In addition to torturing dissidents, starving millions of their own people to death, and running several countries’ economies into the ground, it turns out the commies were pretty good at cartography. In fact, the Soviet military’s secret program “was one of the greatest mapping endeavors the world has ever seen.”

Beginning in the 1940s, the Soviets mapped the world at seven scales, ranging from a series of maps that plotted the surface of the globe in 1,100 segments to a set of city maps so detailed you can see transit stops and the outlines of famous buildings like the Pentagon…. It’s impossible to say how many people took part in this massive cartographic enterprise, but there were likely thousands, including surveyors, cartographers, and possibly spies.

“Possibly” spies? C’mon. Some of these maps were better than our own. The only way to achieve that kind of detail is through espionage. Not that it mattered, of course. After all, we still won the Cold War.

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The most prolific art thief who ever lived? Over at GQ, Stéphane Breitwieser reveals his secrets. “In the annals of art crime, it’s hard to find someone who has stolen from ten different places. By the time the calendar flips to 2000, by Breitwieser’s calculations, he’s nearing 200 separate thefts and 300 stolen objects. For six years, he’s averaged one theft every two weeks. One year, he is responsible for half of all paintings stolen from French museums.”

Kelly Faircloth on “the steamy, throbbing history of romance novel covers.” (Side note: I discovered a new word the other day – yonic – which is basically the female equivalent of phallic. Don’t ask me how I learned about it.)

Wind turbines kill more people than nuclear power plants. “[W]hen it comes to generating power for billions of people,” writes Michael Shellenberger, “it turns out that producing solar and wind collectors, and spreading them over large areas, has vastly worse impacts on humans and wildlife alike.”

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Mark Hollis has died. The Talk Talk front man was only 64. Two of the band’s albums – 1988’s Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, from 1991 – are genuine masterpieces, and sound as fresh and uncompromising today as they did when they were new. (I’ve been listening to both on repeat since I arrived at the office this morning.)

If you’re interested in what sort of impact Hollis had on pop music, this article over at the Guardian features musicians offering their thoughts on “his songs, enigmatic spirit and musical vision.” But honestly, all you’ve got to do is listen. You’ll understand.

RIP.

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EVEN SUCH IS TIME
Sir Walter Raleigh*

Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wander’d all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.

*Written October 29, 1618, the night before he was beheaded for conspiring against King James I.

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Just when I think things couldn’t get any stupider, I see that John Wayne is trending on Twitter. John Wayne, the American actor who died forty years ago.

Why?

Glad you asked. Somebody apparently discovered the infamous 1971 Playboy interview in which Wayne said some mean things – words so shockingly offensive that Twitter includes this warning when you click on the link:

So now, amidst much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the social justice mobs have turned the outrage generators up to 11. John Wayne, you see, is a “straight up piece of shit” because he wasn’t sufficiently woke. Glad to know that the pressing problems of the world – you know, poverty, tyranny, war…those sorts of things – have been solved and all that remains is to purge history of distasteful people.

As usual, Bridget Phetasy gets it right: “The definition of privilege is having so much free time and money,” she tweets, “you can spend your day online bitching about a John Wayne interview from 1971.”

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A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences includes a pretty interesting finding: “Listening to the music you love,” says Laura Ferreri, one of the study’s authors, “will make your brain release more dopamine, a crucial neurotransmitter for humans’ emotional and cognitive functioning.”

Which raises an even more interesting question – for me, anyway. Since dopamine “contributes to feelings of pleasures and satisfaction,” and since the music I love spans everything from Tuvan throat singing to Throbbing Gristle, does that mean I derive more pleasure and satisfaction out of life than, say, someone with more pedestrian musical tastes?

Just wondering, that’s all.

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“Art” and the “artist” – by which we mean an autonomous realm of art and a specialist practitioner in music, painting, literature, whatever – are the historical creation of the division of labour and the existence of surplus value within the host society. Subsistence economies may have individuals who tell stories, sing songs, draw drawings, but they don’t have artists.

Ian Bostridge, from Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession (2014)

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“It’s time to share the spotlight, Midwest,” writes Jonathan Glover in yesterday’s Spokesman-Review. “Frigid temperatures, heavy snow and biting winds are coming to the Inland Northwest.”

What do do this weekend, then? Why, pour yourself a nice single malt (or whip up an Irish coffee), cozy on up to the fireplace, and head over to CNN for some investigative reporting that will blow your mind. Here’s how Part 1 – “The Circus Singer and the Godfather of Soul” – begins:

I mean, how could you not want to read this?

And points to CNN for creating a really well-done multi-media experience: In addition to some compelling writing, there are scads of photos, audio and video clips, and links to some 50 supporting documents. Sixteen people contributed to the production, and it shows.

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