Carole Estrup’s newest painting features, as always, fervent people in action. Whatever sound the figures respond to, they do it with abandon and beauty. The painting was suggested by a Yo-Yo Ma comment – that music is the language of sound. Certainly it is one of them. Carole’s visual is another.
The Vocabulary of Sound
More of Carole’s striking work can be seen on her website, Carole Estrup Gallery & Bookstore.
Add comment August 18th, 2010
Some extra-large extra-terrestrial must have found this mitten too hot
to handle. Yet another in the never ending space oddities and natural sculptures.
Venus on a cold day
Thanks to Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Add comment August 1st, 2010
From Wisconsin comes this trendy new living idea. Called the E.D.G.E (Experimental Dwelling for a Greener Environment) by its designer (Revelations Architects/Builders Corporation) it is a 2 bedroom, 320 square foot, passive solar home perfect for today’s much smaller, less ostentatious families who are very conscious of cost, maintenance and time.
Add comment July 28th, 2010
Before you proudly go posting photos of your Ming vase online, you should be aware that computer-savvy burglars can likely use that photo to find out where you live. The same goes for photos or videos of your kids, yourself, or anything else that you don’t want strangers knowing how to locate. The practice of tracking people via their posted images is an example of “cybercasing”, and is possible because many digital cameras and smart phones, including the iPhone, automatically geotag their images by embedding the longitude and latitude at which they were taken. Even when uploaded to a website, the images still retain this information. By plugging the coordinates into a service like Google Street View, getting an address or an identifying landmark is entirely possible.
This disturbing fact was recently announced in a report published by the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI). Researchers Gerald Friedland and Robin Sommer wrote that they successfully obtained the home addresses of people who had posted photos in ads on Craigslist, despite those people having opted to keep their addresses hidden in their postings.
Creepier still, they were also able to obtain addresses where home videos of children had been shot, by searching under the tag “kids” on YouTube. They then proceeded to search for recent videos from those same users, that had been shot over 1,000 miles away. Within 15 minutes, they were able to determine that 13 of these video posters were likely still away on vacation, leaving their homes available for burglary.
While iPhones do geotag by default, it is possible to turn the feature off. The folks over at I Can Stalk U (they’re against stalking, not in favor of it) can show you how. For other phones and cameras, a Googling or a look through your user’s manual should tell you what you need to know.
Many thanks to GizMag.com for this info/notice
Add comment July 26th, 2010
Paul Ridden’s fine article about Spain’s Solar Decathlon covers an antaean
line of entries, from the earthbound to what might be a wormhole, the FabLabHouse. All of the entries must be totally solar powered in order to qualify and most of them would not seem out of place in any neighborhood.
Ridden supplies 21 photos with his report. You are invited to see them
Solar Decathlon Europe.
Originally posted by Gizmag.com
Add comment July 17th, 2010
NASA recently published this piece of art.
Is it a tattoo artist’s odd rendering on human flesh? A faded pumpkin awaiting a carving knife? An alien civilization’s long awaited message of hope and salvation? Does someone spy a French imperial symbol amongst the graffiti? Is that proof of some Halloween religious conspiracy?
Actually, the markings are caused by dust-devils roving the ever-changing sands of Mars.
Shall we liken them to the shapes carved long ago by South American indians on the sands of the Alti-plano, or simply marvel at nature’s creative impulses?
What do you think?
Add comment October 24th, 2009
Neville Mars has shown us a wonderful concept which creates electric power, charges hybrid-electric cars and shades the hotest, some say ugliest parts of our cities. His Solar Forest, animated by Burb.tv makes it easier to cool buildings and saves both money and energy, as well as provides a carbon neutral ‘factory’. It pleases the eye and sense of order. If we simply have to have parking lots, this is the way to go.
From the air these forest-parks, along with the millions of solar rooftops, will display a shining symbol of a renewable future.
Perhaps Mr. Mars will now turn his attention to designing a drop-in, fully self-contained ‘earth-ship’ replacement for all of those eyesore swimming pools, and someone will figure out what to do with the thousands of golf courses which demand so much water and pollute the present and future. Perhaps we should simply let the tree lines take over and have a real forest.
War Stories for My Grandchildren – a memoir
by H. F. Jansen Estrup
Ask for it at your favorite bookstore or local library
Add comment August 6th, 2009
As a hybrid-electric two-seater, three wheeled transport, the Aptera can cruise freeways at 80mph and get an estimated 300 miles per gallon. The plug-in version gets 100 miles per charge. Both have a drag co-efficiency of 0.15 which enables this ‘earthbound bird’ to flow through the air. Yet even though Aptera seems to mean ‘wingless bird’, it does sport gullwing doors and its cast ‘egg’ shape is re-enforced with steel beams. Passengers are protected by standard air bags and air-conditioning and heat. In California it is permitted to drive in the fast lane without passengers, a sight certain to grab attention of the bumper-to-bumber crowd.
Aptera’s design team is led by Steve Fambro of Southern California and his vision is currently in production. Pricing for the Aptera begins at $25,000 and it is eligible for the current rebates. Reserve your own "2e" for $500 (refundable).
I imagine this piece of art would look just as stunning in your driveway as on city streets or Jay Leno’s garage (check out his endorsement).
Add comment May 30th, 2009
Radiocarbon dating indicates the figure excavated from an archaeological dig in southern Germany, near the Danube valley, was at least 35,000 years old, the researchers said.
“The discovery predates the well-known Venuses from the Gravettian culture by at least 5,000 years and radically changes our views of the context and meaning of the earliest Palaeolithic art,” Conard wrote.
“Before this discovery … female imagery was entirely unknown.”
The figurine’s enlarged breasts, bloated belly and thighs also make clear that sexual symbolism was alive and well tens of thousand of years ago, Paul Mellars of the University of Cambridge, wrote in a commentary.
“The feature of the newly discovered figure that will undoubtedly command most attention is its explicitly, almost aggressively, sexual nature, focused on the sexual characteristics of the female form,” he wrote.
“Whichever way one views these representations, it is clear that the sexually symbolic dimension in European (and indeed worldwide) art has a long ancestry in the evolution of our species.”
(Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Julie Steenhuysen)
Add comment May 13th, 2009
Artis Laine’s sculpture of Sojourner Truth was unveiled yesterday in the U.S. Capitol, the first black female to be so honored. After more than two centuries, millions of Americans say, “It is about time!” See the rest of the story in
Add comment April 29th, 2009
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