Expansion
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(Ben Heine © Cartoons)
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Little Chaos
.
By Joe Duvernay

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Ageless disparity.
John Leonard would not have it,
But...thou too, art like some god of a Sunday Morning.
With what language a tale is told.
What studied assurance,
what ease of difficult not, delivered.

While looking in other direction...
That one stranded day, you remember it!
One in which you gleaned
maybe you are consigned to this
Auger Enforcement,
This twisting while turned,
This that is done.
This being held from above.
A clue to nothing despite your trying,
this formula too will go the way of Occam's Razor,
Liking `better' improvisation with its structure, simple!
A little chaos going a long way.

Too, on some weekend day quite some time ago..
sorted out whole slew of guarded gates.
Loitered about an empty chasm,
and saw clouds do things clouds ought not.
Two of my pocket watches joined the leaving ships crew.
I ran half awake through five or so wasted evenings in a few fogs.
Algorithms by the threes, came to the dance, dancing across the lawns,
stamping-down the new-grown heather,
that laid lounge-act satisfied moments before.

Pity!

Then, danced along a filtered pianos nuance and break.
Wondered out loud about Sir Francis
'California' Drake.
Never would bow down, except that now, it is a must.
And so, as he apologizes to his tormentors for being victim,
releases into this already mixing soup a new nullification,
one that accepts what it does not,
And wrangles with the rest.

-------------------------

--> From:`DRAGON CONVERSATION'(c)2000 Joe Duvernay. All rights reserved.
--> The poem appeared on Daypoems
--> See other poems by the same author
.

Women in Art
.(Ben Heine © Cartoons)
.

This video is a must see!
.
500 Years
of Female Portraits in West
.

.
Video By Eggman
.

Maltreatment
and the Developing Child
.

(Ben Heine © Cartoons)

.
How Early Childhood Experience
Shapes Child and Culture
.
By Bruce Perry (*)

.

We seek to make the world a better place. No matter our profession or vocation, we share the desire — and the ability — to make a difference in a child's life.

Humans are complex creatures. While having the capacity to be humane, we also have the capacity to be cruel. Why? What determines whether a child grows up to be compassionate, thoughtful, and productive? Or, impulsive, aggressive, hateful, and non-productive? Is it genetic?

Likely not. Human beings become a reflection of the world in which they develop. If that world is safe, predictable, and characterized by relationally and cognitively enriched opportunities, the child can grow to be self-regulating, thoughtful, and a productive member of family, community, and society. In contrast, if the developing child's world is chaotic, threatening, and devoid of kind words and supportive relationships, a child may become impulsive, aggressive, inattentive, and have difficulties with relationships. That child may require special educational services, mental health or even criminal justice intervention.

The challenge for us is to help each child reach his or her potential to be humane. To better understand how, we must appreciate the remarkable malleability of our species and the unique role played by the human brain.
.

The Developing Brain

The human brain mediates our movements, our senses, our thinking, feeling and behaving. The amazing, complex neural systems in our brain, which determine who we become, are shaped early.

In utero and during the first four years of life, a child's rapidly developing brain organizes to reflect the child's environment. This is because neurons, neural systems, and the brain change in a "use-dependent" way. Physical connections between neurons — synaptic connections — increase and strengthen through repetition, or wither through disuse. It follows, therefore, that each brain adapts uniquely to the unique set of stimuli and experiences of each child's world. Early life experiences, therefore, determine how genetic potential is expressed, or not.

As the brain organizes, the lower more regulatory systems develop first. During the first years of life, the higher parts of the brain become organized and more functionally capable. Brain growth and development is profoundly "front loaded" such that by age four, a child's brain is 90% adult size! This time of great opportunity is a biological gift. In a nurturing environment, a child can grow to achieve the full potential pre-ordained by underlying genetics. We promote this by fostering conditions of optimal development.
.

Optimal Development

A child is most likely to reach her full potential if she experiences consistent, predictable, enriched, and stimulating interactions in a context of attentive and nurturing relationships. Aided by many relational interactions — perhaps mother, father, sibling, grandparent, neighbour and more — young children learn to walk, talk, self-regulate, share, and solve problems.

Every child will face new and challenging situations. These stress-inducing experiences per se need not be problematic. Moderate, predictable stress, triggering moderate activation of the stress response, helps create a capable and strong stress-response capacity, in other words, resilience. The first day of kindergarten, for example, is stressful for children. Those embedded in a safe and stable home base overcome the stress of this new situation, able to embrace the challenges of learning.
.

Disrupted Development

While most children experience safe and stable upbringings, we know all too well that many children do not.

The very biological gifts that make early childhood a time of great opportunity also make children very vulnerable to negative experiences: inappropriate or abusive caregiving, a lack of nurturing, chaotic and cognitively or relationally impoverished environments, unpredictable stress, persisting fear, and persisting physical threat. These adverse effects could be associated with stressed, inexperienced, ill-informed, pre-occupied or isolated caregivers, parental substance abuse and/or alcoholism, social isolation, or family violence. Chronic exposure is more problematic than episodic exposure.

In the most extreme and tragic cases of profound neglect, such as when children are raised by animals, the damage to the developing brain — and child — is severe, chronic,and resistant to interventions later in life.
.

The Adaptive Response to Threat

When a child is exposed to any threat, his brain will activate a set of adaptive responses designed to help him survive. There is a continuum of adaptive responses to threat and different children have different adaptive styles. Some use a hyperarousal response (e.g., fight or flight) and some a dissociative response (essentially "tuning out" the impending threat). In most traumatic events, a combination of the two is used.

A child adopting a hyperarousal response may display defiance, easily misinterpreted as wilful opposition. These children may be resistant or even aggressive. They are locked in a persistent "fight or flight" state. They often display hypervigilance, anxiety, panic, or increased heart rate. A hyperarousal response is more common in older children, males, and in circumstances where trauma involves witnessing or playing an active role in the event.

The dissociative response involves avoidance or psychological flight, withdrawing from the outside world and focusing on the inner. The intensity of dissociation varies with the intensity of the trauma. Children may be detached, numb, and have a low heart rate. In extreme cases, they may withdraw into a fantasy world. A dissociative child is often compliant (even robotic), displays rhythmic self-soothing such as rocking, or may faint if feeling extreme distress. Dissociation is more common in young children, females, and during traumatic events characterized by pain or inability to escape.
.

Differential "State" Reactivity

A child with a brain adapted for an environment of chaos, unpredictability, threat, and distress is ill-suited to the modern classroom or playground. It is an unfortunate reality that the very adaptive responses that help the child survive and cope in a chaotic and unpredictable environment puts the child at a disadvantage when outside that context.

When children experience repetitive activation of the stress response systems, their baseline state of arousal is altered. The result is that even when there is no external threat or demand, they are physiologically in a state of alarm, of "fight or flight." When a stressor arises, perhaps an argument with a peer or a demanding school task, they can escalate to a state of fear very quickly. When faced with a typical exchange with an adult, perhaps a teacher in a slightly frustrated mood, the child may over-read the non-verbal cues such as eye contact or touch.

Compared to their peers, therefore, traumatized children may have less capacity to tolerate the normal demands and stresses of school, home, and social life. When faced with a challenge, for example, resilient children are likely to stay calm. Normal children in the same situation may become vigilant or perhaps slightly anxious. Vulnerable children will react with fear or terror.
.

Fear Changes the Way We Think

Children in a state of fear retrieve information from the world differently than children who feel calm. In a state of calm, we use the higher, more complex parts of our brain to process and act on information. In a state of fear, we use the lower, more primitive parts of our brain. As the perceived threat level goes up, the less thoughtful and the more reactive our responses become. Actions in this state may be governed by emotional and reactive thinking styles.

As noted above, when children experience repetitive activation of the stress response systems, their baseline state of arousal is altered. The traumatized child lives in an aroused state, ill-prepared to learn from social, emotional, and other life experiences. She is living in the minute and may not fully appreciate the consequences of her actions. Add alcohol to the mix, or other drugs, and the effect is magnified.
.

Decreasing the Alarm State

It is important to understand that the brain altered in destructive ways by trauma and neglect can also be altered in reparative, healing ways. Exposing the child, over and over again, to developmentally appropriate experiences is the key. With adequate repetition, this therapeutic healing process will influence those parts of the brain altered by developmental trauma. Unfortunately most of our therapeutic efforts fall short of this.

