Oct 6 2023 - What colour lies?

 

I've changed my mind on street names - there's streets to be found that are named after food.  Not things like Souffle Crescent or Creme Caramel Drive.  But here they are:  Chicken Dinner Road, Frying Pan Road, Puddin' Ridge Road, Burnt Corn Road, Butter & Egg Road, event Egg / Butter Road, Tater Peeler Road, Smiley Cookie Lane, Chicken Gristle Road, Pop Corn Drive, Ice Cream Street, Candy Castle Lane. These were at this site HERE if you want to know the locations.  Another site has Long Island Street Names that follow the course of food - but really these are named after fruits like Cherry Lane, Plum Street, and so on. They are at this site HERE.  A few are intriguing - Bread and Cheese Hollow Road, Lobster Way, Tuna Walk, Crab Avenue, and so on until Muffin Meadows Road pops up.  And that great expanse - London England - has lots of food and drink streets: Bread Street, Milk Street, Honey Lane, Stew Lane, and so on. That site is HERE.   I was wondering how lies could be white or black - or are there more colours for lies?  There seems to be at least four colours. History has us start at black vs white. "The origin of white lies probably drifts back to the ancient Western idea of polar opposites, white meaning good (and pure) and black as its evil antithesis. Thus a white lie is one that lacks evil intent and a black lie is malevolent." Are there other colours that lies can come in?  Yes - "Gray lies are described as "somewhere in the middle of harming others versus minimizing harm to ourselves. Black lies, the opposite of white lies, aim to harm others while protecting ourselves." And how about the Yellow Lie?  "“A yellow lie is a lie about a big thing. But it's a lie that is important. It's a lie that is necessary to potentially save somebody's life. Yellow lies can only be done if you really know the person who you're lying to." Don't leave out Blue Lies - A lie told by a police officer in order to get someone to comply with his or her wishes, thereby avoiding the use of force.  A lie told to protect the reputation of one's group or organization. More colours:  A bright red lie: a total lie, when something is completely different from the truth. Red lies are about spite and revenge. "Unlike white lies, little green lies are not harmless. Revealing the truth about little green lies will make society as a whole better off. Little green lies may also be good for their tellers." I have even found the Purple Lie! It refers to the assertion that purple as a colour does not exist and it is dark blue. There's a chart in one article to help us navigate some of the colours of lies. Except it has pink rather than red.   Here's a montage image - Floyd Elzinga's mountains and the rust image of the Cloud Garden fountain - one of my favourite texture images.

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Aug 30 2022 - Culinary Appropriation

Mooncakes are part of the Asian Autumn Festival, and when I read about them yesterday, I laughed at the thought of the work of putting together the ingredients and fulfilling the recipe.  It includes lye water, white lotus seed paste, red bean, green tea, mixed nuts and salted egg yokes that have been brined for 30 to 60 days.  These are Asian ingredients are mostly exotic to me.   And the salted egg? "Salted egg yolk is typically an egg cured in the shell to impart a delicious, rich umami flavour. As it is a popular flavour during Mid-Autumn festivals, more expensive and luxurious duck eggs are usually used.  To create them from scratch takes anywhere from 30 to 60 days." But the best part about the exploration of mooncakes is the surprise question, with its answer:  "Is it cultural appropriation to make mooncakes? It's like a foreigner putting on traditional Chinese clothing and claiming to be a native Chinese or well versed in Chinese culture. I would even go as far as to say that this is a form of culinary cultural appropriation. There are even mooncakes for your furry friends." I looked at that as a confused response.  Good thing the great melding pot of Europe with its mixing of cultures is in the past.  Otherwise, we'd be accusing each other of appropriation and starting wars.   We can find more absurd answers on Quora. These range from proposed examples to denials of cultural appropriation existing.  On Quora, people spout out anything and everything.  And other times, have factual answers. The first answer comes from Ross Boardman - "Award winning restaurateur, author of 101 Restaurant secrets Author has 12.4K answers and 33.3M answer views.".   No wonder he has the top answer to the question.   Here's an excerpt from his reply: "Is this something like when white people get dreadlocks and go surfing? Please folks, stop this crap. Wake up from woke. I’m currently looking at a menu of a chain pub in the UK. Let’s start the list; cheesy ciabatta, haloumi sticks, Southern fried goujons, nachos, katsu chicken, cheeseburger, chicken tikka masala and dirty chips (fries) with piri piri sauce. Am sure just based on that a bunch of angry white students are going to come out and glue themselves to the car park because at least those 8, rocking on close to 20 dishes, have been appropriated from other cultures." The rest of his mini-essay/rant is HERE.

