The Shadow Boxes of Joseph Cornell

Joseph Cornell was an American artist whose main works were boxed assemblages created from found objects. These are simple glass fronted boxes in which he arranged collections of photographs or Victorian bric a brac.

If you want to know more about Cornell I recommend “Joseph Cornell” edited by Knyaston McShine and published in 1990 by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. ISBN 3-7913-1063-1.

 

I'm offended

Apparently giving offence is now a criminal offence and giving offence to someone's religion justifies them acting violently.

Dim witted Chief Constables appear to believe that they can arrest anybody whose Facebook posting offends their delicate sensibilities.

Religious bigots appear to believe that if media in another country 'insults' their religion it is OK to kill, break and burn.

That all seems perfectly reasonable to me.

I am offended by -

1.  Jackass policemen who abuse their office and ignore our rights of free speech.

2.  Anybody who gets carried away by their favourite superstition.

3.  A really long list of  people, particularly the officious, stupid and intolerant.

I want them all punished because they are making me cry.  Fencing off Sussex as a giant prison camp should be enough to hold all the people who have come between the wind and my nobility.  I demand immediate action.

Or, I could just get a sense of proportion, shrug and get on with my life. 

Maybe I will do that. Any day that brings nothing worse than offence is a good day.

Balliol College

Each summer some Oxford colleges open to paying visitors. This summer I visited Balliol. The college was founded in 1263 and is one of the oldest Oxford colleges. Its undergraduates are politically active and Balliol  has produced several Prime Ministers.

The front of the college

Nice gardens

The tastefully furnished Junior [student] Common Room

Some elegant new buildings which blend effortlessly with the rest of the college

A formal dinner

The table for staff and their guests is at the far end

All in the best possible taste.  I was surprised not to see a coke vending machine and an ATM by High Table

Obviously the college's architectural heritage is in safe hands.

In addition to the money they get from the government Oxford college have their own funds, built up from legacies. According to Wikipedia Balliol had £64 million in 2009.

How they produce tinned grapefruit

Grapefruit

Have you ever eaten tinned grapefruit segments?

Have you ever wondered how the produced those nice clean segments?  How they peeled each grapefruit, separated the segments and removed all the pith?

They must be using some clever machinery, right?

Last night a new TV programme called Food Unwrapped on the UK's Channel Four went to a grapefruit canning factory in Swaziland to see how they really do it?

When the grapefruit arrive at the factory they are steam blanched to soften their skins. Then they go to the peeling and segmenting process.

This turned out not to involve really ingenious machinery but 250 African ladies and their fingernails.
 

The grapefruit were now segmented but still had their pith. To removed that they soaked the segments in what was described as food grade [wtf?] hydrochloric acid. This did the job but left the segments contaminated with the acid.

To get rid of the acid they then washed the grapefruit in caustic soda, another powerful corrosive.

We were told the alkaline caustic soda neutralised the hydrochloric acid and left the segments safe to eat.

Should we believe that?  Well, if I lived  in a  country with a government that took food quality and safety seriously, and the interests of its citizens carried more weight than  the bribes of food industry lobbyists, I might.

Unfortunately, the UK is not such a country and so I do not.

I wonder if the same technique of  hydrochloric acid and caustic soda washes is used to produce other tinned fruit, such as orange segments.

Pro-biotic

The second half of the programme was on the pro-biotic industry.  Where do they get the bacteria they add to products to make them pro-biotic?  I don't think many people who saw the programme will be buying pro-biotic products in the future.

General Jumbo

General Jumbo was a  comic strip character in a  in the UK comic The Beano. He was a twelve year old boy who commanded a remotely controlled model army, created for him by Professor Carter.  Jumbo uses his army for crime fighting and adventuring.

Jumbo made his first appearance in  1953 and continued until 1998. At first he was drawn by Paddy Brennan, a freelance Irish artist.  The strips are well drawn but Brennan drew Jumbo with an unfortunate facial expression. Later artists did better.  There is an archive of General Jumbo strips here.

This strip was one of my favourites but I had completely forgotten about it until reminded recently by this knowledgeable site.

