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Étiquette : Mechelozzo
Uccello, Donatello, Verrocchio and the art of military command
Uccello, Donatello, Verrocchio and the art of military command. An inquiry into the key events and artistic achievements that created the Renaissance. By Karel Vereycken, Paris.
If there is still a lot to say, write and learn about the great geniuses of the European Renaissance, it is also time to take an interest in those whom the historian Georgio Vasari condescendingly called « transitional figures ».
How can one measure the contributions of Pieter Bruegel the Elder without knowing Pieter Coecke van Aelst? How can we value Rembrandt's work without knowing Pieter Lastman? How did Raphaelo Sanzio innovate in relation to his master Perugino?
In 2019, an exceptional exhibition on Andrea Del Verrocchio (1435-1488), at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., highlighted his great achievements, truly inspiring outbursts of great beauty that his pupil Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) would theorize and put to his greatest advantage.
The sfumato of Leonardo ? Verrochio is the pioneer, especially in the blurred features of portraits of women made with mixed techniques (pencil, chalk and gouache).
The joy of discovery
Leafing through the catalog of this exhibition, my joy got immense when I discovered (and to my knowledgne nobody else seems to have made this observation before me) that the enigmatic angel the viewer's eye meets in Leonardo's painting titled The Virgin on the Rocks (1483-1486) (Louvre, Paris), besides the movement of the body, is grosso modo a visual "quote" of the image of a terra cotta high relief (Louvre, Paris) attributed to Verrochio and "one of his assistants", possibly even Leonardo himself, since the latter was training with the master as early as age seventeen ! The finesse of its execution and drapery also reminds us of the only known statue of Da Vinci, The Virgin with the laughing Child.
Many others made their beginnings in Verrocchio's workshop, notably Lorenzo de Credi, Sandro Botticelli, Piero Perugino (Raphael's teacher) and Domenico Ghirlandaio (Michelangelo's teacher).
Coming out of the tradition of the great building sites launched in Florence by the great patron of the Renaissance, Cosimo de Medici for the realization of the doors of the Baptistery and the completion of the dome of Florence by Philippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), Verrocchio conceived his studio as a true "polytechnic" school.
In Florence, for the artists, the orders flowed in. In order to be able to respond to all requests, Verrocchio, initially trained as a goldsmith, trained his students as craftsman-engineer-artists: drawing, calculation, interior decoration, sculpture, geology, anatomy, metal and woodworking, perspective, architecture, poetry, music and painting. A level of freedom and a demand for creativity that has unfortunately long since disappeared.
The Ghiberti legacy
In painting, Verrocchio is said to have begun with the painter Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-1469). As for the bronze casting trade, he would have been, like Donatello, Masolino, Michelozzo, Uccello and Pollaiuolo, one of the apprentices recruited by Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) whose workshop, starting from 1401, over forty years, will be in charge of casting the bronze bas-reliefs of two of the huge doors of the Baptistery of Florence.
Others suggest that Verrocchio was most likely trained by Michelozzo, the former companion of Ghiberti who said up shop with Donatello. As a teenager, Donatello had accompanied Brunelleschi on their joint expeditions to Rome to investigate the legacy of Greek and Roman art, and not only the architectural legacy.
In reality, Verrocchio only perpetuated and developed the model of Ghiberti's « polytechnic » studio, where he learned the art. An excellent craftsman, Ghiberti was also goldsmith, art collector, musician and humanist scolar and historian.
His genius is to have understood the importance of multidisciplinarity for artists. According to him « sculpture and painting are sciences of several disciplines nourished by different teachings ».
The ten disciplines that he considered important to train artists are grammar, philosophy, history, followed by perspective, geometry, drawing, astronomy, arithmetic, medicine and anatomy.
You can discover, says Ghiberti, only when you managed to isolate the object of your research from interfering factors, and you can discover by detaching oneself from a dogmatic system;
as the nature of things want it, the sciences hidden under artifices are not constituted so that the men with narrow chests can judge them.
Anticipating the type of biomimicry that will characterize Leonardo thereafter, Ghiberti affirms that he sought:
to discover how nature functioned and how he could approach it to know how the objects come to the eye, how the sight functions and in which way one has to practice sculpture and painting.
Ghiberti, who was familiar with some of the leading members of the circle of humanists led by Salutati and Traversari, based his own reflexions on optics on the authority of ancient texts, especially Arabic. He wrote:
But in order not to repeat in a superficial and superfluous way the principles that found all opinions, I will treat the composition of the eye particularly according to the opinions of three authors, namely Avicenna [Ibn Sina], in his books, Alhazen [Ibn al Haytam], in the first book of his perspective, and Constantine [Qusta ibn Luqa] in the first book on the eye; for these authors are sufficient and treat with more certainty the things that interest us.
Deliberately ignored (but copied) by Vasari, Ghiberti's Commentaries are a real manuel for artists, written by an artist. Most interestingly, it is by reading Ghiberti's Commentaries that Leonardo da Vinci became familiar with important Arab contributions to science, in particular the outstanding work of Ibn al Haytam (Alhazen) whose treatise on optics had just been translated from Latin into Italian under the title De li Aspecti, and is quoted at length by Ghiberti in his Commentario Terzio. Author A. Mark Smith suggests that, through Ghiberti, Alhazen's Book of Optics
may well have played a central role in the development of artificial perspective in early Renaissance Italian painting.
Ghiberti's comments are not extensive. However, for the pupils of his pupil Verrocchio, such as Leonardo, who didn't command any foreign language, Ghiberti's book did make available in italian a series of original quotes from the roman architect Vitruvius, arab scientists such as Alhazen), Avicenna, Averroes and those european scientists having studied arab optics, notably the Oxford fransciscans Roger Bacon, John Pecham and the Polish monk working in Padua, Witelo.
Finally, in 1412, Ghiberti, while busy coordinating all the works on the Gates of the Baptistry, was also the first Renaissance sculptor to cast a life-size statue in bronze, his Saint John the Baptist, to decorate Orsanmichele, the house of the Corporations in Florence.
Lost wax casting
However, in order to cast bronzes of such a size, the artists, considering the price of metal, would use the technique known as "lost wax casting".
This technique consists of first making a model in refractory clay (A), covered with a thickness of wax corresponding to the thickness of the bronze thought necessary.
The model is then covered with a thick layer of wet plaster (B) which, as it solidifies, forms an outer mold. Finally, the very hot molten bronze, pored into the mold it penetrates by rods (J) provided for this purpose, will replace the wax.
Finally, once the metal has solidified, the coating is broken. The details of the bronze (K) are then adjusted and polished (L) according to the artist's choice.
This technique would become crucial for the manufacture of bells and cannons. While it was commonly used in Ifé in Africa in the 12th century for statuary, in Europe it was only during the Renaissance, with the orders received by Ghiberti and Donatello, that it was entirely reinvented.
In 1466, after the death of Donatello, it was Verrocchio's turn to become the Medici's sculptor in title for whom he produced a whole series of works, notably, after Donatello, his own David in bronze (Bargello National Museum, Florence).
If with this promotion his social ascendancy is certain, Verrocchio found himself facing the greatest challenge that any artist of the Renaissance could have imagined: how to equal or even surpass Donatello, an artist whose genius has never been praised enough?
Equestrian art
This being said, let us now approach the subject of the art of military command by comparing four equestrian monuments:
- Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius on the Capitoline square in Rome (175 AD) ;
- Paolo Uccello's fresco of John Hawkwood in the church of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence (1436);
- Erasmo da Narni, known as "Gattamelata" (1446-1450), casted by Donatello in Padua.
- Bartolomeo Colleoni by Andrea del Verrocchio in Venice (1480-1488).
Equestrian statues appeared in Greece in the middle of the 6th century B.C. to honor the victorious riders in a race. From the Hellenistic period onward, they were reserved for the highest state figures, sovereigns, victorious generals and magistrates. In Rome, on the forum, they constituted a supreme honor, subject to the approval of the Senate. Apart from being bronze equestrian statues, each one is placed in a place where their troops fought.
While each statue is a reminder of the importance of military and political command, the way in which this responsibility is exercised is quite different.
Marcus Aurelius in Rome
Marcus Aurelius was born in Rome in 121 A.D., into a noble family of Spanish origin. He was the nephew of the emperor Hadrian. After the death of Marcus Aurelius' father, Hadrian entrusted him to his successor Antonin. The latter adopts and gives him an excellent education. He was initiated early in philosophy by his master Diognetus.
