Cartoons: what is normal?

Today the talk is about Cuba and U.S. relations.

Glass houses often beg a stone.

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Drew Sheneman, The Week

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Quantanamo is one of the U.S.'s not-so-secret sins.

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Tom Toles, The Week

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My definition of normalize: make manageable. Question is--for whom.

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Steve Kelley, The Week

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-- Marge

Bye, for now

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I'll be taking a break from blogging for a while to explore other avenues, but might continue posting Friday cartoons. Might not.

-- Marge

Cartoons: everyone has a story

The mix today looks at the Flint Michigan hearings; an Edward R. Murrow quote about campaigns as circus; whether voters are anti-republican establishment or anti-democrat establishment; and the true winner of the 2016 election.

In the congressional hearings on who dropped the ball in Flint, there are several ways to look at it. Here are two: The poisonous conservative thinking that caused the Flint crisis and Will Anyone Accept Responsibility for Flint?

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Clay Jones, The Week

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I never knew that newscaster Edward R. Murrow could be so wise. Here are some of his quotes.

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David Horsey, The Week

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Journalists appear to be defining Bernie Sanders as an anti-Democratic-establishment candidate and Donald Trump as an anti-Republican-establishment candidate. The Washington Post has a series called The great unsettling. This may come closer to the truth.

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Glenn McCoy, The Week

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And now, ta-da, the true outcome of the 2016 presidential election:

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Scott Stantis, The Week

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-- Marge

Eliminating plastics

Plastisphere, "Yum, Plastic" (Environmental Science and Technology),  Grist

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In a recent post, I offered information about The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Here's some more information about plastics in the ocean and on land; and, for extra measure, something about biomimetic materials.

My search started with a Gizmag article, The hungry little bacterium that could hold the key to the world's plastic waste problem. Other, land-based eaters of plastic have been identified: fungus, mushrooms, worms, ... Apparently a lot of biota like plastic.

In a more measured tone, though, plastic-eating and water-based biota are changing the character of plastic present in the ocean in unpredictable ways. A study by Woods Hole proposes a whole new ecosystem. Larger plastic items are being converted to plastic confetti, causing the Garbage Patch to sink and become more bio-available: A 'little world' eating ocean garbage might be a mixed blessing.

Meanwhile humankind continues to probe the natural world for solutions. Here are some that have been identified: Six ways bio-inspired design is reshaping the future. My favorite is slide 3--Health: Battling Bacteria with Biomimicry--which mimics the design of shark skin. As the slide says:

Sharklet has created a bacteria-free surface that can be used in hospitals, restaurants, and other places where contamination has consequences. What's more, because this technique doesn't kill bacteria it will be far more difficult for them to evolve a resistance to it, sidestepping the core problem with most attempts at rendering bacteria harmless. After all, the root technology underwent a 400-million-year incubation period in the ocean, and bacteria haven't figured out how to thwart it yet.

BTW, I came across this page while searching: Degruyter's Bioinspired Materials.

Bioinspired Materials is an innovative journal devoted to publish constructive peer-reviewed, open access, cutting-edge articles from a wide range of research fields that use inspiration from Nature for the design of artificial materials for several scopes.

If you think just forgetting about plastic, which is based on oil anyway, and finding substitutes is a better idea, take a look at these 10 suggestions for eco-friendly plastics.

-- Marge

A ruler with no kingdom left

The predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani is devastated after months under siege by Islamist forces and airstrikes by a United States-led coalition (Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse – Getty Images).

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You can find Bashar al-Assad's history on Wikipedia and you can find thoughts about his motivations in the Atlantic Monthly, but his kingdom is mostly gone because of chemical weapons, barrel bombs, and other attacks on his people.

It should be noted that Syria has become a war zone and, while Assad is responsible for much of the damage, the Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS), a United States-led coalition, and Russian forces enlisted by Assad have contributed. Wondering what's left for Assad to rule, I went searching.

