Links - 19th November 2019 (2)

Episode 132: Art History BB: Kouros & Kore — The Art History Babes - "Greek sculptors also liberated their quarry figures from the marble block, whereas the Egyptian predecessors would have technically been sculpting in high relief due to the backs of the sculptures being left as part of the block. So if that makes sense to you, they didn't really finish their sculptures in the round to where you could walk all the way around it and see an entire figure, it would be kind of cemented into the block. And it was an aesthetic choice because Egyptian culture was just a lot more preoccupied with the idea of stability and permanence. Whereas Greeks were a lot more interested in things like motion and progression"

Episode 121: Georgia O'Keeffe — The Art History Babes - "‘She was obviously working in the heyday of modernism… all of our modernists artists that were trying to, I don't ,know express some greater truth about life and humanity. And what happened in that timeframe was that calling an artwork pretty or beautiful was like a diss. These guys didn't want to hear that their work was pretty, that was not a good thing. And Georgia O’Keeffe’s work would be referred to as pretty sometimes and she liked that. She did not consider that to be a negative thing, she liked when people called it pretty and beautiful, because, you know, she was inspired by nature and nature is pretty and beautiful. To her that was not a denigrative term’…
‘And I think it speaks also to that school of thought where if something is beautiful, it's not serious’.…
‘I wonder if calling things beautiful, or saying something is beautiful. I wonder if the word is imbued somehow with the feminine?’
‘Oh, definitely.’"
I guess before modernism patriarchy didn't exist in art since beauty was desired

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Food under siege - "‘The Siege was using food as a weapon of war. And so it was a form of resistance to show that you were living as you did before, serving food that looked like the foods you used to eat was very important, and in some ways more important than it tasted’...
‘With such a limited food supply did people have to come up with new ways of cooking things and new dishes?’
‘Well, they did. And there was a whole trade in war recipes. One family I knew made Wiener schnitzel, but it was basically made with bread. And they would shape it so that it looked like a piece of veal or chicken or pork and then they would coat it with bread crumbs and oil. If they had the onions which were onions were also very hard to get. They would fry it with the onions. If they had garlic, they would fry it with garlic. There was a great demand for spices because when you had such limited foods, you needed to season what you had and people ran out of their supplies’
‘Did it taste nice?’
‘You know, it didn't taste that bad. You know, the key to it was the onions and garlic. I mean anything with onions and garlic tastes okay. Coffee was funny. I mean, Sarajevans consider coffee to be a staple. So they would use lentils, and they’d brown the lentils and then grind them in place of coffee. And it looked kind of like coffee, it didn't taste at all like coffee, it just tasted like muddy water. Another favorite recipe was for French fries, or chips as they call them. And there were no potatoes, which was a great sacrifice for people. But they would use flour, sometimes cornmeal and a little bit of water, and they would make it into a dough. And then they would cut it to look like French fries. And again, it was all about the illusion, you could have something that looked like French fries, you could have something that looked like coffee, it didn't taste remotely like what it was supposed to. But it was very important for people to maintain appearances. And to look like they weren't suffering because this was a siege and the instrument of warfare on the part of the Bosnian Serbs was to starve people out and basically take away their sense of humanity and their society. And so it was a form of resistance to show that you were living as you did before. People would wear makeup and do their hair. But serving food that looked like the foods that used to eat was very important. And in some ways more important than it tasted...
During a famine, people don't usually die of starvation, they get preventable illnesses. TB, digestive obstructions. Just, you know, flus, and people became very ill and weak...
[On the cat man of Aleppo] Everybody was saying to him: What on earth are you doing looking after these cats, but he was able to show them through all this funding that was coming in from all over the world that look, you know, it's because of the cats that I'm able to help you here. Without the cats, you wouldn't be getting all of this, and that they had to struggle with as well
People love animals more than humans

