Flinging

 

$30 Turns Into $50 Million

The Virgin and Child with a Flower on a Grassy Bank (c. 1503), believed to have been created by Albrecht Dürer. Courtesy of Agnews, London.


A man in Massachusetts attended a routine estate sale four years ago, where a small drawing of a woman and child caught his eye. At the bottom was one of art history’s most recognizable monograms: “A.D.” On a lark, he bought it for $30. At the very least, it was “a wonderfully rendered piece of old art, which justified purchasing it,” he recalled.

As it turns out, the drawing is very likely worth much more—maybe up to $50 million. At least that’s what Agnews Gallery in London is asking for the piece, believing that the “A.D.” behind the artwork is indeed German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer.

The gallery has good reason to think it’s an original drawing by Dürer. After analysis, Christof Metzger, head curator at the Albertina Museum in Vienna and a leading authority on the artist, declared the work to be genuine. Metzger has even included it in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the Old Master. Giulia Bartrum, a former curator of German Prints and Drawings at The British Museum, also believes the drawing is authentic and has organized an exhibition around it on view at Agnews now.

Both experts suspect the work was created around 1503 as a preliminary study for Dürer’s well-known watercolor, The Virgin with a Multitude of Animals, which was finished roughly three years later. (The painting is now in the collection of the Albertina.)

For the consigner, who wishes to remain anonymous, getting to this point of recognition—and the payday that may come with it—has not been easy. After he acquired the artwork in 2017, he brought it to several experts for authentication or potential sale, only to be denied in each instance, according to Agnews.  READ MORE...

Winning the Argument

Day After Thanksgiving Concerns

Many of us go shopping the day after Thanksgiving with all the sales and with all the other people who want to take advantage of the sales as well, or many of us decide to make soup with all the leftovers like my Dad used to do and I now do because of his influence I suppose.

But, once Thanksgiving is over, most of us fail to continue to be as  thankful as we were the day before because we have returned to being so busy living life that we do not have time to think about LIFE.

What does it mean to THINK ABOUT LIFE?

• are we talking about the purpose of life?
• are we talking about the meaning of life?
• are we talking about why we were given life?
• are we talking about respecting life?
• are we talking about being grateful for life?

Most of us, but not all of us, have been raised by our parents to want MORE out of life and while MORE can refer to a variety of things, the underlying concept here is GREED...  and, while GREED is necessary for economic growth and prosperity, GREED can be a rabid dog that bites us in the ass when we are least expecting it....  that is to say that we become more concerned with achieving GREED than we are in appreciating the GREED that we have already accumulated.

Our purpose in life is to accumulate more and more and pretend to enjoy what we have, knowing that inside we are never really satisfied with what we have because we constantly want MORE...  and we are internally stressed because we are fearful that we may one day loose what we have acquired.

Is this really living life?

FORTUNATELY, only 1% of the population live like this...  even though the remaining 99% strive to be like the 1% even though they WILL NEVER get there...  consequently, they are mentally and financially forced to learn to enjoy what they have...  IRONY?

Muscle Girl

 

Violating Speed of Light

Just 13.8 billion years after the hot Big Bang, we can see 46.1 billion light-years away in all directions. Doesn't that violate...something?

A visual history of the expanding Universe includes the hot, dense state known as the Big Bang and the growth and formation of structure subsequently. The full suite of data, including the observations of the light elements and the cosmic microwave background, leaves only the Big Bang as a valid explanation for all we see. (Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss)

The cardinal rule of relativity is that there's a speed limit to the Universe, the speed of light, that nothing can break.And yet, when we look at the most distant of objects, their light has been traveling for no more than 13.8 billion years, but appears much farther away.Here's how that doesn't break the speed of light; it only breaks our outdated, intuitive notions of how reality ought to behave.

If there’s one rule that most people know about the Universe, it’s that there’s an ultimate speed limit that nothing can exceed: the speed of light in a vacuum. If you’re a massive particle, not only can’t you exceed that speed, but you’ll never reach it; you can only approach the speed of light. If you’re massless, you have no choice; you can only move at one speed through spacetime: the speed of light if you’re in a vacuum, or some slower speed if you’re in a medium. The faster your motion through space, the slower your motion through time, and vice versa. There’s no way around these facts, as they’re the fundamental principle on which relativity is based.

And yet, when we look out at distant objects in the Universe, they seem to defy our common-sense approach to logic. Through a series of precise observations, we’re confident that the Universe is precisely 13.8 billion years old. The most distant galaxy we’ve seen so far is presently 32 billion light-years away; the most distant light we see corresponds to a point presently 46.1 billion light-years away; and galaxies beyond about 18 billion light-years away can never be reached by us, even if we sent a signal at the speed of light today.

Still, none of this breaks the speed of light or the laws of relativity; it only breaks our intuitive notions of how things ought to behave. Here’s what everyone should know about the expanding Universe and the speed of light.  READ MORE...

Jelllyfish

 

Colder Than Expected

The latest Winter season 2021/2022 forecast update shows a stronger influence of the now mature La Nina phase. It will modify the jet stream pattern over North America and the Pacific Ocean, extending its reach also to the rest of the world. 

The final Winter forecast from major weather models captures the changing jet stream position during winter, showing us the most likely weather outcome this season.

To try and understand the Winter season and its forecast, we must realize that there are many “drivers” when it comes to weather. Global weather is a very complex system, with many large-scale and small-scale climate influencers. 

We will first look at what this La Nina really is and how it will influence the Winter season of 2021/2022.

Below we have an example of a pressure pattern in a perfect winter scenario for both the United States and Europe. A blocking high-pressure over Greenland and North Pacific, with low pressure and colder air for the United States and Europe. 

This is what every winter fan in Europe and the United States hopes for every winter. But we will see if we can find anything similar in the final Winter 2021/2022 forecast.  READ MORE...

The Gift

 

Ancient Fishing

Ancient fishing is one of the hardest human activities to study. Since many of the materials used, such as plant fibres and wood, are perishable, much of the physical evidence has been lost to time. However, one of the largest ever collections of early fishing technology has given researchers an unparalleled insight into the ancient techniques used.

The team, led by Antonella Pedergnana of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Archaeological research institute in Germany, studied 19 bone fish hooks and six grooved stones.These were found in the Jordan River Dureijay (JRD) in the Hula Valley, northern Israel.

Researchers believe that the grooved stones were used as weights for the rods.  The groundbreaking research study was explored in BBC Science Focus magazine.

Archaeology: Researchers found the ancient fishing tools in Hula Lake, Israel 

(Image: GETTY/BBC Science Focus )

Ancient humans: Humans have fished for thousands of years (Image: GETTY)


Here, Professor Gonen Sharon of Tel Hai College, Israel, told the publication: "The hooks are amazingly similar to modern hooks – in size, in features (like barbs) and in dexterity of making.

"Moreover, the hooks present features that are rarely found in modern-day hooks – for example, an outer lower barb aiming to function as a ‘point of no return’ to prevent the fish from escaping the hook."The sophisticated methods are believed to have risen during a seismic shift in human history.  READ MORE...

Crime Scene Investigation

 

Healthcare Happiness

I am the only member of our parent's family that is dealing with serious health issues and while one could say that it is my fault...  I would tend to agree with that in part because I did not know how to manage my stress...  and, it is not managing my stress that caused me to have a heart attack about 13/4 yeras ago.  

Prior to my heart attack, I had stopped smoking, stopped drinking alcohol, stopped eating red meat, sugars, and fried food s decade before my heart attack actually took place.  Additionally, my blood pressure was low, my cholesteral was low, no family member with heart issues...  so NO TYPICAL MARKERS that underscore a heart attack...

Therefore it must have been stress...

About this same time frame, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's "B" Cell Lymphoma and five years after that I was diagnosed with Melanoma that spread from my foot to my groin to my neck.  I am currently being treated for 2 cancers simultaneously and the meds do not seem to be fighting each other which is a good sign.

My healthcare costs are somewhere between $500,000 and $750,000 depending upon the various tests that I have to see if my cancers have spread.  These tests are typically a CT or a PET scan that I received quarterly.  I also have quarterly tests for my heart as well and since my PSA results are high, I have been seeing a Urologist and have had a biopsy of my prostate.  Since my nuclear stress test for my heart showed a blockage, I have had a recent heart cath that actually revealed NO PROBLEMS at all...  but, these tests are expensive.

My health is STABLE and that is why I have healthcare happiness...

Holiday Humor

 

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Liberia. It began as a day of giving thanks and sacrifice for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. 

Similarly named festival holidays occur in Germany and Japan. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States and around the same part of the year in other places. 

Although Thanksgiving has historical roots in religious and cultural traditions, it has long been celebrated as a secular holiday as well.  SOURCE:  Wikipedia

AUTHOR'S NOTE:  I grew up in Alexandria, Virginia and every Thanksgiving and every Christmas we would pack up the car and my father would drive the family down to Winston-Salem, NC to spend the holiday with my grandfather.  The Thanksgiving table was just like in the photograph above...  these were obviously pleasant memories.

After I got married, we still celebrated Thanksgiving with a large meal and always a turkey, but the amount of food was not as much as I recall having in NC...  although, those could just be a child's memory.  

At 74 years of age, I am still very much thankful for all that I have and while I don't just wait for Thanksgiving to roll around to celebrate my gratitude, I quietly celebrate it every day.

I am also mindful of the millions of people, especially in the United States who do not have the financial means to celebrate Thanksgiving in the same way that the rest of us celebrate it, but they celebrate it nonetheless with their limited abilities.

It is not the wealthy that make Thanksgiving memorable...

It is not the amount of food that makes Thanksgiving memorable...

It is not being with family that makes Thanksgiving memorable...

It is the concept that you are THANKFUL for all that you have regardless of how much or how little that is...

Thena

 

Warren Buffet's Two Letter Word

Billionaire Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, learned a long time ago that the greatest commodity of all is time. That's why he is religiously protective of his own time by setting strict boundaries for himself.

This leads to a Buffett-ism that has garnered a lot of debate over the years since he said it. It's a quote about the difference between successful people and really successful people.

The mega-mogul said: "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything."

No to almost everything?
That's a tall order. Most ambitious people are driven by results and doing more, not less. If you're an entrepreneur like me, you are relentless in your pursuit of capitalizing on every opportunity presented to you if it means growing your business and income. 

It could mean, in your own mind, having to meet as many people as you can to get there. That also means saying a lot more yeses than no's. But is it sustainable?  READ MORE...

Saudi Artist

 

It's Just a Rock

In 2015, David Hole was prospecting in Maryborough Regional Park near Melbourne, Australia.

Armed with a metal detector, he discovered something out of the ordinary – a very heavy, reddish rock resting in some yellow clay.

He took it home and tried everything to open it, sure that there was a gold nugget inside the rock – after all, Maryborough is in the Goldfields region, where the Australian gold rush peaked in the 19th century.

To break open his find, Hole tried a rock saw, an angle grinder, a drill, even dousing the thing in acid. However, not even a sledgehammer could make a crack. That's because what he was trying so hard to open was no gold nugget. As he found out years later, it was a rare meteorite.

"It had this sculpted, dimpled look to it," Melbourne museum geologist Dermot Henry told The Sydney Morning Herald.

"That's formed when they come through the atmosphere, they are melting on the outside, and the atmosphere sculpts them."

Unable to open the 'rock', but still intrigued, Hole took the nugget to the Melbourne Museum for identification.

"I've looked at a lot of rocks that people think are meteorites," Henry told Channel 10 News.

In fact, after 37 years of working at the museum and examining thousands of rocks, Henry explains only two of the offerings have ever turned out to be real meteorites.

This was one of the two.  TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS ROCK, CLICK HERE...

Dancing

 

Removing Toxins

At one period, Dennis started distancing himself from the office and our team. He suffered from severe stress and anxiety, and the signs were showing — he started having grey hairs, developing acne breakouts, and experiencing back pain. He was successful, but the side effects of working long hours were catching up.

Now, Dennis is a close friend of mine, so we kept in touch. He knew the problem was in his lifestyle. He switched careers to a more relaxed position in a local publishing house, started doing yoga, eating healthy. But his problems didn’t stop.

Dennis spent two months trying to get back to his old self, but it was all the same — grey hairs, acne breakouts, and back pain. After much he decided he had enough and started visiting various doctors.

Some doctors tried doing tests, C-Scans, and biopsies, but not one could pinpoint why Dennis was experiencing his symptoms.

Nothing seemed to work. But Dennis always had an interest in traditional traditional wisdom. And he decided to give an alternative approach a try by going to Japan.

One morning in Hokkaido, talking to a farmer in a local market, he expressed his concerns for his wellness.

“You must go to this hidden Ryokan (a spiritual retreat) where many famous Japanese go to find solutions to their problems.” The farmer said.

And so Dennis did — he went to this hidden spiritual retreat for a week.

For a week, Dennis learned from the local monks — he cleaned the common spaces with the monks, picked natural food, did yoga, and he started feeling a bit better.  READ MORE...