The explanation for the dress color

One thing the dress-color disagreement does make clear: color, like beauty, is not in the object but in the beholder—specifically, color (and beauty) are an experience belonging to the beholder. We often try to place attributes totally in the object when in fact they are experiences in the subject: “Does fried liver have a good taste?” (or “Does cilantro have a good taste?”) reads as though the taste is in the object, but quite clearly it is not: the same object (fried liver or cilantro) can taste very good indeed and quite foul to others, with the object unchanged.

So when we talk about the color “of the dress,” we are really talking about subjective experiences, which naturally enough vary as the subject varies.

But New Scientist has an explanation that may be of interest.

Bob Hope and Ozymandias

Frank Rich in the NY Review of Books has a good review of a new biography of Bob Hope, in which he notes:

Hope’s Hollywood career, at first mired in forgettable shorts after a disastrous 1930 screen test at Pathé, took off soon after. In The Big Broadcast of 1938, he and Shirley Ross were cast as a divorced couple who meet again on a transatlantic ocean liner and sift through the ashes of their marriage in the duet “Thanks for the Memory.” To Zoglin, “it is one of the most beautifully written and performed musical numbers in all of movies.” Beautiful or not, this five-minute-plus piece of film gave Hope a career-long theme song and transformed him into a star.

Here’s the clip:

Muck Reads

Via email from ProPublica:

“If everybody’s getting hooked up, nobody’s going to say anything.” Federal air marshals may have skipped some “high risk” flights that would not fit into their busy schedule of romantic affairs.  The alleged transgressions aren’t the first for this service that expanded from a few dozen prior to 9/11 to a few thousand. “The male-dominated agency long has suffered from  allegations of sexism, cronyism and other  misconduct,” writes Reveal. — Reveal via @mtfarnsworth [Yet another example of law enforcement personnel acting above the law with no accountability. – LG]

Data-driven sentencing may punish the poor. In an effort to cut prison populations and save billions of dollars, prisons across the U.S. are using lengthy questionnaires to determine inmates’ sentencing and the risk of releasing. But while the questionnaires asks about the criminals’ history, it also explores issues beyond it. Questions like: Do you have a phone? How many times have you moved? Was one of your parents in jail? Some experts feel that the questions put the poor in an outsized risk of longer sentences. “It’s basically an explicit embrace of the state saying we should sentence people differently based on poverty,” one law professor says. — The AP via @mattapuzzo

“These kids are virtually hog-tied.” At least 100,000 children are handcuffed, belly chained and put in leg irons for their day in court each year in the U.S., MotherJones reports. Prosecutors and law enforcement say shackling can help maintains courtroom order. The American Bar Association disagrees and is pushing to end the practice. — MotherJones via @mintymin

Netanyahu apparently is set on a war with Iran

I think he’d be biting off a lot more than he could chew, but I imagine he figures if he starts the war, he can use the US as a catspaw to save him (and Israel). In other words, he thinks to play the US for his own ends. Mark Langfan has this report:

The Bethlehem-based news agency Ma’an has cited a Kuwaiti newspaper report Saturday, that US President Barack Obama thwarted an Israeli military attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2014 by threatening to shoot down Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.

Following Obama’s threat, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was reportedly forced to abort the planned Iran attack.

According to Al-Jarida, the Netanyahu government took the decision to strike Iran some time in 2014 soon after Israel had discovered the United States and Iran had been involved in secret talks over Iran’s nuclear program and were about to sign an agreement in that regard behind Israel’s back.

The report claimed that an unnamed Israeli minister who has good ties with the US administration revealed the attack plan to Secretary of State John Kerry, and that Obama then threatened to shoot down the Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.

Al-Jarida quoted “well-placed” sources as saying that Netanyahu, along with Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon, and then-Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, had decided to carry out airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear program after consultations with top security commanders.

According to the report, . . .

Continue reading. Video at the link.

A magazine about the quest for excellence: Craftsmanship

We all admire good craftsmanship and prize those things we own that exhibit good craftsmanship. And excellence in craftsmanship is found in all areas: tools, clothing, razors, furniture, knives, guns, shoes, jigsaw puzzles, and so on. The idea of craftsmanship can be generalize from that to apply analogously to any endeavor in which thoughtful, careful, and disciplined work is done by experienced people to achieve something excellent.

Todd Oppenheimer has launched an on-line magazine, Craftsmanship, to explore and celebrate examples of craftsmanship.