A Catch of Collective Nouns

Ever heard of a group of crows being referred to as a "murder of crows" or a bunch of bananas referred to as a "hand of bananas"?

Nope, me neither, until I looked more closely at a catch of collective nouns in English called terms of venery.

Terms of venery, a subset of collective nouns that are object specific, were originally used by hunters to distinguish themselves from the more common folks. Although initially only a few of the words were intended describe groups (the others described characteristics), history is like a game of telephone and now all of the terms are regarded as collective nouns. In this day and age, writers have taken up the torch to invent more terms of venery, often of a humorous nature, so it is not surprising that the words we have for some things are rather bizarre and tongue-in-cheek.

I've hand-picked a list for your amusement and highlighted a few I thought interesting:

Getting corporate and political:
* bank of swans
* business of ferrets
* coalition of cheetahs
* corp of giraffes
* company of parrots
* congress of baboons
* conspiracy of ravens
* parliament of owls
* posse of police

Getting very discriptive:
* abomination of clergy
* ambush of widows
* bloat of hippopotami
* blush of boys
* clashing of economists
* circus of puffins
* converting of preachers
* destruction of cats (feral)
* disguising of tailors
* embarrassment of riches
* equivocation of politicians
* fidget of altar boys
* flap of nuns
* giggle of girls
* illusion of painters
* implausibility of gnus
* murder of crows
* muscle of marines
* mutation of thrush
* neverthriving of jugglers
* obstinacy of buffaloes
* ponder of philosophers
* poverty of pipers
* shrewdness of apes
* shuffle of bureaucrats
* skulk of friars
* threatening of courtiers

What?
* badelynge of ducks (on the ground)
* bale of turtles
* barren of mules
* bob of seals
* bury of rabbits
* caste of flower-pots
* clowder of cats
* confab of doctors
* confraternity of smokers
* cornucopia of slugs
* descent of relatives
* draught of butlers
* earth of foxes
* fall of lambs
* fun of fish
* generation of vipers
* hand of bananas
* heard of harlots
* machination of monkeys
* multiply of husbands
* mute of hounds
* rhumba of rattlesnakes
* sleuth of bears
* unkindness of ravens
* wolfpack of submarines
* zeal of zebras

All About Charts

As a consultant, about a quarter, if not more, of my time is spent wrestling with ways to present complex information to clients that will lead to more than just acknowledgments that we did the work. Not to belittle market research firms (data collection is crucial in the business world), but it is usually a negative thing if one of our reports comes out looking like market research. The key rests in the difference between pure data dump and focused visualizations that transmit insights and sometimes act as calls to action. As such, I have always taken a particular interest in new ways of presenting information visually. This post hashes together some of my encounters with chart magic (data visualization).

Last year, I ran across an article in the Economist celebrating 3 of the best graphics from history. Who were the lucky winners? Minard’s depiction of the fate of Napoleon’s army, Florence Nightingale’s diagrams of mortality in the armies, and Playfair’s chart of wages of mechanics and prices of wheat. For those without access to premium Economist online archives, you can find these as well as other historical graphs on the York University Department of Mathematics’ website. Some of these graphs are flawed (Playfair, for example, used different sets of scales when charting wages and prices, which may visually contradict his conclusion that wheat has gotten more affordable), but the bottom line is, they pioneered new ways of representing information.

At around the same time I read the Economist article, I purchased a few of Edward R. Tufte’s books on information display—Envisioning Information, Beautiful Evidence, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. Although I haven’t gone through all of them, I do recommend them for their wealth of illustrations and chart examples. Beautiful Evidence may be of particular interest to art lovers, especially those who appreciate Leonardo DaVinci’s drawings of inventions, etc. I have to admit though, as in the case of GEB, don’t expect too much new information / insights if you are a visual arts nut.

More recently, I have run across some very amazing charts. They convey messages that elicit both intellectual and emotional responses from the viewers without the aid of any explanatory voice overs—truly worth a thousand words! If anyone wants to contribute, I will update this post with new charts and give due credit :)

Source: JPMorgan
Let's see how the banks have performed...

http://projects.flowingdata.com/walmart/
Walmart is taking over the world, an interactive chart.

