March 5
Quick Hits
My apologies for my lack of content lately, as I just finished working several overnights. It’s also been a minute, so this is a free post - please spread the word.
Questions
It was recently revealed (and you might as well as note it for when it shows up) that the true identity of the street artist Banksy is a 52-year-old man from the Bristol region named Robin Gunningham. There is a sense that for some years that fact was an open secret, but Gunningham nonetheless did take certain steps to conceal his identity. Those steps included his use of what assumed name for several years? This first and last name combination is thought to be the most common such combination for men in the United Kingdom, with over 15,000 people known by it. One example of a person with this name is the drummer who would be nominated for a Tony for his portrayal of the Artful Dodger, while another example is the birth name of the musician whose work would inspire how Banksy would depict Queen Elizabeth II for her Diamond Jubilee.
Attached is selection from a song (credit: Wikimedia Commons). While there are various iterations of it, they all seem to discuss the same titular hill, as well as themes of love, separation, and a desire for your partner to hurt their feet if they ever leave you. Despite the great differences otherwise between the two countries, this tune still remains popular in both North and South Korea. It would be nice to think that this song could bring people separated for so long back together, as in another context it names a reunion of sorts following a substantial hiatus. What song?
One of the most famous legends about this place was promoted by Benedict XIV, who called for its preservation and installed the Stations of the Cross there; the historical evidence for Benedict’s claims, however, is thought to go back no further than the 16th century. Prior to that declaration, this location had a third life as a wool factory, and, before that, a second life as the home to the Frangipani clan, who used it as their fortress. More recently, this building is featured on one of the versions of the five-cent Euro coin, and it also marked the location where the late Chuck Norris had his breakthrough film performance, battling Bruce Lee in The Way of the Dragon, as shown below. What structure?
The revanchiste French general who threatened to topple the Third Republic in 1889, before his miscalculations forced him to escape France, eventually winding up in Belgium, where he felt compelled to commit suicide. The Nobel Prize-winning economist who promoted the titular concept in his 1964 work Human Capital, and who applied Chicago School-style economic insights to various social structures, with the “rotten kid theorem” that he discussed in 1981’s A Treatise on the Family being one notable example. The comic book artist whose American Splendor series was adapted into a film of the same name. The actress whose best-known roles are as Claire Bennet and Juliette Barnes, and whose only child has a 1996 gold medalist as their father. If we wanted to continue the preceding theme, we could cite which person, who played Doctor Who, or which other person, who played Doctor Who?
Nathan Mileikowsky was born in 1879 in Kreva, which today is located in Belarus. Though a rabbi, he engaged in political activism as well, which allowed him to travel the world and write. Though for some years he would write under the pen name “Nitay,” he eventually settled on another name, which means “given by God,” that later would be adopted by his descendants. What is that name?
Currently at the Guggenheim in New York is the first major survey of what Geneva-born American sculptor? Shown first is a collection of several works by her, followed by images of Cutting Corners and Rich Mom. While the Guggenheim survey includes earlier somewhat more personal work as well, this artist has become more notable in recent years for works made of crushed metal like those featured below, as they have been praised for how they balance a sense of tremendous weight with fragility.
One story about the origin of this work says that it was inspired by a conversation that its author had with Harlow Shapley at a 1919 get-together for Harvard’s faculty, though some say it was influenced by Canto 32 from Dante’s Inferno - both in terms of structure and content. What work?
Take the name of the village (below) which is the largest town and the capital of Saba. Now take The Cure’s fifth studio album, which critics consider to be a mostly forgettable follow-up to Pornography. What phrase goes (quite literally) between those examples? Examples of this phrase in common use include its use as the title of two notable songs: one a 2001 alternative rock anthem written by Jim Adkins that was its band’s top single off their album Bleed American, and the other a 2018 collaboration that has demo versions where Charlie XCX, Demi Lovato, Bebe Rexha, and Camila Cabello (among others) perform, with the person selected for the version officially released previously better known for her work as a country musician.
