The War of the Triple Alliance

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The Paragauy War, commonly known as the War of the Triple Alliance, which was waged from 1865 until 1870, was the largest war ever fought in South America. It was in the immediate aftermath of the colonial period and the international borders between the new countries were ill-defined leading to a lot of diplomatic tension.

In that cauldron in Uruguay two factions were vying for control. The Brazilians backed one of them and Francisco Solano Lopez, the lunatic dictator of Paraguay, took offense to that figuring that if anybody had a right to meddle in Uruguay's affairs it was him and not the Brazilians.

Eventually this all boiled over when Lopez invaded and annexed Mato Grosso, a Brazilian province. He then foolishly declared war on Argentina so he could march through its territory to attack Uruguay. To add to his stupidity, he declared that he had annexed two Argentinian territories as well. As result, Argentina and Uruguay both declared war on Paraguay with Brazil secretly joining the alliance. 

The war proper started with a naval battle on the Parana River, where the Brazilian fleet soundly trounced the Paraguayans. Lopez's ground prong of his invasion fared no better, in short order almost all of his troops were either killed or captured. A few months later the Triple Alliance crossed the Paranan and invaded Paraguay. 

By 1869 they had captured Asuncion, Paraguay's capitol, and destroyed Lopez's army. Lopez himself withdrew into the jungle and tried to maintain resistance. As the above linked article says:

That summer, tipped off as to Lopez’s whereabouts, d’Eu crossed the border with 27,000 fresh, combat ready troops and moved in for the kill. On August 11, they surrounded Piribebuy and proceeded to subject the inhabitants to a general bombardment. At 8 am the following day, the task force began making its way up the heights. The Paraguayan defenders opened fire, but they soon ran out of ammunition and had to resort to throwing stones at their attackers. By noon, the Allied army entered Piribebuy over the lifeless bodies of 700 soldiers. D’Eu and his army had killed them all.

All but Lopez. Once again, he had used the destruction of women and children to cover his escape. This time he headed northeast toward Bolivia, one of the few countries in South America that was not at war with him. As El Supremo and a cohort of loyalists made their way into the rain forest, the rear guard charged with covering his retreat was quickly mowed down by d’Eu and the army of avenging nations. On March 1, 1870, the Allies finally caught up with Lopez as he was preparing to cross the Aquidaban River, not far from the Bolivian border. While his henchmen died in a last stand on the banks of the river, Lopez, true to form, met his ignoble end in the water. Wounded by a lance, he thrashed into the shallows, where a bullet smashed into the back of his head as he tried to swim across the river.

The war was a complete disaster for Paraguay. They had much of their territory annexed, but worse is their casualty figures: variously estimated be between 7% on the low end, to 69% of the total population. At war's end there were only 28,746 adult men left. The effects of those casualties and that greatly unbalanced sex ratio echo in Paraguay to this day.   

Sao Lae Ban Na

Get ready for a stockpiling weekend with Ning Pattama. 

 

A new hobby idea for the winter

With winter nearing I'm sure that many of you, those who are too stupid to live in pleasant climes, will be stuck in your houses looking for a winter hobby to occupy your frigid and dreary hours. May I suggest making miniature chain link fences? It's kind of like knitting, only instead of a sweater you get a tiny chain link fence for your efforts. A great addition to your daughter's dollhouse or any diorama you may be building.

Above is a home-built machine to make the chain links. I chose it because the machining of it was so nicely done. If you look around the internet you can find much simpler contraptions to do the same thing. 

 

WWII art commissioned by the U.S. Navy

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With Veterans Day just having passed, I thought some images commemorating them was in order. During WWII the U.S. Navy commissioned a number of artists to illustrate facets of their operations. These are a sample of the work they produced. They are from the Naval History and Heritage Command's Artists archive. 

Remember our veterans

Credit: PA:Press Association
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This country has not seen and probably will never know the true level of sacrifice of our veterans. As a civilian I owe an unpayable debt to all our military. Going forward let’s not send our servicemen and women off to war or conflict zones unless it is overwhelmingly justifiable and on moral high ground. The men of WWII were the greatest generation, perhaps Korea the forgotten, Vietnam the trampled, Cold War unsung and Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan vets underestimated. Every generation has proved itself to be worthy to stand up to the precedent of the greatest generation. Going back to the Revolution American soldiers have been the best in the world. Let’s all take a remembrance for all veterans who served or are serving, peace time or wartime and gone or still with us. ― Thomas M Smith

  

Wichita Line Man

Get ready for a solitary weekend with The Moon Loungers.

 

Riding the Death Railway

The above video shows a day excursion on the Thai-Burma railroad. These excursions, which operate on the weekends and holidays, run north-west from Bangkok to several towns and sites. The Thai-Burma railway is commonly called the Death Railway because of the number of POWs and forced laborers who died constructing it in WWII. On it is the famous Bridge over the River Kwai, which I've recently discussed in the post The Bridge on the River Kwai, and is one of the stops on this trip (they also cross the bridge).   

