majestic maps

I think this is very cool: the entire inventory of 55,000 eighteenth century maps and ephemera owned by King George III of Britain has been digitized and is now available online for free.

I love when art and history are democratized like this and made available for free to anyone anywhere in the world with access to an internet connection. Before that, you actually had to sit in a musty library in Britain in order to see these maps. Now you can see them anywhere.

Ironically, the maps themselves are owned by the Royal Collection, meaning they're owned by the British monarch, thus the least democratic of ownership. But the current monarch should be given credit for making the collection accessible to everyone like this.

So if you're interested in history and/or maps, be sure to check this out.

Seen below is a sixteenth century map of Paris from the collection.

the war on fiona

I've written here before about how I pay a weekly visit to see the elderly woman in whose house we live. She's been living for a while in a part of the care home where they house dementia and Alzheimer's residents.

The unit consists of a large common room with tables, chairs, and sofa-and-chair groups around televisions. This is ringed by resident's individual rooms where some spend much or all of their day.

While I was visiting our friend while she ate at a table and helping her with her meal yesterday during my weekly visit, an elderly man at an adjacent table suddenly turned and started shouting at me in a torrent of largely nonsense. He also repeatedly addressed me as Fiona, notwithstanding that's not my name and I've never been introduced to him before.

Then, to conclude his tirade, he picked up his plate full of food and his full beverage glass and threw them at me, hitting me in the arm and torso and drenching me with his drink. The staff responded immediately and hustled him into his room and closed the door.

I don't know why he thought I was Fiona, whoever she was. I imagine it was just the deterioration of his memory function. Perhaps I reminded him of her. Given his sudden violent reaction, it doesn't seem to be a positive memory.

telemann, my telemann

I have more than 2,000 CD rips on my various computer hard drives, all of which are backed up at least once. I regularly upload some of those to my iPod while removing others.

Lately I've been rediscovering the music of Georg Philipp Telemann, who was a contemporary of Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi. I listen almost exclusively to non-vocal classical music, so the Telemann rips I have are concertos and the like.

One of those rips is a Telemann flute concerto album with soloist Emmanuel Pahud. The track below from the album, IMHO, is an incredibly beautiful piece of music.

I like Telemann because he's calming. I like Vivaldi, Bach, and Handel too, but I think Telemann is a bit more mellow. Have a listen and see what you think. It's only two and a half minutes long.

denver dildo debacle

The fire chief for Denver, Colorado, is resigning because of bawdy jokes about dildos at a union firefighters ball over which he has no control.

The jokes in question referred to a dildo raffle during another ball a year earlier. The media has not reported whether city leaders pushed him to resign.

The big question is why this was a scandal involving him to begin with. He has no control over the union. If firefighters attending the ball had issues about the entertainment, then the union leadership should be taken to task by its membership. Why did the head of the union not resign?

Replacing a fire chief costs taxpayer money in recruitment costs and lost personnel hours. If I was a Denver taxpayer, I'd want to know why the city was even involved in this issue. They were jokes about dildos. Get over it.

harvey's walker

Hollywood power producer Harvey Weinstein was convicted of two criminal counts yesterday in a Manhattan courtroom — rape and a criminal sexual act. He was acquitted on three more serious charges, including that he is a sexual predator.

He was immediately taken into custody after the verdict and now faces a prison sentence of between five and twenty years, which will be announced next month. He also is awaiting trial on various criminal charges in Los Angeles.

Celebrating this verdict would be indecorous. At the same time, it is a relief to see that no matter how rich and powerful someone might be, he or she must still face the music in the American justice system. Yes, the system may be tilted in favor of the elites, but they are not immune, either.

I followed the coverage somewhat as the trial was in progress but wasn't glued to day-by-day reporting. When it started, like many people, I reacted with immediate skepticism when the normally robust Weinstein showed up at trial using a walker.

A Google search reveals that fact has been subject to intense media scrutiny. Was it really needed or a ploy to influence the jury? The fact that Weinstein was filmed without the walker at a Target store several days before the trial began may influence your opinion.

At the end of the day, if the walker was a ploy, like Bill Cosby's cane at his trial, it didn't work. Jurors are not fools.

parallel parking blues

Nevada has now eliminated parallel parking as part of its driving test. It joins a number of other larger states that have done the same.

