As Time Goes By

Get ready for a temporal weekend with Carmen McRae. 

 

Art of the Franco-Prussian War

Click any image to enlarge

In 1870 Otto von Bismark maneuvered to place Prince Lepold on the Spanish throne. This created a crisis in France because they felt it would have led to them being surrounded by a Prussian/Spanish alliance. Leopold's name was withdrawn, but the crisis simmered. 

In July of 1870 the French, believing they had a much better equipped army, declared war on Prussia. Alas for the French, the Prussians mobilized much quicker and pushed into France. By September the Prussians were besieging Paris. The French government collapsed and the resulting treaty ending the war resulted in the French paying an indemnity to Prussia as well as ceding Alsace and part of Lorraine (one of the grievances that was to lead to WWI). The war also unified Prussia with southern German states, which led to modern Germany. 

These are paintings from that war. They were done after the war and some of them give the 19th Century romantic version of war as a noble thing, Others, at least from the German perspective, commemorated victories. The French paintings tended to nurture grievances that were to fester. 

There are more images after the jump. 

My Caribbean cruise

Above is a video touring the Star Clipper. I was on its sister ship the Star Flyer. They appear to be more-or-less identical. I've never really been interested in taking a cruise; stage shows, casinos, bars scattered hither and yon and thousands of fellow passengers don't appeal to me. However, this was a small boat (there were about 140 passengers on the cruise), so I caved into Ms Sinistral's wishes and gave it a try.

We sailed along the Windward Islands stopping here and there. Before the cruise I was cynical enough to expect that masts to be mainly cosmetic, but they actually sailed the boat. I would guess that over 90% of the time we were under sail rather than power. It was interesting seeing how the sails were rigged and handled.

Below is a video of the fellow's stateroom. Mine was laid out a little differently, but it was the same size. Like him, I too was on the bottom deck, I joked that we were traveling in steerage.

All in all it was a relaxing trip. I would recommend it.

Chi Bol

Get ready for a gormandized weekend with Noubold featuring 290.

 

Multiples

When you use bronze as a mirror, you can straighten your clothes and hat. When you use antiquity as a mirror, you can see the waxing and waning. When you use a person as a mirror, you can know if you grasp things or not. - Taizong

 

HMS Victory

This video is a tour of the HMS Victory using 3D modeling. It's nice in that it doesn't fixate on the rigging of the ship, rather it gives a tour of the decks. It gives a good idea of how complex yet still functional the design and layout of the ship was.

 

Just the Two of Us

Get ready for a binary weekend with Lucy Ellis.

 

Old airline ads

Click any image to enlarge

These are a collection of mid 20th century airline ads. They are from an era when air travel was more exotic than it is today. It would be slightly gauche to not wear a suit or dress. They started by emphasizing the reach of airplanes, but eventually moved on to targeting other groups of travelers than the early adopters: older people, single woman, families, businessmen and so forth.

They are taken from the Duke Library's Transportation Archive. 

Stop-motion ninja puppet battle

Above is a video of an animated battle featuring Hidari Jingorō, who was a famous Japanese sculptor from the Edo period. He may, or may not, have been an actual person. There are many stories surrounding him. Apparently, he was missing his right hand and one of the stories is that rival sculptors, jealous of his skills, hacked it off. I think that's what this stop-motion film memorializes.

Video via Spoon and Tamago.

 

Come Out and Play

Get ready for a hooliganized weekend with Robyn Adele Anderson.

 

Korean comfort food

As I recover from the Wuhan Flu I've been subsisting on bread, crackers, water and coffee. Above is a video of Koran comfort food. I'll be damned if I know what it is, but maybe I would be eating it if I were sick in Seoul. Or maybe not. As an extra, below are drinks from a beach somewhere in Korea.

Lazy

Click any image to enlarge

One of the effects this bout of the Wuhan Flu has had on me is sapping all of my energy. My lethargy is off the charts. So, to reflect my state, I pulled together this collection of paintings of people sleeping or idling about. Enjoy.

Down with the Sickness

Get ready for a disordered weekend with maromaro1337.

 

Now I'm sick

Click image to enlarge

I got sick on the tail end of my trip. When I tested myself I have covid, bleh. Aching, coughing and a general apathy. So, things will still be slow here for a bit.

 

Back from my vacation

This song is a bit over-the-top as a reflection of my travels. For example, no River Jordan for me. It will take me a bit to get back in the groove, but this little post is a start.

 

Murderer

Get ready for an agitated weekend with Buju Banton. 

  

Gone fishing

Click image to enlarge

I'm going to be away for a bit. I may or may not post for a week or so. To my few regulars, and my horde of faithful spam bots, try your best to contain your grief over that announcement. Nobody likes a crybaby.

 

Female soldiers on parade

This isn't the usual 'hot military babes' picture click-bait post, instead it just is of female military units marching in parades. I have odd search habits looking for curiosities to post about, and I suspect the various search algorithms sometimes struggle with figuring out just what the hell it is I'm interested in so's advertisers can bombard me with their nonsense. 

Recently the above video popped up in YouTube for me. I had done a post called Calloused feet showing an Indian military parade.  While probably not the case, I like to think it was combined with my post about a visit to a Japanese girls bar to come up with that video of a parade full of Indian female soldiers. I've included a few other videos of women soldiers high stepping down boulevards from the site.

The site is Russian. Along with marching damsels it also has a lot of Russian propaganda songs. They're quite strange. The Great Patriotic War lives on in Russian music.  If you watch any, turn on the captions so can get the lyrics.

Shadows and walls

Inferno by Fan Ho
(click image to enlarge)

I was reminded of a remark of Willa Cather's, that you can't paint sunlight, you can only paint what it does with shadows on a wall. If you examine a life, as Socrates has been so tediously advising us to do for so many centuries, do you really examine a life, or do you examine the shadows it casts on other lives? Entity or relationships? Objective reality or the vanishing point of a multiple perspective exercise? Prism or the rainbows it refracts? And what if you're the wall? What if you never cast a shadow or rainbow of your own, but have only caught those cast by others? - Wallace Stegner 

  

Come Together

Get ready for a devil-may-care weekend with

Leo Moracchioli, Hannah Boulton, Rabea Massaad, Erik Torp and Truls Haugen