lornamatic

um, wow.

Here’s the story.

From http://www.thecityreview.com/rothko.html:

In notes taken at a Rothko lecture at the Pratt Institute on October 27, 1958, and printed in the catalogue’s notes, the artist allegedly made the following comments:
“The recipe of a work of art – its ingredients – how to make it – the formula.

1. There must be a clear preoccupation with death – intimations of mortality….Tragic art, romantic art, etc., deals with the knowledge of death.

2. Sensuality. Our basis of being concrete about the world. It is a lustful relationship to things that exist.

3. Tension. Either conflict or curbed desire.

4. Irony. This is a modern ingredient – the self effacement and examination by which a man for an instant can go on to something else.

5. Wit and play…for the human element.

6. The ephemeral and chance…for the human element.

7. Hope. 10% to make the tragic concept more endurable.

I measure these ingredients very carefully when I paint a picture. It is always the form that follows these elements and the picture results from the proportions of these elements.

I belong to a generation that was preoccupied with the human figure and I studied it. It was with utmost reluctance that I found that it did not meet my needs. Whoever used it mutilated it. No one could paint the figure was it was and feel that he could produce something that could express the world. I refuse to mutilate and had to find to find another way of expression. I used mythology for a while substituting various creatures who were able to make intense gestures without embarrassment. I began to use morphological forms in order to paint gestures that I could not make people do. But this was unsatisfactory. My current pictures are involved with the scale of human feeling, the human drama, as much of it as I can express.”

“most importantly, there is no danger of strangers finding or stealing keys for unauthorized entry…”

I had no idea. You can hire computer programmers for $9 an hour in this town?

Someone’s Butler-placement service has the PR machine running. From the LATimes’ article (which is the third story on this topic I’ve seen this week) If the butler does it, you’ll pay:

“He could be making $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year at a mansion in Bel-Air with museum-quality furnishings rather than cooped up as a $9-an-hour computer programmer in a cubicle in Mid-Wilshire,” says Baker, who started his company in 2004 after a stint as a recruiter for a search firm.

So glad to know that those with a natural flair for food presentation and flower arranging need no longer suffer the pain of database administration.

Internet, you never cease to amaze me. Now you can shop for your very own hired help, right from the comfort of your own mansion! Although I suppose most people who can afford this have, well, hired help, to search for that sort of thing.

If you store the data, thieves will come.

At least 45.7 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen by hackers who broke into the computer systems at the TJX Cos. in Framingham and the United Kingdom and siphoned off data over a period of several years, making it the biggest breach of personal data ever reported, according to security specialists.

TJX, the Framingham discounter that operates the T.J. Maxx and Marshalls clothing chains, also reported in a regulatory filing yesterday that another 455,000 customers who returned merchandise without receipts had their personal data stolen, including drivers’ license numbers. ‘‘It’s the biggest card heist ever,’’ said Avivah Litan, vice president of Gartner Inc. ‘‘This was obviously done over a long period of time, in many locations. It’s done considerable damage.’’

Full story at boston.com.

I’ve got a bit more to say about credit card security, but for now I’ll leave it with this: Every two to three years, you should clear out your old credit cards. Get new numbers from your bank. It’s a hassle, but if you use a credit card regularly, there’s a great chance it’s stored in old databases all over. I’m not sure how that works for driver’s licenses, or how you’d go about getting a new one.

We might ask, what the hell was TJX doing asking for driver’s license numbers in the first place? Oh right, it was some clever store policy, collecting extra data to deter fraud, in this case when a customer returned an item.

That’ll really show those thieves.