Thursday, July 27, 2006

What to read?

Both Kobayashi Maru and Assistant Village Idiot (New England bloggers) are off the web for a while, vacationing in fun places.

So here I am, left with nothing to read but Glenn. I hope he has some good links for once.

(Heh!)

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MY EYES, MY EYES!



Now I certainly don't agree with the Senator from New York's politics, but this thing is just an insult to her!

What, Pat Buchanan has taken up sculpture? Is this some kind of bad joke? What was the artist thinking? How much of the brown acid was he/she taking?

And furthermore, there is one thing of which I am completely certain concerning Sen. Hillary. She doesn't need a comb-over!

H/T the Anchoress (from whom I purloined the image)

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Saturday, July 15, 2006


Rembrandt Laughing Self Portrait Mauritshuis The Hague

I had not realized, until my (now nearly daily) reading of Lines and Color that Friday was the 400 anniversary of the birth of Rembrandt van Rijn.

Serendipitously, I had found a series of art books that I had packed away years ago, including one on Rembrandt. These books were part of a series by McGraw-Hill published in 1970 which included slides of various artwork by each artist. My mom had found them about fifteen years ago and had given them to me. Even by then the slides had degraded into the red range (cheap film) and the book illustrations were all in black and white. Having better references I packed these away. However, I now have an excellent pro-grade scanner which does slides, as well as Photoshop on my Mac. I am in the midst of scanning in the slides from the books. There were twelve from the Rembrandt book, and I’ll post some that I don't remember having seen reproduced elsewhere. Photoshop allows for some color correction, but considering the condition of the slides and the possible original state of the paintings (I can’t remember when it was that “Night Watch” was cleaned, showing its true colors that had been browned out for decades by old varnish, others obviously may have been darkened by varnish) I can’t claim the best color for these.

To quote from the book, written by Diane Kelder, then at the Department of Art History of Finch College: ”Rembrandt was born in the small university town of Leyden on July 14, 1606, the fifth of six children. His father, Harmen Gerritsz van Rijn, whose family came from the region near the Rhine river, was a fairly well-to-do miller; his mother, Cornelia, the daughter of a baker. Politically, the years of Rembrandt’s childhood were unusually calm and peaceful. Early in the seventeenth century, Holland, or the United Provinces, had emerged as an independent colonial power and had entered a period of great commercial prosperity. The country’s considerable seapower helped to create a sphere of economic interest that extended from continental Europe to the South Pacific. Within a short time, this overseas expansion had generated an atmosphere of affluence, vitality, and optimism which proved most beneficial to the fine arts.”

It was into this vitality that one of the greatest painters to ever live was born. Enjoy the images.


Saskia as Flora National Gallery London


Slaughtered Ox Louvre Paris


Denial of Peter Rijksmuseum Amstedam


Blinding of Samson Stadelisches Kunstinstitut Frankfurt

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Wednesday, July 12, 2006

As a conservative who rails against the seeming inability of the left and right to talk common sense together I thought it only fair to link to this post by Lynne at "Left in Lowell Member of the reality-based community of progressive Massachusetts blogs" about the peddling of soft expectations and the current culture of ‘humorous’ degredation of the male sex by the media, especially advertising and comedy programming.

If this is the thoughtfulness Lynne regularly shows (I haven’t had time to go much farther into her blog) then she really is reality-based.

Kudos to her!

H/T Jon Keller’s blog at cbs4boston.com, the local CBS affiliate in Boston

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Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Tunnel ceiling panel collapses in Boston, killing 1

Criminal Probe Launched In Deadly Big Dig Collapse

Listening to the Special Report on the news this morning, with the press conference by the NHTSA and the Turnpike Authority, the clueless questions from some (not all) of the reporters trying to wrap their Journalism Degree minds around engineering concepts would have been comical, were this not so tragic. Many conservatives, including myself, rail about the yellow press' sensationalism and scare mongering. Unfortunately, in Massachusetts the various Authorities with their lack of real accountability, (and the nepotism, corruption, and shoddiness that has gone hand in hand with that over the years) give the press real reasons to be scandalized. The "Big Dig" has been an over-budget, over-long, trouble-plagued albatross on the taxpayers of the US (thanks to Teddy Kennedy 'getting our fair share out of Washington').

I think the next few months, we'll be taking the extra 45 minutes on the 128 loop to visit the in-laws on the South Shore.

Better that than the amazing leaking-and-collapsing "Modern Marvel"

UPDATE
The Modern American has more, and a history of the shennanigans and failures surrounding the "Big Dig." This is particularly interesting.

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Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Monolith (or, the Presence) just finished



copyright 2006 MJ Andrade 60 X 48 inches acrylic on canvas

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