To Burn or Not to Burn

The pastor of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL, Terry Jones, has vowed to burn copies of the Quran on September 11 in commemoration of ninth anniversary of the attacks in New York city.

Protests have come from numerous quarters, both Muslim and non. One expects the Muslims to object to the burning of the chief text of their creed. The protests from the non-Muslims, however, are of a different stripe, and are from people all over the religious and political spectrum. What they generally share in common, however, is a manifestation of fear of Islam: they are terrified of the consequences of this act of provocation.

Keep that in mind the next time someone tells you that Christians are no different from anyone else when it comes to committing acts of violence against those who differ from them. How many Christians over the years have gone on rampages when the writings, symbols, and rituals of their faith are publicly ridiculed, mocked, and desecrated by the bigoted NEA, who provided funding for the morally reprehensible displays of Christian-haters like Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Annie Sprinkle?

On that note, I like Paul Clark's suggestion: Pastor Jones should repackage the burning of the Koran as conceptual art for an NEA grant application.

Brains on the Brain

Source

Two Johns Hopkins professors say they found one of Michelangelo’s rare anatomical drawings in a panel high on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: they maintain the artist hid a drawing of the underside of the brain and the brain stem on the neck of God.

The Brain in God's Throat?

Yeah, I couldn't see it either.

The Vatican, as near as I can make out, wasn't bothered for a comment.

Alps in Time Lapse

Astro-particle physicist and time-lapse photographer Michael Rissi of Zurich, Switzerland created some impressive time-lapse videos of the Swiss Alps.

Take a gander at http://vimeo.com/7700248

The piece is set to the second movement of Beethoven's seventh symphony, which I've long-enjoyed.

Material for a NYC Road Trip

An exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art running through August 23 looks like it's worth catching.

Titled Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages, the exhibit features 50 little-seen medieval works spanning nearly five centuries; pieces include illuminated manuscripts, illustrated plays, charts, diagrams, and maps. A New York Times review describe the works as "vital, evolving, remarkably diverse and essential to the medium’s Renaissance blossoming."

Work schedule permitting, I will have to look into a road trip to NYC some time in the next nine weeks to take this in.

Earthen Ambassadors from China

Officer

Yesterday I went to Atlanta's High Museum of Art to see a detachment from the 8,000-strong terra cotta army that stood guard for over 2,000 years in the tomb of Qin Shi Huang (259 BC – 210 BC), the first Chinese Emperor.

Terra Cotta Army at Xi'an, China

There are several types of soldiers represented in the army -- infantry, charioteers (with horses), archers, officers -- and each of the 8,000 has a unique face and head: you can see facial differences between old and young, different hairstyles, and various kinds of hats. The figures range from 6'0" to 6'5" in height -- what would have been almost mythological proportions to the people of the time. Though the figures are all a dull grayish-brown now (terra cotta is a clay-based unglazed ceramic), when first sent into active duty they were painted in a rainbow of brilliant colors.

The Shush Man

Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

On my first trip to Rome in August, 2000, one of the ports of call where I put in was the Sistine Chapel. Everyone, I think, hears about the chapel's ceiling, but somehow I had managed to miss the news that the walls themselves are covered with eye-popping art -- which is odd to me, in that most people who were in the chapel at the time treated the place as more of a museum or art gallery than a church.

On that note, there was a recording (in English, curiously) piped in over a loud speaker reminding everyone to observe silence. The reminder was necessary: most of the visitors carried on like they were at an amusement park or a museum. The only time they actually quieted down is when the little Italian man sitting in the corner let out a prolonged "SHHHHHHH!" His talent was much in demand -- I actually timed the guy -- because within 60 seconds of a given shush he was on to the next shush: the crowd, it turned out, would quiet down for just a few moments, but slowly, consistently, predictably, the whispers would give way to talking and then return to an excited din.

I didn't know what the man in the corner's official title was, so I dubbed him The Shush Man; perhaps his role is filed under some sub-category of librarian. I also wondered if the chap acquired his job through appointment, or whether it was inherited; I can imagine how he might thus declare " I am a Shush Man, my father was a Shush Man, and his father was a Shush Man..."