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 Scientists Want to Probe Uranus

Breaking news – scientists want to probe Uranus!  It's true: a committee of scientists recommended that a mission to Uranus should be NASA's highest priority planetary science mission in the next decade.

Jokes about Uranus are nothing new.  An 1881 article in Puck magazine purported to be a dialogue between a professor and a grizzled old 49er (gold miner) who had asked if a coming conjunction of the planets meant that the world was coming to an end.  The professor begins:

"On the 14th of May, Mercury comes into conjunction with the sun, and Uranus will be at right angles."

"My what will be at right angles?"

"Uranus."

"The hell!  Then I'll be in the grand bust up, sure."

A more recent example occurred in J.K. Rowling's book Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  The students are looking at the positions of the planets in their Divination class.  Lavender Brown, one of the students, squeals:

    “Oh Professor, look I think I’ve got an unaspected planet! Oooh, which one’s that, Professor?”

    “It is Uranus, my dear,” said Professor Trelawney, peering down at the chart.

    “Can I have a look at Uranus too, Lavender?” said Ron.

    Most unfortunately, Professor Trelawney heard him, and it is this, perhaps, that made her give them so much homework at the end of class.

The planet Uranus was discovered by astronomer William Herschel in 1781.  He said "I can see Uranus."

(Photo: Dick Falcon in the 1960s)

Actually, that's not what he said.  It's what he should have said.  Above is what William Herschel and his telescope actually looked like.

But let's get back to the scientists recommending a probe of Uranus.

The mission is called the Uranus Orbiter and Probe.  The orbiter part of the mission would go around the rim of Uranus.

Then the second part would probe inside.

The probe will first penetrate the outer layer of Uranus ...

And then go deep inside.  Of course, the boys at NASA would have to test this over and over again.

What will happen when the scientists probe deep inside Uranus?  That question is answered in this video, which was a commercial for the Oslo Gay Festival in 2005.

Ads - Part 19

Absolut Vodka

A previous post showed some naked ads from the Kyrö whiskey distillery in Sweden.  Another Swedish distillery has also featured nudity in their ads, Absolut Vodka.

The ad above appeared in 1997, one in a series of ads that highlighted the shape of the Absolut vodka bottle.

This was a fake ad that appeared in an episode of the show Sex and the City in 2003, in which actor Jason Lewis posed for a nude ad for Absolut vodka.  Talk about product placement!  But then Absolut started using the image in their real ads.  Jason Lewis sued Absolut in 2004, saying he had not consented to the ads.  I don't know the outcome of the suit.

In 2018, Absolut did a 3-minute video with the slogan "The Vodka With Nothing to Hide," featuring 28 actual Absolut employees appearing nude.  Above are some excerpts from the video.  Evidently, Swedes are not hung up about nudity.

However, frontal nudity was pixellated in that video as well as several related commercials, such as the one above.

But sometimes we can undo pixellation (at least partially) with a little blurring.  Absolut Photoshopping!

Festivals - Part 21

Knebworth

The Knebworth Festival is a series of rock concerts that have been held on the grounds of Knebworth House (above), one of England's big country estates.  Some years, there were multiple concerts, and others, there were none.  There have been 38 concerts from 1974 to 2014.

Knebworth is not especially noted for nudity, but there have been some naked appearances.  Above is William 'Jesus' Jellett at the first Knebworth festival in 1974.  He became known for getting up and dancing, often naked, at British rock festivals in the 1970s.

Here he is again at the 1974 Knebworth festival.

In 1970 Jellett became convinced that he was the reincarnation of Jesus.  He was gentle and harmless, though, and he appeared at so many rock festivals that he became locally famous.

These guys at the 1976 Knebworth festival are pushing a van that seems to have gotten stuck.

Another view of the van pushers.  The fact that one of the guys is stark naked doesn't seem to be attracting attention.  Well, it is a rock festival.

Robert's Last Stand is a 2-CD set by Led Zeppelin containing recordings of their songs performed at Knebworth in 1979.  They didn't perform naked, but the cover is from a photo shoot that the band did on the grounds at Knebworth.  

Led Zeppelin's lead singer Robert Plant obligingly dropped his pants for the photo shoot.

World Naked Bike Ride - Part 23

WNBR Montreal, 2012

Here are some WNBR riders in Montreal in 2012.  I have several other photos of the circled rider and his buddies.

First we see him with a friend.  Both of them have what look like indented (sunken) appendectomy scars – an odd coincidence.

They are then joined by two other friends.  I'm assuming that the location is in a park where the riders gather before the ride starts.

They guy on the right has a red marker.  We'll see the results of it later.

I think the marker guy is going to take a picture of the other three.

Smile!

Then the marker guy gets to be in a picture, presumably being taken by the previous guy on the left.  What did he use the marker for?  I expected a slogan, but no, it's just a little red square on his chest.  Now everyone will have a naked picture to remember the event.  Smile!

Not the Same Old Song - Part 12

Up Up and Away

Up Up and Away was a 1967 hit by the 5th Dimension, about riding in a balloon.  I've accompanied it with some hot-air balloon pictures from LAD Prostate, a British organization that put out naked calendars to raise money for a prostate cancer charity.

Easter

 Easter

Easter is a religious holiday centered around a belief in a mythical bunny.

(Note: I got this photo from the blog Vellohomo. Thanks, Franco.)

Everyone hopes the Easter bunny will visit them during the night.

The religious rites involve making elaborately colored eggs.

The eggs are then hidden and there's a hunt to find them.  What fun it is to find the eggs!

The mythical bunny also brings Easter baskets to good girls and boys ...

With lots of chocolate.  It's all very religious.

Happy Easter!

Gods, Myths and Heroes - Part 14

 Siegfried

Germanic gods and myths are closely related to Norse gods and myths, much as the Greek and Roman gods correspond.  The best known Germanic myth is the plot of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), a cycle of four operas: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung.

Wagner based the plot on far older Norse and Germanic legends such as the Völsunga saga and Das Nibelungenlied, which we might look at in a later post.  Wagner made changes to the earlier myths, but we won't get into that here.  For now, we're going with Wagner's version.  The four operas take at least 15 hours to perform, so I won't give the detailed plot, just the briefest summary.

    *        *        *

In opera #1, Das Rheingold, suffice it to say that there are gods, dwarfs, giants, and a magic cursed Ring of Power that ends up being guarded by a dragon.  All this was written long before Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

In opera #2, Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), we meet Brünnhilde, the head Valkyrie, daughter of the head god Wotan.  The video above shows the painting Ride of the Valkyries by Herrmann Hendrich, 1906, accompanied by a brief excerpt of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.  You probably associate this music with helicopters in the movie Apocalypse Now, but originally it depicted Brünnhilde and the Valkyries on their flying horses.

Brünnhilde disobeys Wotan, and at the end of the opera, he puts her into a magic sleep surrounded by magic fire that will let only the bravest of heroes through to awaken her, as depicted in the painting above, Wotan and Brünnhilde by Koloman Moser, c. 1916.  

Wotan calls on the fire god Loge to create the magic fire around Brünnhilde, as portrayed above by Arthur Rackham, 1910.  Rackham drew a marvelous series of illustrations of the Ring story, but I'm not using the rest of them here, because all the male characters are fully clothed except for the partially nude Loge above.  (There are some nude Rhinemaidens, but we'll skip over them.)

The accompanying music is an excerpt from Wagner's Magic Fire Music.  Wagner was masterful at weaving together multiple musical themes (leitmotifs).  This excerpt starts with Loge's theme, depicting flickering fire, then Wagner adds the theme of Brünnhilde's magic sleep, and finally on top of all of that, the brass plays the theme of Siegfried, who is destined to rescue Brünnhilde.

Like the Norse gods, and unlike the Greek and Roman ones, there are very few nude representations of Germanic gods and heroes, but artists being what they are, I did find a few.

In opera #3, Siegfried, we finally meet our hero Siegfried, young, strong, handsome and fearless.  The character above, a 1914 painting by Koloman Moser, looks like he could be Siegfried.  There's no indication that Moser intended this to be Siegfried, but there is a connection.  The painting is called Der Wanderer.

In the opera Siegfried, the god Wotan appears disguised as a character called the Wanderer.  Could Moser be depicting him?  He could and did in another painting.  Moser painted several versions of Der Wanderer, and the one above, where he looks older, is explicitly labeled Wotan.  We'll see more art by Koloman Moser in a future post.

Siegfried finds Fafner, the dragon that is guarding the Ring.  Above is the painting Siegfried and Fafner by Hermann Hendrich, 1906, accompanied by Wagner's sinister theme for Fafner.

Siegfried slays the dragon and takes the Ring.  Above, Siegfried by Osmar Schindler, c. 1900 depicts the hero and dead dragon.  Then Siegfried finds Brünnhilde surrounded by the magic fire.  He walks through the fire and awakens her with a kiss.

In opera #4, Götterdämmerung, Siegfried gives the magic ring to Brünnhilde as a token of love and heads off to do heroic deeds accompanied by music called Siegfried's Rhine Journey.  At the end of this excerpt, the brass plays the theme of the river Rhine.  In this drawing by Karl Philipp Fohr, Siegfried stops to take a drink.

There have been very few performances of the Ring operas with nudity.  In the Melbourne Ring cycle performed by Opera Australia in 2013, the audience was surprised when the mortally wounded dragon Fafner emerged from his cave not as a dragon but as a naked man played by Jud Arthur, above.  You see, Fafner was originally a giant, and he turned into a dragon through a magic shape-shifting device, and ... oh, never mind.

There was considerably more nudity in a theatrical adaptation combining Siegfried and Götterdämmerung at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Germany in 2015.  It was loosely based on Wagner's plot but not his music, and it wasn't an opera.  This is Philipp Hochmair as Siegfried.

Here he is again, presumably after killing the dragon.

Götterdämmerung means "twilight of the gods."  At the end, Siegfried is betrayed, is stabbed in the back, and dies.  Brünnhilde rides into the flames of Siegfried's funeral pyre and dies.  The flames spread to Valhalla, which burns up, and all the gods die.  Well, Wagnerian opera is nothing if not dramatic.