We can also be good role models: in all our interactions with children we can be attentive, respectful, honest, and caring. Children will learn that not all adults are inattentive, abusive, unpredictable, or violent. It is paramount that we provide environments which are relationally enriched, safe, predictable, and nurturing. Failing this, our conventional therapies are doomed to be ineffective.

If a child is in a therapeutic relationship, we can help him better understand the feelings and behaviours that are the legacy of abuse and neglect. Information helps. A traumatized child may act impulsively and misunderstand why — perhaps believing she is stupid, bad, selfish or damaged. We can also teach adults in a child's life about how traumatized children think, feel, and behave.

Among the possible therapeutic options to help maltreated and traumatized children are cognitive-behavioural therapy, individual insight-oriented psychotherapy, family therapy, group therapy, play or art therapy, eye-movement desensitization and re-programming (EMDR), and pharmacotherapy. Each of these has some promising results and many disappointments.

Therapy with maltreated children is difficult for many reasons. In the long term, the wisest strategy is to prevent abusive, neglectful, and chaotic caregiving. In that way, fewer children will require therapy.
.

Prevention and Solutions

We are the product of our childhoods. The health and creativity of a community is renewed each generation through its children. The family, community, or society that understands and values its children thrives; the society that does not is destined to fail. To truly help our children meet their potential, we must adapt and change our world. Some ways to do this follow.

1. Promote education about brain and child development

We must as a society provide enriching cognitive, emotional, social, and physical experiences for children. The challenge is how best to do this. Understanding fundamental principles of healthy development will move us beyond good intentions to help shape sensitive caregiving in homes, early childhood settings, and schools. Research is key. Public education must be informed by good research and by the implementation and testing of educational and intervention programs. An important component of public understanding must be awareness of the power of the media over children.

What to do? Integrate key principles of brain development, child development and caregiving into public education. We presently require more formal education and training to drive a car than to be a parent. More research in child development and basic neurobiology is needed to guide sensible changes in policy, programs and practice.

2. Respect the gifts of early childhood

Enriching environments do exist. Many homes and high-quality, early childhood educational settings provide the safe, predictable, and nurturing experiences needed by young children. Unfortunately, we often squander the wonderful opportunity of early childhood.

At a time when the brain is most easily shaped — infancy and early childhood — we spend the fewest public dollars to influence brain development. However, expenditures on programs designed to change the brain dramatically increase for later stages of development (e.g., mental health, substance abuse or juvenile justice interventions).

Investing in high-quality early childhood programs could avoid the expensive, often inefficient or ineffective, interventions required later. Unfortunately, these expensive interventions can be reactive, fragmented, chaotic, disrespectful and, sadly, sometimes traumatic. Our public systems may recreate the mess that many abused and neglected children find in their families.

What to do? Innovative and effective early intervention and enrichment models exist. Integrate them into the policy and practices in your community. Help the most isolated, at-risk young parents connect with community resources, both pre-natally and post-partum. Demand and support high standards for child care, foster care, education, and child protective service.

3. Address the relational poverty in our modern world

We are designed for a different world than we have created for ourselves. Humankind has spent 99 percent of its history living in small, intergenerational groups. A child's day brought many opportunities to interact with the variety of caregivers available to protect, nurture, enrich, and educate. But, the relational landscape is changing.

Today, with our smaller families, we have less connection with extended families and fewer opportunities to interact with neighbours. Children spend a great deal of time watching television. While we in the western world are materially wealthy, we are relationally impoverished. Far too many children grow up without the number and quality of relational opportunities needed to organize fully the neural networks to mediate important socio-emotional characteristics such as empathy.

What to do? Increase opportunities for children to interact with others, especially those who are good role models. Simple changes at home and school can help: limiting television use, having family meals, playing games together, including neighbours, extended family and the elderly in the lives of children, and bringing retired volunteers into schools to create multi-age educational activities.

4. Foster healthy developmental strengths

Certain skills and attitudes help children meet the inevitable challenges of life. They may even inoculate children against the adverse effects of violence. A child who develops six core strengths (see below) will be resourceful, successful in social situations, resilient, and may recover quickly from stressors and traumatic incidents.

When one or more core strengths does not develop normally, the child may be vulnerable (for example, to bullying and/or being a bully) and may cope less well with stressors. These strengths develop sequentially during the child's life, so every year brings opportunities for their expansion and modification.

What to do? The major providers of early childhood experiences are parents. Supporting and strengthening the family will increase the likelihood of optimal childhood experiences. Also important will be peer and teacher interactions. Specific ways to foster strengths at home and at school are suggested on The ChildTrauma Academy's website (www.ChildTrauma.org).
.

Conclusion

The effects of maltreating and traumatizing children have a complex impact on society. Because our species is always changing, better understanding of these issues would help us develop more effective solutions.

The human brain is designed for life in small, relationally healthy groups. Law, policy and practice that are biologically respectful are more effective and enduring. Unfortunately, many trends in caregiving, education, child protection and mental health are disrespectful of our biological gifts and limitations, fostering poverty of relationships. If society ignores the laws of biology, there will inevitably be neurodevelopmental consequences. If, on the other hand, we choose to continue researching, educating and creating problem-solving models, we can shape optimal developmental experiences for our children. The result will be no less than a realization of our full potential as a humane society.

------------------------

(*) Dr. Bruce Perry served as the Thomas S. Trammel Research Professor of Child Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine and Chief of Psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, from 1992 to 2001. Dr. Perry consults on incidents involving traumatized children, including the Columbine High School shootings, the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Branch Davidian siege and the September 11 terrorist attacks. He has served as the Director of Provincial Programs in Children's Mental Health for Alberta, and is the author of more than 250 scientific articles and chapters. He is an internationally recognized authority in the area of child maltreatment and the impact of trauma and neglect on the developing brain. Dr. Perry attended medical and graduate school at Northwestern University and completed a residency in general psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine and a fellowship in Child an Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Chicago.

--> This article originally appeared on Margaret McCain Lecture Series' Website

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From Digital Divide
to Online Democr@cy
.

(Ben Heine © Cartoons)

.

DIGITAL DIVIDE

What It Is and Why It Matters
.
(www.digitaldivide.org)
.

What It Is
.

"Digital Divide" refers to the gap between those who benefit from digital technology and those who do not. It took digital-divide researchers a whole decade to figure out that the real issue is not so much about access to digital technology but about the benefits derived from it. Examining the situation more closely, it turns out that upper-to-middle classes have high-quality access to digital technology because the profit motive pushes technologists to work hard at creating "solutions" designed specifically for them. In this equation, however, the poor are ignored because the assumption is that designing solutions for them will not be profitable.[1] The result is that even where the poor are provided access to digital technology, it is low-quality. Furthermore, the digital technology they do have access to is often of a design that ends up being harmful rather than beneficial. This, in turn, widens the digital divide.

Consider, for the example, cyber cafés. Years ago, many pointed to their spread as an example demonstrating that the digital divide was shrinking. But when a local youth in a Cambodia village ignores his school work and instead spends his evenings playing violent videogames at a local cyber café, he is not really benefiting from digital technology. Thus giving to the poor digital technology that has been designed for the rich may actually add to the causes of poverty and accelerate the exodus of the rural poor into cities already bursting at the seams.

The new view is that closing the digital divide will be most effectively achieved through a two-pronged approach, one direct and the other indirect: The direct approach will be for governments and businesses to work together to change the incentives that shape digital markets. The indirect approach will be for them to team up on e-government digital technology initiatives that extend rural health care and quality education to the poor. Through these two approaches, the poor will be able to reap many of the same benefits from digital technology now derived by the wealthy.
.

Why Closing the Digital Divide Matters
.

1) Closing the Digital Divide is a precondition for reducing poverty.

Many antipoverty experts believe that closing the Digital Divide is not a top priority, arguing instead that the poor need clean water and jobs before they need computers. However, what they do not realize is that access to digital technology greatly enhances the effectiveness and affordability of efforts to improve the water supply, improve rural health and education, generate jobs and address any of the other interrelated problems of poverty. Closing the digital divide may not necessarily be the silver bullet for reducing poverty, but there is a much lower likelihood of large scale and sustainable poverty reduction without doing so.

2) Closing the Digital Divide is a precondition for resolving terrorism.

Even those who are unconvinced by the antipoverty argument may be convinced by the anti-terrorism argument, which argues that the digital divide contributes to terrorism in three ways:

The broadest correlation between digital divide and terrorism has been made by University of California sociologist Manuel Castells (sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/castells), who argues that religious extremism is a rational, self-protection response made by those who are either left out of the digital revolution or who are being forced to accept modernist influences on terms that they perceive as undermining their core values.

