Random Trivia Questions
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5:52 am. Breakfast is cooking. A day out in the world awaits. Can You Answer 13 RANDOM Trivia Questions? The header ad is the Pillsbury doughboy. Apparently those funeral rumors were just somebody’s idea of a joke. Pop Tart, and Aunt Jemima, will be relieved.
5:54 am “How many innings does a baseball game have?” These things always start easy. Maybe, with the popularity of useless honesty, the question should be how many outings a game will have. 5:56 am “What is the name of Mickey Mouse’s pet dog?” These things make me goofy. Pluto is a buddy of Socrates, and Donald is a duck. All are cartoon characters.
5:57 am “What is the general name for a group of wolves?” Why are wolves compared to a box of playing cards? The ad here is Consumer Reports, which also comes in a pack. Is writing down those times too much work? Should you go take a look at breakfast? Cleaning up a burned out pot is not going to be helpful. “Which two fairytale characters ended up in a house made of gingerbread?” If the gb house was on a hill, it would be Jack and Jill. Johnny Carson has a routine about censorship. He honked a horn at the dirty parts. Jack and Jill went up the hill, honk, honk, honk.
“Which movie actor uttered the famous words, “I’ll be back.”” Three famous Hollywood tough guys, with only one American in the crew. Sooner or later there is going to be a wrong answer. “Which bird was commonly used by humans to send messages?” “TRUE or FALSE: In Greek mythology, Hades is the God of The underworld.” “What is the longest river in the world?” “Who said “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”?” The last one is a misquote. The astronaut said it was a small step for a man. The product here is a toilet bowl scrubber. “TRUE or FALSE: Earth is the 3rd closest planet to the sun?””Scurvy is the result of a deficiency in which vitamin?”
“Steven Tyler is the singer of which famous band?” The pharmaceutical ad, with the scrolling side effects in fine print, has been replaced with the soft scrub toilet bowl cleaner. “The Statue of Liberty was given to the United States as a gift from which country? Somehow, the guessing game was good for 10 correct answers, Goofy, Hades, and Scurvy were the only things to fail. The fourteenth correct answer is to say no, do not post this to facebook or twitter.
Jeopardy Ready! From Mickey Mouse to Pigeon carriers, you know your absolutely random trivia! You need to have an exceedingly diverse knowledge range to be able to succeed on a quiz like this – and you did! We don’t know where along your life you picked up information on scurvy, or what Aerosmith song you listen to that reminds of Steven Tyler… you dominated this quiz! Share this quiz with your friends and family. Let’s see how well they do on these super random trivia questions!
Whoever wrote the winners notes did not pay attention to the results. Questions about Mickey Mouse, and Scurvy, were missed. Maybe Mickey’s dog was named Scurvy. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. 6:32 am Breakfast finished cooking without incident.
Broke In Three Places
A young ventriloquist is touring the clubs and one night he’s doing a show in Arkansas.
With his dummy on his knee, he’s going through his usual dumb blonde jokes when a blonde woman in the fourth row stands on her chair and starts shouting: ”I’ve heard enough of your stupid blonde jokes. What makes you think you can stereotype women that way? What does the color of a person’s hair have to do with her worth as a human being? It’s guys like you who keep women like me from being respected at work and in the community and from reaching our full potential as a person, because you and your kind continue to perpetuate discrimination against, not only blondes, but women in general…and all in the name of humor!”
The ventriloquist is embarrassed and begins to apologize, when the blonde yells, ”You stay out of this, mister! I’m talking to that little jerk on your knee!”