Some people have pointed out the similarities between the General Jumbo strip and the more recent  'Top 10' DC comic strip in which Police Officer Robyn "Toybox" Slinger  carries a  box filled with  robotic toys built by her father.

General Jumbo was a children's comic strip My other favourite from back in the day was Jeff Hawke, a comic strip for adults which appeared in the UK's Daily Express newspaper.  I had forgotten about both but if you sit long enough by the banks of the Internet everything eventually floats by.

The Hangmans Toolbox

An Australian hangman's wooden box; used to hold all the equipment he needed to hang someone by the neck until dead. From Melbourne Old Goal. The bush ranger Ned kelly was hung in this goal.

The Worlds Best Dive Locations

Wikipedia has a page on the Seven Wonders of the World; with various lists, including a list of underwater wonders -

Northern Red Sea
Palau
Belize Barrier Reef
Great Barrier Reef
Deep-Sea Vents
Galapagos Islands
Lake Baikal

Some of these can be dived, but not all. The deep-sea vents could only be visited if you had your own submersible.

I thought I would draw up my own list of the worlds best dive locations, and came up with the following

Northern Red Sea
Palau
Coral Sea and the Yongala wreck
Underwater cave systems of the Yucatan
Scapa Flow and the German High Seas Fleet wrecks.
Truk and the Operation Hailstorm wrecks
Channel Island kelp forests off California
Blue holes of Andros



Palau and the Red Sea appear on both lists. There are wrecks at both locations but they are particularly famous for their reef life. The Red Sea around Ras Mohammed and the Straits of Tiran has incredible hard and soft corals; though those at Palau are even better.

I have already posted about Scapa Flow, Truk, Andros and kelp forests. The Coral Sea has superb marine life and incredible underwater visibility, especially when you get to the outer reefs. The Yongala is a steamship which was lost off Australia in 1911, and not found until 1958. Because it stands alone on a flat sandy seabed it has attracted an incredible range of marine life. There are lots of sea snakes, turtles and big fish.



The Yucatan and Andros are on the list because of their underwater cave systems. I think they offer the best cave diving in the world. I have posted  about cave diving at both locations.

There are two other locations which should be on the list but I only know them by reputation. They were on my to do list but I ran out of time.

Bikini Atoll and the atomic test wrecks.
Galapagos

The tallest building in Estonia

During the Soviet occupation of Estonia this building was the headquarters of the secret police in Tallin. Prisoners were kept in its cellars. It was known as the tallest building in Estonia because, it was said, you could see Siberia from its basement.

It’s a small building so I don’t think they could have had many prisoners. Unless they were running a hot bed operation and had a hourly bus service to the Gulag Archipelago. 

It was the same in Budapest. I went round the secret police headquarters there [you see my tastes] and they had a torture chamber and some of the Evil Empire stuff. However, they only had half a dozen cells, and you probably had to make an advance booking to have your fingernails removed. 

The old city in Tallinn is a world heritage site and well worth a visit. It is catching on as a tourist destination and the British stag and hen parties have already started to appear. From Tallinn it is easy to visit Helsinki [two hours by boat] and Riga [four hours by coach]. 

The newer part of Tallinn has lots of posh new skyscrapers and people look very prosperous. There is a big shopping mall in the centre and I was amazed by the quality of goods that were on sale, and how well everybody was dressed. I wish we had somewhere as good in Scotland. The Estonians seem to be doing very well for themselves; though, perhaps, not everybody is sharing in the new prosperity. I took a bus tour outside Tallinn and we went through this vast Soviet era housing estate that looked awfully bleak. If you had to live there then the prospect of being sent to Siberia probably didn’t seem so bad.

Sick of it

This is the first of what may well be many posts on things that are currently annoying me.

1.  Olympics in any shape or form.

2.  Headmasters and teachers moaning about the marking of exam results.

3.  The BBC's biased reporting on Syria. When are they going to stop broadcasting rebel press releases as if they were factual reporting? When is the BBC going to mention the plight of ordinary citizens who might not appreciate Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the USA and the UK financing a war in their neighbourhoods?