Regular readers may recall that this rail line appeared in one of my posts during my recapping of the Thai TV show O-Negative. During a school break the kids went to Kanchanaburi, which is one of the stops in the above video. The train car they're in looks a lot like, although it isn't identical, the 3rd class car the creator of the above video rides.

In the video he mentions another video he did about the market train. I've included it below. It is a train that runs through a market. The vendors need to pull back their goods and fold their awnings as it approaches. It is quite amazing; in the U.S. it would be about a bazillion lawsuits in the offing. Curiously, I've previously used a video of the same train, but filmed from ground level. It was in my very first Cryptic post called Life goes on.   

Mirrors in paintings

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Mirrors fascinate people. They allow us to see our faces which are normally forever hidden from us. In art they provide a variety of uses. Frequently they are just a scene of a pretty girl primping at a mirror and applying makeup, other times they reflect the fleeting nature of youth, vanity, or an inner state of mind.

Suspicious Minds

Get ready for a doubtable weekend with Ty Taylor.

 

Taste testing a Mongolian MRE

The MRE has a day's worth of meals. They are all quite substantial looking. These are from the YouTube channel Readiness Rations. He covers a lot of both military and survivalist-type MREs. Below I have included a couple that are civilian aid MREs.

 

Halloween cheesecake

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The cheesecake in my Halloween photo for this post is just fine, but it strikes me that the two pumpkins in it fall far short on the spookiness scale.  Rather than being scary, the one on the right looks like nothing more than a cheerful doofus. In fact, from his visage, he might be the village idiot of Pumpkinville. Meanwhile, the one on the left, with its eyeballs pointing hither and yon, looks like it is harmlessly crazy rather than frightening. The photographer's pumpkin carvers needed to up their game.

That said, have a good Halloween. Hopefully you won't get 'healthy' treats for your tricks, your house doesn't get TPed by local hooligans and your little tykes, if you have any, don't hurt themselves as they bounce off the walls from their candy-induced sugar rushes.   

  

Boynton’s Bicycle Railroad

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In the 1880s Eben Moody Boynton acquired an old set of railroad tracks on Long Island running between Gravesend and Coney Island. He used this set of tracks to create the Boynton’s Bicycle Railroad which started operation in 1890. It was the first monorail. The locomotive and cars sat atop a single line of wheels and were stabilized by an overhead guiding beam. The train was narrow, allowing both tracks of the conventional rail line to be used at the same time. It operated for two years.

Eben Moody Boynton

Malaika

Get ready for a dissolving weekend with Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba.

 

The Bridge on the River Kwai

The Bridge On The River Kwai is an entertaining movie, but there was always something that seemed very off about it. Lt. Colonel Nicholson, the British officer who decides to build a great bridge to show the Japanese the superiority of the English, is a ridiculous character that is hard to take seriously. Above is a video that discusses the actual building of that bridge and Lt. Colonel Philip Toosey DSO, the British officer who commanded the POWs, and who was far from the blithering nitwit shown in the movie.  

  

Henry Ossawa Tanner paintings

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Henry Ossawa Tanner was a late 19th century, early 20th century painter. He was originally from Pennsylvania. However, being a black, his career path was constrained and so he eventually moved to France where he faced less obstacles because of his race. 

His style was realism, with a lot of expressionism frequently mixed in. I found a lot of his compositions to be unusual, with main elements frequently moved to the side and balanced by dark and light. He painted a lot of religious subjects, which is what he is primarily known for.  

Henry Ossawa Tanner

Wild Horses

Get ready for a resolute weekend with Little Big Town.

 

Gyimes, a village in the Carpathian Mountains

These are scenes from Gyimes, a small rural village in Transylvania. What I know about Transylvania comes from old Bela Lagosi Dracula movies. In the video I didn't notice any fellows eating flies or turning into bats, but perhaps that just wasn't filmed.

The village is in a valley in the Carpathians. Some of my ancestors came from around that area, so maybe a distant cousin or two was in the video. It is a pleasant looking place, although rather too rustic looking for my taste. 

 

Paintings of waterfalls

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Waterfalls are engrossing, and frequently spectacular, features of nature. They are of course shown in paintings, sometimes exclusively featuring the waterfalls, sometimes just using them as a focal point of a landscape. However, as you'll see in these examples, moving water is difficult to capture. Some of these images do it well, some fall short of the mark.  

The picture above is the top of Niagra Falls. While putting the post together I wondered about people who had gone over the falls. If not accidental, early attempts to ride through a descent of the Falls were done in barrels, although later large balls became the popular choice for thrill-seeking nitwits. At any rate, the list is split between intentional publicity stunts, unfortunate boaters and drunks who lost their footing.  

