Marilyn's Photos - May 16 2025 - Michelin Stars

 

There's big news on the Quebec restaurant scene with 9 Michelin Star awards in Quebec.  Michelin certainly has made a business of judging restaurant quality.  They review 17,000 restaurants annually.  There are 151 three-star restaurants globally.  There are 26 Michelin-starred restaurants in Canada - 25 with one star and one restaurant with two stars.   Michelin ratings started out as a service offered by the tire company in 1889 for car owners in France - a guidebook for hotels.   Independently-reviewed restaurants were added in 1920 and stars emerged in 1926. A 3-star designation is the top level.  Even today, the Michelin Guide supposedly does not make money.  Instead, it is estimated that it "increases tire sales by 3%".  And it sells Michelin Guides - about 250,000 a year. The Guide runs events and licenses the ranking system - e.g. TripAdvisor.  And countries pay for coverage.  That's what I found out when i initially asked Pearl Morisette about "star status" - their answer was they had to pay Michelin to make the trip and do the assessment. No promise of a star for that investment.  Most restaurants have 1 star.  A star adds about 20% more traffic to the restaurant, 2 stars gets 40% more business and 3 stars gets 100% more business.  And how do the restaurants react after getting their star?  The article I read says they increased pricing to signal new status, revamped menu language to more sophisticated terms and ingredients.   Would you like to be a Michelin guide "inspector?" You would eat around 250 anonymous meals a year which Michelin calls a table test.  travel involves 150 nights in hotels, 600 total visits and 1,000 reports.  And then there are the chefs who "walk away" from their stars.  Too much work, tired of making complex multi-course menus, get back to cooking simple dishes, The full article is HERE.  A rust abstract today.

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May 12 2025 - Liberty of London

 

Liberty of London is a luxury department store in London dating from 1875.  The store's interior was made from the timbers from two ancient battle ships.  The decks were used for the flooring.  In all, there was 24,000 cubic feet of ship timbers.   My thoughts of Liberty are around its fabric print design and production.  Liberty used the finest silks and cottons in the making of its beautiful floral designs.  Liberty prints were readily available in Toronto in the 1970s into the 1980s.  But those stores are now gone - Eaton's, Simpsons, and the Hudson's Bay.  standalone fabric stores are gone from regular shopping places.  There is a single Fabricland in St. Catharines on Welland Avenue, and that is unusual.  I went online to see if they still make the prints that I had worn.  Yes, there is one of my favourites - poppy and daisy still available.  It is part of Liberty Fabrics’ Classics collection which started in 1979, created to champion the most well-known and iconic designs from the Liberty archive all year around.   And the price?  It is $62.00 a metre at 1.36m width.  Ouch if you wanted to make anything to actually wear. Here's are the Editor's Notes:  Poppy and Daisy is a fine-lined and meadowy layout, which has been part of the Liberty archive since the 1910s. An archetypal Liberty floral, it would have originally been a wood block print. Our Tana Lawn™ cotton is a fabric built by obsession, perfected into a modern masterpiece of production through a bespoke process that has evolved over a century. Printed in our very own Liberty Printing Mill, located between Milan and Lake Como in northern Italy, Tana realises unmatchable fluidity with a silk-like touch, unique print quality and striking colour vibrancy. Machine washable and durable enough for daily wear, it can be used to create everything from simple separates to spectacular statement pieces. Here's the screen print of the lovely design.

And this picture?  A print from Liberty Village in Toronto.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Apr 7 2025 - Coughing is a Reflex

 

I have a cold, and coughing seems to just "happen"  It isn't as though my mind is involved in choosing to cough. It is a reflex activity. The descriptive article says that there are three harmonious phases:  inspiratory, compression, and expiratory.  How elegant a description for something not at all elegant. The description says that there is voluntary control, allowing for modulation of cough frequency and intensity.  How do you stop the coughing naturally?  Here we go: Drink plenty of water. Eat a spoonful of honey. Have some herbal tea.  Gargle some salt water. Eat a slice of pineapple. Reduce inflammation with ginger. Have a warm turmeric drink.  Add probiotics to your diet. Avoid exposure to irritants. Maintain a regular sleep schedule I like the pineapple idea.  It contains bromeliad, an enzyme with anti-inflammatory and mucolytic properties that can help thin mucus and make it easier to cough up. Here's the proposed pineapple cough remedy recipe, which the article says hasn't been proven to be more effective than cough syrup: 1 cup pineapple juice pinch of salt pinch of pepper 1 1/2 tsp honey I vote for cough syrup.

