Sep. 30th, 2008

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There was a lovely b&b (Gianna's), mostly sharing the best aspects of a hotel room and a b&b. A largish room in an old building, with double bed, table, and bookcases, and a tiny spiral staircase up to bathroom and a spare small single bed on a balcony. Part of someone's flat, who was very helpful and friendly (eg. booking museum tickets, offering advice and directions, making breakfast). It even has a tiny kitchenette which wasn't quite necessary for a weekend, but would be invaluable if you wanted to stay any longer.
jack: (Default)
The travel was occasionally difficult, but entirely successful. In Florence, they threw a special weekend holiday when all the museums were free.

People were nice and helpful to occasionally stressed foreigners[1]. The train from Pisa to Florence cost <£5 and went through pretty Italian scenery. Florence and Pisa are small enough you can typically just wander round them with no more thought of transport.

Although one tourist guide company had the notable innovation of offering tours on Segways! I can see the point, if you want to move around over pedestrian areas, but for longer than you'd be comfortable walking. But still, it just seems to be taking the oblivious tourist meme to the extreme.

[1] I loved the coach driver coming back from Luton. "Are you the coach for Cambridge?" "Yes. Have you got a ticket?" "Yes." "I love it when things work out like that."
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All over Florence there are people on the street selling prints, mostly of the same half-a-dozen famous paintings. Which is interesting to see, because the first set you pass, you recognise a couple, but if you don't recognise the rest, you don't know if they're famous, you just notice which ones are nice.

However, once you've passed several sets, the duplication of the same paintings makes it clear they're a handy guide to the top five most famous paintings with any connection to Tuscany.

One of two marvellously quizzical cherbus (picture) was very striking, that looked like it would be around in the Florence galleries, but I didn't actually know what it was. When I came back, I looked it up.

Except the question of looking up an image isn't always trivial, and can be an interesting exploration of google skills, if you can find it without asking someone. I knew: what it looked like; it was of cherubs; it was famous; it had some connection to the renaissance or Tuscany.

I started by doing an image search for "cherubs painting", and it was famous enough to be near the top hit. However, that only find a picture from people who didn't know the traditional name and called it "Rachel's Cherubs" or "Raphael's Little Angels". A quick check of the titles of Raphael's most famous works didn't show that. However, searching for "florence raphael (angels OR cherubs)" gave the real title, and that was readily accessible on wikipeda.

What I didn't know was that it was the bottom of a large painting, Sistine Madonna, painted by Raphael in Italy, but now housed in the gallery of old masters in Dresden, but became independently famous.
jack: (Default)
When thinking about David, the question came up of the most famous piece of art (Mona Lisa?), and how to measure that, and swiftly thence to people. A similar criteria of famousness, say "percentage of people who have heard of", can apply equally well to people, art, and other things.

The obvious suggestion was to normalise between 0.0 and 1.0. It was originally going to be normalised to Jesus at 1.0, but that was probably not complete, so I decided 1.0 should be things known to everyone. That provides some baseline. Say "the sun" is up at 1.0.

I guessed Jesus would be the most famous person (including mythology), being as how people have heard of him all over the world. However, Livredor pointed out that it's quite possible he's not known all over China, and getting 1 biln people in China is a noticeable chunk of that elusive 1.0 score. If you are known to everyone except China, your fame is 0.83 or similar. On the other hand, Chairman Mao has been pretty well known everywhere else; is it possible he actually was more famous than Jesus?

Is there anyone else with a score of 80%+? Real or mythological? You can come up with other concepts in that range. (eg. "Ocean" is known to most adults, but not all. "God" probably doesn't include all small-g gods though.)

Another approach would be to integrate population over time. Jesus, being so widley known for 1000+ years probably beats out anyone mainly known in their own lifetime or own continent. However, he probably also beats out anyone known for N thousand years before that, due to recent explosive population growth.

Another would be to integrate percentage over time. I'm not sure what effect that would have. Anyone from the start of time would be known to everyone, if they could just stay famous long enough, but more recent people may have more staying fame if they do manage to be widely known. Will someone famous for millennia in late BC beat out both?

Links

Sep. 30th, 2008 06:57 pm
jack: (Default)
"Yves Rossy nicknamed the 'Jet Man', is a Swiss pilot, inventor and aviation enthusiast. He is both the first person to build and the first person successfully to fly a jet engine-powered wing strapped to the back.... On 26 September 2008, Yves successfully flew across the English Channel from Calais, France to Dover, England in under 10 minutes."

"I am the Grammarian about whom your mother warned you" T-shirt.

Metal cut-outs to take in your luggage past X-ray machines. The top two are the writing "Nothing to see here", and a cut-out of a Stars-and-Stripes.

Gene Weingarten excellently parodies a typical comment thread in response to a newspaper article.

When Birmingham Council tried to instil pride in recycling efforts, it had the clever idea of sending out 360,000 flyers showing the city skyline. Unfortunately the leaflets actually had a picture of Birmingham, Alabama, on them. 'I can't believe nobody noticed,' said resident Jon Cooper, who spotted the blunder.

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