Oscar Wilde
October 16 is Oscar Wilde’s birthday. On that day in 1854, he appeared in Dublin, Ireland. He is one of the most widely quoted people in the english language. Some of those quotes are real. Since he was a published author, it should be easy to verify what he really said. This is a repost.
One night in 1974, PG was talking to someone, and did not know who Oscar Wilde was. The conversational partner was horrified. PG became educated, and learned about a misunderstanding with the Marquess of Queensberry. Soon the “Avenge Oscar Wilde” signs made sense.
Mr. Wilde once made a speaking tour in the United States. One afternoon, in Washington D.C., the playwright met Walt Whitman. Thee and thou reportedly did the “Wilde thing”.
The tour then went to Georgia. A young black man had been hired as a valet for Mr. Wilde on this tour. On the train ride from Atlanta to Augusta, some people told Mr. Wilde that he could not ride in the same car as the valet. This was very confusing.
After his various legal difficulties, Oscar Wilde moved to Paris. He took ill, while staying in a tacky hotel. He looked up, and said “either that wallpaper goes, or I do”. Soon, Oscar Wilde passed away.
Lizzie Bennett
Yes, you should be outside in the sunshine. But no, you are going to find out Which classic literary character are you? Good judgement has nothing to do with it.
The first question is the binary classic, are you male or female? Next, you pick a time period to live in. The choices are rather limited, with today not an option. For much for living in the present.
What do you value most in life? The usual suspects…friends, family, wealth, virtue, etc… are available. The correct choice is a player who never spends time worrying about such trifles. He/she/it must pick an animal, a mode of transportation, and decide what is important in a significant other. Maybe this is why he/she/it never seems to meet he/she/it. What a load of she/it.
This character is afraid of something. Casting Madonna for the role. Running out of dope. The IRS looking closely at the tax returns. The condom breaking. Watch a Kayne West video with the sound turned up. The datamongers being fed information by playbuzz.
Pick an image out of the eight selections. What is your dream job? You realize that many dreams are nightmares. Last, you have to pick a movie from a box of pictures. So what if you have never seen any of these. That is why you have an imagination.
The answer is Elizabeth Bennett, a player in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. “You are Lizzie Bennett! One of the strongest females in literature, you stand by your opinions and you are fiercely independent. You have great loyalty towards your family and stand by their side no matter one. When you are in love you make sure not to lose your own personality, and you are very wise about who you trust.” Maybe choosing male was not that important after all. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Now, this just does not work. PG is a cis male, with utterly no intention of alteration. Maybe the test needs to be redone. The second time, with male chosen, the suggested answers are different. Under qualifications for a significant other, “Someone who can challenge me” is an option. Under dream job, it is “anything as long as I’m rich.” It doesn’t matter. The answer is still Lizzie Bennett.
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.
What Color Are You?
What color is writers tackle? The desire to put words together, without benefit of content, strikes without warning. The internet can help, with a handy quiz, What Color is Your Personality?
The first assignment is to pick a color out of eight samples. Corrosion maroon, glow yellow, firetruck red, sketchy gray, dirty orange, bougie blue, bondage black, and magnolia green are the candidates. Since this is an ecological saturday, green is chosen.
The next choice is a color from your childhood. The choices are slightly different, with babysale blue, hot trouble pink, white trash gray, and morbid brown entering the choices. The swatches all have a credit link, which is not accessible in firefox. The choice here is white trash gray.
Which color group reminds you of your first love. Here the blocks are divided into nine shades. Black is the solid exception. Grays and silvers, linked to hometheaterhifi.com, is the choice here.
Which color reminds you of your family? The eight choices from round one return, in a different order. Except the gray is slightly less sketchy, and linked to squarespace.com. This is a sponsor of a podcast somewhere, and probably needs the attention. Less sketchy gray it is.
Which of these birds is the most beautiful? Here the choices are pictures of birds. These animals do not scatter trash, make noise, or defecate on vehicles. Most of them are not available in Georgia. The red bird in the top left corner is the first one to be seen, so it is the choice.
What color is success? Which color would you wear? What would you paint your bedroom? Your least favorite color? What color would you dump over the person who designed this quiz?
If you are running out of patience, the you should be happy that this quiz is almost over. What color do you want for a romantic partner? The choices are words, with no pictures to guide you.
The answer is Silver Hi oh silver! The text is too long to copy here, but it might relate. I would have to read it to know. The pictures today are from Chamblee54.
1 comment