The reason isn't because officials think it's no longer important or that various automated assists make the skill no longer necessary for certain vehicles. It's because too many people failed the driving test because of parallel parking requirements, so by eliminating it, costs can be saved at local licensing offices.

I have never understood why people find parallel parking so hard. Women, in particular, have the greater difficulty, although plenty of men don't know how to do it, either. My mother didn't know how to do it and was forever looking for parking lots.

My brother taught me how to drive, and he in turn had been taught by our grandfather, who had a sort of muscular way of parallel parking. You throw your arm over the back seat, and then use both the mirror and the view out the window to glide into place. It works like a charm.

When I first met my husband in the United States, the first time he rode in my car, he was impressed I could both drive a stick and parallel parked so smoothly. I guess the moral here is that if a woman wants to turn a man's head, know how to drive like an alpha dog.

the sign-stealing scandal

I don't follow sports, but I happened to read about the sign-stealing scandal upending American baseball right now. It is, at its core, cheating.

I just don't get cheaters. Don't you have a hollow sense of victory when you win after cheating? Don't you realize you really haven't won, because it you hadn't cheated, you would have lost?

I guess it's greed or narcissism or both that drives people like this. If you believe in winning-at-all-cost, then you'll never win. Winning requires honesty. You may finish first because you cheated, but you have not and will never have won.

porn at the public library

Santa Monica, California, residents are outraged over the fact that a porno movie was actually shot inside one of the city's public libraries recently. It was filmed without the library or city's permission or knowledge.

I think they're right to be angry. There's nothing wrong with porn, but it needs to be kept out of the public eye.

While the movie was being made, there's no guarantee that children wouldn't inadvertently witness what was happening. That is not cool.

IMHO, the porn industry itself should clamp down hard on this sort of thing. They need to police themselves and refuse any and all distribution services for content makers who pull stunts like this.

Otherwise, lawmakers could come down hard on the adult industry and penalize it in a way that causes a lot more pain than the industry itself cracking down on a few troublemakers. Governments tend to overreact when smut is involved, so don't give them a chance to do so.

spielberg's daughter is doing porn

"Steven Spielberg’s daughter Mikaela is a porn star and aspiring erotic dancer," screams the tabloid headline, "and says her dad supports her career."

She's made clear she won't be fucking on screen, however. Apparently she'll just play with herself and with erotic toys.

I fear the day will come for her that she will regret this. Any ordinary person can work in erotic entertainment for a while and then move on to something else more mainstream. The erotic work can be airbrushed out of a resume by simply referring to oneself as a "freelance model."

But she's a very famous man's daughter and has given a tabloid interview about her erotic career plans. She won't be able to paper over that in her work history. I suspect that's a fact she'll come to regret when the time comes to move on with her life into something else.

Good luck to her nonetheless.

crime pays

An Indiana man, who already has an arrest record, was arrested again this week and charged with resisting arrest, reckless driving, possession of methamphetamines, auto theft, and more.

Police could be forgiven if they burst out laughing when they took him into custody. That's because he has "crime pays" tattooed in big letters on his forehead.

You really need to be a special kind of stupid to get a tattoo like this. I wonder if the tattoo artist tried to talk him out of it and, if so, how hard he or she tried.

diamond princess

he plight of the cruise ship Diamond Princess is getting a lot of airplay here Down Under in the media. As of this writing, nearly 550 people on board have been sickened.

The rate has been jumping by almost a hundred a day. For the foreseeable future, the ship sits in Port of Yokohama while the passengers on board are quarantined.

The rapid spread of the virus on board underscores how infectious it is. At the same time, a closed ship under quarantine is an ideal environment for rapid contamination.

Some countries, including the United States and Australia, have been allowed to remove their passengers for quarantine on land. The vast majority, however, remain on the ship.

Roughly a year ago, I wrote here about how I have zero interest in ever taking a cruise. Reading about the Diamond Princess has only reinforced that.

deadly dumpster diving

A North Carolina woman's body was found in a landfill near her home after she apparently died accidentally while dumpster diving behind a stripmall in her neighborhood. No foul play is suspected after police reviewed security video from behind the mall.

