View allAll Photos Tagged ingenuity,
Our squirrel and chipmunk populations have exploded this year. This enterprising little guy initially found a way to open the lid on this sunflower feeder. He would climb inside and consume the load of black oiled sunflower seeds in short order. I put a pair of vise grips above the lock pin to put an end to that caper, but he's found a new attack plan--like any good burglar, always watchful for spying humans.
Video created with 79 frames taken by Mastcam-Z Right camera aboard Perseverance rover on sol 58 (19 April 2021).
I was lucky to get to hang out with the Earth-twin drone to the Ingenuity Helicopter that is currently flying on Mars. I was invited by Syracuse University to witness the demonstration and talk by the amazing scientists and engineers at AeroVironment who designed and developed the drone.
Terri is an functioning demonstration vehicle that differs from its Mars counterpart in a number of ways - but it is functionally the same. We were treated to 3 flights under the Dome during a rainy morning.
I am continually amazed by the *ingenuity* (ha!) of the human species.
Happy weekend!
7th picture taken by RTE camera aboard Ingenuity helicopter on sol 697 (February 5, 2023) at 16:08:56 Martian local time.
10,14 am iso 1000 1/200 f 6,3 Ev -0.50
Un antico motto sosteneva che nelle vene dei bresciani scorra benzina al posto del sangue.
L'innata passione per le corse prese vita in città già sul finire del diciannovesimo secolo:
dal 1895 al 1898 in Italia furono disputate solo tre competizioni motoristiche, ma nel 1899 le gare furono ben venti.
La prima apparizione di un veicolo da corsa sul territorio bresciano avvenne il 14 marzo 1899, nel corso della Verona-Brescia-Mantova-Verona: a vincere, a bordo di un triciclo Prinetti e Stucchi, fu tal Ettore Bugatti…
I bresciani, pur se coinvolti nell'organizzazione veronese, vollero una gara tutta loro. Decisero quindi di organizzarne immediatamente due, che si svolsero la prima il 10 settembre e la seconda il giorno seguente.
La domenica fu disputata sulla circonvallazione cittadina di 6 km - oltre ad una gara motociclistica - la Corsa Automobilistica di Velocità - Brescia; il lunedì prese il via la Brescia-Mantova-Verona-Brescia, con percorso di 223 km.
La vocazione motoristica è testimoniata anche dalle sei aziende costruttrici di automobili che sorsero a Brescia nei primi anni del Ventesimo secolo.
Nel 1904 fu approntato il Circuito di Brescia, sulle strade che collegano il percorso Brescia-Cremona-Mantova-Brescia, per un totale di 185 Km da ripetere due volte.
La prima gara fu disputata il 5 settembre 1904 in occasione della Settimana di Brescia.
L'anno successivo la "settimana" fu replicata ed il 9 settembre 1905 sul Circuito di Brescia fu disputata la prima Coppa Florio.
Fin dopo la Prima Guerra Mondiale non furono indette a Brescia altre competizioni, ma la ripresa avvenne alla grande. Grazie al bresciano d'adozioneArturo Mercanti la città ottenne di organizzare il Gran Premio d'Italia, che fu inserito in un'ampia serie di manifestazioni indette sotto il nome diCircuito Internazionale
Automobilistico-Aereo, nel 1921. Oltre al "Chilometro Lanciato", e ad altre gare per le categorie minori, la maggiore attenzione era ovviamente centrata sul nuovo Circuito di Brescia, detto anche Circuito della Fascia d'Oro, nome della località dove venne dato il via, il 4 settembre, al 1° Gran Premio d'Italia.
Nel 1922, con grande disappunto dei bresciani, Mercanti aprì l'Autodromo di Monza, dove il Gran Premio d'Italia è ancor oggi disputato.
La grande passione per i motori aveva indotto i bresciani a costituire un loro Automobile Club già nel 1906, fino al 1926 sezione dell'A.C. Milano.
Sulla base del nuovo ordinamento del Regio Automobile Club d'Italia, attuato con regio decreto del 14 novembre 1926 - che introduceva pure ilPubblico Registro Automobilistico, il PRA, l'Automobile Club di Brescia fu ufficialmente costituito.
Il 18 gennaio 1927 aprì la sede di Corso Magenta, dove ebbe subito inizio l'attività organizzativa della prima Coppa delle Mille Miglia.
Il nome Mille Miglia e il marchio con la Freccia Rossa, da quel giorno, restano inalienabile proprietà dell'Automobile Club Brescia.
Sin dalla fondazione, è stata mantenuta viva una tradizione che identifica l'ACI Brescia tra i sodalizi più sportivi, non solo a livello nazionale.Circuito di Brescia, Circuito del Garda, Brescia-Edolo-Pontedilegno, Scalata al Colle S. Eusebio, Trofeo Lumezzane, Cronoscalata del Monte Maddalena, sono solo alcune delle competizioni organizzate dal Club bresciano, proseguendo l'opera e la passione del grande Renzo Castagneto.
Per questi motivi, l'Automobile Club di Brescia non potrà mai prescindere dalla sua corsa e produrrà sempre il massimo sforzo possibile per mantenere inalterato questa immensa eredità di ardimento e ingegno che ha scritto indimenticabili pagine di storia.
Tra i ruoli dell'ACI Brescia c'è anche quello di preservare la tradizione motoristica bresciana e quell'immenso patrimonio sportivo, umano e culturale costituito dalle competizioni che sono state disputate sul territorio bresciano dal 1899 ad oggi.
Anche quest'anno, l'A.C. Brescia ha mantenuto in calendario tre corse, Il Rally Internazionale 1000 Miglia, la cronoscalata Trofeo Vallecamonica -Malegno-Ossimo-Borno e il Rally Ronde ACI Brescia.
An ancient saying claimed that in the veins of the bresciani runs gasoline instead of blood.
The innate passion for racing took life in cities already at the end of the 19th century:
from 1895 to 1898 in Italy were held only three racing, but in 1899 the races were well.
The first appearance of a racing vehicle in the territory of Brescia took place on March 14, 1899, during Verona-Brescia-Mantova-Verona: to win, on board a tricycle Prinetti and mortars, was that Ettore Bugatti ...
The bresciani, although involved in the Organization, took a race across them. They decided to organize immediately two, who first took the 10 September and the second the following day.
Sunday was disputed on the ring road of town 6 miles-apart from a motorcycle race-the race car of Speed-Brescia; on Monday took away the Brescia-Mantova-Verona-Brescia, with 223 km path.
Motoring vocation is witnessed by the six manufacturers of cars which arose in Brescia in the early twentieth century.
In 1904 he prepared the circuit of Brescia, on the roads that connect the route Brescia-Cremona-Mantova-Brescia, for a total of 185 miles from repeat twice.
The first race was held on September 5, 1904 on the occasion of the week of Brescia.
The following year the "week" was replicated and the September 9, 1905 at Brescia was played the first Coppa Florio.
Until after the first world war were not held in Brescia other competitions, but the shooting was great. Thanks to the adozioneArturo of Brescia the city Merchants had to organize the Grand Prix of Italy, who was posted in a wide range of events held under the name International diCircuito
Automotive-plane, in 1921. In addition to "Kilometer Launched", and other races for minor categories, the most attention was of course centered on the new circuit of Brescia, also called golden belt Loop, name of the place where it was given the go-ahead, 4 September, at 1° Italy Grand Prix.
In 1922, with great disappointment of the bresciani, merchants opened the Monza Autodrome, where Italy Grand Prix is still disputed.
The passion for engines had prompted bresciani a their Automobile Club as early as 1906, until the section in 1926.C. Milan.
