Ancient Sumerian

Never let it be said that this isn't a classy, high brow establishment interested in other cultures and languages.

The ancient Sumerian symbol for woman :

Sumerian pictogram for woman

Below is the Ancient Sumerian symbol for man. It seems more ambiguous. It could be a fist and forearm or a cartoon man standing in a helmet or a tailless seahorse.

spotty

flashing light

via Tim Blair :

A Yarra councillor wants to see more ‘green and red lady’ pedestrian signals installed across the inner city to promote gender equality. 

Yarra Council and VicRoads announced yesterday the silhouette of a woman would be installed at a new pedestrian crossing in Richmond. 

 Crossing the street shouldn’t be a problem. By the looks of her, she’s from an era that predates cars. Those skilled in the dark arts of photoshop are invited to submit a more modern design.

My submission : 
I figure if the light flashes it'll get people's attention (if it were animated it'd be even better).

Update: animated gif below the fold

Olve Oyl and all her curves

Olve Oyl and all her curves. Risque animation below the fold

recto

This might help those who can't remember the difference between verso and recto.


click to embiggen

Kneeling Nun, verso, by Martin van Meytens, c1731

a notable detail of the painting revealed below

Alphonse Mucha's wife and the painting Woman in the Wilderness

detail of Alphonse Mucha's painting Woman in the Wilderness, 1923 juxtaposed with the photograph of his wife Maruška posing for the painting.
(click to embiggen)

seen here

Woman in the Wilderness, 1923, oil on canvas, 201.5 x 299.5 cm (79.3" x 117.9")
(click to embiggen)

an attempt to show the scale of the painting

Transformation of Antiques magazine cover into the Apparition of a Face (1974) by Salvador Dali

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Transformation of Antiques magazine cover into the Apparition of a Face (1974) by Salvador Dali

Paranoiac-critical conversion 
11.5" x 8.75"

Dali modified the magazine cover to show a woman's face. Below is the original image from the cover of Antiques the Magazine January 1974. 

below the fold is a slow blinking animated gif contrasting the source image with Dali's modified image.

In My Garden of Love

Benny Hill - My Garden of Love

The lyrics :

In my garden of love

Now there’s a rose for the way my spirits rose when we met
A forget-me-not to remind me to remember not to forget
A pine tree for the way I pined over you
And an ash for the day I ashed you to be true

And the sun and the rain fell from up above
And landed on the earth below
In my garden of love

Now there’s a beetroot for the day you said that you’d beetroot to me
A sweet pea for the sweet way you always used to smiled at me
But you had friends who needed you
There was Ferdy, there was Liza
So, just for them, I put down a load of ferdy-liza

And the sun and the rain fell from up above
And landed on the earth below
In my garden of love

Oh, Gus the gardener’s left now and you went with him, too
The fungus here reminds me of the fun Gus is having with you
The rockery’s a mockery, with weeds it’s overgrown
The fuchsia’s gone, I couldn’t face the fuchsia all alone

And my tears fell like raindrops from the sky above
And poisoned all the flowers in my garden of love

Happy Nude Year!

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Standing Bather by Edgar Degas, c1883-4,  charcoal, pastel and watercolor, 12.125" x 9.375"

Context matters

Betty and Me #16 comic book where the text out of context of the image could sound more sexually suggestive than one expects for an Archie Comic.

Goya's Maja

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A comparison of Francisco Goya's Maja nude (La maja desnuda) and his Maja clothed (La maja vestida). I had thought that they were the same figure with clothes painted on one but they are not an exact match.

And although the canvases are the same size (38 x 75 inches) the nude figure is smaller (the clothed figure had to be scaled down to make the comparison)

photo of Las Majas side by side at the Prado, Spain

Dana Scully unarmed

From the 1993 episode of the X-Files season 1 episode 2 (if you count the pilot as episode 1, otherwise it would be season1 episode 1) titled "Deep Throat" FBI Agent Dana Scully meets a man in black with an intense interest in national security who takes her gun and removes the magazine :

Oh, she is sooooo embarrassed as he looks disapprovingly at the empty magazine.
(frame 1 you can see him pull the magazine from the pistol.
frame 2 you can see his skin through the magazine.
frame 3 you can see the greenery through the magazine. Look away, Dana.)

