Now reading The Hound Of The Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle...

Gaming is Dying, and YOU are Killing It | A Rant

You want a rant, I'll give you a rant. Don't take this one too seriously, guys, I sound like a raving madman in this one. But I do believe the gaming industries' decline is largely because of Casuals, fanboys, SJWs, and youtubers like ‪@JimSterling‬ and ‪@TheActMan‬.

Nereide by Adolf Hiremy-Hirschl, 1911.

Liberal Pundits Can’t Hide the Simple Truth: Socialism is Fascism’s Greatest Nemesis

https://redphoenixnews.com/2020/03/02/liberal-pundits-cant-hide-the-simple-truth-socialism-is-fascisms-greatest-nemesis/

As results poured in from the Nevada caucus – showing a landslide victory for Bernie Sanders – liberal news outlets went into panic. MSNBC host Chris Matthews likened the Sanders victory to the fall of France to the Nazis. Such a comparison cannot even be classified as hyperbole. Rather than simply exaggerating reality, Matthews is throwing reality out the window. He has compared the success of a Jewish politician to the conquest of the Nazis. The sick irony is that Sanders lost members of his own family to the Nazis during the holocaust.

This wasn’t the first unhinged comment Chris Matthews has made about the Sanders campaign. He has previously compared Sanders to Fidel Castro while fear mongering about the possibility of public executions in Central Park. It might seem strange that a political commentator would compare Sanders to both Castro and Hitler, considering that the two are polar opposites on the political spectrum. However, it makes sense when you consider the ideology of the American political establishment. For defenders of capitalism like Matthews, there is no difference between the perpetrators of the holocaust and those who stopped it.

To an out of touch millionaire and Washington DC insider like Chris Matthews, Communists and Nazis are equal evils of a similar nature. Either one can be invoked at random to demonize any movement that steps outside of the respectable parameters for bourgeois debate. Bernie Sanders represents a social democratic movement that is funded by grassroots donations rather than corporate money. To the liberal establishment, even this modest reform movement appears as an existential threat to their unchecked power. Therefore, they spew vitriol about Nazis and Communists without any historical analysis. Chuck Todd of MSNBC has even compared Bernie supporters to Hitler’s brown shirts.

These political commentators see the world through a paradigm which is fundamentally flawed and failing. They see the status quo of the United States as something sacrosanct. To them, the United States represents democracy while countries like Cuba represent dictatorship. What they fail to see is that the ruling class of this country exports dictatorship the world over to maintain its world hegemony and riches. The wealth of America’s ruling class is based on the exploitation of labor, land, and resources in poorer countries. It is the communists, like Fidel Castro, who fight for the liberation of their nations against US imperialism. Similarly, it was the communists, a union of all the people in the Soviet Union, men, women, Tartar, Russian, who put an end to the Third Reich. However, the antagonistic relationship between communism and fascism is thrown aside so that these cheap attacks can be levied, and all those things that oppose american hegemony can be conveniently lumped together.

The Bernie Sanders movement is not the movement that will save the world from the hegemony of capitalism. But capitalists and their mouth pieces sure are scared of even its modest, social democratic aims. Even a more equitable distribution of imperialist plunder is an unacceptable and radical goal for mainstream american political commentators. This is why they grasp for straws and use the most sensationalist arguments they can think of. These smears might be vapid, but they expose a profound truth: for many defenders of capitalism, fascism is preferable to its greatest enemy—socialism.

Now listening to Piano Sonata No. 3 by Ludwig van Beethoven and Long Hard Climb by Helen Reddy...

On Hornby Street in Downtown Vancouver. Summer of 2018.

Just finished watching Fresh Horses (1988) and A Chinese Ghost Story (1987)...

Just finished watching The Wild Robot (2024) and A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)...

Now reading Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift...

How likely is it that Donald Trump has Asperger's Syndrome? Answer only with empirical evidence

https://www.quora.com/How-likely-is-it-that-Donald-Trump-has-Aspergers-Syndrome-Answer-only-with-empirical-evidence

Em Oakland: Does Donald Trump Have Asperger’s Syndrome?

So, let’s break Asperger’s syndrome down a bit, shall we?

Asperger’s syndrome is a type of autism spectrum disorder and as such, can be broken down into four main areas of differences/difficulties.

Social

The core difference between Aspies [those with Asperger’s syndrome] and neurotypicals [non-autistic people] in terms of socialisation is that neurotypicals intuitively understand how to socialise and communicate with other neurotypicals. Aspies don’t. They have to learn how to socialise with neurotypicals and they often struggle. What that looks like in more detail, is this:

- Unable to relate to peers.
- May seek out company of those either much younger or much older than them.
- Gets drained by being in groups of people for too long and regains energy by being on their own.
- Has significant difficulties establishing and maintaining friendships and relationships. That means an Aspie could go through their entire lives making very few or even no friends.
- Brutally honest/blunt. You always know if an Aspie doesn’t like something - they say exactly what they think.
- Doesn’t understand the subtleties of social interaction and doesn’t take part in small talk with neurotypicals.
- May struggle reading social cues, including body language, facial expressions, etc.
- May experience anxiety when around large groups of people [social anxiety].
- Most Aspies also have special interests [also called obsessions. Some prefer the term special interests, I don’t mind either way]. These can be on any subject - with males, it’s more likely to be something practical, i.e. building things out of Lego, and with females, it’s more likely to be something creative, i.e. writing stories - and these special interests, an Aspie may have just one, or more than one, and they can research their special interest and talk about it at length.

Emotional

- Aspies often have intense emotions, and might experience long lasting tides of emotion, or fleeting emotions [it varies from person to person].
- Aspies are natural worry warts - they will worry a lot and can be more prone to stress and anxiety, among other things.
- Aspies often have difficulty expressing their emotions. If you were to ask an Aspie how they were feeling about something, or just how they’re feeling that day, the chances are that the reply you will get is “I don’t know.” That doesn’t mean that they don’t know how they’re feeling, or that they’re not feeling anything. What it means is that they don’t know how to grasp one of the many feelings they have in their head, label it and describe it in words. This is called alexithymia.
- May experience extreme emotional outbursts, also known as meltdowns, or may become quiet, unresponsive and withdrawn, also known as shutdowns.

Behavioural

- Aspies may have stereotypical behaviours, i.e. hand flapping, tapping, etc. These are also known as self-stimulatory behaviours or stims.
- Most [although not all] will have rigid routines and will not like any changes to those routines. One example is if at school and a supply teacher comes in, this can upset an Aspie and potentially cause trouble.

Sensory

Most if not all autistic people have differences in how their brain perceives sensory input. These differences can be hypersensitive [oversensitive] or hyposensitive [undersensitive].

Hypersensitive
- Vision/light - those with light hypersensitivity will find most lights, even every day lights, i.e. room lights, car lights, etc. very bright, and they might find wearing Irlens [coloured glasses] or sunglasses helpful.
- Smell - those with a hypersensitive sense of smell can be overwhelmed by aromas they pick up, such as perfumes, etc.
- Sound - those with hypersensitivity to sound will find everyday noises very loud and overwhelming.
- Taste - those with hypersensitivity to taste won’t like certain foods or certain flavours.
- Touch - those with hypersensitivity to touch will find touch either very uncomfortable, or even painful, depending on how severe their hypersensitivity is.