In 2015, Tata Motors announced plans for a new hatchback, which they intended to give a portmanteau name that would emphasize its agility. By February 2016, that name had been set aside in favor of the completely unrelated name “Tiago,” as global events had forced a reassessment. What was the original name for this hatchback? Though nothing of recent importance had happened in a particular forest outside of Entebbe to lead to the name change, a remote association with that location ultimately is why Tata was forced to rethink things.
You likely have heard about Punch the Monkey, the macaque resident of Japan’s Ichikawa City Zoo that was abandoned by his fellow monkeys, so he was given an orangutan plushie from Ikea as a comfort animal (first image). His story served as a real-life recreation of part of an important experiment from psychology in 1950s, where another kind of macaque was given the choice of a wire cage that provided nourishment like food and water, or a monkey-shaped roll of terry-towel that would provide comfort (second image). Like Punch, that monkey sought comfort. Which comparative psychologist was the architect of that experiment? Though experiments like the described would undermine many assumptions underlying behaviorism in favor of what came to be called attachment theory, they are viewed as ethically dubious by many in retrospect - with subsequent experiments by this psychologist, such as his work with the “pit of despair,” not exactly working to repair this man’s reputation among his critics.
Answers
David Jones, as in David Thomas “Davy” Jones, best known as the drummer for The Monkees. Banksy has at least three noteworthy depictions of Queen Elizabeth II: 2001’s Weapons of Mass Distraction (first), 2003’s Monkey Queen (second) and 2012’s Queen Ziggy (last), made for Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee and inspired by the Ziggy Stardust persona of David Bowie, born David Robert Jones.
“Arirang,” which is also the name of the latest album by the recently reunited K-pop group BTS. This is the first release by the group in six years, as the military obligations of its various members kept them from working together on a project.
The Colosseum, also known as the Flavian Amphitheatre. Benedict XIV promoted the story that Christians were martyred at the Colosseum, which is felt to have been crucial in guaranteeing its preservation. Prior to that, its travertine was the source for building projects elsewhere, including possibly for St. Peter’s Basilica.
The above have names that mean “baker” (or are derived from such) in various languages: General Georges Ernest Boulanger (French), Gary Becker (derived from German), Harvey Pekar (various Slavic languages), and Hayden Panettiere (Italian - she had a child with boxer Wladimir Klitschko). Fourteen actors have played Doctor Who, with two of them being Bakers - Tom (#4) and Colin (#6).
Netanyahu
Carol Bove
“Fire and Ice,” the 1920 poem by Robert Frost. Harlow Shapley was a noted astronomer, and on the occasion in question Frost continued to redirect Shapley away from regular party chit-chat towards a discussion about how the universe might end. Canto 32 of Inferno is where Dante and Virgil enter the bottommost portion of Hell - frozen Cocytus, where the fire of Hell transitions into ice. One scholar argues that the nine-lined, tapering nature of Frost’s poem is meant to invoke the structure of Dante’s Hell:
The capital of Saba is The Bottom, while the album by The Cure was called The Top. Right in the middle would be… well, “The Middle,” which names songs both by Jimmy Eat World and a committee comprising of the Russian-German producer Zedd, the American music duo Grey, and county musician Maren Morris. The producers of the latter hit auditioned several female musicians for the song before settling on the version provided by Morris.
The Tata vehicle was to be called the “Zica,” short for “zippy car.” Then came an outbreak of the Zika virus throughout the Americas beginning in the middle of 2015 and continuing into the next year. As Tata was hoping to market the car in Latin America, they abandoned “Zica” in favor of Tiago - a common first name in Brazil. The Zika virus gets its name from Uganda’s Ziika Forest, where it was isolated from a rhesus macaque (a mini theme today) living there in 1947.
Harry Harlow. The “pit of despair” was a stainless-steel chamber used by Harlow to induce depression in macaques, as he would take young monkeys already accustomed to their mothers and isolate them in these chambers for up to ten weeks. Unsurprisingly, they did not like this.