Soha

Get ready for a traipsing weekend with Mil Pasos.

 

Seeing sound

I've posted about sound and vision before with a 19th century Welsh singer's attempt to visualize sound, as well as a method to recreate sound from video by analyzing minute vibrations recorded. In this video an array of microphones acts as an acoustic lens to capture sound, which is then displayed on an image. This allows designers to study which components of a device are creating the sounds. He also demonstrates by showing the sound locations of an echo. 

 

The artwork of Hiroshi Yoshida

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Hiroshi Yoshida was a 20th century Japanese painter and print maker. He was trained in the Western style of oil painting, but eventually moved on to Shin-hanga, which was a return to more a traditional, collaborative woodblock process. However, it still retained a lot of Western influences, particularly in the use of light and color. Shin-hanga prints were primarily aimed for sale to Western audiences.

Hiroshi Yoshida travelled extensively. He visited America, Europe, India and Southeast Asia. Much of his work is landscapes and scenes from the places he visited. It is interesting to see them through the lens of Japanese stylism. 

Hiroshi Yoshida

Stop Draggin' My Heart Around

Get ready for a lingering weekend with The Running Mates.

 

A Whiter Shade of Pale

Get ready for a blanched weekend with Horst Gössl.

Eeeks! I posted the TGIF music video a day early. Senility sets in. I'm retired and so every day is a Saturday to me, and today my fog over what day-of-the-week it is tripped me up. Enjoy the video anyway, and I hope I didn't get any worker bees prematurely excited that the work week was nearly over.  

 

The mechanics of pumping gas

A good description of the workings of the automatic shutoff of a gas pump nozzle when the tank is full. In the comments weehoo4430 elaborates:

I’m an engineer and I used to work for the company that originally created that design. Actually, I redesigned that ball bearing mechanism. I can confirm that you are correct in your assessment of how it works. Also, most gas nozzles have a second diaphragm or plunger (not membrane) that deflects when there is pressure in the fuel line. It is used for prepay fill up. When you hit the prepay amount the dispenser shuts off, the pressure in the nozzle drops and that second diaphragm which is spring biased up will move and shut the nozzle off. There is a third shutoff in some nozzles that is called an attitude device. When a … moron… pulls a flowing nozzle out of a car’s fill pipe, a ball bearing blocks the pickup tube and shuts the nozzle off.

  

Sculpting history

Bamiyan Buddha, before and after its destruction
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History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
- Winston Churchill -

With pencil, you can always erase.

- Sue Monk Kidd -

If you wish to forget anything on the spot,
make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
- Edgar Allan Poe -

  

Fly Me to the Moon

Get ready for an Apollorized weekend with Remember Entertainment. 

 

Street food in Italy

As you might image, Italy appears to have some very good street food offerings. Above we have sausages, beef, pork and other substantial dishes. Below we have sweeter treats. Naturally, while wandering around and munching on your food you'll want some entertainment, so we end with a video of a rather unique busker drumming on some pipes.

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Jules-Descartes Férat's etchings

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Jules-Descartes Férat was a 19th Century French artist known for his etchings of factories and workers. He also illustrated numerous books, noticeably for Jules Verne, Edgar Allen Poe and Victor Hugo. I found his factory illustrations to be the most interesting, although a lot of critics think his work illustrating Verne's Mysterious Island to be his best work.

You're No Good

Get ready for an amiss weekend with Carol Kay.

 

What's in a name?

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

 

Myles Sullivan's canvas art prints

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The visual arts are divided into two broad categories: fine art and commercial art. Fine art is what we generally consider art to be, an artist sitting in front of an easel slapping paint onto a canvas, while commercial art is understood to be advertising type of work. This distinction is blurred somewhat by artists using the canvas print technique to mass produce their artwork. 

Myles Sullivan is a painter/illustrator who sells a lot of work via canvas prints. If you search his name  you'll see many retailers selling his pieces. These examples are from a series of mid-20th century retro works he's known for. They're a sort of film noir style mixed with the feel of James Bond audition tapes. I picture them adorning the walls of hipster bachelor pads, but I might be misreading the demographics of his audience.

Barrio Calavera

Get ready for a reversed weekend with the Kumbiamerikan Rockers
featuring 'El Macha' Chico Trujillo.

 

Walking in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego

Previously we've strolled around Nuuk, Greenland. Today we head to the opposite side of the Americas to tour Ushuaia, the capital of Tierra del Fuego. It claims to be the southernmost city on Earth. It was originally founded by British missionaries in the 19th century and later absorbed by Argentina. In the early 20th century it mainly served as a penal colony. Today it is a tourist destination, and its port handles a number of cruise ships.

The walk, which takes place in light snow flurries (which, as Florida boy, give me the heebie-jeebies), starts on a commercial street, wends down to the water's edge, and then back up into the town. It is a pleasant looking little city.

