Is This Really the Best We Can Do?

A dozen years ago, the late P. J. O’Rourke said, “Don’t vote.  It just encourages the bastards.”  I cannot imagine what the political satirist would say if he were watching the current presidential campaign, but it might be unprintable.

In the last 48 hours alone, the poor American voter has been treated to the spectacles of Donald Trump selling Bibles while Joe Biden castigates the rich for not paying an elusive “fair share”, even as he charges folks $100,000 to have their pictures taken with him, Obama, and Clinton.  We should all note that the only other living president, George W. Bush, has wisely decided to stay distant from all this nonsense.

There is a third presidential candidate, Robert Kennedy, Jr., who evidently has spent the last 48 hours reshaping his tinfoil hat.  If there is a wacky conspiracy theory that Kennedy hasn’t endorsed, it is only because he hasn’t heard of it yet.  Without a doubt, the craziest theory he believes in is that he has any chance of actually being elected.

Are these really the three best men in America to lead the nation?  Obviously not, since according to a recent poll, a majority of Democrats want someone other than Joe Biden and a majority of Republican voters would prefer someone other than Donald Trump.  Think of that:  NEITHER candidate is the first choice of his own party members, yet somehow BOTH still have become their parties’ candidates.  There is obviously something wrong with the way our country’s parties choose OUR prospective leaders.

In case you are wondering, since Kennedy doesn’t really have a party behind him, we can only conjecture that the majority of his supporters would prefer a pony in their back yard.  I totally understand the impulse to vote for a third party candidate as a form of protest, but wouldn’t it be better to have that be a candidate who didn’t learn his science from the National Enquirer?

Ignoring the third and fourth-party candidates, why have the two major parties chosen two men that most of us would not buy a used car from?  Both men are clearly far too old and both have a long history of lying, plagiarism, and going back on their words.  Nor can either man really claim to be a leader since both are deliberately divisive, frequently calling voters who disagree with their policies such names as ‘ultra-MAGA” or “low information voters”.  Real leaders are uniters, whose first priority (not to mention several subsequent priorities) is something better than throwing red meat to their political base in an endless effort to attract campaign contributions.

Take the time to think about it for a few minutes.  Who would you really prefer to be our next president?  How do the two current major party candidates compare with your choice?  Personally, I can think of potential candidates in both parties who would make better leaders than any of the candidates currently vying for the office.  The reason why better candidates don’t end up as the eventual candidates is probably mainly a function of the way the political parties are run.

Political parties end up selecting candidates who are perceived as less suitable or effective for various reasons.  For too often, party candidates are not really selected by the voters but by the  complex interplay of internal party dynamics, including power struggles, factionalism, and influence from special interest groups.  These internal dynamics can lead to compromises and backroom deals that prioritize political expediency over candidate merit or qualifications.

Moreover, the candidate selection process within political parties often involves multiple stakeholders, including party leaders, elected officials, party elites, donors, and activists.  Conflicting interests and competing agendas among these stakeholders can result in candidates being chosen based on loyalty, fundraising prowess, or ideological alignment rather than their leadership abilities or policy expertise.

These various factors frequently end up resulting in a system in which the potential candidate is chosen by seniority.  A good example of this would be the presidential candidacy of Robert Dole back in 1996:  instead, it was widely viewed that he was chosen/should be chosen simply “because it was his turn”.

Party rules about selecting delegates—particularly in the Democratic Party—allow Party insiders to heavily influence who will eventually become the candidate.  In a proportional allocation system, delegates are awarded to candidates based on their share of the vote, allowing multiple candidates to accumulate delegates over time.  This can prolong the nomination process and give candidates with strong grassroots support a chance to remain competitive, even if they don't win outright in early contests.  Conversely, a winner-takes-all approach awards all delegates to the candidate who wins the most votes in a state or district, potentially allowing a front-runner to quickly amass a substantial delegate lead and secure the nomination early in the process.

Perhaps the most egregious sin of political parties is the practice of selecting superdelegates who are not bound by the results of primaries and caucuses.  These party elites, including elected officials and party leaders, have the autonomy to support any candidate they choose at the party convention, regardless of what the voters want.  Superdelegates have enormous influence—far more than their numbers would suggest—on whom the convention eventually selects as their candidates.