On the basis of the new order of the Royal Automobile Club of Italy, implemented by Royal Decree of November 14, 1926-which also introduced ilPubblico Vehicles, the PRA, the Automobile Club di Brescia was officially formed.
The January 18, 1927 opened his headquarters in Corso Magenta, where she immediately beginning the organizational activity of the first Coppa delle Mille Miglia.
The name Mille Miglia and the brand with the red arrow, from that day, remain inalienable property of the Automobile Club Brescia.
Since its founding, has been kept alive a tradition which identifies the ACI Brescia among sports associations, not only at national level.Brescia circuit, circuit del Garda, Brescia-Edolo-Pontedilegno, climbing the Colle s. Eusebio, Lumezzane, Hillclimb del Monte Maddalena, are just some of the competitions organised by the Club, continuing the work and passion of the great Renzo Castagneto.
For these reasons, the Automobile Club di Brescia will never regardless of race and will produce maximum effort to maintain this immense heritage of bravery and ingenuity who wrote unforgettable pages of history.
Between the roles of ACI Brescia there is also to preserve the tradition of Brescia and motoring that immense heritage of cultural, human and sports consists of the competitions that were held on the territory of Brescia from 1899 to the present.
Also this year, the A.C. Brescia has maintained three races on the calendar, the Rally 1000 Miglia, the International Hillclimb Vallecamonica-Trophy Malegno-Ossimo and Borno-Rally Ronde ACI Brescia.
Reconstruction, through our artificial intelligence model, of a photo captured by Ingenuity at SOL 450 (May 27, 2022) at 15:09:08 LMST using its NavCam. The file is available at 44.24 millions of pixel for download at a resolution of 7680x5760 pixels. The NavCam is the camera that the Ingenuity helicopter drone needs to orient itself during flight. The resolution is only 640x480 pixels and the images are all in black and white. Here, our artificial intelligence model enlarged the images to a factor of 12x and coloured the result.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/PipploIMP
Our Facebook Page: bit.ly/PipploFB
Our YouTube Channel: bit.ly/PipploYT
Picture taken by RTE camera aboard Ingenuity helicopter on sol 274 (November 27, 2021) at 12:28:16 pm Martian local time.
This picture was taken while Ingenuity helicopter was on the ground. We see numerous colorful pebbles of all sizes.
8th picture taken by RTE camera aboard Ingenuity helicopter on sol 193 (September 5th, 2021) at 12:05:42 pm Martian local time.
Reconstruction, through our artificial intelligence model, of a detail of a photo captured by Ingenuity at SOL 414 (April 20, 2022) at 11:39:47 LMST using its ColorCam. The file is available at 49 MP for download at a resolution of 7000x7000 pixels. For the uninitiated, these are the remains of the backshell that protected the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter drone during their descent into Martian soil. There is also the parachute next to it. The image dates back to Ingenuity Flight 26.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/PipploIMP
Our Facebook Page: bit.ly/PipploFB
Our YouTube Channel: bit.ly/PipploYT
This is a product of ingenuity and a bunch of grey bricks waiting to be used... it also helps that it was a Sunday begging me to create something.
Hope yall enjoy ;)
Panorama of Perseverance images making up a self-portrait of herself as well as the Ingenuity helicopter off to the near the left-side of the image.
When driving through the countryside looking for a cool shot, I saw an abandoned home which really caught my interest. I pulled off the road to take a closer look and found "No Trespassing" signs hung everywhere. Wanting to set a good example for the kids I passed on the opportunity. So nearly back in town we passed this shot that has a similar urbex feel to it.
This place is steel recycling yard which is one skip and a jump above a junk yard. It really is very clean and presentable. However it's their smashing taste for architecture that caught me. They had this sweet 60s era mobile home parked here. So they were probably thinking, I want to expand our steel recycling empire and we need to build a shop. What better way to do this than to add on to the mobile!
Just look at how intricately they cut the cinder blocks to follow the contours of their home with NASA-like precision. Then they thought, well we have all these jugs of red paint laying around. Lets mix them all together to get enough paint to really draw everyone's attention to our swinging establishment and good design taste!
Read on at EricLeslie.com
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Bas Meeuws (1974) is a passionate photographer who has given a new twist to the traditional Dutch still life with flowers. Meeuws does not paint his flowers with a brush and oil paints, as his famous predecessors from the 17th century did. His images come from a digital reflex camera. Painstakingly and with great ingenuity Meeuws processes his pictures of flowers until he has created exactly the right image. The result is a series of unique and layered works of art.
Inscribed along with the Old Town of Segovia on the UNESCO Heritage List in 1985, "The Aqueduct of Segovia, the symbol of the city, is the best known of these civil engineering feats owing to its monumentality, to its excellent state of conservation, and in particular to its location in one of the most beautiful urban sites in the world.
The hydraulic engineers who tapped the waters of the Río Frío in the Sierra de Guadarrama to bring them 18km to Segovia via a canal with an average gradient of 1% ran into no natural obstacle more challenging than the crossing of the valley of the Río Clamores at the end of the course. In order to reach the rocky contrefort on which the city was perched they had to erect an enormous construction of masonry 813 m in length, consisting of four straight segments and two superimposed arcades borne by 128 pillars. At the lowest point of the valley, the aqueduct stands at a height of 28.5 m above ground.
This colossal edifice is undocumented. However, the profile of the arcade and the construction technique used afford typological comparisons with the Aqua Claudia in Rome, a canal built between AD 38 and 52. Moreover, excavation carried out at the foot of the piers appears to corroborate a date of roughly AD 50.
Following its restoration, which took place after 1484 on the initiative of the Catholic Kings (Los Reyes Católicos), the aqueduct was always used and well maintained. The most serious damage which it suffered occurred in the last century: the replacement in 1929-30 of the 16th-century stone conduit with a cement canal, the stone conduit having earlier replaced a wooden one; disintegration of the masonry owing to the effects of vibration caused by traffic of heavy trucks; decay of the stone caused by gas pollutants. This physical-chemical damage results principally from a poorly planned urban development policy which has destroyed the monument's surroundings by the building of parking lots, large thoroughfares and slip roads which detract from the beauty of the aqueduct and hinder its proper conservation."
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Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya District, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province.Thailand Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya District, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province.
Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya District, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province., founded in 1350, was the second capital of the Siamese Kingdom. It flourished from the 14th to the 18th centuries, during which time it grew to be one of the world’s largest and most cosmopolitan urban areas and a center of global diplomacy and commerce. Ayutthaya was strategically located on an island surrounded by three rivers connecting the city to the sea. This site was chosen because it was located above the tidal bore of the Gulf of Siam as it existed at that time, thus preventing the attack of the city by the sea-going warships of other nations. The location also helped to protect the city from seasonal flooding.
The city was attacked and razed by the Burmese army in 1767 who burned the city to the ground and forced the inhabitants to abandon the city. The city was never rebuilt in the same location and remains known today as an extensive archaeological site.
At present, it is located in Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya District, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province. The total area of the World Heritage property is 289 ha.
Once an important center of global diplomacy and commerce, Ayutthaya is now an archaeological ruin, characterized by the remains of tall prang (reliquary towers) and Buddhist monasteries of monumental proportions, which give an idea of the city’s past size and the splendor of its architecture.
Well-known from contemporary sources and maps, Ayutthaya was laid out according to a systematic and rigid city planning grid, consisting of roads, canals, and moats around all the principal structures. The scheme took maximum advantage of the city’s position in the midst of three rivers and had a hydraulic system for water management which was technologically extremely advanced and unique in the world.