The picture of Kobani above was found at From Syria, an Atlas of a Country in Ruins, March 2015. The same article gives a graphic representation of  the building damage level in Aleppo. It's worse now, since the Russians began bombing. (Legend: RED Destroyed; ORANGE Severe; OCHRE Moderate)

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An analysis of 210 sites in the city’s old quarters concluded that about half were
damaged and one-fifth were destroyed. New York Times

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The New York Times said of Syria After Four Years of Mayhem:

Half of Syrians Displaced (Mar 2015)
The war has displaced 7.6 million people inside Syria and pushed 3.9 million more — half of them children — to seek refuge in other countries, according to figures collected by United Nations agencies.

Lately, Assad's tactics have been bombing schools and hospitals. Foreign Policy reports Syrian MSF Hospital Kept Location Secret to Avoid Being Bombed. The Médecins Sans Frontières-supported hospital was destroyed anyway (Feb, 2016).

For an idea of how the Syrian Free Press on Wordpress sees it all, take a look at the Real SyrianFreePress Network (not sure this is an 'official' site).

If Bashar wins, he will have few people left to rule and little infrastructure to support civilized living. So what's the point of winning?

-- Marge

Cartoons: What in the world are they thinking?

Cartoonists are riffing on these news bites this week: ISIS is going broke, the world watches the U.S. presidential race with 'disbelief', and the GOP establishment is cozying up to Cruz.

Why ISIS is Going Broke.

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Tom Stiglich, The Week

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The world watches the U.S. presidential race with ‘disbelief.’

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Dana Summers, The Week

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The GOP establishment is cozying up to Ted Cruz. It’s not clear they know why.

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Mike Luckovich, The Week

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-- Marge

More tiny Houses (some DIY) and an egg-shaped one

The Roving, 84 Lumber

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Whether these houses have the footprint of a trailer or the shape of an egg, they're considered 'tiny'.  

Alec Wilkinson in his article Let's Get Small (a truly good read), describes those who live in tiny houses like this:

People who live in tiny houses, or aspire to, appear to fall into one of three overlapping categories. The first consists of young people who see a tiny house as a means of owning a place while avoiding property taxes and maybe rent, since they can often find places to park their house free. The second group includes older men and women who have either sold or walked away from a house they couldn’t afford. A subset of this group is retired couples whose children are gone, and who want to live more simply. Both of these groups include transients; that is, people for whom a tiny house is temporary. Among these is a woman named Elaine Walker, who recently listed her house on eBay, although she didn’t find a buyer. She had built the tiny house, in New Hampshire, to live in while selling a house. She had planned to build another normal house, then decided instead to move to California. She found a man who would tow the tiny house there for her. Before he delivered it, he took the house to a car wash. The third group is composed of people determined to live environmentally responsible lives––to live “lightly,” as they put it. According to Greg Johnson, the publisher of a tiny-house Web site called ResourcesForLife.com, to inhabit a tiny house “you have to remodel your sense of what success is and how important it is to you to convey to the outside world ‘Hey, I have a big house and big car and I’m successful.’ If you have a piece of inner tranquillity, you don’t have to prove anything to anybody.” A tiny-house builder describes this group as including people who “want to live off the grid. A lot of vegans. The younger people are idealists. They’re big into off-the-map and sharing their experience.”

A recent article in Gizmag announced Roving tiny house kit caters for DIYers or unhandy buyers. 

US building supplies firm 84 Lumber has joined the burgeoning small living movement with the launch of a new tiny house range that aims to cater to anyone's skills and budget, from screwdriver-phobes to DIY experts. Its debut model, the Roving, looks a good balance between size, price and amenities, and costs US$19,884 for the Semi-DIY option, which includes a basic shell, doors and trailer.

84 Lumber's tiny house models page showcases the current release, The Roving, and two planned releases, the Degsy and the Shonsie. Some specifications are included.

For an idea of  the variety in tiny houses existent, check out Country Living's gallery. Some, such as the vintage sheep cabin (not sure it qualifies as a tiny house, though), are being used to generate income. Another point of interest is the variety of uses.

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Heward Family Ranch in Wyoming, Vintage Sheep Wagon, Country Living

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The egg-shaped tiny house, dubbed the Ecocapsule, has been in the news since mid-2015. It's now in the prototype stage and available for pre-order. Take a look at this video to get an idea of why people are tracking its progress.