Hyposensitivity
- Vision/light - those that are hyposensitive to light will find lights not bright enough or may enjoy certain lights such as lava lamps, etc.
- Smell - those that are hyposensitive to smell will have little to no sense of smell.
- Sound - those with hyposensitive hearing will like loud music and may use music as a thought blocker.
- Taste - those with hyposensitive taste basically won’t have any food hypersensitivity and will eat things other Aspies won’t. I don’t know too much about this one.
- Touch - those with hyposensitive touch often have a disconnect with their body and often seek more input from other people, i.e. hugs, cuddles, etc. and may like different textures of things and may also benefit from having a weight on top of them, i.e. a weighted blanket.

That’s pretty much everything…

So, let’s see about what I know about Donald Trump [please bear in mind that I am not any sort of health professional, and am only comparing what I know of him with the above list of autism/Asperger’s syndrome traits/features].

First of all, from what I’ve seen in interviews, videoclips, and heard other people say about Donald Trump, pretty much all of the social stuff I mentioned in my list for Asperger’s syndrome doesn’t apply to Donald Trump. He seems to be very able socially. I can’t tell that he has any anxiety, or any struggles understanding social rules, etc. In fact, I would say that he seems to understand social rules enough to be able to manipulate people effectively.

As for the emotional stuff, there’s only one thing I would point out and it only links to Asperger’s syndrome very superficially, and that is that I have noticed Donald Trump have the occasional anger outburst. However the huge difference here is that people with Asperger’s syndrome don’t just have angry outbursts if they do get angry, or may not be angry people at all. Their outbursts might be sad or despairing outbursts, or on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, happy or joyful outbursts. Besides that, I haven’t seen Donald Trump display that much emotion, to be honest, and people with Asperger’s syndrome are definitely emotional people.

Also, I haven’t seen any of the behavioural or sensory aspects of Asperger’s syndrome in Donald Trump.

So, based on him only having a couple of traits at most, and those only being linked to Asperger’s syndrome very tangentially/superficially, I would say he definitely does not have Asperger’s syndrome.

As other people have noted, as he has aged, he has now started showing the early signs of dementia.

But with the notes I made in my Aspie vs Donald Trump comparison:

Appears to have a very good understanding of social rules and conventions, appears to have no social difficulties whatsoever. Appears to be able to manipulate people. Can be angry when he doesn’t get his way, but besides that, shows next to no emotion that I can tell. And I’ve also heard that he seems to think he’s the best thing that happened to America, or something like that, and he is definitely very self-centered.

Those symptoms would point to narcissistic personality disorder [NPD], not Asperger’s syndrome.

Girl In White by Mikhail Devyatov, 1955.

Super Sentai Review: Seijuu Sentai Gingaman

https://www.jefusion.com/2016/03/super-sentai-review-seijuu-sentai.html

"We pierce through the galaxy with legendary blades." is the theme of Seijuu Sentai Gingaman. This was the first work that Yasuko Kobayashi had done as a Super Sentai headwriter. This series may have come out as one of the best series in the 1990s.

The heroes

Although the show's title in English means Starbeast Sentai Gingaman, it doesn't really follow too much of a space theme except for having powers that are not of this Earth. It may be possible that the Gingamen themselves are descendants of aliens who got stranded on Earth, settled there permanently and vowed to defend it from the Balban. The story of Gingaman begins with the inauguration of the would be 133rd Gingaman team by lineage. Although Hyuga would have beent he 133rd Ginga Red but fate soon made his younger brother Ryoma as the show's main protagonist instead. The other Gingamen are Hayate (Ginga Green), Gouki (Ginga Blue), Hikaru (Ginga Yellow) and Saya (Ginga Pink). Later on, Hyuga returns and becomes the sixth ranger inheriting the anti-hero Bullblack's powers after the latter's heroic sacrifice.

The Gingamen as warriors are imbued with this "Earth Power" that allows them to harness power from nature. Ryoma uses fire, Hayate uses wind, Gouki uses water, Hikaru uses lightning and Saya uses petals. The heroes had lost their home the Ginga Forest to the Balban and are forced to live with the "normal world" where they must learn to adjust. The plot kind of feels like it was taken from Flashman's rangers where they must try to adjust to a new environment. The heroes must defend the Earth from the Balban Pirates before the Earth becomes their next target for destruction. To guide them in the city, they were assisted by the talking tree Moak and the acorn fairy Bokku. They live in a ranch where Harukiko and his son Yuuta accommodate them and knew of their identity as the 133rd Gingamen.

The villains

The Balban are a group of intergalactic pirates who for some reason could breathe even in the vacuum of space. Captain Zahab and his pirate crew have been plundering and then destroying planets turning them into jewels. Whatever reasons Captain Zahab had, it felt like he was trying to achieve immortality and/or possibly godhood. The Earth becomes the only planet standing in his way as he was defeated by the first Gingamen. These space pirates were sealed off for centuries but were awakened by an earthquake in the modern day. They seek to get whatever energy they could to revive their giant monster Daitanic so they can proceed to destroy Earth.

The main villain crew of Captain Zahab has Shelinda as his steerwoman, Pucrates as his advisor and the four generals. The four generals are Sanbash the leader of the insect-like humanoid monsters, Budo leads a samurai-themed gang of monsters. Illies is an Egyptian themed sorceress who uses magically themed monsters. Batbas is a viking themed general with mechanical robotic beasts who cause havoc. Like the generals in Goranger, the generals only replaced each other when the previous one got destroyed in the conflict though they all appeared in the beginning. The reason was because Captain Zahab wanted to make sure they prevented any sabotaging done towards each other though it proved useless. Later, Dark Merchant Biznella came in later in the series to assist Balban.

Final thoughts

While my first exposure to Yasuko Kobayashi as a writer was Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, Gingaman was where I soon knew of how she started off as a headwriter right after she was an important secondary writer a year before with Denji Sentai Megaranger. She started out pretty good and she had a lot of good assistance from Naruhisa Arakawa and Junki Takegami as major secondary writers together with Shigenori Takatera as the head producer. Like during the time Toshiki Inoue was the head writer of Chojin Sentai Jetman - the series tried to blend in a lot of stuff from Hirohisa Soda's era and became a successful series. This was just a preview of what we might expect from Kobayashi's style as a head writer. This was also where Arakawa was also getting more of an idea on how he wanted to write Tokusatsu his style after he wrote Megaranger's finale.

As I watched through this series and having seen more 90s Super Sentai, I really felt that it was a nice series though I wonder why was it really named Gingaman? After seeing Zyuohger's premiere episodes, I felt like maybe Gingaman should have been named as Zyuohman or Seijuuman instead because it felt like it was too attached to the forest? I even thought that maybe its U.S. adaptation Power Rangers Lost Galaxy should have been named as Power Rangers Star Beasts instead of the official title it got. The show had some really good writing and production styles involved making it memorable. I felt that like Jetman, it should've gotten a post-series TV special (ex. a Hero Encyclopedia) but maybe it was hard to beat Jetman's record. Instead, we had Timeranger get a post-TV series special where the Timerangers explained about the 23 previous Super Sentai series prior to them. Overall, it's been an enjoyable series to watch.