A man goes into the doctor.He says, “Doc, you gotta check my leg. Something’s wrong. Just put your ear up to my thigh, you’ll hear it!”The doctor cautiously placed his ear to the man’s thigh, only to hear, “Gimme 20 bucks. I really need 20 bucks.””I’ve never seen or heard anything like this before. How long has this been going on?” The doctor asked.”That’s nothing Doc. Put your ear to my knee.”The doctor put his ear to the man’s knee and heard it say, “Man, I really need 10 dollars. Just lend me 10 bucks!!””Sir, I really don’t know what to tell you. I’ve never seen anything like this.” The doctor was dumbfounded.”Wait Doc, that’s not all. There’s more, just put your ear up to my ankle,” the man urged him.The doctor did as the man said and was blown away to hear his ankle plead, “Please, I just need 5 dollars. Lend me 5 bucks, please, if you will.””I have no idea what to tell you. There’s nothing about it in my books,” he said, as he frantically searched all his medical reference books.”I can make a well educated guess though,” he continued. “Based on life and all my previous experience, I can tell you that your leg seems to be broke in three places.”
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Eighty Percent
It is a T shirt treasure, and a coffee cup classic. “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” This gem is blamed on Allan Steward Konigsberg, better known as Woody Allen. The percentage goes up and down, and life is sometimes substituted for success.
The quote was recently featured at WIST, or Wish I’d Said That. This quote site is known for giving a source, unlike the sites featuring purring platitudes in front of a cultural kitten. The current top offering is “Bach almost persuades me to be a Christian.” Virginia Woolf attributes the baroque comment to Roger Fry who was not afraid of the author.
Getting back to Mr. Allen and success statistics. He accepts full responsibility for the remark. In 1989, notorious conservative columnist William Safire asked Mr. Allen about whether he said life or success. The answer was rather surprising.
“The quote you refer to is a quote of mine which occurred during an interview while we were discussing advice to young writers, and more specifically young playwrights. My observation was that once a person actually completed a play or a novel he was well on his way to getting it produced or published, as opposed to a vast majority of people who tell me their ambition is to write, but who strike out on the very first level and indeed never write the play or book.”
In other words, you don’t just show up empty handed. If you have an idea, you have to employ the writing formula, ass + chair. You have to turn the tv off, leave the beer in the refrigerator, sit down, and push buttons on the keyboard.
The second part of today’s entertainment is an encore presentation, Inspiration Is For Amateurs. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
PG was listening to an interview with a fiction writer. Someone said “Inspiration is for amateurs.” PG has always been more impressed by action than beliefs, and this phrase made sense. This repost is a good excuse to post some more pictures from The Library of Congress.
The phrase is from a painter named Chuck Close. His output is expensive, and widely enjoyed. A spinal injury left him paralyzed, but did not stop him from producing. Here is the full quote:
“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”
A man once made pottery. It was said that the man only worked with passion, and that if he didn’t feel this passion he did not work. When PG heard that, his thought was that if PG worked that way, he would never finish anything. Most of the sticker pictures take a while to finish. PG always gets tired of the picture before it is through. The idea is to go to the studio, start to do stuff, and before long the enthusiasm will return. Any image requires a certain amount of time with the belly pressed against the work table, or the digital equivalent.
The formula for writing is ass plus chair. A teacher once said to not stare at the blank page, waiting for a bolt of lightening. Start to write something, and the ideas will start to sputter out of the pipeline.
It is not enough to have a bright idea. You have to work the problems out. Sometimes, you spend more time finding out what does not work, than what does. You have to do it wrong before you can do it right. Genius is ninety nine percent perspiration and one percent inspiration. If any cliches have been overlooked, please add them to the comments.
One thing that is helpful is to be focused. The internet can be a problem. When you should be thinking about your product, it is very tempting to see the latest on Facebook or Twitter.
Triumph Of The Pink Pony
In the Brookhaven City Council election meetings that PG has seen, the Pink Pony has a been a topic of discussion. Almost nobody wants the city to spend money trying to shut down the exotic dancing emporium. Some have wondered how who wanted this action taken in the first place.
On October 6, The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled in favor of Brookhaven. The club, which can afford lawyers, filed legal devices to stay open. Finally, in time for the election, the city decided to hold peace talks with the club.
Tuesday, the talks bore fruit. Brookhaven OKs ‘transition’ deal with Pink Pony. “The Brookhaven City Council on Tuesday agreed to a settlement deal with the Pink Pony that will allow the strip club to stay open and operate with nude dancing and serving alcohol during a six-year “transition” period to come into compliance with city ordinances.
