America, in skin and shorts, sleeps
on Wall Street’s back
the beast
appetite and direction, ignores
flies
It is five a.m. and raining
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Category: Art
Space Shuttle Atlantis & Hubble …Crossing the Sun
What an image!
The NASA space shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope, seen in silhouette during a solar transit at 12:17 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, May 13, 2009, from west of Vero Beach, Florida. The two space craft were at an altitude of 600 km above the earth. It took only 0.8 seconds for them to cross the solar disc.
Photo Credit: Thierry Legault
The Babson Boulders of Dogtown
In his 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, German economist and sociologist Max Weber theorized that capitalism’s ascendancy owed much to Protestantism’s emphasis on hard work and worldly success. Whether or not Weber was actually right, the term he coined, “Protestant ethic,” has, to many, become accepted as part of our shared American definition.
Racial Identity: “Hapa” Obama
A comment on my recent post (Rule Book Racism: Can a Black Athlete Celebrate?) deserves a full response.
Lanny writes:
“A young, black, athletic man will soon be our president.” Why don’t you call him white? He’s just as much white as black. Is my wife, Karina, yellow or white, Japanese or American? Her mother is 100% Japanese, and her father from Georgia is white with a touch of Native American.
Lanny has an excellent point, and one that I have often shouted at the screen when cable news pundolts do as I did.
Mea culpa. I reflexively adopted the bigoted and long-established Jim Crow “one-drop rule” which states that to be white is to be pure; even one drop of Negro blood makes one black. Continue reading “Racial Identity: “Hapa” Obama”
Arms and Armor at Cleveland Museum of Art
The Cleveland Museum of Art is in the midst of a massive renovation, so only a fraction of the collection is currently on display.
But there is still much to see. The Arms and Armor Room is magnificent. Its many artifacts illustrate the armorer’s craftsmanship, art, and weapons development, as well as the pomp and ego of those who wore and/or showed off the hundreds of pieces.
I spent more than an hour in this single room, marveling at how each advance in weapons technology led to a concomitant upgrade in armor (note how the knight and his horse are 
almost fully sheathed in metal) until the introduction of firearms canceled out the armored warrior’s advantage.
Our Pentagon is a direct descendant of this “march of progress.”
Birthday
Today is my birthday.
Also born on this day in 1944 was Odd Nerdrum, a prominent Norwegian painter.
Our names were switched at birth.
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“Wanderers at the Beach” 2001