While news reports don't specify what happened, it sounds like she either injured herself when she fell into the dumpster or did not hear the garbage truck that picked up the dumpster before she could escape. If the latter, then she could have been crushed as the garbage truck compacted the dumpster's contents.

While I am frugal and not above acquiring nice items like patio chairs left at the curb for bulk pickup, I have never stooped to dumpster diving. Those things are beyond filthy inside. I can't believe people climb in and harvest food out of dumpsters. Ugh.

I did have an interesting dumpster encounter, however. When I lived in Los Angeles and rented a room in a townhouse, while on the phone I happened to watch as some men apparently cleaned out a unit where I suspect the tenant had skipped on the rent.

They removed furniture from the unit, then took the drawers over to the dumpster and tossed all the contents inside. The last drawer's contents they tossed was obviously from just under the writing surface on a desk, where one might keep more important stuff.

A little while later I took a bag of my trash out to the dumpster to toss inside. Before I did that, however, I looked in to see if there was enough room, given the workers had already thrown quite a lot inside.

When I looked in, I saw the desk drawer contents mostly flat on top of other trash. And I immediately noticed noticed some small tubes. They had landed on top of an open box.

They were rolled quarters.

A quick eyeballing revealed there were eight or nine rolls. At $10 a roll, that was a lot of free money. But they could not be reached simply by stretching my arm to its limit.

I nonetheless was not prepared to climb in the dumpster. So I hurried back to the townhouse where I rented the room, retrieved a broom from the kitchen, and hooked the box with the quarters and drew it towards me.

There were eight full rolls and one nearly full roll. The total came to something like $86.75.

Needless to say, I did laundry for quite a long time on those quarters.

mouths for eyes

You know you need to see this: a gallery of famous — and infamous — people whose portraits have been photoshopped so that they appear to have mouths where their eyes should be.

Some you barely notice. Others are truly horrifying. This is the sort of thing that, had I seen it when I was ten years old, I wouldn't have been able to sleep for weeks. Weird eyes in movies scared me. And this would have done so, too.

macaulay culkin is nearly forty

Macaulay Culkin will turn forty this year. He still does some acting. He's still rich. He still looks like Macaulay Culkin, except in a forty-year-old man-child version.

The latest issue of Esquire features an interview with him. It's a typical celebrity profile, full of inside humor and oozing hipness, but it nonetheless is interesting.

While reading it, I kept thinking: somewhere there is a parallel universe where Macaulay Culkin never became famous. He was never pushed into trying out for a part. He was never cast in anything. He was just an ordinary kid who became an ordinary man with an ordinary job and an ordinary life.

Would that ordinary man be happier than the fading celebrity known as Macaulay Culkin? I suspect he would be.

pepsi in your toilet

Not long after we started living together, my then boyfriend (now husband) asked something like, "why does our loo smell like pickled eggs?"

The answer was because I had soaked and cleaned the toilet with vinegar. If you're already not in the know, vinegar is a great way to remove mineral deposits and staining from any surface, including the insides of your toilet.

You can either soak it in straight vinegar or vinegar diluted with water, depending on the severity of the deposits and stains, or you can make a fizzy paste by mixing with baking soda, a process that works better on sink surfaces, vanity fixtures, and more.

Let it soak for several hours or, ideally, overnight and then clean everything up. A vinegar odor may linger but it will vanish in a few days.

This works because vinegar has acetic acid, which slowly dissolves the mineral stain and deposits, which are alkaline, the opposite of acidic.

Coca Cola or any other cola like Pepsi or a generic brand may work better than vinegar on certain stains and buildups. So if vinegar doesn't work as well as you'd like, substitute with cola in equal parts. This works because colas contain carbonic acid. And just like vinegar, you can make a fizzy paste with cola and baking soda to coat surfaces where straight liquid won't work.

dateline dresden

Once of the most memorable books I've ever read is Victor Klemperer's two-volume I Will Bear Witness 1933-41 — A Diary of the Nazi Years.

Klemperer was a Christian who had converted from Judaism. Hence, in the eyes of the Third Reich, he would always be a Jew. But because he was married to a gentile and had earned an Iron Cross during World War I, he was exempt from the Jewish roundup and deportation orders and thus avoided being sent to a concentration or death camp.