I was out on the escarpment a few years ago, looking for orchards in bloom and came upon a farm rubbish heap that had been burned. Here's a study in rust. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Nov 8 2024 - Living on the Equator

 

If we lived on the equator, then what?  It seems far away from us to me.  Even farther away is Greenland, which is white on the map for some reason known to geographers.  The equator is usually drawn as a red line.  There seems to be some Chinese reference with fire being red and south: "located south of China, the equator therefore became associated with redness." Sunrises and sunsets are very fast there.  Not like here.  They take minutes there.  And then the length of day and night remains constant throughout the year, with a constant climate.  The Earth bulges a little at the equator so people are further from the centre of the earth.   Being on the equator means that the noontime sunlight is almost directly overhead every day, year-round.  And with it goes a 12-hour day and 12-hour night year-round.  That would be solar power year-round for every home.  What is the advantage of the Equator?  "Sites near the Equator, such as the Guiana Space in Kourou, French Guiana, are good locations for spaceports as they have the fastest rotational speed of any latitude, 460 m (1,509 ft)/sec. The added velocity reduces the fuel needed to launch spacecraft eastward (in the direction of Earth's rotation) to orbit, while simultaneously avoiding costly maneuvers to flatten inclination during missions such as the Apollo Moon landings."   That location is known as the European Space Centre. Here's our world with that equator red line.

I keep finding interesting images in the past archives of my photo database.  With more techniques, the colours and textures can be exaggerated and enhanced.  Here's a great example.

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July 18 2024 - Olympics Gossip

 

What is the difference between news and gossip? The definition of gossip is that it is idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others.  "Idle talk" - that it self gets my attention.  This immediately becomes deeply philosophical - that's because Heidegger has things to say about idle talk.   Idle talk for Heidegger isn't simply talking about the weather or the local sports team. Idle talk is any content that does not open one's possibilities and instead limits them...The escape from the possibility of death is Heidegger's reason for why we spend so much time in everydayness and idle talk."  I found this synopsis HERE - written by Kylie Foster. So are the articles that categorize themselves as Olympics Gossip - actually gossip?  It does not seem so.  Mostly rumours and predictions. I did find an article with gossip predictions in sports.  And yes, they fit the definition of idle talk and rumour about the personal/private affairs of sports figures.   I guess Heidegger had it right - a way of escape. There are lots of Olympic rumours - especially cancelled or postponed games.  There is the rumour of Aya Nakamura singing Edith Piaf at the Paris Olympics sparking far-right backlash of racist comments.  There are accusations of Russia targeting the Games with disinformation and propaganda attacks.  And of course, there are rumours about who will be performing at the opening ceremony.    Paris 2024, coming soon.     I found this grunge picture in the older Lightroom database.  it has a great sense of irony.

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July 14 2024 - The Billion Dollar Bet

 

Here's how scientists bet on things.   "It's a $1 billion bet they call "The Great Longevity Wager," and an Alabama scientist is sure he'll win. Or his descendants will, because Dr. Steven Austad doesn't really expect to collect in 2150. Austad, chairman of the biology department at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, is betting that the first person to reach 150 is alive today. If he proves right, his heirs will collect the earnings of an investment account set up with a $150 wager in 2000." "Olshansky, a professor of public health, is the other bettor. And while he shares Austad's belief that lifespans will keep growing because of advances in aging science, he's confident, "It can't produce a 150-year old person." This bet remains current news - even though it was made in 2000.  It just is very entertaining.   There are so many ways of considering the 150 year life span.  The discussion is about slowing aging - think of it taking 80 years to reach the state of a 50-year-old today.  They are looking at drugs to intervene with these results.  The ones being considered aremetformin and rapamycin. The scientists predict it will happen "in time to influence the lives of most people today."' Maybe that also explains the next headline "Why Bryan John son and Jeff Bezos are betting big"...investing in longevity.  They have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars towards companies pursuing longer life.  A rusty spring in the Strasbourg Railway repair shop - from a few years ago.  It might be even rustier now.

