| Tuesday, July 22, 2008 |
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| Alexander Calder's 'Mobiles' | |
| View Poster |
Spotlight: Alexander Calder, the sculptor who invented the mobile, was born on this date in 1898. His works include paintings in oil and gouache, drawings, lithographs, jewelry, tapestries, toys, stage sets, and sculpture in bronze, wood, and wire. The mobile and his other innovation, the stabile, introduced the concept of art in motion. The Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC houses a miniature circus that Calder began to design in the 1920s, with circus animals and carnival performers fashioned from wire. Some of the figures were suspended from a thread, precursors to his more intricate mobiles.
Quote: "To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect."
Question of the Day: How does a sand sculpture keep from falling apart?Remember that sand can be compacted into sand stone with enough pressure and time.
The physicists will tell you all about "interstitial bridges" and other terms that I do not fully understand, but as a master sand sculptor, I can tell you that all sand is not created equal -- sculptures made from sand with a higher silt/clay content, such as the material you find on the US Gulf Coast, will stand longer because the clay holds the moisture longer.
Word of the day: waldo[From Robert A. Heinlein's story "Waldo"]
A mechanical agent, such as a gripper arm, controlled by a human limb. When these were developed for the nuclear industry in the mid-1940s they were named after the invention described by Heinlein in the story, which he wrote in 1942. Now known by the more generic term telefactoring, this technology is of intense interest to NASA for tasks like space station maintenance.
"Robot," which first appeared in the 1923 English translation of the Czech play R.U.R. by Karel Čapek, is perhaps the most famous example of a word that originated in science fiction literature and passed into common parlance. This week we'll take a look at other terms coined by sci-fi writers.
Today's History:
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Wiley Post in Front of the 'Winnie Mae,' the Craft He Flew Around the World |
- Cleveland: the Forest City was named after Gen. Moses Cleaveland, the superintendent of the group that surveyed the area (1796)
- Wiley Post: American aviator completed the first round-the-world solo flight (1933)
- King David Hotel: Jerusalem landmark was bombed by the Irgun in an attack on the British (1946)
- Iraq: Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay were killed by US forces in Mosul; POW Pvt. 1st Class Jessica Lynch returned home to West Virginia (2003)
Today's Birthdays:
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| Bob Dole |
- Gregor Mendel (1822-1884): monk who experimented with pea plants and discovered the basic rules of genetics
- Emma Lazarus (1849-1887): penned "Give me your tired, your poor"; also, writers Oskar Maria Graf (1894-1967), Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943) and Paul Schrader (62)
- Bob Dole (85): former senator and presidential candidate
- Oscar de la Renta (76): fashion designer
- Rhys Ifans (40): actor, Notting Hill; also, actors Orson Bean (80), Louise Fletcher (74), Terence Stamp (69), Bobby Sherman (65), Albert Brooks (61), Willem Dafoe (53), Rob Estes (45), John Leguizamo (44), David Spade and Patrick Labyorteaux (both 43) and Franka Potente (34)
