Uncouth Reflections

Oslo Opera House

Posted on October 29, 2013 by Atypical Neurotic

Atypical Neurotic writes:

Took this shot at 4:25 pm. The Opera House was designed by the Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta, which also designed the new library in Alexandria, Egypt. When I saw the initial renderings back in the early 2000s, I was very skeptical. At the time I seem to remember thinking that it looked like a scaled-up foam-board model (current and former architecture and art students will know what I am referring to). The design turned out to have been genius, especially because people have access to the roof, and on sunny days on weekends, the Opera House is covered with visitors. For that very reason, my partner refers to it as “the rookery”. One slight problem: the designers insisted on Carrara marble, which in the summer sun is dazzlingly white. However, sulfur dioxide bubbles up from the fjord and reacts with the marble, yellowing it in places. They could have used white granite, but that wasn’t white enough for them. We’ll see.

Posted in Architecture, Photography, The Good Life, Travel | 3 Comments

The “Democrat Party”

Posted on October 29, 2013 by Sherbrooke

Sherbrooke writes:

A question. Years ago, watching George W. on t.v. from my perch here north of the border, I saw and heard him say this now-famous phrase: “The Democrat Party.” At first I dismissed it as his usual verbal boneheadedness–and perhaps a way of expressing contempt for the opposition. But I never heard anyone correct it, and now, every time I hear a Republican refer to the “Democrat senator,” “Democrat president” (etc.) I wince. Why have Democrats accepted this? For example, I don’t believe Canada’s New Democratic Party would put up with it from Stephen Harper. And finally, how can Americans respect any party that can’t correctly pronounce the name of the opposition?

Posted in Books Publishing and Writing, Politics and Economics | Tagged language usage | 17 Comments

Horror Movie Posters

Posted on October 29, 2013 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

Nosferatu.

Does this word not sound like the deathbird calling your name at midnight? Beware you never say it — for then the pictures of life will fade to shadows, and haunting dreams will climb forth from your heart and feed on your blood.

Happy Halloween.

Black Sabbath (UK)

Black Sabbath (USA)

Blood and Roses (France)

Blood and Roses (USA)

Blood Bath (USA)

Carrie (Spain)

Curse of the Demon (USA)

Twins of Evil (France)

Eyes Without a Face (France)

Kill, Baby . . . Kill! (USA)

Possession (Italy)

Rape of the Vampire (France)

Re-Animator (USA)

Rosemary’s Baby (USA)

Santo vs. the Vampire Women (Mexico)

The Shiver of the Vampires (France)

Shock (Italy)

Sleepaway Camp (USA)

Suspiria (Italy)

The Fury (Italy)

The Haunting (France)

The Innocents (Italy)

The Nude Vampire (France)

The Perfume of the Lady in Black (Italy)

The Psychic (USA)

The Tingler (Italy)

The Whip and the Body (Italy)

Tombs of the Blind Dead (Italy)

Vampire Lovers (Italy)

All the Colors of the Dark (Spain)

Black Sunday (Italy)

The Case of the Bloody Iris (Italy)

Suspiria (USA)

Posted in Commercial art, Movies | Tagged Film, horror, Movie Posters, movies, Nosferatu | 10 Comments

Linkage

Posted on October 29, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Women are perfectly OK with sexism that benefits them.
Do carbs cause Alzheimer’s? Nice to see another segment of the mainstream coming around on this issue. I remember Dr. Oz giving Gary Taubes a hard time a few years ago.
Tumblr of the Day. AellaGirl’s reddit page, and her Twitter. An example of her art. (All of these links are NSFW.)
Police in full-body armor search a house under a warrant based on a 1986 arrest and in the process seize a reporter’s confidential files. Assuming those facts are true, please explain to me how those are not the actions of a police state. (H/T Glynn Marshes)
Apocalypse in New York.
Aerial views of old London.
“Other animals chew the cord off shortly after birth, but as a vegan, this option did not appeal to me.” Every day, it gets harder to tell the parodists from the sincere.
“The chief outlet for our aesthetic interests is not ‘art’ (as museum curators suppose) but: cars, fashion, porn, and interior design.” — Alain de Botton, on Twitter.
This has to be one of the great Halloween costumes of all time.