The city was ideally situated at the head of the Gulf of Siam, equidistant between India and China and well upstream to be protected from Arab and European powers who were expanding their influence in the region even as Ayutthaya was itself consolidating and extending its own power to fill the vacuum left by the fall of Angkor. As a result, Ayutthaya became a center of economics and trade at the regional and global levels and an important connecting point between the East and the West. The Royal Court of Ayutthaya exchanged ambassadors far and wide, including with the French Court at Versailles and the Mughal Court in Delhi, as well as with imperial courts of Japan and China. Foreigners served in the employ of the government and also lived in the city as private individuals. Downstream from the Ayutthaya Royal Palace, there were enclaves of foreign traders and missionaries, each building in their own architectural style. Foreign influences were many in the city and can still be seen in the surviving art and in the architectural ruins.
The Ayutthaya school of art showcases the ingenuity and the creativity of the Ayutthaya civilization as well as its ability to assimilate a multitude of foreign influences. The large palaces and the Buddhist monasteries constructed in the capital, for example at Wat Mahathat and Wat Phra Si Sanphet, are testimony to both the economic vitality and technological prowess of their builders, as well as to the appeal of the intellectual tradition they embodied. All buildings were elegantly decorated with the highest quality of crafts and mural paintings, which consisted of an eclectic mixture of traditional styles surviving from Sukhothai, inherited from Angkor, and borrowed from the 17th and 18th-century art styles of Japan, China, India, Persia, and Europe, creating a rich and unique expression of cosmopolitan culture and laying the foundation for the fusion of styles of art and architecture popular throughout the succeeding Rattanakosin Era and onwards.
Indeed, when the capital of the restored kingdom was moved downstream and a new city built at Bangkok, there was a conscious attempt to recreate the urban template and architectural form of Ayutthaya. Many of the surviving architects and builders from Ayutthaya were brought in to work on building the new capital. This pattern of urban replication is in keeping with the urban planning concept in which cities of the world consciously try to emulate the perfection of the mythical city of Ayodhaya. In Thai, the official name for the new capital at Bangkok retains “Ayutthaya” as part of its formal title.
Criterion (iii): The Historic City of Ayutthaya bears excellent witness to the period of development of a true national Thai art.
Visiting the Jubilee Campus of the University of Nottingham for a conference and it allowed me to take a picture of their Ingenuity Centre (www.bof.co.uk/projects/university-nottingham-technology-e...).
www.ravishlondon.com/londonstreetart
Together Shoreditch and Spitalfields in the East of London constitute the most exciting place to be in London. The population is young, dynamic and imaginative; Friday and Saturday nights are a riot with a plethora of bars and clubs many with their own unique flavour. But what makes this area really special is that Shoreditch and Spitalfields comprise what one might call, ‘the square mile of art’; a de factor open air art gallery; with graffiti, posters and paste-ups being displayed on the main streets, down the side roads and in all the nooks and crannies of this post-industrial environ.
From Eine’s huge single letters being painted on shop shutters, to the haunting propaganda posters of Obey, to Cartrain’s political black and white pop-art; and to the one very small bronze coloured plastic circle, with the imprint of a dog shit and a man's foot about to step into it, which I once saw pasted to a wall, there is an incredible diversity.
Being on the streets, the work can be destroyed, taken or painted over at any minute. It is fragile and transient. Furthermore the juxtaposition of different pieces of art is random and unpredictable both in content and its location, which means that each day throws up a new and unique configuration of work within the streets, which you can only experience by travelling through the city.
Street Art Beginnings
The reasons for why East London has seen the flowering of street art are manifold. The post-industrial legacy of Shoreditch’s crumbling low-rise warehouses, not only provides an environment in which the artists and designers can do their work, but East London’s proximity to the City of London provides an economic source of support for the artists and designers; and finally Shoreditch with its building sites, old dilapidated warehouses provides a canvas upon which those artists can display their work and increase their commercial value.
Set against the characterless nature of the steely post-modernity of the city, the autumnal colours of the terraced warehouses in Shoreditch, no bigger than four to five stories high; offer a reminder of the legacy of a thriving fabrics and furniture industry which blossomed in the seventeenth Century. Both Shoreditch and Spitalfields have industrial pasts linked to the textiles industry, which fell into terminal decline by the twentieth century and was almost non-existent by the end of Wolrd War II. The decline was mirrored in the many three to four storey warehouses that were left to decay.
The general decline was arrested in the 1980s with the emergence of Shoreditch and Hoxton (Hoxton and Shoreditch are used interchandeably to refer to the same area) as a centre for new artists. It is difficult to say what attracted the artists to this area. But it was likely to be a combination of the spaces offered by the old warehouses, the cheap rents, and the location of Shoreditch and Spitalfields close to the City of London; where the money was to buy and fund artistic endeavour.
Not just that but post-war Shoreditch dominated by tens of post-war tower blocks, built amidst the ruins of the terraced housing that lay there before, which was bombed during World War II; had the rough edge which might inspire an artist. Shoreditch hums with the industry of newly arrived immigrants but also of the dangers of the poorer communities which inhabit these areas. Homeless people can be found sat underneath bridges on the main thoroughfares on Friday and Saturday nights; and Shoreditch is apparently home to one of the largest concentrations of striptease joints and a number of prostitutes. So, Shoreditch is a crumbling dirty, dodgy, polluted mess but it also has money; and these two factors provide an intoxicating mix for artists, who can take inspiration from their environment, but also rub shoulders with people who have the kind of money to buy their work.
By the early nineties Hoxton’s reputation as a centre for artists had become well established. As Jess Cartner-Morley puts it ‘Hoxton was invented in 1993. Before that, there was only 'Oxton, a scruffy no man's land of pie and mash and cheap market-stall clothing…’ At that time artists like Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin were taking part in ‘A Fete Worth than Death’ an arts based event in Hoxton. Gradually these artists began to create their own gravity, attracting more and more of their own like. Clubs and bars began to emerge, as did a Hoxton style, ‘the Hoxton fin’ being a trademark haircut. Many designers and artists located around Shoreditch and Spitalfields. Shoreditch has also become a hive of studios for artists, vintage fashion shops, art students and musicians.
At the same time as an artistic community was forming fuelled by money from the City, London was subject to a revolution in street art. According to Ward, writing for Time Out, the street art scene began in the mid-1980s as part of London’s hip-hop scene. Graffiti artists, emulating what was going on Stateside, began to tag their names all over London. According to Ward many of those pioneers ‘went on to paint legal commissions and are at the heart of today’s scene’. That is to say, from the community of artists congregating in East London, a number were inspired by graffiti, and because the East London, with its countless dilapidated warehouses, and building sites, offered such a good canvas; they went on to use the East London as a canvas for their work.
Little seems to have been written about the individual journey’s particular street artists have taken to get to where they are, which help illuminate some of the issues talked about in this section. Cartrain said that Banksy was a huge influence for him commenting that, "I've sent him a few emails showing him my work and he sent me a signed piece of his work in the post."
What created the East London street art scene may also kill it
The East London urban art scene is unlikely to last forever, being the symptom of a delicate juxtaposition of industrial decline and economic forces.
The irony is that the same factors which are responsible for the creation of the East London art scene are likely to destroy it.
Politicians from all parties, spiritual leaders for global capital, tell us of the unstoppable forces of globalisation. They say if Britain is to continue to dip its paw into the cream of the world’s wealth it needs to become a post-industrial service economy; suggesting a rosy future of millions of Asians slaving away co-ordinated by keyboard tapping British suits, feet on desk, leant back on high backed leather chairs, secretary blowing them off.
