Mythbusting…
The Mythbusters– Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman— host a Discovery Channel show by that shared name… Recently they’ve been, alternately, the source of both amazement and of alarm.
For the amazement, click here to see them using an 1100-barrel paint gun to paint the Mona Lisa (by way of demonstrating the difference between CPU and GPU– or serial and parallel processing)… all in 80 milliseconds…
And as for alarm, credit card companies recently successfully nixed a Mythbusters segment exposing RFID’s security flaws, according to co-host Savage. Read the story here… then read this related post on how to hack an RFID-enabled credit card with $8 worth of gear purchased on E-Bay.
As we switch to cash-and-carry, we might wish a simple Happy Birthday to Anna Mary Robertson, who was born on this date in 1860. At age 70 (when her arthritis prevented her continuing embroidery), she began painting, and signing her work with her married name– Moses. A collector named Louis Caldor discovered her paintings in a Hoosick Falls, New York drugstore window in 1938; then in 1939, art Otto Kallir, exhibited some of her work in his Galerie Saint-Etienne in New York– and worldwide demand for her work exploded. Known thereafter as “Grandma Moses,” her work– and there was lots, as she was terrificaly prolific– was acquired by museums, galleries, and collectors in the U.S., Europe, and Japan (where it was especially prized), and adorned the covers of several Hallmark cards…
While she was celebrated in the press and feted by Presidents and Governors, Mrs. Moses was herself circumspect about her accomplishment: “A primitive artist is an amateur whose work sells.”
Grandma Moses