Van Gogh did not kill himself, authors claim

Vincent van Gogh did not kill himself, the authors of new biography Van Gogh: The Life have claimed.

Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith say that, contrary to popular belief, it was more likely he was shot accidentally by two boys he knew who had "a malfunctioning gun".

The authors came to their conclusion after 10 years of study with more than 20 translators and researchers.

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam called the claim "dramatic" and "intriguing".

In a statement, however, curator Leo Jansen said "plenty of questions remain unanswered" and that it would be "premature to rule out suicide".

He added that the new claims would "generate a great deal of discussion".

Van Gogh died in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, in 1890 aged 37.

The Dutch master had been staying at the Auberge Ravoux inn from where he would walk to local wheat fields to paint.

It has long been thought that he shot himself in a wheat field before returning to the inn where he later died.

Cowboy game
But author Steven Naifeh said it was "very clear to us that he did not go into the wheat fields with the intention of shooting himself".

"The accepted understanding of what happened in Auvers among the people who knew him was that he was killed accidentally by a couple of boys and he decided to protect them by accepting the blame."

He said that renowned art historian John Rewald had recorded that version of events when he visited Auvers in the 1930s and other details were found that corroborated the theory.

They include the assertion that the bullet entered Van Gogh's upper abdomen from an oblique angle - not straight on as might be expected from a suicide.

"These two boys, one of whom was wearing a cowboy outfit and had a malfunctioning gun that he played cowboy with, were known to go drinking at that hour of day with Vincent.

"So you have a couple of teenagers who have a malfunctioning gun, you have a boy who likes to play cowboy, you have three people probably all of whom had too much to drink."

He said "accidental homicide" was "far more likely".

"It's really hard to imagine that if either of these two boys was the one holding the gun - which is probably more likely than not - it's very hard to imagine that they really intended to kill this painter."

Gregory White Smith, meanwhile, said Van Gogh did not "actively seek death but that when it came to him, or when it presented itself as a possibility, he embraced it".
He said Van Gogh's acceptance of death was "really done as an act of love to his brother, to whom he was a burden".

He said Van Gogh's brother, Theo, was funding the artist who, at that time, "wasn't selling".

Other revelations claimed by the authors include that:

Van Gogh's family tried to commit him to a mental asylum long before his voluntary confinement later Van Gogh fought so furiously with his parson father that some of his family accused the artist of killing him
Van Gogh's affliction, viewed as a mix of mania and depression, was a result of a form of epilepsy
Gregory White Smith said the biography, published on Monday, helped to give a greater understanding of a "frail and flawed figure" and that his art would be seen "as even more of an achievement".

Thousands of previously untranslated letters written by the artist were among documents studied by the authors to create a research database containing 28,000 notes.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15328583

@темы: ликвидация безграмотности

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о боже какая прелесть)))

@темы: шоб позырить, merlin, фандомы

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Вот, я поняла чем меня раздражают особо активные борцы за соц. справедливость из тех, кто собственно относится к меньшинствам.
При том, что их вроде как притесняют, они ведут себя как избалованные дети.
Сначала им мало сочувствующих проблемам лгбт, а потом они просто зачморят этого сочувствующего, потому что он будет делать это не так, как им этого хочется. Детский сад какой-то.

@темы: политичное, the diagnosis is... butthurt

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у кого какие амбиции, а у меня пока что только одна - сделать популярный гифсет
вот это на тумблере набирает обороты

REID more

извращенцы)

@темы: criminal minds, my gifs, гиф

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Закрытая запись, не предназначенная для публичного просмотра

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вышло новое промо Гли и так и напрашивается кроссовер с Криминал Майндз

@темы: criminal minds, glee, гиф, the diagnosis is... butthurt

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Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

@темы: политичное, ликвидация безграмотности

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REID more

@темы: criminal minds, my gifs, гиф, фандомы

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Рид помогает Росси бороться с аэрофобией.

REID more

@темы: criminal minds, my gifs, гиф, ликвидация безграмотности

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я намучилась с этими гифками т.к. я наконец-то нашла доступное моему iq-30 уму описание того, как увеличивать резкость, а из-за этого появились новые проблемы, так что вот, выкладываю любимый момент с Ридом

@темы: criminal minds, гиф

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@темы: criminal minds, just Reid looking really pretty and my bad photoshop skills because of bad caps(

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The Moment When Science Fiction Split off From Competence Porn

io9.com/the-moment-when-science-fiction-split-o...

Science fiction used to be almost synonymous with "competence porn," stories about smart people who solve challenges by knowing what they're doing. But lately when it comes to movies and TV, it seems like Americans love competence porn, and they love science fiction... they just don't love them together. What happened?