The areas where terrorism is being incubated -- rural Pakistan, Central Asia, and Indonesia -- are areas mired in poverty and not served by digital networks. Terrorists are sheltered by villagers in these areas partly because the villages themselves have little stake in the stability of the international economy.

It is difficult to implement most antipoverty efforts in such rural areas, whether focused on educational or military solutions, without the aid of broadband telecommunications networks.
.

3) Closing the Digital Divide is a precondition for achieving sustainable world markets.

After the dot-com bust in the late 1990s, many came to believe that digital "information industries" had lost their central role in the world economy. They were wrong. This bust merely showed that technology purchases were slowing in saturated economies. Today, Europe and North America no longer are as dominant in technology as they once were. The emerging market countries of Asia are now major drivers of the digital economy and, in that vast region, the spread of wireless networks is stimulating all other dimensions of economic growth. In fact, the biggest technological growth is occurring outside big cities in these countries. As broadband networks spread into the countryside, costs throughout the supply chain will drop. By adjusting their policies to close the digital divide, the major IT and telecom companies are achieving innovations that could spur growth in the advanced countries as well.

[1] For a good assessment of this issue, see the archive of World Development Reports of United Nations Development Programme, http://hdr.undp.org/reports/. Also see International Telecommunications Union's reports on the subject, www.itu.int/ITU-D/digitaldivide)
.

The Governmental Response
.

At first politicians were clueless. What did they know about turning entire countries into “information societies?” Soon, reformers saw “closing the Digital Divide” as a way to undermine the power of entrenched elites in government bureaus who had restrained the spread of new markets into the countryside. Now ministries in some countries have formed reformist coalitions. They are ready to join wireless entrepreneurs to bring the internet into the countryside.

When “digital divide” was first uttered in 1993, the phrase was used by citizen pressure groups who wanted to force the new Internet companies to pay the additional costs of extending their products and services to the poor. The framers of the 1996 US Telecommunications Act, after noting the existence of the Digital Divide, disappointed social activists by insisting it wasn’t government’s role to redress it. The various federal government programs that had been set up to close the Digital Divide in the Clinton era were discontinued under Bush. After 2000 governments in advanced countries no longer pressured high-tech companies to respond to Digital Divide.
.

But as concern over the Digital Divide declined in the US, it surged in emerging markets. Many developing countries searched for a formula to close the Digital Divide which would free them from undue control my foreign interests. By 2002 you could find 1.4 million “digital divide” references to speeches and project descriptions via Google search. The concern culminated in Geneva’s World Summit on Information Society (revisited in Tunis two years later) where 13,000 delegates were convened to discuss the matter. But despite all the speeches and official “targets” to close the Divide, no formula emerged to harness market forces that shape the direction of new technology as it spread into the developing world.
.

Phase one: Promoting A Digital Divide Superfund

Because everyone assumed market forces couldn’t be altered, governments thought the answer must be to create “superfunds” that would subsidize the delivery of digital technology to the poor. Many of the first intergovernmental task forces to close the Digital Divide sought to become “honest brokers” between public and private sectors. They proposed the creation of huge trust funds they thought would be funded by billionaire IT moguls and G-7 governments. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) made a pledge of $15 billion in development assistance to developing countries to promote closing the digital divide. But the Japanese found it difficult to fulfill the pledge after neither the US nor other high tech nations chipped in. Adding to the disappointment, some developing countries found that they were unable to gain revenue from spectrum license fees, which many had touted as a way of funding digital super-funds.
.

Phase Two: E-Readiness

Wanting to embolden reformers, influential researchers in universities, such as superstar economist Jeff Sachs, joined forces with reformers to promote a concept called “e-readiness,” sometimes called “network readiness.” The term refers to quantitative rankings of countries regarding the extent to which they were able to muster the complex policy changes that would be needed to become an “information society.” By 2001 it was clear that some countries were doing a terrific job becoming e-ready, while others were not - a reality that was actually deepening the digital divide between countries. A study by National University of Singapore professor Wong Poh Kam showed that this pattern of deepening inequities between nations was particularly evident in Asia.
.

Phase Three: Taking on the Phone Companies

Many government reformers blamed the “PTTs” for the failure to close the Divide. The term refers to the incumbent “Post, Telegraph and Telephone” companies which set standards and serve as the 800-pound gorillas of telephony. After fifty years of telephony most fixed-line infrastructures were expensive, slow, bulky, and narrowly confined to cities. By 2000, most developing countries had only between 2-5% phone penetration rates, despite prodding by the World Trade Organization’s Telecom Services Act. There was clear evidence that restructuring telecommunications was a pre-requisite to e-readiness. An ITU study found that countries that liberalized or privatized their telecom sector had doubled telephone penetration between 1996 and 2000, compared with only incremental growth by the unreformed countries.
.

Phase Four: Embrace Wireless as a “Disruptive Technology”

Reformers in many countries found that it wasn’t easy to dislodge the entrenched power of the incumbent telecommunications companies, most of which were under the control of powerful government bureaucrats, even after the World Trade Organization passed its “Telecommunications Services Act.” The Act forces WTO members to liberalize their telecommunications regulations and offer spectrum to new companies. Just as in the business sector, some reformers evoked the name of Austrian-born economist Joseph Schumpeter, to argue that the only way to accelerate each country’s transition into information society’s is to promote “disruptive technologies” by backing entrepreneurs whose business models promise to undermine the control of the old guard.
.

Seven Digital Divide Fallacies
.

Those involved in the ten-year effort to close the Digital Divide were all well-intentioned. But we were like blind men describing the elephant as a tusk or a hoof rather and missing the point about the whole elephant. Similarly, closing the Divide turned out to be not a matter of gaining access to computers or cell phones but finding room for both. It is not a matter of promoting personal use of gadgets vs. shared use of gadgets but both. It is not a job for business or government but both. Not about choosing open source software over Windows but both. Similarly, it is not about GSM wireless vs. CDMA but both. Not about bottom-up vs. top-down efforts but both.

In other words, closing the Digital Divide involves building “ecosystems” in which a diverse mix of stakeholders forge alliances that close the Divide. Here are the “blind man” fallacies, each of which are partial truths:
.

FALLACY NUMBER ONE: Closing the Digital Divide is about giving poor people access to computers.

FALLACY NUMBER TWO: Getting the private sector to profitably serve the poor at the "bottom of the pyramid" is the key to closing the Digital Divide.

FALLACY NUMBER THREE: Creating "shared use" of ICT products in the countryside, such as information kiosks that deliver government services, is the key to closing the Digital Divide.

FALLACY NUMBER FOUR: Closing the Digital Divide requires setting up a "superfund" that supports ICT projects for the poor.

FALLACY NUMBER FIVE: The key to closing the Digital Divide is investment in literacy and education.

FALLACY NUMBER SIX: Social entrepreneurs with IT skills must become the prime movers for closing the Divide since they are able to introduce "disruptive technologies" to serve the poor.

FALLACY NUMBER SEVEN: If governments will only open up their telecom sectors to foreign competition, and make themselves "e-ready", market forces all by themselves will cause the Divide to close.
.

--> Read the explanation of each fallacy on digitaldivide.org

.

Nine Digital Divide Truths
.

Ten years of efforts to ponder the Digital Divide have not been for nothing. Here are the nine lessons about Closing the Divide which have been learned by those on the front ranks of this movement. All these lessons have been incorporated into the model being developed by DigitalDivide.org.
.

TRUTH NUMBER ONE:

The Divide is widening, not narrowing, and at an ever-increasing rate.

TRUTH NUMBER TWO: Closing the Digital Divide may be the only way to make globalization work for the poor.

TRUTH NUMBER THREE: The consequence of not closing the Divide is terrorism.

TRUTH NUMBER FOUR: Closing the Digital Divide is fundamentally about empowerment, that is, it is about using new technologies to empower the poor just as they now empower the rich.

TRUTH NUMBER FIVE: Closing the Digital Divide is the only way to sustain the growth of world markets.

TRUTH NUMBER SIX: World leaders from every sector -- business, government, academia, NGOs -- can benefit from closing the Divide. Yet no one sector has the incentives to lead the effort to close the Divide.

TRUTH NUMBER SEVEN: Closing the Digital Divide requires building an "enterprise ecosystem" that offers "end to end solutions" for the poor.