Michelangelo - New World Encyclopedia

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, and poet. His versatility, accomplishment, and artistic mastery were so commanding that he is often considered the archetypal Renaissance Man, along with his rival and fellow Florentine, Leonardo da Vinci.

Michelangelo's output in every field during his long life was prodigious. When the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the sixteenth century. Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and the David, were sculpted in his late twenties to early thirties. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential fresco paintings in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican in Rome and The Last Judgment on the chapel's altar wall. Later in life, he designed the dome of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican and revolutionized classical architecture with his invention of the giant order of pilasters.

In his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called Il Divino ("the divine one"), an appropriate sobriquet given his intense spirituality. His statue of David is testimony to the beauty of God's creation, even though the artist saw the raw material of inert stone as an obstacle to be mastered, a vault from which the sculptor laboriously released the work of art. One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur. It was attempts by subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance, Mannerism.

Unique for a Renaissance artist, two biographies were published of Michelangelo during his lifetime. Biographer Giorgio Vasari called his work the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance. This viewpoint was upheld in art history for centuries. Michelangelo died in 1564, the year of the birth of Galileo and William Shakespeare.

Early life

Michelangelo was born in 1475 near Arezzo, in Caprese, Tuscany. His father, Lodovico di Leonardo di Buonarotti di Simoni, was the resident magistrate in Caprese and podestà of Chiusi. His mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena. Genealogies of the day indicated that the Buonarroti descended from Countess Matilda of Tuscany, so the family was considered minor nobility. Even so, the family was far from rich. Lodovico struggled financially and definitely hoped for the day when Michelangelo would contribute an income to help with the family obligations.

Michelangelo was raised in Florence. Later, during his mother's prolonged illness and following her death, he lived with a stonecutter and his wife and family in the town of Settignano where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm. From a young age, he loved the feel of marble beneath his fingers and felt at home while working it. Michelangelo once said to Giorgio Vasari, the biographer of artists, "What little good I have within me came from the pure air of your native Arezzo and the chisels and hammers I sucked from my mother's milk."

Michelangelo devoted a period to grammar studies with the humanist Francesco d'Urbino. After a time, and in defiance of his father's wishes, Michelangelo chose to continue his apprenticeship in painting with Domenico Ghirlandaio, a well known painter, and in sculpture with Bertoldo di Giovanni. On June 28, 1488 he signed a contract for three years with Ghirlandaio. Lodovico tried to insist that his son take up a more practical and lucrative profession and was not averse to using harsh treatment and words to get his way. Michelangelo was driven from deep within. When Lodovico was unable to persuade or force him, amazingly, Lodovico was able to get Ghirlandaio to pay the young artist, which was unheard of at the time. In fact, most apprentices paid their masters for the education.

Impressed by Michelangelo's talent and work ethic, Ghirlandaio recommended him to the head of the ruling Medici family, Lorenzo de' Medici. After leaving Ghirlandaio in 1489, Michelangelo dedicated himself to his studies at Lorenzo's school from 1490 to 1492. There, he was influenced by many prominent people who modified and expanded his ideas on art, following the dominant Platonic view of the age. During this period, Michelangelo met literary personalities Pico della Mirandola, Angelo Poliziano, and Marsilio Ficino.

In this period Michelangelo finished Madonna of the Steps (1490–1492) and Battle of the Centaurs (1491–1492). 'Centaurs' was based on a theme suggested by Poliziano and was commissioned by Lorenzo de Medici. Michelangelo had become like a son to Lorenzo. After Lorenzo's death on April 8, 1492, Michelangelo quit the Medici court.

In the following months he produced a Wooden Crucifix (1493), as a thanksgiving gift to the prior of the church of Santa Maria del Santo Spirito who had permitted him some studies of anatomy on the corpses of the church's hospital. Between 1493 and 1494 he bought the marble for a larger than life statue of Hercules, which was sent to France and disappeared sometime in the 1700s.

He entered the Medici court again on January 20, 1494. Piero de Medici commissioned a snow statue from him. But that year, the Medici were expelled from Florence after the Savonarola rise. Michelangelo stayed in Florence for awhile, in a small room underneath San Lorenzo that can still be visited to this day. In this room, there are charcoal sketches still on the walls of various images that Michelangelo drew from memory. Michelangelo left Florence before the end of the political upheaval. He moved to Venice and then to Bologna.

In Bologna, he was commissioned to finish the carving of the last small figures of the tomb and shrine of St. Dominic.

After nearly a year away, he returned to Florence at the end of 1494. But he soon fled again to escape the turmoil and the menace of the French invasion. He was in his home city of Florence again between the end of 1495 and June of 1496. Michelangelo was touched by Friar Savonarola's preaching, moral severity, and his vision of renovation of the Roman Church.

A marble Cupid by Michelangelo was fraudulently sold to Cardinal Raffaele Riario as an ancient piece in 1496. The prelate found out that it was a fraud, but was so impressed by the quality of the sculpture that he invited the artist to Rome, where he arrived on June 26, 1496. On July 4, Michelangelo started to carve a larger than-life-size statue of the Roman wine god, Bacchus, commissioned by the banker Jacopo Galli for his garden.

Subsequently, in November of 1497, the French ambassador in the Holy See commissioned one of his most famous works, the Pietà. The contemporary opinion about this work — “a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture” — was summarized by Vasari: “It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh.”

Though he devoted himself only to sculpture during his first stay in Rome, Michelangelo continued his daily practice of drawing. In Rome, Michelangelo lived near the church of Santa Maria di Loreto. Here, according to legend, he fell in love with Vittoria Colonna, marquise of Pescara and a poet.

The house Michelangelo lived in during this time was demolished in 1874. The remaining architectural elements saved by new proprietors were destroyed in 1930. Today a modern reconstruction of Michelangelo's house can be seen on Gianicolo hill.

Michelangelo returned to Florence from 1499–1501. Things were changing in the city after the fall of Savonarola and the rise of the gonfaloniere Pier Soderini. He was proposed by the consuls of the Guild of Wool to complete a project started 40 years before by Agostino di Duccio that had never materialized: a colossal statue portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom, to be placed in the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. Michelangelo responded to the commissioning by completing his most famous work, David in 1504. This masterwork definitively established his fame as sculptor for his extraordinary technical skill and the strength of his symbolic imagination. The sculpture of David stands in the Academy in Florence. Indeed it is a stunning depiction of David, larger than life, so strong and handsome, as he contemplates his approaching confrontation with Goliath. The giant sculpture is so flawless that it is hard to imagine that it emerged from marble with the help of human hands.