Consider: Science fiction TV shows and movies used to feature heroic scientist characters pretty often. We had heroic inventors, scientific explorers, and sympathetic scientist supporting characters who would explain to the main hero what was going on. Heroes included Reed Richards, but also second leads like Hans Zarkov.

No scientists, please

But at some point, including scientists as heroes became a bit of a taboo in science fiction, with the notable exception of Walter Bishop in Fringe. (And in the U.K., Doctor Who is a holdout.) We're only allowed to explore new science or strange ideas if our hero is an "everyman" who has no clue what's going on.

Case in point: when ABC turned Robert J. Sawyer's novel Flashforward into a TV series, the heroes were changed from a team of physicists to a group of FBI agents.

Nothing exposes the shift from competence porn to "heroes out of their depth" as sharply as a comparison of Ridley Scott's Prometheus to the original Alien. In Alien, Ripley doesn't survive because she's a nice person — she survives because she's the one person who is good at her job and keeps reminding the others about things like quarantine and safety procedures. In Prometheus, absolutely nobody is good at his or her job — just watch this training video.

Also, the original Star Trek mostly shows the Enterprise crew being pretty competent, but now we're only allowed to have science explorer heroes if the focus is on the captain being unqualified for his rank.

But meanwhile, "competence porn" is our most popular entertainment, in the movies as well as television. Medical shows (like House) and forensic/detective shows (like CSI or Bones) celebrate the hero who has godlike powers of reconstructing the past and figuring out exactly what's happened. There are detectives who can tell whether you're lying at a glance, or who can reconstruct a complicated crime scene by looking at a few twigs, Sherlock-style.

And as we wrote a while back, every police procedural and spy show (or movie) has to have the stock "nerd" character, the slightly loopy guy or gal who can hack into any computer or zoom-and-enhance any video. There is an army of incredibly brilliant, nigh-omnipotent nerds on television.

And one of the most popular procedurals right now is the surprisingly awesome Person of Interest, in which the Nero Wolfe character is a supersmart former hacker named Finch who built an artificial intelligence that can predict crimes and terror attacks before they happen.

But the moment you're dealing with A) futuristic technology, B) actual weird science, C) aliens, D) space, E) anything that can't be passed off as an extension of current tech, scientists vanish from the picture. Those nerds who can solve anything are suddenly nowhere to be seen. The competence porn is replaced... incompetence snuff porn?

When did this happen?

Sometime in the past decade or so, there was a definite shift in the zeitgeist. A kind of mini-Singularity, maybe, when many Americans started to feel as though science and technology were growing in sophistication beyond our ability to master them.

We completed the Human Genome Project in 2003, mapping the human genome for the first time — and now a decade later, people are having their individual genomes sequenced for just $5,000 a pop. In the past couple decades, laparoscopic techniques and robotic surgical tools have revolutionized surgery, allowing incredibly complex procedures with a much higher success rate. You've got the Internet in your pocket.

So my theory is, people love to fantasize about having mastery of the world we currently live in. Where once they fantasized about being the heroic explorer who visited other planets or built the next generation of insane technology, now they just want to be able to make their desktop PCs work properly. They want to understand what the heck is going on outside their windows.

One piece of evidence: the number of people working in tech support seems to be going up sharply, even beyond the fact that we're recovering from a recession. The "professional and business services" sector, which includes tech support as well as "network computing and communications support," employed 19.7 million Americans in 2008, and is expected to add an extra 1.4 million workers by 2018, according to Georgetown University — making it the second fastest growing sector. And 35 percent of companies planned to hire new tech support workers in 2013. People are spending all their time calling tech support, basically.

At the same time, lots of formerly secure white-collar and blue collar jobs are being destroyed by advances in robotics and in computer systems generally.

So people feel out of their depth, and attracted to any hero who seems to have a handle on this crazy world we live in — but we feel threatened by actual scientists, or anyone who seems likely to bring in the next wave of change before we're ready for it.

This shift coincides with the decline in space opera on television, and the rise of apocalypses and "disaster porn," which are at least partly a wish-fulfillment fantasy about life becoming simpler and less confusing again. We have "competence porn" in the present day, but when we imagine the near future, we reach for "disaster porn."

What will it take to reunite competence porn and science fiction? Maybe once the people who didn't grow up with the internet in their pocket age out of the all-important 18-49 demographic, there'll be another shift in people's tastes. Maybe the next wave of technological change will make people feel more in control again. Maybe we'll all become cyborgs and our brain implants will make us crave stories about competent people in the future. We can hope, anyway!

@темы: © internet, фандомы, ликвидация безграмотности

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@темы: iPhone, bitch!

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со стороны

разница между храбростью и глупостью такая же, как и между гением и сумасшествием: в послезности действий, совершенных под их руководством.