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-- Marge

The art of Stephen King

The Dark,Tower, vol.7, Wikipedia

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A friend of mine once told me that she read S. King's The Stand every year. That made quite an impression. Lately her comment has come back to me more than once, so I decided to take a look, even though I don't really care for horror stories. It seems to me there's enough horror in the world as it is, but after reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which I really liked, I was game.

The Stand is a big book, both in length and theme. And there were times I had to just put it down, because it was too intense. Sometimes I had to brace myself to read sections I knew would be dark and/or violent. Still, it had a relatively happy ending--the good guys survived (mostly). It had some truly interesting characters. The Dark Man, aka Randall Flagg, is pretty unforgettable.

One of the most interesting characters was the writer, Stephen King, himself. It's also of interest that  "His books have sold more than 350 million copies." (Wikipedia).

Now I'm planning to read The Dark Tower, a work Mr. King considers his Magnum Opus. In preparation I bought The Complete Concordance by Robin Furth, knowing from my experience with The Stand that the details and characters in 7 volumes would be a challenge to track. In the foreword to the Compendium, King describes the process of writing a 7-volume work that spans 32 years in 'real' time, comparing it to visiting and revisiting a department store. The analogy goes like this--

Will I tell you what happens to a story when it lies fallow over such long periods of time? Will you hear? Then close your eyes and imagine a vast department store, all on one level, lit by great racks of overhead fluorescent lights. You see every kind of item under those lights—underwear and automotive parts, TVs and DVDs, shoes and stationery and bikes for the kiddies, blue jeans and mattresses (Oh look, Herbie, they’re on sale, 40% off!), cosmetics and air rifles, party dresses and picnic gear.

Now imagine the lights failing, one by one. The huge space grows darker; the goods so temptingly arrayed grow dimmer and harder to see. Finally you can hardly see your hand in front of your face.

That was the kind of room I came to when it was finally time to write The Drawing of the Three, except then the store wasn’t so big— the first volume was less than three hundred pages long, so it was actually more of a mom n pop operation, do ya not see it. I was able to light it again simply by reading over the first volume and having a few ideas (I also resurrected a few old ones; I hadn’t entirely forgotten what was in those handwritten pages, or the purpose of the tale).

Coming back to write the third volume (The Waste Lands) in the mid-eighties was harder, because the store was once again almost completely dark, and now it was much bigger. Once again I began by reading over what I’d written, taking copious notes, and filling paperback copies of the first two books with yellow highlighted passages and pink Post-it notes.

Another four years passed . . . or perhaps this time it was six. The store had once again grown dark, and by the time I was ready to write Wizard and Glass, it was bigger than ever. This time I wanted to add a whole new annex (call it Roland’s Past instead of the Bridal Shoppe). Once again out came the books— three of them, this time— the yellow highlighter, and the packets of Post-it notes.

(Furth, Robin (2012-11-06). Stephen King's The Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance, Revised and Updated (Kindle Location 52). Scribner. Kindle Edition.)

I wonder what repeatedly drew him back to working on this mammoth project. Did its state of unfinished itch? Did he dream about it? Did Roland haunt him? You may find an answer at the website.

It should be quite an adventure.

-- Marge

 

Cartoons: wordplay

Three of today's cartoons feature a play on words; the fourth is an outlier in more ways than one.

Marshall Ramsey: "Stupor Tuesday"

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Marshall Ramsey, TheWeek

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Bob Gorrell: "Trumped"

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Bob Gorrell, The Week

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Tom Toles: "the T party"

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Tom Toles, The Week

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David Fitzsimmons: Hannibal Lecter vs. Frederick Charles "Freddy" Krueger

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David Fitzsimmons, The Week

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-- Marge

Art: Loving Vincent

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Loving Vincent is a most pleasing combination of painting and film produced by Polish studio BreakThru Films and Trademark Films. Its visual style evokes that of Van Gogh and it flows from scene to scene effortlessly. Here's a trailer--

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According to The Reel --

Vincent Van Gogh’s obsession with his art might have caused him tremendous personal agony, but his output was tremendous – almost 900 paintings, many of which are counted among the greatest works of all time. In a new tribute to Van Gogh, the makers of an animated documentary will feature 120 of his most famous paintings.