In exchange, the Pink Pony will pay the police department $225,000 a year for the six years to cover public safety costs, reimburse the city for its legal fees, donate land near the club along Peachtree Creek for a city park, and contribute up to $75,000 for the park.”
Councilwoman Rebecca Chase Williams opposed the deal. She read a statement. “I am calling on my colleagues to not succumb to political pressure from a strip club. I consider any kind of payment outside of regular licensing fees to be a bribe. At no time has this effort been a religious or moral crusade. It is about having legal, constitutional laws and enforcing them.
Other cities have gone down this path, but settlements with strip clubs have led only to more litigation and problems. Today, the City of Houston, the City of El Paso, and Horry County, South Carolina (where Myrtle Beach is located) are in court because of settlement agreements with strip clubs from years ago. Other powerful strip clubs are suing, arguing that the city’s agreement to take money to ignore their laws is nothing but a bribe, and that it violates the Equal Protection clause of the US Constitution as well as federal anti-trust laws.”
A brief conversation with Mr. Google does not show any evidence of these lawsuits in Houston, El Paso, or Horry County. A search for “El Paso strip club lawsuit” uncovered Man Dies Getting Lap Dances At El Paso Strip Club “El Paso County sheriff’s officials said a 67-year-old man died at an El Paso County strip club Friday night. The manager at the Red Parrot strip club said that the man, identified by sheriff’s officials as Robert Gene White, was getting lap dances, but when it came time to pay the dancers, he was unresponsive.”
My Horry News does not seem to know about the case Mrs. Williams mentions. It does have a quote from “Scott Bergthold, a Tennessee lawyer who has been hired to represent the county … “They were bumping and grinding and rubbing their body parts on patrons. That’s not protected speech.”
Another version of the Brookhaven – Pink Pony detente came with the headline Despite bribe charge, Brookhaven folds on Pink Pony case. “In an astounding turn of events, the Brookhaven city council has surrendered to the Pink Pony strip club and will allow it to operate for six years in defiance of the city’s ordinance on sexually oriented businesses and in return for $250,000 a year to the city.” This article was written by Dick Williams, the husband of Rebecca Chase Williams.
Mr. Williams used to write for the fishwrapper. He said some interesting things in the recent report. “Mayors of several other cities were contacted and opposed the Brookhaven action but would not comment on the record. One who did not wish to be identified said, “If I want to sell drugs in Brookhaven, can I just pay the city a fee and set up shop?” A call to the FBI, which has prosecuted strip club owners in several cities, wasn’t returned.”
The City of Brookhaven allows alcohol to be served. In facilities where the employees keep their clothes on, there is no legal harassment. Alcohol is a drug. The misuse of alcohol can have serious consequences. Alcohol users have legal privileges. Indeed, if a person wants to sell legal drugs in Brookhaven, they can just pay the city a fee, and set up shop.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Are My Attitudes About Race Any Of Your Business?
PG was living his life when see saw something on facebook: “And another thing: if you are going to claim NOT to be racist, I feel like you should familiarize yourself with some contemporary writings and definitions of racism, not just what Mirriam Webster says.” The first reaction was to ignore this. If you reply to a comment about racism on facebook, you are asking for trouble. Life is too short to be wasting time on such unpleasantness.
But the thought engine had been kickstarted, and continued to idle in the background. When PG pulled into the Kroger parking lot, the idea hit full force. Maybe whether you are, or are not, a racist, is no one else’s business.
Some people say that a PWOC is not affected by racism. If this is the case, then why should the racial attitudes of a PWOC affect another PWOC? If a person treats you fairly, do you really need to know this person’s attitudes about race?
The fbf does not say what the context of this claim is. Did anyone ask you whether or not you were a racist? If not, are you assuming that they are interested? Maybe someone assumed the listener was interested. Is the proper response to look bored, and say TMI?
