Sep 28 2023 - Neanderthals

 

We have considered Neanderthals our ancestors, and that we are related to them.  There are also the  Denisovans, an Asian people who are considered our direct ancestors.  Maybe because of the fossils we have a compelling interest in the Neanderthals.  Both fossils and DNA suggests that Neanderthal and modern human lineages separated at least 500,000 years ago. They overlapped for up to 5,400 years.   Professor Thomas Higham  published an article in 2023 on the mapping of DNA and concluded there was interbreeding: ‘Other recent studies of Neanderthal and modern human genetic make-up suggest that both groups interbred outside Africa, with 1.5%-2.1% or more of the DNA of modern non-African human populations originating from Neanderthals.  And it is East Asians who seem to have the most Neanderthal DNA. There was inter-breeding between Neanderthals and "modern humans." In that era the other humans were was Homo heidelbergensis, Homo intercessor or another species.  Neanderthals were named Homo neanderthalensis in 1864, so Neanderthal seems more of a short-form and nickname. Just like "modern human" is a nickname for Homo sapiens to my mind.  Neanderthals are our closets ancient human relatives, but we leave off the Human from their name. What are they missing compared to us that we are so clear about our difference.  It seems that research shows there isn't as much difference in their social and other behaviours.  They made art, jewellery, and tools.   But they didn't evolve over technically the thousands of years the way Homo Sapiens did.  That's why we named us sapiens for 'wise' or 'astute'. Which parts of the human genome have we inherited?  Thicker hair and skin - useful in colder climates.  Also immunity which would provide a quick fix against local infections. On the downside, diseases such as diabetes, lupus and Crohn's disease are inherited from the Neanderthal DNA. Another article says that our nose shape gene is inherited from Neanderthals. So likely there are more discoveries to come. How much of the Neanderthal genome has been sequenced?  In 2010 researchers had produced the first whole-genome sequence. The groundbreaking research was conducted by Svante Pääbo who established a new scientific discipline, Paleogenomics.  The article on his research being awarded the Nobel prize in 2022 is HERE. This picture of the family tree divergence with the Denisovans and Neanderthals comes from that article.  I look at that solitary figure in the far background. Could there be other human species that we haven't discovered?  Discover Magazine says it is possible.  Given how far we've come in understanding so that the Neanderthals are no longer considered inferior cave dwellers.    This is a bit of rust on the Calamus Winery shed.  I named it Cave Dwelling. at the time.

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July 17 2023 - AI Generated Art

 

I read a blog post from Sebastian Michaels cautioning about AI Art.  He showed the images below that were generated by AI Art based on the single term “woman”.  I took those images and searched the Google image feature which looks for similar images.  And that got me to AI Art - the website selling AI Generated Art.  And there were more like the ones below.  All kinds of art.  Even an AI Art Generator for us to use.  Their proprietary AI algorithms have carefully selected and managed images by their team of art experts.   Will we all be intermixed on Fine Art America?  Real people works of art and AI generated art?  Will I say in my profile “I am a real person.”  How might I prove this?  How curious it seems. Here are the AI generated images below.

How did the AI software get to choosing this version/interpretation? It seems to me that there is a a gathering of collective intelligence.  If one is scanning all the literature or pictures and then creating from that wealth of infomation, then won’t a dominant view prevail?  I don’t know how artificial intelligence assembles the result.  I know this seems a strange interpretation of “woman.” Here’s a retrieval of images that match the AI-Generated one on the left.  Ever so similar - which is by a real artist and which isn’t?  So on we go to the picture of the day - a collage of images from the Design competition in the Lily Show.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Dec 5 2022 - Counting Celebrities

 