Until we change the current party system, we will probably continue to have elections in which we aren’t really voting for someone we want, but in which we are voting against the other party’s candidate.  

That’s no way to run an airline…or a nation!

The Tiara

When Queen Victoria married in 1840, she wore a white wedding dress, thereby setting a fashion trend that continues to this day. 

At least that is the popular version.  The fact that other members of royalty had previously worn white to their nuptials as far back as Mary Queen of Scots in 1558 is just one of those inconvenient facts that we should ignore.  As every native Texan knows, never let a few facts get in the way of a good story.

A score of years later, Abraham Lincoln, after being elected to the presidency, used the four months waiting time before the inauguration to grow a beard.  On the advice of his wife, his advisors, and Grace Bedell (an eleven-year-old supporter who famously wrote Lincoln suggesting he grow whiskers to conceal a weak chin), the president-elect adopted a style of beard known as the chin curtain beard.  The style caught on, and beards became a symbol of his determination and leadership during the Civil War.  (In the case of the author, a beard is a symbol of laziness and an aversion to using sharp implements near the throat before consuming coffee.)

In early twentieth century America, every well-dressed man wore an undershirt beneath his dress shirt.  Usually cotton, they served two functions:  they absorbed sweat, keeping the wearer cooler, drier and more comfortable when wearing a wool shirt.  The fashion quickly died out in 1934 when Americans went to the movie theater and watched Clark Gable take off his shirt in the movie It Happened One Night to reveal a bare chest.  While no documentation exists, sales of the undershirt dropped between 45-75% depending on which version of what may be an urban legend you choose to believe.

In January 1961, John F. Kennedy famously didn’t wear a hat at his inauguration, breaking tradition.  Almost immediately, the haberdashery industry was dealt a death blow, ending the popularity of men wear formal hats.  That’s the popular version anyway.  Actually, JFK did wear a hat to the inauguration, but took it off at the inauguration.

Kennedy was actually being heavily lobbied by the hat industry to wear hats more frequently  in a probably futile effort to revive a dying fashion trend.  In the years before his election, the trend to wear formal hats was already dying out in both Europe and America, perhaps because men in both continents, tired of wearing uniforms during the war, were just rejecting formal hats.  In the end, the Kennedy inauguration wasn’t the death of hats, it was the funeral.

And then there was Audrey Hepburn and that little black dress in Breakfast at Tiffany’s…. Well, you get the idea.  Sometimes it only takes a single event to rewrite the rules of what is fashionable.

All of the above is an introduction to what I really want to talk about:  tiaras.  You know, the shiny jewelry doohickey that women and little princesses-in-training wear whenever there is even the slightest justification.  I suppose it is scientifically impossible, but this weird craving for all things sparkly shared by women, crows and pack rats might indicate a hidden genetic link of some kind.

The origin of the word tiara comes from ancient Persia where cloth or metal bands were worn by the chiefs or nobility.  From there, the fashion quickly spread to Egypt and Greece.  The Greeks gave the victors in athletic competitions like the Olympics were awarded wreaths made of laurel or olive branches.  As the Roman Empire grew, they, too, adopted the tiara or diadem as a mark of rank, using gold or silver to create the head band.

Note.  Tiara?  Diadem?  What’s the difference.  Well, the tiara is much fancier and might have jewels (think of a grand crown, but smaller and designed to sit on the forehead rather than the entire head).   A diadem is a decorated head band or a simple circlet worn around the head.  Still confused?  Rocky Balboa wore a diadem while running through the streets of Philadelphia, Wonder Woman wears a tiara.

From the Roman Empire, the tiara spread across Europe, its use usually reserved for the highest royalty.  Over time, however, the tiara slowly fell out of fashion until the beginning of the nineteenth century and the rise of Emperor Napoleon.  Wanting the grandest empire in Europe, with the most formality and grandeur, Napoleon gifted his wife, Josephine with many jeweled tiaras, some of which are still the proud possessions of some of Europe’s royal families.