Breakthru Films (still working on their online presence) won several awards for another film, Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" (2006), a stop-motion animation. It was released in the U.S. as an adaptation by Suzie Templeton and won an Academy Award. Here's a taste:

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This concept trailer for Loving Vincent, published by Solar Pictures, has some interesting points to make. Needless to say perhaps, but there is a theory that Van Gogh didn't commit suicide, but was shot. My apologies if this is a spoiler for you.

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-- Marge

Afghanistan's poet-martyrs

Afghan women, AsiaSociety.org

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Eliza Griswold, a poet herself, wrote an article Why Afghan Women Risk Death to Write Poetry that captures one of the ways these women survive (or don't) their rigidly enforced roles as women. She describes the interaction of rural female poets with a group of urban women who have formed a society of more than 100.

Mirman Baheer, Afghanistan’s largest women’s literary society, is a contemporary version of a Taliban-era literary network known as the Golden Needle. In Herat, women, pretending to sew, gathered to talk about literature. In Kabul, Mirman Baheer has no need for subterfuge. Its more than 100 members are drawn primarily from the Afghan elite: professors, parliamentarians, journalists and scholars. They travel on city buses to their Saturday meetings, their faces uncovered, wearing high-heeled boots and shearling coats. But in the outlying provinces — Khost, Paktia, Maidan Wardak, Kunduz, Kandahar, Herat and Farah — where the society’s members number 300, Mirman Baheer functions largely in secret.

Poetry is one of the few creative releases available to women in Afghanistan, and even then they are in danger of being discovered. Amail, an urban member of Mirman Baheer, mentors one of the rural poets, Meena Muska (her pen name).

Of Afghanistan’s 15 million women, roughly 8 out of 10 live outside urban areas, where U.S. efforts to promote women’s rights have met with little success. Only 5 out of 100 graduate from high school, and most are married by age 16, 3 out of 4 in forced marriages. Young poets like Meena who call into the hot line, Amail told me, “are in a very dangerous position. They’re behind high walls, under the strong control of men.” Herat University’s celebrated young poet, Nadia Anjuman, died in 2005, after a severe beating by her husband. She was 25.

Pashtun poetry has long been a form of rebellion for Afghan women, belying the notion that they are submissive or defeated. Landai means “short, poisonous snake” in Pashto, a language spoken on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The word also refers to two-line folk poems that can be just as lethal. Funny, sexy, raging, tragic, landai are safe because they are collective. No single person writes a landai; a woman repeats one, shares one. It is hers and not hers. Although men do recite them, almost all are cast in the voices of women. “Landai belong to women,” Safia Siddiqi, a renowned Pashtun poet and former Afghan parliamentarian, said. “In Afghanistan, poetry is the women’s movement from the inside.”

An example of landai is

“On Doomsday, I will say aloud,
I came from the world with my heart full of hope.”

                                                              -- Zarmina

In her article, Eliza Griswold follows the stories of two poets, the elusive Meena

Meena lost her fiancé last year, when a land mine exploded. According to Pashtun tradition, she must marry one of his brothers, which she doesn’t want to do. She doesn’t dare protest directly, but reciting poetry to Amail allows her to speak out against her lot. When I asked how old she was, Meena responded in a proverb: “I am like a tulip in the desert. I die before I open, and the waves of desert breeze blow my petals away.” She wasn’t sure of her age but thought she was 17. “Because I am a girl, no one knows my birthday,” she said.

and Zarmina.

Rahila was the name used by a young poet, Zarmina, who committed suicide two years ago. Zarmina was reading her love poems over the phone when her sister-in-law caught her. “How many lovers do you have?” she teased. Zarmina’s family assumed there was a boy on the other end of the line. As a punishment, her brothers beat her and ripped up her notebooks, Amail said. Two weeks later, Zarmina set herself on fire.

Eliza's poetry can be found Poetry Foundation and Work in Progress.

-- Marge

Cartoons: Like it or not

Today's mix looks at the GOP's (possible) dawning self-awareness, Applesauce, and Facebook's new 'Like' buttons.

Republican self-destruction is fun to watch, but bad for us all (E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post).

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Drew Sheneman, The Week

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Apple Goes to Court, and F.B.I. Presses Congress to Settle iPhone Privacy Fight (New York Times). Also, The Morning Download: Encryption App Gains Popularity Amid Apple Privacy Battle (Wall Street Journal).