TRUTH NUMBER EIGHT: The midlevel countries in relatively advanced emerging markets, not the poorest countries, are the best settings for experimental efforts to close the Digital Divide.

TRUTH NUMBER NINE: Closing the digital divide involves using new technologies to formalize the "informal economy," thereby bringing the poor into established markets.
.

--> Read the explanation of each truth on digitaldivide.org

------------------------

--> The analysis above originally appeared on digitaldivide.org
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To a Friend, Juha.
(Ben Heine © Cartoons)

The Artist's Little Boy
.
(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)
.

Teach Me To Paint
.
By The Poetryman

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"There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot,
but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence,
transform a yellow spot into the sun." (Pablo Piccaso)

Teach me to paint!
Teach me to paint the sun like you, daddy!
It’s better that your life be painted first, my child,

And from its color you might then paint the sun.

You mean like you?

No… I mean like you.

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman
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Thank you dear Mark for creating such beautiful
and unexpected poem and photomontage for my birthday!
.

B. Heine by Marcin Bondarowicz

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Graphic art by Marcin Bondarowicz
.

This is a portrait of me by the talented Polish artist Marcin Bondarowicz (visit his Website and online portfolio). Marcin makes paintings and cartoons with an incredible and unique style. He masters a large quantity of graphic techniques (Read his full biography below).

There is a long "portrait story" between Marcin and I. See, for instance the first portrait he did of me and the first portrait I did of him.

Now, it's my turn again and I intend to make a painting, not a simple cartoon. But I must say that I really don't know how I could do better than the above image...

Thank you Marcin, you know how much I admire you and your splendid work. (The image below is Marcin's latest graphic production)
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Marcin Bondarowicz

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Marcin Bondarowicz is a painter, cartoonist and photographer. He was born in 1976 in Starachowice, Poland. He lives now in Poland as a freelance artist. He also publishes his cartoons on several Websites dedicated to the cartoons.

Marcin Bondarowicz works in traditional and digital graphic. He is doing all sort of illustrations in various techniques such as: oil painting, acrylic, computer illustration. Marcin has recently been working as a journalist specialized into press illustration.
.

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Education and qualifications

The Instytut of Technology in Radom: Poland [ masters degree in graphic design and painting ]
Here are some of Marcin’s achievements and rewards :

· Leader of artistic set in 1991

· Rewarded by Rector for active work during study

· Prize winner in a competition for a poster connected with preventing drug habit and integration of local community

· Prize winner in a photo competition: International Year of The Family in 1994-2004, subject mother and a child USA 2004

· The Nomination for the reward in the International Cartoon Competition Satyrykon 2005, category humor and social satire Poland

· The Special Award in BIRD2005 International Art Award CHINA

· The Bronze Prize in The 2nd WINE International Invitation Cartoon Exhibition CHINA 2005

· The Honourable Mentions [FOR-PENCIL] in The International Competition of Graphic Humour FOR pro FOR 2006 [Joke for For 2006 ] Praha, Czech Republic 2006

· Finalist of Sprito di Vino 7th International Competition for young artists of satirical cartoons concerning World Wine, Italy 2006

· Laureat The International Competition of Graphic Humour FOR pro FOR 2006 Praga Czechy - Honourable FÓR- pencil

· Sezond Prize in The Competition of a Caricature and a Short Comic Strip – Serbia 2006 THE CARICATURE WITHOUT WORDS - Free Form

· First Prize in The 6th International Contest of Pictorial Humour and Flash Humour "New technologies" BARAKALDO 2006 Spain

· Honorable Mention in The Second Baku International Cartoon Contests-2006

· Honourable Prize in The 1th International China Olympic Cartoon Competition for January, 2007

Marcin Bondarowicz has cooperated as an illustrator and sarcastic drawer with newspapers such as :

Harvard Business Review Poland, Manager Magazyn Polish Edition, BusinessWeek Polish Edition, Poland Monthly, Przegląd Podatkowy, Puls Biznesu, Gazeta Bankowa, Dziennik Zachodni, Integracja Europejska, Nowy Robotnik, Trybuna Robotnicza, Najwyższy CZAS, Regiony, Nowy Tygodnik Popularny, Gazeta Samorządu i Administracji, Le MONDE Diplomatique, Yeni Akrep – New Skorpion International Cartoon Magazine, INPRECOR Correspondance de presse internationale, KIKS and many more.
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Marcin Bondarowicz (Ben Heine © Cartoons)

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Hoverstop
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(Ben Heine © Cartoons)
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This company (Hoverstop) has created an ergonomic mouse that helps to avoid RSI (Repetitive Stress Injuries) when working with a computer. If you are not using the Hoverstop mouse for more than 10 seconds, it will vibrate softly to remind you to take your hand away and relax! We intend to create a Website and a game to show to children the importance of this specific ergonomic mouse...

--> See a previous post about Hoverstop
--> Visit Hoverstop's Website
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Cartoon gallery on Azercartoon (click on icon)

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View Marcin Bondarowicz's gallery (click on icon)

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Skype

(Ben Heine © Cartoons)
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Skype is a peer-to-peer Internet telephony network founded by the entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, also founders of the file sharing application Kazaa and the peer-to-peer television application Joost. It competes against existing open VoIP protocols such as SIP, IAX, and H.323. The Skype Group, acquired by eBay in October 2005, has headquarters in Luxembourg, with offices in London, Tallinn, Prague and San Jose, California.

Skype has experienced rapid growth in both popular usage and software development since launch, both of its free and its paid services. The Skype communications system is notable for its broad range of features, including free voice and video conferencing, its ability to use peer to peer (decentralized) technology to overcome common firewall and NAT (Network address translation) problems, its use of transparent, strong encryption and its extreme countermeasures against reverse engineering of the software or protocol.

The main difference between Skype and VoIP clients is that Skype operates on a peer-to-peer model, rather than the more traditional server-client model. The Skype user directory is entirely decentralised and distributed among the nodes in the network, which means the network can scale very easily to large sizes (currently over 171 million users) without a complex and costly centralised infrastructure.

Skype also routes calls through other Skype peers on the network to ease the traversal of Symmetric NATs and firewalls. This, however, puts an extra burden on those who connect to the Internet without NAT, as their computers and network bandwidth may be used to route the calls of other users.

The Skype client's application programming interface (API) opens the network to software developers. The Skype API allows other programs to use the Skype network to get "white pages" information and manage calls.

The Skype code is closed source, and the protocol is not standardized. The Windows user interface was developed in Pascal using Delphi, the Linux version is written in C++ with Qt, and the Mac OS X version is written in Objective-C with Cocoa. Parts of the client use Internet Direct (Indy), an open source socket communication library.
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SkypeOut

SkypeOut allows Skype users to call traditional telephone numbers, including mobile telephones, for a fee. This fee is as low as USD$0.024 per minute for most developed countries, and as high as USD$2.142 per minute for calls to the dependency of Diego Garcia. Beginning January 2007, Skype also charges an equivalent of 0.039 Euro for each SkypeOut call, in addition to the ordinary rate. After 180 days of not making a SkypeOut call the Skype balance expires. As of January, 30th 2007, SkypeOut calls to Canada and The United States are no longer free.

SkypeOut calls to most toll free numbers in France (+33 800, +33 805, +33 809) , Poland: (+48 800) , UK: (+44 500, +44 800, +44 808 ) and the United States and Canada: (+1 800, +1 866, +1 877, +1 888 ) are free for all Skype users, even if they do not have the SkypeOut service. However, for many other countries SkypeOut doesn't support calling toll-free and premium rate numbers, and SkypeOut doesn't support calling emergency numbers (such as 112 in Europe or 911 in the U.S.A.).

Quality of service is not guaranteed and dropouts, broken connections and compression distortion are frequently observed by users.
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Skype Me
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By connecting users around the world via voice, Skype has opened up a wellspring of people who want to communicate with people from other countries. To facilitate these people, Skype lets users set their status to "Skype Me," which indicates they are open to callers from around the world. Setting one's status to Skype Me attracts a number of callers who want to practice a foreign language (usually English), in addition to the expected scammers and spammers.
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Criticisms

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Skype has been criticised over its use of a proprietary protocol, instead of an open standard like H.323, Inter-Asterisk eXchange, or SIP, since this makes it much more difficult, if not impossible, for other developers to interact with Skype. Some have theorized that the decision was made to prevent competition over business with SkypeOut.