 

September 11, 2001

Firefighters responding to the aftermath of the 9-11 attack
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Adrienne Walsh, a fireman, on his experiences on 9-11 

You could see Manhattan and then not see Manhattan, and all of a sudden I looked up and there was just this explosion of confetti in the air. And I thought that was the strangest sight I had ever seen because, you know, confetti—certainly if there was a parade or something that you would have known of, but there was nothing I knew of. I thought, "That's bizarre." It was a tremendous amount of paper. And I couldn't see anything else because at this point, I had inched behind a loft building again, and of course, the radio came on and interrupted and said that there had been reports of a plane going into the Trade Center. And as we inched along again, I could see then three floors of fire in the Trade Center. And I thought to myself, "That's really bad." Because it's a self-contained building and fire—it should be fire on one floor, not fire on many floors. If you have fire on many floors, that's a serious, serious, serious problem.

When you got to City Hall, I was riding on the outside of the rig. 

And I remember when you got to City Hall, the—it's almost as if you entered—it's almost as if it was a curtain, and you walked into a curtain. The sky disappeared. There was air and bright light on this side, and there was just gray dust that you could barely see on this side. It was just like walking through a theatrical curtain. There's these six inches of dust on the ground. We parked right across from the plaza. And I remember getting out, I had no mask, because our rig was already down there, our guys were already down there. So I went to the back of the rig to try to see if there was another mask, another air-pak for me. And I remember going around to the rig, around the backside of the rig, and as I got to the backside of the rig, I looked up, and I don't know why I looked up, because I didn't hear anything.

But I saw what I can only describe as almost like a tornado hurtling at me. Just this cloud of dust that had to be over 100 feet in the air, and it was literally circling, and it was just bearing down. I mean, I'd never seen anything like that and anything move as fast as that, and I turned around and I yelled, "Run, run Cap, run!" 'Cause the captain was behind me. And he looked up—we all took off down the block, and I thought—I honestly thought in the midst of all that, "If this is going to come down and it's going to fall all at once as a building—if I beat the cloud, I'll beat the building." And I said to myself as I turned and started to run, "I'm not gonna beat this cloud. It's just moving too fast."

I remember making it through the cloud, and I remember walking, trying to walk through this—the amount of debris—it's unfathomable. And I remember drawing a line in the middle of my brain and putting those that I thought were dead on one side and those that I thought had a chance on the other. 

  

Allí donde tu sabes

Get ready for a languid weekend with Juanin Navarro, Felipe Huenuñir,
Jorge Lobos, Dante Escorza, and Elías Zamora

 

Rainy days in Nepal

These are a few videos of a village in a valley in Nepal on rainy days. The people seem to be primarily herders, although some cultivation also takes place. The scenery is frequently spectacular. That much rain would drive me crazy, but the villagers seem quite cheerful and unbothered by it all.

They are all from the YouTube channel VillageLifeNepal. If you're interested, there are longer and less rainy videos there.

Labor Day and traumatized actresses

Rachel Zegler on the picket line
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If I’m going to stand there 18 hours in a dress of an iconic Disney princess, I deserve to be paid for every hour that it is streamed online. - Rachel Zegler 

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Labor Day is an odd holiday. For most people today it is just a long weekend that marks the end of summer. However, it had its birth in the late 19th century labor movement. In fact, the first Labor Day observances were actually strikes. It wasn't until 1894 that President Grover Cleveland, in an act of political pandering, signed into law the federalizing of the holiday.

The original labor movement, which fought for better working conditions, lower hours, and better pay, had a lot of support. That support has dwindled due to their goals being met and ever-increasing corruption in the unions. 

This Labor Day there are two prominent strikes happening: the Screen Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild. I doubt anybody, aside from the picketer's mothers, really care about these two strikes. The studios finances are sketchy enough that the walk-out may have a point, but still, this is far from downtrodden blue-collar workers looking for a fairer labor deal. These are people in a highly sought after field -- supply and demand and all that.

Which brings us to Rachel Zegler, the actress pictured above. As one expects of a Hollywood actress, she's an insufferable bubblehead. Instead of standing in solidarity with the underpaid writers and other peons in the studios, she dragged out a molecule-sized violin and made it all about herself. Horror of horrors, she had to stand around in a dress for hours as they filmed her. Sounds to me like she wants to get replaced by an AI version of herself and just cash the checks. She such a babbling idiot that she's unintentionally entertaining in a 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' sort of a way. 

The reputation of Labor Unions has dropped so low that their holiday, Labor Day, isn't even about them anymore. At any rate, enjoy your Labor Day. As you grill your hotdogs and swill your beer, try to remember all the poor actresses forced to stand around wearing dresses and count your blessings. 

Don't be Cruel

Get ready for a plaintive weekend with Billy Swan.