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John Cole, The Week

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Then there's Facebook...

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Nate Beeler, The Week

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-- Marge

Cosmology: a change in perspective

Video credits: Science Channel, "Viewing the Universe for the First Time" 

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Assuming you're the center of anything except your own life can be a misleading proposition. Take for example the ancients', and particularly Ptolemy's, observation that the Earth was the center of the universe. Now we call it the geocentric model, then it was the basis of their cosmology and served to inform religion, science, and philosophy. Ptolemy's model was called the Almagest (AD 150) and the "system persisted, with minor adjustments, until the Earth was displaced from the centre of the universe in the 16th and 17th centuries by the Copernican system and by Kepler’s laws of planetary motion" (Brittanica).

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Sacrobosco, Tractatus de Sphaera (1550), Wikipedia

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By the 16th century the system was beginning to fall apart, as described in Universe (William J. Kaufmann III, W.H. Freeman & Company, New York, 1985):

...Tiny errors and inaccuracies that were unnoticeable in Ptolemy's day compounded and multiplied over the years, especially with regard to precession. Fifteenth century astronomers made some cosmetic adjustments to the Ptolemaic system. However, the system became less and less satisfying as more complicated and arbitrary details were added to keep it consistent with the observed motions of the planets.

Individual investigators, such as Aristarchus of Samos, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Tycho Brahe, theorized that the bodies observed from Earth and Earth itself moved around the sun, but could not prove it. It wasn't until Galileo Galilei looked through the new telescope that it all came together. Here is a page of his notes on Jupiter.

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Galileo, notes on moons of Jupiter, StrongBrains

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Two references looking at the depth of the "cosmological models developed by Plato, Eudoxus, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus and others" are Celestial spheres at Wikipedia and Medieval cosmology at Luminarium Encyclopedia.


-- Marge

Art: two contemporary artists

Dima Rebus, "I've been out walking," dimarebus.com

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Taking a break from posts on technical topics, here are two artists that I found online--Dima Rebus, a Russian watercolorist, and Diana Al-Hadid, an American sculptor. It's apparent from the work of both these artists that they have unique ways of looking at the world. Ms. Al-Hadid goes so far as to ask: "How does an artist resist reality?" This may seem a strange question, but not all artists want to blindly copy the world. The video below gives intriguing insights into how the creative process works for her.

Dima Rebus' work is fairly easy to find on the internet at sites like Colossal and Juxtapoz, but he himself is somewhat a mystery. The most in-depth information I found about him was at the site of a  Moscow-based gallery, Artwin Gallery. They say this about Mr. Rebus and contemporary Russian artists:

We are discovering a new generation of urban artists. They prefer personal anonymity while hiding their faces behind avatar userpics and turning their real names into screenname rebuses. Dima’s artistic journey is another generation’s turn in Russian urban painting. It seems like we saw it twenty years ago during Perestroika and during the “Thaw” of the sixties. His young age can be only identified by the mature artistic skills and by the way he looks at the Soviet past, the thing that he never experienced in his real life. This is what represents true contemporary Russian art now, not pseudo-Russian pseudo-art of Old Arbat. Dima Rebus is a young artist masterly working in a watercolour technique. The essence of his unique style is in a delicate drawing and in a keen perception of the surrounding medium. Dima’s works are always filled with air and irony, two elements, that play an important role in his art. Each of his works is outstanding and intriguing. For the painter it is very crucial to show self irony, helping to step aside and not take himself very seriously: “A man who has a sense of humour is beautiful, but a man who has self-irony is even more beautiful” – Dima Rebus. Also Rebus is very famous for his talented illustrations for children’s books, and he collaborates with a number of large publishing companies and design studios, such as Total Football, Snob, Esquire, GQ and others.

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Dima Rebus, "Self-portrait with a cherry," dimarebus.com

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Diana Al-Hadid originated in Syria and was raised in Cleveland, Ohio. She's very clear on what she wants to do with her work. You can find several videos about her at Art21. The video below gives some of her artistic philosophy, as well as personal background.

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-- Marge

Cartoons: this week's outtakes (hopefully)

Looking at some of the trends from this week's news and editorial views, we see Hollywood producing the presidential election; Judge Judy as Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court; Trump added to Mt. Rushmore; the right to privacy as a fiction (made up by whom?); and the U.S Constitution vs. a cocktail napkin.