Federal Borrowing through Dec. 2007

Federal Borrowing through December 2008These two charts function as a pair. Need I say more? Source: seekingalpha.com

Arthur: Stephen Morley
Color-coding maps may not be something new, but the legend is certainly innovative.

http://www.karlhartig.com/chart/chart.html

While Hartig’s charts aren’t always as innovative as some of the others I have just shown, they do visualize some rather interesting relationships, such as how events and the economy contribute to people’s opinions about the president and how consumers change their purchasing behavior in the music industry over the course of time.

J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851)

Joseph Mallord William Turner was an English Romantic painter whose impressionistic seascapes place him stylistically closer to Monet than to his contemporaries. Turner's works are filled with the magnificence of light, whether they are depictions of waves crashing against splendid naval fleets or shipwrecks being swallowed by the furious seas. In college, I used to go to the Yale Center for British Art (BAC) and sit alone for hours (well, maybe not hours, but at least a good 30 minutes) losing myself in Turner's seascapes. So much happens on his canvases that I usually find myself feeling overwhelmed by the free play of his brushstrokes and colors. Yet, my eyes never seemed to get enough of the visual feast and would impatiently devour the delightful yet unquestionably powerful images before me. I would often walk away from these sessions feeling the coolness of sea sprays, their brilliant sparkles impressed on my mind's eye.

As I mentioned earlier, Turner's works do not immediately bring to mind the work of his Romantic contemporaries. Gericault's explicit Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix's frenzied Death of Sardanapalus are both dark--one is shrouded in the shadows of weariness and despair while the other is stained by the blood of passion and pride. Yet, fundamentally, they all mark a return from the refined neoclassicism of Jacques David to works filled with intensity and emotion.

I've always been drawn to paintings that are bold, passionate, and seemingly unrestrained, so it is no wonder that I am drawn to Turner, whose works break free of their canvas constraints and gain a life of their own. What I find most admirable about Turner though, is his ability to win over his audience despite being ahead of his time. I am sure he got away with his abstractions partially because his subjects were seascapes. After all, waves and storms are supposed to be chaotic, their forms everchanging, hard to define and impossible to contain.

While at the BAC, I was even fortunate enough to handle and study a Turner watercolor up close (for a class on connoisseurship). I have to admit though, that I was surprised to find Turner using masking fluids. I know it is a common and legit practice, but somehow (as with knowing about renaissance perspective machines), it dims the level of technical genius I have come to expect from my favorite artists. Of course, I should know better than to hold that romantic view. As much as I'd like to believe in artistic "purity," whether related to authorship, where the artist alone worked on his art, or skills, where the artist paints or draws without the aid of tools, the truth is, sometimes the end more than justify the means. Titan's masterpieces are no less amazing even though they were produced in workshops and Da Vinci is no lesser genius for using the camera obscura to aid his drawings.

Although I like many of Turner's paintings (he painted at least 600 oils), here are a few that wre particularly abstract:

Snowstormteam—Boat off a Harbour's Mouth, John Mallord William Turner, 1842, oil on canvas, 91.5 x 122 cm, Tate, London

Slave Ship—Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhoon coming on, John Mallord William Turner, 1840, oil on canvas, 90.8 x 122.6 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps, Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1812, oil on canvas,146 x 237.5 cm, Tate, London

Be My Valentine Cookies

My valentine really like oatmeal cookies, especially the kind with cranberries, so I generally bake those in the shape of hearts for him. A bit cheesy, I know, but oh-so-much-fun to make. I recently found the perfect recipe on allrecipes.com. I added dark chocolate chips, a pinch of nutmeg and freshly ground whole cloves and cinnamon so the flavor of the spices is even more intense. Otherwise, I followed the recipe to the T (including recommendations to use all butter). Yum...

Haddock Bubbly Bake

Experimenting with new recipes is one of the first signs that my life is returning to its normal rhythm. I bought a pound of haddock rather impulsively this past week and although I've never cooked this type of fish before, I always imagined it would go well with something creamy. Since I have no idea how to go about making creamy fish short of fish chowder, I paid allrecipes.com a visit and found a menu on haddock bubbly bake that was rather popular but simple and straightforward to make. I am proud to say that my dish was a hit. I did make a few adjustments though, such as marinating the fish in a bit of salt and white wine, sauteing the onions and mushroom before layering them on the fish, and using a four cheese mix instead of just cheddar. I also paired the fish, contrary to the site's recommendations, with a bit of Spanish rice and spinach because I imagined the tomatoes in the rice would nicely complement the creamy fish. If I were to make it again, though, I might try asparagus instead of spinach as a veggie side. Something crunchier may make the meal's textures even more interesting.

On Hiatus

I am being worked Monday - Sunday from 9 until at times 4 am, so I have little time to update. I keep thinking the break is coming. It won't until after February. Sorry to everyone who actually follows this blog. Good news is I have been collecting lots of materials, so expect a bountiful rebound :)

For now, everyone should check out:

http://www.coraline.com/

Very nicely designed site (even for film debut standards).

Red, Yellow, and Blue

My parents are re-doing my room now that I no longer live at home. One of their great ideas is to make my bed fold into a giant closet that will take up an entire wall of my bedroom. While looking over the blueprints for the closet design, I thought the doors looked like Mondrian's squares so I pitched the idea that they make the entire closet model after one of Mondrian's paintings. The idea went well with my dad (he has plenty of “gaudy” art deco primary colored objects), but apparently my mom is equally enthused with the idea.

This naturally reminds me of the time I visited the Ludwig Museum in Cologne last year around this time. They had a very impressive and comprehensive exhibit of the artist. I will cover more of that in detail later, but while searching for Mondrian through the web, I found the following Nike shoes. Rather interesting, no?

Nike Dunk Low Premium SB, image from freshnessmag.com

Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)

Piet Mondrian is a Dutch painter most well-known for his grid-like paintings with their boxes of black, white, red, blue, and yellow, although his palette is not limited to the primary colors. As mentioned in my Red, Yellow, and Blue post, I was fortunate enough to visit the Ludwig Museum of Cologne in December, 2007 and saw Mondrian, one of the largest exhibits of the Dutch artist's works. The paintings are displayed in chronological order and invites viewers to see for themselves how Mondrian developed and matured as an artist. I walked away particularly moved by some of his earlier landscapes.

Duinlandschap (Dune Landscape), Piet Mondriaan, 1911, oil on canvas, 141 x 239 cm, Collection Gemeentemuseum Den Haag

Evening; Red Tree, Piet Mondriaan, 1908, oil on canvas, 25.5 x 39 cm, Collection Gemeentemuseum Den Haag

Veoh has a great video of the exhibit, including excellent shots of some select works.

I have always been told that Mondrian's rectangles and proportions follow golden ratios. I have not had the time to dig more into the truth of the matter (once I find out, I will definitely update), but I still think his compositions are well-balanced.

The collection is actually in the keeping of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, so if anyone is in the area, be sure to check it out!

Site: www.gutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg is a website dedicated to making classical literature available on the internet. I actually came across this site quite a while ago when looking for works on Arsene Lupine. For all you Ocean 11, To Catch a Thief, and MI lovers out there, he was a classy thief and disguise extraordinaire way before movies popularized Clooney, Grant, and Cruise. Japanese anime, which is quick to reference and adapt interesting things from other parts of the world (including, for example, Sun Tzu’s furinkazan), even has an animation called Lupin the Third.

In any case, I was pleasantly surprised when I came across the site again while looking for an online version of Art of War. Even though occasionally I am nostalgic about the “old days,” when people actually spend more times moving about than sitting in front of a computer screen, at times like these I am grateful for the internet and how it has spread knowledge and news across the globe. I wonder if, when the printing press first came out, people were nostalgic about the oral tradition?

Furinkazan

In Japanese, "furinkazan" means "wind, forest, fire, mountain." Like Chinese proverbs, the whole in this case is much greater than the sum of its parts. Furinkazan actually refers to the motto painted on the battle standards of Takeda Shingen, a Sengoku period daimyo who quoted (partially) Sun Tzu's Art of War when he decided to focus on the first four of Sun Tzu's maneuver recommendations:

"Swift like the wind"
"Silent like a forest"
"Aggressive like fire"
"Unmovable like a mountain"
"Mysterious like a shadow"
"Move like a trembling of a thunder"

Quite the nice imagery, no? I have to admit, when I first started this post I was going somewhere with it, but now I don't remember why anymore. Woe to me for not updating more often :( In any case, I think this goes very well with my posts with Japanese themes (i.e. my post on Hokusai and Project Gutenberg)

Happy New Year

Although I've been rather negligent with my posts for the last two months, I will by no means stop trying :) I've discovered that often, I hesitate to post because I could not conduct the research for my artist posts with images in time. However, that should not stop me from posting other interesting tidbits of news. Hence, I've decided from now on to split up my different types of posts. Musings on artists will have their names as titles while posts on interesting sites will have "Site" as part of their titles.

On the last day of 2008, I attended the Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria from the British Museum exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I had just finished reading about Assyria in Gods, Graves, and Scholars not too long ago, so the exhibit was extremely timely. Although the famous Dying Lioness was not on view, the exhibit does showcase a marvelous series of reliefs depicting one of Ashurbanipal's lion hunts. The exhibit is definitely worth a visit, with a good range of objects from reliefs, seals, pottery, to little clay tablets.

Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849)

Hokusai is an eccentric Japanese artist whose works have become truly iconic. I am sure everyone has seen the wave, and a good few has seen his red Fuji. Well, both are prints in 36 Views of Mount Fuji by the Japanese artist Hokusai. I first encountered his works in a junior high language arts class, where I read a short story about the artist's rather peculiar life - everything from how his works were once bought and used as wrapping paper to how he made a chicken walk in red ink and then across a scroll to depict maple leaves.

His interesting and creative character aside, Hokusai's art is truly beautiful in their linear design and use of color. A brief bit of research will reveal the magnitude of his contributions to art for both Japan and the rest of the world. Hokusai was not only a leading expert of Chinese art Japan, but had studied Western art (primarily perspectives of Dutch etchings) as well. My understanding of Japanese history is limited, but I should think it is quite revolutionary for Hokusai to study foreign techniques in Edo Japan, a country that pursued a policy of isolation for more than 200 years (it was not until 1854 that Matthew Perry "opened up" the land of the rising sun).

Hokusai's training in Chinese and Western techniques heavily influenced his art, and consequently, Japanese woodblock and ukiyo-e. As much as his works left lasting impressions in Japan - he even coined the term "manga" - Hokusai may have had more impact in the West, where his prints (along with the prints of other Japanese masters) became inspiration and case studies for impressionists like Monet. The rest, as they all say, is history.

As with most of my blog posts, it is impossible in so few words to even scratch the surface of Hokusai, a man who changed his name five times officially and moved at least 90 times. Just google around and one can find countless articles and academic papers on him. What I like most about Hokusai, aside from looking at his prints (and occasionally "borrowing" them to use as backgrounds in my drawings), is reading about him. He is just so much fun to learn about!

Carp Leaping a Cascade, Katsushika Hokusai, print, 19th century

Phoenix, Katsushika Hokusai, 19th century

Perhaps a better known phoenix image is housed in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. I was fortunate enough to attend Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World 1690–1850, and saw the screen in person, not to mention a marvelous painting of Zhongkui by Hokusai.

excerpt from Hokusai Manga, Katsushika Hokusai, 19th century, image from James A. Michener's Hokusai Sketchbooks: Selections from the Manga (1958)

As is evident by the sketches in the above image, Hokusai is probably a man of humor as well.