Dec 1 2021 - The Month of New Beginnings

 

It is December and time for a calendar - I took some of these pictures last year on this day.  For me, December is the start of winter weather - even the start of winter. I seem to be weather-based in my idea of seasons.  December should be the start - it is magical with the landscape's transformation and holiday lights, decorations, mythical and religious stories, themes and colours.  All of the senses are delighted in December.  Many people weigh in that December is their favourite month - Google has determined this with how it interprets the search "december favourite month".  The case seems to be that many people seem to think their favourite month is based on it being their birth month.   That seems perfect given the latest story of birth - Barbados is now a republic. While it did happen November 30th, I am sure December will be a celebration month. While Prince Charles was there to denounce slavery and give it its place as a sin of the past, he is wondering what the price is going to be in reparation demands and negotiations. They now have a ceremonial President as head of state and a Prime Minister who is the head of government.  The last Governor-General is now the President.  The country is a republic within the Commonwealth.  How will that work I ask?  Maybe ask Mauritius as it became a republic in 1992.   It has had turbulent political times since, but then it didn't enjoy good times before becoming a republic.   The UK split off the Chagos Archipelago and other islands from Mauritian territory to form the British Indian Ocean Territory, expelling the local population. I wonder if the UK has obeyed the International Court of Justice decision in 2017 and in 2019 ordering the UK to return the Islands.  This circumstance makes me realize that colonialism is still with us. It isn't surprising that Barbados has been on the republic journey a long time - commissions in 1979 and 1996, and then a planned referendum in 2008 that didn't happen. A proposal in 2015 was made by the Prime Minister that the country would move towards a republic.  By 2020 there was a two-thirds majority in both houses of Parliament, so the vote went through.   And here we are, in what will be the favourite month for Barbados, with their new "Celebrity Queen" Rihanna. The final picture is a second place winner in the Betterphoto contest.  These pretty Cyclamen were at the Niagara Falls Botanical Garden.

Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

May 25 - Left and Right

Left and Right have been hijacked in Google and now retrieve left and right wing politics. One has to look for relative direction to find left and right.   I repeated the search and there's some 'smarts' in Google that now retrieves both concepts.  I knew they were watching me. So in relation to my question about direction, Wikipedia says that: "In situations where a common frame of reference is needed, it is common to use an egocentric view."  I had thought of left and right simply.  I find there are many paragraphs in Wikipedia on this.     I was drawn to the paragraph on Geometry of the natural environment: "The right-hand rule is one common way to relate the three principal directions. For many years a fundamental question in physics was whether a left-hand rule would be equivalent. Many natural structures, including human bodies, follow a certain "handedness", but it was widely assumed that nature did not distinguish the two possibilities. This changed with the discovery of parity violations in particle physics. If a sample of cobalt-60 atoms is magnetized so that they spin counterclockwise around some axis, the beta radiation resulting from their nuclear decay will be preferentially directed opposite that axis. Since counter-clockwise may be defined in terms of up, forward, and right, this experiment unambiguously differentiates left from right using only natural elements: if they were reversed, or the atoms spun clockwise, the radiation would follow the spin axis instead of being opposite to it." This means there is proof of the right-hand rule in nature. There are human cultures with no words denoting the egocentric directions. We use backwards, forwards, up, down and left, right.  They might say "move a bit to the east".   Betterphoto tells me that one of my images won second place in the landscape category.  Here it is - a picture from Winterthur a few years ago.  No azaleas blooming so beautifully this year.

Library Work Then and Now

My generation initiated online searching in the 1970's.  I worked for the Globe and Mail when the online database was just getting started.

I wondered what jobs like this looked like today.  I immediately found one:

"The New York Times News Research Desk has an opening for a researcher who is adept in social media, public records, archival databases, and the art of information gathering.

The role of a news researcher has evolved greatly from the days when most reference information was contained in paper clippings, almanacs and encyclopedias. Today, skilled researchers are required to track facts through a forest of datasets, posts and tweets. They must be adept at deciphering public records, using social media to identify a subject, and finding the seemingly unfindable. A good one has a bloodhound's tenacity, a detective's deductive power, and a philosopher's passion for the truth.

Ideal candidates for this full-time position will be confident in their abilities and cool under deadline pressure. They will have a master’s degree, preferably in library science, or convincing equivalent experience. They will have worked at a major metropolitan daily newspaper or media organization for at least three years. Knowledge of public records — in particular, how to background a subject using databases such as Nexis, Accurint, TLO and Spokeo — is a must. Candidates should also be familiar with the NYT's own online archives, including TimesPast, ProQuest, and Parch; the news aggregators Nexis, Factiva, Newslibrary, and MasterFILE; and specialized collections including PACER, Leadership Directories, JSTOR, TV Eyes, Dialog, Spokeo, Ancestry, Guidestar, and Political MoneyLine."

It is impressive how much more information there is.  For example, Accurint is an online resource for investigating the identification of people, assets, etc.  Spokeo is a people search database.  Both of these show the significant change in how many more people are finable compared to 40 years ago.  While we had online sources, we also paged through books back then to research a topic. I wonder if there even are any reference books today.

The Betterphoto contest last month awarded a Finalist to one of my images.  Here it is.