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Dynasties - "[On working at a brewery for her parents] ‘If I did something bad, I was put into a big empty tank, which I couldn't escape from. I would be trapped there to think about what I’d done.’...
In the sake industry, there is a very rich history. And it's also part of a traditional culture. So it's extremely male dominated. But that's why I'm glad I'm a woman. For example, if I go to a meeting with those from the sake industry, and I do something unusual, if I were a man, they’d look down on me. As a woman, they acknowledge you as a girl trying hard and overlook the faults. It might be that they are looking down on me. But I think if that allows me freedom, then that's okay"

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, The young pub bosses reviving the British boozer - "A lot of people I think like going to pubs because unlike a restaurant, unlike a bar, you can come to a pub and 9 out of 10 times I think you can talk to someone"

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Foraging: Pleasure or profit? - "‘The price that we put on, the issue is about the logistical price that we had to pay to have it in the restaurant. And I think people are definitely willing to pay that. Because they are aware of the effort that takes to bring something that is so unique.’
‘So they're prepared to pay more, even though it might not necessarily actually taste any better.’
‘Yes, definitely. If the story is the right one, I would say yeah, people are not necessarily looking for the most tasty food. It's not a priority, I can say that’
‘It's not your priority to have good tasting dishes. In a restaurant?’
‘The taste of the dishes are not the priority, the priorty is what the dishes are conveying as a story.’"

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Angela Hartnett: My life in five dishes - "‘And when people talk about that time in Gordon's kitchens, they talk about tempers flare, very macho kind of atmosphere. How did you deal with that?’
‘Erm I mean, everyone says macho. And macho because there's a lot of shouting, but you can get women that can shout as well. So I don't know if it's necessarily a male thing. And I wouldn't say it was a sexist in the sense that I was abused in any way because I wasn't. If anything, Gordon would treat me better because I was a woman. You know, one time I was trying to clean this stove. And you could see I was struggling, he said Marcus, Angela doesn't clean the stove… Gordon wasn't overly aggressive to me. I mean, he’d scream and shout a bit, but they're certainly not the way he’d talk to a guy. Because I don't think, you know, as he said, you just can't talk to a woman like that. It’s just wrong to do that’…
‘That culture of screaming is never effective. Because people become immune to it. It's far better to have that crazy line that we've all had. I'm not angry. I'm just disappointed, you know, that kills you more than any screaming or shouting.’"

The Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat aren't healthier. Fast food's meatless marvels are just P.R. - "these offerings aren’t actually any healthier. The Impossible Whopper, for instance, not only has comparable caloric and fat levels as its meat-based counterpart, but it has more salt per serving; the Del Taco options are comparable. The Impossible Slider has more calories, more fat and more sodium than the meaty original (before you add cheese to either).In fact, when you start to compare all of these offerings to their meat-based counterparts, you realize it’s the same story no matter what brands you’re talking about — you might possibly save a few calories or carbs, but you'll probably get way more salt. Switching from meat-based fast foods to meat-free, then, isn’t likely to help your health. As always, it's only about helping a corporation's bottom line... A flurry of bills have been making their way through state legislatures across the country seeking to restrict the use of words like “meat,” “sausage” and “hot dog” solely to products made by “that which comes from an animal.” To make matters worse, the bills are levied as protection against “confusing” the consumer. (This is particularly rich coming from an industry that routinely lobbies against country-of-origin labels or GMO-labeling, lest consumers start making decisions that are bad for Big Food’s bottom line.) That bottom line, though, is unfortunately what all of this all boils down to. If eating more realistic fake meat was about health, the offerings would be far lower in salt content, contain fewer calories and have a bit less dietary fat. None of them do, because the point was never to live up to the marketing of healthier eating. It was to simply act as a smooth replacement for the meat we worried about eating in our day-to-day lives."

The showtrial of Felix Ngole - "A formal inquisition, conducted by a panel of two investigators and a note-taker, was followed by the kind of ponderous disciplinary proceedings normally reserved for exam cheats or demonstrators who have smashed up the vice-chancellor’s office. It is not clear why the university reached straight for its sledgehammer when faced with such a small nut. A year after Ngole’s expulsion, the university’s vice-chancellor extolled the virtues of free speech in the Times Higher Education... It is deeply worrying that a Russell Group university should see nothing wrong in behaving this way, merely because a student disagrees with its point of view."