Art, which is feeble and dependent upon the financial growth of an economy for its survival, will have to shape itself around the needs and demands of capital.
The financial district of the City of London, lying to the south of Shoreditch, has been successfully promoted as a global financial centre, and its mighty power is slowly expanding its way northwards. Plans are afoot for the glass foot soldiers of mammon, fuelled by speculative property investment, to gradually advance northwards, replacing old warehouses with a caravan of Starbucks and Japanese sushi places and a concomitant reduction in dead spaces to portray the art, increased security to capture and ward off street artists, increased property prices and the eventual eviction of the artistic community. Spitalfields has already had big corporate sized chunks taken out of it, with one half of the old Spitalfields Market being sacrificed for corporate interests in the last five years.
So then the very same financial forces, and post-industrial legacy, which have worked to create this micro-environment for street art to thrive, are the same forces which will in time eventually destroy it. Maybe the community will move northwards, maybe it will dissipate, but until that moment lets just enjoy what the community puts out there, for its own financial interests, for their own ego and also, just maybe, for the benefit of the people.
Banksy
Banksy is the street artist par excellence. London’s street art scene is vibrant and diverse. There is some good, cure, kitschy stuff out there, but in terms of creativity and imagination Banksy leads by a city mile. His stuff is invariably shocking, funny, thought provoking and challenging.
Banksy considers himself to be a graffiti artist, which is what he grew up doing in the Bristol area in the late eighties. According to Hattenstone (2003) Banksy, who was expelled from his school, and who spent some time in prison for petty crimes, started graffiti at the age of 14, quickly switching over to stencils, which he uses today, because he didn’t find he had a particular talent for the former. His work today involves a mixture of graffiti and stencils although he has shown a capacity for using a multitude of materials.
Key works in London have included:
•In London Zoo he climbed into the penguin enclosure and painted "We're bored of fish" in six-foot-high letters.
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•In 2004 he placed a dead rat in a glass-fronted box, and stuck the box on a wall of the Natural History Museum.
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•‘A designated riot area’ at the bottom of Nelson’s Column.
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•He placed a painting called Early Man Goes to Market, with a human figure hunting wildlife while pushing a shopping trolley, in the British Museum.
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His work seems to be driven by an insatiable desire to go on producing. In an interview with Shepherd Fairey he said, ‘Anything that stands in the way of achieving that piece is the enemy, whether it’s your mum, the cops, someone telling you that you sold out, or someone saying, "Let’s just stay in tonight and get pizza." Banksy gives the impression of being a person in the mould of Tiger Woods, Michael Schumacher or Lance Armstrong. Someone with undoubted talent and yet a true workaholic dedicated to his chosen profession.
Its also driven by the buzz of ‘getting away with it’. He said to Hattenstone, ‘The art to it is not getting picked up for it, and that's the biggest buzz at the end of the day because you could stick all my shit in Tate Modern and have an opening with Tony Blair and Kate Moss on roller blades handing out vol-au-vents and it wouldn't be as exciting as it is when you go out and you paint something big where you shouldn't do. The feeling you get when you sit home on the sofa at the end of that, having a fag and thinking there's no way they're going to rumble me, it's amazing... better than sex, better than drugs, the buzz.’
Whilst Banksy has preferred to remain anonymous he does provide a website and does the occasional interview putting his work in context (see the Fairey interview).
Banksy’s anonymity is very important to him. Simon Hattenstone, who interviewed Banksy in 2003, said it was because graffiti was illegal, which makes Banksy a criminal. Banksy has not spoken directly on why he wishes to maintain his anonymity. It is clear that Banksy despises the notion of fame. The irony of course is that ‘Banksy’ the brand is far from being anonymous, given that the artist uses it on most if not all of his work. In using this brand name Banksy helps fulfil the need, which fuels a lot of graffiti artists, of wanting to be recognised, the need of ego.
Banksy is not against using his work to ‘pay the bills’ as he puts it. He has for example designed the cover of a Blur album, although he has pledged never to do a commercial job again, as a means of protecting his anonymity. Nevertheless he continues to produce limited edition pieces, which sell in galleries usually for prices, which give him a bit of spending money after he has paid the bills. Banksy has said, ‘If it’s something you actually believe in, doing something commercial doesn’t turn it to shit just because it’s commercial’ (Fairey, 2008). Banksy has over time passed from urban street artist into international artistic superstar, albeit an anonymous one.
Banksy has a definite concern for the oppressed in society. He often does small stencils of despised rats and ridiculous monkeys with signs saying things to the effect of ‘laugh now but one day we’ll be in charge’. Whilst some seem to read into this that Banksy is trying to ferment a revolutionary zeal in the dispossessed, such that one day they will rise up and slit the throats of the powers that be, so far his concern seems no more and no less than just a genuine human concern for the oppressed. Some of what seems to fuel his work is not so much his hatred of the system but at being at the bottom of it. He said to Hattenstone (2003) ‘Yeah, it's all about retribution really… Just doing a tag is about retribution. If you don't own a train company then you go and paint on one instead. It all comes from that thing at school when you had to have name tags in the back of something - that makes it belong to you. You can own half the city by scribbling your name over it’
Charlie Brooker of the Guardian has criticised Banksy for his depictions of a monkey wearing a sandwich board with 'lying to the police is never wrong' written on it. Certainly such a black and white statement seems out of kilter with more balanced assessments that Banksy has made. Brooker challenges Banksy asking whether Ian Huntley would have been right to have lied to the police?
Brooker has also criticized Banksy for the seemingly meaninglessness of some of this images. Brooker says, ‘Take his political stuff. One featured that Vietnamese girl who had her clothes napalmed off. Ho-hum, a familiar image, you think. I'll just be on my way to my 9 to 5 desk job, mindless drone that I am. Then, with an astonished lurch, you notice sly, subversive genius Banksy has stencilled Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald either side of her. Wham! The message hits you like a lead bus: America ... um ... war ... er ... Disney ... and stuff.’ Brooker has seemingly oversimplified Banksy’s message, if indeed Banksy has one, to fuel his own criticisms. It is easy to see that for many the Vietnam painting tells us that the United States likes to represent itself with happy smiling characters, that hide the effects of its nefarious activities responsible for the real life faces of distress seen on the young girl. Something that we should be constantly reminded of. But then that’s a matter of politics not of meaninglessness.
Banksy’s ingenuity comes through in his philosophy on progression, ‘I’m always trying to move on’ he says. In the interview he gave with Shepherd Fairey he explained that he has started reinvesting his money in to new more ambitious projects which have involved putting scaffolding put up against buildings, covering the scaffolding with plastic sheeting and then using the cover of the sheets to do his paintings unnoticed.
Banksy has balls. Outside of London he has painted images in Disney Land; and on the Israeli wall surrounding Palestine. How far is he willing to push it? What about trying something at the headquarters of the BNP, or on army barracks, or at a brothel or strip club employing sex slaves, or playing around with corporate advertising a la Adbusters?
A foot operated vise used for making shingles. Circa 1720.
Seen at the Hans Herr House in Lancaster County PA.
The much weather-worn tombstone of Sir Daniel Wilson (January 5, 1816 - August 6, 1892). He was the third president of the University of Toronto. St. James Cemetery, Toronto, Canada. Spring afternoon, 2021. Pentax K1 II
The inscription on the tombstone appears to read:
In loving memory of my ??
Sir Daniel Wilson LL.D.