Due to the design of the protocol, if given access to an unrestricted network connection, Skype clients can become supernodes. These supernodes hold together the peer-to-peer network and provide data routing for other clients behind more restrictive firewalls, which can generate a significant amount of bandwidth usage. For this reason, some network providers, such as universities, have banned the use of Skype.

A third party paper analyzing the security and methodology of Skype was presented at Black Hat Europe 2006. It analyzed Skype and made these observations:

• Heavy use of anti debugging techniques (used to deter development of alternative clients, hacking tools)
• Significant use of obfuscated code (slows reverse engineering, less description of what program code does internal to the executable file)
• Keeps chatting on the network, even when idle (even for non-supernodes. may be used for NAT traversal)
• Blind trust in anything else speaking Skype
• Ability to build a parallel Skype network
• Lack of privacy (Skype has the keys to decrypt sessions)
• Heap overflow in Skype
• Skype makes it hard to enforce a (corporate) security policy
• "No way to know if there is/will be a backdoor"

SkypeOut rates are "per minute" based, contrary to the trend in charges for calls from conventional telephones. In some countries, many calls are charged at a specified fixed amount per call. In this method, SkypeOut is more expensive for longer calls, whereas it is cheaper for relatively short calls.

Another criticism of Skype has been content filtering.

While available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems, there is no Skype version for the Palm OS, used in mobile devices like the Treo 700p smartphone.

Furthermore, Skype does not support Windows Vista (or at least not fully). This problem is further compounded by the fact that Skype has not announced any kind of Vista-Compatible Skype release date (or version), even though Vista has been on the market for a long time now. For customers that rely on Skype, this may prevent them from upgrading to Vista completely.

Skype has been criticized in the Linux community for bugs and delays in the Linux version . The Mac OS X version also lacks some of the advanced features included in Skype for Windows.

There have also been criticisms of Skype blocking and disabling customer accounts from using the SkypeOut service .

Also, when using SkypeOut to call toll-free numbers, users may experience call degradation when using the keypad to enter numerals into automated systems.

Skype was also found to access BIOS data to identify individual computers and provide DRM protection for plug-ins.
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Legal and political aspects

Skype faces challenges from two main legal and political directions - challenges to its intellectual property, and political concerns by governments who wish to exert more formal control over aspects of their telecommunications systems.

Skype's technology is proprietary and closed to outside review. It is unknown to what extent it can potentially intrude upon other parties' patents and copyrights. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to expect legal challenges from third parties concerning Intellectual Property issues.

Skype also supply Skype-in phonelines without requiring proof of address, which is illegal in some countries.
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Legal challenges

Streamcast lawsuit

In January, 2006, StreamCast Networks filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, accusing Skype of stealing its peer-to-peer technology. The $4.1 billion lawsuit did not initially name eBay, Skype's parent company; however, the lawsuit was amended in a filing with Federal Court in the Central District of California on May 22, 2006, to include eBay and 21 other parties as defendants.

Streamcast seeks a worldwide injunction on the sale and marketing of eBay's Skype Internet voice communication products, as well as billions of dollars in unspecified damages.

IDT lawsuit

On June 1, 2006, Net2Phone (the Internet telephone unit of IDT Corp.) filed a lawsuit against eBay and Skype accusing the unit of infringing U.S. Patent 6,108,704 , which was granted in 2000.
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Political issues

China 2005

For a brief period, SkypeOut was blocked in some regions of mainland China (notably Shenzhen) by the operator China Telecom for undisclosed reasons; it has been speculated that this may relate to SkypeOut's ability to take lucrative international and long-distance business away from the People's Republic of China's state-controlled telecommunications companies.

Skype is one of many companies (others include AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco) which have cooperated with the Chinese government in implementing a system of Internet censorship in mainland China. Critics of such policies argue that it is wrong for companies to assist in such policies, which might allow them to profit from censorship and restrictions on freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Human rights advocates such as Human Rights Watch and media groups such as Reporters Without Borders state that in their view, if companies stopped contributing to the authorities' censorship efforts the government could be forced to change.

Niklas Zennström, chief executive to Skype, told reporters that its joint venture partner in China is operating in compliance with domestic law. "Tom Online had implemented a text filter, which is what everyone else in that market is doing," said Mr Zennström. "Those are the regulations," he said. "I may like or not like the laws and regulations to operate businesses in the UK or Germany or the US, but if I do business there I choose to comply with those laws and regulations. I can try to lobby to change them, but I need to comply with them. China in that way is not different."

France 2005

In September 2005, the French Ministry of Research, acting on advice from the general secretariat of national defence, issued an official disapproval of the use of Skype in public research and higher education; some services are interpreting this decision as an outright ban. The exact reasons for the decision were not given, but speculatively may relate to issues noted earlier, relating to inability to monitor the nature of information being communicated, possible extreme resource usage, or unknown potential actions of the software.

United States, CALEA 2006

In May 2006, the FCC successfully applied the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act to allow wiretapping on digital phone networks. Skype is not yet compliant to the Act, and has so far stated that they do not plan to become compliant.

India 2006

In December 2006, the Government of India announced they are preparing a crackdown on Internet telephony services, citing security risks and loss of revenue. The clampdown is targeted at outsourcers and other Indian IT businesses that use foreign owned Internet telephony services, such as Skype and Yahoo!, to cut their phone bills and evade the six percent revenue share and 12 percent tax imposed on local services by the government. According to The Times of India, companies must reveal the names of licensed service providers they purchase bandwidth and internet telephony minutes from. Companies will also have to undertake that they will not use the services of unlicensed internet service providers.

United Arab Emirates 2006

Skype was abruptly blocked in the UAE for undisclosed reasons—Skype users in the United Arab Emirates are being blocked from the Skype.com site, which prevents them from buying minutes for use with SkypeOut and taking advantage of deeply discounted international calling rates. The blockage has been speculated to originate within Etisalat, the only ISP in the UAE. Since Etisalat has a monopoly on telephony there, the motive could be economic, or it could be one of political control due to Skype's encryption of conversations.

Oman

The Sultanate of Oman has also blocked access to the Skype.com website preventing users from accessing skypeout in order to maintain Omantel's monopoly on the telecommunications market in the country. This has also to do with security issues as well as economic ones as it is difficult to monitor the calls made with skype. If one is to attempt to reach the Skype webpage, the monitor says: "Access Denied (policy_denied) Your system policy has denied access to the requested URL. For assistance, contact your network support team." Many other Persian Gulf countries pursue similar policies regarding Skype for largely the same reasons.

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--> Source: Wikipedia
--> Read the full article
--> Visit Skype
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Heavy Remnants
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(Ben Heine © Cartoons)
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Arrogant Sea
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By The Poetryman
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The grand vessel has tilted its lustrous bow
Into the heavy remnants of an arrogant sea
And is set to acquire more useless weight.

In this great ship now grounded we passengers must ask:
Where are the voices thundering with rescue?
Where are the weapons of mutiny buried?
Deep beneath the dismal granite of a callous sea?
Or here, in the thickset shell of humankind
Where heroes have beaten back upon greater odds?

Might they have died for nothing?
Might we squander their hope given us,
Their lives plunge `neath the icy waters?

The grand vessel has tilted its lustrous bow
Into the heavy remnants of an arrogant sea
And is set to acquire more useless weight.

Where? Where is the anger in our voices?
Where are the urgent pleas in our bearings?
Where are the new heroes most willing to march sternward
Lifting voices with the immense weight of atonement?