Is a montage an appropriation? This is the combination of two (actually more) images.  The pattern part was the grungy floor in Erroll's Shoe Repair in St. Catharines.  Its original colour was yellowish.  I turned it to bright yellow and moved on to blue and red with one of the Topaz filters.  Then the additional colours in an arc came from a Flexifly version of one of my digital paintings.    Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Oct 23 2021 - How to find Fake Authors

 

What do you think of faking your identity as an author? And then winning $1 million Euro? In a recent contest, three men revealed themselves to be the writers of Carmen Mola's novel "The Beast".  They received Spain's 2021 Premio Planeta $1 million Euro award for their novel.  It "came as a surprise" when they stood up to take their award.  For an award worth more than the Nobel Prize, it seems odd more than curious that no one seemed to have done any due diligence on the author(s) before the ceremony.   Really?  That can't be the case, can it? It can't have been a "surprise".  You don't just let anyone in the door of a $1 million Euro award ceremony.  And the story is carried by countless news organizations as the surprise reveal. “Quite apart from using a female pseudonym, these guys have spent years doing interviews,” Beatriz Gimeno, a former head of the Women’s Institute, wrote on Twitter after the award’s announcement. “It’s not just the name — it’s the fake profile that they’ve used to take in readers and journalists. They are scammers.” How were interviews with the author conducted?  In writing, with "representatives", or by an impersonator?  Finding an interview has proved difficult.  Everything to be retrieved is about this "3 for 1" sleight of authorship at the ceremony.    Margaret Atwood's response:  "A great publicity stunt".   I search enough and find an article HERE that reveals the facts that Atwood is alluding to.   "Supposedly “The Beast” was first submitted for consideration for the prize under a different pseudonym; the authors then attributed the work to Mola. The prize is awarded to an unpublished manuscript, which, as part of the terms, must be produced by Planeta Group’s publishing house."  More on publishing house award scams tomorrow. The publisher says that they were aware the author's name was a pseudonym and the "real writer" wanted to be anonymous. "The publisher said she could not comment on when she knew that Mola was really Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez and Antonio Mercero. The secret was always part of the process, even after The Purple Network came out in 2019 and The Girl in 2020." And the real revelation - a quote from one of the authors: “We’ve been lying like dogs for four years and several months,” laughed Díaz. “It’s been a long time since [I published my own] last novel, and more than one person had chided me for not writing anything else, for being lazy. And I would think, ‘If only you knew...’ Would you agree that they are Scammers? Con artists?  Here's a definition of con artist:  a person who cheats or tricks others by persuading them to believe something that is not true. "the debonair con artist lives by scamming rich women" Look at the synonyms to see the dark side:  hustler, sharpie, shark, flimflammer, confidence-man, bunco, clip artist, cheater, fleecer, fraud and hoser.  I think we're on to something.  All the pictures show these three writers so pleased with themselves.  Maybe I am being too generous in applying con artist. Here's a Plaid City image that seems to go with the story.

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Sep 29 2021 - The Decline and Fall of the English Language

 

These are the introduction sentences on the topic of the decline of English:  "Do you weep for the decline of the English language? Do people’s grammatical aberrations on social media fill you with horror?" I can respond that I don't go so far as to weep, but do get irritated.  "I use to" is normal now. I don't want to  get "used to" this.   What's the answer? Let's find out what the experts have to say. "When we think about the future of language – in this case, the English language – we have a tendency to bemoan its demise. The casual language used daily on social networks and in newspaper comment sections delivers a host of typos and misused words. Even capital letters and full stops are left by the wayside by some of those sharing their opinions, something that I personally find almost painful to witness." The article goes on to tell me the English language is evolving.   I am concerned because there are times when I don't understand what the written sentence means.  I will have to go back to school to learn the "New English". Most of the articles are opinion pieces.  I checked out the Linguistic Society of America's article: "Is English Changing?" Here's what the article says: "What's important to realize is that there's no such thing as a 'sloppy' or 'lazy' dialect. Every dialect of every language has rules - not 'schoolroom' rules, like 'don't split your infinitives', but rather the sorts of rules that tell us that the cat slept is a sentence of English, but slept cat the isn't. These rules tell us what language is like rather than what it should be like." That is excellent theory, but often I experience a failure on the the writer's part to communicate their point.  Alternately, I might be far behind on the New English. What got me thinking is the article's "Karen example".  Here it is: (4) So Karen goes, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!" (5) So Karen is like, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!" (6) So Karen is all, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!" The article explains the different meanings of each of these. There are subtle nuances.   I wavered for a moment, thinking I should start a search to learn the new English.  Instead, I found this 'joke' as a possible alternative to going back to school.   The montage picture seems a good representation of the decline of spoken and written language - a story of deterioration and disintegration rather than evolution.