PG was filling out a profile once, and was using some questioned borrowed from another blog profile. One of the questions was, are you a racist? “It depends on who is doing the judging”.
The comment mentioned “contemporary writings and definitions of racism”. Who are the people who set themselves up as arbiters about what we should think about race? What are the qualifications? Who asked them what they thought? How do we know that these people are dependable?.
Maybe the answer is to show compassion and kindness to your neighbor, and don’t judge them about their racial attitudes. If you are proud of your racial attitudes, please refrain from boasting. Not everyone is interested in what you think about race.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
The Shroud Of Turin
@Flyswatter Why are people so gullible about the Shroud of Turin? It was solved as a hoax in 1988! The Unsolved Mystery Behind The Shroud Of Turin Still Has The Power To Captivate
@chamblee54 @Flyswatter shroud has a documented 800 yr history how did ancient forgers create this? it is more interesting as fraud than as reality
@Flyswatter @chamblee54 Well, we know from testing that the “blood stains” are actually red hematite tempera paint. Seems like a forgery to me!
@chamblee54 @Flyswatter this image existed in the 14th century it was in a fire which melted silver handles on the box the man does not have a navel
@Flyswatter @chamblee54 We do know, however, that if this was actually the imprint of a man, it would be an imprint of the whole head. You’d see ears.
@chamblee54 @Flyswatter most jesus worshipers don’t like to listen they enjoy the image of their hero without ears
If you hang around twitter for long, you will not have writers tackle. PG had a discussion about the Shroud of Turin. This is a good subject for a long winded ramble. It is either a miracle of faith, or a miracle of deception. The two are closely related.
In 1978 there was a lengthy article about the Shroud in, of all places, Rolling Stone. The author went through all the possibilities for the Shroud being a forgery. He came to the conclusion that it is real. There is a lovely quote.
“You have to believe in some fourteenth century steppenwolf privy to now lost alchemical formulae, who had a knowledge of the peculiar pathology of crucifixion and the ways in which it was misrepresented in Christian ar undiscovered until the thirties; who procured a cloth from Palestine, one that was once in southern Turkey … and who mysteriously if not miraculously contrived by no known method a negative image to appear encoded with 3-D information only a computer developed for interstellar image analysis could read. And this character would have to have a pretty dry sense of humor .. because all that ingenuity would not become apparent to anyone till 500 years later. It takes, in other words, more of an effort and a more tortured manipulation of the facts to disbelieve in the authenticity of the shroud than it does to accept it.”
The shroud has a documented history going to April 1349. On December 4, 1532, there was a fire. It melted silver on the storage box, and would have destroyed any pigments in use at the time.
On May 28, 1898, Secondo Pia, an Italian amateur photographer, took pictures of the Shroud. When he developed the images, he saw the negatives. The negative was a positive image of Jesus.
There is an enormous amount of information about the Shroud of Turin. There are indications that the bearded image of Jesus is taken from this document. There are historic indications that the Shroud existed in the seventh century.
When Jesus was crucified, three nails were used. Two went in his arms. There is a space between the bones in the wrist where the nails (really spikes, which were pulled out and reused) went in. If the nails had gone in the hands the weight of the body would have pulled the hands down. When you drive a spike into this spot, the nerve controlling the thumb is broken, and the thumb turns inward. There are no thumbs of the image of Jesus in the Shroud. ( There is not a navel either, which is another can of worms. And yes, there were no ears. One of the Youtube lectures has an explanation for that. A slack blogger can only remember so much.)
In 1988, a sample of the Shroud was submitted for radiocarbon 14 dating. This is a scientific procedure that indicates the age of an object. The test indicated that the garment was created 1260–1390 A.D. Since then, numerous problems have been found with the test. Many people believe the radiocarbon 14 test to be discredited.
Since reading the Rolling Stone article, PG has not known what to make of the Shroud. If it is real, then how did a disfigured corpse create this remarkable image? If it is fake, how did a fourteenth century artist create a negative image of remarkable detail? It is a matter where having to have a belief, one way or another, is not an appealing option. Maybe it is best to accept it as a mystery.