President
of the University of Toronto
From 1880 to 1892
Born 5th Jan. 1816
Died 6th August 1892
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Wilson_(academic)
Sir Daniel Wilson FRSC FSA (Scot) FRSE LLD (January 5, 1816 – August 6, 1892) was a Scottish-born Canadian archaeologist, ethnologist and author.
Life
Wilson was born at 55 Potterow[1] in Edinburgh on 3 January 1816, the son of Archibald Wilson and his wife, Janet Aitken. His father is listed in directories as a book-binder, but some records state he was a wine-dealer. He was educated at the Royal High School. He was apprenticed as an engraver around 1830 then went to London, and worked in the studio of J. M. W. Turner. His skills as a water-colour painter came back into play much later in his career.
Wilson returned to Edinburgh in 1842, and was appointed Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1845. He corresponded with Christian Jürgensen Thomsen and J. J. A. Worsaae, who had established the exhibition of the prehistoric material in the Danish national museum in Copenhagen in terms of the Three-age system – the succession of a Stone Age by a Bronze Age and an Iron Age. He organized the display of the Society's museum after the same chronological scheme, the first to emulate the Copenhagen museum.
In 1845 he is listed as a "printseller and artist's colourman" with premises at 25 Hanover Street and living at 32 Broughton Place.
In 1848 Wilson published Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time, of which the chief value lies in the numerous illustrations, done by himself It was an important record of the many historic buildings that were at risk or were being lost in the rapid development of central Edinburgh. In 1851 he published The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, which introduced the word prehistoric into the English archaeological vocabulary – he probably translated it from the Danish word "forhistorie" as used by Thomsen and Worsaae.
His final years in Edinburgh were spent at 17 Archibald Place, near George Heriot's School.
In 1853 Wilson left Scotland to take up the post of Professor of History and English Literature in Toronto. In addition to his teaching duties, he kept up his interests in natural history, geology, and was very interested in the ethnography of the indigenous groups that he encountered on his vacation treks. Many of his watercolour sketches of landscapes and encampments of hunter-gatherer groups are now in the Canadian national archives in Ottawa. His brother George Wilson had become the first director of a new national museum in Edinburgh (now the National Museums of Scotland), and Daniel Wilson actively collected ethnographic material for the museum by means of an extensive network of contacts. He was the author of Civilisation in the Old and the New World, and a number of other books, for example, a study on Thomas Chatterton, and Caliban, the Missing Link. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1861.
In 1875 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Sir George Frederick Harvey, John Hutton Balfour, Sir Andrew Douglas Maclagan and Sir Robert Christison. He served as president of the Canadian Institute (later the Royal Canadian Institute) from 1878-1881.
Daniel Wilson also served as president of University College, Toronto from 1880 to 1892, and as the first president of the federated University of Toronto from 1890–1892. He asserted their claims against the sectarian universities of the province which denounced the provincial university as godless, and against the private medical schools in Toronto. He advocated what he called "the maintenance of a national system of university education in opposition to sectarian or denominational colleges". He opposed the federation of colleges, particularly that of Victoria College, as a "Methodist plot".
In 1888 Wilson was knighted by Queen Victoria for his services to education in Canada, and in 1891 given the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh.
He died in Toronto on August 6, 1892.[2] He is buried in St. James Cemetery in Toronto.
Family
His older brother was George Wilson FRSE (1818–1859).
In 1840, he married Margaret Mackay.
His sister Jessie Aitken Wilson married the biologist James Sime.
Recognition
The Sir Daniel J. Wilson Residence at the University College in University of Toronto is named in his honour.
www.biographi.ca/en/bio/wilson_daniel_12E.html
WILSON, Sir DANIEL, artist, author, ethnologist, and university teacher and administrator; b. 5 Jan. 1816 in Edinburgh, son of Archibald Wilson, a wine merchant, and Janet Aitken; m. 28 Oct. 1840 Margaret Mackay (d. 1885), and they had two daughters; d. 6 Aug. 1892 in Toronto.
After attending the Edinburgh High School, Daniel Wilson entered the University of Edinburgh in 1834 but left the next year to study engraving with William Miller. In 1837 he went to London to establish himself as an illustrator and worked briefly for the painter J. M. W. Turner. Both in London and in Edinburgh, to which he returned in 1842, Wilson eked out a living through literary hack-work, producing reviews, popular books on the Pilgrim Fathers and on Oliver Cromwell and the Protectorate, essays for magazines, and art criticism for the Edinburgh Scotsman.
While still in his teens Wilson had taken to exploring and sketching the old buildings of Edinburgh. His Memorials of Edinburgh in the olden time (2v., Edinburgh, 1848) is profusely illustrated with his own woodcuts and engravings of picturesque structures and architectural details, and it contains an evocative but rambling history of the city. Wilson’s fascination with the past expressed a romantic feeling stimulated by the novels of Sir Walter Scott as well as a patriotic pride in the indigenous antiquities of Scotland, and it extended beyond the history that could be documented by written records to encompass much earlier relics and even skeletal remains. As honorary secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland from 1847, Wilson visited sites and corresponded extensively with collectors throughout the country. In 1849 he compiled a synopsis of the holdings of the society’s museum which, in turn, provided him with the outline for The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1851), the first comprehensive survey of Scottish archaeological remains and one that departed substantially from the tradition of merely gathering and cataloguing curious rarities. Wilson regarded such artefacts as weapons, ornaments, implements, and tombs as the historian’s equivalent of the geologist’s fossils: just as fossils enabled the scientist to identify and characterize eras in the earth’s history, so material remains enabled the student of prehistory (a word which he introduced into the English language) to document the sequence of ages in the human past and to infer attitudes, beliefs, and rites of long-vanished cultures. Wilson adopted the three-tiered division established by Danish antiquaries and arranged Scottish artefacts in terms of the stone, bronze, and iron ages. By connecting these ages to the Christian era, moreover, he drew links between archaeology and written history and thereby extended enormously the chronological depth of the country’s past. Through the examination of skeletal remains and the measurement of skulls Wilson showed that other peoples had lived in Scotland before the Celts. His book also constituted a protest against the tendency to attribute relics that showed skill of workmanship and invention to Roman or Scandinavian influences and to assign all that was rude to Britons, and a plea that archaeology, in order to assume the status of a science, be closely associated with ethnology and that data on Scotland be compared with material from other parts of the world.
Wilson’s book helped establish prehistory as a science in Great Britain as well as his own reputation as a scholar. In 1851 he received his only degree, an honorary lld from the University of St Andrews, and in 1853, despite slight academic experience, he was appointed to the chair of history and English literature in University College, Toronto. His application was supported by Lord Elgin [Bruce*], governor of the United Province of Canada and a fellow member of the Society of Antiquaries.
Wilson’s move to Canada accentuated some of his intellectual interests and closed off other lines of development. Although he kept abreast of discoveries in Scottish prehistory and reworked and reissued his books, he was removed from direct contact with source materials and co-workers. On the other hand he responded eagerly to the ethnological possibilities of the New World. His enthusiasm for the study of the North American Indians was reinforced if not ignited by some members of the Canadian Institute. Wilson joined this scientific society in 1853, edited its periodical, the Canadian Journal: a Repertory of Industry, Science, and Art (Toronto), between 1856 and 1859, and served it in many administrative positions, including that of president in 1859 and 1860. He was instrumental in broadening the scope of its reportage on science to include ethnology and archaeology, and even added literary criticism. Members of the institute had shown a determined interest in preserving the relics, languages, and lore of the vanishing Indians; some, such as painter Paul Kane*, explorer Henry Youle Hind*, and Captain John Henry Lefroy* of the Royal Engineers, had travelled extensively in the northwestern wilderness. Wilson grew especially fond of Kane and of his patron, George William Allan, who collected native artefacts. Wilson’s growing knowledge of the native peoples owed much more to the experiences, collections, and publications of his new acquaintances than to firsthand encounters, and he saw the native peoples in the light of his European preoccupations: they were important not in and for themselves but rather because they exemplified living, primitive cultures that had once existed in prehistoric Europe.