@темы: gryffindor & ravenclaw, тот момент когда тебе приходит в голову интересная мысль но ты слишком косноязычна и не можешь составить броскую фразу

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2 одинаковые фото меня

@темы: yep dats me, iPhone, bitch!

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что тут вообще комментировать

@темы: criminal minds, гиф, timelords are from gallifrey daleks are from scaro, фандомы

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все так

@темы: criminal minds

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очень правильный и жизненный диалог

@темы: criminal minds, гиф

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Celebrating the Prince of Peace in the Land of Guns

By Michael Moore www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/ce...

After watching the deranged, delusional National Rifle Association press conference on Friday, it was clear that the Mayan prophecy had come true. Except the only world that was ending was the NRA's. Their bullying power to set gun policy in this country is over. The nation is repulsed by the massacre in Connecticut, and the signs are everywhere: a basketball coach at a post-game press conference; the Republican Joe Scarborough; a pawn shop owner in Florida; a gun buy-back program in New Jersey; a singing contest show on TV, and the conservative gun-owning judge who sentenced Jared Loughner.

So here's my little bit of holiday cheer for you:

These gun massacres aren't going to end any time soon.

I'm sorry to say this. But deep down we both know it's true. That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep pushing forward – after all, the momentum is on our side. I know all of us – including me – would love to see the president and Congress enact stronger gun laws. We need a ban on automatic AND semiautomatic weapons and magazine clips that hold more than 7 bullets. We need better background checks and more mental health services. We need to regulate the ammo, too.

But, friends, I would like to propose that while all of the above will certainly reduce gun deaths (ask Mayor Bloomberg – it is virtually impossible to buy a handgun in New York City and the result is the number of murders per year has gone from 2,200 to under 400), it won't really bring about an end to these mass slayings and it will not address the core problem we have. Connecticut had one of the strongest gun laws in the country. That did nothing to prevent the murders of 20 small children on December 14th.

In fact, let's be clear about Newtown: the killer had no criminal record so he would never have shown up on a background check. All of the guns he used were legally purchased. None fit the legal description of an "assault" weapon. The killer seemed to have mental problems and his mother had him seek help, but that was worthless. As for security measures, the Sandy Hook school was locked down and buttoned up BEFORE the killer showed up that morning. Drills had been held for just such an incident. A lot of good that did.

And here's the dirty little fact none of us liberals want to discuss: The killer only ceased his slaughter when he saw that cops were swarming onto the school grounds – i.e, the men with the guns. When he saw the guns a-coming, he stopped the bloodshed and killed himself. Guns on police officers prevented another 20 or 40 or 100 deaths from happening. Guns sometimes work. (Then again, there was an armed deputy sheriff at Columbine High School the day of that massacre and he couldn't/didn't stop it.)

I am sorry to offer this reality check on our much-needed march toward a bunch of well-intended, necessary – but ultimately, mostly cosmetic – changes to our gun laws. The sad facts are these: Other countries that have guns (like Canada, which has 7 million guns – mostly hunting guns – in their 12 million households) have a low murder rate. Kids in Japan watch the same violent movies and kids in Australia play the same violent video games (Grand Theft Auto was created by a British company; the UK had 58 gun murders last year in a nation of 63 million people). They simply don't kill each other at the rate that we do. Why is that? THAT is the question we should be exploring while we are banning and restricting guns: Who are we?

I'd like to try to answer that question.

We are a country whose leaders officially sanction and carry out acts of violence as a means to often an immoral end. We invade countries who didn't attack us. We're currently using drones in a half-dozen countries, often killing civilians.

This probably shouldn't come as a surprise to us as we are a nation founded on genocide and built on the backs of slaves. We slaughtered 600,000 of each other in a civil war. We "tamed the Wild West with a six-shooter," and we rape and beat and kill our women without mercy and at a staggering rate: every three hours a women is murdered in the USA (half the time by an ex or a current); every three minutes a woman is raped in the USA; and every 15 seconds a woman is beaten in the USA.

We belong to an illustrious group of nations that still have the death penalty (North Korea, Saudi Arabia, China, Iran). We think nothing of letting tens of thousands of our own citizens die each year because they are uninsured and thus don't see a doctor until it's too late.

Why do we do this? One theory is simply "because we can." There is a level of arrogance in the otherwise friendly American spirit, conning ourselves into believing there's something exceptional about us that separates us from all those "other" countries (there are indeed many good things about us; the same could also be said of Belgium, New Zealand, France, Germany, etc.). We think we're #1 in everything when the truth is our students are 17th in science and 25th in math, and we're 35th in life expectancy. We believe we have the greatest democracy but we have the lowest voting turnout of any western democracy. We're biggest and the bestest at everything and we demand and take what we want.

