This is one of the greatest videos I've ever seen, This is so funny...... and true!
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Statue of Liberty - Recently Released Photos
THE STATUE OF LIBERTY - REMARKABLE PHOTOGRAPHS
The Statue of Liberty Under Construction - Remarkable Photographs
The New York Public Library has recently unveiled some extraordinary pictures of
the Statue of Liberty under construction.
Take a trip back in time and see extraordinary behind the scenes images of the creation of this superlative structure.
Take a trip back in time and see extraordinary behind the scenes images of the creation of this superlative structure.
A giant is formed. The sheer scale of the statue under construction can be seen here, in contrast to the workmen posing woodenly for that fairly new invention, the camera.
The more formal name for the statue is Liberty Enlightening the World and it is constructed with sheets of pure copper, even though the picture makes it look something like marble.
It is something of a miracle that we now have the finished product standing proudly on Liberty Island .
Had it not been for the contributions of ordinary French and Americans then she would never have arisen in the first instance.
Such is the immensity of the statue one can only wonder whether or not the workmen pictured above had any idea which part of the statue they were working on at any one time.
The photographer Albert Fernique, who captured these pictures around 1883, must have been in a certain awe at the immensity of the statue and his images capture its sheer scale and size beautifully. The French had decided to give the United States of America something for their centennial independence celebrations that the Americans and the world would never forget.
The process of building was painstaking, slow and fraught with financial difficulties. The copper shell was only what the public would see.
What lies beneath - both in terms of its structure and the story behind its creation - is almost as startling.
Officials survey the workshop - models of statues can just be seen in the background.
While they probably had an idea that their statue would become an icon of freedom the world over, the French politicians of the day had some rather more down to earth reasons for gifting the immense sculpture to the States. French politics.
Perhaps for this reason the source of the copper has never been revealed. The rumor had always been that the copper was of Norwegian origin, from a village called Visnes, rather than a French source. In 1985 Bell Labs confirmed that this was fairly likely to be true.
At the time France was in political turmoil and, although at the time under their third republic,
many people looked back at the time of Napoleon and the monarchy before that with fondness and wanted its return.
The desire for a backwards step to authoritarianism was worrying. French politicians - as wily then as now - saw Lady Liberty as a way,
albeit phenomenally huge, to focus the public's imagination on republicanism as the best way forward.
The USA and its centennial of independence from the yoke of England was the perfect focus.
The plaster surface of the left arm and its hand take shape, the skeleton underneath revealed.
As there is a deal of work under the carapace, so the French politicians had ulterior motives.
Using the USA - which many saw as the ideal of government and populist aspirational politics - the French
used the statue as a Trojan Horse in reverse, as it were.
Its true purpose, in the eyes of the political gift givers, was to make republicanism the
center of political ideology in the minds of the people.
How greatly it succeeded can never fully be quantified but the French cannot be faulted for thinking big.
It must be said here that the ordinary French,
through their substantial buying of lottery tickets (and other fund raising efforts)
had a much purer purpose at heart than their politicians.
As there is a deal of work under the carapace, so the French politicians had ulterior motives.
Using the USA - which many saw as the ideal of government and populist aspirational politics - the French
used the statue as a Trojan Horse in reverse, as it were.
Its true purpose, in the eyes of the political gift givers, was to make republicanism the
center of political ideology in the minds of the people.
How greatly it succeeded can never fully be quantified but the French cannot be faulted for thinking big.
It must be said here that the ordinary French,
through their substantial buying of lottery tickets (and other fund raising efforts)
had a much purer purpose at heart than their politicians.
It must surely have been amazing for the workers to turn up each morning to the sight of a colossal head looking down upon them.
The inspiration for the face seems to be the Roman god of the sun, Apollo or his Greek equivalent, Helios.
More down to earth sources of inspiration center on the women in the life of the sculptor, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi.
It may well have been Isabella Eugenie Boyer, a good looking and well-known figure in Paris at the time. More worrying,
some believe the face of the statue actually belongs to Bartholdi's mother.
Bartholdi never revealed the true model of the face, but if this is the case Freud would have had a field day.
