Above are outtakes from Kim Pimmel's series "Compressed", which employs "analog visual effects." Her explanation:
I find analog things appealing – whether it's vinyl or photographic film, there's a certain richness and magic that's difficult to replicate with digital means. The Compressed series showcases analog visual effect techniques, so everything in the films is made by hand, with physical materials and tools in my studio.
In a biting review of Olivier Zunz’s Philanthropy in America, Malcolm Harris sheds light on foundations that supported the early 20th century eugenics movement:
Eugenics wasn’t just another 20th century faddish pseudoscience, it was the central intellectual justification for a very American attempt to systematically eliminate entire “undesirable” races and classes of people. The reader wouldn’t know from Zunz’s description that the records in the Eugenics Records Office cataloged “inferior” Americans. It was ventures like this that led Adolf Hitler to write in Mein Kampf that “[t]here is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States.”
The philanthropists’ aid to the formation of this “conception” was more than just inspirational; in addition to the Carnegie Institution’s support of the Davenport project, the Rockefeller family sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute where the Third Reich would recruit its top racial scientists. The Nazis frequently cited American eugenics laws, aspirationally, during their rise to power and defensively at Nuremberg. The ERO was shut down in 1939 when the Nazi connections became suddenly indefensible, but state eugenics laws lasted decades longer.
And eugenics were part of the progressive project. That's something today's liberals both know and remain embarrassed by.
Christopher Jobson features some stunning photos from Anna Schuleit's recent art installation, "Bloom":
In 2003 a building housing the Massachusetts Mental Health Center (MMHC) was slated for demolition to make way for updated facilities. The closure was a time for reflection and remembrance as the MMHC had been in operation for over 9 decades and had touched countless thousands of patients and employees alike, and the pending demolition presented a unique problem. How does one memorialize a building impossibly rich with a history of both hope and sadness, and do it in a way that reflects not only the past but also the future?
The artist filled the entire space with 28,000 potted flowers. She explains:
After four public days of “Bloom”, the building was closed for good and we delivered all twenty-eight thousand flowers to shelters, half-way houses, and psychiatric hospitals throughout New England—which is why I didn’t want to work with cut flowers. I wanted these flowers to continue onward, after the installation. Bloom was a reflection on the healing symbolism of flowers given to the sick when they are bedridden and confined to hospital settings. As a visiting artist I had observed an astonishing absence of flowers in psychiatric settings. Here, patients receive few, if any, flowers during their stay. Bloom was created to address this absence…
A Dish reader first brought Schuleit's project to our attention.
(Photo: Pink heather in one of the waiting rooms, courtesy of Schuleit)
Stefany Anne Golberg remembers Henry Steel Olcott, an American Civil War colonel who spread Buddhism in the late 19th century. Why the religion appealed to his American roots:
The Buddha’s writings were not a demand of faith but rather an invitation to discovery — to which everyone had equal access — through practice, reason, and meditation. … Buddhism taught tolerance and non-violence — the vegetarian Civil War veteran was a firm believer in respect for all life. He liked the message of self-reliance in Buddhism; it felt comfortably American. He liked, too, the emphasis on morals and will. In Buddhism, Olcott saw an Eastern philosophy entirely compatible with modern liberal Western values and thinking. Here’s what he had been looking for: a democratic, methodological, procedural path to the Truth.
He may well be proven right in the long, long term.
In reviewing the British Museum's new exhibition about the Hajj, Joy Lo Dico ponders Saudi dominion over the pilgrimage site:
Gulf News has estimated that the Hajj and the Umrah, the lesser pilgrimage that can be conducted at any time of year, contributes $30 billion to the economy, through the provision of accommodation, travel services, even animals for slaughter. That is 6 percent of the Saudi’s total GDP—with oil revenues stripped out, it’s more like 15 percent. Saudi Arabia’s status as patron has been repaid magnificently. As the river of black gold runs dry and the Hajj continues to grow, it not unthinkable that it will become the country’s greatest financial asset.
Malise Ruthven shares other concerns about the exhibit:
In part, the exhibition’s unskeptical approach seems also to reflect the fact that it is dedicated to a living religion, not an antique belief system. It lays out Muslim beliefs without exploring the archaeological and anthropological matrices from which they issue. The question this raises is: should a scholarly and secular institution refrain from such exploration in order to accommodate religious sensitivities?
(Photo: An aerial view shows Muslim pilgrims walking around the Kaaba in the Grand Mosque of the holy city of Mecca during the annual Hajj pilgrimage rituals on November 7, 2011. By Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images.)
"I see that both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum now have Secret Service with them on the campaign trail. And in Santorum's case I think it's the first time he's actually ever used protection," – Senator Scott Brown, after Conan O'Brien.
An "extremely rare" sight from NASA, and a reminder of why it's called the Emerald Isle:
Moist ocean air also contributes to abundant rainfall. Ireland receives between 29 and 78 inches of rain per year, with more rain falling in the west and in the mountains. Most of the rain falls in light showers. This moist climate means plenty of clouds and fog. According to the Irish Meteorological Service, the sky is entirely cloudy more than 50 percent of the time. There are more clouds during the day than at night, and fog is common.
A day late, I know. But still beautiful.
Leeat Granek and Meghan O’Rourke argue against reclassifying it as such in the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM):
A group of psychiatrists have spearheaded a movement to include ongoing grief as a disorder, to be labeled “complicated” or “prolonged grief.” Others have proposed, separately, that a mourner can be labeled clinically depressed only two weeks after the loss of a loved one. The problem with both potential changes is that more people’s grief will be diagnosed as abnormal or extreme, in a culture that already leads mourners to feel they need to just “get over it” and “heal.”
We seem to be further and further away from the Victorian fetish of intense and long grief. Some kind of new balance is obviously desirable: grief is no more a disease than life itself. It requires living, not curing.
Neil deGrasse Tyson recalls NASA's beginnings and argues that the space program deserves more government money:
Matt Honan is swayed by Scrunchthethird's supercut above:
It's beautifully cut, with all kinds of archival space footage and a compendium of Neil deGrasse Tyson's most compelling messages. Meanwhile it's set to a great score, Arrival of the Birds and Transformation by The Cinematic Orchestra. The entire thing adds up to a convincing, emotional, yet logical plea to revive the space program. I'm all in.
Doug Bandow has his doubts after reading the Government Accountability Office's 2012 report on government waste:
Washington spends some $25 billion annually on space systems, such as satellites. However, reported GAO, “Fragmented leadership has led to program challenges and potential duplication in developing multibillion-dollar space systems.” … The Pentagon and NASA plan to spend some $15 billion on launch services from 2013 to 2017. Yet GAO concluded that “increased collaboration” between the two “could reduce launch contracting duplication” since their efforts “are not formally coordinated, duplicate one another, and may not fully leverage the government’s investment.”
Full text of Neil's recent Senate testimony here and his take on the most astounding fact about the universe here.
Michael J. Sandel questions the spread of markets into every aspect of our lives:
Paying kids to read books might get them to read more, but might also teach them to regard reading as a chore rather than a source of intrinsic satisfaction. Hiring foreign mercenaries to fight our wars might spare the lives of our citizens, but might also corrupt the meaning of citizenship. Economists often assume that markets are inert, that they do not affect the goods being exchanged. But this is untrue. Markets leave their mark. Sometimes, market values crowd out nonmarket values worth caring about.
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