And sometimes we have to be violent m*****f*****s to get it. But if one of us goes off-message and shows the utterly psychotic nature and brutal results of violence in a Newtown or an Aurora or a Virginia Tech, then we get all "sad" and "our hearts go out to the families" and presidents promise to take "meaningful action." Well, maybe this president means it this time. He'd better. An angry mob of millions is not going to let this drop.

While we are discussing and demanding what to do, may I respectfully ask that we stop and take a look at what I believe are the three extenuating factors that may answer the question of why we Americans have more violence than most anyone else:

1. POVERTY. If there's one thing that separates us from the rest of the developed world, it's this. 50 million of our people live in poverty. One in five Americans goes hungry at some point during the year. The majority of those who aren't poor are living from paycheck to paycheck. There's no doubt this creates more crime. Middle class jobs prevent crime and violence. (If you don't believe that, ask yourself this: If your neighbor has a job and is making $50,000/year, what are the chances he's going to break into your home, shoot you and take your TV? Nil.)

2. FEAR/RACISM. We're an awfully fearful country considering that, unlike most nations, we've never been invaded. (No, 1812 wasn't an invasion. We started it.) Why on earth would we need 300 million guns in our homes? I get why the Russians might be a little spooked (over 20 million of them died in World War II). But what's our excuse? Worried that the Indians from the casino may go on the warpath? Concerned that the Canadians seem to be amassing too many Tim Horton's donut shops on both sides of the border?

No. It's because too many white people are afraid of black people. Period. The vast majority of the guns in the U.S. are sold to white people who live in the suburbs or the country. When we fantasize about being mugged or home invaded, what's the image of the perpetrator in our heads? Is it the freckled-face kid from down the street – or is it someone who is, if not black, at least poor?

I think it would be worth it to a) do our best to eradicate poverty and re-create the middle class we used to have, and b) stop promoting the image of the black man as the boogeyman out to hurt you. Calm down, white people, and put away your guns.

3. THE "ME" SOCIETY. I think it's the every-man-for-himself ethos of this country that has put us in this mess and I believe it's been our undoing. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! You're not my problem! This is mine!

Clearly, we are no longer our brother's and sister's keeper. You get sick and can't afford the operation? Not my problem. The bank has foreclosed on your home? Not my problem. Can't afford to go to college? Not my problem.

And yet, it all sooner or later becomes our problem, doesn't it? Take away too many safety nets and everyone starts to feel the impact. Do you want to live in that kind of society, one where you will then have a legitimate reason to be in fear? I don't.

I'm not saying it's perfect anywhere else, but I have noticed, in my travels, that other civilized countries see a national benefit to taking care of each other. Free medical care, free or low-cost college, mental health help. And I wonder – why can't we do that? I think it's because in many other countries people see each other not as separate and alone but rather together, on the path of life, with each person existing as an integral part of the whole. And you help them when they're in need, not punish them because they've had some misfortune or bad break. I have to believe one of the reasons gun murders in other countries are so rare is because there's less of the lone wolf mentality amongst their citizens. Most are raised with a sense of connection, if not outright solidarity. And that makes it harder to kill one another.

Well, there's some food for thought as we head home for the holidays. Don't forget to say hi to your conservative brother-in-law for me. Even he will tell you that, if you can't nail a deer in three shots – and claim you need a clip of 30 rounds – you're not a hunter my friend, and you have no business owning a gun.

Have a wonderful Christmas or a beautiful December 25th!

*** *** ***

Когда говорят, что России нужна свобода ношения оружия (при этом забывая, что по в штатах оно должно быть дома в сейфе и разобрано, а лицензию на ношение хрен получишь), пусть вот по пунктам сравнят нашу страну и США. Вроде настолько разные, но сколько общего. Бедность, домашнее насилие, "каждый сам за себя", расизм похлеще чем там потому что там хотя бы сверху борятся, а у нас? Кавказ + нелегальные иммигранты... Это сложные проблемы, а люди ищут простых решений.

@темы: политичное, ликвидация безграмотности

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12.08.2013 в 01:17

Пишет  JunkyPerv:

ОЛЛ ЗЕЕЕ ФИИИИИИИИИИИИЛС Т________________________Т

11.08.2013 в 22:38

Пишет  комбефер король афер:

Ловите самый потрясающий клип, который я видела...за неопределенное количество времени
а я пошла пересматривать/смотреть все эти фильмы

06.08.2013 в 03:42

Пишет  анжольрас радужный пегас:

ОБОГИ! ЭТО ПРОСТО ЭПИК ПОСМОТРИТЕ ОБЯЗАТЕЛЬНО!

ETERNA from Behind The Epic on Vimeo.

список фильмов

по-моему, я умерла и попала в гиковский рай. я по-моему большую часть видео сидела с открытым ртом

единственное...

они забыли

МАТРИЦУ

как.

@темы: шоб позырить, фандомы