It isn't so much about counting things as finding ways of estimating the number of something,   One Wired article tried to figure out how many celebrities there were in the world.  It  looked to the category of Living People on Wikipedia.  There are 604,174 pages on notable people.  At the time the total global population was just over 7 billion so the fraction of living famous people was 0.000086.  If the calculation was just for English-speaking population the number comes out to between 1 in 10,000 and 5 in 10,000.   That's how many celebrities there are - a lot to track if you are in the celebrity-tracking business.  You might want to count other things besides our planet's population and celebrities.  I found the world meters  site and it is constantly counting things for us - current population, births, deaths, government spending, new books, newspapers circulated, emails sent today, blog post written, forest loss, undernourished people, overweight people, water used this year, energy used,, oil pumped, days to the end of oil, days to the end of coal, deaths caused by cancer, number cigarettes smoked today,  This is the site I was looking at:  https://www.worldometers.info/ We might wonder about  who were history's great "counters." In today's terminology it would statisticians.  It turns out that Florence Nightingale was one of them.  Nightingale was a member of the Royal Statistical Society and one of the first people to collect statistics on health policy.  Her work led to health policy reforms in 19th-century Britain and saved the lives of countless British soldiers.   She presented the  statistics of soldier deaths from preventable causes  (such as unsanitary conditions) in a graphical pie chart diagram, making the information instantaneously understandable.   The diagram is now called a polar-area diagram.  She was one of the first statisticians to represent data in diagrams.

This is a part of a screen installation located in downtown Toronto.   The second picture shows how it is installed along a walkway.

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Sep 4 2021 - The Penguin Channel

 

Are you still thinking about penguins?  I was this morning and decided there must be penguin news of some kind.  It turns out there is a penguin channel - it is HERE.  It is Live Penguin TV from Phillip Island in Australia. Their 32,000 strong penguin colony is on display every day.  They have a penguin parade which 3/4 of a million people watch.  The Youtube videos have had more than 25 million people watch them.  This looks like the biggest parade in the world and the most covered.   Penguins live in lots of place - the Antarctica, Australia/New zealand, Argentina/Chile, Galapagos Islands, South Africa...the UK has plenty of penguins. Even though Penguins are so cute and can come up very close to people, they are considered anti-social and nervous.  There are warnings on the penguin websites about this.  This warning from Antartica tourism: "Penguin chicks, in particular, are quite curious. I've seen several lucky tourists who were astonished to find that chicks came right up to them. One chick even climbed onto a woman's lap. Even if a penguin comes extremely close to you, however, remember: you're not allowed to touch or hold them." That's because they do bite. Other advice includes ignoring the smell, being quiet, and being patient.  So maybe the Philips Island live-stream is perfect for us jumpity and fidgety first world types who want to put the video on fast-forward till we get to a good bit.  Penguin jokes are very corny, and then you find a great one: One day a police officer sees a man walking  20 penguins down the street. The officer says to the man, "Hey, mister, are these all your penguins?". The man replies "Why yes, they are indeed my penguins!". The police officer says "Well, you're going to have to take every single one of those penguins to the zoo immediately!". The man says "OK, well I'm not sure they'll enjoy it there!" to the police officer and he heads towards the zoo. A day later the police officer sees the man again with the same 20 penguins. But this time they are all wearing sunglasses! He's shocked and gobsmacked. The police officer walks hastily over to the man and says "I thought I told you to take these penguins to the zoo?". The man replies "I did, and today we are all going to the beach! They don't like enclosed spaces".  I saw this image in the portfolio, and don't remember if I posted it.  Today it makes me think of penguins walking, dancing and jumping into the water, so seems perfect.

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White Space Ahead

What is white space? It's not blank space.  It has a purpose.  In design is is also called negative space.  Wikipedia tells me that in the print and web world, it is the negative space where the page is left unmarked - margins, gutters, space between columns, etc.    A more recent application is to represent the minimalist life. Jocelyn K. Glei says that if you analyze your daily schedule with an eye toward design, you will find out if you have preserved enough 'white space' within your daily workflow.  I wonder what the visual representation is for a day that is "extremely busy and cluttered".  Another author, Brian Gardner is clear on what to do.  He suggests we declutter our physical space, paint our walls white, designate a quiet spot, get enough sleep, and hide the screens (the phones, etc).   I wondered if there is a relationship between connecting dots and white space, but found myself in unchartered territory.  It is only unchartered from a 'tag' point of view on a google search.  Whenever I go after more complicated search terms and relationships, google reveals its limitations. I found a wall art app the other day, and had a lot of fun with it. You drop your image into a room setting of your choice. Here are a few applications.  This is the Lake Effects Series followed by the Dark and Stormy Night Collage.