Interested in the stoics, he adopted for a while their lifestyle, sleeping on the ground, wearing a rough tunic, before he was dissuaded by his mother.
He went to Athens in 175 A.D. and became a promotor of philosophy. He helps financially the philosophers and the rhetoricians by granting them a fixed salary. Concerned with pluralism, he supported the Platonic Academy, the Lyceum of Aristotle, the Garden of Epicurus and the Stoic Portico.
On the other hand, during his reign, persecutions against Christians were numerous. He saw them as troublemakers – since they refused to recognize the Roman gods, and as fanatics.
Erected in 175 A.D., the statue was entirely gilded. Its location in antiquity is unknown, but in the Middle Ages it stood in front of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, founded by Constantine, and the Lateran Palace, then the papal residence.
In 1538, Pope Paul III had the monument of Marcus Aurelius transferred to the Capitol, the seat of the city's government. Michelangelo restored the statue and redesigned the square around it, one of the fanciest in Rome. It is undoubtedly the most famous equestrian statue, and above all the only one dating back to ancient Rome that has survived, the others having been melted down into coins or weapons…
If the statue survived, it is thanks to a misunderstanding: it was thought that it represented Constantine, the first Roman emperor to have converted to Christianity at the beginning of the 4th century, and it was out of the question to destroy the image of a Christian ruler.
Neither the date nor the circumstances of the commission are known.
But the presence of a defeated enemy under the right foreleg of the horse (attested by medieval testimonies and since lost), the emperor's gesture and the shape of the saddle cloth, unusual in the Roman world, make us to belief that the statue commemorated Marcus Aurelius' victories, perhaps on the occasion of his triumph in Rome in 176, or even after his death. Indeed, his reign (161-180) was marked by incessant wars to counter the incursions of Germanic or Eastern peoples on the borders of an Empire that was now threatened and on the defensive.
The horse, while not that large, but looking powerful, has been sculpted with great care and represented with realism. Its nostrils are strongly dilated, its lips pulled by the bit reveal its teeth and tongue.
One leg raised, he has just been stopped by his rider, who holds the reins with his left hand. Like him, the horse turns his head slightly to the right, a sign that the statue was made to be seen from that side. Part of his harness is preserved, but the reins have disappeared.
The size of the athletic rider nevertheless dominates that of a powerful horse that he rides without stirrups (accessories unknown to the Romans). He is dressed in a short tunic belted at the waist and a ceremonial cloak stapled on the right shoulder. It is a civil and not a military garment, adapted to a peaceful context. He is wearing leather shoes held together by intertwined straps.
The statue is striking for its size (424 cm high) and for the majesty it exudes. Without armor or weapons, eyes wide open and without emotion, the emperor raises his right arm. His authority derives above all from the function he embodies: he is the Emperor who protects his Empire and his people by punishing their enemies without mercy.
The fresco by Paolo Uccello
In 1436, at the request of Cosimo de' Medici, the young Paolo Uccello was commissioned to paint a fresco depicting John Hawkwood (1323-1394), the son of an English tanner who had become a warlord during the Hundred Years' War in France and whose name would be Italicized into Giovanno Acuto.
Serving the highest bidder, especially rival Italian cities, Hawkwood's company of mercenaries was no slouch.
In Florence, although it may seem paradoxical, it was the humanist chancellor Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) who put Hawkwood at the head of a regular army in the service of the Signoria.
This approach is not unlike that of Louis XI in France, who, in order to control the skinners and other cutthroats who were ravaging the nation, did not hesitate to discipline them by incorporating them into a standing army, the new royal army.
The humanists of the Renaissance, notably Leonardo Bruni (1370-1440) in his De Militia (1420), became aware of the curse of using mercenaries in conflicts and of the fact that only standing army, i.e. a permanent army formed of professionals and even better by citizens and maintained by a state or a city could guarantee a lasting peace.
Although Hawkwood faithfully protected the city for 18 years, his ugly "professionalism" as a mercenary was not unanimously accepted, to the point of inspiring the proverb "Inglese italianato è un diavolo Incarnato" (« An Italianized Englishman is a devil incarnate »).
Petrarch denounced him, Boccaccio tried in vain to mount a diplomatic offensive against him, St. Catherine of Sienna begged him to leave Italy, Chaucer met him and, no doubt, used him as a model for The Knight's Tale (The Canterbury Tales).
All this will not prevent Cosimo, a member of the humanist conspiracy and a great patron of the arts, returning from exile, from wanting to honor him. But in the absence of the bronze equestrian statue (which had been promised to him…), Florence, will only offer him a fresco in the nave of Santa Maria del Fiore, that is to say under right under the cupola of the Duomo.
From the very beginning, Paolo Uccello's fresco seems to have stirred quite a controversy. A preparatory drawing in the collections of Florence's Uffizi Museum indicates the commander, more armed, taller, and, with his horse in a more military position. Uccello had originally depicted Hawkwood as « more threatening », with his baton raised and horse « at the ready ».
A recent ultraviolet study confirms the fact that the painter had originally depicted the condottiere armed from head to toe. In the final version, he wears a sleeveless jacket, the giornea, and a coat; only his legs and feet are protected by a piece of armor. The final version presents a less imposing rider, less warlike, more human and more individualized
In the dispute, it was not Uccello who was considered faulty, but his sponsors. Moreover, the painter was quickly given the task of redoing the fresco in a way deemed "more appropriate".
Unfortunately, there is no record of the debates that must have raged among the officials of the church fabric (Opera Del Domo). What is certain is the fact that in the final version, visible today, the condottiere has been transformed from a warlord running a gang of mercenaries, into the image of philosopher-king whose only weapon is his commanding staff. At the bottom of the fresco, we can read in Latin: "Giovanno Acuto, British knight, who was in his time held as a very prudent general and very expert in military affairs."
The position of the horse and the perspective of the sarcophagus have been changed from a simple profile to a di sotto in su view.
If this perspective is somewhat surrealistic and the pose of the horse, raising both legs on the same side, simply impossible, it remains a fact that Uccello's fresco will set "the standards" of the ideal and impassive image of virtue and command that must embody the hero of the Renaissance: his goal is no longer to "win" a war (the objective of the mercenary), but to preserve the peace by preventing it (the objective of a philosopher-king or simply a wise head of state).
Paradigm shift
As such, one might say that Uccello's fresco announces the "paradigm shift" marking the end of the age of perpetual feudal wars, to that of the Renaissance, that is to say to that of a necessary concord between sovereign nation-states whose security is indivisible, the security of one being the guarantee of the security of the other, a paradigm even more rigorously defined in 1648 at the Peace of Westphalia, when it made the agapic notion of the "advantage of the other" the basis of its success.
One historian suggests that the recommissioning of Uccello's fresco was part of the « refurbishing » of the cathedral associated with its rededication as Santa Maria del Fiore by the humanist Pope Eugene IV in March 1436, determined to convince the Eastern and Western Churches to peacefully overcome their divisions and réunite as was attempted at the Council of Florence of 1437-1438 and for which the Duomo was central.
Interesting is the fact that Uccello's fresco appeared at around the same time that Yolande d'Aragon and Jacques Coeur, who had his Italian connections, persuaded the French king Charles VII to put an end to the Hundred Years' War by setting up a permanent, standing army.
In 1445, an ordinance was passed to discipline and rationalize the army in the form of cavalry units grouped into Compagnies d'Ordonnances, the first permanent army at the disposal, not of warlords or aristocrats, but of the King of France.
Donatello's "Gattamelata" (1447-1453)
It was only some years later, in Padua, between 1447 and 1453, that Donatello would work on the statue of Erasmo da Narni (1370-1443), a Renaissance condottiere, i.e. the leader of a professional army in the service of the Republic of Venice, which at the time ruled the city of Padua. An important detail is that Erasmo was nicknamed "il Gattamelata".
In French, « faire la chattemite » means to affect a false air of sweetness to deceive or seduce… Others explain that his nickname of "honeyed cat" comes from the fact that his mother was called Melania Gattelli or that he wore a crest (a helmet) in the shape of a honey-colored cat in battle…
The man was of humble origin, the son of a baker, born in Umbria around 1370. He learned to handle weapons from Ceccolo Broglio, lord of Assisi, and then, when he was in his thirties, from the captains of Braccio da Montone, who was known for recruiting the best fighters.