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman
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Time
.(Ben Heine © Cartoons)

Tribute to my beautiful wife Marta

MOderNA LISA
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(Ben Heine © Cartoons)

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Shattered Images of Mona Lisa
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By M. Gale
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David Teixidor Buenaventura, Gioconda 2001
Aimee Brune Pages, Leonardo painting the Mona Lisa
Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa
Leonardo da Vinci, La Belle Ferronniere
Attributed to Salai, Monna Vanna
Leonardo da Vinci, Saint John the Baptist
Leonardo da Vinci, Virgin and Child with Saint Anne
Master of the Fontainebleau School, Gabrielle d'Estrees and one of her Sisters
Albrecht Durer, Melencolia I
Andy Warhol, Thirty Are Better Than One
Raphael, Lady with a Unicorn
Raphael, Portrait of a Young Woman
Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Isabella d'Este
Giulio Romano, Portrait of a Woman
Andrea del Verrocchio, Sleeping Youth
Leonardo da Vinci, Self Portrait
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Raphael and La Fornarina
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Mademoiselle Caroline Riviere
Franco-Flemish, Profile Portrait of a Lady
Robert Campin, Woman
Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Margareta van Eyck
Pisanello, Cecilia Gonzaga
Piero del Pollaiuolo, Profile of a Lady
Attributed to Piero del Pollaiuolo, Portrait of a Man
Fra Filippo Lippi, Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement
Robert Campin, Double portrait
Jan van Eyck, Portrait of a Man
Sandro Botticelli, Portrait of a Man Holding a Medal of Cosimo de' Medici
Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q.
Salvador Dali, Self Portrait as Mona Lisa
Marcel Duchamp; Man Ray (photo), Duchamp as Rrose Selavy
Yasumasa Morimura, Mona Lisa in Pregnancy

MONA LISA as La Gioconda, Donna Velata, Monna Vanna, La Fornarina, La Belle Ferronniere, Lady with a Unicorn, Gabrielle d'Estrees, Mademoiselle Caroline Riviere, Rrose Selavy, Mao Lisa, Mammary Lisa, Pneumonia Lisa, Gioconda 2001...


Influential 'Woman'

Leonardo's portrait of Mona Lisa, probably the most famous painting in the world has been interested by the public for more than 500 years. It has been reproduced and discussed by artists throughout the history. Even historians and scientists (like Sigmund Freud) tried to reveal the identity of the sitter and the time of the painting’s creation. Although the painting is not dated nor signed the author is known, but the time of its creation is a cause of many discussions. There are no final answers, but there are a lot of theories which are mostly based on writings of Vasari and his contemporaries:

Leonardo undertook to execute, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of Monna Lisa, his wife; and toiling it for four years, he left it unfinished; and the work is now in collection of King Francis of France, at Fontainebleu. In this head, whoever wished to see how closely art could imitate nature was able to comprehend it with ease; for in it were counterfeited all the minuteness that with subtlety may be painted, seeing that the eyes had that luster and watery sheen which are always seen in life, and around them were all those rosy and pearly tints, as well as the lashes, which can not be represented without the greatest subtlety. The eyebrows, though his having shown the manner in which the hairs spring from the flesh, here more close, there more scanty, and curve according to pores of the skin, could not be more natural. The nose, with its beautiful nostrils, rosy and tender appeared to be alive. The mouth, with its parting, and with its ends united by the red of the lips to the flesh tints of the face, seemed, in truth, to be not colors but flesh. In the pit of the throat, if one gazed upon it intently, could be seen the beating of the pulse. And, indeed, it may be said that it was painted in such a manner as to make every valiant craftsman, whoever he might be, tremble and lose heart. He made also of his device: Mona Lisa being very beautiful, he always employed, while he was painting her portrait, persons to play and sing, and jesters, who might make her remain merry, in order to take away that melancholy which painters are often wont to give the portraits they paint. And in this work of Leonardo's there was a smile so pleasing, that it was a thing more divine than human to behold; and it was held to be something marvelous, since the reality was not more alive.
(Giorgo Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, G. Du C de Vere, translation by D. Ekserdian, New York, 1996)

Despite its undisputable historical value, Vasari's writing shouldn't be taken too seriously. This is clear when we take a look at his description of Mona Lisa. Vasari speaks about a beautiful sitter, praises her elegant eyelashes and realistically painted eyebrows. If we compare Mona Lisa with other sitters of that time, we can hardly say she is a beauty and Leonardo never painted her eyelashes or eyebrows, so we can assume that Vasari never saw the painting in person or that he was describing another painting.

The only reliable explanation of the 'mysterious Mona' lies within the painting itself. A painting created by a philosopher and an artist like Leonardo is not merely a beautiful image for decorating a 'Medicean saloon', but the painter's statement-his word. Leonardo literally encrypted his view of the world in this painting, its dimensions and image. He was a true master who besides his perfect technique enabled the viewer to read (watch) and understand the painting in layers. This is probably the reason why Mona Lisa and her direct flirting with the viewer remained 'mysterious' despite her popularity. Or to put it in other words - her 'mysterious smile' made her an icon.

Let us leave unsolved the riddle of the expression on Mona Lisa's face, and note the indisputable fact that her smile has exercised no less powerful a fascination on the artist than on all who have looked at it for the last four hundred years. From that date the captivating smile reappears in all his pictures and in those of his pupils. As Leonardo's Mona Lisa is a portrait, we cannot assume that he added on his own account such an expressive feature to her face - a feature that she did not herself possess. The conclusion seems hardly to be avoided that he found this smile in his model and fell so strongly under its spell that from then on he bestowed it on the free creations of his phantasy. This interpretation, which cannot be called far-fetched, is put forward, for example, by Konstantinowa (1907):

'During the long period in which the artist was occupied with the portrait of Mona Lisa del Giocondo, he had entered into the subtle details of the features on this lady's face with such sympathetic feeling that he transferred its traits - in particular the mysterious smile and the strange gaze - to all the faces that he painted or drew afterwards. The Gioconda's peculiar facial expression can even be perceived in the picture of John the Baptist in the Louvre; but above all it may be clearly recognized in the expression on Mary's face in the Madonna and Child with St. Anne'...
(Sigmund Freud, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood , Standard edition, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1990)

Mona Lisa has been reappearing in many disguises. Like Orlando, she has changed her sex and identity throughout reproductions, interpretations and reinterpretations by numerous artists. She was a man and a woman, a hooker and a saint, a mother and a mistress, an aristocrat and a peasant...

Leonardo's Mona Lisa can also be understood as an icon of the birth of the modern subject. A subject that is no longer one-dimensional but divided like Durer's angel(s) in Melencolia I. In Melencolia I and in Mona Lisa, the question of sex prevails over the identity of the sitter. It seems as if the artist is trying to tell us on a conscious or a subconscious level that the definition of sex does not lie in a statement that a man is a man and a woman a woman, but that each one of us carries within a male and a female side.

Whether Mona Lisa is the painter's self portrait, which was discussed by Marcel Duchamp in his interpretation L.H.O.O.Q. will probably never be proved. But we can claim that Leonardo is a brilliant master, who tells us much more through this painting than we may think when we first look at it

If we cast everything else aside, the indisputable fact that Mona Lisa been the audience’s favorite for more than 500 years remains. She doesn’t loose on her value, on the contrary, she again and again arouses new associations and feelings. As the representative of the »classical«, she was the object of hatred for the modernists. An image that should be desacralized (torn, drawn on it, erased ...). Post-modernism has through Warhol put her beside Marilyn Monroe and Mao, the icons of the modern time - the modern saints. Today, she can be even found in the 'notorious art' of today - advertising.


Myth of LISA

According to mythology, Leonardo never finished the painting, but was constantly completing it which is visible on x-ray. Leonardo hasn't separated from it until his death, and it is supposed he took it with him to France where it was later sold to the French king Francis I. In 1550s, Vasari wrote that the painting was owned by the king, but in 1625 it is mentioned by Cassiano Del Pozzo as being one of the art pieces in The Royall French Collection in Fontainebleu.

The name La Joconda was first mentioned in 1525 in a heritage list of the painter Salai, Leonardo's student and heir, who left it to his sisters in Milan. The written record describes a portrait of a lady named La Joconda. If Salai and Vasari are describing the same painting, it is not known how it came from Milan, where it was taken by Salai when he returned to Italy after the death of his teacher, back to France.

There are theories that the painting was originally wider, so both of the columns on the left and on the right side were visible. If we take a look at the direct copy of the Mona Lisa, Raphael's Lady with a Unicorn and his Portrait of a Lady, the theory is confirmed, because the columns are clearly visible on both of them. It is rather unusual for Leonardo to base his composition in a way that the columns are cut off and only a part of the capitals are visible. It is also unusual that somebody would just cut the painting. I doubt that the painting was ever owned by somebody who would cut it just so it would fit a frame. If the painting was originally bigger, it is most probable that the 'vandal' was Leonardo himself. But we can only guess why and when that happened...

...Maybe in the following years (in France, where he was studying architecture?), Leonardo wanted to sign the painting through gematry and because of that he cut it into the desirable width? But because he was also a master of composition he didn't destroy it with the cutting, but it only gained on composition.

It is also possible that it is not named La Gioconda after the real person Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, but after an Italian word giocare (playing) which would present Mona Lisa as a 'merry lady' or an image playing with us. Until now, we have no indisputable evidence about how her name should be written: La Gioconda, La Giocconda, or La Joconda.