In Europe, as tiaras became popular again, aristocratic women began to wear them to formal occasions.  Etiquette dictated certain rules, however (and pretty much those rules still apply in certain circles today).  A woman could wear a tiara to any “white tie” event. An unmarried woman never wore a tiara, but on her wedding day, she wore a tiara owned by her family.  After the wedding, she wore either a tiara that was her personal property or a tiara owned by her husband’s family.  There was an exception made for royal princesses, who could wear tiaras belonging to the royal family after their eighteenth birthdays.

The height of the popularity of the tiara was the last two decades of the nineteenth century up to the start of the first World War.  The terrible death toll of the war, followed by a depression and yet another war, made the ostentatious wearing of jewelry unfashionable for all but the royal families.  

This suddenly changed when Elizabeth Taylor was given a diamond tiara by her husband, Mike Todd.  If you are counting, he was the third of seven husbands, and the one who probably started her fascination with diamonds.  As she later wrote in her autobiography:

“When he gave me this tiara, he said, ‘You’re my queen, and I think you should have a tiara.’ I wore it for the first time when we went to the Academy Awards. It was the most perfect night, because Mike’s film Around the World in 80 Days won for Best Picture. It wasn’t fashionable to wear tiaras then, but I wore it anyway, because he was my king.”

The tiara was created by Cartier sometime in the 1920's for Florence Gould, the wife of Frank Jay Gould, the famous owner of French Riviera Casinos and the son of the infamous railroad tycoon Jay Gould.  The tiara, known as the "Tiara of Nine Flights" was part of Florence Gould's extensive diamond collection that was sold after her death.

Liz wore the tiara everywhere.  She wore it to film openings; she wore it to Hollywood parties.  She would have worn it to grocery stores if she had stooped to go to grocery stores.  And as a fashion icon, she made the tiara popular again.  I spent a few minutes playing with Google this afternoon.  Think of a woman famous in the last fifty years, then google their name with ‘tiara’ and almost immediately, a photo of her wearing a tiara pops up.  Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Sara Jessica Parker, Ivanka Trump, Angelina Jolie, Madonna, Oprah…. Evidently, everyone.  Even my wife, The Doc, has one, but she won it in a bowling tournament.

When Liz passed away in 2011, her famous jewel collection (which included not only the tiara but the famous pearl known as La Peregrina) sold at auction for $156 million, of which slightly over $4 million was for the tiara.  The identity of the anonymous buyer remains a secret, at least for now.

Sooner or later, someone will show up wearing it.

Alantropa

My eldest son, What’s-His-Name, was helping me install a security camera in the backyard.  Hidden behind a mass of English Ivy climbing the back wall, it was so camouflaged than if either of us turned to pick up a tool, it took us a few seconds to relocate where in the mass of dense green leaves we had hidden the camera.

Finished, the two of us sat down at the patio table to enjoy a couple of beers, (respectively, root and Tecate), as a reward for our work just as my younger son, The-Other-One, came home from school.  

“Hey,” he said, “When did we get a security camera?”

The-Other-One is red/green colorblind, and this was another example of how most forms of camouflage simply didn’t work on him.  There were a lot of things he couldn’t see—like the large piece of red cellophane he hit with the lawn mower, that scattered red confetti all over the front yard—and evidently, things he could see that we couldn’t.  I’ve often wished I could briefly see through his eyes, to see the world differently.

Fresh viewpoints challenge our assumptions and offer new ways of looking at the world.  They can spark creativity and innovation by breaking us out of conventional thinking.

Sometimes, the most important discoveries come from those who see things differently.  Eccentric thinkers might notice patterns or connections that others miss, leading to breakthroughs in science, art, or problem-solving.

Or to put it succinctly, the nut point of view is frequently valuable.  People who see the world differently and come up with new ideas are the essential yeast that keeps society rising.

Herman Sörgel, a German architect in the 1920s, was an entire cake of such yeast.  He came up with a brilliant plan on for preventing another cataclysmic world war by providing so much wealth and resources to Europe that such a war would never again be necessary.  His plan was to provide sufficient Lebensraum by damming up the Straits of Gibraltar and substantially draining the Mediterranean Sea.

