Did you know there is a very long tradition of Russian Political jokes? I find this out from Wikipedia. The jokes start with Imperial Russia and conclude with Post-soviet Russia. They are HERE. A Bloomberg article with the best jokes is HERE.
Bloomberg's article, as with Wikipedia, demonstrates that Russian humour about the way the country is run is an unbroken tradition from the czarist era to the present day. The article's author, like me, finds that many of them aren't funny. But there are some great jokes in the article. Here is Reagan's joke.
"The CIA-Reagan Soviet joke pipeline was no secret at the time. One from a list declassified in 2013 was a particular favorite — Reagan told it repeatedly, once adding he’d shared it with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and gotten a laugh from him. The CIA version goes like this:
An American tells a Russian that the United States is so free he can stand in front of the White House and yell, “To hell with Ronald Reagan.” The Russian replies: “That’s nothing. I can stand in front of the Kremlin and yell, ‘To hell with Ronald Reagan,” too.
Two more from Wikipedia:
A Gulag joke: Three men are sitting in a cell in the (KGB headquarters) Dzerzhinsky Square. The first asks the second why he has been imprisoned, who replies, "Because I criticized Karl Radek." The first man responds, "But I am here because I spoke out in favor of Radek!" They turn to the third man who has been sitting quietly in the back, and ask him why he is in jail. He answers, "I'm Karl Radek."
A Stalin joke: Stalin reads his report to the Party Congress. Suddenly someone sneezes. "Who sneezed?" Silence. "First row! On your feet! Shoot them!" They are shot, and he asks again, "Who sneezed, Comrades?" No answer. "Second row! On your feet! Shoot them!" They are shot too. "Well, who sneezed?" At last a sobbing cry resounds in the Congress Hall, "It was me! Me!" Stalin says, "Bless you, Comrade!" and resumes his speech.
Our pictures today come from Moyer Road - this is the road that Vineland Estates Winery is located on. This silver barked bush along the side of the road is very photogenic as it is. It becomes the texture for an abstract pattern created in photoshop.
I experience our industrial and post-industrial society as having an orientation towards squares and rectangles. These are prevalent around us in every day things - mores than circles, ovals, and waves. Our houses, tables, pictures, paper - all kinds of things are square and rectangular - so many things come in those shapes. The folders on my computer and the window I am typing in - these follow the pattern. What makes this predominant?
The predominance of the right angle in architectural plans is the topic of Why are most buildings rectangular? by Philip Steaman. He answers the question:
"A geometrical demonstration comparing room shapes and room arrangements on square, triangular and hexagonal grids indicates that it is the superior flexibility of dimensioning allowed by rectangular packings that leads to their predominance". His article is HERE.
So rectangular it is for many things - efficiency. There might be more than this. In a tutorial on how to use shapes creatively at visme.co the ideas and feelings of shapes are outlined :
Squares and rectangles are reliable, give stability and suggest order
Circles represent completion, wholeness and harmony
Pentagons, hexagons, octagons give designs a unique feel. They can also be used to portray an already known use of the shape.
So in addition to efficiency, we get reliability, stability and order. Squares and rectangles seem to be our chosen sensibility. I would think this has been the case since ancient Greece and Rome when geometry was explored and recorded. I wonder what would change this progression? Can we evolve to another set of shapes? I don't see easy answers in my search, so will pursue this in the future.
We move to our pictures today - taken in the Niagara Street arboretum where the weeping cherry tree is located. It is the subject of the last picture.