In 1427, Erasmo, who had the confidence of Cosimo de' Medici, signed a seven-year contract with the humanist Pope Martin V, who wished to strengthen an army corps loyal to his cause with the aim of bringing to heel the lords of Emilia, Romagna and Umbria who were rebellious against papal authority.
He bought a huge suit of armor to reinforce his high stature. He was not an impetuous fighter, but a master of siege warfare, which forced him to take slow, thoughtful and progressive action. He spied on his prey for a long time before trapping it.
In 1432, he captured the fortress of Villafranca near Imola by cunning alone and without fighting. The following year he did the same to capture the fortified town of Castelfranco, thus sparing his soldiers and his treasure.
Those who were unable to grasp his tactics, accused him of being a coward for "running away" from the front-line, not realizing, that on a given moment, this was part of the tactics of his winning strategy.
He was a prudent captain, with a very well-mannered troop, and he was careful to maintain good relations with the magistrates of the towns that employed him. He obtained the rank of captain-general of the army of the Republic of Venice during the fourth war against the Duke of Milan in 1438 and died in Padua in 1443. Following his death, the Venetian Republic gave him full honors and Giacoma della Leonessa, his widow, commissioned a sculpture in honor of her late husband for 1650 ducats.
The statue, which represents the life-size condottiere, in antique-style armor and bareheaded, holding his commanding staff in his raised right hand, on his horse, was made by the lost-wax method. As early as 1447, Donatello made the models for the casting of the horse and the condottiere. The work progresses at full speed and the work is completed in 1453 and placed on its pedestal in the cemetery that adjoins the Basilica of Padua.
Brilliant for his cunning and guile, Gattamelata was a thoughtful and effective fighter in action, the type of leader recommended by Machiavelli in The Prince, and which appears in the sixteenth century by François Rabelais in his account of the "Picrocholine wars".
Not the brute power of weapons, but the cunning and the intelligence will be the major qualities that Donatello will make appear powerfully in his work.
Contrary to Marcus Aurelius, it is not his social status that gives the commander his authority, but his intelligence and his creativity in the government of the city and the art of war. Donatello had an eye for detail. Looking at the horse, we see that it is a massive animal but far from static. It has a slow and determined gait, without any hesitation.
But that's not all. A rigorous analysis shows that the proportions of the horse are of a "higher order" than those of the condottiere. Did Donatello make a mistake and make Erasmo too small and the horse too large? No, the sculptor made this choice to emphasize the value of Gattamelata who, thanks to his skills, is able to tame even wild and gigantic animals. In addition, the horse's eyes show him as wild and untameable. Looking at him, one could say that it is impossible to ride him, but Gattamelata manages it with ease and without effort.
Because if you look at the reins in the hands of the protagonist, you will notice that he holds them in complete tranquility. This is another detail that highlights Erasmus' powerful cunning and ingenuity.
Next, did you notice that one of the horse's legs rests on a sphere? If this sphere (which could also be a cannonball, since Erasmus was a warrior) serves to give stability to Donatello's composition as a whole, it also indicates how this animal of gigantic strength (symbolizing here warlike violence), once tamed and well used, allows the globe (the earthly kingdom) to be kept in balance.
Having told you about the horse, it is time to know more about the condottiere.
He has a proud and determined expression. The baton of command, which he holds in his hand, delicately touches the horse's mane. The baton is not just a symbolic object; he may have received it in 1438 from the Republic of Venice.
Unlike Uccello's fresco, Gattamelata is not dressed as a contemporary prince of commander, but as a figure beyond time embodying both the past, the present and the future. To capture this, Donatello, who takes care of every detail, has taken an ancient model and modernized it with incredible results. The details of the protagonist's armor include purely classical motifs such as the head of Medusa, taken from Marcus Aurelius, in Greek mythology one of the three gorgons whose eyes had the power to petrify any mortal who crossed her gaze.
Although the helmet of Gattamelata would have allowed to identify him at eyesight, Donatello has discarded this option. With a helmet on his head, he would have been the symbol of a bloodthirsty warrior, rather than a cunning man. Even better, the absence of a helmet allows the artist to show us a fearless commander whose fixed gaze shows his determination. With the figure slightly bowed and legs extended, the sword in its scabbard placed at an angle, Donatello gives the illusion of an "imbalance" that reinforces in the viewer's mind the idea that the horse is advancing with full strength.
Art historian John Pope-Hennessy is emphatic:
The fundamental differences between the Gattamelata and Marcus Aurelius are obvious. The (roman) emperor sits passively on his horse, legs dangling. In the fifteenth century, on the other hand, the art of riding implies the use of spurs. The impression of authority that emanates from the monument designed by Donatello comes from the total domination of the condottiere over his horse. (…) The soles of the feet are exactly parallel to the surface of the pedestal, as are the large six-pointed spurs, stretched to the middle of the animal's flank.
As a result, Gattamelata is not a remake of the "classical Greek or Roman sculpture" of a hero with a sculpted physique, but a kind of new man who succeeds through reason. The fact that the statue has such a high pedestal also has its reason. Placed at such a height, the Gattamelata does not "share" our own space. It is in another dimension, eternal and out of time.
Verrocchio's Colleoni
Some thirty years later, between 1480 and 1488, Andrea del Verrocchio, after a contest, was selected to make a large bronze equestrian statue of another Italian condottiere named Bartolomeo Colleoni (1400-1475).
A ruthless mercenary, working for a patron one day and his rival the next day, he served from 1454 the Republic of Venice with the title of general-in-chief (capitano generale). He died in 1475 leaving a will in which he bequeathed part of his fortune to Venice in exchange for the commitment to erect a bronze statue to his honor in St. Mark's Square.
The Venetian Senate agreed to erect an equestrian monument to his memory, while charging the costs to the widow of the deceased…
In addition, the Senate refused to erect it in St. Mark's Square, which was, along with St. Mark's Basilica, at the heart of the city's life. The Senate therefore decided to interpret the conditions set by Colleoni in his last will and testament without contradicting them, choosing to erect his statue in 1479, not in St. Mark's Square, but in an area further from the city center in front of the Scuola San Marco, on the campo dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo.
Although Verrocchio had started working on the project since 1482, it remained unfinished at his death in 1488. And it is, not as Verrocchio wished, his heir Lorenzo di Credi who will cast the statue, but the Venetian Alessandro Leopardi (who lost the contest to Verrocchio), who will not hesitate to sign it!
If the horse is in conformity with the typology of the magnificent horses composing the quadriga overseeing the Basilica of Saint Mark of Venice (Greek statuary of the IVth century BC brought back by the crusaders from Constantinople to Venice in 1204) and of the horse of Marcus Aurelius, its musculature is more nervously underlined and traced. Objectively, this statue is ideally more proportionate. There is also more fine detail, a result of new pre-sculpture techniques, making the work captivating and realistic to look at.
The sculpture overflows its pedestal. According to André Suarès quoted in The Majesty of Centaurs:
Colleone on horseback walks in the air, he will not fall. He cannot fall. He leads his earth with him. His base follows him […] He has all the strength and all the calm. Marcus Aurelius, in Rome, is too peaceful. He does not speak and does not command. Colleone is the order of the force, on horseback. The force is right, the man is accomplished. He goes a magnificent amble. His strong beast, with the fine head, is a battle horse; he does not run, but neither slow nor hasty, this nervous step ignores the fatigue. The condottiere is one with the glorious animal: he is the hero in arms.
His baton of command is even metamorphosed into a bludgeon! But since it is not Verrocchio who finished this work, let us not blame the latter for the warlike fury that emanates from this statue.
Venice, a vicious slave-trading financial and maritime Empire fronting as a "Republic", clearly took its revenge here on the beautiful conception developed during the Renaissance of a philosopher-king defending the nation-state.
On the aesthetic level, this mercenary smells like an animal. As a good observer, Leonardo warned us: when an artist represents a man entirely imprisoned by a single emotion (joy, rage, sadness, etc.), he ends up painting something that takes us away from the truly human soul. This is what we see in this equestrian statue.
If, on the contrary, the artist shows several emotions running through the figure represented, the human aspect will be emphasized. This is the case, as we have seen, with Donatello's Gattamelata, uniting cunning, determination and prudence to overcome fear the face of threat.
Leonardo's own, gigantic project to erect a gigantic bronze horse, on which he worked for years and developed new bronze casting techniques, unfortunately was never build, seen the hectic circumstances.
