Two more photos from October 20th 2007, and that’s really it.
First, the painter who painted Venus and The Annunciation, painting The Annunciation:
Maybe you suspected he painted his paintings at home and just taped them to the pavement. No. He painted them in situ.
And later, on the same day, a fish:
Which came out really well, I think. It’s the bottom of a street lamp. To its right, what the top of the street lamp looks like.
Yes, as earlier promised:
There’s a lot I could say, by way of a photo-essay, about these photoer photos. But, do you know what the best thing about them is, in my opinion? How good they are. Oh, technically, they’re a bit rubbish, but I don’t care about that. I just really like them. Even the one of me. But especially the one of the bloke lying face down on the ground playing a guitar behind his head.
Last night on our live stream we made some jokes about the Corona Virus. Now some people are upset.
We would like to apologise sincerely to anyone who might have been given the impression by our comments that we care in any way about you being offended. We don’t. Have a nice day
I am offended by the lack of a full stop at the end of that. I think it was this:
The Corona Virus is so toxic it’s probably a Straight White Male.
This is a podcast, and now they are talking about tattoos, like they are both Theodore Dalrymple. They sound like two old geeezers. But they are young. Oh, now they just made a crack about someone designing a virus that only wipes out old people. That’s me told. I am offended.
Corona says:
Everyone stop fucking asking us about the virus.
Says commenter Alan:
It’s okay, they’re rebranding:
I find all this very, very offensive. And quite funny.
As I recall Dame Edna Everage once upon a time saying:
I’ve always had the ability to laugh at the misfortunes of others.
Haven’t we all. No question mark there, because it’s not a question.
October 20th 2007 was a good day for me photoing photoers, and I’ve just set aside thirty five photoers to stick up here. But, because of the lateness of the hour, that will take too long to sort out now, even given how much easier such photo-clutch displaying has now become. So here, in the meantime, is some Art that I photoed on that same expedition, in among photoing all those photoers:
The painting on the left is The Birth of Venus, complete with her strategically long, blond hair. But what is the one on the right? (Aside from not being quite finished.)
Closer up:
I see an angel and a Madonna. I wonder if googling will yield anything.
No luck. Lots of Madonnas, of the modern Italian-American and pop-singing sort, and lots of this famous painting. But nothing like the painting above. So, commenters?
Cranebow:
Found this here.
LATER: From where I’m sitting, there is small and unwelcome gap just before where it says, below, “Monday 27 January 2020”. Can any passing WordPress experts explain this, and thereby help me get rid of it? (My guess is: Me asking this will cause this gap to vanish spontaneously.)
And I was right! It did vanish. And me writing the above paragraph enabled me to spot it, because the entire paragraph turned blue. A missing “/” was the problem, following the blue “here”, which, when inserted, abolished the gap. So, WordPress experts, forget about it.
If and when I get myself that new laptop that I mentioned here I was thinking of getting, I’m going to call it my Hand Lift Electricity Brain.
A sneaky selfie by me, a week ago:
And a dozen sneaky selfies by Vivian Maier, photoed somewhat longer ago:
The point being that selfies are selfies, but sneaky selfies are selfies but with lots of other stuff going on as well.
Vivian Maier being my favourite of all the photographers whose work I have got to know by being a regular reader of Mick Hartley‘s blog.
Snatched from the cricinfo online text commentary on this cricket match yesterday:
Hugh: “@ Dez, Spelled is perfectly acceptable, as well as spelt. Like lit and lighted. In any event the thing about language is, if you’re understood then it’s served it’s purpose. Thing with grammar pedants, they’re typically not the brightest.”
Wisely, aside from that last bit of abuse, which I only sort of agree with. Language keeps on changing. Just enjoy it, every so often having a LOL about it.
Over a lifetime, one’s attitude to language changes.
