Slave Sculpture

Head of a black man holding up the tomb of Doge Giovanni Pesaro, designed by Baldassare Longhena, 1665-69. In the defence of Candia (modern Herakleion), the Venetians defeated the Ottomans at sea and African galley slaves were among their prisoners. Basilica of the Frari

The image comes from JMSmith, who took the photo in Venice. The caption comes from a book review of  Monumenti dei Dogi: sei secoli di scultura a Venezia in The Art Newspaper. The images are different, but I am certain they are of both photos of the same sculpture. The book is in Italian, costs about 70 Euros and is available from Amazon. Another book also has a picture of this same sculpture.

Munitions & Rules

The FAL in Cuba: Left Arm of the Communist World?
Forgotten Weapons

I'm a bit of a sucker for FAL automatic rifles. While I do like the way they look, I think I like them because they are exotic, as in I have never seen one in person.

At the end of the video Ian is going to demonstrate shooting one of these rifles in full-automatic mode, but he can't show us because of YouTube's rules. I would kind of like to see that because Ian is not a big guy and the FAL shoots a 308 cartridge, which is substantial.

Then we have this video by Demolition Ranch where he was demonstrating just what kind of things YouTube allowed regarding automatic weapons:

Youtube Legal Gun Content...
DemolitionRanch

Okay, YouTube has rules, the government has rules and your friends have their own rules. Rules change. I'm not too worried about the rules.

Anyway, the business about the freighter blowing up in Havana harbor piqued my interest. Another case where the CIA might have been sticking their fingers in. Nice thing about explosions, any evidence pretty much gets obliterated.

La Coubre explosion 4 March 1960

On the page with the image I found this block explaining the rules governing the inclusion of this photo. Awful lot of legalese.

Licensing

	This work was created in Cuba and is now in the public domain because its term of copyright has expired. According to Cuban law #14 and subsequent amendments, copyright terms in Cuba are the following:
Type of material Copyright has expired in Cuba if... Copyright has expired in the US if...¹ Photographs Used more than 25 years ago First published in Cuba without compliance with US copyright formalities and used in Cuba before February 20, 1972 Anonymous works (not photographs) Used more than 50 years ago First published in Cuba without compliance with US copyright formalities and used in Cuba before February 20, 1947 Corporate and government works Never (perpetual copyright) Published before 1929 (95 years ago) All other works More than 50 years has passed since the 1st of January following the death of the author a) Published in Cuba without compliance with US copyright formalities, author died before 1947 or b) Published before 1929 (95 years ago)
Note 1: For a file to be hosted on Wikimedia Commons, it must be in the public domain in both Cuba and the United States.
¹ For a work to be public domain in the United States, its copyright must have expired in Cuba before Cuba joined the Berne Convention on February 20, 1997.
Note 2: Notwithstanding the conditions set above, the state of Cuba may decide to transfer to the state the copyright on works when the copyright term for the creator of it has expired, as set by the 48º article of Cuban Copyright law. Such works would not be free of copyright, and may be deleted at any time. English ∙ Español ∙ 日本語 ∙ русский ∙ 中文（简体） ∙ 中文（繁體） ∙ +/−

Greenland Mega-Tsunami

Greenland Mega-Tsunami Breakthrough - Explained
Dr Ben Miles

Too cool.

Dickson Fjord

Wikipedia entry

Broadcast Tower Strobe Lights

Broadcast Towers on Mt. Suappoa, Phoenix, Arizona

RobertaX tells an entertaining story about strobe lights and acorns.

Via Tam

Home Theater

This may not interest anyone, but after screwing around for most of day with this mess I thought I better make some notes.

We are still decompressing from the big remodel project. We moved into the basement while the upstairs was being remodeled. This resulted in all kinds of stuff being squirreled away into all kinds of corners.

One of the things that got squirreled away was the Wireless surround speakers for the Panasonic Home Theater Sound System. I came across them this week and set them up. Everything seems copasetic, the pilot light changes from red to green, but I'm not getting any sound. Start investigating and find that I'm not getting any sound from any of the speakers. All the sound we're getting is from the speakers in the TV. Huh. Either those speakers are very good or maybe they're just good enough for us.

Well, if we've got this sound system, it ought to be working, so I set to work sorting things out.

There were only three cables plugged into the back of the TV: one power line and two signal (HDMI) cables. One goes to the ROKU box and one goes to an HDMI switch. If we're using the ROKU there's no path for the audio to get to the Sound System, so I needed to add a pair of audio cables. The audio cables I found included a third cable with yellow plugs for video. Plug that one in and nothing works. Fine, just the two audio cables then.