It is mentioned in Salai's will that the portrait of the Lady (Quadro de una dona aretata) was named La Joconda (altered to read la Honda). But in his work Vite de piu eccellenti architetti, scultori e pittori, published in 1550 in Florence, Vasari mentions Mona Lisa as a portrait of Francesco del Giocondo's wife Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo or abbreviated - Monna Lise del Giocondo (Monna is abbreviation for Madonna).

The identity of the sitter has been intensively discussed in the last century. The leading role has been besides Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo given to Costanza d'Avalos, Isabella d'Este, Isabela Gualandi and Guilliano de' Medici's mistress Pacifica Brandano. Sigmund Freud suspected the possibility that was Leonardo’s mother Caterina who possessed the mysterious smile:

...It may very well have been that Leonardo was fascinated by Mona Lisa's smile for the reason that it awoke something in him which had for long lain dormant in his mind - probably an old memory. This memory was of sufficient importance for him never to get free of it when it had once been aroused; he was continually forced to give it new expression...

Vasari mentions that 'heads of laughing women' formed the subject of Leonardo's first artistic endeavors.... 'In his youth he made some heads of laughing women out of clay, which were reproduced in plaster, and some children's heads which were as beautiful as if they had been modeled by the hand of a master ...'

Thus we learn that he began his artistic career by portraying two kinds of objects; and these cannot fail to remind us of the two kinds of sexual objects that we have inferred from the analysis of his vulture-phantasy. If the beautiful children's heads were reproductions of his own person as it was in his childhood, then the smiling women are nothing other than repetitions of his mother Caterina, and we begin to suspect the possibility that it was his mother who possessed the mysterious smile - the smile that he had lost and that fascinated him so much when he found it again in the Florentine lady.
(Sigmund Freud, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood , Standard edition, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1990)

The most intriguing theory is the one ascribing Mona Lisa Leonardo's features. It is interesting that Mona Lisa and Leonardo's Self portrait of an old painter are very similar if we ignore the age difference. What if Leonardo wanted to tease the viewer and show him that what he sees is for not what it really is (or that another person does not see the same thing as himself?), but that his phantasm lies in-between. A man or a woman - what is it that separates one from another - or maybe both?


In Searching of MONA

Leonardo da Vinci wrote some observations in connection to drawing of the figure (portrait) in his literary works:

Never make the head turn the same way as torso, nor the arm and leg move together on the same side. And if the face is turned to the right shoulder, make all the parts lower in the left than on the right; and when you turn the body with the breast outwards, if the head turns to the left side, make the parts on the right side higher than those on the left. (The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, Oxford, 1883)

Mona Lisa was very different from other portraits made until that time, because she was painted sitting down and not as a bust or drawn in profile like Italian painters did. The portrait was larger and included more of the sitter’s body. This invention of Leonardo's influenced the development of a completely new way of portrait drawing which was followed by many until the 19th century.

The other important Leonardo's invention that gives the painting its mysterious character is the so-called sfumato technique. It means painting shadows with subtle shade transitions created with fingers that produced a special hazy effect on the painting.

The third important feature of Mona Lisa is the look of the sitter which is directed at the viewer. This 'trick' has already been used by the northern painters when painting portraits and self portraits. One of the fist portraitist, who painted a sitter looking directly at the viewer was Netherlandish painter Jan Van Eyck. In this way a completely different communication with the beholder is made, for he is directly addressed by the 'image'. The viewer is not merely an observer - as he is with other three-quarter and profile portraits of the northern-Renaissance art until Van Eyck - but becomes a part of the story.

Half-length cutting with stress on almost realistically painted face is typical for the northern portraits in the second quarter of the 15th century (from 1430s on, with Jan Van Eyck and Robert Campin). The cutting slowly becomes bigger and the hands of the sitter which have the same cutting as the face are included. A neutral, monochrome background which emphasizes the expression of the sitter is also very typical for these portraits. In the second half of the 15th century, the portrait opens into landscape in Italy and The Netherlands. Background is represented as a wallpaper or as a window view in front of which the sitter is placed.

Portraits of the Italian painters from the first half of the 15th century have less distinctive features and the person is usually painted from the profile. Such kind of portraits were initially used for the portrait medals, introduced by Pisanello in 1430s. His medal for Cecilia Gonzaga is the first known Renaissance medal to portray a woman. The profile portraits in the paintings were mostly abandoned in the late fifteenth century, although they were still used for special occasions (memorial portraits).

According to Campbel the long standing preference for this view was in part due not only to the long tradition of portraying donors in profile in sacred art and to the influence of classical medals and coins, but also perhaps to the possibility of creating an absolutely faithful likeness of the face by using its shadow profile.
(Italian paintings of the Fifteenth century, The Collections of the National Gallery of Art – Systematic Catalogue, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2003, pp. 592-593.)

The oldest three-quarter portrait is one of Rudolph IV of Hapsburg from the end of the 14th century (exhibited in the Erbischotliches Dozesanmuseum in Vienna). Since 1520s on, this type of portrait has been frequently used all over northern Europe. In 1450s in Rome, French painter Jean Fouquet depicted Pope Eugene IV as a three-quarter portrait. This painting was probably well known by Italian artists and wealthy patrons of arts.

The oldest Italian three-quarter portrait is Cardinal Ludovico Trevisan by Montegno from 1459. However the sitter appears as a bust and his hands are not included in the picture. The only exception is Portrait of a Man by Andrea della Castagno dated in the middle of the 15th century, which has all the characteristics of the northern three-quarter portrait looking at the viewer. The only difference is in the details of the brush which makes it incomparable to Netherlandish portraits by Campin, Van Eyck or van der Weyden.

Northern and southern painters knew each other through their original works (the Netherlandish painters in the Medicean collection), reproductions circling around and also through traveling (Durer often traveled to Italy, Jacopo de Barbari spent three years in Nuremberg etc.). The three-quarter portrait (look pointed into the beholder and often including arms) which had been through Robert Campin, Jan Van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden known in the northern European countries in the first half of the 15th century, appeared in Italy in 1470s with Sandro Botticelli's and Leonardo da Vinci's paintings.


Double (Self?) Portrait

Early Renaissance portraits of women were painted mostly for weddings. Most of them seem to date from the first years of marriage, after which civic laws dictated that women should dress more decently and refrain from wearing jewelry. Lippi's bridal portrait Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement (about 1435-1436) is the first preserved solo portrait in Florentine Renaissance. The painter’s treatment of the motif is highly unusual, since the husband Lorenzo Scolari is painted next to the bride Angiola Sapiti and as a reverse, a mirror image of her.

There are a lot of double portraits, husband and wife or a donator and Madonna, where two portraits contribute to the whole. Van Eyck's Man in a Turban dated in 1433 and Portrait of Margareta van Eyck (probably the painter's wife) dated in 1439 are especially interesting portraits, because they are not compatible in dimensions but are very similar. Some assume that Man in a Turban is the self portrait as it was described in the inventory of Lord Erandel's collection in 1655. The painting is also Van Eyck's first known portrait with the sitter looking at the beholder, which was later on used by Durer and Italian Renaissance painters.

Van Eyck probably signed himself through the image in the mirror in Betrothal of the Arnolfini. Johannes de Eych fuit hic / 1434, meaning Van Eyck was here is written above the mirror where two persons are painted. The man in a red turban could be the author’s self portrait. A figure in a red turban wearing a fur coat is painted in the background in the middle of the canvas in his Virgin of Chancellor Rolin. This type of signature where the author is painted as a commentator on the picture were often used by Renaissance artists. It was applied by Durer in numerous paintings, by Botticelli in Adoration of the Magi (Medici Adoration), by Raphael in School of Athens...

If Man in a Turban is really Van Eyck's self portrait, than it is the first independent self portrait known in the history of painting. Since then, painters often painted themselves in different periods of their lives, with various attributions in various disguises... often as an 'imitation' or a commentary of the most famous (self) portrait - Mona Lisa.


MOderN(A) LISA

Modernist artists fought against everything old and so Mona Lisa as the representative of 'the Classic' became the object of hatred and despise. In 1919, at the peak of Dadaism, Dadaist artists tried to destroy a lot of 'old things' but most of all, they wanted to change the old patterns of thinking and Mona Lisa was the first victim.