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Homosexuality and free speech - "‘What right should a conservative Christian have to say that homosexuality is a sin? Felix Ngole was removed from a postgraduate Social Work course at the University of Sheffield in 2016 after posting a Facebook comment in a debate about gay rights. He said he was paraphrasing the Bible when he wrote “same sex marriage is a sin, whether we accept it or not, homosexuality is a sin no matter how you want to dress it up”. He has appealed to the High Court in London and he's won the right to have the university look again at its decision. He says he wants his place back. And that the case has wider implications for British life’...
‘I remember the letter that they sent to me, it was really shocking to me because I was treated like a criminal. They told me I have to submit my, my library badge within a certain period of time, my library membership will be terminated, with such strong language. And I was thinking is this really necessary?'...
'‘They're saying they're giving a professional qualification. And once you are qualified, you would not treat a gay couple the same as a straight couple’...
'Let me tell you what my beliefs as a Christian. Everybody is precious and wonderful in the eyes of God. And that reflects on my practice, as well. I have worked with gay people, I've socialized with gay people. I've taught students who are gay, and nobody has ever made a complaint against me. If you look at the judgment, it clearly states that I've got views, but it's never ever affected my practice. It is quite possible for someone to hold views, and yet be professional'...
Peter Tatchell: ‘Freedom of speech is one of the most important and precious of all human rights. So there has to be really strong, compelling reasons in order to restrict it... the University essentially said that because Mr Ngole holds a particular point of view, and this point of view might lead to him discriminate to when he became a social worker, that the dismissal was fair and just. Now, I think it's really a bit of, a bit excessive to say that someone should be dismissed from a course on the basis of what they might subsequently do'...
'It’s quite signifcant you're saying that, because the university, I would have thought was acting… in a way that it thinks would be acceptable to you and to other people who've campaigned on these things for years, decades. But actually, you're saying it's possible, they have gone too far, that we've all gone too far.'...
'It's based on a presumption of what he might do, not what he's actually done. And I think that's a very dangerous route to go down... It is perfectly possible that a person can hold a deep religious view that homosexuality is wrong, such as my own mother, but she would never ever discriminate against a gay person. I know that from experience... in a free society, we have to make that distinction and allow space for those kind of people'
I am old enough to remember when liberals were telling everyone that gay marriage being legalised wouldn't affect non-gay people so only bigots and homophobes would have concerns (though actually, someone told me that a few weeks before I wrote this)
Too bad though he's black, he's also Christian
Presumably social workers aren't allowed to think divorce, adultery or single parenthood are wrong either

jae on Twitter - "yesterday someone pointed out that screaming “fuck” during sex is the same as screaming “parkour” while you parkour and I haven’t been the same since"

The Grudge (Al Ba’sa) – Beirut, Lebanon - "A sliver-thin house in Beirut, built in 1954, is the ultimate display of how deep sibling annoyance can go. Known as The Grudge, or Al Ba’sa in Arabic, the house is just a bit over 13 feet at its widest point, and just around 2 feet at its narrowest. At a side view, the “house” built of brotherly spite looks more like a wall than a place to live. But despite its narrow dimensions, Al Ba’sa is habitable, and is the skinniest building in the city.As the story goes, two brothers inherited land from their father. They couldn’t decide how to split the land between them, a dispute complicated further by the fact that one part of the property had been cut over the years by various municipal infrastructure projects, leaving a portion of the land a small and sort of odd shape. One brother decided to take that small, oddly shaped bit of land and build on it, constructing a building that fit the confines of the land with the added bonus of blocking his brother’s ocean view. Not only would his brother not be able to enjoy his spectacular sea view, but because he was now facing what was essentially a wall his property values would sink, too. The perfect plan."