Finally, beyond all the interpretations, let us admire the admirable know-how of these artists. In terms of craft and skill, it generally took an entire life to become able to realize such great works, not even mentioning the patience and boundless passion required.
Up to us to bring it back to life !
- Verrocchio, Sculptor and Painter of Renaissance Florence, Andrew Butterfield, National Gallery, Princeton University Press, 2020;
- Donatello, John Pope-Hennessy, Abbeville Press, 1993;
- Uccello, Franco and Stefano Borsi, Hazan, 2004;
- Les Commentaires de Lorenzo Ghiberti dans la culture florentine du Quattrocento, Pascal Dubourg-Glatigny, Histoire de l'Art, N° 23, 1993, Varia, pp. 15-26;
- Monumento Equestre al Gattamelata di Donatello: la Statua del Guerriero Astuto, blog de Dario Mastromattei, mars 2020;
- La sculpture florentine de la Renaissance, Charles Avery, Livre de poche, 1996 ;
- La sculpture de la Renaissance au XXe siècle, Taschen, 1999;
- Ateliers de la Renaissance, Zodiaque-Desclée de Brouwer, 1998;
- Rabelais et l'art de la guerre, Christine Bierre, 2007.
- The Greek language project, Plato and the Renaissance, Karel Vereycken, jan. 2021.


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The 13 Most Evil US Government Human Experiments
The U.S. Government has been caught conducting an insane amount of vile, inhumane and grisly experiments on humans without their consent and often without their knowledge. So in light of recent news of the U.S. infecting Guatemalans with STDs, here are the 13 most evil, for lack of a better word, cases of human-testing as conducted by the United States of America.
Get ready to become one of those conspiracy theory nuts, because after this list, you will never fully trust your government again.
1. Project MKULTRA, Subproject 68
The CIA-ran Project MKULTRA paid Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron for Subproject 68, which would be experiments involving mind-altering substances. The entire goal of the project was to probe examination into methods of influencing and controlling the mind and being able to extract information from resisting minds.
So in order to accomplish this, the doctor took patients admitted to his Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal and conducted "therapy" on them. The patients were mostly taken in for issues like bi-polar depression and anxiety disorders. The treatment they received was life-altering and scarring.
In the period he was paid for (1957-1964) Cameron administered electroconvulsive therapy at 30-40 times the normal power. He would put patients into a drug-induced coma for months on-end and playback tapes of simple statements or repetitive noises over and over again.
The victims forgot how to talk, forgot about their parents, and suffered serious amnesia.
And all of this was performed on Canadian citizens because the CIA wasn't willing to risk such operations on Americans.
To ensure that the project remained funded, Cameron, in one scheme, took his experiments upon admitted children and in one situation had the child engage in sex with high-ranking government officials and film it.
He and other MKULTRA officers would blackmail the officials to ensure more funding.
2. Mustard Gas Tested on Soldiers via Involuntary Gas Chambers
As bio-weapon research intensified in the 1940's, officials also began testing its repercussions and defenses on the Army itself. In order to test the effectiveness of various bio-weapons, officials were known to have sprayed mustard gas and other skin-burning, lung-ruining chemicals, like Lewisite, on soldiers without their consent or knowledge of the experiment happening to them. They also tested the effectiveness of gas masks and protective clothing by locking soldiers in a gas chamber and exposing them to mustard gas and lewisite, evoking the gas chamber image of Nazi Germany.
EFFECTS OF LEWISITE: Lewisite is a gas that can easily penetrate clothing and even rubber.
Upon contact with the skin, the gas immediately causes extreme pain, itching, swelling and even a rash. Large, fluid-filled blisters develop 12 hours after exposure in the form of intensely severe chemical burns. And that's just skin contact with the gas.
Inhaling of the gas causes a burning pain in the lungs, sneezing, vomiting, and pulmonary edema.
EFFECTS OF MUSTARD GAS: Symptomless until about 24 hours after exposure, Mustard Gas has mutagenic and carcinogenic properties that have killed many subjected to it.
Its primary effects include severe burns that turn into yellow-fluid-leaking boils over a period of time. Although treatment is available, Mustard Gas burns heal very, very slowly and are extremely painful.
The burns the gas leaves on the skin are sometimes irreparable.
It was also rumored that along with the soldiers, patients at VA hospitals were being used as guinea pigs for medical experiments involving bio-warfare chemicals, but that all experiments were changed to be known as "observations" to ward off suspicions.
3. U.S. Grants Immunity to Involuntary-Surgery Monster
As head of Japan's infamous Unit 731 (a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II), Dr. Shiro Ishii (head of medicine) carried out violent human experimentation of tens of thousands during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.
Ishii was responsible for testing vivisection techniques without any anesthesia on human prisoners. For the uninitiated, vivisection is the act of conducting experimental surgery on living creatures (with central nervousness) and examining their insides for scientific purposes.
So basically, he was giving unnecessary surgery to prisoners by opening them all the way up, keeping them alive and not using any anesthetic.
During these experiments he would also force pregnant women to abort their babies. He also played God by subjecting his prisoners to change in physiological conditions and inducing strokes, heart attacks, frost bite, and hypothermia. Ishii considered these subjects "logs".
Following imminent defeat in 1945, Japan blew up the Unity 731 complex and Ishii ordered all the remaining "logs" to be executed.
Not soon after, Ishii was arrested. And then, the respected General Douglas McArthur allegedly struck a deal with Ishii. If the U.S. granted Ishii immunity from his crimes, he must exchange all germ warfare data based on human experimentation.
So Ishii got away with his crimes because the US became interested in the results of his research.
While not directly responsible for these acts, the actions of the American government certainly illustrated it was more than willing to condone human torture for advancements in biological warfare that could kill even more people.
Not a surprise, considering its past resume. Ishii remained alive until 1959, performing research into bio-weaponry and probably thinking up more plans to annihilate people in different, Dr. Giggles-esque ways to his dying day.
4. Deadly Chemical Sprays on American Cities
Showing once again that the U.S. always tends to test out worse-case scenarios by getting to them first and with the advent of biochemical warfare in the mid 20th century, the Army, CIA and government conducted a series of warfare simulations upon American cities to see how the effects would play out in the event of an actual chemical attack.
They conducted the following air strikes/naval attacks:
- The CIA released a whooping cough virus on Tampa Bay, using boats, and so caused a whooping cough epidemic. 12 people died.
- The Navy sprayed San Francisco with bacterial pathogens and in consequence many citizens developed pneumonia.
- Upon Savannah, GA, and Avon Park, FL, the army released millions of mosquitoes in the hopes they would spread yellow fever and dengue fever. The swarm left Americans struggling with fevers, typhoid, respiratory problems, and the worst, stillborn children.
Even worse was that after the swarm, the Army came in disguised as public health workers.
Their secret intention the entire time they were giving aid to the victims was to study and chart-out the long term effects of all the illnesses they were suffering.
5. US Infects Guatemalans With STDs
In the 1940's, with penicillin as an established cure for syphilis, the US decided to test out its effectiveness on Guatemalan citizens.
To do this, they used infected prostitutes and let them loose on unknowing prison inmates, insane asylum patients and soldiers. When spreading the disease through prostitution didn't work as well as they'd hoped, they instead went for the inoculation route.
Researchers poured syphilis bacteria onto men's penises and on their forearms and faces. In some cases, they even inoculated the men through spinal punctures.
After all the infections were transmitted, researchers then gave most of the subjects treatment, although as many as 1/3 of them could have been left untreated, even if that was the intention of the study in the first place.
On October 1, 2010, Hillary Clinton apologized for the events and new research has gone on to see if anyone affected is still alive and afflicted with syphilis. Since many subjects never got penicillin, its possible and likely that someone spread it to future generations.
6. Human Experiments to Test the Effects of The Atomic Bomb
While testing out and trying to harness the power of the atomic bomb, U.S. scientists also secretly tested the bomb's effects on humans.
During the Manhattan Project, which gave way to the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, U.S. scientists resorted to secret human testing via plutonium injection on 18 unsuspecting, non-consenting patients.
This included injecting soldiers with micrograms of plutonium for Project Oak Ridge along with later injecting three patients at a Chicago hospital. Imagine you're an admitted patient, helpless in a hospital bed, assuming that nothing is wrong when the government suddenly appears and puts weapons-grade plutonium in your blood.
Out of the 18 patients, who were known only by their code-names and numbers at the time, only 5 lived longer than 20 years after injection.