Since we are never going to have a definitive answer anyway, maybe we can allow one more hypothesis. Maybe the Shroud of Turin was created before the crucifixion. Maybe some Egyptian mystics created this image as an act of prophecy. Maybe this image foretold the crucifixion/resurrection story. It was taken to Jerusalem at the proper time, to be seeded with the local pollen. The Egyptians were capable of building giant pyramids, and other miracles that we cannot explain today. Maybe they could draw a 3-D image on linen, and deliver it to the burial site of the man depicted in time for the burial.
Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Little Bit Of A Challenge
This feature started with a tweet: @MaxBlau Alternate title: Braves working “every day” to ignore public transit plan for new stadium. There is a link to an article, Braves working ‘every day’ on a parking plan for new stadium.
Braves executive vice president of business operations Mike Plant gave a luncheon presentation to some chamber of commerce types about the new ballpark. His lips were probably moving.
“they expect a game will attract about 10,000 cars. All of those will not arrive or depart at the same time. The stadium is used for baseball games only about 55 weeknights over a five-month period. “the impact is minimal… a lot of our fans will be coming from the north.””
The idea is that the 75/285 interchange is closer to the center of where the team’s fan base lives. The truth is that the site is on the western edge of this fan base. People in Gwinnett County will be just as far away from the Braves as they are with the team downtown. The only difference is the presence of rail transportation to downtown. When the team becomes the Cobb Crackers, the only way to get there will be by automobile and bus.
The impending disaster of traffic, and parking, is painfully obvious to anyone not on the Braves payroll. There will be lots of time to curse this decision while you sit in traffic. There was another comment in the article, which displays the lack of commonsense planning of this operation.
“The new stadium will differ in other ways from many major league venues, he said. It’ll face a different direction. “It’ll be a different position than Turner Field, with the outfield facing southwest. A left fielder might have a little bit of a challenge late in the day, but that’s what we pay them for.””
Traditionally, the baseball diamond has been set up with home plate in the south west corner. This began when all games were played in the afternoon. The idea is to minimize the effects of the sun.
As the linked chart shows, Turner field uses the traditional layout. Many of the other clubs do not. With most games played at night, it is not as big an issue as before.
It is tough to figure out exactly where Sun Trust Park will fit in. The site is, like most of Atlanta, a mass of hills and woods. There are high rise office buildings already there. It seems like the team is trying to fit a diamond shaped peg into a triangular hole. The results are likely to be uncomfortable. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Moon Zappa
The current WTF Podcast features Moon Zappa. At no time does she say grody, gag me with a spoon, or boofoos. Today, she is the divorced mother of an eight year old, and buys quality apple butter.
Moon is the daughter of the late Frank Zappa. FZ did not do drugs, smoked Winston cigarettes, and spent all his time working on music. The four children, Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva, called the parents Frank and Gail. Mrs. Zappa stays busy these days selling her husbands music.
Once, Moon broke a finger in school. She called Gail, and waited. Eventually, the family Rolls Royce pulled up. Gail was driving, with Frank in the passenger seat. Frank quit driving when his first drivers license expired. Before taking Moon to the ER, they stopped to get Frank a burrito.
Gail and Moon were walking to the store one day, when Moon was very little. A car stopped, and tried to pick up Gail. Moon screamed “Fuck off pervert.”
Captain Beefheart was at the Zappa house one time. He had made a hole in the side of his nose with a pencil. When a finger was put over the other nostril, the nose became a whistle.
While listening to this show, PG was editing pictures from The Library of Congress. Some of these images appear with this feature. This is a repost.
A Trillion Dollars
This piece is selections from previously published material. The full post of part one is available, if you are interested in stories about Richard Nixon and Antonin Scalia. One part we are using today is about Ronald Reagan, and the federal budget. Federal finances have been in the news lately, and Congress has made a bad situation worse. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
… The last quote is from another POTUS who is no longer with us, Ronald Reagan. “I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.” Mr. Reagan was a professional actor, and he knew the value of a good script.
