Happy Halloween

Oh my, Halloween is so fraught with landmines in these politically correct neo-puritan days that even picking out a card can be a chore. Anyway, and at the risk of being insensitive and offending any Children of the Corn that might visit this blog -- Happy Halloween.

Errr.... also, please try to ignore the unhealthy and oddly cannibalistic connotations of a corncob pipe being smoked by a corncob (insert the Surgeon General's warning here, etc., etc.).

A mainland Chinese reflects on living in the West

The Hong Kong situation is revealing fractures in the Sinosphere (Mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese diaspora) that were previously invisible to us Westerners. This video features a letter written by a mainland Chinese person who discusses the issues facing Chinese living in the West and the isolation the CCP inculcates in many of them. The comments to the video are quite interesting as well.

Real & imagined opium dens

Click any image to enlarge

Opium dens, which started out as an Asian thing, became popular, or at least somewhat trendy, during the 19th century in Europe as well. Some of these pictures are of actual opium dens, others like the one above with all the drugged white women, are staged.

If you want to get titillated by Victorian opium addiction you can always go to Project Gutenberg and read Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey. Just be prepared for a lot of blithering foppery if you do decide to read it.

Finally, as usual, there are more pictures after the jump.

Brown Eyed Girl

Get ready for a retrospective weekend with Imaginary Future.

St Joseph elementary school in Banjul, Gambia

The video labels it as a high school, but in the commentary it is for grades 1 through 9. Vic Stefanu, who filmed it, has a large number of interesting videos at his YouTube site.

Out of reach

A Eunuch’s Dream (1874), Jean Lecomte du Nouÿ

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven - W. B. Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Bring it on Home to Me

Get ready to ask for a second chance this weekend

with Scary Pockets featuring Joshua Radin and Hunter Elizabeth. 

Starting a WWII Soviet T-34-85 tank

The above video shows a 1944 T-34-85 being started after it sat in a barn for a while. It is powered by a 38 litre V-12 diesel. Below is more video of the tank, including shots of the interior of the turret and hull.

Paintings by Naoki Tomita

Click any image to enlarge

Naoki Tomita is a Japanese painter who paints striking urban and suburban landscapes. He applies hiss oil paint thickly and in the process creates a blending of realism and impressionism from his brush strokes.

He also paints portraits, but in these samples, and those after the jump, I've concentrated only on his landscape work.  

Ball and Chain

Get ready for a constrained weekend with Melody Angel.

Aboard a fishing junk out of Hong Kong in 1960

Visualizing the Tower of Babel

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Genesis 11:1-9 King James Version:

1. And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
2. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
8. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

The images are from Picryl's Tour de Babel.

Somebody That I Used to Know

Get ready for a collaborative weekend with Walk off the Earth.

A matter of perspective

Patent for the windowed envelope (click to enlarge)

I feel today, with all the possibilities we have in our hands, all the new technology at our disposal, everything is becoming obvious. Nothing is surprising. You can see beautiful things on Instagram, but there is something that doesn't touch you deeply. Everything is normal, while there's nothing that grabs you and turns you upside down. - Ludovico Einaudi

Operating a Gutenberg press

This video is a demonstration of the working model of a Gutenberg printing press located at the Crandall Historical Printing Museum.

Faces of the ancient Egyptian 1%

Click any image to enlarge

These are examples of Fayuum Mummy portraits. They're paintings, from the Hellenistic era Egypt, that were attached to mummies and are meant to depict the deceased. However, from the above link:

On first inspection the Fayum mummy portrait paintings look like true-life depictions of actual individuals, but closer analysis reveals that the 'individual' features are sometimes no more than repetitive, formulaic renderings. In other words, quite a few of the portraits appear to have been created from a small number of facial templates, disguised by the use of different fashions, hairstyles and beards.

Regardless, they are still the only extent collection of portraits we have of more common people of antiquity, rather than the kings and generals we usually see in ancient art. That said, it was still only the very upper crust of society that could afford them.

Time Of The Season

Get ready for the other endless season with OptycNerd.

Street food at the Ruifeng Night Market

This video shows some food from a night market in Kaohsiung Taiwan. I love Taiwanese night markets, they feature a lot of stalls and stores with all sorts of goods and have a lot of venders selling street food. Tasting the different foods is a lot of appeal of the places.

Of the food shown I would love to try the Big Takoyaki Ball in a cup (although the commenters to the video seem to think they are overcooked and that it is a shame to break the balls up before serving them) or the Flaming Beef Cubes cooked with a blowtorch.

The fabric of society

Images from Spoon & Tamago (click images to enlarge)

At last he looked over at his host, contemplating the dead civil servant's American flag shoulder patch. He unscrewed the flask and this time raised the container towards the hooded garment.

"Believe it or not, Mr. Postman, I always thought you folks gave good and honest service. Oh, people used you as whipping boys a lot, but I know what a tough job you all had. I was proud of you, even before the war.

"But this, Mr. Mailman" - he lifted the flask - "this goes beyond anything I'd come to expect! I consider my taxes very well spent." He drank to the postman, coughing a little but relishing the warm glow.

He settled deeper into the mail sacks and looked at the leather jacket, ribs serrating its sides, arms hanging loosely at odd angles. Lying still, Gordon felt an sad poignancy - something like homesickness. The jeep, the symbolic, faithful letter carrier, the flag patch ... they recalled comfort, innocence, cooperation, an easy life that allowed millions of men and women to relax, to smile or argue as they chose, to be tolerant with one another - and to hope to be better people with the passage of time.

Gordon had been ready, today, to kill and to be killed. Now he was glad that had been averted. They had called him "Mr. Rabbit" and left him to die. But it was his privilege, without their ever knowing it, to call the bandits "countrymen," and let them have their lives.

Gordon allowed sleep to come and welcomed back optimism - foolish anachronism that it might be. He lay in a blanket of his own honor, and spent the rest of the night dreaming of parallel worlds.

- David Brin, The Postman

A rainy day in Kyoto

In the above clip Ranbalac, the videographer, visits the popular Golden Temple in Kyoto on a rainy day. In 1950 the actual Golden Temple was burned to the ground by an insane monk. The present structure was rebuilt in 1955.

The gardens are beautiful, and the sea of umbrellas floating through them, along with the sound of the rain, make for an interesting entry into my walking in cities video series.