After last week's discovery of Salvador Dalí's little-known 1969 Alice in Wonderland illustrations, I followed the rabbit hole to another confluence of creative culture titans. In 1945, Dalí and Walt Disney embarked upon a formidable collaboration -- to create a six-minute sequence combining animation with live dancers, in the process inventing a new animation technique inspired by Freud's work on the unconscious mind and the hidden images with double meaning. The film, titled Destino, tells the tragic love story of Chronos, the personification of time, who falls in love with a mortal woman as the two float across the surrealist landscapes of Dalí's paintings. The poetic, wordless animation features a score by Mexican composer Armando Dominguez performed by Dora Luz.
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Destino
Salvador Dali and Walt Disney started a project in 1945, but it wasn't completed until 2003. Really interesting!:
Sudden Bird Death in New Mexico
Worrying news from New Mexico, and speculation that California wildfires may be to blame:
Professor Martha Desmond of the college's Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Ecology expressed deep concern about what the sudden deaths of these birds portends for the environment.
"It is terribly frightening," Desmond told the Sun News. "We've never seen anything like this. ... We're losing probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of migratory birds."
She added that "a number of these species are already in trouble. They are already experiencing huge population declines and then to have a traumatic event like this is – it's devastating."
Just Love the News about Venus and Phosphine
It would be truly amazing if it is life:
Or maybe we should be a bit cautious:
The idea that life might reside in Venusian clouds has been floating around in the astronomy community for decades. Carl Sagan, the astronomer who popularized the “extraordinary claims” mantra, explored the concept in a 1967 paper** with the biophysicist Harold Morowitz. Before Venus became a planet-size furnace, it was a watery world, covered in oceans that flowed for billions of years, as habitable as the seas of Earth. As the atmosphere swelled with heat-trapping gases and water evaporated into space, life-forms on the surface, forced to adapt, could have escaped into the skies. If life indeed resides in Venus’s atmosphere, it might be the last remnant of a wrecked biosphere.
Sousa-Silva daydreams often about what such aerial life-forms might be like. “It’s fascinating to imagine what kind of complexity could arise if you’re not scared of sulfuric acid,” she said. Venusian life-forms would have a more difficult existence if they resembled earthly microorganisms, Sousa-Silva says, because they would have to work hard to extract the very little water vapor in the atmosphere to survive.
Or maybe we should be a bit cautious:
Monday, September 14, 2020
Remembering Some Of The Interesting People I'm Meeting at My New Job 5
Wednesday September 16, 2020: South Sacramento, South of Mack Road
Still unfamiliar with this neighborhood. Returned to the apartment complex I had trouble with yesterday, and managed to get in. Missed most of the people, but interviewed one person not for the apartment but for his big family in Concord. Also received information from the leasing office that one apartment was vacant on April 1st.
Also visited the apartment complex across the street again.
Interviewed a 28-year-old woman with seven kids. She was in her bathrobe and trying hard to escape the interview in order to take a shower. Didn't want to enter her kids names. Thinking there might have confusion about kids ages and sexes that she refused to wait to check off on.
Visited a house with 8 people, all room renters. Two married couples. All Filipinos and quite old - ages 57 through 85 - and all working in low-pay home nursing care. I interviewed the youngest fellow, and finished the interview, when one of the other workers arrived. She made four important corrections to the data, almost too late to get the data recorded. My interviewee really didn't know the other people in his house very well. Instructive!
Tuesday September 15, 2020: South Sacramento, South of Mack Road
Totally unfamiliar with this neighborhood. Highest Covid rates in the city. We're down with the difficult cases now.
Had trouble getting into an apartment complex. Interviewed just one person there. Visited the apartment complex across the street.
Visited a number of houses in various states of disorganization. A lot of no answers, even though I could tell many of the people were actually at home.
Talked to one fellow on Ring. I could tell from notes that many enumerators had been here before. I identified myself. He laughed and said "I hate you guys!" He then promised to answer the census.
Talked to one woman with heavily-accented English. Perhaps African. Apparently not the woman of the house. Help perhaps, or a relative?