The 2016 race and possibly election:

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David Horsey, The Week

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Marshall Ramsey, The Week

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Bill Schorr, The Week

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The DoJ vs. Apple:

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David Fitzsimmons, The Week

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Replacing Scalia:

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Mike Luckovich, The Week

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-- Marge

From hacker to #OpISIS

The Cyber Activists Who Want to Shut Down ISIS, Reuters / Paul Spella / The Atlantic

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Freedom of speech can be so tricky. If you're a hate-monger like the late Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church it's O.K. to say things like "Thank God for dead soldiers" at the funeral of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq. But if you're whistleblower Edward Snowden releasing classified information revealing the extent of the NSA's snooping, you're a traitor. There is a Whistleblower Protection Act but it appears to be limited to "federal whistleblowers who work for the government and report agency misconduct." It didn't help Edward Snowden. WikiLeaks did.

Then there are hactivists. Many consider organizations such as Anonymous annoying, even dangerous. Not all agree. Author John Mellow at PC World quoted Yochai Benkler of Harvard Law School as saying "'Audacious' Hactivists Make Social Statement..." My apologies for not quoting directly from Hacks of Valor: Why Anonymous Is Not a Threat to National Security, but I chose not to sign up for my one free article a month at Foreign Policy.

But since the Charlie Hebdo shooting of Jan 2015 in Paris, Anonymous has taken on the new role of waging war against ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). Looking again at Foreign Policy, a most prestigious magazine published by the FP Group, there's the article Anonymous Vs. The Islamic State, an eye-opener (at least in my view). This from the article:

For more than a year, a ragtag collection of casual volunteers, seasoned coders, and professional trolls has waged an online war against the Islamic State and its virtual supporters. Many in this anti-Islamic State army identify with the infamous hacking collective Anonymous. They are based around the world and hail from every walk of life. They have virtually nothing in common except a passion for computers and a feeling that, with its torrent of viral-engineered propaganda and concerted online recruiting, the Islamic State has trespassed in their domain. The hacktivists have vowed to fight back.

Another article, this one in The Atlantic, describes The Cyber Activists Who Want to Shut Down ISIS.

About the online recruiting--it's beginning to look like we have to collectively work at bringing youth back from their isolation: Loneliness: a silent plague that is hurting young people most.


-- Marge

More about harvesting water from air

Warka Tower: How it functions, WarkaWater

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A while back I posted about the Warka Tower, DIY: getting water from air. I'm happy to report that the Warka Water project is strong and evolving. That it doesn't require electricity is one of its best features.

Atmospheric water generation isn't particularly new (see air well), but growing awareness of the need for good potable water in developing countries has spurred new approaches. To wrap your head around the enormity of the need, check out Water for People and Earth Institute's State of the Planet, where fog collectors are described.

A new company in South Africa, Water from Air, is making a splash ( ;-) ). Their video raises an interesting point about water purification. There's also Water-Gen, which was developed primarily for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Standing or sitting water can pose health problems, because it may foster the growth of unfriendly microorganisms. Ultraviolet water purification is widely used; this site compares it with chlorine purification.

Not all water collection must result in potable water. FogQuest in one project "provide[s] water for a commercial aloe vera crop" in Chile.

As an aside: I never fully understood what Luke Skywalker's aunt and uncle did on Tatooine. They had a Moisture Farm. Here Luke Skywalker and WED-15-77, a Treadwell droid, attend to a moisture vaporator on Tatooine,

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Wikipedia, Lucasfilm

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-- Marge

Cartoons: Gotham City's Batman to the rescue?

It's all politics in my cartoon world today, except for one about the Zika Virus and one about lead levels in Flint vs. those in Pennsylvania. So here are my picks.

Can we all agree that presidential politics have gone to hell in a handbasket, or in this case a dumpster, this election cycle?

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Marshall Ramsey, The Week

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Here's the latest on the main contender--Donald Trump.

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Bob Gorrell, The Week

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There's a possibility of a new contender--Michael Bloomberg, another billionaire. Oligarchy, anyone?

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John Darkow, The Week

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And that's it, Folks.

-- Marge