Robin drawings

When searching my hard disk for reference images of birds a couple of weeks ago, I found some scans of Robin drawings. Not birds, but illustrations by Robin Jacques, taken from the book Drawing for Radio Times, by R.D. Usherwood, or perhaps The Artists of Radio Times by Martin Baker. A library book it was, and quite a few years ago.

Travellers on the London Tube may have seen some of Robin Jacques’s Sherlock Holmes drawings decorating the walls of Baker Street Underground Station.

I don’t know the dates on which these originally appeared in Radio Times magazine.

From what I remember, according to the book these were all done to quite short deadlines. I think it said all three of these detailed drawings for The Tempest were completed over a weekend.

I have seen a couple of his original drawings, and they are very small scale, with fine detail work to challenge a printer’s craft.

Click on the drawings to enlarge, or for extra high resolution scans click here: one, two, three, four, five, six.

Late night viewing

Above, Buster in Beckett’s Film. Also available at Archive.org, where you can download it.

And here, Beckett working on What, Where in 1987.

Francis Sedgemore writes on watching Christopher Hitchens’s recent Newsnight interview.

Ain’t a fit night out on Archive.org, The Fatal Glass of Beer.

Below, SEE CANADA NOW! with Buster in The Railrodder.

Tico Tico

Performed by The Ray Conniff Orchestra, with celluloid spliced by the prolific Rob of Suburbanbatherson.

UPDATE: Suburbanbatherson gone from YouTube. More.

Purple fingers 3: on Afghanistan

Above: building a railway in Afghanistan: the new line from Hairatan to Mazar-e-Sharif. Photo by the American Embassy, Kabul, via Railways in Afghanistan. Read more here. ISAF Media has more photos.

This is another follow up to Purple Fingers. See also Purple Fingers 2: on Iran. Below are some links from the last few weeks. If it’s faster service you want, try the SWJ.

Kabul goes to Washington
From earlier this month,  Hamid Karzai and Hillary Clinton in conversation at the United States Institute of Peace, and Abdullah Abdullah talking to journalist Steve Coll at the New America Foundation.

After the big reception given to Karzai, the US Government didn’t have so much time for his rival Abdullah, who came warning of the dangers of fraud in upcoming parliamentary elections, and the dangers of premature withdrawal. Via Terry Glavin.

Karzai brought a large portion of his cabinet with him on his visit, which proved useful at that USIP event. An excerpt:

PRESIDENT KARZAI: If we keep going at the current speed of revenue collection, this year – and correct me, Minister of Finance, are you around – of which this year, we had 22 percent increase in our revenue collection.

PARTICIPANT: Fifty-eight percent.

PRESIDENT KARZAI: Fifty-eight percent? Yesterday, you said 22 percent. (Laughter.)

SECRETARY CLINTON: Yesterday was a good day. (Laughter.)

PARTICIPANT: That was GDP growth.

PRESIDENT KARZAI: GDP growth, sorry, sorry, sorry. Okay. So that was GDP growth. 22 percent GDP growth and 50-something percent the revenues this year. Now, if we move at this speed, within three years, Afghanistan will be able to pay for the existing numbers of our security forces. Within three years, Afghanistan will be paying its civil services, its military, and police forces from its own pocket. Now, that will be a tremendous achievement and it is a benchmark that I hope our ministers will keep very, very strongly in mind so we can come back three years later to the United States and tell the U.S. Congress and Senate, look, we’ve done it. Now we will not be asking you for salaries, but we will be asking you for investment and F-16s. (Laughter.)

[...]

PRESIDENT KARZAI: On economic matters, we had extensive engagement on the issue of agriculture and the importance of agriculture and the viability of the Afghan agriculture sector, its ability to produce the best quality of foods and to export on mineral resources, the abilities of Afghanistan, the richness of the country and the mineral resources that can easily run of the knowledge that we have today of the Afghan mineral resources to over a billion dollars. Our ministers yesterday said that it can be between $1 to $3 billion --

PARTICIPANT: He said $3 billion.

PRESIDENT KARZAI: To $3 billion.

PARTICIPANT: (Off-mike.)

PRESIDENT KARZAI: Yeah, 3 billion.

PARTICIPANT: No, no, 3 trillion.

PRESIDENT KARZAI: Trillion, yeah, $3 trillion. Trillion, sorry. That’s what I meant. Trillion, trillion, yeah. $1 to $3 trillion.

Full text here.

Caricaturist Steve Brodner had a go at Karzai in a short film for PBS. (Some earlier to and fro with Brodner over Afghanistan in the comments here.)

Talking to the Taliban
Lauren Feeney of PBS talked to Michael Semple about the visit, about US commitment, and about issues around talking to the Taliban.

Talking to the Taliban was also the theme of Steve Coll’s article in the New Yorker the week before last (see also photos), while on the blog he has been writing on the Afghanistan policy of the UK’s new government, and hears a statement of support from William Hague on the principle of humanitarian intervention.

In one of those posts, Steve Coll mentions the famed British pedestrian in Afghanistan, Rory Stewart, now a Conservative MP, and speculates that Stewart’s skepticism about US military strategy might indicate future policy. I linked to Rory Stewart’s arguments against the surge last October and made some criticisms of them.

How we fight: US, UK, DK.
In the New York Times today, more on Female Engagement Teams in the military: In Camouflage or Afghan Veil, a Fragile Bond, by Elisabeth Bushmiller.

From a week ago on the UK Forces Media Ops’ Helmand Blog: First British Female Soldiers Complete the United States Marine Corps Female Engagement Team Course.

The Helmand Blog is obviously aimed mainly at a UK readership, but an item from yesterday describes some of the UK military’s work communicating with Afghanistan’s media.

On BBC News earlier last week: Top army bomb squad officer Col Bob Seddon resigns.

Armadillo, a documentary on Danish forces in Afghanistan, has led to a military investigation following accusations that it describes the liquidation* of Taliban fighters. The film shows Danish soldiers stationed at Forward Operating Base Armadillo  in the first half of 2009. The controversy concerns the killing of five Taliban in a skirmish. Reportedly the Taliban were sheltered in a ditch, Danish soldiers threw a grenade into the ditch and then followed up by extensive firing into the ditch. The central legal question is whether the Taliban fighters could still pose a threat at the time they were shot.

Author Carsten Jensen, who has for some time argued that Denmark should withdraw from Afghanistan, described the film as “an earthquake in the nation’s self-understanding”.

The General Secretary of the Danish Red Cross, Anders Ladekarl, sees no evidence of a war crime in the film, though he describes it as “an anti-war film that shows war is shit”. He says “I see a group of Danish soldiers who are professional and do it as well as they possibly can. I notice first and foremost that they really try to live by the rules of war.”  Mr Ladekarl points to another scene where the Danish soldiers have the opportunity to throw a hand grenade into a closed area where there are armed Taliban fighters. The soldiers know there are also civilians in the area. “It would be completely legal to use a hand grenade in that situation, but all the same they don’t and risk their lives by instead making a search of the compound.”

The film premiered at Cannes and is now showing in Danish cinemas. Here’s the trailer.

*The word liquidation heard in the film was used during the Nazi occupation of Denmark to describe the killing of informers by the Resistance without legal process. The debate around these killings is described in this earlier post.

Trolley Troubles

Above, from the New York Public Library’s digital gallery, a postcard of the Mt Lowe Railway in California. Added: a larger image of an almost identical photo at the Beinecke Library.

Below, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in Trolley Troubles, from 1927.




Trolley Troubles was the first cartoon to be released featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Oswald is the missing link of animation evolution. Created by Walt Disney and Ubbe Iwerks, he was clearly derived from Felix the Cat, then animation’s biggest star, via Disney’s own Julius the Cat. Oswald featured in 26 silent short cartoons by the Walt Disney Studio before Disney lost control of the character to distributor Charles Mintz one year later. That defeat led Disney to create - with Iwerks - the character Mickey Mouse.

