Bosnia's Old Bridge

View of the bridge (Stari Most, 1558) .... taken from the top of the minaret (1617) at the Koski Mehmed Paša Mosque (1552).

View from the bridge .... the mosque and minaret are just left of center.

Sadly, after two days of shelling, the original bridge was deliberately destroyed by Croat forces in 1993 during the civil war. The commanding officer who ordered its destruction was tried as a war criminal and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Thanks to an international coalition, an exact reconstruction of the bridge began in 2001 and completed in June of 2004. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

#extremecivilisation

Life or art? Who imitates who?
Art installation at Tate Modern
August 20, 2015

George Monbiot, author and blogger at the UK Guardian, recently launched the hashtag #extremecivilisation and invited suggestions. Here, for your reading pleasure, is an excerpt from his blog at the Guardian listing some of the modern breakthroughs by today's geniuses which are sure to make our lives better and easier on planet Earth.

There may be flowing water on Mars. But is there intelligent life on Earth?
~George Monbiot

A couple of weeks ago I launched the hashtag #extremecivilisation, and invited suggestions. They have flooded in. Here are just a few of the products my correspondents have found. All of them, as far as I can tell, are real.

An egg tray for your fridge that syncs with your phone to let you know how many eggs are left. A gadget for scrambling them – inside the shell. Wigs for babies, to allow “baby girls with little or no hair at all the opportunity to have a beautifully realistic hair style”.The iPotty, which permits toddlers to keep playing on their iPads while toilet training. A £2,000 spider-proof shed. A snow sauna, on sale in the United Arab Emirates, in which you can create a winter wonderland with the flick of a switch. A refrigerated watermelon case on wheels: indispensable for picnics – or perhaps not, as it weighs more than the melon. Anal bleaching cream, for… to be honest, I don’t want to know. An “automatic watch rotator” that saves you the bother of winding your luxury wrist-candy. A smartphone for dogs, with which they can take pictures of themselves. Pre-peeled bananas, in polystyrene trays covered in clingfilm; Just peel back the packaging.

#extremecivilisation

Cool hermitage

Fabulous 16th century hermitage built into the cliff face in Marjan Park - Split, Croatia

Supermoon over the Seven Seas

Adriatic sea from Split's bell tower

We're going to miss tonight's supermoon eclipse. It happens here in Croatia at the very inconvenient time of 3:47 AM tomorrow morning and I just can't seem to talk myself into getting up at three to climb the hill in the middle of the park to see it. I'm sure I'll kick myself when I see all the photographs in the morning. But we are hoping to see the supermoon rise over the Adriatic Sea this evening. The Riva promenade in front of Diocletian's palace is right on the water. That should be a good place to watch moon rise if it's not cloudy.

As for the palace itself, Diocletian built it some 1,700 years ago. It was his retirement home after stepping down as Emperor of Rome. Supposedly, he just wanted to kick back and garden but, being the iron-fisted bigoted bastard he was, retirement didn't stop him from having people put to death because he didn't like their religion. I think a lot of people must have been relieved when, after five years of "retirement", he died but Romans did built to last. Sections of his palace stand to this day and are the main attraction for the flood of tourists who visit here. We've spent the last couple of weeks exploring it and the rest of the jumbled maze of streets, stairs and buildings built into, on, over, under, against and often with the enormous stone blocks that were once the palace. The ancient city of Split is a small but amazing place.

So.... on with the night.




via i.space

Late at night....

Late at night and almost beyond the edge of human hearing, giraffes hum....



Via New Scientist

Happy Autumn Equinox 2015

Event Time in UTC, Time Zone

8:22 AM

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

That's 10:22 AM here in Croatia.

Once again, they are saying that tomorrow it's supposed to rain. In any case, today is a lovely day for the equinox. I hope you are enjoying it as well.

Worlds within worlds

Split, Croatia

Our first day here we walked from our apartment to the water and thought, small town. Got it! On our second day here we entered the old city, a maze of Roman, medieval and 19th century overlays. Okay, it's not huge but, if you take a lot of photos, stop to read all the plaques and get an ice cream cone... before you know it, you're deeply into the layers and layers of history wrapped within it's walls.

Ok. Day three. As usual, gotta go. Photos to follow

Amsterdam good-bye

Twilight in Amsterdam
red lights are brothels

We leave Amsterdam this morning and, rainy and cold as it's been lately, we're ready. I'm not exactly going to miss this place but I won't forget it either.

We did get to Rembrandt's house. Swami calls him Zoon, which means son in Dutch. Understandable. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn is a mouthful. Anyway, Rembrandt is one of my favorite painters so going there was on my must do list. M. Lee wasn't so impressed because the house is something of a "George Washington's axe", i.e. same axe... just with a new handle and a new axe head. But Swami and I had a great time. It was, after all, where Rembrandt lived. The location is the same. The light coming in the windows is the same light (more or less given pollution etc). There are paintings of his on the walls. But the tubes of paint, easels, and presses in the studios and the furniture, curtains, bedding, pots and pan etc. in the rest of the house are all props. Rembrandt went bankrupt and had to sell everything he owned to satisfy his debtors. However the Dutch are, if nothing else, great accountants. The auctioneers left a list of everything he had, down to the smallest paintbrush. From that, the museum did a good job of recreating the set. But we all liked seeing his etchings done on handmade Japanese paper. They were on exhibit in a less visited part of the house.

Me and Swami
at Rembrandt's house

Above all else, his house was a great studio with different rooms for different endeavors, an artist's dream. And yes, it's tawdry of me, but I did enjoy visiting the kitchen where, it is said, his outraged mistress threw pots and pans and screamed at him when he broke up with her.

Of course, this wasn't the only place we visited during our stay here but it's all the time I have at the moment to write about it. But I will say this. Visually, Amsterdam is a city right out of one of my childhood books. The houses are narrow and tall and lean on each other as, slowly over the centuries, they sink into the wetlands bog upon which they are built. The fisherman should never have built anything here but fishing huts but it's too late now.

Up next, modern art

Today we're headed to the modern art museum. I am ready for a break from the medieval world. Yes, the art itself, for it's own sake, is interesting. Some of it's even good. And it's interesting to watch how techniques and point of view evolved over the centuries but, holy god! They do love their martyrs. It gets oppressive, all the images of beatific people sitting in pots of boiling oil or water, being flayed, beheaded, hung or stabbed to death by ragged dudes with long swords. Funny. I haven't seen much on the subject of the Christians racing through the world in search of their bullshit "holy grail" ie another power grab murderfest, or whatever other discrimination of the "other" they can get away with, courtesy of church and state. Same old same old, ISIS to Kim Davis. Even if the art at the Amsterdam modern art museum is as ridiculous as the crap we saw in Ghent at SMAK I don't care. Bring on the black paintings and metal shavings hanging from the wall. I'm ready for a laugh!