Potter fan fiction.
Finally, I found "tooth and neck" in three blog postings (first, second, third) where, oddly enough, the phrase appeared each time in the text of one of the commenters. There was, by the way, no evidence that the commenter in each instance might be the same person.
Obviously further research is called for, but I haven't decided in what direction. Perhaps I can monitor the number of instances documented by Google over the next few months and we might get a good estimate for the growth rate of "tooth and neck" as it spreads through the vernacular–at the speed of cliché!
__________
* Yesterday, when I first looked, Google reported only 30 instances. It must be spreading already!
In: All, Curious Stuff, Such Language!
Beard of the Week XLIX: Wild & Gay Things
This week's beard belongs to Maurice Sendak, the famed artist noted for his book illustration, particularly the celebrated Where the Wild Things Are (from 1963).
I write "artist noted for his book illustration" because of the piece in the New York Times ("Concerns Beyond Just Where the Wild Things Are", by Patricia Cohen, 2 September 2008; the portrait at right is from that piece, credited to Joyce Dopkeen) that claims Sendak is plagued by Norman Rockwell or, more precisely, he feels plagued by the same question that plagued Rockwell: is he a great artist or a mere illustrator? The emphasis, of course, is usually on the "mere".
I think it's a silly and pointless distinction, just as I think the distinction between "erotica" and "pornography" is silly and pointless, and I think I'm going to have more to say about that next week. I can think of no use for making a distinction between "artist" and "[mere] illustrator" except to help keep the nose in the air of the person claiming the distinction.
I'm quite content to label Sendak a great artist who happens to have a talent for creating art that looks great and also works well in children's' books. Hooray!
But really what I wanted to highlight about this article is this poignant note, which comes after the author repeats a few well-know character foibles about Sendak:
Was there anything he had never been asked [in an interview]? He paused for a few moments and answered, “Well, that I’m gay.”
The piece noted that this year, in which he celebrated his 80th birthday, has been a tough one, mentioning his triple-bypass surgery and the death of his long-time partner: "He lived with Eugene Glynn, a psychoanalyst, for 50 years before Dr. Glynn’s death in May 2007."
50 years! What an incredible loss to sustain.
Thanks for coming out, Mr. Sendak. You're a great artist.
In: All, Beard of the Week, Faaabulosity, Music & Art
Celebrity & Politics
We liberals seem to have a difficult time at politics because we like to talk about ideas and problems and solutions to those problems, even though we know that the electorate doesn't particularly care to talk about ideas and solutions to problems.
Instead, what gets the candidate elected is celebrity, that elusive and vacuous quality of being famous for being well-known. Clues to this truth have littered the political field for years, if not decades, but it's hard to accept let alone capitalize on. The McCain camp knows it, that's why they tried mocking Obama's rock-star popularity, but perhaps that campaign didn't work so well because, even though we don't like to acknowledge it, rock-star celebrity is the reason presidents get elected.
Obama is a celebrity. Remarkably, some of his celebrity seems to have come from talking about ideas, but that may be just an illusion. Hillary is a major celebrity, too. That's why her devotees felt so betrayed, because they feel that she has much more celebrity than Obama, making her the obvious choice for the nomination; getting fewer delegates during the primaries was just an annoyance, a minor detail.
And McCain is something of a celebrity, too. He's famous for being a POW, a type of celebrity also frequently called "hero", although it's an unusually passive type of heroism. And so the candidate keeps reminding us that he was a POW and people talk about it and that brings celebrity.
But, of course, Ms. Palin is the biggest celebrity of the moment because she's such a fairy princess, a real Cinderella. Wow, pretty and smart and no one had ever heard of her and then she gets asked to the ball by the prince. That will make people talk, and it certainly has, particularly Democrats. They talk incessantly about how Palin was a bad choice, which is true, but net effect is to increase her celebrity and make her ever more electable.
And speaking of Ms. Palin, what started this whole train of thought was watching Obama on Letterman's show (at Joe's) as they discussed the piggish lipstick story. I was delighted with Obama's observation that, to be logical about it, since Bush's failed policies would actually be the pig in the "putting lipstick on a pig" metaphor, Ms. Palin would actually be the lipstick, not the pig.
But then, it was probably the type of analysis that only appeals to intellectual liberals like me. On the other hand, his delivery with the little chuckle in his voice might add a bit to Obama's celebrity. We'll see, I guess.
