Turner Prize - Britain's Best Art

"Site-specific painter whose understated yet radical works are rooted in fine-art tradition wins judges' vote"

The yellow bits are gold leaf. That is the sole connection to 'fine art tradition'. The composition is only a quadruple mirror image of some abstract shape.

There must be a good technological trick to getting the gold leaf to stick to certain areas.

Yes, there is; it's called 'pounce' and static electricity, discovered, and used, by Giotto, etc, in the fourteenth century

What you do is make a sketch, then pin prick holes in the parts you want to separate. Then you rub chalk dust over the sketch, which goes through the holes, and forms areas you can't paint on. That's basically it, but of course, there are complications.

As Wright's paintings are frescos, applied directly to walls, there is no way he can sell the painting to someone who wants to take it home.

But can you imagine the number of wealthy sheikhs or Russian Mafiosi who would like something like this on their bathroom wall? He's got it made.

Wish I'd thought of the idea.

Morphing POTUS

Well it didn't take long for the new US president (or POTUS, which, if you say it out loud, sounds more appropriate) to morph from being everyone's darling to George Bush III.
His speech on Tuesday night at West Point, outlining 'Obama Surge 2' in Afghanistan (he's already sent 21000 extra squaddies) might have been taken, word for word, straight from GWB.

Who will be the Last Man to Die in Obama's Afghan War?

Who will be the last man to die for Obama's senseless war in Afghanistan?

Almost everyone knows that the war is unwinnable in any conventional sense, and that it's going to get worse, not better.

This photo shows just how much Obama has been cowed by his generals.If I had cropped the picture to show only the army officer, it would have been very easy to depict him as a Nazi.

Obama's visiting Arlington Cemetery on Veterans' Day, 11 November 2009.

Just under 3 weeks later, he announced a 'surge' in Afghanistan; 30,000 extra troops from the USA, and several thousand from other fragments of NATO.

No, don't ask me what the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is doing fighting local insurgents some few thousand miles from Europe and America

Something very strange happened here. I saw a related photo somewhere else very recently, and wanted to use it for this post. I searched for it on Yahoo but found that on almost all the sites mentioned, the photos had been taken down.

Maybe it shouldn't be shown in advance of Obama's trip to collect the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.

'Conus magus' ventrum 10-23mm

'Conus magus' ventrum 10-23mm

While the world is falling apart a long way away from me, I prefer to spend my time on more interesting things.

This is a series of shells I collected around here on Siargao Island. They're interesting because they are almost all half the usual adult size of this species, and very brightly coloured.

Nos 1-5 are plain pink with a narrow, fuzzy band of white around the middle. No 6 though, changes colours dramatically about halfway around the last whorl, and the rest of the series follows suit.

A certain Mr L A Reeve named this as Conus fucatus in 1849, but now it's generally credited as a juvenile of Conus magus which is normally about 50 cm (2") long.

Now, an interesting thing about shell collecting is that you don't often find juveniles. Shells appear to grow, wham! into their adult size in a single season. To get a series of youngsters like this is quite unusual.

So, why all these colourful shells around here?

US Soldier in Afghanistan

US soldier in Afghanistan
Originally uploaded by smallislander

This man's face says it all; the utter hopelessness and vacant stupidity of America's wars.

He probably doesn't really know where he is, let alone what he's supposed to be doing there. Meanwhile, he has to wear that ridiculous hat.

Not a single Afghan has attacked America (although one Afghan-American is under indictment for thinking about blowing up the New York subway).

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091202/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan
gives you all the bullshit you need to know.

Continuing the Weblog

My resolution on 17th October, to have a disciplined approach to posting, did not last long, as I predicted.

I felt it was becoming too obsessed with my own obsession with Israeli bad behaviour, which wasn't my intention at all. There are plenty of other blogs that can do that much better than I.

This is supposed to be a blog about a quiet life on a tropical island (although I do give myself room for the occasional rant).