Posted in Linkathons, Performers, Politics and Economics, Sex, Travel | Tagged AellaGirl, Alain de Botton, London, New York, police state update, sexism | 4 Comments

Blog Milestone

Posted on October 29, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Earlier today, we passed 200,000 unique views on the blog. About half of that traffic is probably bots, but we’ll take it. Thanks, bots! Remy decided to celebrate with some hooping.

Posted in Personal reflections | Tagged blog news, classy, Remy LaCroix, respectable | Leave a comment

Fewer/Less

Posted on October 29, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

Given my background in the media (researcher, reporter, etc), I like to think that I could be a much bigger grammar Nazi than I am. But I tend to swing pretty loose where language goes. Texting, gabbing, blurting, Ebonics … All can be — and often are — sources of inventiveness, energy, new ideas and humor. Besides, what does playing Mr. Prissy really add to the ongoing flowiness of things? I’ll take good nature and ease (even if marred by mistakes) over uptightness, however correct, approximately all the time.

Even so, there are still a few language-things that turn me into a stickler. One of them: the very common misuse of “begs the question.” (Grr: no idea why the typography in that posting has grown wonky over the years.) Quick explanation: “begs the question” does not mean “prompts the question,” as many people seem to think. Instead, it means “assuming what you’ve set out to prove.” When question-begging is going on, what’s being discussed is a logical fallacy, not something along the lines of “Hey, you know, what I just said has got me thinking about something related!” Note that some modern language authorities have caved on this particular issue. For them, the phrase is misused so often these days that the time has come to accept the new usage. Still, although I agree that eventually we all have to roll with change, my heels dig in.

Here’s another: using the word “less” when the word “fewer” would be correct.

No no no no no. “Less” is used when you’re referring to a mass that has grown smaller: “There’s less water in that bucket than there was ten minutes ago.” “Fewer” should be used when you’re referring to a number that has grown smaller: “There are fewer duplicates in my iPhoto collection now that I’ve gone through and weeded them out.” Less bread … but fewer slices of bread. In the case of my subway snapshot above: can the switches in question be counted, at least in principle? Yes? Then “fewer,” not “less,” is the word that should be used.

Funny how often this particular goof leaps out at you once you’ve awakened to it. Funny too how certain language-usage things can really gripe a person. Which ones tend to seize your attention and switch on your indignation?

Funny as well that the poster in question was created and paid for by a branch of the New York City government. Do we suppose that someone — a designer, editor, writer or boss — OK’d this poster thinking, “Yeah, that’s how real people speak, and we’d do well to address real people in their own language”? Or were its creators just clueless about proper usage?

Related

A good Ben Yagoda piece about some basic rules of grammar that all of us would do well to keep in mind.

Posted in Books Publishing and Writing | Tagged grammar, writing | 19 Comments

Bitcoin Update: Fall 2013

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Sir Barken Hyena

Sir Barken Hyena writes:

Last June I posted about Bitcoins and why I was buying them. Six months on, it’s time to take stock of where we are.

First things first, my return on investment. I bought my coins, never mind just how many, over May and June this year at an average of $102.50 each. As of this writing, we’re looking at $206.90 per. How’d the rest of you do in real estate or the stock market over that time, eh?

Gloating aside, there are good reasons for that price increase. Bitcoin’s position and future potential have never been better. In fact, an important hurdle to adoption appears to have been passed, along with those price milestones.

Ask people about Bitcoin and if they’ve heard of it at all they’ll say “oh that drug trafficker stuff” or something similar. Like most media distortions, it has a basis in fact. Or at least it did until the FBI seized the main internet purveyor of illegal goods, the website Silk Road. The total taken was staggering, something north of 170,00 BTC, worth 10’s of millions in dollars. But some the methods used to apprehend the criminals were revealing of a critical and poorly understood feature of Bitcoin, the public transaction ledger, called the “blockchain”.

