Fairy Tales

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Which versions of fairy tales are subversive? And somebody says something nice about Disney. That's a nice change of pace.

Danville

Danville, USA & Canada

There are 14 towns in the United States called Danville, as well as 6 unincorporated communities, plus one in Quebec. Just in case you were wondering.

Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor - Trailer

Second

George Washington talking about musket balls and bullets.

 Came across the above picture on Facebook and I got to wondering when the second was invented (discovered? when people realized there was such a thing?). Ask dot com provides an answer:

The international unit of the second was first described by the Greco-Egyptian mathematician Claudius Ptolemy in his work "Almagest" around 150 C.E. He defined the second, or second-minute, as one-sixtieth of a minute.  The second was not used in timekeeping, however, until the development in the 17th century of the first mechanical clocks that could track this unit of time. Marin Mersenne, a French mathematician, developed a pendulum clock that could track one second via the pendulum's swing.

17th Century? That would be the 1600's, and a hundred years later the race of technology was in full swing.

Ptolemy (I pronounce it Tolemy, drop the P in the bit bucket), I think I've heard of him, although since they specified a first name, maybe there's more than one. Just checked, apparently no, there is only the one:

Claudius Ptolemy (circa AD 100 – c. 170) was a Greco-Egyptian writer, known as a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. - Wikipedia, more or less.

". . . poet of a single epigram . . ."? Is that even a legal construct? I would have no trouble with it if it was phrased like this:  ". . . author of a single epigram . . .". Guess I've never heard poet used that way. Still don't like it. And an 'epigram'? That's just "a short poem, especially a satirical one, having a witty or ingenious ending."

Just what was that epigram? Here you go, courtesy J J O'Connor and E F Robertson:

Well do I know that I am mortal, a creature of one day.
But if my mind follows the winding paths of the stars
Then my feet no longer rest on earth, but standing by
Zeus himself I take my fill of ambrosia, the divine dish.

P.S. Phrase in full swing "in total effect or operation" (1560s) perhaps is from bell-ringing. - Online Etymology Dictionary

Black Widow

Adam West as Batman & Tallulah Bankhead as Black Widow,
in episode 56, Caught in the Spider's Den, of the Batman television series from 1967.
Tallulah was born in 1902 so she is 65 in this picture.
She died the next year asking for codeine and bourbon.

I recognized the name, but I couldn't place her, so I did a little checking. Seems she was fairly notorious in her day. Inspired by Dustbury

Pic of the Day

Giant statue of a man. Coney Island, NYC, ca 1960.

Picture showed up on the YouTube tune Mister Glenn by Little Willie John. The tune's title refers to John Glenn, the astronaut, so you might think this is a statue of an astronaut. A Google Image Search turns up several other instances of this pic, and they all refer to it as an astronaut or spaceman.

    I think it's a welder. The helmet looks like an arc welder's face mask. His arms are bare, which would be a bad thing if you were a spaceman. It's also a bad thing if you are an arc welder, but then that shirt doesn't look very substantial, so maybe he puts on a jacket when he goes to work. Baring his arms lets the girls see how strong he is. This is Coney Island after all, so entertainment is the highest priority. I don't know what the wire (or tube) running into his helmet is. Could be fresh air, arc welding produces fumes, and down in the bottom of a ship they could accumulate. Or it might be an intercom, though I find that unlikely.

   It's nice of the shoe shine boy to pose for the picture. It gives us a sense of scale. I'm thinking the statue is about 30 feet tall.

Update December 7, 2015. Debra Jane Seltzer of Roadside Architecture dot com was kind enough to reply to my inquiry:

I describe this statue at the top of this page:http://www.roadarch.com/giants/ifother2.html
While the helmet is similar to one worn by a welder, International Fiberglass did not market "Welders" in its catalog materials -- but they did list "Spacemen."

A welder's mask only covers the face, it is not a complete helmet. You can't tell from this picture, but from the pics on this page you can see it's a full helmet. Debra also has

• a page on flickr with more photos of roadside Americana. and 
• a blog where she posts some of her recent acquisitions.

P.S. Roberta X identifies it as 'Muffler Man'. Muffler men weld, so it could be 'welder man' as well as 'space man'. Just don't get to persnickety about the helmet.

Bugatti, Star Wars Edition

Bugatti

Looks like spaceship styling of supercars is back in fashion. Found this in an article about the deep doo-doo VW is in because they lied about their diesel engines. Seems that might have to sell off some branches of their conglomerate.

First up on the chopping block would be MAN, the division that supplies ship engines, gear units, propulsion systems, and other industry components that’s worth between $4 and $5 billion euros, the report said. But an unnamed source (our favorite kind) also said, “Volkswagen may also consider divesting luxury car brands Bentley and Lamborghini or motor bike brand Ducati, although these units don’t really move the needle.”

Which prompted me to wonder just how much the Bugatti company is worth, whereupon I came across this line:

I wondered the same thing until my good friend, a professional racing driver, pointed out to me that Ferrari really isn't a car company, it is a licensing company.  That's how it makes sense that they spend roughly 400b Euro in Formula 1 and only sell 7,000 cars per year.  They make as much or more licensing the Ferrari brand to leather jackets ($1,000), shoes ($480), watches ($475 for a heritage) as they do selling cars.  Bugatti and Lambo are "halo" projects for their parent brands. - Kian Sandjideh

Via Posthip Scott.