Bertholdi made a small scale model first, which is still displayed in the Jardin du Luxembourg in the city of the statue's original construction, Paris .
Before the statue was shipped to America , though, it had to be seen to be tested. If it had not been for money, it may never have landed in the states - particularly in the form we all know.
On a visit to Egypt , Bartholdi's vision of liberty expanded to its present proportions. Had his original idea received financial support,
then whatever gift the French gave the Americans for the 1876 centennial could not possibly have been the statue.
Little by little, the statue arises. Bertholdi saw the Suez Canal under construction in the eighteen sixties and was inspired to build a giant figure at its entrance.
He drew up plans which bore a remarkable similarity to what now stands on Liberty Island but his ideas were rejected by the Egyptian ruling body
of the time because of the financial problems the country was facing at the time. Had the staute been built in Egypt as a lighthouse,
the idea would never have been taken up for America . The Statue of Liberty as we know it was in fact used as a lighthouse,
from its unveiling in 1886 right until 1902 - the very first in the world to use electricity.
Almost there! There were huge structural issues that had to be addressed in the design and construction of a sculpture of such enormity.
Enter a certain Gustave Eiffel, who would later go on to build that eponymous tower which still dominates the skyline of Paris .
It was his job (which he delegated to Maurice Koechlin, his favored structural engineer) to ensure that Liberty 's copper sheath could move while still remaining vertical.
Koechlin created a huge pylon of wrought iron and the famous skeletal frame to ensure that the statue would not fall down in high winds.
Money was always a problem. The plan had been to get the statue to the US by the fourth of July, 1876.
Only the right arm and torch were finished by then. However, as the Americans had taken responsibility for the construction of the pedestal,
these pieces of the statue were displayed to the American public at the Centennial Exposition (in Philadelphia ).
Money raised by allowing people to climb this part of the statue (see here) started the funding efforts for the base of the statue.
The French did their bit too, showing the head in their own exposition in 1878.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
We've Figured Him Out
We've Figured Him Out - By Ben Stein - from the American Spectator
Why is President Barack Obama in such a hurry to get his socialized medicine bill passed?
Because he and his cunning circle realize some basic truths:
The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008. They wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith.
They ignored his anti-white writings in his books. They ignored his quiet acceptance of hysterical anti-American diatribes by his minister, Jeremiah Wright.
They ignored his refusal to explain years at a time of his life as a student. They ignored his ultra-left record as a "community organizer," Illinois state legislator, and Senator.
The American people ignored his total zero of an academic record as a student and teacher, his complete lack of scholarship when he was being touted as a scholar.
Now, the American people are starting to wake up to the truth. Barack Obama is a super likeable super leftist, not a fan of this country, way, way too cozy with the terrorist leaders in the Middle East, way beyond naïveté, all the way into active destruction of our interests and our allies and our future.
The American people have already awakened to the truth that the stimulus bill -- a great idea in theory -- was really an immense bribe to Democrat interest groups, and in no way an effort to help all Americans.
Now, Americans are waking up to the truth that ObamaCare basically means that every time you are sick or injured, you will have a clerk from the Department of Motor Vehicles telling your doctor what he can and cannot do.
The American people already know that Mr. Obama's plan to lower health costs while expanding coverage and bureaucracy is a myth, a promise of something that never was and never will be -- a bureaucracy lowering costs in a free society. Either the costs go up or the free society goes away.
These are perilous times. Mrs. Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State, has given Iran the go-ahead to have nuclear weapons, an unqualified betrayal of the nation. Now, we face a devastating loss of freedom at home in health care. It will be joined by controls on our lives to "protect us" from global warming, itself largely a fraud if believed to be caused by man.
Mr. Obama knows Americans are getting wise and will stop him if he delays at all in taking away our freedoms.
There is his urgency and our opportunity. Once freedom is lost, America is lost. Wake up, beloved America.
Note: If you haven't seen Ben's 'Expelled' please check it out and throw a party for all you kids and friends and view it. It is great. Ben Stein is trying to reverse the effects of liberalism on our nation. He's a patriot!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
