We're fascinated by words...

Here are some of the animated short films nominated for an Academy Award. If you watch only one on this page make it be Hors Piste. It's hilarious.

My favorite issue of Aviation Week each year is their photo contest and this year is no exception. Here's a look at some of the finalists.

I can't find any mention of this on the museum's website, but it has been reported that The Science Behind Pixar exhibition is coming to the Perot museum in Dallas beginning next 25 April. I'll declare this a "must see" right now.

Julie Mehretu, Stadia II, 2004. I see Joan Miro with a 21st century tech influence. source

Mondrian shares some of his insight into abstract art. "The emotion of beauty is always obstructed by the appearance of ‘the object’; therefore the object must be eliminated from the picture." Read more from Piet and other artists here.

Make Weird Music (or read about it).

How many of these progressive rock concept albums do you own? Many people own Pink Floyd's The Wall. I only own 4 of them.

How deep is the sea?

Can green light cure migraines and headaches?

Solve the traveling salesperson problem and create art at the same time.

Elevate your Excel game with with these shortcuts. Or these. Or the official ones from Microsoft.

Probably only the most hardcore Disney fan will want to read this article about the layout manual produced for in-studio use during the production of films for the War Dept. during WWII.

Even the great Chuck Yeager crashed a plane every once in a while, like this F-104 in 1963.

Brent Wadden, Untitled, 2019. Woven abstraction. source

Read 'em and weep: He Who Must Not Be Named's wildest statements of 2019.

The origins of figurative art by humans just got 7,000 older with the discovery of 44,000 year-old cave paintings in Indonesia.

I recommend my Paris friends see the Barbara Hepworth exhibition at the Musee Rodin. Her work is what got me interested in sculpture.

Barbara Hepworth, Contrapuntal Forms, 1965. source. From the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art. I think I prefer her work in marble to other materials. She not only makes it organic, but she makes it human. And in person, the desire to touch and stroke the pieces is palpable.

...but where we meet is the silence behind them. ~Ram Dass

Predominance of the Christmas Spirit

Mondrian himself said that Composition in Black and Gray has a Christmas mood "if one understands the Christmas idea in a really abstract way... the predominance of the spiritual."

As an abstraction, the painting utilizes a simple motif of diagonal lines to divide the canvas into 256 triangles. Mondrian's use of thicker lines to trace out an irregular arrangement of squares produces a twinkling effect at the intersections.

The painting's spirituality derives from the overall visual effect in which the eye wanders across the canvas, an infinite sky full of stars, especially relevant for a particular starry night. Its small size makes this a joyful intimacy, as though this vista is for you alone.

Piet Mondrian, Composition in Black and Gray, 1919. source

Merry Christmas to all.

What we hate most in others...

Markus Reuter and Mark Wingfield (recording under the name TEAR) have released two EPs on Bandcamp: Secret Music and City of Memories. And both EPs are freely available for download. What better way to give these two musicians a try?

You can also freely stream The Undivided Five, the new album from A Winged Victory for the Sullen.

Rolling Stone reports that beginning in 2020 Steve Hackett will perform Genesis' classic live album, Seconds Out, in its entirety. That show is scheduled to start late in 2020 in the UK. No US dates on the schedule. Yet.

Robert Mangold, Four Color Frame Painting No. 11, 1985. I had the pleasure of hearing the artist speak several years back and he explores a motif like this one for many paintings in a row until he loses it.

And the latest from Sonar and David Torn, Tranceportation Vol. 1,  is a keeper. Check out the teaser.

Colin Edwin has a new album coming out in January. Here's the trailer.

Here's a 2-fer from DJ Earworm.

• I always recommend his annual United State of Pop.
• And now we get his Decade of Pop.

We're getting close to award season for movies.

• Check out these Oscar-candidates for best animated shorts.

Lovers of the seven seas will adore Chris Bryan's film MOCEAN.

ONext spring will see a new exhibit installed in the Disney Family Museum: The Walt Disney Studios and World War II. Given my fascination with their wartime film Victory Through Airpower, I would like to see this.

Speaking of WWII, Godsend was the Soviet's code name for a spy within the Manhattan Project. We now know his name: Oscar Seborer.

Some thoughts on multi-cultural, multi-language communication.

The protophobic X boson may exert its force only across the width of an atom's nucleus but if it truly exists it will upset the entire standard model of particle physics.

Have you heard that the 2nd law of thermodynamics (i.e. entropy) controls the fact that time only moves forward and not backward? Not so fast.

Three Red Bull Air Racers fly by Mt. Fuji. From a photo gallery of the Red Bull Air Race. Still can't believe they ended it.

Houston's Rothko Chapel has suffered the same fate as those home renovation shows on HGTV. During its remodel they found a problem with the walls that must be addressed resulting in a 4-month, $1 million delay. Reopening now planned for late spring 2020. “It’s like resoling your shoes, while you’re standing up, without lifting them.”

This one particular black forest cake is the best dessert in Fort Worth. And it's not German, it's Swiss: Schwarzwaldtårta. (Why this article includes a 3D interactive rendering of a black forest cake is beyond me.)

The so-called "creative class" consists of techies, creatives, and knowledge workers. Fort Worth's creative class is growing the second fastest in the country.

Screen shot from a video showing the relative size, appearance, and rotation of the planets. MUST SEE.

Are you a fan of nature and landscape photography? Then checkout the work of Jeff McDonald (on Instagram and Etsy) and George Buxbaum.

2D animation is not dead as evidenced by Klaus. Click through if only to watch the video showing how a scene progresses from rough to final.

I'm not certain it qualifies as history, but here's a history of the poop emoji.

Your essential cured meats. Loves me some mortadella. Saucisson smells like feet.

Five reasons why smart doesn't mean successful. #3 Smart people attach a lot of their self esteem to being smart which can lead to avoidance.

In Ohio, the house of representatives passed a law allowing students to give wrong answers for religious reasons. Any politician who voted for this should be ashamed. Hopefully, the senate will kill this thing dead. Kill it with fire.

Vanadium dioxide, a metal, conducts electricity but not heat.

Have you ever been eating a pop-tart and wondered what whiskey would pair well with it?

I guessed that Oreos' mystery flavor was churros. I just didn't win the prize.

Ze Frank does it again with True Facts: Stinkhorns. And again with Mudskippers.

Sometimes the title says it all: You Can Finally Spend the Night in a Hotel Shaped Like an Anus.

I leave you with Emoji Storm, a real-time animation of every emoji being used on Twitter.

...we fear in ourselves.