Amelia Earhart Lost and Found?

Amelia Earhart

One of the few times in my later life that I've wanted to somehow pick up the phone and call my late father to tell him that maybe Amelia Earhart has been found, lo, three quarters of a century later.

From the NYTimes: "Recently, new evidence has emerged to support the theory that Earhart did land on an island. The same group that first caught my attention, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, announced that it had determined that remnants of a jar, found on that same atoll in the Pacific — Gardner Island, now named Nikumaroro — may well have come from a face cream Earhart used. More significantly, using high­tech software, the group has re­examined reports of previously dismissed radio signals said to have been sent from Earhart and determined that 57 of them were credible. This summer the group is beginning a $2 million search operation based on a 1937 photo of what looks like the landing gear of a Lockheed Electra in the water off Nikumaroro."

The Earhart Project is undertaking a search. It very well may be that Earhart and Noonan managed to land the plane on Nikumaroro, did send distress signals that were received but not understood.

I wanted to talk to my dad about Amelia's failings as well, "her refusal to take a necessary antenna, her lack of knowledge of Morse code, her choice of an unreliable navigator."

Greatest Accomplishment of Humanity

Money quote: "With absolutely no attempt at hyperbole at all, it is fair to say that this is one of--if not the--biggest achievement of the human race.
"For, as we speak, an object conceived in the human mind, and built by our tools, and launched from our planet, is sailing out of the further depths of our solar system--and will be the first object made by man to sail out into interstellar space."

This is, of course, Voyager 1, at the heliosphere. This is one of the songs on the record that is being sent out into the vast unknown, "Dark Was the Night" by Blind Willie Johnson.



h/t Daily Mail Online

Nefertiti in Chicago

Went to visit the old girl in Berlin at the Neues Museum last April, but alas alack photos were not allowed. However, here she is in Chicago at the Oriental Institute (a copy).

Nefertiti, Oriental Institute Chicago, June 2012

Nefertiti, Oriental Institute Chicago, June 2012

France v Spain

Croque monsieur v paella?

Alan Turing and William Shockley

Whatever success I have in my life is due to two men, both scarred in life and death. We are now celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alan Turing who invented computational devices and who led the code-breaking work at Bletchley Park during the Second World War that brought an end to Hitler. William B. Shockley is a Nobel winner for his work on the invention of the transistor at Bell Labs, who later earned well deserved scorn for his views on eugenics and his overt racism. My hearing loss has been largely corrected by the work of these two men.

Lesson in Redacting

My correspondent, Catwoman, wonders if the recent kerfuffle in which art doyen Paul Klein erred in not appropriately redacting the address on an invoice that he used as an object lesson for artists to avoid being cheated by gallerists will rival the great raid on Richard Feigen's gallery way back when.

Jessica Stockholder in Madrid and Chicago

Artist, teacher, Jessica Stockholder in Chicago and Madrid.

Jessica Stockholder, Chicago, corner of State & Adams, June 2012

Jessica Stockholder, Chicago, corner of State & Adams, June 2012

Jessica Stockholder, Madrid, Parque El Retiro, April 2011

Jessica Stockholder, Madrid, Parque El Retiro, April 2011