Along with plutonium, researchers also had fun with uranium. At a Massachusetts hospital, between 1946 and 1947, Dr. William Sweet injected 11 patients with uranium. He was funded by the Manhattan Project.
And in exchange for the uranium he received from the government, he would keep dead tissue from the body of the people he killed for scientific analysis on the effects of uranium exposure.
7. Injecting Prisoners with Agent Orange
[WARNING: video may be disturbing, but is a reality of what Americans used as biological warfare during Vietnam and what we, as Americans, VOLUNTARILY injected into people for "testing" purposes … with the help of a very popular American company.]
Above is a video of what the effects of Agent Orange can do to children of parents affected, or even exposed to it.
While he received funding from the Agent Orange producing Dow Chemical Company, the US Army, and Johnson & Johnson, Dr. Albert Kligman used prisoners as subjects in what was deemed "dermatological research".
The dermatology aspect was testing out product the effects of Agent Orange on the skin.
Needless to say the injecting of, or exposure to, dioxin is beyond monstrous to voluntarily do to any human. Kligman, though, injected dioxin (a main component of Agent Orange) into the prisoners to study its effects.
What did happen was that the prisoners developed an eruption of chloracne (all that stuff from high school combined with blackheads and cysts and pustules that looked like the picture shown to the left) that develop on the cheeks, behind the ears, armpits, and the groin — yes, the groin.
Kligman was rumored to have injected 468 times the amount he was authorized to. Documentation of that effect has, wisely, not been distributed.
The Army oversaw while Kligman continued to test out skin-burning chemicals to (in their words) "learn how the skin protects itself against chronic assault from toxic chemicals, the so-called hardening process" and test out many products whose effects were unknown at the time, but with the intent of figuring that out.
During these proceedings, Kligman was reported to have said:
"All I saw before me were acres of skin… It was like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time."
Using that analogy, it's easy to see how he could plow straight through so many human subjects without an ounce of sympathy.
8. Operation Paperclip
While the Nuremberg trials were being conducted and the ethics and rights of humanity were under investigation, the U.S. was secretly taking in Nazi scientists and giving them American identities.
Under Operation Paperclip, named so because of the paperclips used to attach the scientists' new profiles to their US personnel pages, N***s who had worked for in the infamous human experiments (which included surgically grafting twins to each other and making then conjoined, removing nerves from people's bodies without anesthetic, and testing explosion-effects on them) in Germany brought over their talents to work on a number of top secret projects for the US.
Given then-President Truman's anti-Nazi orders, the project was kept under wraps and the scientists received faked political biographies, allowing these monsters to live on not only American soil, but as free men.
So while it was not direct experimentation, it was the U.S. taking some of the worst people in the world and giving them jobs here to do unknown, horrible experiments/research.
9. Infecting Puerto Rico With Cancer
In 1931, Dr. Cornelius (that's right, Cornelius) Rhoads was sponsored by the Rockefeller Institute to conduct experiments in Puerto Rico. He infected Puerto Rican citizens with cancer cells, presumably to study the effects. Thirteen of them died.
What's most striking is that the accusations stem from a note he allegedly wrote:
"The Porto Ricans (sic) are the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever to inhabit this sphere… I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more… All physicians take delight in the abuse and torture of the unfortunate subjects."
A man that seems to be hell-bent on killing Puerto Rico through a cancer infestation would not seem a suitable candidate to be elected by the US to be in charge of chemical warfare projects and receive a seat on the United States Atomic Energy Commission, right?
But that's exactly what happened. He also became vice-president of the American Cancer Society.
Any shocking documentation that would have happened during his chemical warfare period would probably have been destroyed by now.
10. Pentagon Treats Black Cancer Patients with Extreme Radiation
They were told they would be receiving treatment, but they weren't told it would be the "Pentagon" type of treatment: meaning to study the effects of high level radiation on the human body.
To avoid litigation, forms were signed only with initials so that the patients would have no way to get back at the government.
In a similar case, Dr. Eugene Saenger, funded by the Defense Atomic Support Agency (fancy name), conducted the same procedure on the same type of patients. The poor, black Americans received about the same level of radiation as 7500 x-rays to their chest would, which caused intense pain, vomiting and bleeding from their nose and ears.
At least 20 of the subjects died.
11. Operation Midnight Climax
Here's a government experiment that, when you Google it, has completely different image results than web results.
Operation Midnight Climax involved safe houses in New York and San Francisco, built for the sole purpose to study LSD effects on non-consenting individuals.
But in order to lure the individuals there, the CIA made these safe houses out to be, wait for it, Brothels. Prostitutes on the CIA payroll (yes, there was such a thing) lured "clients" back the houses.
Instead of having sex with them, though, they dosed them with a number of substances, most famously LSD. This also involved extensive use of marijuana.
The experiments were monitored behind a two-way mirror, kind of like a sick, twisted peep show.
Furthermore, it's alleged that the officials who ran the experiments described them as … "it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and bidding of the All-highest?"
The most horrifying part was the idea of dosing non-consenting adults with drugs they couldn't possibly know the effects of.
[The video featuring a soldier talking about Operation Midnight Climax and his experiences with the CIA and the U.S. Government has been removed from YouTube and the account assocaited with it terminated "due to multiple third party notifications of copyright infrigement" from claimants including (surprise!) Philip Morris International.]
12. Fallout Radiation on Unsuspecting Pacific Territories
After unleashing hell upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States embarked on numerous thermonuclear bomb tests in the Pacific in response to increased Soviet bomb activity.
They were intended to be a secret affair. However, this secrecy would fail.
Detonated in 1954 over Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, Castle Bravo was the most powerful nuclear device the US ever set off. What they didn't expect was for the fallout from the blast to inadvertently be blown upwind onto nearby residents of other islands. The suffering included birth defects and radiation sickness.
The effects were greater felt in later years when many children whose parents were exposed to the fallout developed thyroid cancer and neoplasms.
This created Project 4.1, a study to examine the effects of radiation fallout on human beings. Essentially, it was the latest in a long string of studies where humans act as guinea pigs without giving consent and a project remembered by the US as a way to gather data that would otherwise be unobtainable.
The US moral standard that history best remembers is that even though the radiation fallout on the people of the Marshall Islands was an accident, it might as well have been intended.
In addition, perhaps as nature's way of adding insult to injury, a Japanese fishing boat was caught in the fallout. The fishermen all fell ill and one died, making the Japanese livid that the US was still affecting them with nuclear devices.
13. Tuskegee, Alabama
The recent uncovering of the US exposing Guatemalans to syphilis brings back to mind this infamous study.
In between 1932 and 1972, researchers recruited 400 black share-croppers in Tuskegee, Alabama to study the natural progression of syphilis.
But the scientists never told the men they had syphilis. Instead, they went around believing that they were being treated for "bad blood" disease as researchers used them to find out the extent of syphilis symptoms and effects.
In 1947, penicillin became the standard cure for syphilis. But along with withholding information about the disease, scientists also "forgot" to tell their subjects that what they were being treated for had a cure. And so the study continued for nearly 30 years more.
Once it was discovered, the backlash to the study was so fierce that President Bill Clinton made formal apology, stating he was sorry that the government "orchestrated a study that was so racist". Sadly enough, it would be horrific, but one of the more docile evil human experiments ever conducted by the U.S. Government.
Read more about the State conducted Human Experiments HERE.
11 comments
Sure you can list all the eeeevils of a single country but I'm sure this has gone on all over this falle world…
Because other countries have done similar things that makes this all right?
No champions here, folks. ALL governments are doing such atrocities. It's just a question of money and secrecy. There are two countries where they're doing it even more and longer than in the U.S.: Russia and China. Because there they can conduct this kind of experiments at large scale so that nobody will ever know – they just declare corresponding areas "military" or "contaminated" (with all the people living inside). There is a huge such area in West Siberia, right behind the Ural Mountains, you'll never read about. In the 1950-1960s, the USSR had tested there the effects of nuclear weapons on thousands of unknowing people. The access to the area is still banned even for Russian journalists, and the habitants cannot leave.
You may be right about China and Russia, but "ALL governments" certainly do not participate in such atrocities.
Now sing it with me…"America, Americaaa…"
all governments have secret black opp type of experiments. dont be daft and gullible mate.