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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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May 31 2023 - All Fired Up

 

With climate change we now have to learn the fire verbs.  It snow, it rains, but it doesn't fire.  Lately we see the verb to blaze, and that's equivalent to blizzard.  I wonder if there will be a meteorological word for wild fires. So far there is burn, rage, deviate and blaze.   I checked out the wildfire glossary - it is from British Columbia and is HERE.  There are no fire-related words starting with A, but B has blow-up - a sudden and unexpected major increase in rate of spread... Can meteorologists help fight wildfires?  It seems they can.  As Incident Meteorologists, they camp out with fire crews and help fire crews to plan operations.   On the other hand, there have been a number of meteorologists "fired" for various reasons.

This is one of Floyd Elzinga's works - it looks like the hills are "ablaze".

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Sep 13 2022 - Mending Bridges

 

Can you imagine?  The original bridge crossing the Niagara River in Niagara Falls, named the Honeymoon Bridge collapsed in 1938 due to an ice jam on the river.   Massive chunks of ice began to accumulate below the bridge on January 23rd, 1938. This was precipitated by a powerful wind storm that blew ice from Lake Erie down the Niagara River and over the Horseshoe and the American Falls.  It was the bridge's close proximity to the water level that was the problem..   "During the fateful week in 1938, the Niagara river bed rose to 9 feet high, thus engulfing the Maid of the Mist docks and everything else around it. Suddenly the abutments of the Honeymoon Bridge were encased with ice. Knowing that the bridge would collapse on any given day, all vehicle traffic was ceased to a halt the day prior to the Niagara Falls Bridge Collapse on January 26th."  There was film footage of this at the time.  It is HERE.   Thousands of spectators watched from both sides as the collapse occurred. I went looking for images of the construction of the new arch, started in 1940 and completed in 1941.  "The bridge is a hingeless steel arch, and when it was first built was reportedly the longest hingeless steel arch ever constructed. The bridge's steel is composed of built-up beams that are riveted together. The bridge appears to retain good historic integrity with no major alterations to the superstructure noted. The bridge's solid rib arch and minimal bracing give this bridge an appearance that is quite modern in comparison to other bridges built during this time."   Here in the definitive article on its construction - August 28, 1941 Engineering News-Record describes of the method of erection.    And when the bridge opened November 1st 1941, which dignitaries were on hand? I found only one reference, but an excellent one.  It is an original Toronto Star caption: "The rainbow bridge at Niagara Falls was formally opened during the week-end. A rainbow made its appearance shortly afterward. Hoisting the Canadian flag is Hon. T. B. McQuesten; and on his LEFT are Dr. Norman V. Leslie of Hamilton and C. Elliston Kauymeyer; bridge manager." I wondered if it would have been the Prime Minister or Premier of Ontario as it was considered one of the most significant bridges of its time.  But that was a thought only. The Toronto Public Library archives has numerous historical pictures of construction HERE.  This picture makes everything look so tidy and neat, but it was a huge site, full of construction equipment as the second image shows better.

Abstract image today reminding me of the bridge structure.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Dec 13 2021 - Artificial Trees

 