First, teachers (not always of the brightest sort) tell you what language definitely, definitively, objectively, carved into the fabric of the universe, is. Apostrophes so, “literally” literally means literally (which I still think it should (which it literally now does not for many people)), its is different from it’s because blah blah blah, blah blah blah is not correct stop it once, blah blah blah.
Second, you watch people literally driving a tank through all those and similar carved-into-the-universe rules (literally driving an actual fucking tank (and swearing (which is also objectively wrong))), and putting things like “)))” in their blog postings, and generally being wrong.
Three, you relax and realise that it was ever thus. Language always changes. Metaphors mutate into … words, often spelt wrongly. Lines get towed, and well, boo hoo, so what. Like the man said: “If you’re understood then it’s served it’s purpose.” And although that second “it’s” there, according to the pedants who taught me about it’s/its, should have been its, I actually think that spelling it it’s make at least as much sense.
And, I know I know, you can’t carve something into fabric; that would destroy it. But, you got the message.
The Nurture Only view being, in this case, the claim that all the differences in behaviour and attitude – with regard to such things as casual sex, attaching importance to physical sexual allure, and so on – between human males and human females are all caused by societal pressure.
Says SS-W (on page 90 of The Ape That Understood The Universe):
Arguably, though, the most persuasive argument against the Nurture Only view is that sex differences in sexual inclinations and choosiness can be found in many individuals who have no gender norms, no socialization, and little in the way of culture: that rather sizeable group, so often overlooked by psychologists, known as other animals. The differences aren’t found in all other species, but they are found in many, including most birds, mammals, and reptiles. And when we find the differences in other animals, evolution is the only reasonable explanation. Why should humans be different? It’s logically possible, of course, that the differences are products of evolution in squirrels, turkeys, and frogs, but of learning and culture in Homo sapiens. But it hardly seems likely. In other species, the differences appear when the ceiling number of offspring for males is higher than that for females. Humans meet this condition, and our species presumably evolved from earlier species that displayed the normal sex differences. As such, what the Nurture Only theory asks us to believe is that, in our lineage and ours alone, natural selection eliminated the normal sex differences, despite the fact that the selection pressure that initially created them was still operative. Why would it do that? It’s particularly perplexing given that, when we look around the world, we still find the sex differences that selection supposedly eliminated. Thus, the Nurture Only theory asks us to believe not only that selection eliminated the differences for reasons unknown, but that learning and culture then coincidentally reproduced exactly the same differences in every culture on record. This is not a compelling thesis. Cultural forces clearly influence people’s willingness to engage in casual sex, and to some extent their desire to do so as well. But the idea that culture creates these sex differences out of nothing not only clashes with the available evidence, it clashes with everything we know about how evolution works.
This comes in the middle of the chapter entitled “The SeXX/XY Animal”. Right at the beginning of this chapter, just below the subheading “An Academic Culture War”, appears this academic wisecrack:
“Everyone knows that men and women are different … except social scientists.”
Which doesn’t mean that everyone who knows that men and women are different also knows exactly what those differences consist of. And don’t consist of.
The “Other creatures” category at this blog usually means other creatures besides cats and kittens. But for this posting “Other creatures” means other creatures besides the particular creatures that are humans.
Speaking of animals, as I like to do of a Friday, how does Life get from little tiny single cell thingies to, you know, animals? Well, somewhat like this:
This school of fish swimming together looks like a single creature, shuffling along the ocean floor. Kinda analogous to the nature of multicellularity: Multicellular organisms are, in effect, large, highly coordinated colonies of single-celled organisms (their cells). pic.twitter.com/PZZlkie0Or
— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) January 19, 2020
The little tiny cells don’t themselves get that much bigger. No. Instead they combine into cooperating flocks, like the fishes above.
To be clear, the above is not an actual creature evolving. What you see there is merely analogous to how bigger creatures assemble themselves from tiny little cells.
I continue to read this SS-W book. My problem is: I’m already persuaded of the truth of everything he says. But I am learning plenty, so will continue.