In his new environment Wilson’s early interests in cranial types and measurement grew into an obsession, largely in response to the controversy over whether the various races of people had separate origins (polygenesis) or had developed from a single creation (monogenesis). A group of American writers, including Philadelphia physician Samuel George Morton, an acquaintance of Wilson’s, ascribed mental and moral qualities to races on the basis of the shapes of heads, argued that races were distinct species, and contended that a single head type was to be found among all North American native peoples other than the Inuit. The implications of polygenesis, and its association with justifications of Negro servitude, offended Wilson’s moral sense as well as his scientific instincts. He had grown up in a family of pronounced anti-slavery views, and in 1853 in Philadelphia he was surprised and hurt to find that people dismissed as ridiculous the idea that “the black man is sprung from the same stock as the white.” All his life Wilson remained true to the cardinal doctrine of the philosophers of the late 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment that humankind was everywhere and in all ages the same and that variations of culture and attainments were due to the circumstances in which people were placed, not innate racial character. In a series of articles, Wilson challenged the view that a single head type characterized the North American Indian race by pointing out how varied specimens actually were and how difficult it was to generalize about skulls that had been altered by diet, deliberate deformation, and burial rites.
The twin themes of the unity of mankind and the importance of the indigenous native culture of North America for illuminating European prehistory dominated Wilson’s Prehistoric man: researches into the origin of civilisation in the Old and the New World (Cambridge, Eng., and Edinburgh, 1862). Its two discursive and synthetic volumes attempted to establish man’s innate capacity by examining how certain faculties or instincts were expressed among a great diversity of races and cultures. Thus Wilson wrote of water transport, metallurgy, architecture, fortifications, ceramic art, narcotics, and superstitions in order to illustrate the ways in which human beings revealed a common ingenuity in invention and in artistic and religious expression. His entire inquiry was based on the belief that despite an immense variety of cultures and conditions all people were capable of progress, that levels of attainment were matters of social learning and environment rather than biological destiny, and that progress was by no means inevitable because man was a free agent and could relapse into savagery. Wilson was especially intent on isolating parallels and correspondences between the cultures of North America and those of prehistoric Europe. In discussing sepulchral mounds, for example, he compared the funeral rites of an Omaha chief who was buried with his horse and those of an ancient Saxon interred with his chariot: “For man in all ages and in both hemispheres is the same; and, amid the darkest shadows of Pagan night, he still reveals the strivings of his nature after that immortality, wherein also he dimly recognizes a state of retribution.”
For Wilson there was no contradiction between the psychic unity of man and the fact that certain races, favoured by environment, were more advanced than others. He was intrigued by the cultural contacts between Amerindians and Europeans and by the resulting displacement and extinction of the weaker races. North America seemed to him a gigantic laboratory of racial intermixture, and he insisted that interbreeding had already taken place in Canada to a larger extent than was commonly recognized. Because the polygenists had argued that different species of people were incapable of perpetuating hybrids that would be permanently fertile, Wilson made much of the Métis of the Red River settlement whose offspring were, he felt, in some respects superior to the original stocks. The Métis also seemed to him to point to the fate of all the aboriginal peoples of Canada: they would ultimately disappear as distinct groups, not by extinction, but by absorption into a new type of humanity. Wilson was therefore highly critical of a policy that isolated Indians on reserves and kept them in a state of pupilage; he argued that Indians themselves should manage their reserves and resources, that they should as individuals have the right to dispose of their share of reserve lands, and that individuals should be freed to compete equally with whites.
Throughout his study Wilson dwelt upon the profound differences between human beings and animals. Unlike Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution through natural selection attempted to explain the continuity of human and animal intelligence, Wilson contrasted man’s moral sense, and his capacity to reason, accumulate, and transmit experience, with the fixed, mechanical instincts of animals. Wilson also found fault with Darwin’s hypothetical mode of argument, pointed to the lack of geological evidence for transmutation, and objected to a scientific explanation of a reality that was both material and spiritual on material grounds alone. Though in time he accepted elements of the evolutionists’ argument – such as a vast age of the earth and a remote prehistory of man – and even conceded the possibility of man’s physical evolution, he always insisted on a special creation of man’s moral feelings, instincts, and intelligence.
A British reviewer of Prehistoric man was amazed that such a study issued from the “woody depths of Canada”; closer to home, Henry Youle Hind dismissed Wilson as an armchair anthropologist who relied excessively upon the observations of others. But, though Wilson did almost no field-work in Upper Canada’s prehistory (apart from a trip to Lake Superior in 1855 to examine ancient workings of copper deposits), he did travel to museums in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston to study Indian skulls. He also visited the impressive earthworks in the American Midwest which he, like most others, concluded were the products of a race of mound-builders who had been displaced by the Indians, and he made determined efforts to gather information by sending questionnaires to Indian agents. Still, Wilson’s originality lay more in calling the attention of European scholars to the evidences of the prehistory of the Old World that could be seen in North America, and in making the ideas of European anthropology better known in Canada. His book, however, appeared at a time when Darwin shifted the terms of the debate about man from the multiple or single creation controversy to the question of man’s descent from brutish ancestors. Wilson never fully engaged this problem, nor did he ever follow other anthropologists and ethnologists inspired by the theory of evolution in constructing stages of lineal social progress along which peoples were assigned positions on the grounds of racial capacity. His reluctance to pursue these lines of argument is perhaps why one of his students, the poet William Wilfred Campbell*, judged Wilson too old and conservative to be affected by the growth of science in the latter decades of the century. On the other hand modern anthropologists, who have freed themselves from the post-Darwinian obsessions with race, have found Wilson’s work refreshing and forward-looking precisely because he was in his own time so reactionary.
Prehistoric man drew together the main elements in Wilson’s eclectic anthropological and ethnological thought, and in his later papers, some of which were collected in The lost Atlantis, and other ethnographic studies (Edinburgh, 1892), he refined and qualified ideas already set out in it. He continued to write about migration and racial intermingling, the aesthetic faculty in aboriginal people, and the relationship of the size of the brain to intellectual vigour. He came to doubt that cranial capacity offered any reliable measure of intelligence. One of his minor interests was why most people were right-handed (Wilson was left-handed and became ambidextrous) and whether this preference was due to social habit or physiology. This seemingly trivial inquiry led him to consider evidence from archaeology, philology, literature, and anatomy, and to the conclusion that the left hemisphere of the brain, which controlled the right side of the body, developed earlier than the right hemisphere.
Wilson always seemed to have several projects under way simultaneously, not all of them tangential to the subjects he taught as professor of history and English literature. Though Caliban: the missing link (London, 1873) has most often been described as a playful comparison of Shakespeare’s imaginary creation, a being between brute and man, and the fanciful inventions of modern evolutionary science, it is no less a study of the dramatist’s artistry, the supernatural creatures in his plays, and the intellectual milieu in which he wrote. In Chatterton: a biographical study (London, 1869) Wilson documented the life of the young poet who had like himself sought fame and fortune in London but who had met only despair and death by his own hand. Of these two books and the third edition of Prehistoric man, published in 1876, Wilson said in 1881 that Chatterton was his favourite.