In: All, Current Events, Wanderings
Blue Ribbons
Our friend Gerry Stacey, more years ago than I care to remember, complimented my thread crochet by suggesting that I should enter something in the Maryland State Fair because I was sure to win. What a nice thing to say, I thought, and even a good idea.
As you know, though, I never get around to things quickly although I usually do finally get around to them. This year a few things happened that led to getting around to it: 1) I remembered early enough in the year to look up details like entry classifications and deadlines; 2) I thought about what pieces I might choose first (from the many, many completed items in the crochet bin) that could stand up to competition; and 3) I was feeling like I could really use some personal validation by winning something in some contest of some sort. For the crochet I settled on the Prince George's County Fair, largely because the fairgrounds are closer, since we live in Prince George's County.
And so, with more drama and anxiety than really necessary I prepared a couple of the pieces I liked the most and took them on Tuesday, 2 September, to the fairgrounds, which is also known as the "Equestrian Center" in Upper Marlboro, MD. (As you can guess from the names, horses and tobacco are, indeed, of cultural interest around Upper Marlboro.) Finding where to deliver the goods was a lot harder than it should have been–it's not like the fair organizers have never done this before–but I did manage and successfully delivered the two precious objects. The ladies taking in the exhibits for the "Home Arts" division were quite nice and said nice things, too.
This past Sunday Isaac and I met our friends Byron and Lisa at the fairgrounds to enjoy the oddly satisfying retro experience of the county fair (although there was no tractor pull). It turned out to be quite a popular place to visit and there were people enjoying themselves everywhere. Along with all the exhibits, which included the traditional 4-H entries of home-grown vegetables and home-cooked cookies and pies, there were carnival rides and horses, too.
Walking around amidst the booths, nearing the home-arts exhibits, I was biting my fingernails, of course. Fortunately, Lisa ran ahead and brought back the good news: 2 blue ribbons! Here is photographic evidence, captured mere seconds later:
The piece on the left, made with beadspread-weight cotton (size 10), is a rectangle measuring about 24" x 36". The piece on the right, made with smaller cotton thread (size 20), is a circular tablecloth about 48" in diameter. Sometime I'll try to take some pictures that actually show off the patterns of the pieces, but–since it may take me awhile to get around to it–perhaps you get the idea from this photograph.
Beard of the Week XLVIII: Father of the Composer
The week's beard belongs to Pierre Joseph Ravel* (1832-1908), father of the composer Maurice Ravel. As I started this entry I was listening to the concluding movement of Ravel's "Trio for Piano, Violin, and Violoncello", surely one of the most sumptuous sounding pieces I can think of–it's amazing the sound that these three instruments can make at the bidding of a master of color and invention like Ravel, the son. (Listen in the footnote†) What a marvelous BoW Maurice Ravel would make, I thought, if only he had had a beard. Alas, I had never seen a photograph of Ravel where he was other than clean shaven. So, we finesse the situation with the discovery that Joseph Ravel, his father, did have a beard.
About this image we are told (link):
The portrait by Marcellin Desboutin, painted in 1892, and now to be seen at Ravel's house Le Belvédère, shows an imposingly bearded face with grave features.
All true, perhaps, but the look to me is more akin to early photographs of people who didn't really know what to do while having their portrait taken. Looking grave was often the default look.
As we learn from the biographical sketch of Joseph Ravel at maurice-ravel.net, Ravel the father sounded plenty interesting enough anyway. Joseph was born in Switzerland, grew up to be an engineer, and moved to France when he was in his twenties. Occasionally he worked in Spain on railway engineering, and it was in that country that he met Marie Delouart, a French woman from the Basque region of France. They were married when Joseph was forty; Maurice was born in the following year.
Joseph finally ended up getting involved with the early development of internal-combustion engines. He apparently had mixed success as an inventor. Later he seems to have found a stable livelihood as a manufacturer of motors. Grave though he may have been, in the portrait at least, we're told that he had some aptitude at music and supported his son's early efforts [source]:
Though Pierre Joseph Ravel made a living as a civil engineer and an inventor, working mostly in the early automobile industry, he loved music and supported his eldest son’s ambitions. Maurice began piano lessons in 1882 at the age of seven, and he soon also showed an aptitude for composition.