Sörgel forsaw a future world that was dominated by the Americas and by an inevitable Pan-Asian Union.  For Europe to compete in such a world, it would be necessary for Europe to acquire more land and resources.  By damming up certain key points around the Mediterranean, and allowing evaporation to lower the water level, there would be  substantially more land in both Europe and North Africa available to colonize.  Sörgel’s plan called for the creation of three large freshwater lakes in the Sahara with canals linking the new farmland to the now smaller Mediterranean Sea.  

At right is an artist’s drawing of what the area would look right after the sea had dropped sufficiently.  If you have a little trouble orienting yourself, slightly to the left of the center is an enlarged Sicily connected to what is now the boot-turned-galosh of Italy.  Greece, upper right, is substantially bigger.

A little over 5.3 million years ago, the sea first crashed through the Straits of Gibraltar, creating a tidal wave that roared across the Mediterranean area in what geologists call the Zanclean Flood.  What Sörgel had in mind was to reverse most of that flood.

The plan had five major components.  A massive hydroelectric dam across the Straits of Gibraltar that would, over the course of the next century, allow the sea level east of the dam to drop by more than 600 feet.  Three additional dams, one located at the Dardanelles to hold back the Black Sea, a second on the Congo River creating the freshwater lakes in the Sahara, and the last between Sicily and Tunisia creating a highway between Italy and North Africa and lowering the water level even more to the east.  Lastly, the Suez Canal would have to be deepened and extended northward through the new area uncovered by the receding water.  The Suez Canal would cease to be a sea level canal, but one requiring a series of massive locks to lower the ships down to the level of the Mediterranean.

Not only would there be new land, prompting new settlements along the newly created coast, there would be expanded canals linking the newly created arable farmland in the Sahara to ports along the sea.  Highways and railroads that crossed the dams at Gibraltar and Sicily would promote trade between the two continents.  Imagine bullet trains connecting Paris with the Congo or Berlin with Kenya.

For Sörgel, the project, which he named Alantropa, had almost endless benefits.  The new land would help alleviate overpopulation, the construction would provide jobs, and the expansion of European political culture into Africa would promote stability and peace.  How could it miss?—after all, since as we all know, Europe has a history almost free from warfare.

Though Sörgel first introduced his plan shortly after the first World War, it was later supported by Adolf Hitler, who firmly believed in acquiring new territory and frequently justified the war by Germany’s need for lebensraum.

Okay, it is a great and ambitious project, but there are a few small problems.  First, it just assumes that all of Africa would go on cheerfully content to be the colonial possession of European powers.   Nor is it likely that every coastal town along the Mediterranean Sea would have been happy to find themselves miles inland.

The scope of the project is enormous, perhaps impossibly so.  When Sörgel first proposed his series of massive dams, there was not enough concrete in the world to complete the project.  Even today, a century later, it would be a massive project, one that would dwarf even the American undertaking of landing a man on the moon.

There are also a few other problems.  It would, of course, be an ecological nightmare, destroying vast numbers of ecosystems.  It would alter enough land that it would change worldwide climate patterns and probably alter the Gulf Stream.

Sörgel passed away in 1952, and with his death the popularity of the project slowly vanished.  Today, the only place where Alantropa is mentioned is in a few Science Fiction books, particularly those that deal with alternative realities.  If such a book interests you, I suggest  “The Atlantropa Articles” by Cody Franklin and Joseph Pisenti.  In their book, the second World War never occurs, and after Hitler creates Alantropa, the protagonist travels through a Europe united under the swastika

There is, of course, one last problem with the plan.  Sörgel was not entirely correct in his belief that most wars are fought over resources, such as land, oil, or (as becomes increasing likely for the near future), water.  Sörgel believed that if he created more resources, this would end the need for conflict, but he failed to realize that what nations really fight over is not the resources, but the control of those resources.

Blacker than Black

Let’s talk pigments, the substances added to other objects to give our world a little color.  And then, we’ll talk about how some artists are engaging in a pigment war.

Shortly after the discovery of fire in prehistoric times, someone discovered that you could use charcoal to make dark marks on rocks and wood.  This was almost immediately followed by the discovery that mixing crushed charcoal with a watery clay paste produced a paint that could be used for cave paintings and rock art.   It probably didn’t take very long before a variety of pigments were sourced from minerals, plants, and animal sources.