Nonetheless, he and his wife experienced many forced deprivations, from losing his university teaching job, his savings, and ultimately his home. The couple was crowded with other mixed couples into a "Judenhaus," and he was forced to wear a yellow star and ordered to perform menial forced labor.

That was until February 1945, when Klemperer, too, learned that all people such as himself would receive deportation orders and be forcibly relocated "to the East." By sheer coincidence, however, that never happened because the scheme was interrupted by the hellacious Dresden firebombing.

Klemperer and his wife survived the infamous destruction of the German city, which he wrote about vividly in his diary, along with an account of what happened to the couple immediately afterwards: he removed his yellow star and they simply walked out of the city and joined a long stream of refugees fleeing to safety.

I thought of that book again when I saw a sobering photo essay in the New York Times to commemorate the Dresden firebombing, which happened seventy-five years ago this week. The amount of visible damage is staggering.

You have to wonder where all of those people managed to live in all that rubble. Many were in cellars, of course, but the ruins suggest those must have been at a premium. Perhaps many of them simply lived in the open air.

The picture below shows a streetcar making its way through the ruined city enlargement. Surviving the firebombing must've been pure hell, and then the aftermath doubly so.

earworm

I happened to hear this song again the other day and it's become an earworm, unable to get out of my head. I've always thought the music was catchy but the lyrics are downright silly. It's "Head Over Heels" by Tears for Fears, which was a chart topper in 1985, the year I was born.

This would have been a better video, IMHO, without the audience right in front of the band. They're obviously actors and end up looking quite silly. It's not nearly as silly, however, as the band's original 1985 music video.

fashion stumbles and catastrophes

As is typical for any high-profile entertainment award ceremony, Sunday's Academy Awards had no shortage of fashion mistakes, from more minor to disastrous.

I was very pleased to see the brilliantly talented Laura Dern finally win an Oscar. I was not a big fan of Marriage Story, but her role in that film was stunning and extraordinary.

Her dress for the ceremony, however, left something to be desired IMHO (first picture below). The style and cut are lovely, but that black top makes it look like she has her bra on over her dress. And those tassels look like something borrowed from a 1950s stripper costume. Dern has worn some beautiful gowns in the past, and it's a shame she didn't wear something stunning this year.

Kristen Wiig's dress was a great color and looked terrific from the waist up (middle picture below). The black opera gloves really finished off the look nicely. Those side ruffles, however, are awful. They make her look like a car wash brush. The train was pointless. Without the ruffles and the train, the dress would've been fantastic with that narrow, tight skirt paired with the top.

Billie Eilish's Chanel outfit, however, was hands-down the worst of the night (bottom picture below). There are no adequate words to describe that monstrosity. Coco Chanel must be spinning in her grave. Chanel once meant classy. Now it means classless.

cut your toenails

Back before I was married when I was still living in the United States, I noticed I was having increasing difficulty cutting my toenails. They seemed to be growing thicker and harder because I could barely get through them with my toenail clipper.

Then one day, I could no longer cut my big toe nails. I knew people's nails thickened with age, but I was only in my early twenties then.

Finally it dawned on me: the problem wasn't my toenails. The problem was the clipper. It was probably very dull. I tried cutting regular paper with it. It wouldn't work.

So I went to the drugstore and tested a brand-new toenail cutter on a piece of paper. It went through it like butter.

That's when I decided to toss my old clipper and buy a new one, which I think was all of a dollar. The old one couldn't be sharpened because it couldn't be taken apart and I had no sharpening tools.

Ever since then, every few years, I toss out my clipper and buy a new one again. I've never had a problem cutting my toenails since.

For his part, the husband uses a nail clipper that more resembles thick shears. They look like torture devices, like something you'd use to tear off someone's big toenail and not trim it. The gizmo can be sharpened, so that's a big advantage.

So if you, like me, seem to be having more problems clipping your toenails, the culprit may not be you but, instead, your clippers.

But whatever you do, don't cut your toenails in public. It's disgusting. And don't use a big-ass knife like this woman is using, either. You could end up losing a whole toe.

red light camera scandal

About a year ago, my Midwest-based brother received a ticket for allegedly running a red light. There was no cop on the scene and, instead, the purported crime was caught by a red-light camera.