Rule number one of the Rules for a Gunfight is "Bring a gun…" the unmentioned corollary is bring a loaded gun. (although it is mentioned in these modified rules for a gunfight)

The light colored part at the top of the magazine may be the follower or a cartridge so it may not be an unloaded gun but underloaded. Later in the episode, she holds a guy at gunpoint and there is a distinct possibility she might want more bullets in that situation (Rule 2 of the Rules for a Gunfight is "Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice…")

The Internet Movie Firearms Database identifies her pistol as a Bernardelli Mod.60 32 ACP pocket pistol.

How Orwellian : Like Uganda?

"In their place" Atlas of Women In The World pages 18-19

In the book Atlas of Women In The World section noting how women are kept "in their place" the USA is classified like Uganda where a man can inherit his dead brother's wives and where a man can claim "unmarried women as wives by raping them" and like Swaziland where "married women are legal minors."

The yellowish color on the map above indicates that "cultural norms, religious fundamentalism, or nationalist pressure are imposing increasing social restrictions on women" and the particulars noted for the US are all abortion related.

Curiously, quite a few countries that have much stricter abortion laws than the US but are displayed in a neutral tan color.  Ireland and many countries in Central and South America ban abortion in all circumstances except to save the life of the mother.

How many US states limit abortion to government approved reasons like say Japan, South Korea, Finland and Poland? Zero. (Finland and Poland are tan while South Korea and Japan are not visible because they are covered by the map's key. I hope the mapmaker is suitable embarrassed by that incompetence and especially by the big empty space on the bottom right of the page.)

Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain have gestational limits that are more restrictive than any US state but apparently that is hunkydory because they are neutral tan, too.

Even Angola and Nicaragua get a pass and are tan while they ban abortion in all circumstances including to save the life of the mother.

The map notes that Venezuela allows a man who rapes a woman to marry her to avoid punishment but it isn't colored yellow. Venezuela remains neutral tan despite banning abortion in all cases except to save the life of the mother.

France has troubled banlieues where the organization Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissive) was born because women (no matter their beliefs) are expected to follow strict islamic rules or face violence. In France, convicted gang rapists get a pathetic and outrageous slap on the wrist as punishment : "two were given a year in prison; the third, six months; and the fourth, a suspended sentence two were given a year in prison; the third, six months; and the fourth, a suspended sentence" Despite all this France is neutral tan.

This map says a lot by what it doesn't show. Mostly, that it is an incompetently made map.

(the links above are to the Center for Reproductive Rights overview of world abortion laws (PDF link) and to the Guttmacher Institute's overview of US state laws (PDF link). This UN chart (PDF link) also has some interesting bits)

French postcard

Here's a french postcard :

click to embiggen

You can tell it is a French postcard because it stays "Carte Postale" on it which is French for "post card".

(for anyone searching for "french postcard" wanting to see erotic naked photographs of women then here is the front of the card).

labeled "J. Mandel 273 A-N"

(as a reminder of the inevitable human mortality I'll point out the model is probably dead. If she isn't then by now she is, to be kind, vintage – to be unkind she is ancient, decrepit, creased, wrinkled, robbed of many of her charms by age and gravity and probably looks like a she was made of wax and kept too close to a flame with her bounce and jiggle replaced with a sagging waddle.)

Are guns phallic symbols?

click to embiggen (that doesn't look phallic to me)
(image found here)

Markley's Law : … [a] variant of Godwin's Law: As an online discussion of gun owners' rights grows longer, the probability of an ad hominem attack involving penis size approaches 1.

I think the proponents of Markley's Law need to reevaluate their basic premise. Are guns even phallic? Like a woman, you cannot ignore a gun for a long time and then expect it to be cooperative. It is always good to take the time to keep a gun well lubricated.  If one plays with the trigger correctly you'll notice the gun becomes hot. Phallic shaped bullets are squeezed tightly into a gun's barrel. Guns can be simultaneously very tough but also fragile. Guns, like women, can be very, very loud. 

