Gilding the Lily

Photograph by Scott “Genghis” Wong, “Street Photography”


Link: PBase

Swallow’s Nest Castle is an architectural folly, located on the Crimean shore in southern Ukraine, built between 1911-1912 ontop of 130 ft high Aurora Cliff. Designed by Russian architect Leonid Sherwood, the castle overlooks Ai-Todor cape of the Black Sea and is located near the remnants of the Roman castrum of Charax.


The first building on the Aurora Cliff was a wooden cottage romantically named the “Love Castle” and constructed for a Russian general circa 1895.

In 1911, Baron von Steinheil, a Baltic German noble who had made a fortune extracting oil in Baku, aquired the timber cottage and within a year had it replaced by the current building. Though Scottish baronial and Neo-Moorish styles had been introduced in Crimea in the 1820’s, Swallow’s Nest is closer in style to German architectural follies, such as Neuschwanstein, Babelsberg, and Stolzenfels, although its precarious setting on the cliffs by the sea may also suggest the Belém Tower.

Link: EnglishRussia | Wikipedia–Swallow’s Nest

Bad ass art installation?
Nope. Just an ad for bug spray.




Link: I believe in Adv

“A collection of historical scientific writings owned by Richard Green of Long Island, a retired physician and amateur astronomer, will be put up for sale next week at Christie’s auction house in Manhattan. Included among the 347 lots are works by Copernicus, Darwin, Descartes, Newton, Freud and Kepler, as well as the first phone book.

Right is Nicolaus Copernicus’s book “De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium” (”On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres”). In it, the Polish astronomer laid out his theory that the Earth and other planets go around the Sun, contravening a millennium of church dogma that the Earth was the center of the universe.”

Link: NYTimes Slideshow–”Science History for Sale”

Located some 90 million light years from the Earth, two nearly identical spiral galaxies, NGC5427 (left) and NGC 5426, look like they’re doing a do-si-do in the Virgo (Gilding’s sign) constellation. Although they look like they are just passing one another, the gravitational tugging has already begun to reshape the two galaxies and set off a wave of star formation. In about 100 million years, the two will merge into one elliptical galaxy.

The image was taken by the Gemini South telescope in Chile.


Link: NYTimes Slideshow–”Siamese Galaxies…”

Stanley Milgram’s
obedience
experiments in the
early 1960s are
some of the most
famous in all of
psychology. In them,
Milgram tested how
far people would go
in delivering painful
shocks to a peer,
when instructed to
do so by an
authority figure –
the experimenter, or
scientist. The
scientist told the volunteers they were participating in a learning experiment, to test how shocks might improve recall of word associations; and he encouraged them to continue raising the voltage of the shocks when the learner gave wrong answers. The “learner” was in fact an actor, giving many wrong answers, and pretending to be receiving shocks. Most of the study participants went to what they thought was the maximum shock level — 450 volts on the machine — despite loud protests and shouts of pain from the learner.

Link: NYTimes Slideshow | Related Article: NYTimes–”Would I pull that switch”

Richard Hofstadter wrote of the United States that “it has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one.”

Meant as an ugly sentiment, this is not so when taken in by Samuel de Champlain’s who said that America (and Canada) is a place where ideas grew from dreams of “prevoyant” people.




Link: NYTimes–”One New World…”

Since 1988, Timothy Richards has been creating exceptionally beautiful and precise sculptures of architecture in British Gypsum plaster, and incorporating etched brass, white metal, copper, hand-made glass, and gold.

All of the sculptures are made by hand by Richards and his small, dedicated team, from his workshop in Bath, England.

Central to the theme of these pieces is, of course, the architecture, but Richards aims to use his love of architecture and his skill in model making to tell the story of Architecture over the centuries.

Some of the sculptures are designed to be bookends. Others stand alone as collectible pieces. From the Royal Opera House to the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Courtauld’s Gallery to Harvard University, the House of Commons to the Spanish Government, and The Royal British Family, not only could some of the world’s most brilliant pieces of architecture be within your fingertips reach, holding your treasured tomes, or greeting you in the doorway as you hang up your coat, most of Richards sculptures come from commissioning so virtually any of the world’s architectural giants or small precious beauties can be yours.

This particular scultpure is a limited edition (of 300) run of Ellis Island. The front window facades are pierced through to allow light to penetrate through the model.

Over 100 million Americans can trace their ancestry to a man, woman, or child whose names are recorded in the great registry room on Ellis Island.

Currently, Ellis Island stands in peril of losing itself in time, disrepair, and all forgotten history. Nearly 30 hauntingly beautiful buildings built on Ellis Island’s forgotten South Side have been vacant, shuttered, and unseen by the public for well over half a century. These are the former buildings where immigrants in need of medical attention received care, their homeless, huddles masses found refuge and food and clean clothes, and newly sworn American citizens were carried to the mother land by ferry. Organizations, such as We Are Ellis Island and Save Ellis Island, are working tirelessly to raise money and awareness for the massive restoration, rehabibilitation and adaptive reuse project for the South Side of Ellis Island. In April 2007 the Ferry Building was reopened to the public and was the first building to be completed by the campaign.

Link: Timothy Richards | Moss Daily New
We Are Ellis Island | Save Ellis Island

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, having its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient suffrance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government…The history of the present King…is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands…

…He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance….

…He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their acts of pretended legislation…

…For imposing taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases…

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally, the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever…

…He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Capitive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act…

…We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations…They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore…do, in the name, and by authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right out to be Free and Independent States…for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

History has repeated itself. Why hasn’t our affirmation in the Declaration of Independence?

Link: History.com

Did You Know?

…~ In July 1776, the estimated number of people living in the newly independent nation was 2.5 million.

…~ On July 4, 2008, the nation’s population will be 304 million.

Flags

…~ $2.4 million was the dollar value of U.S. flags exported in 2007. Mexico was the leading customer, purchasing $1.2 million worth.

Patriotic-Sounding Names

…~ The number of places nationwide with “liberty” in their name is 31. The most populus one, as of July 1, 2006, is Liberty, Mo. (29,581). Iowa has more of these places than any other state with its total of four: Libertyville, New Liberty, North Liberty, and West Liberty.

…~ There are 31 places (that is to include cities, towns, villages, and census-designated locations) named “eagle” — after the majestic bird that serves as America’s national symbol. The most populus of these is Eagle Pass, Texas, with 26,401 residents.

…~ Twelve places have “independence” in their name. The most populus of these is Independence, Mo. with 109,400 residents.

…~ There is one place named “patriot” — Patriot, Ind., with a population of 192.

…~ How about spending the 4th of July in “America.” Nope, not the nation — well, ok, the nation — but, there are five places in the country named “America,” with the most populus being America Fork, Utah, population 25,596.

The British are Coming!

…~ The dollar value of trade last year between the United States and the United Kingdom was $107.2 billion, making the British, our adversary in 1776, our sixth-leading trading partner today.

Link: History.com