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Category Archives: Art/Style/Culture
Drone Romance
“Directed by speculative architect Liam Young and written by fiction author Tim Maughan, In the Robot Skies is the world’s first narrative shot entirely through autonomous drones. In collaboration with the Embedded and Artificially intelligent Vision Lab in Belgium the film has evolved in relation to their experiments with specially developed camera drones each programmed with their own cinematic rules and behaviours. In this near future city drones form both agents of state surveillance but also become co-opted as the aerial vehicles through which two teens fall in love.”
Muscle Shoals Sound Studios
Barb and her sister are in Destin, FL this week and on the way down they stopped in Muscle Shoals, AL for a class reunion. Including a tour of the studio where the Rolling Stones recorded Wild Horses (and Brown Sugar) in December of 1969. The tour included the toilet where Keith Richards reportedly wrote Wild Horses, and an invoice for the recording sessions.
CAT Scan
Patina
“She was big on patination. That was how quality wore in, she said, as opposed to out. Distressing, on the other hand, was the faking of patination, and was actually a way of concealing a lack of quality.”
— Zero History (William Gibson)
Simplicity
Spotted this motorcycle in front of our local coffee shop. I know nothing about motorcycles but find this one especially beautiful. No saddlebags. No radio. No cupholder. No windscreen! No place for a passenger.
The Turning Point
Buddha Trump
A cast of “Trump, the Buddha of Knowing of the Western Paradise,” by the Chinese sculptor Hong Jinshi.
“A furniture maker and decorator in China created a stir — and inspired copycats — by casting a ceramic sculpture of the former president in a meditative pose that evokes the Buddha. Mr. Hong’s sculpture reflects an abiding cultural fascination with Mr. Trump in China that began with his election. Many admired his brash style, his family’s business ties to China and even his early courtship of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, whom he called “an incredible guy.” (New York Times)
Wallets, billfolds and money-clips
When the nurse handed me my vaccination card she said, “Keep this in your wallet.” Hmm, where did I put my wallet? For the past year we’ve been paying for stuff online with a credit card.
I found my wallet and decided to do a little house cleaning. How much of this stuff do I really need to have with me every time I leave the house? I can pay for gas and groceries using my phone and ApplePay. And I’ve always kept some cash in a money clip. I see that some get by with their driver’s license and a credit/debit card in a phone case. Which got me wondering… do young folks still carry wallets?
“The difference between billfold and wallet is that a billfold is a small, folding sleeve or case designed to hold paper currency, as well as credit cards, pictures, etc while wallet is a small case, often flat and often made of leather, for keeping money (especially paper money), credit cards, etc.” (WikiDiff)
Forty years ago, when I started wearing suits to work, I carried a wallet in the inside pocket of my suit coat. (The one on the left in the photo below). When I hung up the suits for last time, I switched to a “billfold” (middle) and kept it in a pocket of my laptop case.
Along the way I kept looking for ways to lighten the load and tried some that didn’t fold at all. Just some pocket for credit cards and a magnetic money-clip. I’m giving that a try as I get back in the world.
I’ve long been fascinated by “fat wallets” and collected a few photos over the years. Each of the wallets pictured below were carried in the hip pocket. I would have dearly loved to got through the contents of each of these. What a story they could tell.
And no discussion of wallets would be complete without George Costanza’s exploding wallet. Another scene from the Wallet episode.
Vaccinated
I got my first dose of COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech) this afternoon. This was a lot sooner than I expected since Missouri is dead last in the nation in the percentage of citizens vaccinated. I was thinking April, maybe.
Our doctors are affiliated with the University of Missouri Hospitals in nearby Columbia so we signed up to their program. On Monday of this week they began online scheduling and –being over 65– I was able to get an appointment.
MU is using Faurot Field as their vaccination site. Not the stadium but what looked to me like the VIP area where the Big Shots watch the games. It was all very well organized and I was in an out in no time. I’m sure it will get more hectic when they start mass vaccinations.
I’ve thought a good deal about vaccinations in recent months. I get a flu shot every year and I’ve been vaccinated for pneumonia and shingles. As a child in the ’50s I was vaccinated against polio and smallpox and all of the other childhood diseases. But at my age (73 next month), COVID-19 could be a death sentence. Worse than death in my opinion. So getting this vaccine had a very real life-or-death feel to it.
If we can believe the CDC (and I do now), the Pfizer vaccine might be 95% effective. While there seems to be lots of questions about just what that means, there’s a good chance it will keep me out of the hospital and off a ventilator.
I go back for the booster shot in 21 days. According to the studies, some immunity starts 10 to 14 days after the first dose, but full immunity appears seven to 14 days after the second. Full immunity. Has a nice ring to it. But you won’t see me out and about without a mask for at least the next six months. We’ll avoid being indoors and still order our groceries online. Not much will change. But we (Barb got her first shot last week) will have some immunity. What a beautiful word. It feels like a super power.
Yes, there will be mutations of the virus and the scientists will be scrambling for years, doing their best to come up with new and more effective vaccines. My secret hope is this process will lead to vaccines for the common cold and other more serious diseases.
PS: Wore my favorite T-shirt (by Dylan Sisson) because you can’t see my shit-eating grin behind the mask.