Bitcoin is money but it’s more than that, it’s a complete accounting system. But all the accounts are public! Every single transaction in the blockchain from inception to present is publicly viewable. For example, let’s look at the last 100 largest Bitcoin transactions:

https://blockchain.info/largest-recent-transactions

All those funny numbers are encrypted addresses that show the sender and the receiver of the transaction. True, it doesn’t say “Joe Blow” but there are lots of ways to link a person to a bitcoin address.

Think about that though, does anyone think a drug trafficker wants his transactions visible to the entire world? Bitcoin is terrible for criminals, they’ve just been able to operate unobserved. Not anymore, that cat is out of the bag. The Bitcoin price dropped on the Silk Road news, but then rebounded in a few days and has since sustained about a 50% increase from there.

Also driving that price rise is China. An announcement by Baidu, a sort of Chinese Google, that a division will accept payment by bitcoin, plus the US budget jitters, seems to have put it above $200, maybe for good. This was on massive Chinese trading volume. In addition lately I’ve seen a few articles giving a favorable gloss to investing in bitcoin, which is a new thing to me.

What next? A lot of venture capital has flowed to start ups exploring various services, and some of that fruit is starting to show up. Expect many more announcements in the next 6 months. Also there are major upgrades coming to Bitcoin-QT, the server software. Supported will be charge back and identity features that will help merchants, escrow accounts, asset titles and similar features.

So expect more good new for Bitcoin.

Posted in Politics and Economics | Tagged bitcoin | 3 Comments

Sacramento, California

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

As promised, here are a few pictures of my state capital. I was on my way back to catch a flight and only had an hour, so forgive the haphazard nature of the snaps. Here’s California’s capitol building, which looks brand new and gleaming in person. Hats off to the building maintenance team. The seals in the last row are on the ground right outside the main entrance.

Click on the images to enlarge.

Hey, question: aren’t we always hearing about how Noble our Selfless Public Servants are? I of course never doubt their Sacrifice for the ~~Empire~~ Republic, but surely they not only can do more for the public, they’d be happy to do so if they could. To that end, I propose that they vacate this wonderful building and we turn it into a California historical and cultural museum for the citizenry to enjoy. Let our elected leaders, who surely derive all of their satisfaction not from mundane things like their physical surroundings but from the knowledge they’re boldly steering the ship of state, let them work in, oh, I dunno, barges in the middle of the nearby Sacramento and American rivers. Folsom State Prison is less than an hour away — they can work there, too.

Next, some pleasant buildings across the street.

A Catholic cathedral about a block away from the Capitol building.

Some shots of the streets. As you can see, they’re pedestrian, bike, and rail-friendly. I didn’t see any cars in this immediate area.

Another government building. The inscription under the pediment reads, “Bring Me Men To Match My Mountains.” LOL, sorry dude! The statutes that flank the entrance are the personifications of Climatic Wealth and Mineral Wealth.

Posted in Architecture, Photography, Travel | Tagged California, Sacramento, traditionalism | 4 Comments

“Car crashes…are symptoms of a disease…”

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Glynn Marshes

Glynn Marshes writes:

Says the CNN opinion columnist.

Before you argue that car crashes/motorcycle accidents are not, in fact, symptoms of a disease but some other category of phenomenon, please bear in mind: the new definition of the word “disease” is “awful problem that requires massive spending and government intervention to fix.”

It no longer has nothing to do with, ya know, germs or whatever.

Posted in Politics and Economics | 2 Comments

Quote Du Jour

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Another time, I met him at a party in Palm Springs. I hadn’t seen him for about a year. He was having a rough time. MGM had dropped his contract. He asked me what I was doing. I said, ‘The usual. Making pictures. You?’ He said, ‘The usual. Getting my ass in a sling.’

He was kissing the bottle at that time. We went for a drive in the desert and a little woo-poo. We really tied one on. We started shooting up a little town — Indio, I think it was; I don’t know where the hell we were — with a couple of .38s Frank kept in the vanity compartment. We were both cockeyed. We shot out streetlights, store windows. God knows how we got away with it. I guess Frank knew somebody! Somebody with a badge. He usually did.

— Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations