Las Vegas is a temple of the ersatz celebrating the vacuousness of gambled fortunes. For all the glitz and neon grandeur (quickly being replaced by LEDs), Las Vegas is usually an honest thief. Everyone knows that isn’t the Eiffel Tower, nor the Montgolfier balloon in front of Paris; New York, New York’s scale is wrongContinue reading “Neptune’s Fountain”
Category Archives: Reference Materials
World Happiness
I was never overly impressed with self-reported happiness indices and country rankings, until I read this 2022 working paper by Blanchflower and Bryson. The paper still uses self-reported data but this time, they add the negative dimensions of personal experience to tabulate a net happiness score. Combining data on around four million respondents from theContinue reading “World Happiness”
Mushrooms in Eden
Controversy over what’s depicted in the image, and what it may say about early Christians, has raged for decades. BY EMMA BETUEL AUGUST 5, 2021 (Atlas Obscura) Does This Medieval Fresco Show A Hallucinogenic Mushroom in the Garden of Eden? In France, Plaincourault Chapel features a peculiar depiction of the Garden of Eden’s Tree of theContinue reading “Mushrooms in Eden”
Protective Arts 