[…] The 13 Most Evil US Government Human Experiments by Robert Wabash Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this. Tags: abuse, crime, Evil, human rights, Leonardo de Caprio, medical experiments, MK Ultra, Robert Wabash, Shutter Island, vivisection […]
There is no evidence that all governments indulge in such experiments. Even the Chinese don't make chemtrails or put fluoride in water. The crazy experiments are the product of the uniquely sick minds of the rulers of the west. Jewish Names like Sidney Gottlieb come to mind.
That is why this country is being targeted by foreign terrorists. I will celebrate the day when they destroy the White House and every other government building in DC. They are a bunch of evil white SOBs! Everything that the white race has, they stole, they even stole me!
Thank you for the list of information. I'm writing a paper on medical experiments by the US government and this list has been a very useful resource.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Pizza dough:
• 250 g wheat flour
• 12 g beer yeast
• 150 ml lukewarm water
• 1/3 tsp. salt (pizza dough is not salted in Tuscany, but naturally you can add some)
• Some olive oil for the pan
• 2 medium eggplants
• 50 g small dried tomatoes preserved in oil
• 200 g fresh ricotta
• 8 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 3 tbsp. coarse salt
• 5-6 tbsp. pesto (home-made or commercial)
Perfect Tuscan Pizza Crust
Pizza dough:
The evening before, make a small, very soft dough by dissolving 25 g flour and the yeast in finger-temperature warm water. Cover the dough and allow to raise in a temperate place. The next day, put the rest of the flour in a mound on the table or counter, make a depression in the middle and then add the raised dough starter. Add the lukewarm water (approx. 37°C) and knead together until a soft, loose dough is formed. Make a ball and then place it in a lightly floured bowl. Using a sharp knife, cut an X on the surface and then allow it to rise for about an hour in a warm place. The dough can be kneaded again a couple of times before rolling it out about 4-5 mm thick in a baking pan (about 30 cm diameter) greased with oil. Let it rise again about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the oven to approx. 250°C.
We love this recipe with pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, ricotta and eggplant:
Slice the eggplants lengthwise into slices, sprinkle with a little coarse salt and allow to 'sweat' out the bitter juices in a colander for about an hour. Then arrange the eggplant on the dough with 4-5 tablespoons pesto sauce. Put the baking pan in the oven for 20 minutes. Remove it and dollop the ricotta cheese on top of it using a tablespoon. Put the pizza back in the over for another 10 minutes. Remove from the oven, garnish with a few tablespoons of pesto, the coarsely chopped sun-dried tomato and the remaining oil. Serve immediately.


text:
6-7 years ago son after Brittany's murder, I would have never believed that I could say these words I will say now. "Because of and in spite of Brittany's murder, I have experienced some of the most unbelievable gifts from people across the US. My expereinces with some of these people are experiences many may never share"
Two events this week brought home that I am trully lucky in a different kind of way.
Of course I would never choose to have a daughter that has been murdered but..... this morn at the Tulsa hotel I stay at, an older couple anad I were talking politics, kids, current laws etc. They were retired police officers....so of course I discussed my daughter. Out of the blue before they left, the woman comes up to me and gives me a $100 check. People rarely do this and I am always awed by it. This month has been so hard financially that something like that gives me hope. And they give me hope because they are also trying to change our laws!!!!!! I can never repay them!!
Prior to this, at the beginning of the week, I learned through someone's posting about a site called rewardstv and crimepay. I wrote the director/creator of it, Max Cannon , just to see how one gets posted on his site. Within a day he tells me he will post our story, needs pictures and will take some of the reward fund he has had donated and connect it to Brittany's murder. He also has links on linkedin, facebook and a number of other facebook pages.
I am forever in debt of these people and others!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Above is Brittany's link
below are the other feeds


text:
Microsoft Security Compliance Manager
Published: April 6, 2010 | Updated: January 28, 2013
What's New: Microsoft Security Compliance Manager 3.0
Microsoft Security Compliance Manager 3.0 is now available for download! SCM 3.0 includes new baselines for Windows Server 2012, Windows 8, Internet Explorer 10, an enhanced setting library, and new functionality to LocalGPO.
New! SQL Server 2012 Baselines for Security Compliance Manager (SCM) are now available for beta download!
Download Microsoft Security Compliance Manager 3.0
Launch the download of Microsoft Security Compliance Manager 3.0.
Visit the TechNet Wiki to review the Release Notes and Getting Started Guide.
Microsoft product-specific security policy configurations are integrated with Security Compliance Manager 3.0. To access security baselines for Windows client and server operating systems and Microsoft applications, launch the download of the Security Compliance Manager3.0.
About This Solution Accelerator
The Security Compliance Manager (SCM) is a free tool from the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team that enables you to quickly configure and manage the computers in your environment and your private cloud using Group Policy and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager.
SCM provides ready-to-deploy policies and DCM configuration packs based on Microsoft security guide recommendations and industry best practices, allowing you to easily manage configuration drift and address compliance requirements for Windows operating systems, Office applications, and other Microsoft applications.
Now you can easily configure computers running Windows Server 2012, Windows 8, Microsoft Office applications, and Windows Internet Explorer 10 with industry leading knowledge and fully supported tools. In addition to the latest software releases, you can also configure previous additions of Windows Server and Microsoft Office.
Key SCM Features:
- Baselines based on Microsoft security guide recommendations and industry best practices: These baselines are designed to help you manage configuration drift, address compliance requirements, and reduce security threats.
- Centralized security baseline management features: These include a baseline portfolio, customization capabilities, and security baseline export flexibility to accelerate your organization's ability to efficiently manage the security and compliance process for the most widely used Microsoft technologies.
- Gold master support: Import your existing Group Policy to take advantage of it, or create a snapshot of a reference machine to kick-start your project.
- Stand-alone machine configuration: Deploy your configurations to non-domain joined computers using the new GPO Pack feature.
- Updated security guides: Take advantage of the deep security expertise and best practices in the updated security guides, and the attack surface reference workbooks, to help reduce the most important security risks for your organization.
- Comparisons against industry best practices: Analyze your configurations against prebuilt baselines for the latest Windows client and server operating systems.
Included in the Download
The Microsoft Security Compliance Manager download includes the following components:
- Microsoft_Security_Compliance_Manager_Setup.exe: The Microsoft Security Compliance Manager allows you to view, update, and export security baselines.
- LocalGPO.msi: This tool is designed to manage the local Group Policy of a computer, such as applying a security baseline and exporting the local Group Policy.
Version History
- SCM 3.0 was released January 2013
- SCM 2.5 was released March 2012
- SCM 2.0 was released in September 2011
- SCM 1.0 was first released in April 2010
Related Resources
The following resources provide additional information about security topics and Microsoft Security Solution Accelerators:
- Microsoft Security Compliance Manager Release Notes
- José and Jeff discuss SCM
- Microsoft Security Compliance Manager Interview with Chase Carpenter at Microsoft Management Summit 2011
- Solution Accelerators Team presents Microsoft Security Compliance Manager
- System Center Configuration Manager Extensions for SCAP
Community and Feedback
Want to know what's coming up next? Check out our Microsoft Security Guidance Blog.
Join in discussions on managing IT security and compliance in the Security and Compliance Management Forum.
Contact the Solution Accelerators security team with your feedback: email@example.com.
About Solution Accelerators
Solution Accelerators are authoritative resources that help IT pros plan, deliver, operate, and manage IT systems that address real-world scenarios. Solution Accelerators provide free, prescriptive guidance and automation to accelerate cross-product integration, core infrastructure development, and other enhancements.
Sign up to receive the Solution Accelerator Notifications newsletter so that you can stay informed about new Solution Accelerator releases and updates. The newsletter covers such areas of interest as:
- Communication and collaboration
- Security, data protection, and recovery
- Deployment
- Operations and management
Download This Accelerator
Launch the download of the Microsoft Security Compliance Manager3.0.


text:
Batya Friedman, University of Washington
Fred B. Schneider, Cornell University
A careful distinction between quality and quantity is key to promoting the future growth of the computing and information field. Toward that end, this document advocates adjustments to hiring, promotion, and tenure practices as well as to the publication culture. Contributions in a small number of high quality publications or artifacts are what should be emphasized; success as a researcher is then not primarily a matter of numbers.
The recommendations that follow were developed over an 18-month period by the CRA Committee on Best Practices for Hiring, Promotion, and Scholarship. As part of this work, the committee conducted interviews in autumn 2013 with more than 75 academic and industry computing and information unit heads to understand the issues and gain insights from practice. Preliminary recommendations were vetted with department chairs and CRA Deans at the Snowbird Conference in July 2014.
