Tetherd Cow Ahead

The Continuing Misfortunes of Simple Graphics Man ~

#23: The Fascinating Flame.

You know that nice hypnotic, trancy kinda feeling you get when you look into the flickering flames of a fire and you just want to stay there and watch, and your mind floats away all warm and comfy-like…

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Thanks Pil!

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7 Famous Mirrors (cont)

•3: Perseus’ Shield and the Gorgon.

And while we’re on the subject of polished shields…

Imagine the Reverend as a young whippersnapper sitting in art class. The earnest teacher is holding up a print of Caravaggio’s Medusa and waxing rapturously about the wonderful ‘circular form’ of the composition. She holds this painting to be a perfect example of the ‘circular form’ and blah blah blah blah… the young Reverend’s attention wanders to a box kite that he can see floating off in the distance above the sports field.

It was some years afterward in Florence that the genius of Caravaggio (or someone else – read on…) revealed itself to me. I was wandering through the corridors of the Uffizi when I came upon the original painting of Medusa that I’d seen in school. But not on a flat canvas as I’d always assumed. As the myth goes, Perseus couldn’t look at Medusa directly lest he be turned immediately to stone. To this end, Caravaggio painted the severed head of the Gorgon as we know Perseus would have seen it – reflected in his polished shield, shrieking in outrage as it flies away from his flashing blade (and its former neck). Of course it’s a great example of circular form – because it’s actually painted on a real circular shield†, a detail that my teacher either didn’t know, or failed to pass on in her enthusiasm for Caravaggio’s technique.‡

She also neglected to tell the most interesting part of the story, a snippet that would have certainly regained the attention of the young Reverend because it concerned a personage with whom the young Reverend was most intrigued.

Caravaggio’s painting of Medusa is famous, but it’s not as widely known that there is said to have been a previous, and therefore more original, version of the exact same idea, executed by none other than Leonardo da Vinci.

The story of its existence is recorded by Giorgio Vasari, a 16th Century Italian architect and painter of moderate artistic accomplishments better known for his biographies of many other artists of his age. Among other things Vasari coined the term ‘Renaissance’ and wrote his Vita da Leonardo, a kind of Leonardo, This Is Your Life!

In the Vita, Vasari tells the story of a shield, or buckler, that was brought to Leonardo by his father for decoration. It appears that Leonardo was rather uncomplimentary about the workmanship of the shield, which was made by a peasant in his father’s service, but went on to make the best of a poor opportunity:

And afterwards, having given it a coat of gesso, and having prepared it in his own way, he began to think what he could paint upon it, that might be able to terrify all who should come upon it, producing the same effect as once did the head of Medusa.

Way to go Leo! He’s asked to decorate some homeware and chooses for a subject something designed to scare the shit out of viewers. Even as a young whippersnapper I knew that Leonardo da Vinci was my kind of guy.

The finished result, for which Leonardo derived inspiration from “…lizards great and small, crickets, serpents, butterflies, grasshoppers, bats, and other strange kinds of suchlike animals”, was, according to Vasari, so terrifying that Leonardo’s father, Ser Piero, was taken aback with fear “not thinking that it was the buckler, nor merely painted the form that he saw upon it…” but the real thing!

Ah, those were the days!

It is not known what happened to the Leonardo buckler. Most likely Leonardo’s mum took one look at it and said to Ser Piero: “You put that thing in the cellar! I won’t have it in the loungeroom scaring the bejeesus out of my whist club! Tut. I don’t know. Where did we go wrong with that boy?”

If indeed the Leonardo shield was ever anything more than an apocryphal invention Caravaggio would certainly have known about it. When he was commissioned to do a version by his patron, Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, the unspoken challenge to the painter would have been – “C’mon, Mick, old son, let’s see you top Leo’s effort!”

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†In the Uffizi, the Caravaggio Medusa is displayed on a stand so that you can walk around it. It’s actually a real shield, although made of wood and not reflective brass (of course). The head is painted on the interior concave surface as Perseus would have had to have seen it, and is so masterfully done that it appears to be floating in space. It’s hard to convey the sense of delight that I had on realizing just what Caravaggio had done.

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The idea for this series of posts came to me in a dream last night. Well, in the dream I had already posted about them, so I have to speculate that the idea actually came from somewhere else entirely.

Hmm. That’s a bit disturbing. Anyways, because I have a history of letting my dreams dictate the course of my artistic explorations, I present for you:

7 Famous Mirrors

•1: The Evil Queen’s Magic Mirror from the Grimm Fairytale Snow White.

Everyone knows the schtick – the queen enquires of her mirror every morning “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest one of all”. The mirror obligingly tells the queen that it is she, until, one day (obviously tiring of her appalling poetry) it decides to point the finger* at Snow White, thus propelling the poor young girl into a terrifying future filled with dwarfs, coffins and tainted fruit.

In the Grimm telling of the story, the queen finally gets her come-uppance by being forced to don a pair of iron shoes that have been heated in a furnace. She is then compelled to dance in them until she dies. Modern screenwriters please take note – this is what is called an original idea.

•2: Archimedes’ Focussed Ship-Burning Mirrors.

The story goes that around 200 BC during the Second Punic War, the accomplished Greek physicist and engineer Archimedes used mirrors, possibly polished bronze shields, to focus sunlight onto advancing Roman ships causing them to burst into flames. It seems this is probably a tale that grew in stature with the telling. Over the years there has been a lot of speculation about this claim, and while it is possible under exceptional conditions to focus very fine mirrors on a distant wooden object and ignite it, it is unlikely that even a huge number of highly polished bronze shields on a very sunny day could have done much more than just scorch moving, waterlogged wooden ships. The Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters effectively scuttled the story in their Archimedes Death Ray episode, in which they spent quite some time getting a stationary ship to even smoke. Their conclusion was that a catapult filled with flaming pitch would have been far more effective, and a lot easier to implement.

