Allen Dulles (1893-1969)

More information (he was big on information) here.

Paykan

A modest, unassuming little veh-i-cule. More information here.

Pioneers, O Pioneers

Nebuchadnezzar the King of the Jews
Suffered from new and original views,
He crawled on his hands and knees, it's said,
With grass in his mouth and a crown on his head.
     With a wowtyiddly, etc.

Those in traditional paths that trod
Thought the thing was a curse from God,
But a Pioneer men always abuse
Like Nebuchadnezzar the King of the Jews.

Black Lord Foulon the Frenchman slew
Thought it a Futurist thing to do.
He offered them grass instead of bread.
So they stuffed him with grass when they cut off his head.
     With a wowtyiddly, etc.

For the pride of his soul he perished then -
But of course it is always of Pride that men,
A Man in advance of his Age accuse,
Like Nebuchadnezzar the King of the Jews.

Simeon Scudder of Styx, in Maine,
Thought of the thing and was at it again.
He gave good grass and water in pails
To a thousand Irishmen hammering rails.
     With a wowtyiddly, etc.

Appetites differ; and tied to a stake
He was tarred and feathered for Conscience' Sake.
But stoning the prophets is ancient news,
Like Nebuchadnezzar the King of the Jews.

(G.K.C.)

Selman Waksman (1888-1973)

More information here.

Wilhelm Wassmuss (1880-1931)

More information here.

You want nightmares?

Georg Luger (1849-1923)

More information here.

Dar al-Funun

More information here.

Jalebi

More information here.

Rambler Marlin

Ah, the romance of the open road… More information here.

Samad va Fulad Zereh div (dir. Jalal Moghadam, 1971)

More information here, and the whole film, I think, here.

Honesty

Honesty consists not in never stealing but in knowing where to stop in stealing, and how to make good use of what one does steal. It is only great proprietors who can steal well and wisely. A good stealer, a good user of what he takes, is ipso facto a good inventor. Two men can invent after a fashion to one who knows how to make the best use of what has been done already.

La Castiglione (1837-1899)

More information here.

Harry Clarke (1889-1931)

More information here.

Gabbitas and Thring

Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

I've just been to see Zero Dark Thirty, and although I don't usually write reviews of things I read or see or listen to, beyond saying 'I liked it' or, more rarely, 'I didn't like it', I feel somehow compelled to say that I liked this movie a great deal, and that the whole furore (ah, that's why I'm compelled to write about it! A good wholesome furore!) about whether or not it 'endorses torture', or suggests that torture was a useful tool in finding and killing Osama Bin Laden, doesn't seem to me to be the point of the movie. It's a film about knowledge, about how we process information, and the moral uncertainty that arises from this process. It's about how the world (in this instance the political world, the world of spycraft, but I think this applies to the world in general) is never purely black and white.
Three moments:
1. Maya (Jessica Chastain), the protagonist, says at one point something along the lines of: 'I've lost a lot of friends, I feel that I've been left behind to get Osama for them'. In the context of the movie, this kind of eschatological understanding of the mission is quite clearly naive: it may be (it's not entirely clear that it is) what Maya thinks, but we are never given any kind of (with apologies) Hollywood-style implied statement that she is right.
2. CIA chief James Gandolfini asks people round a table to say, yes or no, whether they think Osama Bin Laden is in the house that he may have been tracked down to. Only Maya says, unequivocally, yes; everyone else gives generally positive numbers between 60% and 80%. James Gandolfini is naturally a little put out by this.
3. When they finally get Bin Laden, they find his archives. 'Give me ten minutes to get it all bagged up,' the head of the squad says. 'You've got four before the Pakistani airforce get there,' his commanding officer tells him over the radio. They end up leaving half the archive there.
Unless you can tie up every loose end to every question in every situation, which, given the fact that life is messy, you can't, then solutions to particular problems (from 'Where is Osama Bin Laden?' to 'What Happened Last Night?') will always be a matter of reconstructing possible paths through disorganised chaos, and if you arrive at the 'right' answer, then you are lucky. Quid est veritas, as someone once said.

It ain't over till it's over...

The Christmas presents which we sent to England on 18 December arrived there yesterday, 16 January. The delicious Christmas cake had its last hurrah this morning. Only 340-odd shopping days to go...

Ruby Bridges (1954- )

More information here.

Disconcerting Fictional Encounter of the Day

We neared our destination, The Trade Towers. Smoke still drifted near the base of the south tower, where the latest blast had occurred. Our operations were located in the north tower, as was Mister Dryden's downtown apartment. To the right of the towers, near the river's edge, stood the beginnings of the floodwall. When the possibility of the Green first showed itself, years ago, the city borrowed funds from the Old Man toward the construction of a fifty-foot wall intended to surround Manhattan. The funds were no less liquid than the waters to be fought and were mostly diverted to other campaigns. The floodwall ran only from the towers south to the Battery. Traditional American handicraft was employed in the wall's construction, and so most of it had collapsed.
Jack Womack, Ambient (1988)

Collette Renard (1924-2010)

Quel vocabulary lesson! More information here.