We're planning for next year's Fantasy of Trees and will need to buy some artificial trees.  We typically are able to get them from the big box stores at a reduced sale price if we buy all the leftover stock.  I wondered what happens to leftover stock and put my question into the google search engine with this answer: "Many are chopped up, ground down and fed to plants and animals, according to Rocco Malanga, the owner of Cedar Grove Chrismas Trees in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. "On a commercial level, they become wood chips that are made into mulch," Malanga said. "That's very common. Aside from that, they go to farms for livestock." As for artificial trees, there weren't any answers for what big box stores do with leftover stock. There are lots of questions about Christmas trees on goggle that made me think might be asked for immigrants experiencing Christmas in North America for the first time. Q What plant looks like a Christmas tree? A Norfolk Island pine trees (Araucaria heterophylla) are commonly used as those cute little houseplant Christmas trees that you can buy around the holidays, but then the holidays end and you are left with a seasonally dated, living plant. Q What are the trees called that look like Christmas trees? A Fir trees are a genus of the evergreen coniferous trees and are also a popular choice for the holiday season. The most popular fir trees used for Christmas include the noble fir, fraser fir and balsam fir. Today we have an abstract image.

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July 30 2021 - Mallfun or Mallfunction

 

I went to the Mall yesterday.  The one I went to was Mapleview in Burlington.  Whenever we drive by that Mall, I still see the original farm with old-style greenhouses on the vast grounds that are now parking lots.   That would be more than a year and a half since I'd been in a mall or most retail stores.  There are many kinds of places that we haven't been in since March 2019.   Malls and corporate office towers are very similar - shining granite and marble floors and walls in neutral colours.  Everything so clean and entirely impersonal.  The 'death of the shopping mall' has been in progress for years with the drop in revenue continuous.  Before February 2020, the drop in revenue per square foot was 42 per cent.  But then the pandemic came along.  Malls may not be going down yet.   I was there just as it opened at 11:00am and left just before 12:30pm.  It started to fill up as the 12:00 hour approached. The people that were there seemed impatient to get started with normal again.  Both young and old were there. There were quite a few 'super seniors' out for a look-see walk in the stores.  Yes, everyone was out for a stroll in the Mall.  Will this be part of a new normal?  What will the social environment be post-2019 pandemic?  Will Malls remain part of it?  I ask this as it is my generation that experienced the rise of the Malls.  Let's enjoy some of the shopping/mall jokes of the past.     What is cheaper and more effective than a psychiatrist? Going shopping at a mall. I saw a man with one arm shopping at a second hand store. I told him “you’re not going to find what you’re looking for.” An atheist comes into a mall And there is no parking spot, so he says "God, if you give me parking spot, I will convert myself and become Christian". Two minutes later he says "Nevermind I found one" I fell asleep at the mall today... I was counting customers leaving the Apple store There's a lot of fun in playing spin-the-dial on images with Flexifly - our Floyd Elzinga montage image has a few variations today.

Mar 12 2021 - ReThinkx on Energy

 

Do you remember the predictions of RethinkX for the next 10, 20, 30 and more years?  And some of them seem ordinary and others seem outrageous.   The report on agriculture and farming is like science fiction to me. The science fiction part is the prediction that by 2030, the number of cows in the U.S. will have fallen by 50% and the cattle farming industry will be all but bankrupt.  It will be replaced by a Food-as-Software model, where foods are engineered by scientists at a molecular level. The cost of proteins will be five times cheaper by 2030 and 10 times cheaper by 2035 than existing animal proteins, before ultimately approaching the cost of sugar. They will also be superior in every key attribute – more nutritious, healthier, better tasting, and more convenient, with almost unimaginable variety. This means that, by 2030, modern food products will be higher quality and cost less than half as much to produce as the animal-derived products they replace. There are now many articles on these proteins and their availability - it isn't science fiction to me anymore.  Likely our focus on COVID is what keeps the progress backgrounded. What about their latest report?  I received the notice of their report on the energy sector and it predicts a dramatic disruption.  Their investigation indicates that leading analyst organizations, both government and private, have inaccurately estimated what is known as "levelized costs of electricity" (LCOE) for coal, natural gas and hydro power plants. This had made these types of fuel appear to be better investments than they are.  Solar, wind, and batteries are the disruptors. Financial market corrections will mean the bursting of a trillion-dollar bubble similar to the subprime mortgage housing bubble. That was a big ouch known as the great recession.  They say something similar can happen. Here's the report HERE.    This is one of the montage pictures.  I seem to be attracted to rust and copper corrosion montages. Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca