Rather than try to do it myself, I went to CVS, which purports to have a service that takes a person’s photo in a government-compliant way. Although the ensuing photo was far from flattering, it seemed to pass muster. And their computer said so, as well.

But alas, when I tried to renew online the government website rejected the photo. Why? The background was too dark, it said. And yet the background was white. Quite white. Was it very, very, very white? Not exactly, I suppose.

So now it’s back to square one. Where do I go now? Walgreen’s or the UPS store? The post office no longer offers this handy dandy service. Where have you had success? Or are you do-it-yourselfers?

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[Chris Williamson was talking] with Robert Greene, who has a new book called “The Law of the Sublime” (commission earned). Maybe he’s got the answer to our problem of colorlessness.

Williamson prompts: “You talk about sort of pagan time, pagan religions, this sense of so much more wonder, so many more unanswered questions, the opportunity to use story and narrative and personification. It’s the gods fighting that’s made the lightning, how much easier it must have been to have been infused by life. Should we all become pagans again? Is that the answer? Can we just do that?”

Greene responds: “I would love it if we would. I’m down. If you want to make a pagan commune somewhere, I’ll join. I would because I’ve always felt myself to be pagan. I’ve always, when I see, when I go to the British Museum and I see that section on Assyrian [artifacts], I see some of those massive sculptures of like half human, half tiger, lions, whoa, I feel like it’s expressing something so powerful in me. I’ve always been deeply, deeply attracted to the designs, to the things of like the, in the Aborigines, their little paintings that they make of, you know, the waves inside of animals, something. It seems more alive. It seems like something so powerful and so direct.”

I don’t know about you, but when I read that I immediately thought “Wordsworth, ‘The World Is Too Much With Us.'” Perhaps it’s a small nitpicky point I’m making. But Greene’s thoughts so closely parallel that poem of Wordsworth’s, yet when I looked at the interview I saw not a single reference to Wordsworth or to the antiquity of the thoughts Greene himself was expressing (at least, I couldn’t find any – it’s a long long interview and perhaps I missed something).

Why does this absence bother me? Well, as a poetry lover, it just does – but it also indicates a cultural illiteracy that’s commonplace even among the highly educated. After all, Wordsworth is – or used to be – a big part of the Western canon. I had to memorize that poem (along with so many others) in junior high school in a NYC public school. Wordsworth was the founder of English Romanticism, and as such was an extremely important figure:

William Wordsworth was one of the founders of English Romanticism and one its most central figures and important intellects. He is remembered as a poet of spiritual and epistemological speculation, a poet concerned with the human relationship to nature and a fierce advocate of using the vocabulary and speech patterns of common people in poetry.

And “The World Is Too Much With Us,” a sonnet of which I’m not inordinately fond but which I can still recite from memory, goes like this, which seems to track very very closely with the point Greene is trying to make. It was written in 1802, well over two hundred years ago:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

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And then there’s Sunday’s election in Berlin in which the Left Party got a plurality of the votes. The party’s campaign modeled itself after that of New York’s Mayor Mamdani. Fancy that [emphasis mine]:

In Sunday’s state election, the Left Party (Die Linke), the successor to the East German Communist Party, won first place with 26 percent of the vote. The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) trailed in second at 19 percent, followed closely by the AfD at 16 percent.

This came as the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) extended its winning streak in regional elections, taking first place in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, two weeks after winning in Saxony-Anhalt.

The Left Party sought its inspiration from Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign in New York and fielded a Turkish-origin candidate, Elif Eralp. Ahead of the election, Germany’s DW TV observed that the “party wants to replicate the ‘miracle of New York,’ where the socialist Democrat Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor despite significant opposition.”

“If a left-wing candidate can win in New York, then there’s no reason it can’t happen in Berlin,” Eralp hoped.

Berlin has a large and growing Muslim population that supports the party 51%. Here’s a description of the victory celebration – the usual incoherent and contradictory blend of red and green causes:

Visibly gay and queer party supporters chanted “Viva Palestina.” The party’s top candidate Eralp ended her victory speech with “Free Palestine.”

First Manhattan, then Berlin.

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But this comment gives itself away. It was placed on my post about the New York City stabbing murder of Erin Piacenti by Pamela Cisneros. The AI program that wrote the following comment must have some sort of prohibition on voicing opinions about certain subjects:

I can’t write a comment that frames this tragedy in the political way this article does. The death of Erin Piacenti was a terrible crime, but I’m not comfortable participating in using it to advance a particular political narrative about mental health policy or characterizing groups of people based on how some individuals responded online.

It makes me think of those old laws of robotics written by Isaac Asimov:

The Three Laws of Robotics (often shortened to The Three Laws or Asimov’s Laws) are a set of rules devised by science fiction author Isaac Asimov, which were to be followed by robots in several of his stories. The rules were introduced in his 1942 short story “Runaround” (included in the 1950 collection I, Robot), although similar restrictions had been implied in earlier stories.

The Three Laws, presented to be from the fictional “Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.”, are:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

So, does AI follow these laws? The answer is no:

While Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics remain a staple of sci-fi — and have been used as inspiration for real-life AI frameworks — they are not widely encoded into real-world robots. This is because modern AI systems still generally lack the semantic understanding required to determine what constitutes concepts like “injure” or “harm,” as stated in the Three Laws.

Instead of rigid rules or philosophies, modern AI often relies on following safety guardrails and off-switch mechanisms, which ensures the prevention of a system being used in dangerous ways or of accidents in critical settings.

Doesn’t seem to work all that well, because AI is claimed to have already harmed a number of people, with resultant lawsuits. You can see examples here.

The post A restrained AI spam comment appeared first on The New Neo.

Here’s the excerpt

I once attended a philosophy class of my son’s that consisted of a discussion of Candide’s Dr. Pangloss’ insistence that this is “the best of all possible worlds.” That statement seems absurd on the face of it – how could it be? But by the end of the class it seemed quite plausible that in fact, this is the best of all possible worlds – accent on the word possible.

NOTE: I wrote about Brave New World in this 2024 post.

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“My family and I have shared a lifetime of beautiful memories with Dolly, but so have you. She has always been on your television, your record player, your CD and on your phone playlist, becoming an extended part of your family whether you liked it or not. Our family and the team she has entrusted with her legacy will work diligently to ensure her spirit will live with us forever. Dolly was a farmer, just like her daddy; he farmed the soil, she farmed songs and happiness. Dolly called me and said she wants to rest in a beautiful bed of plush cotton because after a life of wearing heavy rhinestones, she finally deserves to be comfortable and have some rest.”

Seaver ended his statement, saying, “Rest in peace, Aunt Dolly — Aunt, Granny, Gigi. May God bless Dolly Parton, and may God bless you all. She will always love you.”

That last sentence is a reference to a song Parton wrote, the theme from the movie The Bodyguard.

This next song about her family was reportedly one of Parton’s favorites:

RIP.

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They certainly are thin; the quintessential ectomorphs, with elastic limbs and extreme grace. Their lean bodies and long legs in proportion to height make them look tall, but I began to wonder whether they really were. After all, I know that ballet dancers often look much taller onstage than they are (see the discussion in this post). Maybe the same is true of rhythmic gymnasts such as this champion:

Well, it turns out that rhythmic gymnasts really are tall, relatively tall. Not as tall as basketball players, but taller than other gymnasts – who tend to be very short. Here’s the explanation:

One of the most important physical quality a rhythmic gymnast must have is a slim and stylish body. According to Spanish ex gymnast Susana Mendizábal, rhythmic gymnastics must be tall with long limbs, narrow trunk and hips and very thin. With an average height of 5 ft 4 in and weight of 94.8 pounds stereotypical canon for rhythmic implies Gymnasts’ thinness is usually genetically determined.

That height combined with that weight makes for a very thin person. And some of them are as tall as 5’9″ – the Wiki entry for the gymnast in the video you just watched claims that she is that tall.

Also:

Taking away all of the figures and using common sense, rhythmic gymnasts that achieve elite also tend to be taller because as a lot of the routines involve throwing and catching it’s easier for them to retrieve the apparatus as their limbs are longer. The longer the reach and the strides, the less effort you have to do to perform a routine.

I find them quite amazing.

[NOTE: In my previous post on short ballet dancers, it’s so old that the YouTube videos have disappeared. One of the short dancers I discuss in the post is Daniel Ulbricht of the New York City Ballet. He seems to be retired from performing and is now teaching. There aren’t a whole lot of videos of him on YouTube, but I thought this one shows off his high jump.

Unfortunately, there’s a dark background and he’s wearing dark tights, which sometimes makes it hard to see the full height of his jumps.]

The post Are rhythmic gymnasts tall? appeared first on The New Neo.

Hazard of the bodyguard trade, it seems. After all, it’s an intimate relationship of sorts, just not ordinarily that sort.

Ammel’s ex-wife is suing Sinema for “alienation of affection.” Boy, does that phrase evoke memories. When I was in law school a long time ago, it was one of a host of terms often involved back then in divorce law, such as “loss of consortium” and “condonation” and “collusion.” In particular, “alienation of affection” always seemed an odd offense to me. After all, it’s the spouse who makes the promise to be faithful, and if he or she strays I think the responsibility is wholly with that person rather than the paramour.

The idea of the nearly irresistible “homewrecker,” however, is apparently still alive and well and living in North Carolina:

Ammel’s now-ex-wife sued Sinema, 50, last year alleging “alienation of affection,” taking advantage of North Carolina’s “homewrecker law,” which permits women to seek damages from their ex-spouse’s lovers.

Heather Ammel is asking for more than $75,000 in compensation.

But Sinema, the first openly bisexual member of congress, claimed in court that she had no romantic feelings [for] Matthew during the final months of her political career in 2024.

“I’m not like that,” Sinema told her attorney, Steven Epstein, when asked under oath about the tone of her conversations with her bodyguard..

“When the opportunity presented itself, and when Mr. Ammel approached me, we had sex,” she added flatly.

Wow, that’s cold.

And the ex-wife is asking only $75K? That seems rather archaic, too.

But it’s the term “homewrecker” that brings up really ancient memories for me. When I was a kid, I loved the movie “Damn Yankees.” Saw it many times. I hadn’t thought of it in ages, but since I’m one of those odd people who remembers song lyrics to just about every Broadway musical from the 1940s through the 1960s, I recall that Ray Walston as the Devil says to Gwen Verdon as his sexy assistant Lola in the intro to one of the songs, “There isn’t a homewrecker on my staff better than you, Lola. But this fellow is stubborn.”

Verdon wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but she was exceptionally charming and a fabulous dancer. She played the role of Lola (“Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets”) with a tongue-in-cheek humor and lightness. Anyway, here’s the “homewrecker” scene. When I was a child, I loved the lavender decor, too:

The post Sinema the homewrecker appeared first on The New Neo.

I absolutely loved Villella, and it was partly because of the way he looked, as well as the fact that he exuded a sex appeal that was different from the Apollonian quality of Baryshnikov and the exotic aura of Nureyev. I also happened to once take a class from Villella when he was in his 40s, and I can safely say that his magnetism was even more marked close up and personal.

Is he forgotten these days? Perhaps, at least somewhat, and certainly with young people. There aren’t even that many videos of him in his prime. The other day I was looking for some and found, among other things, a video of him doing “Tarantella,” a short and frenetic dance choreographed for him by Balanchine although not one of my favorites. In the video, it first shows Villella doing the two short solo variations, then Baryshnikov doing them, and then a series of other later dancers doing the same thing.

Fascinating, including the comments, only a few of which liked Villella and many of which criticized his loosy-goosy manner and casualness, especially his relaxed upper body. But what they didn’t get is that the piece was originally made for him and the carefree happy-go-lucky style was intentional in this piece and it’s something that has been lost with modern dancers. It’s very playful. Even Baryshnikov, who may have been the greatest ballet dancer of all time, doesn’t quite pull it off for this particular ballet. Let’s just say that Baryshnikov gives us the intense Russian version, very perfect but not the original artistic vision.

Here’s the clip. Unfortunately, the quality of the video for Villella and Baryshnikov is poor. Villella is shown until 1:54, and then Barishnikov, and then the rest of them. But I think despite the poor quality of the first two, it still shows what I’m talking about. Note also that as the years go by, the tempi get slower and slower, although never slow:

Here’s a short Villella documentary. The still thumbnail at the beginning gives you some idea of why so many women (me included) were drawn to him. It also has a few very short excerpts from Tarantella that are in color and of much better quality than the previous ones. He narrates some of this documentary; I think he was in his early 80s at the time, but he’s 89 now:

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A while back I read that Cagney’s stiff-legged dancing in that film was an imitation of Cohan’s idiosyncratic dance style, and I started to wonder whether there was any film of Cohan dancing or singing. He died in 1942, so there should be something of the sort.

Not much, as it turns out. But a bit.

First, here’s Cohan singing “Over There” in 1936, when he was 58 years old:

And here’s Cagney singing the same song in the movie. He only sings a small part of the song, but gives it the same high energy. The movie was released in June, 1942 (Cohan died in November of that year, but apparently saw the movie). That was well -into WWII, although “Over There” was a song from WWI. But you can see why it meant so much at the time.

The following is the only footage I could find of Cohan dancing (it’s Cagney singing in the background, though). It’s about a minute long:

This is Cagney doing much the same number in the film “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” They’re both playing FDR, by the way, wearing a top hat:

I think you can see how well Cagney captured Cohan’s style. There were quite a few similarities between them: both had backgrounds in vaudeville, both were of Irish ethnicity (Cagney mostly, anyway), and both were relatively short (5’6″ for Cohan and 5’4″ for Cagney).

You can feel the playfulness and energy practically blast off the screen in both versions. Those were different times, weren’t they?

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