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Sep 6 2021 - September Songs

 

How many September songs are there? Spinditty says there are more than 60 songs about September. The list is HERE.  My attention is attracted to Frank Sinatra's album September of My Years, made for his 50th birthday in December 1965. Sinatra recorded "It Was a Very Good Year" for the album live on a Walter Cronkite CBS News Special on Frank Sinatra in the spring - it was broadcast closer to his birthday - in November.   A year of celebration of Frank Sinatra is how I think of that album, and it was rereleased in 1986. Considering all the many September songs there are, I want to give a name to this subject category.  And what came to my mind was  "Septemberism" - where great reminiscing and nostalgia are the main themes. This name was taken - but long ago.  I find out that this was the name of a Portuguese political movement in the 1830s and the name of the insurgents in a Bulgaria uprising in 1923.  There are lots of September uprisings in history.  Unlike songs with September where there are lots of lists, there really aren't any lists of uprisings by month. So who is to know if September of the most popular uprising month.  It might be Spring. While Frank Sinatra's songs were reminiscent and nostalgic, our own experience of September this is is one of apprehension because of the fourth wave of COVID.  In amongst the many September jokes, I found these two COVID jokes: I just got off the phone with a researcher in China. He says it's not worth getting the Covid-19 now, as they are expecting the Covid-20 PRO to be released in September.   Please, don't get Covid-19 They are releasing Covid-20 in September and it's much better. Little did we think there would be a yearly release - and Covid-21 is available anywhere near the unvaccinated now. September 20th is a Full Harvest Moon this year - names for September's full moon are: Autumn Moon (Cree) Falling Leaves Moon (Ojibwe) Leaves Turning Moon (Anishinaabe) Moon of Brown Leaves (Lakota) Yellow Leaf Moon (Assiniboine) Here's one of my moon rising interpretations.

Aug 29 2021 - Ingrid Bergman Born and Dies on same day

 

As we approach the passing of Summer, I noticed the People who were born on this day headline.  When I looked at the site, Ingrid Bergman showed up in two places:  She was born on August 29th and died on August 29th.  That's remarkable to me.  It makes me consider the Birthday Paradox.  Answersdrive.com has more about this: "The birthday paradox is strange, counter-intuitive, and completely true. It's only a “paradox” because our brains can't handle the compounding power of exponents. We expect probabilities to be linear and only consider the scenarios we're involved in (both faulty assumptions, by the way). Consequently, how likely is it to have the same birthday? One person has a 1/365 chance of meeting someone with the same birthday. Two people have a 1/183 chance of meeting someone with the same birthday. But! Those two people might also have the same birthday, right, so you have to add odds of 1/365 for that. Also, what are the odds of being born and dying on the same day? So we have ~0.3097% chance of dying on a birthday while statistically (1/365) would lead us to believe there is only ~0.27397% chance of dying on a birthday. That is indeed a 13% increase in chance of death on a birthday from 1/365. Is it rare to die on your birthday?  Tradition has it that William Shakespeare also died on his birthday - born on April 23 1564 and died on April 23 1616 - he was 52 years old.  Among 25 million Americans who died between 1998 and 2011, 6.7% more people than expected die on their birthday, and the effect was most pronounced at weekends and among the young – among 20 to 29 year olds, the excess was over 25%." As the days go by, we are coming to the most common birthday:  It is September 9th.  The least common birthday is December 25th.   Our image today is a montage of spring cherries and one of my abstract pastels.  I like the colourful effect with the pastel sensibility.

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Aug 5 2021 - Ice Worms Now!