Monday September 14, 2020: Student Apartments Just South of Sacramento State University
I was reluctant to tackle these apartments for several reasons. There seemed to be initial confusion regarding whether these were dormitories (which would be group quarters). Apparently not. There would be many, many in-movers, which means no one knows what was going on in April, except management, who isn't talking. Plus, there was so many of them. Nevertheless, it wasn't all that bad.
I met a fellow named Matthew, who is also a census employee, focusing on the Elk Grove area. Matthew said, "I'm glad to see a census enumerator here, but would think it would really suck, because of all the in-movers." I replied, "It's not that bad. There are a lot of people here from the Bay Area. People are taking advantage of me being here to get their Bay Area families covered by the Census."
Sunday September 13, 2020: Gingerly Start Working on the "Case Push" List
Didn't do much work. The "Case Push" list is full of hard cases. Just one interview. Most interesting contact was a woman who refused a census interview. I think she viewed her refusal as a political protest. "People around here didn't get their unemployment extended. No way am I doing the census."
Saturday September 12, 2020: No Work!
Still no work.
Friday September 11, 2020: Confusion
I prepared to work, but missed the memo that no work was required. I approached just one house, then went home.
Thursday September 10, 2020: No Work!
For the first time, no work was required, so I worked on air quality stuff instead.
Still unfamiliar with this neighborhood. Returned to the apartment complex I had trouble with yesterday, and managed to get in. Missed most of the people, but interviewed one person not for the apartment but for his big family in Concord. Also received information from the leasing office that one apartment was vacant on April 1st.
Also visited the apartment complex across the street again.
Interviewed a 28-year-old woman with seven kids. She was in her bathrobe and trying hard to escape the interview in order to take a shower. Didn't want to enter her kids names. Thinking there might have confusion about kids ages and sexes that she refused to wait to check off on.
Visited a house with 8 people, all room renters. Two married couples. All Filipinos and quite old - ages 57 through 85 - and all working in low-pay home nursing care. I interviewed the youngest fellow, and finished the interview, when one of the other workers arrived. She made four important corrections to the data, almost too late to get the data recorded. My interviewee really didn't know the other people in his house very well. Instructive!
Tuesday September 15, 2020: South Sacramento, South of Mack Road
Totally unfamiliar with this neighborhood. Highest Covid rates in the city. We're down with the difficult cases now.
Had trouble getting into an apartment complex. Interviewed just one person there. Visited the apartment complex across the street.
Visited a number of houses in various states of disorganization. A lot of no answers, even though I could tell many of the people were actually at home.
Talked to one fellow on Ring. I could tell from notes that many enumerators had been here before. I identified myself. He laughed and said "I hate you guys!" He then promised to answer the census.
Talked to one woman with heavily-accented English. Perhaps African. Apparently not the woman of the house. Help perhaps, or a relative?
Monday September 14, 2020: Student Apartments Just South of Sacramento State University
I was reluctant to tackle these apartments for several reasons. There seemed to be initial confusion regarding whether these were dormitories (which would be group quarters). Apparently not. There would be many, many in-movers, which means no one knows what was going on in April, except management, who isn't talking. Plus, there was so many of them. Nevertheless, it wasn't all that bad.
I met a fellow named Matthew, who is also a census employee, focusing on the Elk Grove area. Matthew said, "I'm glad to see a census enumerator here, but would think it would really suck, because of all the in-movers." I replied, "It's not that bad. There are a lot of people here from the Bay Area. People are taking advantage of me being here to get their Bay Area families covered by the Census."
Sunday September 13, 2020: Gingerly Start Working on the "Case Push" List
Didn't do much work. The "Case Push" list is full of hard cases. Just one interview. Most interesting contact was a woman who refused a census interview. I think she viewed her refusal as a political protest. "People around here didn't get their unemployment extended. No way am I doing the census."
Saturday September 12, 2020: No Work!
Still no work.
Friday September 11, 2020: Confusion
I prepared to work, but missed the memo that no work was required. I approached just one house, then went home.
Thursday September 10, 2020: No Work!
For the first time, no work was required, so I worked on air quality stuff instead.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)