Could Joseph have been entirely grave and without humor when his most famous invention was a circus act? I like how it's described in this sentence from Wikipedia on Maurice Ravel:
Some of Joseph's inventions were quite important, including an early internal-combustion engine and a notorious circus machine, the "Whirlwind of Death," an automotive loop-the-loop that was quite a hit in the early 1900s.
To end on a romantic, fanciful note, perhaps it was from his father that Maurice Ravel got his incredible flair for inventiveness, albeit with music rather than machines.
———-
* Sometimes written "Pierre-Joseph", but it seems he preferred just "Joseph".
† The Trio is in a minor and has four movements: I. Modéré II. Pantoum (Assez vif) III. Passacaille (Très large) IV. Final (Animé) It's all fabulous but the fourth movement I find spine-tingling. If you have the four minutes and 47 seconds to spare, here's an electrifying performance of the fourth movement by the Beaux Arts Trio:
In: All, Beard of the Week, Music & Art
Park Validates Ars Hermeneutica's Mission
Here is one item from this week's "What's New", by Bob Park (5 September 2008 issue). I take it as validation of Ars Hermeneutica's view that increasing science literacy in America is vitally needed and will help enfranchise voters who find themselves at a loss to judge the words or deeds of politicians when it comes to science policy and policy affected by science.
DEBATE: DID "SCIENCE" GET A MENTION IN ST. PAUL?
Last week we did a word search for "science" in Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver. We thought it unfortunate that Obama made only a single reference to science. As you have surely noticed, WN [What's New] is firmly non-partisan, so we ran the same search on a transcript of McCain’s acceptance speech last night in St. Paul. "Text not found" popped up. Could this be? Our nation is roiled by controversies over evolution, nuclear power, climate change, energy shortage, stem cells, Plan B, all of which must turn to science for their resolution. Indeed, is there an issue the nation faces that doesn’t turn on science? "Perhaps the search technology failed," I thought, "try another word." I typed in "fight." There were 25 hits. Hmmm.
In: All, Briefly Noted, It's Only Rocket Science, Snake Oil--Cheap!
Beard of the Week XLVII: The Maxim Gun
This handsome beard (photo source), a very stylish and modern schnauzer,* belongs to American/British inventor Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim (1840–1916). The hedge on nationality comes about because Maxim was born in Sangerville, Maine and lived in a number of east-coast cities, but in 1881 he took up living in London and evidently adopted British citizenship soon thereafter.† He was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1901 for his contributions to the British military.
Inventing was what he did–the biography from World of Invention says he held 271 patents. He got tangled up with Thomas Edison about precedence over the incandescent lamp. His reputation has been secured by two inventions: the mousetrap and the automatic machine gun.
Of course, when it comes to something as iconic as the mousetrap, there will be qualifications. Those who proceed carefully tell us that the first mousetrap is due to inventor William C. Hooker, who got his US patent in 1894. Then in 1897 the British patent went to James Henry Atkinson for his "Little Nipper". But, ultimately, if was Maxim who invented the "traditional style" mousetrap with the spring-loaded bar triggered by the lever upon which one placed tasty morsels to entice the mouse to suicide. (Here's an interesting fact I tripped across concerning the "Little Nipper": "The Little Nipper slams shut in 38,000[th]s of a second and that record has never been beaten.")
But Maxim's great claim to fame, in his lifetime and after, was the invention of the Maxim Machine Gun, the first automatic machine gun (to distinguish it from the Gatling Gun). Most biographies repeat the anecdote about how Maxim was thrown off his feet as a little boy by the recoil from shooting a powerful rifle and that this is his stated inspiration for using the recoil momentum to drive the automatic loading of the weapon from its belt of ammunition. The gun could shoot an amazing 666 rounds per minute. (These days I'm confident that that "666" figure would not pass without comment.) Quoting again from the World of Invention:
Maxim's improvements in weaponry gave significant advantage to British forces during the Boxer Rebellion and the Boer War. Soldiers, grateful for the improvements, chanted: "Whatever happens, we have got/The Maxim gun and they have not!" Soon, the gun came into use in every major country. It was not until the perfection of tank warfare that the machine gun slaughter of World War I was successfully countered.