Now my brother rarely uses that intersection and was thus certain he entered the intersection on a green light and it turned yellow but not red before he cleared it.

Although he found a lot of stuff online about inaccurate red light cameras that "jumped the gun," so to speak, and photographed people before the light actually turned red, he decided it wasn't worth fighting city hall. So he pleaded guilty by mail, paid the fine, went to traffic school, and the citation was expunged from his record.

Flash forward to a few months ago. The media began reporting on a bribery scandal where at least one state legislator was bribed by a red light camera company to swing the city's contract their way and to increase the number of red light cameras the city would order. At least one state legislator has pleaded guilty to the charges while others are still facing trial, including officials at the red light camera company.

My brother began reading about this and it pissed him off royally. If a red light camera company was bribing city officials for a contract and for more red light cameras than originally ordered, how can one assume the cameras themselves are accurate? What better way to ensure that you get more business from the city than to sell them cameras that catch both the guilty and the innocent and thus increased revenue?

I think he has a very valid point. He's pissed off enough that he wants to city to refund the fine that he paid as well as the cost of traffic school. He's also exploring if his fight would be stronger if he went the class action route both against the city and the red light camera company.

I hope he succeeds. Fighting tickets must be part of our family DNA. I know my father has done it successfully and so have I. Now my brother is joining the fight, too.

the neanderthals

The BBC is featuring an interesting article about the last neanderthals on its news page. Although the piece doesn't bring it up, I wonder if they were killed off by a virus like Native American tribes.

During the Age of Exploration, a common malady that Europeans usually could easily overcome wiped out entire native populations within days of contact. Whose to say the same thing didn't happen with the Neanderthals?

The answer would likely depend on how close the two populations were in terms of contact. If they were in regular close contact, then almost certainly not. But if they kept miles apart, then that could be the answer, I think.

the queen's underpants

I was reading something offline the other day about modern-day ladies-in-waiting to the British queen and female royals. The queen has nine and the other lesser royals have fewer.

Ladies in waiting to the British monarch and royals are glorified personal servants but they're actually all members of the nobility or aristocracy. Some of their tasks including helping the royal dress and undress.

Another important task is to do the royal's personal shopping. Queen Elizabeth obviously can't go to Harrods or Harvey Nick to buy her own underpants or pantyhose, so that's a task for a lady in waiting.

It's considered a great honor to be a lady in waiting. The current senior lady-in-waiting is a duchess whose husband is richer than God.

If I were to be asked, which will almost certainly never happen, I will decline. Rinsing out some other broad's dirty pantyhose and underpants is not my idea of a good time nor of a great honor.

debby dingdong

Earlier this week, I mixed up a dinner recipe that's a favorite with the boys and popped it into the countertop steamer/cooker. When I turned the device on, however, all I got was an error message. I tried unplugging and replugging several times but still the same error message.

So the ingredients all went into a refrigerator container and put away until I could get a new cooker. As an alternative, I made a quick and easy ham, potatoes, and vegetables dinner.

I picked up a new countertop steamer/cooker yesterday. I washed all the appropriate components before I used it, dried it, then mixed up some brown rice, barley, and chicken hearts to test the device. I regularly cook that for the dog as it's ideal to mix with dried food as a motivator.

The directions said the control panel would come on once you plugged it in. So I plugged in the new one but the control panel was blank. I unplugged and replugged several times with the same results.

I thought, crap, now I have to take this one in for an exchange. But then I noticed something. For a brand-new device, the plug looked rather old.

Then it dawned on me. Instead of plugging in the new device, I was plugging in an ancient blender that permanently sits on the counter next to the toaster oven.

Needless to say, once Debbie Dingdong plugged in the new cooker with its actual plug, the control panel came on and I was off and running. The rice/barley/chicken hearts cooked beautifully and, once cooled, was a hit with the dog.

rest in peace, spartacus

The legendary Kirk Douglas died yesteday at the age of 103. He had an extraordinary life and an extraordinary career.

