January 6, 2011
Palladium [puh-ley-dee-uhm] is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pd and an atomic number of 46. Palladium is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal that was discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston, who named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was named after the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, acquired by her when she slew Pallas.
Palladium, along with platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium and osmium form a group of elements referred to as the platinum group metals (PGMs). Platinum group metals share similar chemical properties, but palladium has the lowest melting point and is the least dense of these precious metals.
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January 6, 2011
A hallmark is an official mark or series of marks struck on items made of precious metals — platinum, gold, silver and in some nations, palladium. In a more general sense, the term hallmark can also be used to refer to any distinguishing characteristic or trait Historically, hallmarks were applied by a trusted party: the ‘guardians of the craft’ or nowadays by an assay office.
Hallmarks are a guarantee of certain purity or fineness of the metal as determined by formal metal (assay) testing. Hallmarks are often confused with ‘trademarks’ or ‘maker’s mark.’ Hallmarks are an official mark of guaranteed metal content, trademarks are the mark of a manufacturer to distinguish his products from other manufacturers’ products.
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January 6, 2011
The MGB is a sports car launched by MG Cars in 1962 to replace the MGA and manufactured until 1980. The MGB was a relatively modern design at the time of its introduction. It utilized a monocoque structure that reduced both weight and manufacturing costs as well as adding chassis strength. This was a considerable improvement on traditional body-on-frame construction. The MGB’s performance was brisk for the period, with a 0–60 mph time of just over 11 seconds, aided by the relatively light weight of the car. Handling was one of the MGB’s strong points. The 3-bearing 1798 cc B-Series engine produced 95 hp (71 kW) at 5,400 rpm.
In 1974, as US air pollution emission standards became more rigorous, US-market MGBs were de-tuned for compliance. As well as a marked reduction in performance, the MGB gained an inch in ride height and the distinctive rubber bumpers which came to replace the chrome for all markets. Nearly half million MGBs were produced and about a third of them remain today (on the roads and garages of their owners). With plenty of cars available and a large supply of reasonably priced parts, MGBs are very inexpensive cars. Prices fluctuate depending of year and condition, early chrome-bumper cars and MGB GTs carrying a premium.
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January 6, 2011
Hammacher Schlemmer is a retailer and mail order dealer founded in 1848. They claim to be the oldest continuously published catalog in the United States, with annual catalog circulation exceeding 30 million.
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January 6, 2011
Herbert Vogel (b. 1922) and Dorothy Vogel (b. 1935) are American art collectors. Herbert worked as a clerk for the United States Postal Service. Dorothy was a librarian employed by the Brooklyn Public Library. Together they built a large and impressive contemporary art collection on their modest income. Though their focus is conceptual art and minimalist art, the collection also includes noteworthy post-minimalist work.
They amassed a collection of over 4,782 works, which they kept in their New York City apartment. In 1992, they decided to transfer the entire collection to the National Gallery of Art. More recently, in late 2008, they launched The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States along with the National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The program will donate 2,500 works to 50 institutions across 50 states and will be accompanied by a book with the same name.
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January 6, 2011
The tomacco is a hybrid of tomato and tobacco plants first described in a 1959 ‘Scientific American’ article. Both plants are members of the same family, Solanaceae or nightshade. The name ‘tomacco’ was given to the plant by Homer Simpson in a 1999 episode of ‘The Simpsons.’ Homer accidentally created it when he planted and fertilized his tomato and tobacco fields with plutonium. The result is a tomato that apparently has a dried, brown tobacco center, and, although being described as tasting terrible by many characters, is also immediately and powerfully addictive.
A Simpsons fan, Rob Baur of Lake Oswego, Oregon, was inspired by the episode. Remembering the article in a textbook, Baur cultivated real tomacco in 2003. The plant produced offspring that looked like a normal tomato, but Baur suspected that it contained a lethal amount of nicotine and thus would be inedible. The tomacco plant bore tomaccoes until it died after 18 months, spending one winter indoors. Baur was featured on audio commentary in the Simpsons Season 11 DVD box set discussing the plant and resulting fame.
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January 5, 2011
Guerrillero Heroico (‘Heroic Guerrilla’) is an iconic photo of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara taken by Alberto Korda. It was taken on March 5, 1960, in Havana, Cuba, at a memorial service for victims of the La Coubre explosion and by the end of the 1960s turned the charismatic and controversial leader into a cultural icon. Korda has said that at the moment he shot the picture, he was drawn to Guevara’s facial expression, which showed ‘absolute implacability’ as well as anger and pain. Guevara was 31 at the time the photo was taken.
Versions of it have been painted, printed, digitized, embroidered, tattooed, silk-screened, sculpted or sketched on nearly every surface imaginable, leading the Victoria and Albert Museum to say that the photo has been reproduced more than any other image in photography.
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January 5, 2011
Shepard Fairey (b. 1970) is a contemporary artist, graphic designer, and illustrator who emerged from the American skateboarding scene. He first became known for his ‘André the Giant Has a Posse’ (…OBEY…) sticker campaign, in which he appropriated images from the comedic supermarket tabloid ‘Weekly World News.’ His work became more widely known in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, specifically his Barack Obama ‘HOPE’ poster.
Fairey’s first art museum exhibition, titled ‘Supply & Demand’ like his earlier book, was in Boston at the Institute of Contemporary Art in the summer of 2009. The exhibition featured over 250 works in a wide variety of media: screen prints, stencils, stickers, rubylith illustrations, collages, and works on wood, metal and canvas. As a complement to the ICA exhibition, Fairey created public art works around Boston. The artist explains his driving motivation: ‘The real message behind most of my work is ‘question everything.”
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January 5, 2011
Andre the Giant Has a Posse is a street art campaign based on a design by Shepard Fairey created in 1989 in Providence, Rhode Island. Distributed by the skater community, the Andre stickers began showing up in many cities across the U.S. Over time the artwork has been reused in a number of ways and spread worldwide, following in the footsteps of World War II icon ‘Kilroy Was Here.’
Threat of a lawsuit from Titan Sports, Inc. in 1994 spurred Fairey to stop using the trademarked name ‘André the Giant,’ and to create a more styled image of the wrestler’s face, now most often with the equally iconic branding OBEY. Continue reading →
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January 5, 2011
They Live is a 1988 film directed by John Carpenter, who also wrote the screenplay under the pseudonym Frank Armitage. The film is based on Ray Nelson’s 1963 short story ‘Eight O’Clock in the Morning.’ Part science fiction horror and part dark comedy, the film echoed contemporary fears of a declining economy, within a culture of greed and conspicuous consumption common among Americans in the 1980s.
In They Live, the ruling class within the moneyed elite are in fact aliens managing human social affairs through the use of a signal on top of the TV broadcast that is concealing their appearance and subliminal messages in mass media. The story revolves around a nameless man referred to as Nada (Roddy Piper), a quiet drifter who finds an unusual pair of sunglasses that allow him to see the aliens and their subliminal messages.
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January 5, 2011
Heiligenschein [hahy-li-guhn-shahyn] (German for ‘aureola,’ literally ‘Holy shine’) is an optical phenomenon which creates a bright spot around the shadow of the viewer’s head. It is created when the surface on which the shadow falls has special optical characteristics. Dewy grass is known to exhibit these characteristics, and creates a heiligenschein. Nearly spherical dew droplets act as lenses to focus the light on the surface beneath them. Some of this light ‘backscatters’ in the direction of the sunlight as it passes back through the dew droplet. This makes the antisolar point appear the brightest.
The opposition effect creates a similar halo effect, a bright spot of light around the viewer’s head when the viewer is looking in the opposite direction of the sun, but is instead caused by shadows being hidden by the objects casting them. When viewing the Heiligenschein, there are no colored rings around the shadow of the observer, as in the case of a glory. In the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee, this was the word which eliminated crowd and national favorite Rajiv Tarigopula and elicited the audience to give him a standing ovation for receiving 4th place for the second consecutive year in a show of immense respect.
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January 5, 2011
Déjà vu (‘already seen’) is the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined. The term was coined by a French psychic researcher, Émile Boirac (1851–1917). The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of eeriness or strangeness.
It is difficult to evoke the déjà vu experience in laboratory settings, therefore making it a subject of few empirical studies. Certain researchers claim to have found ways to recreate this sensation using hypnosis. Déjà vu is is thought to be an anomaly of memory. In particular, it may result from an overlap between the neurological systems responsible for short-term memory and those responsible for long-term memory (events which are perceived as being in the past). The events would be stored into memory before the conscious part of the brain even receives the information and processes it.
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