Old, Amazing Color Pictures

27 Aug

I’ve been fascinated recently with the origins of color photography.  I’m also interested in well-known figures in color.  That’s why a gallery of pictures posted to Life Magazine are so interesting to me.

Life uploaded a gallery of color photographs of Adolf Hitler taken by Hugo Jaeger, who had unprecedented access to the German leader over the course of WWII.  I find the gallery striking because it’s so… humanizing.  Hitler seems like any other world leader.

Hitler photo from Life Magazine

This reminds me of two other striking galleries I saw, not long ago.

1) A color gallery of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Click here to check it out.

2) A stunning gallery of European cities in 1906 (a big year for color pictures): See the pictures here.

Cheese, Please

27 Aug

On another day in the Napoli area, Enzo took us to Tenuta Vannulo, the only organic buffalo mozzarella farm in all of Italy.  They have a model I really admire.  Everything is on an extremely local level.  Every morning at 4 a.m. or so they collect the milk from the 400 or so buffalo on the farm.  From there, they make the mozzarella.  They produce enough mozzarella and ricotta to sell on a daily basis and nothing more.

The buffalo have the five-star hotel treatment (for buffalo).  Their stables are divided into two sections.  In the front, there’s bountiful food.  When they want water, they simply pass through a door to get to the back.  Upon returning, however, they must be milked. There is a waiting area as they prepare to be milked, where there are scratching posts and mats for napping.  Then, they enter the robotic milking area.  A computerized system collects the milk from them and stores information on how much milk comes from each tete, allowing the farmers to track milk production over time.

Happy buffalo mingle and eat. I think they're cute.

We also saw the workers form the mozzarella from the “dough.” It’s pretty amazing, actually.  To get those small balls of mozzarella we’re used to, the workers pinch off pieces from the dough which is over 150 degrees as they handle it.  Talk about tough.  As Americans, we often eat mozzarella incorrectly.  When eaten properly, mozzarella is served at room temperature and it should be bought in 1 kilogram pieces at a minimum. Of course, our guide added, many people prefer the small balls of mozzarella, but those are not traditional.

I really liked the mozzarella "braid"

Basically, the entire process was really cool and true mozzarella has an incredible taste.  We got to sample some that had just been made.  The richness, the delicateness, the smoothness of the cheese was amazing.

Workers hard at work making mozzarella

Hungry yet?

Links: 8/26

26 Aug

1) Google’s Pumped: Yesterday, Google released a feature that allows people to call phones from their Gmail account.  This feature resembles Skype, the popular video chatting application.  Today, Google tweeted that 1,000,000 million phone calls had been made since the launch.

2) Surprise Viral Hit Gets Star Treatment (Again): In late July, a local news broadcast in Huntsville, Alabama first told the story of Dodson family.  One of the family members, Antoine, drew the attention of Auto-Tune the News.  The Gregory brother produced a version of the song that would be sold on iTunes and would even place on the Hot 100 chart last week. Today, a bunch of punk artists recorded their own version of the song.

3) DC Mayoral Race Music: Last week, I told you of one new song in favor of current mayor Adrian Fenty.  Now, a new music has emerged and the DCist blog has reviewed it.

4) Texting habits: a recent survey examines how we, as a people, text and use cell phones by race and gender.

5) A New “Dilemma”: Author Michael Pollan of “Omnivore’s Dilemma” fame, believes it’s worthwhile to spend more on eggs because:

“when we’re spending billions to deal with a salmonella outbreak, [food] isn’t really as cheap as it seems”

6) Terrorists Like Avril: This story is not so funny.  Canadian police arrested three men on charges of terrorism against targets in Canada and abroad.  But the story took a bit of a turn when footage emerged of one of the men trying out on “Canadian Idol.” He sang Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” (poorly) and did the moonwalk.

7) Funny, but Accurate

I love Katy Perry

26 Aug

This new album is off the hook.  I know it’s pop, but it’s awesome, feel-good music.  I stick to it.  Some of the reviews are iffy, but if you want fun music look here. I think the song below, “Last Friday Night,” is going to be a smash.

The Day We Became British

26 Aug

One of the days in Napoli, we headed to a set of ancient Greek ruins called Paestum.  Once we arrived, we were greeted by our favorite guide again (Silvia) who pulled me and Enzo aside.  A situation had presented itself.  All EU citizens under 18 (which was all of the kids) got into the ruins for free, but Americans would have to pay the full price of admission.  As a result, we became Brits who spoke no Italian.

I went over to the bus and ordered the kids not to speak until we entered the ruins.  I, of course, was free to speak because I only did so in Italian.  We paid for the tickets and the guide mentioned that we were a group of high schoolers from London here to study ancient Greek culture.  The lady even marveled “oh, how wonderful” before letting us inside.

The ruins themselves were beautiful.  Note some of the pictures below.

The best-preserved temple in Paestum

Probably the coolest part was that archaeologists had found an ancient burial site (one of the only ones preserved from the Greek times).  Inside, they found 8 sealed jars.  When they opened those jars, they found honey.  IT STILL RAN. How cool.  No one tasted it though.

There was a second part to the trip.  A museum.  We again had to pretend to be British.  The story grew more complex.  We had our tickets from before, but in theory had to get a second set.  Silvia told the lady that we had left our IDs with the professor (Enzo) for security purposes but that he would meet us after the trip.  The lady that was fine, and that if he came, he could show her the IDs.  I then called Enzo and asked him not to show up at the museum.

It worked and the museum was really cool.   One of the treasures was a set of tomb paintings.  Of these, the most famous and studied is called the “Tomb of the Diver.”  It represents the voyage between this life and the next life.  It was really cool.  See it below.

Ultimately, a really cool visit.  Cheers, Paestum!

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