After much mucking around, I think I have it all sorted. We have 5 remote controls

1. ROKU
2. HDMI Switch
3. TV
4. Panasonic DVD Changer and Home Theater Sound System
5. LG Blue Ray Player

We can watch:

• Netflix vid ROKU
• DVDs using the Panasonic Changer
• BlueRay disks using the LG Player

The HDMI Switch has 5 channels:

1. Not in use
2. Not in use
3. Panasonic DVD Changer and Home Theater Sound System
4. LG Blue Ray Player
5. Not in use

To get Home Theater to listen to the signal coming in over the audio input jacks, you need to switch the TV to AUX. On the TV remote control, use the TV/VIDEO button just to the left of the MENU button which is just above the big round tilt-o-whirl cursor keys. If you try and use the Home Theater System for anything besides just audio, it will get confused and refuse to listen to the audio signal. Pressing the button on TV remote seems to get it unstuck, even though it is not connected. 

Well, I guess 'connected' doesn't mean what I think it means. The DVD player is plugged in the HDMI switch and the switch is plugged into the TV, so I supposed there could be some feedback signals running from the TV back to the player even though the switch has been changed to connect the LG player.

If we are just watching something from ROKU, we only need two remotes: the one for the ROKU for video play functions, and the Home Theater one for volume control. Maybe I should look for a fancy one that could replace all of these.

Random Car Thoughts

1. They finished the Jackson School Road Project a couple of years ago so now we have a nice new asphalt road. You might think that this new road would be nice and smooth, and it is, sort of, but it's not perfect. At first I was thinking that the paving company had just done a sloppy job, but now I'm wondering if maybe they didn't make it a little wavy to give people some idea of how fast they are going. After all, it is a residential street with kids and cross walks and driveways.

2. You might have noticed that car makers have started adding power opening to the rear lift doors on the back of SUVs. My first thought was it was needless extravagance, but then I started noticing how dirty the back of our SUV was, and putting my hand on that door to close it meant getting my hand dirty.

 
Back in the day when I was wearing blue jeans and doing real work a little bit of dust like that wouldn't bother me. If it was bad enough I would just wipe my hands off on my jeans. But evidently in my old age I have gotten particular. 

Our SUV has cutout in the bottom edge of the rear lift door that you can use to close the lift gate, but it's a little awkward. You have to give it enough of a push to give the door enough momentum for the door to close and latch, but you only have a couple of feet to do that before the angle of the dangle makes it too awkward to push. 

So maybe the power lift gates were added just so people don't have to get their hands dirty closing that rear lift gate. Yes, you could wash your car, but some places the back of your car gets dirty in hurry. You'd have to carry a bucket of water with you so you could wash off the dirt every time you wanted to close the gate, and that would be annoying.

Charles Cottar & the Savage .250-3000

1919 Savage Rifle Advertisement

Body of text:

CHARLES COTTAR'S SURPRISE AT THE .250-3000

Is anything much harder to kill than the rhinoceros? His temper is bad, his skin is inches thick, and he weighs close to a ton. He charges on sight, and he will hunt a man as a terrier does a rat.

    Mr. Cottar has killed a number of charging rhino with his little .250-3000 Savage rifle. He has learned to expect it to kill them.

    But when he killed one that ran away-killed it with one shot-striking in the ham and ranging clear forward through the lungs at 175 yards he was really surprised. He didn't think any rifle could do that. 

    Mr. Cottar has been killing leopard, lion, rhino, hippo and elephant with the 250-3000 Savage for four or five years. He has found it the most generally useful rifle for African hunting.

    It is a six-shot, seven-pound, lever-action take-down repeater, with checked extra-full pistol-grip stock and fore- arm and corrugated steel shot-gun butt-plate and trigger. It has the lines, beauty and feel of an expensive shot-gun. And it shoots a vicious little 87-grain Spitzer point bullet 3000 feet a second, straight enough to make possibles on

the 800-yard target and hard enough to penetrate 5/8" boiler-plate or Mr. Cottar's rhino. 

    Look at it and later on buy it at your dealer's, and write us for a detailed description.

SAVAGE ARMS CORPORATION

UTICA, N. Y.

Sharon, Pa.                          Detroit, Mich.

Executive and Export Offices

50 Church St., New York City

Manufacturers of Hi-Power and Small Calibre Sporting Rifles, Automatic pistols and Ammunition

Charles Cottar

Savage Arms Corporation