By this date Wilson’s energies were absorbed in university administration and academic politics. He misled his friends and possibly deluded himself when he confessed a preference for the quiet scholarly life, for he relished and excelled in the affairs of the University College council and the University of Toronto senate. His prominence in the university was already established in 1860, seven years after his arrival, when he, rather than the president of University College, John McCaul*, appeared with the vice-chancellor of the university, John Langton, before a select committee of the Canadian assembly to defend the college. In his testimony Wilson adumbrated the principles of higher education that would guide him as president of University College after 1 Oct. 1880 and as president of the University of Toronto from 1887 to 1892.
Under the University Act of 1853 the University of Toronto had become solely an examining and degree-granting institution with teaching being delegated to University College and to such denominational colleges as Victoria at Cobourg and Queen’s at Kingston which were expected to affiliate with it. The University of Toronto and University College had prior claims upon the revenues from the endowment first established for King’s College; any remaining surplus was to be divided by the government among the denominational institutions. However, with the construction from 1856 to 1859 of the quasi-Gothic University College building [see Frederic William Cumberland*], to which Wilson contributed designs for gargoyles and carvings, no funds were left to be shared. The cause of the denominational institutions was taken up by the Wesleyan Methodist Church which in 1859 requested the Legislative Assembly to investigate the alleged mismanagement of University College. At the select committee hearings held the next year, before which Wilson and Langton appeared, Egerton Ryerson*, the superintendent of education for Upper Canada, denounced the unjust monopoly of revenues intended for all colleges by this “temple of privilege” run by a “‘family compact’ of Gentlemen”; censured the wastage of public funds on a needlessly elaborate building; upheld as models the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which concentrated on the classics and mathematics, in contrast to University College, which offered too many optional subjects in the sciences, history, and modern languages; and doubted that a Christian education was attainable in a godless institution in which teachers were not imbued with the feelings and principles of religion. Ryerson hardly endeared himself to Wilson by also mentioning that there was no need to teach history and English literature at the college level since these subjects were covered in the grammar schools.
In his response on 21 April 1860 Wilson endorsed the Scottish model of higher education, especially the teaching of abroad range of subjects and the provision of options that would help prepare students in practical ways for particular professions. Wilson was contemptuous of appeals to the examples of the two old English universities which were accessible only to a privileged class and some of whose graduates struck him as men who had “just emerged from the cloister.” Both he and Langton pointed to the unmistakable trend in Britain towards severing the denominational associations of universities and the removal of all restrictions on faculties other than the theological. On this matter Wilson spoke with considerable feeling: his brother George, a chemist, had for years been kept from a university position because he could not in good conscience sign the confession of faith and the formula of obedience of the established church in Scotland. Wilson detested the sectarianism of colonial society. He argued that public financial support for the religious colleges would perpetuate class and denominational differences, whereas in a non-denominational system people with different religious convictions would intermingle and be trained to cooperate.
Wilson’s support for the principle of nondenominationalism did not mean that he wanted to divorce religion in general from higher learning or that he was an outright secularist. He believed profoundly that, though there were many ways of attaining an understanding of God and nature, truth itself was one, and that science would supplement, not challenge, the essential teaching of Scripture. Thus, far from promoting an indifference to religion, Wilson attacked ecclesiastical interference in the teaching of science precisely because such intervention in the past had impeded the discovery of truth which was both secular and spiritual.
Like Ryerson, Wilson could not refrain from mixing statements of principle with personal abuse. He insinuated that since Ryerson did not possess a university degree he could not be taken as an informed witness on higher education, to which Ryerson replied that Wilson’s own academic experience in Scotland had been brief and his only degree was an honorary one. As for Wilson’s scholarship he added that Wilson had a particular affinity for relics and that “in his leisure moments in this Country [he] has devoted himself to disembowelling the Cemeteries of the Indian Tribes, in seeking up the Tomahawks, Pipes and Tobacco which may be found there, and writing essays upon them.”
Though the select committee issued no recommendations, the hearings left a lasting impression on Wilson. He conceived an intense distaste for Ryerson in particular – “the most unscrupulous and jesuitically untruthful intriguer I ever had to do with,” he confided in his journal – and a suspicion of Methodist designs against University College in general. All subsequent proposals for a closer association of the religious colleges, especially the Methodist Victoria, with the University of Toronto, appeared to Wilson as a revival of the attempt of 1860 to despoil University College. Wilson played no role in initiating in the mid 1880s the proposals for the federation of denominational colleges with the university and, had he had his way, University College would have remained the primary teaching arm of the university with the denominational colleges becoming merely centres for theological instruction. In the difficult and protracted negotiations over the terms upon which Victoria College would enter federation, Wilson’s role was one of obstruction and resistance. He had no appreciation for the creative possibilities of the principle of university federation (which in any case was only fully realized after his death) and little understanding of the risks its Methodist supporters undertook. For him federation was a Methodist plot abetted by politicians out to secure the Methodist vote.
Wilson’s life as president of University College and later of the University of Toronto was complicated by the fact that all appointments to the teaching staff were made by the government on the recommendation of the minister of education for Ontario, and that university statutes could take effect only with the minister’s approval. These arrangements maximized the opportunities for intrigue and interference both on the part of politicians responsive to the critics of the college and university and on the part of disaffected academics who could and did take their complaints to the minister. Wilson was frequently challenged on appointments by those who advocated the hiring of native-born Canadians (or even exclusively Toronto graduates), but the most illuminating example of the cross-pressures under which he worked was the issue of the admission of women to classes at University College. Their status was quite anomalous: after 1877 they could write the matriculation examinations but they could not attend classes or obtain degrees. In 1883 Wilson cavalierly rejected applications for admission by five women. Their cause was taken up by Emily Howard Stowe [Jennings*] and the Women’s Suffrage Association, by William Houston*, legislative librarian and a member of the University of Toronto senate, and by two members of the legislature, John Morison Gibson* and Richard Harcourt*, both of whom were also members of the university’s senate. On 5 March 1884 the legislature approved a motion that provision be made for the admission of women to University College. Wilson attempted to overturn this decision by publishing on 12 March an open letter to the minister of education, George William Ross*. Wilson declared himself in favour of the higher education of women and pointed out that in 1869 he had helped found the Toronto Ladies’ Educational Association in which, until its dissolution in 1877, he had given virtually the same lectures to large groups of women that he had delivered to men at University College. He believed, however, that mixing young men and women in their most excitable years would only distract their attention from their studies. Wilson preferred the establishment of a college for women in Toronto modelled on Vassar or Smith in the United States. For Wilson coeducation was simply a cheaper and inferior alternative to these models. He later admitted privately that lecturing on Shakespeare to young men in the presence of young women would be a trying ordeal because of the sexual allusions in some of the plays.
Wilson had great faith in the powers of passive resistance and he informed the premier, Oliver Mowat*, that he would do nothing unless forced to act by an order in council. Though Ross had assured him that the government would back up its commitment with additional financial support and give the college adequate time to make adjustments, an order in council on 2 Oct. 1884, one day after the start of classes, compelled him to admit female students. To Wilson this action was not only a personal betrayal but another instance of the politicians caving in to pressure.
As the result of such experiences as these Wilson developed a hypersensitivity to even the most trivial matters as potential points of criticism or political trouble. When he learned that someone had made measurements for a five-foot-high mirror for the female students’ toilet-room he protested to the minister that it was not necessary (an ordinary mirror was sufficient for brushing hair and adjusting neckties) and might arouse unfriendly comment. In June 1886 Wilson prevented the trade union leader Alfred F. Jury* from speaking at the Political Science Club because he loathed the “communist” and “infidel” and feared that by providing a platform for the controversial figure to address students the university would invite criticism, most likely from Methodists. He constantly fretted about other opportunities for politicians to meddle in the university, and much of his surviving official correspondence with Ross is devoted to defending professors’ long summer holidays and instructing the minister on such matters as the evil effects of political appointments.