Anita Jones, University of Virginia
Erwin Gianchandani, CRA/CCC (now at NSF)
See also Anita Jones' CACM Viewpoint "The Explosive Growth of Postdocs in Computer Science"
The Computing Research Association's (CRA) Board of Directors has approved a Best Practices Guide, providing guidance to graduate students, postdocs, advisors and mentors, and departments and institutions on how to have a positive postdoctoral experience within computer science and engineering. We encourage our colleagues throughout the community to take a look at the document — the latest in a series of white papers about the recent increase in postdocs in the field — and adopt these Best Practices.
Martha E. Pollack (University of Michigan)
Marc Snir (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
The fields of computing and information science and engineering have a strong commitment to interdisciplinary work, with CISE researchers collaborating with electrical engineers in the design of low-power chips; with linguists in the development of natural-language processing systems; with biologists in the exploration of the genetic code; with economists in the formation of theories of on-line commerce; and with statisticians in the discovery of new ways to extract information from rich sets of data—to name just a few examples.
J Strother Moore (University of Texas, Austin)
Lawrence Snyder (University of Washington)
Philip A. Bernstein (Microsoft Research)
Universities and businesses have considerable incentive to cooperate in the development of intellectual property (IP). Businesses recognize universities for their rich talent pool and enthusiastic graduate students, while universities recognize businesses as a source of real-world problems, technical know-how, and funding. There are numerous examples of successful research collaborations in computer science, computer engineering, and electrical engineering. Mindful that some IP such as gene splicing and human growth hormone have produced "IP goldmines," many university administrators (and some students and faculty) are eager to establish strong safeguards to protect their rights to intellectual property.
David Patterson (University of California, Berkeley)
Larry Snyder (University of Washington)
The relentless pressure to innovate in the information technology (IT) industry has drawn university researchers and graduate students into entrepreneurial situations to an increasing degree. The trend affects the academic enterprise in diverse ways, both favorable and unfavorable. The risks and rewards are outlined, and the concept of a Commercialization Oversight Committee is described as a mechanism that can facilitate the best outcomes when interests conflict.
David Patterson (University of California, Berkeley)
Lawrence Snyder (University of Washington)
Jeffrey Ullman (Stanford University)
The evaluation of computer science and engineering faculty for promotion and tenure has generally followed the dictate "publish or perish," where "publish" has had its standard academic meaning of "publish in archival journals" [Academic Careers, 94]. Relying on journal publications as the sole demonstration of scholarly achievement, especially counting such publications to determine whether they exceed a prescribed threshold, ignores significant evidence of accomplishment in computer science and engineering. For example, conference publication is preferred in the field, and computational artifacts - software, chips, etc. - are a tangible means of conveying ideas and insight. Obligating faculty to be evaluated by this traditional standard handicaps their careers, and indirectly harms the field. This document describes appropriate evidence of academic achievement in computer science and engineering.


text:
Several years ago my husband had to undergo surgery, and I wanted to have something for him to be a sort of comfort. A blanket came to mind. It needed to be something bright, something cheerful. Different. Happy. And so the idea of the Happy Blanket was born. He loved it, and so did everybody else. I've made many since then, and happily given them all away. There's always one on my needles.
I decided not to overthink the blanket. The idea came from Magic Ball Knitting which I rather enjoy, but I'd not until then made anything as large as a blanket or an afghan using this technique.
There's something joyful about a colorful knitted piece. At least it is to me, but then I do really enjoy bright colors. And the fact that this is such easy knitting makes me all the more happy. My Happy Knitting pieces are not pretentious, they're not sophisticated, and yet I'm greatly surprised at people's reaction to them.
Exuberant shawls, wraps and scarves began to spring to life as fast as I could wind sunny little balls of textured color. And that's the point of my Happy Knitting – I love the knots. I make no attempt to hide them. This is carefree knitting at its best. A dropped stitch? It's not going to get very far, though of course it's good to keep a count of your stitches.
Making the balls is all part of the fun. I certainly do use up leftover bits – happy memories of knitting projects – but I cut lengths from my yarn stash. This is not exactly a small one, due in part to my tendency to collect just one ball of yarn where I can as a travel souvenir. My Happy Knitting yarn balls are full of stories of where and when and how the yarn was acquired, and of fond thoughts of the people connected to them.
This is my Grab 'n' Go knitting – ideal for driving in the car or situations where I can't concentrate too much. It's trouble free, uncomplicated, and the results are most satisfying.
A Happy Scarf cheers me up instantly on the dullest day – and the winter seems to have made a point of being as grayly dreary as possible this year. It's also a great conversation starter as I'm often asked where I got it. A few brave souls have even been given a brief tutorial!
My Happy Vest has proved very useful – it goes with anything.>
The cats have been as helpful as always while we attempted to photograph a few items here on the Pelion Peninsula. The newest rescue, Haig, is rather taken with his Happy Cat Toy, and slowly learning to trust us.
Jason did his quiet duty as always, quite unperturbed by Olly's curiosity.
Raki – not to be confused with Olly – is slowing down quite a bit now, and prefers to spend his time snuggled in a Happy Shawl. I reckon he's got the right idea.
Thanks to my friend Dawn Cusick who provided me the photo of the Happy Blanket I made for her; shown on her balcony in North Carolina.


text:
Dr. Sumedha Arya
Transfusion Medicine Physician Trainee
University of Toronto
Note: The session is a self-approved group learning activity (Section 1) as defined by the Maintenance of Certification program of The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
To be added to the distribution list for the LearnTransfusion series, send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com with "Weekly Transfusion Medicine Seminars" in the subject line. Include your name and complete e-mail address in the body of the e-mail and confirm that you would like to be added to the distribution list for the LearnTransfusion series. You will then receive weekly email notifications of upcoming series events with details on how to join the webinars (e.g., link to register for the webinar).
The LearnTransfusion series is the seminar component of the Areas of Focused Competency (AFC)-Diploma Program in Transfusion Medicine. The series, organized by Canadian Blood Services, is also open to all practitioners in the field of Transfusion Medicine. Through a series of regular webinars, trainees and practitioners are exposed to various scientific, technical and clinical aspects of transfusion medicine.


text:
Imagine Peter after the Resurrection. I imagine—knowing myself—that although he knew he was forgiven by Jesus for his denial, he was still unable to forgive himself. He did not trust himself and did not feel able to carry out the role Jesus gave him as a "rock" of faith and leader of the Church.
In the Gospel of John Peter decides to go fishing—his "normal" life before Jesus. But when Jesus appears, his love is stirred and he impetuously swims to shore to be with him. After eating Jesus pulls Peter aside: "Peter, do you love me?" Jesus tells Peter, "Feed my lambs." "Tend my flock." "Feed my sheep."
What is Jesus saying? Yes, you failed, but I still choose you; I still want you to carry out the role I have appointed for you. I believe in you.
May this story lead us to a renewed trust and love for God, even we we fail him and fail ourselves. O Jesus, I will trust in you!


text:
Advanced Search
Prof. Powershell
The Environment PSProvider gives you access to system environmental variables and can be viewed like a drive.
We often use variables in PowerShell as placeholders for values that might change. The advantage is that you can rerun a long or complex code sample simply by changing the value of variables. One source of variables that you may not be using is the Environment PSProvider. This provider gives you access to the system environmental variables like %PATH% and %TEMP%.
In PowerShell, the Environment PSProvider creates an ENV PSDrive which you can view like any other drive. Remember, anytime you want to reference a PSDrive as a drive, include the colon:
PS C:\> dir env:
Name Value ---- ----- ALLUSERSPROFILE C:\ProgramData APPDATA C:\Users\Jeff\AppData\Roaming CLASSPATH .;C:\Program Files (x86)\ QuickTime\QTSystem\QTJava.zip CommonProgramFiles C:\Program Files\Common Files CommonProgramFiles(x86) C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files ...
Anything you see here should be the same thing you would see when using a CMD prompt from running SET. In this lesson we're just going to focus on using these values. Over the years I've seen people try to use these values in a number of ways:
PS C:\> $user = get-item -Path env:username | select -ExpandProperty Value PS C:\> $user Jeff
Or you might see this:
PS C:\> $user = (get-item -Path env:username).value
Technically there's nothing wrong with this approach as you are, in fact, retrieving the Username item from the ENV: drive. But to me that seems like a lot of work.