Ancient civilizations such as the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans extensively used pigments in their art and architecture.  They developed techniques for extracting pigments from various natural sources, including minerals like malachite and lapis lazuli, plants like madder and saffron, and insects like cochineal.

During the Middle Ages, the production and trade of pigments became more organized, with centers of pigment production emerging in regions known for their natural resources.  Medieval artists used pigments like vermilion, ultramarine, and lead white in illuminated manuscripts, frescoes, and religious art.

The Renaissance and Baroque periods saw advancements in pigment technology, with artists experimenting with new pigments and techniques.  During this time, the availability of pigments expanded as trade routes opened, bringing exotic materials like Indian yellow and Brazilian green to Europe.

The Industrial Revolution brought rapid and significant changes to the pigment industry.  Synthetic pigments, produced from coal tar derivatives and other chemical compounds, were developed, leading to a wider range of colors and more affordable pigments.  Aniline dyes revolutionized the textile dyeing industry in the 19th century because they were less expensive to produce and offered a much wider range of colors than natural dyes.  Synthetic pigments like cadmium red and phthalo blue became popular among artists.  

In the 20th and 21st centuries, the pigment industry continued to innovate, with advancements in organic and inorganic pigment synthesis.  Today, artists have access to a vast array of pigments in various forms, including traditional powdered pigments, oil paints, watercolors, acrylics, and digital pigments used in digital art.  Some of the newer pigments are formulated by scientists who create compounds designed specifically for the way they either absorb or reflect certain wavelengths of light.

In 2014, Surrey NanoSystems announced the development of Vantablack, the black blackest black of anything black.  (If you say that out loud several times in a row, you’ll end up doing a bad impersonation of Dracula.)  According to its creators, this pigment is the "world's darkest material" absorbing up to 99.965% of visible light.  

If you will allow a very non-scientific explanation, Vantablack is a layer of almost perfectly hemispherical rods.  When light hits the surface of the material, the light is “trapped” by reflecting off the mesh of carbon nanotubes with almost none escaping as reflected light.  How big are these nanotubes?  About a millionth of a millimeter each, or roughly about one thousandth of a spider web.

Perhaps this is a case of a picture being worth a thousand words.  The photo at the right shows a crumpled piece of aluminum foil with part of the foil coated with Vantablack.  The coated area is just as crumpled as the rest of the foil. 

As you can imagine, there are a lot of people thinking about military applications for this product.  And there are a lot of artists who would like to experiment with it—but they can’t.

In 2014, Anish Kapoor, a British contemporary artist and sculptor, purchased the exclusive rights to the pigment from Surrey NanoSystems for an undisclosed price.  In the last decade, Kapoor has produced a whole series of works using the super pigment.  I’d show you a couple of pictures of them, but they are too black to make out any details.  (I do like the large round hole in the floor with both the bottom and the sides of the hole are painted with Vantablack—I’ll bet standing on the edge is frightening.)

Kapoor is not the first artist to hog a new pigment, and so far, he has resisted all efforts to allow other artists to even experiment with it.  While other artists had not shared a pigment that produced a tint or color, Kapoor was Bogarting the blackest black.  This was particularly upsetting to Stuart Semple, another British artist, and the founder of Culture Hustle, a London based online art store that specializes in exotic pigments.  Semple publicly denounced Kapoor for not allowing the rest of the art world to use the new pigment.

Semple had previously marketed pigments that claimed to the be the pinkest pink in the world or the greenest green.  I’m not really sure what those terms mean, since while we can easily define black as the absence of light, I’m not sure how to define the essence of pink.  Is it the presence of Barbie? 

Semple’s online store, available here, will gladly sell you a bottle of the ultimate pink or the greenest green, and they even have a new pigment, Black 4.0, that they claim—without proof—is even darker than Vantablack.  There is only one small condition, you have to check a little box next to this notice:

*Note: By adding this product to your cart you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this material will not make it's way into the hands of Anish Kapoor.

Semple may be willing to stop the feud, however:  Culture Hustle also markets a line of luminescent pigments.  The website contains a notice that they will gladly ship Anish Kapoor those pigments free of charge.  As the notice claims:  “We want you to know how lovely it feels to #shareTheLight.”

