Julian Beever

I recently got introduced to Julian Beever. As you'll see when you click that link, he has a unique style of pavement drawings. Check it out.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...it's...a man!

Check this out— http://www.jet-man.com/actuel_eng.html.

Apart from the obvious question "How on earth did he do that!?" is this question: "When will this amazing gizmo be featured in a James Bond movie?"

Atatürk's Reforms and Dil Devrimi (the language revolution)

As I mentioned earlier, I'm studying Turkish. As part of that, I'm learning more about Turkey's history. For more details, see this blog entry.

Panda-monium

Yeah, yeah, I know. The pun police will be pulling me over to give me a citation. But puns are obligatory when we're talking about this cutie at the Atlanta Zoo.

The little tyke even has his own blog.

Everyone now...awwwwwww. :^)

Time Zone Gaffe

I just realized I've been posting messages with a US pacific coast time zone instead of a US Atlantic coast time zone. Doh! Fixed now.

New Britain Museum of American Art

This morning, I visited the New Britain Museum of American Art (NBMAA). I was pleasantly surprised by what I found.

I heard about it through word of mouth. The secondhand information included a report that it had started as an exhibition out of someone's home and was later expanded. Having seen something like that in New Hampshire where I enjoyed some Maxfield Parrish paintings, my expectations for the building were low.

Also, NBMAA's site shows no pictures of its building. That reinforced my low expectations.

So, imagine my surprise when I found a large, spanking new building perched right next to an invitingly large park named Walnut Hill Park. Plenty of parking spaces were available. Everything was immaculate. Even the scent inside the building was "new," reminding me of the scent of a new car when you drive it for the first time.

Entering the building, I found the main desk manned by two very nice women. Happily, they informed me that I had arrived in time to enjoy the museum's collection free of charge. Apparently, from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM on Saturdays, there is no charge.

NBMAA has its share of modern art. Fortunately, not enough was there to overshadow my enjoyment of genuine art.

By modern art, I mean obvious crap like one display that included nothing more than a wooden border holding white flourescent lights. The name associated with that display is Dan Flavin. However, I must give him credit—he made me laugh. If he meant his work as a joke, it worked.

By genuine art, I mean work by artists like Claude Raguet Hirst, Charles Courtney Curran, Thomas Moran, and Robert Salmon, among others. All of these artists are new to me. Learning about them added to my enjoyment of this museum only a couple of towns away from my home.

Topping the day for me was finding in NBMAA's collection MaxField Parrish's The Old Glen Mill. Important note: This web picture does not do justice to this work. It fails to show the exquisite detail in each leaf at the center of the painting.

All that and I didn't have to pay to enter the building. Thank you NBMAA!

Deniz Kurdu

What is Deniz Kurdu? I'm glad you asked. It's a special purpose blog—Dennis learning and practicing Turkish.

I dubbed it, in part, Deniz because it sounds like Dennis. In Turkish, it means sea. Why kurdu too? Because at http://www.turkishdictionary.net/, I found that deniz kurdu means "experienced sailor, sea dog, an old salt".

It made me smile. So, that became my new blog's site name.

So, take a peek, if you wish, and have a chuckle or two at my expense while I stumble my way through a world that is new and fascinating to me.

Machu Picchu Moved to Nepal?

The notion of Machu Picchu being in Nepal instead of Peru would have been a fun marketing ploy by the two countries seeking tourists. However, it was a silly error by a Nepalese employee who lost his job over the gaffe. The story is online at this site.

That story spurred me to Google some pictures of the famous location. I found some excellent pictures at Biker Tony's site. They're breathtaking.

A miracle

On October 24, 1781, Madison wrote to Jefferson his latest report on the Constitutional Convention. In that particularly long letter, I enjoyed reading this excerpt:

Hence was embraced the alternative of a Government which instead of operating, on the States, should operate without their intervention on the individuals composing them: and hence the change in the principle and proportion of representation.

This ground-work being laid, the great objects which presented themselves were

1. to unite a proper energy in the Executive and a proper stability in the Legislative departments, with the essential characters of Republican Government.

2. to draw a line of demarkation which would give to the General Government every power requisite for general purposes, and leave to the States every power which might be most beneficially administered by them.

3. to provide for the different interests of different parts of the Union.

4. to adjust the clashing pretensions of the large and small States.

Each of these objects was pregnant with difficulties. The whole of them together formed a task more difficult than can be well concieved by those who were not concerned in the execution of it. Adding to these considerations the natural diversity of human opinions on all new and complicated subjects, it is impossible to consider the degree of concord which ultimately prevailed as less than a miracle.[Emphasis added.]

Miracle indeed! Bless the Age of Enlightenment for producing the epoch changing accomplishment that summed up in the birth of America!

Here's to the next Renaissance on the long road of reason to complete the revolution America's Founders started.

Gary Cooper

Gary Cooper is one of my favorite actors. This is my favorite photo of him.

Sense of Humor and the Self-Exclusion Fallacy

At work today, someone made a lame, strained effort at humor. Seeing his joke fall flat on its face, he fell back on this old chestnut: "Don't you have a sense of humor?"