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*Figuratively speaking of course, since it has no fingers. But since mirrors don’t talk either I think the metaphor holds up.

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I know you’ve all been on the edge of your seats for further updates in the Prophet Peter Popoff saga and today’s good news is that I’ve finally sent off a letter to him!

A Swish of the Cow’s Tail to Colonel Colonel for planting the inspiration for ‘The Pancake of Hope’ and I am hereby pleased to award him a Cow Medallion for his part in the Prophet Peter Popoff Panto.

ClickOnThePicâ„¢ to read!*

Now we shall see of what kind of stuff Prophet Pete is made, and whether his prophecies standard up to The Cow Challenge!

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*I figure that if Amazon can patent OneClickâ„¢ then I’m going to attempt to patent anything that occurs to me.

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About a year ago here on The Cow we had cause to examine the Irish company Steorn and their announcement of the discovery of a remarkable way of creating unlimited amounts ‘free energy’.

As you may remember, Steorn was challenging scientists to disprove their claim that the laws of physics are entirely wrong and promising that you’d never ever have to put your mobile phone on charge again.

Well, Steorn are still chugging along (powered by some kind of energy – mostly produced by hot air I’m guessing) and have wheeled out a gadget to silence the naysayers once and for all! Catchily titled ‘Orbo’, early photos show that the machine looks like nothing so much as a few plastic pipes and some Meccano.

And guess what Cow Fans? They have a working model ready for ALL THE WORLD TO SEE! Well, actually, not so much. You see, Steorn recently announced that Orbo would be unveiled for public scrutiny at the London Kinetica Museum on July 4th. This event was to coincide with a simultaneous streaming on the Steorn site (presumably from somewhere deep withing the Steorn Free Energy Complex) of live video of a ‘simpler’ (their word) version of the machine ‘lifting a weight’. But, darn, golly gosh, just as everyone was tensing up for the complete re-writing of human history, a few problems seemed to have materialized out of nowhere and, well, they had to cancel the viewing and the web demo at the last moment. Colour me surprised.

It seems that heat from the lights in the room where Orbo was to be exhibited at Kinetica somehow interfered with its capacity to create unlimited energy, delicate little thing that it is. One hopes that the consumer model will be a little more robust if Steorn’s plans to roll out Orbo as part of their scheme to solve all the problems of Africa aren’t to appear a little dismal. It gets a little warm in Africa from time to time, or so I’m told.

It isn’t explained anywhere why the Kinetica ‘heat-from-the-lights’ setback should have had any material effect on the planned webcam stream but there you go.

It’s interesting to observe that Sean McCarthy has now come down unequivocally on the side of claiming to have disproved the Laws of Thermodynamics. He says as much on the Steorn site:

This is an extraordinary position to attempt to defend. I can’t even say it’s controversial – it’s BEYOND controversy.

Scanning through the Steorn website is a perplexing experience. It seems that these guys really do believe in what they’re doing. One is forced to contemplate the following possibilities:

1. They have rewritten the Laws of Physics as we know them.

2. A fairly large group of well-presented and reasonably intelligent people have somehow fooled themselves into believing Possibility #1.

3. They’re pulling our collective legs.

4. They are consummate swindlers, hoping to profit by pulling in the dollars from gullible suckers.

5. There’s something else going on.

Taken in order: Possibility #1 is by far the most unlikely of events. It is true that there have been occasional turbulent upheavals in scientific thinking, but very very few of those come entirely out of the blue without any indications at all from the prevailing body of scientific knowledge. To clarify, the principles that Steorn are suggesting they have discovered overshadow any other scientific revolution you can name. On the other hand, Steorn is in the company of almost countless numbers of people who have thought they had discovered such miracles.

Which brings us to Possibility #2. I guess it is feasible, but I find it hard to believe that none of these people are aware that they are the latest in a very long line of people to have made such claims to their detriment. But I never underestimate the capacity of human beings to comprehensively delude themselves if the conditions are favourable.

Possibility #3: If it’s a joke they’ve dragged it on for an awfully long time, and we all know the secret of good humour – it’s in the timing.

Possibility #4: Where I’m placing my money. Although there’s one further possibility that hadn’t occurred to me until recently…

Which is Possibility #5. Something else. It came to my attention on Tech Blorge last week that the whole Steorn thing might actually be something other than what it seems, specifically, some kind of viral marketing test or information dissemination experiment. The favourite in this field would appear to be a viral for Halo 3, but in my opinion that seems unlikely. It just doesn’t feel right. But there is definitely something fishy about the Steorn site – as the Tech Blorge guys say, it looks more like it’s been put up by some slick advertising types than the usual free energy type of nitwit. It is feasible that Steorn is wheeling in a Trojan Horse.

Are they idiots? Are they conmen? Are they having a jolly old time running everyone around in circles?

Sean McCarthy seems happy to grasp the bull by the horns:

Yes Sean. You’ve done everything EXCEPT actually demonstrate that your idea works. Really. If your machine does what you say IT’S A SPECTACULAR RESULT. It’s not a maybe-it-does-maybe-it-doesn’t kinda scenario surely? Show us the money Steorn, that’s ALL you have to do!

UPDATE: This video on YouTube clinches it for me – they are swindlers. This is the most nonsensical piece of rubbish and misdirection I’ve seen in a long time. Wait till the bit where Sean says “…and that’s the science!” and consider what’s gone before. That’s the science? Sean, that was a humungously cretinous piece of waffle. That’s not science by a long shot.

That’s snake oil.