Lost But Not Forgotten

The French frigate Reine de France pulled up to the docks in Philadelphia and offloaded three large wooden crates. Loaded onto a freight wagon, they were taken to the home of the French Minister, Anne-Cesar de la Cuzerne. There, the first two crates were carefully opened to reveal full-sized portraits, one of King Louis XVI and the other of his spouse, Marie Antoinette. The third crate contained elaborate frames for the paintings.

During the Revolutionary War, Ben Franklin, in his capacity as Ambassador to France, had asked the King for the favor of Royal Portraits to be given to the new nation. At the time, the United States was desperate for French assistance in fighting the British. While the King didn’t particularly like the idea of a independent democracy, he loved the idea of any country fighting the British, so he generously gifted the revolution with muskets, black powder, and a small loan (at 5% interest), and sent a French fleet to patrol off the American coast. Without this French assistance, it is doubtful that the American Revolution would have been successful.

A gift of Royal Portraits was a big deal: it was considered an important diplomatic symbol, and while the revolutionary war was being fought, the King didn’t think the United States was important enough to rate such a gift. On the other hand, several years after the war had ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the King decided it was the time to honor the request because, by sending the paintings, the King was not so subtly reminding the new nation about the promises made to the French people (including that 5% loan).

It was obvious that what Louis wanted was a tiny, little, weak United States, hemmed in by the British to the North, French Louisiana to the West, and Spanish Florida to the South—in other words, a country just big enough to make payments on that loan while staying a thorn in the side of the British.

In the United States, a large number of people no longer wanted either the paintings or to be reminded of their obligations to a French monarch. For two years, the paintings remained in the French Minister’s house and became something of a tourist attraction, as a steady stream of people came to gawk at them. Finally, the two portraits were hung in the government’s offices, first in New York, then in Philadelphia, and then (finally), in the capitol in Washington, in 1800.

The two paintings were actually copies of existing paintings. The original of the King’s portrait was done by Antoine-Francoise Collet and the portrait of Marie Antoinette was done by her close friend, Élizabeth Louise Viegée le Brun. Similar copies of the portrait of the Queen had been given to other countries, but only the original remains today.

By 1812, the United States was at war with the British again, in perhaps one of the dumbest wars ever fought. We were mad that both the British and the French—continually at war with each other—had each forbidden us to trade with their opposite—effectively eliminating all trade with Europe. Going to war with Britain over it was stupid, but we were a young country and had to learn all our lessons the hard way.

The hardest of these lessons occurred August 24, 1814, when the British marched into Washington, and started setting fire to all the government buildings…including the capitol and the White House. We all know the story of Dolly Madison and her slave, Paul Jennings, saving the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington (the image that appears on the one-dollar bill). What is not as widely known is that the residents of Washington, realizing that the American troops had abandoned the city, seized the opportunity to loot the government buildings. Perhaps they reasoned that it was better that the national booty be grabbed by Americans instead of the British.

Or, maybe, the British stole the portraits, since we know for a fact that the Redcoats did their own share of looting. After setting the town on fire, the Royal Navy sailed to Bermuda with their spoils, included four paintings of King George III and Queen Charlotte, a grandfather clock and President James Madison's personal government receipt book. Today, the paintings hang in the Bermuda government buildings, while the grandfather clock is still held by the descendants of one of the naval officers.

Officially, the last time the two French royal portraits were seen was just before the British troops arrived. By the time they left, the capitol building was destroyed, along with anything that was left inside it. What happened to the two portraits?

Officially, the government decided that the portraits had been destroyed in the fire. Unofficially, rumors started circulating almost immediately that the paintings had been removed before the British arrived. Over the years, several items the locals had stolen found their way back into the newly rebuilt capitol.

In 1850, a Southern newspaper reported that an unnamed plantation owner had purchased the two paintings for his home. Two decades later, a New York newspaper revealed that the paintings were being sold privately by a dealer in town. Similar rumors continued to circulate well into the Twentieth Century.

The portraits probably were destroyed. But, if you are ever in a garage sale and someone is selling a painting of a woman with a widescreen television under her dress, pick it up for me!