The Beatles’ Ringo Starr Was One Of Many To Rush To Her Defence, Saying “Good For Dusty. I Would

go read the first chapter of my dumb mclennon britpop au hooray

Too good to be true?

The Riace Bronzes

A recent episode of the Bettany Hughes series, The Ancient World, entitled ‘Athens: The Truth About Democracy’, covered the history and development of that unprecedented experiment in direct, representational democracy in 5th-century Athens. As expected, the show covered the astonishing achievements the Greeks made in art, drama and philosophy. Interestingly, Hughes pointed out that these achievements actually coincided with the period in which pure democracy was beginning to decline, eroded by the dominance of Pericles and the dragged-out nightmare of the Peloponnesian War.

Among the most notable achievements was the abrupt evolution of Greek sculpture from the stiff, Egyptian-like figures of the kouroi to the astonishing dynamism and realism of the Discobolus and the Riace Bronzes. The suddenness of this evolution and the perfection of the resulting art seems to be in keeping with the rest of the ‘Greek Achievement’, but an English sculptor has a different theory. Nigel Konstam, interviewed by Hughes in the programme, thinks that the lifelikeness of these sculptures is just that – namely that they were made using plaster casts of live models. He demonstrated how this could be done in his workshop, where a number of sculptors smeared plaster over a carefully positioned, suitably muscled male model.

Konstam didn’t stop there, though. His ultimate piece of evidence was the soles of some of the Riace sculpture’s feet. The underside of the sculpted toes and soles are flattened at exactly the same point a live standing model’s would be – a detail unnecessary for verisimilitude, since the soles are invisible. It’s a persuasive argument, though it could just as easily be argued that Greek sculptors paid the same attention to detail on the invisible as the visible in their work. A more convincing proof for the argument came to me as I looked at the images of various statues, something that has often occurred to me while looking at Greek sculpture – namely, that the heads and bodies often seem notably different to each other., Even when the proportions are perfect, as they usually are, the bodies are so life-like as to seem to be breathing, while the faces are oddly generic – both male and female faces have the same long noses, pursed lips and round cheeks (incidentally the young Elvis had a perfectly ‘Greek’ face). It’s less conclusive than the soles-of-the-feet evidence, but this disparity strongly indicates, from an aesthetic point of view at least, that models with perfect bodies were used as moulds for both male and female Greek sculptures, while the faces were created from imagination. It’s not implausible that such ripped torsos would be plentiful among Athenian citizens – soldiers in the triremes spent up to 8 hours a day solidly rowing.

If true, this theory rather takes away from the idea that the Greeks were innovators in sculpture, but the thought doesn’t bother me. Their myriad achievements in just about every other field more than make up for it.

White Feathers

My Amazon review for White Feathers, a super new WWI-set novel dealing with (among other things) the practice of shaming non-combatant men into joining up by encouraging the women in their lives to present them with a white feather, symbolising their supposed cowardice. I really enjoyed this novel - as I say in the review, it's that rare beast, a 'literary page-turner'.

It can be hard for historical novels to strike the balance between inhabiting the period in which they're written and fully engaging a broad range of modern readers. White Feathers pulls this off with a vibrancy and a lightness of touch that are all the more striking when you realise that this is a debut novel.

you can't have a man who's been to workmans playing paul mccartney. a man who knows what wowburger is? playing a beatle? that's not how the world works.

THE BEATLES at a hotel in Weston Super Mare, Somerset, by Bruce Leak, an 11 year old boy who was on a family holiday with his parents and sister. 1963.

Towers on the cusp of something

From the Irish Times, May 2008:

//PLANNERS IN Dublin City Council have rejected a proposal to preserve the Pigeon House chimneys at Poolbeg by adding them to the Record of Protected Structures (RPS), on the basis that they are not of sufficient architectural, social or historical value.

The 207m (680ft) candy-striped twin chimney stacks at the ESB’s Poolbeg generating station have been one of the city’s most recognisable landmarks for more than 30 years, but have never had protection from demolition.

The situation has a greater than usual urgency due to the fact that the Poolbeg power station is to close in 2010. It seems likely that the site they are located on will undergo a change of function.

The ESB said no decision had been made on the future of the stacks and it was unlikely that any decision would be taken until the plant closed.