Also during this period, Michelangelo painted the Holy Family and St. John, also known as the Doni Tondo or the Holy Family of the Tribune. It was commissioned for the marriage of Angelo Doni and Maddalena Strozzi. In the seventeenth century, the painting hung in the room known as the Tribune in the Uffizi. He also may have painted the Madonna and Child with John the Baptist, known as the Manchester Madonna and now in the National Gallery, London.

Under Pope Julius II in Rome: the Sistine Chapel ceiling

Michelangelo was invited back to Rome in 1503 by the newly appointed Pope Julius II and was commissioned to build the Pope's tomb. Under the patronage of Julius II, Michelangelo constantly had to stop work on the tomb to accomplish numerous other tasks. Due to interruptions, Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years without finishing it. One interruption was the commission to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took four years to complete (1508 – 1512). According to Michelangelo's account, Bramante and Raphael convinced the Pope to commission Michelangelo in a medium not familiar to the artist, to divert him from his preference for sculpture into fresco painting, so that unfavorable comparisons with his rival Raphael would be made. However, this story is heavily discounted by modern historians and contemporary evidence, and may merely have reflected his suspicions, as he grappled with frustration over being separated from his beloved marble.

Michelangelo was employed by Pope Julius II to paint the 12 Apostles on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but protested for a different scheme. Eventually he completed the work with over 300 Biblical figures in a composition. His figures showed the creation of Man, the creation of Woman, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and the drunkenness of Noah and the Great Flood. Around the windows he painted the ancestors of Christ. On the pendentives supporting the ceiling he alternated seven Prophets of Israel with five sibyls, female prophets of the classical world, with Jonah over the altar. On the highest section, Michelangelo painted nine episodes from the Book of Genesis. His drive to manifest what he imagined ruled him.

Under Medici Popes in Florence

In 1513 Pope Julius II died. His successor Pope Leo X, a Medici, commissioned Michelangelo to reconstruct the façade of the Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze in Florence and to adorn it with sculptures. Michelangelo agreed reluctantly. The three years he spent creating drawings and models for the façade, as well as attempting to open a new marble quarry at Pietrasanta for the project, were among the most frustrating in his career. Work was abruptly cancelled by his financially strapped patrons before any real progress had been made. The basilica lacks a façade to this day.

Apparently not the least embarrassed by this, the Medici later came back to Michelangelo with another grand proposal, for a family funerary chapel in the Basilica of San Lorenzo. Fortunately for posterity, this project, occupying the artist for much of the 1520s and 1530s, was more fully realized. Though still incomplete, it is the best example of the integration of the artist's sculptural and architectural vision. Michelangelo created both the major sculptures and the interior plan. Ironically, the most prominent tombs are those of two rather obscure Medici who died young, a son and grandson of Lorenzo. Lorenzo de' Medici, Il Magnifico is buried in an obscure corner of the chapel, without the free-standing monument that had been planned.

In 1527, the Florentine citizens, encouraged by the sack of Rome, threw out the Medici and restored the republic. A siege of the city ensued. Michelangelo went to the aid of his beloved Florence by working on the city's fortifications from 1528 to 1529. The city fell in 1530 and the Medici family rule was restored to power. Completely out of sympathy with the repressive reign of the ducal Medici, Michelangelo left Florence for good in the mid-1530s, leaving assistants to complete the Medici chapel. Years later his body was brought back from Rome for interment at the Basilica di Santa Croce, fulfilling the maestro's last request to be buried in his beloved Tuscany.

Last works in Rome

The fresco of The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel was commissioned by Pope Paul III. Michelangelo labored on the project from 1534 to October 1541. The work is massive and spans the entire wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel. The Last Judgment is a depiction of the second coming of Christ and the apocalypse; where the souls of humanity rise and are assigned to their various fates, as judged by Christ, surrounded by the Saints.

The depictions of nakedness in the papal chapel were considered obscene and sacrilegious. Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini Mantua's ambassador campaigned to have the fresco removed or censored, but the Pope resisted. After Michelangelo's death, it was decided to obscure the genitals ("Pictura in Cappella Ap.ca coopriantur"). So Daniele da Volterra, an apprentice of Michelangelo, was commissioned to cover the genitals with perizomas (briefs), leaving the complex of bodies unaltered. When the work was restored in 1993, the restorers did not remove all the perizomas. Some were left as a historical document. Also, some of Michelangelo’s work had been tragically scraped away when the perizomas had been installed. A faithful uncensored copy of the original, by Marcello Venusti, can be seen at the Capodimonte Museum of Naples.

Censorship always followed Michelangelo, once described as "inventor delle porcherie" ("inventor of obscenities," in the original Italian language referring to "pork things"). The infamous "fig-leaf campaign" of the Counter-Reformation, aiming to cover all representations of human genitals in paintings and sculptures, started with Michelangelo's works. To give two examples, marble statue of Cristo della Minerva in Rome was covered by a pan, as it remains today, and the statue of the naked child Jesus in Madonna of Bruges (The Church of Our Lady in Bruges, Belgium) remained covered for several decades.

In 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, and designed its dome. As St. Peter's was progressing there was concern that Michelangelo would pass away before the dome was finished. Once construction began on the lower part of the dome, the supporting ring, the whole design slowly came into being. There was no way to turn back.

Capitoline Square

The Capitoline Square, designed by Michelangelo, was located on Rome's Capitoline Hill. Its shape, more a rhomboid than a square, was intended to counteract the effects of perspective.

Laurentian Library

Around 1530 Michelangelo designed the Laurentian Library in Florence, attached to the church of San Lorenzo. He produced new styles such as pilasters, tapering thinner at the bottom, and a staircase with contrasting rectangular and curving forms.

Palazzo Farnese

Work on the Palazzo Farnese in Rome was begun by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, who was commissioned by Pope Paul III. Michelangelo took over the works in 1546 after the death of Sangallo.

After the death of Julius II, construction was halted. His successor, Pope Paul III, appointed Michelangelo as chief architect following the death of Antonio de Sangallo in 1546. Michelangelo actually razed some sections of the church designed by Sangallo in keeping with the original design by St. Peter's first architect, Donato Bramante (1444–1514). However the only elements built according to Michelangelo's designs are sections of the rear façade and the dome. After his death, his student Giacomo della Porta continued with the unfinished portions of the church.

Michelangelo the man

Michelangelo was often arrogant toward others and constantly dissatisfied with himself. His art originated from deep inner inspiration and drive as well as culture. In contradiction to the ideas of his rival, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo saw nature as an enemy that had to be overcome. The figures that he created are forceful and dynamic; each in its own space apart from the outside world. For Michelangelo, the job of the sculptor was to free the forms that were already inside the stone. He believed that every stone had a sculpture within it, and that the work of sculpting was simply a matter of chipping away all that wasn't a part of the statue.

For Michelangelo, his life was a seemingly endless struggle between fulfilling commissions to earn money to help support himself, his aging father, and other family members, and having time to pursue the artistic ideas and passions that were in his heart and mind. It is hard to imagine that the artist who created the magnificent fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel felt frustrated to be painting, having been taken away from the sculptural work he was most devoted to.

Gaming is Dying, and Remakes are Killing It

The Silent Hill 2 Remake should've never been made. Despite critical acclaim from both journalists and """fans""", I'm here to tell you it's a soulless cash-grab.

0:00 Gaming is Dying Segment
15:55 Review Section - Gameplay
18:53 Boss Fights
21:24 It's Less Scary
28:01 CENSORSHIP
32:01 Angela
39:06 Eddie
42:02 Mary
45:00 James
48:16 Conclusion

Now reading Time magazine Vol. 103 No. 11: Ready Or Not, Here Comes Gatsby (March 18, 1974)…

The Silent Hill Transmission was... uhhhh...

Reacting to the Silent Hill transmission.

Now listening to Piano Sonata No. 29 by Ludwig van Beethoven and Chicago V by Chicago...

On Burrard Street in Downtown Vancouver. Autumn of 2018.

Burrard Street is a major thoroughfare in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is the central street of Downtown Vancouver and the Financial District. The street is named for Burrard Inlet, located at its northern terminus, which in turn is named for Sir Harry Burrard-Neale.

The street starts at Canada Place near the Burrard Inlet, then runs southwest through downtown Vancouver. It crosses False Creek via the Burrard Bridge. South of False Creek, on what used to be called Cedar Street before the completion of the bridge in 1932, the street runs due south until the intersection with West 16th Avenue.

The intersection of Burrard Street and Georgia Street is considered to be the centrepoint of Downtown Vancouver, along with the more tourist-oriented and upscale shopping-spirited intersection of Burrard Street and Robson Street to the south. At and due northeast of the centre is the heart of the Financial District. Further down closer to Vancouver Harbour stands the historic Marine Building, an Art Deco masterpiece, opened in 1930, two years before the Art Deco pylons of the Burrard Bridge at the opposite end of the street. Finally at the Harbour lies Canada Place and the Vancouver Convention Centre.

Nearer to Burrard Bridge is located St. Paul's Hospital, established on Burrard Street in 1894.

Burrard Street served as the dividing line between the two district lots laid out on the downtown peninsula in the second half of the 19th century: District Lot 185 (now West End) and District Lot 541 (granted to the Canadian Pacific Railway). The two grids were oriented differently, with the result that only every third northwest-southeast street in DL185 actually continuing southeast beyond Burrard into DL541. Burrard currently serves as the boundary between West End and Downtown, as defined by the City of Vancouver.

Burrard Street is served by SkyTrain's Burrard Station, located underground between the intersections with Melville and Dunsmuir Streets in the heart of the Financial District. Along the downtown portion, there is a bike lane on the southwest-bound direction towards the Burrard Bridge.

 

Book Review: The Fifth Profession by David Morrell

https://tysonadams.com/2014/09/03/book-review-the-fifth-profession-by-david-morrell/

How do you tell if a book has samurai in it? Don’t worry, they’ll put a katana on the cover. A book about ninjas is a little harder, since they are invisible to anyone that hasn’t just been killed by a ninja. How do you tell if a book is a thriller? Don’t worry, they’ll put a gun on the cover.

Professional protectors – the fifth profession…. get it! – Savage and Akira are teamed up to protect a travelling businessman. Things go horribly wrong and Savage is beaten to a pulp after seeing the businessman and Akira killed. Akira is also beaten to a pulp and sees the businessman and Savage killed. And so begins the twist in this David Morrell thriller.

A lot of thrillers take you from point A to point B very efficiently to the point of cliche. Some authors even churn out the same book dozens of times in this manner. The thing that keeps you coming back is the the taut writing, thrills and cool escapism. The strength of The Fifth Profession is that it starts with the standard thriller plot setup and then eschews that for a different plot entirely. It makes the entire story novel. See what I did there?

There are some annoying aspects to Morrell’s novel. David has a habit of hammering certain points and descriptions at the reader, to the point I started assuming everyone had “karate” calloused hands. To some people this could be annoying and enough to throw the book against a wall – which I wouldn’t be doing this since I read this on my iPad. To others the plotting and pacing will keep you entertained, as it did with me.

Why Modern Nintendo Sucks

Why does modern Nintendo suck, well its not what you think. It's not stuff like their mediocre online service, cheap hardware, treatment of legacy games and then selling those legacy games back to consumers at full price or just the fact that their games never go on sale. While all of these things are super frustrating, it's not the reason modern Nintendo sucks. The reason is Nintendo has lost its creativity.

Nintendo is shedding its veneer of kindness and embracing a new reputation: Vigorous legal bully

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/nintendo-is-shedding-its-veneer-of-kindness-and-embracing-a-new-reputation-vigorous-legal-bully/

Nintendo is speedrunning the Disney playbook. We all know where that goes.

We're experiencing a golden age of Nintendo…'s legal bloodhounds. Seriously, these days I hear more about Nintendo's latest target of annihilation than Nintendo's latest videogames. That's partly because the console giant's recent output has mostly been a forgettable roster of late-generation call-ups like "a Zelda spinoff" and "more Mario Party", but it's also because Nintendo's public persona has gotten pretty ugly.

Beyond that one month that we were all really into Tears of the Kingdom, the story of Nintendo lately is one of picking fights or (more commonly) threatening to sue its own fans so hard that they don't even dare fight back. The decimation of the Ryujinx emulator and a potentially risky Palworld lawsuit are making headlines everywhere, but taking stock of just the past couple of years revealed a bunch of Nintendo legal actions that I totally forgot about.

Between late 2022 and 2024, Nintendo:
- Went after a PC application that assigns box art to your non-Steam games because it had Nintendo art in its database
- Barraged a YouTuber/modder with copyright strikes and threats until he took down a Breath of the Wild multiplayer mod
- Blocked the release of the Dolphin emulator on Steam by warning Valve it'd come after them next
- Indirectly killed a cool Portal 64 demake in development for genuine N64 hardware: Amazingly, Valve nipped this one in the bud not because of the Portal usage, but because it didn't want to deal with the inevitable Nintendo fallout.
- DMCA'd a Palworld Pokémon mod off the internet as the game was blowing up (months before the patent suit)
- Sued the developers of the Yuzu Switch emulator, killed the project, and settled for millions of dollars before a judge could decide if there is anything illegal about Yuzu
- Killed the Citra 3DS emulator, made by the same Yuzu group, in the fallout
- Nuked 20 years' worth of Nintendo-related Garry's Mod creations from orbit (because why not)
-  Formally filed a patent lawsuit against Palworld
- Sicced the dogs on the last Switch emulator standing, Ryujinx

It's worth saying out loud that this is not normal, even for videogame company standards. Hostility toward fan games isn't unique to Nintendo (though it is easily the most hostile), but you don't see Microsoft wiping Xbox emulators off the net, and it’d be pretty weird for EA to go after a software dev because they downloaded some box art. Sega and Sony, two companies with a rich backlog of IP and console hardware, aren't sending cease and desist letters to ISO sites, and they're generally more chill about fan projects, too (though the Sega-owned Atlus loves go after fans almost as much as Nintendo). Earlier this year, the developers of the Bloodborne Kart fan game was able to release its FromSoftware-inspired kart racer after scrubbing it of official Bloodborne branding.

In a time when we're used to viewing game companies as adversaries—"[insert company here] isn't your friend" is a common social media refrain—Nintendo's heel turn has been a slower burn. It's been true as long as I've followed games that people just aren't normal about Nintendo. The company has always enjoyed this special, Disney-like reputation as a game maker that puts fun first and breeds creativity. Those qualities have cultivated a fandom fiercer than any other entertainment brand on earth, and insulate the billion-dollar operation from cynicism.

Perhaps it's that Disney-like trajectory fueling Nintendo's latest litigious surge against any and all perceived infringers. After all, Nintendo ain't a game company anymore—with a billion-dollar Mario movie under its belt, a sequel on the docket, theme parks, and a Zelda film on the way, the company's value is increasingly tethered to its icons, and decreasingly associated with brand new characters or worlds. When your game plan revolves around repackaging decades-old stories, everything starts to look like a threat..

Nintendo's situation is unique because nobody hates emulation quite like Nintendo. To the Big N, there is no game preservation debate: emulation leads to piracy, so emulators are as good as pirates. Mario in Garry's Mod is a crime. Fan games are an assault on the IP vault.

That one particularly sticks in my craw. When a publisher pressures a fan into cease-and-desisting their fan game, you'll sometimes hear that the Nintendos of the world have an obligation to defend their trademark, because if they don't, they'll lose it. That makes sense when you first think about it—if they let just anyone make a game called Pokémon, Nintendo's baby would get genericized like Kleenex or the yo-yo! But when you consider that this worst-case scenario of a publisher losing its intellectual property because it didn't shut down a fan game has never actually happened, it starts to sound less like a legitimate worry and more like a one-size-fits-all excuse.

It's not like Nintendo's legal exploits are gonna trigger a mass fan exodus, but I'd argue we're seeing the effects of its reputation in how people are talking about the Palworld lawsuit: In one corner are Nintendo diehards cheering for the downfall of a too-familiar creature collector, in the other a mix of Palworld players and Nintendo skeptics who see this as just another example of Nintendo overreach—its latest attack on PC gaming. Even if it emerges victorious, Nintendo will come out the other side having chipped another little piece of its "lovable toymaker" mask.

And if Nintendo is going to keep going full Ace Attorney on emulators, drawing larger borders around its precious IP in the process, it shouldn't be tedious-to-impossible to access so much of its precious back catalog legally. With the Wii Virtual Console, 3DS, and Wii U stores gone forever, the only official way to emulate an old Zelda is to buy Nintendo's crappy online subscription and wait for that service to die in a decade, too. The Switch 2 is an opportunity to do better—to put as much focus on how fans can play its games as it's currently putting on how they can't.

Now reading Monuments Of Civilization: Egypt by Claudio Barocas...

Leonardo da Vinci - New World Encyclopedia

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Leonardo_da_Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an immensely talented Italian Renaissance polymath: architect, anatomist, sculptor, engineer, inventor, geometer, musician, and painter. Leonardo was the archetype "Renaissance man," infinitely curious and equally inventive. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time.

Leonardo is famous for his realistic paintings, such as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, as well as influential drawings including the Vitruvian Man. He conceived of ideas vastly ahead of his time. Notably, he invented concepts for the helicopter, a tank, the use of concentrated solar power, the calculator, a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics, the double hull, and many others. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were feasible during his lifetime as modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. However, he greatly advanced the fields of knowledge in anatomy, astronomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.

Of his works, only a few paintings and his notebooks (scattered among various collections) containing drawings, scientific diagrams and notes have survived.

Biography

The first known biography of Leonardo was published in 1550 by Giorgio Vasari, who wrote Vite de' più eccelenti architettori, pittori e scultori italiani ("The lives of the most excellent Italian architects, painters and sculptors"). Most of the information collected by Vasari was from first-hand accounts of Leonardo's contemporaries because Vasari was only a child when Leonardo died. This biography remains the first reference in studying Leonardo's life.

Leonardo was born in the village of Anchiano, a few miles from the small town of Vinci, in Tuscany, near Florence. It was thought that Leonardo was the illegitimate son of a local peasant woman known as Caterina. His biological father appears to have been a Florentine notary or craftsman named Piero da Vinci. Leonardo's mother was married off to one Antonio di Piero del Vacca, a laborer employed by his biological father. According to papers recently found by the Museo Ideale Leonardo Da Vinci in his home town of Vinci, the marriage occurred just a few months after she gave birth to a boy called Leonardo. Even though he was born after modern naming conventions came into use, he was known as "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci," which simply means "Leonardo, son of Piero, from Vinci, Italy." Leonardo signed his works "Leonardo" or "Io, Leonardo" ("I, Leonardo").

Leonardo grew up with his father in Florence, where he started drawing and painting. He started school when he was five years old. His early sketches were of such quality that his father showed them to painter/sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio, who subsequently took on the 14-year old Leonardo as a garzone (an apprentice). In Verrocchio's workshop Leonardo was introduced to many activities, from the painting of altarpieces and panel pictures to the creation of large sculptural projects in marble and bronze. Leonardo also worked with Lorenzo di Credi and Pietro Perugino. According to Giorgio Vasari, Leonardo’s first biographer (1550):

But the greatest of all Andrea's pupils was Leonardo da Vinci, in whom, besides a beauty of person never sufficiently admired and a wonderful grace in all his actions, there was such a power of intellect that whatever he turned his mind to he made himself master of with ease.

In 1472 Leonardo was inducted into the painter's guild of Florence, while even four years later, he was still considered Verrocchio's assistant. The earliest known dated work of Leonardo's is a pen and ink drawing of the Arno Valley. It is dated August 5, 1473. This work was done before Leonardo became an independent master in 1478 at age 26. His first commission, to paint an altarpiece for the chapel of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Florentine town hall, was never started. His first large painting, The Adoration of the Magi, started in 1481, was never completed. It was to be for the Monastery of San Donato a Scopeto in Florence.

From around 1482 to 1499, Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, employed Leonardo, providing him a workshop, complete with apprentices. During this period, seventy tons of bronze set aside for Leonardo's Gran Cavallo horse statue were cast into weapons for the duke in an attempt to save Milan from the French under Charles VIII in 1495.

When the French returned under Louis XII in 1498, Milan fell without a fight, overthrowing Sforza. Leonardo stayed in Milan for a time, until the morning he came upon French archers using his life-size clay model of the Gran Cavallo for target practice. He left with Salai, his assistant, and his friend Luca Pacioli for Mantua. After two months, he moved on to Venice where he was hired as a military engineer.

Leonardo returned to Florence briefly at the end of April 1500. In Florence he entered the services of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI. He worked as Borgia's military architect and engineer and traveled with him throughout Italy. In 1506 he returned to Milan, then in the hands of Maximilian Sforza after Swiss mercenaries drove out the French.

From 1513 to 1516, Leonardo lived in Rome, where painters Raphael and Michelangelo were active at the time, although he had little contact with these artists. However, Leonardo was probably pivotal in the relocation of Michelangelo's David in Florence; the move was against Michelangelo's will.

In 1515 Francis I of France retook Milan. Leonardo was commissioned to make a centerpiece mechanical lion for the peace talks between the French king and Pope Leo X in Bologna. This was likely his first encounter with the French king. In 1516 he entered Francis' service, and was given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé (also called "Cloux"; now a museum open to the public) next to the king's residence at the Royal Chateau Amboise. The king granted Leonardo and his entourage generous pensions. A surviving document lists 1,000 écus for the artist, 400 for Count Francesco Melzi, his apprentice, and 100 for Salai ("servant"). In 1518 Salai left Leonardo and returned to Milan, where he eventually perished in a duel.

King Francis became a close friend of Leonardo. Some 20 years after Leonardo's death, Francis told the artist Benevenuto Cellini that he believed about Leonardo that, "No man had ever lived who had learned as much about sculpture, painting, and architecture, but still more that he was a very great philosopher."

Da Vinci lived for the last three years of his life at Clos Lucé, France, and died there on May 2, 1519. According to his wish, 60 beggars followed his casket. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in the castle of Amboise. Although Melzi was his principal heir and executor, Salai was not forgotten. He received half of Leonardo's vineyards.

It is apparent from the works of Leonardo and his early biographers that he was a man of high integrity and very sensitive to moral issues. His respect for life led him to vegetarianism for at least part of his life. The term "vegan" would have fit him well. He entertained the notion that taking milk from cows amounted to stealing. Under the heading, "Of the beasts from whom cheese is made," he answers, "the milk will be taken from the tiny children." Vasari reported a story that as a young man in Florence, Leonardo often bought caged birds just to release them from captivity. He was also a respected judge on matters of beauty and elegance, particularly in the creation of pageants.

Leonardo pioneered new painting techniques in many of his pieces. One of them, a color shading technique called Chiaroscuro, used a series of glazes custom-made by Leonardo. It is characterized by subtle transitions between color areas. Chiaroscuro is a technique of bold contrast between light and dark. Another effect created by Leonardo is called sfumato, which creates an atmospheric haze or smoky effect.

Early works in Florence (1452–1482)

While working as an apprentice to in 1476, Leonardo worked with Verrocchio to paint The Baptism of Christ for the friars of Vallombrosa. He painted the angel at the front and the landscape. The difference between the two artists' work can be seen. Leonardo's blending and brushwork was finer than Verrochio's technique. Vasari told the story that when Verrocchio saw Leonardo's work he was so amazed that he resolved never to touch a brush again.

Leonardo's first solo painting was the Madonna and Child, completed in 1478. During the same time period, he also painted a picture of a little boy eating gelato. From 1480 to 1481, he created a small Annunciation painting, now in the Louvre. In 1481 he also painted St. Jerome, but never finished the painting. Between 1481 and 1482 he started painting The Adoration of the Magi. He made extensive, ambitious plans and many drawings for the painting, but it was never finished, as Leonardo's services had been accepted by the Duke of Milan.

Milan (1482–1499)

Leonardo spent 17 years in Milan in the service of Ludovico Sforza (between 1482 and 1499). He did many paintings, sculptures, and drawings during these years. He also designed court festivals, and drew many engineering sketches. He was given free rein to work on any project he chose, though he left many projects unfinished, completing only six paintings. These include Virgin of the Rocks in 1494 and The Last Supper (Ultima Cena or Cenacolo, in Milan) in 1498. In 1499 he painted Madonna and Child with St. Anne. He worked on many of his notebooks between 1490 and 1495, including the Codex Trivulzianus.

Leonardo had a habit of planning grandiose paintings with many drawings and sketches, only to leave them unfinished. One of his projects involved making plans and models for a monumental seven-meter-high (24 feet) horse statue in bronze called Gran Cavallo. Because of war with France, the project was never finished. The bronze originally intended for use in building the statue was used to make a cannon. Victorious French soldiers used the clay model of the statue for target practice. The Hunt Museum in Limerick, Ireland has a small bronze horse thought to be from Leonardo's original design and created by an apprentice. In 1999 a pair of full-scale statues based on his plans were cast. One was erected in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the other in Milan.

When the French invaded Milan in 1499, Ludovico Sforza lost control, forcing Leonardo to search for a new patron.

Nomadic Period: Italy and France (1499–1516)

Between 1499 and 1516, Leonardo had numerous patrons. He traveled around Italy doing several commissions before moving to France in 1516. This period has been described as his “Nomadic Period.”

He visited:
- Mantua (1500) (sketched a portrait of the Marchesa Isabella d'Este)
- Venice (1501)
- Florence (1501–1506) sometimes referred to as his Second Florentine Period.
- Traveled between Florence and Milan staying in both places for short periods before settling in Milan.
- Milan (1506–1513) sometimes referred to as his Second Milanese Period, under the patronage of Charles d'Amboise until 1511)
- Rome (1514)
- Florence (1514)
- Pavia, Bologna, Milan (1515)
- France (1516–1519) (patronage of King Francis I)

Upon returning to Florence, he was commissioned by the Grand Council Chamber in the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of government of the Florentine Republic for a large mural commemorating a great military triumph in the history of Florence, The Battle of Anghiari. Leonardo’s rival, Michelangelo, sketched on the opposite wall. After producing a fantastic variety of studies in preparation for the work, Leonardo left the city with the mural unfinished. He was not getting paid as he had expected. More importantly, he was struggling with his choice of technique. Instead of the fresco technique, he experimented (as in the Last Supper) with oil binders, hoping to extend the time to manipulate the paint. The incomplete painting was destroyed in a war during the mid-sixteenth century. Not only Peter Paul Rubens but artists in the modern era have produced their own studies based on Leonardo's original sketches.

Most evidence suggests that he began work on the Mona Lisa (also known as La Gioconda, now at the Louvre in Paris) in 1503 and continued to work on it until 1506. He continued to work sporadically on it well after that. The painting is likely to be of Lisa de Gherardini del Giocondo, wife of the silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. The painting was commissioned by the silk merchant to commemorate the birth of their second son as well as a move to a new home. Leonardo most likely kept the painting with him at all times, and did not travel without it.

The Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world. It was famous at the time because of his use of sfumato (the smoky effect he created), which transcended the convention of the time, as did the sitter's angle, contrapposto, as well as the bird's-eye view of the background. In modern times, the painting has received an astounding amount of media attention. In addition to Leonardo's cutting edge techniques, Mona Lisa's alluring and mysterious smile is very captivating.

The Mona Lisa was one of only three paintings that Leonardo took with him to his final residence at Clos Lucé. It may have been his favorite work, and the painting had a rather large monetary valuation listed in the will of his protégé, Salai.

Between 1506 and 1512, Leonardo lived in Milan under the patronage of the French governor Charles d'Amboise. He painted St Anne in 1509. One painting, The Leda and the Swan, is known now only through copies as the original work did not survive. He also painted a second version of The Virgin of the Rocks during this time (1506–1508).

While under the patronage of Pope Leo X, he painted St. John the Baptist (1513–1516).