Conventional Wisdom

People are talking about: "Last year compared to this year" weather differences.  Our fitness instructor mowed the lawn three times by yesterday's date last year.  I'd sent out pictures of orchards in bloom, having spotted the first orchard trees blooming in mid-April.  The Magnolias were in bloom in Queenston, a beautiful town on the Niagara River.   I was thinking of what conventional wisdoms have become common practice in the 20th century. I expected to find things like the 80-20 principle.  While the term dates back to 1838,  it is associated with John Kenneth Galbraith in his 1958 book The Affluent Society in which he displayed his contrarian view of economic theories of the day. Conventional wisdom is considered a derogatory term - it is defined as "ideas so accepted that they go unquestioned".  The example that is cited is that it was once believed that the Earth is flat, and that at the Earth is the centre of the universe.   Wikipedia puts it more specifically:  "It is widely believed that prior to Christopher Columbus people thought the world was flat, but in actuality, scholars of that time had long accepted that the earth is a sphere.  The above sentence is true; people today often think that Columbus discovered the world to be round, when in fact the world's roundness was already widely known by Columbus' time. However, if enough people read and believe the above sentence, the above sentence will eventually supplant the old belief (the old belief in past belief in a flat earth). The above sentence would become the new conventional wisdom. (Ironically, however, this would also turn the above sentence, the new conventional wisdom, into a false claim; because the new conventional wisdom would propose that people are confused about past beliefs in a way that they actually wouldn't be.)" So complicated a term to consider.  In seeking a list of typical conventional wisdoms, I find lead-in paragraphs to research studies and their results and financial investors and their advice. My sense is that this expression has been hijacked by writers. If it is a serious area of investigation, perhaps it is obscure rather than popular. And now what we experience is that it is conventional wisdom to challenge conventional wisdom.  There's something circular about this concept! The fascinating Canada Blooms' wall sculpture is today's subject.  The second picture shows it interpreted by the Flaming Pear plug-in "India Ink".  The third one interprets it with the Topaz Labs plug-in "Glow".  Both interpretations show off its wonderful design structure.

Decay vs Design Finding a headboard that looked like grunge was a curious experience in Florida.  I marvel at what the materials and techniques would be.  That's what the first and third images are - closeups of the crackle effect.  I get the impression Elmer's Glue or acrylic is involved in the process. And Martha Stewart youtube instructions are easily found. The second image is likely easier to identify.  It is the carpeting in the lobby, with a pretty water lily motif.

Splish Splash

Two years ago I was driving around St. Catharines, looking for dumpsters and peeling paint.  I found some and discovered it was a paint recycle factory.  It was full of paint splatters everywhere.   They let me put on a hard hat and take photos inside.  It was so dark, though, that the quality of the images was less than I wanted.

However, I fooled around with some photoshop brushes and the  paint pictures, and here is what I came up with…

Canada Blooms 2014 is here

Hi everyone,

Canada Blooms opened on Friday. It's one of the largest flower and garden shows in North America.  I was there yesterday.  In the past, I've been able to register as Media and get into the show in the mornings before it opens to the public.  This year I joined the Garden Writers Association as a garden photographer.  Our section met at the show for seminars and networking, so I had a double event this year.    

The Canada Blooms show is excellent.  I was surprised to see innovation in the landscape designs.  Landscape Ontario, with its bee theme had some attractive beehive-inspired structures.  The floral design displays showed a sense of humour this year - bikinis created from flowers.  

It is quite a contrast to photograph the show before the crowds surge in.  I got a view of the show from the podium of the main stage.  This may spark a reaction from some of you - fear of public speaking is the number 1 fear.

Red Spike

At the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto Ontario, in front of the new addition, with the Michael Lee Chin dedication plaque in front.  September 2012