In the year 1919 on the 400th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, Duchamp took a reproduction of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa added in pencil a moustache and gave it the title L.H.O.O.Q., which is pronounced in French: Elle a chaud au cul (She has a hot arse). He later explained the title himself:

…In reference to the Mona Lisa I also added a sentence or initials on the bottom of that reproduction - L.H.O.O.Q. A loose translation of them would be 'there is fire down below'.
(Artur Schwartz, The Complete work of Marcel Duchamp, Thames & Hudson, pp. 476-477)

Duchamp said that by drawing moustache and beard to Mona Lisa, she became a man:

…The curious thing about that moustache and goatee is that when you look at it the Mona Lisa becomes a man. It is not a woman disguised as a man, it is a real man, and that was my discovery without realizing it at that time.
(Artur Schwartz, The Complete work of Marcel Duchamp, Thames & Hudson, pp. 476-477)

Marchel Duchamp later wrote that the only reason he draw her moustache was to desacralize her. But maybe Duchamp didn't tell us everything and he revealed only the first layer of the image. Rhonda Roland Shearer, a New York sculptor thinks that L.H.O.O.Q. is Duchamp's self portrait. She thought that original was a lithography made by a superimposition of Mona Lisa and Duchamp's portrait.

Regarding to his statement that Mona Lisa is in fact a man, it is certainly interesting that he choose a woman as his alter ego. As an art gesture, he was photographed transformed in Rrose Selavy (pronounced in French as 'Rose is life'). Photographs were taken by Man Ray in 1921. 'In contrast to an earlier Man Ray portrait of Duchamp dressed as a woman (La Belle Haleine: Eau Voilette (Beautiful Breath: Veil Water), 1921), the seductive gaze and fashionable attire of this Rrose Selavy project the image of a mysterious figure.' (Artur Schwartz)

We will probably never know for sure whether Duchamp revealed Leonardo's disguise and solved the mystery of Mona Lisa. It is certain that Mona Lisa has since the time of its creation been one of the most frequently interpreted works of art and could not be avoided by all famous artists.
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Mona Lisa : Sol and Anima
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	Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (La Gioconda), 1503-14, oil on panel, 77 x 53cm, Louvre

Like Jesus Christ on the male side, is Mona Lisa the most worshipped woman in the world, and her curious look and smile attracted modern masses like a Hollywood star when it left Louvre to tour the world. There is something special behind this fragile painting stored in the bullet proof box in Musée du Louvre that attracts the vast attention without skepticism - a direct hit into the heart, for a moment reason is suspended and imagination rules. Leonardo's biographer Vasari describes this painting as a sublime masterpiece with splendid details admiring also 'her eyebrows' which are unfortunately not painted, since s/he is painted without the eyebrows, and so a doubt rises whether Vasari really saw the painting in persona, or is he just spreading what he heard. Leonardo was so fond of this work that he always carried it with him until sold to French king Francois I.

Composition

Analysis of the composition of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa shows that it is based on the circle that is visible on the painting as the perfectly circular shape of the top of Mona Lisa's head.

	module of painting derived from figure's 'circular' head

The diameter of the described circle fits into the width of the panel exactly 3 times, and 4 times in the height of the figure, thus forming a basic Pythagorean triangle 3-4-5. The height of the board does not fit into the grid of circles, but they seem to be important only for the figure of Mona Lisa. And we are not sure that the present dimensions of the painting are in fact those defined by Leonardo da Vinci.

Next thing to do is to find the system of measures that Leonardo da Vinci used for the composition. The width of the painting is according to different sources ranging from 52.4 to 53 cm. This is very close to the length of exactly 1 Venetian cubit measuring 52.2 cm.

	width = 1 Venetian cubit

VENETIA		cm
Miglio	5000	173867
Stadio	625	21731
Pertica grande	6	208,6
Passo	5	173,87
Pertica Piccola	4,5	156,6
Braccio	2	69,6
Cubito	1,5	52,2
Piede	1	34,8
Palmo	4	8,7
Oncia	12	2,9
Punto	72	0,48
Linea	144	0,24
Atomo	864	0,04
Decimo	1728	0,02

A circle, that is the compositional module, is therefore 1 palm in radius. Every metrical system is 'modular', which means that smaller units are always a simple fractions of the larger, as an example: 1 cubit equals 1.5 ft, 6 palm, or 12 oncia. The width of the painting measuring three circles is 1 cubit = 6 palm = 18 oncia, while the height of the figure is 8 palm or 24 oncia. These numbers defining the composition are conveying an important message.

Constantly Shifting Identity

This antagonistic painting is constantly pulsating the same question: Who is the person portrayed - a woman or a man? The usual suspicions go in two directions: if it is a woman, which according to this line of reasoning most probably is, then it is a painting of the Florentine lady Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, commissioned by her husband Francesco del Giocondo. There are also some other suggestions like Isabella of Aragon or the mistress of Giuliano de' Medici.

But if the portrayed is a man, then who is he: a lover of Leonardo or at least his affection for a man disguised in the portrait of a woman or a hermaphrodite? As every masterpiece, it opens more questions than gives the answers. Every square inch of this painting has been analyzed by many researchers seeking for the secret code that would unveil the mystery of the portrayed, but nothing definitive has been published yet, nor will ever be ...

A very old method used for encoding the additional, intentional messages into artistic compositions is khabbalistic exegesis called gematria, often mistakenly confused with numerology. Gematria is useful because it deals with words that have numeric values (read measures), and relates similar values to similar meanings. If we use simple Masonic code (A=1, B=2, ... , Z=26) and calculate the famous title of the painting a value of 84 is obtained:

MONA LISA = (13+15+14+1) + (12+9+19+1) = 84.
Another name for the painting is also La Gioconda, or as a variant LA GIOCCONDA, which has the same gematric value:

LA GIOCCONDA = (12+1) + (7+9+15+3+3+15+14+4+1) = 84
'La Giocconda' can be translated as a 'playful woman', which is perhaps one of the reason of her peculiar smile. But her mysterious smile conceals also another enigma, of her identity ...

	circumference of rectangle = 2 x (18+24) = 84

The above gematric speculations are amplified by the composition of circles that rule the proportions of the portrayed. If the width of the painting is considered as 1 Venetian cubit, then three circles and four circles in height equal 18 and 24 oncia respectively. The circumference of this rectangle 18 : 24, enclosing the figure is again concealing the number 84:

circumference = 2 x (18+24) = 84
This number really seems to be of extraordinary importance for this painting, no wonder since it is also a number that unveils the master himself:

LEONARDO = 12+5+15+14+1+18+4+15 = 84

REBIS

(from Latin res bina, 'twofold matter')
This painting seems to represent a compound - hieroglyphic image in alchemistic manner, that is none else but hermaphroditic Leonardo himself. Another surprise is concealed in the title of the painting, which is a rebus:

MONA LISA = SOL + ANIMA
This title is a rebis and a rebus of fundamental alchemical antimony of Sun (Sol) and Moon (Anima, soul), two basic symbols for opposing forces that are united in alchemic genderless hermaphrodite. There are many alchemic texts concerning this subject that obsessed a lot of artists during with philosophy inspired Renaissance.

... Sol and Lune, the male and female, two sperms, heaven and earth, and two, as I may say, Argent vives, and out of which alone the philosophers say their stone is made; which pitiful fellows mistake for crude mercury. But that mercury is all metals, male and female, and an hermaphrodite monster in the very marriage of the soul and the body, which I call solution; and the putrefaction of the philosophers. The earth of gold is dissolved by its own spirit, which you shall discover in these proportions. Marsilio Ficino on the alchemical art

If one third of the circle, that outlines the composition, is taken for a module (= two oncia), the ratio of rectangle that defines the figure is 9 : 12. Both numbers are symbols for previously mentioned antinomies, for number 9 symbolizes Moon, and 12 stands for Sun. This number is also the number of '12 compositional circles' that could parallel 12 zodiacal signs through which Sun traverses. This traditional symbolism is also recorded by Agrippa in De Occulta Philosophia, a dictionary of magick from 1510:



... The number nine belongs to the Moon, the utmost receptacle of all Celestiall influences, and vertues, as also it is dedicated to the nine Muses, as also to Mars, from whom is the end of all things. The number ten is Circular, and belongs to the Sun, after the same manner as unity; also it is attributed to Janus, because it is the end of the first order, and from whence begins the second unity; it is also ascribed to the world. In like manner the number twelve, because the Sun going round twelve signes, distributes the yeer [year] into twelve moneths, is attributed to the world, the Heaven, and the Sun ... Agrippa: De Occulta Philosophia


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Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci

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--> The 2 articles above originally appeared on Aiwaz.net
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