“Primary Selection”
24″ x 36″
Acrylic on canvas
Sold
2004

I just sat through an hour of CNN, getting caught with on all the specs on today’s London Underground bombings. Sobering, and uncomfortably familiar.

Back on that morning in September of 2001 as the events were unfolding back east, I remember being the first person I knew who noticed the the date. 911. The number for Emergency, a number representing panic. The chosen date of the attack itself was perversely creative. It demonstrated purposefulness, reinforcing the message, effectively making the sense of violation even more real.

I’m curious about today’s date, July 7, and wonder if there’s anything significant about the number 7 or 77 that’s being communicated here in these London attacks.

Hmm. Check this out. Pay attention to the members included in the Group’s list, as well as the nations notably absent:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The Group of 77 at the United Nations is a loose coalition of developing nations, designed to promote its members’ collective economic interests and create an enhanced joint negotiating capacity in the United Nations. There were 77 founding members of the organization, but the organization has since expanded to 133 member countries.

The group was founded on June 15, 1964 by the “Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven Countries” issued at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The first major meeting was in Algiers in 1967, where the Charter of Algiers was adopted and the basis for permanent institutional structures was begun. There are Chapters of the Group of 77 in Rome (FAO), Vienna (UNIDO), Paris (UNESCO), Nairobi (UNEP) and the Group of 24 in Washington, D.C. (IMF and World Bank).

Member States:

* Afghanistan
* Algeria
* Angola
* Antigua and Barbuda
* Argentina
* Bahamas
* Bahrain
* Bangladesh
* Barbados
* Belize
* Benin
* Bhutan
* Bolivia
* Bosnia and Herzegovina
* Botswana
* Brazil
* Brunei Darussalam
* Burkina Faso
* Burundi
* Cambodia
* Cameroon
* Cape Verde
* Central African Republic
* Chad
* Chile
* China
* Colombia
* Comoros
* Republic of the Congo
* Costa Rica
* Côte d’Ivoire
* Cuba
* North Korea
* Democratic Republic of the Congo
* Djibouti
* Dominica
* Dominican Republic
* Ecuador
* Egypt
* El Salvador
* Equatorial Guinea
* Eritrea
* Ethiopia
* Fiji
* Gabon
* Gambia
* Ghana
* Grenada
* Guatemala
* Guinea
* Guinea-Bissau
* Guyana
* Haiti
* Honduras
* India
* Indonesia
* Iran
* Iraq
* Jamaica
* Jordan
* Kenya
* Kuwait
* Laos
* Lebanon
* Lesotho
* Liberia
* Libya
* Madagascar
* Malawi
* Malaysia
* Maldives
* Mali
* Marshall Islands
* Mauritania
* Mauritius
* Micronesia
* Mongolia
* Morocco
* Mozambique
* Myanmar
* Namibia
* Nepal
* Nicaragua
* Niger
* Nigeria
* Oman
* Pakistan
* Palau
* Palestine
* Panama
* Papua New Guinea
* Paraguay
* Peru
* Philippines
* Qatar
* Romania
* Rwanda
* Saint Kitts and Nevis
* Saint Lucia
* Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
* Samoa
* Sao Tome and Principe
* Saudi Arabia
* Senegal
* Seychelles
* Sierra Leone
* Singapore
* Solomon Islands
* Somalia
* South Africa
* Sri Lanka
* Sudan
* Suriname
* Swaziland
* Syria
* Thailand
* Timor-Leste
* Togo
* Tonga
* Trinidad and Tobago
* Tunisia
* Turkmenistan
* Uganda
* United Arab Emirates
* Tanzania
* Uruguay
* Vanuatu
* Venezuela
* Vietnam
* Yemen
* Zambia
* Zimbabwe

Presiding Countries:

* India (1970-1971)
* Peru (1971-1972)
* Egypt (1972-1973)
* Iran (1973-1974)
* Mexico (1974-1975)
* Madagascar (1975-1976)
* Pakistan (1976-1977)
* Jamaica (1977-1978)
* Tunisia (1978-1979)
* India (1979-1980)
* Venezuela (1980-1981)
* Algeria (1981-1982)
* Bangladesh (1982-1983)
* Mexico (1983-1984)
* Egypt (1984-1985)
* Yugoslavia (1985-1986)
* Guatemala (1987)
* Tunisia (1988)
* Malaysia (1989)
* Bolivia (1990)
* Ghana (1991)
* Pakistan (1992)
* Colombia (1993)
* Algeria (1994)
* Philippines (1995)
* Costa Rica (1996)
* Tanzania (1997)
* Indonesia (1998)
* Guyana (1999)
* Nigeria (2000)
* Iran (2001)
* Venezuela (2002)
* Morocco (2003)
* Qatar (2004)
* Jamaica (2005)

Group Of 77’s official web site: http://www.g77.org/

Dearest Human Race,
You’re capable of better.
Please, stop the madness.

“Noone mourns the wicked.”

Saw this the other night at the Pantages in Hollywood. It’s essentially a prequel to The Wizard Of Oz, giving us the background story leading up to Dorothy’s house landing in Munchkinland. The plot revolves around the childhood of the woman we know as the Wicked Witch Of The West, offering an explanation as to why she became the way she was.

Loved it. Great material. Clever, smart, fun stuff, rich with social commentary, with a healthy dose playful surprises that pivot around ideas that are already so familiar to fans of the film. The entire piece is underscored by lessons of empathy that never lose relevance (“Don’t judge a book by its cover”, etc.) while also providing a source of inspiration to us social misfits (“Be comfortable with who you are regardless of what people think”, etc.)

I also really dug the branding. Fantastic logo, effective palette, killer merch.

Check it out if you can.

A honey bee must tap two million flowers to make one pound of honey.

A typical American eats 28 pigs in his/her lifetime.

Americans spend approximately $25 billion each year on beer. [click to continue…]

Painting “All is Vanity” by Charles Allen Gillbert (1873-1929).

If you look around in the above figure you will notice the appearence and disappearance of black dots at the crossings.

Even though this figure looks similar to the Hermann Grid, it is markedly more vivid; the effect is probably caused by different mechanisms than those causing the Hermann Grid effect.

1993: First demonstrated by JR Bergen at the ARVO, in a weaker variant

1994: Re-discovered by Bernd Lingelbach’s wife Elke

1995: Demonstrated at the Tübingen ECVP meeting (Schrauf M, Lingelbach B, Lingelbach E & Wist ER. The Hermann grid and the scintillation effect. Perception 24: suppl, 88–89)

1997: Schrauf M, Lingelbach B & Wist E. The scintillating grid illusion. Vision Res 37:1033–1038

The inverse:

Question: Do the lines or the squares influence the colour of the apparent disks?

As you notice in the above figure, red streets leave the disks black. But if the squares are red, , the disks acquire a reddish tint (below).

Sources

Schrauf M, Lingelbach B, Lingelbach E & Wist ER (1995) The Hermann grid and the scintillation effect. Perception 24: suppl, 88–89

Schrauf M, Lingelbach B & Wist (1997) The scintillating grid illusion. Vision Res 37:1033–1038

VanRullen R, Dong T (2003) Attention and scintillation. Vision Res 43:2191–2196

The Wizard of Oz was a Broadway musical 37 years before the MGM movie version was made. It had 293 performances and then went on a tour that lasted 9 years.

Actress Jayne Mansfield accidentally exhaled her breast out of her dress during the telecast of the Academy Awards in 1957. [click to continue…]

Fireworks originated in China some 2,000 years ago. The most prevalent legend has it that fireworks were discovered or invented by accident by a Chinese cook working in a field kitchen who happened to mix charcoal, sulphur and saltpeter (all commonly found in the kitchen in those days). The mixture burned and when compressed in an enclosure (a bamboo tube), the mixture exploded. [click to continue…]

Source: Thomas Lang