Now what I find curious is that to my eyes Oswald was the better designed character. If survival of the fittest depended purely on design, then Oswald would have reigned supreme, and Mickey would have languished. Mickey is a much more awkward character - an oversized mouse, in his first released cartoon Steamboat Willie he dwarfs a parrot, and later of course the mouse towers over his pet dog. As a rabbit his size would have made a little more sense. And Mickey’s ears are bizarre. Even as artistic standards rose to ever greater heights in the Disney studio in the 30s and 40s it proved impossible to animate those ears in three dimensions. They are flat symbols of ears which must rotate around the horizon of Mickey’s head rather than maintain a fixed placement on its sphere.

But what ensured Mickey’s survival was not physical appearance, but brains - Disney’s brains. Disney was smarter than every other animation producer, and with that brain the mouse, like that odd-looking Homo Sapiens before him, went on to triumph.

Some links:

A few years ago the Disney studio bought back the rights to the original Disney/Iwerks Oswald shorts, and they’ve since been released on DVD.

Jerry Beck of Cartoon Brew has information about Oswald on his Cartoon Research site.

There’s a very good book on pre-Mickey Disney films: Walt in Wonderland.

Eddie Fitzgerald also takes a look at Oswald in relation to the theory of cartoon evolution on his Theory Corner blog. It seems that in the 1930s, despite having possession of a vital Disney creation in Oswald, animation producer Water Lantz ruined the character’s comic potential by aping newer Disney cartoons like the Silly Symphony Funny Little Bunnies.

Here’s a couple of pages on Ub Iwerks, designer of Oswald, Mickey, and Flip the Frog. Ub Iwerks was an amazing animator for the time, and some have tried to portray him at the primary creative force behind the launch of the Disney Studio. But, watching the cartoons he produced away from Disney, I feel there is something vital missing from them.

Michael Sporn has a post on the Toonerville Trolley newspaper cartoon that undoubtedly inspired Oswald’s trolley film, and on the wonderful Van Beuren animated adaptations of Fontaine Fox’s creation. There were also earlier live action Toonerville Trolley shorts, but these I have not seen.

Purple fingers

In the middle of the hullabaloo surrounding the UK coalition negotiations last week, some purple-wearing protesters popped up, campaigning for a change in the voting system. This was the Take Back Parliament campaign for proportional representation.

A curious feature of the campaign is the use of elements from the international fight for democracy: purple-stained fingers from the post-liberation elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the phrase “Where’s my Vote?” from the post-election protests in Iran. While the source of these is obvious, the About this Campaign page on their website doesn’t seem to make a connection with any international fight for democracy. They explain their symbolism in purely British terms:

With a nod to history this is a purple-coloured movement. Purple is the historic colour of democracy and the franchise in this country - the colour used by suffragettes in their campaign for the vote.

The purple index finger in our logo is a symbol of the movement. The simple act of holding up a purple index finger (using ink, marker etc) is an immediate action that people do to show that although they voted, this Parliament doesn't represent them and that they demand a new system.

Of course a campaign like this will want to build as broad a base as possible, and their supporters will not all have the same views on the fight for democracy abroad. Supporting organisations include Avaaz - a Res Publica (US) project,  Ekklesia, and the MCB, though most others are concerned almost exclusively with domestic UK or environmental issues.

The absence of an explanation does leave me wondering what the thinking was behind the use of the purple fingers and the “Where’s my Vote?” slogan. Was it just a desire to hijack strong symbols and words, the standard MO of advertisers everywhere?  Was it a feeling of solidarity with campaigners for democracy worldwide? Do they actually believe that this reform campaign within a functioning democracy is equivalent to the struggle against fraud and violent repression in Iran, or the brave resilience of voters going to the polls in the face of murderous threats in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Will the purple campaigners also be marching in support of democracy in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran?

On Iran

Protest at the British Embassy Washington DC against the UK Border Agency’s deportation of Iranian refugees. Via Bob.

Capital Punishment, Capital Fear, background to the recent executions from Tehran Bureau.

Marg Bar Diktator: General Strike In Iranian Kurdistan, Silence In The West, by Terry Glavin.

More on Farzad Kamangar and the political dissidents executed in Iran, from Flesh is Grass.

Neo-Resistance translates a Statement and Analysis of Kurdish Reformists about Recent Executions. Also, The shocking executions have distracted attention from the following.

On Afghanistan

Keep up with Terry if you can.

Lauryn Oates wraps up a story of pseuds vs schoolgirls at Butterflies and Wheels: Women’s Rights Are Called ‘Cultural Imperialism’.

Akinoluna keeps up with the increasing role of women in the US military effort in Afghanistan, for example here and here and here.

The BBC reports poppy blight. (If you missed it, see the earlier poppy conversation in the comments at Flesh is Grass.)

Railways of Afghanistan has more on current and future railway projects. (Earlier post on this here.)

On Egypt

From the start of the month Christian Fraser on BBC Radio’s From Our Own Correspondent reports that Mohamed ElBaradei could spark political upheaval in Egypt. Audio here.

Uprising in Cairo: A New Labor Movement Takes Shape, from Working In These Times, via ModernityBlog / Labour Start / Nonviolent Conflict.

The New Yorker’s George Packer on Obama a year after Cairo, via Michael J Totten.

From last year on the BBC World Service, Mubarak’s Egypt.

On Voting Reform

A string of commenters disagree with Oliver Kamm, including myself. My contribution to the comment thread refers to this earlier disgruntled post by OK.

Linked to earlier, Shuggy vs Peter Ryley.

Added: update on Iran.

Added: update on Afghanistan.

Added: I’m my personal revolution, an article by Emanuele Toscano at openDemocracy about Italy’s Purple Movement: pro-democracy, pro-constitution, and anti-Berlusconi. Thanks to Bob in the comments.

Pass me the crosshead gudgeon pin, please.

I’m afraid the locomotive pictured in the previous post may be broken. There’s neither smoke nor steam to be seen, and no sign of movement. Not to worry, with my Wonder Book of Railways, I’m sure I can fix it!

For an extra large version of the above cutaway, click here.

More snow

Here’s a recent set design for a Debenhams ad, promoting their winter sale. The ad was directed by Charlie Paul of Itch Film.

For real snow, see Flesh is Grass and Mick Hartley. Or just look out the window.

Silk Road, Iron Horse, Copper Wire

. . . or connectivity in Afghanistan.

Having read today’s New York Times article about China’s copper mining project in Afghanistan, a project to develop not just a copper mine, but a power station, a coal mine, and a railway line from the country’s northern border with Uzbekistan to its southeastern border with Pakistan, I had an appetite for more background, and found Railways of Afghanistan. What ever did I waste my time on before the internet?

Will China build the railway? Maybe. Will they be first to build a moon base? That might be just as likely.

All the live long day

Cog railway

Based on the Mount Washington cog railway in New Hampshire, this is a recent painting for a promotion by my American illustration agents Lindgren & Smith.

Normblog goes tabloid

Not quite, but in a change just as radical and disturbing, this morning’s edition departs from the long established Normblog house style and features photographs inserted in the text! Visible on the page! Not safely tucked away behind a clickable link, but actually interrupting the previously pure flow of words! Some are even in colour. Surely the Normblog tabloid edition cannot be far behind. Appropriately enough the topic of the post is the grotesquely ugly, unwelcoming, unloved Euston Station, and its fine neoclassical predecessor, demolished in 1961. What a falling off, and all that.

Above is an image of another lost masterpiece from the heyday of British railway station building, taken from The Wonder Book of Railways, published sometime in the 1920s by Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, London and Melbourne.