My Beauty Best Teacher

Global Warming Believers from around the world met for another conference designed to close ranks, discourage critical thinking, improve groupthink, and provide more evidence to one another backing up their already reached assumptions and theories. These 'scientists' are a real threat to your life, liberty, and property, but don't take my word for it.

Via memeorandum comes this story from the Telegraph called Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world. Here are some interesting parts...

...In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years...


....Prof Anderson admitted it “would not be easy” to persuade people to reduce their consumption of goods. He said politicians should consider a rationing system similar to the one introduced during the last “time of crisis” in the 1930s and 40s.

This guy looks back for inspiration on how to solve what he sees as a crisis to the command and control economies of World War Two, believing that people need to be persuaded by governmental power to adopt living standards below what they can achieve just so that some people can feel like they control the temperature of the entire globe. This professor of course would be directing these standards from his plush university, controlling who gets how much power in society, while armed men in gray uniforms controlled by him roam the streets beating down freedom-loving patriots who turn on lights to read at night, drive safe cars, operate dishwashers, and fly around to visit family and friends.

It is my hope that the United States is only minimally supporting a conference like this, and that our elected leaders stay away from this situation because, while the goal of protecting the environmental is moral and the desire to create a better society for our future is a good one, the methods that they advocate to achieve these goals and desires runs counter to what America has shown to be successful. Only by supporting and celebrating life, liberty, and property protection can any real and lasting gains be made in making our future and environment a brighter and healthier one.

For those interested in learning more, check out Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam or The Great Global Warming Swindle (DVD).

Technology is pretty cool sometimes. For those of you who were still confused by the Fed's recent actions regarding quantitative easing and treasury bonds, here are two cute characters who talk their way through it. Via Rachel Lucas, from Hot Air:

Christopher Chetsanga writing in Scidev:

courtesy of IDP

It is those who generate new knowledge, who can patent it and convert it to wealth that will make a difference in a community. Such S&T capabilities will enable a nation to overcome technology barriers. That way young scientists can learn to swim with the technology current rather than watching from the shoreline. But our universities are in danger of functioning as diploma factories rather than knowledge repositories.

More here

To be honest, I don't fully understand this whole Wikileaks thing, but I did find this point made by Ace of Spades to be quite interesting:

In May 2009, rumors surfaced that President Obama was planning to leave several European countries exposed to Russian ambition if Russia would agree to help keep nukes out of Iran. Rumors confirmed: according to the Wikileaks cables, Obama proposed a trade -- he would cancel the Polish missile shield if Russia would support sanctions for Iran.

The missile shield was officially canceled in September 2009. Shortly thereafter President Obama met with President Medvedev who came out of the meeting conceding "in some cases, sanctions are inevitable."

A diplomatic victory for Obama? Not remotely. Less than a month later, Russia reversed itself and declared that "[t]hreats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive." After the US and the EU imposed tough penalties on Iran in September of this year, Russia immediately condemned the sanctions regime and started finding ways to undermine it.

Obama sold out our allies to Russia for a bill of goods.

President Barack Obama has done a poor job domestically, but it probably will take several years for our nation to realize how poor of a job he has done with foreign affairs. He brought to the table certain key assumptions about foreign policy that have proven to be very wrong- from believing that he could modify our enemies behavior by sitting down with them without preconditions and talking it out, to backing immediate withdrawal of our troops from key strategic locations, to attempting to try terrorists in civilian courts, to bowing to foreign leaders and hoping that would make them like us better, to pushing memes of foreign policy that haven't been accepted since Obama's time in college studying foreign policy.

This particular deal is yet another example how a black-belt in evil outmaneuvered a white-belt in rainbows, and serves to underscore the point that President Obama was not and is not an equal to the task that has been given to him.

For those interested in learning more, check out American Missile Defense: A Guide to the Issues (Contemporary Military, Strategic, and Security Issues).

UPDATE: Reader John recommends that we all read a book by Dinesh D'Souza called The Roots of Obama's Rage which he suggests explains Obama's foreign policy.

The landscape artist may feel in awe of a particular landscape scene, but the drama fails to convey to the oil painting; mountains look flat, waterfalls resemble a trickle and mighty firs look more like Bonsai trees. How can the artist produce a landscape painting with depth and drama?

Problems with Dramatic Landscape Art

Dramatic Landscape Art Rachel Shirley

Sitting too close to a painting, misleading the artist on the importance of each brush mark as it is viewed close up. Fine detail may not be so visible from ten feet away, resulting in a painting filled with insipid brush marks that lack punch or expression.

Painting onto a white canvas which may also mislead the artist to the true tonal value of each colour mixture, as even pale ones will appear dark. The result is a landscape painting that looks washed out.

Over-mixing the paint and applying it onto the artwork rather like one would to emulsion a wall. Similarly, anguishing over every brushstroke and smoothing over imperfections. The result is a painting that looks overworked and lifeless.

How to Paint a Dramatic Landscape

Adding a sense of depth and drama to a landscape painting is mostly dependent upon the visual resources at hand, whether this is photos or sketches. Painting from memory must be avoided, or it will spoil the effect. The following tips will help create a landscape that has depth and drama.

Fine Art Photography

If panorama is desired, select an image that contains distant objects and near objects. The contrast in proximity will enhance the sense of distance, whether the scene depicts a Scottish Highland or Yellowstone Park. Using wide angled photography provides further opportunities for exploring big skies and vistas adding a real sense of space. Be aware of the horizon line. A high horizon will enhance the land; a low horizon will enhance the sky.

Furthermore, don’t clutter the landscape with lots of elements. Less can often be more when it comes to creating a grand scale.

Look for and create contrasts within the landscape scene: Big and small; sunlight and shadow or near and far. A small cottage will make a thundering waterfall appear more impressive. A lone poplar set against distant mountains will create a chasm effect. A streak of sunlight hitting a snow cap against a sombre scene will create a tonal focal point.

Painting Dramatic Skies


Landscape Perspective Rachel Shirley

Beware of empty skies that exhibit a lacklustre blue or grey. If a photograph features such a sky, another sky can be substituted so long as the lighting, angle and the time of day are consistent. Great skies to use might be altocumulus, anvil clouds or frontal cirrus. Further drama can be added if clouds are obliquely lit by a low sun, bringing bizarre colours and textures.
An ordinary landscape can be transformed by different weather conditions. Castlerigg Stone Circle in Cumbria, for instance has twice the drama when snow-caps festoon the surrounding mountains. Consider returning to the same setting another day or time of year.


Tips for Landscape Art click to buy from Amazon

A landscape even when empty adheres to the rules of perspective which can be used to add depth to a painting. Imagine for instance, that the landscape is the floor and the sky is the ceiling to a huge room. If both exhibited a grid, the squares would appear to flatten and get smaller with distance until the grid converges to a vanishing point. Clouds and grass echo this pattern, in that each formation would appear to flatten and get smaller.

Painting Techniques for Dramatic Art

Stand back from the painting to prevent working too close up. Working on a toned ground as opposed to a white surface will help the artist judge tones more accurately. I endeavour to use all tonal values from pale to very dark within my landscapes. Don’t be afraid to use paint neat from the tube and to contrast art techniques, from impasto skies to blending mists. Palette knives, old combs or sponges are great for creating a diversity of marks for a dramatic landscape. Lastly, don’t fret over every imperfection. Allow streaks of colour and brush marks to remain. Doing so will retain freshness, vibrancy and energy to the painting.

Links on Landscape Painting

• Books on landscape painting
• Art materials
• How to paint lightning
• How to paint deserts
• How to paint sunsets
• How to paint Kilimanjaro
• Painting mist and fog

Over at Diane's Journals:

The most important piece of furniture in an African household is the seat, most often a stool or bench, as it is called in French: le banc.
The Duala of the area now known as Cameroon, for example, believed that the owner’s mystical strength lay in his seat; it was therefore dangerous for another person to sit on it. This person could be hit by lightning if he did not possess a similar mystical force. To sit on another person’s seat was to openly defy him, and nobody was surprised to find the transgressor dead the next day...[continue reading]

Many people in our nation are unemployed as a result of the liberal policies of Obama and Bush, of Democrats and liberal Republicans, who didn't respect private property rights, who created barriers and limits to our freedom and liberty, and who failed to embrace and love human life in all of its glory. These liberal policies manifested itself in high taxes, cumbersome regulations disguised as 'safety' or 'environmental', new entitlements, increased federal control over disaster relief and education and energy production, increases in barriers to production and investment, and the giving away of taxpayer money that the government doesn't even have to those who haven't earned it.

Unemployment is difficult, and it doesn't look like the situation is going to get a whole lot better, especially if Obama and the Democrats don't extend the Bush tax cuts. In order for jobs to be created though, you have to allow people to make free choices, and what is happening right now with unemployment benefits is not right. The government is using money taken from my children and from my grandchildren (ie, debt) to pay people to sit home and not work. It isn't paying these people enough to really pay the bills or buy any new products (so it isn't 'stimulus payments') and these unemployment benefits can only be earned when people aren't working, so they aren't producing anything for our society. At some point, unemployment benefits must be scaled back or cut off, or else unemployment will simply turn into yet another entitlement program, paid for by debt, acting as a drag on our economy and preventing jobs from being created.

Tough choices have to be made at some point by unemployed- to either get retrained, to switch careers, to retire early at a reduced standard of living, to get a job at a retail chain or fast food joint, or to take a risk on themselves and go into business as an entrepreneur. Of course unemployment is a safety net that people do pay into, and thus should be there for those to cushion their fall and buy them time to recover and readjust, but unemployment should not be a long-term solution, or else it will be come a long-term problem.

That being said, our elected leaders (mainly Democrats in Congress and the Presidency but also some Republicans) are unable to make the tough decisions that need to made regarding unemployment. There are increased calls to extend these benefits, indefinitely I imagine, by many in the media. Via RealClearPolitics, Robert Reich (whose book The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism was required reading in two of my University classes) is one of these types of people who are unable to make the hard decisions to get American back to work, and writes in the San Francisco Chronicle "Extend benefits for jobless, not tax cuts for rich":

Yet Republicans and some Blue Dog Democrats in Congress say we can't afford another extension of jobless benefits. The deficit is too big.But wait. These are the same members of Congress who say we should extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Extending the Bush tax cuts for the people at the top would cost more than extending unemployment benefits for struggling families without a breadwinner. These families need the money. The rich don't.

This Reich is the same person who advises Democrats on economic policy, and he thinks that in the zero-sum game of wealth creation, it is better to take money from jobs creators (ie, the wealthy, those people who worked hard for their money, who invest in businesses, who buy products, and who run businesses) and transfer that money (through government bureaucrats, who take a large cut for themselves) to those who are unemployed, so that they can continue to not produce anything and drain wealth from society. Reich is proud of the 'tough decision' that he is making and thinks that it is 'really brave' for politicians to take money by force and give it to someone else for doing nothing (being unemployed) and then take credit for it. Reich ends his editorial by saying:

Quick action is needed. About 800,000 unemployed workers will run out of benefits this week. Two million more will stop receiving benefits by the end of December. Millions more after that. The choice couldn't be clearer.

The choice is clear- make the tough decision Congress and do something different than creating another entitlement program. Perhaps it is some sort of reduced unemployment program, designed to transition people off government dependence to independence and freedom, or perhaps it is some sort of unemployment program that rewards people for getting back to work in any way rather than bribing them to stay in government-induced dependent poverty, but the choice is clear- do not just simply make the easy call and extend benefits, but instead make the tough call and move people closer to freedom while increasing protection of private property.

The beginner in landscape painting may find it difficult to pick up a paintbrush and make a mark. A fear of failure fuelled by an inner art critic could cripple all creativity before it has a chance to express itself into a sky sketch or a seascape. How can the novice artist produce satisfactory landscape art for the first time?

Creative Blocks to Landscape Art

Experiments with Paint Rachel Shirley

Worrying about getting the first mark perfect could cause the artist to continuously false-start the painting in an effort to capture a particular green colour mix or realism in clouds. Unchecked, this inner perfectionist could sap all confidence from the artist, creating a negative learning experience. But there are easier ways of overcoming the transition between a non-painter to a landscape artist.


Painting a First Landscape

Learning a new skill often entails being lenient and landscape painting is no different. This means learning to accept that mistakes will be made, some of which may turn out to be “happy accidents.” Unintended marks may add interest to the landscape painting and could be used to enhance future artworks. Alternatively, every mistake is a learning process.

Starting Out in Landscape Painting

Begin with mark making on a primed piece of card. Use each brush and try out each colour in turn. Aim to cover the painting surface with different marks. Use paint neat, dry, runny or thick. Mix two colours, then three. Try blending two colours into one another to create gradations. Lighten a colour by adding white, then try darkening it by adding the colour’s opposing colour (in the case of red, this will be green.)

Experiment with how colours look when placed against different backgrounds. The artist will discover that a dark colour will appear pale when painted on a darker colour, and a pale colour will appear dark when placed on a pale colour. This is good practice when gauging the tonal key of a landscape painting, such as painting clouds on a blue sky, or shadows over water.

Expressive Landscape Painting

Try out different brushes, palette knives, old combs, toothbrushes or sponges. View oil painting like a child learning a new skill. Above all, have fun and experiment.

When producing a first landscape painting, keep it simple with manageable goals. Experiment in private if need be and bear in mind that if the painting does not work out, it does not matter for this is all part of learning.

Begin by using a limited palette of three primary colours and white. Use a small painting surface of approximately A4 in size. Copy a photograph consisting of simple elements. This might be a sky, a tree, a river or a cottage. The aim is not perfection, but simply to complete a painting.

Tips for Beginners in Art

Resist the temptation to compare oneself with landscape art as seen in fine art books, such as those produced by the Impressionists or the Classists. Such comparisons will be unfair and could nurture an inner despair. Artists such as Constable and Monet could only reach the pinnacles they had by intensive practice fuelled by a passion for painting. Even they at some point would have produced an unsatisfactory landscape painting and made mistakes. Of course, fine art books continue to show only their best works.

Expressive Oil Painting Landscapes

Create Colourful Paintings click to buy from Amazon

Try not to agonise over every aspect of the painting in an effort to get it right. Landscape oil painting often means letting go. Allow imperfections to remain, which might be brush marks, streaks of colour or irregular lines. Oil Painting is often about suggestion rather than illustrating every object in full. Cloud sketches and lake paintings for example, often contain broken glazes and thick impasto, which adds atmosphere and expression to the painting.

Improving an Oil Painting

Completing one’s first landscape painting is a big first step and may spark the inspiration to embark on a series of others. A painting that does not go to plan can be put to one side and another one begun. But learning to paint involves learning to accept mistakes will happen, and with the right view, provides the path to improvement, whether it is to capture reflections in water or snow caps on mountains.

Links on Painting Landscapes

• Books on oil painting landscapes
• Oil painting materials
• Demonstration on painting a stone circle
• How to paint greens
• Primary colours in art
• How to mix oil paint

The artist striving for drama may paint mountains as a backdrop to a village or creek that resembles an idealised Alpine scene of pointed cones with cartoonish snowy caps rather than a convincing portrayal of mountains that suggests bulk. How does the landscape artist paint mountains with realism?

Problems with Painting Mountains

Oil Painting Mountains Rachel Shirley

The following culprits are often to blame for an unconvincing painting of mountains:

Making assumptions about the appearance of mountains that harp to symbolism. This might be: all mountains have flanks that are angled at forty-five degrees; all flanks converge neatly to a sharp summit; all snow caps are white; all mountains are bluish-grey and the contours of all mountains are jagged, etc.

Painting mountains in isolation to the other elements of the landscape painting instead of keying them in. This might result in mountains that appear too faint, too dark or out of scale with the rest of the painting.

Using mountains to fill an empty space, to hide a mistake or provide a backdrop to a landscape painting. This might tempt the artist to paint the mountains from memory which could result in the aforementioned idealised portrayal of mountains.

Treating mountains as cut out shapes and filling them in with one hue. The resultant featureless slopes are unlikely to grant the viewer any of sense of depth or scale to the landscape painting.

Tips on Mountain Painting

In order to make improvements to a painting with mountains, all assumptions about how mountains “should” look must be dispelled. This means looking at mountains images, either in real life or photos with fresh eyes. The artist will soon discover that some mountains have bizarre outcrops, protrusions and cols, the contours of which could be jagged, smooth, curved or bulbous.

How to Paint Mountains

How to Paint Snow Caps Rachel Shirley

Unlike buildings, painting mountains accurately is not so crucial, but it is important to capture the truth about mountains which can be found within their diverse textures, contours and patchwork of colours.

When brightly lit, mountains exhibit a weird and complex jigsaw of colour and tone. Some lower flanks resemble crumpled tissue paper; others undulate from a flat plain. In such cases, it is important to simplify the mountain form into its most basic elements first, and then to work into the detail.

Many mountains do in fact resemble inverted cones, but some might be lopsided, pyramidal or flattened. Build upon this basic shape by observing and adding other shapes to this basic shape to suggest a complex three-dimensional form. Compare one shape with another and record whether it is darker, paler, bluer or more crimson than a neighbouring area.

Half-closing the eyes will unclutter the scene and help the artist capture the basic essence of the mountain. Detail such as trees or ravines can be added last.

The Colour of Mountains

The same mountain will appear different under diverse lighting, weather and seasons. Autumn will exhibit pinks, reds and rustic colours from fern that on other occasions look bland. Grim weather will bring out slates, greys and violets that add drama. Snow caps exhibit arctic blues and creams if sunlit, creating focal points. Never disregard a colour if it can be seen on the mountain, regardless of how bizarre it might seem.

How to Paint Mountains with Drama

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Rather than view mountains as a convenient backdrop, use them as a focal point to a landscape painting. Dramatic photos of mountain ranges such as the Himalayas, the Alps, the Rockies or the Appalachians offer great opportunities to use bright colours and contrasting tones. Kilimanjaro or the Eiger are also worth exploration.

Oil Painting Techniques for Mountain Art

Any art technique can be used for painting mountains. Impasto oil pasted via palette knives will suggest thick snow and sharp peaks; blending over detail with a thin glaze will suggest mist over the mountains; or simply painting alla prima via wide bristles is great for expressing, energy and movement to a mountain painting. Applying detail via a fine sable is ideal for suggesting cracks, icy rivulets or pinnacles.

Links Relating to Mountain Painting

• Book on landsape painting
• Oil painting materials
• Demonstration on how to paint Kilimanjaro
• How to paint weather
• How to paint alla prima
• Tips on painting alfresco
• How to create distance in landscape painting

Often overlooked on this blog and others is foreign policy. Those who follow the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan usually only do so as a reflection on US domestic policy. Events in North Korea or Georgia serve only to give citizens of the United States a chance to test responses by political actors. Few really truly appreciate that importance of foreign policy, but it was foreign affairs that dragged our nation into the War on Terror, the Cold War, Vietnam, Korea, WWII, WWI, etc. It was foreign policy that led to crisis in the Balkans, Rwanda, Somalia, etc. It was foreign policy that opened up markets to our products.

Walter Russell Mead never losses sight of foreign policy and its importance and today put together an excellent article that surveys the major challenges facing the world. Here are some highlights from his article Things Fall Apart, via The American Interest:

...There are times when the ideas of the world’s rulers and the institutions through which they govern are adequate to the needs of the era, and there are times–like the present–when they are not. It is not just the Obama administration that seems mentally and even culturally unprepared to understand much less to guide the events now sweeping through the world. In Brussels, Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo and Delhi — to say nothing of Washington – leaders seem equally clueless, equally committed to outmoded, inaccurate approaches to the issues of our time...

Europe

...The European Union is perhaps the most feckless of the world’s power centers. Its currency is built on a foundation of hopeful assumptions that haven’t panned out: for example that countries as disparate in culture and situation as Greece, Germany, Finland, Ireland and Italy can all live happily under a common currency. There has been no shortage of warning signs for the last decade: there was no secret about the housing bubbles in Ireland and Spain. The falsity of Greek statistics was well known, as were the imprudent habits of its governments and the dysfunctional nature of its economic culture....

...Meanwhile, Europe continues its relentless failure to manage urgent challenges at home and abroad. The Europeans are unwilling (and in some cases, unable) to make the investments that would keep NATO strong; the continuing refusal to take Turkey’s application for EU membership seriously further and decisively marginalizes Europe in the Middle East. Wishful thinking cannot substitute for policy when it comes to the question of immigration, and Europe’s deepening demographic crisis ensures not only a future of population decline but of economic decline and welfare state bankruptcy as well...

China

...Europe is not the only place where leaders don’t measure up to the problems. Although China is not as democratically governed as Europe, on the whole the technocrats of Beijing have handled the last twenty years better than the bureaucrats of the EU. Nevertheless Beijing is confronting a confluence of economic, environmental and social challenges that pose problems which even China’s leadership is unlikely to overcome. Arguments about China’s currency undervaluation, while real, miss the main point: Whether China revalues the renminbi or not, its model of rapid growth based on manufactured exports is reaching fundamental limits... Rising raw material prices combined with consumer fatigue in the malls is squeezing the profitability of Chinese industry just as workers are demanding higher wages. Meanwhile, food price inflation in China is triggering mass anxiety and the financial system appears vulnerable to the kind of bubbles that have wreaked such havoc in the West....

China’s problems go beyond economics. Chinese public opinion, smarting from what it sees as two centuries of humiliation, and now elated by (overblown) press reports of China’s rise, wants its government to follow a more assertive and even aggressive foreign policy. Disputes with Japan, Korea and Vietnam over offshore islands stir deep currents of emotion, and public opinion judges the Chinese government by its ability to prevail in these disputes.

...Looming environmental disasters threaten China’s future, with issues of water, air quality and the usual environmental devastation that accompanies communist governance on a massive scale already taking a toll. The consequences of the one-child policy threaten a demographic disaster as an aging Chinese population will place a growing burden on a society not yet affluent enough to support it...

Russia

Emerging from the sordid shadows of the Soviet Union, Russia faced four great challenges. It needed to come to terms with the horrors and failures of the past, recognizing the enormous evil that Russia both suffered and inflicted during the Soviet period... It has failed, and Russian life and culture remain poisoned by the residue of unrepented horrors and uncomprehended crimes.

...Second, Russia needed to build a modern and competent state that in turn could provide the framework for a new economy and a new society... but with every passing year the critical failure of the Putin presidency to build the stable institutions and solidify the rule of law that a genuinely strong Russian state would require becomes more clear — and more costly....

...The third task, of building the kind of capitalist economy that could provide its citizens with dignity and affluence, has also been left undone. There is no one who thinks that the rule of law is secure in Russia, or that investors (foreign or domestic) have any real security for their investments....

...The fourth task, of finding a suitable world role for a new Russia, has also been decisively botched. Russia has no real friends anywhere in the world; there are those it can bully and those (a much greater number) that it can’t...

Mead also touches on Japan ("a pale shadow of its former self"), India (scandals, poverty, political chaos), Israel, Turkey, etc. His conclusion is one that I also echo:

I hope and pray that the generations of today will not know the sick despair of September 1939; if we are to avoid that kind of fate under even uglier circumstances, we need to start demanding more of our leaders — and of ourselves.

For those interested, check out some books by Walter Russell Mead such as Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World (Vintage), or Walter Russell Mead.

MSNBC reports:

While the modern age of antibiotics began in 1928 with the discovery of penicillin, the new findings suggest that people knew how to fight infections much earlier than that — even if they didn't actually know what bacteria were.
Some of the first people to use antibiotics, according to the research, may have lived along the shores of the Nile in Sudanese Nubia, which spans the border of modern Egypt and Sudan.
"Given the amount of tetracycline there, they had to know what they were doing," said lead author George Armelagos, a biological anthropologist at Emory University in Atlanta. "They may not have known what tetracycline was, but they certainly knew something was making them feel better."

More here

Painting buildings for the first time may flummox the artist who struggles with vanishing points and perspectives, resulting in a village scene consisting of childish-looking blocks nestling in trees with black squares for windows. What is the best way to paint buildings?

Problems with Drawing Perspectives for Buildings

Perspectives to Buildings Rachel shirley

Before making improvements to a painting consisting of buildings, the following culprits need to be identified.

• Not understanding or adhering to the rules of perspectives, vanishing points or failing to measure proportions of buildings.
• Illustrating every building as being a cuboid of equal sides and angles that fall away towards the distance in the same fashion.
• Illustrating windows as being the same size and proportions, despite the wall they reside upon angling away from the viewer.
• Taking the draftsman’s approach to illustrating buildings, measuring equal spaces between windows, centring doors, and using the ruler to draw lines for tiles, bricks or drainpipes.
• Over-smoothing the paint on surfaces of buildings, resulting in a space-age looking village rather than one that looks natural or worn by time.

Simple Exercise on Painting Buildings

The following simplified drawing exercise may help the artist paint convincing buildings, whether this is a Lakeland village or Cornish tin mines.

Establish the centre of the composition, which could be a window or a roof tile. Plot this centre point onto the centre of the painting surface. Doing so will prevent the composition from falling off towards the edge of the painting.

Identify a “key” measurement within the composition starting with the biggest. This could be the height of a building or the width of a roof. This “key” may be used as a foundation from which to build up the sketch and make comparisons with other aspects of the composition. The church spire, for instance may equal or half this key measurement.

How to Draw the Vanishing Point

How to Draw Buildings Rachel Shirley

Bear in mind that the horizon lays at eye level, whether or not it can be seen. Draw a faint line across the painting surface to represent the horizon. Remember that the location of the line will affect how much of the sky or ground will be in view.

If the wall of a building went on forever, it would eventually recede at a point on the horizon. This point is known as the vanishing point. Every building or structure has their own vanishing point.

Any aspect of a building, such as a porch or veranda that falls below this horizon line will generate an angle that will appear to recede upwards towards the vanishing point.

Similarly, any feature located above the horizon line, such as a rooftop or chimney stack, will generate angles that appear to fall downwards towards the vanishing point.

How to Sketch Angles for Buildings

Another rule of thumb is that a structure that is situated near the horizon line will generate a small angle; a structure that is situated at some distance above or below the horizon line will generate steep angles. This can be seen when viewing tower blocks from below.

Drawing Detail on Buildings

Contrary to belief, windows often are not spaced equally on a drawing, even though this might be the case in reality. If a wall recedes from the viewer, the spaces between windows, doors and other features will get smaller and appear more squashed together. Doors will appear narrower and chimneys thinner, including the spaces between.

Sketching Detail on Buildings

Oil Painting Guide click to buy from Amazon

All this being well, nothing can really substitute for sensitive observation. In many cases, buildings are not perfect right-angles and walls do not have crisp corners. Weather and time will create imperfections. Crumbling brickwork, crooked cottages and gates off hinges often add a charm and authenticity to a setting consisting of buildings.

The Colour of Buildings

Close observation also applies to the hue of buildings. Brickwork is often not a consistent and perfect red, but a medley of ochres, oranges, browns and maroons; similarly, mortar will exhibit blues, browns and rusts. Moss, pebbledash and sandstone will often possess a variety of tones. The weather and lighting conditions will further create unlikely colours on any building. Reflections from a blue sky or sunset will cast pinks or blues onto white cottages.

Finally, a successful rendering of buildings will result if making artistic comparisons between the buildings and other elements within the painting. Are the colours paler, more sombre or have a particular hue? This will ensure the buildings key in with the trees, river or sky nearby.

Links to Products and Articles on Oil Painting Buildings

• How to draw accurately
• Build confidence in painting
• Demonstration on how to paint a village
• How to paint a river
• Books on oil painting
• Art materials

After taking control of Congress in 2006 and winning the Presidency in 2008, the evidence is pouring in that liberal policies create a society that is less, in every sense of the word. Of course we all know that policies that attack natural rights- such as your right to life, your right to make free choices, and your right to work for and keep your own property- will of course lead to society that is less. Being from Michigan, I've watched what happens when Democrats run your state in the liberal way, and it isn't pretty. In 2010, voters went to the polls and soundly rejected Democrats and their liberal agenda, and now Democrats are frantically trying to find some way to explain what happened that doesn't involve them rejecting their entire worldview. There has to be some sort of conspiracy or something to explain why when they run things everything goes badly, or else they might have to admit that they are wrong! Via memeorandum, here is some of Liberals resort to conspiracy theories to explain Obama's problems:

... For some, the solution is to lay the blame on President Obama. He hasn't been liberal enough. He can't communicate. "I cannot recall a president," Robert Kuttner says in the Huffington Post, "who generated so much excitement as a candidate but who turned out to be such a political dud as a chief executive." Obama is "fast becoming more albatross than ally." This is an ideological movement at its most cynical, attempting to throw overboard its once-revered leader to avoid the taint of his problems.

But there is an alternative narrative, developed by those who can't shake their reverence for Obama. If a president of this quality and insight has failed, it must be because his opponents are uniquely evil, coordinated and effective. The problem is not Obama but the ruthless conspiracy against him.

So Matt Yglesias warns the White House to be prepared for "deliberate economic sabotage" from the GOP - as though Chamber of Commerce SWAT teams, no doubt funded by foreigners, are preparing attacks on the electrical grid. Paul Krugman contends that "Republicans want the economy to stay weak as long as there's a Democrat in the White House." Steve Benen explains, "We're talking about a major political party . . . possibly undermining the strength of the country - on purpose, in public, without apology or shame - for no other reason than to give themselves a campaign advantage in 2012." Benen's posting was titled "None Dare Call it Sabotage." ....

When the evidence comes in proving that you are wrong, how you react says a lot about the type of person that you are.

For those interested, check out None Dare Call It Conspiracy or None Dare Call It Treason.

Luca Bussotti writing over at Pambazuka:

CC Afronie

Firing up the local production of knowledge is crucial to escaping the ‘industry of development’

He goes on to say:

...it appears rather obvious that few people have an interest in promoting local knowledge and knowledge in general as a key to exiting structural dependence. Rather, as Mozambican sociologist Elísio Macamo wrote, the ‘industry of development’ continues to work, and it doesn't seem to be in the interest of the leading classes to get rid of it.

More here

Innovation Africa reports:

Timely access to information and advice about how to manage plant health problems can make the difference between success and failure. Since 2003, 12 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, have introduced community-based plant health clinics as a way of providing this advice to small-scale farmers.
Plant clinics have spread rapidly because they offer a cheap and practical alternative to more conventional approaches that can help only limited numbers of farmers. They operate in easily accessible public places and are widely used to identify the causes of plant health problems and to find solutions.

Continuing:

Community-based plant clinics have the potential to help farmers and contribute to making agriculture a successful business, especially in resource-poor countries where advisory services are often scarce, underfunded and beyond the reach of millions of smallholders. Plant clinics provide an opportunity to coordinate the efforts of extension, research, government regulation and input supply, to reach more people and to use existing resources more efficiently.

More here

A sovereign is the supreme lawmaking authority within its jurisdiction. When the Pilgrims left England and came to America, in their hearts they didn't recognize as their sovereign lord the King of England, realizing that anyone who could make it wrong to practice your religion could not truly be the real authority over your actions. The Pilgrims didn't recognize themselves as sovereign lords over themselves, able to determine what was right and wrong for themselves, knowing that this sort of selfishness and vanity would lead away from morality and create an absence of law. When the Pilgrims came to America, they didn't recognize 'no one' as sovereign, realizing that someone had to be responsible for their actions and had to provide law over them or else their community would dissolve into anarchy.

When the Pilgrims arrived in America, they knew in their hearts who their sovereign lord was- they knew who was the real lawmaking authority who watched over them and governed their behavior. Even on the shores of a faraway world, far from the British military or the power of the crown, far beyond the reach of any monarch, in a hostile land filled with potentially hostile people, the Pilgrims sat down and gave thanks to their sovereign lord and savior, to the authority which governed their society, to the source of law and rules and power, and to the one person who could possibly guarantee their safety and salvation. The Pilgrims gave thanks to God and his son, Jesus Christ, recognizing him as their sovereign.

Nolan Finley, writing in the Detroit News today, wrote in Editing God out of history distorts truth:

Ask any grade school kid who the Pilgrims were giving thanks to on the first Thanksgiving and I'll lay you three-to-one odds that the answer you get is, "the Indians." Public education is so obsessed with separation and so uncomfortable with discussions of religion that it has sanitized the unbreakable link between faith and America's founding. Now children are taught that the Pilgrims set the first Thanksgiving dinner for the Native Americans who helped keep them alive during their first harsh year in the New World.

This is more than just a small distortion in the name of political correctness. And it's not one of those Merry Christmas versus Happy Holidays issues. Whether you're a believer or non-believer, you should be concerned that God is being written out of this nation's history because doing so will limit our understanding of who we are as a people.

Faith was the driving force in the lives of the Pilgrims. Certainly the Indians helped them through the deprivations of that first year. But the settlers believed it was their prayers that accounted for their survival. And despite the starvation and sickness, they saw this new land as a great gift from God, a place where they were free to practice their religion.

The freedom to worship sparked a hunger for other liberties and created a culture that chafed at submission to arbitrary authority.

The words they used matter. When you edit out "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" from the Declaration of Independence, as President Barack Obama has been doing lately, you lose the understanding that the early Americans were able to take the extraordinary risk of breaking way from their king and taking responsibility for their own governance because they believed God was the only sovereign they were answerable to.

It was a remarkable proposition at a time when the entire rest of the world was under the rule of monarchs.

The belief in America's divine destiny and its providential partnership fueled the nation's sea-to-sea expansion and sparked a missionary zeal for spreading freedom. It gave rise to the notion of America's large and unique place in the world and the theory of American exceptionalism that is also now considered quaint in many quarters.

The irony here is that schools have no problem exposing our flaws in the name of getting history right. It almost relishes defrocking our heroes — Jefferson owned slaves, and so did Washington; Jackson practiced genocide; the pioneers ravaged the land. They do so even to the point of challenging the nation's legitimacy.

But when it comes to discussing the very complex and integral ways religion shaped our history, educators lose their nerve. So they invent more convenient scenarios, such as Pilgrims cooking up the idea of a huge Thanksgiving dinner to honor their Indian benefactors, instead of the God whom they ardently believed led them to this New World and controlled every aspect of their fate.

There's both good and bad in the nation's religious history. Americans have done some noble things in the name of serving God, and they've made some tragic mistakes doing the same. It's not proselytizing to explore that relationship between God and country. It's just telling the truth.

Truth is largely being scrubbed from public schools today, especially in the social studies, in ways big and small, and the fact that almost every single one of my students thinks that Thanksgiving was held to give thanks to the Native-Americans and not God is just one more piece of evidence that our nation is losing its history and its soul, and soon when people ask you who your sovereign is, your answer of "The President of the United States" will not be the same as the Pilgrim's reply of "God and Jesus."

Hope Shand writing in Pambazuka:

Under the guise of developing ‘climate-ready’ crops, the world’s largest seed and agrochemical corporations are pressuring governments to allow what could become the broadest and most dangerous patent claims in intellectual property history. A new report by ETC Group[1] reveals a dramatic upsurge in the number of patent claims on ‘climate-ready’ genes, plants and technologies that will supposedly allow biotech crops to tolerate drought and other environmental stresses (i.e. abiotic stresses) associated with climate change. The patent grab threatens to put a monopoly choke-hold on the world’s biomass and our future food supply, warns ETC Group.

More here

Michael Barone of the Washington Examiner should be required reading for anyone going into or studying government or politics- his analysis of elections and voting patterns is the best. Here is a shortened version of his most recent analysis of the Wave Election of 2010- be sure to check out the full article here:

Gentry liberals: The tsunami swept from the George Washington Bridge to the Donner Pass, but didn't wash away affluent liberals to the east and west of these geographic markers. Also surviving were the cannibals -- the public employee unions that are threatening to bankrupt states like California and New York, a prospect that doesn't faze the left-leaning gentry.

Jacksonians: In 2008 Barack Obama ran weakly in lands settled by the Scots-Irish from the Appalachians southwest to Texas. In 2010 Democrats did even worse there.

Germano-Scandinavian America: The Upper Midwest, settled largely by German and Scandinavian immigrants, has long been the most pacifist, isolationist and dovish part of the United States. That's one reason Obama did well in caucuses and primaries and in the general election in 2008 in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. He even made it a close race in the Dakotas. But that appeal seems to have vanished this year.

Blacks and Hispanics. Black voters remained almost unanimously Democratic this year. Not so Hispanics, who voted Republican in Florida and only mildly Democratic in Texas, where Republicans captured two Hispanic-majority House seats on the Mexican border.

The Finnish vote: Around 100 years ago Finnish immigrants flocked to the mines and woods of the country around Lake Superior, where the topography and weather must have seemed familiar. They've been a mostly Democratic, sometimes even radical voting bloc ever since. No more, it seems.

Finns, Hispanics, Midwest pacifists/isolationists, and Jacksonians are all falling out of the modern-day Democratic Party. It appears that the election of Obama in 2008 is indeed going to destroy a modern-day party, but it isn't the Republican Party as expected- he is going to rip apart the Democratic Party into those who produce and those who are parasitic.

Founded by the Hot Sun foundation the Kibera Film School is an institution:

...where trainees learn all aspects of filmmaking from script, acting, casting, camera, production, editing, and distribution. Professionals from the Kenyan film and TV industry work as instructors in the KIBERA FILM SCHOOL.

Kibera Film School