Tsk, tsk, tsk
“With just a few weeks of training, you can learn to ‘see' objects in the dark using echolocation the same way dolphins and bats do,” reports Hadley Leggett in Wired magazine. “Ordinary people using no special skills can use tongue clicks to visualize objects by listening to the way sound echoes off their surroundings, according to acoustics experts at the University of Alcala de Henares in Spain. ‘Two hours per day for a couple of weeks are enough to distinguish whether you have an object in front of you,' Juan Antonio Martinez said in a press release. ‘Within another couple of weeks you can tell the difference between trees and pavement.'”
A new Neverland?
Residents of a Ukrainian village, Oktyabrskoye in the Zaporizhia region in the country's southeast, have approached local politicians with a proposal to rename their village “Jackson,” The Daily Telegraph reports. Oleg Kislitsyn, a deputy in the regional parliament, explained: “They want to create a house-museum and collect his records there. This is a depressed region, all the factories are closed. They hope this will attract tourists.”
The rockets' damn glare
Tomorrow is a U.S. national holiday, the Americans' equivalent of Canada Day. In the evening, “a bit after 8 o'clock, the sun will set,” Troy Patterson writes in Slate magazine. “The civilized thing to do at this juncture would be to go home, kick back with a little John Locke and pass out fast. But, no, we must reckon with the stupid fireworks, an integral part of the Fourth of July since 1777, when they befouled the skies above Boston and Philadelphia. ... Just as it is incalculably more thrilling to watch a piano burn than say, kindling, there is more satisfaction in watching actual stuff explode – cars, volcanoes, toasters, what have you – than in witnessing explosions that produce only bombast. When fireworks blow up, the only things up-blowing are the fireworks themselves. There is no drama. There is violence but there is not sex. There is a feeling of danger without a corresponding feeling of adventure.”
In western saloons
Recent U.S. news from The Associated Press:
“Bartenders in Utah threw open their bars Wednesday as the state ditched a 40-year-old requirement that customers fill out an application, pay a fee and become a member of a private club before setting foot in a bar.” The new rules are an effort to boost the state's (U.S.) $7-billion-a-year tourism industry and make the state appear a little less quirky to outsiders.
The Arizona Senate has given final approval to a bill that would allow people with concealed-weapons permits to carry guns into businesses that serve alcohol. The bill's sponsor, Senator Jack Harper, said: “It's very important that criminals are now afraid rather than law-abiding citizens.” The measure would ban drinking while packing a gun.
Tips for rich artists
Some sales advice for artists, from Sarah Thornton's Seven Days in the Art World:
Brown paintings don't sell as well as blue or red ones.
Happy paintings sell better than gloomy ones.
A male nude doesn't go over as well as a buxom female looking expectant.
Try to keep a work smaller than the standard dimension of a Park Avenue elevator.
A lot of artists who are doing well now will be worth little in 10 years.
Source: book review in moreintelligentlife.com
‘Plain people' tempted
Known as the “plain people,” the Amish travel by horse-drawn buggies, wear homemade clothing and live with very little electricity, Douglas Belkin writes in The Wall Street Journal. But the Amish in northern Indiana edged into the conventional economy, he adds, lured by the high wages of the recreational-vehicle and modular-homes industries. The great increase in discretionary income spawned a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality. “Some Amish bishops in Indiana weakened restrictions on the use of telephones. Fax machines became commonplace in Amish-owned businesses. Websites marketing Amish furniture began to crop up. Although the sites were operated by non-Amish third parties, they nevertheless intensified a feeling of competition. ... It became common practice for families to leave their carriages home and take taxis on shopping trips and to dinners out. Some Amish families had bought second homes on the west coast of Florida and expensive Dutch Harness Horses, for their distinctive, prancing gait. Others lined their carriages in dark velvet and illuminated them with battery-powered LED lighting.”
Thought du jour
“When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it – a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand – as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it is bad art.”
– Marc Chagall
