Category Archives: LIVES

...and other stuff, BULLSHIT, FREE ADVICE, LIVES, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

UNPLANNED BREEDING

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UNPLANNED BREEDINGpopulation explosion graphWorld_Population_2050

“We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.”

— Arnold Toynbee (14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934–1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global perspective.

...and other stuff, ART, LIVES, The Real Johannes Vermeer, THE VERMEER WOMEN, VERMEER REVEALED

GIRL WITH A PEARLESCENT CAMERA

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 This picture is a modern spoof on the world famous painting by the 16th century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer.   The girl in the legendary painting (as well as in several other of his paintings) is his second daughter, Elizabeth!  Vermeer never hired models — he painted only family and friends.  It doesn’t take a cosmetic surgeon to compare the features of the women in the majority of his paintings to observe that the same women are being painted in their own home, again and again in different poses, settings, lighting and clothing.  Most of his paintings feature his wife, Catharina, who was not only his constant accomplice in creating a family, she was his foremost ally in his life as an artist!

The painting named (by others), “Girl with a pearl earring”, as well as “The girl with a red hat”, and “The girl with a flute”, and others, are all of his second daughter, Elizabeth, who was a teenager when they were painted.  He used her as the model for a series of very small “tronie” or facial portraits, which were popular at the time.

These miniature “head shots” were especially well suited to the use of the camera obscura to create what we know now to have a photographic quality, rendering the light and perspective differently than the unaided lens of the human eye perceives it.

To learn all of the details about the women who posed for Johannes Vermeer in all of his famous paintings, read the book VERMEER: PORTRAITS OF A LIFETIME, by Lawrence R. Spencer.

DOWNLOAD THIS BOOK FROM iTUNES
http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/vermeer/id443800993?mt=11 

 

...and other stuff, ART, FREE ADVICE, LIVES, PICTURE POEMS, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

THE TAO

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Although ascetics and hermits first wrote of the ‘Tao  it is with the sixth century B.C. philosopher Lao Tzu (or ‘Old Sage’ — born Li Erh) that the philosophy of Taoism really began. Some scholars believe was a slightly older contemporary of Confucius (Kung-Fu Tzu, born Chiu Chung-Ni). Other scholars feel that the Tao Te Ching, is really a compilation of paradoxical poems written by several Taoists using the pen-name, Lao Tzu.

According to legend Lao Tzu was keeper of the archives at the imperial court. When he was eighty years old he set out for the western border of China, toward what is now Tibet, saddened and disillusioned that men were unwilling to follow the path to natural goodness. At the border (Hank Pass), a guard, Yin Xi (Yin Hsi), asked Lao Tsu to record his teachings before he left. He then composed in 5,000 characters the Tao Te Ching (The Way and Its Power).