During his time in France, Leonardo made studies of the Virgin Mary for The Virgin and Child with St. Anne, and many drawings and other studies.

Selected works:
- The Baptism of Christ (1472–1475) – Uffizi, Florence, Italy (from Verrocchio's workshop; angel on the left-hand side is generally agreed to be the earliest surviving painted work by Leonardo)
- Annunciation (1475–1480) – Uffizi, Florence, Italy
- Ginevra de' Benci (c. 1475) – National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., United States
- The Benois Madonna (1478–1480) – Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
- The Virgin with Flowers (1478–1481) – Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany
- Adoration of the Magi (1481) – Uffizi, Florence, Italy
- The Madonna of the Rocks (1483–86) – Louvre, Paris, France
- Lady with an Ermine (1488–90) – Czartoryski Museum, Krakow, Poland
- Portrait of a Musician (c. 1490) – Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy
- Madonna Litta (1490–91) – Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
- La belle Ferronière (1495–1498) – Louvre, Paris, France—attribution to Leonardo is disputed
- Last Supper (1498) – Convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy
- The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist (c. 1499–1500) – National Gallery, London, UK
- Madonna of the Yarnwinder 1501 (original now lost)
- Mona Lisa or La Gioconda (1503-1505/1507) – Louvre, Paris, France
- The Madonna of the Rocks or The Virgin of the Rocks (1508) – National Gallery, London, UK
- Leda and the Swan (1508) - (Only copies survive; best-known example in Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy)
- The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (c. 1510) – Louvre, Paris, France
- St. John the Baptist (c. 1514) – Louvre, Paris, France
- Bacchus (or St. John in the Wilderness) (1515) – Louvre, Paris, France

Science and Engineering

Renaissance humanism saw no mutually exclusive polarities between the sciences and the arts. Leonardo's studies in science and engineering, recorded in notebooks comprising some 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, fuse art and science. They are as impressive and innovative as his artistic work. These notes were made and maintained during Leonardo's travels through Europe, as he made continual observations about the world around him.

Leonardo was left-handed and used mirror writing in his journals throughout his life. The explanation is that it is easier to pull a quill pen than to push it. By using mirror writing, the left-handed writer is able to pull the pen from right to left and also avoid smudging what has just been written.

Leonardo's approach to science was an observational one. He tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail. He did not emphasize experiments or theoretical explanation. Since he lacked formal education in Latin and mathematics, contemporary scholars mostly ignored Leonardo the scientist. Later, he did teach himself Latin and it has been said that he was planning a series of treatises on a variety of subjects, though they were never written.

Anatomy

Leonardo started to discover the anatomy of the human body while apprenticed to Andrea del Verrocchio. His teacher insisted that all his pupils learn anatomy. When he became a successful artist, he was given permission to dissect human corpses at the hospital Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. Later in Milan, he performed dissections at the hospital Maggiore and in Rome at the hospital Santo Spirito (the first mainland Italian hospital); from 1510 to 1511 he collaborated with the doctor, Marcantonio della Torre. Leonardo dissected 30 male and female corpses of different ages. Together with Marcantonio, he prepared to publish a theoretical work on anatomy and made more than two hundred drawings. His book was finally published in 1580, 61 years after his death. It was titled Treatise on Painting.

Leonardo drew many images of the human skeleton, and was the first to describe the double-S form of the backbone. He also studied the inclination of pelvis and sacrum, stressing that the sacrum was not uniform, but composed of five fused vertebrae. He was also able to represent the human skull and cross-sections of the brain exceptionally well (transversal, sagittal, and frontal). He drew many images of the lungs, mesentery, urinary tract, sex organs, and even coitus. He was one of the first who drew the fetus in the intrauterine position and wished to learn about "the miracle of pregnancy." He often drew diagrams of the cervical muscles and tendons and the shoulder. He was a master of topographic anatomy. He not only studied human anatomy, he studied the anatomy of many animals, as well.

It is important to note that he was not only interested in structure but also in function, so he became a physiologist in addition to being an anatomist. Leonardo actively searched for models among those who had significant physical deformities, for the purpose of developing caricature drawings.

Leonardo's study of human anatomy led to the first known design of a robot in recorded history. The design, which has come to be called Leonardo's robot, was probably created around 1495 but was rediscovered in the 1950s. It is not known if an attempt was made to build the device.

Leonardo also correctly worked out how heart valves eddy the flow of blood, yet he was unaware of blood circulation. He believed that blood was pumped to and consumed by the muscles. A diagram Leonardo did of a heart inspired a British heart surgeon to pioneer a new way to repair damaged hearts in 2005.

Inventions and Engineering

Fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, Leonardo produced detailed studies of the flight of birds, and plans for several flying machines, including a helicopter and a light hang glider which could have flown.

In 1502 Leonardo produced a drawing of a single span 720-foot (240 meter) bridge as part of a civil engineering project for Sultan Beyazid II of Constantinople. The bridge was intended to span an inlet at the mouth of the Bosporus known as the Golden Horn. Beyazid did not pursue the project because he believed that construction was impossible. Leonardo's vision was resurrected in 2001 when a smaller bridge based on his design was constructed in Norway.

Owing to employment as a military engineer, Leonardo's notebooks also contain several designs for military machines: machine guns, an armored tank powered by humans or horses, cluster bombs, a working parachute, a diving suit made out of pig's leather and a hose connecting to air, etc. He came to believe that war was the worst of human activities. Other inventions included a submarine, a cog-wheeled device that has been interpreted as the first mechanical calculator, and one of the first programmable robots that has been misinterpreted as a car powered by a spring mechanism. In his years in the Vatican, he planned an industrial use of solar power, by employing concave mirrors to heat water. While most of Leonardo's inventions were not built during his lifetime, models of many of them have been constructed with the support of IBM and are on display at the Leonardo da Vinci Museum at the Château du Clos Lucé in Amboise.

The Notebooks

Leonardo wrote daily in notebooks throughout his life. He wrote about his sketches, inventions, architecture, elements of mechanics, painting ideas, human anatomy, grocery lists and even people that owed him money. These notebooks—originally loose papers of different types and sizes, distributed by friends after his death—have found their way into major collections such as the Louvre, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, and the Victoria and Albert Museum and British Library in London. The British Library has put a selection from its notebook (BL Arundel MS 263) on the web in the Turning the Pages section. The Codex Leicester is the only major scientific work of Leonardo's in private hands. It is owned by Bill Gates, and is displayed once a year in different cities around the world.

Why Leonardo did not publish or otherwise distribute the contents of his notebooks remains a mystery to those who believe that Leonardo wanted to make his observations public knowledge. Technological historian Lewis Mumford suggested that Leonardo kept notebooks as a private journal, intentionally censoring his work from those who might use it irresponsibly (the tank, for instance). They remained obscure until the nineteenth century, and were not directly of value to the development of science and technology. In January 2005, researchers discovered the hidden laboratory used by Leonardo for studies of flight and other pioneering scientific work in previously sealed rooms at a monastery next to the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata, in the heart of Florence.