Exsanguination

Sunday, 2 April 2017

TPS

Some sprouting potatoes I’d left too long in the depths of my pantry were eventually discovered and ended-up in the compost bin, where they grew prolifically. They flowered and produced fruit very similar to unripe tomatoes. It was the first time I’d seen such a thing and it lead me on an amazing journey of discovery I wanted to share with others who (as I was until very recently) might not be familiar with Solanum, TPS, and Solanaceae alkaloids.

According to Joseph Lofthouse, a man who strikes me as being both pragmatic and a learned survivalist (and with regards to this post, seed propagator), “Potato seeds are harvested from potato fruits. The pollinated seeds are called "True Potato Seed" (TPS) to differentiate them from "seed potatoes" which are genetically identical clones of a tuber.”

Landrace Gardening: True Potato Seeds (Joseph Lofthouse, Courtesy of Mother Earth News)
http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/potato-seeds-zbcz1307

What fruit is growing on my potato plants? (Michigan State University)
http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/what_are_those_fruit_growing_on_my_potato_plants

What is a Potato Fruit; From the Ground Up (University of Wyoming)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlUruv7xjeA

The Wiki lowdown (boom! You know it);
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_fruit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato

Digressing here;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanaceae

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solanum_species

Edible Solanaceae (L-R: Tomato (Solanum Lycopersicum), Aubergine/Eggplant (Solanum Melongena), Potato (Solanum Tuberosum) - being the odd one out because its tubers are edible, rather than its fruit)

Nightshades (L-R: Black Nightshade (Solanum Nigrum), Brazilian Nightshade (Solanum Seaforthianum), Bittersweet/Woody Nightshade (Solanum Dulcamara)

Some interesting plants belonging to the Solanaceae family include;

Peppers (27 species)
Genus: Capsicum - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsicum
Example: Bonnet Pepper (Capsicum chinense) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsicum_chinense

Tobacco (10 species)
Genus: Nicotiana - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotiana
Example: (Nicotiana tabacum) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotiana_tabacum

Nightshade (5 Species)
Genus: Atropa - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropa
Example: Deadly Nightshade (Atropa Belladonna) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropa_belladonna

Mandrake (5 species)
Genus: Mandragora - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandragora_(genus)
Example: (Mandragora officinarum) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandragora_officinarum

Datura (9 species)
Genus: Datura - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura
Example: Jimsonweed (Datura stramonium) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_stramonium

Henbane (11 species)
Genus: Hyoscyamus - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyoscyamus
Example: Black Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyoscyamus_niger

Monday, 20 February 2017

Imitation; The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Some covers that appeal to me.
Sorry the video links aren't that great (most videos posted on YouTube are live versions), but I think studio versions are more representative of cover intent, so I've opted for them. Close your eyes and soak in the audio goodness :o)

The House of the Rising Sun

Cover - The White Buffalo (Album: ? Sons of Anarchy, Season 4 Soundtrack)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scTqpfL9WMA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Buffalo_(band)

(Best recognised) Original - Animals (Album: The House of the Rising Sun [Single], 1964)
* The oldest known recording of this song is by artists Clarence Ashley and Gwen Foster, 1933.
It has been extensively covered; The Platters, The Doors, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Eagles, Sinead O'Connor, The White Stripes, Courtney Love, and many more artists...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A-4VGfx5lU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Animals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_the_Rising_Sun

Hurt

Johnny Cash - Hurt (Album: American IV: The Man Comes Around, 2002)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt1Pwfnh5pc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cash

Original - Nine Inch Nails (Album: The Downward Spiral, 1994)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPz21cDK7dg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Inch_Nails
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurt_(Nine_Inch_Nails_song)

Wednesday, 18 January 2017

Dem Bones; Churches, Chapels, Ossuaries

Mankind's compulsion for collection and organisation has always fascinated me.
Here are a few examples of creative collections utilising corporeal leftovers...

Kaplica Czaszek (Skull Chapel) - Saint Bartholomew's Church
Czermna, Poland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Chapel,_Czermna

Capela dos Ossos (Chapel of Bones)
Evora, Portugal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capela_dos_Ossos

Convento de San Francisco (Saint Francis Monastery)
Lima, Peru
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monastery_of_San_Francisco,_Lima

Kostnice v Sedlci (Sedlec Ossuary)
Kutná Hora, Czech Republic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary
https://imagesofatourist.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/sedlec-ossuary-kutna-hora-czech-republic/

Kostnice v Mělníku (Mělník Ossuary) - Kostel sv. Petra a Pavla (Saint Peter and Paul's Church)
Mělník, Czech Republic
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/melnik-chapel-bones

Cripta de los Capuchinos - Chiesa di Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini (Church of Our Lady of the Conception of the Capuchins)
Rome, Italy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_della_Concezione_dei_Cappuccini
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capuchin_Crypt

Dem Bones Books;
http://empiredelamort.com/the-book/

Friday, 9 December 2016

Gibran Kahlil Gibran (جبران خليل جبران)

Though he considered himself to be mainly a painter, living most of his life in the United States, and writing his best-known works in English, Kahlil Gibran was the key figure in a Romantic movement that transformed Arabic literature in the first half of the twentieth century. Educated in Beirut, Boston, and Paris, Gibran was influenced by the European modernists of the late nineteenth century. His early works were sketches, short stories, poems, and prose poems written in simple language for Arabic newspapers in the United States. These pieces spoke to the experiences and loneliness of Syrian immigrants in the New World. For Arab readers accustomed to the rich but difficult and rigid tradition of Arabic poetry and literary prose, many of the forms and conventions of which went back to pre-Islamic Bedouin poetry, Gibran’s simple and direct style was a revelation and an inspiration. His themes of alienation, disruption, and lost rural beauty and security in a modernizing world also resonated with the experiences of his readers. He quickly found admirers and imitators among Arabic writers, and his reputation as a central figure of Arabic literary modernism has never been challenged.

Gibran’s reputation in the English-speaking world, on the other hand, has been mixed. His works have been hugely popular, making him the best-selling American poet of the twentieth century, but that enthusiasm has not been shared by critics. His paintings and drawings of sinuous idealized nudes belong to symbolism and art nouveau and are, thus, a survival of a tradition rejected both by American realists and European abstractionists. His English books—most notably, The Prophet (1923), with its earnest didactic romanticism—found no favor with critics whose models were the cool intellectualism of James Joyce and T. S. Eliot or the gritty realism of Ernest Hemingway. As a result, Gibran has been dismissed as a popular sentimentalist by American critics and historians of art and of literature. There are signs that this situation is changing, at least on the literary side, as critics become more sensitive to the characteristics of immigrant writing.

My father introduced me to Kahlil when I was in my early twenties when he gave me a copy of 'The Prophet' (which I have retained to this day). One particular poem made a huge impact on me and my outlook on life. It spoke to me of (return on) investment in life and in particular, of people that are so scared of being hurt, that they invest nothing; they just sit on the fence...

On Joy & Sorrow
Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

I didn't know he was a painter until I took the time to research his journey through this life. To me, he will always be foremost a poet (with incredible insight), but I thought it appropriate to include some of his artwork considering how he viewed himself;

The Man;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahlil_Gibran
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/kahlil-gibran

The Book;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prophet_(book)

The Paintings;
http://inner-growth.info/khalil_gibran_prophet/html/galleries/gibran_gallery1.htm

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

'A vision in a dream, a fragment'

Thus Samuel Taylor Coleridge described 'Kubla Khan'. This mysterious and magical work may never have seen the light of day but for the intervention of Lord Byron, whose request to Coleridge resulted in the poem's publication in June 1816. Coleridge had always seen it as "a psychological curiosity" and indeed it is, but such a profoundly pagan and ravishingly beautiful one that, like much of the poet's work, its lines still have the power to mesmerise the psyche of the English speaking world.

'Kubla Khan' is an opium dream, partially recalled. In Coleridge's own words:
"This fragment with a good deal more, not recoverable, composed, in a sort of Revery brought on by two grains of Opium taken to check a dysentry, at a Farm House between Porlock and Linton, a quarter of a mile from Culbone Church, in the fall of the year, 1797."

And again, this time the author speaking in the third person:
"An anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas's Pilgrimage (a contemporary travel book much read by Coleridge). 'Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.' "

For the sake of accuracy, the actual quotation from Purchas's Pilgrimage reads as follows: "In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteene miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant Springs, delightfull Streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the midst thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure, which may be removed from place to place. Here he doth abide..."

For three hours or so, his imagination fired not only by the words of Purchas, but by many other literary and travel book sources, Coleridge dreamed of two to three hundred lines of poetic images that "rose up before him as things" and when he awoke, he started to write them down. Incredibly, he was called out "by a person on business from Porlock" and on his return to his room Coleridge found he could remember little else of the dream vision.

The poem mixes images from Purchas's Pilgrimage with hints of ancient and archetypal rituals and concepts, all ordered in the kaleidoscopic manner of dreams. The River Nile (is it Alph, the sacred river?), the Empire of the Mongols, the temples of India, all combine in a sensuous vision of pagan pleasures and fertility rites - a perfect subject for expression through dance, music and the magical words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This then, is what he remembered...

Xanadu / Kubla Khan
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea...

About the man;
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43991
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge

About his addiction;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleridge_and_opium

About the poem;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubla_Khan

Sunday, 4 December 2016

Leonardo Bonacci

In the 12th century, Leonardo Bonacci (a.k.a. Leonardo of Pisa, Leonardo Pisano Bigollo, Leonardo Fibonacci) wrote in Liber Abaci of a simple numerical sequence that is the foundation for an incredible mathematical relationship behind phi. This sequence was known as early as the 6th century AD by Indian mathematicians, but it was Fibonacci who introduced it to the west after his travels throughout the Mediterranean world and North Africa.
Starting with 0 and 1, each new number in the sequence is simply the sum of the two before it.

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, ...

The ratio of each successive pair of numbers in the sequence approximates phi (1.618...), as 5 divided by 3 is 1.666..., and 8 divided by 5 is 1.60.

No need to get overly stressed-out with mathematics, irrational numbers and such. Soak in some visual goodness;

The Golden Ratio in Nature by Cristobal Vila:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp6D-xhJr4A

Fibonacci, PHI, World's most mysterious number, Golden number (crap resolution, but highly educational):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03uC9bhX0Rc

I intend to highlight Mr. Da Vinci in another entry, but I couldn't resist Lisa when it came to this topic.

More food for thought;

15 Uncanny examples of the Golden Ratio in Nature:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5985588/15-uncanny-examples-of-the-golden-ratio-in-nature

Nature, The Golden Ratio, and Fibonacci too:

https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/nature-golden-ratio-fibonacci.html

Wiki goodness:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci

Super math nuts only:

http://www.friesian.com/golden.htm

Maurits Cornelis Escher

A brilliant artist and mathematician. Serendipitously he entered my life age eleven; blessed at an early age you could say.
Truthfully, I cannot decide which medium I prefer his works in (woodcuts, lithographs, etchings, sculptures), but the medium is of no importance really. What he saw in his mind's eye and managed one way or the other to convey to us normal folk is important.

Hard to know where to begin with really.
Hmm, what about... Tessellation;

For Dummies (like me): http://mathforum.org/sum95/suzanne/whattess.html
For Boffins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessellation

Transmogrification;

Perspective Exploration (saved the best for last);

Should you be interested in learning more about Mr. Escher;

Official website: http://www.mcescher.com/gallery/
Wiki goodness (oh yeah): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._C._Escher