Nonetheless, I am working tirelessly to invent a gun that has a labia as I know that the Markley's Law types would immediately embrace such a clearly non-phallic gun and not merely shift their criticism to some other stupid argument.

To be fair, I will admit that "Mannlicher" can sound pretty gay.


Update (2013-02-28) : Another view.

nude

Super UnderThermia

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SuperUnderThermia is the 2007 Australian of the Year Tim Flannery's latest project and follows his previous effort at establishing new society known as Geothermia. SuperUnderThermia is different in more than one way.

First, this project takes into account rain.
Second, who doesn't like Seamonkeys? (or as they'll be known in the future : SuperUnderThermians)
Third, it shares some of the same essential principles as Geothermia.

---

This is my entry for the Flannery Centre's art contest.

(I note disappointingly that the Flannery Centre's own domain simply redirects to another site.) This seems like a good opportunity to note my distaste for naming things (not web sites but buildings etc) after living people. I think it often reflects poorly on both the person deciding the name and the person after whom the eponymous thing is being named.

Thoughts from the Phallocracy

Mary Daly, feminist formerly of Boston College and currently dead, once said "If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males."

So, like me – a member of the Phallocracy in good standing – Mary Daly envisioned and yearned for a future very much like a harem.

I suppose the only difference would be the eternal question of whether the dress code would be more like I Dream of Jeannie or more like J.A.D. Ingres' Turkish Baths.

p.s. "decontamination" is an interesting choice of words. I'm sure the problem of what would be the best and most proper term to use led her to consider her words carefully before she chose her final solution.

An early vision of ancient man

And it looks like that ancient man is Homo Erectus.

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Study of an Antique Relief by Johan Tobias Sergel c.1769

Although it is identified as being part of the Pergamon Altar (circa 200 B.C.) I haven't seen this section in photos from the Pergamon Museum.

Peek a boo

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A Nymph and a Satyr attributed to Pierre-Charles Trémolières (1703-1739).

Note the difference between a Nymph and a nympho : a nympho would stay awake for the debauchery.

Unlike this painting by François Boucher, this just seems pervy. And not pervy in the good, just doing my part to continue the survival of the species way but the creepy kind of pervy. The voyeuristic eagle on the left doesn't help.

I imagine clothes that cling to you with no visible means of support like the satyr's outfit wouldn't be that comfortable.

A Public Service Announcement : a difference between men and women

A difference between men and women - a public service announcement

Women tend to look at themselves or other women, very carefully and examine each and every conceivable area. Then they score each area and think, for example, "okay, these shoes are 88% sexy, 14% slutty (in the good way), 18% slutty (in the bad way), 22% cute, 94% nice, 40% voluptuous, 21% fat, 9% unfashionable, 6% retro, 52% cool, an 60% sure another girl will like them/be jealous of them/hate her for having them" She then moves on to the next item/physical feature and scores it (again, using a potentially infinite number of variables). Then she averages all of the scores for all of the features together, weights the average based upon an unknown formula (it is known to be partially based upon her current mood and whether she likes the woman being examined or not) and then comes to a conclusion.

Men look at women differently. If a woman asks a guy to tell her if she looks good in an outfit he :
step 1) looks at her and more likely than not gets completely distracted by one single feature (ie a boob, luscious lips, legs, if she is smiling etc)
step 2) asks himself "Does (that feature he was distracted by) look good?" This is generally a simple yes or no question.
step 3) Either blurt out the answer or take a moment to make the answer more than a one word sentence and if the answer is "no" then he has to guess if she really wants his opinion or not and the consequences of the wrong answer.

(ie a woman asks "do you like my shoes?" guy looks at shoes, notes that they are on her feet, notes the color (in case she asks), looks at her legs, follows her leg upward, looks at her hips, checks for cleavage, decides he likes the way she stands with her hands on her hips and he thinks about her boobs and thinks they look good and answers "yes, those shoes look good.")

Of course, occasionally guys get stuck on the wrong part and declare that an otherwise gorgeous woman looks practically like Ernest Borgnine and they say things like "Salma Hayek has a weird chin. Blechh!"