This slogan is another one that Mr. Obama may find handy. It should be noted that it was a big deal when the national debt (the grand total of the deficits) went over a trillion dollars. This was during the first term of Mr. Reagan. Today, under Mr. Obama, the annual deficit is over a trillion dollars. Sooner or later, you are talking about real money.
PG suffered brain damage trying to find out more about the quote from Mr. Reagan. He went through six pages of google. There must be 25 sites which have lists of quotes from Mr. Reagan, and all of them feature this quote. None have an actual source.
What was the context? When did he first say it? One site says it was “(during the latter years of his administration)”. Another site says it was “Said often during his presidency, 1981-1989”. Maybe this is an urban legend. As Mr. Reagan said, don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
Those of a certain age remember Everett Dirksen. A Republican Senator from Illinois, he was blessed with an operatic voice, and cursed with a face that could stop a clock. He is credited (or blamed) for the quote ” A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” The Dirksen Congressional Center can neither confirm nor deny if he really said that. The discussion of this reputed quote does turn up a passage, that is germane to today’s conversation.
“One time in the House of Representatives [a colleague] told me a story about a proposition that a teacher put to a boy. He said, ‘Johnny, a cat fell in a well 100 feet deep. Suppose that cat climbed up 1 foot and then fell back 2 feet. How long would it take the cat to get out of the well?’
“Johnny worked assiduously with his slate and slate pencil for quite a while, and then when the teacher came down and said, ‘How are you getting along?’ Johnny said, ‘Teacher, if you give me another slate and a couple of slate pencils, I am pretty sure that in the next 30 minutes I can land that cat in hell. If some people get any cheer out of a $328 billion debt ceiling, I do not find much to cheer about concerning it.” [Congressional Record, June 16, 1965, p. 13884].
Senator Dirksen went to the fundraising dinner in the sky September 7, 1969. Twelve years later, the Reagan revolution was getting started. Taxes were cut, and spending increased. In a couple of years, the national debt went over a trillion dollars. (The annual budget deficit is now over a trillion dollars.) For those new to the game, a trillion is a billion, multiplied by a thousand. For all the numbers above, multiply by a thousand, to get a trillion.
In 1965, Senator Dirksen was losing sleep, over raising the national debt to $328 billion. The current national debt is estimated at $16,964,687,666,420. This is 5171% of 328 billion.
In 1965, the national debt was $328 billion, and we were losing 100 men every week in Vietnam. One of the more expensive things the government does is fight wars. Currently we are officially killing people in Afghanistan, and several more countries that no one knows about (nudge wink).
On September 11, 2001, The United States was attacked. Revenge was the order of the day. There are now indications that this was one of the goals of Al Queda. The Soviet Union imploded, in large part, because of the strain of fighting a war in Afghanistan. Now, the United States is waist deep in the same big muddy. Whoever is elected in 2016 will have to deal with this matter.
Afghanistan has a gross national product of $27billion. The Congressional Research Service estimates the cost of American operations in Afghanistan for 2011 to be $119 billion. This is over four times the gross national product of Afghanistan. Pretty soon, you are talking about real money. This is a repost.
Agent 99
Agent was hired to babysit Agent Maxwell Smart. She had his back at all times. Would you believe, when told to sing “99 bottles of beer on the wall,” Agent Maxwell Smart forgot the lyrics? KAOS was scared of Agent 99. They were not worried about Agent Maxwell Smart. Agent 99 was a former fashion model, and the daughter of a spy. Would you believe, Agent 99 did not have a real name? Agent Maxwell Smart was a bachelor until he married Agent 99. This is a repost. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Trivia is from the IMDB. One trivia item is fake.
Winching The Dead
A recent post included the phrase “getting severely overweight dead people out of an apartment building.” Those are googling words. Most of the results are hand wringing about the number of overweight people. A couple of the results were worth clicking out.
The headline result is from Merry Olde England, which is becoming known as the fattest country in Europe. Fire service called in 50 times to winch fat people out.