Response: I do. Don't you? It's precisely because I do have a sense of humor that I'm not laughing.

The speaker was indulging in a common fallacy—the fallacy of self-exclusion. That is, the speaker gets to say whatever the hell he feels like saying without being held accountable for any kind of basic logic or common sense.

For example, how often have you heard this gem: "Nothing is black or white."? Oh really? What about what you just said?

Then, of course, there's this common stand-by: "You can't be sure of anything." Are you sure about that?

You get the idea.

The Man Who Laughs

Victor Hugo's amazing novel, The Man Who Laughs, is evidently available in toto at this site.

Seeing this, I was floored. Since it's often out-of-print, I would have been happy just to find a reference or two.

My motivation for the web search was to refresh my memory of the character named Barkilphedro. His name came to mind while I was thinking of certain unpleasant characters at work.

Barkilphedro is Hugo's fascinating personification of hate. What makes this character study especially chilling is its relevance to the modern world. In my case, I see elements of this character in corporate America.

To give you just a tiny taste of Hugo's insights from which Barkilphedro evolved, here are some excerpts from the site:

He was given his way [by Queen Anne], so much was he feared. He who can make the king laugh makes the others tremble.

He was a powerful buffoon....

There are wheels within wheels at court. Barkilphedro became the motive power. Have you remarked, in certain mechanisms, the smallness of the motive wheel?...

Barkilphedro excelled in making the cunning discoveries which place the great in the power of the little. His walk in the dark was winding, soft, clever. Like every perfect spy, he was composed of the inclemency of the executioner and the patience of a micrograph. He was a born courtier. Every courtier is a noctambulist. The courtier prowls in the night, which is called power. He carries a dark lantern in his hand. He lights up the spot he wishes, and remains in darkness himself. What he seeks with his lantern is not a man, it is a fool. What he finds is the king....

Barkilphedro, once a candidate for orders, had studied a little of everything. Skimming all things leaves naught for result. One may be victim of the omnis res scibilis. Having the vessel of the Danaïdes in one's head is the misfortune of a whole race of learned men, who may be termed the sterile. What Barkilphedro had put into his brain had left it empty....

Hate indistinct is sweet and suffices for a time; but one must end by having an object. An animosity diffused over creation is exhausting, like every solitary pleasure. Hate without an object is like a shooting-match without a target. What lends interest to the game is a heart to be pierced.

One can not hate solely for honour; some seasoning is necessary--a man, a woman, somebody, to destroy.

This service of making the game interesting; of offering an end; of throwing passion into hate by fixing it on an object; of amusing the hunter by the sight of his living prey; of giving the watcher the hope of the smoking and boiling blood about to flow; of amusing the birdcatcher by the credulity of the uselessly-winged lark; of being a victim, unknowingly reared for murder by a master-mind; all this exquisite and horrible service, of which the person rendering it is unconscious, Josiana rendered Barkilphedro.

Ayn Rand once wrote: "Hugo gives me the feeling of entering a cathedral". Reading Hugo, I feel the same kind of reverence.

P.S., Can someone translate "omnis res scibilis" for me? I could not find a translation via Google.

Did Lincoln Steal A Famous Phrase from Madison?

Did Lincoln steal his famous "preserve the union" phrase from Madison or some other Founding Father? I've now seen Madison use the phrase more than once. The latest example I found follows:

It appeared to be the sincere and unanimous wish of the Convention to cherish and preserve the Union of the States. No proposition was made, no suggestion was thrown out, in favor of a partition of the Empire into two or more Confederacies

If Lincoln did steal it from Madison, he ignored what Madison immediately said next:

It was generally agreed that the objects of the Union could not be secured by any system founded on the principle of a confederation of sovereign States. A voluntary observance of the federal law by all the members, could never be hoped for. A compulsive one could evidently never be reduced to practice, and if it could, involved equal calamities to the innocent & the guilty, the necessity of a military force both obnoxious & dangerous, and in general, a scene resembling much more a civil war, than the administration of a regular Government.

Even if Lincoln had read Madison's prescient observation, his statist ambition would have ignored it. For more details, check out The Real Lincoln.

Madison on the Constitutional Convention

Two years before George Washington became the first president of the United States, James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson about constitutional convention and the mood prior to publishing its conclusions. He wrote:

Nothing can exceed the universal anxiety for the event of the Meeting here. Reports and conjectures abound concerning the nature of the plan which is to be proposed. The public however is certainly in the dark with regard to it. The Convention is equally in the dark as to the reception wch. may be given to it on its publication. All the prepossessions are on the right side, but it may well be expected that certain characters will wage war against any reform whatever. My own idea is that the public mind will now or in a very little time receive any thing that promises stability to the public Councils & security to private rights, and that no regard ought to be had to local prejudices or temporary considerations. If the present moment be lost it is hard to say what may be our fate.

[Emphasis added]

Indeed, what would have been our fate?

The entire letter in which this quote appears is available here