Instead we can use a shortcut to retrieve an environmental variable. Personally, I prefer this approach:
PS C:\> $env:username Jeff
You can interpret that as telling PowerShell to get the value of $ENV:Username and treat the whole thing as a variable. That is a whole lot less to type. But be careful when using these values, especially when combining. Use double-quotes so you can take advantage of variable expansion:
PS C:\> Write-Host "Connecting as $env:userdomain\$env:username" -ForegroundColor Cyan Connecting as Serenity\Jeff
Or use the -f formatting operator:
PS C:\> $msg = "Connecting as {0}\{1}" -f $env:userdomain,$env:username PS C:\> Write-Host $msg -ForegroundColor Cyan
Using the environmental variables is also a great way build paths. But don't try to concatenate; instead, use Join-Path:
PS C:\> $myfile = join-path -Path $env:temp -ChildPath MyTemp.txt PS C:\> $myfile C:\Users\Jeff\AppData\Local\Temp\MyTemp.txt PS C:\> $docs = Join-Path -Path $env:USERPROFILE -ChildPath Documents C:\Users\Jeff\Documents
My last recommendation for the ENV: PSDrive is to use the value from %COMPUTERNAME% instead of LocalHost. Yes, localhost will work in almost all cases, but if you are capturing output you have no way of knowing what computer the command actually run on. Using $env:computername will always return an actual computername, so why not use it? So if you are defining a function parameter and want to default to localhost, set the default to the actual computer name:
Param( [string]$Computername = $env:computername)
So, to see what environmental variables you have, get a directory listing of ENV: and to reference a variable, use the item path preceded by a $ sign.
About the Author
Jeffery Hicks is an IT veteran with over 25 years of experience, much of it spent as an IT infrastructure consultant specializing in Microsoft server technologies with an emphasis in automation and efficiency. He is a multi-year recipient of the Microsoft MVP Award in Windows PowerShell. He works today as an independent author, trainer and consultant. Jeff has written for numerous online sites and print publications, is a contributing editor at Petri.com, and a frequent speaker at technology conferences and user groups.
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New York, USA - As is so often the case these days here, the women's
version of the ING New York City Marathon (Sunday 7 Nov) seems more intriguing
than the men's race, especially this year.
Olympic redemption for Radcliffe?
Not only is Britains Paula Radcliffe (holder of the World record at an awesome
2:15:25) competing for the first time since her agonising dropout at 36
kilometres in Athens 11 weeks ago, but she'll be facing three other top
10 performers on the all-time list: Kenyans Tegla Loroupe and Margaret Okayo,
equal 7th at 2:20:43, and American record holder Deena Kastor, 10th at
Britains best athletics writers
Radcliffes presence has brought a squad of Britains best athletics writers
across the pond to see how she will fare, and today she faced them and others
for the first time since she stopped at 36 km in Athens. She was cheerful,
almost chirpy, and said she had gotten over her Athens disappointment and was
ready to run hard and win. "Its something you can never forget," she
smiled, perhaps a bit ruefully, "but you have to get over it."
Hard training in Flagstaff
If she is as ready as she says she is after two months of hard training in
Flagstaff, Arizona, its hard to bet against the 30-year-old Radcliffe. Shes run
more than five minutes faster than anyone else in the field, and if form holds,
she could win literally by a mile (more than 1600 metres).
Okayo fit for task
But of course, form doesn always hold in a Marathon, and no world-class runner
toes the line with the idea of finishing second.
Okayo, 28, who took the London Marathon title this spring, has won in New
York twice, in 2001 and 2003, setting a course record each time (its now
2:22:31) ...


text:
Game show legend Chuck Barris dead at 87
NEW YORK (AP) - Chuck Barris, whose game show empire included "The Dating Game," ''The Newlywed Game" and that infamous factory of cheese, "The Gong Show," died at 87.
Barris died of natural causes Tuesday afternoon at his home in Palisades, New York, according to publicist Paul Shefrin, who announced the death on behalf of Barris' family.
Barris made game show history right off the bat, in 1966, with "The Dating Game," hosted by Jim Lange. The gimmick: a young female questions three males, hidden from her view, to determine which would be the best date. Sometimes the process was switched, with a male questioning three females. But in all cases the questions were designed by the show's writers to elicit sexy answers.
Celebrities and future celebrities who appeared as contestants included Michael Jackson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steve Martin and a pre-"Charlie's Angels" Farrah Fawcett, introduced as "an accomplished artist and sculptress" with a dream to open her own gallery.
After the show became a hit on both daytime and nighttime TV, the Barris machine accelerated. New products included "The Newlywed Game," ''The Parent Game," ''The Family Game" and even "The Game Game."
At one point Barris was supplying the television networks with 27 hours of entertainment a week, mostly in five-days-a-week daytime game shows.
The grinning, curly-haired Barris became a familiar face as creator and host of "The Gong Show," which aired from 1976 to 1980.
Patterned after the Major Bowes Amateur Hour show that was a radio hit in the 1930s, the program featured performers who had peculiar talents and, often, no talent at all. When the latter appeared on the show, Barris would strike an oversize gong, the show's equivalent of vaudeville's hook. The victims would then be mercilessly berated by the manic Barris, with a hat often yanked down over his eyes and ears, and a crew of second-tier celebrities.
Occasionally, someone would actually launch a successful career through the show. One example was the late country musician BoxCar Willie, who was a 1977 "Gong Show" winner.
He called himself "The King of Daytime Television," but to critics he was "The King of Schlock" or "The Baron of Bad Taste."
As "The Gong Show" and Barris' other series were slipping, he sold his company for a reported $100 million in 1980 and decided to go into films.
He directed and starred in "The Gong Show Movie," a thundering failure that stayed in theaters only a week.
Afterward, a distraught Barris checked into a New York hotel and wrote his autobiography, "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," in two months. In it, he claimed to have been a CIA assassin.
The book (and the 2002 film based on it, directed by George Clooney) were widely dismissed by disbelievers who said the creator of some of television's most lowbrow game shows had allowed his imagination to run wild when he claimed to have spent his spare time traveling the world, quietly rubbing out enemies of the United States.
"It sounds like he has been standing too close to the gong all those years," quipped CIA spokesman Tom Crispell. "Chuck Barris has never been employed by the CIA and the allegation that he was a hired assassin is absurd," Crispell added.
Barris, who offered no corroboration of his claims, was unmoved.
"Have you ever heard the CIA acknowledge someone was an assassin?" he once asked.
Seeking escape from the Hollywood rat race, he moved to a villa in the south of France in the 1980s with his girlfriend and future second wife, Robin Altman, and made only infrequent returns to his old haunts over the next two decades.
Back in the news in 2002 to help publicize "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," Barris said his shows were a forerunner to today's popular reality TV series.
Born in Philadelphia in 1929, Charles Barris was left destitute, along with his sister and their mother, when his dentist father died of a stroke.
After graduating from the Drexel Institute of Technology in 1953, he took a series of jobs, including book salesman and fight promoter.
After being dropped from a low-level job at NBC, he found work at ABC, where he persuaded his bosses to let him open a Hollywood office, from which he launched his game-show empire. He also had success in the music world. He wrote the 1962 hit record "Palisades Park," which was recorded by Freddy Cannon.
Barris's first marriage, to Lynn Levy, ended in divorce. Their daughter, Della, died of a drug overdose in 1998. He married his third wife, Mary, in 2000.
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Your system's first boot on its own power is what electrical engineers call the "smoke test".
If you did a default installation, the first thing you should see when you
boot the system is the menu of the grub
The first choices in the menu will be for your new Debian system. If you
had any other operating systems on your computer (like Windows) that were
detected by the installation system, those will be listed lower down in the
If the system fails to start up correctly, don't panic. If the installation was successful, chances are good that there is only a relatively minor problem that is preventing the system from booting Debian. In most cases such problems can be fixed without having to repeat the installation. One available option to fix boot problems is to use the installer's built-in rescue mode (see Section 8.6, "Recovering a Broken System").
If you are new to Debian and Linux, you may need some help from more experienced users. For direct on-line help you can try the IRC channels #debian or #debian-boot on the OFTC network. Alternatively you can contact the debian-user mailing list. You can also file an installation report as described in Section 5.4.7, "Submitting Installation Reports". Please make sure that you describe your problem clearly and include any messages that are displayed and may help others to diagnose the issue.
If you had any other operating systems on your computer that were not detected or not detected correctly, please file an installation report.