 

There is a lot of interesting science stuff.  There seems to be new things every day.   Our heading today is about ice worms.  They are new for me:  they have been emerging from the glaciers in the Pacific Northwest.  They are inky black and only an inch long.  They eat algae and bacteria in the snow.  They like 0 degrees Celsius temperatures, but not lower than that or too high.  A sort of Goldilocks temperature. Why did they make the headlines that they emerged from the glaciers?  It is what happens this time of year, so not something unusual.  Two research scientists are studying them on a grant from NASA.That is unusual. They are a curiosity, so hit the news with a boost from the scientists to give some facts and explanations. This is yearly summer occurrence. An estimated 5 billion ice worms can live in a single glacier, and they wriggle to the surface of the glacier late in the day.   Does the (early) bird get the worm?  Yes - these glaciers have gray-crowned rosy finches, American pipits, common ravens, horned larks, semipalmated plovers and snow buntings.   Here is a great worm pun: Look, I know she ate a worm but we are not here to debate de bait Deb ate. We have two images today - the first a little fun with a peeling Niagara sign, and the second a montage of Toronto's skyline with a cement wall. This cement wall was in Oshawa quite a few years ago, and I found it stark and compelling.

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July 6 2021 - Summering

 

When we think of summering, what do we think of?  The people with cottages who spend their summers on a lake?  The birds that migrate to northern parts of the hemisphere? Summering isn"t used very much. There's a few summer camps for law students. A debut album in 2015. A failed Facebook sites with nothing posted since 2017.  Summering doesn't seem to be an accepted verb.  That might be because it is associated with the rich heading off to their summer homes on the beach or the ocean or wherever. What about some summer records?  What might we associate with summer?  The world's largest scoop of ice cream in 2014 weighing 1,365.31 kg.  Then there's the world's largest kick board which is 10 times the standard adult size, so pretty well took up the swimming pool. How long is the longest inflatable water slide?  1,975 feet.  Do you imagine joining 1,387 people to make sand angels?  Longest hot dogs, largest beach towel, longest bikini parade (China), longest barbecue, most people applying sunscreen... all activities associated with summer.   I wonder if there might be any records this year.  Other than heat wave  temperatures. Here's one:   Skills Ontario successfully launched the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ attempt event on May 5, 2021. We invited Ontarians in making history by helping us to break the record for Largest Online Video Chain of People Passing and Using a Screwdriver! Although we had a focus on women in the trades, this record attempt was open to anyone, any age across the province with a minimum goal of receiving 251 individual video submissions.     This montage is a combination of weathered wood and a white stone sculpture.  It looks like peas in pods to me.

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Mar 13 2021 - Olympic Betting

 

No one won the Lottery yesterday, and that got me thinking about the Olympics.  I wonder what the odds are that they can proceed.  I have all kinds of questions and thoughts. Maybe it will be Chile, Israel, and the U.S.  They are the top three on vaccinations.   Wait!  IOC has revealed that China has offered vaccines Tokyo and Beijing Olympic athletes.  There we have it.  The Vaccination lottery.  Bach added: "For each of these doses, the IOC will pay for two doses more which can be made available to the population in the respective countries." Is that a variety of bribe? Maybe it is hush money.  Meanwhile, Sarah Hirshland, United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee chief executive, said Team USA athletes could be vaccinated before their respective trials because of the pace of the rollout in the country. "The broad base of athletes may have access to the vaccine sooner than we thought initially possible," she said. "This is great news and we're feeling really positive about the progress we're seeing here in the United States, both in its advantage to US athletes as well as international athletes living and training in our country right now." What about the headline that COVID vaccines won't be compulsory for the Tokyo Olympics.   And then who will be able to watch the games? The decision on whether to let foreign fans to travel will be made before the start of the Olympic torch relay on March 25th.   So back to the odds:  This year bookies are rather offering wagering options on yes/no – whether the 2021 Tokyo Olympics will take place with spectators. At the moment, the odds heavily favor spectators being allowed to attend. What’s interesting is that there’s no option to bet on Tokyo Olympics getting postponed once again, suggesting that sportsbooks believe the Games will happen this summer. Last year, at the time when the pandemic was spreading around the world at a super-fast pace, the oddsmakers guessed correctly that the Games were going to get postponed. This is the Royal Horticultural Society symbol, with a colourful montage background. Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

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