The company has also yet to decide whether it will sell the 90-acre site on which the stacks stand. The site is likely to become prime development land in the coming years with plans to move much of Dublin port’s activities outside the city and proposals to turn the Poolbeg area into a high-density urban quarter.//

The change in the economic landscape since 2008, along with scandals relating to inflated property values in the Docklands, means that the value of the ‘prime development land’ around Poolbeg may not rise any time soon. At the present time (August 2010) the generating station appears to be still operating and the alternators and drums are still standing, along with the towers. The station compound is run-down and looks semi-derelict, but is still protected by CCTV. The Shellybanks strand in front of the station is still far quieter than its neighbour Sandymount, the quiet broken only occasionally by hikers and wanderers. A foul smell in the area, possibly emanating from the gas used to power to combined cycle generators, puts off the dog-walkers and joggers of Sandymount. I haven’t been able to find any information as to whether the station will be closing in 2010, as announced by the ESB in 2007. The next change to happen in the area, in place of property development, will be the new incinerator which was under construction on a site just to the west of the generating station until 22 July, when work was stopped after the Department of the Environment failed to approve a licence for an outflow pipe.

The stop-and-start nature of industrial and commercial development in Ireland is frustrating from an economic point of view, but the upside it results in strange, intriguing half-derelict landscapes like that at Poolbeg and Pigeon House Road. This is a time for collecting images of industry winding down and the sense of poetry they evoke

The Virgin and the Eagle.

On Instagram

A depressing conclusion to a mystery

T/W anorexia, disordered eating, just generally miserable times

Something was bothering me from a few anecdotes that I'd read over the past couple of months regarding John's height. In Elliot Mintz account of John giving him a hug, he mentions that John was no giant, despite apparently being 5"10. Robert Rosen, the man who got hold of Lennon's diaries says that John's shirts fitted his 5"8 frame perfectly (just ... just don't ask how he got them) and Mike Tree estimates that John's height was about 5"8. ((A random redditor further apparently interviewed Halstead, the captain of John Bermuda trip, who said he thought John was 5"7/5"6)). From this it would be a pretty fair to conclude that John had been lying about his height, especially as the Beatles did wear heels.

The thing is that we know from John's midsummer Night's Dream costume fitting was measured to 5"10, a pretty good indicator that John actually was that height. (Note as well that Ringo is listed as 5"6 here when his PR height was 5"8, indicating that these are accurate.)

Even by today's standards, 5"10 is above average height. So what's going on? Why are there multiple accounts of John in the 70s of him not being very tall?

One reason could be his posture and that he may have been slouching, which he seems to have done a bit. The other reason is that John may have just been extremely skinny, but in saying that in my experience skinniness usually makes you look a bit taller.

So let's go back to the drawing board and look at common reasons for what causes an adult to lose height. The obvious answer is age, but what is it about age that causes people to shrink? Welll, many factors, a big one being spinal compression as the vertebrae thins out and loses elasticity. However, two other key factors are muscle wastage and Osteoporosis: a condition where bones lose their density and become weaker. As the bones become weaker, micro breaks in the spine can occur, causing people to stoop and lose height. Muscle wastage on the other hand affects the spine as well as posture.

What does this have to do with John? He was in his late 30s-40 when these stories started coming in, not an old man in the slightest. See unfortunately, Osteoporosis doesen't just occur in old people, it can also crop up in younger people too due to different risk factors; factors like genetics, hormone issues, lack of vitamins and ... malnutrition.

I think anyone who has seen pictures of 1980 John and knows about his eating habits knows where I'm going with this.

Osteoporosis is a common side effect of anorexia, occuring in 30% of sufferers with 90% of sufferers experiencing bone thinning. Osteoporosis can also occur within a year of the onset of symptoms. As far as we know John's disordered eating and periods of starvation started in the late 60s, meaning that he had nearly a decade of consistent bouts of starvation. Muscle wastage too is extremely common with anorexia and from pictures you can see that this is also the case with John. In the picture above, there is no muscle on the chest area to cover the bones. A lack of physical activity would also have exacerbated both conditions.

I could be wrong, man could just have had a terrible posture and people could be misremembering his height. Nevertheless, I think there's a real possibility that John actually starved himself shorter.