Wilson’s last years as president were hardly uneventful. On the evening of 14 Feb. 1890 fire gutted the eastern half of the University College building, destroying the library and all of Wilson’s lecture notes. In addition to dealing with restoration and reconstruction, Wilson, haunted by the spectre of total blindness from cataracts, began to rewrite his notes. During his years as a university administrator Wilson made repeated visits to Edinburgh, wrote a warm memoir of publisher William Nelson, who had helped him in the days when he had tried to make a living as a writer, and kept abreast of the activities of the Society of Antiquaries. He also closely followed developments in North American Indian ethnology and prehistory. Usually away from the university from mid July to mid September, Wilson spent many summers with his daughter Jane (Janie) Sybil sketching and executing water-colours of the natural scenery in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Upon his death he left her an estate valued in excess of $76,000, over half of which was in the form of bank shares and debentures. Following her father’s instructions, she destroyed his papers except for a diary.
Aside from the astonishing diversity of his intellectual interests, the most arresting feature of Wilson’s temperament was a romantic, poetic streak that rejoiced in ancient ruins, valued the sheer variety of cultures, and emphasized the mysterious and unknowable elements in life. Raised as a Baptist, Wilson became an Anglican evangelical; in Toronto he supported the Church of England Evangelical Association, which campaigned against ritualism, and he was one of the founders in 1877 of the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School (later Wycliffe College). He was involved in the Young Men’s Christian Association in Toronto, serving as president from 1865 to 1870, and was instrumental in establishing a Newsboys’ Lodging and Industrial Home for young street urchins, giving public lectures to raise funds to maintain it.
There was a combative element in Wilson’s character. His biographer, Hugh Hornby Langton*, who knew him well in his last years, judged that Wilson was of “an irascible disposition” but that he had learned to control his temper in public. Certainly his journal and his many letters to his friend Sir John William Dawson, principal of McGill University, bear witness to a character that did not easily suffer fools, particularly if they were clerics or politicians. In the privacy of his journal he usually referred to his political opponents in the university as “Moloch” or “the snake” and he was utterly contemptuous of politicians in general. This was one reason why he at first declined (but later accepted) a knighthood at the rank of knight bachelor, which the government of Sir John A. Macdonald announced in June 1888: since politicians were honoured with higher orders of knighthood, Wilson regarded his own as a slight to all men of letters and science. He passed acerbic judgements on the latter too. When he was requested to advise the Marquess of Lorne [Campbell*] on nominations for the Royal Society of Canada (of which he became a charter member in 1882 and president in 1885), he told Dawson he considered the whole idea premature. Although he admitted that the scientific sections of the society might do creditable work, the section on English literature and history appeared ridiculous. Wilson had written encouraging reviews of Canadian poetry in the 1850s but 30 years later he felt that, apart from Goldwin Smith*, all the prospective candidates in the men of letters category were mediocrities. “As for this Canadian Academy,” he exploded, “call it the A.S.S. or noble order of nobodies.”
Time has played strange tricks with the reputation of this self-taught, eclectic polymath. Wilson has been remembered in Britain as a man of science and letters and as a radical pioneer in Scottish prehistory, but in Canada his career as a university statesman who fought against denominational control and political interference was judged most important, while his scholarship in history, anthropology, and ethnology was treated as incidental. Thus, mainly through Langton’s biography, Wilson became primarily a university figure – indeed, the tall, spare, erect old man with a luxuriant white beard was a local character. After 1960 both historians interested in the impact of Darwin in Canada and anthropologists concerned with the indigenous roots of their discipline paid far more serious attention to his scientific writings which can no longer be dismissed as the dabblings of a dilettante.
Another butterfly photo to show how nature adapts and uses mans features. This photo even shows the monarch butterfly with his long feeding tube in the opening of the bird feeder. Not a good photo, but a lot of my pictures are done to emphasize nature and what we have seen .
or the quality of being clever, original and inventive
those Castrol Barrels make up a waste shoot the Builders came up with. clever eh
and the Elephant wanted to be in the picture too
NASA PR video from Perseverance images of the Ingenuity helicopter taking off and flying straight up.
Edited Ingenuity PR image of its shadow on the floor of Jezero Crater seen on its first flight. This is the first powered flight on another planet. Processing variant.
Image source: mars.nasa.gov/resources/25818/ingenuitys-first-black-and-...
Original caption: April 19, 2021
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter took this shot while hovering over the Martian surface on April 19, 2021, during the first instance of powered, controlled flight on another planet. It used its navigation camera, which autonomously tracks the ground during flight.
The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was built by JPL, which also manages this technology demonstration project for NASA Headquarters. It is supported by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, and Space Technology Mission Directorate. NASA’s Ames Research Center and Langley Research Center provided significant flight performance analysis and technical assistance during Ingenuity’s development.
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance:
mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
nasa.gov/perseverance
Reconstruction, through our artificial intelligence model, of a photo captured by Ingenuity at SOL 689 (January 27, 2023) at 16:02:11 LMST using its ColorCam. The file is available at 472.64 millions of pixel for download at a resolution of 25248x18720 pixels. The image dates back to Ingenuity Flight 41.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/PipploIMP
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A unique collection of signs spanning the period from 16th to the 20th centuries is housed in two galleries, offering a vivid glimpse of the atmosphere of the capital’s streets. Shopkeepers, whose customers were often illiterate, attracted the attention of passing trade by shouting their wares, but also by using pictures, hence the beauty and ingenuity of these signs on which griffons, fauna and black cats can be found side by side.
Love the opinels, they remind me of my youth in the mountains of south of France... every shepherd would have one and use it everyday, with their good old carbon blades ...
the lock is pure ingenuity and it's a super lightweight knife... and now it comes in color !!! awesome :)
Precision stonework at the Wall of the Six Monoliths, Ollantaytambo, Sacred Valley, Peru. "These stones are so massive that they weigh up to 50 tons and are each carved and fitted together with such precision that even a pin will not fit between them."
www.trover.com/d/ZvSn-the-wall-of-the-six-monoliths-ollan...
Edited Ingenuity image of the back shell that was part of the capsule that brought the Perseverance Rover (and Ingenuity as well) to Mars. Perseverance landed about a year ago. The back shell landed a distance from the rover and is a little worse for wear, with large cracks along the edges. The parachute is still attached. In some of these images, you can see the shadow of Ingenuity as it flies overhead.
Amazing to think that this has been filled with water for the past 129 years, and I imagine it doesn't look much different now than it did when it was first built.
Panorama of Perseverance images of under the rover. Of interest is the partially visible Ingenuity helicopter being ready to be deployed for a flight, probably in April. Ingenuity is visible sticking out the bottom of Perseverance. Color/processing variant.
I find it funny how well this photo is working with what's currently happening. I get a lot of anxiety when the day gets later and I haven't posted a photo yet. It's 22:15 right now and my power just went out. I started having a panic attack. Luckily, my brother owns a laptop. And I have a data plan. Using my markiii's RAW image processing capability and the extra SD card slot it has I was able to transfer this image from my CF to the SD, put it on my brother's laptop, use my phone as a tether and use an online photoshop to touch up the image and finally post this. If that doesn't show ingenuity then I don't know what does.