“Paramedics in the West Midlands have had to call on their heavy-lifting emergency service colleagues, despite having extra equipment to help move extremely heavy patients themselves. Over a three-year period they called in West Midlands Fire and Rescue Service on 50 occasions, so the patients could be winched out with apparatus designed for lifting car wrecks. Sometimes morbidly obese patients, … can only be extracted from their homes after a window is taken out, say firefighters.
… Nick Harrison, chairman of the West Midlands Fire Brigades Union, said: “In most cases these people are quite elderly and are suffering from serious medical issues which have left them bedridden for a long time, and they have put on a lot of weight. “Many times we have to remove the whole window frame and get them out that way. It’s a lot safer both for them and for the rescuers.”
… Official statistics show the West Midlands to be the fattest region in Britain, which is itself the fattest major country in Europe. According to the Association of Public Health Observatories, about 25 per cent of adults in Britain are now clinically obese. In the West Midlands, the figure is 29 per cent. By comparison, across the European Union as a whole it is just 14 per cent. “
One of the commenters had a constructive suggestion: “The ‘feeders’ should be brought to court and punished. For every obese person there is one or more ‘feeders’, who shop, supply the food, help the person eat it etc. Being a ‘feeder’ should be a criminal offense.”
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
The Pursuit Of Truth
There is a podcast called The Fact of the Matter. It is about a man who likes to separate fact from fiction. “The pursuit of truth properly considered shouldn’t stop short of insanity.” After an hour or so plumbing the digital depths, PG began to appreciate the truth of that comment. Does anyone have a recipe that uses a can of worms?
The show is about a photograph from the Crimean War, The valley of the shadow of death. It was taken by Roger Fenton April 23, 1855, near a place called Balaclava. Today, this is in Ukraine. Balaclava was the site of a nasty battle, in a bloody, pointless war. Today, a Balaclava is a colorful ski mask. It is the fashion statement of Pussy Riot.
PG cannot understand why this picture is a big deal. The Library of Congress has a collection of the Fenton Crimean War Photographs. This Fenton pictures were one of the first collections in the LOC that PG worked with. The picture of a road, with cannonballs, did not catch his eye.
The more historic pictures PG edits, the better he gets. One thing he learned was to download the high resolution .tif pictures. When he did the Fenton pictures before, he used the lower quality .jpg images. When he paused the podcast, and went to the LOC to see “Shadow of Death”, he decided to download a few old favorites. These are the pictures that go with this post.
The podcast is a detective story. It seems that there are two versions of the photograph. One has the cannonballs in the road, the other doesn’t. Were the cannonballs tossed on the road to make the picture more dramatic, or were they removed? They could have been removed to clear the road for wagon traffic, or to recycle the balls. In 1855, people picked up used cannonballs.
A very good question is why anyone should care? A man named Errol Morris cares. The link is to a very long article at the New York Times about the picture. Mr. Morris went to Ukraine to investigate the pictures. It is possible that his pursuit of truth did not stop at the boundary of insanity.
So the podcast mentions this famous picture, with a second shot that casts doubts. PG went to the LOC, and found the famous picture right away. The second shot proved elusive. PG viewed all 263 pictures in the Fenton collection in a slide show, and could not find the second picture. PG began to think that maybe the second picture was the fake. The New York Times article by Errol Morris has a copy of the second picture. The possibility remains that the second picture is a fabrication.
The podcast says that the location of some rocks changes in the two pictures. In the picture without the cannonballs on the road, the rocks are higher up on a hill, than they are in the famous picture. To Mr. Morris, this is evidence that the famous picture is a fake. PG has examined the two images, and includes them here. Perhaps this search for truth will be called off before the onset of dementia.
Controversies about famous images is not new. The shot of the flag going up over Iwo Jima has long been suspected of being posed. Just today on facebook, there was a link to a feature, The Kissing Sailor, or “The Selective Blindness of Rape Culture”. The idea is that the nurse did not want the sailor to kiss her on VJ day. This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress
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