While he's arguably best remembered for his most famous roles in movies like Spartacus and Lust for Life, he had many fine performances in a number of other films. My personal favorite was his appearance in The Bad and the Beautiful where he gave a subtle, restrained yet powerful performance as a Hollywood producer.

His passing makes me want to discover his movies all over again with fresh viewings. I'm sure many others now feel the same way, and I'll bet that would make Mr. Douglas smile from ear-to-ear with his trademark grin.

iowa woes

It's Wednesday morning here in Sydney as I wrote this and later in the afternoon Tuesday back in the States. The results for the Iowa caucuses on Monday night still have not been released but are promised in a few hours.

The delay is believed to have been caused by a faulty reporting app that was not adequately tested before the election.

Many pundits and wonks were wringing their hands back in the United States over the delay, as if having to wait a day for results was catastrophic. Get a grip, people. Voters before the mass media age sometimes waited weeks or months before they learned the outcome of an election.

It's better to get it slow and right than hasty and wrong.

The above notwithstanding, the pundits are predicting this will be the death of the Iowa caucuses and the state will have a primary in 2020. They're also predicting Iowa will no longer be first in the nation to vote.

I say good on both counts. Caucuses are not the most democratic way to select a candidate. People who cannot block out an entire evening to participate don't have their voices heard. A primary gives every registered voter a chance to decide.

And Iowa shouldn't be the first in the nation to vote. They're not really representative of America in the twenty-first century. Most of the country is urban or suburban and multi-ethnic while most of Iowa is rural and almost entirely white.

For the same reason, New Hampshire shouldn't be second in the country to vote. They're almost as nonrepresentational as Iowa.

If I was queen of elections, I would decree that the country should have three or four regional primaries, each spaced a few weeks apart. The first and possibly second primaries would seriously whittle the field. The remainders would shrink it even further.

Or, you go to a whole-nation primary and then the top two or three candidates have a runoff a month later. The top two of that contest have a final primary a month later. It's long past time to significantly streamline and shorten the presidential primary process.

victoria's dirty little secret

The New York Times is running a feature article that uncovers a long history of sexual harassment of both models and corporate personnel at Victoria's Secret, the once booming but now struggling lingerie company.

This was not surprising news. I never modeled for them, of course, but I tried. I went to several open castings during my modeling years in the U.S. but never got a callback.

The article reminded me once again that you have to expect you'll be treated like a side of beef by many employers if you're a model. They don't see you as a person but, instead, as a body.

You need to go into the business with your eyes wide open about that fact. Then you have to decide how far you'll go in order to achieve your career goals — are you willing to be exploited if it will get you what you want?

the killer in the crowd

Sometimes when I'm in a place crowded with people — a shopping center, a busy supermarket, a traffic jam — I wonder to myself if anyone there committed a murder and got away with it.

Considering the number of unsolved homicides per year in first-world country versus the general population, I roughly calculated that one out of ten thousand people have committed an unsolved homicide.

If you attend a sporting event in a huge stadium that seats several tens of thousands, then chances are there are several killers sitting among you.

If that's the case, then a good session of people-watching will probably turn up some who look like a stereotypical killer. Then again, the killer(s) might purposefully look nothing like what we imagine a killer to look like.

In fact, if you're reading this in a crowded place, that ordinary person sitting closest to you or walk nearest you right now could be a killer.

Be careful.

winnie the poop

While changing the baby the other day and with my nearly four-year-old assisting, I remarked about how he had a really stinky poop.

A long pause and then my son asked "is poo and poop the same?"

I answered yes, that they were interchangeable.

"Then how come Winnie is never called Winnie the Poop," he asked.

I explained that the "pooh" in Winnie the Pooh was spelled differently and did not mean poop or poo. He then asked what it meant and I was stumped.

So I Googled. It turns out Winnie was originally the name of a bear that the book's author's son A.A. Milne visited at the London Zoo and that Pooh was the name of a swan the boy fed each morning but then also came to mean how little he wanted something.

rest in peace

The great Terry Jones of Monty Python fame died last week. He was one of my favorites in the troupe. Onscreen and off, he always looked like he was having a whole hell of a lot of fun.

Here's a wonderful short compilation reel with some of his greatest, most memorable characters. I never realized he was the naked man in the field playing the piano.