One has the impression that Maxim was quite a character. Occasionally in my reading I've come across mention of him and that mention is often accompanied by a satirical cartoon (for instance). Someplace in my shamble of notes I have some witty quotation attributed to Maxim, but you'll have to wait until I come across it again someday.
Instead, let's wrap up with this summary from the Encyclopedia of World Biography:
A gifted and versatile inventor, Maxim received 122 United States patents and 149 British patents. He devoted much time and money near the turn of the century to aeronautical experiments. An airship he built in 1894 to study the lift and thrust of various wing shapes and propellers actually rose from the ground, but he had not developed methods for controlling his machine in the air and did not achieve manned flight. He had, however, using an incredibly heavy, steam-propelled machine, proved that mechanical flight in heavier-than-air machines was possible.
Maxim was a brilliant, artistic, and accomplished man, although it was difficult for others to get along with him. He was opinionated and self-centered, and even his younger brother Hudson, also an inventor, found him impossible as a colleague. Twice married, Maxim had two children; his son, Hiram Percy Maxim, became well known as an inventor in his own right. Maxim died in Streatham, London, on Nov. 24, 1916.
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*Or "goatee" in the misguided contemporary vernacular.
†I haven't yet read any biography that makes much of a deal out of this citizenship change. None talk about any drama or profound reasons that he might have "renounced" his American citizenship; it sounds more as though he felt that if he was going to be living and working in England he should become a citizen. Of course, that may have been merely preparing the way for the later knightship.
What Would It Have Looked Like?
Spending a bit of time online with Richard Dawkins (I was spending time with him whereas he spent no time with me–the net works that way), I listened to a reasonably interesting TED talk in which Dawkins talked about how our perceptions of reality are shaped by the evolution of our brains to help us get around in the universe at the size that we are.
That's interesting enough, but what I want to preserve here is this perceptive and useful little exchange ascribed to the philosopher Wittgenstein, also on the subject of perceptions of reality and the "obvious". It's a lovely mini-drama and a useful point to remember.
Wittgenstein: Tell me, why do people always say it was "natural" for man to assume that the Sun went 'round the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?
Friend: Well, obviously, because it just looks as though the Sun is going 'round the Earth.
Wittgenstein: Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?
[Richard Dawkins, "Queerer than we can suppose: the strangeness of science", TED talk, July 2005.]
In: All, Common-Place Book, It's Only Rocket Science
Beard of the Week XLVI: Far from Kansas
The week's BoW entry is a special treat and a BoW first: a guest entry written by Mel, The Indextrious Reader and friend of this blog. Thanks Mel!
This week's beard belongs to artist Virgil Burnett (born in Kansas in 1928). A real Renaissance man, he began his career as a student at Columbia University in New York, continuing as a graduate student at the University of California in Berkeley.
His early focus was illustration; he worked in the propaganda office during WWII after being drafted; after the war he began working commercially. One of his many jobs was providing cover art for those very recognizable Penguin paperbacks. His cover for War of the Worlds was part of the inspiration for the art design of the latest movie made from this story.
He has led a fascinating life, with years in Paris and the US among some big names in the arts community, both visual artists and poets such as James Merrill and Daryl Hine. While teaching at the University of Chicago, he was involved with the creation of Pasdeloup Press, a small imprint which he brought with him when he moved to Canada in the 1970s.
In Canada he established himself as a professor at the University of Waterloo. During his time there he continued producing his own artwork, meticulously detailed images of fantastic medievalism.
He also found time to write many works, including a novel, Towers at the Edge of a World (1983), and a short story collection, Farewell Tour (1987), as well as a novella and some biographical works, and always, more illustration. More recently he has published a rollicking memoir, The Old Met, les Halles and other Losses (2005), which details his years in Paris. Just this month a novel entitled Scarbo Edge: a Romaunt has been released. Since his retirement from Waterloo he has also become well known for his terra cotta sculptures.
In 2006 the National Library of Canada curated a retrospective of his work in books and illustration; it was a multifaceted presentation of some of the projects he’s been involved with over his long and distinguished career. He’s worked as an illustrator, a sculptor, a teacher, an author, an editor, and a publisher with his own Pasdeloup Press.
And beyond all that accomplishment he is also a true gentleman; brilliantly educated, a marvelous conversationalist, worldly and well-traveled.
In: All, Beard of the Week, Books